The only way to have a truly free government is to have a government that protects only against force and fraud. That way you have freedom to do whatever you want to while being safe because of the government.
Safety is relative, and the terms "force" and "fraud" are vague and ill-defined, and even if they were well-defined it would have zero relevance to safety. I'm sorry, but society tends towards increasing, not decreasing, complexity as the method of advancing social justice and adapting to changes in our environment. Reducing complexity would, necessarily, make it less adaptive to its surroundings (which are in a constantly increasing state of entropy) and the end result would be an increase in chaos. Over a long enough timeframe, it would become indistinguishable from anarchy.
There is no way you can argue for marijuana to not be legalized by a purely financial standpoint.
The evidence strongly suggests that regular use of marijuana impairs short-term memory, amongst other things. It continues to effect the person for days or weeks, unlike many other kinds of drugs. I'm not good enough with statistics to venture a guess on the impact on productivity at a societal level, but I'm confident it would dwarf the DEA's budget. Are you really that sure that the tax revenue and private sector profits would outweigh that loss?
A real democracy would be a disaster, simply because most people lack the inclination to become educated on the large number of social issues. As well, civil rights improvements have historically been championed by a small, but vocal and active minority. The majority would have us praying to giant fifty foot jesus statues every morning, driving at only the posted speed in the fast lane would be punishable by summary execution, hunting licenses for gays would be introduced, and the list goes on.
I am quite comfortable with handing power over to a few elected officials that have some semblance of a conscience, or lacking that, at least the business sense to sell out at a decent price. The average person would sell their freedom of speech for a double-scoop of ice cream.
I think I see a flaw in your cunning plan, Mr. President: The people who voted for you are also online. And dear god, are they stupid. Don't feel bad though; The ones that voted for the other guy aren't any smarter. -_- But then, what did you really expect? Given a choice between democracy and educated civil discourse, or a large smack of porn and screaming matches, 9 out of 10 internet users prefer the latter. And the 10th one was a cat walking over the keyboard.
Face it, the vast majority of time people spend on the internet is wasted in stupid, distracting ways. Al,l that interaction and people in contact with one another? For what?
Yeah, before the internet we had to read crappy romance novels. Now we have fanfics. Technology changes... People don't.
Sorry for the typo in the second sentence. My girlfriend sat down in her bra and panties in front of the air conditioner as I was writing that. Yes, that's just as distracting for us as for you, guys. -_-
I still go to the library-- Because I'm poor, and need to get my e-mail and stay in touch with friends online, search for jobs, and more. To the man who calls the internet less worthwhile than the internet: Sir, how does it feel being a dinosaur? Our generation is the first to realize that we will never be able to reach a point in our lives where we can afford to be out of date and set in our ways. The internet is largely responsible for that, because it ensures that we can share our collective insights and experiences with each other and the world almost instantly. Now get off my lawn--I mean, LCD.
Get a voltage regulator and a couple deep cycle marine batteries. You'd be amazed what fifty pounds of battery can accomplish. -_- Maybe the problem here is "Battery life" is a poor measurement in the first place. There's no frame of reference, for one, and for two, it varies by how you use it. Miles per Gallon is also affected by your driving style. Why do people assume statistics for computers would somehow be more objective?
In other news, people use laptops in places without a wall outlet? Inconceivable! I've never seen such madness...;)
Okay, you want a faster network that doesn't have multiple layers, encryption, etc.? Fine -- use the NSA, CIA, FBI, DHS, ABC, NBC, LMNOP supported and approved network. Sorry to break it to you guys, but a global, multinational, digital, and public communications network is going to have interests on it you aren't going to like or want to see what you're sending. This is true no matter who you are. That's the nature of a PUBLIC communications network. Suck it up. Our governments inability to protect our rights, combined with the corporate and multinational interests killed so-called freedom. Now we have to pay a premium to have it back.
Be glad speed is the only thing you're losing in this deal. Historically, you stood to lose a whole lot more for these kinds of innovations. Like your life.
Hey, reality called -- electric cars take time to charge (on the order of a few hours) and they only have a range of a hundred miles or so. For vehicles like taxis with such a heavy duty cycle, you have two options: Add more cars to the fleet to compensate for the lengthy charge times, or use something that can be refuelled quickly and has range similar to gas. Natural gas-powered is the only potentially viable alternative, and at that, the fuel density is still below that of gasoline. Don't just shout "Go green!" because it's politically vogue. It also needs to be economically feasible.
This isn't an attack on "violent video games" per se, but rather the government responding to the economic crisis by applying sin taxes on a variety of goods, such as liquor, cigarettes, gas, electric, water, (the last three under the guise of "conservation"), and so on. Anything that is not a majority-use good or has any kind of social stigma will be taxed.
The GP was advocating revolution in the US, which is a bad idea. My point was that if you have enough power to start a revolution, you will have enough power to elect a president.
You're putting words in my mouth. I'm not advocating anything except a reassessment of our values, which is a far cry from revolution. That said, the traditional elements required to start a coup de etat in this country are now present: High levels of poverty, frustration with the goverment, restriction of civil liberties, the expansion of police powers to record levels, the all-consuming quest for secrecy on the part of our government officials. The general public is pissed right now. If you're going to ignore all the social factors, plug your ears, and go "la la la", by all means do it. But I'm not so stupid to believe my country is infallable. The kind of blind patriotism that's being advocated today is just that -- blind. And our founding fathers wanted an educated and aware populace more than anything because THAT is what stops a revolution, not idiotic "we are invincible!" values. Which, by the way, if someone ever utters that around you, run like hell because death is usually instantanious after that, at least in every movie I've seen.
Why? I assume you are talking about a violent revolution? How many people do you think you would need supporting you in order to stage a revolution? 30%? 60%? If your revolution is going to be successful, you'll need more people for you than against you.
You're an idiot if you think you need a majority to have a revolution. In truth, you may need as few as a hundred people, well placed and educated. Or you need billions, all mildly receptive to the idea. It depends on what is at stake, the will of the people, and a long list of other social intangibles. It's better to look at it in terms of social pressure than by mere numbers. A dozen people highly dedicated to a cause caused trillions of dollars in damage to this economy recently. It wasn't a revolution, but what if there had been a hundred, instead of a dozen? The Soviet Union fell in a matter of hours. The Berlin Wall came down in a week. You think the United States is somehow more impervious to this? That it couldn't crumble under a coup de etat? If you think that, you're being naive.
The bottom line is that national security has become such an all-consuming goal for our government precisely because these intangible social factors point to this country being in a period of extreme suseptibility to losing control of its population, hence the aggressive need for suppression of free speech, excessive demands for secrecy, and the sudden and rapid reduction of civil liberties. They're trying to keep people from getting together in any large numbers and getting the idea in their head that now is the time for change and something spontanious develops and rips the guts out of the institution.
Which is exactly how it happens -- not with a bang, but a whisper.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
You should read the rest of the document too, you might be startled to realize just how many of the reasons our country separated from its original government (the british) are presently true and in force. Frankly, secret treaties, secret courts, secret laws, and everything behind the veil of National Security... has now descended to matters as trivial as copyright. I think it's time to reconsider our perogative as Americans.
People, you live under a government that believes public property is a public nuisance and liability. Ownership creates both liability and responsibility, which are critical tools to governmental use and control of a thing. If they could, they'd legislate a tax on air consumption, because air shouldn't be free (they've already done this on food and water, but air remains elusive). Even at that, we have air quality standards and emissions controls and all this talk about global warming. Even things that have no real physical counterpart (copyrights on digital copies of things) still adhere to this concept of "no public ownership".
All Google is doing is fulfilling your government's vision of having everything owned.
It's not a micromanagement choice when he's responsible for a government that has perhaps 50,000 workstations, each needing a $200-300 license. Conservatively. I have no idea how many workstations the entire state educational system has, but I'd bet 50,000 is a lowball estimate. But still, that's $10 million, minimum, for an upgrade. For an educational agency's budget, that's not small potatoes. That could pay for the salaries of 57 primary school teachers for the next 5 years. The fact that the upgrade has questionable value for the educational agencies in the state is a supporting point! Why spend that much money for something with no real return on investment? Or, we could just ignore the huge economic question here and cry "evil microsoft!" or "how dare they single out a single company!" Yes... Those arguments make so much more sense than it's uneconomical.
Let me just point out that it's very cold in space. Even with the sun nearby, I think we'd all experience at least a little bit of shrinkage if we were in Jupiter's position and it's not fair for the other planets to laugh at him.
Venus: That's what every man says. The truth is, you're just upset that Saturn has over 200 satellites to your... uhh... 63. Plus, you've completely lost control of your weight these past few millenia and have horrible acne. Seriously, clean up your atmosphere and do something about those red splotches and maybe you'll have a chance with some of the inner planets.
whoa. whoa boy. A lot of good points, but you are mistaken about the level of self-employment. Read this. They quote 25%. I know the amount of freelance work done is more -- even graphic designers who have a permanent position do it on the side. It's just the lifestyle we have. As to market saturation, i don't know where you live, but here in Minneapolis/St. Paul, all my contacts say we have more candidates than positions right now. And I know how many design companies are out there. I also know a lot of them are sole proprietorships with less than 25 employees -- it's freelancing "plus"... Everyone has a graphic design "business" on the side. Few of them are making much money.
I agree that Joe Average can churn out a simple newsletter and do simple layouts. Which is all a lot of people need. But running a marketing campaign, or designing an art catalog, submitting to a magazine -- they wouldn't know a bleed margin from a x-line, or Helvetica from Century Schoolbook.:) Absolutely there's a need, but for small projects that publish directly to the web or a small circulation they can print at Kinkos? Not so much.
There's this talk about how blogging is changing things. It is, but is it doing so in a good way? Nearly all blogs are little more than a news aggregate. All they provide in the way of content is commenting and maybe some editorializing.
I didn't say it would be an improvement. Frankly, the quality of news in general has gone down in recent years. Few people have time to do fact-checking and research and a lot of embarassments have happened in recent times. Blogging only lowers the professional responsibility to uphold journalistic integrity another notch. And as to bias, you're right again! But most people don't want unbiased news. Witness the Fox News Network, or the Rush Limbaugh Show, or Larry King... dear god, it's horrible out there. But people are buying it.
Another problem is that people want everything spoon-fed in bite-sized doses. How many people actually read full articles and don't just read sensationalist headlines and maybe skim over the summary.
There's more information on a soup label today than most people's knowledge of the world a hundred years ago was. We are swimming in information; When you're faced with so much data, you're going to skim, look for key phrases, and try to "surf" it rather than "absorb" it. That's just human nature. The media needs to adapt to this, because most people can't read 500 WPM at post-doctorate level like most of us can. The average reading comprehension is 5th grade, and you're lucky if they have ever read a book cover to cover in their life. That's why people still spend so much time watching TV instead of the internet -- they can't type as fast and they can't read as fast. The average person can listen to a conversation (about 200-300WPM) faster than they can read. So any news publication will need to adapt to that reality, not the other way around.
despite this I do think that the internet has real value and will probably bring about positive change. The problems I describe are probably symptoms of American media in general, but from what I've seeing the web isn't really helping.
The problem is not limited to "american media". We're just ahead of the curve.
You know, we don't bite. We make good friends. Most of my friends are geeks. Just not necessarily computer geeks. If you had any idea how attractive a man who can be topical in conversation is, you'd probably stop caring about how "manly" your laptop looks. And kick yourself for all the missed opportunities. If I were you, I'd work on small talk more than shop talk.
Disconnect. Bad plan, darlings. Journalism is undergoing a paradigm shift right now in the same way graphics design underwent it. Before the 1990s, we had separate jobs for typesetting, graphic artist, layout, etc. All that went out the window when the PC came along and suddenly anyone could make a newsletter using PageMaker. The demand for all that graphic design footwork -- needing to hire a team of people to design it, imploded. What came out of it was the versatile graphic designer -- a jack of all trades. Journalism until recently had many different career paths. With the collapse of the printed media and an entire generation growing up used to the idea of instant access to everything, cross-referenced and streaming on demand -- deadlines have gone from a day to a few minutes. How long does it take to get indexed into google so people can search for your article? That time difference is the new deadline. And audiences aren't local anymore -- they are global.
Reconnect. Our collective knowledge is also heavily slanted to the global and national level now. For example, up here in Minnesota, a recent "local" story has been the flooding near Fargo, ND and Moorhead, MN along the Red river. When I asked my friends who would be willing to car pool up with me to help sandbagging efforts last friday (the story had been out for a good week) -- only one of my friends had any knowledge of the event, out of about 15 people I asked. Local news doesn't exist anymore for our generation. Strange, but true. Of course, they ALL knew about major national and global events. Our communities really are losing their geographical ties.
I see the future of journalism being somewhat akin to blogging. Journalists simply pick their own interest and self-direct their energies towards it. Interested parties will, via word of mouth and advertisement, come to know that particular journalist. A one-to-many relationship. The sources for these stories will be the readers of those stories. Slashdot is a decent example of what journalism will come to resemble -- open, online forums that are dedicated to particular communities. But I highly doubt that in the journalism to come that people will simply visit one website for their needs. It'll probably look more like Google news -- RSS feeds that we select and create lists of journalists who are involved in fields we have a mutual interest in.
Journalism will become, much like graphic design, at least half or more self-employed or contract/temp work in the next ten years. And we'll come to know journalists by name, instead of by what network or paper they represent.
Look up UMA on T-Mobile. My BlackBerry Curve 8320 supports it, so I use my WiFi for voice calls when I'm at home.
I have t-mobile. Their wireless offerings have the suck at least in the Minneapolis/St.Paul market. the latencies make skype unusable; web pages take 10-30 seconds to display, etc. And t-mobile's phones are generally as locked down as any other vendor. See also: Ringtones.
First, labeling people and sorting them into categories is a problem. Not because it isn't useful, but because the audience here is much more likely to view those as absolutes than guidelines. Whenever people start arbitrarily dividing other people into groups, they are certain to be mislead to a degree. A person's demeanor and work habits are not necessarily a reflection on their inner nature. Assuming that one is the other is a bad plan. Use labels, prejudices, stereotypes, and categories as a starting point. But don't stay there. Just because someone is an "organic inward completionist" this week doesn't mean you might not find out later while they're on break talking about a problem they're working on that the approach they are using is radically different.
Secondly, managing people (and working with management) is a skillset that is very individualized. There is no right or wrong approach. There is only what succeeds, and what still needs work. This book is useful because it condenses experience in a format that other people can benefit from. But remember when you read the book to keep your critical thinking skill "shield" up. Take frequent breaks. Don't zombie on it for fourty pages. Especially not anything that mixes technology and people. Because it's too easy to internalize all this stuff without stopping to think: "Hey, that doesn't make sense..." And a lot of personal experience doesn't make sense. There are lessons to be learned here and there, but what your takeaway is will be different than mine, even if we are in the same situation, and have the same experiences.
I would define not working as using Firefox 3.0.7, going into help and preferences off the main page, and under "your preferences" - "user info" - selecting "messages", then setting "comment reply" to "web"... and then having absolutely no change or popup or anything on any page I view. I'm at a loss for even knowing where "web messages" go. The feature isn't exactly documented. Slashdot mirrors linux documentation in that regard -- six thousand different program options and defaults, and about 3 sentences of "how to use me".
Slashdot Mirror
The only way to have a truly free government is to have a government that protects only against force and fraud. That way you have freedom to do whatever you want to while being safe because of the government.
Safety is relative, and the terms "force" and "fraud" are vague and ill-defined, and even if they were well-defined it would have zero relevance to safety. I'm sorry, but society tends towards increasing, not decreasing, complexity as the method of advancing social justice and adapting to changes in our environment. Reducing complexity would, necessarily, make it less adaptive to its surroundings (which are in a constantly increasing state of entropy) and the end result would be an increase in chaos. Over a long enough timeframe, it would become indistinguishable from anarchy.
There is no way you can argue for marijuana to not be legalized by a purely financial standpoint.
The evidence strongly suggests that regular use of marijuana impairs short-term memory, amongst other things. It continues to effect the person for days or weeks, unlike many other kinds of drugs. I'm not good enough with statistics to venture a guess on the impact on productivity at a societal level, but I'm confident it would dwarf the DEA's budget. Are you really that sure that the tax revenue and private sector profits would outweigh that loss?
A real democracy would be a disaster, simply because most people lack the inclination to become educated on the large number of social issues. As well, civil rights improvements have historically been championed by a small, but vocal and active minority. The majority would have us praying to giant fifty foot jesus statues every morning, driving at only the posted speed in the fast lane would be punishable by summary execution, hunting licenses for gays would be introduced, and the list goes on.
I am quite comfortable with handing power over to a few elected officials that have some semblance of a conscience, or lacking that, at least the business sense to sell out at a decent price. The average person would sell their freedom of speech for a double-scoop of ice cream.
I think I see a flaw in your cunning plan, Mr. President: The people who voted for you are also online. And dear god, are they stupid. Don't feel bad though; The ones that voted for the other guy aren't any smarter. -_- But then, what did you really expect? Given a choice between democracy and educated civil discourse, or a large smack of porn and screaming matches, 9 out of 10 internet users prefer the latter. And the 10th one was a cat walking over the keyboard.
Face it, the vast majority of time people spend on the internet is wasted in stupid, distracting ways. Al,l that interaction and people in contact with one another? For what?
Yeah, before the internet we had to read crappy romance novels. Now we have fanfics. Technology changes... People don't.
Sorry for the typo in the second sentence. My girlfriend sat down in her bra and panties in front of the air conditioner as I was writing that. Yes, that's just as distracting for us as for you, guys. -_-
I still go to the library-- Because I'm poor, and need to get my e-mail and stay in touch with friends online, search for jobs, and more. To the man who calls the internet less worthwhile than the internet: Sir, how does it feel being a dinosaur? Our generation is the first to realize that we will never be able to reach a point in our lives where we can afford to be out of date and set in our ways. The internet is largely responsible for that, because it ensures that we can share our collective insights and experiences with each other and the world almost instantly. Now get off my lawn--I mean, LCD.
Get a voltage regulator and a couple deep cycle marine batteries. You'd be amazed what fifty pounds of battery can accomplish. -_- Maybe the problem here is "Battery life" is a poor measurement in the first place. There's no frame of reference, for one, and for two, it varies by how you use it. Miles per Gallon is also affected by your driving style. Why do people assume statistics for computers would somehow be more objective?
In other news, people use laptops in places without a wall outlet? Inconceivable! I've never seen such madness... ;)
Okay, you want a faster network that doesn't have multiple layers, encryption, etc.? Fine -- use the NSA, CIA, FBI, DHS, ABC, NBC, LMNOP supported and approved network. Sorry to break it to you guys, but a global, multinational, digital, and public communications network is going to have interests on it you aren't going to like or want to see what you're sending. This is true no matter who you are. That's the nature of a PUBLIC communications network. Suck it up. Our governments inability to protect our rights, combined with the corporate and multinational interests killed so-called freedom. Now we have to pay a premium to have it back.
Be glad speed is the only thing you're losing in this deal. Historically, you stood to lose a whole lot more for these kinds of innovations. Like your life.
Hey, reality called -- electric cars take time to charge (on the order of a few hours) and they only have a range of a hundred miles or so. For vehicles like taxis with such a heavy duty cycle, you have two options: Add more cars to the fleet to compensate for the lengthy charge times, or use something that can be refuelled quickly and has range similar to gas. Natural gas-powered is the only potentially viable alternative, and at that, the fuel density is still below that of gasoline. Don't just shout "Go green!" because it's politically vogue. It also needs to be economically feasible.
The best technology upgrade those cabs could use is those little pine-shaped air fresheners.
This isn't an attack on "violent video games" per se, but rather the government responding to the economic crisis by applying sin taxes on a variety of goods, such as liquor, cigarettes, gas, electric, water, (the last three under the guise of "conservation"), and so on. Anything that is not a majority-use good or has any kind of social stigma will be taxed.
The GP was advocating revolution in the US, which is a bad idea. My point was that if you have enough power to start a revolution, you will have enough power to elect a president.
You're putting words in my mouth. I'm not advocating anything except a reassessment of our values, which is a far cry from revolution. That said, the traditional elements required to start a coup de etat in this country are now present: High levels of poverty, frustration with the goverment, restriction of civil liberties, the expansion of police powers to record levels, the all-consuming quest for secrecy on the part of our government officials. The general public is pissed right now. If you're going to ignore all the social factors, plug your ears, and go "la la la", by all means do it. But I'm not so stupid to believe my country is infallable. The kind of blind patriotism that's being advocated today is just that -- blind. And our founding fathers wanted an educated and aware populace more than anything because THAT is what stops a revolution, not idiotic "we are invincible!" values. Which, by the way, if someone ever utters that around you, run like hell because death is usually instantanious after that, at least in every movie I've seen.
Why? I assume you are talking about a violent revolution? How many people do you think you would need supporting you in order to stage a revolution? 30%? 60%? If your revolution is going to be successful, you'll need more people for you than against you.
You're an idiot if you think you need a majority to have a revolution. In truth, you may need as few as a hundred people, well placed and educated. Or you need billions, all mildly receptive to the idea. It depends on what is at stake, the will of the people, and a long list of other social intangibles. It's better to look at it in terms of social pressure than by mere numbers. A dozen people highly dedicated to a cause caused trillions of dollars in damage to this economy recently. It wasn't a revolution, but what if there had been a hundred, instead of a dozen? The Soviet Union fell in a matter of hours. The Berlin Wall came down in a week. You think the United States is somehow more impervious to this? That it couldn't crumble under a coup de etat? If you think that, you're being naive.
The bottom line is that national security has become such an all-consuming goal for our government precisely because these intangible social factors point to this country being in a period of extreme suseptibility to losing control of its population, hence the aggressive need for suppression of free speech, excessive demands for secrecy, and the sudden and rapid reduction of civil liberties. They're trying to keep people from getting together in any large numbers and getting the idea in their head that now is the time for change and something spontanious develops and rips the guts out of the institution.
Which is exactly how it happens -- not with a bang, but a whisper.
The Declaration of Independence warned us about this. Specifically:
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
You should read the rest of the document too, you might be startled to realize just how many of the reasons our country separated from its original government (the british) are presently true and in force. Frankly, secret treaties, secret courts, secret laws, and everything behind the veil of National Security... has now descended to matters as trivial as copyright. I think it's time to reconsider our perogative as Americans.
People, you live under a government that believes public property is a public nuisance and liability. Ownership creates both liability and responsibility, which are critical tools to governmental use and control of a thing. If they could, they'd legislate a tax on air consumption, because air shouldn't be free (they've already done this on food and water, but air remains elusive). Even at that, we have air quality standards and emissions controls and all this talk about global warming. Even things that have no real physical counterpart (copyrights on digital copies of things) still adhere to this concept of "no public ownership".
All Google is doing is fulfilling your government's vision of having everything owned.
It's not a micromanagement choice when he's responsible for a government that has perhaps 50,000 workstations, each needing a $200-300 license. Conservatively. I have no idea how many workstations the entire state educational system has, but I'd bet 50,000 is a lowball estimate. But still, that's $10 million, minimum, for an upgrade. For an educational agency's budget, that's not small potatoes. That could pay for the salaries of 57 primary school teachers for the next 5 years. The fact that the upgrade has questionable value for the educational agencies in the state is a supporting point! Why spend that much money for something with no real return on investment? Or, we could just ignore the huge economic question here and cry "evil microsoft!" or "how dare they single out a single company!" Yes... Those arguments make so much more sense than it's uneconomical.
Let me just point out that it's very cold in space. Even with the sun nearby, I think we'd all experience at least a little bit of shrinkage if we were in Jupiter's position and it's not fair for the other planets to laugh at him.
Venus: That's what every man says. The truth is, you're just upset that Saturn has over 200 satellites to your... uhh... 63. Plus, you've completely lost control of your weight these past few millenia and have horrible acne. Seriously, clean up your atmosphere and do something about those red splotches and maybe you'll have a chance with some of the inner planets.
whoa. whoa boy. A lot of good points, but you are mistaken about the level of self-employment. Read this. They quote 25%. I know the amount of freelance work done is more -- even graphic designers who have a permanent position do it on the side. It's just the lifestyle we have. As to market saturation, i don't know where you live, but here in Minneapolis/St. Paul, all my contacts say we have more candidates than positions right now. And I know how many design companies are out there. I also know a lot of them are sole proprietorships with less than 25 employees -- it's freelancing "plus"... Everyone has a graphic design "business" on the side. Few of them are making much money.
I agree that Joe Average can churn out a simple newsletter and do simple layouts. Which is all a lot of people need. But running a marketing campaign, or designing an art catalog, submitting to a magazine -- they wouldn't know a bleed margin from a x-line, or Helvetica from Century Schoolbook. :) Absolutely there's a need, but for small projects that publish directly to the web or a small circulation they can print at Kinkos? Not so much.
There's this talk about how blogging is changing things. It is, but is it doing so in a good way? Nearly all blogs are little more than a news aggregate. All they provide in the way of content is commenting and maybe some editorializing.
I didn't say it would be an improvement. Frankly, the quality of news in general has gone down in recent years. Few people have time to do fact-checking and research and a lot of embarassments have happened in recent times. Blogging only lowers the professional responsibility to uphold journalistic integrity another notch. And as to bias, you're right again! But most people don't want unbiased news. Witness the Fox News Network, or the Rush Limbaugh Show, or Larry King... dear god, it's horrible out there. But people are buying it.
Another problem is that people want everything spoon-fed in bite-sized doses. How many people actually read full articles and don't just read sensationalist headlines and maybe skim over the summary.
There's more information on a soup label today than most people's knowledge of the world a hundred years ago was. We are swimming in information; When you're faced with so much data, you're going to skim, look for key phrases, and try to "surf" it rather than "absorb" it. That's just human nature. The media needs to adapt to this, because most people can't read 500 WPM at post-doctorate level like most of us can. The average reading comprehension is 5th grade, and you're lucky if they have ever read a book cover to cover in their life. That's why people still spend so much time watching TV instead of the internet -- they can't type as fast and they can't read as fast. The average person can listen to a conversation (about 200-300WPM) faster than they can read. So any news publication will need to adapt to that reality, not the other way around.
despite this I do think that the internet has real value and will probably bring about positive change. The problems I describe are probably symptoms of American media in general, but from what I've seeing the web isn't really helping.
The problem is not limited to "american media". We're just ahead of the curve.
The patent is invalid. Everybody knows you need Crisco to do offshoring right. :\
You know, we don't bite. We make good friends. Most of my friends are geeks. Just not necessarily computer geeks. If you had any idea how attractive a man who can be topical in conversation is, you'd probably stop caring about how "manly" your laptop looks. And kick yourself for all the missed opportunities. If I were you, I'd work on small talk more than shop talk.
Disconnect. Bad plan, darlings. Journalism is undergoing a paradigm shift right now in the same way graphics design underwent it. Before the 1990s, we had separate jobs for typesetting, graphic artist, layout, etc. All that went out the window when the PC came along and suddenly anyone could make a newsletter using PageMaker. The demand for all that graphic design footwork -- needing to hire a team of people to design it, imploded. What came out of it was the versatile graphic designer -- a jack of all trades. Journalism until recently had many different career paths. With the collapse of the printed media and an entire generation growing up used to the idea of instant access to everything, cross-referenced and streaming on demand -- deadlines have gone from a day to a few minutes. How long does it take to get indexed into google so people can search for your article? That time difference is the new deadline. And audiences aren't local anymore -- they are global.
Reconnect. Our collective knowledge is also heavily slanted to the global and national level now. For example, up here in Minnesota, a recent "local" story has been the flooding near Fargo, ND and Moorhead, MN along the Red river. When I asked my friends who would be willing to car pool up with me to help sandbagging efforts last friday (the story had been out for a good week) -- only one of my friends had any knowledge of the event, out of about 15 people I asked. Local news doesn't exist anymore for our generation. Strange, but true. Of course, they ALL knew about major national and global events. Our communities really are losing their geographical ties.
I see the future of journalism being somewhat akin to blogging. Journalists simply pick their own interest and self-direct their energies towards it. Interested parties will, via word of mouth and advertisement, come to know that particular journalist. A one-to-many relationship. The sources for these stories will be the readers of those stories. Slashdot is a decent example of what journalism will come to resemble -- open, online forums that are dedicated to particular communities. But I highly doubt that in the journalism to come that people will simply visit one website for their needs. It'll probably look more like Google news -- RSS feeds that we select and create lists of journalists who are involved in fields we have a mutual interest in.
Journalism will become, much like graphic design, at least half or more self-employed or contract/temp work in the next ten years. And we'll come to know journalists by name, instead of by what network or paper they represent.
Look up UMA on T-Mobile. My BlackBerry Curve 8320 supports it, so I use my WiFi for voice calls when I'm at home.
I have t-mobile. Their wireless offerings have the suck at least in the Minneapolis/St.Paul market. the latencies make skype unusable; web pages take 10-30 seconds to display, etc. And t-mobile's phones are generally as locked down as any other vendor. See also: Ringtones.
First, labeling people and sorting them into categories is a problem. Not because it isn't useful, but because the audience here is much more likely to view those as absolutes than guidelines. Whenever people start arbitrarily dividing other people into groups, they are certain to be mislead to a degree. A person's demeanor and work habits are not necessarily a reflection on their inner nature. Assuming that one is the other is a bad plan. Use labels, prejudices, stereotypes, and categories as a starting point. But don't stay there. Just because someone is an "organic inward completionist" this week doesn't mean you might not find out later while they're on break talking about a problem they're working on that the approach they are using is radically different.
Secondly, managing people (and working with management) is a skillset that is very individualized. There is no right or wrong approach. There is only what succeeds, and what still needs work. This book is useful because it condenses experience in a format that other people can benefit from. But remember when you read the book to keep your critical thinking skill "shield" up. Take frequent breaks. Don't zombie on it for fourty pages. Especially not anything that mixes technology and people. Because it's too easy to internalize all this stuff without stopping to think: "Hey, that doesn't make sense..." And a lot of personal experience doesn't make sense. There are lessons to be learned here and there, but what your takeaway is will be different than mine, even if we are in the same situation, and have the same experiences.
I would define not working as using Firefox 3.0.7, going into help and preferences off the main page, and under "your preferences" - "user info" - selecting "messages", then setting "comment reply" to "web"... and then having absolutely no change or popup or anything on any page I view. I'm at a loss for even knowing where "web messages" go. The feature isn't exactly documented. Slashdot mirrors linux documentation in that regard -- six thousand different program options and defaults, and about 3 sentences of "how to use me".