McCain vs. Obama on Tech Issues 877
eldavojohn writes "Ars is running a brief article that looks at stances from Chuck Fish of McCain's campaign and Daniel Weitzner from Obama's in regards to technical issues that may cause us geeks to vote one way or the other. From openness vs. bandwidth in the net neutrality issue to those pesky National Security Letters, there's some key differences that just might play at least a small part in your vote. You may also remember our discussions on who is best for geeks."
A lot can be seen from their choice of advisor. (Score:5, Interesting)
What about the other candidates? (Score:2, Interesting)
Obama and McCain want to put potsmokers in prison. A vote for someone who wants you in prison isn't just a wasted vote, it's a stupid vote. "Vote for me, I want you incarcerated! A gambler in every prison, a pothead in every institution, a hooker or a john in every cell!"
I want to know what the Green and Libertarian candidates stances are on tech issues. Why these two parties are not mentioned in the corporate-owned media is obvious; the question is why they are being ignored by slashdot?
method is more important than issues (Score:5, Interesting)
Barak Obama consistently evaluates situations and sets goals in a dynamic and networked way. This is how his campaign has generated such a huge response from mostly small donors. John McCain has been labeled a maverick, but has closely associated himself with conservative players and the mindset that an authoritative leader can best set goals for others.
Virginia Postrel explores the differences between these approaches in detail in The Future and Its Enemies. Al Gore, for example, appears to be future oriented because of the many apparently progressive stands he takes on issues, but Al Gore uses a top-down evaluation strategy that locks in a particular view with little input before or after. As such the future is at odds with Al Gore, and will tend always to surprise him and chafe at the positions he takes which are based on a mostly static model of the world and the options for progress it presents us.
Re:Do you really think they have opinions? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about the other candidates? (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably because they have no realistic chance of winning.
(Yes, I know that's a self-fulfilling prophecy.)
In all seriousness, I feel like a third party candidate would now need to be part of the "national conversation" on the election a lot earlier than now to win in November -- assuming that's even still really possible.
Do you really WANT them to have opinions? (Score:5, Interesting)
What you want from these guys is the wisdom to see that letting folks alone to work out stuff for themselves is the best default option, and government should step in only as the utter last resort. You want them to know their own limits, to realize they're not only not experts in tech stuff, but also not experts in farming, or energy exploration and transportation, or medicine, or housing, or education, or any of the other million and a half things people do to keep the wheels humming. They're just lawyers, and if they confine themselves to drafting (or if President promoting the drafting of) well-written, focussed, modest laws that address the relatively few issues that actually can be helped with a good law...well, they'll do a lot more good than any number of demagogues and wannabe Caesars.
Re:method is more important than issues (Score:0, Interesting)
Conservatives are the ones that follow the constitution and do little to hamper our freedoms. Check out Reagan - the greatest president of the 20th century and compare him to FDR, our most facist dictator of a president - and the biggest failure.
Re:What about the other candidates? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Do you really think they have opinions? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention the behind the scenes stuff that most people don't see. They use that website (they call it MBO) for everything -- coordinating volunteers and logistics, calling voters, fund-raising, voter outreach, etc, etc, etc.
I've worked on a fair number of political campaigns in recent years and I've never seen one that leveraged technology quite as effectively as the Obama campaign. It was probably the margin of victory over Hillary -- especially in the beginning when nobody else had a clue how well organized Obama was.
He wants to kill the Manned space program. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well stopping it for five years will effectivly kill it. Anybody that is any good will leave for a new job. The total amount for education if any of it gets to education will be something like
All in all a REALLY BAD PLAN.
It will put thousands of people out of work in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and California and provide little to no help with education. The whole thing reminds me of a town near where I lived. They had a huge problem with drugs and prostitution. There solution was to close the strip clubs. Well that solved.... nothing but sure sounded good.
At this point I am hoping Clinton does get the nomination.
Re:method is more important than issues (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll leave it up to you to decide which "wing" has more idiots. (Disclaimer: I consider myself a progressive turning increasingly cynical about the entire political system.)
A rather slanted article... (Score:3, Interesting)
On every point the "last word" is either left to Obama's side, or questioned/rebuffed by the author himself. Bleah...
Re:Has Obama been selected (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Vote Hillary! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:McCain has been one of Amtraks most (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been on no less than 7 rides to Upstate NY to/from NYC that were suppose to be 5.5 hours long and ended up being almost 12 hours long and one that ended up being almost 20 hours. I've been on a ride that was suppose to be a little over a day long that turned into almost 3 days. A friend of mine found a ticket collector going through her personal belongings and when she reported it no action was taken. These are the thing I have time to type but there was much much more. Bottom line, Amtrak is the Ghetto of transportation in the US.
Re:All I need to know (Score:5, Interesting)
They have a wider view of what constitutes an asset and the lengths to which they should be able to go to protect them than a lot of people think is good for society. Is it ok for us to become a police state in order to protect their assets? Or do we draw the line somewhere?
I'd have to assume you reference their music and film divisions and how they "criminalise" people who illegally copy copyrighted material.
There's that. Then there's the legislation like the DMCA which criminalises things like DVD decoding on unlicensed devices.
If upholding copyright law and defending their property is "suppressive", "anti-progress", "anti-freedom", and "anti-privacy", then what do you expect from them?
They do more than uphold, they try everything they can to extend copyright and other law in ways that are detrimental to society. See the treaty discussed on slashdot earlier today which would allow border guards to take copies of people's private data stores in order to check for noncompliance. I would like some ethics from them. But this isn't about what I expect from them, it's about giving your electoral mandate to someone who aligns with their interests.
Close a up shop because you deem their business model to be "obsolete"?
Straw man, and not one of my opinions.
It's to make sure that people know that they will be backed up, which in turn encourages innovation. If the pharmaceutical companies didn't have patent protection from the government, they would not be able to stay in business. Although this isn't quite the same as protection of things like music and film, the idea is similar.
Thanks, I have a good understanding of IP law, perhaps you ought to check up on it yourself if you feel the need to illustrate a copyright example by using patents.
Why should a company spend all of the time promoting an artist, who are mutually bound by contracts, if you can just go download the music?
Another straw man.
Do I like how big business operates with regard to art? Not particularly, but artists need to make the change. Don't blame the companies for doing what they have the fiduciary responsibility of doing.
They have a fiduciary responsibility to try to change the law? And to abuse the court system by presenting weak cases? And try a scatter-gun scare tactic approach 0on universities and other folks? This is news to me.
So I think I can blame them for their lack of ethics if nothing else.
And who should I blame for legislation favouring specific business sectors over and above the interests of the populace and the technical crowd?
Oh right, politicians who are in the pockets of the same media companies and hol,d their intrerests above those of society as a whole, or at least are quite prepared to hear a one-sided story. Which is, coincidentally, what we're talking about here, which politician should get your mandate. The one in bed with the coporations that are taking actions I disagree with wouldn't get my vote, were I a US voter.
I'm all for free market capitalism, but I'm not so laissez-faire that I think anarchy is the way to go. Let the market decide if Time Warner's media component is the right business model going forward. Things tend to not change overnight, so don't be impatient.
The market is not perfect, consumers are not always enlightened and competition is not always free and fair. That said it's not the business model I argue with, it's the ethics and the politics.
Some of the worst decisions are made with haste.
This is releveant to what, how?
I'm not asking for radical overnight change, I'm looking for politicians and political parties that will stop us going even further in the wrong direction, then consider what to do from there.
Re:Has Obama been selected (Score:3, Interesting)
I can say "I like white people" without being racist.
Re:All I need to know (Score:4, Interesting)
According to PBS Bush won recount ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that a democrat designed the ballot and that a democratic election board approved the ballot I think it would be far more accurate to say that the democrats gave away Florida.
This is somewhat of a tangent but you should realize that the "stole the election" theme is a political strategy of the democrats, not a historical fact. To be fair, the republicans would have done the exact same thing had the situation been reversed. However according to PBS, a somewhat left leaning organization:
"In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted."
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/recount_4-3.html [pbs.org]
You need manned missions to send a man to Mars (Score:3, Interesting)
Obama has po-pohed the idea that any kind of problem can kill off everyone on earth. That I think in the long term, is a grave mistake.
Re:Has Obama been selected (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, the rules were set and the two state committees broke them with impunity anyway, but if the leader of the Democrat party is saying that he wants them to count, then, err... I'm thinking they may get chucked in anyway.
(This of course doesn't shake my agreement with your statements on the matter - rules are rules - but they may not matter anyway).
Re:Has Obama been selected (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:He wants to kill the Manned space program. (Score:3, Interesting)
The mix of events - the Cold War, optimism for the future and a the number of scientists trained in rocketry from the Second World War - that made it happen in the United States the first time was unique. Once dead, without that trigger and without those circumstances, no American space presence - manned or robotic - will occur again.
Re:it's them scheming democraps (Score:3, Interesting)
I see (in older and recent votes)
2 people who vote for things they can't pay for.
2 people who would at least THINK about national health care (but unfortunately not a rational plan)
1 person who has a tiny amount of fiscal restrait (not as much as Ron Paul... but some)
1 person who won't even consider national health care.
All three are in the pockets of corporations-- just a different set.
I'm tending towards McCain
Both political parties are destroying this country long term because neither has a any patriotism or backbone and both have sold out to corporate interests.
Re:He wants to kill the Manned space program. (Score:4, Interesting)
Wouldn't that be a neat option on your tax forms? It would be cool if you could designate x% of your tax dollars to go to some government program (education, military, NASA, CDC, etc). Whatever you are most concerned with would get a boost come tax time. The dollars would go to where we as a nation really want them to go.
I know that there are a lot of problems with distributed government plans, but the reason we have elected representatives as we do is because 200 years ago it was the only feasible way for everyone to have a semblance of a voice. With tech growing as it has (wikis, dBs), the possibility of getting everyone who cares to chime in is no longer an impossibility.
Wikilaws.gov? Congressional budgets via W-4s? I know it would be a disaster, but maybe some hybrid of our current system with a distributed system could work.
Re:Has Obama been selected (Score:5, Interesting)
One of those is a civil liberties issue; the other one is just speaking the truth.
Re:probably a slight majority of americans (Score:4, Interesting)
And then you get guys like me. I could personally care LESS about Barack Obama's skin color. Really. His ancestry is of no interest to me.
What is of interest are his positions defined by his voting record. Barack Obama's voting record is the single MOST LIBERAL [nationaljournal.com] of anyone in the Senate. More liberal than Ted Kennedy, more liberal than anyone. Even the redoutable Maxine Water of the House, who recently (and infamously) threatened to "socialize" all the American oil companies [sevenload.com], isn't as liberal as Obama (and has endorsed Hillary Clinton).
So my vote goes to McCain. Not because I particularly like him, but because he is, by far and away, the LEAST vile and frightening of the available choices.
Re:probably a slight majority of americans (Score:3, Interesting)
A voter is either voting for a particular candidate or against one or more candidates. There's nothing wrong with either approach; there are times when it is as important to keep a "bad" candidate from public office as it is to get a "good" candidate in. But how does the voter define good and bad, and determine at which point it is better to make a negative vote than a positive one?
And there's the rub. With the artificial polarization of the bipartisan system, the massive campaigning system and PR/media manipulation, there really is no way to define the candidates in such a way as to make a solidly informed vote. Candidates change their message to suit the target audience, and avoid giving concrete and unambiguous answers when they can. Promises are made which can't be backed up, mud is thrown in order to garner negative votes, and the media spins everything possible.
So in the end, how can a voter not vote blindly? I personally don't vote based on skin color, gender or age, but I can see why people do -- they are among the few facts which can't be changed as the political winds suit. And all of the candidates' personal attributes have the potential to affect decision-making. Whether or not they allow this to happen, and to what extent, is an important question.
Now, voting strictly along party lines? That's intentionally blinding yourself. And this applies equally to the candidates as to the voters.
Hyper-Individualist Politics (Score:2, Interesting)
This really bothers me.
It seems every election Slashdot has an article on which candidate is better "for the geeks." This is along with hundreds of articles about which candidate is better for X Y Z group.
This is a symptom of the sickness in our society today. Everyone thinks in terms of, "what's best for me," rather than, "what's best for our country." It is exactly the kind of thinking that led us into our current mess of endless war, deficit spending, a falling dollar and the housing crash. People voted for the candidate who said the right thing on a narrow issue rather than looking at the broad profile and thinking about how position and policy statements would affect us in the large.
It's easy to campaign to individual desires. It's much harder to campaign on the idea that together we are much stronger than we are as individuals. We've had some examples of this: Both Roosevelts, Kennedy, Lincoln. But ever since Goldwater, individualistic politics has ruled the day.
I see this attitude starting to change, but it's slow. I, along with other politically-minded people I know, have pledged to contribute our stimulus checks to funding a fall public event in St. Paul, MN that will bring this conversation to a larger group of people. The stimulus checks themselves are another symptom of the rampant hyper-individualism of our society. They send the message that you, as an individual, are more important to the economy than our combined efforts. Well, I reject that notion and what better way to make a point of it than using that money to collectively support an effort that works to restore balance among the needs of the individual and the needs of the community?
Re:Has Obama been selected (Score:3, Interesting)
If that's truly what she wants, she'd probably best hit the mute button and stand down now lest she end up being viewed as Ralph Nader instead--hopelessly fracturing the party core and letting an election once seen as a shoo-in Democrat victory slip away.
Not that I'm calling for her to stand down, but if this is indeed her secret strategy her time is probably better spent now in fence-mending so that she might actually accrue some goodwill ahead of November.
Of course if Obama wins the election she's pretty much done anyway (at least for President), so I guess she figures to go out with guns blazing.
On the other hand .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Our country has been 4 years of Bush, 8 years of Clinton, and 8 years of Bush already. That means anyone younger than 21 can't even remember a time when one of those two families wasn't in power in our nation!
Given that realization, I'd have to give the nod to Obama over Clinton - just for the sake of "breaking the cycle", if nothing else! (Of course, a vote for McCain would accomplish that too
Re:Has Obama been selected (Score:5, Interesting)
-A
I understand your point about leaving it there as an savings type of investment, but I have a better idea. Drill it! It would cost about $30/barrel to extract the oil that sells for about $135 today. Remember, that's a billion barrels, or $135,000,000,000 profit. Take that "profit" and dump it into research towards alternative energy. By the time we run out of ANWR oil, we won't need it anymore. Or, if $135,000,000,000 in research can't find an acceptable renewable, then it can't be found!
I'm curious if that idea would be acceptable to either candidate.
Re:probably a slight majority of americans (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What is Net Neutrality (Score:3, Interesting)
And one more example. Why the heck doesn't my cell phone automatically keep track of how many minutes I've used without me having to manually reset it when the billing cycle restarts. I should be able to see a running total in both minutes and dollars on the device. But no, those @#$*&( are just dieing to have me use those high-rate extra minutes.
Re:Do you really think they have opinions? (Score:3, Interesting)
In the rest of the world, "liberal" has a positive connotation.
To me, "liberal" sounds a lot better than "conservative" as long as the "conservative" isn't prefixed with "fiscally" or "environmentally."
Re:it's them scheming democraps (Score:4, Interesting)
Therefore, if we reduce the tax rate to 0 we should have infinite revenue. GREATNESS!!!11!!
On the other hand, maybe some research on the Laffer Curve [wikipedia.org], which is usually the basis for the "reduced tax rates = greater revenue" argument, is in order. I do not think that it means what you say it means.
Re:Has Obama been selected (Score:5, Interesting)
No, you're wrong. Bush has yet to surpass Reagan as the leader of the largest growth of the US government in history.
His war on drugs destroyed the 4th amendment. His corporate welfare programs haven't been matched by Bush. Bush's crimes against this nation are just the next step in the progression that Reagan pushed. He does not make them look like Libertarians, he makes them look just like he does. The problem isn't that Bush is worse than Reagan, it's that the Reagan cultists refuse to look deeper into the issue and spout nonsense like "Bush isn't a Republican". He's exactly what a Republican is. The rejection of the real Republican Barry Goldwater in favor of the fascist Ronald Reagan was the turning point at which Republicans completely rejected their stated platform in favor of the biggest government that they could get. Ron Paul was a last ditch effort at bringing that party back to its stated ideals and it turned out the same.
So, because I believe in a smaller federal government I'm a "wingnut extremist"? Wow. I suppose the other "wingnut extremists" include Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Quincy Adams, and a host of others of similar reputation?
No, *if* you believe in a smaller federal government *and* you support the Republicans, then you're a fool. You're a fool in that situation because there is no evidence backing up that link and all evidence points to the contrary.
I believe in a smaller federal government, but I'm not stupid enough to believe that supporting the (current) party of biggest, most invasive government is a rational choice. Thomas Jefferson is spinning in his grave at the idea of religious extremists (hell any religious people) destroying his careful construction. That you would dare to invoke the man who said "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.", in defense of unrestrained military spending at the benefit of said banking institutions *often in other countries*, demonstrates nothing but contempt for yourself, Thomas Jefferson, and everyone around you who's stuck footing the bill for your willful ignorance.
20 years wasn't that long ago. That's my point. It's not ancient history or something.
Like I said, 1980 was 28 years ago, and that's discounting the excesses of Nixon and Eisenhower. I'll ignore them in favor of simple rounding.
30 years is a long time. People born 30 years ago could vote for 12 years. That's 3 presidential election cycles. It's been a progression, and it started long before Reagan.
So, repeating nonsense that was already nonsense 30 years ago is ignorant, and it doesn't require the history to be ancient, recent, or modern. All it requires is for you to put a little thought and research into the matter rather than repeating old lies as if the mere repeating of them could make them true.
Re:it's them scheming democraps (Score:2, Interesting)
1. It has been proven over and over again that reduced tax rates equal greater tax revenue. Less shackles equals more work.
One thing that has always bugged me is that Dole/Reagan's AMT increase did not include inflation indexing. That was the one really good thing Reagan did, end bracket creep by indexing the income tax. Because they excluded the AMT from that we now face the current AMT crisis.
There is empirical evidence that decreasing capital gains taxes can increase revenue shot term, because people hold off sales until after the new rate takes effect, increasing activity and hence revenue short term. OTOH, I haven't seen numbers on it, but I expect raising the capital gains rate would do the same thing, since there would be a rush to sell before the rate changes. Long term neither should make a difference.
Re: wtf indeed - no govt control is required. (Score:3, Interesting)
I do that set up now...I have a high deductible policy, that has reasonable montly premiums. I stuff the limit of money I can annually in a HSA, pre-tax...and I pay my Dr. and meds with that as needed. I find that with the Dr's and tests...when I tell them it isn't going to be paid by insurance....they cut the rate they charge me.
YOu can get a much better deal this way...and I can do to any damned Dr. I want to...without consulting any HMO books, etc...
The trouble with insurance is, it is being treated as a payment plan...not insurance against disaster...