"New Statesman" Pirates Its Own Magazine

WebMink writes "Knowing that its explosive special edition on China this week will be blocked by censorship, UK political magazine 'New Statesmen' has taken the unusual step of posting its own torrents of the PDF of the Mandarin edition on the magazine. Looking at the content of the issue they are probably right to expect censorship — there's an article from the former newspaper editor Cheng Yizhong about media censorship, and Ai Weiwei interviews a member of the '50 cent party' — a commenter paid half a dollar every time he derails an online debate in China. 'Essentially, these people are paid internet trolls; their job is to stop any meaningful discussion online about the government.'" Specifically, the magazine has made available this issue as a PDF and also as a torrent (magnet link).

Comments

Torrents != pirating

[adnonsense]

Who on earth came up with that headline?

Re:Torrents != pirating

[MickyTheIdiot]

Jack Valenti

Re:Torrents != pirating

[phayes]

My God, I knew that the RIAA was evil but now they are using the Undead!

Re:Torrents != pirating

[Johnny Fusion]

If you read the article, the New Statesmen themselves refer to it as "pirated" (in quotes). While one could pay money for the Magazine, those who can read Mandarin can get it for free using pirating methods where the print version will most likely not see the light of day due to state censorship. They are using this technique as its well known "the internet routes around censorship"

Re:Torrents != pirating

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god this was derailed quickly. Just imagine how horrible it would have been if people actually discussed something meaningful. After all, its obviously much more important to dissect a headline, of an aggregation site notorious for useless and incorrect headlines, than it is to actually discuss the content on which the article reports.

Here's a clue. This is not the time for THAT discussion.

You must be a blast at parties.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[omnichad]

You really must be new here.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[Chrisq]

Who on earth came up with that headline?

I don't know but they should go home (by TWOCing their own car), burgle their own house, then sexually molest themselves.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[MonsterTrimble]

Are they voting republican?

Re:Torrents != pirating

[Anonymous Coward]

Pardon, nitpick.

Chinese is something you read.

Mandarin is something you speak.

(Multiple spoken dialects that map to the same unified writing.)

Re:Torrents != pirating

[jonadab]

> Chinese is something you read.
> Mandarin is something you speak.

Technically, that's an oversimplification.

It's a *good* oversimplification, because it's almost entirely correct. But reality is somewhat more complicated.

More precisely, Mandarin is a very popular dialect of Chinese (perhaps the most popular, although measuring popularity is inherently a bit subjective), and the differences between the major dialects of Chinese are significantly more pronounced in speech than in writing.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[jonadab]

> Just imagine how horrible it would have been if
> people actually discussed something meaningful.

This is Slashdot. The question of what does or does not constitute piracy is considered highly meaningful by a significant percentage of the people here. The site runs a lot of stories devoted entirely to that topic, in fact. (Granted, I don't know that this was necessarily intended to be one of them; censorship is _also_ a fairly major topic here, so the submitter may well have intended the story to be mostly about that.)

Re:Torrents != pirating

[phayes]

The retirees in Florida vote mostly democrat so I'd say no...

Re:Torrents != pirating

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You can't pirate something you've got the rights to. This is what's usually called "giving away".

Re:Torrents != pirating

[Anonymous Coward]

Me, I wish people would stop referring to the different Chinese languages as "dialects".
Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc., etc., are not mutually intelligible.
Calling them the same language is essentially CCP propaganda.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[JTsyo]

This is exactly the time to talk about it. The article is about the New Statesman releasing its magazine as a torrent to bypass censorship. If it was about the actual article within the New Statesman then the comment could have been considered off-topic.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[UnknownSoldier]

So basically you let them win?!?!

Pardon my French, but Man, what a pussy.

Either a) ignore the trolls & idiots, b) tell them to piss of, or c) shame them by writing a rebuttal that makes them looks like complete and total idiots.

You DO have choices. Giving up seems counter to everything /. was originally about -- having an intelligent and insightful commentary & debate. /me *shrugs* At least the place hasn't degenerated into Reddit ... yet

Re:Torrents != pirating

[lister king of smeg]

maybe you should say that to my chinese professor that calls it mandarin, oh and she is a native speaker of the language

Re:Torrents != pirating

[brit74]

I actually thought it was the pirates themselves referring to it as "piracy" because they wanted to make the argument "See! Pirating is so good for the magazine that they're helping people pirate! Everyone should let everything be pirated! Down with copyright!"

Re:Torrents != pirating

[davester666]

They switch to voting R after they die.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[phayes]

Were that to be the case the Ds would protest much less when Rs attempt to make sure that real live voters are the only ones that can vote. Apparently the undead are a minority that Ds must protect from disenfranchisement.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[scarboni888]

This should have been modded flamebait.

The relentless perpetration of massive lies is far more important than the content of the ridiculously headlined post in this case especially since the actual article is not even titled that way.

For such misinformation to be allowed to perpetrate without calling it on a forum where people know a hell of a lot better is ludicrous.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[scarboni888]

What are you, a cop?

Re:Torrents != pirating

[sumdumass]

Here is the problem though. Torrent does not equal pirating methods. And even if it did, the fact that the copyright owner gave permission to copy and download or distribute the copy, removes any and all aspects of pirating unless they open the issue with a feature story on pirates in the south pacific.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[TapeCutter]

Get a life, the magazine has done a GoodThing(TM). Timmothy can call it a 'fart in a bottle' for all I care, it's their deed that counts not Tim's talent for eyeball grabbing headlines, and certainly not your approval. But hey, good job derailing the conversation, I have totally forgotten what the story was about.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[tehcyder]

You forgot to say copyright != theft because no one on slashdot has the brains to appreciate that distinction either.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[Omniskio]

"Who on earth came up with that headline?" (Errr...the one posting it maybe?) From the WMD Handbook: Divert attention away from the original article, news report, or incident immediately. Guide the discussion towards safer topics, preferably topics embarrassing and controversial to "The West", but any topic will do. If this diversionary tactic fails, insults are you next course of action. Intimate that the commentator is unemployed, hides in his parents' basement, has no girlfriend, is a drug addict, etc.

Re:Torrents != pirating

[jonadab]

> Me, I wish people would stop referring to the different Chinese languages as "dialects".

Honestly, the word "dialects" really just means "directly related languages". Some dialects are mutually intelligible and some are not. The various Chinese languages are generally mutually intelligible in written form, not so much when spoken.

What I find odd is that the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, etc.) are almost never called dialects. They're so closely related and so similar (apart from minor differences in pronunciation and orthography) that in virtually any other language family they would certainly be called dialects. Heck, Portuguese is more or less a regional accent (albeit a fairly pronounced one) with a handful of orthographic changes.

Broken PDF link?

[k28]

Can't seem to access the PDF link to read more into it. Interesting that the (sometimes) hours of effort involved in derailing a message thread or debate only pays 50 cents - one might argue that you'd be looking at 50-100 threads at once, but surely that's still not enough to justify the hours of work that must go into it each day?

Re:Broken PDF link?

[jasonvan]

They say to work for the love of the job, not the money.

Re:Broken PDF link?

[SJHillman]

Also remember the cost of living and average wage are lower in China, so without checking any actual numbers, it may be more akin to several dollars per derailment in the US. Still not a lot, but it'd be a nice little side gig and as the other poster mentioned, they may just enjoy doing it.

Re:Broken PDF link?

[WebMink]

Seems the Slashdot editor has broken the link - the file is easily available from the link in the article.

Re:Broken PDF link?

[Johnny Fusion]

The PDF is at http://www.newstatesman.com/sites/default/files/files/AWW%20New%20Statesman.pdf Also its in Mandarin so not sure how much more you will be able to read into it.

Re:Broken PDF link?

[MarkGriz]

Can't seem to access the PDF link to read more into it

Perhaps you should pirate it from somewhere

Re:Broken PDF link?

[Chrisq]

Can't seem to access the PDF link to read more into it. Interesting that the (sometimes) hours of effort involved in derailing a message thread or debate only pays 50 cents - one might argue that you'd be looking at 50-100 threads at once, but surely that's still not enough to justify the hours of work that must go into it each day?

Just look at the people here who do the same thing for free though!

Re:Broken PDF link?

[NatasRevol]

Kind of like posting on slashdot, at work, for money.

Man, that'd be nice.

Re:Broken PDF link?

[jonadab]

> Interesting that the (sometimes) hours of effort involved
> in derailing a message thread or debate only pays 50 cents

I don't know exactly how the article determined the "fifty cents" figure, but if that's half a US dollar's worth of the People's Currency as determined by exchange rates, it would have rather more than fifty cents' worth of purchasing power in China. (The Chinese government deliberately keeps the value of their currency somewhat low in terms of purchasing power parity compared to other currencies, especially the US dollar, so that the exchange rates favor their exports. It's an economic strategy that works for them at their current level of development because they still have a lower average standard of living than the fully developed world. In the long term, it won't be sustainable -- and indeed the exchange rate is already not as skewed as it used to be -- but in the long term they won't need this crutch as badly, because ipso facto they will have developed their economy to the point where it can compete better on other merits, which will in fact be why the undervalued-currency strategy will no longer be effective at that point.)

Also, if you're thinking in first-world terms, unskilled labor in China is less expensive than you might expect compared to the local prices of other goods and services. This is another way of saying that the standard of living for an unskilled worker is currently lower in China than in the fully developed world. (It does make a significant difference, too, which part of China you're talking about. The Shanghai area, for example, is much more developed than Xinjiang.)

Chinese Edition

[donscarletti]

It should be "Chinese Edition" since it refers to the written language. Mandarin is a spoken dialect of Chinese, roughly equivalent to what "Received Pronunciation" is to English. Chinese can generally understand all Mandarin, though few outside of Beijing can speak it perfectly.

Modern written Chinese borrows heavily from Mandarin grammar and vocabulary, while retaining some conventions from Classical Chinese, the older written form that was pretty much impossible to understand when read aloud.

While it is possible to write in Chinese characters using Cantonese, Minnan or Wu grammar, it's quite rare and considered strange or wrong, even in regions where those dialects are spoken.

Re:Chinese Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

A useless (and homophobic) response to an informative comment. Well done.

Re:Chinese Edition

[VortexCortex]

A useless (and homophobic) response to an informative comment. Well done.

I assure you I'm not afraid of homosexuals... What I do fear is that humans may be well on their way to Idiocracy.
My fears were justified by the GGP's informative comment, which is remarkably similar to certain scenes in that movie...

I'd "woosh" you, and the down-modder, but I was rather tactless, I can see how the reference would be easily missed (it wasn't a very good one) -- I blame my inability to give a damn about being P.C. or my slashdot comments. Also note: Just because someone says Fag, doesn't mean they're a homophobic. It's similar to how I can say "Nigger" without being racist.

Re:Chinese Edition

[Fnordulicious]

Mandarin is a spoken dialect of Chinese, roughly equivalent to what "Received Pronunciation" is to English.

This is factually incorrect. “Chinese” used colloquially in English refers only to Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin is not a dialect of a larger language, it is a language in and of itself. Speakers of other Chinese languages, e.g. Min or Yue or Hakka, can’t understand Mandarin hardly at all without formal education. The analogy is more like English versus Dutch or German. Dutch and German speakers are often fluent in English, but this is only because they have extensive schooling in English. Their languages are related, but mutual intelligibility is very low.

Chinese can generally understand all Mandarin, though few outside of Beijing can speak it perfectly.

In fact, many (ethnically) Chinese people have a hard time understanding Mandarin without education. The simplest test is to see how well young kids (5–8 yo) in a randomly selected village can comprehend spoken Mandarin. At that age they will have a reasonable competence in the local language, but haven’t received much formal education in standard Mandarin. The effect is even stronger outside of China (PRC/ROC) where Mandarin isn’t as important and some other unrelated language is dominant. Examples include Hakka speakers in Tahiti, or Penang Hokkien in Indonesia.

Modern written Chinese borrows heavily from Mandarin grammar and vocabulary, while retaining some conventions from Classical Chinese, the older written form that was pretty much impossible to understand when read aloud.

This is true. But it’s more accurate to say that modern written Chinese *is* Mandarin with a few Classical Chinese bits retained. And most people don’t use much of the Classical Chinese stuff in everyday writing, say in email or forum posts online.

While it is possible to write in Chinese characters using Cantonese, Minnan or Wu grammar, it's quite rare and considered strange or wrong, even in regions where those dialects are spoken.

This is also true, but only from a Mandarin-speaking perspective. The large number of highly literate people speaking Cantonese has led to a fairly standard written form for that language. It’s often unintelligible to Mandarin readers, particularly since the inventory of characters is enhanced with Cantonese-specific ones and also partly because some well known characters are used for different purposes in written Cantonese.

The PRC government has a strong interest in promoting Mandarin as the “one true Chinese language” to the detriment of all other Chinese languages. They meet a lot of resistance from Cantonese speakers, but other linguistic groups have less power and literary history. The situation is quite different in the ROC, where Mandarin is certainly the language of state, but many people – especially in the south – speak a mutually unintelligible Chinese language (Hakka or Taiwanese Southern Min).

Re:Chinese Edition

[JimCanuck]

While it is possible to write in Chinese characters using Cantonese, Minnan or Wu grammar, it's quite rare and considered strange or wrong, even in regions where those dialects are spoken.

Not really, while modern mainland books and magazines have standardized to Mandarin/Beijingese grammar, many publications worldwide and on the mainland, especially those still published in Traditional Chinese use Cantonese grammar as that is the dominate dialect that still holds onto the Traditional writing type.

Simplified Chinese, being the work of the PRC-CPC, is strictly written in Mandarin/Beijingese style grammar.

Re:Chinese Edition

[donscarletti]

Traditional Chinese is most often used in Taiwan (pop 23 million), where the offical language is Mandarin. Hong Kong people taking notes for themselves often prefer writing English and when writing informally and Mandarin influenced Chinese (with Traditional characters) when writing novels and other great works (see Gu Long, Jin Yong, Liang Yusheng, etc.). The overwealming majority of Cantonese speakers live on the mainland though and only know how to write using Mandarin grammar.

Best to think of Simplified/Traditional as the same set of characters in different shapes, like Roman, Italic, Frikten, Insular, Antiqua, Uncial, etc for the Latin alphabet. Most people can read both if they can read either properly. It does not really bear a relationship with the language

Re:Chinese Edition

[tehcyder]

Just because someone says Fag, doesn't mean they're a homophobic. It's similar to how I can say "Nigger" without being racist.

Using fag or gay as an insult is either (1) homophobic or (2) childishly ignorant. And unless you're black using the word "nigger" will pretty much always be seen as racist.

Political correctness doesn't come into it. You might think you're being bold and outspoken, but if your language offends people unnecessarily, then you can't complain that people treat you as offensive. You have the right to be as much of an arsehole as you want, just don't whine when people react as though you're an arsehole.

Pay ME China!

[happy_place]

To heck with that... I just want to know where I can get paid for derailing discussions. I could make some serious D'oh!

Hard times, coming your way

[concealment]

From 1223-1240, Mongols (partial ancestors of today's Han Chinese and cultural contributors to all of Asia) invaded Europe, eventually being stopped at the borders of Western Europe.

From 1839 to 1860, the English and Chinese fought a series of wars. If it had not occurred before, resentment of the West was now part of the Chinese psyche.

In 1949, China became communist. It no longer had the pro-Western orientation of its nationalist party.

From 1950 to 1953, the US fought a proxy war with China in Korea.

From 1965 to 1975, the US fought a proxy war with China in Vietnam.

Many of our enemies are using weapons made by China or her allies in Russia and Eastern Europe. This is unchanged since the 1950s-1990s when those nations were united into a military bloc as allies.

History repeats itself.

Hard times, coming our way.

Re:Hard times, coming your way

[Anonymous Coward]

North Vietnam was allied with the Soviet Union; they are not big fans of China for historical reasons.

The PRC and the USSR parted ways after Stalin died; they were in their own little mini-ColdWar for most of the 50s-90s.

You might want to pay more attention to history.

Re:Hard times, coming your way

[khallow]

So we should expect new invasions of vast hordes of horse archers from Mongolia? New employment options in the pillage and loot industry?

Re:Hard times, coming your way

[NatasRevol]

No. With global warming, the land bridge to Asia is closed for repairs.

Re:Hard times, coming your way

[jonadab]

> Many of our enemies are using weapons made by
> China or her allies in Russia and Eastern Europe.

China and Russia have not been allies since... well, technically they were allies for part of World War II, but it was a pretty uneasy alliance even then. Also, that was the Nationalist government of China (which is now de facto the government of Taiwan), before they were driven out.

Yes, I know, the current Chinese government has its roots in Communism, which came out of Russia. That's true. It does not imply that they continued to see eye to eye with Russia on everything. During the height of the cold war, China and Russia had significantly more distrust for each other than for the major Western powers (America, England, France).

See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sino-Russian_relations
And particularly here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_Split

Re:Hard times, coming your way

[brit74]

Yeash. You have a bizarrely Chinese-centric version of history.

The war in Korea was a US "proxy war" against China? What nonsense. It was a war started by the (Communist) North Koreans. It's a lot easier to make the argument that the Korean war was a Chinese proxy war against the United States than vice-versa. (Or are you aiming to make the US the bad guy?) The USSR was also a big backer of the North Koreans (so why don't you call the Korea war a proxy war against the USSR?) Afterall, the North Koreans were using some of the most recent Russian military equipment and Russians were actually flying aircraft against US pilots. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_provided_military_support_for_North_Korea_during_the_Korean_War

The Vietnam war was about stopping the spread of communism into South Vietnam (see the Domino Theory). It's nonsense to say Vietnam was about fighting a war with China.

Re:Hard times, coming your way

[tehcyder]

The Vietnam war was about stopping the spread of communism into South Vietnam (see the Domino Theory)

The entirely discredited Domino Theory was an absurd piece of justification for military/economic intervention. Here's a clue: if a country wants to be "communist" [*] it's not the job of the US to stop them.

[*] This was used to describe any vaguely left wing or democratic movement that did not pander to the US military-industrial complex.

Re:WTF?

[Chrisq]

Why in hell should a british newspaper be censored -in Britain?!?- 'cause it reports on China? Doesn'r make sense.

Censored in China? Yes. Censored in UK? No.

They are putting it on torrents so that people in China can read it! ...... Oh wait ... are you being paid 50c to divert the conversation to UK censorship?

I wonder if the same thing happens here

[davydagger]

"the '50 cent party' â€" a commenter paid half a dollar every time he derails an online debate in China"

I wonder how many microsofties on here have similar arrangements.

Its what you do when you study english.

Re:I wonder if the same thing happens here

[TaoPhoenix]

I bet there are certainly a few, though with a pay rate higher than 50 cents. I'd believe $5 per thread. $10 if they are getting a luxury payout for being good.

Re:I wonder if the same thing happens here

[N1AK]

Nah there's plenty of chumps who will try to derail these kinds of discussions for free in the West. Just look at your own post for a great example.

Re:I wonder if the same thing happens here

[NatasRevol]

Assuming english forums, it's probably good practice for speaking/writing english.

And they get paid for it.

It's a two-fer.

Re:I wonder if the same thing happens here

[jonadab]

Unnecessary. Americans will do it for free, just because they're bored.

Re:I wonder if the same thing happens here

[tehcyder]

I bet there are certainly a few, though with a pay rate higher than 50 cents. I'd believe $5 per thread. $10 if they are getting a luxury payout for being good.

I can confirm that the figure is in fact $108.50 (less withholding tax) per thread. If you have accounts with all the major players (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook) and accounts on slashdot, reddit, digg, twitter, faceboook and a few others and you post on a few threads on each every day, you can pretty soon get yourself a nice 7 figure annual salary for a couple of hours work a day. You won't get rich like Bill Gates, but you'll be comfortable.

However, these gigs are appointment only. If you'd like an "in", I can arrange it for a small finders' fee, just to cover my time and expenses, of $1000 per company, which you'll recoup in your first day's work!

Sounds Familiar

[organgtool]

their job is to stop any meaningful discussion online about the government.

So they are the Chinese equivalent of Fox News. I'm not just trying to make a joke, that is absolutely one of the effects of Fox News. They troll every story with a partisan angle and push their base ridiculously far to the right. Then everyone in the left and center responds by ridiculing them and offering counterpoints to their ridiculous arguments. But that doesn't matter because the effect of Fox News making their ridiculous arguments is that they keep both sides at war with each other so that there is no chance that we find common ground and fix the one problem that we can all agree on: reforming campaign finance and eliminating lobbying. By keeping us preoccupied by arguing over divisive yet relatively inconsequential matters, they are perpetuating our current system that heavily favors the rich. This has been going on for years and has been highly effective, so it's no wonder the Chinese are doing the same thing. People will always find ways around censorship, but keeping the people constantly distracted is the most effective way to fight unwanted changes.

Re:Sounds Familiar

[SuricouRaven]

People measure left and right relative to their own views. There is no ideal objective measure. You can write surveys for it, but all they do is embody the writers ideas of what left and right should be. Political alignment is all relative. As many have pointed out before me, a party that American standards would classify as on the left would be considered as on the right by European standards.

There's an implicit view in your post that the center, neutral ground, is where media should be. This is debateable. Efforts to avoid bias could be themselves seen as a form of bias, if facts observed support the positions of one wing more than another. For a media establishment to then appear neutral can only be achieved by counter-biasing their reporting, to make two arguments appear evenly matched when they are rightfully not.

Re:Sounds Familiar

[JTsyo]

How do you determine the center in reality other than by asking people what they think? The US center is overall more to the right when compared to Europe but compared to Asia we would be more to the left.

Re:Sounds Familiar

[garyebickford]

No argument there, though I would argue that the media can not rightly assert that they are neutral when their own demographic is so highly skewed from the population. Rather than a highly skewed reporting entity 'trying to be unbiased', I would prefer if their institutions weren't essentially echo chambers for their own biases - I would like to see two news reporters who actually disagree once in a while - in private, not to mention in public.

Of course, that's about as likely as a reporter who actually knows anything about the topic they are reporting on - history, technology, science, math, all those things they didn't take in school while they were learning to be 'journalists'.

IMHO only 'true believers' are in agreement with everything espoused by any party - we all have a self-contradictory mishmash of beliefs. We'd like to see X, but feel badly for those who will suffer as a result of X, and also feel badly for those who are suffering without X.

Note re counter-biasing - I had a boss like that once. At every review, he always had to come up with 'three good things, three bad things' about every employee. A triumph of algorithm over sense.

Re:Sounds Familiar

[OneAhead]

most of the mainstream news media were far to the left (over 70%), and Fox News was only slightly to the left (IIRC 52%, within experimental error).

This makes you sound just like those climate change deniers who are always pointing to a handful of deeply flawed studies (often published by shills) and ignore a massive body of scientific work that goes against their agenda.

News outlets including CNN cited a study of several major media outlets by a UCLA political scientist and a University of Missouri-Columbia economist purporting to "show a strong liberal bias." But the study employed a measure of "bias" so problematic that its findings are next to useless, and the authors -- both former fellows at conservative think tanks cited in the study to illustrate liberal bias -- seem unaware of the substantial scholarly work that exists on the topic.
-- http://mediamatters.org/research/2005/12/21/former-fellows-at-conservative-think-tanks-issu/134514

Oh yeah, and even though the numbers coming out of the study were outrageous, you succeeded to push them into the realm of the ludicrous. The UCLA study (with all its flaws) still classified Fox News as "right of center"... Then again, that may just be your memory, as your "last year" turns out to be 7 years ago.

I'm not even going to start arguing against all the other BS in your post. Except this: yes, academia is somewhat left-leaning (although far less than you'd have people believe). What does that prove? Smart people see through the populist lies being perpetuated by the American right?

Re:Sounds Familiar

[tehcyder]

Funny thing - last year a professor (UCLA?) used standard statistical measures on various news outlets to measure overall bias. I don't recall the details of the methodology, but it is one that has been used for a long time for this sort of thing. He found that most of the mainstream news media were far to the left (over 70%), and Fox News was only slightly to the left (IIRC 52%, within experimental error).

That is the funniest thing I have read all week.

It's also worth noting that in DC something over 90% of all news professionals are registered to left or extreme left parties - IIRC last survey showed over 12/13. Among the reporters and editors the ratio is more extreme. I just read a quote from the editor or publisher or something at NY Times, who said (as I recall) that everyone in the news room and editorial staff is so far left that they don't even know how to cover a story from any other angle.

If you are a college grad, realize that at most colleges over 95% of instructors are left or far left - so your education started out from a very left perspective. Chances are, based on the available inputs to most of us, your idea of 'center' is probably somewhere to the left of where it really is. Of course I don't know you, I'm generalizing.

IMHO any news organization that presumes to be nonpartisan should have approximately equal numbers of personnel of all common persuasions. AFAIK the only 'mainstream' news TV outlet with _any_ regular non-leftist onscreen personalities is Fox - I don't have cable and rarely see TV, so I could be mistaken on that by now. (plus also maybe Bloomberg and some other financial channels?) I think the experience of Juan Williams (is he still on Fox?) is a useful example.

Oh, you were being serious. I'd get some urgent professional help if I were you, whatever drugs you're on aren't helping.

Re:Cerberus, the dogs of mass effect 3

[durrr]

I bet the US govt keeps a set of similar professionals, that have as a goal to keep people as stupid as possible.

subject

[Legion303]

They'll PAY YOU to troll? I'm quitting my job and moving to china!

Pirating

[Taibhsear]

You keep using that word. I do no think that word means what you think it means...

Personally, you welcome your new overlords

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

"the '50 cent party' — a commenter paid half a dollar every time he derails an online debate in China. 'Essentially, these people are paid internet trolls; their job is to stop any meaningful discussion online about the government."

Discern your political leaning:

1. Oh my god, how corrupt!
2. Eh, companies astroturf, why not governments?
3. 50 cents? That's not a living wage!

Re:Cerberus, the three headed dog

[JTsyo]

I see the Chinese have read Ender's Game.

Did anyone else add Ai Weiwei

[mothrafokker]

To their list of prank phone names?

Pirating?

[DirtyLiar]

They own it, and all the rights to it, so unless they have refused to give themselves permission to distribute their magazine, a concept that makes no sence, they have the right to distribute it any way they want.

Translation: They can't pirate their own stuff.

50 Cent Party?

[ragnvaldr]

I think the "Kanye West Party" might be more accurate in this case.

Pirate

[scarboni888]

You keep using that word. I do not think you know what it means.

"giving" it away

[chrismcb]

If you give it away, its not "pirating"

let "pirating" = "the free version"

[FatLittleMonkey]

Shhhh. Anything that dilutes the meaning of the word "pirating" is a good thing.

Reply to: subject

[FatLittleMonkey]

New Slashdot meme?

"In Communist China, government..."

Re:Dear Pot (UK)

[tehcyder]

Remove all the street cameras in UK as a first step before talking about bad things in other countries.

Here's a tap with the clue stick to all you paranoid fuckwits out there: if you're going to watch child porn, deal drugs or whatever it is you're worried about being caught doingdon't do it in a public place where you might be seen by witnesses. And CCTV cameras are in public places.