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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.
... 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.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Is it any stranger than associating "communism" or "socialism" with bad things? The ideals are generally good natured, it's the context attached to them that has become corrupt.
Well, Bush and friends have done to the word "democracy" what Stalin and comrades have done to the words "socialism" and "communism"
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Currently our democracy is a shining example of bad things. Its broken in every way, and that is why people around the world are down on it to an extent. It's not democracy itself, but our form of democracy, which is really a corporate driven government full of corruption with little real progress, change, or responsibility. We do scary things because power is unchecked. Our election system is broken and corrupt. Our sense of governing is broken and corrupt.
Our idea of political debate is standing in an empty house of congress, with a sign that says "let us vote". Our idea of public discussion and debate is 2 idiots on the news argueing talking points back and forth. Its the same thing everyday with little change, little progress, and its just not taken serious by either party or the voters. The voters have mostly given up because of this nonsense. The voters know that we only get 2 choices. Just because 10 democrats debate for candidacy, doesnt mean any of them are really any different. They are the same. REAL, political new comers.. are not allowed "IN". The chances of entering these debates is none. The chances of getting on ballots in every state, is virtually impossible and its getting harder and harder.
And we go to war over lies and bullshit. We kill people because we want to. That is why democracy isnt so loved these days. We cant even provide healthcare for our people, and we're in serious fucking debt and we refuse to tax the corporations that now have the highest dow jones ever... SOMETHING is serverely broken... and by something, i mean everything.
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.
Essentially, the Bush administration has twisted and perverted the term. "Spreading Democracy" now means "We're gonna invade your country and enforce our will."
Similarly, before Hitler adopted it for his own nefarious uses, the swastika was seen as a symbol of luck in the west.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
If you studied predator to prey relationships, you'd probably recognize that two wolves and a sheep scenario as non-sustainable in any case. You probably need a wolf to sheep ratio of something like 1 : 10 or 1:20. If what we're talking about is one wolf and ten sheep voting on what's for dinner, the wolf is SOL unless he learns to eat grass.
So this explanation of why the republic subtype of democracy works better than the direct democracy subtype doesn't work.
There are two reasons that do explain the value of a democratic republic. The first is the impracticality of deciding on everything by a direct vote. The second is that we each play different roles on different issues: we aren't always the sheep or always the wolf in every single question. If we were always in the sheep class, our rational interest would say throw wolves to the, er.. wolves.
But the reality is that we're all minorities. Maybe it's the people we like to sleep with. Maybe its the fact we like to collect guns. Or look at dirty pictures. Or have heretical ideas. Pure majoritarianism means everybody sooner or later feels the hand of tyranny.
Our democratic republic works because of a rough and approximate egalitarianism, in which we can see ourselves as belonging to the wolf class or the sheep class. That was the genius of FDR, who was considered a class traitor by many. He realized that a society which was polarized into wolves and sheep had to end up in one kind of tyranny or another, most likely something like what happened in the Soviet Union: a tyranny of a small set of erstwhile sheep. A "social democracy" is not necessarily one of radical egalitarianism, it is one in which no person is for practical purposes relegated to perpetual sheep status.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The highest estimate for civilian deaths in Iraq that I've heard is 600,000. If we consider the existence of the war in Afganistan, that implies that we *could* get to an estimate 1,000,000 using the method you describe.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
At this point, I'm personally willing to suspend Godwins law for discussions about American politics. The more that people look at fascism and the USA next to each other, the more likely it is that we'll be able to fix some of the disturbing similarities.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.