OK, Jesse Ventura is the exception that proves the rule. He got elected in a small midwestern state that's famous for doing politics its own way. And he was a singularly ineffective governor who served one term, and then retired permanently from politics.
As for Nader and Perot, all their runs tell us is that if you're charismatic and appeal to a large group of disaffected people you can make a big splash in the news. Neither had any luck creating a permanent political base or influencing policy.
No, I take that back, both influenced policy — away from their own agenda. Perot split the Republican vote, helping to elect Bill Clinton, and Nader split the Democratic vote, helping to elect George W.
Two issues here. First, Slashdot is the wrong place to play usage nazi. People here don't give a shit, and why should they?
Second, "correct" usage is just a convention. It's not always as clearcut as compulsive usage nazis like to think when they tell you something is "a noun not a verb" or violates some obscure rule.
And indeed, there's huge body of people who consider "Democrat party" to be perfectly good usage: Republicans. They say "Democrat party" instead of "Democratic party" to imply that the other party is not the party of Democracy, it's the party of people who call themselves Democrats. Of course, Democrats consider that usage offensive.
But even if you're a Democrat (for the record, I'm not, nor a Republican either) you have to admit that saying "Democrat party" instead of "Democratic party" conveys a meaningful idea. That's why it's so stupid to play usage nazi: "incorrect" usage is not always an enemy of communication — sometimes its more effective than "correct" usage.
The editors seem to have a fascination with stupid pundits. Shall we tag this and similar stories stupidpundit?
Here's one big collective stupidpundit story: when Leopard came out, a bunch of pundits crowed that it was a big leap forward, filesystemwise. Why? Because Leopard has gone over to ZFS as the main file system, and ZFS is the first really new file system in decades.
Except that Leopard hasn't gone over to ZFS. It doesn't even support read-write access to ZFS. Why did so many pundits get it so wrong? Because Leopard introduces Time Machine, an automatic file versioning system, which is "obviously" built on top of ZFS's file versioning feature. Of course, if that were true, you wouldn't have to plug in an external disk to use Time Machine. But you do.
Darn those stupid pundits. They had me all excited because ZFS really is very cool. If Mac OS had gone over to it, I would have been terribly tempted to buy my first Mac.
Your "informative" post is so full of misinformation I don't know where to start. The Demo party is by no means "private". If that were the case, they could just go off by themselves and pick their candidates without bothering us. It has many official and unofficial ties with government at all levels. It uses those ties to guarantee its semi-monopoly on power. Some people would claim that this relationship is benign, but it would take a particularly stupid one to insist that it's nonexistent.
And yes, you can go to another party, or run as an independent. You can also go jump off a dock. I don't anybody would care about that, either.
No, he's being disallowed from running in the Democratic primary. Which is effectively disallowing him from running. When was the last time you saw any significant attention paid to a primary race that wasn't Democratic or Republican?
My "can't boil water" thing was hype not an example. A common example (one I've actually seen) is somebody who accidentally dyes all their clothes a funny color because they can't be bothered to read the instructions on the side of the detergent box.
You seem to think that Wikipedia has clear-cut "notability" rules. It does not. What it has is a set of guidelines that people who participate in the notability discussions are supposed to consider before achieving a "consensus". Participants can ignore these guidelines if they choose — but when I was a participant, most people didn't even bother to read them.
Incidentally, "notability" has nothing to say about ego listings. That's covered by the rules that prohibit advertising and autobiographical articles. So much for your understanding of the "notability rules"!
Things may have been tightened up since I participated, back in 2005, but back then notability discussions were a joke. Whoever took an interest in the issues voted (in theory, we were having a discussion leading to a consensus, but it was really voting) and eventually an admin would decide that there were enough votes one way or another for a "consensus" to be called. The definition of "consensus" varied from admin to admin; sometimes a majority on one side or the other, sometimes it was a 2/3 vote. But even if they'd been consistent about it, it's stupid to call something a "consensus" when there's still a significant minority in opposition. And "consensus" of what? Just a few self-selected participants, often recruited by somebody who wants to force a decision one way or the other.
One way I liked to contribute to Wikipedia was by bringing up random articles. If the article was worthwhile but ragged, I'd copy edit it. If the article was trivial crap, I'd submit it for deletion.
One I randommed onto an article that was a biography of a Canadian guy. His sole claim to fame? He once ran for Provincial Leader of a major political party. He came in something like third or fourth. (A roughly equivalent U.S. scenario would be somebody running for governor of a state, and coming in third or fourth in the party primary.) He then went back to his regular job and never ran for anything again.
Not notable, right? Indeed, it turned out that he was only in Wikipedia because somebody had used a bot to insert the names of everybody who ever ran for anything in Canada. But a bunch of people who thought that Canada was underrepresented in W stacked the discussion, and got a "consensus".
If I thought Wikipedia was worth reforming, the first thing I'd do is eliminate the notability filter. After all, one of the big Wikipedia "big rules" is "Wikipedia is not paper". That is, there's room for everybody. I used to groan every time that rule was cited during a notability discussion because the rule has nothing to do with whether somebody/something is notable or not. On the other hand, "Wikipedia is not paper" totally contradict the whole idea of having a notability filter.
You can't fix democracy just by dreaming up clever election rules. A complicated system for guaranteeing the victory of the most important politician solves nothing. It really isn't all that important which specific politician gets elected. What's important is that whoever does get elected have some sense of responsibility to the citizenry. That requires their active participation, not just visiting a polling booth every couple of years. Right now, too many voters are too apathetic, too busy, too ignorant, too bigoted, or too self-interested to play the role they're supposed to play. If you want to fix democracy, that's the problem you need to attack.
And will you please stop with all the lame posts that are just link farms? If you have an opinion that you think people need to hear about, tell us about it. If you can't explain your opinions to people, why should we care what those opinions are?
First, came the news that Mac sales has risen by 2/3 from last year, so that one in 12 new PCs sold in the U.S. is now a Mac. Now the user base of the Mac platform has risen to the point where it's worth developing malware for it! If malware developers are taking notice, legitimate application developers can't be far behind. Rejoice, Mac fanatics: you're finally a mainstream platform!
Techies are such an arrogant bunch. Knowing all the technical shit you need to know in order to avoid malware doesn't make you smart, it just makes you technical. On the one hand, I know lots of smart non-techies who managed to get their systems infected. On the other hand, I know techies who can't boil water without hurting themselves.
I read the whole fucking article. The author has some vague plans about boycotts and electing the right people. Nothing we haven't heard before — or is likely to overcome the huge political and financial clout of the telecoms. It's just an incoherent rant. I think he's channeling Howard Beale.
Well, he might be going through a small, independent ISP, like Sonic.net. (Which I can personally endorse.) But even independent ISPs have to use the infrastructure provided by the local telephone opco. Which are almost always owned by the same big telcoms that own the cell companies.
If you have an argument to make, make it. If you're too lazy to explain yourself, why should I expend a lot of effort trying to figure out what you have to say?
You pointing me to Wikipedia as an authority on a controversial issue? (Snicker)
No shit. The author seems totally disconnected from simple logic. On the one hand he's all bent out of shape because of the monopolistic abuses of the cell phone companies. On the other hand, he claims that we can do without their services. Hello? If people don't really need their services, how did they become monopolies?
The submitter refers to the story as a "long satisfying screed". In other words, it feels good to read it and yell "right on! you go!" That's the problem with current political discourse: it's designed to make you feel good, not to actually accomplish anything.
First off, the blogger won mainly because the plaintiffs hired a totally incompetent attorney. He came up with all kinds of silly legal theories, failed to file motions on time, and generally acted unprofessionally. A more competent attorney might have done better. Then again, a more competent attorney might have decided that this was a really bad case, and definitely would have advised the plaintiffs that they couldn't possibly recover enough money to justify going to court. Probably a number of attorneys did just that, leaving the plaintiffs to find an shyster stupid enough to take the case.
Second, the blogger is a total asshole. He has a bad experience with an ineptly run auction listing company, and immediately proclaims that all such companies are evil. What total crap. I'm all for protection of free speech, even stupid free speech. But when the civil rights of idiots are upheld, don't expect me to get excited about it.
Basically, this is a squabble between two mentally deficient parties with a similarly challenged lawyer assisting the process. Big deal.
Who said this was a monumental decision in favor a bloggers? The defendant himself. And who was the brilliant editor who went that self-aggrandizement go unchallenged? Zonk of course.
In theory, I suppose they can. But infotainment is purveyed by big media companies with good lawyers and very deep pockets. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for somebody to take them on.
I assume people with valuables in their rooms tend to lock up? And the doors are solid enough to require significant effort to break down? The sound of splintering wood tends to attract attention. Though if I lived in a dorm, I'd still lock everything down with those security cables.
And bicycle thefts are probably more profitable than stealing electronics. High end bikes are worth thousands, and the typical laptop is only worth a few hundred.
A long time ago, I read an article about bicycle thefts at UC Berkeley. The campus cops recommended using heavy-duty locks, the kind you can't break without a huge bolt cutter, the kind that are impossible to conceal. So the reporters got one of those cutters, carried it openly onto campus, and pretended to cut the locks on several bikes in busy areas. Nobody paid any attention!
I have (dead) outlets for one cable company but am forced to go with the higher-priced firm. Moves like this will help those who live in areas where competition -- even minimal competition -- exists. The article also discusses the impact this may have on low- to middle-income families, who disproportionately live in apartment complexes."
So thanks to the FCC, you can stop paying cable bills that are totally obscene and start paying that are just extremely lewd. Progress!
The problem with cable/satellite is not the lack of competition by service providers (though I'm not thrilled by that). The big problem is the lack of competition by content providers.
Back in the 80s, anybody with an uplink could start a cable channel. They still can, but they have no hope of finding any local cable companies to carry them. All their bandwidth is used up by big media companies who have gamed the system so that cable companies have to carry all kinds of crap, and pay premium prices for it. Until that changes, you'll be shelling out.
Or you could just do without. I mean, it's only TV.
One problem with buses is that they require a lot more power than railed vehicles. I would guess that this new technology provides enough energy for a tram (in the U.S. we call them "light rail" or "trolleys") but not enough for a bus. But I'm no expert.
Jeez, remind me not to rely on your reviews! You're refusing to acknowledge any of the most basic ethical rules of the journalism, and yet you claim you can be trusted because "people are cynical". Gee, I wonder why?
In other words, Comcast used ambiguous language to dodge this issue. Not a uncommon practice. And calling it "an equivocation fallacy" doesn't maker it any more serious. Indeed, dressing your argument up in fancy jargon is itself a kind of fallacy.
Also note that "we" did not impeach anybody for equivocation. At least I didn't. It was a bunch of right-wing politicians who think that it's unconstitutional for a liberal to be president. If speaking ambiguously was grounds for removing someone from office, every elected official in the world would be in trouble!
Its easy to overlook the odd thumbdrive. That sort of bullshit is what separates casual bloggers from real journalists and reviewers. If you pretend to be a journalist and have any professional ethics at all, you don't accept freebies from the people you're covering and reviewing. Period. Not a thumb drive, not a T-shirt, not a voucher for lunch at McD's, nothing, zilch, nada. Real news organizations fire the asses of reporters who accept freebies. If bloggers want to be taken seriously, and claim the same privileges and legal protections that "regular" reporters get, they need to adopt the same ethics.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, Jesse Ventura is the exception that proves the rule. He got elected in a small midwestern state that's famous for doing politics its own way. And he was a singularly ineffective governor who served one term, and then retired permanently from politics.
As for Nader and Perot, all their runs tell us is that if you're charismatic and appeal to a large group of disaffected people you can make a big splash in the news. Neither had any luck creating a permanent political base or influencing policy.
No, I take that back, both influenced policy — away from their own agenda. Perot split the Republican vote, helping to elect Bill Clinton, and Nader split the Democratic vote, helping to elect George W.
Two issues here. First, Slashdot is the wrong place to play usage nazi. People here don't give a shit, and why should they?
Second, "correct" usage is just a convention. It's not always as clearcut as compulsive usage nazis like to think when they tell you something is "a noun not a verb" or violates some obscure rule.
And indeed, there's huge body of people who consider "Democrat party" to be perfectly good usage: Republicans. They say "Democrat party" instead of "Democratic party" to imply that the other party is not the party of Democracy, it's the party of people who call themselves Democrats. Of course, Democrats consider that usage offensive.
But even if you're a Democrat (for the record, I'm not, nor a Republican either) you have to admit that saying "Democrat party" instead of "Democratic party" conveys a meaningful idea. That's why it's so stupid to play usage nazi: "incorrect" usage is not always an enemy of communication — sometimes its more effective than "correct" usage.
The editors seem to have a fascination with stupid pundits. Shall we tag this and similar stories stupidpundit?
Here's one big collective stupidpundit story: when Leopard came out, a bunch of pundits crowed that it was a big leap forward, filesystemwise. Why? Because Leopard has gone over to ZFS as the main file system, and ZFS is the first really new file system in decades.
Except that Leopard hasn't gone over to ZFS. It doesn't even support read-write access to ZFS. Why did so many pundits get it so wrong? Because Leopard introduces Time Machine, an automatic file versioning system, which is "obviously" built on top of ZFS's file versioning feature. Of course, if that were true, you wouldn't have to plug in an external disk to use Time Machine. But you do.
Darn those stupid pundits. They had me all excited because ZFS really is very cool. If Mac OS had gone over to it, I would have been terribly tempted to buy my first Mac.
Your "informative" post is so full of misinformation I don't know where to start. The Demo party is by no means "private". If that were the case, they could just go off by themselves and pick their candidates without bothering us. It has many official and unofficial ties with government at all levels. It uses those ties to guarantee its semi-monopoly on power. Some people would claim that this relationship is benign, but it would take a particularly stupid one to insist that it's nonexistent.
And yes, you can go to another party, or run as an independent. You can also go jump off a dock. I don't anybody would care about that, either.
No, he's being disallowed from running in the Democratic primary. Which is effectively disallowing him from running. When was the last time you saw any significant attention paid to a primary race that wasn't Democratic or Republican?
My "can't boil water" thing was hype not an example. A common example (one I've actually seen) is somebody who accidentally dyes all their clothes a funny color because they can't be bothered to read the instructions on the side of the detergent box.
You seem to think that Wikipedia has clear-cut "notability" rules. It does not. What it has is a set of guidelines that people who participate in the notability discussions are supposed to consider before achieving a "consensus". Participants can ignore these guidelines if they choose — but when I was a participant, most people didn't even bother to read them.
Incidentally, "notability" has nothing to say about ego listings. That's covered by the rules that prohibit advertising and autobiographical articles. So much for your understanding of the "notability rules"!
Things may have been tightened up since I participated, back in 2005, but back then notability discussions were a joke. Whoever took an interest in the issues voted (in theory, we were having a discussion leading to a consensus, but it was really voting) and eventually an admin would decide that there were enough votes one way or another for a "consensus" to be called. The definition of "consensus" varied from admin to admin; sometimes a majority on one side or the other, sometimes it was a 2/3 vote. But even if they'd been consistent about it, it's stupid to call something a "consensus" when there's still a significant minority in opposition. And "consensus" of what? Just a few self-selected participants, often recruited by somebody who wants to force a decision one way or the other.
One way I liked to contribute to Wikipedia was by bringing up random articles. If the article was worthwhile but ragged, I'd copy edit it. If the article was trivial crap, I'd submit it for deletion.
One I randommed onto an article that was a biography of a Canadian guy. His sole claim to fame? He once ran for Provincial Leader of a major political party. He came in something like third or fourth. (A roughly equivalent U.S. scenario would be somebody running for governor of a state, and coming in third or fourth in the party primary.) He then went back to his regular job and never ran for anything again.
Not notable, right? Indeed, it turned out that he was only in Wikipedia because somebody had used a bot to insert the names of everybody who ever ran for anything in Canada. But a bunch of people who thought that Canada was underrepresented in W stacked the discussion, and got a "consensus".
If I thought Wikipedia was worth reforming, the first thing I'd do is eliminate the notability filter. After all, one of the big Wikipedia "big rules" is "Wikipedia is not paper". That is, there's room for everybody. I used to groan every time that rule was cited during a notability discussion because the rule has nothing to do with whether somebody/something is notable or not. On the other hand, "Wikipedia is not paper" totally contradict the whole idea of having a notability filter.
You can't fix democracy just by dreaming up clever election rules. A complicated system for guaranteeing the victory of the most important politician solves nothing. It really isn't all that important which specific politician gets elected. What's important is that whoever does get elected have some sense of responsibility to the citizenry. That requires their active participation, not just visiting a polling booth every couple of years. Right now, too many voters are too apathetic, too busy, too ignorant, too bigoted, or too self-interested to play the role they're supposed to play. If you want to fix democracy, that's the problem you need to attack.
And will you please stop with all the lame posts that are just link farms? If you have an opinion that you think people need to hear about, tell us about it. If you can't explain your opinions to people, why should we care what those opinions are?
First, came the news that Mac sales has risen by 2/3 from last year, so that one in 12 new PCs sold in the U.S. is now a Mac. Now the user base of the Mac platform has risen to the point where it's worth developing malware for it! If malware developers are taking notice, legitimate application developers can't be far behind. Rejoice, Mac fanatics: you're finally a mainstream platform!
Techies are such an arrogant bunch. Knowing all the technical shit you need to know in order to avoid malware doesn't make you smart, it just makes you technical. On the one hand, I know lots of smart non-techies who managed to get their systems infected. On the other hand, I know techies who can't boil water without hurting themselves.
Or even worse, mandatory!
I read the whole fucking article. The author has some vague plans about boycotts and electing the right people. Nothing we haven't heard before — or is likely to overcome the huge political and financial clout of the telecoms. It's just an incoherent rant. I think he's channeling Howard Beale.
Well, he might be going through a small, independent ISP, like Sonic.net. (Which I can personally endorse.) But even independent ISPs have to use the infrastructure provided by the local telephone opco. Which are almost always owned by the same big telcoms that own the cell companies.
No shit. The author seems totally disconnected from simple logic. On the one hand he's all bent out of shape because of the monopolistic abuses of the cell phone companies. On the other hand, he claims that we can do without their services. Hello? If people don't really need their services, how did they become monopolies?
The submitter refers to the story as a "long satisfying screed". In other words, it feels good to read it and yell "right on! you go!" That's the problem with current political discourse: it's designed to make you feel good, not to actually accomplish anything.
First off, the blogger won mainly because the plaintiffs hired a totally incompetent attorney. He came up with all kinds of silly legal theories, failed to file motions on time, and generally acted unprofessionally. A more competent attorney might have done better. Then again, a more competent attorney might have decided that this was a really bad case, and definitely would have advised the plaintiffs that they couldn't possibly recover enough money to justify going to court. Probably a number of attorneys did just that, leaving the plaintiffs to find an shyster stupid enough to take the case.
Second, the blogger is a total asshole. He has a bad experience with an ineptly run auction listing company, and immediately proclaims that all such companies are evil. What total crap. I'm all for protection of free speech, even stupid free speech. But when the civil rights of idiots are upheld, don't expect me to get excited about it.
Basically, this is a squabble between two mentally deficient parties with a similarly challenged lawyer assisting the process. Big deal.
Who said this was a monumental decision in favor a bloggers? The defendant himself. And who was the brilliant editor who went that self-aggrandizement go unchallenged? Zonk of course.
In theory, I suppose they can. But infotainment is purveyed by big media companies with good lawyers and very deep pockets. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for somebody to take them on.
What did Stalin say? "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." This is the financial equivalent.
I assume people with valuables in their rooms tend to lock up? And the doors are solid enough to require significant effort to break down? The sound of splintering wood tends to attract attention. Though if I lived in a dorm, I'd still lock everything down with those security cables.
And bicycle thefts are probably more profitable than stealing electronics. High end bikes are worth thousands, and the typical laptop is only worth a few hundred.
A long time ago, I read an article about bicycle thefts at UC Berkeley. The campus cops recommended using heavy-duty locks, the kind you can't break without a huge bolt cutter, the kind that are impossible to conceal. So the reporters got one of those cutters, carried it openly onto campus, and pretended to cut the locks on several bikes in busy areas. Nobody paid any attention!
The problem with cable/satellite is not the lack of competition by service providers (though I'm not thrilled by that). The big problem is the lack of competition by content providers.
Back in the 80s, anybody with an uplink could start a cable channel. They still can, but they have no hope of finding any local cable companies to carry them. All their bandwidth is used up by big media companies who have gamed the system so that cable companies have to carry all kinds of crap, and pay premium prices for it. Until that changes, you'll be shelling out.
Or you could just do without. I mean, it's only TV.
One problem with buses is that they require a lot more power than railed vehicles. I would guess that this new technology provides enough energy for a tram (in the U.S. we call them "light rail" or "trolleys") but not enough for a bus. But I'm no expert.
Jeez, remind me not to rely on your reviews! You're refusing to acknowledge any of the most basic ethical rules of the journalism, and yet you claim you can be trusted because "people are cynical". Gee, I wonder why?
In other words, Comcast used ambiguous language to dodge this issue. Not a uncommon practice. And calling it "an equivocation fallacy" doesn't maker it any more serious. Indeed, dressing your argument up in fancy jargon is itself a kind of fallacy.
Also note that "we" did not impeach anybody for equivocation. At least I didn't. It was a bunch of right-wing politicians who think that it's unconstitutional for a liberal to be president. If speaking ambiguously was grounds for removing someone from office, every elected official in the world would be in trouble!