While many people jumped all over presidential hopeful John McCain's wrong-headed view on network neutrality, few noticed his infuriating love for Microsoft. "[T]he 70 year old presidential hopeful also said that he would ask Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to serve on his cabinet to deal with technology issues if elected. He did not however say what position Ballmer might be hired in, but did joke that he might consider him for a diplomatic position, such as ambassador to China."
No wonder Dick Cheney kept Ballmer out of the current Administration. A shotgun weilding Vice President versus a chair throwing Ambassador would make for an interesting Sunday morning talk show routine.
You sir, are a fucking idiot. The grandparent's post was a joke, and the hunting incident is the least of the problems "liberals" (well really, anyone with a modicum of sense) have with the likes of Dick Cheney. How about 2 DUIs (so between GWB and Cheney, we have a team with 3 DUIs), draft evasion, Halliburton's ties to Iran when Cheney was at the helm, pressuring intelligence agencies to jazz up reports to fit your own world view (see the Downing street memo), and so many others? Not that I expect a rational reply...
And here are citations for Halliburton's and Cheney's involvement with "axis of evil" fulcrum Iran:
First, from Fox News [foxnews.com] of all places.
An excerpt:
While he headed the Houston-based oil services and construction company, Cheney strongly criticized sanctions against countries like Iran and Libya. President Clinton cut off all U.S. trade with Iran in 1995 because of Tehran's support for terrorism....
Much of Halliburton's business with Iran comes through Halliburton Products & Services Ltd., a subsidiary incorporated in the Cayman Islands and based in the United Arab Emirates. Halliburton Products & Services opened a Tehran office in early 2000, before Cheney left Halliburton to become Bush's running mate.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday June 03 2007, @05:59PM (#19375113)
Well the best thing about having Ballmer in the administration would be that it would be difficult to buy him off. Do you think he would even notice $9,000 from the RIAA? Or a lobbyist funded ski trip somewhere?
I say Ballmer for President! No I'm kidding. We don't need him to say "Fucking Putin is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Russia."
Ex-KGB, martial artist, absolutely no morality, ruthless, has probably been behind numerous deaths... Yeah, dude's a wuss.
Wow, I didn't know all that about Steve Ballmer! I suppose chair-throwing can be a martial art and given that he has threatened to fucking kill Google, I'm not surprised. ...But ex-KGB? Wait... You were talking about Steve Ballmer, weren't you?
That John McCain would consider picking Steve Ballmer to serve in the cabinet just affirms the stupidity of the American voter. Flash, not substance, appeals to the typical voter. Ballmer has plenty of flash; he is the high-profile leader of one of the most well-known companies in America. To the dumb American voter, Ballmer is good, and the chairman of the electrical enginering department at MIT is bad. The likelihood that McCain would pick a good choice -- like the EE department chairman at MIT -- is zero.
Among the Republican candidates, both John McCain and Ron Paul are the least dishonest candidates -- even if you disagree with their political positions. McCain is honest in saying that a substantial increase in troops in Iraq can transform the country. He is correct. Increasing the number of Western occupying soldiers to 400,000, pushing aside the Iraqi government, and running Iraq as a colony on the basis of Western values (e.g., equality for women) will transform Iraq into a prosperous, liberal Western nation. At the end of 20 years of occupation, we can relinquish control to democratically elected Iraqi politicians who spent most of their youth in a Western-value-dominated colony.
At the same time, Ron Paul is correct when he says that American foreign policy (like deposing the democratically elected government of Iran in the 1950s) is, at least partially, responsible for Arab attacks (like the 9/11 incident) against American citizens.
Note that neither men can win this election. American voters do not want to hear truth. Neoconservative voters especially do not want to hear the truth. They wanted war on the cheap and cheered using a pathetic force of 160,000 soldiers to occupy Iraq. Of course, these voters refuse to support making sacrifices for the war; their attitude is, "You make all the sacrifies for the war. You die for the war. As for me, I make no sacrifices. I will not support even a tax increase to pay for this war. Excuse me! I must hop in my SUV and head off to the baseball game!"
When Ron Paul told the truth during the recent debate, the Republican voters booed and condemned him. They do not want to hear about American responsibility for the 9/11 incident. In the debate, Ruddy Giuliani viciously attacked Paul and his utterance of the truth. Few politicians are as dishonest as Giuliani, so he has the best chance of being nominated as the Republican candidate. The American voter prefers hearing lies.
On the Democratic side, the least dishonest politicians are Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, and Barack Obama.
Okay. Clinton has a good chance of being president. However, she keeps saying the truth. She refuses to apologize for her vote authorizing the use of force against Iraq. Although we now know that the CIA intelligence data was wrong, supporting the use of force was appropriate since, in 2003, we believed that the intelligence data was correct. If a nation with a leader making violent threats does have weapons of mass destruction, authorizing the use of military force against this nation is appropriate -- maybe, even, desirable. Clinton voted correctly. She correctly refuses to apologize for the vote.
However, if she keeps sticking to the truth, she will ruin her chances to win in the election. The dumb American voter does not want to hear the truth. So, henceforth, Clinton should avoid talking about her vote on the use of force -- if she wants to win. She must focus on flashy superficialities -- just like Giuliani.
Of course, Fred Thompson has an excellent chance to win. Nothing is more superficial and flashy than an actor.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday June 03 2007, @05:05PM (#19374731)
The likelihood that McCain would pick a good choice -- like the EE department chairman at MIT -- is zero.
Why would the chairman of the EE department at MIT be a good choice? The position doesn't require technical aptitude, it requires the ability to understand the way technology affects public policy. It requires someone to be able to draw on people like the EE department chair to help interpret new technologies.
But it also requires skills that highly technical people usually lack. Engineers and developers often take a myopic view of technology that is often far too black-and-white to be useful in a public policy setting. As much as I hate to say it, lawyers, economists and other non-technical disciplines tend to have skills that transfer over better than strictly-tech people.
If I were looking at creating a cabinet position to advise on technical issues, I'd look more towards people like Lawrence Lessig...the kind of person who has clearly been able to draw on the knowledge of people who deeply understand technology and then apply what they've learned to real-world considerations. Someone who understands the intricacies of what public policy is allowed to and is likely to be able to accomplish.
McCain is running as a Faux version of his 2000 personna. Flip flopping on his 2000 positions loses all the people drawn to his 'straight talk express' and the religious right is making clear they don't buy it.
If Balmer wanted to be a politician he could run for President himself, he is a vastly more credible candidate than the rest of the Republican field to date.
Romney is running against the state he was governor of, openly attacking liberals for holding the views he claimed to hold five years ago, another flip flopper.
Worst flip flopper of all is Giuliani, he was for terrorism before he was against it. Back when he was running for Major of NYC it was convenient to pander to the expat Irish vote by supporting the IRA. So Giuliani was a regular fixture at Sinn Fein and Noraid fund raisers. In 1994 he gave a 'humanitarian award', the Crystal Apple to Gerry Adams, who blew up a shopping mall 18 months later.
Thompson is busy hiring staff embroilled in the worst Bush administration scandals. And Ron Paul will have been drowned in the slime generated by the administration noise machine long before the primaries.
What is particularly disgusting about this crew is the snearing contempt they have for anyone who does not share their exact views. There were plenty of people who understood what the Iraq war was almost certain to become, it was not even a close call if you knew the history of the British occupation. Put one of those people in charge, not the blind sheep.
Remind me, who won the last election? Oh yes, that's right, a government full of incompetent hypocrites that had a record of lying habitually. I think the evidence speaks for itself.
Nevermind the fact that Thompson has spent more time in elected office than Clinton or Obama... You pick on the fact that he's been an actor.
Being a professional political candidate (which is all elected officials are these days) is not unlike being an actor. It's even more superficial and flashy than acting, except you never admit it's fake. Come to think of it, no wonder Jesse Ventura was so qualified.
Canada "liberated"? It was granted independence in a completely peaceful and orderly process. No shock and awe required.
Actually they withheld cream and sugar when having the British Ambassador over for tea. He was both shocked and awed at the impropriety of it all. No amount of stammering, "Now listen here, old chap, this simply will not do," could conjure up the required accompaniments, and he was forced to telegraph home immediately recommending that such dastardly manners be answered with expulsion from The Empire.
The rest of the world was like, "What the Fuck? Canada just got its independence now? That's stupid, why'd they bother after waiting so fucking long?"
Where was the civil war in Germany after World War II? Where was the civil war in Japan after World War II? It didn't happen.
The circumstances are completely different. In Iraq you have three very different groups of people in one country where the minority government was just overthrown by outside forces. I knew that was going to be a recipe for disaster before we even invaded. A lot of people knew this outcome was likely.
So a presidential hopeful wants somebody who at least knows how technology works to be a technology adviser? Say it ain't so!
However, I do hope this happens so he is able to re-use the "Developers, developers, developers" presentation.
So a presidential hopeful wants somebody who at least knows how technology works to be a technology adviser? Say it ain't so!
If "knifing the baby", "cutting off oxygen" and "fucking killing" is how technology works, McCain has his man. Ballmer knows NOTHING about technology and needs the kind of business ethics class that comes with steel bars on the door.
I hope the whole thing was a bad joke, but there is no mistaking McCain's stance on network neutrality. Love of M$ goes hand in hand with approval of ATT's tactics.
The person [slashdot.org] who posted this journal and somehow got kdawson to get it to the front page is the same person [slashdot.org] posting under the "Erris" account. twitter thinks it's cool to shill [slashdot.org] his own submissions, probably because moderators have wised up to his twitter account and just mod him down on sight.
I think/.'ers need to see these stories, but kdawson needs to get a better source.
A presidential hopeful wants someone who actively opposes fair competition/cooperation in the industry to advise him on tech policy.
This is not trollish conjecture, the anti-trust lawsuits didn't come out of thin air, and the anti-cooperation charge should require no explanation.
Allow me to also note the increasing movement among U.S. State governments to pursue open standards technology. You want to talk friction? What sort of leverage would MS have on this issue? They already threatened contract-infringement legal action against the state of California just because the state considered having an official conversation about open standards.
Watch the beginning of the video on this link. [allthingsd.com] Mossberg asks him if the debate on frivolous software patents is anywhere on his radar and McCain says "No" in a manner that is very dissmissive of Mossberg's nerd question. I was a McCain supporter before, but after watching this interview he comes off as totally clueless about technology. You'd think he'd get someone to at least brief him before going to this event.
Software patents are not on any candidate's radar this election cycle. There is the war, there is health care. A hundred other issues that draw more passion then anything the geek can offer.
IT is one of the most stressful things people have to deal with [slashdot.org]. Computers are part of everyone's daily lives and the suck of non free software is too. A politician that does not realize this is out of touch. One that can't harness it is not a leader.
How can I convince you that software patents are important? Easy, it's your freedom, wellbeing and prosperity. The war is important. Declining standards of living is important and healthcare is part of that. Computers touch on these and all 100 of your other issues, but the bigger connector is run away corporate power and greed [essential.org]. Your computer needs to be free if you are ever to learn the truth about wars, healthcare and standards of living. Without a free press to inform you of your leader's dirty work, you will continually suffer unjust laws, wars and declining standards of living.
Laws like the DMCA and other crazy copyright attacks are both a symptom and a cause of corporate power. They are a symptom because free people would never knowingly vote their rights away. People voted that way because they were lied to. They were told that copyright and patent laws were "enablers." We understand the lie because our computers and the internet are a relatively free place. They are a cause because they can be used to take your freedoms away, which will leave you ignorant. Make no mistake you can worse off even than people before the internet if the internet is made non free. Before the internet, people had printed newspapers but you will only have broadcast and non free internet.
Well. Better the devil you know than the usual political hack that doesn't know anything about tech.:)
Seriously, it's got to be mostly a symbolic move to lure some business/tech folks. I think McCain is probably just throwing a name out there, and that Ballmer would be a poor choice due to his personality and the small fact that he already has, you know, a pretty full-time job. But if McCain's announcement gets voters and candidates thinking that yes, tech policy actually does matter, that's a very good thing.
Oh, yeah, very good thing. But for them, not for interoperability. It would be the death for access to Open Source and Open Formats all across the board of the federal government. If Microsoft can kill legislatures pro Open Formats using "only" lobbies, imagine how aggressively they would defend their own interests by having someone with capacity to directly influence TPTB.
Think about Cheney and Halliburton, but this time for I.T. instead of good ol' military contracts.
Bill Gates may be chairman of Microsoft, but CEO Balmer is certainly a capable chair-man in his own right.... Please don't let Balmer anywhere near the Chief of Staff position.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday June 03 2007, @03:14PM (#19373797)
McCain was once a Republican I could vote for: His own man. But a few years ago he became little more than a lapdog for the RNC. Makes you wonder what kind of dirt they have on him. He's not White House material. Once maybe, but not anymore. Not because I think he's become crooked, but because I think he's become weak.
I do not understand the appeal of this simpering asstard to voters with otherwise-enlightened sensibilities.
Simple: many people have decided that he can't be as bad as Bush (generally ignoring his voting record) solely because he lacks any obvious mental defects, and at least has some personal knowledge of why torture's a stupid method of intelligence gathering.
When you lower the bar enough, anyone can reach it.
I've heard what the man has to say, and yeah, a lot of it is typical Libertarian wacko BS.
As the same time, he hasn't been bought off by the usual suspects. Like the poster above, I would have voted for McCain in a HEARTBEAT in 2000, even knowing what I do now about Gore (Gore 2000 is a different man than Gore 2007 regardless of what he'd like to say...I still think he has been one of the most consistently smartest people in politics for 20 years, just not a great politician).
But I'll take a president that offers wacko ideas just to break the monotony. No party is going to get lockstepped behind him the way the Republicans did Bush, or partly the way the Dems did behind Clinton before the Republican uprising. Which brings up another thing -- one of the greatest things of the Clinton era was that EVERYONE had to compromise. No one got what they wanted. And because of it, there was discussion and debate and things had to happen because everyone found a common platform that they could agree on and the country had some of the largest gains because of it.
With Ron Paul, I could see the same thing happening again. I'd LOVE to see a president that actually understood how to veto. And knew when it was appropriate. Clinton understood how to do this and even tried to get a line-item veto in that would allow his to use his pen even more (unfortunately, it was passed in an unconstitutional manner...I bet if they did something like this with Riders it might actually pass the supreme's muster...errr...then again, maybe thats what it was...it was a long time ago that I read up on this stuff).
I'd love to see a real maverick running the country. I could care less if his politics match mine or not. I just don't want some jingoistic motherfucking corporate whore that seems to be able to convince the lower half of the bell curve that something is right and thus you shouldn't question nor educate yourself about such matters (you only need 51% in the US of A).
Even worse, if the population increases faster than we mine gold, then we get bad deflation.
And deflation is bad because?
Deflation increases the value of money. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who you are. For wages, deflation increases unemployment, because the real price of labor goes up. The same is true in reverse, inflation increases employment because real wages go down. However, from an economic point of view, nothing has changed. Increased employment through inflation is essentially reducing the wages of those who are employed and giving it in form of new jobs to the unemployed.
Another claimed "negative" side of deflation is that if you have borrowed money, the real amount you end up paying grows as the value of money increases. With inflation your debt decreases the more inflation eats the value of money. Obviously this causes problems in a central bank-run monetary system. Which however isn't an argument for paper money, but is an argument for letting the market decide what the rate is. In periods of great inflation, this would cause high interest rates, and in periods of deflation, the interest rate would be zero, and in some cases negative.
Tying inflation or deflation to the amount of a specific metal that we happen to dig out of the ground is a pretty bad way to do things. See what happened during the price revolution, where nations rapidly increased their silver production, in part causing a lot of inflation.
Oh my. The awful price revolution, where prices increased sixfold in a period of 150 years. This is obviously why paper money is superior to a gold standard!
Do you know how much a 1966 dollar is worth today? 6 dollars. That is the same sixfold increase in prices, in a period of 40 years, and that's for a relatively strong fiat currency . To make an apples to apples comparison, we need to compare the price revolution to a similar case of extreme growth of money supply. A good example would be Germany, from the year 1914-1924. During this time period, the prices in German papiermark [wikipedia.org] grew an incredible one trillion times!
Compared to the horrors of paper money, a gold standard is rock solid. Such stability would increase the predictability of the economy, and would benefit almost everyone. There is one huge problem with moving to a gold standard however. Losing the power to inflate, means that the US government would have to pay for military expenses through taxation, instead of just borrowing money from the Chinese and inflating the debt away. If the people actually saw in their taxation how much it all costs, the empire would dissolve overnight.
... how far out of touch McCain is with respect to technology and those in the technology industry.
On the other hand, if McCain is looking for someone to help build monopolies illegally and then illegally leverage those monopolies, then Ballmer's the dude.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday June 03 2007, @03:22PM (#19373877)
"Fucking Hu Jintau is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill China."
Wouldn't there be a conflict of interest if the CEO of one of the country's biggest tech companies was helping determine tech policy? Certainly even someone who isn't tech-savvy can see that. It'd be a little bit like asking the CEO of an oil company to determine environmental policy. Even if Ballmer were to step down from his position (and I'm not holding my breath on that one), he probably still owns tons of MS stock.
On a side note, McCain's opinion on net neutrality seems to be founded on a general small-government policy, not on a technical understanding of the situation. You can't just use a blanket "small government" argument for all things... some things work better when they're private companies, and others work better as public institutions. There's a reason why water is a public utility, power is often regulated, and software is produced mostly by private companies. Politicians should think that through before they parrot the party line on small/big government again.
Certainly even someone who isn't tech-savvy can see that. It'd be a little bit like asking the CEO of an oil company to determine environmental policy.
He is old, and he would be the oldest President if he won and he also supports the unpopular Iraq War. If Fred Thompson enters the race which is just a formality now, there will be no chance McCain will grab the Republican nomination.
Somewhat of an oversimplification - though that's pretty much how the political process if conveyed to the public so, hey, in electoral terms, you're probably right.
McCain is a veteran and a P.O.W. who experienced torture first hand.
From his perspective: If you're going to commit to a war, commit to it.
He's admittedly avoiding questions about whether we should have gone in the first place (realities being what they are, there's absolutely no way he could get the republican nomination if he went that far against the republican president.
Still, accepting that it has happened, there are basically three choices: get the hell out and deal with the fallout (becoming the more popular view), stay with your head burried in the sand (the administration policy for the last 4 years), stay and do what needs doing to do it right (McCain's choice). That's pretty common amongst Vietnam vets who are largely convinced Vietnam was winnable had the politicians not hamstrung them at every turn.
The interesting thing about McCain is his ethics on how you go about winning that war. Month on month, the war in Iraq has become more of a failure and more insurgents are turning up. Surely if you kill or capture the numbers the U.S. do, that number should go down? No, you piss away all credibility by torturing people, you piss off far more people who would never otherwise have been insurgents - torturing and abandonning ethics recruits for the other guy far better than anything he could do. As a P.O.W. who was tortured, McCain's been vocal that it's never justified (sure, you might prevent an attack that kills 5,000 now but you radicalize enough people to kill 50,000 over time).
Personally, I think the war in Iraq was an horrific lie fed to the American people - Bin Laden never had real ties, Saddam never had real ties to 911, they never tried to buy yellowcake uranium and the chemical weapons that we sold to them were destroyed after the first gulf war. I think the current method of occupation is a great way to make the situation in the middle east worse and kill a lot of young Americans along with thousands of Iraqi civilians. I also think that getting out [sensibly] is the right thing to do......Still, while I don't agree with McCain that it should be continued, if it is to be, I have vastly more respect for his notion about how to do it than the current administration's system that seems to be based largely on denial or any of the other republicans that seem to hope more of the same may work differently for them.
So, I'd prefer a democrat that gets us out of the war entirely. Still, if I have to have a republican that keeps us there, let's get one with an actual clue about how to do something positive.
Ballmer has a track record of taking a large, powerful empire and gradually frittering away its goodwill, resources, and internal cohesion by his aggressive posturing, constant confrontation, and wilful ignorance of what made it great in the first place.
The question is, how has he *avoided* becoming a member of the Republican administration for so long?
Disclaimer: I couldn't care less about US party politics, but the parallel is actually striking enough to mention.
Meta-Disclaimer: I am aware of the locution 'could care less' and I consider it WRONG WRONG WRONG!!! *throws chair*
Err... Balmer is the CEO of a convicted criminal corporation.
In a country where convicted criminals can lose the right to vote, you can also go to the White House for being one? That's not really something that can be explained in english without getting into some kind of semantic Moebius loop, can it?
convicted criminal corporationvsyou can also go to the White House for being one
Is Ballmer a convict or is it Microsoft? He is the CEO of a company that is constantly involved in lawsuits, but can you name one large company that isn't? And does that make the CEO a criminal? Regardless of what you may think of him, he is one of the world's most powerful voices in the world of technology, so I am sure his word counts.
And while we're at it, don't forget to criticize George W Bush for using the constitution as toilet paper.
I was trying to think of something that may get modded insightful as a response, but I don't have the time at the moment.
Ballmer is the head of a company that is violating US law. He is not trying to fix this. Rather he seems quite content with the current situation. Microsoft continues to force its way into new markets by abusing its monopoly power, and tightening its grips on its existing markets. They seem to be ignoring the very weak settlement of their antitrust suit, but by putting a pretty face on, no one seems to notice! Ballmer undoubtedly has a hand in this, he is a criminal and an enemy to the free (as in capitalism) market.
Ballmer may be well known, but he should be thrown into a pool of sharks, not into a government office.
Department of Health & Human Services: Josef Mengele Department of Defense: André Maginot Department of Energy: Kenneth Lay Department of Homeland Security: Osama bin Laden Department of Education: Terri Schiavo Department of Labor: Beevis Department of State: Butthead Department of Commerce: Karl Marx Department of State: Groucho Marx Department of the Treasury: Jesse James Department of Agriculture: William R. Simonson Department of the Interior: George Custer Office of National Drug Control Policy: Timothy Leary Environmental Protection Agency: Joseph Hazelwood Department of Transportation: Joseph Hazelwood Office of Management and Budget: Paris Hilton Department of Housing & Urban Development: John Spartan United States Trade Representative: John Rambo
Oh yeah, and... Department of Justice: Alberto Gonzales
Oh God (Score:5, Funny)
But the comedy almost writes itself.
Imagine Ballmer jumping around and screaming at cabinet meetings.
Cheers,
Ethelred
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Re:Oh God (Score:5, Interesting)
An excerpt:
And something more current regarding Halliburton's current relationship with Iran. [washingtonpost.com]Parent
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I say Ballmer for President! No I'm kidding. We don't need him to say "Fucking Putin is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Russia."
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Wow, I didn't know all that about Steve Ballmer! I suppose chair-throwing can be a martial art and given that he has threatened to fucking kill Google, I'm not surprised.
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Lies, not Truth, Appeal to the American Voter (Score:4, Insightful)
Among the Republican candidates, both John McCain and Ron Paul are the least dishonest candidates -- even if you disagree with their political positions. McCain is honest in saying that a substantial increase in troops in Iraq can transform the country. He is correct. Increasing the number of Western occupying soldiers to 400,000, pushing aside the Iraqi government, and running Iraq as a colony on the basis of Western values (e.g., equality for women) will transform Iraq into a prosperous, liberal Western nation. At the end of 20 years of occupation, we can relinquish control to democratically elected Iraqi politicians who spent most of their youth in a Western-value-dominated colony.
At the same time, Ron Paul is correct when he says that American foreign policy (like deposing the democratically elected government of Iran in the 1950s) is, at least partially, responsible for Arab attacks (like the 9/11 incident) against American citizens.
Note that neither men can win this election. American voters do not want to hear truth. Neoconservative voters especially do not want to hear the truth. They wanted war on the cheap and cheered using a pathetic force of 160,000 soldiers to occupy Iraq. Of course, these voters refuse to support making sacrifices for the war; their attitude is, "You make all the sacrifies for the war. You die for the war. As for me, I make no sacrifices. I will not support even a tax increase to pay for this war. Excuse me! I must hop in my SUV and head off to the baseball game!"
When Ron Paul told the truth during the recent debate, the Republican voters booed and condemned him. They do not want to hear about American responsibility for the 9/11 incident. In the debate, Ruddy Giuliani viciously attacked Paul and his utterance of the truth. Few politicians are as dishonest as Giuliani, so he has the best chance of being nominated as the Republican candidate. The American voter prefers hearing lies.
On the Democratic side, the least dishonest politicians are Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, and Barack Obama.
Okay. Clinton has a good chance of being president. However, she keeps saying the truth. She refuses to apologize for her vote authorizing the use of force against Iraq. Although we now know that the CIA intelligence data was wrong, supporting the use of force was appropriate since, in 2003, we believed that the intelligence data was correct. If a nation with a leader making violent threats does have weapons of mass destruction, authorizing the use of military force against this nation is appropriate -- maybe, even, desirable. Clinton voted correctly. She correctly refuses to apologize for the vote.
However, if she keeps sticking to the truth, she will ruin her chances to win in the election. The dumb American voter does not want to hear the truth. So, henceforth, Clinton should avoid talking about her vote on the use of force -- if she wants to win. She must focus on flashy superficialities -- just like Giuliani.
Of course, Fred Thompson has an excellent chance to win. Nothing is more superficial and flashy than an actor.
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Re:Lies, not Truth, Appeal to the American Voter (Score:4, Insightful)
But it also requires skills that highly technical people usually lack. Engineers and developers often take a myopic view of technology that is often far too black-and-white to be useful in a public policy setting. As much as I hate to say it, lawyers, economists and other non-technical disciplines tend to have skills that transfer over better than strictly-tech people.
If I were looking at creating a cabinet position to advise on technical issues, I'd look more towards people like Lawrence Lessig...the kind of person who has clearly been able to draw on the knowledge of people who deeply understand technology and then apply what they've learned to real-world considerations. Someone who understands the intricacies of what public policy is allowed to and is likely to be able to accomplish.
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Re:Lies, not Truth, Appeal to the American Voter (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, it only takes 400,000 soldiers to move Iraq West? How many dump trucks does it take?
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Re:Lies, not Truth, Appeal to the American Voter (Score:4, Interesting)
If Balmer wanted to be a politician he could run for President himself, he is a vastly more credible candidate than the rest of the Republican field to date.
Romney is running against the state he was governor of, openly attacking liberals for holding the views he claimed to hold five years ago, another flip flopper.
Worst flip flopper of all is Giuliani, he was for terrorism before he was against it. Back when he was running for Major of NYC it was convenient to pander to the expat Irish vote by supporting the IRA. So Giuliani was a regular fixture at Sinn Fein and Noraid fund raisers. In 1994 he gave a 'humanitarian award', the Crystal Apple to Gerry Adams, who blew up a shopping mall 18 months later.
Thompson is busy hiring staff embroilled in the worst Bush administration scandals. And Ron Paul will have been drowned in the slime generated by the administration noise machine long before the primaries.
What is particularly disgusting about this crew is the snearing contempt they have for anyone who does not share their exact views. There were plenty of people who understood what the Iraq war was almost certain to become, it was not even a close call if you knew the history of the British occupation. Put one of those people in charge, not the blind sheep.
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Re:What are you smoking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a professional political candidate (which is all elected officials are these days) is not unlike being an actor. It's even more superficial and flashy than acting, except you never admit it's fake. Come to think of it, no wonder Jesse Ventura was so qualified.
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Re:Lies, not Truth, Appeal to the American Voter (Score:5, Informative)
Hong Kong. South Africa. Philippines. Canada, technically.
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Re:Lies, not Truth, Appeal to the American Voter (Score:5, Funny)
Actually they withheld cream and sugar when having the British Ambassador over for tea. He was both shocked and awed at the impropriety of it all. No amount of stammering, "Now listen here, old chap, this simply will not do," could conjure up the required accompaniments, and he was forced to telegraph home immediately recommending that such dastardly manners be answered with expulsion from The Empire.
The rest of the world was like, "What the Fuck? Canada just got its independence now? That's stupid, why'd they bother after waiting so fucking long?"
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Re:Now, REALLY wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Where was the civil war in Germany after World War II? Where was the civil war in Japan after World War II? It didn't happen.
The circumstances are completely different. In Iraq you have three very different groups of people in one country where the minority government was just overthrown by outside forces. I knew that was going to be a recipe for disaster before we even invaded. A lot of people knew this outcome was likely.
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"Infuriating love" (Score:4, Insightful)
clueless infatuation, convicted monopolist (Score:5, Insightful)
So a presidential hopeful wants somebody who at least knows how technology works to be a technology adviser? Say it ain't so!
If "knifing the baby", "cutting off oxygen" and "fucking killing" is how technology works, McCain has his man. Ballmer knows NOTHING about technology and needs the kind of business ethics class that comes with steel bars on the door.
I hope the whole thing was a bad joke, but there is no mistaking McCain's stance on network neutrality. Love of M$ goes hand in hand with approval of ATT's tactics.
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Re:clueless infatuation, convicted monopolist (Score:5, Funny)
Ballmer needs to be in a Zoo? But won't he scare the (other) monkeys?
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erris == twitter (Score:5, Informative)
I think /.'ers need to see these stories, but kdawson needs to get a better source.
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I think you missed it... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not trollish conjecture, the anti-trust lawsuits didn't come out of thin air, and the anti-cooperation charge should require no explanation.
Allow me to also note the increasing movement among U.S. State governments to pursue open standards technology. You want to talk friction? What sort of leverage would MS have on this issue? They already threatened contract-infringement legal action against the state of California just because the state considered having an official conversation about open standards.
Regards.
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AND McCain's cluelessness on software patents (Score:5, Informative)
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Software as an issue. (Score:4, Insightful)
Software patents are not on any candidate's radar this election cycle. There is the war, there is health care. A hundred other issues that draw more passion then anything the geek can offer.
IT is one of the most stressful things people have to deal with [slashdot.org]. Computers are part of everyone's daily lives and the suck of non free software is too. A politician that does not realize this is out of touch. One that can't harness it is not a leader.
How can I convince you that software patents are important? Easy, it's your freedom, wellbeing and prosperity. The war is important. Declining standards of living is important and healthcare is part of that. Computers touch on these and all 100 of your other issues, but the bigger connector is run away corporate power and greed [essential.org]. Your computer needs to be free if you are ever to learn the truth about wars, healthcare and standards of living. Without a free press to inform you of your leader's dirty work, you will continually suffer unjust laws, wars and declining standards of living.
Laws like the DMCA and other crazy copyright attacks are both a symptom and a cause of corporate power. They are a symptom because free people would never knowingly vote their rights away. People voted that way because they were lied to. They were told that copyright and patent laws were "enablers." We understand the lie because our computers and the internet are a relatively free place. They are a cause because they can be used to take your freedoms away, which will leave you ignorant. Make no mistake you can worse off even than people before the internet if the internet is made non free. Before the internet, people had printed newspapers but you will only have broadcast and non free internet.
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Not Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, it's got to be mostly a symbolic move to lure some business/tech folks. I think McCain is probably just throwing a name out there, and that Ballmer would be a poor choice due to his personality and the small fact that he already has, you know, a pretty full-time job. But if McCain's announcement gets voters and candidates thinking that yes, tech policy actually does matter, that's a very good thing.
Re:Not Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about Cheney and Halliburton, but this time for I.T. instead of good ol' military contracts.
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His position would be obvious (Score:3, Funny)
It's an accident waiting to happen. Literally. (Score:5, Funny)
I can just see the official state banquet (Score:4, Funny)
throws chopsticks
SOY SAUCE! SOY SAUCE! SOY SAUCE!
But a sad Joke (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But a sad Joke (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, he was crooked a long time ago. Google the "Keating Five" to see the sorts of people McCain has chosen to associate with over the years.
I do not understand the appeal of this simpering asstard to voters with otherwise-enlightened sensibilities.
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Re:But a sad Joke (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple: many people have decided that he can't be as bad as Bush (generally ignoring his voting record) solely because he lacks any obvious mental defects, and at least has some personal knowledge of why torture's a stupid method of intelligence gathering.
When you lower the bar enough, anyone can reach it.
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Re:Indeed, a bought man (Score:4, Insightful)
I've heard what the man has to say, and yeah, a lot of it is typical Libertarian wacko BS.
As the same time, he hasn't been bought off by the usual suspects. Like the poster above, I would have voted for McCain in a HEARTBEAT in 2000, even knowing what I do now about Gore (Gore 2000 is a different man than Gore 2007 regardless of what he'd like to say...I still think he has been one of the most consistently smartest people in politics for 20 years, just not a great politician).
But I'll take a president that offers wacko ideas just to break the monotony. No party is going to get lockstepped behind him the way the Republicans did Bush, or partly the way the Dems did behind Clinton before the Republican uprising. Which brings up another thing -- one of the greatest things of the Clinton era was that EVERYONE had to compromise. No one got what they wanted. And because of it, there was discussion and debate and things had to happen because everyone found a common platform that they could agree on and the country had some of the largest gains because of it.
With Ron Paul, I could see the same thing happening again. I'd LOVE to see a president that actually understood how to veto. And knew when it was appropriate. Clinton understood how to do this and even tried to get a line-item veto in that would allow his to use his pen even more (unfortunately, it was passed in an unconstitutional manner...I bet if they did something like this with Riders it might actually pass the supreme's muster...errr...then again, maybe thats what it was...it was a long time ago that I read up on this stuff).
I'd love to see a real maverick running the country. I could care less if his politics match mine or not. I just don't want some jingoistic motherfucking corporate whore that seems to be able to convince the lower half of the bell curve that something is right and thus you shouldn't question nor educate yourself about such matters (you only need 51% in the US of A).
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Re:Indeed, a bought man (Score:5, Interesting)
And deflation is bad because?
Deflation increases the value of money. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who you are. For wages, deflation increases unemployment, because the real price of labor goes up. The same is true in reverse, inflation increases employment because real wages go down. However, from an economic point of view, nothing has changed. Increased employment through inflation is essentially reducing the wages of those who are employed and giving it in form of new jobs to the unemployed.
Another claimed "negative" side of deflation is that if you have borrowed money, the real amount you end up paying grows as the value of money increases. With inflation your debt decreases the more inflation eats the value of money. Obviously this causes problems in a central bank-run monetary system. Which however isn't an argument for paper money, but is an argument for letting the market decide what the rate is. In periods of great inflation, this would cause high interest rates, and in periods of deflation, the interest rate would be zero, and in some cases negative.
Oh my. The awful price revolution, where prices increased sixfold in a period of 150 years. This is obviously why paper money is superior to a gold standard!
Do you know how much a 1966 dollar is worth today? 6 dollars. That is the same sixfold increase in prices, in a period of 40 years, and that's for a relatively strong fiat currency . To make an apples to apples comparison, we need to compare the price revolution to a similar case of extreme growth of money supply. A good example would be Germany, from the year 1914-1924. During this time period, the prices in German papiermark [wikipedia.org] grew an incredible one trillion times!
Compared to the horrors of paper money, a gold standard is rock solid. Such stability would increase the predictability of the economy, and would benefit almost everyone. There is one huge problem with moving to a gold standard however. Losing the power to inflate, means that the US government would have to pay for military expenses through taxation, instead of just borrowing money from the Chinese and inflating the debt away. If the people actually saw in their taxation how much it all costs, the empire would dissolve overnight.
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Well, that just shows... (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, if McCain is looking for someone to help build monopolies illegally and then illegally leverage those monopolies, then Ballmer's the dude.
Ballmer was overheard saying... (Score:5, Funny)
Conflict of Interest (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Conflict of Interest (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't they do that already?
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McCain doesn't have a chance anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
Supporting the unpopular Iraq War (Score:5, Insightful)
McCain is a veteran and a P.O.W. who experienced torture first hand.
From his perspective: If you're going to commit to a war, commit to it.
He's admittedly avoiding questions about whether we should have gone in the first place (realities being what they are, there's absolutely no way he could get the republican nomination if he went that far against the republican president.
Still, accepting that it has happened, there are basically three choices: get the hell out and deal with the fallout (becoming the more popular view), stay with your head burried in the sand (the administration policy for the last 4 years), stay and do what needs doing to do it right (McCain's choice). That's pretty common amongst Vietnam vets who are largely convinced Vietnam was winnable had the politicians not hamstrung them at every turn.
The interesting thing about McCain is his ethics on how you go about winning that war. Month on month, the war in Iraq has become more of a failure and more insurgents are turning up. Surely if you kill or capture the numbers the U.S. do, that number should go down? No, you piss away all credibility by torturing people, you piss off far more people who would never otherwise have been insurgents - torturing and abandonning ethics recruits for the other guy far better than anything he could do. As a P.O.W. who was tortured, McCain's been vocal that it's never justified (sure, you might prevent an attack that kills 5,000 now but you radicalize enough people to kill 50,000 over time).
Personally, I think the war in Iraq was an horrific lie fed to the American people - Bin Laden never had real ties, Saddam never had real ties to 911, they never tried to buy yellowcake uranium and the chemical weapons that we sold to them were destroyed after the first gulf war. I think the current method of occupation is a great way to make the situation in the middle east worse and kill a lot of young Americans along with thousands of Iraqi civilians. I also think that getting out [sensibly] is the right thing to do...
So, I'd prefer a democrat that gets us out of the war entirely. Still, if I have to have a republican that keeps us there, let's get one with an actual clue about how to do something positive.
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He's a good choice. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ballmer has a track record of taking a large, powerful empire and gradually frittering away its goodwill, resources, and internal cohesion by his aggressive posturing, constant confrontation, and wilful ignorance of what made it great in the first place.
The question is, how has he *avoided* becoming a member of the Republican administration for so long?
Disclaimer: I couldn't care less about US party politics, but the parallel is actually striking enough to mention.
Meta-Disclaimer: I am aware of the locution 'could care less' and I consider it WRONG WRONG WRONG!!! *throws chair*
Criminals? (Score:4, Interesting)
In a country where convicted criminals can lose the right to vote, you can also go to the White House for being one? That's not really something that can be explained in english without getting into some kind of semantic Moebius loop, can it?
Re:Criminals? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is Ballmer a convict or is it Microsoft? He is the CEO of a company that is constantly involved in lawsuits, but can you name one large company that isn't? And does that make the CEO a criminal? Regardless of what you may think of him, he is one of the world's most powerful voices in the world of technology, so I am sure his word counts.
And while we're at it, don't forget to criticize George W Bush for using the constitution as toilet paper.
Ballmer is the head of a company that is violating US law. He is not trying to fix this. Rather he seems quite content with the current situation. Microsoft continues to force its way into new markets by abusing its monopoly power, and tightening its grips on its existing markets. They seem to be ignoring the very weak settlement of their antitrust suit, but by putting a pretty face on, no one seems to notice! Ballmer undoubtedly has a hand in this, he is a criminal and an enemy to the free (as in capitalism) market.
Ballmer may be well known, but he should be thrown into a pool of sharks, not into a government office.
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The new McCain cabinet: (Score:5, Funny)
Department of Defense: André Maginot
Department of Energy: Kenneth Lay
Department of Homeland Security: Osama bin Laden
Department of Education: Terri Schiavo
Department of Labor: Beevis
Department of State: Butthead
Department of Commerce: Karl Marx
Department of State: Groucho Marx
Department of the Treasury: Jesse James
Department of Agriculture: William R. Simonson
Department of the Interior: George Custer
Office of National Drug Control Policy: Timothy Leary
Environmental Protection Agency: Joseph Hazelwood
Department of Transportation: Joseph Hazelwood
Office of Management and Budget: Paris Hilton
Department of Housing & Urban Development: John Spartan
United States Trade Representative: John Rambo
Oh yeah, and...
Department of Justice: Alberto Gonzales
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Steve "Monkeyboy" Ballmer (Score:4, Funny)
Re:McCain's Bad Taste (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, I thought it was kinda funny.
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Re:I hate them both (Score:5, Funny)
Why vote for the lesser of two evils. Write-in Cthulhu in 2008!
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Re:Both sides of the fence (Score:4, Informative)
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