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Message Digest Volume 28 : Issue 25 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: Re: President Obama keeps his Blackberry Re: Presidential telephones was Re: Why Obama's phone calls will always go through Re: Presidential telephones was Re: Why Obama's phone calls will always go through Re: Lawsuit over website links in spotlight / Copyright violation or fair use to be decided Re: President Obama keeps his Blackberry ====== 27 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:06:45 -0800 (PST) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: President Obama keeps his Blackberry Message-ID: <002cb523-f9d8-4d7e-83b8-6eee3a5d3ac7@n41g2000yqh.googlegroups.com> > You are, of course, right in being concerned about the President > getting information only from a small circle of men with hidden > agendas. A basic critical skill of the President is (1) to put highly competent people around him who are absolutely loyal with no agendas, AND (2) be willing to hear the facts, as unpleasant as they may be. FDR was fortunate to have very loyal people and generally (though not always) was open minded about things. Eleanor was a mixed blessing for FDR. She was able to get out in the country and bring him unfiltered information about conditions that he needed to have, this was most valuable. She also served as a test flagpole for new ideas; she'd publicize an idea and if rejected by the public, he wouldn't push it forward but blame it on her. On the other hand, she received tons of mail from individuals seeking help and was not afraid to bother him or his staff with such issues, which they didn't have time for. Truman's people were generally extremely loyal to him, but some critics say that they were not of the highest caliber and also a little greedy to enrich themselves. But Truman was extremely open minded and wanted to hear all points of view before making a decision. Nixon's primary people were extremely loyal to him. But Nixon wasn't as open minded and had too many pre-conceived notions that his staff only reinforced. Nixon liked his friend Bebe Rebozo because Bebe never wanted anything from Nixon and was loyal and confidential. All presidents need someone like that but it's very hard to find. Unfortunately for Nixon, lower level units, such as inherited from Johnson, despised Nixon and sabotaged him when possible from day one. They leaked information that needed to stay confidential. Nixon was NOT paranoid, people WERE out to get him with a vengence from day one. All this contributed to Watergate. How Nixon handled affairs leading to Watergate was wrong and extremely well discussed in history. But not so well discussed is how Nixon was treated; and that was just as wrong, and, _bad for the country_ . > For the leader of the free world, finding the truth is a deadly > serious business . . . What is "truth"? Two people examining the exact same set of facts may come up with completely different conclusions. The President's time is limited and he must delegate a great deal of work to subordinates. He simply does not have the time to do his own research and depends on his staff to filter and distill complex issues down to essentials, but still include subtle nuances that could influence the ultimate decision. Today's technology is a powerful tool, but it is no substitute for _thinking_. I hope the new president's people don' t think all the answers are in Google or problems solved via an e-mail. All Presidents need an "S.O.B." to act as their gate keeper to preserve time. There is not time to see every cabinet officer, member of Congress, or visiting governor who wants an audience. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 23:44:58 -0600 From: "Kenneth P. Stox" <stox@sbcglobal.net> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Presidential telephones was Re: Why Obama's phone calls will always go through Message-ID: <0ZSel.691$Lr6.277@flpi143.ffdc.sbc.com> Kenneth P. Stox wrote: >> ***** Moderator's Note ***** >> >> Shrub's office: a Mickey Mouse phone, with the cord cut. > > Now that was funny! Thanks for making my day. > > ***** Moderator's Note ***** > > Actually, it's inaccurate: nobody ever cut the cord on Shrub. Stop it! I'm going to hurt myself if you keep this up. ***** Moderator's Note ***** I wish, to the core of my soul, that it _was_ a laughing matter. America is still a Puritan country, where voters are unable (or unwilling) to expend the mental energy needed to separate vice from virtue, assuming always that the presence of one indicates the abscence of the other. The more historians tell us that powerful men have always lived by different rules, the more we cling, ever more desperately, to a quant and simple minded notion that our president should be expected to meet the same standard of behavior we expect of a church pastor. Shrub wasn't elected - he was annointed. Leaving aside how his brother Gerrymandered the Florida ballots and left us with a comical image of a cross-eyed Electoral Judge focusing on the last dangling chad in the world, I'm sure there were other deals made that we'll never hear about. If I live to be one hundred, nobody will ever convince me that Shrub's father didn't make a deal with Diebold to hack the code in the computerized voting machines in Ohio. The 2000 election was not about issues: it was about presidential infidelity. Even if philandering _were_ a measure of executive competence, it is _not_ an excuse for an entire nation to put on blinders: Americans allowed the Florida courts to coronate a daddy's boy who would be hard-pressed to form a team of sled dogs. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:17:00 +1100 From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Presidential telephones was Re: Why Obama's phone calls will always go through Message-ID: <pan.2009.01.25.21.16.58.924216@myrealbox.com> > ***** Moderator's Note ***** ....... > ... Even if philandering _were_ a measure of executive competence, > it is _not_ an excuse for an entire nation to put on blinders: Americans > allowed the Florida courts to coronate a daddy's boy who would be > hard-pressed to form a team of sled dogs. ....... But he ended up behaving in the way those who put him there wanted him to behave, so do you blame the puppet or the (mostly still hidden) puppeteers? -- Regards, David. David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have. ***** Moderator's Note ***** Neither: Dubya got to be president, which was pretty remarkable for someone with his background. If I were in his shoes, I'd have done the same thing. I don't blame the puppeteers, either: those pulling his strings got wealth beyond the dreams of Crocius, advanced their view of the world, and rolled back social programs which had been causing them a shortage of cheap and stupid laborers. Licoln was wrong, you see: it may not be possible to fool all the people all the time, but it _is_ possible to fool enough of them to get within a couple of percent of a victory, which seems to be all you need when your brother is the Governor of the state that's involved. We allowed it to happen: we knew it was all a circus, but we were watching the trapeze artist while the clowns picked our pockets and robbed us of our birthright. We met the enemy: he was us. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 10:06:27 -0500 From: "MC" <for.address.look@www.ai.uga.edu.slash.mc> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Lawsuit over website links in spotlight / Copyright violation or fair use to be decided Message-ID: <3a%el.1514$S8.903@bignews3.bellsouth.net> Interesting. On the one hand, quoting the title and one sentence of a work has always been considered fair use in other contexts. On the other hand, much of the usefulness of a news story resides in its title and first sentence. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I rather hope fair use wins. ***** Moderator's Note ***** It's not about fair use: it's about advertising revenue. In order to read the title and the first sentence of a story, viewers must see the ads that are on whatever page shows it to them, and as the market for traditional newspapers collapses, publishers are scrambling for every mil of online advertising money they can find. Long story short: smalltown publishers want the Big Boys to share the wealth. They want to be paid for every quote, no matter how short, so that they can keep reporting on the mayor's middle name and the date of birth of Paul Revere and all the other garbarge Pete Seeger oh-so-presciently predicted. After all, if the first line of the story made viewers want to click on it and read the rest, there wouldn't be a problme. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:50:37 +0000 (UTC) From: Paul <pssawyer@comcast.net.INVALID> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: President Obama keeps his Blackberry Message-ID: <Xns9B9E8D0C15744Senex@85.214.105.209> "Geoffrey Welsh" <reply@newsgroup.please> wrote in news:f02d4$497b5b09$d1b705a6$31072@PRIMUS.CA: > David Clayton wrote: >> Wouldn't less "insulation" from the outside world make a leader >> more effective? > > Have you ever dialled the wrong speed dial or emailed the wrong > person? I've even had people leave messages for someone else on > my answering machine even though my greeting stated my name > clearly. And, from the message, it was clear to me that the > mistake was not enabled by a linguistic barrier. > > The POTUS' confidentiality requirements are much higher than mine; > I think it would be a good idea if his communications tools had > extra precautions built-in against messages being misdirected. > I'm not certain that any existing device has such a feature, but > it would be A Good Thing. > Maybe if he starts getting calls from charities and political campaigns (!) he will fix the Do Not Call rules.... -- Paul ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. 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