All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

New Requirements For Office

pudge on 2002-03-24T00:11:11

In order to run for federal office in the US, you will be required to use government-approved software (see §306). If none is available for your chosen platform -- assuming you use computers at all ... what if you are from the Luddite Party? -- you must use a different platform. In other words, you could be required by law to use Windows to run for federal office.

WOW.

Sure, we can hope that such software will be available for other platforms, and there is nothing in the legislation that prohibits someone from developing such software, but still ... if they don't, you are out of luck.

FWIW, the software in question is for recording/reporting of camapaign finance information.

The only loophole I see is "once such software is made available to such candidate." One might argue that if I use Mac OS or Linux, and you give me Windows software, then you have not indeed made available to me any "such software," where such software is software that "permits this, allows that, allows another thing" since it does not permit or allow anything for you, not being a Windows user.

Kinda scary.

URL doesn't work

vsergu on 2002-03-24T00:51:46

Which is not surprising, since it does have "temp" in it. The Thomas site does make it unreasonably difficult (perhaps impossible) to get real URLs for the things you find in searches. I think you're talking about HR 2356, section 306, and it's possible that this link is more persistent.

Re:URL doesn't work

pudge on 2002-03-24T02:02:24

Hm, I was hoping to link to the actual section, but yeah, that'll have to do. I am editing the journal entry to reflect it, thanks.

Not as bad as you think

roblimo on 2002-03-24T03:30:52

The applicable section of the bill is right here.

This is no big deal. An easy spec to meet. A spreadsheet program that could output HTML would do it.

Re:Not as bad as you think

pudge on 2002-03-24T03:46:05

Your URL is broken too. The "temp" means it expires. :-)

Anyway, the software must transmit the information. It's good that the spec is simple, but I just hope that there's software available for other platforms. We'll see.

Re:Not as bad as you think

pudge on 2002-03-24T03:49:36

Oh, I am also troubled by the Commission "requiring" vendors of the software to allow certain things. What does that mean? If I post open source software online that fulfills (A), will the government come knocking on my door ordering me to fulfill (B)? Or does it mean if I don't fulfill (B) that it does not meet the standards, and if so, is (B) as easy as you say (A) is (I doubt it)?