Since Pravda is hardly known for its history of unbiased coverage (I used to read it in the old Sov days -- ugh!) I was skeptical, but I read it anyway. It's excellent. The key paragraph:
Despite the talk of "Big Oil", "Big Tobacco", "Big Pharmaceuticals" and the centralized, corporate control of America's most powerful industries, there is little talk in the American mainstream of "Big Media", and the role a handful of individuals have played in centralizing the control of American "free press" into their handful of hands. It has become almost impossible in the United States to pick up a newspaper or a magazine, turn on a radio, or watch a television station without being bombarded by a deliberately crafted and censored propaganda message of a minority that, despite not being elected into power, play the defining role in shaping what politicians and the American public believe about each other, and thus, by extension, the policies that those politicians and the American public adopt.
But the problem is deeper than them simply being factually wrong. I think people in the media often mistake their epistemic role for a metaphysical one. Since often they alone can tell us what happened, they immodestly extend their authority to how and why.
During the shelling of the Russian Parliament building years ago, a CNN reporter noted of the live coverage, "It's a little scary, beaming these images into people's homes without us being able to interpret it for them". Not as scary as that comment. This is going to be a period of tectonic shifts in world relations and perceptions. While I admit that most people would rather be led than lead, the Net gives those who want to think for themselves an alternative to sifting through the media's predigested sludge.
Re:Does the Middle East get PBS?
on
Bert Is Evil
·
· Score: 1
In Arab countries, it's called "Open Sesame" Street.
This one is true. The author was interviewed on Charlie Rose a couple of nights ago. A very charming guy, full of smiles, but anxious about his homeland.
Your last paragraph rings particularly true. The Taliban's support base is a loose affiliation of former fighters who hopped on board when the Taliban won some victories in the civil war. The BBC is reporting mass defections in its ranks, of both fair weather friends and those disillusioned by their fundamentalist strictures.
Despite all the references to old-time militancy, pre-war Afghanis had a reputation for being very relaxed and easygoing, sort of the way Nepalis are regarded now. Kabul was said to be one of the high (pun intended) points of the old cross-Asia hippie trail. I've never been there, but I've met a number of Afghanis in Pakistan and China. Even when they spoke about the war, most had a disarming and gentle nature. Some were concerned that I was not a muslim, but saying I was from America always brought smiles, not froth. I wonder how many of the sudden authorities on THEM have met anyone from the area.
Many of the Afghanis I met were filled with optimistic plans about what they would do with their new country (this was just after the final Soviet pullout). I doubt the man I met scouring China for supplies for his new hotel had the Taliban in mind when he was fighting for his country. I doubt that anyone there planned on being held in thrall to a government which is in turn held in thrall to a band of militant foreigners who would bring another war down on them.
If the US government doesn't lose it's cool, the Afghani people could prove to be our biggest ally in all this.
Thank you for your kind words. I've been very gratified by the international response, beyond the expected lip service. Flowers placed by the embassies in Hungary, Russia, Norway, Germany -- probably others. President of Ireland, expressing sympathy for a country that is "very, very dear to us". John Major's words were more inspiring than those of our own president (scary, yes).
Back to Canada -- every country should be so blessed to have a neighbor like Canada. It isn't easy to maintain an independent identity and friendship and loyalty all together. I could go on. In this case: The US didn't want international planes to land for a reason -- fear that those planes were loaded with explosives and kamikaze pilots. Well, Canada stepped up and took that risk for us. Just because nothing exploded doesn't mean that anyone knew they wouldn't. Thank you.
Whatever the US has done for Canada over the years is amply repaid by the mere existence of such a friendly neighbor. Remeber that Canada declared war on Japan a day before the US after Pearl Harbor. So, as SCTV's Canadian Minute put it, "for a full 24 hours, Canada stood alone against the mighty Japanese Empire".:-)
Those games are truly eye-opening. I'm not a great chess player, but charging out with the king like that is messed up. No wonder Short thought it was a bad joke after the first few moves, assuming it was the same "opening".
That made me doubly sure it *wasn't* a computer. From what I know, computers use libraries for opening moves since the choices are too wide open to compute. But who knows? I like the mystery here, because all possibilities are cool:
It is Bobby Fischer
An amazing unknown has appeared out of nowhere and is demolishing grandmasters
There has been a major advancement in computerized strategic thinking
Ahhh, I'm glad you mention that. This link has a State of Virginia Supreme Court decision that addresses at least the speech part. Apparantly, it is held that the proscription is against the behavior of wearing the mask, not the speech or assembly done while wearing the mask. I guess the thinking is along the lines of: inciting a riot may require assembly, but free assembly does not depend on the right to start riots, so riot-starting can be legislated against.
I don't believe that the US Supreme Court has ruled on these laws, since so many of them remain. This is odd, since many seem to date from the Klan era of reconstruction to depression. The ACLU has a press release about a Federal lawsuit involving a Detroit anti-mask law. And you know they're just dying to get to the Supreme Court.
The sequel is called the "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act," and it requires PCs and consumer electronic devices to support "certified security technologies" to be approved by the Commerce Department
For a minute there, I thought that meant they'd be banning Windows 98!
Granted it's a little extreme, but I don't think it's against the law...
Unforntunately, it is.
IIRC, about 18 states have "anti-mask" laws, and many municipalities. These were largely designed to supress demonstrations by the KKK. While they seem to mostly target "associations" of mask-wearers rather than individuals, what constitutes an association? From a Frankfort, Kentucky law I found quoted:
No group of three of more persons shall, while wearing a hood, mask, or device whereby a substantial portion of the face is hidden or covered so as to conceal the identity of the wearer, enter, be, or appear in any public place within the city of Frankfort
Even if you did always travel alone, you may encounter other masked deviants and together be taken for an "association".
Don't worry, though. When you are stopped and interrogated due to mistaken identity, you can use technology yourself to ensure that your rights are respected. Or maybe not.
...is that the Muslim community in this country actively supported George W. Bush in the presidental campaign because they were scared of Gore's choice of Lieberman
Actually, that's not it. The Palestinians were very unhappy with Clinton's passive stance on the peace agreements, doing nothing as Israel repeatedly delayed implementation. Also, Bush camper Jim Baker is fairly popular with the Arabs. Apparantly, whatever deals were cut before the Gulf War were cut squarely, and he had quite a bit of public trust in Arab countries. His remark that "we don't need Jewish money to win this election" scored big, too. Even better, I think that remark came right on the heels of one of those "Greater Israel" outbursts (from Sharon?) that make muslims antsy. Anyway, many Arabs thought their side got a better hearing under Bush Sr. than Clinton, and hoped for more from Jr.
For crying out loud, glib sensationalism is the last thing slashdot needs more of...
Shame!
Would you be more upset if it was CNN.com that went down while the FBI conducted their search? What were they doing there? Oh, they didn't say. If the government is going to start messing with the flow of information in this country they'd better have a good reason -- and the public should be able to judge how good the reason is.
I'd rather live in world where terrorists hid behind freedom of the press than one where the police hid behind fear of terrorism.
Another question I'd like to add is "Choice of language?"
While I like oop myself, I'm the first to admit that there's very little hard data supporting its claims of greater productivity, maintainability and extensibility. This is mostly because
Development of large projects is usually closed, and metrics pertaining to it are as closed as the source.
It is too expensive to try to solve a large problem twice -- once in oo, once in procedural, so comparing can be difficult.
No one can decide on appropriate metrics
If someone could come up with some good choices for point three, KDE/Gnome could provide all kinds of interesting data for the first two. Of course, one data point doesn't prove anything and there are tons of other variables, but it would be a start.
Now if the projects would just divide themselves by editor, we could get three flamewars for the price of one.
Funny, I've never thought of Slashdot as "journalism". Who are the reporters? Where are the stories they write? Where is the pretense of objectivity?
Every ed will say straight out they have a pro-linux bias, there's no attempt to disguise it. The anti-MS atmosphere isn't "Slashdot's dirty secret" as mod-losers like to claim, it's just part of the deal. Slashdot is a conversation, not a newspaper. I don't see why people criticize it for not being something it has never pretended to be.
I agree completely that Of97 filters are crucial. For some MS reason, they also seem quite difficult. Even MS finds them difficult -- I worked at a place that spent literally millions converting its Of95 docs to 97 because the MS filters were totally bogus (Powerpoint in particular). And why would MS have a disincentive to upgrade?
I'd love to see old +Fravia come out of reversing retirement to spearhead an effort to completely crack the Of97 formats. He's perfect for several reasons:
31337 3k11z
Ability to manage large projects (look at HCU!)
He's an avowed MS-hater and would have a chance to strike a big blow
He has a long-professed desire to use cracking skills to increase functionality rather than just break protections
Draft +Fravia! Or if he won't, then Quine or Mammon or any of the other HCU elites. It's a perfect match.
But, society does change with time. This is just another transition that society needs to go through. Sci-fi writers (e.g. Spielberg/Kubrik in A.I.) try to make us believe that people are static---they don't change with technology. But, they do.
There's a really interesting Sci-Fi book dealing with just this idea -- The Light of Other Days by AC Clark & Stephen Baxter. The premise is someone developing a stable wormhole large enough to fit a tiny camera through. The camera can be pointed anywhere and is too small for the people on the other side to see. Once the wormcam becomes cheap enough for the public, deeply-held notions of privacy (and later, memory) begin to dissolve. Pretty good reading. Check it out.
How about if you lived in New York and had a telephone? Then anyone could find out where you lived.
I hope sensitivity to ever-decreasing privacy will cause people to recognize charging for an unlisted number as the blackmail that it is. Imagine if every entity that collected personal information about charged you to keep it secret.
Well, it's not out yet but here's the Crusoe-based notebook I've been waiting for. It isn't out yet, but it doesn't seem like vapor. They've been updating their site recently and that's always a good sign.
The best part is that you can pull the screen away from the keyboard and use it as a webpad. That plus a non-scalding transmeta chip makes it worth the wait, for me at least.
Slashdot Mirror
Since Pravda is hardly known for its history of unbiased coverage (I used to read it in the old Sov days -- ugh!) I was skeptical, but I read it anyway. It's excellent. The key paragraph:
Despite the talk of "Big Oil", "Big Tobacco", "Big Pharmaceuticals" and the centralized, corporate control of America's most powerful industries, there is little talk in the American mainstream of "Big Media", and the role a handful of individuals have played in centralizing the control of American "free press" into their handful of hands. It has become almost impossible in the United States to pick up a newspaper or a magazine, turn on a radio, or watch a television station without being bombarded by a deliberately crafted and censored propaganda message of a minority that, despite not being elected into power, play the defining role in shaping what politicians and the American public believe about each other, and thus, by extension, the policies that those politicians and the American public adopt.
Too true. Did Katz write that piece, too?
But the problem is deeper than them simply being factually wrong. I think people in the media often mistake their epistemic role for a metaphysical one. Since often they alone can tell us what happened, they immodestly extend their authority to how and why.
During the shelling of the Russian Parliament building years ago, a CNN reporter noted of the live coverage, "It's a little scary, beaming these images into people's homes without us being able to interpret it for them". Not as scary as that comment. This is going to be a period of tectonic shifts in world relations and perceptions. While I admit that most people would rather be led than lead, the Net gives those who want to think for themselves an alternative to sifting through the media's predigested sludge.
In Arab countries, it's called "Open Sesame" Street.
Mista Bert, he dead.
The horror. The horror...
I'm hoping bin Laden's next appearance on a children's show will be a short cameo on The Electric Chair Company.
When? Immediately, immediately, immediate-l-y!
Cut the crap and realize that this isn't vaporware anymore.
Not vaporware, plasmaware.
I guess we'd have to pay both arms and both legs for this....
Wait -- do you mean it will be really expensive, or is that just another exploding hydrogen joke?
This one is true. The author was interviewed on Charlie Rose a couple of nights ago. A very charming guy, full of smiles, but anxious about his homeland.
Your last paragraph rings particularly true. The Taliban's support base is a loose affiliation of former fighters who hopped on board when the Taliban won some victories in the civil war. The BBC is reporting mass defections in its ranks, of both fair weather friends and those disillusioned by their fundamentalist strictures.
Despite all the references to old-time militancy, pre-war Afghanis had a reputation for being very relaxed and easygoing, sort of the way Nepalis are regarded now. Kabul was said to be one of the high (pun intended) points of the old cross-Asia hippie trail. I've never been there, but I've met a number of Afghanis in Pakistan and China. Even when they spoke about the war, most had a disarming and gentle nature. Some were concerned that I was not a muslim, but saying I was from America always brought smiles, not froth. I wonder how many of the sudden authorities on THEM have met anyone from the area.
Many of the Afghanis I met were filled with optimistic plans about what they would do with their new country (this was just after the final Soviet pullout). I doubt the man I met scouring China for supplies for his new hotel had the Taliban in mind when he was fighting for his country. I doubt that anyone there planned on being held in thrall to a government which is in turn held in thrall to a band of militant foreigners who would bring another war down on them.
If the US government doesn't lose it's cool, the Afghani people could prove to be our biggest ally in all this.
Damn. Another false alarm.
I hate cell phones, BUT...
ABC news is reporting they just found 10 cops buried but still alive -- using cell phones.
They're digging them out now.
Thank you for your kind words. I've been very gratified by the international response, beyond the expected lip service. Flowers placed by the embassies in Hungary, Russia, Norway, Germany -- probably others. President of Ireland, expressing sympathy for a country that is "very, very dear to us". John Major's words were more inspiring than those of our own president (scary, yes).
Back to Canada -- every country should be so blessed to have a neighbor like Canada. It isn't easy to maintain an independent identity and friendship and loyalty all together. I could go on. In this case: The US didn't want international planes to land for a reason -- fear that those planes were loaded with explosives and kamikaze pilots. Well, Canada stepped up and took that risk for us. Just because nothing exploded doesn't mean that anyone knew they wouldn't. Thank you.
Whatever the US has done for Canada over the years is amply repaid by the mere existence of such a friendly neighbor. Remeber that Canada declared war on Japan a day before the US after Pearl Harbor. So, as SCTV's Canadian Minute put it, "for a full 24 hours, Canada stood alone against the mighty Japanese Empire". :-)
Thanks again for your support.
It's because you're using the old home page. The upgraded Slash 2.2 can be found at:
http://slashdot.org/index.asp
Those games are truly eye-opening. I'm not a great chess player, but charging out with the king like that is messed up. No wonder Short thought it was a bad joke after the first few moves, assuming it was the same "opening".
That made me doubly sure it *wasn't* a computer. From what I know, computers use libraries for opening moves since the choices are too wide open to compute. But who knows? I like the mystery here, because all possibilities are cool:
I'll be watching this story.
Ahhh, I'm glad you mention that. This link has a State of Virginia Supreme Court decision that addresses at least the speech part. Apparantly, it is held that the proscription is against the behavior of wearing the mask, not the speech or assembly done while wearing the mask. I guess the thinking is along the lines of: inciting a riot may require assembly, but free assembly does not depend on the right to start riots, so riot-starting can be legislated against.
I don't believe that the US Supreme Court has ruled on these laws, since so many of them remain. This is odd, since many seem to date from the Klan era of reconstruction to depression. The ACLU has a press release about a Federal lawsuit involving a Detroit anti-mask law. And you know they're just dying to get to the Supreme Court.
The sequel is called the "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act," and it requires PCs and consumer electronic devices to support "certified security technologies" to be approved by the Commerce Department
For a minute there, I thought that meant they'd be banning Windows 98!
Security technologies indeed.
Granted it's a little extreme, but I don't think it's against the law...
Unforntunately, it is.
IIRC, about 18 states have "anti-mask" laws, and many municipalities. These were largely designed to supress demonstrations by the KKK. While they seem to mostly target "associations" of mask-wearers rather than individuals, what constitutes an association? From a Frankfort, Kentucky law I found quoted:
No group of three of more persons shall, while wearing a hood, mask, or device whereby a substantial portion of the face is hidden or covered so as to conceal the identity of the wearer, enter, be, or appear in any public place within the city of Frankfort
Even if you did always travel alone, you may encounter other masked deviants and together be taken for an "association".
Don't worry, though. When you are stopped and interrogated due to mistaken identity, you can use technology yourself to ensure that your rights are respected. Or maybe not.
Actually, that's not it. The Palestinians were very unhappy with Clinton's passive stance on the peace agreements, doing nothing as Israel repeatedly delayed implementation. Also, Bush camper Jim Baker is fairly popular with the Arabs. Apparantly, whatever deals were cut before the Gulf War were cut squarely, and he had quite a bit of public trust in Arab countries. His remark that "we don't need Jewish money to win this election" scored big, too. Even better, I think that remark came right on the heels of one of those "Greater Israel" outbursts (from Sharon?) that make muslims antsy. Anyway, many Arabs thought their side got a better hearing under Bush Sr. than Clinton, and hoped for more from Jr.
That said, I don't disagree with Canada.
For crying out loud, glib sensationalism is the last thing slashdot needs more of ...
Shame!
Would you be more upset if it was CNN.com that went down while the FBI conducted their search? What were they doing there? Oh, they didn't say. If the government is going to start messing with the flow of information in this country they'd better have a good reason -- and the public should be able to judge how good the reason is.
I'd rather live in world where terrorists hid behind freedom of the press than one where the police hid behind fear of terrorism.
"Hewpaq Compardlett" from Drunk in Sydney?
Why not the Aussie-flavored "Pomhaq"? Too vicious?
Great point.
Another question I'd like to add is "Choice of language?"
While I like oop myself, I'm the first to admit that there's very little hard data supporting its claims of greater productivity, maintainability and extensibility. This is mostly because
If someone could come up with some good choices for point three, KDE/Gnome could provide all kinds of interesting data for the first two. Of course, one data point doesn't prove anything and there are tons of other variables, but it would be a start.
Now if the projects would just divide themselves by editor, we could get three flamewars for the price of one.
Funny, I've never thought of Slashdot as "journalism". Who are the reporters? Where are the stories they write? Where is the pretense of objectivity?
Every ed will say straight out they have a pro-linux bias, there's no attempt to disguise it. The anti-MS atmosphere isn't "Slashdot's dirty secret" as mod-losers like to claim, it's just part of the deal. Slashdot is a conversation, not a newspaper. I don't see why people criticize it for not being something it has never pretended to be.
I agree completely that Of97 filters are crucial. For some MS reason, they also seem quite difficult. Even MS finds them difficult -- I worked at a place that spent literally millions converting its Of95 docs to 97 because the MS filters were totally bogus (Powerpoint in particular). And why would MS have a disincentive to upgrade?
I'd love to see old +Fravia come out of reversing retirement to spearhead an effort to completely crack the Of97 formats. He's perfect for several reasons:
Draft +Fravia! Or if he won't, then Quine or Mammon or any of the other HCU elites. It's a perfect match.
But, society does change with time. This is just another transition that society needs to go through. Sci-fi writers (e.g. Spielberg/Kubrik in A.I.) try to make us believe that people are static---they don't change with technology. But, they do.
There's a really interesting Sci-Fi book dealing with just this idea -- The Light of Other Days by AC Clark & Stephen Baxter. The premise is someone developing a stable wormhole large enough to fit a tiny camera through. The camera can be pointed anywhere and is too small for the people on the other side to see. Once the wormcam becomes cheap enough for the public, deeply-held notions of privacy (and later, memory) begin to dissolve. Pretty good reading. Check it out.
How about if you lived in New York and had a telephone? Then anyone could find out where you lived.
I hope sensitivity to ever-decreasing privacy will cause people to recognize charging for an unlisted number as the blackmail that it is. Imagine if every entity that collected personal information about charged you to keep it secret.
Well, it's not out yet but here's the Crusoe-based notebook I've been waiting for. It isn't out yet, but it doesn't seem like vapor. They've been updating their site recently and that's always a good sign.
The best part is that you can pull the screen away from the keyboard and use it as a webpad. That plus a non-scalding transmeta chip makes it worth the wait, for me at least.