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Google's Cerf On Short List For Obama CTO
Incumbents may face net-neutrality headache should Obama win...
Business Week suggests that should Obama be elected President, TCP/IP co-creator and Google "Chief Technology Evangalist" Vint Cerf is on a short list to be the nation's CTO (Google's CEO is apparently an Obama fan). That's not welcome news for companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, who've had several public (and a few covert) battles with Google concerning network neutrality, white space broadband, and wireless spectrum auctions. Incumbents probably won't like the other potential CTOs on Business Week's short list either: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer; Amazon CEO Jeffrey Bezos and respected Princeton professor Ed Felten. The Dallas Morning News also explores how the net-neutrality landscape may soon be changing for incumbent operators.
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jdjbuffalo
join:2004-01-17
Denver, CO

jdjbuffalo

Member

Very Encouraging

This would be a welcome change to governments not having qualified people in important positions.

However, I can't say everyone on that list would be a good thing:
Vint-Cerf: Yes
Steve Ballmer: Hell No
Jeffrey Bezos: No
Ed Felten: Yes
Lawrence Lessig: Hell Yes

I know in the article it said that Lessig isn't on the list and that he wouldn't want the position but I would love to have him there.

Noah Vail
Oh God please no.
Premium Member
join:2004-12-10
SouthAmerica

Noah Vail

Premium Member

Vint Cerf tickled by O'Bama's Irish?

Vint Cerf handled by O'Bama. Nice.
So I could guess Vint would be down with O'Bama's support of the AT&T-NSA lip lock.

And that would mean that Vint is also up with Rep. George Miller's [D-CA] Higher Education Act that turns colleges into the RIAssA's mandated enforcement units. Vint's potential new Master certainly is.

If you choose to accept it Vint, understand that you get the whole O'Bama line, not just the fashionable accessories.

At least when Clinton stuck his finger in the air, he wafted wherever public sentiment blew him.

O'Bama follows BIG power like any good Beta Male would. And so shall we, as O'Bama continues Bush's work toward government ownership of the citizenry.

NV

cdru
Go Colts
MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN

cdru

MVM

Re: Vint Cerf tickled by O'Bama's Irish?

If Cerf would be tapped for the position, don't expect him to just bend over and allow Obama to be his puppet master. Cerf is one of the good guys and he's not going to allow others to tell him how he should think. Felten and Lessig I think would be great for the jobs as well for the same reasons (and they will be even less willing to cave into pressure).

I honestly don't think any of them will be tapped though. Not enough of the big corps would back them unfortunately.

tschmidt
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join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH

tschmidt to jdjbuffalo

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Re: Very Encouraging

Agree about Cerf and Lessig.

Not sure about Felten. He has done a lot of great work but I'm not sure how well he would function in such a politicized role.

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

FFH5

Premium Member

Money for this will be hard to get

»www.businessweek.com/bwd ··· rss_tech
But the tech czar would almost certainly be deeply involved in overseeing a federally-backed $50 billion venture capital fund that Obama has proposed to develop more environmentally friendly technology.
Given the state of the economy and the already horrendous budget deficit expected to reach over $500 billion in the coming fiscal year, I wouldn't bet on the Congress approving this initiative any time soon.

As much as Obama would hate it(if elected), austerity and few new programs will be the guiding principal for the next couple years. The financial system bailout will consume every free Billion for the next year or two.

bent
and Inga
Premium Member
join:2004-10-04
Loveland, CO

bent

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by FFH5:

Given the state of the economy and the already horrendous budget deficit expected to reach over $500 billion in the coming fiscal year...
Since this is a overtly political thread, I'd just like to remind everyone that there was a budget surplus at the end of the Clinton years. Tax and spend, or borrow and spend. Take your pick.

Back on topic, Cerf would be a good choice as CTO. This the technological direction of this country needs to be more Google-like and less M$-like.

pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
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join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD

1 edit

pnh102

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by bent:

Since this is a overtly political thread, I'd just like to remind everyone that there was a budget surplus at the end of the Clinton years.
True. I figured that once Hillary Clinton became president, we could go back to the good old days of the 1990s, right?

Oh, wait a minute.
said by bent:

This the technological direction of this country needs to be more Google-like and less M$-like.
How are the two companies any different? Both seek to make maximum profit for their shareholders.

bent
and Inga
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join:2004-10-04
Loveland, CO

bent

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by pnh102:

How are the two companies any different? Both seek to make maximum profit for their shareholders.
The philosophies of how they go about doing that are vastly different.

FFH5
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Tavistock NJ

2 recommendations

FFH5

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by bent:
said by pnh102:

How are the two companies any different? Both seek to make maximum profit for their shareholders.
The philosophies of how they go about doing that are vastly different.
Are they different? I don't think so. It is just that they are at different phases of the same reality - creating a monopoly. Microsoft is at the phase where they are trying to protect their gains and slow the descent. Google is still in the expansion phase and just now is drawing the attention of anti-trust regulators around the world. They are 2 sides of the same coin separated by ten years of history.

pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
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Mount Airy, MD

pnh102

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Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by FFH5:

They are 2 sides of the same coin separated by ten years of history.
Google is also smart enough to get in bed with the politicians before any bogus anti-trust lawsuits can be filed.

bent
and Inga
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bent to FFH5

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I'm not so sure... who exactly did Google steal the search engine from?

pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
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2 recommendations

pnh102

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by bent:

I'm not so sure... who exactly did Google steal the search engine from?
According to your link, Bill Gates stole DOS from no one. He paid the original creator a sum of money in exchange for the rights to the OS and then modified it as he saw fit. None of this is illegal, much less "stealing."

bent
and Inga
Premium Member
join:2004-10-04
Loveland, CO

bent

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

So because I paid you money for pirated software, that makes my copy legit? Don't think so.

pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium Member
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD

1 edit

pnh102

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by bent:

So because I paid you money for pirated software, that makes my copy legit? Don't think so.
Of course it doesn't. But Bill, nor the company from which he purchased QDOS, did not pirate anything.

Besides, quite a bit of popular open-source, zero cost software has been developed using the same methods that the company which made QDOS used. It may not have been pirated, but it was emulated quite well.

FFH5
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Tavistock NJ

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FFH5 to bent

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said by bent:

I'm not so sure... who exactly did Google steal the search engine from?
And Google didn't create the "search engine". They built on earlier search engine technologies. Patent infringement anyone? Google has had to defend themselves in court on that issue already.

And Google has bought up more companies for their technology(search & otherwise) than Microsoft ever did.

mahony
join:2000-06-24
Modesto, CA

1 edit

mahony

Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

Just curious as to where you get your facts? Seems like more then business week is wrong. MS has purchased many more companies then Google.
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li ··· poration

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li ··· isitions

Link Logger
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Calgary, AB

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Perhaps you should listen to Tim Paterson's interview on BBC concerning Microsoft's acquisition of QDOS/DOS. Tim was the original author so if anyone should know the real story its him.

»www.patersontech.com/Dow ··· nBBC.mp3

He certainly had/has no problems with Microsoft's acquisition of his OS and Microsoft even worked with them (Seattle Computer Products) for about a year helping them develop/finish it before acquiring it. While it might have proven over the years to have been a good business move, it certainly wasn't as 'evil' as people might think and Tim certainly doesn't have any regrets about it.

Blake

bent
and Inga
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join:2004-10-04
Loveland, CO

bent

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

My question would be how much of DOS was CP/M, and was CP/M public domain at that point? Wikipedia claims that there were several important resemblances, and I had always heard the same. We had a proto-pc in our house that ran CP/M off of 8" floppies before IBM started selling PCs with DOS. I was pretty young at the time, but an end user would be pressed to tell the difference between between the two. Did Seattle Computer Products purchase that code from Digital Research?

From the above link:
"CP/M-86 was expected to be the standard operating system of the new IBM PCs, but DRI and IBM were unable to negotiate development and licensing terms. IBM turned to Microsoft instead, and Microsoft delivered PC-DOS based on a CP/M "clone," 86-DOS. Although CP/M-86 became an option for the IBM PC after DRI threatened legal action, it never overtook Microsoft's system."

That whole deal sounded shady as hell to me when I first heard about it, and it still does.

Sorry to derail the thread so horribly, but mentioning Cerf and Ballmer in the same context was asking for it

Link Logger
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join:2001-03-29
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Link Logger

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Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by bent:

Sorry to derail the thread so horribly, but mentioning Cerf and Ballmer in the same context was asking for it
Suggesting either for this position is insane as I would hope there is someone who is without commercial influence and could find and make the decisions that would best serve all concerned and given this is a government type position serve the public first and foremost. Certainly I would rather have someone from a purely academic background as they would tend to be a little freer of such influences, but yet know the issues and technology etc.

Blake

bent
and Inga
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bent

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by Link Logger:

Suggesting either for this position is insane as I would hope there is someone who is without commercial influence and could find and make the decisions that would best serve all concerned and given this is a government type position serve the public first and foremost. Certainly I would rather have someone from a purely academic background as they would tend to be a little freer of such influences, but yet know the issues and technology etc.

Blake
The flip side to that is that people from purely academic environs can be out of touch with the business world that drives technology adoption. I'm not saying that's always the case, but...

KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
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Tulsa, OK

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It was shady. DOS was CP/M with very minor modifications.

Noah Vail
Oh God please no.
Premium Member
join:2004-12-10
SouthAmerica

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said by bent:

I'm not so sure... who exactly did Google steal the search engine from?
According to O'Bama's support of HR4137, O'Bama feels infringing someone's deployed creation is stealing.

So then, the answer to your question is,
ask jeeves
altavista
dogpile
vivisimo
lycos
alltheweb
hotbot
webcrawler
infoseek
looksmart
wisenut
yahoo!
einet galaxy
excite
virtual library
rsbe
wwwworm
aliweb
veronica
archie
smart

to name a few.

NV

bent
and Inga
Premium Member
join:2004-10-04
Loveland, CO

bent

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

I'm not sure what you're implying by your list of Googles competition, but I really doubt that Google blatantly ripped off an OS and sold it as their own.

This is the sort of thing I associate with Google:

"After the company's IPO in August 2004, it was reported that founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and CEO Eric Schmidt, requested that their base salary be cut to US$1.00. Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries have been turned down, primarily because, "their primary compensation continues to come from returns on their ownership stakes in Google. As significant stockholders, their personal wealth is tied directly to sustained stock price appreciation and performance, which provides direct alignment with stockholder interests." Prior to 2004, Schmidt was making US$250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each earned a salary of US$150,000."

Big brass balls, and the smarts to back them up. How many other CEOs of C-corps do you know of that have done that?

pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
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Mount Airy, MD

pnh102

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Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by bent:

I'm not sure what you're implying by your list of Googles competition, but I really doubt that Google blatantly ripped off an OS and sold it as their own.
On that note, do you think Linus Torvalds, Dr. Andrew Tannenbaum, Richard Stallman and the numerous other individuals who wrote open source software that mimicked the operation of commercially available software should be labeled as software pirates?

bent
and Inga
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join:2004-10-04
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bent

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

I think there's a difference between "borrowing" good ideas that work and outright theft of code. I mean c'mon... they didn't even bother to change the A:\> prompt.

pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
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join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD

pnh102

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Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by bent:

I think there's a difference between "borrowing" good ideas that work and outright theft of code.
But again, simply recoding someone else's idea is not the same as stealing their code. There's a million different ways to write a "Hello, world!" program and if a million people wrote said program in a unique way they might be borrowing one another's good ideas but they are not stealing each other's code.
said by bent:

I mean c'mon... they didn't even bother to change the A:\> prompt.
If you really want to be that detailed you could say the same thing about Minix and Linux. They use the same prompt style as the old commercial Unix did prior to AT&T's liberating it in the 1990s.

Noah Vail
Oh God please no.
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join:2004-12-10
SouthAmerica

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Noah Vail to bent

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to bent
said by bent:

...I really doubt that Google blatantly ripped off an OS and sold it as their own.
Of Course Not.
They ripped off several different search engines and presented Google as their own creation.
said by bent:

This is the sort of thing I associate with Google:

"After the company's IPO in August 2004, it was reported that founders...blah, blah, blah... requested that their base salary be ...blah, blah, blah... primarily because, "their primary compensation continues... blah, blah, blah... As significant stockholders, their personal wealth ...blah, blah, blah... stock price appreciation and performance, ...blah, blah, blah... US$250,000 per year,...blah"
Ah, yes. Hmmmm.
said by bent:

Big brass balls, and the smarts to back them up. How many other CEOs of C-corps do you know of that have done that?
Well these guys seem to belong to that crowd.

Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld Jr. $34 million in 2007

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein $70 million last year. Co-Chief Operating Officers Gary Cohn and Jon Winkereid were paid $72.5 million and $71 million, respectively.

Bears Sterns former chair Jimmy Cayne received $60 million

AIG chief executive Martin Sullivan got $14 million compensation package.
Robert Willumstad received $7 million for three months.

Morgan Stanley Chair John Mack earned $1.6 million + stock. CFO Colin Kelleher got a $21 million paycheck in 2007.

Countrywide Financial's CEO Angelo Mozilo's total take is over $400 million.

Merrill Lynch's Stanley Neal, was given a package of $160 Million.

Fannie Mae's CEO Daniel Mudd received $11.6 million in 2007.
Freddie Mac's CEO Richard Syron, brought in $18 million.

Wachovia Corp. CEO G. Kennedy Thompson received $21 million in 2007.

Washington Mutual's CEO Alan Fishman gets a salary and incentive package worth more than $20 million through 2009.

Since Testicles and brains seem to be the true measure of a man, these guys got 'em in spades.

There aren't enough trophies to go around.

NV

bent
and Inga
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join:2004-10-04
Loveland, CO

1 edit

bent

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

I think you inadvertently made my point for me. The douchebags you listed are execs who did the opposite of what Googles did. Now list for us the execs who received $0 in 2007...

In order to insert all those "blahs" you must have read and understood, no?

edit for typo

Noah Vail
Oh God please no.
Premium Member
join:2004-12-10
SouthAmerica

Noah Vail

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

Actually, I believe your criteria for most excellent CEO dude were
said by bent:

Big brass balls, and the smarts to back them up.
Of which the aforementioned financial wizards, are fully possessed.

Perhaps, upon reflection, you have revised criteria for most excellent CEO dude?

NV

bent
and Inga
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join:2004-10-04
Loveland, CO

bent

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

Haw! Where's the balls in suckering a board into giving you millions regardless of your performance? The testicular capacity comes in to play tying your remuneration solely to the failure or success of your company.

Noah Vail
Oh God please no.
Premium Member
join:2004-12-10
SouthAmerica

Noah Vail

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Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by bent:

Haw! Where's... balls... suckering... board... giving... millions... of... performance... testicular... comes... to... tying... remuneration... to... failure... success... your company.
Ah.
I thought you might want to alter your conclusion a bit,
once it was revealed
the company it kept.

NV

••••••••••

kamm
join:2001-02-14
Brooklyn, NY

kamm to pnh102

Member

to pnh102
said by pnh102:
said by bent:

Since this is a overtly political thread, I'd just like to remind everyone that there was a budget surplus at the end of the Clinton years.
True. I figured that once Hillary Clinton became president, we could go back to the good old days of the 1990s, right?

Oh, wait a minute.
It's actually very easy: just stop the trillion-dollar war.. oh wait a minute, that's red herring for ignorant gun-touting redneck-country, isn't it?
said by bent:

This the technological direction of this country needs to be more Google-like and less M$-like.
How are the two companies any different? Both seek to make maximum profit for their shareholders.

Except that in the past ~5 years Google's stock waaay overperformed MSFT while maintained its positive approach unlike M$ - evil doesn't really pay after all?

•••••••••
Expand your moderator at work

quarkmachine
join:2003-02-12
Derby, KS

quarkmachine to bent

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to bent

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

said by bent:

said by FFH5:

Given the state of the economy and the already horrendous budget deficit expected to reach over $500 billion in the coming fiscal year...
Since this is a overtly political thread, I'd just like to remind everyone that there was a budget surplus at the end of the Clinton years. Tax and spend, or borrow and spend. Take your pick.
Wrongo Bongo... I guess the more it's proclaimed the truer it gets... »www.letxa.com/articles/16

bent
and Inga
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bent

Premium Member

Re: Money for this will be hard to get

Interesting article. Even taken at face value, the total debt only increased by 1.4T during the Clinton administration, while increasing (so far) by 3.72T during the Bush administration.

TechieZero
Tools Are Using Me
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said by bent:

Since this is a overtly political thread, I'd just like to remind everyone that there was a budget surplus at the end of the Clinton years.
And he did it by ***reducing*** taxes...

Jim Kirk
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Well, we didn't need an Intellectual Property tzar either, but we have one now.

tschmidt
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said by FFH5:

Given the state of the economy and the already horrendous budget deficit expected to reach over $500 billion in the coming fiscal year, I wouldn't bet on the Congress approving this initiative any time soon.
Normally during a recession conventional wisdom (which I agree) is to have government run deficits to pump money into the economy to help jump start it. When times are good you get your economic house in order to get ready for the next rainy day.

Not to get too political but this administration has done such a horrendous economic job that will be difficult. At some point creditors become leery of loaning us money. Even countries can only live beyond their means for so long.

One of my frustrations during the presidential debates was neither candidate addressed how spending $700B on bale-out, reduction in tax revenue due to recession, and war spending, would affect budget.

Net-Neutrality policy is independent of broadband policy. Net-Neutrality is not the the expensive part, that is building First-Mile access network. We need to put the cost into perspective. Costs about $2,000 per household to deliver FTTP. There are about 110 million households in the US so we are talking about $200-300 Billion to wire up the nation. That is a lot of money but if we had not squandered so much recently it is certainly doable. I'd argue in the near term there are higher priority tasks.

/tom

phoneboy3
@shawcable.net

phoneboy3

Anon

Steve Ballmer?

You gotta be shittin me. Steve Ballmer. LOL! That's pretty funny. Just what we need, a dysfunctional Gov't with a dysfunctional madman as it's CTO. His first exective order would be to make Open Source illegal.

FFH5
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Tavistock NJ

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FFH5

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Why the short list of candidates mentioned are bad choices

»techblog.dallasnews.com/ ··· ort.html
As the WSJ notes, Google is increasingly coming under the regulatory scrutiny of the feds, and it seems like there would be all sorts of conflict of interest issues for Schmidt as CTO.

Of course, there are ways to mitigate that conflict: require him to sell all his Google stock, prohibit Schmidt from working at Google for at least 10 years after he leaves government, and require him to recuse himself from any policy discussions that could affect Google's business.

But Google is so big and influential now that it seems like half the issues a federal CTO would be addressing would touch on Google's business in one form or another. The same would likely hold true for bigwigs from, say, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, the Linux community or wherever.

Overall, picking a retired exec or perhaps an independent university researcher might be a better bet, with less potential conflict of interest. Maybe someone like Tim Berners-Lee (invented the Web, you know).

But we already have an FCC chairman who handles some of that (and BusinessWeek notes the potential for conflict between that position and the CTO), an assistant secretary for cyber security at Homeland Security, and a presidential science adviser. Does the president really need another technical adviser?
There are all sorts of conflict of issues involved if an exec from a large technology company would be asked to fill the position. If the position is even needed, it might best be filled by an academic.

••••••
rdmiller
join:2005-09-23
Richmond, VA

rdmiller

Member

CTO?

Who hold that job now? Must be a phantom postition invented by Business Week.

•••••••••••••
gower23528
join:2005-06-08
Weston, WV

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Member

barack

man i hope Barack gets elected...his plan for technology seems fair and appropriate..

••••••••••••

DrModem
Trust Your Doctor
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USA

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DrModem

Premium Member

Obligitory Google Joke

Our newest product:

Google Government, beta.

Disclaimer: Being a beta, it may be prone to instability and crashes; Especially of your economy.

bent
and Inga
Premium Member
join:2004-10-04
Loveland, CO

bent

Premium Member

Re: Obligitory Google Joke

You actually made me LOL.

TScheisskopf
World News Trust
join:2005-02-13
Belvidere, NJ

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We've already had the crashes. It's time for a code audit.

kamm
join:2001-02-14
Brooklyn, NY

kamm

Member

Counter-balance for Joe...

... the Biden (not the Plumber - who isn't even a plumber etc. )

Biden is so clueless he was always a fuckin' cheerleader for the illegal Hollywood-mob, the RIAA/MPAA mafia so it's refreshing to see someone smart and tech-savy on-board...

If true then Obama once again shows his very impressive ability to pick the right person and delegate him the right task.

•••••••••••

cline3621
Mr. Yuk is MEAN Mr. Yuk is GREEN
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join:2006-06-14
Clarksville, TN

cline3621

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Plumber or lack therof

I know this is slightly off topic, but, I can attest, earlier in my life between the ages of 18 and 26 I did plumbing work. I didn't have a license. That doesn't make you any less or more of a plumber, as long as your working for someone who does. Now I know how to install a water heater and so on, but if I were to do that today, on my own without a license, I would be in violation of most state laws. On a side note Obama basically played the 'class warfare' card the other day, when he asked a crowd: "Do you know any plumbers, making more than $250,000 a year?" As a matter of fact Obama I do. I worked for 2 of them, in Clarksville, Tn. Both small businesses, employing less than 10 people at a time might I add. On a side note most 'small businesses' in this country make more than $250,000 a year.

••••

thats good
@comcast.net

thats good

Anon

good 2 hear

Comcast openly now throttles the hell out of my connection when using Bit Torrent. I can use Bit Torrent but while doing so surfing the INterent is like Im using dial up.

I then stopped BT but problem remained, felt like they were punishing me for my legitimate BT use (downloading live concerts). Switching routers fixed the problem as they give you a new IP address.

I had no issues until the recent newsletter re: 250 gig and throttling. Not sure what there tech was doing to that IP I had, except killing its connection. Though if thats how they treat Bit Torrent users Net Neutrality needs a voice cause no one will want to use Bit Torrent if they cant surf the net at the same time!
Pv8man
join:2008-07-24
Hammond, IN

Pv8man

Member

Re: good 2 hear

Oh but it's ok, it's just
"Reasonable Network Managment"
That's all, it will "enhance your online experience"

/sarcasm
cajundsl
cajundsl Denver Qwest
join:2003-02-05
Denver, CO

2 edits

cajundsl

Member

We could have guessed - Cerf smooched Al Gore's butt, too

When Al Gore was (justifiably, in my opinion) getting roasted over his claims to have "invented" the Internet, Vint Cerf was one of the few people outside the DNC saying "But he DID!" followed by a lot of babble about how Gore pushed legislation through enabling the rapid spread of the Internet. Bull. Allowing folks to look at naked people in the privacy of their own homes did that; the same reason VCRs and DVD players are common household appliances.

Horse apples, then and now. Vint Cerf is a political puta as far as Democratic politicians are concerned. No Democratic Party claim of technical literacy or primacy in technical matters is too overblown for Vint Cerf to affirm. Hitching his wagon to Obama's sputtering star is the final indication that the Democratic Party's going to take it in the ear again this November.

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tschmidt

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Re: We could have guessed - Cerf smooched Al Gore's butt, too

said by cajundsl:

Vint Cerf was one of the few people outside the DNC saying "But he DID!" followed by a lot of babble about how Gore pushed legislation through enabling the rapid spread of the Internet.
Sorry but you lost me on that one. The period of time Cerf and Kahn were talking about was before the Internet was available to the general public. Gore rightly deserves credit for pushing for funding.

Here is the letter I assume you are referring to.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 17:43:58 -0400
From: vinton g. cerf
To: Declan McCullaugh , farber@cis.upenn.edu
Cc: rkahn@cnri.reston.va.us
Subject: Al Gore and the Internet

Dave and Declan,

I am taking the liberty of sending to you both a brief summary of Al Gore's Internet involvement, prepared by Bob Kahn and me. As you know, there have been a seemingly unending series of jokes chiding the vice president for his assertion that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet."

Bob and I believe that the vice president deserves significant credit for his early recognition of the importance of what has become the Internet.

I thought you might find this short summary of sufficient interest to share it with Politech and the IP lists, respectively.

==============================================================

Al Gore and the Internet

By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf
Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.

No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.

Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective.

As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.

As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies to consolidate what at the time were several dozen different and unconnected networks into an "Interagency Network." Working in a bi-partisan manner with officials in Ronald Reagan and George Bush's administrations, Gore secured the passage of the High Performance Computing and Communications Act in 1991. This "Gore Act" supported the National Research and Education Network (NREN) initiative that became one of the major vehicles for the spread of the Internet beyond the field of computer science.

As Vice President Gore promoted building the Internet both up and out, as well as releasing the Internet from the control of the government agencies that spawned it. He served as the major administration proponent for continued investment in advanced computing and networking and private sector initiatives such as Net Day. He was and is a strong proponent of extending access to the network to schools and libraries. Today, approximately 95% of our nation's schools are on the Internet. Gore provided much-needed political support for the speedy privatization of the Internet when the time arrived for it to become a commercially-driven operation.

There are many factors that have contributed to the Internet's rapid growth since the later 1980s, not the least of which has been political support for its privatization and continued support for research in advanced networking technology. No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this effort, both in the councils of government and with the public at large.

The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of the value of high speed computing and communication and for his long-term and consistent articulation of the potential value of the Internet to American citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world.

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