Cynicism is flawed when treated as a moral absolute.
Any politician must act that way
A false assertion. Politicians have been known to make decisions which make them look bad. Kennedy accepted full responsibility for the Bay of Pigs. Johnson did not seek re-election, citing Vietnam, Clinton voluntarily testified before a grand jury, and Gore made it clear he did not want to be the deciding vote in certifying his Presidential election. Politically, these things were all detrimental to the politician involved--while they gained small points on integrity, politically their choices were net losses.
*If* you promote openness, accountability, and allow others to criticize you, you can have an honest and relatively politics-free science department.
If you say the decision should be made by prominent scientists, then the selection of those scientists will be political.
Not overtly. I realize it's impossible, by definition, to remove subjectivity from the process, and that even the most honest person's subjective choices will be tainted by their politics, but it's certainly possible to mitigate the problems introduced by politics.
The two alternatives, which are to either fully embrace political maneuvering as a legitimate and desired course of action, or to exclude government from the realm altogether are both less desirable than, flawed as it is, to have a department set up to promote the sciences.
Heh. Yeah, I wasn't actually thinking of the current President when I wrote that. I just meant it's what the Office of the Presidency should have as one of its cabinets.
I know I have a European bias toward this, but why couldn't the [government pay for it]?
Governments working towards the advancement of science? You Europeans think up the strangest things!
You must not have been paying attention to the US for the last four years. You see, we're at war with the tererists of mass destruction, and have had to ration "frivolities" like science, reason, openness and accountability.
I think they melt those things down to make Freedom Guns, or Democracy Bombs, or something.
The question would be how to choose what to pay for. The current system has the advantage that only journals which at least someone (even if it is some insane clique of social scientists) reads get money.
That's not really much of a problem. First, the President should have a "Department of Science" cabinet, where it's made explicitly clear that science from that department will be clear of political influences, then you have that department choose to fund access to journals deemed worthy by a board of prominent scientists. In essence, you have the scientists choosing which publications to support, which interestingly is exactly the advantage you list for the current system.
So now the journal is chosen by reason, is less subject to capricious market forces, and you have public access. This really seems win-win-win.
The choice of which journals to support is opinion, which frightens many because it requires a certain level of trust, but I'd much more trust publicly accountable people in an open process over the so-called free market when it comes to promoting science.
Why the hell would you compare military spending to the GDP? That doesn't make any sense, unless you are looking for something to dwarf military spending, and there isn't much that does. In fact, GDP is about the only thing that *does* dwarf the US military budget!
Your "reference" page lists the military budget as 49% of the discretionary spending in 2003 (the last year listed). I suspect that that number doesn't even *count* the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are left out of many budget reports (hey look, we've decreased the budget deficit. All we had to do was not count all the money we spend, wee!).
The US spends more money on the military than every other nation combined (the site you linked to has that number at just above 90% of the rest of the world's spending for 2002, on an upward trend). It's half of US discretionary spending. Only a moron could claim that that's not 'colossal'.
I wrote: US courts do indeed recognize the notion that a journalist has the right to refuse to disclose a confidential source. That's why the asshole who outed Valerie Plame isn't in jail.
You wrote: That's false. Two journalists, Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, have been held in contempt and ordered jailed for refusing to disclose their sources in the Valerie Plame matter.
In other words, the asshole who outed Valerie Plame isn't in jail? That doesn't bode well for your claim.
A federal appeals court recently upheld those rulings, on the basis that there is no First Amendment protection for journalists "to conceal the criminal conduct of his source."
And I never claimed the First Amendment gave journalists the right to, "to conceal the criminal conduct of his source."
You're making the mistake of treating the issue as though it has to be absolutely a First Amendment guaranteed right, or not considered in the courts at all. I've stated that the courts do have a notion of the need to allow a journalist to keep their sources confidential. That's why Novak isn't in jail right now (either that, or he already sung, in which case it raises the question of why the other journalists are in jail).
Allow me to spell it out more simply for you:
The courts are nervous about forcing journalists to reveal sources. One strong reason behind this is the First Amendment. Although the First Amendment does not grant the inalienable right to protect the anonymity of your sources, it does make clear that a free press is of great importance. This is clearly what I meant by the courts having a "notion". You are absolutely wrong in thinking I'm wrong here.
It was Novak who publicly outed Valerie Plame, but because the courts don't feel comfortable forcing journalists to talk if there's an alternative. In sort of an ironic way, the alternative resources for the courts in this case are other journalists, but Novak is at the center, so the courts are being consistent when going after the other journalists first. Novak has potentially violated federal law related to national security. The other journalists have not.
What would you call it, if not a "notion" (which is the word the original poster used) where the courts take into consideration that they don't want to lightly force a journalist to reveal sources, but will still do it?
You are right that the courts can and do hold journalists in contempt for not revealing sources. Unfortunately for you, I never claimed otherwise.
What good are dictionary definitions, when we all have different dictionaries?
The usefulness of dictionary definitions is extremely obvious (at least, it should be). If, for example, you don't know what I meant by "obvious", wouldn't you consult a dictionary? Yeah, there is subjectiveness and nuance, but it seems glib to dismiss the dictionary altogether!
Assuming a common definition of such a term is really not possible.
Why would one assume a common definition is not possible? The debate does contain subjectiveness, but not so much as to throw out the notion of a definition to work off of. The question isn't, "is it good journalism" or "is it reliable journalism," or anything other than, "is it journalism?". That's the first question to ask. The rest follows, and is valid to discuss, but let's see if we can answer the first one before moving on.
It just sticks out as bordering on absurd to think that we'd consider mainstream journalism to be journalism, but have a debate over whether a blog is or isn't journalism, the debate should really be the other way around.
It's like we've all come to call microwaving food "cooking", then along comes a new craze of preparing meals from scratch, and wondering if it really should be called "cooking" since it doesn't come pre-packaged from the store.
Blogging is more journalism than mainstream journalism is. It seems to me we're focusing on the wrong side.
I have thought about it, and I have no idea what you mean, since you don't actually give a definition.
Had you checked a dictionary, you could have saved yourself a huge amount of typing.
Being "journalism" has nothing to do with peer-review. I do agree fully that review is beneficial, but journalism is essentially a journal of current news. A blog (about news) is almost as pure an example of the definition of "journalism" as possible. Since blogs don't have to sell ads, you get a more pure experience (a *huge* portion of the news, even if you don't count advertising, isn't really anything that should be considered 'news'), which is kind of my point. To ask if blogging is journalism shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what journalism actually is!
It's quite ironic, actually. What we currently call journalism isn't really a good example of journalism, but this new thing (blogging) comes along that is far more consistent with the definition of the word, and so-called journalists are asking whether or not this new thing is actually journalism!
Uh... last I checked, US courts do not recognize the notion that a journalist has the right to refuse to disclose a confidential source.
Uh... (god I hate posts that start with, "Uh...") you need to check harder. US courts do indeed recognize the notion that a journalist has the right to refuse to disclose a confidential source. That's why the asshole who outed Valerie Plame isn't in jail.
What they don't recognize is an absolute and inalienable right to maintain a source's confidentiality. The difference is subtle, but there does exist, within the courts, the notion that you don't lightly take to throwing a journalist in jail for keeping a source confidential.
First of all, it's about protecting the First Amendment's prohibition against abridging freedom of the press. It's reasonable to hold that a free press needs some level of protection against being forced to reveal sources.
Second, the courts will throw journalists in jail for contempt of court, but often try to exhaust other means of gaining the information (from other people) first.
You actually made a completely logically consistent response, which looks like it answer the question, but doesn't at all.
The question isn't, "is a blog journalism?" It's, "is blogging jounralism?" (in other words, it's not, "is the medium a discipline?" as you claim, it's "is one discipline a subset of another discipline?")
So yeah, blogging is journalism if it's about timely news. It's not coincidence that "journalism" starts with the word "journal".
Online bloggers (in various forms) who pretend to be journalists are upset that courts ruled that bloggers who pretend to be journalists aren't really journalists.
Now if we could only get network "personalities" who pretend to be journalists ruled not journalists, we could actually make some progress!
Cable news "personalities" calling themselves journalists is, more often than not, like someone watching a meteor shower calling themself an astronomer.
Are you kidding?!?! At least your hypothetical "astronomer" is actually doing something that, however amateur, actually involves astronomy!
The site http://www.clavius.org/really belongs in the body of the post. It answers in depth every "reason" why it's impossible to have landed on the Moon.
If you have your doubts, or otherwise find yourself giving credence to the Apollo hoax theories, you owe it to yourself to visit that site. There's nothing wrong with questioning government and understanding that it's possible (possible != probable, and as hard as it was to land on the Moon, imagine how much harder it would be to fake it in an open society where not only would you have to trick hundreds of thousands of engineers and support personnel as well as thousands of scientists, but also the astronauts who are still alive today and have not contradicted the stories, all the while you can't have made a single mistake that would expose the conspiracy!) that the Moon landings were faked, but this is a case where the evidence is fully on the side of the conventional story.
Either way, I think the way she was quoted was... appalling.
Your use of the ellipsis makes me wonder if you didn't misquote yourself.
There are two possibilities here:
1.) You wrote: "Either way, I think the way she was quoted was," then paused dramatically, and finished up with, "appalling." 2.) You wrote: "Either way, I think the way she was quoted was absolutely wonderful, and the fact that I instantly thought 'MISQUOTE!' is abjectly appalling."
The actual MP3 is here. It's not even on a streaming server; you have to download the whole thing. This is a step backwards to 1999 technology.
Dude, you got this so wrong.
A 'podcast' is where you have a program which automatically downloads mp3's by checking an RSS feed, and copies them over to iTunes for your iPod (you don't actually have to have an iPod, but the whole experience is designed with the iPod in mind, hence the name). This is like TiVo for your Internet broadcasts, this is far superior to streaming audio. Streaming is so Marconi!
It's one guy, talking. And he's boring. This isn't Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's more like "shut up, I'm watching the show".
This is like another modern technology you appear to be unfamiliar with--the DVD. Once you've watched a show, you can watch it again with commentary, that's what this commentary is for. Again, via a podcast this is vastly superior to the DVD method (omigod, imagine if this had been around when B5 was on!).
Incidentally, if you're shipping out voice recorded with one microphone, both channels are the same and there's no reason to send it in stereo. Just bloats the file.
Oh so true. Fortunately the guys at SciFi know this (not terribly surprising that a television network would understand the 'vagaries' of audio channels, lol), and made the file mono.
There's absolutely no way I haven't just been trolled...
First of all, Apple can't violate the First Amendment, since it applies to Congress.
The story submission does not state that "Apple violated the first amendment", but that Apple's actions are a potential "threat to first amendment rights". There's a huge difference.
Apple is using the government in an attempt to (effectively, and directly) shut down Think Secret as a press agency in the way it exists today. That's clear first amendment territory.
OK, it's more nuanced than that, right?
Someone violated an agreement they had with Apple. Think Secret did not violate an agreement they had with Apple.
OK, it's more nuanced than that, right?
Think Secret solicits people to break their confidentiality agreements. Should that be illegal? Should it be against the law for me to ask you about information you contractually agreed to keep private? Isn't it your obligation to keep your trap shut? This clearly has first amendment implications, and Apple is a party to them.
It's sort of an awkward situation. TS is completely in the rights, but so is Apple. The system is fouled up, but what's the more critical right, the right for Apple to keep something secret (after telling people about it--this isn't a case of someone seeking to force Apple to release proprietary info--which ironically is what they are demanding of TS, and besides the point, it's already legal to force corporations to release proprietary info), or TS's right and ability to publish legitimate industry rumors?
First you say they have the "morals" forced upon them by the group (the market).
Then you say that the group has no right to force upon them any morals.
This highlights the internal contradiction of the free market (there is no such thing, it's a model we use to describe the actual market and it's important to know the limitations of the model if you are to avoid conclusions which contradict reality).
We do have the "power" (I think you meant "right") to impose our morals on others. That's never been the debate. The debate is to what extent we use that power, and what set of morals are imposed. Even the most libertarian of free marketers seeks to impose his morals on others. When you make the claim that the issue is over imposing morals or not, someone will call you on your contradiction, then use that to say, "you pushing your morals (of equality, justice, the like) is the same as me pushing my morals (of discrimination, forced religion, torture, etc)."
The question of what moral responsibility game programmers (or publishers) have is a valid one. They do bear responsibility for their actions, and the foreseeable effects, just like anyone. If you write a game that you could reasonably believe will cause people to die, you are morally complicant in the deaths your game causes in that regard. You can mitigate responsibility by including disclaimers (prominently--if people aren't likely to read them, they really can't count as disclaimers, think about it), or any other reasonable action.
It's really hard to legislate morality, because it's easy to go overboard, and there is no shortage of people who want just that. But if we can't legislate any morality, then murder, for example, can't be made illegal. The problem is there are also people who want no moral responsibility for their actions. Just like it's important to understand when legislated morality goes overboard, it's important to understand when its inadequate. It's often difficult (or impossible) to tell which is which, but if you hold moral absolutes (whether the religious right set of absolutes, or the neo-con capitalist set, among others), you increase the odds of being wrong one way or the other.
Those are good words for OS makers and sysadmins. It's very poor advice for home users, because the target audience can't be assumed to understand what that means. The OS really needs to be designed with this in mind. MS fails on that miserably, crossing into the realm of liability for damages IMO.
The most hilarious thing to me when someone gets hacked is looking at their box and a simple nmap shows every port under gods lcd monitor open.
That can only be funny if they should have known better. That's not something your average XP user can realistically be expected to even have the slightest of clues on.
A song isn't a secret, nor is it in any way expected to be kept private. Additionally, songs don't harm people the same way the bank data can.
All arguments for the current atmosphere of draconian copyright laws are based on simplistic analogies like yours.
Songs are not the same as physical property, songs are not the same as private data, songs are not the same as trade secrets. How is that so damn hard for some people to understand?
No one forces you to buy anthing, so I can't see how they "ripped you off enough".
Simply not physically forcing someone to buy something is enough to make it impossible to have ripped them off? Do you even know that "ripped off" means?
You are simply rationalizing your theft. Much like an employee who "suplements his unfair pay" by stealing from his company.
You are simply rationalizing treating IP infringement as equal to theft. Stealing physical goods from your employer is not the same as copying a song, and you're being either simple-minded or disingenuous to claim otherwise.
Your logic is as follows:
A cow is an animal. A sheep is an animal. Therefore a cow is a sheep.
Theft is stealing, copyright infringement is called stealing, but they aren't the same. Don't treat them the same. IP infringement and theft share some characteristics, and there are certainly arguments for protecting IP rights, but they are not identical to the arguments for protecting physical property rights, nor the same for protecting land property rights. They are all different, and all must be dealt with differently.
Slashdot Mirror
Cynicism is flawed when treated as a moral absolute.
Any politician must act that way
A false assertion. Politicians have been known to make decisions which make them look bad. Kennedy accepted full responsibility for the Bay of Pigs. Johnson did not seek re-election, citing Vietnam, Clinton voluntarily testified before a grand jury, and Gore made it clear he did not want to be the deciding vote in certifying his Presidential election. Politically, these things were all detrimental to the politician involved--while they gained small points on integrity, politically their choices were net losses.
*If* you promote openness, accountability, and allow others to criticize you, you can have an honest and relatively politics-free science department.
If you say the decision should be made by prominent scientists, then the selection of those scientists will be political.
Not overtly. I realize it's impossible, by definition, to remove subjectivity from the process, and that even the most honest person's subjective choices will be tainted by their politics, but it's certainly possible to mitigate the problems introduced by politics.
The two alternatives, which are to either fully embrace political maneuvering as a legitimate and desired course of action, or to exclude government from the realm altogether are both less desirable than, flawed as it is, to have a department set up to promote the sciences.
Somebody please mod this +100 Hilarious.
Heh. Yeah, I wasn't actually thinking of the current President when I wrote that. I just meant it's what the Office of the Presidency should have as one of its cabinets.
I know I have a European bias toward this, but why couldn't the [government pay for it]?
Governments working towards the advancement of science? You Europeans think up the strangest things!
You must not have been paying attention to the US for the last four years. You see, we're at war with the tererists of mass destruction, and have had to ration "frivolities" like science, reason, openness and accountability.
I think they melt those things down to make Freedom Guns, or Democracy Bombs, or something.
The question would be how to choose what to pay for. The current system has the advantage that only journals which at least someone (even if it is some insane clique of social scientists) reads get money.
That's not really much of a problem. First, the President should have a "Department of Science" cabinet, where it's made explicitly clear that science from that department will be clear of political influences, then you have that department choose to fund access to journals deemed worthy by a board of prominent scientists. In essence, you have the scientists choosing which publications to support, which interestingly is exactly the advantage you list for the current system.
So now the journal is chosen by reason, is less subject to capricious market forces, and you have public access. This really seems win-win-win.
The choice of which journals to support is opinion, which frightens many because it requires a certain level of trust, but I'd much more trust publicly accountable people in an open process over the so-called free market when it comes to promoting science.
Why the hell would you compare military spending to the GDP? That doesn't make any sense, unless you are looking for something to dwarf military spending, and there isn't much that does. In fact, GDP is about the only thing that *does* dwarf the US military budget!
Your "reference" page lists the military budget as 49% of the discretionary spending in 2003 (the last year listed). I suspect that that number doesn't even *count* the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are left out of many budget reports (hey look, we've decreased the budget deficit. All we had to do was not count all the money we spend, wee!).
The US spends more money on the military than every other nation combined (the site you linked to has that number at just above 90% of the rest of the world's spending for 2002, on an upward trend). It's half of US discretionary spending. Only a moron could claim that that's not 'colossal'.
I wrote:
US courts do indeed recognize the notion that a journalist has the right to refuse to disclose a confidential source. That's why the asshole who outed Valerie Plame isn't in jail.
You wrote:
That's false. Two journalists, Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, have been held in contempt and ordered jailed for refusing to disclose their sources in the Valerie Plame matter.
In other words, the asshole who outed Valerie Plame isn't in jail? That doesn't bode well for your claim.
A federal appeals court recently upheld those rulings, on the basis that there is no First Amendment protection for journalists "to conceal the criminal conduct of his source."
And I never claimed the First Amendment gave journalists the right to, "to conceal the criminal conduct of his source."
You're making the mistake of treating the issue as though it has to be absolutely a First Amendment guaranteed right, or not considered in the courts at all. I've stated that the courts do have a notion of the need to allow a journalist to keep their sources confidential. That's why Novak isn't in jail right now (either that, or he already sung, in which case it raises the question of why the other journalists are in jail).
Allow me to spell it out more simply for you:
The courts are nervous about forcing journalists to reveal sources. One strong reason behind this is the First Amendment. Although the First Amendment does not grant the inalienable right to protect the anonymity of your sources, it does make clear that a free press is of great importance. This is clearly what I meant by the courts having a "notion". You are absolutely wrong in thinking I'm wrong here.
It was Novak who publicly outed Valerie Plame, but because the courts don't feel comfortable forcing journalists to talk if there's an alternative. In sort of an ironic way, the alternative resources for the courts in this case are other journalists, but Novak is at the center, so the courts are being consistent when going after the other journalists first. Novak has potentially violated federal law related to national security. The other journalists have not.
What would you call it, if not a "notion" (which is the word the original poster used) where the courts take into consideration that they don't want to lightly force a journalist to reveal sources, but will still do it?
You are right that the courts can and do hold journalists in contempt for not revealing sources. Unfortunately for you, I never claimed otherwise.
What good are dictionary definitions, when we all have different dictionaries?
The usefulness of dictionary definitions is extremely obvious (at least, it should be). If, for example, you don't know what I meant by "obvious", wouldn't you consult a dictionary? Yeah, there is subjectiveness and nuance, but it seems glib to dismiss the dictionary altogether!
Assuming a common definition of such a term is really not possible.
Why would one assume a common definition is not possible? The debate does contain subjectiveness, but not so much as to throw out the notion of a definition to work off of. The question isn't, "is it good journalism" or "is it reliable journalism," or anything other than, "is it journalism?". That's the first question to ask. The rest follows, and is valid to discuss, but let's see if we can answer the first one before moving on.
It just sticks out as bordering on absurd to think that we'd consider mainstream journalism to be journalism, but have a debate over whether a blog is or isn't journalism, the debate should really be the other way around.
It's like we've all come to call microwaving food "cooking", then along comes a new craze of preparing meals from scratch, and wondering if it really should be called "cooking" since it doesn't come pre-packaged from the store.
Blogging is more journalism than mainstream journalism is. It seems to me we're focusing on the wrong side.
I have thought about it, and I have no idea what you mean, since you don't actually give a definition.
Had you checked a dictionary, you could have saved yourself a huge amount of typing.
Being "journalism" has nothing to do with peer-review. I do agree fully that review is beneficial, but journalism is essentially a journal of current news. A blog (about news) is almost as pure an example of the definition of "journalism" as possible. Since blogs don't have to sell ads, you get a more pure experience (a *huge* portion of the news, even if you don't count advertising, isn't really anything that should be considered 'news'), which is kind of my point. To ask if blogging is journalism shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what journalism actually is!
It's quite ironic, actually. What we currently call journalism isn't really a good example of journalism, but this new thing (blogging) comes along that is far more consistent with the definition of the word, and so-called journalists are asking whether or not this new thing is actually journalism!
Uh... last I checked, US courts do not recognize the notion that a journalist has the right to refuse to disclose a confidential source.
Uh... (god I hate posts that start with, "Uh...") you need to check harder. US courts do indeed recognize the notion that a journalist has the right to refuse to disclose a confidential source. That's why the asshole who outed Valerie Plame isn't in jail.
What they don't recognize is an absolute and inalienable right to maintain a source's confidentiality. The difference is subtle, but there does exist, within the courts, the notion that you don't lightly take to throwing a journalist in jail for keeping a source confidential.
First of all, it's about protecting the First Amendment's prohibition against abridging freedom of the press. It's reasonable to hold that a free press needs some level of protection against being forced to reveal sources.
Second, the courts will throw journalists in jail for contempt of court, but often try to exhaust other means of gaining the information (from other people) first.
Mod parent horizontally +/-0 Rumsfeld.
You actually made a completely logically consistent response, which looks like it answer the question, but doesn't at all.
The question isn't, "is a blog journalism?" It's, "is blogging jounralism?" (in other words, it's not, "is the medium a discipline?" as you claim, it's "is one discipline a subset of another discipline?")
So yeah, blogging is journalism if it's about timely news. It's not coincidence that "journalism" starts with the word "journal".
Online bloggers (in various forms) who pretend to be journalists are upset that courts ruled that bloggers who pretend to be journalists aren't really journalists.
Now if we could only get network "personalities" who pretend to be journalists ruled not journalists, we could actually make some progress!
Cable news "personalities" calling themselves journalists is, more often than not, like someone watching a meteor shower calling themself an astronomer.
Are you kidding?!?! At least your hypothetical "astronomer" is actually doing something that, however amateur, actually involves astronomy!
Given the definition of the word journalism, I'd say blogs are more journalism than the current big media so-called "journalism". Think about it.
The site http://www.clavius.org/ really belongs in the body of the post. It answers in depth every "reason" why it's impossible to have landed on the Moon.
If you have your doubts, or otherwise find yourself giving credence to the Apollo hoax theories, you owe it to yourself to visit that site. There's nothing wrong with questioning government and understanding that it's possible (possible != probable, and as hard as it was to land on the Moon, imagine how much harder it would be to fake it in an open society where not only would you have to trick hundreds of thousands of engineers and support personnel as well as thousands of scientists, but also the astronauts who are still alive today and have not contradicted the stories, all the while you can't have made a single mistake that would expose the conspiracy!) that the Moon landings were faked, but this is a case where the evidence is fully on the side of the conventional story.
This is old news. Lord Vader visited the troops something like two thanksgivings ago!
Either way, I think the way she was quoted was ... appalling.
Your use of the ellipsis makes me wonder if you didn't misquote yourself.
There are two possibilities here:
1.) You wrote: "Either way, I think the way she was quoted was," then paused dramatically, and finished up with, "appalling."
2.) You wrote: "Either way, I think the way she was quoted was absolutely wonderful, and the fact that I instantly thought 'MISQUOTE!' is abjectly appalling."
The actual MP3 is here. It's not even on a streaming server; you have to download the whole thing. This is a step backwards to 1999 technology.
Dude, you got this so wrong.
A 'podcast' is where you have a program which automatically downloads mp3's by checking an RSS feed, and copies them over to iTunes for your iPod (you don't actually have to have an iPod, but the whole experience is designed with the iPod in mind, hence the name). This is like TiVo for your Internet broadcasts, this is far superior to streaming audio. Streaming is so Marconi!
It's one guy, talking. And he's boring. This isn't Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's more like "shut up, I'm watching the show".
This is like another modern technology you appear to be unfamiliar with--the DVD. Once you've watched a show, you can watch it again with commentary, that's what this commentary is for. Again, via a podcast this is vastly superior to the DVD method (omigod, imagine if this had been around when B5 was on!).
Incidentally, if you're shipping out voice recorded with one microphone, both channels are the same and there's no reason to send it in stereo. Just bloats the file.
Oh so true. Fortunately the guys at SciFi know this (not terribly surprising that a television network would understand the 'vagaries' of audio channels, lol), and made the file mono.
There's absolutely no way I haven't just been trolled...
everyone jumping on the bandwagon of this new and great thing
I get the notion, AmigaAvenger, that it takes a while for you to warm up to new technologies...
First of all, Apple can't violate the First Amendment, since it applies to Congress.
The story submission does not state that "Apple violated the first amendment", but that Apple's actions are a potential "threat to first amendment rights". There's a huge difference.
Apple is using the government in an attempt to (effectively, and directly) shut down Think Secret as a press agency in the way it exists today. That's clear first amendment territory.
OK, it's more nuanced than that, right?
Someone violated an agreement they had with Apple. Think Secret did not violate an agreement they had with Apple.
OK, it's more nuanced than that, right?
Think Secret solicits people to break their confidentiality agreements. Should that be illegal? Should it be against the law for me to ask you about information you contractually agreed to keep private? Isn't it your obligation to keep your trap shut? This clearly has first amendment implications, and Apple is a party to them.
It's sort of an awkward situation. TS is completely in the rights, but so is Apple. The system is fouled up, but what's the more critical right, the right for Apple to keep something secret (after telling people about it--this isn't a case of someone seeking to force Apple to release proprietary info--which ironically is what they are demanding of TS, and besides the point, it's already legal to force corporations to release proprietary info), or TS's right and ability to publish legitimate industry rumors?
First you say they have the "morals" forced upon them by the group (the market).
Then you say that the group has no right to force upon them any morals.
This highlights the internal contradiction of the free market (there is no such thing, it's a model we use to describe the actual market and it's important to know the limitations of the model if you are to avoid conclusions which contradict reality).
We do have the "power" (I think you meant "right") to impose our morals on others. That's never been the debate. The debate is to what extent we use that power, and what set of morals are imposed. Even the most libertarian of free marketers seeks to impose his morals on others. When you make the claim that the issue is over imposing morals or not, someone will call you on your contradiction, then use that to say, "you pushing your morals (of equality, justice, the like) is the same as me pushing my morals (of discrimination, forced religion, torture, etc)."
The question of what moral responsibility game programmers (or publishers) have is a valid one. They do bear responsibility for their actions, and the foreseeable effects, just like anyone. If you write a game that you could reasonably believe will cause people to die, you are morally complicant in the deaths your game causes in that regard. You can mitigate responsibility by including disclaimers (prominently--if people aren't likely to read them, they really can't count as disclaimers, think about it), or any other reasonable action.
It's really hard to legislate morality, because it's easy to go overboard, and there is no shortage of people who want just that. But if we can't legislate any morality, then murder, for example, can't be made illegal. The problem is there are also people who want no moral responsibility for their actions. Just like it's important to understand when legislated morality goes overboard, it's important to understand when its inadequate. It's often difficult (or impossible) to tell which is which, but if you hold moral absolutes (whether the religious right set of absolutes, or the neo-con capitalist set, among others), you increase the odds of being wrong one way or the other.
Turn. Off. Unused. Services.
Those are good words for OS makers and sysadmins. It's very poor advice for home users, because the target audience can't be assumed to understand what that means. The OS really needs to be designed with this in mind. MS fails on that miserably, crossing into the realm of liability for damages IMO.
The most hilarious thing to me when someone gets hacked is looking at their box and a simple nmap shows every port under gods lcd monitor open.
That can only be funny if they should have known better. That's not something your average XP user can realistically be expected to even have the slightest of clues on.
This news isn't news. What's news is this news is in the news!
So then it is news. Otherwise the news that it's in the news couldn't be news.
A song isn't a secret, nor is it in any way expected to be kept private. Additionally, songs don't harm people the same way the bank data can.
All arguments for the current atmosphere of draconian copyright laws are based on simplistic analogies like yours.
Songs are not the same as physical property, songs are not the same as private data, songs are not the same as trade secrets. How is that so damn hard for some people to understand?
No one forces you to buy anthing, so I can't see how they "ripped you off enough".
Simply not physically forcing someone to buy something is enough to make it impossible to have ripped them off? Do you even know that "ripped off" means?
You are simply rationalizing your theft. Much like an employee who "suplements his unfair pay" by stealing from his company.
You are simply rationalizing treating IP infringement as equal to theft. Stealing physical goods from your employer is not the same as copying a song, and you're being either simple-minded or disingenuous to claim otherwise.
Your logic is as follows:
A cow is an animal. A sheep is an animal. Therefore a cow is a sheep.
Theft is stealing, copyright infringement is called stealing, but they aren't the same. Don't treat them the same. IP infringement and theft share some characteristics, and there are certainly arguments for protecting IP rights, but they are not identical to the arguments for protecting physical property rights, nor the same for protecting land property rights. They are all different, and all must be dealt with differently.
Is the content on this media server going to stuff you own or have permission to distribute?
Would that affect Apache's ability to serve the files?