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*Updated: Mr. Guillot AKA yankprintster (4225) responded and is interested in answering some questions. Ask him your questions below in the comments*
B.J. Guillot is one of three candidates currently seeking to represent Washington's 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Guillot is also a reader of SoylentNews. In a recent interview with CoinTelegraph about his enthusiastic support of cryptocurrency, Mr. Guillot was asked "When did you first hear about Bitcoin, and when did you get into it?" He explains that he got turned on to Bitcoin while reading a certain news for nerds site, and then mentions:
Since I have the floor, let me just state for the record, the new Slashdot web design and user experience is really poor. I've since moved on to SoylentNews.org for my daily science and tech news.
Perhaps Mr. Guillot would be kind enough to answer a few questions about his positions on topics of particular concern to the SN community. I invite him to answer directly in the comments below, or if he would prefer, I will collect and forward the highest-modded comments to Mr. Guillot, and then submit a new story with his responses.
According to his campaign website, Mr. Guillot holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics, and has software development experience.
The Crypto Crimson reports that while many politicians are "quick to jump on the bitcoin bandwagon" following the U.S. Federal Election Commission's recent opinon declaring that political committes may accept contributions in the form of Bitcoin, unlike these other politicians, Mr. Guillot is an active miner who "currently achiev[es] a hashrate of five Terahash per Second - certainly the fastest bitcoin mining politician".
The top item to appear in the "Issues" section of Mr. Guillot's campaign website is "NSA Spying". Mr. Guillot's stated positon on this issue is: "The Federal Government needs to immediately stop its spying and metadata collection of its citizen's phone calls and emails. It's also time to discontinue the Patriot Act. No more extensions!".
On his campaign website, Mr. Guillot also states his positions on: "Internet Freedom", "Patent Reform", "Bitcoin", "National Debt", "FairTax", "Military", "Second Amendment", "Energy", and "Education".
(Score: 1) by yankprintster on Wednesday July 09 2014, @12:56AM
Hello guys. This is B.J. Guillot, the candidate again. Responding to the second round of new questions I saw today after work:
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Q: A.C. - And does Mr. Guillot support changing the US national motto to "live free or die"?
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A: I love the New Hampshire Motto, but it's probably best to leave the national motto alone and not use something that another State already has dibs on.
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Q: lonestar (4437) - Impeach? Yes or No?
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A: I assume you are talking about President Obama. I personally feel impeachment talk is just political theater. If you don't like him, you only have to put up with him for two more years. I am concerned about his more and more frequent use of executive orders, but if you were successful at kicking him out of office, do you really want Joe Biden to be President?
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Q: gringer (962) - Do you still use Fortran? What sorts of applications have you written or modified [either in Fortran, or the other languages if you would prefer to answer that]?
Would you sell your Leaf and Prius if you could get a Tesla (i.e. replace two cars with one)?
What is the oldest computer that you own?
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A: It's been a long time since I've used Fortran. Most recently was probably back in 2004 when I installed Linux on a cluster of four Microsoft Xboxes for a school project and did some timing tests for various MPI routines. See the website: http://www.bgfax.com/xbox/ [bgfax.com] that talks about that project. My wife actually still uses Fortran for a project she is working on at her employer (big aerospace company in the Pacific Northwest that I probably shouldn't name).
The language I've written most of my "real" software in was Turbo Pascal back in the day (wrote a lot of BBS-related shareware) and more recently Java. The Java application handles all aspects of ambulance medical billing and data collection (mailing patient bills, sending electronic medical claims, finding and matching previously encountered patient records, etc.) That application is still in use at my employer, but there are other programmers that are now supporting it as I've moved on to a management role there.
I'd love a Tesla, but they are just too expensive for me right now. My wife and I each drive, so it'd be cumbersome to try to consolidate to a single car.
The oldest computer I own is a TI 99/4A (have several of them in working condition). Before I jumped into this Congressional campaign, I was teaching myself TMS-9900 assembly language for the TI 99/4A and wrote a subroutine that would encrypt a block with AES-256 and hash a block with SHA-256. It took me a while to get it working in 16-bit assembly (as the AES algorithm was designed for either 8-bit or 32-bit and the SHA algorithm was 32-bit). My goal was to make a PGP compatible encryption/decryption program for the TI so that I could have a NSA-proof means of communications--no keyloggers should work on the old hardware, no spyware, no viruses, not connected to the Internet--but the speed of the SHA algorithm in particular turned out to be a lot slower than I expected and I never got around to writing code to do the RSA algorithms needed to finish the project.
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Q: c0lo (156) -
"A: Once you aren't spying on Americans inside the US, it's fair game for the NSA to spy on people outside the US."
Then I suppose you will accept as fair the following consequences:
* creation of regional specific IT services, in which US companies will be forbidden to participate (starting with networks which avoid US soil/jurisdiction, to regional clouds)
* any relation involving US interest will be "distrusted by default, unless controlling mechanisms are defined"
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A: That's unfortunately already started to happen to some degree. Because of the USA PATRIOT Act, the Canadian government won't let us use a SaaS/web-based product if it is hosted on US servers. You have to deploy to infrastructure at a Canadian data center in that case. That's what I've been told anyway. If my information is wrong on that, I'm sure someone will correct me.
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Q: A.C. - Q: redneckmother (3597) - I am curious about his stance on campaign finance reform.
"A: In General, I think the system in place now is OK with one exception: SuperPAC's should be required to release donation records within days of receipt, rather than keeping them anonymous for long periods of time."
If this is the only problem he sees, we have issues. I see the system as it stands as inherently corrupt, and I couldn't vote for any politician who is "OK" with it.
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A: Let's hear your idea. A Congressional campaign costs around $1-2 million. 435 members of Congress run for election every 2 years. Assume 2 major candidates in each Congressional race at $2M/each, that's about $1.7 billion every 2 years just to fund the Congressional races. And then you have local State Representatives and State Senators, and U.S. Senators, State-level folks (Governor, Lt. Gov, etc.) on various schedules. If the government were to simply give this money to candidates to go run their campaign (versus having to fundraise), do you really think it would end up going to candidates that aren't already part of "the system"? The other idea I've heard is that you force television stations to do a set amount of free adverting for candidates, but campaign advertising is a significant piece of revenue for many TV networks and local cable companies. I don't really like the idea of the government forcing people or companies to do things. But I'm open to hear your ideas. Maybe you have an idea I've not considered and it could spark some new thoughts about the process.
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Q: Tork (3914) - Mr. Guillot, your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Can you tell us what makes you so popular?
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A: I'm just trying my best to get the word out to as many places as will listen. I try to be open-minded about things, and I'll listen to people with opinions I don't agree with to try to better understand their point of view. While I'm running as a Republican, one thing I tell myself is that if I win, my constituents aren't just Republican--they are Democratic, Libertarians, Greens, Independents, etc.
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Q: c0lo (156) - In a time when the US export are less and less driven by manufactured products, how well is the education prepared [insidehighered.com] to keep US on the competitive edge?
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A: Education is a big problem now, and I can identify with some of the items specified in the article you mentioned. It took me 7 years to get my BS degrees instead of 4. I changed majors a few times. I started out as a Chemical Engineering major, then switched to Electrical Engineering, and finally ended switching to Computer Science. Programming came naturally to me, but I thought it'd be better career wise to be an engineer (plus I had a scholarship for the engineering department, but not for CS). But in the end, I didn't like engineering as much as I had hoped and switched to CS because it was easy for me. And then eventually decided to double major in math since I only needed another 4 or 5 math classes to make that happen. And after being there for 6 years, it didn't feel like a big deal to stay one more to do that. I don't think our public schools are doing enough to keep young people interested in STEM subjects, and promoting classes. But it's not just STEM. A lot of people graduate high school and have never had a money management class and don't really grasp the concept of trying to save money for retirement, or how the stock market works, or how fast credit card debt adds up, etc. And some States don't seem to require students to learn about the US Constitution anymore. There have been lots of ideas proposed on how to fix these problems, but I'm not sure I've seen a good answer yet.
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Q: No.Limit (1965) -Currently I'm quite interested in the theory that the US (and possibly many more countries) is an oligarchy. As I'm trying to form an educated opinion about this matter I've come across the difficulty that it's hard to find reliable information. I hope you can help me with your insights:
- What do you think about this theory and what's your opinion on it?
- Have you ever experienced someone with enough power/influence to be considered an oligarch?, if yes, how was it, in particular how was that person?, did they realize that they're in a position with much more influence than others?
- Do you think there are changes necessary to the system to avoid this situation and what would you suggest if so?
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A: I don't think we've passed the threshold into an oligarchy. People ultimately still hold the power. They could vote every incumbent out that's up for election in November if they wanted to. But it just doesn't seem to happen. People say they hate the current people in power, but then they never exercise their power to reboot the government by voting them all out. I'm not sure why people seem to stick with the status quo. Maybe it's the "stick with the devil you know" mindset, or just voter apathy in general. I've never personally met anyone I'd considered to be an oligarch, but I read about people in the paper every now and then that could be potential candidates (enough money to lawyer themselves out of any crime). It's not a crime to be successful and have money. Nor is it a crime to be able to pay for the best possible legal defense. Maybe we need more educated jurors that don't get swayed by silly arguments?
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Q: number6 (1831) -
Mr. Guillot, can you please offer a few personal tips about the SoylentNews business model.
The community has been debating the pros and cons of various methods to maintain this site's long-term health. A key issue has been to avoid the same fate that Slashdot suffered. Given the various suggestions offered by the community so far, what would you like to see?
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A: The best advice I'd have is that the SoylentNews folks just need to listen to their visitors. Slashdot screwed up by totally ignoring all the negative feedback they were getting about their new layout. As long as the SN team are able to take constructive criticism and react to it in a constructive manner, then things should all work out in the end.
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Regards,
B.J. Guillot
Republican Candidate for US Congress
Washington State 2nd Congressional District
Website: http://www.vote4bj.com/ [vote4bj.com]
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vote4bj [facebook.com]
(Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Wednesday July 09 2014, @03:51AM
Thank you continuing to post and answer questions.
Those license agreements to click through... Just on Linksys site to get an update for my router. http://support.linksys.com/en-us/support/routers/WRT1900AC [linksys.com]
The freaking agreement is a 138 page PDF. 138 pages and multiple languages to boot! And there is simple check box "I accept the terms & conditions" and "accept" or "do not accept" button. How do I know what I am agreeing to? This needs to be stopped. Feds should spell out the terms and conditions, not each company's whim, since these licenses are driven out by copyright, patent and trademark laws.
Another in that area, giving a copyright for 95 years is very bad, when the company abandons the product decades, before copyright runs out. Many years ago to sell software the company I worked for had to place in escrow the source code, increase the company failed the clients needed the code to continue. Why does copyright law not protect the customers as well? Say, "stop supporting a product (no more patches for bugs), the full source becomes public domain (hence open source?) immediately, instead 95 years, because that is the escrow agreement built into copyright law. If you are going to give up the work, then give up the rights.
Oh well, have a fun run for office!
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Wednesday July 09 2014, @05:50AM
Wow, first off, major props to you for coming and answering our questions. My guess is you had a meta-moment when SoylentNews ran an article about you liking SoylentNews; the staff consider this our first official interview (as I've learned running the site, you can never expect what's going to come out of the community :-)). We actually had a small traffic spike which broke the "unique visitors" record for the site.
Secondly, since the question train keeps going, would you mind if I took all the responses thus far, and turned them into an article and ran it? I can understand it can be tiring fielding questions all day. If there's one thing I learned from this site, it's always important to keep a discussion going, and this is a pretty good place to get various bits of insight; with your approval, I'll stick it in the queue for Wednesday or Thursday.
Anyway, having gone through the pain of incorporating a business as of late, I'm curious on your opinions with respect the internet and small businesses. The fact is, business law in the United States is still firmly stepped in the concept that a business is a location in one state that buys or sells goods from a physical location, and is (generally) for profit. While I realize this falls under the realm of state law more than federal, the fact is, forming a business that (more or less) exists solely on the internet is shockingly difficult, especially if one is not operating on the basis of profit. Due to the strict limitations on non-for-profit, without the public benefit corporation laws in Delaware (and other states), it was quite possible we'd still be floundering figuring out how to do it. Even now, we still are unable to directly fundraise due to state laws requiring that the corporation be licensed in each individual state (something that I would think would fall under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, and thus within Congresses authority). Put simply, do you feel, as they exist today, the rules and regulations are sufficient for businesses (especially those related to PBCs, not for profit, and 501(c)(3)) that primarily exist in digital form, and if not, where do you feel that reform is necessary?
My next question is about dealing a follow up to your comments on impeachment. As you stated "I personally feel impeachment talk is just political theater.", and I can understand the sentiment, given how rarely impeachment happens in the United States (twice with presidents, with Nixon likely to have been impeached had he not resigned), do you feel that there is sufficient means for Congress (and the general public in large) to provide oversight and take corrective actions when necessary? While the House and Senate do have means to deal with issues internally (such as censure of McCarthy), they are very rarely used. Furthermore, given the opportunity to reform impeachment and other similar measures, what type of changes would you make to make it less of a political theatre, and more as a reasonable tool to reign in elected or appointed officials.
Finally, and this is with my site admin hat on, how would you recommend us structuring future interviews on the site. Slashdot traditionally went with "Ask a bunch of questions, we'll pick the best, and post the answers", while Reddit has its "Ask Me Anything" and "I Am A" sections which serve much the same purpose. This has managed to be a fusion of both, but in a very ad-hoc way. This discussion has prompted us (the staff) to work out an actual policy and format for doing interviews which are both interesting for the reader, and engaging for the writer; as you said, the right thing to do is to read feedback and respond, and we want to be an excellent forum to do so. Since you are our pilot test case, I'd love to get feedback on how we can improve it.
Anyway, thanks for your time on behalf of the SoylentNews Staff and myself, and I hope you keep enjoying the site for many more years to come :-). I might ask more questions later, but I think these are probably difficult enough for now.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by yankprintster on Thursday July 10 2014, @12:58AM
Yeah, an article would be cool. There were only a few new questions I saw today, and I've running short on time today, so I might have to come back tomorrow to address them, or if you'd rather try to do it differently for the follow-up that's fine too. We can do whatever works best with your newly drafted interview policies.