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George Bush News Feeds, Privacy, and Allegory
by Rattle at 6:18 am EDT, Aug 28, 2003 |
] Have a personal Web site or blog? If so, get the latest
] campaign headlines and inside scoop posted instantly to
] your site through a live news feed from GeorgeWBush.com!
] Just choose one of the two styles available, copy and
] paste the single line of code to put these news feeds
] anywhere on your site. Its not an RSS feed, its a javascript thing you embed in a page. Its Bush after all, so it sucks, and is somehow more controlling then necessary. See, what's needed is some type of syndication format, so people could just display the press releases and crap on their site using whatever schema they desire.. Here, it looks simple, its just one line you put in your webpage, but you wind up with this ugly box that you can't do anything to control or tweak.. You have to like Bush's color scheme to support him on the web I guess. Also, it could say anything to anyone visiting your page, and you wouldn't know because its interpreted client side. It could also be used by the Bush team to monitor the readership of your site. From the Privacy Policy posted:
] How we use log files to better serve you: We use log files
] to assess the aggregate level of traffic to GeorgeWBush.com
] including what pages people are visiting, and to diagnose
] any potential problems with the Web site. This log file
] does contain an Internet Protocol or IP address that gives
] us insight on the general geographic area that visitors are
] coming from but not information on a specific individual.
] We do not use log files to track a particular individuals use
] of GeorgeWBush.com. I'm a paranoid libertarian conspiracy theorist. I admit that. So allow me to spin off on a tangent and start making connections.. They are clearly going to be looking at URL referral information. Thats a "duh". And here they say they are at least gaining "insight on the general geographic area that visitors are coming from", so they are looking up IPs against an IP/location lookup service like GeoIp, which is not cheap to do at scale, and not a "normal" thing to do. Ok, so that implies there is real effort going into data mining the logs. At the very least, your standard webstats + info on ip location. There is a real reason for them to want to know where users/votes are, thats not the thing.. I just _really_ don't like the idea of the _Bush People_, collecting and data mining stats across large numbers of websites using banner crap like this.. The aggregate vs. individual shit in the privacy policy does not do much to ease my sudden wave of paranoia. People are more dangerous in groups, and nothing about this statement does anything to make me think they are not looking at and/or tracking groups.. And possibly interested in what groups follow what websites, and the relationship between those website, for whatever evil goals.. In general, you don't care what any one person does, you care what more then N people are doing. I mean, common.. The phrase "How we use log files to better serve you".. Doesn't that make a shiver crawl up your spine? Yes yes yes, I see the irony.. "Using log files to serve you better" sounds like a slogan for MemeStreams.. But its not me saying it, its Bush. Thats scary. Hmm.. I'm hung up on this phrase.. You wouldn't even have to paraphrase it to use it as a header in a RIAA FAQ. Heh.. So when you see one of these on a site, email the webmaster and tell them you don't want georgewbush.com having the ability to track your visits to their site. |
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RE: George Bush News Feeds, Privacy, and Allegory
by Decius at 11:03 am EDT, Aug 28, 2003 |
] Its not an RSS feed, its a javascript thing you embed in a
] page. Its Bush after all, so it sucks, and is somehow more
] controlling then necessary. One the one hand, you are right. They want to control the way their message gets presented, and they want to collect statistics. They need to know what geographic areas they are winning and loosing in so they can target their marketing effectively. On the other hand, I'll bet that if enough bloggers contacted them they would agree to release the content in RSS. They would be stupid to turn down an opportunity to get their message out. Furthermore, does Howard Dean have RSS? What I'm most interested in is how this stuff can be used in a non-partisan way. Obviously they are thinking of republicans putting a big ass Bush ticker on the side of their page. Maybe we could build a page with all the major tickers. If it was RSS we could reaggregate election press releases chronologically so you could follow the discourse blow by blow... I guess there ought to be an elections topic on MemeStreams. Having said all that, I reamed Howard Dean two days ago. I ought to ream Bush too. On his web page there is a "quiz question" that asks how many American working families are benefitting from Bush's Jobs and Growth Act. Users are asked to choose one of four options from 12 Million to 34 Million. Seriously, waving around all the good work you've done for the economy is abysmally stupid. You sound like the Iraqi Information Minister. "There is no recession. There are no unemployed people in the city..." Everyone knows someone who is having trouble finding a job. No one is fooled. Saying I already fixed the problem is another way of saying "I don't need to do anything else about it." I'm not voting for that, either. |
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RE: George Bush News Feeds, Privacy, and Allegory
by k at 11:59 am EDT, Aug 28, 2003 |
Decius wrote: ] Furthermore, does Howard Dean have RSS? Yep, two feeds in fact.
RSS 2.0 for full content : http://blog.deanforamerica.com/index.xml
and 1.0 for headlines only : http://blog.deanforamerica.com/index.rdf ] Having said all that, I reamed Howard Dean two days ago. I
] ought to ream Bush too. On his web page there is a "quiz
] question" that asks how many American working families are
] benefitting from Bush's Jobs and Growth Act. Users are asked
] to choose one of four options from 12 Million to 34 Million.
]
] Seriously, waving around all the good work you've done for the
] economy is abysmally stupid. You sound like the Iraqi
] Information Minister. "There is no recession. There are no
] unemployed people in the city..." Everyone knows someone who
] is having trouble finding a job. No one is fooled. Saying I
] already fixed the problem is another way of saying "I don't
] need to do anything else about it." Agreed. It's so childish. |
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RE: George Bush News Feeds, Privacy, and Allegory
by Rattle at 8:36 pm EDT, Aug 28, 2003 |
Decius wrote:
] On the other hand, I'll bet that if enough bloggers contacted
] them they would agree to release the content in RSS. They
] would be stupid to turn down an opportunity to get their
] message out. I'm sure they would.. Its just the lack of insight/research/clue present was note worthy enough to rant about.
] Furthermore, does Howard Dean have RSS? Dean has "Blog for America". http://www.blogforamerica.com/ .. RSS2 full-feed, RSS1 excerpts. Its MovableType. Complete with a blogroll linking to all the expected places like Instapundit, MetaFilter, etc.. Its even got the link to its stats page, so you can see how many hits its getting.. http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=s16BlogForAmerica So, er.. He executed a pretty good Internet strategy. That isn't enough to win my vote. I don't know enough about Dean. Infact, pretty much every time I hear something about Dean, its how "bloggy" he is or its his effective use of grass roots meetup type stuff.. I thought it was really good/odd when he popped up guest-blogging on Lessig's blog.. But that had more to do with excitement over the possibility of issues related to copyright terms and the public domain popping up on more people's radar and maybe becoming a "political issue". ] What I'm most interested in is how this stuff can be used in a
] non-partisan way. Obviously they are thinking of republicans
] putting a big ass Bush ticker on the side of their page. Maybe
] we could build a page with all the major tickers. If it was
] RSS we could reaggregate election press releases
] chronologically so you could follow the discourse blow by
] blow... I'm sure that there is an RSS feed available of Bush's press releases. If Bush doesn't have one on his site, then somewhere has a relay of his PR releases somewhere. Yahoo, BBC, NewsIsFree, Syndic8, etc.. Just about everywhere is supporting RSS these days, and someone will have a relay of his releases. You can do what you described with pretty much any current news reader yourself, if you have feeds for everything you want to survey. That would work fine for just following feeds all aggregated up. ] I guess there ought to be an elections topic on MemeStreams. Yep. It might be a good idea to break it into two topics.. Elections under current events, and Elections under Politics and Law. There seems to be a lot of discussion about voting system hacking, issues pertaining to elections and elections systems in general.. And there is sure to be alot of talk about the upcoming presidential election. Those are two separate topics. Might be useful to divide them as such..
] Having said all that, I reamed Howard Dean two days ago. I
] ought to ream Bush too. On his web page there is a "quiz
] question" that asks how many American working families are
] benefitting from Bush'... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ] |
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