----- Original Message -----

From: Ralph Yozzo

To: Ralph Yozzo ; govtrack@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 9:50 PM

Subject: [govtrack] List of Featured Bills

I'd like to make a list of featured bills.  Bills that are interesting and should be paid attention to.

One bill is FEATURED: H. Res. 799: Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, of high crimes... -- Tracked by GovTrack.us

I've updated http://peoples-vote.brooklynmarathon.com to include the featured bills at the beginning.

If you have other suggestions, please let me know.

One thing I notice is that congress is filled with bills about nothing:

H.Con.Res. 376: Congratulating the 2007-2008 National Basketball Association World Champions, the...

S.Res. 597: A resolution designating June 2008, as "'Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!' Recognition Month". 
(this is an amazingly blatant advertisement. and a whole month.  are they kidding!)

S.Res. 596: A resolution congratulating the Boston Celtics on winning the 2008 National...
S.Res. 602: A bill supporting the goals and ideals of "National Life Insurance Awareness Month".
S.Res. 601: A resolution designating October 19 through October 25, 2008, as "National Save for Retirement Week"

Ralph:

 

    I'd like to also let users work to write NEW bills, and then try to find congresspeople who might submit it.

 

    The bills that are already before congress have mostly been written by industry lobbyists. How about giving the rest of us a chance?

 

Harvey

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Ralph Yozzo

To: Ralph Yozzo ; govtrack@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 9:50 PM

Subject: [govtrack] List of Featured Bills

I'd like to make a list of featured bills.  Bills that are interesting and should be paid attention to.

One bill is FEATURED: H. Res. 799: Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, of high crimes... -- Tracked by GovTrack.us

I've updated http://peoples-vote.brooklynmarathon.com to include the featured bills at the beginning.

If you have other suggestions, please let me know.

One thing I notice is that congress is filled with bills about nothing:

H.Con.Res. 376: Congratulating the 2007-2008 National Basketball Association World Champions, the...

S.Res. 597: A resolution designating June 2008, as "'Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!' Recognition Month". 
(this is an amazingly blatant advertisement. and a whole month.  are they kidding!)

S.Res. 596: A resolution congratulating the Boston Celtics on winning the 2008 National...
S.Res. 602: A bill supporting the goals and ideals of "National Life Insurance Awareness Month".
S.Res. 601: A resolution designating October 19 through October 25, 2008, as "National Save for Retirement Week"

Ralph:

>available in XML format <

     So, OpenOffice would be good to go? That's XML, right?
I've got an "ERISA Clarification Act" ready to post.

     But, how would it be loaded into a wiki? Who would moderate changes or
discussions?

Harvey

----- Original Message -----
From: Ralph Yozzo
To: govtrack@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 10:40 PM
Subject: Re: [govtrack] List of Featured Bills


Definitely.  I can add them to the featured list.


Or if they are available in XML format they can be loaded easily.




On Jun 27, 2008, at 1:10 AM, "Harvey Frey" <hsfrey@...> wrote:


Ralph:

     I'd like to also let users work to write NEW bills, and then try to find
congresspeople who might submit it.

     The bills that are already before congress have mostly been written by
industry lobbyists. How about giving the rest of us a chance?

Harvey

----- Original Message -----
From: Ralph Yozzo
To: Ralph Yozzo ; govtrack@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 9:50 PM
Subject: [govtrack] List of Featured Bills


I'd like to make a list of featured bills.  Bills that are interesting and
should be paid attention to.

One bill is FEATURED: H. Res. 799: Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice
President of the United States, of high crimes... -- Tracked by GovTrack.us

I've updated http://peoples-vote.brooklynmarathon.com to include the
featured bills at the beginning.

If you have other suggestions, please let me know.

One thing I notice is that congress is filled with bills about nothing:

H.Con.Res. 376: Congratulating the 2007-2008 National Basketball Association
World Champions, the...

S.Res. 597: A resolution designating June 2008, as "'Wait Wait...Don't Tell
Me!' Recognition Month".
(this is an amazingly blatant advertisement. and a whole month.  are they
kidding!)

S.Res. 596: A resolution congratulating the Boston Celtics on winning the
2008 National...
S.Res. 602: A bill supporting the goals and ideals of "National Life
Insurance Awareness Month".
S.Res. 601: A resolution designating October 19 through October 25, 2008, as
"National Save for Retirement Week"

There's another *free* editor like notepad, but with a really neat
feature (one of many) called a "Clip". Double clicking the Clip will
pop up a 'fill in the blanks' window saving your a *lot* of typing
and typos. Here's the download URL:

http://www.notetab.com/ntl.php

Download, install and open.

Below is a clip I made (and tested) from Ralph's example that you can
copy into the NoteTab clip library. F4 opens the NoteTab clip panel.
You can choose where you want the Clip to reside. I used the HTML
clip tab and added (copy & pasted) the GovTrack clip by rightClicking
the "OtherElements" heading. Type in your Clip name and copy the code
below into the new window that opens,then click the Save icon. Now
you can open a new file (or an existing one) and double click on the
Clip name to 'fill in the blanks' creating the code you want.

-= Begin copy of Clip below (I named the Clip "GovTrack") =-

<rss version="2.0">
   <channel xml:space="preserve">
     <title>Introduced Legislation -- Tracked by GovTrack.us</title>

<link>http://www.govtrack.us/users/events.xpd?
monitors=misc:introducedbills</link>
     <description>Legislative events tracked by GovTrack.us in the
following categories: Introduced Legislation</description>

     <generator>GovTrack.us <comments@...<lt
%3Bcomments@...> ></generator>
     <copyright>This data is left in the public domain.</copyright>

     <pubDate>^?[WeekDay=Mon|Tue|Wed|Thu|Fri|Sat|Sun], ^?
[DayOfMonth=01|10|20|30] ^?[Month=Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|
Oct|Nov|Dec] ^?[Year=2004|2005|2006|2007|2008|2009|2010|2011|2012] ^?
[Hour=00]:^?[Minute=00]:^?[Second=00] -^?[GMTdiff=0400|0500|0600|0700|
0800]</pubDate>
     <ttl>360</ttl>

     <image>
       <url>http://www.govtrack.us/media/logo32x32.png</url>
       <title>GovTrack.us</title>
       <link>http://www.govtrack.us</link>
     </image>

     <item xml:space="preserve">
       <pubDate>^?[Weekday=], ^?[DayOfMonth=] ^?[Month=] ^?[Year=] ^?
[Hour=]:^?[Minute=]:^?[Second=] -^?[GMTdiff=]</pubDate>
       <category domain="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/subjects.xpd?
type=crs"> Introduced Legislation </category>
       <title>Bill Action: ^?[Action=Introduced|Passed]:  FEATURED: ^?
[HorS=H|S]. Res. ^?[BillNo=]: ^?[BillTitle=Replace this text with
Bill Title here]... -- Tracked by GovTrack.us</title>

<link>http://www.govtrack.us/users/events.xpd?monitors=bill:^?
[LChors=h|s]r^?[LoNum=0000]-^?[HiNum=9999]</link>
       <description>^?[Description=Replace this text with bill
description here]...</description>
      </item>
   </channel>
</rss>

-= End copy of Clip above (Last line = "</rss>") =-

I've tested it, but Ralph may want it modified a bit.

HTH......Ron



--- In govtrack@yahoogroups.com, "Ralph Yozzo" <fedex1@...> wrote:
>
> Almost any editor can be used to create an XML document.
>
> I prefer vi or vim, but even notepad can do it.
>
> For the wiki,  it's mostly text based.  cut and paste is usually
what people
> use to input data.
>
> moderation, etc is dependent on the wiki chosen.
>
> For the featured bill XML for http://peoples-
vote.brooklynmarathon.com, it's
> very simple.  A title and a link.  It looks complicated but it's
really very
> simple.  Currently it is in RSS2 XML format, but if simpler XML is
better
> for everyone I can support that.
>
> <rss version="2.0"><channel xml:space="preserve">
>     <title>Introduced Legislation -- Tracked by GovTrack.us</title>
>     <link>
> http://www.govtrack.us/users/events.xpd?
monitors=misc:introducedbills</link>
>     <description>Legislative events tracked by GovTrack.us in the
following
> categories: Introduced Legislation</description>
>
>     <generator>GovTrack.us comments@...<lt%3Bcomments@...>
> ></generator>
>     <copyright>This data is left in the public domain.</copyright>
>
>     <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400</pubDate>
>     <ttl>360</ttl>
>
>     <image>
>         <url>http://www.govtrack.us/media/logo32x32.png</url>
>         <title>GovTrack.us</title>
>         <link>http://www.govtrack.us</link>
>     </image>
>
>     <item xml:space="preserve">
>                     <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400</
pubDate>
>                     <category domain="
> http://www.govtrack.us/congress/subjects.xpd?type=crs">
>                             Introduced Legislation
>                         </category>
>                     <title>Bill Action: Introduced:  FEATURED: H.
Res. 799:
> Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States,
of high
> crimes... -- Tracked by GovTrack.us</title>
>     <link>http://www.govtrack.us/users/events.xpd?
monitors=bill:hr110-799
> </link>
>     <description>Legislative events tracked by GovTrack.us in the
following
> categories: H. Res. 799: Impeaching Richard B. Cheney, Vice
President of the
> United States, of high crimes...</description>
>
>                 </item>
> </channel></rss>
>
> On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 1:57 AM, Harvey Frey <hsfrey@...> wrote:
>
> >   Ralph:
> >
> > >available in XML format <
> >
> > So, OpenOffice would be good to go? That's XML, right?
> > I've got an "ERISA Clarification Act" ready to post.
> >
> > But, how would it be loaded into a wiki? Who would moderate
changes or
> > discussions?
> >
> >
> > Harvey
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Ralph Yozzo
> > To: govtrack@yahoogroups.com <govtrack%40yahoogroups.com>
> > Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 10:40 PM
> > Subject: Re: [govtrack] List of Featured Bills
> >
> > Definitely. I can add them to the featured list.
> >
> > Or if they are available in XML format they can be loaded easily.
> >
> > On Jun 27, 2008, at 1:10 AM, "Harvey Frey" <hsfrey@...<hsfrey
%40harp.org>>
> > wrote:
> >
> > Ralph:
> >
> > I'd like to also let users work to write NEW bills, and then try
to find
> > congresspeople who might submit it.
> >
> > The bills that are already before congress have mostly been
written by
> > industry lobbyists. How about giving the rest of us a chance?
> >
> > Harvey
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Ralph Yozzo
> > To: Ralph Yozzo ; govtrack@yahoogroups.com <govtrack
%40yahoogroups.com>
> > Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 9:50 PM
> > Subject: [govtrack] List of Featured Bills
> >
> > I'd like to make a list of featured bills. Bills that are
interesting and
> > should be paid attention to.
> >
> > One bill is FEATURED: H. Res. 799: Impeaching Richard B. Cheney,
Vice
> > President of the United States, of high crimes... -- Tracked by
GovTrack.us
> >
> > I've updated http://peoples-vote.brooklynmarathon.com to include
the
> > featured bills at the beginning.
> >
> > If you have other suggestions, please let me know.
> >
> > One thing I notice is that congress is filled with bills about
nothing:
> >
> > H.Con.Res. 376: Congratulating the 2007-2008 National Basketball
> > Association
> > World Champions, the...
> >
> > S.Res. 597: A resolution designating June 2008, as "'Wait
Wait...Don't Tell
> >
> > Me!' Recognition Month".
> > (this is an amazingly blatant advertisement. and a whole month.
are they
> > kidding!)
> >
> > S.Res. 596: A resolution congratulating the Boston Celtics on
winning the
> > 2008 National...
> > S.Res. 602: A bill supporting the goals and ideals of "National
Life
> > Insurance Awareness Month".
> > S.Res. 601: A resolution designating October 19 through October
25, 2008,
> > as
> > "National Save for Retirement Week"
> >
> >
> >
>

Anyone know why the GovIt site is down?  It has been down most of the
day Saturday.

Hi guys.

With the recent discussion about writing bills on a wiki, I know there
are people here with good technical skills! So I'm writing my periodical
pitch to get some help with GovTrack. If you want to earn some money
helping GovTrack, that might also be possible to arrange.

I've been expanding my list of project ideas here:
http://wiki.govtrack.us/index.php/Projects

Here are a few:
- Display on a bill page a list of sections of the U.S. Code that would
be modified, by looking for references in the bill text.
- Researching what the different types of votes are (like 'motion to
recommit with instructions') and adding explanatory text to the site.
- Tagging bills (crowd-sourcing)
- Make the website fully compliant with accessibility standards

Need I say that GovTrack is quite popular and your contributions will
benefit thousands of people each day? :)

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

----- Original Message -----

From: Josh Tauberer

To: GovTrack List

Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 7:50 AM

Subject: [govtrack] I need help!

Hi guys.

With the recent discussion about writing bills on a wiki, I know there
are people here with good technical skills! So I'm writing my periodical
pitch to get some help with GovTrack. If you want to earn some money
helping GovTrack, that might also be possible to arrange.

I've been expanding my list of project ideas here:
http://wiki.govtrack.us/index.php/Projects

Here are a few:
- Display on a bill page a list of sections of the U.S. Code that would
be modified, by looking for references in the bill text.
- Researching what the different types of votes are (like 'motion to
recommit with instructions') and adding explanatory text to the site.
- Tagging bills (crowd-sourcing)
- Make the website fully compliant with accessibility standards

Need I say that GovTrack is quite popular and your contributions will
benefit thousands of people each day? :)

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

----- Original Message -----

From: Josh Tauberer

To: GovTrack List

Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 7:50 AM

Subject: [govtrack] I need help!

Hi guys.

With the recent discussion about writing bills on a wiki, I know there
are people here with good technical skills! So I'm writing my periodical
pitch to get some help with GovTrack. If you want to earn some money
helping GovTrack, that might also be possible to arrange.

I've been expanding my list of project ideas here:
http://wiki.govtrack.us/index.php/Projects

Here are a few:
- Display on a bill page a list of sections of the U.S. Code that would
be modified, by looking for references in the bill text.
- Researching what the different types of votes are (like 'motion to
recommit with instructions') and adding explanatory text to the site.
- Tagging bills (crowd-sourcing)
- Make the website fully compliant with accessibility standards

Need I say that GovTrack is quite popular and your contributions will
benefit thousands of people each day? :)

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

• Wiki type tools is one option
• Another is source code control system such as Subversion or CVS.  These are the source code control system used by most programmers to keep track of the history of changes to program source.  It allows for revision history, branching, merging, checking for differences between revisions.  Full History and Userid support. 
• Group editing tools such as Google documents.

Harvey Frey wrote:
> Would there be some way to list the bills which you would like
> someone to work on, and allow individuals to sign up to work on them,
>  and "lock" those bills so that one person won't overwrite another's
> changes?
>
> I doubt that you want just anyone uploading changes to your site. How
>  would you control uploads of edited bill text?

Most things I have in mind are meant to be done by an automated process,
not manually editing bills. There are some things that would be nice to
do with human editing, of course, but they are much more complicated
projects. More below. First to address some other points:

> Would someone be interested in writing a script which could recognize
>  a statutory reference and generate an appropriate hyperlink?

I've already done that for U.S.C. references. They are hyperlinked on
GovTrack already.

> Even there, there's a problem since most of the USC sites don't have
> embedded pinpoint anchors to subsections. Would you want to keep
> local marked up copies of those too?

If necessary absolutely, but I could talk to someone at the Cornell LII
website if we wanted to do something more with them.

> Do you have a preferred technique for handling this problem?

ReadableLaws by Matt Burton tried an approach to annotating bills and we
were talking about how to collaborate.

I general I think the right approach is going to depend on the specifics
of the goal. Whether it's marking up how a bill modifies the US Code or
something else.

> Are you willing to save marked up copies of bills on your site? Apart from
> the massive storage needed

This is not a problem.

> how would you (we) keep them current?

This is one of the reasons this is a very complicated project to do
correctly.

An approach, for which I have the basis in the works, is to tie mark-up
to the bill on a paragraph-by-paragraph level. Each paragraph gets an
id. And these ids carry through as the bill is revised (automatically).
Some ids disappear when paragraphs are deleted, and new ids come in as
paragraphs are added. (It would be nice if Congress provided these ids,
but they don't, so I'm working on generating them.)

There are some very useful projects in here, in terms of human editing,
but it's one of the most ambitious types of projects to tackle.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

I thought that you were on this mailing list.  Glad I could be of
assistance.


--- In govtrack@yahoogroups.com, Taylor Norrish <tay199@...> wrote:
>
> Barry,
>
> Thanks for sounding the alarm. I was away yesterday, and wouldn't
you know it... that's when the problem comes. I'm looking into right now.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Taylor
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: btbarry21 <btbarry21@...>
> To: govtrack@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Saturday, June 28, 2008 7:27:37 PM
> Subject: [govtrack] GovIt.com Down?
>
>
> Anyone know why the GovIt site is down?  It has been down most of the
> day Saturday.
>

Josh:

>I've already done that for U.S.C. references. They are hyperlinked on
GovTrack already.<

     Oh, good! In annotating the USA Patriot Act, I found that they often
made reference to a law by its NAME, which meant I needed to find the PL
number and then, if possible the USC cites. <G> I think this was intentional
obfuscation, and would be hard to follow automatically.

>ReadableLaws by Matt Burton tried an approach to annotating bills and we
were talking about how to collaborate.<

     Thanks for that reference! I'll check it out. I've attended several
conferences on Legislative markup, but didn't find much of value, especially
as I'm interested primarily in Semantic annotation, and the state of the art
still seems to be syntactic (dates, addresses, etc.)

     What is your preferred language for the scripts you write to manipulate
the bill text?

     Do you have an ontology for the XML you generate? That would be a
starting point for those of us who might be interested in helping. I've
developed a primitive 'folksonomy' for myself, but it's primarily aimed at
court decisions rather than legislation.

Harvey



----- Original Message -----
From: Josh Tauberer
To: govtrack@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 5:01 PM
Subject: Re: [govtrack] I need help!


Harvey Frey wrote:
> Would there be some way to list the bills which you would like
> someone to work on, and allow individuals to sign up to work on them,
> and "lock" those bills so that one person won't overwrite another's
> changes?
>
> I doubt that you want just anyone uploading changes to your site. How
> would you control uploads of edited bill text?

Most things I have in mind are meant to be done by an automated process,
not manually editing bills. There are some things that would be nice to
do with human editing, of course, but they are much more complicated
projects. More below. First to address some other points:

> Would someone be interested in writing a script which could recognize
> a statutory reference and generate an appropriate hyperlink?

I've already done that for U.S.C. references. They are hyperlinked on
GovTrack already.

> Even there, there's a problem since most of the USC sites don't have
> embedded pinpoint anchors to subsections. Would you want to keep
> local marked up copies of those too?

If necessary absolutely, but I could talk to someone at the Cornell LII
website if we wanted to do something more with them.

> Do you have a preferred technique for handling this problem?

ReadableLaws by Matt Burton tried an approach to annotating bills and we
were talking about how to collaborate.

I general I think the right approach is going to depend on the specifics
of the goal. Whether it's marking up how a bill modifies the US Code or
something else.

> Are you willing to save marked up copies of bills on your site? Apart from
> the massive storage needed

This is not a problem.

> how would you (we) keep them current?

This is one of the reasons this is a very complicated project to do
correctly.

An approach, for which I have the basis in the works, is to tie mark-up
to the bill on a paragraph-by-paragraph level. Each paragraph gets an
id. And these ids carry through as the bill is revised (automatically).
Some ids disappear when paragraphs are deleted, and new ids come in as
paragraphs are added. (It would be nice if Congress provided these ids,
but they don't, so I'm working on generating them.)

There are some very useful projects in here, in terms of human editing,
but it's one of the most ambitious types of projects to tackle.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

> I've attended several
> conferences on Legislative markup, but didn't find much of value, especially
> as I'm interested primarily in Semantic annotation, and the state of the art
> still seems to be syntactic (dates, addresses, etc.)

If you learn anything interesting, I'd love to hear about it.

>     What is your preferred language for the scripts you write to manipulate
> the bill text?

I use Perl. If I were to start over again today I'd probably use Python.
But, to the extent anyone wants to contribute, I would prefer Perl so
they could reuse my existing routines, but I would gladly accept Python
and maybe other languages.

>     Do you have an ontology for the XML you generate?

I have some documentation of most things here:
http://wiki.govtrack.us/index.php/Data_Directory

But it doesn't include anything about the structure of bill text XML
that I generate, in part because it comes from HTML from THOMAS and I
don't have a complete (or any) description of that.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

Joe Germuska wrote:
> On Jun 29, 2008, at 7:01 PM, Josh Tauberer wrote:
>> (It would be nice if Congress provided these ids, but they don't, so
>> I'm working on generating them.)
>
> Regarding the idea that it would be nice if Congress provided these IDs,
> and also things like this
> <http://readablelaws.org/index.php?title=Help:Contributing> from
> Readable Laws:
>> When translating laws, pay special attention to de-referencing them.
>> One of the reasons bills are so hard to read is their failure to
>> actually say /what/ they are doing. Instead, they often just modify
>> existing laws. Here's an example from the USA PATRIOT Act:
>>   Section 105(e)(1) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50
U.S.C. 1805(e)(1)) is amended by--
>>    (A) inserting `(A)' after `except that'; and
>>    (B) inserting before the period the following:...
> It seems worthwhile to me that citizens push for a more modern approach
> to legislation.  It is nonsense that something like the above would not
> also include the updated text in its entirety, especially in an
> electronic age.

Actually I sympathize with the bill writers, who are often, I believe,
from the Office of Legislative Counsel (OLC), separate for House and
Senate it seems. When writing code --- be it legal or computer --- you
want to be as concise as possible. The fewer words the less likelihood
of errors, and the easier it is to see exactly what the precise
modification is (though more difficult to understand it).

So I would prefer separate annotations.

> I understand that GovTrack is focused on machine-solvable problems

Only because that's what I've been capable of doing. Crowd-sourcing is
certainly on topic for this list.

> So: is there any traction in Congress itself or in the
> activist community to push for some process rationalization?

I haven't heard of anything significant.

> Is this hopelessly naîve?

Depends on what you want. Additionally writing annotations doesn't seem
like something particularly difficult for the OLC to do, but it would
require funding.

Grander process changes are probably hopeless without small incremental
steps.

> I'm going to try to attend the IGOTF meeting <http://igotf.org/> in
> Chicago in August (since I live here). This is the kind of thing I hope
> to talk about with people and find out how I can help.

Wish I could go.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

----- Original Message -----

From: Josh Tauberer

To: govtrack@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 10:15 PM

Subject: Re: [govtrack] I need help!

Joe Germuska wrote:
> On Jun 29, 2008, at 7:01 PM, Josh Tauberer wrote:
>> (It would be nice if Congress provided these ids, but they don't, so
>> I'm working on generating them.)
>
> Regarding the idea that it would be nice if Congress provided these IDs,
> and also things like this
> <http://readablelaws.org/index.php?title=Help:Contributing> from
> Readable Laws:
>> When translating laws, pay special attention to de-referencing them.
>> One of the reasons bills are so hard to read is their failure to
>> actually say /what/ they are doing. Instead, they often just modify
>> existing laws. Here's an example from the USA PATRIOT Act:
>>   Section 105(e)(1) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1805(e)(1)) is amended by--
>>    (A) inserting `(A)' after `except that'; and
>>    (B) inserting before the period the following:...
> It seems worthwhile to me that citizens push for a more modern approach
> to legislation.  It is nonsense that something like the above would not
> also include the updated text in its entirety, especially in an
> electronic age.

Actually I sympathize with the bill writers, who are often, I believe,
from the Office of Legislative Counsel (OLC), separate for House and
Senate it seems. When writing code --- be it legal or computer --- you
want to be as concise as possible. The fewer words the less likelihood
of errors, and the easier it is to see exactly what the precise
modification is (though more difficult to understand it).

So I would prefer separate annotations.

> I understand that GovTrack is focused on machine-solvable problems

Only because that's what I've been capable of doing. Crowd-sourcing is
certainly on topic for this list.

> So: is there any traction in Congress itself or in the
> activist community to push for some process rationalization?

I haven't heard of anything significant.

> Is this hopelessly naîve?

Depends on what you want. Additionally writing annotations doesn't seem
like something particularly difficult for the OLC to do, but it would
require funding.

Grander process changes are probably hopeless without small incremental
steps.

> I'm going to try to attend the IGOTF meeting <http://igotf.org/> in
> Chicago in August (since I live here). This is the kind of thing I hope
> to talk about with people and find out how I can help. 

Wish I could go.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

------------------------------------

Pierre Demester wrote:
> any thoughts of using Coldfusion ?

I actually don't know the first thing about ColdFusion.

--
- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation!  Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

Please, please, not cold fusion. -1 (or as many as I can muster).

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Pierre Demester <pierre@...> wrote:
> Coldfusion is similar to ASP (Microsoft) and PHP (open source)... in that it
> is a scripting language.
>
> PHP has Object Orientation (OO) - whereas Coldfusion (CF) (developed
> (Jeremy) Allaire and Ben Forta, then sold to Macromedia, bought by Adobe)
> resembles HTML.
>
> I, unfortunately have not had the opportunity (not currently cost effective
> to upgrade) to use CF 8 - which I think includes OO... but I might be
> incorrect.
>
> If you know HTML - you can learn CF fairly quickly.
> -- to fully utilize PHP... you need an understanding of OO.. which is a
> barrier that most people cannot cross.
> --- therefore, most PHP installs are not fully utilized. The "power is
> there"... the knowledge lacks.
>
> Another major difference is that PHP is free.
> -- CF starts @ $700... $2500 if you need the Enterprise edition. Most people
> don't.
>
> My take - you get what you pay for, Free is nice. There's a price for
> Quality.
>
> A third obstable is the installation base. Because PHP is free - there are
> literally thousands (upon thousands) of companies who "toss in" PHP for
> free.
> -- PHP is part of the standard linux install. All of my servers have PHP - I
> rarely use it.
>
> Because CF has a cost... the number of companies providing hosting services
> drops dramatically.
> - most companies who switch to CF... provide their own hosting services
>
> It's the same issues with databases
> -- MySQL (free / open source / hosted by 1000's upon 1000's)
> -- as compared to Microsoft SQL Server (very expensive / professional
> results).
>
> Many large entities use CF... Amazon.com, EBay.com, Senate.gov, Jaguar (the
> car manufacturer)... literally too many to list.
> - the number of PHP / MySql installations are uncountable.
>
> I think I've even come a Whitehouse.gov section that was CF based.
> -- some entities develop their entire site with CF - others only develop a
> portion.
>
> CF works with Sun Solaris, Windows IIS, and Linux.
>
> Pierre
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: govtrack@yahoogroups.com [mailto:govtrack@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
> Of Josh Tauberer
> Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 9:33 AM
> To: govtrack@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [govtrack] I need help!
>
> Pierre Demester wrote:
>> any thoughts of using Coldfusion ?
>
> I actually don't know the first thing about ColdFusion.
>
> --
> - Josh Tauberer
> - GovTrack.us
>
> http://razor.occams.info
>
> "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
> falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
> Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)
>
>



--
--
Derek Willis
dwillis@...
http://www.thescoop.org/docs/

Code has to be maintained.
When a development project goes live, less than half its full
life-cycle cost has been spent; the rest is modification.
Personally, I'm thumbs up on PHP (objects available, not mandatory,
btw), and thumbs down on ColdFusion (proprietary add-on to a graphics
package), but regardless, one of the first rules of good code is Make
it readable, Make it modifiable.
It might run like gold and still be bad code.


At 09:27 AM 7/2/2008, Mark Fredrickson <mark.m.fredrickson@...> wrote:
>I call "bikeshed" on this discussion[1]. Code is gold: if you can
>write something in Coldfusion, do so. If you can write it in
>something else, do so.
>
>Best of luck,
>-M
>
>[1] <http://www.bikeshed.com/>http://www.bikeshed.com/ and
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_the_bikeshed>http://en.wikipedia.org/wik\
i/Color_of_the_bikeshed
>
>On Jul 2, 2008, at 9:19 AM, Derek Willis wrote:
>
>>Please, please, not cold fusion. -1 (or as many as I can muster).
>>
>>On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Pierre Demester
>><<mailto:pierre%40in.ternet.us>pierre@...! .us> wrote:
>> > Coldfusion is similar to ASP (Microsoft) and PHP (open
>> source)... in that it
>> > is a scripting language.
>> >
>> > PHP has Object Orientation (OO) - whereas Coldfusion (CF) (developed
>> > (Jeremy) Allaire and Ben Forta, then sold to Macromedia, bought by Adobe)
>> > resembles HTML.


Neil
--
NeilRest@...

Plato had defined the human being as an animal, biped and
featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought
it into the lecture-room with the words, 'Here is Plato's human
being.' In consequence of which there was added to the definition,
'having broad nails'.

Is c#, .NET or MONO an option?

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 10:53 AM, Dale Moore <DaleEMoore@...> wrote:
> Is c#, .NET or MONO an option?
>

In case you didn't see Josh's prior response, quoting:

> What is your preferred language for the scripts you write to manipulate
> the bill text?

I use Perl. If I were to start over again today I'd probably use Python.
But, to the extent anyone wants to contribute, I would prefer Perl so
they could reuse my existing routines, but I would gladly accept Python
and maybe other languages.