Moral media isn't dead. You just have to look harder for it.
Now that the Sept 11th jingoism has died down and it's starting to be a non-terminal offence to express discontent versus the powers that be, you're starting to see the creepings of independent thought show up even in CNN. Up here in Canada, CTV's been doing it for a while. But even then there's a huge under-reporting of stories that would knock the comfort zone of the average person.
The basic problem is this -- any media outlet is a slave to the mandate of its publisher. This isn't really new, it's as old as newspapers themselves (it used to be that if you wanted to be a politician it was a shrewd move to found your own newspaper). So, if you've got nothing but biased media out there, the only way to really inform yourself is to (a) check up on all the biases and try to develop your own conclusions from them, and (b) realize that there's no substitute for actually being at the scene of the event, or at the very least talking to someone who is.
People who critique the media as having a bias often make the mistake of trying to sound like it's forced upon them, when really, you can choose to go out and find different information from a different source. Some options include:
It also helps in times of conflict to go to the media outlets or websites of your political enemies to see what they're saying. It's amazing how they often take as gospel a premise that is completely different from your own. It's also amazing how often the exact same coercive techniques are used by both sides. Makes you wonder if there are average citizens over there are pissed off at their media as much as some of us are at ours.
By the way, I know I went off on a bit of a tangent, but if you click on any of the links above you'll see minimal coverage of the Elizabeth Smart case. There might be a story in there at some point to tell everyone how it all turns out, but nothing like the usual CNN sensationalism. The point is, if you don't like your media, don't go back to it -- go elsewhere. It's not like we have battered wife syndrome or something.
They probably won't need to. Somebody's going to have to speak up to claim it, and what do you want to bet Microsoft's lawyers will be there to make sure the winner has to spend that $200,000 on legal fees to fight off the DMCA?
Won't matter if it's international, neither. Didn't matter with Dmitri Skylarov, didn't matter with James Sabzali...
Go read some of Abrash's Black Book. The guy makes jokes out of assembly language. The only laughing I ever did was that nervous kind that you do while thinking, "Boy, am I out of my league..."
It requires a Windows install to use, but it definitely shows that they care about Linux users and are making progress towards the Linux client."
Not too sound too much like a naysayer, but...
1. How much progress can they be making if they can't distribute a proper Linux install? I know deployment is tricky, but come on, that really sounds like a hack job.
2. How do we know that the Linux server thing wasn't a plan all along? They might have just seen all the Linux servers for CounterStrike et al. and thought it was a smart idea. Linux is a great server OS, and while I do think it's also a legitimate gaming OS myself (no, seriously!), it's not exactly a trivial matter to port over a 3D game from Windows to a non-DirectX system, so all their talk might still be just talk...
Sorry, ever since the downfall of Loki I've taken an I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it attitude to companies professing intentions for Linux.
(That's probably only one step removed from trolling, heh.)
Perhaps, but one could speculate that this money would not go anywhere other than the shareholders' coffers...
There's an interesting article on zmag about how if the mainstream news talks about things being bad or good in the economy or whatnot, they're talking about it from the point of view of those at the top of corporations. This might be one of those cases.
Ha. I just came back here to eat crow. Between this and that article on MSNBC talking about crappy software (and MS's part in authoring it), I will have to mollify my position.
Very strange, though. Very very strange. Illogical.
I don't think Spielberg's the real expert here. AI was originally a project of Kubrick's, and Minority Report is based off PK Dick, both of whom were troubled about the future while Spielberg thought it would be a hoot doing movies about trucker road rage and aliens who can make bikes fly.
Although I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that he'd try to capitalize on current social context to pump up his own film... Ah, yes, "relevence"...
Add Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book. It's not really for true beginners and much of the techniques are probably out of date in today's SDK-driven development world, but it's a great book regardless, and has a lot of theory that's applicable in non-graphics areas (optimization, mostly).
I think the most troubling thing about Watergate is that since then the amount of credible investigative journalism has dwindled to the point of non-existence. What is news is now determined by the corporate or political interests -- guys like the head of Fox saying that reporting about civilian casualties in Afghanistan doesn't do anyone any good, or John Ashcroft saying that criticizing the Bush administration is on par with helping the terrorists directly.
It's not just an American phenomenon. Up here in Canada two editors have been fired in last couple of years for writing editorials criticizing the Liberal government, because the two editors were working for a newspaper chain owned by Izzy Asper, a buddy of the PM. And as CNN goes international, you see them representing the conservative American viewpoint abroad, to the point of feeding a smear campaign against leaders like Pres. Chavez in Venezuela in their home country.
It's gotten so bad that the only people who openly criticize the powers that be have been largely marginalized (and then dismissed) as radical leftists -- Chomsky, Fisk, Moore, etc. These are brilliant guys with important questions, but the moment you mention their names the ad hominems commence as the argument degenerates into how big of a kook they are.
I guess the big question I have is, if a scandal like Watergate were to hit the ground, in the bustling forest of today's largely goose-stepping society, would it make a sound? I'm worried it wouldn't.
The day before Microsoft was declared by a judge to be a monopoly, MSNBC ran a story that tried to prove that Microsoft was NOT a monopoly.
Take another look at any news page on MSNBC. How many times are you branded by Microsoft trademarks throughout? Another time, they ran an article about competing OSes, and Linux got mentioned three times by name, compared to the 70 times in the stories and surrounding advertisements that Microsoft got mentioned.
I will admit I'm surprised about this particular article, but it's not like they have an anti-MS agenda.
That's odd. I can't find any links to it on MSNBC.com. If they are there, they're not very prominently placed. I was able to locate it by search only, and while it was in the News section, it's no longer there now.
Perhaps it's no longer a timely item, except it's still one of CNN's top stories in the Tech section.
Coincidence that MSNBC has shuffled a story about a competing browser under the rug, while CNN is still pushing it?
This slashdot article isn't about how CNN is biased towards pro-AOL material.
Well, surely examining the publisher of an article for reasons of credibility is only fair? Last time I checked we were still a number of chromosomes away from being sheep.
Deal with it.
Consider it dealt with. The story is a non-event. CNN would be quick to latch onto any story that benefits the parent corporation, no matter what source it's from. The only reason anybody HERE knows about the article is because of CNN highlighting it.
Consider if MSNBC put up a story about how IE dominance is still strong, according to an AP article. Does the bias seem more apparent now? Does the lack of news-worthiness shine through a little more?
If the AP ran a story about how everybody in the world thought that Mozilla was crap, and Netscape was crap for basing itself off Mozilla, you could bet CNN would keep that little tidbit off their site.
You can show editorial bias in many ways, one of which is simply by skewing the presentation of the information -- pumping up stories that benefit the corporation to prominent status, and relegating others to out-of-the-way places (or even neglecting them altogether).
I'm not sure about that. Maybe the hard-core geeks would, but remember the original Matrix where the helicopter crashed into the building? That blew my mind, and I NEVER thought about the CG-based nature of it.
I think it's the people who use CG badly who end up giving a bad rap to the use of CG in general, and make us cringe at the thought of the gratuitous use of CG (like, say, to make creatures such as Jar-Jar). The people who use it well really have nothing to worry about.
There's some sort of statistic that there are less than a dozen writers in Canada who make their entire living off writing fiction. Arguably, the fact that our writers aren't cushy actually makes our literary scene better, because people who do it are more likely to be doing it out of love than out of love of money. Of course, this might also not be the case, but you need to examine the product to be sure, and this is the point. You make your judgements based on the end results, not on some half-wit pondering out loud from the peanut gallery.
Jesus Christ, laugh at the article and move on. I don't think that Linus is losing sleep just because of ZDNet's opinions. One of the beautiful things about open source is that it doesn't suffer from unsubstantiated FUD. The only bad press that matters is that which comes from the top of a meritocracy, not out of the mouths of corporate serfs.
1. First they ignore you. 2. Then they laugh at you. 3. Then they fight you. 4. Then you win.
We're at stage three, kids. Stage four is just around the corner...
There was an ancient Chinese king who was so feared and respected that once, when he was at war and cornered in a city with only a smattering army against a massive foe, he simply told his soldiers to leave him alone. He then left the city gates wide open, and sat in the town square in the lotus position, meditating. When the enemy advanced in on him and the general saw the king sitting there, seemingly completely unprotected, he realized that only a fool would leave himself so obviously at mortal risk, and since the king was no fool, that must have meant that he had a hidden motive so devastating that, conversely, only a fool would advance in on him. The general immediately left the city, and not too long after, signalled his surrender.
The moral of the story is that one should create a shell around him or her, so easy to crack that it dumfounds potential assailants, convincing them that there is a hidden defense waiting for them. The more harmless the outer appearance, the more sinister that hidden defense will seem in the imagination of the assailant, until they will capitulate and leave well enough alone. Therefore, it is important to choose a platform that on the surface appears to a hacker to be laughably weak, and the weaker the better.
In other words, any number of Microsoft products should do the trick just fine.
What if the universe were a giant burrito? How many people could it feed? Hopefully Taco Bell will fund my research, or at least offer me some coupons or something. On top of everything else, science should also be yummy.
This is my sarcastic way of saying I don't understand what the $%^@! this guy is trying to sell us by saying the universe is a computer.
An interesting subject, because yours seems to be the popular prevailing attitude amongst Americans.
By the way, your vision of the world comes to you through a largely right-wing dominated media. So you'll pardon me if I laugh off your opinions as those of a deluded slave.
As part of my career I am responsible for filtering valid email addresses from gigabytes of online data, and I can testify that this kind of data mining is arduous and thankless.
It's irrelevent what the audience wants in this case -- Lucas is going to do what Lucas is going to do. It IS the mark of a strong ego that he won't bend to his audience, but that is neither a good nor a bad thing.
What it does mean is, if you don't like what he's been doing, don't fork over the money to see it. Then you're not putting yourself at financial loss for an unfulfilling experience, and you're giving yourself nothing to complain about.
Slashdot Mirror
Moral media isn't dead. You just have to look harder for it.
Now that the Sept 11th jingoism has died down and it's starting to be a non-terminal offence to express discontent versus the powers that be, you're starting to see the creepings of independent thought show up even in CNN. Up here in Canada, CTV's been doing it for a while. But even then there's a huge under-reporting of stories that would knock the comfort zone of the average person.
The basic problem is this -- any media outlet is a slave to the mandate of its publisher. This isn't really new, it's as old as newspapers themselves (it used to be that if you wanted to be a politician it was a shrewd move to found your own newspaper). So, if you've got nothing but biased media out there, the only way to really inform yourself is to (a) check up on all the biases and try to develop your own conclusions from them, and (b) realize that there's no substitute for actually being at the scene of the event, or at the very least talking to someone who is.
People who critique the media as having a bias often make the mistake of trying to sound like it's forced upon them, when really, you can choose to go out and find different information from a different source. Some options include:
ZNet
The Guardian
The Independent
Le Monde Diplomatique (English version here)
Tom Tommorow
It also helps in times of conflict to go to the media outlets or websites of your political enemies to see what they're saying. It's amazing how they often take as gospel a premise that is completely different from your own. It's also amazing how often the exact same coercive techniques are used by both sides. Makes you wonder if there are average citizens over there are pissed off at their media as much as some of us are at ours.
By the way, I know I went off on a bit of a tangent, but if you click on any of the links above you'll see minimal coverage of the Elizabeth Smart case. There might be a story in there at some point to tell everyone how it all turns out, but nothing like the usual CNN sensationalism. The point is, if you don't like your media, don't go back to it -- go elsewhere. It's not like we have battered wife syndrome or something.
(or maybe we do???)
They probably won't need to. Somebody's going to have to speak up to claim it, and what do you want to bet Microsoft's lawyers will be there to make sure the winner has to spend that $200,000 on legal fees to fight off the DMCA?
Won't matter if it's international, neither. Didn't matter with Dmitri Skylarov, didn't matter with James Sabzali...
Not bad. But what if it's a boy?
;)
Go read some of Abrash's Black Book. The guy makes jokes out of assembly language. The only laughing I ever did was that nervous kind that you do while thinking, "Boy, am I out of my league..."
It requires a Windows install to use, but it definitely shows that they care about Linux users and are making progress towards the Linux client."
Not too sound too much like a naysayer, but...
1. How much progress can they be making if they can't distribute a proper Linux install? I know deployment is tricky, but come on, that really sounds like a hack job.
2. How do we know that the Linux server thing wasn't a plan all along? They might have just seen all the Linux servers for CounterStrike et al. and thought it was a smart idea. Linux is a great server OS, and while I do think it's also a legitimate gaming OS myself (no, seriously!), it's not exactly a trivial matter to port over a 3D game from Windows to a non-DirectX system, so all their talk might still be just talk...
Sorry, ever since the downfall of Loki I've taken an I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it attitude to companies professing intentions for Linux.
(That's probably only one step removed from trolling, heh.)
...water is still wet. Details at 11.
Funny enough, but the same article is on progress.org.
Perhaps, but one could speculate that this money would not go anywhere other than the shareholders' coffers...
There's an interesting article on zmag about how if the mainstream news talks about things being bad or good in the economy or whatnot, they're talking about it from the point of view of those at the top of corporations. This might be one of those cases.
Just speculatin' is all.
Ha. I just came back here to eat crow. Between this and that article on MSNBC talking about crappy software (and MS's part in authoring it), I will have to mollify my position.
Very strange, though. Very very strange. Illogical.
Thanks. Saw that one right after I hit submit. D'oh.
I don't think Spielberg's the real expert here. AI was originally a project of Kubrick's, and Minority Report is based off PK Dick, both of whom were troubled about the future while Spielberg thought it would be a hoot doing movies about trucker road rage and aliens who can make bikes fly.
Although I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that he'd try to capitalize on current social context to pump up his own film... Ah, yes, "relevence"...
Add Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book. It's not really for true beginners and much of the techniques are probably out of date in today's SDK-driven development world, but it's a great book regardless, and has a lot of theory that's applicable in non-graphics areas (optimization, mostly).
I think the most troubling thing about Watergate is that since then the amount of credible investigative journalism has dwindled to the point of non-existence. What is news is now determined by the corporate or political interests -- guys like the head of Fox saying that reporting about civilian casualties in Afghanistan doesn't do anyone any good, or John Ashcroft saying that criticizing the Bush administration is on par with helping the terrorists directly.
It's not just an American phenomenon. Up here in Canada two editors have been fired in last couple of years for writing editorials criticizing the Liberal government, because the two editors were working for a newspaper chain owned by Izzy Asper, a buddy of the PM. And as CNN goes international, you see them representing the conservative American viewpoint abroad, to the point of feeding a smear campaign against leaders like Pres. Chavez in Venezuela in their home country.
It's gotten so bad that the only people who openly criticize the powers that be have been largely marginalized (and then dismissed) as radical leftists -- Chomsky, Fisk, Moore, etc. These are brilliant guys with important questions, but the moment you mention their names the ad hominems commence as the argument degenerates into how big of a kook they are.
I guess the big question I have is, if a scandal like Watergate were to hit the ground, in the bustling forest of today's largely goose-stepping society, would it make a sound? I'm worried it wouldn't.
The day before Microsoft was declared by a judge to be a monopoly, MSNBC ran a story that tried to prove that Microsoft was NOT a monopoly.
Take another look at any news page on MSNBC. How many times are you branded by Microsoft trademarks throughout? Another time, they ran an article about competing OSes, and Linux got mentioned three times by name, compared to the 70 times in the stories and surrounding advertisements that Microsoft got mentioned.
I will admit I'm surprised about this particular article, but it's not like they have an anti-MS agenda.
Ha. Tell you what. I'll check back into this thread in three days and eat crow if CNN's dumped this story on the backburner.
I'd still be interested to see if the link got the same treatment on MSNBC's page as it does on CNN's...
That's odd. I can't find any links to it on MSNBC.com. If they are there, they're not very prominently placed. I was able to locate it by search only, and while it was in the News section, it's no longer there now.
Perhaps it's no longer a timely item, except it's still one of CNN's top stories in the Tech section.
Coincidence that MSNBC has shuffled a story about a competing browser under the rug, while CNN is still pushing it?
This slashdot article isn't about how CNN is biased towards pro-AOL material.
Well, surely examining the publisher of an article for reasons of credibility is only fair? Last time I checked we were still a number of chromosomes away from being sheep.
Deal with it.
Consider it dealt with. The story is a non-event. CNN would be quick to latch onto any story that benefits the parent corporation, no matter what source it's from. The only reason anybody HERE knows about the article is because of CNN highlighting it.
Consider if MSNBC put up a story about how IE dominance is still strong, according to an AP article. Does the bias seem more apparent now? Does the lack of news-worthiness shine through a little more?
If the AP ran a story about how everybody in the world thought that Mozilla was crap, and Netscape was crap for basing itself off Mozilla, you could bet CNN would keep that little tidbit off their site.
You can show editorial bias in many ways, one of which is simply by skewing the presentation of the information -- pumping up stories that benefit the corporation to prominent status, and relegating others to out-of-the-way places (or even neglecting them altogether).
I'm not sure about that. Maybe the hard-core geeks would, but remember the original Matrix where the helicopter crashed into the building? That blew my mind, and I NEVER thought about the CG-based nature of it.
I think it's the people who use CG badly who end up giving a bad rap to the use of CG in general, and make us cringe at the thought of the gratuitous use of CG (like, say, to make creatures such as Jar-Jar). The people who use it well really have nothing to worry about.
There's some sort of statistic that there are less than a dozen writers in Canada who make their entire living off writing fiction. Arguably, the fact that our writers aren't cushy actually makes our literary scene better, because people who do it are more likely to be doing it out of love than out of love of money. Of course, this might also not be the case, but you need to examine the product to be sure, and this is the point. You make your judgements based on the end results, not on some half-wit pondering out loud from the peanut gallery.
Jesus Christ, laugh at the article and move on. I don't think that Linus is losing sleep just because of ZDNet's opinions. One of the beautiful things about open source is that it doesn't suffer from unsubstantiated FUD. The only bad press that matters is that which comes from the top of a meritocracy, not out of the mouths of corporate serfs.
1. First they ignore you.
2. Then they laugh at you.
3. Then they fight you.
4. Then you win.
We're at stage three, kids. Stage four is just around the corner...
Loosely paraphrased from The 48 Laws of Power.
There was an ancient Chinese king who was so feared and respected that once, when he was at war and cornered in a city with only a smattering army against a massive foe, he simply told his soldiers to leave him alone. He then left the city gates wide open, and sat in the town square in the lotus position, meditating. When the enemy advanced in on him and the general saw the king sitting there, seemingly completely unprotected, he realized that only a fool would leave himself so obviously at mortal risk, and since the king was no fool, that must have meant that he had a hidden motive so devastating that, conversely, only a fool would advance in on him. The general immediately left the city, and not too long after, signalled his surrender.
The moral of the story is that one should create a shell around him or her, so easy to crack that it dumfounds potential assailants, convincing them that there is a hidden defense waiting for them. The more harmless the outer appearance, the more sinister that hidden defense will seem in the imagination of the assailant, until they will capitulate and leave well enough alone. Therefore, it is important to choose a platform that on the surface appears to a hacker to be laughably weak, and the weaker the better.
In other words, any number of Microsoft products should do the trick just fine.
What if the universe were a giant burrito? How many people could it feed? Hopefully Taco Bell will fund my research, or at least offer me some coupons or something. On top of everything else, science should also be yummy.
This is my sarcastic way of saying I don't understand what the $%^@! this guy is trying to sell us by saying the universe is a computer.
"Popular does not mean Right"
An interesting subject, because yours seems to be the popular prevailing attitude amongst Americans.
By the way, your vision of the world comes to you through a largely right-wing dominated media. So you'll pardon me if I laugh off your opinions as those of a deluded slave.
As part of my career I am responsible for filtering valid email addresses from gigabytes of online data, and I can testify that this kind of data mining is arduous and thankless.
Nice troll. Almost fooled me.
I think you missed my point.
It's irrelevent what the audience wants in this case -- Lucas is going to do what Lucas is going to do. It IS the mark of a strong ego that he won't bend to his audience, but that is neither a good nor a bad thing.
What it does mean is, if you don't like what he's been doing, don't fork over the money to see it. Then you're not putting yourself at financial loss for an unfulfilling experience, and you're giving yourself nothing to complain about.