Music is incidental. Movies are incidental. TV is incidental. What the RIAA, the MPAA and the networks really sell us is CULTURE. A unified set of signals that remind us who we are, where we came from, and what common experiences we share.
Mass distribution of media exists to provide western civilization with a shared experience base. It lets us easily identify people with the same sorts of interests, needs and social patterns, based on what brand logos they sport, what music they're listening to, what movie logo they've got stuck onto their backpack. Without a mass distribution system churning out crap and making it popular, our culture would rapidly fragment and balkanize. We'd have small enclaves of tight-knit families, with little or no reason to go outside those groups except for technical information or needed supplies. The American television monoculture would collapse.
Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is left as an exercize to the reader.
Truly, one can measure the greatness of a movie by how quotable it is. The only thing that comes close is Princess Bride. Big Trouble in Little China comes in third, I think. At least, that's what ole Jack Burton always says at a time like this.
The 20 year old social darwinists that have always had straight A's and no lives will pipe up and say "waah, college is hard, do it or go be poor. And vote Bush" but when you have kids, a full-time job, and a home to take care of, there just isn't any time.
To which those same social darwinists would reply, "tough - you should have completed college BEFORE you had kids and had to get a job. Oh, wait - you weren't born lucky enough to get a full ride to college? HA! THEN YOU DESERVE TO BE POOR, PLEB!!!
Well, probably not quite that overtly condescending, but still the same idea. Trouble is, even if it's cruel for them to say so, they DO have the weight of how-things-really-are behind them.
Unfortunately, whenever you privatize, you provide corporations with the opportunity to grab the power that you supposedly intended to go to the people. Whenever you subsidize, you provide the government with the opportunity to grab the power that you supposedly intended to go to the people. In EITHER CASE - "private" or "public" control - those with more power will invariably use their power to ensure that they get the lion's share of the new power to be had. The little guy can't get anything BUT screwed, because he simply doesn't have the resources to compete.
If you want to "level the playing field" and let people get what they actually need, rather than what their social ties will let them get away with, you need to kill off the top 10% every 5 years and let the proletariat scramble to fill the power vacuum. Anything else is a recipe for oligarchy.
Before someone posts his phone number, I'd just like to remind everyone: You do NOT fuck with judges. Harrassing a judge, ESPECIALLY about a legal judgement he made, will get you into some SERIOUS shit. A good portion of our legal system is designed to protect itself and its human components, especially court justices.
If spammers can trojan a few thousand machines to DDOS from, what makes you think they can't create false P2P nodes and corrupt any distributed spamblock lists to the point of uselessness?
The REALLY interesting thing about this is that it's totally impossible to read, but if I skim it, I read it fine - and can't even tell that it's scrambled. It's like my "scan mode" (which tends to let me read about 20 pages per minute, at about 70% retention) isn't even using English.
Asians are notorious for customizing their phones to death...those neon/blue lights just annoy me to death. They are an abomination and should be made illegal.
Margaret: "Father, the man is bad." More: "There's no law against that." Roper: "There is a law against it. God's law." More: "Then God can arrest him." Roper: "Sophistication upon sophistication!" More: "No. Sheer simplicity. The law, Roper, the law. I know what's legal, but I don't always know what's right. And I'm sticking with what's legal." Roper: "Then you set man's law against God's?" More: "No. Far below. But let me draw your attention to a fact. I am not God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can't navigate. I'm no voyager. But in the thickets of the law, there I am a forester. I doubt if there's a man alive who could follow me there, thank God." Alice: "While you talk, he is gone." More: "And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law." Roper: "So now you'd give the Devil the benefit of law!" More: "Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get to the Devil?" Roper: "I'd cut down every law in England to do that!" More: "Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you -- where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat. This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast -- man's laws, not God's -- and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake."
The problem with this is, who cares? Obviously you care, and obviously I care, but the majority of Americans, unfortunately, consider the rest of the world to be full of dark-colored half-people. Worse, these same Americans can't POSSIBLY admit that that's how they feel, even to themselves, without breaking through a generation and a half of "sensitivity training" and "multiculturalism". Worse than THAT, if they WERE to break through to the fundamental truths of the matter, they would quickly realize that helping people and not giving terrorists reasons to fight would, in fact, deprive many of us of our SUVs and McDonalds - and THEN where would we be?
I don't like it either, but not saying it doesn't make it less true.
Some bugs are just too hilariously funny to patch. All the better when they're more-or-less benign.
Actually, to be honest, we DID patch it, about 60 million years ago, but our lead felt it was so hilarious, he put it back in as an easter-egg in the evolution module's garbage collection heap, where he figured noone would see it.
We had to cancel memory deallocation when people showed up and started LIVING there, before the memory corruption spread too far. We managed to stabilize the region, of course, but not before they started thinking "G'day mate" was a proper way to talk.
The value of a status symbol is not in its quality; the value of a status symbol is in its rarity. If a BMW could be manufactured for $20, its "pimp" factor would quickly drop to "ghetto" levels.
Slashdot Mirror
His reference to Steven King's demise was meant as the clue-in that you were being trolled.
And the wheel of samsara turns another notch...
I realized something coming home the other day:
Music is incidental. Movies are incidental. TV is incidental. What the RIAA, the MPAA and the networks really sell us is CULTURE. A unified set of signals that remind us who we are, where we came from, and what common experiences we share.
Mass distribution of media exists to provide western civilization with a shared experience base. It lets us easily identify people with the same sorts of interests, needs and social patterns, based on what brand logos they sport, what music they're listening to, what movie logo they've got stuck onto their backpack. Without a mass distribution system churning out crap and making it popular, our culture would rapidly fragment and balkanize. We'd have small enclaves of tight-knit families, with little or no reason to go outside those groups except for technical information or needed supplies. The American television monoculture would collapse.
Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is left as an exercize to the reader.
The victim is always responsible.
Guilt has nothing to do with it; it's just a power game.
Truly, one can measure the greatness of a movie by how quotable it is. The only thing that comes close is Princess Bride. Big Trouble in Little China comes in third, I think. At least, that's what ole Jack Burton always says at a time like this.
And don't forget Buckaroo Banzai.
Pick two.
'Nuclear' doesn't actually enter into it; it's just one locus of possibilities within the 'Safe/Cheap/Small' domain.
The fact that Apache vulnerabilities don't make it to the frontpage of slashdot might not be a contributing factor to your perception of the facts?
Yes they do.
More emphatically, conveniently forgetting this is a REQUIREMENT for getting into a position where you CAN run the show. Always.
dinosaur footprints?
The meteor crater is only 50,000 years old, at most. Dinosaurs died out 65,000,000 years ago.
I call bullshit.
The 20 year old social darwinists that have always had straight A's and no lives will pipe up and say "waah, college is hard, do it or go be poor. And vote Bush" but when you have kids, a full-time job, and a home to take care of, there just isn't any time.
To which those same social darwinists would reply, "tough - you should have completed college BEFORE you had kids and had to get a job. Oh, wait - you weren't born lucky enough to get a full ride to college? HA! THEN YOU DESERVE TO BE POOR, PLEB!!!
Well, probably not quite that overtly condescending, but still the same idea. Trouble is, even if it's cruel for them to say so, they DO have the weight of how-things-really-are behind them.
Unfortunately, whenever you privatize, you provide corporations with the opportunity to grab the power that you supposedly intended to go to the people. Whenever you subsidize, you provide the government with the opportunity to grab the power that you supposedly intended to go to the people. In EITHER CASE - "private" or "public" control - those with more power will invariably use their power to ensure that they get the lion's share of the new power to be had. The little guy can't get anything BUT screwed, because he simply doesn't have the resources to compete.
If you want to "level the playing field" and let people get what they actually need, rather than what their social ties will let them get away with, you need to kill off the top 10% every 5 years and let the proletariat scramble to fill the power vacuum. Anything else is a recipe for oligarchy.
Nail. Head. *WHAM*
Where's my mod points when I need them?
Before someone posts his phone number, I'd just like to remind everyone: You do NOT fuck with judges. Harrassing a judge, ESPECIALLY about a legal judgement he made, will get you into some SERIOUS shit. A good portion of our legal system is designed to protect itself and its human components, especially court justices.
Be careful.
There's a HUGE problem with this idea.
If spammers can trojan a few thousand machines to DDOS from, what makes you think they can't create false P2P nodes and corrupt any distributed spamblock lists to the point of uselessness?
Did you check at the bottom of the stairs?
The REALLY interesting thing about this is that it's totally impossible to read, but if I skim it, I read it fine - and can't even tell that it's scrambled. It's like my "scan mode" (which tends to let me read about 20 pages per minute, at about 70% retention) isn't even using English.
I wonder what THAT means?
Get a load of this.
Didn't you idiots listen the first time?
BAN DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE!!!
Asians are notorious for customizing their phones to death...those neon/blue lights just annoy me to death. They are an abomination and should be made illegal.
What, Asians?
The problem with this is, who cares? Obviously you care, and obviously I care, but the majority of Americans, unfortunately, consider the rest of the world to be full of dark-colored half-people. Worse, these same Americans can't POSSIBLY admit that that's how they feel, even to themselves, without breaking through a generation and a half of "sensitivity training" and "multiculturalism". Worse than THAT, if they WERE to break through to the fundamental truths of the matter, they would quickly realize that helping people and not giving terrorists reasons to fight would, in fact, deprive many of us of our SUVs and McDonalds - and THEN where would we be?
I don't like it either, but not saying it doesn't make it less true.
*nods* I've had it both ways, and had people correct me for both of them. Guess you can't win whichever way you go. ;)
I'll have to pull out my Latin book and try to figure it out again.
Some bugs are just too hilariously funny to patch. All the better when they're more-or-less benign.
Actually, to be honest, we DID patch it, about 60 million years ago, but our lead felt it was so hilarious, he put it back in as an easter-egg in the evolution module's garbage collection heap, where he figured noone would see it.
We had to cancel memory deallocation when people showed up and started LIVING there, before the memory corruption spread too far. We managed to stabilize the region, of course, but not before they started thinking "G'day mate" was a proper way to talk.
That is simply a matter of hiring trustworthy employees...start by paying them more...that usually makes them a little more trustworthy.
That only works until you pay them enough to afford better lawyers than you have yourself.
It's that fear that turns the record labels' knuckles white against the leashes of their artists.
The value of a status symbol is not in its quality; the value of a status symbol is in its rarity. If a BMW could be manufactured for $20, its "pimp" factor would quickly drop to "ghetto" levels.