Lets hope DS9 fires this douche bag as well. DS9 used to be a great show, but now it is just a fucking Soap Opera
Um, the last original episode of DS9 aired in, I believe, 1998 or 1999. A little late for creative feedback, I'd imagine (unless you run across one of the many spacetime anomalies...)
How I hate when people spout tripe like this. Sci fi is not about "escaping reality". It is not. It never has been. If it is "escapist" at all, it's about escaping into reality -- into a Universe larger and more awe-inspiring than the insipid little minutae with which we fill our lives.
Science fiction is not about spaceships and little green men, time travellers and miracle cures. It's not about gadgets and gizmos. It's not about a million different outcomes to the roll of the dice. Science fiction, at its best, is about being open to new ideas and new ways of thinking about things... it's about challenging orthodoxy and imagining that things could be different, even at a fundamental level. It's about understanding what it is to be human by examining those who aren't.
Perhaps three quotes by John Campbell typify what science fiction really is:
The basic rule of SF is: Set up a basic proposition--then develop its consistent, logical consequences.
No literature is sound, no philosophy of action workable, if it doesn't take a hard look at itself.
(paraphrased) Give me an alien who thinks as well as a man, but differently.
I like it when a TV shows rewards its regular audience with content that they can appreciate more than casual viewers
I think we all know the answer here: It's not necessarily that the audience is too dumb to appreciate the intelligent series that exist. It's that the typical TV executive is too dumb to appreciate them. While watching the deep storylines, the corporate drones feel bewildered and oppressed by an unnerving sense that everyone else gets it but they do not -- that there is a sly joke going on, and it's on them.
They dumb things down not because they have any empirical evidence that this will help ratings. They do it, rather, because they have no other ideas -- no clue what else to do. This is how a ratings slump has always been solved, so this is how they must be solved. Never mind that, in the actual history of television, these shennanigans have never actually solved a ratings slump.
Although television is allegedly a creative art, the very top levels are infested with groupthinkers and sheep. Good science fiction, true science fiction, escapes them and they are threatened by it.
It uses the same simple-minded space opera approach that I hated in shows like Babylon V and Battlestar Gallactica: 'Treat the audience like we're all 13-year old underachievers.'
I guess the Roman numeral "V" should tip me off that you're not a fan, but I don't see how you could have watched any fair sampling of Babylon 5 and concluded it had plotlines on the order of, say, Galactica (or Andromeda). The show had its share of flaws but generally B5 treated its audience as intelligent and, amazingly, as possessing an attention span longer than the 6-10 minutes of a typical TV act.
Isn't hard-to-disrupt communication the reason that DARPA got involved in this "Internet" business anyhow?
Yup
Um, nope.
While some work had been done on using packet-switching to improve communication reliability after a nuclear attack, that work was purely theoretical and not directly tied to the origin of the ARPAnet. The ARPAnet was explicitly created to allow computer researchers to share files and resources, reducing unnecessary duplication of effort and resources. The nuclear war myth might be better copy, but it's just a myth.
Check out Where Wizards Stay Up Late for the real story.
It seems to me this would evolve just the way the Internet did before; it would at first be used just by government agencies, next given to the large defense contractors, eventually adopted by the research universities, and then swallowed whole by Joe Public. This, IMHO, is the best way to get the next-gen Internet.
This might well be the evolution of this new network, but it is not how the current Internet evolved. The Internet, as ARPAnet, was explicitly for the research universities from the get-go. The first nodes on were universities; the first "commercial" node was BBN, the consulting firm charged with building the net.
The government, in fact, was in general quite reluctant to get into something that was perceived, at best, as a convenience for computer researchers.
The so-called plans that have been available for decades are like a kindergartener scrawling a picture of an automobile. Do they know you put gas in to make it go? Yes. Do they know how it works? Hell no
The construction of a Little Boy type bomb (if that's the Hiroshima one -- I always confuse the two) is actually considerably simpler than the four-stroke combustion engine. The Manhattan Project's main hurdles were (a) calculating how much fissionable material is needed; (b) working out the theory of shaped charged explosives; (c) manufacturing the fissionables.
At this point in time, only (c) is really hard. Information, like the truth, will out.
we are castigating the CIA for not preventing the Sept. event; would we not castigate the US government if another event occured, this time from publically available info?
"We" are not, in that "we" includes me, and I am not, castigating the CIA. Not yet. Little has been offered to show that the Sept 11 events were preventable without superhuman efficiency and draconian surveillance.
Under an argument similar to yours, the government would be outlawing box cutters -- heck, we know they can be used for highjacking. We'd also be outlawing airplanes, since they can be highjacked. We'd outlaw trucks and trains, since they too can carry a massively destructive load of kinetic energy, to say nothing of their fuel. TV often broadcasts pictures of the New York skyline -- maybe ben Laden got his idea from a transition pan in "Friends". Better ban that, too... after all, wouldn't we be remiss if someday someone did get the idea from TV?
The problem with that is, the only way to stop people from getting the "bad" ideas is to stop them from having ideas at all. That price is too high to pay.
It might be counterintuitive, but the experience of the software industry has shown that the best solution is more openness, not less. Hiding information doesn't protect the information, and it doesn't protect people. We should be extremely wary of government directives to destroy records... too many people seem to think, "Well, I'm unlikely to need a report on dams, so OK."
I understand the cries of tyranny and oppression, but you people don't even understand the idea of it. The United States lives in the most open society in the world, with millions of freedoms for each individual.
But fewer every day.
It's not just the loss of a specific liberty that bothers me, though that would be worrisome enough. It's the growing loss of the habit of freedom... these steps aren't being justified and not enough people are asking for justification. We have an administration whose gut reaction to everything seems to be: Censor, Hide, Obscure. Remember the earlier brouhaha about the members of the Vice President's energy panel? The White House played that close to the vest because, at the root of it, they do not believe in public disclosure. Of anything. To anyone.
The functioning of a democratic society absolutely depends on an intelligent, informed electorate. Every single attempt by the government to restrict information, to destroy data, to preclude debate must be scrutinized, debated, and, usually, resisted.
Otherwise, all is lost. The enemies of the United States, as the Constitution reminds us, are both foreign and domestic... and some of them, mayhaps, live and work on Pennsylvania Avenue.
People, this is about not being quite so liberal with the plans for our US infrastructure. Note the article says that the information was "yanked", and not destroyed.
So a Syracuse University library clerk broke the disc into pieces, saving a single shard to prove that the deed was done.
OK, if some of the more radical quantum infortmation theorists are right, information can't really ever be destroyed. But I think it falls within the commonly-accepted use of "destroyed" when we start smashing CD-ROMs.
What's next? Torch-lit parades and book-burning rallies?
This is so absurd that I'm sure I'll be "redundant" before I get to hit Submit, but...
There are only one reason terrorists haven't detonated an atomic bomb and that is that they don't know how to do it.
Wow, are you dumb. The knowledge on "how" has been widely available for decades. It takes a not-too-sophisticated knowledge of some simple physics. Heck, some university graduate programs assign the shielding calculations, etc., as questions on their qualifying exams!
What is hard to do, and generally denied to terrorists, is the laborious process of amassing enough fissionable material to make the bomb work. That is not an information thing -- the materials are themselves rare, expensive, and tough to produce. In fact, the best way to combat the true threat of nuclear terrorism is to educate the public about what steps must be taken to keep that material in safe hands. Knowing more, not knowing less, serves the interest of public safety.
I can't wait until Ashcroft's thought police break down the door to my classroom because I dare to teach the principle of relativity and quantum mechanics that make nukes possible.
yes. because someone who went to an ivy league school is dumb. granted his dad got him there but still. what school did you graduate from?
I am not the original poster but I'll take a swing. I graduated from a small liberal arts college in Washington, DC. (The Catholic University of America) What's worse, I graduated from its Physics Department, with a total enrollment of 12. Does this make me "dumb"? Does it make me dumber than anyone who graduated from, say, Princeton? No, of course not.
Just like "graduating from an Ivy League college" is a far cry from a guarantee of intelligence.
Since a large portion of the President's job involves public speaking, and since -- presumably -- he knows he isn't good at it, a smart man would see that he should find some good speech writers to compensate. I don't know that the President is an idiot. He's just failed to offer me any evidence to the contrary.
Btw, I would not at all be surprised, for instance, if Saddam Hussain got more worthwhile intelligence from the likes of CNN (e.g., troup movements, morale, technology, etc) in the comfort of his bedroom than he did from his entire intelligence service during the Gulf War.
I'd be surprised. And it's starting to bother me that these old tired saws are trotted out time and again. Where is the evidence that Hussein does this? That the 9/11 terrorists used public data? That any of the Orwellian measures being proposed, had they been in place, would have actually prevented these atrocities?
Before we sign away all our traditional freedoms and legacies -- and opennes of government is certainly one of these -- perhaps we should be asking more questions about the effectiveness of the "solutions" and the motives of the people pushing them.
How much coverage has NBC given to unfavorable events for Microsoft? Virtually none because they are partners in MSNBC.
Ouch. It hurts to see a pretty decent argument shot in the foot by one careless example. As a matter of fact, MSNBC has been relatively hard on Microsoft during the whole trial mess... more so, as far as I've seen, than network TV or CNN.
Nonetheless, the point that mega-mergers are hinderng the true freedom of the press is a good one.
These guys want you to pay for their service AND serve advertisements to you? I am betting in a few weeks we will see how AOL has filed suit against Onstar for stealing their business practices... they would be right of course -- who could claim prior art against AOL's practices?
The evil of advertising is not that it's so frequent or intrusive, but that it's so frequently intrusive and *irrelevant*.
I disagree. I feel that the evil of advertising is exactly that it's so frequent and so intrusive. I know it makes me un-American but there really are times I'd rather not be thinking about how to spend my money the fastest.
If I drive into a new city, and I get a list of seafood restaurants nearby with Zagats reviews, that's VALUABLE!
I disagree again. If I can query a database and say "Give me some seafood restaurants nearby" -- that is, if I as a user initiate a search -- then the service can be valuable. If OnStar or whoever simply decides "Hey, he might want some food now", then it's just pointless and intrusive.
However when the military absorbed ARPA to form DARPA the created a nonclassified system called MilNet.
Um, ARPA was always in the DoD. The original offices were in the Pentagon. The shift to DARPA was just a name change to help refocus on defense projects, rather than civilian research.
Civilian research such as, for example, a vast interconnected computer network.:)
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Isn't "shall make no law... abridging freedom of speech" something in the law "proper"?
To quote Aristotle, "The habit of changing the laws lightly is an evil." I think it's good that no one's willing to modify the Bill of Rights. Let them retain a little bit of their sanctity, rather than be whittled away with each new fad.
- everyday 's injuried people by stupid ones (stupid ones _exist_ in the real world).
Hmmm. Let's see.
The terrorist acts were commited by people living in a country where all thought, except the official thought, is banned under punishment of death.
World War II was started by a Fascist government whose first act in power was to eliminate all rival groups and ban all competing sources of information, and whose policy was to employ secret police to arrest and "disappear" anyone who voiced an opinion opposed to the party line. The government used its sole control of media to prepare its populace for the war it fully intended not only to fight but to begin.
(I have to admit, I'm not really sure where the stupidity comment fits in. How does this proposal reduce or eliminate "everyday stupidity"? Indeed, by blocking "ugly" thought from sight, I suggest that it increases everyday stupidity.)
The lesson would seem, to me, to be: Regimes that censor their own people can easily wander into dangerous territory and often become a threat to the peace and stability of the world.
On the other hand, the United States was excorciated for its war in Viet Nam. Many fingers were pointed at us. And you know what? Public opinion -- given access to all views of the war -- shifted and eventually the war ended. Militarily, the US was not even in danger of "losing" that war (in the sense of military collapse). But politically it became untenable... because all sides had the right to air their views.
Hmmmm. Seems that perhaps free and open debate is a surer way to peace and freedom than restriction of speech and thought.
Thing is, europeans usually don't think that their countries have a right to bully other countries for their own profit
I wonder if you'd find agreement with that statement in, say, India. Or Egypt. Or Mexico. Or Peru. Or anywhere in Africa (except South Africa). Or the Pacific Rim. Or...
To drag this back on topic, at least in the US, you're allowed to point out our hypocricies, our fallacies, and our failings. You're allowed to rail against the government and/or anyone you feel responsible. You're allowed to think and speak what you will. Our greatest danger is the growing acceptance by some of the sort of restrictions on speech common in Europe.
We aren't perfect and we aren't saints. But as far I can see, free speech is one thing we got right.
Free speech should be an inalieable right no matter how offensive your words are.
Why? Axiom? Dogma?
Experience.
All freedoms flow from and depend on the freedom of conscience, the freedom to think, the freedom to hold opinions and to express them. It is that which most clearly makes us human and it is that which so overwhelmingly adds value to life. It is not too far off to say it is freedom of thought and expression that is the point of human life.
History makes clear that there will always be people holding vile, noisome opinions; people who need to blame ill-defined "others" for their hardships; people who feel compelled to spread villiany and hatred. But history also shows that the best incoluation against these virulent strains of political bile is free and open debate on them.
Censorship of any form allows -- virtually begs for -- broader and broader censorship. It constrains the universe of discourse and a priori cuts off lines of thought and exploration. It reduces the material available to thinking citizens.
Free speech is an expression of faith in the public. Ask yourself: Would you like someone else -- someone who, perhaps, disagrees with everything you believe -- given the power to decide what you can say or think? If you don't want others having that power over you, how can you ask it for yourself?
"But my opinions are right and true," you might reply. Wonderful. If that's truly so, then their rightness and trueness should be apparent to those who hear them. In which case, the right and the true will drive out the false and wicked, because the former will prove more robust and more attractive. A dedication to free speech is a statement of faith that the good and the true are intrinsically appealing to an informed public; that given equal footing, the good and the true will triumph because the public can be relied upon to choose them when presented with all the alternatives.
All moves to restrict speech based on content betray a fundamental disdain for the people so loudly championed. All such moves express a derision of one's fellow citizens. "I know best; I must must be listened to; I must be obeyed." How small a step from protecting the public to controlling it! How small a step from laws banning fascist thought to laws enacting it.
The awful irony here is, people are eager to fight a despicable enemy by becoming the despicable enemy...
You Americans are insane to allow unrestricted freedom of speech since this is the tool that the extreme right wing will use to take over your country, and turn it into an even more totalitarian state than it already is.
Excuse me? The best way to avoid a totalitarian state is to seize control of public discourse? The irony would be delicious if I weren't choking from laughing so hard.
Free speech is not the tool the "extreme right" (whoever they are) will use to "take over" the US. Free speech is the political defense mechanism by which they will never be able to do so. Only if we ever allow a restriction on speech will we run the risk that a small group could seize power and inflict its will on us. In a society that truly values free and open debate, the "extreme right wing" is easily seen as "extreme" and not in accord with popular thought.
Or should my post be censored now, since it "supports" the extreme right wing and therefore, by implication, hate crimes? Who gets to decide? Who gets to appoint the thought gods? And how do you ever keep such a system balanced, when the people making the decision can choke off any criticism of their decision?
I know that slashdot posts are far from a scientific sampling of modern thought:) but the posts I've seen imply, to me, that Europeans don't really grasp the meaning of freedom: Free speech is never a threat! In fact it is an immunity mechanism that protects us from the extremists, the fascists, and the totalitarians. The right and the true will flourish in an environment wherein they are given the opportunity.
One reads a lot about the American arrogance, and goodness knows, it's true. But it seems to me far more arrogant to appropriate to oneself the power to choose between "correct and proper" beliefs and "bad and vile" ones. How paternalistic, condescending, and in the end, simply obnoxious is such an attitude. Let all people speak their minds fully in a free and open marketplace of ideas. Let all people say and read what they will. I have faith that ordinary citizens, in such a climate, can be trusted to make the right decisions.
The fundamental difference is that he wanted to take away everybody's rights...
... sort of like the way you want to take away everybody's rights.
You claim to see the irony but you clearly do not: The techniques you advocate are the ones absolutely vital to the overthrow of a democratic system. Artificially choking off the flow of information among citizens is a recipe for fascism and totalitarianism. The fact of the matter is, in a free society, pweople have the right to belive "wrong" -- even vile -- things. They even have the right to advocate their "wrong" vile opinions. That's what makes it a free society.
People call for censorship to "defend" the public. Such people have no faith in the public and, usually, no real historical perspective. They need to feel important and they cannot believe that, amazingly, the public can defend itself.... given the tools. What are the tools? Not repressive laws that smother debate, but open regimes that permit and encourage it.
Neo-Nazis are indeed a disturbing and worrisome strain in the body politic. You know what, though? They are also pretty laughable. Given a forum they almost invariably come off as awkward, ignorant, and just plain silly. Exposed to the harsh light of publicity they wither and die. But locked away, hidden from our view for our own "safety", banned and persecuted, they flourish like a noisome fungus. Then the uninformed can't make a rational evaluation or a balanced judgement. And of course, the very act of banning them feeds their sene of persecution and gives it an air of legitimacy.
Freedom is hard. We have to put up with disagreeable, even vile, people and opinions. But history shows that free speech -- far from being a threat to a democratic system -- is the best inoculation against virulent hate and violent overthrow. Show a little faith in the people you purport to protect. Elsewise you are displaying an anti-democratic streak, yourself.
Just how many Europeans do you think support the practice? Nearly nada. How many European countries protect it as a religous right? Nada? I don't know... tell me.
My shorter answer is that you're raising a strawman, which is unfortunate because there are *serious* reasons to worry about this.
No, I don't believe the original poster was raising a strawman. The point is, Euorpeans don't support the prsctice of female circumcision. (I'm going out on a limb here, but I think this is true.) Therefore one might expect that they would accept speech decrying the practice. But wouldn't that be hypocrtical, since such speech would be directly against a particular race or creed?
The hypothetical here was raised to make people think: What if "good" speech ( = "speech I support") were banned as "hate speech"? Who draws the line? And do we really want anyone drawing the line, given the possibiility for abuse? Even when we think we're right, we might have to accept not acting on it, because maybe we are wrong. And maybe we don't have the authority or the overwhelming need to insist that everyone agree with us.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, the last original episode of DS9 aired in, I believe, 1998 or 1999. A little late for creative feedback, I'd imagine (unless you run across one of the many spacetime anomalies...)
How I hate when people spout tripe like this. Sci fi is not about "escaping reality". It is not. It never has been. If it is "escapist" at all, it's about escaping into reality -- into a Universe larger and more awe-inspiring than the insipid little minutae with which we fill our lives.
Science fiction is not about spaceships and little green men, time travellers and miracle cures. It's not about gadgets and gizmos. It's not about a million different outcomes to the roll of the dice. Science fiction, at its best, is about being open to new ideas and new ways of thinking about things
Perhaps three quotes by John Campbell typify what science fiction really is:
I think we all know the answer here: It's not necessarily that the audience is too dumb to appreciate the intelligent series that exist. It's that the typical TV executive is too dumb to appreciate them. While watching the deep storylines, the corporate drones feel bewildered and oppressed by an unnerving sense that everyone else gets it but they do not -- that there is a sly joke going on, and it's on them.
They dumb things down not because they have any empirical evidence that this will help ratings. They do it, rather, because they have no other ideas -- no clue what else to do. This is how a ratings slump has always been solved, so this is how they must be solved. Never mind that, in the actual history of television, these shennanigans have never actually solved a ratings slump.
Although television is allegedly a creative art, the very top levels are infested with groupthinkers and sheep. Good science fiction, true science fiction, escapes them and they are threatened by it.
I guess the Roman numeral "V" should tip me off that you're not a fan, but I don't see how you could have watched any fair sampling of Babylon 5 and concluded it had plotlines on the order of, say, Galactica (or Andromeda). The show had its share of flaws but generally B5 treated its audience as intelligent and, amazingly, as possessing an attention span longer than the 6-10 minutes of a typical TV act.
Um, nope.
While some work had been done on using packet-switching to improve communication reliability after a nuclear attack, that work was purely theoretical and not directly tied to the origin of the ARPAnet. The ARPAnet was explicitly created to allow computer researchers to share files and resources, reducing unnecessary duplication of effort and resources. The nuclear war myth might be better copy, but it's just a myth.
Check out Where Wizards Stay Up Late for the real story.
This might well be the evolution of this new network, but it is not how the current Internet evolved. The Internet, as ARPAnet, was explicitly for the research universities from the get-go. The first nodes on were universities; the first "commercial" node was BBN, the consulting firm charged with building the net.
The government, in fact, was in general quite reluctant to get into something that was perceived, at best, as a convenience for computer researchers.
The construction of a Little Boy type bomb (if that's the Hiroshima one -- I always confuse the two) is actually considerably simpler than the four-stroke combustion engine. The Manhattan Project's main hurdles were (a) calculating how much fissionable material is needed; (b) working out the theory of shaped charged explosives; (c) manufacturing the fissionables.
At this point in time, only (c) is really hard. Information, like the truth, will out.
"We" are not, in that "we" includes me, and I am not, castigating the CIA. Not yet. Little has been offered to show that the Sept 11 events were preventable without superhuman efficiency and draconian surveillance.
Under an argument similar to yours, the government would be outlawing box cutters -- heck, we know they can be used for highjacking. We'd also be outlawing airplanes, since they can be highjacked. We'd outlaw trucks and trains, since they too can carry a massively destructive load of kinetic energy, to say nothing of their fuel. TV often broadcasts pictures of the New York skyline -- maybe ben Laden got his idea from a transition pan in "Friends". Better ban that, too... after all, wouldn't we be remiss if someday someone did get the idea from TV?
The problem with that is, the only way to stop people from getting the "bad" ideas is to stop them from having ideas at all. That price is too high to pay.
It might be counterintuitive, but the experience of the software industry has shown that the best solution is more openness, not less. Hiding information doesn't protect the information, and it doesn't protect people. We should be extremely wary of government directives to destroy records... too many people seem to think, "Well, I'm unlikely to need a report on dams, so OK."
It's time we all adopt the motto of New Hampshire, which I have always admired:
But fewer every day.
It's not just the loss of a specific liberty that bothers me, though that would be worrisome enough. It's the growing loss of the habit of freedom... these steps aren't being justified and not enough people are asking for justification. We have an administration whose gut reaction to everything seems to be: Censor, Hide, Obscure. Remember the earlier brouhaha about the members of the Vice President's energy panel? The White House played that close to the vest because, at the root of it, they do not believe in public disclosure. Of anything. To anyone.
The functioning of a democratic society absolutely depends on an intelligent, informed electorate. Every single attempt by the government to restrict information, to destroy data, to preclude debate must be scrutinized, debated, and, usually, resisted.
Otherwise, all is lost. The enemies of the United States, as the Constitution reminds us, are both foreign and domestic
Blockquoth the LA Times article:
OK, if some of the more radical quantum infortmation theorists are right, information can't really ever be destroyed. But I think it falls within the commonly-accepted use of "destroyed" when we start smashing CD-ROMs.
What's next? Torch-lit parades and book-burning rallies?
Wow, are you dumb. The knowledge on "how" has been widely available for decades. It takes a not-too-sophisticated knowledge of some simple physics. Heck, some university graduate programs assign the shielding calculations, etc., as questions on their qualifying exams!
What is hard to do, and generally denied to terrorists, is the laborious process of amassing enough fissionable material to make the bomb work. That is not an information thing -- the materials are themselves rare, expensive, and tough to produce. In fact, the best way to combat the true threat of nuclear terrorism is to educate the public about what steps must be taken to keep that material in safe hands. Knowing more, not knowing less, serves the interest of public safety.
I can't wait until Ashcroft's thought police break down the door to my classroom because I dare to teach the principle of relativity and quantum mechanics that make nukes possible.
I am not the original poster but I'll take a swing. I graduated from a small liberal arts college in Washington, DC. (The Catholic University of America) What's worse, I graduated from its Physics Department, with a total enrollment of 12. Does this make me "dumb"? Does it make me dumber than anyone who graduated from, say, Princeton? No, of course not.
Just like "graduating from an Ivy League college" is a far cry from a guarantee of intelligence.
Since a large portion of the President's job involves public speaking, and since -- presumably -- he knows he isn't good at it, a smart man would see that he should find some good speech writers to compensate. I don't know that the President is an idiot. He's just failed to offer me any evidence to the contrary.
I'd be surprised. And it's starting to bother me that these old tired saws are trotted out time and again. Where is the evidence that Hussein does this? That the 9/11 terrorists used public data? That any of the Orwellian measures being proposed, had they been in place, would have actually prevented these atrocities?
Before we sign away all our traditional freedoms and legacies -- and opennes of government is certainly one of these -- perhaps we should be asking more questions about the effectiveness of the "solutions" and the motives of the people pushing them.
Ouch. It hurts to see a pretty decent argument shot in the foot by one careless example. As a matter of fact, MSNBC has been relatively hard on Microsoft during the whole trial mess... more so, as far as I've seen, than network TV or CNN.
Nonetheless, the point that mega-mergers are hinderng the true freedom of the press is a good one.
Premium cable channels?
I disagree. I feel that the evil of advertising is exactly that it's so frequent and so intrusive. I know it makes me un-American but there really are times I'd rather not be thinking about how to spend my money the fastest.
I disagree again. If I can query a database and say "Give me some seafood restaurants nearby" -- that is, if I as a user initiate a search -- then the service can be valuable. If OnStar or whoever simply decides "Hey, he might want some food now", then it's just pointless and intrusive.
Um, ARPA was always in the DoD. The original offices were in the Pentagon. The shift to DARPA was just a name change to help refocus on defense projects, rather than civilian research.
Civilian research such as, for example, a vast interconnected computer network.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Isn't "shall make no law
To quote Aristotle, "The habit of changing the laws lightly is an evil." I think it's good that no one's willing to modify the Bill of Rights. Let them retain a little bit of their sanctity, rather than be whittled away with each new fad.
Hmmm. Let's see.
(I have to admit, I'm not really sure where the stupidity comment fits in. How does this proposal reduce or eliminate "everyday stupidity"? Indeed, by blocking "ugly" thought from sight, I suggest that it increases everyday stupidity.)
The lesson would seem, to me, to be: Regimes that censor their own people can easily wander into dangerous territory and often become a threat to the peace and stability of the world.
On the other hand, the United States was excorciated for its war in Viet Nam. Many fingers were pointed at us. And you know what? Public opinion -- given access to all views of the war -- shifted and eventually the war ended. Militarily, the US was not even in danger of "losing" that war (in the sense of military collapse). But politically it became untenable
Hmmmm. Seems that perhaps free and open debate is a surer way to peace and freedom than restriction of speech and thought.
I wonder if you'd find agreement with that statement in, say, India. Or Egypt. Or Mexico. Or Peru. Or anywhere in Africa (except South Africa). Or the Pacific Rim. Or...
To drag this back on topic, at least in the US, you're allowed to point out our hypocricies, our fallacies, and our failings. You're allowed to rail against the government and/or anyone you feel responsible. You're allowed to think and speak what you will. Our greatest danger is the growing acceptance by some of the sort of restrictions on speech common in Europe.
We aren't perfect and we aren't saints. But as far I can see, free speech is one thing we got right.
Experience.
All freedoms flow from and depend on the freedom of conscience, the freedom to think, the freedom to hold opinions and to express them. It is that which most clearly makes us human and it is that which so overwhelmingly adds value to life. It is not too far off to say it is freedom of thought and expression that is the point of human life.
History makes clear that there will always be people holding vile, noisome opinions; people who need to blame ill-defined "others" for their hardships; people who feel compelled to spread villiany and hatred. But history also shows that the best incoluation against these virulent strains of political bile is free and open debate on them.
Censorship of any form allows -- virtually begs for -- broader and broader censorship. It constrains the universe of discourse and a priori cuts off lines of thought and exploration. It reduces the material available to thinking citizens.
Free speech is an expression of faith in the public. Ask yourself: Would you like someone else -- someone who, perhaps, disagrees with everything you believe -- given the power to decide what you can say or think? If you don't want others having that power over you, how can you ask it for yourself?
"But my opinions are right and true," you might reply. Wonderful. If that's truly so, then their rightness and trueness should be apparent to those who hear them. In which case, the right and the true will drive out the false and wicked, because the former will prove more robust and more attractive. A dedication to free speech is a statement of faith that the good and the true are intrinsically appealing to an informed public; that given equal footing, the good and the true will triumph because the public can be relied upon to choose them when presented with all the alternatives.
All moves to restrict speech based on content betray a fundamental disdain for the people so loudly championed. All such moves express a derision of one's fellow citizens. " I know best; I must must be listened to; I must be obeyed." How small a step from protecting the public to controlling it! How small a step from laws banning fascist thought to laws enacting it.
The awful irony here is, people are eager to fight a despicable enemy by becoming the despicable enemy...
Excuse me? The best way to avoid a totalitarian state is to seize control of public discourse? The irony would be delicious if I weren't choking from laughing so hard.
Free speech is not the tool the "extreme right" (whoever they are) will use to "take over" the US. Free speech is the political defense mechanism by which they will never be able to do so. Only if we ever allow a restriction on speech will we run the risk that a small group could seize power and inflict its will on us. In a society that truly values free and open debate, the "extreme right wing" is easily seen as "extreme" and not in accord with popular thought.
Or should my post be censored now, since it "supports" the extreme right wing and therefore, by implication, hate crimes? Who gets to decide? Who gets to appoint the thought gods? And how do you ever keep such a system balanced, when the people making the decision can choke off any criticism of their decision?
I know that slashdot posts are far from a scientific sampling of modern thought
One reads a lot about the American arrogance, and goodness knows, it's true. But it seems to me far more arrogant to appropriate to oneself the power to choose between "correct and proper" beliefs and "bad and vile" ones. How paternalistic, condescending, and in the end, simply obnoxious is such an attitude. Let all people speak their minds fully in a free and open marketplace of ideas. Let all people say and read what they will. I have faith that ordinary citizens, in such a climate, can be trusted to make the right decisions.
... sort of like the way you want to take away everybody's rights.
You claim to see the irony but you clearly do not: The techniques you advocate are the ones absolutely vital to the overthrow of a democratic system. Artificially choking off the flow of information among citizens is a recipe for fascism and totalitarianism. The fact of the matter is, in a free society, pweople have the right to belive "wrong" -- even vile -- things. They even have the right to advocate their "wrong" vile opinions. That's what makes it a free society.
People call for censorship to "defend" the public. Such people have no faith in the public and, usually, no real historical perspective. They need to feel important and they cannot believe that, amazingly, the public can defend itself.... given the tools. What are the tools? Not repressive laws that smother debate, but open regimes that permit and encourage it.
Neo-Nazis are indeed a disturbing and worrisome strain in the body politic. You know what, though? They are also pretty laughable. Given a forum they almost invariably come off as awkward, ignorant, and just plain silly. Exposed to the harsh light of publicity they wither and die. But locked away, hidden from our view for our own "safety", banned and persecuted, they flourish like a noisome fungus. Then the uninformed can't make a rational evaluation or a balanced judgement. And of course, the very act of banning them feeds their sene of persecution and gives it an air of legitimacy.
Freedom is hard. We have to put up with disagreeable, even vile, people and opinions. But history shows that free speech -- far from being a threat to a democratic system -- is the best inoculation against virulent hate and violent overthrow. Show a little faith in the people you purport to protect. Elsewise you are displaying an anti-democratic streak, yourself.
No, I don't believe the original poster was raising a strawman. The point is, Euorpeans don't support the prsctice of female circumcision. (I'm going out on a limb here, but I think this is true.) Therefore one might expect that they would accept speech decrying the practice. But wouldn't that be hypocrtical, since such speech would be directly against a particular race or creed?
The hypothetical here was raised to make people think: What if "good" speech ( = "speech I support") were banned as "hate speech"? Who draws the line? And do we really want anyone drawing the line, given the possibiility for abuse? Even when we think we're right, we might have to accept not acting on it, because maybe we are wrong. And maybe we don't have the authority or the overwhelming need to insist that everyone agree with us.