The place of the media, in modern societies, hasn't been resolved yet. Mass media in this day and age has so much reach that it can cause a revolt or, at much, change the outcome of any democratic election. This is dangerous for any government, and specially for governments of developing nations, whose mass media can be easily owned by foreign capitals/countries with an eye for the local resources. Venezuela is definitely a nation like that, and after he nationalized oil (which was pretty much being looted for pennies by foreign companies), mass media and even factions of the military launched an all out offensive against the government. What we are seeing is pretty much that Chavez has fed up with mass media controlled by foreign interests and decided to close it down, given it was dangerous for his government. Did he have an alternative?
Bottom line is that:
1) Freedom of press is dangerous for any country in the development world, given how easy it can serve foreign interests from developed countries
2) Government intervention of the media is seen as something wrong and antidemocratic, going against free speech (even though it's only the speech of those who own the media).
So, in the best scenario, governments just negotiate favorable deals with the media, in the worst case the media can destroy a government. In the end, the mass media itself just becomes a tool used by large economic groups to threaten governments.
Slashdot Mirror
Chrome OS starts making sense as a "full" OS when you consider the existence of Native Client:
http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/wiki/Downloads
This runs safe, sandboxed, native (x86/arm) applications downloaded from the cloud.
Wonder how long would it take to develop OpenSource engines of this complexity? Why are there none? Ogre and Irrlitch are far, far away...
The place of the media, in modern societies, hasn't been resolved yet. Mass media in this day and age has so much reach that it can cause a revolt or, at much, change the outcome of any democratic election. This is dangerous for any government, and specially for governments of developing nations, whose mass media can be easily owned by foreign capitals/countries with an eye for the local resources.
Venezuela is definitely a nation like that, and after he nationalized oil (which was pretty much being looted for pennies by foreign companies), mass media and even factions of the military launched an all out offensive against the government.
What we are seeing is pretty much that Chavez has fed up with mass media controlled by foreign interests and decided to close it down, given it was dangerous for his government. Did he have an alternative?
Bottom line is that:
1) Freedom of press is dangerous for any country in the development world, given how easy it can serve foreign interests from developed countries
2) Government intervention of the media is seen as something wrong and antidemocratic, going against free speech (even though it's only the speech of those who own the media).
So, in the best scenario, governments just negotiate favorable deals with the media, in the worst case the media can destroy a government.
In the end, the mass media itself just becomes a tool used by large economic groups to threaten governments.
I thought this could only happen in Venezuela, because Chavez was an evil dictator..
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/03/04/2136257/Venezuela-Bans-Hostile-Videogames-and-Toys?from=rss
I'm confused now..