This link was out on the CSAIL mailing lists a few days ago. Pretty funny stuff. At that time, I think they had about 10 donations totalling maybe $150. As of this post, they have 118, with $1841.59 total. I have to think that at least some of that is in part to/.ers. Nice work/., now we can see them deliver a randomly generated talk!:-)
I wonder if it's anything like language acquisition. Deprived of language input in early childhood, children past a certain age exhibit very limited linguistic development and never really recover. To tie this idea in with the current thread, it seems that the components of the brain that are specialized or would be specialized for language simply atrophy or are otherwise non-existent to the rest of a person's cognitive abilities; a parallel situation may exist with sight.
Of course, this is all wild speculation and I have no proof to back up this hypothesis tying the two situation together, so take it for what it is: the early morning brain farts of an insonmniac grad student.
It was especially telling when i spent time in former east germany, and especially east berlin.
After seeing first hand the memorial to the berlin wall, and the destruction all across east germany (like how none of it was rebuilt during the pre-unification years), i vowed that the next time i heard some fucking _IDIOT_ saying something positive about communisim/socialism, or trying to compare whats happening in the US to what transpired in eastern europe and the soviet union, id be sure and make my token attempt to set them straight.
In the summer of 1990, just after the wall fell and Czechoslovakia still existed, my dad took my family to Prague. The city, at one point, had been beautiful, but decades of communism had really taken its toll on both the city and the people. After that first-hand impression, I've always wondered what the hell is going through a person's mind when they speak warmly about communism. It simply baffles me. I wonder how far they've come in the past 15 years without the TRUE oppression that was the USSR keeping them down.
Rumors are still floating around about a second gunman, Area 51, and a Zionist conspiracy to control the White House through Hollywood franchises.
Some people, in the face of doubt, or even overwhelming contradictory evidence, will cling to beliefs tenaciously. I don't know precisely why, but they do. I hypothesize that it may be due to having a world view that would be shattered if they did not twist facts to suit them.
Back to blogs and a point that I've made repeatedly. The MSM is probably a little less immune to mistakes than blogs, but as an aggregate, blogs correct themselves very quickly.
With so many "right wingers" calling themselves "conservative" and attempting to restrict my activities, it's hard not too.
Plus "Right wing" is just another label... none of these are exact definitions...
Agreed definitions are not exact, but there are salient differences between true conservatism and the perversion offered by the right wingers. Their vile attempts at sneaking religious morality into government are completely antithetical to true conservative ideals. I, and most other conservatives, do not wish to be associated with right wingers anymore than a socialist wishes to be associated with communism.
Except when it comes to gay marriage, dying with dignity, smoking marijuana, playing D&D in the community center, or a thousand other personal issues. Then it's regulation hell.
People who call themselves Conservatives just *say* they want to give the government off your back. That doesn't actually *mean* they want the government off your back.
Of course none of this addresses the core issue, to wit, any election campaign finance reform can only be effective to the extent that we throw out the First Ammendment and institute a speech police force.
To my mind this is a disease far worse than the "cure."
I've always been uncomfortable with election campaign finance reform. If I interpret the rest of your post correctly, you're of the mind that this is bad legislation not because it singles out blogs (or rather, doesn't), but because the entire concept of campaign finance reform starts to open a number of regulatory doors that are antithetical to true free speech.
Want to start an unsubstantiated rumour about your political opponent? What better place to start than at some anonymous blog, and then for good measure, post some trackbacks at a few more anonymous blogs. Like any good rumour mill, the bloggers will repeat and repost it, all the while believing they're scooping the traditional media.
You're assuming that bloggers wouldn't fact check from sources other than other bloggers.
But yes, the bill does not dicriminate (I've, like, actually read it and stuff). It is not aimed at bloggers and applies to any "Electioneering Communication" that is "distributed," "including, but not limited to" Cable, satellite, Internet, flyers, doorhangers, etc, etc, etc.
On the face of it, you're correct; the bill doesn't discriminate. If you read down further, in the definitions section, you'll see:
The term "Electioneering communication" shall not include:.
. .
new stories, commentaries, or editorials distributed through any newspaper, radio station, television station, or other recognized news medium unless such news medium is owned or controlled by any political party, political committee or candidate.
I'm not too good with this sort of thing, but it seems that the wording is pretty vague. If blogs aren't "recognized" as a "news medium," wouldn't this mean they could be considered "electioneering communications?"
(This is an honest question, not an attempt to score a point.)
Agree with your point about there being just as much PC on the right as on the left. People who toe ideological lines on either side of the aisle know there are certain things they can't say and continue to retain their credentials as a member of those groups. Most of the population exists in the middle shaking their heads.
I disagree about your comment about the Pope. This is just tact. He died yesterday! Give it a week. Then the coverage will be like with Reagan, good and bad.
Are journalists or columnists in traditional media required to register with the local authorities, pay a registration fee because they're popular, report all their costs (such as travel, meals with sources, etc), or turnover their readership (auditing of server logs) to the government so they can see who might be reading certain opinions?
I doubt that they are. If they are, then that's, at the very LEAST, highly disturbing. The fact that you wish that bloggers would stop posting doesn't mean that the government, or anyone else, should be able to come in and regulate their speech. It's the same principle as the tv: if you don't like the programming, then change the channel, or turn it off.
The reasons politicians are interested in singling out blogs are pretty obvious. Blogs have a relatively low startup and maintenance cost, can be started by anyone, and whereas there are relatively few points of regulation for traditional media, blogs are highly distributed. The squashing of a scandal, omission of facts, or the redirection of public attention becomes incredibly difficult for people (politicians, corporations, etc) who have become accustomed to a certain amount of cover from the elitist press.
Traditional MSM are scared because of such scandals like Dan Rather's Forged Memo story. Before blogs, the fact that there were some serious questions about the authenticity of those national guard memos would have never seen a wide audience and would have been largely relegated to the lore of right-wing conspiracy theorists.
CBS and others are pissed because now their job, getting the story RIGHT, has suddenly become that much more difficult with people who are both knowledgable in such matters AND able to make that knowledge widely known. Furthermore, because of the rapid response made possible by blogs, the facts are checked over and over again and a truer picture of what actually happened becomes hammered out. Contrast this with the relatively slow response times of the NYT or WT, stories with innaccuracies are only slowly corrected and usually in the back sections of the paper. An inaccurate picture is usually what people are left with.
I think there is no clearer ideal of what free political speech looks like.
Forums = Manual for Gentoo. If I get some bizarro portage error, that's my first stop. If someone hasn't encountered my problem before, that means a few hours of tinkering for me.
But it honestly wouldn't be too far from the truth, right?
Except that, in this case, "God" is some dork in his underwear and a thinkgeek.com t-shirt. There's only ever been two "people" on the planet, one of them was Jesus (at least once), and the other looks the same as her mother, grandmother, great-grand mother, etc.
In all seriousness, I wonder if this isn't more an experience on collaborative learning than it is evolution? You have two beings with limited ways of moving, a simple communication protocol, and limited memory. It's not so much that genetic code is being passed down from generation to generation as it is methods of acting in the world. And on that, I'm not even sure it's learning per se. It's more like swapping random commands... there doesn't seem to be a reward/cost function of any sort. Still, it's interesting.
A nuclear bomb can be detonated by taking two lumps of metal and banging them together real fast. The romans could have done that, easily.
You're either 12 or an art student with no engineering background at all. If detonating a nuclear bomb were that easy, we would have ceased to exist years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
This link was out on the CSAIL mailing lists a few days ago. Pretty funny stuff. At that time, I think they had about 10 donations totalling maybe $150. As of this post, they have 118, with $1841.59 total. I have to think that at least some of that is in part to /.ers. Nice work /., now we can see them deliver a randomly generated talk! :-)
If they're so concerned about research activity, why not fund a few graduate students? :-)
Mod: -1: Fat Chance
I'm more concerned about whether or not the average /.er (or person, for that matter) washes their hands after a trip to the toilet.
*shudder*
Shhhh! Don't destroy the Appler's delusions of innovation. :-)
I wonder if it's anything like language acquisition. Deprived of language input in early childhood, children past a certain age exhibit very limited linguistic development and never really recover. To tie this idea in with the current thread, it seems that the components of the brain that are specialized or would be specialized for language simply atrophy or are otherwise non-existent to the rest of a person's cognitive abilities; a parallel situation may exist with sight.
Of course, this is all wild speculation and I have no proof to back up this hypothesis tying the two situation together, so take it for what it is: the early morning brain farts of an insonmniac grad student.
I call bullshit.
Discounting the longer security lines, it's no harder for US citizens to travel internationally than it was before 9/11.
And yes, I speak from experience. Hell, I renewed my passport through the mail in under 3 weeks.
Rumors are still floating around about a second gunman, Area 51, and a Zionist conspiracy to control the White House through Hollywood franchises.
Some people, in the face of doubt, or even overwhelming contradictory evidence, will cling to beliefs tenaciously. I don't know precisely why, but they do. I hypothesize that it may be due to having a world view that would be shattered if they did not twist facts to suit them.
Back to blogs and a point that I've made repeatedly. The MSM is probably a little less immune to mistakes than blogs, but as an aggregate, blogs correct themselves very quickly.
Agreed definitions are not exact, but there are salient differences between true conservatism and the perversion offered by the right wingers. Their vile attempts at sneaking religious morality into government are completely antithetical to true conservative ideals. I, and most other conservatives, do not wish to be associated with right wingers anymore than a socialist wishes to be associated with communism.
The difference is that blogs (taken as a whole) are self-correcting because there are so many eyes on. Old media isn't.
You're assuming that bloggers wouldn't fact check from sources other than other bloggers.
Actually, I just offered a high profile example. I never implied that this sort of legislation was only coming from one side.
Agree with your point about there being just as much PC on the right as on the left. People who toe ideological lines on either side of the aisle know there are certain things they can't say and continue to retain their credentials as a member of those groups. Most of the population exists in the middle shaking their heads.
I disagree about your comment about the Pope. This is just tact. He died yesterday! Give it a week. Then the coverage will be like with Reagan, good and bad.
Heh. "slashdot discussions."
Are journalists or columnists in traditional media required to register with the local authorities, pay a registration fee because they're popular, report all their costs (such as travel, meals with sources, etc), or turnover their readership (auditing of server logs) to the government so they can see who might be reading certain opinions?
I doubt that they are. If they are, then that's, at the very LEAST, highly disturbing. The fact that you wish that bloggers would stop posting doesn't mean that the government, or anyone else, should be able to come in and regulate their speech. It's the same principle as the tv: if you don't like the programming, then change the channel, or turn it off.
The reasons politicians are interested in singling out blogs are pretty obvious. Blogs have a relatively low startup and maintenance cost, can be started by anyone, and whereas there are relatively few points of regulation for traditional media, blogs are highly distributed. The squashing of a scandal, omission of facts, or the redirection of public attention becomes incredibly difficult for people (politicians, corporations, etc) who have become accustomed to a certain amount of cover from the elitist press.
Traditional MSM are scared because of such scandals like Dan Rather's Forged Memo story. Before blogs, the fact that there were some serious questions about the authenticity of those national guard memos would have never seen a wide audience and would have been largely relegated to the lore of right-wing conspiracy theorists.
CBS and others are pissed because now their job, getting the story RIGHT, has suddenly become that much more difficult with people who are both knowledgable in such matters AND able to make that knowledge widely known. Furthermore, because of the rapid response made possible by blogs, the facts are checked over and over again and a truer picture of what actually happened becomes hammered out. Contrast this with the relatively slow response times of the NYT or WT, stories with innaccuracies are only slowly corrected and usually in the back sections of the paper. An inaccurate picture is usually what people are left with.
I think there is no clearer ideal of what free political speech looks like.
Apparently, her talent takes a number of forms and positions.
Bloody vikings.
Alright boys... the fox is out... prepare to send in the hounds!
Anyone else notice the dupe in the acknowledgement of the dupe?
You're both right.
Forums = Manual for Gentoo. If I get some bizarro portage error, that's my first stop. If someone hasn't encountered my problem before, that means a few hours of tinkering for me.
But it honestly wouldn't be too far from the truth, right?
Except that, in this case, "God" is some dork in his underwear and a thinkgeek.com t-shirt. There's only ever been two "people" on the planet, one of them was Jesus (at least once), and the other looks the same as her mother, grandmother, great-grand mother, etc.
In all seriousness, I wonder if this isn't more an experience on collaborative learning than it is evolution? You have two beings with limited ways of moving, a simple communication protocol, and limited memory. It's not so much that genetic code is being passed down from generation to generation as it is methods of acting in the world. And on that, I'm not even sure it's learning per se. It's more like swapping random commands... there doesn't seem to be a reward/cost function of any sort. Still, it's interesting.
You're either 12 or an art student with no engineering background at all. If detonating a nuclear bomb were that easy, we would have ceased to exist years ago.