russ@wpg.UUCP (Russell Lawrence) (06/03/88)
While I was engrossed in reading the various postings about
comp.women, my associate's ten year old son came into my office and
asked me what I was doing.
"Aw, these people are preparing to vote on a new newsgroup and they're
discussing the issues", I answered without thinking.
"Voting, huh?", he grinned. "How old do you have to be to vote?"
I realized that he was eagerly anticipating that he might get a chance
to vote on whatever it was that we were voting about, but when the irony
of his question hit home (...in the light of the comp.women quibbling,
flames and name calling), I burst out laughing and had to ask myself
"Yeah, how old DO people have to be to vote?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I suppose that minimum age, immigration (ie, access rights), and other
restrictions on citizenship will never play a fatal role in net politics
because net "property owners" have so much freedom and autonomy. When
an immature, overzealous, or misguided sense of purpose causes some
people's good intentions to stray too far from a common and purposeful
goal, site administrators can always withdraw their support... even though
such actions are usually greeted by cries of "fascism" from a
chorus of net weenies.
--
Russell Lawrence, WP Group, New Orleans (504) 456-0001
{uunet,killer}!wpg!russoconnor@sungoddess.UUCP (06/03/88)
An article by russ@wpg.UUCP (Russell Lawrence) says:
] "Yeah, how old DO people have to be to vote?"
Look, let's get this silliness over with.
Will one of you SYSTEM ADMINISTATOR PEOPLE please
write a script that will :
1. Create a few hundred new accounts on your machine.
2. Give them all realistic names.
3. Have them all send in whatever vote you like.
Vote, huh ?
--
Dennis O'Connor oconnor%sungod@steinmetz.UUCP ARPA: OCONNORDM@ge-crd.arpa
"Never confuse USENET with something that matters, like PIZZA."pst@comdesign.UUCP (06/03/88)
From article <441@wpg.UUCP>, by russ@wpg.UUCP (Russell Lawrence):
< I suppose that minimum age, immigration (ie, access rights), and other
< restrictions on citizenship will never play a fatal role in net politics
< because net "property owners" have so much freedom and autonomy.
Net "property owners"? Perhaps we should limit sufferage to TRUE net
property owners -- those of us that:
(a) pay the phone bill
(b) actually own the hardware
(c) pay for the maintenance on the hardware
(d) pay for the added disk drive that was needed to hold news
It would make the voting process much simpler for the vote taker :-), but
then again, I think there might be some flames -- does Spaf own his own
USENET node? Does Rick Adams? Does Mark Horton? Hmmmm, perhaps this isn't
such a good idea after all... (heavens, what if Bob Webber went out and
bought a IBM-PC with UUPC! We'd have yet another landslide for comp.
protocols.tcpip.eniac and 99.9% of the backbone sites would have nothing
to say about it (sick smile)).
Oh well, what about split cases (like myself), who administer a small
network at work, and have a unix-box at home... I guess I get to vote,
but what if I am using NNTP to pull the groups off of the hard disks at
work? Am I then 3/5ths of a vote because I am slave to a real computer?
(note: to our non-US friends, this is a reference to the 3/5ths rule on
slave votes back when we had such delightful concepts as slavery :-(.
"Every land-owning white male is equal..." ... lovely justice)
Grinning all the way home,
Paul
--
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