When G4 took over TechTV, it started to go downhill fast. Getting rid of the original cast members signals the homogonization of the network into nothing worth watching. I used to like to watch TechTV because they were one of the few networks on television that would tell you if a product sucked.
As for Martin Sargeant, he was entertaining about half the time... some of his bits were really stupid, but his self-deprecating style was funny. His show was one of the weakest on the original TechTV and ironically, it was one of the shining stars on G4 so I'm not surprised it was cancelled.
On the bright side, it's better to completely kill off all the good content on G4 rather than maintain the lousy network in pergatory. With the dearth of useful content, there will be a gaping hole for a new network to rise up and providing some useful programming to the tech community.
Wouldn't it be interesting if each news story had an accompanying "Nutrition Facts" table like products in stores? Instead of calories, calories from fat, sodium and sugars, we could get a concise table at the end of each article which measured:
* The source of the journalist's research and suvey methodology
* The writer's religious and political affiliation
* A list of publications the writer has contributed to in the last two years
* An outline of the holdings in the writer's stock portfolio
Just a thought... a nice way of avoiding journalistic trans-fats and other artificial ingredients.
"The media is becoming lazy when it comes to really getting to the truth of the matter. Instead of getting to the facts, they figure it's good enough just to give two sides of a story.
Sometimes I think if President Bush came out and said the world was flat, the next day, the headlines would read 'Shape of Earth? Opinions Differ!' "
Maybe we need a "Journalism Electorial Collage" to save journalists from their own ignorance?
As goofy as the story might be, that it's "worthy of reporting" that abortions cause cancer, even though an overwhelming number of scientists claim otherwise, one device was available up until 1987 to address situations like this.
The Fairness Doctrine would have allowed those who disagree with the story airtime to present their own point of view. Unfortunately Reagan and the Republicans killed the Fairness Doctrine many years ago.
If you're old enough, you probably remember a time when network news had a carefully-delineated editorial section of their broadcast. It was usually at the end of the show and someone would come on and say their editorial and the station would air a message like, "If you disagree you're invited to come on the air with your own opinion." The existence of guidelines allowing opposition groups to counter news reports forced the mainstream media to be more objective in their reporting. All that went out the window when the Fairness Doctrine was erased.
I object less to goofy stories, than I do the fact that if you disagree, you don't have any substantive recourse to express your point of view to the same audience. There is no "discussion" on these issues any more. It's really a shame this very useful set of FCC rules were gutted.
There is no legitimate reason to not have the Fairness Doctrine in effect unless you don't respect the value of hearing two sides to a story. Those who say the law would be counterproductive are exclusively the ones who are happy with the fact that their agenda is being pushed and don't want the people to hear any contrary opinions.
Let's lobby to bring back the Fairness Doctrine and give groups equal time to counter the biased media.
Never said it was so, never said it wasn't so. I don't know. Neither do you.
That's another evasive, ridiculous argument, like "We didn't find WMDs in Iraq. That doesn't mean they're still not there."
True, global warming MIGHT be the result of a giant invisible llama in space breathing on our planet, so in lieu of him turning off his invisibility cloak, let's just disregard the oodles of other scientific evidence and bury our heads in the sand. Good thinking moron.
The Fairness Doctrine has become obsolete and irrelevant. It comes from an era of limited media bandwidth, when broadcast stations had to be doled out as limited resources.
Ask the most intelligent people you know whether they feel there's any difference between NPR and CSPAN and the major commercial networks and radio stations. Therein lies the difference. When commercial interests are involved, news becomes even more biased and censored.
If NPR and CSPAN were as widely available as the major commercial stations, the Fairness Doctrine might not be as big a deal, but it is sorely needed.
The F.D. is not an intrusion of the free press - not at all. You obviously don't know anything about the Fairness Doctrine to say something so ignorant. Read up on it and read the case studies where it was used. It's a device, not unlike the Freedom of Information Act, which allows citizens to petition to provide relevant information on issues to the populace. It never was, nor ever would be a government "rule" - it's merely a tool that people can use to counter propaganda if they so decide.
Blogs are one of the last sources of contrary opinion due to the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine. The story below comes from this blog news site and touches on the issue of what's happened with our news sources, specifically relating to the analysis in the wake of the recent election:
Most people would agree that our current political climate is heavily polarized. The media most often calls attentions to extremes in the issues, rather than seeking common ground between groups. Even the president jumps on the bandwagon with statements like, "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists." With no room for compromise, fueled by a media system which seeks to divide everything into two clearly contrasting piles of soundbytes, it's no wonder half the public is extremely polarized and the other half extremely apathetic.
How did things get to this point? Many argue the winner communicated more effectively than the loser. I agree. And many argue that the losers didn't have the right message. To that I also agree. But trying to understand what the Kerry camp did wrong is a waste of time when you ignore the extreme tilt of the playing field upon which they performed.
It is my contention that two specific events have contributed to the current situation:
The policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission that became known as the "Fairness Doctrine" is an attempt to ensure that all coverage of controversial issues by a broadcast station be
balanced and fair. The FCC took the view, in 1949, that station licensees were "public trustees," and as such had an obligation to afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of contrasting points of view on controversial issues of public importance. The Commission later held that stations were also obligated to actively seek out issues of importance to their community and air programming that addressed those issues. With the deregulation sweep of the Reagan Administration during the 1980s, the Republican-controlled Commission dissolved the fairness doctrine.
The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine harkened a new age in media and journalism. News outlets were no longer forced to adopt middle ground positions when covering issues; editorial no longer need be confined to narrow areas, and the airwaves exploded with thousands of heavily polarized pundits broadcasting 24 hours a day their agendas, without any concern for fairness or covering alternative viewpoints.
Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and thousands of other partisian pundits were free to spew their slanted take on the world without ever considering the need to offer anything but a wholly one-sided tale of the issues. Left un-regulated and therefore un-challeneged, their hubris expanded to epic preportions as evidenced in statements like, "Fair and Balanced, "No Spin Zone", etc.
And thus began the modern propaganda wars. Unfortunately it's more of a massacre than a real war.
Yes, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine also gave liberal entities the same freedom. The problem is the platforms for these pundits were mostly commercial radio stations, and the conservatives took the role of spokespeople for the agenda of corporate America, unarguably the true political power in the nation. Liberals, representing the moderate voice of the mainstream didn't have the resources that mouthpieces for big-pharma, insurance, finance, oil and defense contractors, and as a result, found themselves literally drowning in a sea of pro-big-business propaganda, with no way to get equal airtime and thus, no comparable method
The real sad thing here are people turning this into a political issue when it is a scientific issue first and foremost. Notice that the majority of those against the Kyoto treaty argue on political grounds. And don't hand me the BS kool-aid malarky about regulations causing job loss. You don't know what you're talking about. You can probably create more jobs enacting efforts to clean up the environment than you can destroying it.
This isn't a political issue. It's a health/science issue.
Those of you who think that there is no consequence to dumping pollutants into the air should re-route the exhaust from your car back into the cab and then wait a half hour. After that I'll concede, and there will be one less bonehead to argue with.
Statistics for fun and profit
on
Don't Read My Lips
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This story conjures up some clever side-conjectures, such as the notion that you can create statistical probability for virtually any scenario you desire if you keep researching until you find the data set that substantiates your claim. I wonder how many sets of criteria these guys churned through before they identified a pattern that jived with something significant? It sounds like a great gimmick to use to get grant money. 1. Pick an issue, formulate a premise, and then 2. start mining historical data until a substantive pattern arises which substantiates your claim. 3. Profit.
In this case, the future-tense references are kind of obvious if you ask me. People that talk about the future are often trying to detract attention from the present, and in those scenarios whether we're talking about a presidential election or a corporate report, tend to be reflective of whether or not the status quo is desireable or change is needed. Who needs a report to recognize this? If a company is doing badly, of course they're going to focus on the future. If a company is doing well, they'll be talking about their present circumstances. DUH.
As a result, I'm inclined to believe the outcome of this upcoming election is going to shatter these analysts predictions. In the business world, you can't really get away with lying about the present to the degree Bush has managed politically, and he's invented a new approach towards attempting to re-invent reality, which I'm not quite sure the majority of the public has bought, so his present tense propaganda is a completely different monster than any historical data these guys might have used for comparison.
Why can't we redirect this kind of research energy towards applications that really have a benefit to mankind? How about predicting patterns which lead to cancer or destructive weather? Doesn't that seem like a more noble use of time and resources?
What's next for these guys? An analysis of peoples' choices for celluar ring tones as they relate to their propensity to purchase expensive designer salad croutons? Stouffers is waiting anxiously for your results.
Back then the terms "conservative" and "liberal" had completely different meanings. In fact, in England there's a huge difference in those terms when compared with the American definitions. And on top of that, nobody really seems to know what a liberal is except those who seem to be proud they're not a liberal. The whole notion is bullshit.
Libertarians (couldn't afford) or wouldn't be having brain scans anyway. In a Libertarian world, such technology wouldn't exist because it would have likely only come about through government-subsidized research, none of which would exist under the naive tiny-government scenario propsed by Libertarians.
You're naive if you think the line-item veto would have made any difference. Just like campaign finance reform, had the line-item veto gone into effect politicians would have found loopholes, such as making one line-item contingent upon another not being vetoed, therefore rendering the whole effort useless.
This is obviously a bone thrown to the whiny right-wingers who keep claiming slashdot it biased.
This is also probably as legitimate a story you can find that "maligns" John Kerry without being loaded with lies and distortions. So the closest we come is something that really nobody could care about that redefines the concept of triviality.
Congrats right-wingers. Does this make you happy? Will you finally stop whining? I doubt it.
Sounds like my old sig, "Re-elect George W Bush because nothing is as amusing as angry liberals."
And it's true, for mouth-foaming incoherent rage, just wait till Bush wins. If Kerry wins, Bush supporters will be disappointed and concerned, but most of them won't be complaining about impeachment or disenfranchisement or how the election was rigged, blah, blah, blah.
Duuuude, you must be smoking crack. If Gore had won in 2000, the republicans would have made a much bigger fuss (at least in the media which would have seemed a lot larger than the democratic protests).
Hell hath no fury like a bunch of angry conservatives. That's the party that spent $50+ million dollars of taxpayer money to expose the fact that Clinton got a blowjob. If you think liberals are more whack than conservatives when it comes to getting uppity, you're nuts.
I predict that I may not be the only one that is completely fed up with people wasting too much time and energy on predictions, especially innocuous and chaotic issues such as the election a week before the fact. If you want to predict Earthquakes and weather patterns, cool, but no matter what you predict, things are still going to be chaos because it doesn't take a PhD to figure out one side is going to be unhappy about losing. Thank you professor Obvious.
Why don't you academics stop jerking off over week-early predictions and do something productive like research a cure for cancer, or at least see if you can predict the number of people who could possibly care about this big waste of resources and ask yourself if your time and talent are not better served elsewhere?
It's not Slashdot's job to tell people what they should think - they're merely just putting information and stories online. Considering the old adage "blood is thicker than water", it's probably newsworthy that relatives of GW are actively campaigning against him. If you don't think so, it's probably you that are the most biased.
Watch.. conservatives are going to post that the outrageous costs are the result of skyrocketing insurance premiums due to frivolous lawsuits... even though that's a total farce.
The bottom line is that we could have free healthcare for everyone in the United States if we just cut down on the buracracy of the system. There's enough wasted money in administrative overhead to more than fund universal healthcare.
Slashdot Mirror
When G4 took over TechTV, it started to go downhill fast. Getting rid of the original cast members signals the homogonization of the network into nothing worth watching. I used to like to watch TechTV because they were one of the few networks on television that would tell you if a product sucked.
As for Martin Sargeant, he was entertaining about half the time... some of his bits were really stupid, but his self-deprecating style was funny. His show was one of the weakest on the original TechTV and ironically, it was one of the shining stars on G4 so I'm not surprised it was cancelled.
On the bright side, it's better to completely kill off all the good content on G4 rather than maintain the lousy network in pergatory. With the dearth of useful content, there will be a gaping hole for a new network to rise up and providing some useful programming to the tech community.
Wouldn't it be interesting if each news story had an accompanying "Nutrition Facts" table like products in stores? Instead of calories, calories from fat, sodium and sugars, we could get a concise table at the end of each article which measured:
* The source of the journalist's research and suvey methodology
* The writer's religious and political affiliation
* A list of publications the writer has contributed to in the last two years
* An outline of the holdings in the writer's stock portfolio
Just a thought... a nice way of avoiding journalistic trans-fats and other artificial ingredients.
"The media is becoming lazy when it comes to really getting to the truth of the matter. Instead of getting to the facts, they figure it's good enough just to give two sides of a story.
Sometimes I think if President Bush came out and said the world was flat, the next day, the headlines would read 'Shape of Earth? Opinions Differ!' "
Maybe we need a "Journalism Electorial Collage" to save journalists from their own ignorance?
As goofy as the story might be, that it's "worthy of reporting" that abortions cause cancer, even though an overwhelming number of scientists claim otherwise, one device was available up until 1987 to address situations like this.
The Fairness Doctrine would have allowed those who disagree with the story airtime to present their own point of view. Unfortunately Reagan and the Republicans killed the Fairness Doctrine many years ago.
If you're old enough, you probably remember a time when network news had a carefully-delineated editorial section of their broadcast. It was usually at the end of the show and someone would come on and say their editorial and the station would air a message like, "If you disagree you're invited to come on the air with your own opinion." The existence of guidelines allowing opposition groups to counter news reports forced the mainstream media to be more objective in their reporting. All that went out the window when the Fairness Doctrine was erased.
I object less to goofy stories, than I do the fact that if you disagree, you don't have any substantive recourse to express your point of view to the same audience. There is no "discussion" on these issues any more. It's really a shame this very useful set of FCC rules were gutted.
There is no legitimate reason to not have the Fairness Doctrine in effect unless you don't respect the value of hearing two sides to a story. Those who say the law would be counterproductive are exclusively the ones who are happy with the fact that their agenda is being pushed and don't want the people to hear any contrary opinions.
Let's lobby to bring back the Fairness Doctrine and give groups equal time to counter the biased media.
Where's the part where Bush did business with the Nazis? or Prescott helped Hitler rise to power?
Never said it was so, never said it wasn't so. I don't know. Neither do you.
That's another evasive, ridiculous argument, like "We didn't find WMDs in Iraq. That doesn't mean they're still not there."
True, global warming MIGHT be the result of a giant invisible llama in space breathing on our planet, so in lieu of him turning off his invisibility cloak, let's just disregard the oodles of other scientific evidence and bury our heads in the sand. Good thinking moron.
The Fairness Doctrine has become obsolete and irrelevant. It comes from an era of limited media bandwidth, when broadcast stations had to be doled out as limited resources.
Ask the most intelligent people you know whether they feel there's any difference between NPR and CSPAN and the major commercial networks and radio stations. Therein lies the difference. When commercial interests are involved, news becomes even more biased and censored.
If NPR and CSPAN were as widely available as the major commercial stations, the Fairness Doctrine might not be as big a deal, but it is sorely needed.
The F.D. is not an intrusion of the free press - not at all. You obviously don't know anything about the Fairness Doctrine to say something so ignorant. Read up on it and read the case studies where it was used. It's a device, not unlike the Freedom of Information Act, which allows citizens to petition to provide relevant information on issues to the populace. It never was, nor ever would be a government "rule" - it's merely a tool that people can use to counter propaganda if they so decide.
The same thing was said four years ago... and what did we get? No significant change. Why should this time be any different?
That idea is being promoted to shut people up.
Most people would agree that our current political climate is heavily polarized. The media most often calls attentions to extremes in the issues, rather than seeking common ground between groups. Even the president jumps on the bandwagon with statements like, "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists." With no room for compromise, fueled by a media system which seeks to divide everything into two clearly contrasting piles of soundbytes, it's no wonder half the public is extremely polarized and the other half extremely apathetic.
How did things get to this point? Many argue the winner communicated more effectively than the loser. I agree. And many argue that the losers didn't have the right message. To that I also agree. But trying to understand what the Kerry camp did wrong is a waste of time when you ignore the extreme tilt of the playing field upon which they performed.
It is my contention that two specific events have contributed to the current situation:
1. The veto of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 by Ronald Reagan:
The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine harkened a new age in media and journalism. News outlets were no longer forced to adopt middle ground positions when covering issues; editorial no longer need be confined to narrow areas, and the airwaves exploded with thousands of heavily polarized pundits broadcasting 24 hours a day their agendas, without any concern for fairness or covering alternative viewpoints.
Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and thousands of other partisian pundits were free to spew their slanted take on the world without ever considering the need to offer anything but a wholly one-sided tale of the issues. Left un-regulated and therefore un-challeneged, their hubris expanded to epic preportions as evidenced in statements like, "Fair and Balanced, "No Spin Zone", etc.
And thus began the modern propaganda wars. Unfortunately it's more of a massacre than a real war.
Yes, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine also gave liberal entities the same freedom. The problem is the platforms for these pundits were mostly commercial radio stations, and the conservatives took the role of spokespeople for the agenda of corporate America, unarguably the true political power in the nation. Liberals, representing the moderate voice of the mainstream didn't have the resources that mouthpieces for big-pharma, insurance, finance, oil and defense contractors, and as a result, found themselves literally drowning in a sea of pro-big-business propaganda, with no way to get equal airtime and thus, no comparable method
First off, there's no real proof that our CO2 is heating up the climate.
Oh yea? Why? Because you, "the Shadow" knows? And what is the basis of your conclusion on this? Let me guess, "Cause you said so."
Nevermind the Carbon Dioxide Increasing in Atmosphere, Methane Also Increasing, More Frequent Extreme Weather, Disappearing Glaciers, Melting Arctic Sea Ice, Melting Antarctic Sea Ice, Greenland's Ice Sheet Melting, and Tropical Diseases Spreading. Let's just ignore all that, or better yet, let's bury our head in the sand and blindly support an administration hell-bent on burying scientific evidence.
The real sad thing here are people turning this into a political issue when it is a scientific issue first and foremost. Notice that the majority of those against the Kyoto treaty argue on political grounds. And don't hand me the BS kool-aid malarky about regulations causing job loss. You don't know what you're talking about. You can probably create more jobs enacting efforts to clean up the environment than you can destroying it.
This isn't a political issue. It's a health/science issue.
Those of you who think that there is no consequence to dumping pollutants into the air should re-route the exhaust from your car back into the cab and then wait a half hour. After that I'll concede, and there will be one less bonehead to argue with.
This story conjures up some clever side-conjectures, such as the notion that you can create statistical probability for virtually any scenario you desire if you keep researching until you find the data set that substantiates your claim. I wonder how many sets of criteria these guys churned through before they identified a pattern that jived with something significant? It sounds like a great gimmick to use to get grant money. 1. Pick an issue, formulate a premise, and then 2. start mining historical data until a substantive pattern arises which substantiates your claim. 3. Profit.
In this case, the future-tense references are kind of obvious if you ask me. People that talk about the future are often trying to detract attention from the present, and in those scenarios whether we're talking about a presidential election or a corporate report, tend to be reflective of whether or not the status quo is desireable or change is needed. Who needs a report to recognize this? If a company is doing badly, of course they're going to focus on the future. If a company is doing well, they'll be talking about their present circumstances. DUH.
As a result, I'm inclined to believe the outcome of this upcoming election is going to shatter these analysts predictions. In the business world, you can't really get away with lying about the present to the degree Bush has managed politically, and he's invented a new approach towards attempting to re-invent reality, which I'm not quite sure the majority of the public has bought, so his present tense propaganda is a completely different monster than any historical data these guys might have used for comparison.
Why can't we redirect this kind of research energy towards applications that really have a benefit to mankind? How about predicting patterns which lead to cancer or destructive weather? Doesn't that seem like a more noble use of time and resources?
What's next for these guys? An analysis of peoples' choices for celluar ring tones as they relate to their propensity to purchase expensive designer salad croutons? Stouffers is waiting anxiously for your results.
And you've removed the political bias?
Apples and oranges.
Back then the terms "conservative" and "liberal" had completely different meanings. In fact, in England there's a huge difference in those terms when compared with the American definitions. And on top of that, nobody really seems to know what a liberal is except those who seem to be proud they're not a liberal. The whole notion is bullshit.
Libertarians (couldn't afford) or wouldn't be having brain scans anyway. In a Libertarian world, such technology wouldn't exist because it would have likely only come about through government-subsidized research, none of which would exist under the naive tiny-government scenario propsed by Libertarians.
You're naive if you think the line-item veto would have made any difference. Just like campaign finance reform, had the line-item veto gone into effect politicians would have found loopholes, such as making one line-item contingent upon another not being vetoed, therefore rendering the whole effort useless.
Here's a good list of media endorsements for the various candidates.
This is obviously a bone thrown to the whiny right-wingers who keep claiming slashdot it biased.
This is also probably as legitimate a story you can find that "maligns" John Kerry without being loaded with lies and distortions. So the closest we come is something that really nobody could care about that redefines the concept of triviality.
Congrats right-wingers. Does this make you happy? Will you finally stop whining? I doubt it.
Sounds like my old sig, "Re-elect George W Bush because nothing is as amusing as angry liberals."
And it's true, for mouth-foaming incoherent rage, just wait till Bush wins. If Kerry wins, Bush supporters will be disappointed and concerned, but most of them won't be complaining about impeachment or disenfranchisement or how the election was rigged, blah, blah, blah.
Duuuude, you must be smoking crack. If Gore had won in 2000, the republicans would have made a much bigger fuss (at least in the media which would have seemed a lot larger than the democratic protests).
Hell hath no fury like a bunch of angry conservatives. That's the party that spent $50+ million dollars of taxpayer money to expose the fact that Clinton got a blowjob. If you think liberals are more whack than conservatives when it comes to getting uppity, you're nuts.
I predict that I may not be the only one that is completely fed up with people wasting too much time and energy on predictions, especially innocuous and chaotic issues such as the election a week before the fact. If you want to predict Earthquakes and weather patterns, cool, but no matter what you predict, things are still going to be chaos because it doesn't take a PhD to figure out one side is going to be unhappy about losing. Thank you professor Obvious.
Why don't you academics stop jerking off over week-early predictions and do something productive like research a cure for cancer, or at least see if you can predict the number of people who could possibly care about this big waste of resources and ask yourself if your time and talent are not better served elsewhere?
Whine. Whine. Whine.
It's not Slashdot's job to tell people what they should think - they're merely just putting information and stories online. Considering the old adage "blood is thicker than water", it's probably newsworthy that relatives of GW are actively campaigning against him. If you don't think so, it's probably you that are the most biased.
Watch.. conservatives are going to post that the outrageous costs are the result of skyrocketing insurance premiums due to frivolous lawsuits... even though that's a total farce.
The bottom line is that we could have free healthcare for everyone in the United States if we just cut down on the buracracy of the system. There's enough wasted money in administrative overhead to more than fund universal healthcare.
That's what I get for upgrading to newer versions of QT probably. I hate that stupid virus-like program.