Presidental Elections and IT Questions

[Parcival]

If you wanna know what Bush and Kerry think about IT, you'll like this link:

Bush and Kerry on Technology (http://www.comptia.org/pressroom/election_2004.aspx)

I like this answer:

Kerry response:
I do not condone the illegal sharing of copyrighted material. We must ensure that our laws protect the creations of individuals and companies while not unreasonably stifling technological innovation. I am open to examining whether legislative action is necessary to ensure that a person who lawfully obtains or receives a transmission of a digital work may back up a copy of it for archival purposes or transfer it to a digital media device for the purpose of non public performance or display.


PS: My first political thread - I hope it's going to survive. :)

[gehidore]

Originally posted by Parcival
PS: My first political thread - I hope it's going to survive. :)

Heh,

Its up to all them other mods, I'm to lazy to find out...

votes for bush

[fatTrav]

Though I don't really care what Kerry has to say about anything, I did find some of these questions and responses interesting.

The question about internet content really scared me b/c I was thinking both of them (Kerry more than bush, because of his religion) would want to try and censor a lot of content on the internet. I felt both responses were similiar and actually reassuring that people won't have their content restricted based on what someone else deems "appropriate." I hate censorship. After all, "It is blindingly clear judges have no greater capacity than the rest of us to determine what is moral." --Justice Scalia.

Their opinions on spam were also good. Bush was (somehow) more opinionated and informed on this issue than Sen. Kerry. I just wish I could figure out how to get WordPress to better handle (or handle period) spam on my blog. Gmail seems to be able to detect which comments are legit and which aren't though an email to notify me. *shrugs*

Though I was somewhat letdown that no question focused on keeping high-paying IT jobs between the borders. I can understand why it would be beneficial to the US economy for outsourcing (businessess spend more money than anyone else, they cut costs would help them to spend more) to help boost it. But also it hurts the American worker. I can see this issue both ways and don't like either.

A good article, but not enough for me to make a different decision with my vote. I hope this can stay a clean thread...

[madcompnerd]

John Kerry:
They could then use those computers to launch "denial of service attacks," or steal and corrupt large quantities of sensitive information. Moreover, these worms could reach most vulnerable targets in an hour or less. We need a president who is actively supportive of developing technologies that will automatically detect and respond to these kinds of attacks.
My gawd, please don't let this man win. If you don't know what it is, DON'T PRETEND TO!
What is a technology that automatically detects worms and responds to them; or is he referring to auto detecting DoS?

[madcompnerd]

Does anyone else ever get the idea, when reading this, that these read like a bad high school paper? All the "I [verb]" quotes. No point, it just triggers my "oh crap I used firstperson in a formal paper" nerve.

Neither of the candidates seem to differ too far on this one, although Bush seems to have some clue as to what these things are; or at least he's spent time throwing money at things.

[Parcival]

Well, I am sure neither one has actually a real clue. I'm 99.9% sure that they didn't give the answers but somebody from their staff. In other words, this interview doesn't reflect what Bush and Kerry know about IT, but rather their staff. ;)

So is the whole interview pointless? Nope. Once either one of these guys is elected he's not gonna work as a sys-admin, but as a politician who's going to enforce laws and protect rights. For me, Kerry scores because he's open to legislation protecting individual's rights for a legal private copy; a right the biggies in the field keep trying to rip away from us.

[infiniphunk]

My gawd, please don't let this man win. If you don't know what it is, DON'T PRETEND TO!

Wow. Go ahead and re-elect mr "nucular" I'm sure he will do wonders for America as he has for the last 4 years. Bush doesn't know any more about tech than Kerry from what I can see in these responses. I really feel sorry for the middle-class in your country. Its a pity.

[gehidore]

Originally posted by infiniphunk
Wow. Go ahead and re-elect mr "nucular" I'm sure he will do wonders for America as he has for the last 4 years. Bush doesn't know any more about tech than Kerry from what I can see in these responses. I really feel sorry for the middle-class in your country. Its a pity.

Lets avoid flamery, No 'attacks' just state your opinion(next time without the quote that targets someone else), otherwise I will be forced to break out the padlock. (err threadlock :p)
Nothing against you, just trying to stop the fire at the first spark...

[Parcival]

Originally posted by gehidore
Lets avoid flamery, No 'attacks' just state your opinion

That's why I said I hope the thread's going to survive the day. :) Indeed it already has, which is in my eyes another hint for the good discussion style here at JL in general. :)

[infiniphunk]

Obviously neither the Republican nor the Democrat candidate for the presidency really know very much about technology and science; neither one has a science background. So both have teams of advisors who basically give them ideas on how to put a "conservative" or "liberal" spin on todays important tech issues. Anybody know what its called when you have a society governed by techies?

[blingbling!!]

Anybody know what its called when you have a society governed by techies?

Nerdutopia?
Geekdom?
Hell?

[TheSpeedoBeast]

Originally posted by blingbling!!

Hell?
:p

[Davy]

Originally posted by blingbling!!
Hell?

AKA redmond, washington

:P

[zeddity]

Originally posted by infiniphunk
Anybody know what its called when you have a society governed by techies?

A technocracy (http://www.technocracy.org).

[Parcival]

Technocracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy) in Wikipedia.

[El_Cu_Guy]

Votes for the lesser of two evils.

[jerbear]

It's for reasons like this that I wish we could change the mindset that we need professional politicians to run the country. The incumbents tend to prevent new people from entering the arena with the attack that they don't have enough "experience." Experience in what? Getting your staff to do your research and make your positions for you? We need people in power that actually knows something about the real world: Middle class working people with jobs as doctors, teachers, business men, scientists and engineers, IT people (well, the ones that haven't gone insanne yet anyway - then again, they probably have developed the most patience in trying to explain the truth to stupid people!), etc...

These days it seems that you have to be a multi-millionare and either have a background in law or politics. And coming from a strongly political family helps a good bit too!

Actually, that reminds me of my other soap box (feel free to stop reading now - this will get a bit off topic). I really don't like the current winner-take-all mentality of our electoral process. I've seen all the ideas for eliminating the electoral college and putting in IRV or some other variation on vote counting. But it seems to me that these all fall short. They turn us back into a strict democracy where uninformed voters pick a candidate based on feelings. Much better was the original electoral college where we didn't even vote for a candidate. Instead we picked someone from our local area that we believed we could trust to have our best interests at heart. He travelled to Washington and met with similarly elected "electors" to hash out where the candidates really stood. A small group of cautious informed and intelligent people is far less likely to be swayed by mud slinging and emotional pleas. Now I suspect that our country is too big with too little sense of community to go back to such a situation. However, I think Nebraska and Maine are on the right track. Let's keep the electoral college, but give a single electoral vote for each congressional district plus two electoral votes from the overall winner of the state. The biggest problem is gerrymandering during the redistricting process. But if we follow Iowa's lead and let an independent non-partisan organization run the process and base district lines on population size and geographical features, we could get a much better approximation of the ideal situation.

Anyway, enough on this rant... Politics is just all around messed up anyway!