Recently in Politics Category
The midterm presentations for Nick Law's thesis seminar went smoothly for all. The guest critics were great, and provided some excellent feedback.
My Presentation Slides [pdf]
This just blows my mind. How, in all that is holy, can someone or some group of people slip something into a bill or other piece of legislation? Do these people read the damn things? Yes, who dunnit is important, but who let it be done is as, if not more important. From the article...
Now, it's not necessarily outrageous that Sen. Specter didn't know what his subordinate slipped into the legislation. The Patriot Reauthorization was a long and hotly debated bill.
...complete bullshit. This isn't some high school book report.
How can democracy work with occurances such as these mishaps so common. I've been considering work in projects dealing with social-democracy [see Matt Burton's thesis for an example of a similar approach]. But what good will an informed public be, when the problem isn't just constituent apathy and ignorance, but real issues within the actual governmental entities themselves?
There has recently been a surge in online consumer activism, notably in banks and utilities [via Slashdot]. This phenomenon was innevitable, something related to the growing powers of online governmental petitioning (as covered in last weeks Economist [sorry, paid or subscriber article]). I'm very curious to see what happens with this stuff in the coming years. Will customers and constituents be able to have any kind of influence? How will this effect free markets, capitolism, etc.
UPDATE
Also see the JetBlue debacle... And how collective customer action brought about the first airline Passenger Bill of Rights:
JetBlue.com: bill of rights
CNN coverage
consumeraffairs.com coverage
I rarely visit YouTube.com. My YouTube experience exists mainly in exposure to embedded content - the use of YouTube as a media storage platform. And I'm fairly certain most internet media consumers are like me.
The social components of YouTube just don't do it for me. This might be partly due to the interface, which in my humble opinion doesn't encourage social behavior. YouTube's design is too clean, too empty of feeling. Groups, Channels, Categories... I feel a certain forced redundancy.
To me, the power of YouTube is in the platform. This aint no MySpace for video.
Tacking on commenting, channels, and messages doesn't make something social.
I'm even curious as to how effective a platform YouTube is. The blogosphere was recently in a tizzy about some prominent YouTube posting Athiest getting his account wiped. For a service with the slogan 'Broadcast Yourself', this just seems a little shifty.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
- Ben Franklin
Cat and I have an ongoing discussion on whether corporate vs. governmental regulation is more dangerous. She leans towards the corporate being the lesser evil, where I believe corporate regulation (that is, companies deciding policy, disregarding lobbying) is the greater evil.
Visa just announced their intention to block payments to the Russian music download site AllofMP3. AllofMP3 insists upon its legality in terms of Russian copyright law—but has promised a change in its business model, hoping for more international acceptance (of course, this will come at a price, as the downloaders are quite happy with the current system).
But is Visa's extreme measure to block payments to AllofMP3 acceptable? As a digg poster commented, Since when has it been Visa's obligation to judge business morality? While I believe that businesses should have models of moral obligation, decisions such as these should be questioned by general consumers and more closely examined by relevant subscribers. Business policies, and corporate morality policies should be easily available, and digestible to consumers, subscribers, anyone who wants them, really—public accessibility is key. Archives of past business and policy movements should be equally accessible.
Link (Must login to NYTimes.com)
Much privacy has been sacrificed in the war against terror and child pornography. I find this completely absurd.
On this subject, Gonzales says
"We respect civil liberties, but we have to harmonize this so we can get more information"
I call bullshit.
ICANN recently confirmed a proposed contract which would enable tierd pricing for the .org, .biz, and .info top-level domains. Why do you care?
This means that the registries could charge $100,000/yr for sex.biz, $25,000/yr for movies.org, etc. if they wanted to...
George Kirikos — circleid.com
I'm noticing a trend here, with strong similarities to the Net-Neutrality mess. Over-privatization, maybe, but in an old-boys club sort of way.
A recent Slashdot post confirms the passage of a bill by the House to ban social site (Myspace, Friendster, Facebook...) access on public terminals (libraries, schools...). The bill seeks to protect children from predators who use the social platforms with evil intentions. I call bullshit. This is another example of a completely backwards, wholly political, absurdly rhetorical slap-fest. Bills and regulations such as these won't prevent child predators from lurking the streets of America and cyberspace. They might as well try to stop global warming by nuking the ozone.
Bob Frankston wrote a well-informed article (story, really) on net-neutrality. The story explores the telco's greed using the metaphore of sidewalks in a planned community. The settings are frighteningly Orwellian, where Big Brother is not the government, but a junta of corporations existing under the guise of consumer-beneficial competition.
