This would merely be another case of CNN clickbait, were it not for the fact that this time they're straight out lying to their audience about the content of the interview their story pretends to be about. And that point seems to have completely escaped/. editor BeauHD. The real story here is that a reporter for CNN - a non-print news organization - is deliberately misrepresenting what the CEO of one of best and most professional print journals still in existence has to say about the medium-term future of his own publication, one of CNN's major competitors.
Although the criticisms I level in the above quote, and others like them in the parent post, are valid, they are completely mistargeted. Kellie Eli, the author of the article to whose dishonesty I so strenuously objected, works for CNBC, not CNN, and it is that news organization, not CNN which deserves everyone's opprobrium.
To compound my error, when several of you attempted to point out my misattribution to me, I responded to your polite reproofs with scorn. And, worse yet, smugness.
I'm sorry for that: for my fundamental error of attributing to CNN the journalistic sins of CNBC, and for my dismissive and condescending smugness in responding to those of you who more-or-less gently tried to make me aware of my mistake.
I apologize to you all, and I hope you can find it in yourselves to be a better person than I am, and forgive me for acting like an asshole.
I feel obligated to tell you that, for more than two years now, I have suffered from a medical condition that causes severe, chronic sleep deprivation. When I wrote the parent post, I was running on about 2.5 hours of sleep. As I was composing it, I repeatedly referred to the article whose integrity it attacks. In all, I must have looked at that CNBC story a half-dozen times or more - and, every time I did, when I looked at the logo at the top of the report, what I saw was "CNN", not CNBC. Later that day, after another almost two hours of sleep, I posted a raft of responses to your comments. In the process, I know for a fact that I visited the CNBC story page at least once - and, again, what I saw was "CNN", not CNBC. It was only when I read a reply from gnick wherein he explicitly stated that I had confused CNN with CNBC that I finally realized what all the criticism of my original post was about.
I was mortified by that epiphany. I have always prided myself on my mental acuity, and it was devastating to me to realize how far that has deteriorated.
In a letter to his long-time agent, the late Robert A. Heinlein observed, "An honest man can choose to follow the path of reason, or he may choose the path of faith. He cannot do both." I have tried since I became literate at the age of six to follow the path of reason. That path demands I adhere to established facts, and let them guide my conclusions, rather than attempt to warp facts to fit my beliefs. My original post failed to meet that standard, and I must now apologize for it.
Although I hope it helps to explain it, my misperception does not excuse my conduct. I am responsible for what I do and say, and it is my responsibility to acknowledge and to apologize for my misstatements of fact, and intentional discourtesies.
I do. I am sorry for being a jerk to you all, and I aplogize to you for my impolitesse. And I still more deeply regret my misattribution of journalistic misconduct on the part of CNBC to CNN. I sincerely apologize for that, as well.
Regarding CNN's story on this topic that they're apparently misrepresenting so badly, I can't find it. I'm starting to think thomst just pulled it out of his ass. Does anyone have a link to the CNN story everyone's bitching about?
<facepalm>
The link you can't seem to locate IS IN THE FUCKING SUMMARY. So is a link to the actual interview with Mark Thompson.
I might give them the benefit of the doubt, that what happened is comparable to what happens with science reporting. Interviewer makes executive summary of interview, with choice quotes. One of those quotes is misinterpreted by editor/producer/whoever. Misinterpretation turned into headline and made subject of an article, article handed down to junior writer who's not going to tell his boss 3 levels up that his English comprehension sucks. Misinformation makes it to press time, retraction happens a week later in size 4 print next to the 4 pages of ads.
Hanlon's Razor notwithstanding, I'd find it easier to give CNN credit for mere incompetence in this case were it not for the fact that the NYT is its direct competitor for news consumers. It's just too conveniently "on the nose" for a non-print news organization to be putting these particular words in that specific mouth, given that most people won't bother reading past the headline - and that the majority of those who do won't read CNN's report closely enough to catch the contradiction, especially since the false assertion regarding Mark Thompson's meaning is repeated in the lede.
Sorry, but, where blatantly self-serving reportage is concerned, my credulity only strains so far...
And the media can't understand why Russian trolls are able to spread lies on social media. The Russians learned how to write headlines from 24 hour news networks. We wouldn't have a fake news epidemic if major news outlets (on all fronts) didn't sell out their objectivity for political gains.
I have to disagree with your conclusion:
We wouldn't have a fake news epidemic if major news outlets (on all fronts) didn't sell out their objectivity for political gains.
The vast majority of major newspapers, newsmagazines, and TV news organizations do not, in fact, "sell out their objectivity for political gains." Fox News certainly does.It's true that MSNBC does lean sharply left in its editorial content - although, in fairness, it tries to provide at least some conservative counterbalance to that bias in the form of the Morning Joe show - but its news coverage qua news coverage clearly attempts to be objective. Fox News, on the other hand, deliberately declines to cover stories that cast the current administration and/or the Repubican party in an unfavorable light - and, since the departure from the Hannity and Colmes show of Alan Colmes, it has entirely given up on even the pretense of providing balanced editorial content in its host mix.
Your observation that "The Russians learned how to write headlines from 24 hour news networks," by contrast, is spot on.
Were I permitted to award you a +1 Insightful upmod for it, I would do so...
The headline and CNN reporter Kellie Eli's quote above completely misstate NYT CEO Mark Thompson's actual point.
To which an anonymous coward objected:
I glanced at CNN and didn't see this, but maybe I missed it. Either way a link would be helpful if your making arguments like this.
I make it a policy not to respond to ACs, but I will make an exception here, because you presume to engage in such pointless, minutely-detailed misrepresentation of my statement - and impugn my motives in the process. So, here goes:
The link(s) you demand ARE IN THE FUCKING SUMMARY. Try actually reading it.
And, FWIW, I hold Fox News in considerably lower regard than I do CNN. Most of CNN's sins are, per Hanlan's Razor, handily attributable to journalistic incompetence and stupidity. This one, however, certainly seems deliberate to me, given that:
a - CNN is certainly aware that the vast majority of web users read only the headlines, not the body of the story - and the headline's mischaraterization is repeated in the lede, so as to mislead those who succumb to the temptation to skim the article, rather than read it closely enough to catch the contradiction.
b - The NYT is a direct competitor to CNN for consumers of news.
I criticize CNN's reporting in general not because of the ongoing disaster that is Donald Trump's presidency (although CNN, with its craven gift of virtually unlimited air time to his campaign, including start-to-finish live coverage of many of his ralllies, certainly bears a not-inconsiderable portion of blame for his election), but because of its decades of mindless pack journalism, and round-the-clock slavering over such piffle as the JonBenét Ramsey murder (a tragic event, to be sure, but certainly not one that justified the months of non-stop coverage CNN awarded it), and the accidental suicide of golddigging bimbo Anna Nicole Smith - whom you may recall the ever-odious Wolf Blitzer tried his damnedest to tag as "America's Rose" in an attempt to somehow inflate her utterly self-indulgent, opiod-addicted, worthless existence to somehow being the equivalent of Britain's then-recently-deceased Diana, Princess of Wales, who had spent much of her pubiic life working for and promoting charities focused on issues such as banning landmines, AIDS prevention in third-world countries, and providing services to cancer and leprosy patients and homelss persons. You can try to justify such conduct as due to the pressure to fill time in the 25-hour news cycle, but you can't make its craven, pandering self-interest in any way praiseworth, or even appetizing.
Fox News, by contrast, systematically lies by both omission and commisstion as a matter of policy. It is, in fact, not a news organization at all, but rather a propaganda machine dressed up in journalist's clothing. If it were to disappear entirely tomorrow, America would only benefit from its absence...
CNN's story (and the/. summary above) promulgate its own propaganda thusly:
newspaper printing presses may have another decade of life in them
The headline and CNN reporter Kellie Eli's quote above completely misstate NYT CEO Mark Thompson's actual point. What he said was "I believe at least 10 years is what we can see in the U.S. for our print products." (Emphasis added by me, for clarity's sake.)
Note the profound difference in meaning between Thompson 's statement "at least 10 years," and Eli's characterization of his meaning as, "another decade of life... but not much more." (My elision here is, once more, strictly for the purpose of clarity.) Her story quotes him as saying, "an absolute minimum of 10 years" of existence for the NYT print edition, whereas the CNN headline (precisely echoed by/.'s own headline) twists that to, "Print journalism has maybe another 10 years," and that mischaracterization continues in Eli's purported paraphrase of his statement.
This would merely be another case of CNN clickbait, were it not for the fact that this time they're straight out lying to their audience about the content of the interview their story pretends to be about. And that point seems to have completely escaped/. editor BeauHD. The real story here is that a reporter for CNN - a non-print news organization - is deliberately misrepresenting what the CEO of one of best and most professional print journals still in existence has to say about the medium-term future of his own publication, one of CNN's major competitors.
In my universe, that's yellow journalism at its most despicable.
I think Donald Trump is a lying asswipe who wouldn't recognize an actual fact if it rose up and bit him on the bunghole - but, sadly, this story is patent, deliberate, no-shit, fake news.
CNN should be ashamed of itself - but it's been pellucidly clear for at least 3 decades now that it it has no sense of organizatonal shame, so I'm not holding my breath on that score. But it pisses me off mightily that it has so casually discarded what pitiful shreds of journalistic integrity it might once have had - and thereby placed me in the profoundly awkward and embarrassing position of being forced to publicly agree with the likes of Donald fucking Trump...
The thing is, just because the current, multi-lateral funding agreement expires in 2024 does not mean that it can't be replaced by a new, longer-term agreement between then and now. The question really is whether continuing operation of the ISS "as is", de-orbiting it, wholly or partially privatizing it, or doing something else altogether with it is the best, most practical, and achievable thing to do with it - and the answer to that question is not as clear-cut as some people might want to believe.
Part of the problem of formulating an optimal solution is that, as it has grown by accretion of new modules over the years, the ISS has become increasingly fragile and unwieldy. Although it's tempting to advocate it be moved to a higher, more stable orbit, that's a non-trivially-difficult proposition. Even mere stationkeeping puts considerable strain on its asymmetrical structure. Applying the amount of thrust necessary to boost it into a significantly-higher orbit could badly warp (or even break) it, stress connections between modules enough to cause it to spring leaks, bend its solar panels, and/or cause pieces to fall off - none of which would be Good Things. On the other hand, expanding it any further in its current orbit would make it even more fragile and hard to maintain on-station.
Then there's the political reality that the USA doesn't own the ISS. It belongs to an international consortium - and, even if you discount smaller contributors (Canada, which supplied the station's external remote manipulators, the EU, to which the Columbus module belongs, or Japan, which built the JEM-ELM-PS and JEM-PM modules), Russia, which owns the Zarya, Pirs, Zvezda, Poisk, and Rassvet modules, certainly won't permit the USA to unilaterally make decisions about the station's fate. Yes, the USA supplied as many of the ISS's modules as all the other partners combined, but that doesn't mean it can claim even a majority of the ISS component parts. Plus, from the time the space shuttle program shut down until SpaceX delivered its first payload, Russia was exclusively responsible for supplying the station with consumables - and it's still the only option for crew exchange flights - so its wishes regarding the ISS's fate can't simply be waved away.
There's also the fact that Congress rarely agrees to fund projects for more than a year at a time, regardless of NASA/the current administration's long-range plans. And the prospect of selling off the USA's portion of the ISS to private parties would definitely be a tough sell there.
So Trump won't unilaterally get to decide the ISS's fate - for which we should all be thankful, because the man doesn't even read, much less study technological policy.
What I suspect may happen is that an agreement to extend international funding for continued operation of the station in-situ will be struck sometime prior to 2024, thereby kicking the decision down the road a few years. In the end, what I think is the likeliest outcome is that some number of the newest, largest, and least-fragile modules will be boosted into a higher, more stable orbit to form the nucleus of a second-generation ISS, while, for practical reasons, the older, shabbier, less-maintainable ones (which is to say, "the Russian ones") will be de-orbited.
And then, maybe, we can get on with building the orbital facility we, as a species, actually need: a shipyard in space, where we can contruct and refurbish real spaceships - the kind that move humans, shuttlecraft, and cargo between destinations, without themselves ever having to land or take off from the bottom of planetary gravity wells...
Shouldn't there be numerous success stories, even anecdotal, if it's really all that favorable?
I think the problem is the conflation of "diversity of skillsets" with "diversity of [sex/ethnicity/cultural background]". The former is, I think, unquestionably a Good Thing when you're trying to solve Big Problems or develop innovative stuff. The value of the latter is what's really open to question - and not because any particular [sex/ethnicity/cultural background] is of questionable value in and of itself, but because whether that [sex/ethnicity/cultural background] is of value in solving a specific Big Problem or developing a given innovative whatsis is fundamentally unknowable.
It's an issue of not being able to draw baseline comparisons, because Big Problems tend to be unique (as do innovative whatchamacallits). You can't usefully compare the [sex/ethnicity/cultural background] factors that allow one team to succeed and others to fail, because each problem or whizbang is its own universe, and the things that allow a given team to successfully tackle any given challenge won't necessarily cross-apply to solving any other problems.
My conjecture is that [sex/ethnicity/cultural background] factors may affect the viewpoint of particular team members in ways that enable them to achieve insights that may prove invaluable to successfully tackling some critical aspect of a given problem - but if and whether that will happen in a specific venture is impossible to predict or plan for. And, further, just because it proved useful in one, individual instance doesn't guarantee or even suggest it will do so in a different one.
Cross-/multi-disciplinary efforts prove their value all the time. Likewise, adding a jack-of-all-trades to a team can help tie the knowledge bases of an assortment of specialists together in useful ways. That kind of diversity - one of thought and knowledge - gets more useful the more complex the problem that's being addressed.
Windows has the clearly superior MPC-HC which is free as in freedom and free as in beer...
prompting dcsmith to respond:
As long as you don't think you'll ever need support of any kind, perhaps.
The fact is that, as of today, MPC-HC is as stable as any application I've ever used on the Windows platform. Also, because the player employs whichever codecs the user has installed, it should be fully compatible with forthcoming video codecs for some time to come, as long as new ones are installed by the OS as they come into use - and on Windows, that's pretty much been the case.
Having said that, because development of MPC-HC has come to an end, it won't be capable of displaying VR content, once that becomes a thing - which, IMsnHO, won't be for a while, since nothing even approaching an industry standard has yet emerged (with the kind of de-facto "standard" of Google Cardboard excepted - and Cardboard is, at best, a tentative, preliminary step towards VR that nobody with any scrap of sense would contend is worth further development). So, sometime in the future, MPC-HD will become obsolete for al but by-then-legacy content.
Which will limit its users to watching, what, a century or more of movies and TV... ?
You think? How many people will "friend" celebrities for the sole purpose of downvoting them, if only to see the fans go bananas.
Your comments - not just this one, but all of them - on this topic reveal your foundational ignorance of how "friendship" works on FB. Or, to put it another way, you're clearly talking out your ass here.
To begin with, FB limits everyone to a maximum of 5,000 "friends". For users who are actually celebrities, that's a pretty small number. In order to add a new "friend", a celebrity who already has 5,000 must first de-friend one of those users to open up a slot.
In practice, that never happens, unless the wannabe is someone they know, like, and are already actual friends with IRL - such as, for instance, another celebrity. (And, since the person who monitors their feed is almost undoubtedly a personal assistant, rather than the celeb him/herself, the add is usually arranged by personal assistants, rather than by the user him/herself, anyway.)
The relationship the vast majority of FB users have with celebrities they love (or hate) is as "followers", which is quite a different and less privileged status.
And then there's the matter of "blocking" FB users (which is trivially easy to do). Blocking a user removes them from your view, and prevents them from seeing any of your posts. Act like an asshole often enough (and just how often "often enough" is is purely a matter of choice on the part of the person you've set out to annoy), and your trolling ass will be blocked. The user you're trying to harass promptly becomes invisible to you, and anything and everything you've posted disappears from his/her view, as well.
So, no, the scenario you find so amusing to contemplate will, in practice, never, ever happen...
I am profoundly relieved, because that nasty Scarlett Johansson person will be unable to post videos featuring my face grafted onto the bodies of her lovers. The chance that my dignity might be outraged in this way been worrying me ever since "deepfakes" became a thing.
Somebody with points please mod parent +1 Funny...
To all of you who scoffed at the notion that New Urbanism has any power over planning in San Francisco, and that the SF Planning Commission has been captured by New Urbanists, allow me to direct your attention to the Metreon project. Athough the Wikipedia article does not mention it, I well recall the controversy over the Planning Commission's requirement that the additional parking included in the original proposal be reduced by over a third, specifically to make it less attractive to drive to the site - which is located on a corner of the Moscone Center convention facility, then already a parking nightmare (as any attendee of Apple's WWDC prior to 2017 will attest).
Sony's foolish decision to charge admittance to the Metreon helped it to fail spectacularly (spectacularly enough that Sony backed out of the facility and sold its controlling interest to Westwood), but the parking situation certainly did not help to make it a more attractive destination. And, although the AMC megaplex onsite is quite profitable - despite how often moviegoers get shot there - the rest of the development is still underwater.
When I was employed in downtown SF, I took BART to work as often as possible. But the nature of my job frequently dictated that I be at work past the BART system's closing time, leaving me little choice other than to drive. I hated being forced to choose between parking 8 blocks away, knowing I wouldn't be leaving work until the middle of the night, or paying the piratical parking fees more convenient locations demanded - and I doubt I was alone in that.
Again, to be clear, it's commercial, office-use, and industrial-ish developments for which the Planning Commission dictates insufficient new parking. Their motivation is specifically to make driving - and especially parking - in downtown SF an ever more nightmarish experience, with the goal of forcing commuters to take public transit, instead. This is not a secret. PC members have explicitly said as much on many occasions. I know this because, up until 2000, when we moved away, I was heavily involved in local politics in El Cerrito, an East Bay suburb whose Planning Commission was also captured by New Urbanists. Members of that body frequently pointed to the San Francisco Planning Commision's goals and policies as a model for those of El Cerrito, both in public meetings and in private conversations with me and other politically-active citizens. (And, of course, from coverage of SFPC's hearings and deliberations in the San Francisco Chronicle, to which I was a subscriber, back in the days when that was a thing.)
Finally, let me state for the record that I have no objections whatsoever to apartment or high-rise condominium living for those who live in downtown areas of big cities. Single-family detached dwellings make no economic sense in those settings. Nor do I object to public transit, when it's done properly. What I object to is the one-size-fits-all approach to any form of problem-solving, and I strongly object to forcing commuters into public transit in circumstances where pubic transit simply does not accomodate their needs (for instance, to haul large, bulky items) or schedules (i.e. - shift workers and others who must work late hours). Meat-axe approaches are fundamentally wrong-headed, and New Urbanists have an annoying tendency to view every planning problem as a nail...
For the past 30 or more years, there's been a "progressivist" initiative in urban planning to significantly reduce the number of private motor vehicles on the road in densified urban areas (for which read "downtown" - to distinguish it from "inner urban" areas, for which read "slums"). It - along with housing densification itself - is one of the core goals of New Urbanism.
New Urbanism, in turn, is dedicated to reducing urban sprawl (for which read "suburbs"), in part by mandating high-density, multi-family housing, mixed-use planning (for which read "medium- and high-rises with residential units on top and retail at street level"). It regards with disdain that portion of the population that does not care for apartment living and mass transit as a lifestyle, and seeks to enforce its vision by changing planning law and packing planning commissions, not just in big cities, but in small and medium ones, as well.
A prime example of a city whose planning process is now wholly based on New Urbanist principles is San Francisco, which has systematically constrained parking by consistently approving major new construction only on condition that it be designed with new parking that's deliberately inadequate for the expected demand. (The idea being to make finding a parking place so difficult that it will basically force commuters to take public transit, rather than drive.) Ask any San Francisco resident or commuter (other than a fanatic bike geek) how that has worked out.
Uber and Lyft are merely taking advantage of the New Urbanist movement to try to mandate that cities run by progressives enact traffic-reduction policies that will result in their companies making the maximum possible profit from the hapless residents of and commuters to these cities.
I only hope that the New Urbanist masterminds stab them in the back by mandating fleets of city-owned self-driving cars to serve their residents and visitors...
The _eviodence_ need not be in dispute for a lawsuit or criminal prosecution to need to go to court. Whether an act is illegal can be in dispute.
What you say is true. However, the points the quoted argument cites are not evidence. They're the plaintiff's lawyer's characterization of relationships between the defendant (Cloudflare) and third parties not named as co-dependents - a.k.a. "opinions"...
And, of course, "The evidence is undisputed". No need for a trial; just seize CF's bank accounts now...
This.
If Cloudflare is doing anything other than pleading guilty, the "evidence" is, by definition in dispute.
The argument presented in this motion is pure handwaving. Any competent Federal judge is going to dismiss it out of hand, because no actual evidence is cited - only the claims presented in the argument itself.
Claims and evidence are two legally distinct things, AFAIK. <DISCLAIMER>I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.</DISCLAIMER>
And then, of course, there's this. (WARNING: extremely NSFW!)
The headline claims "Chrome OS Is Almost Ready To Replace Android On Tablets," while TFS (which is itself apparently a quote of The Verge's story) says, "In essence, however, Android remains Google's dominant mobile OS, while Chrome OS has been taking on more responsibility as Chromebooks have steadily become more capable and tablet-like."
So the story contradicts the headline, which means the headline is pure...
A great way to confound these trackers everywhere is to use an addon like AdNauseam. It will click on everything for you, generating a massive, and false, report regarding your activities.
A better way to defeat them is to use NoScript's Application Boundary Enforcer (ABE - located in the Advanced tab of the Options menu) to forbid their javascripts from running on anything other than their own domains. For instance, here's what I use to block Facebook from running the scripts associated with those ubiquitous "share" icons, as well as with their single-pixel trackers:
Then just block third-party cookies by default, and Presto!, you're only being tracked on Facebook's own site - which you kinda have to put up with, if you use FB at all.
Similar strategies will keep Google, Twitter, Snapchat, and any other social media company from following you around the web, as long as you create ABE scripts to block them outside of their own respective domains.
And, of course, it should go without saying that you'll want to block google-analytics.com, googleadservices.com, and other ad trackers altogether. Fortunately, despite all the Google-hating on/., you don't have to enable any of their ad trackers in order to actually use Google itself, or any of its applications, such as Gmail or Drive
Would that the same were true of, say, Facebook...
This is a leaked document which is admitted to be a draft, subject to wholesale changes, of a budget request from the DOE, which will be edited at the Whitehouse before the president presents it to Congress with a bunch of other similar documents. Congress will ignore the president's input and draft their own budget in the house, argue for months over in committee, sent to the floor of the house, finally arrive at something that won't be recognizable as the original draft that the house passes as a "budget" which will be taken up by the Senate who will likely add their own amendments in committee and from the floor which if it actually passes, will head back to the reconciliation committee to be possibly edited again before both chambers vote to pass it or not.
There is a nearly zero chance these numbers will survive all the coming edits driven by the endless debate in congress.
All of what you say is quite true - and yet TFA has actual value, in that it reveals the deeply-atavistic mindset of the bugeteers in the Orange Oaf's administration.
Note, for instance, that TFS points out DoE - which currently is headed by noted Texas dimwit Rick Perry (of "I forget" fame) - requested fairly Draconian cuts, but the OMB insisted on going beyond cutting to the bone all the way to chopping off whole limbs. This is an otherworldly level of stupid and spiteful, done together, with arrogance.
What this report does is to provide incentive for private citizens and public ones alike to work even harder to influence their Congresscritters to push back against the ever-greater excesses of an administration with no actual vision of its own - only a blind determination to undo every singe policy and legislative achievement of its predecessor, for no better reason than to wave the toddler-in-chief's tiny, flaccid dick around.
In other words: its value lies in motivating sane people who live in the real world to stay angry at the narcississtic know-nothing who occupies what has become the Offal Office...
That Ajit Pai opposes this proposal is, prima facie, a strong argument in favor of having the government own the network and only rent its use to the cellular carriers.
Because, with that swine, it's always Opposite Day...
The problem with Heinlein's books are that he couldn't leave his politics out of it and his politics were unworkable in the real world. His books were actually quite well written, good prose and characters (the language was a bit too American for us English speakers though) but the idea that an anarchistic capitalism or voluntary military government would work completely broke the suspension of disbelief.
I think it's more accurate to say, "he couldn't leave his philosophy out of it."
Heinlein started out as a Democrat (and even ran for Congress as one), but later became a Republican - back in the days before that meant "a know-nothing xenophobe" - which pretty firmly establishes for me that he considered philosophy and politics as separate issues. As do I, fwiw.
I also think it's important to keep firmly in mind that science fiction - space opera aside - has always been a literature of ideas, and one of the most frequent forms it takes is that of "if this goes on", where the author extrapolates the consequences of a trend, idea, or technological impact taken to a logical extreme. Heinlein was far from immune to its charms, and in novels such as Beyond this Horizon (where he explored the effects of a society where the code duello had been re-instituted and legally codified to protect pacifists and non-combatants) and Farnham's Freehold (where, in an alternate timeline, slavery was still the norm - only with the shoe very much on the other racial foot) he adapted the technique to reflect and comment on those ideas and institutions. To enjoy that form, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief (as the comedy axiom goes, "If you buy the gag, you buy the bit.") to enjoy the ride. Otherwise, you should read something else.
And, again, I disagree that the world of Starship Troopers (the novel) was governed by a military dictatorship. It's quite clear to me that it was not.
The book does, however, focus on that world's military culture from the inside - and therein, I think, lies the confusion. Military culture in every society is distinct - and distinctly different - from society's mainstream culture. That's been true of every human society (except Sparta) throughout history, and there's every reason to suppose that would apply to a future society, just as it does to current ones. To enter the military is to step outside of civilian cultural norms. That's very much what basic training is all about - in addition to the physical and combat skills training, its principal task is to condition recruits to accept and comply without question to orders from higher ranks, as well as to focus on the welfare and needs of the unit, rather than their own, individual concerns. Those are necessary adjustments for those recruits to be able to function effectively as part of a corps, up to and including sacrificing their own lives in an assault, or in defence of their comrades' lives; things they would not normally be capable of doing as members of civilian society.
When you only really glimpse a society through that lens, it will naturally appear to be an entirely different animal than it does from a strictly civilian perspective.
John Scalzi's Old Mans War series was a better depiction of a benign military dictatorship. Such a society could only be maintained if kept secret from the population that was expected to support it. When it was revealed, the support structure broke down.
To repeat, I disagree that the society of Heinlein's Starship Trooper (as opposed to Verhoeven's) is governed by a military dictatorship. And I haven't read Scalzi's series, so I can't intelligently comment on it...
Ooo ooo! Now wave away his advocacy of incest and group marriage..
Why would I want to do that? Because it apparently offends your sense of morality?
I'm with RAH (and c6gunner, below) on this topic. Adults who wish to engage in mutually-consensual sexual relations and/or marriage contracts should be free to do so, regardless of genetic relationship or number of participants. In western countries, the state has no legitimate interest in the former and currently acts in an indefensibly prejudiced manner in the latter.
Note the terms "adult" and "mutually-consensual" in the above statement.
I disagreed with a lot of Heinlein's political and economic theories, but we were of a mind when it came to civil liberties...
I don't think anyone believes RAH was a Nazi sympathizer, but the system of government in SST is fatally flawed. Anyone can enlist in a service, but not anyone can complete service. Severe corporal punishment, and even capital punishment, can be enforced with the thinnest veneer of a trial that has no independence from the chain of command. Despite the promise of universal enlistment, the government has strong control over who gets the franchise.
"Severe corporal punishment" is a feature of many current military justice systems, albeit not that of the USA - or, at least not formally (see: blanket party). However, it is worth noting that the execution that's carried out during Pvt. Rico's basic training is of a deserter during wartime. And not some phony-baloney Iraq/Vietnam-esque war of empire-building based on false premises and PR manipulation, but an actual existential war in which a genocidal alien species is the aggressor against humanity.
Under every form of military law with which I'm familiar, desertion in wartime is a capital crime. If it takes place on the battlefield, summary execution without trial is the conventional penalty.
Yes, in SST the execution in question takes place during basic training - but that is not unprecedented, even in modern times (although, again, not in the USA). Note, however, that every recruit of the Mobile Infantry is a volunteer, not a draftee. And the legal framework to which they will be bound as recruits is made explicitly clear to them before they sign up.
Some people fail to take the rules seriously - especially the ones that will apply "if and when" conditions change from those in effect when they enlist (such as a sneak attack from an alien species intent on subjugating and/or eliminating the human race creating a de factor state of war). I think that's rather the point RAH was making: that war is not a game, and soldiering is a commitment that should never be entered into lightly...
I thought it was a great book, but I actually liked the movie a lot. I didn't think it necessarily needed to be called Starship Troopers, but I did feel that it perfectly captured the atmosphere of fascism in the original book, which was its most important aspect.
I think you misremember the book.
The society Heinlein depicted in Starship Troopers bore no meaningful resemblence to the one in Verhoeven's movie. In interviews after the book was published, RAH stressed that military service was not the only path to the sovereign franchise in the Starship Troopers world. He envisioned any number of public service paths - specifically including something very much like the Peace Corps - as routes to voting status. The point of the model he created was not worship of the military, per se, but rather earning the franchise through service to society (as opposed to "the State" - of which he had a notorious distrust).
It wasn't fascistic - it was pragmatic (at least in Heinlein's view). And the Dean himself was a personality of considerable complexity: equal parts civil- and economic-libertarian, with a strong anti-Soviet bias (although, as evidenced by Stranger in a Strange Land, not necessarily an anti-communist one), and a passionate advocate of the goal of becoming a Renaissance man; he advocated suspicion of altruism, all while being selflessly generous with his time to Red Cross blood drives, and his mentorship to younger writers, such as Spider Robinson. I've seen the man spend hours being patiently courteous to a seemingly-endless line of fans seeking his autograph, yet turn coldly dismissive of one who casually admitted violating the terms on which he offered those autographs (either donate blood, or be rejected as a donor).
While I disagreed with much of his politics, I admired RAH enormously as a man, and even moreso as a writer. He played devil's advocate for many positions he, himself did not hold - but fascism definitely was not one of them...
It was a great book. Now I know why the movies stank.
I'm not sure I'd call it a "great" book. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a great book. Starship Troopers is more good than great. I say that because it's far and away the most polemical of Heinlein's juvenile books, and polemics and juveniles make for an awkward mix.
Not coincidentally, it was the last book he ever offered Scribners & Sons. (After Scribner's rejected it on the grounds that its subject matter was "too controversial" and inappropriate for a juvenile audience, he terminated his til-then-exclusive relationship with S&S, directed his agent to seek another publisher for the book - which was quickly snapped up by Putnam's - and re-focused his writing on an adult marketplace. Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, as well as lesser works such as Farnham's Freehold and Glory Road, swiftly followed.)
I read every one of Heinlein's juveniles as a kid growing up in the 1950's and 60's, and I thought Starship Troopers was great stuff. But, even then, I realized that, although it was cast as a juvenile novel, it was a good deal more adult in both theme and tone than most of his other books aimed at "young adults" - although, admittedly, other juvenile works, such as Between Planets and Citizen of the Galaxy put their protagonists in fairly adult situations and were also discursive on political and social issues. But The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress achieved a whole new level of artistry for Heinlein from my perspective. A masterful blend of revolutionary theory, applied low-gravity physics, societal adaptation to significant, chronic male-female population imbalance, inherited physiological exile from mainstream society, and the high-stakes politics of resistance to colonialism (along with a mickle bit of romance and the first fictional depiction of a superintelligent AI from a sympathetic perspective), it utterly captivated me as a teenager, when I first read it in serial form in Galaxy Magazine. I still consider it Heinlein's best novel, and I've read 'em all - including his blecherous first effort For Us, the Living and his posthumous juvenile "collaboration" with Spider Robinson, Variable Star.
FWIW, my second favorite Heinlein novel is Double Star, which also (and deservedly) won him his first Hugo...
Slashdot Mirror
Among other things, I erroneously stated:
This would merely be another case of CNN clickbait, were it not for the fact that this time they're straight out lying to their audience about the content of the interview their story pretends to be about. And that point seems to have completely escaped /. editor BeauHD. The real story here is that a reporter for CNN - a non-print news organization - is deliberately misrepresenting what the CEO of one of best and most professional print journals still in existence has to say about the medium-term future of his own publication, one of CNN's major competitors.
Although the criticisms I level in the above quote, and others like them in the parent post, are valid, they are completely mistargeted. Kellie Eli, the author of the article to whose dishonesty I so strenuously objected, works for CNBC, not CNN, and it is that news organization, not CNN which deserves everyone's opprobrium.
To compound my error, when several of you attempted to point out my misattribution to me, I responded to your polite reproofs with scorn. And, worse yet, smugness.
I'm sorry for that: for my fundamental error of attributing to CNN the journalistic sins of CNBC, and for my dismissive and condescending smugness in responding to those of you who more-or-less gently tried to make me aware of my mistake.
I apologize to you all, and I hope you can find it in yourselves to be a better person than I am, and forgive me for acting like an asshole.
I feel obligated to tell you that, for more than two years now, I have suffered from a medical condition that causes severe, chronic sleep deprivation. When I wrote the parent post, I was running on about 2.5 hours of sleep. As I was composing it, I repeatedly referred to the article whose integrity it attacks. In all, I must have looked at that CNBC story a half-dozen times or more - and, every time I did, when I looked at the logo at the top of the report, what I saw was "CNN", not CNBC. Later that day, after another almost two hours of sleep, I posted a raft of responses to your comments. In the process, I know for a fact that I visited the CNBC story page at least once - and, again, what I saw was "CNN", not CNBC. It was only when I read a reply from gnick wherein he explicitly stated that I had confused CNN with CNBC that I finally realized what all the criticism of my original post was about.
I was mortified by that epiphany. I have always prided myself on my mental acuity, and it was devastating to me to realize how far that has deteriorated.
In a letter to his long-time agent, the late Robert A. Heinlein observed, "An honest man can choose to follow the path of reason, or he may choose the path of faith. He cannot do both." I have tried since I became literate at the age of six to follow the path of reason. That path demands I adhere to established facts, and let them guide my conclusions, rather than attempt to warp facts to fit my beliefs. My original post failed to meet that standard, and I must now apologize for it.
Although I hope it helps to explain it, my misperception does not excuse my conduct. I am responsible for what I do and say, and it is my responsibility to acknowledge and to apologize for my misstatements of fact, and intentional discourtesies.
I do. I am sorry for being a jerk to you all, and I aplogize to you for my impolitesse. And I still more deeply regret my misattribution of journalistic misconduct on the part of CNBC to CNN. I sincerely apologize for that, as well.
Mea culpa ... Mea maxima culpa
gnick plaintively inquired:
Regarding CNN's story on this topic that they're apparently misrepresenting so badly, I can't find it. I'm starting to think thomst just pulled it out of his ass. Does anyone have a link to the CNN story everyone's bitching about?
<facepalm>
The link you can't seem to locate IS IN THE FUCKING SUMMARY. So is a link to the actual interview with Mark Thompson.
You're welcome ...
mentil cautioned:
I might give them the benefit of the doubt, that what happened is comparable to what happens with science reporting. Interviewer makes executive summary of interview, with choice quotes. One of those quotes is misinterpreted by editor/producer/whoever. Misinterpretation turned into headline and made subject of an article, article handed down to junior writer who's not going to tell his boss 3 levels up that his English comprehension sucks. Misinformation makes it to press time, retraction happens a week later in size 4 print next to the 4 pages of ads.
Hanlon's Razor notwithstanding, I'd find it easier to give CNN credit for mere incompetence in this case were it not for the fact that the NYT is its direct competitor for news consumers. It's just too conveniently "on the nose" for a non-print news organization to be putting these particular words in that specific mouth, given that most people won't bother reading past the headline - and that the majority of those who do won't read CNN's report closely enough to catch the contradiction, especially since the false assertion regarding Mark Thompson's meaning is repeated in the lede.
Sorry, but, where blatantly self-serving reportage is concerned, my credulity only strains so far ...
danbert8 noted:
And the media can't understand why Russian trolls are able to spread lies on social media. The Russians learned how to write headlines from 24 hour news networks. We wouldn't have a fake news epidemic if major news outlets (on all fronts) didn't sell out their objectivity for political gains.
I have to disagree with your conclusion:
We wouldn't have a fake news epidemic if major news outlets (on all fronts) didn't sell out their objectivity for political gains.
The vast majority of major newspapers, newsmagazines, and TV news organizations do not, in fact, "sell out their objectivity for political gains." Fox News certainly does.It's true that MSNBC does lean sharply left in its editorial content - although, in fairness, it tries to provide at least some conservative counterbalance to that bias in the form of the Morning Joe show - but its news coverage qua news coverage clearly attempts to be objective. Fox News, on the other hand, deliberately declines to cover stories that cast the current administration and/or the Repubican party in an unfavorable light - and, since the departure from the Hannity and Colmes show of Alan Colmes, it has entirely given up on even the pretense of providing balanced editorial content in its host mix.
Your observation that "The Russians learned how to write headlines from 24 hour news networks," by contrast, is spot on.
Were I permitted to award you a +1 Insightful upmod for it, I would do so ...
I stated:
The headline and CNN reporter Kellie Eli's quote above completely misstate NYT CEO Mark Thompson's actual point.
To which an anonymous coward objected:
I glanced at CNN and didn't see this, but maybe I missed it. Either way a link would be helpful if your making arguments like this.
I make it a policy not to respond to ACs, but I will make an exception here, because you presume to engage in such pointless, minutely-detailed misrepresentation of my statement - and impugn my motives in the process. So, here goes:
The link(s) you demand ARE IN THE FUCKING SUMMARY. Try actually reading it.
And, FWIW, I hold Fox News in considerably lower regard than I do CNN. Most of CNN's sins are, per Hanlan's Razor, handily attributable to journalistic incompetence and stupidity. This one, however, certainly seems deliberate to me, given that:
a - CNN is certainly aware that the vast majority of web users read only the headlines, not the body of the story - and the headline's mischaraterization is repeated in the lede, so as to mislead those who succumb to the temptation to skim the article, rather than read it closely enough to catch the contradiction.
b - The NYT is a direct competitor to CNN for consumers of news.
I criticize CNN's reporting in general not because of the ongoing disaster that is Donald Trump's presidency (although CNN, with its craven gift of virtually unlimited air time to his campaign, including start-to-finish live coverage of many of his ralllies, certainly bears a not-inconsiderable portion of blame for his election), but because of its decades of mindless pack journalism, and round-the-clock slavering over such piffle as the JonBenét Ramsey murder (a tragic event, to be sure, but certainly not one that justified the months of non-stop coverage CNN awarded it), and the accidental suicide of golddigging bimbo Anna Nicole Smith - whom you may recall the ever-odious Wolf Blitzer tried his damnedest to tag as "America's Rose" in an attempt to somehow inflate her utterly self-indulgent, opiod-addicted, worthless existence to somehow being the equivalent of Britain's then-recently-deceased Diana, Princess of Wales, who had spent much of her pubiic life working for and promoting charities focused on issues such as banning landmines, AIDS prevention in third-world countries, and providing services to cancer and leprosy patients and homelss persons. You can try to justify such conduct as due to the pressure to fill time in the 25-hour news cycle, but you can't make its craven, pandering self-interest in any way praiseworth, or even appetizing.
Fox News, by contrast, systematically lies by both omission and commisstion as a matter of policy. It is, in fact, not a news organization at all, but rather a propaganda machine dressed up in journalist's clothing. If it were to disappear entirely tomorrow, America would only benefit from its absence ...
CNN's story (and the /. summary above) promulgate its own propaganda thusly:
newspaper printing presses may have another decade of life in them
The headline and CNN reporter Kellie Eli's quote above completely misstate NYT CEO Mark Thompson's actual point. What he said was "I believe at least 10 years is what we can see in the U.S. for our print products." (Emphasis added by me, for clarity's sake.)
Note the profound difference in meaning between Thompson 's statement "at least 10 years," and Eli's characterization of his meaning as, "another decade of life ... but not much more." (My elision here is, once more, strictly for the purpose of clarity.) Her story quotes him as saying, "an absolute minimum of 10 years" of existence for the NYT print edition, whereas the CNN headline (precisely echoed by /.'s own headline) twists that to, "Print journalism has maybe another 10 years," and that mischaracterization continues in Eli's purported paraphrase of his statement.
This would merely be another case of CNN clickbait, were it not for the fact that this time they're straight out lying to their audience about the content of the interview their story pretends to be about. And that point seems to have completely escaped /. editor BeauHD. The real story here is that a reporter for CNN - a non-print news organization - is deliberately misrepresenting what the CEO of one of best and most professional print journals still in existence has to say about the medium-term future of his own publication, one of CNN's major competitors.
In my universe, that's yellow journalism at its most despicable.
I think Donald Trump is a lying asswipe who wouldn't recognize an actual fact if it rose up and bit him on the bunghole - but, sadly, this story is patent, deliberate, no-shit, fake news.
CNN should be ashamed of itself - but it's been pellucidly clear for at least 3 decades now that it it has no sense of organizatonal shame, so I'm not holding my breath on that score. But it pisses me off mightily that it has so casually discarded what pitiful shreds of journalistic integrity it might once have had - and thereby placed me in the profoundly awkward and embarrassing position of being forced to publicly agree with the likes of Donald fucking Trump ...
sycodon opined:
Selling it is better than burning it up.
Yep.
The thing is, just because the current, multi-lateral funding agreement expires in 2024 does not mean that it can't be replaced by a new, longer-term agreement between then and now. The question really is whether continuing operation of the ISS "as is", de-orbiting it, wholly or partially privatizing it, or doing something else altogether with it is the best, most practical, and achievable thing to do with it - and the answer to that question is not as clear-cut as some people might want to believe.
Part of the problem of formulating an optimal solution is that, as it has grown by accretion of new modules over the years, the ISS has become increasingly fragile and unwieldy. Although it's tempting to advocate it be moved to a higher, more stable orbit, that's a non-trivially-difficult proposition. Even mere stationkeeping puts considerable strain on its asymmetrical structure. Applying the amount of thrust necessary to boost it into a significantly-higher orbit could badly warp (or even break) it, stress connections between modules enough to cause it to spring leaks, bend its solar panels, and/or cause pieces to fall off - none of which would be Good Things. On the other hand, expanding it any further in its current orbit would make it even more fragile and hard to maintain on-station.
Then there's the political reality that the USA doesn't own the ISS. It belongs to an international consortium - and, even if you discount smaller contributors (Canada, which supplied the station's external remote manipulators, the EU, to which the Columbus module belongs, or Japan, which built the JEM-ELM-PS and JEM-PM modules), Russia, which owns the Zarya, Pirs, Zvezda, Poisk, and Rassvet modules, certainly won't permit the USA to unilaterally make decisions about the station's fate. Yes, the USA supplied as many of the ISS's modules as all the other partners combined, but that doesn't mean it can claim even a majority of the ISS component parts. Plus, from the time the space shuttle program shut down until SpaceX delivered its first payload, Russia was exclusively responsible for supplying the station with consumables - and it's still the only option for crew exchange flights - so its wishes regarding the ISS's fate can't simply be waved away.
There's also the fact that Congress rarely agrees to fund projects for more than a year at a time, regardless of NASA/the current administration's long-range plans. And the prospect of selling off the USA's portion of the ISS to private parties would definitely be a tough sell there.
So Trump won't unilaterally get to decide the ISS's fate - for which we should all be thankful, because the man doesn't even read, much less study technological policy.
What I suspect may happen is that an agreement to extend international funding for continued operation of the station in-situ will be struck sometime prior to 2024, thereby kicking the decision down the road a few years. In the end, what I think is the likeliest outcome is that some number of the newest, largest, and least-fragile modules will be boosted into a higher, more stable orbit to form the nucleus of a second-generation ISS, while, for practical reasons, the older, shabbier, less-maintainable ones (which is to say, "the Russian ones") will be de-orbited.
And then, maybe, we can get on with building the orbital facility we, as a species, actually need: a shipyard in space, where we can contruct and refurbish real spaceships - the kind that move humans, shuttlecraft, and cargo between destinations, without themselves ever having to land or take off from the bottom of planetary gravity wells ...
https://slashdot.org/~DoctorBonzo mused:
Well, we all want diversity, don't we?
Shouldn't there be numerous success stories, even anecdotal, if it's really all that favorable?
I think the problem is the conflation of "diversity of skillsets" with "diversity of [sex/ethnicity/cultural background]". The former is, I think, unquestionably a Good Thing when you're trying to solve Big Problems or develop innovative stuff. The value of the latter is what's really open to question - and not because any particular [sex/ethnicity/cultural background] is of questionable value in and of itself, but because whether that [sex/ethnicity/cultural background] is of value in solving a specific Big Problem or developing a given innovative whatsis is fundamentally unknowable.
It's an issue of not being able to draw baseline comparisons, because Big Problems tend to be unique (as do innovative whatchamacallits). You can't usefully compare the [sex/ethnicity/cultural background] factors that allow one team to succeed and others to fail, because each problem or whizbang is its own universe, and the things that allow a given team to successfully tackle any given challenge won't necessarily cross-apply to solving any other problems.
My conjecture is that [sex/ethnicity/cultural background] factors may affect the viewpoint of particular team members in ways that enable them to achieve insights that may prove invaluable to successfully tackling some critical aspect of a given problem - but if and whether that will happen in a specific venture is impossible to predict or plan for. And, further, just because it proved useful in one, individual instance doesn't guarantee or even suggest it will do so in a different one.
Cross-/multi-disciplinary efforts prove their value all the time. Likewise, adding a jack-of-all-trades to a team can help tie the knowledge bases of an assortment of specialists together in useful ways. That kind of diversity - one of thought and knowledge - gets more useful the more complex the problem that's being addressed.
The other kind? <shrug> ...
110010001000 inquired:
Why is Google taking an equity stake in a company that promotes such a toxic workplace?
to which stephanruby responded:
This could be a way to ensure that Travis Kalanick and his co-founders cannot take back control of the company.
Right now, they still have way too many shares.
From TFS:
Uber will pay Waymo a 0.34 percent equity stake
One third of one percent of Uber's total outstanding shares isn't going to prevent Kalanick and his co-founders from doing anything.
So, no, that's not it, at all ...
p>kurkosdr opined:
Windows has the clearly superior MPC-HC which is free as in freedom and free as in beer...
prompting dcsmith to respond:
As long as you don't think you'll ever need support of any kind, perhaps.
The fact is that, as of today, MPC-HC is as stable as any application I've ever used on the Windows platform. Also, because the player employs whichever codecs the user has installed, it should be fully compatible with forthcoming video codecs for some time to come, as long as new ones are installed by the OS as they come into use - and on Windows, that's pretty much been the case.
Having said that, because development of MPC-HC has come to an end, it won't be capable of displaying VR content, once that becomes a thing - which, IMsnHO, won't be for a while, since nothing even approaching an industry standard has yet emerged (with the kind of de-facto "standard" of Google Cardboard excepted - and Cardboard is, at best, a tentative, preliminary step towards VR that nobody with any scrap of sense would contend is worth further development). So, sometime in the future, MPC-HD will become obsolete for al but by-then-legacy content.
Which will limit its users to watching, what, a century or more of movies and TV ... ?
Opportunist snorted:
You think? How many people will "friend" celebrities for the sole purpose of downvoting them, if only to see the fans go bananas.
Your comments - not just this one, but all of them - on this topic reveal your foundational ignorance of how "friendship" works on FB. Or, to put it another way, you're clearly talking out your ass here.
To begin with, FB limits everyone to a maximum of 5,000 "friends". For users who are actually celebrities, that's a pretty small number. In order to add a new "friend", a celebrity who already has 5,000 must first de-friend one of those users to open up a slot.
In practice, that never happens, unless the wannabe is someone they know, like, and are already actual friends with IRL - such as, for instance, another celebrity. (And, since the person who monitors their feed is almost undoubtedly a personal assistant, rather than the celeb him/herself, the add is usually arranged by personal assistants, rather than by the user him/herself, anyway.)
The relationship the vast majority of FB users have with celebrities they love (or hate) is as "followers", which is quite a different and less privileged status.
And then there's the matter of "blocking" FB users (which is trivially easy to do). Blocking a user removes them from your view, and prevents them from seeing any of your posts. Act like an asshole often enough (and just how often "often enough" is is purely a matter of choice on the part of the person you've set out to annoy), and your trolling ass will be blocked. The user you're trying to harass promptly becomes invisible to you, and anything and everything you've posted disappears from his/her view, as well.
So, no, the scenario you find so amusing to contemplate will, in practice, never, ever happen ...
hyades1 confessed:
I am profoundly relieved, because that nasty Scarlett Johansson person will be unable to post videos featuring my face grafted onto the bodies of her lovers. The chance that my dignity might be outraged in this way been worrying me ever since "deepfakes" became a thing.
Somebody with points please mod parent +1 Funny ...
To all of you who scoffed at the notion that New Urbanism has any power over planning in San Francisco, and that the SF Planning Commission has been captured by New Urbanists, allow me to direct your attention to the Metreon project. Athough the Wikipedia article does not mention it, I well recall the controversy over the Planning Commission's requirement that the additional parking included in the original proposal be reduced by over a third, specifically to make it less attractive to drive to the site - which is located on a corner of the Moscone Center convention facility, then already a parking nightmare (as any attendee of Apple's WWDC prior to 2017 will attest).
Sony's foolish decision to charge admittance to the Metreon helped it to fail spectacularly (spectacularly enough that Sony backed out of the facility and sold its controlling interest to Westwood), but the parking situation certainly did not help to make it a more attractive destination. And, although the AMC megaplex onsite is quite profitable - despite how often moviegoers get shot there - the rest of the development is still underwater.
When I was employed in downtown SF, I took BART to work as often as possible. But the nature of my job frequently dictated that I be at work past the BART system's closing time, leaving me little choice other than to drive. I hated being forced to choose between parking 8 blocks away, knowing I wouldn't be leaving work until the middle of the night, or paying the piratical parking fees more convenient locations demanded - and I doubt I was alone in that.
Again, to be clear, it's commercial, office-use, and industrial-ish developments for which the Planning Commission dictates insufficient new parking. Their motivation is specifically to make driving - and especially parking - in downtown SF an ever more nightmarish experience, with the goal of forcing commuters to take public transit, instead. This is not a secret. PC members have explicitly said as much on many occasions. I know this because, up until 2000, when we moved away, I was heavily involved in local politics in El Cerrito, an East Bay suburb whose Planning Commission was also captured by New Urbanists. Members of that body frequently pointed to the San Francisco Planning Commision's goals and policies as a model for those of El Cerrito, both in public meetings and in private conversations with me and other politically-active citizens. (And, of course, from coverage of SFPC's hearings and deliberations in the San Francisco Chronicle, to which I was a subscriber, back in the days when that was a thing.)
Finally, let me state for the record that I have no objections whatsoever to apartment or high-rise condominium living for those who live in downtown areas of big cities. Single-family detached dwellings make no economic sense in those settings. Nor do I object to public transit, when it's done properly. What I object to is the one-size-fits-all approach to any form of problem-solving, and I strongly object to forcing commuters into public transit in circumstances where pubic transit simply does not accomodate their needs (for instance, to haul large, bulky items) or schedules (i.e. - shift workers and others who must work late hours). Meat-axe approaches are fundamentally wrong-headed, and New Urbanists have an annoying tendency to view every planning problem as a nail ...
For the past 30 or more years, there's been a "progressivist" initiative in urban planning to significantly reduce the number of private motor vehicles on the road in densified urban areas (for which read "downtown" - to distinguish it from "inner urban" areas, for which read "slums"). It - along with housing densification itself - is one of the core goals of New Urbanism.
New Urbanism, in turn, is dedicated to reducing urban sprawl (for which read "suburbs"), in part by mandating high-density, multi-family housing, mixed-use planning (for which read "medium- and high-rises with residential units on top and retail at street level"). It regards with disdain that portion of the population that does not care for apartment living and mass transit as a lifestyle, and seeks to enforce its vision by changing planning law and packing planning commissions, not just in big cities, but in small and medium ones, as well.
A prime example of a city whose planning process is now wholly based on New Urbanist principles is San Francisco, which has systematically constrained parking by consistently approving major new construction only on condition that it be designed with new parking that's deliberately inadequate for the expected demand. (The idea being to make finding a parking place so difficult that it will basically force commuters to take public transit, rather than drive.) Ask any San Francisco resident or commuter (other than a fanatic bike geek) how that has worked out.
Uber and Lyft are merely taking advantage of the New Urbanist movement to try to mandate that cities run by progressives enact traffic-reduction policies that will result in their companies making the maximum possible profit from the hapless residents of and commuters to these cities.
I only hope that the New Urbanist masterminds stab them in the back by mandating fleets of city-owned self-driving cars to serve their residents and visitors ...
Antique Geekmeister cautioned:,/p>
The _eviodence_ need not be in dispute for a lawsuit or criminal prosecution to need to go to court. Whether an act is illegal can be in dispute.
What you say is true. However, the points the quoted argument cites are not evidence. They're the plaintiff's lawyer's characterization of relationships between the defendant (Cloudflare) and third parties not named as co-dependents - a.k.a. "opinions" ...
Nutria pointed out:
And, of course, "The evidence is undisputed". No need for a trial; just seize CF's bank accounts now...
This.
If Cloudflare is doing anything other than pleading guilty, the "evidence" is, by definition in dispute.
The argument presented in this motion is pure handwaving. Any competent Federal judge is going to dismiss it out of hand, because no actual evidence is cited - only the claims presented in the argument itself.
Claims and evidence are two legally distinct things, AFAIK. <DISCLAIMER>I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.</DISCLAIMER>
And then, of course, there's this. (WARNING: extremely NSFW!)
I think ALS needs a new lawyer ...
The headline claims "Chrome OS Is Almost Ready To Replace Android On Tablets," while TFS (which is itself apparently a quote of The Verge's story) says, "In essence, however, Android remains Google's dominant mobile OS, while Chrome OS has been taking on more responsibility as Chromebooks have steadily become more capable and tablet-like."
So the story contradicts the headline, which means the headline is pure ...
... clickbait.
https://slashdot.org/~TimothyHollins enthused:
A great way to confound these trackers everywhere is to use an addon like AdNauseam. It will click on everything for you, generating a massive, and false, report regarding your activities.
A better way to defeat them is to use NoScript's Application Boundary Enforcer (ABE - located in the Advanced tab of the Options menu) to forbid their javascripts from running on anything other than their own domains. For instance, here's what I use to block Facebook from running the scripts associated with those ubiquitous "share" icons, as well as with their single-pixel trackers:
Site .facebook.com .fbcdn.net .facebook.com .fbcdn.net
Accept from
Deny INCLUSION(SCRIPT, OBJ, SUBDOC)
Then just block third-party cookies by default, and Presto!, you're only being tracked on Facebook's own site - which you kinda have to put up with, if you use FB at all.
Similar strategies will keep Google, Twitter, Snapchat, and any other social media company from following you around the web, as long as you create ABE scripts to block them outside of their own respective domains.
And, of course, it should go without saying that you'll want to block google-analytics.com, googleadservices.com, and other ad trackers altogether. Fortunately, despite all the Google-hating on /., you don't have to enable any of their ad trackers in order to actually use Google itself, or any of its applications, such as Gmail or Drive
Would that the same were true of, say, Facebook ...
bobbied argued:,/p>
This is a leaked document which is admitted to be a draft, subject to wholesale changes, of a budget request from the DOE, which will be edited at the Whitehouse before the president presents it to Congress with a bunch of other similar documents. Congress will ignore the president's input and draft their own budget in the house, argue for months over in committee, sent to the floor of the house, finally arrive at something that won't be recognizable as the original draft that the house passes as a "budget" which will be taken up by the Senate who will likely add their own amendments in committee and from the floor which if it actually passes, will head back to the reconciliation committee to be possibly edited again before both chambers vote to pass it or not.
There is a nearly zero chance these numbers will survive all the coming edits driven by the endless debate in congress.
All of what you say is quite true - and yet TFA has actual value, in that it reveals the deeply-atavistic mindset of the bugeteers in the Orange Oaf's administration.
Note, for instance, that TFS points out DoE - which currently is headed by noted Texas dimwit Rick Perry (of "I forget" fame) - requested fairly Draconian cuts, but the OMB insisted on going beyond cutting to the bone all the way to chopping off whole limbs. This is an otherworldly level of stupid and spiteful, done together, with arrogance.
What this report does is to provide incentive for private citizens and public ones alike to work even harder to influence their Congresscritters to push back against the ever-greater excesses of an administration with no actual vision of its own - only a blind determination to undo every singe policy and legislative achievement of its predecessor, for no better reason than to wave the toddler-in-chief's tiny, flaccid dick around.
In other words: its value lies in motivating sane people who live in the real world to stay angry at the narcississtic know-nothing who occupies what has become the Offal Office ...
Yep.
That Ajit Pai opposes this proposal is, prima facie, a strong argument in favor of having the government own the network and only rent its use to the cellular carriers.
Because, with that swine, it's always Opposite Day ...
mjwx opined:
The problem with Heinlein's books are that he couldn't leave his politics out of it and his politics were unworkable in the real world. His books were actually quite well written, good prose and characters (the language was a bit too American for us English speakers though) but the idea that an anarchistic capitalism or voluntary military government would work completely broke the suspension of disbelief.
I think it's more accurate to say, "he couldn't leave his philosophy out of it."
Heinlein started out as a Democrat (and even ran for Congress as one), but later became a Republican - back in the days before that meant "a know-nothing xenophobe" - which pretty firmly establishes for me that he considered philosophy and politics as separate issues. As do I, fwiw.
I also think it's important to keep firmly in mind that science fiction - space opera aside - has always been a literature of ideas, and one of the most frequent forms it takes is that of "if this goes on", where the author extrapolates the consequences of a trend, idea, or technological impact taken to a logical extreme. Heinlein was far from immune to its charms, and in novels such as Beyond this Horizon (where he explored the effects of a society where the code duello had been re-instituted and legally codified to protect pacifists and non-combatants) and Farnham's Freehold (where, in an alternate timeline, slavery was still the norm - only with the shoe very much on the other racial foot) he adapted the technique to reflect and comment on those ideas and institutions. To enjoy that form, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief (as the comedy axiom goes, "If you buy the gag, you buy the bit.") to enjoy the ride. Otherwise, you should read something else.
And, again, I disagree that the world of Starship Troopers (the novel) was governed by a military dictatorship. It's quite clear to me that it was not.
The book does, however, focus on that world's military culture from the inside - and therein, I think, lies the confusion. Military culture in every society is distinct - and distinctly different - from society's mainstream culture. That's been true of every human society (except Sparta) throughout history, and there's every reason to suppose that would apply to a future society, just as it does to current ones. To enter the military is to step outside of civilian cultural norms. That's very much what basic training is all about - in addition to the physical and combat skills training, its principal task is to condition recruits to accept and comply without question to orders from higher ranks, as well as to focus on the welfare and needs of the unit, rather than their own, individual concerns. Those are necessary adjustments for those recruits to be able to function effectively as part of a corps, up to and including sacrificing their own lives in an assault, or in defence of their comrades' lives; things they would not normally be capable of doing as members of civilian society.
When you only really glimpse a society through that lens, it will naturally appear to be an entirely different animal than it does from a strictly civilian perspective.
John Scalzi's Old Mans War series was a better depiction of a benign military dictatorship. Such a society could only be maintained if kept secret from the population that was expected to support it. When it was revealed, the support structure broke down.
To repeat, I disagree that the society of Heinlein's Starship Trooper (as opposed to Verhoeven's) is governed by a military dictatorship. And I haven't read Scalzi's series, so I can't intelligently comment on it ...
Daemonik gibed:
Ooo ooo! Now wave away his advocacy of incest and group marriage..
Why would I want to do that? Because it apparently offends your sense of morality?
I'm with RAH (and c6gunner, below) on this topic. Adults who wish to engage in mutually-consensual sexual relations and/or marriage contracts should be free to do so, regardless of genetic relationship or number of participants. In western countries, the state has no legitimate interest in the former and currently acts in an indefensibly prejudiced manner in the latter.
Note the terms "adult" and "mutually-consensual" in the above statement.
I disagreed with a lot of Heinlein's political and economic theories, but we were of a mind when it came to civil liberties ...
https://slashdot.org/~Boronx responded:
I don't think anyone believes RAH was a Nazi sympathizer, but the system of government in SST is fatally flawed. Anyone can enlist in a service, but not anyone can complete service. Severe corporal punishment, and even capital punishment, can be enforced with the thinnest veneer of a trial that has no independence from the chain of command. Despite the promise of universal enlistment, the government has strong control over who gets the franchise.
"Severe corporal punishment" is a feature of many current military justice systems, albeit not that of the USA - or, at least not formally (see: blanket party). However, it is worth noting that the execution that's carried out during Pvt. Rico's basic training is of a deserter during wartime. And not some phony-baloney Iraq/Vietnam-esque war of empire-building based on false premises and PR manipulation, but an actual existential war in which a genocidal alien species is the aggressor against humanity.
Under every form of military law with which I'm familiar, desertion in wartime is a capital crime. If it takes place on the battlefield, summary execution without trial is the conventional penalty.
Yes, in SST the execution in question takes place during basic training - but that is not unprecedented, even in modern times (although, again, not in the USA). Note, however, that every recruit of the Mobile Infantry is a volunteer, not a draftee. And the legal framework to which they will be bound as recruits is made explicitly clear to them before they sign up.
Some people fail to take the rules seriously - especially the ones that will apply "if and when" conditions change from those in effect when they enlist (such as a sneak attack from an alien species intent on subjugating and/or eliminating the human race creating a de factor state of war). I think that's rather the point RAH was making: that war is not a game, and soldiering is a commitment that should never be entered into lightly ...
drinkypoo opined:
I thought it was a great book, but I actually liked the movie a lot. I didn't think it necessarily needed to be called Starship Troopers, but I did feel that it perfectly captured the atmosphere of fascism in the original book, which was its most important aspect.
I think you misremember the book.
The society Heinlein depicted in Starship Troopers bore no meaningful resemblence to the one in Verhoeven's movie. In interviews after the book was published, RAH stressed that military service was not the only path to the sovereign franchise in the Starship Troopers world. He envisioned any number of public service paths - specifically including something very much like the Peace Corps - as routes to voting status. The point of the model he created was not worship of the military, per se, but rather earning the franchise through service to society (as opposed to "the State" - of which he had a notorious distrust).
It wasn't fascistic - it was pragmatic (at least in Heinlein's view). And the Dean himself was a personality of considerable complexity: equal parts civil- and economic-libertarian, with a strong anti-Soviet bias (although, as evidenced by Stranger in a Strange Land, not necessarily an anti-communist one), and a passionate advocate of the goal of becoming a Renaissance man; he advocated suspicion of altruism, all while being selflessly generous with his time to Red Cross blood drives, and his mentorship to younger writers, such as Spider Robinson. I've seen the man spend hours being patiently courteous to a seemingly-endless line of fans seeking his autograph, yet turn coldly dismissive of one who casually admitted violating the terms on which he offered those autographs (either donate blood, or be rejected as a donor).
While I disagreed with much of his politics, I admired RAH enormously as a man, and even moreso as a writer. He played devil's advocate for many positions he, himself did not hold - but fascism definitely was not one of them ...
aixylinux opined:
It was a great book. Now I know why the movies stank.
I'm not sure I'd call it a "great" book. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a great book. Starship Troopers is more good than great. I say that because it's far and away the most polemical of Heinlein's juvenile books, and polemics and juveniles make for an awkward mix.
Not coincidentally, it was the last book he ever offered Scribners & Sons. (After Scribner's rejected it on the grounds that its subject matter was "too controversial" and inappropriate for a juvenile audience, he terminated his til-then-exclusive relationship with S&S, directed his agent to seek another publisher for the book - which was quickly snapped up by Putnam's - and re-focused his writing on an adult marketplace. Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, as well as lesser works such as Farnham's Freehold and Glory Road, swiftly followed.)
I read every one of Heinlein's juveniles as a kid growing up in the 1950's and 60's, and I thought Starship Troopers was great stuff. But, even then, I realized that, although it was cast as a juvenile novel, it was a good deal more adult in both theme and tone than most of his other books aimed at "young adults" - although, admittedly, other juvenile works, such as Between Planets and Citizen of the Galaxy put their protagonists in fairly adult situations and were also discursive on political and social issues. But The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress achieved a whole new level of artistry for Heinlein from my perspective. A masterful blend of revolutionary theory, applied low-gravity physics, societal adaptation to significant, chronic male-female population imbalance, inherited physiological exile from mainstream society, and the high-stakes politics of resistance to colonialism (along with a mickle bit of romance and the first fictional depiction of a superintelligent AI from a sympathetic perspective), it utterly captivated me as a teenager, when I first read it in serial form in Galaxy Magazine. I still consider it Heinlein's best novel, and I've read 'em all - including his blecherous first effort For Us, the Living and his posthumous juvenile "collaboration" with Spider Robinson, Variable Star.
FWIW, my second favorite Heinlein novel is Double Star, which also (and deservedly) won him his first Hugo ...