"On issues where there are several different perspectives among our members, our Policy Briefs should reflect that. This Policy Brief presented one view among conservatives on U.S. copyright law. Due to an oversight in our review process, it did not account for the full range of perspectives among our members. It was removed from the website to address that concern.
"I know some want to point fingers elsewhere, but the simple fact is that we screwed up, we admitted it, and we hope people will now use this opportunity to engage in polite and serious discussion of copyright law."
It will remain as a remarkable document that sets the Republicans apart from the Democrats, leaving the party as the standard bearer for forward looking technology policy.
So they will be pushing for major patent reform, too?
I'm enjoying these because I was on the receiving end of all of this. I got the email pitches which led me to both donate and volunteer. And I did data entry at one of the field offices so I was part of the process of taking data generated by callers and walkers and putting it into the database.
It's cool to now know I was a small part of this enormous undertaking.
His model is similar to what musicians have done with street teams: go out and promote our shows and in return we'll give you free stuff, special perks, etc.
That tends to attract a group of people who don't normally have clout themselves and see this as a way to participate in the team effort. They are usually younger fans who have more time and enthusiasm than high level connections themselves.
Seems like Pink would likely attract the same type of people (i.e., those who don't normally have access to Pink and who aren't such important book reviewers that they would normally get a review copy anyway). Is Pink planning to deny review copies to the normal outlets?
I'm also undecided about paying for access, whether with money or with hard work. On the one hand, I think people who do something out of the ordinary (whether to put out lots of money or to work hard on behalf of your hero) deserve to get something in return for it. But on the other hand, from observation I have seen that people who aren't truly insiders aren't treated as such. If you have paid for access or if you are perceived as a worker bee or worse, as a groupie, you tend to be treated differently than if you are a close friend, a trusted confident, a paid consultant, and so on. In other words, having to do something to get access tends to mark you as having lesser status.
I'm posting this one because it reflects what I did at one of those neighborhood offices. I was a volunteer who entered data into the database each night. The results of those walk and phone campaigns were entered. Most of the time, no one was home. But the people called multiple times and knocked on doors multiple times until they did reach someone.
So the data was important in keeping track of what was being done and who to contact, but the human interaction was essential to the process.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Three things needed here...
Look, he said it was posted on a satirical site, I said, "Thanks for the heads up."
Yes, if someone says something "might" be satire, I will self-censor to avoid looking silly. I don't need to confirm that he is right to self-censor myself. If someone says, "Don't go there, you'll fall off a cliff," I'll probably say, "Thanks. Now I know not to go there" whether or not it's true.
You have totally missed my point all along. I've spotted lots of satire recently, so whenever anyone sends out "satire alert" it stops me in my tracks before posting. I don't feel I have go confirm the alert to stop posting.
If you really want to get into this, we can talk about the effect of increasing skepticism when people post satire as reality. Yes, I've run into enough fake stories that my default is to question everything. Somehow you want to defend yourself over this because I said "thank you" to someone who said "satire." Why are you taking this so personally? It was my side conversation with someone, just like I might have in the comments of a Facebook post. I wasn't talking to you. That's okay here, is it not?
I still haven't found any background on the story because now I have started to look for it. That's not to say it isn't true but I have ended up trying to do my own fact-checking after all. So now I am putting in the time to verify it because people are asking me here why I accepted his view that it might be satire rather than your view that it was true. Surprisingly there is very little on this story. There's an incomplete blurb on the Private Eye site and in Google there's mostly there's just references to this Techdirt story. It's taken on a life of its own because of these comments back and forth, but no verification that I can nail down yet. It's an echo chamber effect so far. Maybe someone can do some more fact checking on it.
I have, over recent months, begun to learn which sites to laugh at rather than accept as truth. The Onion I've known all along. There's also a faux Christian site and a military satire site. Being in America, I don't know Private Eye, but now I know a bit more about it.
I responded the way I would respond when someone said the same thing on Facebook. "Thanks for the heads up."
I was being chatty and evidently I've hit a nerve. I'm not taking his comment at face value, either. I was just saying to him, "Oh, good to know that the publication is known for satire. I'll keep that in mind and not say more yet."
His comment just reminded me that satire abounds these days. I've nearly tripped over it on Facebook multiple times. I didn't realize it never appears here. :-)
I wasn't going to say much anyway (mostly just to say how I would get around the problem). But I'll just wait now until I get more background on the story. Like I said, I've nearly fallen for stories/photos on Facebook which upon checking I've found out were either satire or fake. So it's buyer beware with news stories these days.
I'm just making an observation that I'm learning to verify before responding. All the commenter did for me was to remind me of that.
I did try to verify the story online myself but couldn't find much, so I'll just wait until it evolves more. That's all.
I've seen photos and stories on Facebook that I am about to share, but before I do, I check them out and realize they are satire. It's gotten common enough that I should double check every story/photo now before taking it at face value. Most of the time I do, but sometimes I don't take the time and have to backtrack afterward. I feel silly when I treat a satirical story as a real one.
An important point to keep in mind is that this may have been a much larger issue than an election day tech failure. It may have been a reflection of a world view that wants facts to fit the narrative rather than the narrative fitting the facts. If, for example, you find global warming inconvenient, you throw out any science that suggests it is happening.
Sigh* Talk about lack of "due diligence". Private Eye is a satirical publication. Note, NOT a news publication, a SATIRICAL one.
Thanks for pointing that out. Saves me the trouble of looking it up myself and spares me from making a comment based on incomplete info and therefore looking silly.
Is there anyone here who doesn't understand the difference between a deliberate act (abortion) and something that's not (miscarriage)?
If abortion were not available through clinics, some women would still be finding ways to abort. In fact, that was a significant reason it was made legal -- to avoid the dangers of back alley abortions.
So the difference between a woman who goes to a clinic and a woman who doesn't have a clinic to go to but finds a way to "miscarry" may be the same result without the safety of medical follow up.
I'm old enough to remember when there were no legal abortion clinics. In my college dorm, when an unmarried college student thought she was pregnant, she'd be told from other classmates, "I know a doctor. I'll give you his name." That's why I don't want abortion made illegal. I don't want to go back to those days.
But if society is truly concerned about the unborn, let's make sure we offer great options to women who do get pregnant and especially to those children who are born to them. I can get behind making abortions illegal again if as a country we create a model society for children. Let's make it a wonderful world for all children. Let's have a children's bill of rights so that every child born in this country has adequate food, health care, and access to education.
I just wanted to point out that pricing is a complex issue and that in some cases a higher priced item does sell better. As I said, there's commodity pricing and luxury pricing and identical items can be perceived differently based on how they are priced. For some items you will actually sell more if the price is higher because the higher price conveys quality even if there is actually no difference in the lower and higher priced product.
I suppose what you can conclude is that sometimes lower prices sell more items and sometimes higher prices sell more items.
Apple is the ultimate example right now of a company that sells items for premium prices and its strategy is working very well.
A classic case is wine. Tests were run indicating that the higher the price of the wine, the better people thought it tasted even when the lower and the higher priced wines were the same.
Romney Is President - NYTimes.com: "Romney and Tea Party loonies dismissed half the country as chattel and moochers who did not belong in their 'traditional' America. But the more they insulted the president with birther cracks, the more they tried to force chastity belts on women, and the more they made Hispanics, blacks and gays feel like the help, the more these groups burned to prove that, knitted together, they could give the dead-enders of white male domination the boot."
This article covers the data gathering software in more depth, but what none of these articles explains is how the poll watchers know who voted. Based on what I have found elsewhere, it appears that whoever serves as a poll watcher is close enough to hear the name of the person picking up the ballot and that's how the poll watcher enters the voter's name into the system to update.
I do know that once a person has voted and that info has been entered into the state system, that info is available publicly. But that doesn't happen instantaneously on election day.
The quote from the article below points out that even if you are monitoring who is voting on Election Day, there is a limit to what you can do as a result. So a lot of the work is done beforehand.
Why Romney's Orca killer app beached on Election Day | Politics and Law - CNET News: "There is only so much resource you can move around at 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon on Election Day," Issenberg said. "On short notice, you can send robocalls, reorder a call list and employ paid phone banks, but you are not radically changing the shape of the electorate. They acted like they had invented the wheel, but really all it would have been was a slightly better tread on the tire."
I've been doing a bit more reading about how the poll watchers and the reporting software worked. Evidently, a poll watcher is able to sit close enough to whoever is checking in voters at the polls to hear the name of the voter. Then the poll watcher goes down his list of supporters who haven't yet voted and checks that person off. The info is relayed to the campaign office and anyone who still hasn't voted is contacted about getting to the polls.
I was in one of those offices and I was handing out canvassing sheets to walkers. On the day of the election, the sheets I had were not updated during the day. They were just handed out multiple times to volunteers going door to door. There were other people doing phone calling and perhaps they got frequently updated lists.
According to what I have read the Romney and the Obama poll watchers had mobile apps allowing them to report voters as they passed through the poll check in. Romney's system evidently didn't work properly.
I never had an overview of the Obama system and never asked. So most of what I have learned about poll watchers has come from what I have found online, not what I was able to witness on election day.
But I did see how hard paid staffers and volunteers worked. There was a lot of effort involved. I was there multiple days and hours before election day and on election day. I saw a lot of blocks walked. A lot of phone calls made. A lot data entered. A lot of events organized.
On the post: That Was Fast: Hollywood Already Browbeat The Republicans Into Retracting Report On Copyright Reform
A recent update
Update: A spokesman for the RSC comments:
"On issues where there are several different perspectives among our members, our Policy Briefs should reflect that. This Policy Brief presented one view among conservatives on U.S. copyright law. Due to an oversight in our review process, it did not account for the full range of perspectives among our members. It was removed from the website to address that concern.
"I know some want to point fingers elsewhere, but the simple fact is that we screwed up, we admitted it, and we hope people will now use this opportunity to engage in polite and serious discussion of copyright law."
On the post: That Was Fast: Hollywood Already Browbeat The Republicans Into Retracting Report On Copyright Reform
Re: they'll vet and issue it again
So they will be pushing for major patent reform, too?
On the post: Obama's Tech Team Was Firing On All Cylinders While Romney's Was Still In Beta
And yet another article
It's cool to now know I was a small part of this enormous undertaking.
When the Nerds Go Marching In - Alexis C. Madrigal - The Atlantic
On the post: Dan Pink Offers 'Access' As A Reward For Helping Promote His Book
Not sure what I think about this
That tends to attract a group of people who don't normally have clout themselves and see this as a way to participate in the team effort. They are usually younger fans who have more time and enthusiasm than high level connections themselves.
Seems like Pink would likely attract the same type of people (i.e., those who don't normally have access to Pink and who aren't such important book reviewers that they would normally get a review copy anyway). Is Pink planning to deny review copies to the normal outlets?
I'm also undecided about paying for access, whether with money or with hard work. On the one hand, I think people who do something out of the ordinary (whether to put out lots of money or to work hard on behalf of your hero) deserve to get something in return for it. But on the other hand, from observation I have seen that people who aren't truly insiders aren't treated as such. If you have paid for access or if you are perceived as a worker bee or worse, as a groupie, you tend to be treated differently than if you are a close friend, a trusted confident, a paid consultant, and so on. In other words, having to do something to get access tends to mark you as having lesser status.
On the post: Obama's Tech Team Was Firing On All Cylinders While Romney's Was Still In Beta
Yet another article
So the data was important in keeping track of what was being done and who to contact, but the human interaction was essential to the process.
Jim Messina offers his tips on how Barack Obama’s campaign team beat Mitt Romney. - Slate Magazine
On the post: UK Newspaper Licencing Agency Says Musicians Need To Pay To Quote Reviews
For what it's worth
On the post: UK Newspaper Licencing Agency Says Musicians Need To Pay To Quote Reviews
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Three things needed here...
Yes, if someone says something "might" be satire, I will self-censor to avoid looking silly. I don't need to confirm that he is right to self-censor myself. If someone says, "Don't go there, you'll fall off a cliff," I'll probably say, "Thanks. Now I know not to go there" whether or not it's true.
You have totally missed my point all along. I've spotted lots of satire recently, so whenever anyone sends out "satire alert" it stops me in my tracks before posting. I don't feel I have go confirm the alert to stop posting.
If you really want to get into this, we can talk about the effect of increasing skepticism when people post satire as reality. Yes, I've run into enough fake stories that my default is to question everything. Somehow you want to defend yourself over this because I said "thank you" to someone who said "satire." Why are you taking this so personally? It was my side conversation with someone, just like I might have in the comments of a Facebook post. I wasn't talking to you. That's okay here, is it not?
I still haven't found any background on the story because now I have started to look for it. That's not to say it isn't true but I have ended up trying to do my own fact-checking after all. So now I am putting in the time to verify it because people are asking me here why I accepted his view that it might be satire rather than your view that it was true. Surprisingly there is very little on this story. There's an incomplete blurb on the Private Eye site and in Google there's mostly there's just references to this Techdirt story. It's taken on a life of its own because of these comments back and forth, but no verification that I can nail down yet. It's an echo chamber effect so far. Maybe someone can do some more fact checking on it.
I have, over recent months, begun to learn which sites to laugh at rather than accept as truth. The Onion I've known all along. There's also a faux Christian site and a military satire site. Being in America, I don't know Private Eye, but now I know a bit more about it.
On the post: UK Newspaper Licencing Agency Says Musicians Need To Pay To Quote Reviews
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Three things needed here...
I was being chatty and evidently I've hit a nerve. I'm not taking his comment at face value, either. I was just saying to him, "Oh, good to know that the publication is known for satire. I'll keep that in mind and not say more yet."
His comment just reminded me that satire abounds these days. I've nearly tripped over it on Facebook multiple times. I didn't realize it never appears here. :-)
On the post: UK Newspaper Licencing Agency Says Musicians Need To Pay To Quote Reviews
Re: Re: Re: Three things needed here...
I'm just making an observation that I'm learning to verify before responding. All the commenter did for me was to remind me of that.
I did try to verify the story online myself but couldn't find much, so I'll just wait until it evolves more. That's all.
On the post: UK Newspaper Licencing Agency Says Musicians Need To Pay To Quote Reviews
Re: Re: Re: Three things needed here...
I've seen photos and stories on Facebook that I am about to share, but before I do, I check them out and realize they are satire. It's gotten common enough that I should double check every story/photo now before taking it at face value. Most of the time I do, but sometimes I don't take the time and have to backtrack afterward. I feel silly when I treat a satirical story as a real one.
On the post: Obama's Tech Team Was Firing On All Cylinders While Romney's Was Still In Beta
Here's an even more detailed look
Inside Romney's Election Day Collapse - Business Insider
On the post: UK Newspaper Licencing Agency Says Musicians Need To Pay To Quote Reviews
Re: Three things needed here...
Thanks for pointing that out. Saves me the trouble of looking it up myself and spares me from making a comment based on incomplete info and therefore looking silly.
On the post: Obama's Tech Team Was Firing On All Cylinders While Romney's Was Still In Beta
Re:
I say we start by throwing off the shackles we call government. But since I'm an anarchist and you're not, we don't agree on that either.
Are you an anti-abortion anarchist? Kind of an interesting, but potentially dangerous combination. Are women going to be targets of your anarchy?
On the post: Obama's Tech Team Was Firing On All Cylinders While Romney's Was Still In Beta
Re:
If abortion were not available through clinics, some women would still be finding ways to abort. In fact, that was a significant reason it was made legal -- to avoid the dangers of back alley abortions.
So the difference between a woman who goes to a clinic and a woman who doesn't have a clinic to go to but finds a way to "miscarry" may be the same result without the safety of medical follow up.
I'm old enough to remember when there were no legal abortion clinics. In my college dorm, when an unmarried college student thought she was pregnant, she'd be told from other classmates, "I know a doctor. I'll give you his name." That's why I don't want abortion made illegal. I don't want to go back to those days.
But if society is truly concerned about the unborn, let's make sure we offer great options to women who do get pregnant and especially to those children who are born to them. I can get behind making abortions illegal again if as a country we create a model society for children. Let's make it a wonderful world for all children. Let's have a children's bill of rights so that every child born in this country has adequate food, health care, and access to education.
On the post: Obama's Tech Team Was Firing On All Cylinders While Romney's Was Still In Beta
Here's another good article on data, message, and campaigns
On the post: A Reminder: Lower Prices Can Make You More Money
Re: Re: Re: Re: Now if only Apple understood that
I just wanted to point out that pricing is a complex issue and that in some cases a higher priced item does sell better. As I said, there's commodity pricing and luxury pricing and identical items can be perceived differently based on how they are priced. For some items you will actually sell more if the price is higher because the higher price conveys quality even if there is actually no difference in the lower and higher priced product.
I suppose what you can conclude is that sometimes lower prices sell more items and sometimes higher prices sell more items.
Apple is the ultimate example right now of a company that sells items for premium prices and its strategy is working very well.
A classic case is wine. Tests were run indicating that the higher the price of the wine, the better people thought it tasted even when the lower and the higher priced wines were the same.
On the post: Navy SEALs Lose Their Military Careers By Consulting With EA On Videogame
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I have to disagree
If you want or think you can transform the US military, give it your best shot.
On the post: Obama's Tech Team Was Firing On All Cylinders While Romney's Was Still In Beta
Re: Re: Technology had nothing to do with it
Romney Is President - NYTimes.com: "Romney and Tea Party loonies dismissed half the country as chattel and moochers who did not belong in their 'traditional' America. But the more they insulted the president with birther cracks, the more they tried to force chastity belts on women, and the more they made Hispanics, blacks and gays feel like the help, the more these groups burned to prove that, knitted together, they could give the dead-enders of white male domination the boot."
On the post: Obama's Tech Team Was Firing On All Cylinders While Romney's Was Still In Beta
Here's more detail about the system
I do know that once a person has voted and that info has been entered into the state system, that info is available publicly. But that doesn't happen instantaneously on election day.
The quote from the article below points out that even if you are monitoring who is voting on Election Day, there is a limit to what you can do as a result. So a lot of the work is done beforehand.
Why Romney's Orca killer app beached on Election Day | Politics and Law - CNET News: "There is only so much resource you can move around at 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon on Election Day," Issenberg said. "On short notice, you can send robocalls, reorder a call list and employ paid phone banks, but you are not radically changing the shape of the electorate. They acted like they had invented the wheel, but really all it would have been was a slightly better tread on the tire."
On the post: Obama's Tech Team Was Firing On All Cylinders While Romney's Was Still In Beta
Re:
I was in one of those offices and I was handing out canvassing sheets to walkers. On the day of the election, the sheets I had were not updated during the day. They were just handed out multiple times to volunteers going door to door. There were other people doing phone calling and perhaps they got frequently updated lists.
According to what I have read the Romney and the Obama poll watchers had mobile apps allowing them to report voters as they passed through the poll check in. Romney's system evidently didn't work properly.
I never had an overview of the Obama system and never asked. So most of what I have learned about poll watchers has come from what I have found online, not what I was able to witness on election day.
But I did see how hard paid staffers and volunteers worked. There was a lot of effort involved. I was there multiple days and hours before election day and on election day. I saw a lot of blocks walked. A lot of phone calls made. A lot data entered. A lot of events organized.
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