Maybe if we had robots to raise the children hands off, so people started to say "I'm bored with that kid lets have another one" and were able to act on that impulse at nearly zero cost (like buying a new car) then we would see that happen.
"Another baby? Ok, we can hire a tenth nanny."
While anything mindless and repetetive CAN be done by a robot, anything that a robot can do, you can just hire someone to do for you. Sometimes cheaper.
Take this case for example, nobody stopped to consider that he might have setup a HTTP proxy, VPN tunnel, or some other routing service? Why? Because neither the defence nor prosecution understand what they're talking about.
There is not a single part of the internet that cannot be fairly simple translated into long established law. For example, to help establish your alibi defence of "I was at home", you would use all sorts of things that can help you clear that up. "I dialed a friend's house, and she didn't pick up" is the closest immediate parallel. The phone company can verify that the call was made, and while it doesn't prove that YOU did it, it does help make your case.
Could someone be faking it, technically? Yeah, probably. But it is reasonable to believe that they actually are? That's what juries are for.
It is kind of funny, the lawyers spend TONS of time worrying that the jury won't understand the law. But they never stop to consider that the lawyers won't understand the evidence.
Sheesh.
Juries don't decide one little bit of what the law is, and they don't need to understand it. All they do need to understand is what the JUDGE says -- the judge decides what the law does or does not say, and when she opens her mouth it's as good as written law for that case. Juries decide questions of fact -- like, "given the evidence presented, do we believe that $DEFENDANT was at home?"
But MS products are cancer for end users, who face interoperability issues when even thinking about leaving MS's operating system, web browser, office suite, or instant messenger. Not to mention forced upgrades.
A new member of my team and I were talking me awhile back. He's a mac-head, and not really a PC user. We were talking about general stuff, and he asked a question that I simply did not have an answer to.
"How can I get Mac OS 10.5 to install on a 10.6 macbook, so I can get my version of ProTools to run?"
The version number might be off, but it's a great illustration of the point. MS doesn't lock in anyone to anything, especially by the standards of THE ENTIRE REST OF THE INDUSTRY.
True but if a blogger can say "Eff you, my source is confidential." even if they made the whole thing up, how can anyone ever sue for libel and slander?
Sue the blogger.
Sheesh. Reporters don't have any greater freedom of the press than you or I. They just have, in some intra-state matters, an ability to not identify sources. You can still sue them for slander or libel, as they have the same duty to not-slander and not-libel as anyone else. (Which is why a smart reporter always asks for the other side -- so they can stand before a jury and say they asked for the other side,)
Why should only reporters be allowed to conceal their sources?
Why should society allow anyone legally protected anonymity if there is not someone else willing to stake their name and reputation on the anonymous source's alleged facts?
Why should only priests, lawyers, and doctors be able to keep client information secret?
1: Because to properly advise someone on morality, they need to be able to be able to tell you everything. 2: Because to properly advise someone on legality, they need to be able to be able to tell you everything. 3: Because to properly advise someone on medicine, they need to be able to be able to tell you everything.
The only reason priests don't have to go through the certification and study and governance that lawyers and doctors do is the separation of church and state. You did know that practice of law or practice of medicine without a license is a crime, right?
These assume that there is a special need for this kind of protection above and beyond what a normal citizen would need.
No. They assume that there is benefit to society to exempting these special cases from the general rule of discoverability.
Well fuck that. I'd like to think we're all equal in the eyes of the law, no matter what our profession is.
So you're saying that if *I* came into your house and slept with your wife while she was asleep, that shouldn't be rape, because you have implied consent?
No, of all our technology to produce power it still involves boiling water.
Except for internal combustion, photovoltaic solar, molten-sodium solar, hydroelectric, wind, or using an alternator instead of a break to provide resistance to excersie equipment.
Yeah, so, aside from all of those, everything uses boiling water.
What would really be nice is an HTML/XML-like language that has features for building real desktop-like GUI's 95% declaratively in a state-ful way instead of JavaScript IF's, loops, and pathy set/gets.
1: GTK javaascript. or JavaScript.net. language + framework = program. 2: MS has crap like that. And so does Firefox. You just don't pay attention to it. 3: statefulness in JavaScript is simple. Passing references vs. Passing Values.... is not.
I'd put on my headband, boots, camo pants, and grab whatever black market guns I could find (by then guns will be outlawed so we can become more in-line with the more "progressive" nations) and maybe grenade or two.
What crazy rock have you been living under that makes you think that the PROGRESSIVES will be the ones that turn the US into tyranny?
And that's ignoring one simple fact: if the right or the left decides to go ape-shit crazy in the US to the point where armed violence is the only sensible response... THEY WILL HAVE BIGGER GUNS THAN YOU. And tanks. And body armor. And more numbers.
Sheesh.
On a different note: if you want to preserve gun rights, stop listening to the crap shoveled by the NRA and talk radio, and put your efforts towards a far more effective goal: re-normalizing guns. Folk who have never handled a gun see the weapon as "strange" and "dangerous" and "foreign", and it is those three things that can be sensibly outlawed. Those that handle firearms and appreicate them see guns as neither strange nor foreign, and no more dangerous than an automobile.
So, the question is: has the underlying fabric of mainstream society changed since pre-internet days, to such a great extent that society would fall apart without the internet? I'd say no way.
Open up your wallet.
EVERYTHING but the cash is linked to the internet in some way or another for its vital function.
Driver's License? The police officer checks it over the internet against records that essentially only exist digitally on the internet.
Checkbook? When you write a check, the payee deposits it in his bank, who gives her funds drawn from the federal reserve over the internet, then sends an image of the check to your central bank over the internet, which then contacts your branch and updates your balance over the internet.
Credit Card? Just as bad as checks, except that you can't give someone a signed document with it if they don't have the internet to call up and enter it into.
Insurance card? Just as bad as credit cards, but without that government middleman. And a company with a fiduciary duty to not pay for your healthcare if it can at all avoid it.
And that's just in a typical wallet. We're not even talking about air traffic control, gasoline distribution, package shipping, or international communications. (Which reminds me: if the internet goes down, so does every regional or long-distance telephone system. And cell phones. And VoIP.)
The public needs to be shown that the word "nuclear" is not cause for panic.
Two nuclear weapons ended the biggest war of human history. Two. And then the threat of even one more being used kept two alliances with far starker differences than that war's adversaries from ever entering into direct conflict -- because they were afraid of nuclear weapons.
Find a new word if you want -- "fission" and "fusion" are perfectly serviceable -- but the public's fear of the word "nuclear" is warranted by history, and will not go away anytime soon.
Best of luck to this project in prying that material out of their hands, and in surviving the massive lobbying and astroturfing that will ensue before the project achieves that goal.
Wikipedia is a relatively harmless site that requires pointing elsewhere for information, and like any good encyclopedia disclaims any status as a source of authority. And they are plagued by trolls, malicious edits, and so forth.
Open sourcing "law" is something of even greater complexity, where EVERY SINGLE PAGE is going to have someone determined to change what the law says.
Should the government-ran web pages for law be standardized? Hell yes. Is a classic "Open Source' model appropriate for the generation of content? Hell no.
Yep, ST definitely missed some things they could have explored. They have great medical technology, but people still die at the same age? It seems like they would have figured out how to extend our lifespan by then.
Actually, people do live longer. A hell of a lot longer. Doc McCoy, who was far from young in TOS, saw the launch of the Enterprise -D. And the 'Trek continuity DID figure out how to greatly extend the human lifespan beyond even that -- with eugenics, which caused supervillians like Khan.
Time travel can make a very good movie when it's the central plot device of the movie (like in 12 Monkeys), but for a weekly TV show I think they should stay away from it.
1: 12 monkeys sucked.
2: Go see Dr. Who. It posits as sticky timeline, and the recent reboot had some interesting consequences.
As Scott Adams says; "The Holodeck will be mankind's last great invention". I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out why we'd never ever want to leave.
Rebuttal 1: Go see "Surrogates." It's essentially got the answer right there.
Rebuttal 2: You'd leave for the same reason God created us. Beause, eventually, a sentient mind craves something that it itself did not create.
Isn't that just FANTASY rather than science-based fiction?
Nope. Like it or not, psychology and anthropology are sciences. As are political science and economics.
really, though, science fiction is not now and has never been "science-based fiction". It's what Asimov and his ilk called it: "speculative fiction." The author starts with "imagine a world where..." and then comes up with a story worth telling in that world.
Fantasy is a sub-set of science fiction, in which the "imagine a world where..." is usually "the supernatural is real"
Once Nevada found out about this they claim I own and operate a company, and are SUING me for 1 year's back unemployment. Uh, I don't have $12,000 sitting around guys. That's because I'm UNEMPLOYED.
So you're in the right. What's the problem, again?
Oh, yeah. Going into a courtroom means you've automatically lost something. I get it. You're going to not get all that income from not sitting around collecting unemployment.
They decided, for her, that the money she was collecting was sufficient to live on...
No, they didn't. Unemployment insurance is NOT welfare. The labor dept in this case did exactly what they were supposed to -- enforce the law as written.
The law is crazy and dumb, but that's not the Labor Dept's fault. It's the legislature's.
It will be worse when the government passes universal healthcare coverage. Under the current proposals, they will tell you whether you're insurance is sufficient, and if not, will fine you for not having the proper coverage. Eventually, as government continues it's reckless spending, more and more people will be told their coverage is insufficient as they try to cover the increasing debt. Then, you will decide to get the best coverage available so you won't be fined, and that will result in being taxed for having a "luxury" plan.
This would be BETTER and LESS WASTEFUL if we actually had a real welfare state -- the gov't guarantees a rock-bottom standard of living for everyone (food + shelter + healthcare), and every dollar you make beyond that is progressively taxed until you're supporting yourself. (progressive: very little % tax on the 1st dollar, slightly increasing % tax on the last dollar. You know, like how the system works now until about 250,000.) Why are we wasting our nation's wealth in shifting this woman from "unemployment" to "welfare", anyway? Send her a check, tell her to go volunteer if we need to, and ever, ever, EVER take a dollar away from her for a dollar she earns.
If you want to go full bore SMART, we could even abolish the minimum wage and require complete portability of employer-provided healthcare benefits, to untether the market from our social engineering The republicans SHOULD be making these last two proposals -- but since they're focused on scare tacticsk they aren't.
H&R Block are "Tax preparers", not accountants. If you worked in more than two states over five years, for all that is holy GET A REAL ACCOUNTANT!
Professionals *DO* understand tax liabilities. That's why they deserve the $. H&R Block aren't professionals, and you get better guidance with a software box than the minimum-wage seasonal worker who prepares your return at H&R block.
Oh, and check your agreement with H&R block, too. Depending on state, you mgiht be able to bill them for that $600. (If it was an accountant in NY, you definitely could.)
Just apply the existing rules. No story here, except that it looks like the existing rules were misapplied.
Noo. The IRS change the "longstanding precedent" not too long ago, and now it's based purely on profit history. If it goes 3 years without a net profit, it's a "passive activity" and not a business.
This lawyer either REALLY messed up her taxes, or her net profit was some $200. Which isn't all THAT hard, when I'd be hard pressed to find a year of web hosting costing more than $100 for one blog.
So if only 1.5% of developers are women... but fewer than 0.1% of comments on development mailing lists are sexist... what is the real "problem" that exists?
how many comments are there per year per developer? 100? 1000?
1 "sexist comment" per 15 women isn't bad. 100 per 15 women -- 6.6 per woman per year -- is pretty firmly in the ballpark of "sexist problem." Especially if we assume that the "sexist comments" are made about said female developers.
You'd think a geek would understand scale, precision, and ratios.
He doesn't want Google or anyone else to stop linking or he would have already stopped them by technical means, what he wants is a slice of Google pie, the bigger the slice the better.
Google is fairly high on contention for "most profitable site on the 'web." A big reason for why they are so profitable is that they have a trusted search engine & an only sliightly-less-trusted news aggrigator. Both of these two exist by pointing to work someone ELSE is doing.
Now, Google's all fine and dandy with not getting any direct revenue from these things -- they get trust, and knowledge, which let them sell the ads that bring in all that revenue.
Murdoch's News Corp, otoh, is on all fronts doing what everyone else in the "actually do research and write something" industry is doing -- losing money. News Corp can insulate themselves fairly well, by just funneling money from profitable venutres that don't produce a lot of original material (Fox News TV) to those that produce the material (Wall Street Journal). But, while this works for Murdoch, it doesn't really work for anyone else.
And it should, because we are FAR better served as a country by having professional journalists and bloggers, than by having bloggers alone.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe if we had robots to raise the children hands off, so people started to say "I'm bored with that kid lets have another one" and were able to act on that impulse at nearly zero cost (like buying a new car) then we would see that happen.
"Another baby? Ok, we can hire a tenth nanny."
While anything mindless and repetetive CAN be done by a robot, anything that a robot can do, you can just hire someone to do for you. Sometimes cheaper.
Just because someone knows how to use a typewriter doesn't mean they can write a book just as well as an English major.
An english degree helps you write in the same way that a history degree helps you change the world.
Unless, of course, you meant edit, or perhaps write a book review.
The NIF is the ISS of the physics world.
A great work that will die early because of the biterness of scientists who don't get to play with it?
If the prosecution didn't trust these people, said people could have set the status for the suspect.
If the prosecution trusted those people, they wouldn't have brought the case to a trial.
It's the JURY that has to decide if they trust those people, moron.
Take this case for example, nobody stopped to consider that he might have setup a HTTP proxy, VPN tunnel, or some other routing service? Why? Because neither the defence nor prosecution understand what they're talking about.
There is not a single part of the internet that cannot be fairly simple translated into long established law. For example, to help establish your alibi defence of "I was at home", you would use all sorts of things that can help you clear that up. "I dialed a friend's house, and she didn't pick up" is the closest immediate parallel. The phone company can verify that the call was made, and while it doesn't prove that YOU did it, it does help make your case.
Could someone be faking it, technically? Yeah, probably. But it is reasonable to believe that they actually are? That's what juries are for.
It is kind of funny, the lawyers spend TONS of time worrying that the jury won't understand the law. But they never stop to consider that the lawyers won't understand the evidence.
Sheesh.
Juries don't decide one little bit of what the law is, and they don't need to understand it. All they do need to understand is what the JUDGE says -- the judge decides what the law does or does not say, and when she opens her mouth it's as good as written law for that case. Juries decide questions of fact -- like, "given the evidence presented, do we believe that $DEFENDANT was at home?"
any crime that can assumed to be premeditated would not be excused by such an alibi.
Truth is boolean, evidence is Bayesian.
But MS products are cancer for end users, who face interoperability issues when even thinking about leaving MS's operating system, web browser, office suite, or instant messenger. Not to mention forced upgrades.
A new member of my team and I were talking me awhile back. He's a mac-head, and not really a PC user. We were talking about general stuff, and he asked a question that I simply did not have an answer to.
"How can I get Mac OS 10.5 to install on a 10.6 macbook, so I can get my version of ProTools to run?"
The version number might be off, but it's a great illustration of the point. MS doesn't lock in anyone to anything, especially by the standards of THE ENTIRE REST OF THE INDUSTRY.
True but if a blogger can say "Eff you, my source is confidential." even if they made the whole thing up, how can anyone ever sue for libel and slander?
Sue the blogger.
Sheesh. Reporters don't have any greater freedom of the press than you or I. They just have, in some intra-state matters, an ability to not identify sources. You can still sue them for slander or libel, as they have the same duty to not-slander and not-libel as anyone else. (Which is why a smart reporter always asks for the other side -- so they can stand before a jury and say they asked for the other side,)
Why should only reporters be allowed to conceal their sources?
Why should society allow anyone legally protected anonymity if there is not someone else willing to stake their name and reputation on the anonymous source's alleged facts?
Why should only priests, lawyers, and doctors be able to keep client information secret?
1: Because to properly advise someone on morality, they need to be able to be able to tell you everything.
2: Because to properly advise someone on legality, they need to be able to be able to tell you everything.
3: Because to properly advise someone on medicine, they need to be able to be able to tell you everything.
The only reason priests don't have to go through the certification and study and governance that lawyers and doctors do is the separation of church and state. You did know that practice of law or practice of medicine without a license is a crime, right?
These assume that there is a special need for this kind of protection above and beyond what a normal citizen would need.
No. They assume that there is benefit to society to exempting these special cases from the general rule of discoverability.
Well fuck that. I'd like to think we're all equal in the eyes of the law, no matter what our profession is.
So you're saying that if *I* came into your house and slept with your wife while she was asleep, that shouldn't be rape, because you have implied consent?
No, of all our technology to produce power it still involves boiling water.
Except for internal combustion, photovoltaic solar, molten-sodium solar, hydroelectric, wind, or using an alternator instead of a break to provide resistance to excersie equipment.
Yeah, so, aside from all of those, everything uses boiling water.
What would really be nice is an HTML/XML-like language that has features for building real desktop-like GUI's 95% declaratively in a state-ful way instead of JavaScript IF's, loops, and pathy set/gets.
1: GTK javaascript. or JavaScript .net. language + framework = program.
2: MS has crap like that. And so does Firefox. You just don't pay attention to it.
3: statefulness in JavaScript is simple. Passing references vs. Passing Values.... is not.
I'd put on my headband, boots, camo pants, and grab whatever black market guns I could find (by then guns will be outlawed so we can become more in-line with the more "progressive" nations) and maybe grenade or two.
What crazy rock have you been living under that makes you think that the PROGRESSIVES will be the ones that turn the US into tyranny?
And that's ignoring one simple fact: if the right or the left decides to go ape-shit crazy in the US to the point where armed violence is the only sensible response... THEY WILL HAVE BIGGER GUNS THAN YOU. And tanks. And body armor. And more numbers.
Sheesh.
On a different note: if you want to preserve gun rights, stop listening to the crap shoveled by the NRA and talk radio, and put your efforts towards a far more effective goal: re-normalizing guns. Folk who have never handled a gun see the weapon as "strange" and "dangerous" and "foreign", and it is those three things that can be sensibly outlawed. Those that handle firearms and appreicate them see guns as neither strange nor foreign, and no more dangerous than an automobile.
So, the question is: has the underlying fabric of mainstream society changed since pre-internet days, to such a great extent that society would fall apart without the internet? I'd say no way.
Open up your wallet.
EVERYTHING but the cash is linked to the internet in some way or another for its vital function.
Driver's License? The police officer checks it over the internet against records that essentially only exist digitally on the internet.
Checkbook? When you write a check, the payee deposits it in his bank, who gives her funds drawn from the federal reserve over the internet, then sends an image of the check to your central bank over the internet, which then contacts your branch and updates your balance over the internet.
Credit Card? Just as bad as checks, except that you can't give someone a signed document with it if they don't have the internet to call up and enter it into.
Insurance card? Just as bad as credit cards, but without that government middleman. And a company with a fiduciary duty to not pay for your healthcare if it can at all avoid it.
And that's just in a typical wallet. We're not even talking about air traffic control, gasoline distribution, package shipping, or international communications. (Which reminds me: if the internet goes down, so does every regional or long-distance telephone system. And cell phones. And VoIP.)
The public needs to be shown that the word "nuclear" is not cause for panic.
Two nuclear weapons ended the biggest war of human history. Two. And then the threat of even one more being used kept two alliances with far starker differences than that war's adversaries from ever entering into direct conflict -- because they were afraid of nuclear weapons.
Find a new word if you want -- "fission" and "fusion" are perfectly serviceable -- but the public's fear of the word "nuclear" is warranted by history, and will not go away anytime soon.
Best of luck to this project in prying that material out of their hands, and in surviving the massive lobbying and astroturfing that will ensue before the project achieves that goal.
Wikipedia is a relatively harmless site that requires pointing elsewhere for information, and like any good encyclopedia disclaims any status as a source of authority. And they are plagued by trolls, malicious edits, and so forth.
Open sourcing "law" is something of even greater complexity, where EVERY SINGLE PAGE is going to have someone determined to change what the law says.
Should the government-ran web pages for law be standardized? Hell yes. Is a classic "Open Source' model appropriate for the generation of content? Hell no.
Yep, ST definitely missed some things they could have explored. They have great medical technology, but people still die at the same age? It seems like they would have figured out how to extend our lifespan by then.
Actually, people do live longer. A hell of a lot longer. Doc McCoy, who was far from young in TOS, saw the launch of the Enterprise -D. And the 'Trek continuity DID figure out how to greatly extend the human lifespan beyond even that -- with eugenics, which caused supervillians like Khan.
Time travel can make a very good movie when it's the central plot device of the movie (like in 12 Monkeys), but for a weekly TV show I think they should stay away from it.
1: 12 monkeys sucked.
2: Go see Dr. Who. It posits as sticky timeline, and the recent reboot had some interesting consequences.
As Scott Adams says; "The Holodeck will be mankind's last great invention". I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out why we'd never ever want to leave.
Rebuttal 1: Go see "Surrogates." It's essentially got the answer right there.
Rebuttal 2: You'd leave for the same reason God created us. Beause, eventually, a sentient mind craves something that it itself did not create.
Isn't that just FANTASY rather than science-based fiction?
Nope. Like it or not, psychology and anthropology are sciences. As are political science and economics.
really, though, science fiction is not now and has never been "science-based fiction". It's what Asimov and his ilk called it: "speculative fiction." The author starts with "imagine a world where..." and then comes up with a story worth telling in that world.
Fantasy is a sub-set of science fiction, in which the "imagine a world where..." is usually "the supernatural is real"
Once Nevada found out about this they claim I own and operate a company, and are SUING me for 1 year's back unemployment. Uh, I don't have $12,000 sitting around guys. That's because I'm UNEMPLOYED.
So you're in the right. What's the problem, again?
Oh, yeah. Going into a courtroom means you've automatically lost something. I get it. You're going to not get all that income from not sitting around collecting unemployment.
They decided, for her, that the money she was collecting was sufficient to live on...
No, they didn't. Unemployment insurance is NOT welfare. The labor dept in this case did exactly what they were supposed to -- enforce the law as written.
The law is crazy and dumb, but that's not the Labor Dept's fault. It's the legislature's.
It will be worse when the government passes universal healthcare coverage. Under the current proposals, they will tell you whether you're insurance is sufficient, and if not, will fine you for not having the proper coverage. Eventually, as government continues it's reckless spending, more and more people will be told their coverage is insufficient as they try to cover the increasing debt. Then, you will decide to get the best coverage available so you won't be fined, and that will result in being taxed for having a "luxury" plan.
This would be BETTER and LESS WASTEFUL if we actually had a real welfare state -- the gov't guarantees a rock-bottom standard of living for everyone (food + shelter + healthcare), and every dollar you make beyond that is progressively taxed until you're supporting yourself. (progressive: very little % tax on the 1st dollar, slightly increasing % tax on the last dollar. You know, like how the system works now until about 250,000.) Why are we wasting our nation's wealth in shifting this woman from "unemployment" to "welfare", anyway? Send her a check, tell her to go volunteer if we need to, and ever, ever, EVER take a dollar away from her for a dollar she earns.
If you want to go full bore SMART, we could even abolish the minimum wage and require complete portability of employer-provided healthcare benefits, to untether the market from our social engineering The republicans SHOULD be making these last two proposals -- but since they're focused on scare tacticsk they aren't.
Can't wait until they run Healthcare can you?
The story is not about a poorly RUN system. It's about a poorly DESIGNED system. Whole different ball of wax.
... professionals. Last year H&R Block ...
H&R Block are "Tax preparers", not accountants. If you worked in more than two states over five years, for all that is holy GET A REAL ACCOUNTANT!
Professionals *DO* understand tax liabilities. That's why they deserve the $. H&R Block aren't professionals, and you get better guidance with a software box than the minimum-wage seasonal worker who prepares your return at H&R block.
Oh, and check your agreement with H&R block, too. Depending on state, you mgiht be able to bill them for that $600. (If it was an accountant in NY, you definitely could.)
Just apply the existing rules. No story here, except that it looks like the existing rules were misapplied.
Noo. The IRS change the "longstanding precedent" not too long ago, and now it's based purely on profit history. If it goes 3 years without a net profit, it's a "passive activity" and not a business.
This lawyer either REALLY messed up her taxes, or her net profit was some $200. Which isn't all THAT hard, when I'd be hard pressed to find a year of web hosting costing more than $100 for one blog.
So if only 1.5% of developers are women ... but fewer than 0.1% of comments on development mailing lists are sexist ... what is the real "problem" that exists?
how many comments are there per year per developer? 100? 1000?
1 "sexist comment" per 15 women isn't bad. 100 per 15 women -- 6.6 per woman per year -- is pretty firmly in the ballpark of "sexist problem." Especially if we assume that the "sexist comments" are made about said female developers.
You'd think a geek would understand scale, precision, and ratios.
He doesn't want Google or anyone else to stop linking or he would have already stopped them by technical means, what he wants is a slice of Google pie, the bigger the slice the better.
Google is fairly high on contention for "most profitable site on the 'web." A big reason for why they are so profitable is that they have a trusted search engine & an only sliightly-less-trusted news aggrigator. Both of these two exist by pointing to work someone ELSE is doing.
Now, Google's all fine and dandy with not getting any direct revenue from these things -- they get trust, and knowledge, which let them sell the ads that bring in all that revenue.
Murdoch's News Corp, otoh, is on all fronts doing what everyone else in the "actually do research and write something" industry is doing -- losing money. News Corp can insulate themselves fairly well, by just funneling money from profitable venutres that don't produce a lot of original material (Fox News TV) to those that produce the material (Wall Street Journal). But, while this works for Murdoch, it doesn't really work for anyone else.
And it should, because we are FAR better served as a country by having professional journalists and bloggers, than by having bloggers alone.