To cybersquat you must generally go through a registrar to create  a unique name for a domain.  This guy setup a user account with a service.

Exactly.  What's more, whoever said cybersquatting was restricted to domains?

If you've got a url myspace.com/barackobama, people are naturally going to think you're barackobama.

That's cybersquating.

2) Joe created this problem by choosing the url, myspace.com/barackobama. This is cybersquatting, pure and simple. Even if you love Barack Obama, when you choose the name of a public figure you have to expect at some point they are going to want to control their official message.

Exactly.  I wonder how many of those putative 160k friends signed up thinking maybe they were signing up to something from Obama himself.  That'd be understandable since, you know, it has his name.

"The better solution is not to regulate it at all. You may like the idea of gov't shutting down speech that bothers you. But that isn't free speech, and it is most certainly not good for the people."

For all your mistrust of government, you're putting a whole lot of faith in one monopolistic corporation.

It's been the experience in this country since the days of Teddy Roosevelt and the original trust-busters, that you do not allow services that are dominated by one or two corporations to operate without a substantial amount of regulation.

Back in the old days, everyone was free to go wherever they wanted -- but if you wanted to get their by train, you'd have to go by way of one of the robber barrons.

Somehow, I get the feeling that your definition of freedom of speech is pretty much useless for most people.  It only guarantees the freedom for the owner of the pipe.

Really old school.

"The point is that "hits" is a very general term that means different things in different contexts."

Here's an explanation by Site Meter, the company that tracks traffic on this site: "When someone comes to your site, they generate a 'hit' for every piece of content that is sent to their computer."

Here's another explanation by About.com.

People don't have "Access" or "Request" Counters; they have "Hit Counters".  This is about as basic as it's gets.  It only means different things to people who don't know what they're talking about.  

If you can't get terminology like this right, what are the chances of doing better in murkier areas?

As mommy used to say, consider the source.  This is little better than trash-talk.

"In fact, Google News lists 341 hits for "Ned Lamont" in the last month.... [T]here have been only 39 hits in the last month on Google News for "Steven Laffey.'"

For God's sake, doesn't anyone know about the Internet any more?  Those are 'results' not 'hits'.  Hits are what happen when you (or rather your browser) looks up a web page.  Either of those candidates are likely to have generated way more than a couple hundred hits.

I think the one office was simply an organizational question -- this really is a modest operation.

That said, they may be opening other offices.  They're also working at the County Building in Downtown Chicago.

Yup, those signatures won't invalidate themselves!

So people need to contact FairIllinois.org and see when it's best to help out.

I've been chastised over at Kos.  They say Lamont won by '33.5%'.

0.33465871438038436050364479787939 -- you know.

Actually my favorite was the "Steamed-hamburger capital of the world".

We have an event in Chicago that's similiar to what you're talking about.  It's called Reading Liberally (the bibliofile offshoot of Drinking Liberally).

You can see some of our book selections on our Final Resting Place for Former Banners Page