The difference here is that the politicians know that votes are fickle, but money is money.

I just thought of another problem with this though: for money to really speak, it has to at least have the appearance of being a continual stream. That means that once this $12mil warchest is used up, there has to be assurances that there will be ANOTHER war chest lined up to keep supporting things. Otherwise, it's easier to go with the other PAC who wants to keep things as they are, but will only donate $3mil/year.... for the next 20 years.

Lessig has to ensure this thing stays funded not just until the PAC's goals are realized, but until the goals of those being funded are realized. Otherwise, other deeper-running money may speak louder.

At least Lessig has a track record and is putting his name and reputation to this.

Then again, AC has a track record and , er, oh well.

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You know, they might just do it.

But isn't this only phase 2 of 3? It'll be interesting to see how far that $12mil actually goes.

Are you a US citizen? If so, you're likely supporting the current government structure by paying taxes. Just saying.

If you can get similar momentum behind some solution that has a chance of making any difference, and doesn't oppress anyone, go for it.

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Interesting... averaging at $100/pledge.

Oh, and:

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No matter what you think of Lessig, I think that the experiment in and of itself is interesting.

It's something that hasn't been tried before. If it doesn't work, a bunch of people are out parts of $5mil. If by some miracle it DOES work... well, then what's the use of decrying it?

The only real downside I can see to this PAC is that people who might have put their time/money into some competing and more effective project put it into this one, pinning more hope on the strategy than maybe they should have.

But unless we see it attempted at least once, we won't really know what effect it will have on the political climate.

So go for it, Larry & Gang! I hope it works.

Personally, I see Google's position in K-12 as being about where Apple's was 20-25 years ago. As long as they don't try for any heavy-handed manipulation, the outcome should be as mutually beneficial as well.

The thing here is that with all the ways Google is involved, the districts have a choice, year to year, on whether to choose them again. There's no lock-in, just education and some influence on the direction of CS education.

If Facebook (cringe) happens to have better ideas in the next election cycle, they could easily supplant Google as the resource provider and decision maker. Or it could be Apple again. Or Microsoft. Or IBM.

That's the way the system is SUPPOSED to work, and I'm glad it hasn't been railroaded yet.

While I presume the parent is meant to be some sort of satire, it's interesting that throughout history, slaves and then servants have generally been accepted in all these locations doing the same looking and listening. And the slaves/servants talked to each other -- they just didn't talk that much to the upper class, so what they said wasn't considered an issue.

What we're doing here is making our electronics replace those people, which is a good thing. The bad thing is that while we accept the devices in our lives, and consider their "conversation" meaningless to us, that conversation can be manipulated by anyone with some smarts and a network connection. So insead of slaves escaping or this month's maid getting fed up and moving on, you have devices that can leak all your personal information they have access to (lights tend to know when you're home) to the benefit of someone else.

I think in this case you need to ask "Of what?"

In the US, Google obviously leans to the left of the political spectrum. But the US spectrum is skewed heavily to the right, so that's not saying much.

In the EU, which includes true socialist countries, I'd say Google is a bit right of centre. However, I'm not sure of who Google has been donating to in the EU; the EU doesn't tend to take as kindly to political bribery as the US (not to say that they don't do it, but it's not usually so blatant).

[US government dept tasked with spying] --- renamed ---> [CIA]
[BND exists] - - - - - - - >

How's that?

To be a decent analogy, they'd need it affixed to something mobile, like their car, as well as to their house.

The point here is that the CLIENTS start broadcasting the string whenever they're not connected to Wifi. So his phone/laptop will be advertising where their owner lives whenever he's away from home with them.

If you still don't get it, it's like everyone in his family wearing a T-shirt that says "My home address is 123 Johnson Rd -- and if you're reading this, I'm probably not at home".

It makes burglary easy, and stalking as well.

That's because MS has been convicted in court of abusing this power. So far, Google appears to have stayed within the law in how it uses this data.

Except that's not true: Google's got into plenty of trouble for grabbing too much data, then not deleting that data when ordered to by the court.

I think you'll find that Google is well on its way to becoming the new MS -- and not just in the market sense. People ARE starting to grumble, and avoid using Google services for some things.

I'm sure 3M could work something out....

Agreed. I am shocked at this study! I must share this thought with all you slashdot readers!