Child porn brings up some other arguments, but I'll leave those for another discussion and discuss this:
I feel the author's case has merit.
One or the other portions of this specific case may have merit, but saying that BOTH aspects of the case has merit is basically saying that all web sites need to be shut down immediately for potential copyright violation.
Ms. Scott initially demanded that Scribd perform due diligence on her behalf to prevent distribution of her copyrighted work. That is a fair and reasonable request, and the DMCA allows for that. Scribd implemented a filter that ensured that her work could not be distributed any more.
But then to claim that the copy of her work that sits in their filtering algorithm is itself a violating copy is utterly silly.
A hash is not going to work. Some uploader could simply add a few words to the document somewhere and the hash is rendered useless. In order to do meaningful filtering, they need to do significant matches against the original work.
It sounds like Scribd made more than a reasonable effort to protect Ms. Scott's work, and fortunately even her lawyers finally clued in and dropped the case.
It won't, however, answer Apple's biggest reason for not wanting to support Flash.
Flash is, simply, a proprietary format that they don't have any patent control over. They want h264, which is a proprietary format controlled by a consortium they are a major member of.
Apple wants Flash dead. They don't want it open, they don't want it closed, they don't want it with cherries and whipped cream on top. They want it dead. It's something they cannot control, and therefore it must die.
Given the fact that this is a very early field test of the technology and not an actual application of the technology, and given the fact that this was emphasized pretty heavily in the summary and even more so in the actual article, I fail see your point.
This is an early test. Actual hands-off application of this technology is at least 10 years off, probably more.
The vehicle will operate autonomously, with a human being monitoring it from within and ready to take over should the early-stage experimental autonomous systems somehow not perform up to spec.
I love The Bollard. And, yes, they are an excellent example of a newspaper done more for love than money. The Coastal Journal and the other freebies in the Midcoast area do pretty well, too.
But they rely heavily on people willing to cover news and not get paid terribly well, and they have mostly human resources, not a lot of in-depth technical resources. It's still excellent, and is probably the way actual newsgathering on the local level is sustainable, but how long will they last?
Twitter, Facebook, and other informational sources have their value, but it's a storm of opinion, not a decently authoritative source.
The relevant RESPONSE would be the police being able to enter your house with a warrant. Or maybe telling the ISP to start collecting the logs for your account with a warrant. Or tapping your phone with a warrant. Or tracing your cell via GPS with a warrant. Do you see a pattern here? "with a warrant".
But forcing companies to collect and retain every bit of data on EVERYONE just so they can go back and review it for people they suspect later? No. That's not at all analogous to being able to enter a house with a warrant.
So much is collected about our daily activities that we've become used to it. Maybe it's made law enforcement easier, and maybe that's worth the price. That's a matter of seriously divided opinion.
But, please, don't pretend that the forced collection of data on everyone all the time is in any way analogous to being able to enter a private space with a proper warrant.
Stop working for the large media outlets that treat you like a consumable resource. Instead, find a nice local newspaper that treats its employees with respect or, better yet, start your own independent blog.
Find one first. Every newspaper within 150 miles of my house has been bought out by ever-larger conglomerates. Most then immediately cut the local field reporter jobs by about 2/3. After a few rounds of this, our "local" papers are owned by companies three states over, and reporting has been cut to the point where one reporter is responsible for at least 4-5 towns, and a couple of interns per county do filler stories like "Edna's thoughts on turning 103" and "Looka da cute fuzzy puppy!"
By the time I cut my subscription, the "local" section was a total of 10 pages long, most of it advertising or letters to the editor. There was, at best, one article that had anything to do with a town 20 miles from me, and that was usually a filler piece.
The "free paper" actually sends reporters to town council meetings and does more local reporting. It's chock full of ads, and doesn't have any Reuters or other non-local stories, but it's got a lot of local stuff in it, and it's actually not all that bad for being written by obviously inexperienced journalists.
Just because you -can- update a news website every minute doesn't mean you necessarily -should-
I want to find you and give you a friendly man-hug. I really do. It would be so cool to have reporters actually check their facts and have their editors really give a crap about whether the truth is being at least attempted at.
I honestly wish the world worked that way, but it doesn't any more.
If you wait to report your story, by the time you released it everyone would skip right on past the headline saying "nope, read that four hours ago, what are these people smoking that they think I still give a shit?"
You might attract a small following of people interested in dropping the information crapflow and looking for verified, reasonably nonbiased, honest reporting. But few advertisers are going to want to deal in what they consider "old news".
The only way to get advertisers is to gain a really dedicated following of people. And with the dizzying array of news sources, first is often seen as best.
Actually, I think you'll find that true investigative journalism has simply become unprofitable. It's not that people don't want to work on it, it's that no one really wants to report verified, accurate fact with as little bias as possible any more.
Introducing a bias that whips your audience into a frenzy sells a shitload more ads.
And why bother verifying (or, let's be honest, even collecting!) facts when all you want to do is keep your audience angry enough about the only they know for sure. The simple fact that everyone but you is lying to them about everything?
Investigative journalism still exists, to an extent. But it's going away, because advertisers pay the outlets that attract the most eyeballs, and people aren't willing to pay for the newspaper any more.
We are, truly, getting the news outlets we so richly deserve.
Is facebook just the least abysmal compared to all the other competitors and non-competitors.
Bingo. Ding-ding-ding! Give the man a cookie, he's hit the nail on the head.
Facebook sucks the least of any site offering the service they offer. That's the key to their success.
Don't like it. Start your own site.
Oh, no! And you were on a roll! Well, we have some lovely consolation prizes. Thanks so much for playing.:)
Not really a practical answer. In order to have a social site, you have to have the opportunity to socialize. Facebook was the earliest contender to have a site that didn't blow big stinky steaming monkey chunks, and therefore most of the social site fans are already there and pretty entrenched.
To unseat Facebook, you're going to have to build something so fantastic, so compelling, so supremely awesome that people are going to want to move en masse. That way, your new users have a chance at having at least a little bit of a friend network when they arrive.
And since most of Facebook's money comes from targeted advertising, any serious contender is either going to have the same privacy issues and ruin most of the incentive to leave Facebook, charge a membership fee and alienate users that way, or run the site out of the goodness of their hearts to the tune of millions of dollars of losses a year.
The same was said of AOL - they were the first to make a compelling case for that newfangled Internet thingy to the masses, and they were the BIG player back when the Internet was young, and a connection was on the other side of a dialup modem. Facebook is the same "training wheels to social sites" that AOL was the "training wheels to the Internet" back then.
AOL was eventually unseated, and Facebook will be, too. But probably not in the next couple of years. There's little profitable incentive to unseat them and do so in such a way that people would actually want to leave Facebook.
For those who are perceptive, the fact that user satisfaction is so low but those same users continue to use the service tells you anything you might want to know.
Yes, it actually says several things. Your contempt for the site and its users is quite obvious, and understandable enough. However, setting that aside - regardless of people's reasons for wanting to use a social site, there are a number of logical reasons why someone who wants to use one would choose Facebook despite its obvious shortcomings.
First and foremost, if you want to use a social site (leaving aside why), they are rather like Immortals, "in the end, there can be only one." People will only really want to use the social site where, well, there's a chance to socialize. That's rather the point. That means choosing the site where all the people they know are already members. And very few people are going to want to support more than one, possibly two if you're really into it, social sites at the same time.
Second, social sites provide a medium of communication that isn't really closely analogous to anything that has existed before. Yeah, it's "part" this and it's "like" that, but it's not really a new medium. It's a new type of communications medium. And, for some, a really compelling one. And Facebook's take on it is markedly different from, say, MySpace's attempt. Facebook mixed the right elements and ease-of-use at the right time. They weren't first, they weren't perfect, but they did it just well enough to attract critical mass - they attracted massive amounts of users just as the whole social site fad reached the mainstream.
People continue to use Facebook, warts and all, because it has no real competition in its niche. There are other social sites, for sure, but Facebook got it closer to "right" than anyone else earlier than anyone else managed to get something as useful, so they ended up with most of the users.
And there's obviously something to its niche that people feel is useful to them, or it wouldn't account for more traffic in the US than any other web site. I don't see the concept of socialization over the Internet going away any time soon, and Facebook sure provides a great way to maintain an online community.
Eventually, they will probably be unseated, but it's going to take a lot of effort for someone to knock Favebook off the throne it currently occupies. The new site is going to have to be compelling enough to get people to exit Facebook pretty much en masse and convince most of their friends to come along. Facebook's parent company makes a LOT of money through advertising, and they are a bit of a juggernaut at the moment, so there aren't many sites that would dare face off with them.
And anyone with the resources to become a serious contender is going to be in it to make money, so it's doubtful that the privacy issues will go away, so even privacy-minded folk will have little reason to move.
OT, but some of my favorites (collected from various co-workers):
I'd like to emphasize that I am NOT making any of these up.
"He was reeking haddock with the system." "It's not that cold on the thermometer, but don't forget the wind shield factor". "OK, all of these things are important, but what takes present tense?" "Hopefully this has got your creative juices floating..." "There's no pot of gold at the end of the tunnel." "He was out last week for surgery. He had a pollack removed."
I'm sorry to say that your local paper is already dead. It is no longer what I consider a "working" newspaper. That's an example of a newspaper that has given up newsgathering.
I'm perfectly OK with my local news outlets doing reprints/redistributions of Reuters, AP, etc news stories. After all, news needs to have a global perspective, and the major redistributors have an economy of scale that a local paper simply can't match. My local paper simply cannot send a cub reporter to the Gulf of Mexico nor can they afford a helicopter to fly over the Gulf or afford experts in oil containment and petrochemistry to assess the extent of the damage.
The AP can do all of that once, and sell the resulting story and image to all the local news outlets.
But your LOCAL paper it also needs to have a vibrant "LOCAL" section with the kind of news you need to understand what is going on around you. If it's not doing that, it's not a "local newspaper", it's a "local reprinting service of non-local news".
The kinds of local coverage you describe are cheap to collect and add a "local flavor" to the paper without actually needing to put any real money into collecting and verifying actual news of importance.
Your local paper will continue to exist, but has ceased to serve any useful purpose.
Actually, your post demonstrates the effects of the changes in the coverage of the news. It's becoming centralized, and as such the only news that's profitable is what sells ads (sensationalism) and/or what is cheapest to collect or needs little verification (opinion).
And if you can sell your story as "the story no one else will tell you", then people will come back and watch YOUR ads.
Your gross misconception of certain communities is an excellent example of the effects, and the very bleeding of polarizing opinion you decry into what is supposed to be news coverage.
Because keepin' you hatin' means keepin' you watchin', which sells ads. You're unwittingly serving as a perfect example of the same problems you decry.
Be especially wary of those outlets that claim to have exclusive access to the truth behind the news, or cover stories that no one else "dares tell you", or claims not to have an agenda and to be completely unbiased.
Because that's just not possible, and you're far more likely to be manipulated if you can be tricked into believing that your chosen news outlet is free of bias. Once their bias becomes your baseline for "truth", they've won.
Yeah, except Slashdot works on a totally different economy of scale than a newsgathering organization.
How many traffic/camera helicopters does Slashdot have in the air? How many reporters do they hire in the Gulf of Mexico to cover the oil spill? None. They have volunteers submit "reprints" from other organizations who are themselves "reprinters" or in some cases the actual newsgathering organization. They have more volunteers who audit them, and more volunteers to run a vibrant discussion community.
The money gleaned from running Slashdot after paying for bandwidth and a little hookers and blow for the shareholders could never support even a handful of independent cub reporters, much less a decent newsgathering crew or a reprint subscription to Reuters.
Slashdot is actually a prime example of why the traditional print news media are having trouble. It costs a good deal of money to get good coverage of the news, and traditionally subscribers have paid for that. But now it's available everywhere, for free.
They'll dry up, and the only organizations left will be those that are big enough to use economies of scale in advertising to raise enough money. Which means the population of paid professional newsgatherers is going to plummet, replaced by reprints of the gist of Twitterstorms and the like.
May not be a complete disaster, but the Times (and the Gazette, and the Post) they are a'changin.
Mike is the man who has inseminated turkeys with a syringe, and gotten turkey jizz on himself. He has immersed himself in ponds of feces. He's been inside machines that grind up animals. He's hung off skyscrapers, wind turbines, and all manner of high ugly places.
He's a brave guy. It's not that he's braver than any of the people he covers - they all just think of it as their job. But he's sampled ALL that ugliness in employment has to offer.
And, yes, I fully expect that he'd probably projectile-vomit at some point while covering that job.
Well, since Dell really doesn't offer a refund of the Windows licensing cost when you order the Linux one, it's really easier just to buy the Windows version then "nuke it from orbit", either leaving Windows on there as a dual-boot in case you ever need it, or wiping it off.
There are lots of sites devoted to Linux compatibility of various desktop, laptop, and netbook configurations, which is really all you need.
All the Vendor is going to do is add their crapware to a perfectly good Operating System.;)
Heck, as I mentioned earlier in another thread, Wine has better compatibility with older Windows software than Windows XP does.
Not that I blame Microsoft, they need to drop the cruft of old-software support from time to time, but they could learn a lesson in sandboxed compatibility modes with older versions of their own software from the Wine folks.
I suppose, with a little work, you might be able to get Wine working in Windows. Though I think that would cause a serious rift in the Space/Irony Continuum.
Mint (and I believe Ubuntu) preinstalls a torrent handler called "Transmission". It's no uTorrent, I'll freely admit, but it is extremely capable, fast, and lightweight. It's a solid performer.
Can't help you on the Japanese input stuff, sorry.:(
Actually, I think that's how my friend's Mini 9 came configured. But that may have changed.
Regardless, the Ubuntu or Mint install discs make it really, REALLY easy to add a multiboot option to a preinstalled Windows machine. Boot to CD, select "install", select the "run side by side" option, and you're done. You can choose what to start every time you start the computer.
Wine runs Windows software that Windows itself cannot run. I have a generous handful of old favorite Windows 95/98 games that simply will not run in any way, shape, or form in Windows XP or later. Wine handles them without the slightest issues and with very little work (you just need to tell it what operating system to pretend to be for those programs, all covered in the GUI).
On the other hand, my work requires that I have a Windows XP box to remote in. My wife has a Nokia phone. I have an iPod. None of these do well in Linux even with Wine. VirtualBox, 15 minutes, and my old XP CD later, and I've got a work, Nokia, and iTunes-compatible virtual machine available that has remained untouched and unchanged along with all of my data over my last two complete OS upgrades (9.04->9.10 and 9.10->10.04).
But the real beauty is that all the stuff I really need on Windows is sandboxed off to a virtual machine. The remote access software really messes with the Internet connection of the machine it runs on (loads this silly "secure desktop" and locks Internet access away on the "insecure desktop"), except that it's all now a Windows VM and cannot affect my Internet connection in Linux.
iTunes has no access to anything on my actual computer, only to what's on the VM I provide it.
Patch Tuesday is just a day I start up my XP instance, click on the "Express Install" button, and leave it alone for a half hour or so while I'm doing stuff. "Reboot" means that XP goes away for a few minutes. Chances are I'm not doing anything in it at the time anyway, I just keep watching my TV show or whatever while Windows does its reboot happy dance.
So, while I still need Windows, I don't need it to be my primary operating system. In fact, I've found things a whole lot more convenient when I don't. I can run a much greater variety of software (Wine handles the bulk of it, and a VirtualBoxed XP instance handles the rest), it was all incredibly easy to set up, and didn't cost me a dime.
Slashdot Mirror
Child porn brings up some other arguments, but I'll leave those for another discussion and discuss this:
I feel the author's case has merit.
One or the other portions of this specific case may have merit, but saying that BOTH aspects of the case has merit is basically saying that all web sites need to be shut down immediately for potential copyright violation.
Ms. Scott initially demanded that Scribd perform due diligence on her behalf to prevent distribution of her copyrighted work. That is a fair and reasonable request, and the DMCA allows for that. Scribd implemented a filter that ensured that her work could not be distributed any more.
But then to claim that the copy of her work that sits in their filtering algorithm is itself a violating copy is utterly silly.
A hash is not going to work. Some uploader could simply add a few words to the document somewhere and the hash is rendered useless. In order to do meaningful filtering, they need to do significant matches against the original work.
It sounds like Scribd made more than a reasonable effort to protect Ms. Scott's work, and fortunately even her lawyers finally clued in and dropped the case.
I almost went Dr. Seuss.
I'm glad I didn't. It would have looked pathetic compared to your effort.
Bravo, sir.
It won't, however, answer Apple's biggest reason for not wanting to support Flash.
Flash is, simply, a proprietary format that they don't have any patent control over. They want h264, which is a proprietary format controlled by a consortium they are a major member of.
Apple wants Flash dead. They don't want it open, they don't want it closed, they don't want it with cherries and whipped cream on top. They want it dead. It's something they cannot control, and therefore it must die.
Given the fact that this is a very early field test of the technology and not an actual application of the technology, and given the fact that this was emphasized pretty heavily in the summary and even more so in the actual article, I fail see your point.
This is an early test. Actual hands-off application of this technology is at least 10 years off, probably more.
The vehicle will operate autonomously, with a human being monitoring it from within and ready to take over should the early-stage experimental autonomous systems somehow not perform up to spec.
I love The Bollard. And, yes, they are an excellent example of a newspaper done more for love than money. The Coastal Journal and the other freebies in the Midcoast area do pretty well, too.
But they rely heavily on people willing to cover news and not get paid terribly well, and they have mostly human resources, not a lot of in-depth technical resources. It's still excellent, and is probably the way actual newsgathering on the local level is sustainable, but how long will they last?
Twitter, Facebook, and other informational sources have their value, but it's a storm of opinion, not a decently authoritative source.
No. Sorry, with respect, but... just.. no.
The relevant RESPONSE would be the police being able to enter your house with a warrant. Or maybe telling the ISP to start collecting the logs for your account with a warrant. Or tapping your phone with a warrant. Or tracing your cell via GPS with a warrant. Do you see a pattern here? "with a warrant".
But forcing companies to collect and retain every bit of data on EVERYONE just so they can go back and review it for people they suspect later? No. That's not at all analogous to being able to enter a house with a warrant.
So much is collected about our daily activities that we've become used to it. Maybe it's made law enforcement easier, and maybe that's worth the price. That's a matter of seriously divided opinion.
But, please, don't pretend that the forced collection of data on everyone all the time is in any way analogous to being able to enter a private space with a proper warrant.
Stop working for the large media outlets that treat you like a consumable resource. Instead, find a nice local newspaper that treats its employees with respect or, better yet, start your own independent blog.
Find one first. Every newspaper within 150 miles of my house has been bought out by ever-larger conglomerates. Most then immediately cut the local field reporter jobs by about 2/3. After a few rounds of this, our "local" papers are owned by companies three states over, and reporting has been cut to the point where one reporter is responsible for at least 4-5 towns, and a couple of interns per county do filler stories like "Edna's thoughts on turning 103" and "Looka da cute fuzzy puppy!"
By the time I cut my subscription, the "local" section was a total of 10 pages long, most of it advertising or letters to the editor. There was, at best, one article that had anything to do with a town 20 miles from me, and that was usually a filler piece.
The "free paper" actually sends reporters to town council meetings and does more local reporting. It's chock full of ads, and doesn't have any Reuters or other non-local stories, but it's got a lot of local stuff in it, and it's actually not all that bad for being written by obviously inexperienced journalists.
Just because you -can- update a news website every minute doesn't mean you necessarily -should-
I want to find you and give you a friendly man-hug. I really do. It would be so cool to have reporters actually check their facts and have their editors really give a crap about whether the truth is being at least attempted at.
I honestly wish the world worked that way, but it doesn't any more.
If you wait to report your story, by the time you released it everyone would skip right on past the headline saying "nope, read that four hours ago, what are these people smoking that they think I still give a shit?"
You might attract a small following of people interested in dropping the information crapflow and looking for verified, reasonably nonbiased, honest reporting. But few advertisers are going to want to deal in what they consider "old news".
The only way to get advertisers is to gain a really dedicated following of people. And with the dizzying array of news sources, first is often seen as best.
Actually, I think you'll find that true investigative journalism has simply become unprofitable. It's not that people don't want to work on it, it's that no one really wants to report verified, accurate fact with as little bias as possible any more.
Introducing a bias that whips your audience into a frenzy sells a shitload more ads.
And why bother verifying (or, let's be honest, even collecting!) facts when all you want to do is keep your audience angry enough about the only they know for sure. The simple fact that everyone but you is lying to them about everything?
Investigative journalism still exists, to an extent. But it's going away, because advertisers pay the outlets that attract the most eyeballs, and people aren't willing to pay for the newspaper any more.
We are, truly, getting the news outlets we so richly deserve.
Yes, they are adding shark-mounted lasers. It's a combination of Mafia Wars and Farmville. You can take out a lasershark hit on someone's lost lamb.
Is facebook just the least abysmal compared to all the other competitors and non-competitors.
Bingo. Ding-ding-ding! Give the man a cookie, he's hit the nail on the head.
Facebook sucks the least of any site offering the service they offer. That's the key to their success.
Don't like it. Start your own site.
Oh, no! And you were on a roll! Well, we have some lovely consolation prizes. Thanks so much for playing. :)
Not really a practical answer. In order to have a social site, you have to have the opportunity to socialize. Facebook was the earliest contender to have a site that didn't blow big stinky steaming monkey chunks, and therefore most of the social site fans are already there and pretty entrenched.
To unseat Facebook, you're going to have to build something so fantastic, so compelling, so supremely awesome that people are going to want to move en masse. That way, your new users have a chance at having at least a little bit of a friend network when they arrive.
And since most of Facebook's money comes from targeted advertising, any serious contender is either going to have the same privacy issues and ruin most of the incentive to leave Facebook, charge a membership fee and alienate users that way, or run the site out of the goodness of their hearts to the tune of millions of dollars of losses a year.
The same was said of AOL - they were the first to make a compelling case for that newfangled Internet thingy to the masses, and they were the BIG player back when the Internet was young, and a connection was on the other side of a dialup modem. Facebook is the same "training wheels to social sites" that AOL was the "training wheels to the Internet" back then.
AOL was eventually unseated, and Facebook will be, too. But probably not in the next couple of years. There's little profitable incentive to unseat them and do so in such a way that people would actually want to leave Facebook.
For those who are perceptive, the fact that user satisfaction is so low but those same users continue to use the service tells you anything you might want to know.
Yes, it actually says several things. Your contempt for the site and its users is quite obvious, and understandable enough. However, setting that aside - regardless of people's reasons for wanting to use a social site, there are a number of logical reasons why someone who wants to use one would choose Facebook despite its obvious shortcomings.
First and foremost, if you want to use a social site (leaving aside why), they are rather like Immortals, "in the end, there can be only one." People will only really want to use the social site where, well, there's a chance to socialize. That's rather the point. That means choosing the site where all the people they know are already members. And very few people are going to want to support more than one, possibly two if you're really into it, social sites at the same time.
Second, social sites provide a medium of communication that isn't really closely analogous to anything that has existed before. Yeah, it's "part" this and it's "like" that, but it's not really a new medium. It's a new type of communications medium. And, for some, a really compelling one. And Facebook's take on it is markedly different from, say, MySpace's attempt. Facebook mixed the right elements and ease-of-use at the right time. They weren't first, they weren't perfect, but they did it just well enough to attract critical mass - they attracted massive amounts of users just as the whole social site fad reached the mainstream.
People continue to use Facebook, warts and all, because it has no real competition in its niche. There are other social sites, for sure, but Facebook got it closer to "right" than anyone else earlier than anyone else managed to get something as useful, so they ended up with most of the users.
And there's obviously something to its niche that people feel is useful to them, or it wouldn't account for more traffic in the US than any other web site. I don't see the concept of socialization over the Internet going away any time soon, and Facebook sure provides a great way to maintain an online community.
Eventually, they will probably be unseated, but it's going to take a lot of effort for someone to knock Favebook off the throne it currently occupies. The new site is going to have to be compelling enough to get people to exit Facebook pretty much en masse and convince most of their friends to come along. Facebook's parent company makes a LOT of money through advertising, and they are a bit of a juggernaut at the moment, so there aren't many sites that would dare face off with them.
And anyone with the resources to become a serious contender is going to be in it to make money, so it's doubtful that the privacy issues will go away, so even privacy-minded folk will have little reason to move.
Right. The users are the product.
I'm sure their customers are quite happy with them.
Damnit, stop posting truly good stuff just after I run out of mod points!
I may have to steal that line very soon.
OT, but some of my favorites (collected from various co-workers):
I'd like to emphasize that I am NOT making any of these up.
"He was reeking haddock with the system."
"It's not that cold on the thermometer, but don't forget the wind shield factor".
"OK, all of these things are important, but what takes present tense?"
"Hopefully this has got your creative juices floating..."
"There's no pot of gold at the end of the tunnel."
"He was out last week for surgery. He had a pollack removed."
As someone who currently has a few mod points, I can only quote The Librarian, and say, with great import and deep thought:
"Ook!"
I'm sorry to say that your local paper is already dead. It is no longer what I consider a "working" newspaper. That's an example of a newspaper that has given up newsgathering.
I'm perfectly OK with my local news outlets doing reprints/redistributions of Reuters, AP, etc news stories. After all, news needs to have a global perspective, and the major redistributors have an economy of scale that a local paper simply can't match. My local paper simply cannot send a cub reporter to the Gulf of Mexico nor can they afford a helicopter to fly over the Gulf or afford experts in oil containment and petrochemistry to assess the extent of the damage.
The AP can do all of that once, and sell the resulting story and image to all the local news outlets.
But your LOCAL paper it also needs to have a vibrant "LOCAL" section with the kind of news you need to understand what is going on around you. If it's not doing that, it's not a "local newspaper", it's a "local reprinting service of non-local news".
The kinds of local coverage you describe are cheap to collect and add a "local flavor" to the paper without actually needing to put any real money into collecting and verifying actual news of importance.
Your local paper will continue to exist, but has ceased to serve any useful purpose.
Actually, your post demonstrates the effects of the changes in the coverage of the news. It's becoming centralized, and as such the only news that's profitable is what sells ads (sensationalism) and/or what is cheapest to collect or needs little verification (opinion).
And if you can sell your story as "the story no one else will tell you", then people will come back and watch YOUR ads.
Your gross misconception of certain communities is an excellent example of the effects, and the very bleeding of polarizing opinion you decry into what is supposed to be news coverage.
Because keepin' you hatin' means keepin' you watchin', which sells ads. You're unwittingly serving as a perfect example of the same problems you decry.
Be especially wary of those outlets that claim to have exclusive access to the truth behind the news, or cover stories that no one else "dares tell you", or claims not to have an agenda and to be completely unbiased.
Because that's just not possible, and you're far more likely to be manipulated if you can be tricked into believing that your chosen news outlet is free of bias. Once their bias becomes your baseline for "truth", they've won.
Yeah, except Slashdot works on a totally different economy of scale than a newsgathering organization.
How many traffic/camera helicopters does Slashdot have in the air? How many reporters do they hire in the Gulf of Mexico to cover the oil spill? None. They have volunteers submit "reprints" from other organizations who are themselves "reprinters" or in some cases the actual newsgathering organization. They have more volunteers who audit them, and more volunteers to run a vibrant discussion community.
The money gleaned from running Slashdot after paying for bandwidth and a little hookers and blow for the shareholders could never support even a handful of independent cub reporters, much less a decent newsgathering crew or a reprint subscription to Reuters.
Slashdot is actually a prime example of why the traditional print news media are having trouble. It costs a good deal of money to get good coverage of the news, and traditionally subscribers have paid for that. But now it's available everywhere, for free.
They'll dry up, and the only organizations left will be those that are big enough to use economies of scale in advertising to raise enough money. Which means the population of paid professional newsgatherers is going to plummet, replaced by reprints of the gist of Twitterstorms and the like.
May not be a complete disaster, but the Times (and the Gazette, and the Post) they are a'changin.
Mike is the man who has inseminated turkeys with a syringe, and gotten turkey jizz on himself. He has immersed himself in ponds of feces. He's been inside machines that grind up animals. He's hung off skyscrapers, wind turbines, and all manner of high ugly places.
He's a brave guy. It's not that he's braver than any of the people he covers - they all just think of it as their job. But he's sampled ALL that ugliness in employment has to offer.
And, yes, I fully expect that he'd probably projectile-vomit at some point while covering that job.
Well, since Dell really doesn't offer a refund of the Windows licensing cost when you order the Linux one, it's really easier just to buy the Windows version then "nuke it from orbit", either leaving Windows on there as a dual-boot in case you ever need it, or wiping it off.
There are lots of sites devoted to Linux compatibility of various desktop, laptop, and netbook configurations, which is really all you need.
All the Vendor is going to do is add their crapware to a perfectly good Operating System. ;)
Heck, as I mentioned earlier in another thread, Wine has better compatibility with older Windows software than Windows XP does.
Not that I blame Microsoft, they need to drop the cruft of old-software support from time to time, but they could learn a lesson in sandboxed compatibility modes with older versions of their own software from the Wine folks.
I suppose, with a little work, you might be able to get Wine working in Windows. Though I think that would cause a serious rift in the Space/Irony Continuum.
Mint (and I believe Ubuntu) preinstalls a torrent handler called "Transmission". It's no uTorrent, I'll freely admit, but it is extremely capable, fast, and lightweight. It's a solid performer.
Can't help you on the Japanese input stuff, sorry. :(
Actually, I think that's how my friend's Mini 9 came configured. But that may have changed.
Regardless, the Ubuntu or Mint install discs make it really, REALLY easy to add a multiboot option to a preinstalled Windows machine. Boot to CD, select "install", select the "run side by side" option, and you're done. You can choose what to start every time you start the computer.
I use both.
Wine runs Windows software that Windows itself cannot run. I have a generous handful of old favorite Windows 95/98 games that simply will not run in any way, shape, or form in Windows XP or later. Wine handles them without the slightest issues and with very little work (you just need to tell it what operating system to pretend to be for those programs, all covered in the GUI).
On the other hand, my work requires that I have a Windows XP box to remote in. My wife has a Nokia phone. I have an iPod. None of these do well in Linux even with Wine. VirtualBox, 15 minutes, and my old XP CD later, and I've got a work, Nokia, and iTunes-compatible virtual machine available that has remained untouched and unchanged along with all of my data over my last two complete OS upgrades (9.04->9.10 and 9.10->10.04).
But the real beauty is that all the stuff I really need on Windows is sandboxed off to a virtual machine. The remote access software really messes with the Internet connection of the machine it runs on (loads this silly "secure desktop" and locks Internet access away on the "insecure desktop"), except that it's all now a Windows VM and cannot affect my Internet connection in Linux.
iTunes has no access to anything on my actual computer, only to what's on the VM I provide it.
Patch Tuesday is just a day I start up my XP instance, click on the "Express Install" button, and leave it alone for a half hour or so while I'm doing stuff. "Reboot" means that XP goes away for a few minutes. Chances are I'm not doing anything in it at the time anyway, I just keep watching my TV show or whatever while Windows does its reboot happy dance.
So, while I still need Windows, I don't need it to be my primary operating system. In fact, I've found things a whole lot more convenient when I don't. I can run a much greater variety of software (Wine handles the bulk of it, and a VirtualBoxed XP instance handles the rest), it was all incredibly easy to set up, and didn't cost me a dime.