Do You MySpace? - New York Times

Do You MySpace? -

the New York Times

asks................................................

~~ NO !! ~` tp

[ Maybe I should .

Now I am feeling peer presure.

Oh the shame & agony, of not being cyber-cool ! ]

(Update 2009:   http://www.myspace.com/radamhalperin )

Google Anything, so Long as It's Not Google - New York Times

~~ You know Google is getting a little weird lately.
Well, absolute power does corrupt absolutely ~` TP

----------------------------

Google Anything, so Long as It's Not Google - New York Times: "August 28, 2005
Google Anything, so Long as It's Not Google
By RANDALL STROSS

IF you were Google's C.E.O., wouldn't you Google yourself? At least once? Would you be surprised to discover that your recent stock sales, net worth, hobbies and contributions to various political candidates are online and easily reached with a click or two?

That your home address pops up so readily - O.K., that may have come as a surprise - shows that a person can no longer designate which piece of personal information becomes public and which remains private.

So why, if you're Eric E. Schmidt, the chairman and chief executive of Google, a soft-spoken person without a history of intemperate action, do you furiously strike at the poor messenger who delivers the news that your company's search service works very well indeed?

Last month, Elinor Mills, a writer for CNET News, a technology news Web site, set out to explore the power of search engines to penetrate the personal realm: she gave herself 30 minutes to see how much she could unearth about Mr. Schmidt by using his company's own service. The resulting article, published online at CNET's News.com under the sedate headline 'Google Balances Privacy, Reach,' was anything but sensationalist. It mentioned the types of information about Mr."

BBC NEWS | Technology | Maturing net growing more slowly

~~ Is the Internet as we know it just a fad?

Is blogging doomed to the same fate as the

rubics-cube , platfom shoes (for men) & disco ? ~

~ TP

"Maturing net growing more slowly"
BBC NEWS | Technology | Maturing net growing more slowly

After years of huge increases, the rate at which net traffic is growing is slowing down, say analysts.

During 2004 the amount of net traffic travelling on backbone cables between nations grew by 104%, reported the consultancy Telegeography.

By contrast in 2005 the growth slumped to a less stellar 49%.

Telegeography said the change could be the result of a global slowdown in the numbers of people signing up for high-speed net services.

-----------------.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/4184436.stm

Published: 2005/08/26 09:06:04 GMT

© BBC MMV

BBC NEWS | Americas | Colombia lawmakers 'use cocaine'

~~ I am Shocked !
Just Shocked to hear this!
I order this country closed at once ! ~~
~~ TP

"Colombia lawmakers 'use cocaine'"
BBC NEWS | Americas | Colombia lawmakers 'use cocaine'

Some of Colombia's elected politicians have used cocaine within Congress itself, the vice-president of the country's Senate has alleged.

The drug is also being sold there, Senator Edgar Artunduaga said.

"I know names of people who distribute cocaine here in Congress," he said, revealing the results of an investigation ordered by his office.

"There are important officials who distribute, and senators and representatives who consume," he said.

Appeals Court OKs Jerry Falwell Web Site - Yahoo! News

~~` Strike up one for Cyber Speech Rights. ~~ TP

"Appeals Court OKs Jerry Falwell [counter] Web Site" -

"'After even a quick glance at the content of the website ... no one seeking Reverend Falwell's guidance would be misled by the domain name
http://www.fallwell.com
into believing that Reverend Falwell authorized the content of that website,'

Judge Diana Gribbon Motz

wrote, noting that the site criticized Falwell,
his positions and his interpretations of the Bible."

What Blogs, Podcasts, Feeds Mean to Bottom Line - Yahoo! News

~~~ In case you care about this money stuff . ~~ tp

---------------------------------------------------------------------
"What Blogs, Podcasts, Feeds Mean to Bottom Line - Yahoo! News"
---------------------------------------------------------------------

On the Front Lines in the War on Spam - www.newsfactor.com/

~~ I treat spam aggressively. At my Yahoo! Email , I rarely get spam in my inbox because I report the spam right away , and the Yahoo! Filters work very well at future diverting of like spam to the Bulk Mail folder .

But I am online almost constantly
--- I have a tel-commuting real job --
{ and you though this is how I feed myself ,
oh you are so cute,
I'm blushing ]
--so I do check my email as it comes in ,
and can afford to do alot of
"tiny-momentary-time-slivers"
to report spam as it arrives .
Which now is less a three a week to my Yahoo inbox!

Meanwhile my junk mail at Yahoo!
does fill up with at least 30 spam mails a day,,
BUT my inbox stays pretty clean.

[Google's g-mail also seems good so far w / spam , but it is too early to tell .]

However , if you check an active email box only once a day ,
or once every few days ,
and you got 47 spam and
59 real important emails
all mixed together in you Inbox
all the time :

Well your doomed!!
Doomed I tell you !
You will never win against spam !!

{ I feel like giving off a loud evil laugh , but i might wake the neighbors .}


~~`TP

------------------------
On the Front Lines in the War on Spam

By Mark Long
August 25, 2005 10:00AM

"There are different initiatives happening, but we do not expect anything that would dramatically reduce spamming in the next 12 months," said Arabella Hallawell, e-mail security analyst at Gartner.
------
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=12200002QHTA
---------------------------------------------

Justice Weighs Desire v. Duty (Duty Prevails) - New York Times

~~~
Justice Stevens calling decsions he voted for unwise.

But the blame lies with congress, he says ,, as they write the dumb laws. { I am paraphasing him there .]

In the annals of Supreme Court History , this is a major speech -- that is sure to be cited often in Law Schools & civil liberties classes . ~
~` TP

August 25, 2005
"Justice Weighs Desire v. Duty (Duty Prevails)"
By LINDA GREENHOUSE, N.Y. Times ;

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 - It is not every day that a Supreme Court justice calls his own decisions unwise. But with unusual candor, Justice John Paul Stevens did that last week in a speech in which he explored the gap that sometimes lies between a judge's desire and duty.

Addressing a bar association meeting in Las Vegas, Justice Stevens dissected several of the recent term's decisions, including his own majority opinions in two of the term's most prominent cases. The outcomes were 'unwise,' he said, but 'in each I was convinced that the law compelled a result that I would have opposed if I were a legislator.'

In one, the eminent domain case that became the term's most controversial decision, he said that his majority opinion that upheld the government's 'taking' of private homes for a commercial development in New London, Conn., brought about a result 'entirely divorced from my judgment concerning the wisdom of the program' that was under constitutional attack.

His own view, Justice Stevens told the Clark County Bar Association, was that 'the free play of market forces is more likely to produce acceptable results in the long run than the best-intentioned plans of public officials.' But he sa"

Clarence C. Newcomer, a Longtime Federal Judge, Dies at 82 - New York Times

~~~ The first place ol' TP goes in the news is the Oh-Bits .
You learn a lot of history there .
Here we see Judge Newcomer was at the
epicenter of some major events & rulings . ~
~ TP

Clarence C. Newcomer, a Longtime Federal Judge, Dies at 82 - New York Times:

"Judge Newcomer presided over a fiercely contested trial in which the City of Philadelphia was found liable this year for $12.8 million in damages to residents forced from their homes by a 1985 fire touched off when the police dropped a bomb on a house occupied by the radical group MOVE.

But that was hardly the first of his cases to draw vast attention in eastern Pennsylvania, and sometimes beyond.

In 1974, he stripped William Stinson of a seat in the Pennsylvania Senate because of evidence that Mr. Stinson had stolen votes, and declared Bruce Marks the winner, tipping control of the Senate to Republicans.

In 1975, he ordered girls admitted to Central High School in Philadelphia. That order was reversed on appeal, though girls were ultimately admitted to the school in 1983.

In 1980, he ended Topps Chewing Gum's exclusive right to sell baseball cards, allowing the Fleer Corporation to compete in that lucrative market.
[~~~ my favorite of this group here ~` TP]

In 1993, he ruled that a law firm's refusal to promote a female associate to partner violated civil rights law, and in 1997 determined that states could not discriminate against new residents by paying them lower welfare benefits than longtime residents."

The Detective Jack Slipper, 81, of Great Train Robbery Fame, Dies - New York Times

~~~ Another historical Oh-Bit.
Not many peoples lives become characters in movies-- and for the postitive things at that too !
"Jack Slipper", the perfect name for the life he led.
As the lead police dectective in Britians greatest train robbery Mr. Slipper became a legend.
His parents must have got the name from Above .~
~~ TP

The Detective Jack Slipper, 81, of Great Train Robbery Fame, Dies - New York Times: "By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 25, 2005

LONDON, Aug. 24 (AP) - Jack Slipper, the retired Scotland Yard detective who pursued one of the fugitives from the Great Train Robbery across many years and two continents, died here on Wednesday. He was 81.


Known as Slipper of the Yard, he came to public attention for his role in the Great Train Robbery of 1963, one of Britain's largest and most audacious robberies and a crime that still fascinates the country.

An armed gang held up the Glasgow-to-London mail train, stealing 125 sacks of bank notes worth £2.6 million - $7.3 million at the time, or more than $50 million today.

The train's driver, Jack Mills, was hit over the head during the robbery. He never returned to work and died of cancer in 1970.

A team of detectives, including Detective Slipper, arrested most of the gang soon after the robbery. But one member, Ronnie Biggs, escaped from prison after 15 months by scaling a wall with a rope ladder and jumping into a waiting furniture van. Mr. Biggs fled to Spain, had plastic surgery to change his appearance, spent several years in Australia and settled in Brazil in 1970.

In 1974, Detective Slipper traveled to R"

BBC NEWS | Technology | Poor print exposing pin numbers

~~~~ Technology breeds problems for technology to solve . ~~~ TP

BBC NEWS | Technology | Poor print exposing pin numbers: "Poor print exposing pin numbers
By Mark Ward
Technology Correspondent, BBC News website

The pin numbers of millions of consumers are being put at risk by shoddy printing, warn security experts.

Bright lights and easy to use software helped University of Cambridge researchers defeat tamper-proofing on letters telling people their new pin.

The researchers fear the security lapses could put consumers at risk as the UK adopts chip and pin technology.
=============

Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations

~~ Every body uses the web these days to make their lives simpler ; even Bin Laden & Co.
.
The question is: Am I prepared to give up some cyber-liberty to increase Government's need for cyber-counter-terrorism?

Is terrorism -- or the threat of -- the price we pay for living in a free society?

Or must we allow our governments to ask citizens to show a passport to go onto the internet. Am I as a law abiding citizen, prepared to surrender privacy for the privilege of using the internet?

Or as a citizen with a voice, am I not entitled to unfettered access to the Internet, without any government interference?

To tell you the truth, I really do not know how I feel here. When human lives are at stake, the balances between rights, privileges and principles are not simple.
~~ Technopol~ ~ ~

Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/05/AR2005080501138_pf.html

Al Qaeda's innovation on the Web "erodes the ability of our security services to hit them when they're most vulnerable, when they're moving," said Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA unit that tracked bin Laden. "It used to be they had to go to Sudan, they had to go to Yemen, they had to go to Afghanistan to train," he added. Now, even when such travel is necessary, an al Qaeda operative "no longer has to carry anything that's incriminating. He doesn't need his schematics, he doesn't need his blueprints, he doesn't need formulas." Everything is posted on the Web or "can be sent ahead by encrypted Internet, and it gets lost in the billions of messages that are out there."

BBC NEWS | Europe | Canada sends navy to Arctic north

~~~~ Canada vs. Denmark !!! On the brink of war !?!?!
This is real?!?!

The arms dealers must be salivating.

Polar Warfare Specialists send in your resumes. { All three of you ! }

You'd almost think the Onion was the source here .

I go with the side that will keep the Arctic North pristine.

Though no one is sure who that will be yet. ~~ TP

"Canada sends navy to Arctic north"
By Lee Carter
BBC News, Toronto

Canada is sending its navy back to the far northern Arctic port of Churchill after a 30-year absence.

The visit by two warships to the area is the latest move to challenge rival claims in the Arctic triggered by the threat of melting ice.

The move follows a spat between Canada and Denmark, over an uninhabited rock called Hans Island in the eastern Arctic region.

A visit there by Canada's defence minister last month angered the Danes.

Now two Canadian warships, the Shawinigan and the Glace Bay, are on a mission to display what Canada calls its territorial sovereignty over parts of the Arctic it believes are within its borders.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4175446.stm

Web of Crime: Zombie PC Armies Designed to Suck Your Wallet Dry - Yahoo! News

~~ Well written article on the Zombie PC thing.
Explains it better than anything else I 've read. Worth a click to read the whole thing , especially if you are a wanna-be-geek like me . ~~
~~ TP

"Web of Crime: Zombie PC Armies Designed to Suck Your Wallet Dry"

Erik Larkin, special to PC World

Tue Aug 23, 3:00 AM ET


"..... harmful bots, when installed on the PCs of unspecting users, connect to IRC, or to a Web site, or even to a peer-to-peer network and await commands from their controllers. When the commands arrive, the bots execute them on their unwitting hosts--which might include your personal computer--enabling malicious hackers to gain complete control over those machines; the infected PCs are then called "zombies."

For instance, a July 2005 study by antivirus vendor McAfee reported that the number of systems infected with malicious software that allows a PC to be used for unauthorized purposes jumped by 303 percent during the second quarter of 2005 from the previous quarter.

The primary purpose of these infiltrations is to make money, says Larry Johnson, special agent in charge of the Criminal Investigative Division of the U.S. Secret Service. And in some respects, the operations function just like a legitimate business.

Organized criminals are emerging as a new and increasingly effective source of sophisticated attacks with botnets, according to Vincent Gullotto, vice president of McAfee's Anti-virus and Vulnerability Emergency Response Team. "There's a whole new ballgame that's being played," he adds.

Copyright © 2005 PC World Communications, Inc.
Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

"What Price Homeland Security?" Jack M. Germain ,www.newsfactor.com ;;;

~~~ Could the whole Internet could go "pooof " in a millisecond ?

I for one got to remember to save my data OFF Line too.

Now I back must everything up in email or blog or post .

I guess it is not that smart for me rely on the internet as a data back-up tool.

Do'oh !! ~ ~ `~ tp

{ and oh , yeah , this article here also says

everybodys internet could go down too ,

not just only mine.]
~~~~
` ` ` :~ ```do ' oh ``` ``~~~~~~TP

"What Price Homeland Security?
Jack M. Germain,
www.newsfactor.com

Tue Aug 23, 1:58 PM ET

How safe is the Internet's aging infrastructure? If recent events in the computer industry itself are any indication, the answer to this question is that the infrastructure is not safe at all.

A sobering report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued earlier this year declared that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is failing to secure vital Internet-infrastructure components. That report concluded that the U.S. is unprepared for major emergencies related to the Internet."

Swaziland Girls Celebrate End of Sex Ban - Yahoo! News

~~~~ "Africa's last Monarch" ,... "chastity rituals" ....
"obliging his family to forfeit a cow"........
Now this is not really Technopolitical , but worth a read none-the-less.
The cow part got me. ~~ TP

By THULANI MTHETHWA, Associated Press Writer
Swaziland Girls Celebrate End of Sex Ban - Yahoo! News

Thousands of Swazi girls Tuesday celebrated the end of a ban on sexual activity that had been imposed as a way to combat AIDS in one of the countries hit hardest by the epidemic.

King Mswati III, Africa's last absolute monarch, had reinstated the "umchwasho" chastity ritual for five years in 2001, banning sexual relations for girls younger than 18. But the move was ridiculed as old-fashioned and unfairly focused on girls — and the king himself was accused of ignoring it.

During the ban, Swazi girls were instructed to wear the scarves as a sign of their chastity. If an umchwasho girl was approached for sex by a man, she was expected to throw her tassels at his homestead, obliging his family to forfeit a cow..

Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press

CNN.com - Pataki calls for federal probe over audiotapes - Aug 23, 2005

~~~ Just a hunch,, but I think this will torpedo any chance Pataki
had for the 2008 GOP Presidential nod.
{Not that he stood a chance anyway.] ~~ TP

CNN.com - Pataki calls for federal probe over audiotapes - Aug 23, 2005

"Even if these tapes were illegally made -- and we don't know yet that they were -- we believe the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed our right to publish the contents of the tapes," Col Allan, editor-in-chief of the Post, said in a statement." ~~~ Interesting Point ~~ TP

ALBANY, New York (AP) -- Gov. George Pataki called Monday for a federal investigation after transcripts of taped telephone conversations he had with an aide appeared in a newspaper.

The New York Post reported that the conversations appear to have taken place during Pataki's first term, probably in 1996 and possibly in 1997.

The newspaper said it anonymously received a tape recording of the telephone conversations, which include a former Pataki aide complaining about administration commissioners not hiring the patronage appointees he had recommended to them quickly enough.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Brits happy to ditch civil liberties | The Register

~~~ Not a good sign. ~` TP ~~~

Brits happy to ditch civil liberties

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/22/civil_libs_ditch/

By Lucy Sherriff (lucy.sherriff at theregister.co.uk)

Published Monday 22nd August 2005 16:03 GMT

Three out of four Brits would happily hand over their civil liberties in exchange for better security against terrorist attacks, according figures from pollsters ICM.

It is interesting to note that this is the same general public that rails against any attempts to make them drive more slowly, or with more care. This is in spite of the fact that in 2004, 671 pedestrians were killed in traffic accidents, and a further 2,550 people died in other road accidents

For Wildlife, the Web Is a Treacherous Place - New York Times

~~ The Internet does not kill elephants.

People kill elephants using the Internet for sales. ~~ TP

For Wildlife, the Web Is a Treacherous Place - New York Times

August 22, 2005

For Wildlife, the Web Is a Treacherous Place
By BOB TEDESCHI

IS the Internet hastening the demise of the African elephant?

According to one advocacy group for endangered species, it is. And the group says the growing online trade in live animals and animal parts is threatening scores of other wild creatures as well, from the cotton-top tamarin of Colombia, a monkey whose numbers in the wild have dwindled to fewer than 2,500, to the Tibetan antelope, whose numbers in the last half-century have declined to about 75,000, from more than 500,000.

In a report released last week after a three-month investigation, the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Yarmouth Port, Mass., said it had found more than 6,000 illegal or potentially illegal wildlife items for sale online, including a hawksbill turtle shell for $102 and an elephant-bone sculpture for $18,000.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/22/technology/22ecom.html

======

China tries to wipe Internet icon from Web - Yahoo! News

Wired News: No Sex, Please, We're Repressed

"Beijing has worked hard but struggled to extend its heavy-handed control of domestic media to the country's booming internet, which is forecast to have 120 million users, second only to the United States, by the end of the year."

~~ China using their powers
of E-Governance in a totalitarian fashion. ~
~ techno pol. ~~

ABC News: More U.S. Cities Pushing Public Wireless Nets

ABC News: More U.S. Cities Pushing Public Wireless Nets

ABC News: Most New York Voters Back Subway Searches

ABC News: Most New York Voters Back Subway Searches

"New Poll Shows That 72 Percent of N.Y. Voters Support Random Police Searches of Bags in Subways"

~~~ Majority opinion does not overcome the US Consitution. The searches are too random to be effective. And any profiling WILL NOT stand a Court test . The searches simply give the politicians a new mega-phone with which to speak staunchly on Terrorism. All while avoiding the substance of the core issue, that being : the War in Iraq is not going well. ~~~ technopolitical ~~

Salon.com News | Why racial profiling doesn't work - NP

Salon.com News | Why racial profiling doesn't work - NP

Radio Free America

~~ Video did not Kill the Radio Star,, big biz like Clear Channel did though.
BUT community-based radio stations hold out hope for making radio relevant again. ~~~
~~ technopolitical ~

"American Prospect Online - ViewWeb
Radio Free America Low-power radio stations may not have Clear Channel’s candlepower, but what they lack in wattage they make up in commitment"

"From the beginning, independent, community-based radio stations picked up on the campaign and used the air to organize support for the boycott. And in December 2003, the Prometheus Radio Project -- a small, nonprofit made up of former radio-pirates-turned-media-advocates -- organized a band of volunteers to travel to Immokalee, Florida, for a weekend to help the workers set up their own low-power radio station, WCIW. Since then, says Ramirez, the station, which broadcasts in multiple languages, has helped to unite and organize the diverse group of workers and has provided a platform for reaching out to political allies across the country."

~

Notorious apartheid policeman in Biko case dies - Yahoo! News

Notorious apartheid policeman in Biko case dies - Yahoo! News

~~ Time to meet your Creator. ~~ tp

BBC NEWS | Technology | Pioneering net community sold off

~~~ Is the internet getting old ?
Will I be telling my grandchildren that I used "The Well" ,
when it first went online !!"

Even though i did not.

{ Though yours truly was online in 1986 through GREENLINK--- which was Greenpeace 's early & primitive global internet network---- when i was a staffer in the NYC office. }~~` . TP

" Pioneering net community sold off"


The pioneering electronic community known as The Well is being sold off.

Set up in 1985 before the net was widely used, The Well helped to define the basic ethic and etiquette of online life.

Many of the early members of The Well have gone on to become the guiding lights of net as it has risen to its current level of prominence.

TV Campaign by a Public Advocate Candidate Stresses a Wireless City - New York Times

~~ Very interesting and forward looking. Now the Homeless & Welfare recipients can sleep easily, knowing the city will be wired for broadband. But yes, down the road this is inevitable in all cities, but should it be a priority now ? -- when the $$ could go to help those who are more worried about food & health ~~~ TP

August 19, 2005
TV Campaign by a Public Advocate Candidate Stresses a Wireless City
By JONATHAN P. HICKS http://www.nytimes.com/

Throughout the campaign, Mr. Rasiej (pronounced Ra-SHAY), has championed an unconventional platform of expanding computer use and high-speed information technology for the public. As a cornerstone of his campaign, he said he would seek to create wireless Internet access throughout the city and in the subways. The campaign declined to disclose how much the ad campaign cost. "New Yorkers, look around you," Mr. Rasiej states in one of the ads, with a blur of traffic on the screen and a montage that lifted some footage from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's campaign commercials. "See your city as it could be. Imagine if firefighters could download floor plans of burning buildings on their way to a fire. Imagine signs on subway and bus stops telling us when the next train or bus is going to arrive. Imagine being able to call 911 in a subway in an emergency." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/19/nyregion/metrocampaigns/19advocate.html

"Web map tracks demand for major news"

"What's next? Web map tracks demand for major news"
By Eric Auchard

"SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - It's debatable how big a deal any specific news event is compared to all the other human mayhem that occurs each day. Journalists, editors, historians and the guy at the end of the bar could probably never agree.

A news mapping service introduced on Thursday by Akamai Technologies Inc. promises to give unprecedented insight into the relative hunger that millions of Internet users have to learn of breaking events minute-by-minute."

~ ~ I hope this does not become the dog wagging the tail.
Just because a newsstory is popular, does not mean it is also "news" worthy. ~~ tp~~~

"Akamai, which helps speed delivery of 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic over its network, is looking to count the sum of page requests across 100 major news sites it serves to rank interest in major events on a scale never seen before.

The Akamai Net News Index provides a map of six global regions and measures the current appetite for news relative to average daily demand in terms of millions of visitors to news sites per minute, per week, within each geographic region."

Spikes in traffic can reveal the next wave of news demand.

David Weiss, Who Filmed Hot Type's Last Days, Dies - New York Times

David Weiss, Who Filmed Hot Type's Last Days, Dies - New York Times:

"David Loeb Weiss was born in Warsaw in either 1911 or 1912, and came to the United States with his family as a child. He earned a bachelor's degree from New York University and a master's in political science from the New School for Social Research. He rode the rails a hobo and had a variety of jobs, among them dishwasher, busboy, waiter, union organizer, merchant seaman and teacher."


~~ What an interesting Life !! G-D Bless his soul ~~ TP

BBC NEWS | Technology | Netting the connected electorate

~~~ In the USA 2004 race the Bush team "netted" the religious right. ~~ TP

BBC NEWS | Technology | Netting the connected electorate
"Widespread access to and use of the net is influencing the complex balance of influences that determine voting patterns and electoral outcomes. One of the comments made by several commentators this time around was that we did not seem to be having a "national" election but instead it was a collection of local contests. I know that this is how it is supposed to work, but the last 50 years have seen this model break down as national questions and national politicians dominate the debate, manipulating a suitably pliant media into reporting it in these terms. " The net, by creating connections between people and giving anyone who wanted it access to a vast pool of information on candidates, policies, likely outcomes and strategic options, did what it does best: it connected the nodes on the electoral map and allowed information to flow.