That mirrors my experiences with it. I've twice built desktops from the minimal install package, which eats up a bit more than 24 hours. The machines were fast, looked nice, and behaved quite well. But, sooner or later, I'd intall a new update and something would go belly up. So, I don't use Gentoo anymore. I've got better things to do than learn the innards of yet another one-off packaging scheme.
That said, the Gentoo site and community are superb.
...and bitch about how all these Bad People are doung Bad Things, why don't the people who don't believe in copyright pay for their own little educational effort to tell the little boys and girls about the wonders of open source and Larry Lessig and all that?
Sometime you have to decide between actually trying to do something and preserving your own, and probably undeserved, sense of moral superiority.
I understand your argument about ownership. I don't accept it. You're talking about control, not ownership. If "the people" actually owned "the media", "the people" could transfer ownership. Clearly, they don't and can't.
Your constant coupling of "corporate" with "boot-lick", etc., certainly demonstrates that you believe these individuals' status as corporate employees influences their behavior. Otherwise, why focus on it?
If you see a person sitting along, reading a script, odds are that's the news. OK? If you see one or more people sitting around engaging in mock verbal combat, that's commentary and interpretation, not the news. (And it's not editorializing. Editorializing happens when the news outlet itself presents an opinion that represents the viewpoint of that source.) Inany case, whatever they do, I want them to clearly distinguish between news and comment.
If you want to redefine the word "own", I accept your statement. But ultimate control of media content as a result of individual purchasing decisions is not ownership. Your original post was not qualified in that fashion and asserted some sort of utopian and literal people's ownership of "the media".
If you're bothered by the "facial expressoins", "head bobs, sly winks and wry smiles" that you say you see and hear on TV and radio, and want to attribute them to corporate influence -- which you apparently do -- don't watch and don't listen.
News reporting is a subset of journalism and it is supposed to be "just the facts". People in the news profession are well aware of the difference between reporting the news and commenting on and interpreting the news. However, most content produced by outfits like CNN and Fox is really comment and interpretation, and they identify it as such. But the audience takes it as straight news and straight reporting. It is as if people claimed that Slashdot was a good sources of straight news.
>> The media does, in fact, belong to the people....
An assertion. Name a media outlet owned by "the people". If you are arguing that you believe "the media" ought to be owned by "the people", then state that explicitly. You'll need to define what you mean by "the media" and "the people".
>>...ratings suffer, advertisers leave... and it goes away.
An indicator of revenue. not ownership. The fact that I have an option to purchase a good or service does not mean I can claim ownership.
>> What I disdain are corporate shills..."
Don't we all. Who do you have in mind, specifically. (The word "corporate" is a popular and convenient slur these days that's used to label anyone who draws a paycheck.)
>>... all they seem to care about is putting some ridiculously transparent political spin on daily events.
Most of the airtime on the cable news channels and a goodly portion of airtime on the other networks is filled with talking head pundits, commentators and magazine shows. If those are the folks upsetting you, remember that they aren't producing news. They're commenting on the news, just like talk radio. Talk radio isn't braodcasting news; neither are all those paid yammerers.
You seem to be reading blogs that deliberately take a tongue-in-cheek approach. Fair enough. But there are those who argue that blogs are revoluionary news outlets because they will "tell the truth" without being burdened by corporate and financial pressures. I don't accept that. AS soon as a blog has the resources to actually engage in independent news gathering, it will b subject to the same pressures as any other commercial news outlets. (And there's no reason to believe a writer using a blog to publish is any less corruptable than a writer employed by a corporation.) ALmost all bloggers today key off of material and nws written and published elsewhere. That's what I meant by parasitic.
I don't know if Wonkette intends to be taken seriously or not, but that's not what I said. I said I didn't bookmark the site, which means I found it not worth reading.
The only revolutionary aspect about blogs is the lowered cost and increased ease of publishing. That's an attribute of the Internet, not blogs specifically.
The "media" doesn't belong to the people. It belongs to the folks who own it. Your local newspaper doesn't belong to you; it belongs to its owners. Don't confuse your right to free speech with a right to mandate what someone else's printing plant publishes.
I don't especially care to know the people writing my news or want them to feel "real" to me. In truth, however, we don't know any more about the people behind blogs than we do those corporate types you disdain with a knee jerk. Everything a blogger tells you about himself in order to appear "real" might be a lie. How would you know?
I want to consume news gathered and prepared by professional reporters who know how to write and how to keep their own perspectives and interpretations out of their product. A lot of what is packaged as "news" these days is not that, and I don't consume it. Now, there's nothing to stop bloggers from engaging in professional reporting, but almost all of them spend all their time telling us what they think. That's fine, but it has a much more in common with the world of talk radio, talking head pundits, Stern and Limbaugh than it does with professional reporting. And it is just as parasitic.
Don't think that my comments on blogs means I hold traditional media in the highest esteem. I don't. But I do believe that whatever influences and pressures negatively affect traditional media can and do affect blogging.
I read Wonkette a few times and I didn't bookmark her.
A lot of bloggers and their readers take blogging very seriously, arguing that blogs are a revolutionary assualt against the "Big Media" they hold in such contempt.
I think they're wrong. Whatever problems afflict traditional media will afflict bogs, 'cause they're media tools, too.
We're talking about look and feel here, not code. Apple sure didn't copy any of its OSX look and feel from BSD.
You don't make much sense claiming that Linux can't be copied because it's GPL'd, but, in any case, Linux is pretty much a white-room copy of Unix, so there you go.
Here's the point: Look and feel innovations have consistently come from the proprietary world, not from open source. There's gotta be a reason.
Well, we're talking about look and feel, not so much the underlying code. It's the fact that Lin-WhateverItIs looks just like someone else's products that's at issue.
And I wasn't trying to be funny with that post, moderators. Open source allows the proprietary market to establish its design standards. It just makes a few tweaks and tags along.
Ever wonder why Linux vendors copy Windows/Mac designs, and not the other way around? I mean, you don't see Steve Jobs holding a press conference to announce iPine, do you?
My understanding is that the Rutan craft will accelerate to a few times the speed of sound and then coast to 60 kilometers.
Remembering that achieving orbit is a matter of velocity, not altitude, is the Rutan design a dead end? I.e., could this design achieve orbit with the addition of a more powerful engine? (I know the easy answer is "Yes", but I'm asking if this particular design is capable of orbital flight.) If so, would the Rutan's rather unusual reentry approach work in a return from orbit?
Users don't care about complexity they don't see. And Proxy servers? Come on. Ninety nine-plus percent of users have never heard of (and will never hear or have a reason to hear of) proxy servers. Besides, isn't running a server just a tad complex when all you want to do is tell your browser: "Don't load these sites"?
Why not build this capability into browsers? Follow the cookies handling model.
Make it optional, stick it in "preferences", stock it with an initial list of spam sites, and give the user the ability to add additional sites, delete sites, and select/deselect the block.
If worms, virii, spam, etc. don't become more damaging than they are now, the status qou will be maintained.
If, on the other hand, bad guy capabilities increase until someone does something that takes lives and/or billions of dollars, then I think we'll see legislation to deal with it seriously.
Don't forget, too, that if the internet becomes too damn annoying or risky to use, people will stop using it. Seems to me that's a more likely way that my internet freedom will be restricted.
>> Shouldn't all humankind have a bit of a say in the morality issue?
Sure, every individual gets to decide for themselves about morality. "Humankind" is not some kind of group mind that can form a single opinion. "Humankind" is just 6 billion or so humans.
>> How do they exist? What makes them so?
Rights exist because we exist. No external agency exists that gives us rights; we are born and we are free. Society limits how we can exercise those rights by making distinctions between the legality and morality of instances of similar actions carried out in different circumstances. For, example: the act of killing a person in times of war or in self-defense versus killing the same person on a city street just before you take his wallet. Society says we have a right to do the former but not the latter. I say we are born free to do both, and that we, as a society, use different nomenclature and language to describe the same acts when their circumstances differ.
I'm not saying that murder is moral. I am saying, however, that the use of language like "you have no right to murder someone" means that society has decided to prohibit murder. If we have a right to kill in certain circumstances, we must have a right to kill in any circumstances, but society, fortunately, constrains our ability to exercise our rights when it is in the interests of that society.
I say it isn't immoral. That's all the authority I need. Don't know about you.
If you think we're better off living as scavengers and dieing in our third decade, watching most of the children we bear die before their first birthday, be my guest. I consider that a lot worse than our lives right now.
Rights don't need to be justified. They simply exist. They aren't gifts, because that implies a giver. It isn't a question of deciding if exercising a right will benefit anyone, because "benefit" is open to interpretation. (What benefits me may injure you, or vice versa. Even when we both exercising the same rights.)
It's both sophistic and sophomoric to argue by fabricated analogies that are designed to lead the other side away from the thrust of the issue. It's common, sadly, on/. It's also common among people who are ashamed to be human.
So... why behave like you're ashamed to be alive? Or as if it's immoral to change anything, anywhere? The same bogus belief that would oppose exploring for life on Europa would have kept humans in Africa scavenging for food and dieing before we're 30.
Using size as a determinant of an object's planet status ignores location. Why not decide that Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud objects are not planets, regardless of their size? If objects located in the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Cloud were comparable to traditional planets in terms of composition, number, behavior and location, it's doubtful that either the Belt or the Cloud would be considered discrete regions.
Slashdot Mirror
That mirrors my experiences with it. I've twice built desktops from the minimal install package, which eats up a bit more than 24 hours. The machines were fast, looked nice, and behaved quite well. But, sooner or later, I'd intall a new update and something would go belly up. So, I don't use Gentoo anymore. I've got better things to do than learn the innards of yet another one-off packaging scheme.
That said, the Gentoo site and community are superb.
"Greetings from Just About Everywhere Else -- the Den of Complacency. Where we live by the motto -- Peace through inferior fortitude"
...and bitch about how all these Bad People are doung Bad Things, why don't the people who don't believe in copyright pay for their own little educational effort to tell the little boys and girls about the wonders of open source and Larry Lessig and all that?
Sometime you have to decide between actually trying to do something and preserving your own, and probably undeserved, sense of moral superiority.
I understand your argument about ownership. I don't accept it. You're talking about control, not ownership. If "the people" actually owned "the media", "the people" could transfer ownership. Clearly, they don't and can't.
Your constant coupling of "corporate" with "boot-lick", etc., certainly demonstrates that you believe these individuals' status as corporate employees influences their behavior. Otherwise, why focus on it?
If you see a person sitting along, reading a script, odds are that's the news. OK? If you see one or more people sitting around engaging in mock verbal combat, that's commentary and interpretation, not the news. (And it's not editorializing. Editorializing happens when the news outlet itself presents an opinion that represents the viewpoint of that source.) Inany case, whatever they do, I want them to clearly distinguish between news and comment.
If the facial tics bother you, turn around.
If you want to redefine the word "own", I accept your statement. But ultimate control of media content as a result of individual purchasing decisions is not ownership. Your original post was not qualified in that fashion and asserted some sort of utopian and literal people's ownership of "the media".
If you're bothered by the "facial expressoins", "head bobs, sly winks and wry smiles" that you say you see and hear on TV and radio, and want to attribute them to corporate influence -- which you apparently do -- don't watch and don't listen.
News reporting is a subset of journalism and it is supposed to be "just the facts". People in the news profession are well aware of the difference between reporting the news and commenting on and interpreting the news. However, most content produced by outfits like CNN and Fox is really comment and interpretation, and they identify it as such. But the audience takes it as straight news and straight reporting. It is as if people claimed that Slashdot was a good sources of straight news.
>> The media does, in fact, belong to the people....
...ratings suffer, advertisers leave... and it goes away.
... all they seem to care about is putting some ridiculously transparent political spin on daily events.
An assertion. Name a media outlet owned by "the people". If you are arguing that you believe "the media" ought to be owned by "the people", then state that explicitly. You'll need to define what you mean by "the media" and "the people".
>>
An indicator of revenue. not ownership. The fact that I have an option to purchase a good or service does not mean I can claim ownership.
>> What I disdain are corporate shills..."
Don't we all. Who do you have in mind, specifically. (The word "corporate" is a popular and convenient slur these days that's used to label anyone who draws a paycheck.)
>>
Most of the airtime on the cable news channels and a goodly portion of airtime on the other networks is filled with talking head pundits, commentators and magazine shows. If those are the folks upsetting you, remember that they aren't producing news. They're commenting on the news, just like talk radio. Talk radio isn't braodcasting news; neither are all those paid yammerers.
You seem to be reading blogs that deliberately take a tongue-in-cheek approach. Fair enough. But there are those who argue that blogs are revoluionary news outlets because they will "tell the truth" without being burdened by corporate and financial pressures. I don't accept that. AS soon as a blog has the resources to actually engage in independent news gathering, it will b subject to the same pressures as any other commercial news outlets. (And there's no reason to believe a writer using a blog to publish is any less corruptable than a writer employed by a corporation.) ALmost all bloggers today key off of material and nws written and published elsewhere. That's what I meant by parasitic.
I don't know if Wonkette intends to be taken seriously or not, but that's not what I said. I said I didn't bookmark the site, which means I found it not worth reading.
The only revolutionary aspect about blogs is the lowered cost and increased ease of publishing. That's an attribute of the Internet, not blogs specifically.
The "media" doesn't belong to the people. It belongs to the folks who own it. Your local newspaper doesn't belong to you; it belongs to its owners. Don't confuse your right to free speech with a right to mandate what someone else's printing plant publishes.
I don't especially care to know the people writing my news or want them to feel "real" to me. In truth, however, we don't know any more about the people behind blogs than we do those corporate types you disdain with a knee jerk. Everything a blogger tells you about himself in order to appear "real" might be a lie. How would you know?
I want to consume news gathered and prepared by professional reporters who know how to write and how to keep their own perspectives and interpretations out of their product. A lot of what is packaged as "news" these days is not that, and I don't consume it. Now, there's nothing to stop bloggers from engaging in professional reporting, but almost all of them spend all their time telling us what they think. That's fine, but it has a much more in common with the world of talk radio, talking head pundits, Stern and Limbaugh than it does with professional reporting. And it is just as parasitic.
Don't think that my comments on blogs means I hold traditional media in the highest esteem. I don't. But I do believe that whatever influences and pressures negatively affect traditional media can and do affect blogging.
I read Wonkette a few times and I didn't bookmark her.
A lot of bloggers and their readers take blogging very seriously, arguing that blogs are a revolutionary assualt against the "Big Media" they hold in such contempt.
I think they're wrong. Whatever problems afflict traditional media will afflict bogs, 'cause they're media tools, too.
We're talking about look and feel here, not code. Apple sure didn't copy any of its OSX look and feel from BSD.
You don't make much sense claiming that Linux can't be copied because it's GPL'd, but, in any case, Linux is pretty much a white-room copy of Unix, so there you go.
Here's the point: Look and feel innovations have consistently come from the proprietary world, not from open source. There's gotta be a reason.
Well, we're talking about look and feel, not so much the underlying code. It's the fact that Lin-WhateverItIs looks just like someone else's products that's at issue.
And I wasn't trying to be funny with that post, moderators. Open source allows the proprietary market to establish its design standards. It just makes a few tweaks and tags along.
Ever wonder why Linux vendors copy Windows/Mac designs, and not the other way around? I mean, you don't see Steve Jobs holding a press conference to announce iPine, do you?
If you knowingly publish something that is inaccurate simply to score a scoop, you're unethical (otherwise known as a liar).
If bloggers want to be taken seriously as journalists, they can't take Denton's easy way out.
Because Amazon tells potential customers upfront what they're doing with the data generated in a search, it isn't a privacy issue.
If you agree to an interview with the local TV news anchor, are you going to whine about privacy when they run the clip at 11 o'clock?
If you don't won't Amazon to store data about you, don't use it.
My understanding is that the Rutan craft will accelerate to a few times the speed of sound and then coast to 60 kilometers.
Remembering that achieving orbit is a matter of velocity, not altitude, is the Rutan design a dead end? I.e., could this design achieve orbit with the addition of a more powerful engine? (I know the easy answer is "Yes", but I'm asking if this particular design is capable of orbital flight.) If so, would the Rutan's rather unusual reentry approach work in a return from orbit?
You know, the idea of a personal computer is to avoid having the ask someone for permission to use it.
..I'd rather see them earn their $60 million by flying 300,000 passengers at $200 than 3 passengers at $20 million each.
There's nothing in the current ISS infrastructure that will allow you or me to fly to orbit.
It's all symbols, whether you use a "(", a "{", a "Begin", a "DO" or whatever. The machine is blind to all of it and doesn't care.
Some folks like to work with words, and some folks like to work with squiggly lines.
Users don't care about complexity they don't see. And Proxy servers? Come on. Ninety nine-plus percent of users have never heard of (and will never hear or have a reason to hear of) proxy servers. Besides, isn't running a server just a tad complex when all you want to do is tell your browser: "Don't load these sites"?
Why not build this capability into browsers? Follow the cookies handling model.
Make it optional, stick it in "preferences", stock it with an initial list of spam sites, and give the user the ability to add additional sites, delete sites, and select/deselect the block.
Like most things, it depends.
If worms, virii, spam, etc. don't become more damaging than they are now, the status qou will be maintained.
If, on the other hand, bad guy capabilities increase until someone does something that takes lives and/or billions of dollars, then I think we'll see legislation to deal with it seriously.
Don't forget, too, that if the internet becomes too damn annoying or risky to use, people will stop using it. Seems to me that's a more likely way that my internet freedom will be restricted.
>> Shouldn't all humankind have a bit of a say in the morality issue?
Sure, every individual gets to decide for themselves about morality. "Humankind" is not some kind of group mind that can form a single opinion. "Humankind" is just 6 billion or so humans.
>> How do they exist? What makes them so?
Rights exist because we exist. No external agency exists that gives us rights; we are born and we are free. Society limits how we can exercise those rights by making distinctions between the legality and morality of instances of similar actions carried out in different circumstances. For, example: the act of killing a person in times of war or in self-defense versus killing the same person on a city street just before you take his wallet. Society says we have a right to do the former but not the latter. I say we are born free to do both, and that we, as a society, use different nomenclature and language to describe the same acts when their circumstances differ.
I'm not saying that murder is moral. I am saying, however, that the use of language like "you have no right to murder someone" means that society has decided to prohibit murder. If we have a right to kill in certain circumstances, we must have a right to kill in any circumstances, but society, fortunately, constrains our ability to exercise our rights when it is in the interests of that society.
I say it isn't immoral. That's all the authority I need. Don't know about you.
/. It's also common among people who are ashamed to be human.
If you think we're better off living as scavengers and dieing in our third decade, watching most of the children we bear die before their first birthday, be my guest. I consider that a lot worse than our lives right now.
Rights don't need to be justified. They simply exist. They aren't gifts, because that implies a giver. It isn't a question of deciding if exercising a right will benefit anyone, because "benefit" is open to interpretation. (What benefits me may injure you, or vice versa. Even when we both exercising the same rights.)
It's both sophistic and sophomoric to argue by fabricated analogies that are designed to lead the other side away from the thrust of the issue. It's common, sadly, on
So... why behave like you're ashamed to be alive? Or as if it's immoral to change anything, anywhere? The same bogus belief that would oppose exploring for life on Europa would have kept humans in Africa scavenging for food and dieing before we're 30.
In other word, why have Europeans given up?
Utter nonsense. We have every right to explkre for life beyond Earth, and no obligation to preseve anything, anywhere.
Peopole like Amigoro need to stop apologizing for being alive. People are more important than animals.
Using size as a determinant of an object's planet status ignores location. Why not decide that Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud objects are not planets, regardless of their size? If objects located in the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Cloud were comparable to traditional planets in terms of composition, number, behavior and location, it's doubtful that either the Belt or the Cloud would be considered discrete regions.