Netflix is a corporation, and so therefore will restrict access to certain materials.
Once broadband is more establisheda, a better distribution system would be an open source p2p network with trusted peer mechanisms. Peer reviews would act as a filtering mechanism.
Once the triage occurs via trusted peer evaluation, p2p + broadband distributes.
The audiovideo entertainment would be free for download, and would be paid for by embedded product placment commercials.
James Madison, 4th President of these United States of America, often referred to as the "Father of the American Constitution," said that the primary goal of the American government should be to "...protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."
Clue: the minority of the opulent is people like Rendell and the CEO and board of directors of Verizon. The majority is people like you and me.
Madison got his wish. Heck, he wrote most of the Constitution. And now you see what he wanted. And he got it.
The Founding Fathers were not good people. They were perfect American exploiters--treacherous, filthy, murderous scum.
They were owners of slaves, whom they no doubt beat until bloody, and raped until traumatized, and murdered. You doubt it? Go read up on some of the personal accounts of slaves. Google will get you there.
The Founding Fathers were owners of indentured white slaves, whom they no doubt beat until bloody, and raped until traumatized, and murdered. You doubt it? Go read up on some of the personal accounts of indentured servants. Google will get you there.
I believe you may have just committed a crime (IANAL). I am sure that many of the rightwingbots brownshirts on/. will rush to report you to the SS.
As for myself, I would never advise or incite anyone to commit a crime. I advocate reformism via information war.
As for the negative consequences I would like to see Rendell suffer, they would be as follows: arrested and indicted for treason (the enemy of the people being Verizon (the constitution being a flexible document, as per case law (IANAL))), and then tried in a recognmized court of law by a jury of his peers, and then once found guilty, executed, as traitors have been in the past.
Now if those kind of negative consequences existed, scum like Rendell would not be grabbing those wads of corporate cash, would they?
Bush, Rumsfeld, Clinton, reagan, Kissinger, Nixon, Johnson et al, have all killed MILLIONS more than McVeigh ever hoped of killing.
THEY are the REAL terrorists! And for what reasons? So that multinational corps could raise profits? So that rich people could live without fear of socialism spreading democratically throughout the world?
It is the "dept of OFFENSE", not "dept of DEFENSE"
on
HIV Vaccine
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
THe American military is NOT used to defend Americans. It is used to grab more profits for multinational corporations (so they can use the money to outsource our jobs); it is used to put down democratic leftist governments (to serve as an example to other countries that might want to do the same), so that the wealthy of the world do not have to worry about losing their billions.
Our military has never been used to defend the American mainland.
you are a Good Little RushBot
on
HIV Vaccine
·
· Score: 1
There ya go! You spit out that scripted response in good time. Was that Rush Limbaugh healthcare script #3 or #4?
this is from brazil & france, NOT USA pharmco
on
HIV Vaccine
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Note that this research is being done in brazil and france, and so I doubt it is being funded by the so-called "free market" (yeah, right) profits from American pharmaceutical companies. You know the ones, those that are ripping us off, and paying Rush Limbaugh to spread propaganda about how we Americans are carrying the rest of the world with our free market (yeah, right) healthcare system.
Oh, by the way, France has nationalized healthcare--anyone walks right in and gets healtcare without paying. Real good system. Oh, yeah, that's right. We Americans are subsidizing their healthcare by paying for all this research.
Hmm. So that's why this vaccine to beat AIDS is coming out of France and Brazil.....
You are missing the fact that there are NO negative consequences for our elected representatives when they sell us out to the corporations.
We need to have BAD THINGS happen to politicians and other government officials when they sell us out to the corporations. If nothing bad happens to them, and there is so much to gain for these politicians/bureaucrats (bribes, "donations", ultra-lucrative lobbying positions, "grants",etc) and no negative consequences, why not do it?
There is a reason why you or I do not walk into a bank and start grabbing wads of cash. Bad thing will happen to us if we do that.
CLUE: POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS ARE GRABBING THESE WADS OF CASH. RIGHT NOW. Rendell just grabbed a wad of cash.
And you and I aint gonna do JACKSHIT about it. Isn't that right?
Have you read that crap on her blog? It is almost ALL polical horserace crap, political gossip, a real distraction from the real political issues that need discussion. Who said this, who said that, attacks on the GOP and Bush. Hardly ever a word about the real and important issues of taxation, trade, healthcare, etc.
No doubt that the author of this slashdot article quoted wonkette because wonkette is often cited by mainstream media sources when they discuss blogs.
And why do these mainstream media sources cite wonkette? Because she restrains her political discussions to the conventional topics covered by the mainstream media and she takes the same slants offered by the mainstream media. She is "safe."
Clue: avoid any blogs referenced by the mainstream media. They are sanitized crap--by definition.
Same thing goes for politicians and political candidates--if the mainstream media gives them much attention, then do not vote for them--it means that politician has sold out and is ideologically acceptable to the powerful interests that control the media.
For example, consider the case of the new media darling, Barack Obama: there is a good reason why he is suddenly a media darling--he has promised he will not support "protectionist" trade (translation: he is a willing accomplice to the bleeding dry of America).
For about $100/month in dues and insurance payments, you can sign up for cryonics. It's a longterm experiment to determine whether a person vitrified today using state-of-the-art cryopreservative/vitrifications techniques (which eliminate or greatly reduce ice crystal formation) will be able to be revived at some indeterminate date in the future.
Although such revival is impossible today, at some day N days in the future, it may be possible to revive the experimental subjects. A happy consequence of such revival would likely be awakening into a society where humans are virtually immortal (or extremely lomglived) and machines and other technologies make it possible for humans to not have to work.
Nice payoff for that experiment!
As for the odds of success, there are too many confounding variables to make an estimation. However, the probability of success would be the product of several independent variables, such as (odds of a future society coming up with revival technology) times (odds of remaining safe in the dewar until such a time arrives) times..... etc etc.
You wrote:
25% of what? You could have a room full of certified genius, but there would still be a bottom 25%
THat is the core of the American-style neoliberal, laissez faire capitalism. It is darwinism. What's old is new again. THis is the way America was run for centuries, even before it was a country. Law of the jungle. We turned out backs on this earlier this century (New Deal, labor unions, etc), but now we are regressing to hypercompetitiveness. Europe is way way ahead of us in keeping hypercompetitiveness at bay.
And it is not just the tech companies that do this. Many other high profile industries do this. Most law firms do this, at least the larger ones, and many smaller ones. The weakest performers of the bunch are told to leave every year. And the weakest performers are not bad, but they are just relatively weakest.
The officer corps of the American armed services do the same: up, or out.
Insanity, as far as I am concerned. And we swim in currents of death, all around us. Our lives are so short, and yet we subject ourselves to this nonsense. I can understand it in young people. They are too green, too inexperienced to see the forest for the trees. But why don't more older people call Bullshit on this? We have the ability to make our lives better. Why not do so?
That the European welfare states are collapsing-- but they just keep plugging along. Gee, I wonder if the corporatist-imperialist state of America will have to declare war on them if Americans finally catch on. And that happens ol' Cryofan will be here in America--fighting for Europe!
I gather from your comment and your linked website, you think canada is exploiting immigrants because of racism. I doubt it. Immigrants are probably exploited in Canada (as in America) because they ARE exploitable. They are vulnerable. This is what America is all about. America celebrates the basest urges and drives of mankind. We CELEBRATE them! And Canada is learning from us. It is a very old story. The outsider is exploited, enslaved, raped, etc whenever they are vulnerable. If they are outsiders and look different, well, that just makes it easy. Same thing goes on at jobsites all over the world.
Check out a movie called Dogville. You can get it on p2p if you look around.
When the waves of workplace reforms and social safety net reforms swept over the Americas and Europe, western civilization thought it had swept aside mankind's brutish past once and for all. We even allowed ourselves to dream of a spiffy Jetsonesque future, replete with flying cars and so very much leisure time. What will we do with all our leisure time, magazines and pundits asked in the 50s and 60s. And 45 years later, the future did not turn quite that way....
Why not? Delve into the genesis of an particularly evil branch of the dismal science known as "neoliberalism," at the University of Chicago. It was adopted by the zillionaires and the megaCorps and we are now in its death grip.
The days of large new unions are over in America, for all practical purposes, unless all these braindead f*ckers wake up in time, which I seriously doubt. Our leaders sold us out starting decades ago, passing legislature that made it harder and harder to unionize here. Now the unions are dying, and it is quite hard to start a large new union.
You might be able to join an existing union (there are a couple around for computer geeks), but I think the current laws will make it hard to get a lot of coders/programmers into it. Ask John Miano, he may know--he has been trying to get a guild going for some time. Whether it is a union....?
Although ten years ago, I never would have ever dreamed of saying this, but there is no doubt that the countries with the highest unionization rates are the ones with the highest living standards.
Actually it's just the corporations. Most people, if they attain any degree of financial sucess, invest in something. It's capitalism and it works.
You mean regular working people can buy stocks and bonds?! YOu mean that not all investors have millions? I had no idea!/sarcasm
Look, EVERYONE KNOWS that already. I myself have tens of thousands in stocks. Why not also point out that gravity causes objects to fall towards the earth and that the sky is blue? There are lots of obvious statements for you to make here on Slashdot. I think we have found something for you to do!
You make want to consider the veracity of this statement: 1 is NOT the same as 1000000. Also, if I apply one newton of force to an object that is not the same as applied one million newtons.
Governments, by definition, do the controlling. That is why that government is best which governs least. The corporations can be controlled much more easily. They will do whatever a sufficiently large group of investors or customers tell them to do.
Governments are simply machines, and Libertarians are simply Luddites. Well, they are defacto luddites. But more to the point they are automatons of the propaganda disseminated by the wealthy INVESTORS AND CORPORATIONS. If you think corporations are the sole genesis of American corporatism, then you need to read the link on my home page that mentions "tentacles of rage". Several zillionaire clans were actually the genesis of the rightwing media propaganda machine that is the foundation of American corporatism.
Actually, this would not be that bad an idea, if only, IF ONLY, our government actually represented th average citizen, and NOT the corporations and the investors.
Until we can control our govts, something like this is just a bad thing.
And there appears to be nothing we can do about it. They can start wars, strip us of worker protections, our social safety net, our higher education funding, anything they want.
Why? Because of the power of propagnda. They have most of America in the grip of propaganda-based belief systems. Many young males are in the grip of the free-market-as-deity belief system. Others are in the grip of country-and-constitution-worship belief system.
In the aggregate, these Americans can be manipulated by pressing the right buttons during poltical campaigns, especially primary elections. By the time the general election rolls around, both candidates are always Corporatist shills, at least in the presidential election.
Really, I have to think that it is not only profit that keeps broadband from being reasonably priced in America. It may be that there is fear among the top of the corporatist hierarchy that once a critical mass of Americans can download video quickly over the Net, alternative distribution and creation systems may open up the path for leftist counter-propaganda. I think that if most Americans could just view a good video documentary series on the history of political propaganda in America, the grip of the corporatists could be shaken.
Notice how many corporate apologists are all over this thread? Considering how many millions these MegaCorps with their virtual monopolies are able to spend on lobbying and controlling our govt and our media, you think they don't have people trying to shape opinion on the Net?
ANd they always seem to get the first post on these types of threads! The poor frist posters are getting bulldozed by these cyberpropagandists....
We Americans seem to have been subordinated to authority extremely well. We have an authoritarian culture.
It has something to do, I suppose, with the fact that ours was until very recently a slave-driven culture. And before slavery was outlawed, there was a great deal of attention focused on protection and obedience to leaders.
Also, we are a celebrity obsessed culture. I think it comes out of the fact that we are a hierarchy obsessed culture. For hundreds of years our leaders have helped create a culture obsessed with authority and hierarchy. That is why we can play and talk about games that kill millions of people. Suppose a war game came out centered around invading Iran and Killing Iranians. THose are real people. Do you think there would be a huge fuss over that?
But when it comes down to anything reeking slightly of actual disobedience to our leaders or actual revolution....ohhh! BIG FUSS! We have been trained, oh, so very well. It took centuries.
Slashdot Mirror
Netflix is a corporation, and so therefore will restrict access to certain materials.
Once broadband is more establisheda, a better distribution system would be an open source p2p network with trusted peer mechanisms. Peer reviews would act as a filtering mechanism.
Once the triage occurs via trusted peer evaluation, p2p + broadband distributes.
The audiovideo entertainment would be free for download, and would be paid for by embedded product placment commercials.
I would ask you to consider whether your response if a result of having listened too much to talk radio.....
James Madison, 4th President of these United States of America, often referred to as the "Father of the American Constitution," said that the primary goal of the American government should be to "...protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."
Clue: the minority of the opulent is people like Rendell and the CEO and board of directors of Verizon. The majority is people like you and me.
Madison got his wish. Heck, he wrote most of the Constitution. And now you see what he wanted. And he got it.
The Founding Fathers were not good people. They were perfect American exploiters--treacherous, filthy, murderous scum.
They were owners of slaves, whom they no doubt beat until bloody, and raped until traumatized, and murdered. You doubt it? Go read up on some of the personal accounts of slaves. Google will get you there.
The Founding Fathers were owners of indentured white slaves, whom they no doubt beat until bloody, and raped until traumatized, and murdered. You doubt it? Go read up on some of the personal accounts of indentured servants. Google will get you there.
I believe you may have just committed a crime (IANAL). I am sure that many of the rightwingbots brownshirts on /. will rush to report you to the SS.
As for myself, I would never advise or incite anyone to commit a crime. I advocate reformism via information war.
As for the negative consequences I would like to see Rendell suffer, they would be as follows: arrested and indicted for treason (the enemy of the people being Verizon (the constitution being a flexible document, as per case law (IANAL))), and then tried in a recognmized court of law by a jury of his peers, and then once found guilty, executed, as traitors have been in the past.
Now if those kind of negative consequences existed, scum like Rendell would not be grabbing those wads of corporate cash, would they?
Bush, Rumsfeld, Clinton, reagan, Kissinger, Nixon, Johnson et al, have all killed MILLIONS more than McVeigh ever hoped of killing.
THEY are the REAL terrorists! And for what reasons? So that multinational corps could raise profits? So that rich people could live without fear of socialism spreading democratically throughout the world?
THe American military is NOT used to defend Americans. It is used to grab more profits for multinational corporations (so they can use the money to outsource our jobs); it is used to put down democratic leftist governments (to serve as an example to other countries that might want to do the same), so that the wealthy of the world do not have to worry about losing their billions.
Our military has never been used to defend the American mainland.
There ya go! You spit out that scripted response in good time. Was that Rush Limbaugh healthcare script #3 or #4?
Note that this research is being done in brazil and france, and so I doubt it is being funded by the so-called "free market" (yeah, right) profits from American pharmaceutical companies. You know the ones, those that are ripping us off, and paying Rush Limbaugh to spread propaganda about how we Americans are carrying the rest of the world with our free market (yeah, right) healthcare system.
Oh, by the way, France has nationalized healthcare--anyone walks right in and gets healtcare without paying. Real good system. Oh, yeah, that's right. We Americans are subsidizing their healthcare by paying for all this research.
Hmm. So that's why this vaccine to beat AIDS is coming out of France and Brazil.....
You are missing the fact that there are NO negative consequences for our elected representatives when they sell us out to the corporations.
We need to have BAD THINGS happen to politicians and other government officials when they sell us out to the corporations. If nothing bad happens to them, and there is so much to gain for these politicians/bureaucrats (bribes, "donations", ultra-lucrative lobbying positions, "grants",etc) and no negative consequences, why not do it?
There is a reason why you or I do not walk into a bank and start grabbing wads of cash. Bad thing will happen to us if we do that.
CLUE: POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS ARE GRABBING THESE WADS OF CASH. RIGHT NOW. Rendell just grabbed a wad of cash.
And you and I aint gonna do JACKSHIT about it. Isn't that right?
Have you read that crap on her blog? It is almost ALL polical horserace crap, political gossip, a real distraction from the real political issues that need discussion. Who said this, who said that, attacks on the GOP and Bush. Hardly ever a word about the real and important issues of taxation, trade, healthcare, etc.
No doubt that the author of this slashdot article quoted wonkette because wonkette is often cited by mainstream media sources when they discuss blogs.
And why do these mainstream media sources cite wonkette? Because she restrains her political discussions to the conventional topics covered by the mainstream media and she takes the same slants offered by the mainstream media. She is "safe."
Clue: avoid any blogs referenced by the mainstream media. They are sanitized crap--by definition.
Same thing goes for politicians and political candidates--if the mainstream media gives them much attention, then do not vote for them--it means that politician has sold out and is ideologically acceptable to the powerful interests that control the media.
For example, consider the case of the new media darling, Barack Obama: there is a good reason why he is suddenly a media darling--he has promised he will not support "protectionist" trade (translation: he is a willing accomplice to the bleeding dry of America).
For about $100/month in dues and insurance payments, you can sign up for cryonics. It's a longterm experiment to determine whether a person vitrified today using state-of-the-art cryopreservative/vitrifications techniques (which eliminate or greatly reduce ice crystal formation) will be able to be revived at some indeterminate date in the future.
Although such revival is impossible today, at some day N days in the future, it may be possible to revive the experimental subjects. A happy consequence of such revival would likely be awakening into a society where humans are virtually immortal (or extremely lomglived) and machines and other technologies make it possible for humans to not have to work.
Nice payoff for that experiment!
As for the odds of success, there are too many confounding variables to make an estimation. However, the probability of success would be the product of several independent variables, such as (odds of a future society coming up with revival technology) times (odds of remaining safe in the dewar until such a time arrives) times..... etc etc.
Link? Yeah, what the heck....
25% of what? You could have a room full of certified genius, but there would still be a bottom 25%
THat is the core of the American-style neoliberal, laissez faire capitalism. It is darwinism. What's old is new again. THis is the way America was run for centuries, even before it was a country. Law of the jungle. We turned out backs on this earlier this century (New Deal, labor unions, etc), but now we are regressing to hypercompetitiveness. Europe is way way ahead of us in keeping hypercompetitiveness at bay.
And it is not just the tech companies that do this. Many other high profile industries do this. Most law firms do this, at least the larger ones, and many smaller ones. The weakest performers of the bunch are told to leave every year. And the weakest performers are not bad, but they are just relatively weakest.
The officer corps of the American armed services do the same: up, or out.
Insanity, as far as I am concerned. And we swim in currents of death, all around us. Our lives are so short, and yet we subject ourselves to this nonsense. I can understand it in young people. They are too green, too inexperienced to see the forest for the trees. But why don't more older people call Bullshit on this? We have the ability to make our lives better. Why not do so?
That the European welfare states are collapsing-- but they just keep plugging along. Gee, I wonder if the corporatist-imperialist state of America will have to declare war on them if Americans finally catch on. And that happens ol' Cryofan will be here in America--fighting for Europe!
The media has pounded into the heads of Americans that resistance to globalization is futile.
I gather from your comment and your linked website, you think canada is exploiting immigrants because of racism. I doubt it. Immigrants are probably exploited in Canada (as in America) because they ARE exploitable. They are vulnerable. This is what America is all about. America celebrates the basest urges and drives of mankind. We CELEBRATE them! And Canada is learning from us. It is a very old story. The outsider is exploited, enslaved, raped, etc whenever they are vulnerable. If they are outsiders and look different, well, that just makes it easy. Same thing goes on at jobsites all over the world.
Check out a movie called Dogville. You can get it on p2p if you look around.
When the waves of workplace reforms and social safety net reforms swept over the Americas and Europe, western civilization thought it had swept aside mankind's brutish past once and for all. We even allowed ourselves to dream of a spiffy Jetsonesque future, replete with flying cars and so very much leisure time. What will we do with all our leisure time, magazines and pundits asked in the 50s and 60s. And 45 years later, the future did not turn quite that way....
Why not? Delve into the genesis of an particularly evil branch of the dismal science known as "neoliberalism," at the University of Chicago. It was adopted by the zillionaires and the megaCorps and we are now in its death grip.
The days of large new unions are over in America, for all practical purposes, unless all these braindead f*ckers wake up in time, which I seriously doubt. Our leaders sold us out starting decades ago, passing legislature that made it harder and harder to unionize here. Now the unions are dying, and it is quite hard to start a large new union.
You might be able to join an existing union (there are a couple around for computer geeks), but I think the current laws will make it hard to get a lot of coders/programmers into it. Ask John Miano, he may know--he has been trying to get a guild going for some time. Whether it is a union....?
Although ten years ago, I never would have ever dreamed of saying this, but there is no doubt that the countries with the highest unionization rates are the ones with the highest living standards.
Also I think other countries have 40 hr or less legal maximum work weeks.
Yet, somehow, Americans continue to either ignore or rationalize away the fact that Europe has now a better place to live than America.
How do Europeans view these horrible working conditions under which Americans work?
Iff'n you says Ah has to, Ah can plow dat field in a day, and Ah kin code 80 hours next week....
Just don't beat me wit dat whip, Massa.
Back to da plantation, boys!
Arbeit Macht Frei!
Slavery is Freedom!
YOu wrote:
/sarcasm
Actually it's just the corporations. Most people, if they attain any degree of financial sucess, invest in something. It's capitalism and it works.
You mean regular working people can buy stocks and bonds?! YOu mean that not all investors have millions? I had no idea!
Look, EVERYONE KNOWS that already. I myself have tens of thousands in stocks. Why not also point out that gravity causes objects to fall towards the earth and that the sky is blue? There are lots of obvious statements for you to make here on Slashdot. I think we have found something for you to do!
You make want to consider the veracity of this statement: 1 is NOT the same as 1000000. Also, if I apply one newton of force to an object that is not the same as applied one million newtons.
Governments, by definition, do the controlling. That is why that government is best which governs least. The corporations can be controlled much more easily. They will do whatever a sufficiently large group of investors or customers tell them to do.
Governments are simply machines, and Libertarians are simply Luddites. Well, they are defacto luddites. But more to the point they are automatons of the propaganda disseminated by the wealthy INVESTORS AND CORPORATIONS. If you think corporations are the sole genesis of American corporatism, then you need to read the link on my home page that mentions "tentacles of rage". Several zillionaire clans were actually the genesis of the rightwing media propaganda machine that is the foundation of American corporatism.
Actually, this would not be that bad an idea, if only, IF ONLY, our government actually represented th average citizen, and NOT the corporations and the investors.
Until we can control our govts, something like this is just a bad thing.
And there appears to be nothing we can do about it. They can start wars, strip us of worker protections, our social safety net, our higher education funding, anything they want.
Why? Because of the power of propagnda. They have most of America in the grip of propaganda-based belief systems. Many young males are in the grip of the free-market-as-deity belief system. Others are in the grip of country-and-constitution-worship belief system.
In the aggregate, these Americans can be manipulated by pressing the right buttons during poltical campaigns, especially primary elections. By the time the general election rolls around, both candidates are always Corporatist shills, at least in the presidential election.
Really, I have to think that it is not only profit that keeps broadband from being reasonably priced in America. It may be that there is fear among the top of the corporatist hierarchy that once a critical mass of Americans can download video quickly over the Net, alternative distribution and creation systems may open up the path for leftist counter-propaganda. I think that if most Americans could just view a good video documentary series on the history of political propaganda in America, the grip of the corporatists could be shaken.
Here is a good book on the history of political propaganda in America.
Notice how many corporate apologists are all over this thread? Considering how many millions these MegaCorps with their virtual monopolies are able to spend on lobbying and controlling our govt and our media, you think they don't have people trying to shape opinion on the Net?
ANd they always seem to get the first post on these types of threads! The poor frist posters are getting bulldozed by these cyberpropagandists....
In other news, some say that "slavery is freedom."
We Americans seem to have been subordinated to authority extremely well. We have an authoritarian culture.
It has something to do, I suppose, with the fact that ours was until very recently a slave-driven culture. And before slavery was outlawed, there was a great deal of attention focused on protection and obedience to leaders.
Also, we are a celebrity obsessed culture. I think it comes out of the fact that we are a hierarchy obsessed culture. For hundreds of years our leaders have helped create a culture obsessed with authority and hierarchy. That is why we can play and talk about games that kill millions of people. Suppose a war game came out centered around invading Iran and Killing Iranians. THose are real people. Do you think there would be a huge fuss over that?
But when it comes down to anything reeking slightly of actual disobedience to our leaders or actual revolution....ohhh! BIG FUSS! We have been trained, oh, so very well. It took centuries.