FTC Taps Ed Felten As First Chief Technologist 76
An anonymous reader contributes this snippet from Digital Daily: "Looks like the Federal Trade Commission got its first choice of Chief Technologist, because it's hard to think of anyone better to serve in that capacity than Princeton computer science professor Ed Felten, a guy whose CV makes everyone from Microsoft to Diebold shudder in embarrassment."
o.O (Score:2)
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FTW
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Re:o.O (Score:4, Insightful)
He's also a doctor(but not an MD).
Linguistics funnies aside, he is absolutely the best guy for the job. Which is why I'm so shocked he got the job.
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Re:Why do they "tap" people? (Score:5, Informative)
I always think of it in the magic: the gathering term, as in you're "tapping" them to use their resources.
or like a beer tap on a keg.
take your pick.
Obligatory xkcd (Score:2, Funny)
Hopefully not like this [xkcd.com].
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+++ great commenter, would tap again
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It's borrowed from the use of the term to refer to selecting someone for a fraternity.
IIRC, it's something the Skull and Bones came up with, which is probably another reason to outlaw them.
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They invented it? The idea is you get the first tap when you take up a certain level of responsibility, and a double if you drop it. [wikipedia.org] Do a good job and you can skip the double and act like you own the whole bar for the rest of your life.
FTC and GAO are two of those agencies the country really really needs when things get rough. Their missions are as core to what the citizenry cries out for at every election as anything done by the CIA. Not more important, but just as important.
Maybe those Princeton guys
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- Dan.
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He should be jailed! (Score:5, Funny)
He and that criminal piracy organization that he works for, Princeton, should be locked up!
He and Princeton only works to provide tools to pirates and to destroy the movie and music industries.
How dare he support piracy and takes the food out of the mouthes of deserving industry executives! Without the repeated extensions of the copyright periods, there will be no incentive to produce new versions of Snow White. 75 years is just not enough time to make back the money invested in making a song or a movie!
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It can be two things. It can be insightful without being literal.
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Without the repeated extensions of the copyright periods, there will be no incentive to produce new versions of Snow White. 75 years is just not enough time to make back the money invested in making a song or a movie!
Finally someone has a clue! If my landlord can make money off of something 100 years old then so should Scott Joplin!
Applause (Score:2)
First article ever contributed by Ed Felten's mom.
Great, more Elitism in Government (Score:3, Funny)
Anyone else get the feeling that these ivory tower intellectual types are looking down their noses at us? I'd much rather we have someone like CowboyNeal as national CTO. Now there's a guy I could have an e-beer with.
Re:Great, more Elitism in Government (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone else get the feeling that these ivory tower intellectual types are looking down their noses at us?
Every time someone asks that I think, or say, "yes, and it's well deserved."
Re:Great, more Elitism in Government (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow. simply Wow. So you think only people who are uneducated and ignorant should have important posts.
Way to go, you irrational twit.
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</flamebait>
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So you think only people who are uneducated and ignorant should have important posts.
A hell of a lot of my fellow Americans do, I'm sad to say. We don't revere knowledge and learning anymore, we treasure sound bites.
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A nice observation, 602015. Maybe another way to put is that trafficking in snippets results in an economy of snippets.
Complex subject matter is more prone to fracturing when such an economy exists.
The great judges and counsels of history have either had the power to get enough of the full story to make balanced decisions, or to intuit the implications of a judgment and decide well despite knowledge of their own ignorance.
IMHO they all would have had a hell of a time replicating the feat in today's society
Re:Great, more Elitism in Government (Score:5, Informative)
#SeigFail!
"The so-called 'intellectuals' still look down with infinite superciliousness on anyone who has not been through the prescribed schools and allowed them to pump the necessary knowledge into him. The question of what a man can do is never asked but rather, what has he learned? 'Educated' people look upon any imbecile who is plastered with a number of academic certificates as superior to the ablest young fellow who lacks these precious documents."
Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf"
Re:Great, more Elitism in Government (Score:4, Interesting)
Ever spoken to an academic? You might be surprised how poorly your stereotypes stand up to reality.
Very true. Much of my early career as a software developer (late seventies, early eighties) was spent working with senior medical researchers at a couple of local Universities. I had time time of my life, actually ... it was some pretty cool stuff for the time, and those guys were great. Always willing to take the time to explain something, never tried to make anyone feel stupid, nothing like the stereotypical "ivory tower" types that many people seem to believe inhabit our institutes of higher learning. Oh, it takes all kinds, but having an advanced education doesn't make you any less of a human being. It may make you harder to fool
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I'll jump in as well.
I had a conversation at some function with a guy my sister knew. Turns out he was into the final stages of a PhD and when he found out that I wasn't going to college he offered me a several thousand dollar set of books on philosophy and asked nothing in return.
IIRC he claimed that the hardest part of teaching certain fields was getting the students to stop looking in the books for the questions they were supposed to be answering.
So when some random, uneducated guy he met wondered about
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IIRC he claimed that the hardest part of teaching certain fields was getting the students to stop looking in the books for the questions they were supposed to be answering.
Yes. To do that which schools are supposedly teaching their students to do: think. Most of us are born being able to breathe on our own, conversely most of us need some training to learn how to think for ourselves. I'm not convinced that our schools are doing that anymore (I haven't been in one for many years, but looking at the caliber of some of their recent graduates I'm concerned.)
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I'd much rather we have someone like CowboyNeal as national CTO.
What makes you think he isn't?
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Yes., nothing worse the having someone educate, and knowledgeable person rendering an opinion. Only the ignorants should be listened to! Just because I don't know something, doesn't mean you educated and smart people can tell me how it works!
Sorry, didn't mean to steal the Tea party's platform.
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I didn't know that was their platform. But it makes sense now that you mentioned it. That is if the other side thinks they have all the answers even after demonstrating their solutions don't work. But hey, who am I to tell someone that knows everything something?
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You realize that by ridiculing the tea party like this you are helping them win, right? I'm assuming you're just trying to be funny (so do the mods), but really if you want to consider yourself a worthy opponent of their ideology, you ought to study it better and defeat it with rational arguments.
Anyone can sling mud at an idiot, but that doesn't make them look any smarter than their target. If you really are the better man, you ought to show it.
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If rational arguments were effective most politicians and priests would be unemployed.
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Re:Great, more Elitism in Government (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you're confusing 'elitism' with 'intelligence'...
'elite' implies wealth and power. True, that typically also leads to a better education, but you can put any idiot through Harvard and he'll still be an idiot.Just because you do well at an ivy-league school does not mean you're intelligent. Hell, I find that people who do well on exams are just good at memorizing information. When it comes to actually using that information or having any common sense at all, many of them can't and don't. So you can remember the formulas the prof gives you, remember the problem formats, and manage to pull numbers out and plug them into the right formula. I've seen plenty of people do that without having any clue what the formula actually _means_. Hell, there have been times where I've done that myself.
What we really need in government are people who know how to interpret and use information. That's about it. I'm not saying Ed Felten can or can't do this, I'm just saying that that's certainly not part of being 'elite'. It is, however, a large part of intelligence.
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A group or class of persons or a member of such a group or class, enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status.
Or this one:
The best or most skilled members of a group.
I still want those people in governance positions. Certainly when posed with this question I prefer elite to rabble.
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I'm personally not a huge fan of having the government entirely composed of people who have no idea what it's like to not have health insurance. People who have no concept of life on less than a 6 figure salary. People who don't know the meaning of the word debt. Yes, that's exactly who's in there now. In some cases it works. In many others, it's a complete failure. Not everything can be understood through numbers and statistics. How can you claim to represent people when you don't have even the tiniest con
Re:Great, more Elitism in Government (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, due to the reform, they won't know what it is like to not have health insurance, nor will anyone else. Of course, the public won't stand for it, they need to have the right to know what it's like to not have health insurance.
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"'elite' implies wealth and power."
No, it isn't.
Elite simply implies "the top notch". Think tenis elite, football elite, intellectual elite, political elite...
The wealth and power elite is listed in Forbes.
The intelectual elite comes (mostly) from top rank universities and it is showed by their merits (coming from top rank universities or not).
When it comes to think, I for one want prefer the intelectual elite to the unwashed masses.
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And top universities cost a lot of money. I know plenty of people who are far more intelligent than I am that are going to far worse universities - or no university at all - simply because they can't pay for it. The most intelligent person I ever met is currently working at McDonald's, trying to earn enough money to pay for tuition at a rather terrible university.
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Oh yes, by the way, you can have a beer with him. I have done so many times.
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helps to copy it with proper english or do a lazier copy paste.
"I will be Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission. http://bit.ly/bRiFrS [bit.ly] http://bit.ly/9HujRz [bit.ly]"
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Princeton is a private university known for it's research. Just sayin.
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And researchers are noted for a certain disconnect from reality... Just Sayin'.
Although personally I think he seems like a good pick, we'll have to see what he actually does or recommendations he makes.
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Just sayin.
This expression needs to die already.
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Why? Just askin'.
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It's getting there. Once upon a time, it was the provenance of the correct, used to punctuate a pithy, incisive attack. In recent months, it has become the equivalent of 'your mom', an over-used bit of drivel at the end of proclamations by minor douchebags (Hi! My name is Snarkalicious. Just sayin). Soon it will fall into disuse, only beeing brought up occasionally by Freepers and the like who came across it for the first time in 2-4 year old comments and find it to be horribly charming.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
And what advantage would private sector experience give him in this position? Other than industry ties that would be used to manipulate him?
Re:Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, it should be Carli, because she did such a great job~
We really don't want people who think in 3 month blocks advising on decsions that will impact every citizens. That's smart.
The government caters to all citizens, business caters to only those people who want/afford there good and/or services.
Running the government like a business will fail. Every time some one tries it, it fails. Why? because they MUST cater to everyone. Regardless of income. Plus, they can never maintain the high level of service the government provides cheaper then the government does it.
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True, most businesses have a luxury of excluding unwanted customers, something the government cannot do. That said, the government can learn a lot from private business. For example there's little to no incentive for government employees to b
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There's also the issue of accountability. However you feel about efficiency, governments are fulfilling a social role and private industry is trying to make the most money it can. My biggest gripe with privatization is how we're handing off social interests to parties with priorities that are not those of the electorate; e.g. the privatized prison industrial complex lobbying politicians to get more people arrested [chasingevil.org] rather than actually solving the illegal immigration problem.
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> we're handing off social interests to parties with priorities that are not those of the electorate
I hear what you're saying, totally agree with you.
But I do want to point out that this "handing off social interests" is met with wild enthusiasm from half of the electorate. Our electorate consists largely of tens of millions of proudly ignorant schmucks who have no idea what they want and will passionately fight against their own interests if a tv show tells them to.
CV makes everyone shudder in embarrassment (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would someone's CV make you shudder in embarrassment?
Just because he's quite talented and has a strong background, why would that cause Microsoft to shudder?
Jealousy maybe, But embarrassment? Are there pictures of Ballmer dancing, on his CV?
Re:CV makes everyone shudder in embarrassment (Score:5, Informative)
Felten showed that Microsoft was lying when they claimed in court that they could not remove Internet Explorer from Windows without disrupting the entire OS. He was also responsible for other discoveries embarrassing for several companies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Felten
Re:CV makes everyone shudder in embarrassment (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe because he believes in fair use?
He was one of the scientists behind the MPAA v. 2600 amicus briefs.
He also went after the RIAA when they threatened to sue him if he commented on encryption in one of his presentations.
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He'd be great as Chief Tech at FEC too (Score:2)
It'd be great if we had someone who truly understood "eVoting" advising the folks who mandate/monitor election activity.
Gone within a year... (Score:4, Insightful)
...when he realizes that he has no decision making power, and all the decisions are made on politically basis with his job being to justify them.
Whoa!! (Score:2)
Hey, what's going on here? Do you know what you have just done? Praised a government decision, that's what! I mean, surely the man is corrupt or something...