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Democracy Player Is Dead, Long Live Miro
MrSpin writes "Democracy Player has relaunched today as Miro. Developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation, Miro aims to make online video "as easy as watching TV", while at the same time ensuring that the new medium remains accessible to everyone, through its support for open standards. The open-source application combines a media player and library, content guide, video search engine, as well as podcast and BitTorrent clients. But why the name change? According to last100, who have published a full review and guide to Miro: "When Democracy Player launched back in February 2006, the feedback received was that the name evoked different, yet equally negative responses. For many Americans it conjured up an image of yet another left wing media project, and to the rest of the world it was, rather bizarrely, being associated with the policies of the Bush administration. In contrast, the new name is purposely abstract.""
Is there any reason to use Miro rather than VLC or BS Player? These seem to handle everything I've encountered.
Creepy that so many people associate "Democracy" with bad things. Actually scares me...
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Makes a bigger difference than we realize. Sort of makes you wonder how many other smaller projects don't make it because of a poor name. I hate coming up with a name for anything I work on... Heck there is times when I sit and stare at the screen because I can't think of a good name (that will get me through code review). -Wes
DP to Miro, Gaim to Pidgin, Beryl and Compiz rejoining... what next? GCC becomes Gnucco?
... and to the rest of the world it was, rather bizarrely, being associated with the policies of the Bush administration. I hope, for the sake of everything that I believe in, this is a false statement. It's sad that I have to go on living knowing that while I was alive a man was elected president of my country (twice!) & in that time, he was able to put a foul taste in your mouth upon saying "democracy."I guess we can still say that the core ideas of democracy are good, that only awful men with awful goals and intentions used democracy to do wrong. I guess today Marxism sounds like an idea with potential though historically men like Joseph Stalin & Mao Zedong have given it a social stigma that the terrible things they did under its name are inherent and must occur when the idea is put into practice.
I hope the rest of the world is not convinced that democracy comes hand in hand with the actions of the United States of America today. Hopefully other countries will become model democracies for the rest of the world.
I hope the theory of democracy is resilient enough to withstand the current administration and that it survives as a concept that can be taught to children as the model of the most fair form of government. I also hope that the rest of the world aspires to become democratic--as has been the popular progression for quite sometime. Ironically, we are tarnishing the image of a system that we hope the Iraqi people to embrace--quite possibly the reason that effort fails.
The history books will indeed be interesting to read when I am a withered old man.
I like this quote from Winston Churchill that explains while democracy is not perfect, it is the best we've got: Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
My work here is dung.
I wouldn't call the name abstract, as miro is Spanish for "I watch." Seems perfectly suitable to me.
If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.
"Miro" is spanish for "see" or "watch" so makes sense. Why say it's abstract?
Scientia est Potentia
So wait, the feedback on their name demonstrated that many Americans viewed something with the word "democracy" in it as some kind of left-wing plot?! When did the word democracy come to signify the left of the American political spectrum? More interestingly what does that say about the right? What word signifies them to many Americans I wonder. I also wonder what this says about the American political system and Americans in general.
You mean the german Miro (http://www.miro.com) that now produces computer displays, that formerly produced multimedia hardware for computers (http://www.mirosupport.de/)?
I see absolutely no problem with trademarks here.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
So now Bush has tarnished Democracy as badly as Stalin tarnished socialism.
Particularly sad, since neither one practiced either doctrine.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
.. because it kept on popping up on reddit.
Remember, the United States has a "Republic" -
A Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting for "what's for dinner".
(hmm, I wonder how you relate a republic to two wolves and a sheep...)
How are the data streams -- or metadata sent to/from the player -- impacted by GPL 3.0? I know the GPL 3.0 has provisions regarding web services and sending / receiving data. Is this an issue?
21st-Century-Citizen
Not 'bizarre' at all. Actually I and everyone I know expected exactly those reactions, and were therefore puzzled by the name choice of 'Democracy Player'. It was just a half-step better then 'Freedom Player' (to make the comparison to 'Freedom Fries' even clearer, not that there is any need).
The project itself is a nice idea. Hopefully the misguided name choice didn't set it back too much.
Names seem to matter as much as the product itself. My dad designed and built something for Westinghouse that was going to Germany named the MIST. I suppose it was an acronym for something; but upon arrival in Germany, it had its name changed to something that wasn't offensive. I don't speak German, so I don't know what that would be misinturpreted as. Another naming failure was with the Chevy Nova. Nova, in espaniol, means "it doesn't go". I'm sure this was just an over site by GM. But the cars didn't sell well in Latin America and other Latin countries.
The game.
has cleared their trademark with Joan Miro's estate?
If not, queue intellectual property lawsuits in 5..4..3..
It's happened before.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I would never thought that I would live to see the day that the left wing sells out the idea of imposing democracy in favor of a Kissinger-esque RealPolitik. Back when I was a young Reagan supporter, young liberals that I argued with cringed at the notion of the USA even having a relationship with a dictatorial regime, and would argue that if the USA were to do anything, it ought to invade the middle east and topple all of these dictators once and for all. Of all the things I disagreed with from them, that struck me as ultimately the right thing, and so, when Bush set out to do that, I was shocked to hear that now the left has evolved to favor dictators and strongmen, and don't even believe that a society whose people are free is fundamentally better than a society whose people are not.
This is my sig.
Is that "miro" in French means someone who has very low vision.
And "Miro", in Spanish is, of course, a famous modern painter... Not exactly very well known for being "easy" to understand.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I really liked the "go to hell big media player". but the developers did not think it was a good idea to start out beating the bushes looking for snakes.
Spanish and Japanese for Watch, oddly.
Now they feel "democracy" is tainted too, just because bush tried to use it as a veil. Now you cant use that word that easily. Its just stupid. If some jerk comes and tries to exploit the word "good", what will happen ?
Read radical news here
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
So how about we focus instead on getting some free resources for the production of decent content? Right now, there is a VERY sharp divide between professional studio productions (that are heavily DRM'ed and can only be accessed by paying $ at sites like iTunes) and crappy home videos/video podcasts that look like they're made in a junior high AV room.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Any videoplayer with "democratic" in the title isn't.
ignatius
Miro happens to be the name of the company that started the Mambo Server open-source CMS project. Since I know they existed before today, they might have a good claim to stop the Miro player from using the Miro name. Software trademarks seem to go across many types of software - Firefox had to change its name to Firefox from Firebird because of the open-source relational database called Firebird. Seeing as though both Miro's Mambo and the Miro player deliver content to users, it would seem they are more related than a database and a web browser.
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but people really need to do good trademark searches.
But it doesn't play some of my indeo codec generated avi files on OS X, while the MPlayer for OS X does (After some tuning, but I forget detail). No offending, just FYI.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Everytime you hear crap about "saving our democracy" you ought to cringe. Democracy and freedom are not the same thing. You can have a monarchy and have a free society. You can have a democracy or representative democracy and have a society that is all but a police state. The abuse most commonly occurs when leftists criticize actions by regimes like the Bush Administration.
Truth is, America was a lot freer when we weren't even a democracy in name. When our founders created our country, only 1/3 of the federal body politic was directly elected. We had the lowest taxes, fewest regulations, our federal civil service was actually serving, rather than ruling, the people and federal police powers were few and far between. Today, well, speaks for itself.
I'm glad they changed the name. Their project has a lot more to do with freedom than democracy.
Democracy is good. The player is dead though because it kept crashing all the time. And people in forums had the same problem. I wish the reincarnation is better
First off, as I'm sure you're aware, there are some in the left who are against almost everything Bush proposes exactly because Bush proposes it. Same with the right and Clinton in the 90's. That said, most of those who were against the Iraq war from the beginning (including many conservatives who had not given up on Reagan) did not believe we should be meddling in the affairs of other countries. No matter how you paint it, that's not the same as favoring "dictators and strongmen" or not thinking "that a society whose people are free is fundamentally better than a society whose people are not." There's this crazy belief that a society whose people are free can't be forced to be free - they have to choose to be free. This idea might even be influenced by Star Trek's prime directive, but that's a whole other can of worms.
Simply, it's not one of these black-and-white worlds, left-or-right, with-us-or-against-us that some people like to paint. It's complex. You can consider yourself "on the left" and be for or against toppling regimes. Similarly with people who consider themselves "on the right".
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I dunno. Let's find out!
The MAFIAA don't want you to have any fair use rights. That's good!
Disney wants copyrights to last forever, in the name of all that is good.
Good for Microsoft trying to rule the known universe through monopolistic skulduggery!
It's good that Google participates in censorship in China.
The USA Patriot Act taking away all your freedoms is a good thing!
The death of Internet radio will do us all some good.
and finally,
Bush's trampling on all our rights, extinquishing our freedoms and forcing our troops in Iraq to stay and be killed is not just good, it's great!
Ok. So anything happen?
My blog
In Japanese, "miro" (or the closest phonetic equivalent) is the imperative form of "look", so it works there too.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
In fact the mindless animosity towards Clinton still rages; you can't discuss anything with a self-described "Right wing" or "conservative" person these days without the conversation being inexorably drawn to the almost satanic power they ascribe to the Clintons.
Bush II, unlike Reagan, is really a pretty appropriate target for voter ire, though - you should try reading Barack Obama's (horribly titled) book "The Audacity of Hope" if you want a even-handed treatment of the so-called liberal/conservative divide.
Of course, if you are a true-blue Bushie, you won't read anything Obama writes, because it would be physically painful for you to have your mind pried open by a liberal black man.
The problem is, people confuse communism with dictatorship and/or totalitarianism when really, they are mutually exclusive.
There has never been any modern communist government in the past few hundred years.
A real communist country WOULD BE a democracy; in fact if you take democracy to it's logical course (where everyone has a say) you inevitably end up with a communist state.
A true communist country would have
- A democratically elected government with 100% transparency
- 100% nationalized economy where all work equally and are compensated proportionally to their capabilities
- Total freedom of expression and speech
You can't have any of these things without the others. The problem with reaching this goal, which all totalitarianist status that started out with the end goal of communism (Cuba, China, The USSR, North Korea) have encountered, is it is impossible to nationalize the enconomy while having a democratic government at the same time, because it is a violent process by necessity. So the government needs to have absolute power for awhile, so they can take over industries for the good of the people.
The way it is supposed to work is the government should weild absolute power for a period of time ONLY - say a few years - then totally revoke it and give it back to the people. The problem is once the government gets this power they don't give it up easily - in fact it usually gets worse.
This is why transitioning to true communism is so difficult - in fact it has never yet been archived. Hopefully someday we can all as a society put aside our differences and make it work for the good of the world.
Will Miro catch on? I was playing around with Democracy/Miro a couple of weeks ago. Its looking pretty slick. But it seems to me that its only real advantage over youtube and its clones is its Bittorrent syndication ability. Yet I had a hard time finding any content through the client that was actually served as torrents. I suppose the ecosystem needs to evolve still, but it was discouraging to me.
Assuming (and it's not a particularly big assumption) that you are referring to 'Americans' thinking that.. I think they know.
Especially in the southern states, they know. In fact, they know that in several industries, knowing Spanish makes you a more likely candidate for a job. No, not just flipping burgers - think being a lawyer, a foreman, architect, etc. as well. They also know that they can't force those who prefer to speak their native Spanish (or variety of hispanic language) to learn English to go around. In essence, they know that eventually, everybody is going to speak both languages until such a time as learning Spanish becomes more important than learning English.
In fact, this trend of the U.S. becoming increasingly 'hispanic' has been fully anticipated by a chain of Pizza places with origin in Texas; they now accept mexican pesos for payment. And no, this isn't just the establishments near the border - it applies to all of their establishments, as far as a thousand miles away from the border.
Now you could imagine this to be a smart move - get all the hispanics who would otherwise have to exchange their money with a fee spend it at your establishment instead - and at the end of the day/week, exchange it yourself for a smaller fee overall - or even give part of it back to a patron who's heading into Mexico anyway. Yet if more companies start doing this - there's no incentive for anybody coming out of Mexico to exchange their money to dollars. Moreover, once it proces to be more profitable to charge in pesos (as they can charge more for the 'exchange fee' and 'handling fee' and other mostly bullshit fees), payment in pesos may become preferred - bumping up the dollar prices to encourage others to pay in pesos as well. Very soon - why would a company even accept dollars anymore?
No, I don't think you'll find a single 'American' (citizen of the united states of america) who thinks English is the world's only language - if only because of the hispanic-creep.
Democracy Player makes me think of PBS. Where sometimes you'll find quality programming, but then you have to put up with all that other stuff the rest of the public SHOULD enjoy. The only time I ever catch myself watching PBS is when NOVA, or some weird British Sit-Com is on.
I don't have cable so I may consider putting together a set top computer just for this purpose.
Israel came pretty close with their kibbutzim.
It turned out pretty weird though. When all the children in the community are raised communally, they all view each other as if they are biological brothers and sisters and don't really get attracted to each other. Most of them ended up marrying "outsiders".
Also:
"When we saw our first children in the playpen, hitting one another, or grabbing toys just for themselves, we were overcome with anxiety. What did it mean that even an education in communal life couldn't uproot these egotistical tendencies? The utopia of our initial social conception was slowly, slowly destroyed."
nothing will happen unless you people speak up and take to streets and make them account for their deeds.
Read radical news here
There's no such thing as an "inappropriate" comparison. The results of the process of comparing two things reveals the level of resemblance between them - which might be zero, of course, but that's still a comparison. Granted, either you compare things fairly or you don't. The oft-repeated mantra "you can't compare Bush to Hitler" is bullshit, though - I can compare fish to the Dirac Sea if I want to.
Sure, the name sounds abstract to us, but I'm sure they'll find it to hold a little more meaning in Japan where "Miro" is the command form of "Watch (it)"
You've never read Marx, have you? The work is not meant to be distributed equally. Really.
The proles do the work for the brains so the brains can relax and think big thoughts.
Problem is the proles don't like that.
I should say so. If the State came along and said I had to operate an engine lathe because the State needed it thus, what do you think I would do?
Join one of the 100 million folks Communism/Socialism has killed?
It has Christianity beat by a long shot in the 'murdering innocents' department.
No thanks. I'll take economic and political self determination any day over forced equality.
It's just damnfoolishness that keeps getting people killed.
Ask anybody who worked for the Venezuelan press.
Or Cuban.
BTW, can you name one Communist country that wasn't totalitarian? You said they're 'mutually exclusive' however I have yet to see an instance where a Communist country was NOT totalitarian.
The opposite of progress is congress
I don't travel so I really have no gauge on the rest of the world, but things are pretty depressing here in the states. Democracy really only works when you have an educated and politically active populace. I look around and wonder if that very criteria is a pipe dream. There are bad ideas all around me. Irrational fears and prejudices. Commonplace superstitions that would be recognized as neurotic in any objective context. An unfortunate lack of civic pride or sense of community, especially in contrast to some of the groups I see gather online. Ofcourse it isn't an American phenomenom, but it sure has reached some heights in this country. More depressing considering our relative prosperity.
While I have no experience with this software, I have to say that when I hear the name Democracy Player, I think of drooling masses. I think of misguided liberalism and hypocritical conservatism. I think of the flower power hippies that didn't really accomplish anything. And that's not even considering all the baggage the Bush administration has added to words like "democracy" and "freedom." Yea, Miro is way better. The less I'm reminded of the clusterfuck or real world politics the better. You know, just long enough for the aliens to land and finally sort things out, either ground us like children or annihilate us outright. The people just aren't up to the task.
For the good of the world? Sorry but I do not work my butt off for you or anyone else. Hell I generally really dislike most people in the world, I sure as hell will not help support them because I am better than them at something. Communism and other ideas like it are fantasies. They sound real good and look very nice on paper, but they will NOT work in the real world. As you said the places that have even attempted it couldn't even get to full communism, how the hell do you expect people to make it work once they get there if no one can even get there? The whole notion is so fundamentally flawed that it will not happen and will continue to only be a fantasy in the minds of the inept and hopelessly idiotic, though admittedly sometimes good natured, people.
I'm sure people can find something to respond negatively to on the corresponding wikipedia disambiguation page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miro
Since when is democracy a left wing idea in America? Wasn't that what we were trying to do in Iraq, bring democracy to Iraq?
WTF!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
I have Comcast. I also run only Linux. The two actually do work. Instead of activating my cable modem online, I just called Comcast and asked for them to activate my modem's MAC. They did so, and I was in. You don't have to use their portal or web activation services. Just call them.
Wow, an open source project that understands marketing a little, and admits when name was conveyingn the wrong message.
...
Most open source projects will tell you to fuck off when they are informed that they picked a stupid name.
Here are some examples:
GIMP - handicapped image program
Lesstif - best that can be achieved is less that the real thing
IceWeasel - No, I'm not "Foxy" I am "Weaselly"!
HURD - rhymes with
Software names should not involve embarassment and explanation to mention.
I wonder if they fixed the horrible torrent support. It always starts fast then bogs down and slows to a crawl. What makes it worse is the inability to see the actual torrent peers information to see if it's a problem with the torrent network or something closer to home.
well, in french the word "miro"means "nearly blind"...what a name for a video viewer ;-)
You comments are cultural rather than rational. The whole idea that you don't want to work for the benefit of others is a standard lower-class American belief - that mindset will get you from "poor" to "upper middle class" in the USA (or at least provide comfort when you fail), so it's competitively advantageous for you to have it.
Other cultures promote different mindsets, many of which are also sustainable in practice. I don't know if there is a mindset that would work in a democratic communist system, but I wouldn't want to simply assume that things are impossible simply because they wouldn't mesh cleanly with my cultural background.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Communism is impossible given the nature of current humanity. Now maybe if you gave everyone lobotomies. Communism is the natural refuge of dictators who want to control sheep from behind the curtain of ideology. Fascism is the natural refuge of dictators who dispose of the curtain.
it could have been the Gnu Improved Multimedia Player...
I'll get my hat... kthxbye
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I haven't used DP since it originaly started (and I have to say it didn't sound either right- or left-wing. to me it was just plain stupid). Does the linux version stil suck? It was pretty unusable back then.
Democracy Player is junk. There is nothing but crap content (except for youtube which is mostly crap) and is bloatware.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Vote 3rd-party in 2008!
Nothing to see here. Move along.
hate to burst bubbles, but to the miss informed the U.S. is NOT a democracy. :
have you all forgotten your history lessons.
I looked it up to confirm it with the world fact book which list us as
Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition.
even on wiki.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Stated
as you can see we are a republic, the democracy we practice as a matter
of tradition is so we don't get stuck with a king or dictator for life(only 8
years max). any country can have a bad leader we just don't get stuck with one for too long.
democracy in software is good. because the software can become the sum of a collective knowledge.
democracy's in in politics are usually very week, because it becomes the sum collective bullshit.
(note: the bigger it is the less stuff gets done)
hence the reason why we like to spread it to other countries.
Which is why other countrys see us as the democracy spreaders. and it gives them a big distaste.
a thing to think about it that while that iraq is a developing democracy
and Afghanistan is a islamic republic.
Afghanistan had a leader immediately(president Hamid Karzai, i always seem to remember that kwel hat he wears),
and is almost self sufficient in its public works/schools/security (though it'll be a while before we totally leave there,
example: still in south korea) there major current problem is the drugs because its there primary cash crop,
which they are trying to train farmers to switch to alternative crops(this will be a while). (note: that not every one wants drugs)
Iraq on the other hand is trying to develop a democracy, Has anything improved????
Do you know who is there leader? What is there cash crop... OIL? (last i checked every one has fought over that since WWI)
Another thing to think about.....
how many senators can you name? i think i can name about 20
any major changing policy's come from it? I can think of several.
how many members of the house can you name? i think i know 2
any major changing policy's come from it? I know there are some things(i just cant think of any)
Which one is based members based on population again?
Which one is more effective?
The house is there as a check and balance for the senate.
I was interested in installing DP when I first learnt about it a couple months ago, but held back on installing it as Ubuntu insisted on installing FireFox along with it, which I assume is what DP used to browse Youtube and whatnot. Installing FF, however, interferes with the browser I normally use. Does Miro change this dependency? If so, I would install it in a snap.
So then what is the natural refuge of people who want everyone as equals including themselves?
It sure as hell isn't modern democracy/capitalism based society.
BTW, can you name one Communist country that wasn't totalitarian? You said they're 'mutually exclusive' however I have yet to see an instance where a Communist country was NOT totalitarian.
That is my whole point. Communism is the antithesis of capitalism, which are both economic ideologies, not political ones. Totalitarianism is the antithesis of democracy, which are political ideologies, not economic ones. But the general public is always grouping these things together when really they have nothing to do with each other than the fact that up to this point all communist societies have turned out to be totalitarian.
It is perfectly possible for a communist socienty to exist democratically if all residents endorse it. The problem lies in the transition because you have all these wealthy and/or powerful individuals who don't want to give up that power for the benefit of everyone else.
I should say so. If the State came along and said I had to operate an engine lathe because the State needed it thus, what do you think I would do?
This is a straw-man argument because in a true democratic communist society YOU would elect the people who run the state and local governments, so in effect it would be YOU who decide you want to operate the lathe.
There has never been any modern communist government in the past few hundred years.
A real communist country WOULD BE a democracy; in fact if you take democracy to it's logical course (where everyone has a say) you inevitably end up with a communist state. It doesn't matter what "real" communism is. Every attempt at Communism has turned into vicious totalitarianism. "Real" Communism is an abstraction. The fact is, there is something about either the Communist system, or the people who are attracted to Communism, that makes any real world attempt at "real" Communism impossible.
It would be kind of like I started a philosophy called "Chocolatism" that said "If you eat nothing but chocolate, you will live forever"... Then, when people ate nothing but chocolate and inevitably died, I said "That isn't real Chocolatism... In real Chocolatism people live forever".
The comments above make me sad. Is it really to the point that people convince themselves that the world would've been better off with Saddam in power? I understand that there has been a lot of death, and things haven't played out well. I would definitely say that the situation isn't ideal, but who are we kidding? At the heart of the matter, Saddam broke terms with the UN, and the provisions in the resolutions required an UN co-ordinated effort to remove Saddam from power. The rest of the UN fell flat on their face, and didn't follow through with the resolution that they signed. Sure it makes the countries involved look really stupid, and sure I don't condone the killing of innocent citizens, but surely people haven't fooled themselves into thinking that Saddam was in the right and Bush was in the wrong!
If knowing is half the battle, what is the other half?
As trademarked by Pinnacle. Hopefully the fact that it's a discontinued product line will keep their lawyers out of attack mode.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
That's the first kind, with you as the dictator trying to reshape society according to your ideals.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
According to the story, the media player had to be renamed because the word "democracy" now has negative political connotations.
The media player itself is the product of a non-profit which has a political, although non-partisan mission: "to build tools and services that give people more ways to engage in their culture."
So it seems to me that this story is very much about the issue of power in a democratic society. Naturally, whenever this comes up, the people who like to make a distinction between a "republic" and a "democracy" also appear -- and they are in fact on topic here. To them "democracy" means "direct democracy" which in turn has negative implications of mob rule. Bringing this full circle, this is precisely the complaint of the mainstream media about YouTube and the blogosphere. These remove the media's cultural gatekeepers, creating an immense crush of material unfiltered for any property, whether it is taste, factual accuracy, or pleasing orthodoxy.
This trend is one that the program is intended by its sponsoring organization to accelerate. The trend can be called with equal truth the democratization of media, or the undermining of media standards.
So, on the whole, a discussion of power, democracy and egalitarianism is equally if not more on topic in this than a discussion of the player's technical and artistic merits (e.g. whether the player's skin sucks, neat features in play list management etc.).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The first "attempt at Communism" occurred in Russia, which is precisely not where Marx envisioned it; he saw it coming about in western Europe. Pretty much every attempt since then has followed the Russian model (with variations) with predictably repetitive results.
Which I find amusing, because the poor DO work for the benefit of others. The problem is that they usually mean they don't want to work to support "people on welfare" when what they're actually doing is supporting the executives and shareholders of whatever company they work for. I'd feel a whole lot better knowing I was working to "support" someone dirt poor than someone who has multiple homes, a yacht, and generally whatever else they want.
I don't know it's fair to call it a "lower-class" belief, though. The richest people don't work at all, and they like it that way. A lot of them are actively against "entitlement" programs, but are perfectly happy with their companies paying low wages to people just above poverty in order to help their bottom line. (another vacation home sounds good!)
I think what's a "lower-class" phenomenon is that they just don't realize that they DO work to support everyone else -- and, surprise surprise, it's not the people on welfare. It's the rich folk with all the power who, for the most part, couldn't give a damn about the plight of the poor. (sarcasm) They earned their money, after all. This is American, anyone can get rich if they try hard enough... (/sarcasm)
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
It would be kind of like I started a philosophy called "Chocolatism" that said "If you eat nothing but chocolate, you will live forever"... Then, when people ate nothing but chocolate and inevitably died, I said "That isn't real Chocolatism... In real Chocolatism people live forever".
This is a great analogy! Seriously. I'll try to remember this the next time someone says a bunch of Christians doing something heinous aren't "real Christians", or a bunch of Muslims killing civilians with suicide bombs aren't "real Muslims".
Sorry but I do not work my butt off for you or anyone else.
Fascinating. What, then, keeps you fed and clothed? Do you work for a boss? Are you a contractor who works for other people? Maybe you run a company, direct other people to work for you, and manage all this for the benefit of your customers?
In the end, everyone works for someone else. Capitalism just came up with a better motivator for people like you.
Yeah, whatever.
Most rich people (at least the "nouveau rich", not the ones who just inherited it all; we don't have many of the latter in the USA) actually do work, and quite hard. I'm no fan of Donald Trump for instance, but he certainly does work a lot between his TV gigs and his real estate projects. Most CEOs spend all their waking time working. Of course, many of them are arguably incompetent (like Bob Nardelli of Home Depot, Carly Fiorina of HP, etc.), but they don't actually sit around doing nothing, they spend a lot of time working, even though it's in the wrong direction and ends up damaging the company. Did they earn their money? In a way, yes: the shareholders agreed to pay them that much without any expectation of competence. Don't like it? Don't invest in that company, or purchase from them. I don't shop at Home Depot for instance. I do, however, support laws which "level the playing field" so that crappy companies like this can't use their size and power to crush their competition, and I'll vote for politicians who agree with me on this.
"Poor" people in the US aren't really all that poor. They usually have vehicles and jobs, and aren't starving. They just can't afford the new flat-screen TVs the rest of us can. These are called "working poor". They might support richer people in a way through their efforts, but they're really supporting themselves. They work, get a paycheck, and live off of that. They don't get a big paycheck because their work is menial and not highly-valued, or else they could go somewhere else and get more pay. They also usually stay poor because they constantly make stupid decisions, like maxing out their credit cards, having kids they can't afford, not getting an education, getting involved in drugs, etc.
The people who support the "people on welfare" are the middle class, who also contribute most of the tax revenues. Now why anyone would want to "support" dirt-poor people who refuse to work (welfare recipients), I have no idea. If you like that idea, I encourage you to start a charity for people like that, and contribute all your money to it. Don't ask me for a donation though. All welfare does is encourage people not to work. It doesn't help society if poor people decide they're better off sitting at home popping out babies instead of cleaning toilets and taking out the trash.
It's not that easy to get rich in America, but it's not hard to get into the middle class if you avoid stupid decisions and work hard. Lots of companies are desperate for workers who can actually show up every day.
You're relying on the assumption that no one else on earth exists with similar ideals, which is a fallacy. Lots of people would prefer everyone had equal access to resources.
That is what I would call democracy (or crazy) (or stupid)
There's a name for this...the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
No, I'm only relying on the fact that there are a substancial portion that do not share your ideals.
In any event, communal systems do not work beyond a very small community size because in practice (if not in theory) they depend on unanimous consent for all actions, which any community of significant size will never have.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Mission Accomplished :p
Saying the people ate nothing but cholocate is like saying that Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam actually practiced true communism and the point of the poster that you're replying to is that these places have never done that.
english is my first language, but my only formal education in it was from U.S. public schools, so you may forgive me for
Communism won't work before we have machines doing all our labor. Of course, that doesn't mean the death of capitalism, just that people won't have to work for a living.
Yeah yeah and theses days many so called democracies are turning into corporate klepto-plutocracies (yes i looking at you Cheney!) (for those who don't know or care to google plutocracy is rule by the rich... you can figure out the klepto part on your own i assume). That is to say in early 20th century terminology Fascist Corporate States. Heads (will roll...) they win. Tails its your ass.
"Every attempt at Communism has turned into vicious totalitarianism. "
Meh. Every attempt at everything ends up as totalitarianism. Just because we're writing this during a short window of democracy in the West doesn't change much. Hopefully when the police-state comes, people won't put up with it for too long, and the revolution in a century or two will restore democracy (or similar).
What I fear is that technology will make future police states so powerful that they'll be very difficult to overthrow.
I wouldn't be entirely surprised if by 2050 both the US and Australia are not democratic by today's standards. Not yet sure where I would go... India maybe? Europe? I live in hope...
They may not be starving, I agree, but many do not have vehicles. Here in Nashville, we do have MTA (Metro Transit Authority), but the schedules make it difficult to get to work and get back home. I know I had a job once about 15 minutes away by car. I could take a bus there, if I left three hours early, but I couldn't get back home. None of my co-workers could give me a lift, and I couldn't find anyone to carpool with. The poor here DO have a lot more money than people elsewhere in the world, but consider the cost of living is also much, much higher.
They make just enough money to get to work every day. I'm not kidding you. The cost of food, clothing, shelter, and transportation JUST to get back to work is dead even with that they're paid, and sometimes even then, it's not enough. If the "richer people" decided to take a little pay cut, these working poor (which is probably most poor people) could have a much higher standard of living.
No! Absolutely wrong! Imagine if every cashier decided not to work. Retail would go out of business in a day. Just because their work is 'menial' or doesn't seem to require much skill doesn't mean it's not highly-valued. It's this sentiment that's caused "customer service" in general to take a nose dive. Do you really think someone making six bucks an hour is going to care if they made your sandwich correctly, or if they smile, or if they say "thank you come again"? They have nothing to lose here. Just as easily as there's another employee waiting to replace them, there's another company that pays shitty wages waiting to hire them. Smiling, or paying attention to detail, or anything else they can do isn't going to get them out of the poor house. The only thing that might is education, and that's not going to be available to someone who can barely afford food.
You realize that SOMEONE has to work those shitty paying jobs, right? SOMEONE is always going to be pushed into that wage bracket because there aren't enough 100k a year jobs for every American to have one. Most of them max out their credit cards because they have unexpected expenses and bills. Not flat screen TV's. An education is expensive. Even with all the programs out there to help you, it's expensive. You have to have support from somewhere in order to be able to do it. You can't work for $6 an hour, have to fully support yourself, and go to college all at the same time. Sure, there might be some rare exceptions to that, but for the majority of the "working poor" it's just not possible.
As for the kids, I agree with you there, actually. People who can't support themselves shouldn't be having kids. As for drugs, I can't say I blame a lot of people for turning to drugs. If you life sucked as much as theirs, you might, too. And once that process starts, it's vicious. What people who are addicted to drugs needs is -- wait for it -- medical care. Which you know they won't get because they have no heal insurance. Rince. Repeat.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
Why don't you add some decent feeds to it.
All wrong. I don't even know where to begin.
They may not be starving, I agree, but many do not have vehicles. Here in Nashville, we do have MTA (Metro Transit Authority), but the schedules make it difficult to get to work and get back home. I know I had a job once about 15 minutes away by car. I could take a bus there, if I left three hours early, but I couldn't get back home. None of my co-workers could give me a lift, and I couldn't find anyone to carpool with. The poor here DO have a lot more money than people elsewhere in the world, but consider the cost of living is also much, much higher.
You're complaining that the buses have bad schedules? Cry me a river.
You want to see poor people? Go to Africa, where there's people literally starving to death, or being slaughtered by militias in local power struggles. That's poor. You not being able to afford a car is not poor. You're just a whiner. Poor people in America are not starving or in fear of their lives, so as far as I'm concerned, they have little to complain about, except their own mistakes.
They make just enough money to get to work every day. I'm not kidding you. The cost of food, clothing, shelter, and transportation JUST to get back to work is dead even with that they're paid, and sometimes even then, it's not enough. If the "richer people" decided to take a little pay cut, these working poor (which is probably most poor people) could have a much higher standard of living.
I doubt it. They'd probably spend the extra money on lottery tickets.
If they want more money, they need to get a better job. It's that simple. Why should the "richer people" give them more money if there's someone willing to do the same work for less money? We're not even talking about something like outsourcing here; we're talking about people living in the same geographic area with the same cost-of-living. No one has any obligation to give money to the lower class. If you want money, you need to earn it.
No! Absolutely wrong! Imagine if every cashier decided not to work. Retail would go out of business in a day. Just because their work is 'menial' or doesn't seem to require much skill doesn't mean it's not highly-valued.
Totally wrong. It's not "highly valued" because any monkey can be trained to do it quickly. There's a huge supply of dumb monkeys out there, so if one cashier quits, you can easily hire another one to replace him. Every cashier isn't suddenly going to quit because they'd lose their paycheck; they're not that stupid. How about if every doctor decided not to work, because they want 5x as much money? Maybe everyone should stop working all at once. This is really a useless argument here.
You realize that SOMEONE has to work those shitty paying jobs, right? SOMEONE is always going to be pushed into that wage bracket because there aren't enough 100k a year jobs for every American to have one. Most of them max out their credit cards because they have unexpected expenses and bills. Not flat screen TV's.
No, most of them max out their credit cards on things they don't need. Take a trip to your local trailer park and count how many digital satellite dishes you see.
Someone has to work the shitty jobs because they're necessary for the economy to function. However, because there's so many people able to do those jobs, they don't pay much. There's lots of high-paying jobs available, more than then number of people willing and able to take them. That's why they pay so well.
Have you ever taken a basic class in economics? You should.
As for the kids, I agree with you there, actually. People who can't support themselves shouldn't be having kids. As for drugs, I can't say I blame a lot of people for turning to drugs. If you life sucked as much as theirs, you might, too. And once that process starts, it's vicious. What people who are addicted to drugs needs is -- wait for it -- medical care. Which you know they won't get because they have no heal insuran
The fact that Communists launched a revolution, and they didn't practice true Communism, refutes Communism.
So the problem is not "communism", merely "statism"?
Hokay.
But then again, that's the way my knee jerks anyway.
(insert favorite annoying emoticon here)
Listen. Think. Repeat.
Rants of this author can also be ignored at www.listenthinkrepeat.com/wordpress.
Yes, I agree that it's a simplistic theory, and I probably overplayed my sarcasm card a little bit. However, and this was my point - subscribing to that theory is not the same as believing that the dictator is good or that democracy is bad.
I appreciate your perspective on this, but I would argue that an equally honest response is "I don't really like dictatorships, but, I don't know that what I plan on doing will make things better. If I don't have a plan that has a high likelihood of success, then it's probably best that I don't risk making things worse." Iraq is a prime example of this. One could argue that there was a way to make things better. It's hard to imagine a situation worse than living under Hussein. However, we've come pretty close to creating that with our sectarian violence. Before we got involved, about half the country was afraid for their lives (I'm making up the percentage, but you get the idea) and the other half knew they were fine as long as they kissed up. Not a good situation at all, don't get me wrong. Now, almost everyone in the country is afraid for their lives. This is almost as bad as what we did in Nicaragua.
I agree completely. There might be other reasons to impeach him, but I haven't heard a compelling case yet. He's hired some terribly incompetent people, shown himself to be quite incompetent as a C-in-C, but none of that is impeachable. Trying to get rid of habeas corpus might have crossed the line, however. It depends on whether you can successfully argue that he just doesn't understand the Constitution.
And, here, you've managed to totally disgust me. You like killing, and you don't care about the future of our world, or about anyone outside of your own small neighborhood, evidently. What's the big deal about a 350hp V8 car that gets you so ... excited, anyway? It sounds quite illogical to me.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
In theory, everything works in theory, but unfortunately that is not reality. As long as it is rewarding to game the system, people will game it at the expense of all the other schmucks that go along with the ideology. That's why there's never been a "true democratic communist society". It's a utopian ideal that is impossible to implement in the real world.
I don't think that watching TV is easy. There is all that mental preparation to counteract the expected fall in brain activity due to high levels of bogon absorption. Then the weeks of rehabilitation after watching TV, which should be booked in advance to ensure no lasting effects. No, watching TV is definitely not an easy matter.
Of course, Roosevelt gets a free pass on his fascist behavior nowadays, because he was vaugly socialist... Even though by any stretch of the imagination he was far more fascist than McCarthy. Which goes back to how the thread started: Many people will give a leader carte blanche to do anything they want, so long as they are vaugly socialist. The Internet is getting worse? The Internet has been available to the public at large for at least 10 years. We are just now seeing, however, a real attempt to restructure the internet to be more easily monitored and controlled by the state. You can look through over 200 years of history and find lots of examples where things got better, got worse, maybe both at the same time. But now is the first time, at least in the U.S., that the classical Western liberal values are no longer what our culture aspires to. It is the first time that authoritarianism has been widely popular to the masses. In previous years, people might have supported oppressing one group, or another - But they never aspired to have a centralized authority dominate their own lives. They wanted to oppress other people, but at least they themselves didn't want to be oppressed. They had liberal values, at least selfishly. Now is the first time people actually want an authoritarian government to run their own lives - that represents a fundamental change in American values! And that change in values doesn't seem limited to the U.S., either.
Now, there are a wide variety of cooperative decision making models, which bear little resemblance to our highly competitive, win-lose style of government. A few do require unanimous approval for every action, and it's true that those scale poorly. But the most popular (called the consensus approach) only allows a single individual to block a decision if their objection is that going forward would be detrimental to the group as a whole. Those whose objections are more personal have their objections noted, but are expected to stand aside and allow the decision to go forward.
As with democratic forms of government, it is sometimes not feasible to get everyone in on the decision-making, so individuals elect representatives, whom they expect will bring their concerns to the table. Consensus decision-making is then used within the representative body.
In short, I see nothing unscalable about consensus decision-making. If anything, I think it has the potential to be less rancorous than the democratic processes that run our institutions today.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Is anybody clamoring for Bush as permanent dictator? Doesn't it appear that the trend of eroding freedoms is reversing? Is there not free speech being excercised? Are you not allowed to leave the country? Choose your own career? Live your life in relative freedom?
Too much "the sky is falling" for me and "now is a uniquely bad moment in history".
First of all, sequestration is not a good idea, IMO. Have you heard what's happened before when naturally occurring concentrations of CO2 have been released? Mass death.
Secondly, WTF?
Have you read any of the research? Have you heard of a single explanation for the CO2 besides humans? If so, can you name it?
(If you argue that the CO2 is being released from the oceans as the Earth is being heated up by the Sun, I might have to scream. First of all, we have satellites in space that measure the solar output. Secondly, the CO2 concentrations in the oceans are increasing, not decreasing.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I thin you're wrong, people are different, they have different needs, also most people are lazy, so I see communism happening only when robots will do all the day to day work.
I like to watch tv online. In fact, I prefer it greatly over regular cable tv. That may be because I don't get cable, true, but why has it taken so long to move in this direction? The ability to have viewer-specific advertising during each show should be making networks salivate. There's all those people out there like me who surf around constantly to places like peekvid, alluc.org, cinecast.us, sidereel.com (results catalogues at http://www.mymindwanders.com/blog/?cat=13) etc etc. for their favorite shows... why not embrace it? One of the features I like the most about Miro is the ability to search selected online TV and video websites like veoh, youtube, dailymotion. However, Miro lacks the ability to stream those videos - you must download them - which is a big turn-off. Also, has anyone noticed it takes up over 130k of system memory? Other than those two draw-backs, I am thoroughly impressed, however.