The guy who said that Chinese scientists weren't allowed to talk about moon landings had better show some evidence. All the free speech smackdown in China these days are against things that the gov't feels directly threatened by, not just anything that makes them look bad, and the Apollo landings certainly don't fall under that category.
A friend of mine is spending a few months in China teaching English. She even gives an open-mic style cultural exchange lecture every week, because the school is actively seeking to give their students a first-hand look at American values. (So closed-minded and totalitarian, eh?)
Of course, she cannot see the digital photos I put up on my homepage because, presumably, my whole college is blocked by the Great Firewall. This very much annoys me. What this means, though, is that China is a complex country with both liberal and conservative elements. (*gasp!*) I like a lot of the progress these days, but I find their wanton blocking of any sites with opposing viewpoints really despicable.
And here you are blocking off a whole country... Which side are you on, exactly?
Pretty much the one situation that sends me to Altavista these days is when I'm looking for a phrase or a quote. Altavista can do strict strings and complex boolean fun better than Google.
This is an old argument. From what I understand, the patent office is not responsible for guaranteeing that patents are unique and value; they're only responsible for doing a cursory check. My guess would be that they don't have the funding to do more in depth checking, anyway. Instead, the idea is to put the burden on people who file claims against bad patents.
Now, I'm not saying I like this system, mind you. I don't. But the patent office simply doesn't have the resources and isn't give the responsibility to check patents more rigorously.
Oops! I should have used preview again after my minor edit!:P Here's teh last paragraph as it should be:
In other words, if your product is banned because it kills people, you can actually sue the gov't for making your product illegal. Imagine cigarette companies being able to sue places that enact anti-smoking laws. (Hell, that just might happen, even.) Of course, we're talking actual frickin' toxic waste here, not just cigarettes. What a wonderful world we live in.
P.S.: Note that this is an article written by a prominent Republican, while I am not Republican by a long shot. I don't care, because it's a good article!:)
You think that's a joke? Take a look at this column. It talks about a provision in NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement, for non-North Americans) that lets companies sue other govt's if they enact laws that cause the companies to have losses.
Methanex, a Canadian company, is suing the U.S. gov't for $970 million because a California law against their carcinogenic gasoline additive is going to cost them money.
Metalclad, a U.S. company, has already won $16 million from Mexico because a community rejected their cancer-causing toxic waste dump.
These suits, being part of an international treaty, are not subject to national laws for appeal.
In other words, if your product is banned because it kills peoplesue the gov't for making your product illegal. Imagine cigarette companies being able to sue places that enact anti-smoking laws. (Hell, that just might happen, even.) Of course, we're talking actual frickin' toxic waste here, not just cigarettes. What a wonderful world we live in.
P.S.: Note that this is an article written by a prominent Republican, while I am not Republican by a long shot. I don't care, because it's a good article!:)
Thanks for nitpicking. My points was that it was "relatively" non-lethal. I mean, if you look at it in the context of the number of people who've been protesting, protesting in a western country is probaby safer than driving.. And let's not forget that you can't blame solely the police when there are violent protesters.
Note how I didn't even begin to point out how that guy in Milan was raising a frickin' fire extinguisher and threatening to throw it (last I heard.. correct me if I'm wrong).. My point was that even disregarding any direct action on the part of the individual, protestors (at least since Seattle) know that they're going into a situation where there is going to be violence, and you just really can't expect the police to keep that violence under control without the possibility of accidents/flared up situations.
Modern USia has quite simply lost any semblance of morality and ideology other than the dollar and a kind of rabid Christianity. Whatever happened to fighting the good fight against communism because it threatened the freedoms we fought so hard to win?
Right! We need to fight with morality and scruples in mind, just like we did against communism throughout the Cold War! We need to "fight the good fight" like we did in Vietnam! We need to support the causes of the noble and the just like we did with the Afghan FREEDOM FIGHTERS!
I so totally agree that these days, we suffer from total lack of cause and purpose.. we just advocate free market capitalism. After all, what has capitalism ever gotten anyone?! . We need to target our nuclear missiles at the remaining Communist countries lest their Evil Ways take over the free and just Western world!!
The morality and ideology of the Cold War are values we should forever strive to regain! We must once again fight the good fight! (And if you don't agree, then you'll never work in Hollywood again!)
Can you really imagine any country allowing its cities to be occupied by a hostile, anti-government protest? Check out the story of the US reaction to the WTO protests in Seattle.
In Seattle, non-lethal weapons were used. Even in many third-world countries, protests are broken up with rubber bullets, not live ammunition. And if you complain that the students were radical, why not also point out that the gov't was hardline and refused to budge?
Now, I'm generally very defensive about China when Slashdotters rant about how evil it is without looking at the reality and practicality of the situation there, as it is making a lot of positive progress these days, but this is a case where the gov't could have done any number of things to avoid killing students, and it chose not to. Why? Not because it "had no choice", but because it too heavily weighs "stability of our nation" over individual lives. For that matter, even the "patience" may have been a bad thing, as a more controlled suppression of the protests earlier could have turned out a lot better.
I think there is a difference between pointing out a point of view and subtlely changing what someone else is saying.
You can shield your child from someone's views. I have no problem with that. You can show you child their views and then express your counterargument. That's fine too. But to distort someone else's views without their permission is unfair and dangerous, and that is essentially what editing for content is. Well-done films are not merely a commodity for you to pick and choose pieces of, a la carte. They are coherent wholes intended to be seen as a whole, and doing anything else with them violates the integrity of the art.
Somewhat contrived example: Say I see Goya's Saturn Devouring His Children, and I think the lighting and style create a great mood, and I want to show my kid this piece of art.. but the whole eating-the-kid bit is too graphic, so I blot it out. Am I being fair to the artist to say that this is what was intended? No. My kid would be missing out onn the artist's intention. I think that in this case, since I'm not comfortable with showing my child the subject matter, I should just find a different painting.
"Well, this is different," you might say, "because the eating-the-child thing is crucial to the painting, and the nude scenes in movies aren't." Well, who should decide what is crucial to the film and what isn't? I say the artist should get to decide.
I don't buy the whole, "Old movies didn't have sex and violence and they were just as good," argument. First of all, people often compare the best of old movies with ALL movies today.. Secondly, I know that when I watch an old movie, the cleanliness makes me feel that it's unrealistic. Old movies can still deal with a lot of issues pretty well on a more abstract level, but they just don't manage to feel as relevant or pertinent.
Fact is, sex and violence are parts of life, and while many movies exploit them for purely viceral benefit, many other movies deal with them seriously and thus manage to feel more pertinent to the real world than old classic cleaned up movies.
But see, that's precisely an example where that scene contributes to character development. The later scenes with Kelly Preston don't make much sense without that background of the nature of their relationship.
The issues discussed in Jerry Maguire aren't really targeted for kids anyway. I mean, if you want somehting that's more appropriate, you don't even have to go any futher than renting the same director's Say Anything instead, a movie which doesn't have any graphic sex scenes. (Well, there is a sex scene, actually, but it's more subtle than the one in Jerry Maguire.)
I know the world isn't black and white, but I tend to very much favor artistic integrity, and when you edit a movie like that, you are changing the writer and director's conception of the movie. Now, the reason I'm not totally against it is because movies are often very collaborative projects with lots of artistic compromising anyway, but that's no excuse to exacerbate the problem.
The way I see it, instead of adulterating In the Name of the Rose, why not show your kid a non-R-rated movie that expresses similar values? There is really no shortage of movies out there.
*sigh*. And not only do they have to pretend to be male, but they have to write about male characters in order to make them more "generic", since male characters appeal to both sexes, but female characters only appeal to females.. unless they have big boobies or something. *sigh*
I'm thinking that perhaps the/. staff posts stuff more cavalierly without fact-checking precisely because its comment structure allows for easy reader corrections. I know that whenever I see an iffy story, I go to the comments to see if there have been any corrections, and there usually are. Because of this, I can't really say "I'm not going to read/. any more!"
Fact is, for people like me who read the score 4/5 comments,/. remains a pretty reliable news source, if you take those comments into account. This, as I've said, probably contributes to editor slacking, since they feel that fact-checking isn't necessary. However, there is a significant portion (majority?) of/.'s audience that does not read the comments. You can say, "This is their own fault," all you want, but some people just choose not to spend more time than is necessary to get a brief glimpse of the news. For these people,/. is spreading uncorrected misinformation, and it is doing a disservice to its readership.
I think that, if the editors don't want to spend the time to fact-check, they should at least post immediate update/corrections to the article, visible on the front page, when a glaring error has been made as in this case. That way, the people who don't read comments can at least be informed of mistakes.
You know, this makes me wonder why she chose to bill herself with her initials.. Perhaps this confusion isn't accidental, but intended? Perhaps, like George Elliot, she's intentionally hiding her true sex in order to avoid people who'd avoid her books just because she's female? Or perhaps I'm just being paranoid, since I recall reading a lot of children's books written by women, and no one seemed to mind that.
This sounds iffy to me. The whole point of this is for them to MAKE MORE MONEY. They still have to charge roughly the same prices.. the market still works as it does, regardless of cards. Most consumers don't care about privacy, but they do care about prices.
Were British justified in implementing harsh measures against all suspects?
Who knows.. maybe because of these measures, which resulted in injustice to couple of innocent, they saved hundreds of other innocent lives.
Tough choice.
The whole basis of "innocent until proven guilty", and, for that matter, most of our civil liberties is that we must protect the rights of individuals even when it goes against the will of the majority. Although I agree that things aren't always that simple, and we often need to find a balance between what's good for the majority and the rights of individuals. Still, my point is that just because it may save many lives does not, in and of itself, justify hurting innocent people. It may; just not always.
My theory about the Pepsi challenge is that Pepsi is sweeter and thus tastes better in small doses, but once you've been drinking it for a while, it gets nasty, and that's why many people prefer Coke. Since the Pepsi challenge is all about small doses, it's biased toward Pepsi.
I'm actually curious about this.. I'm on a couple of obscure mailing lists that are archived online, so that's basically the same as having your email address in cleartext on Slashdot, except that Slashdot is more heavily trafficked.
I currently get maybe a few spams a week, whereas I used to hardly get any at all before when I was more careful about having my address on the web anywhere.
What are other people's experiences with subscribing to obscure web-archived mailing lists, or, for that matter, with posting your email address in cleartext on Slashdot?
Slashdot Mirror
The guy who said that Chinese scientists weren't allowed to talk about moon landings had better show some evidence. All the free speech smackdown in China these days are against things that the gov't feels directly threatened by, not just anything that makes them look bad, and the Apollo landings certainly don't fall under that category.
In other news, making Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead obviously means that Tom Stoppard doesn't appreciate the original story!
Of course, she cannot see the digital photos I put up on my homepage because, presumably, my whole college is blocked by the Great Firewall. This very much annoys me. What this means, though, is that China is a complex country with both liberal and conservative elements. (*gasp!*) I like a lot of the progress these days, but I find their wanton blocking of any sites with opposing viewpoints really despicable.
And here you are blocking off a whole country... Which side are you on, exactly?
Pretty much the one situation that sends me to Altavista these days is when I'm looking for a phrase or a quote. Altavista can do strict strings and complex boolean fun better than Google.
I love that last line. Very clever. :)
Now, I'm not saying I like this system, mind you. I don't. But the patent office simply doesn't have the resources and isn't give the responsibility to check patents more rigorously.
In other words, if your product is banned because it kills people, you can actually sue the gov't for making your product illegal. Imagine cigarette companies being able to sue places that enact anti-smoking laws. (Hell, that just might happen, even.) Of course, we're talking actual frickin' toxic waste here, not just cigarettes. What a wonderful world we live in.
P.S.: Note that this is an article written by a prominent Republican, while I am not Republican by a long shot. I don't care, because it's a good article! :)
Methanex, a Canadian company, is suing the U.S. gov't for $970 million because a California law against their carcinogenic gasoline additive is going to cost them money.
Metalclad, a U.S. company, has already won $16 million from Mexico because a community rejected their cancer-causing toxic waste dump.
These suits, being part of an international treaty, are not subject to national laws for appeal.
In other words, if your product is banned because it kills peoplesue the gov't for making your product illegal. Imagine cigarette companies being able to sue places that enact anti-smoking laws. (Hell, that just might happen, even.) Of course, we're talking actual frickin' toxic waste here, not just cigarettes. What a wonderful world we live in.
P.S.: Note that this is an article written by a prominent Republican, while I am not Republican by a long shot. I don't care, because it's a good article! :)
Please mod parent up.
I just want to point out that the guy who got caught at MIT was a sysadmin, not a student..
My post was sarcastic, in case that wasn't sufficiently clear.
Note how I didn't even begin to point out how that guy in Milan was raising a frickin' fire extinguisher and threatening to throw it (last I heard.. correct me if I'm wrong).. My point was that even disregarding any direct action on the part of the individual, protestors (at least since Seattle) know that they're going into a situation where there is going to be violence, and you just really can't expect the police to keep that violence under control without the possibility of accidents/flared up situations.
Right! We need to fight with morality and scruples in mind, just like we did against communism throughout the Cold War! We need to "fight the good fight" like we did in Vietnam! We need to support the causes of the noble and the just like we did with the Afghan FREEDOM FIGHTERS!
I so totally agree that these days, we suffer from total lack of cause and purpose.. we just advocate free market capitalism. After all, what has capitalism ever gotten anyone?! . We need to target our nuclear missiles at the remaining Communist countries lest their Evil Ways take over the free and just Western world!!
The morality and ideology of the Cold War are values we should forever strive to regain! We must once again fight the good fight! (And if you don't agree, then you'll never work in Hollywood again!)
In Seattle, non-lethal weapons were used. Even in many third-world countries, protests are broken up with rubber bullets, not live ammunition. And if you complain that the students were radical, why not also point out that the gov't was hardline and refused to budge?
Now, I'm generally very defensive about China when Slashdotters rant about how evil it is without looking at the reality and practicality of the situation there, as it is making a lot of positive progress these days, but this is a case where the gov't could have done any number of things to avoid killing students, and it chose not to. Why? Not because it "had no choice", but because it too heavily weighs "stability of our nation" over individual lives. For that matter, even the "patience" may have been a bad thing, as a more controlled suppression of the protests earlier could have turned out a lot better.
You can shield your child from someone's views. I have no problem with that. You can show you child their views and then express your counterargument. That's fine too. But to distort someone else's views without their permission is unfair and dangerous, and that is essentially what editing for content is. Well-done films are not merely a commodity for you to pick and choose pieces of, a la carte. They are coherent wholes intended to be seen as a whole, and doing anything else with them violates the integrity of the art.
Somewhat contrived example: Say I see Goya's Saturn Devouring His Children, and I think the lighting and style create a great mood, and I want to show my kid this piece of art.. but the whole eating-the-kid bit is too graphic, so I blot it out. Am I being fair to the artist to say that this is what was intended? No. My kid would be missing out onn the artist's intention. I think that in this case, since I'm not comfortable with showing my child the subject matter, I should just find a different painting.
"Well, this is different," you might say, "because the eating-the-child thing is crucial to the painting, and the nude scenes in movies aren't." Well, who should decide what is crucial to the film and what isn't? I say the artist should get to decide.
Fact is, sex and violence are parts of life, and while many movies exploit them for purely viceral benefit, many other movies deal with them seriously and thus manage to feel more pertinent to the real world than old classic cleaned up movies.
The issues discussed in Jerry Maguire aren't really targeted for kids anyway. I mean, if you want somehting that's more appropriate, you don't even have to go any futher than renting the same director's Say Anything instead, a movie which doesn't have any graphic sex scenes. (Well, there is a sex scene, actually, but it's more subtle than the one in Jerry Maguire.)
The way I see it, instead of adulterating In the Name of the Rose, why not show your kid a non-R-rated movie that expresses similar values? There is really no shortage of movies out there.
*sigh*. And not only do they have to pretend to be male, but they have to write about male characters in order to make them more "generic", since male characters appeal to both sexes, but female characters only appeal to females.. unless they have big boobies or something. *sigh*
Fact is, for people like me who read the score 4/5 comments, /. remains a pretty reliable news source, if you take those comments into account. This, as I've said, probably contributes to editor slacking, since they feel that fact-checking isn't necessary. However, there is a significant portion (majority?) of /.'s audience that does not read the comments. You can say, "This is their own fault," all you want, but some people just choose not to spend more time than is necessary to get a brief glimpse of the news. For these people, /. is spreading uncorrected misinformation, and it is doing a disservice to its readership.
I think that, if the editors don't want to spend the time to fact-check, they should at least post immediate update/corrections to the article, visible on the front page, when a glaring error has been made as in this case. That way, the people who don't read comments can at least be informed of mistakes.
You know, this makes me wonder why she chose to bill herself with her initials.. Perhaps this confusion isn't accidental, but intended? Perhaps, like George Elliot, she's intentionally hiding her true sex in order to avoid people who'd avoid her books just because she's female? Or perhaps I'm just being paranoid, since I recall reading a lot of children's books written by women, and no one seemed to mind that.
This sounds iffy to me. The whole point of this is for them to MAKE MORE MONEY. They still have to charge roughly the same prices.. the market still works as it does, regardless of cards. Most consumers don't care about privacy, but they do care about prices.
The whole basis of "innocent until proven guilty", and, for that matter, most of our civil liberties is that we must protect the rights of individuals even when it goes against the will of the majority. Although I agree that things aren't always that simple, and we often need to find a balance between what's good for the majority and the rights of individuals. Still, my point is that just because it may save many lives does not, in and of itself, justify hurting innocent people. It may; just not always.
My theory about the Pepsi challenge is that Pepsi is sweeter and thus tastes better in small doses, but once you've been drinking it for a while, it gets nasty, and that's why many people prefer Coke. Since the Pepsi challenge is all about small doses, it's biased toward Pepsi.
I currently get maybe a few spams a week, whereas I used to hardly get any at all before when I was more careful about having my address on the web anywhere.
What are other people's experiences with subscribing to obscure web-archived mailing lists, or, for that matter, with posting your email address in cleartext on Slashdot?