I know that most of the/. posters are going to bitch and moan about how horrible this is, since Bush is such a Nazi and we're building the American police state, but......could someone please give me three examples where your civil liberties were actually violated or you were prevented from performing some legitimate task* by the Patriot Act? Prevented from borrowing a library book because John Ashcroft was reading your library patron log? Anything?
Note for example that there is no inherent RIGHT to board an airplane without ID. As a private business whose major concern is safety, they instead have the RIGHT to refuse service to anyone.
* by legitimate, I mean something pursuant to your daily life. Not simply being a dick to protest how 'inherently unjust' the Patriot Act is.
Slashdot should have a new mod value: +1 'Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
Obviously some kind of limit would need to be in place to keep people from hopscotching all over
Not sure why it's obvious. Disney's Toontown does it this way, and as long as you can maintain a friend list and guildie list that is ABOVE the server level (aha, I have 3 friends on bloodscalp and 15 on eldre-thalas tonight), what's the problem?
Since the worlds are all identical (ie the Alliance/Horde ownership of Tarren mill doesn't change), what would be the problem. I know I would ALWAYS try to choose the least busy server with reasonable pingtimes that I could.
Interesting point. I don't think you're insanely leftist, at least by that post. But the OP's attitude actually might be illustrative of why the current public political divide SEEMS so huge, when in fact it's not.
See, it's not that I care that anyone knows my opinion, but the wearing of one's opinion on ones' sleeve is an invitation to friction. It is - it's waving a big red flag about my beliefs, and challenging anyone who thinks I'm wrong to confront me on it. IMO a society can't work like that on a constant basis.
We ALL have differing ideas about things. We express our opinions about our beliefs about how government should run by our casting votes for candidates that we feel (at least somewhat) mirror our views. But we can't all have everything the way we want.
Worth repeating: we can't all have everything the way we want.
So 'society' as a concept is a bunch of people COMPROMISING on their wants to come to a collective existence that's pretty good for all. Part of that collective existence is "not waving my beliefs in others' faces, PARTICULARLY if they are contentious".
I know that probably sounds very tepid and milquetoastish, but the comfort and happiness of the people around me in my life IS important to me (to some degree, anyway), EVEN IF WE DISAGREE ON IMPORTANT ISSUES.
I see our current polity as being all about "me" for everyone: "my wants", "my needs", "my beliefs". Frankly, I see it more from Liberals than I do from Conservatives (ok folks, we can take the Kerry, Gore, and Wellstone stickers off the cars now), although I see it more and more from the part of the Republican party I don't particularly like, the 'demonstrative conservatives' - ick to all of you, on both sides.
Part of society is about getting along with others. I see far more effort being spent on people's own gratification, and very little effort or thought going into consideration of the people around oneself.
As a life philosophy, I like this statement (and see how MUCH of it (boldface) is devoted to OTHERS): "The TRUE GENTLEMAN is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe." - John Walter Wayland
Be proud of what you believe in. Work to make your ideas happen, and don't shrink from defending them. But think about how your actions impact others, and simply try to be nice.
OK, great you now have seats that mitigate impact and motors that aren't really attached to the hull... a couple of questions:
1) I've never been in combat, but I'd expect that damage enough to cause power failure is rather common. With everything else, it's 'repair the damage and start her up again'. With motors mounted on 'maglev' shocks, what happens if you don't have the supplemental power to start with?
2) IMO one of the most impressive things about the modern military is their sensor suites at all levels from the massive carrier group to the individual soldier? How will these be affected by maglev systems in everything? How about Joe Soldier's mark 1 compass?
3) the flip side of #3, I'd expect that you're just giving enemy targeting systems one more 'thing' to aim at; in fact I find it hard to believe that these relatively high-power systems wouldn't make 'stealthing' the using vehicle nearly impossible?
If someone releases what you feel is 'edited' content, there is one surefire way to fight it: release everything.
So if the EU feels that Microsoft is being disingenuous (which it probably is) then they can simply release all the paperwork and let people make up their own minds.
I'm sorry, but while this is amusing in a 'speculative-fiction' sense, futurists (and particularly near-futurists) have an abysmal track record on predicting the actual outcomes or impacts of devices, technologies, or concepts. Science Fiction authors actually probably have a better track record than the professional futurists....
Underwater Cities? Living in Space Stations or on the Moon? Dinner pills? Impending total exhaustion of X (where X = any natural resource)? Mass Starvation across the globe? Cryongenic technology? 300-year lifespan?
All I can say to this book is: "Where the is my flying car? This is the future, and I was told I was going to get a goddamn flying car, and I want to know where the hell it is!"
(and for the inescapable/. pedants, I *know* there *exists* a flying car, but it's not an UBIQUITOUS flying car ala the Jetsons, so shut up.)
From TFA: "Groth took the case on a pro-bono basis, but Murray asked for an accounting of Groth's fees in her ruling. Groth said Tuesday it's likely he could bill several thousand dollars for the case."
He apparently didn't ask for it, so it sounds like it's a little bit of a punitive slap at the city for wasting everyone's time.
BINGO. At the end of the day, capitalism means a win for the consumer. For every giant manufacturer that buys a chunk of the DoJ or lobbyists to pass ridiculous legislation, there is simply more incentive for the black market to address the demands (legal or illegal) of customers.
As one stout-hearted princess almost put it, "the more you tighten your grip, the more DVD viewers will slip through your fingers".
Well, I know you're trying to tell us the sky is falling, but IMO After Mr. Aid and other historians complained, the archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees government classification, began an audit of the reclassification program, said J. William Leonard, director of the office.
Mr. Leonard said he ordered the audit after reviewing 16 withdrawn documents and concluding that none should be secret.
"If those sample records were removed because somebody thought they were classified, I'm shocked and disappointed," Mr. Leonard said in an interview. "It just boggles the mind."...suggests that the system works as intended. Some dumbass deskjockey got a little overzealous with his 'classified' stamper, and it's being reviewed. It looks like even the reviewer is shocked that such banal items were classified, so I'm guessing it will be quickly reversed.
Every system has to have error-checking components, to trap errors and to either flag them or correct them. The fact that errors happen isn't proof of a failed system (as much as critics would like to make it so), the fact that errors are identified and flagged PROVES it's working.
As an aside, I'm sorry but your basic premise is stupid. "For as long as Governments are given cart-blanche(sic) to declare their own secrets, they will forever be out of control." Who else is going to declare their secrets? If you submit them to some sort of public process, they're not really secrets then, are they? Or are you one of the pollyannas who believe that 'governments should have no secrets from their people' in which case there is no point even trying to have a reasonable debate.
Anyone know WHY this was censored? That's just silly. It smacks more of stupidity than censorship (or a culture where "all that's not expressly allowed" is forbidden, which is antithetical to the whole CONCEPT of the US and the Constitution).
From TFA Violations of the privacy of sources, persistent problems in granting press visas and the arrest of several journalists during anti-Bush demonstrations kept the United States (22nd) away from the top of the list.
So your point (and RSF, cleverly trading on the credibility of the MSF organization) is to say that the US isn't as "free" a press system because the press has in many ways arrayed itself directly AGAINST not "the government", but "the part of the government that we don't like politically"?
I don't find these measurements persuasive, unless they are ALSO accompanied by some sort of measurement of the objectivity of the same press. - privacy of sources? Would this be the sources that fed CBS news the blatantly false documents about Bush's NG service? Or would this be the source that 'revealed' the the administration was trying to destroy Joe Wilson (disregarding that his wife pulled strings to get his assignment, his testimony to the BIpartisan investigative committee was found to be self-contradictory, and the conclusions in his 'report' (used to pimp his book and to get him a job in the Kerry campaign) implausable and unsupportable? - press visas, I don't know anything about this issue. - the arrest of journalists during anti-Bush demonstrations? Perhaps you'd like to check out http://www.zombietime.com/sf_rally_september_24_20 05/anatomy_of_a_photograph/ to see how "neutral" the press coverage in the US is.
Please. The press cannot claim their 'inalienable rights' as journalists if they simultaneously act as advocates for a political viewpoint....that's not journalism, that's demagoguery.
I know you've already pigeonholed me a a foaming-at-the-mouth conservative. I'm not sure what will 'credential' me as a fairly widely-read media consumer. I'm not going to claim I'm unbaised, nobody is. But I think that, impossible as it may sound in 2006, one should be able to to at least TRY to set aside one's biases and listen critically yet objectively to new items from WHATEVER source.
Generally I listen to NPR for an hour in the morning, and an hour in the evening. Sometimes at lunch I listen to Air America or the Patriot radio stations, in about equal proportions, or just music when I get tired of the right- or left-wing whining. I've read books both by Ann Coulter and Al Franken, both of which nearly nauseated me. As far as those two head-cases are concerned, it's nearly a tossup but I guess I've found Coulter more credible. I was reading one of coulter's books when I had access to lexisnexis, and confirmed (for example) her assertion that the "homeless" - as a subject - pretty much disappeared as a subject from 1993-2000. I didn't have the same resources to confirm/disprove Franken's extended whinging, but I do know that I've never heard of a conservative commentator physically taking down someone at a speech, and then bragging about it. It could be that I'm just repulsed by Franken personally.
I base my comment about media outlets against the president based on my own observations, that's all; I see that while the PRIMARY motivation of "big media" is sensationalism, they are far more likely to choose the sensational story that directly hurts GW Bush and this administration. The NYT, CBS, NBC, NPR all seem to spend a great deal of time concentrating on Abu Ghraib, for example, but then refuse to print the Danish cartoons out of 'sensitivity' to their muslim audience? Double standard?
I'm not sure why you characterize a discussion of Socrates' military service as laughable; I didn't hear that one. He WAS a soldier: (from wiki) "He also saw military action, fighting at the Battle of Potidaea, the Battle of Delium and the Battle of Amphipolis. It is believed, based on Plato's Symposium, that Socrates was decorated for bravery. In one instance he stayed with his wounded friend Alcibiades, and probably saved his life. Despite the objections of Alcibiades, Socrates refused any sort of official recognition and instead encouraged the decoration of Alcibiades. During such campaigns, he also showed his extraordinary hardiness, walking without shoes or a coat in winter." or was it that they were talking to a Naval Academy historian?
In an era where we've already got government-created and funded media outlets and the Pentagon bribing Iraqi journalists to run favorable war stories, not to mention other departments paying journalists to endorse their positions, it begs the question, how much more can they possibly do?"
I think this is simply disingenuous. The United States certainly has propoganda organs, but I think it's indisputable that it also has the most free and open media community (circus) in the world.
I think Rumsfeld's point is more that, Fox news aside, every other media outlet in this country seems dedicated to 'taking down' the president in any way that they possibly can. In an era where a higher percentage of Washington reporters voted Democrat than REGISTERED Democrats, and where media networks formerly of some standing don't hesitate to run stories without research, plaigarize from web blogs, and outright fabricate evidence (Courier Font for the win, Dan) out of their irrational hatred of George Bush, I don't think it's suprising for a senior member of the administration to say that it would behoove the government to act more aggressively to get GOOD news about US efforts out and AROUND the anti-US media conglomerates.
"Why aren't I getting any phone calls for the past 4 hours" "Because you show as busy in your calendar. You should get the voicemails as emails." "What?! And where are the voicemails of which you speak?" "You should be getting them." "Do you see any in my email?" "No....I see, you've forwarded your phone to your cellphone, so the voicemails will be forwarded to your PDA." "But I don't have them in there? It says that the emails were truncated because the PDA omits attachemnts over 128kb." "Oh then it would have dropped them off." "So where are they?" "Deleted. The PDA dropped them, and the voicemail server doesn't save them once sent." "So they're gone? 4 hours of voicemails - gone?" "Sorry, it looks like it" "But I'm not busy in the first place?" "Hmm...look, you got this email from your wife saying that it's Bill's birthday today." "So?" "She marked it as an all day event, when you accepted to add it to your calendar, it marked you as 'out all day'. Also, you're not going to get paid for today, we have our payroll integrated too." "So let me see if I understand this, according to my accepting a birthday reminder, I've lost 4 hours of vital voicemails, automatically rejected any meeting requests since the system thought I was already in one, and in fact I'm not even going to get paid for today?" "Yeah, sorry about that." "So since I'm definitely 'not here', then I guess the police won't suspect me of killing you?" "?"
[blah] [blah] [blah] The sky is falling! We're going to run out of (*). [blah] [blah] [blah] wash, rinse, reuse annually, replacing (*) with: - fresh water - oil - food - land - habitable temperatures (it's either going to get catastrophically hot or cold)
I'm sure it will stop being considered an "addiction" by the mass media companies (ahem, I mean "objective news organizations" of course) as soon as they can figure out a way to (re)capture those eyeballs reliably for advertising revenue.
You mean someone has given up their 8-hour-a-day TV watching in favor of a 8-hour-a-day internet experience? They MUST be addicted.
However when honest unbiased historian sit down some day to write the history of war the motivations will be far more complex. I'd be interested to meet him or her.
Ever seen Triumph of the Will?
If you sit in on even some staggeringly obscure history lecture, it doesn't take a careful ear to hear the bias in EVERYTHING.
Landholding and tenancy rights in medieval England? The feminist professor's 3 hour lecture presents a convincing case that we're only hearing the patriarchal view written by the male-dominated monks/scribes of the time, and that most medieval landholders were actually bull-dyke lesbian feminists who assumed men's names to avoid punishment for their carnal preferences. The fiscal conservative will say that tenancy rights were indicative of the burgeoning economic power of the middle class, and that the legalisms and paperwork reflected archiac notions of Divine Right and serfdom that were long since extinct in actuality.
In fact, sit for 30 minutes in any History Department lobby and LISTEN to the conversations going on, there's a rat's nest of conflicting interpretations of historical events throughout recorded history, each proponent advocating their particular interpretation and denigrating (sometimes viciously) the understanding of someone else.
No, as much as we'd like to pretend, the modern media is no better, and no worse than the media that went before it. And the hindsight of historians, despite the issues of the event having (probably) long since lost historical relevance, is no more objective than the yellow journalist of today.
"Graphic Novel" = term used exclusively by fans of the genre, particularly signalling something that purports to be more serious and adult-themed.
"Comic book" or "comics" = term used by the other 95% of people to refer to test publications in which the huge majority of page space is pictures, rather than text.
Ironically, the industry agrees wholeheartedly that they should be called graphic novels, because people will spend $10 on a 'graphic novel' when they wouldn't even consider $3 for a 'comic book'.
Personally, they're still comic books, despite the extraordinarily high quality artwork and compelling stories (cf. Neil Gaiman, among many others) that they contain.
Even further, how are they defining 'spyware'? I run spybot on my mom's computer, and I get 50 items that need cleaning. Of course 40 are simply icky cookies that need to be swept, 8 are bad links that show up in her cache, and only a couple are what I would actually call something suspicious.
Yes, malware is a problem, but the numbers are just meaningless statistics meant to startle people who don't really understand it anyway.
There's only so many times people can read about young girls being gang raped to punish their brother... ...before it needs to go up on a for-pay site because there's revenue being lost there. How is a poor Sado/BDSM site supposed to pay its bills with that sort of news available for free?
Slashdot Mirror
I know that most of the /. posters are going to bitch and moan about how horrible this is, since Bush is such a Nazi and we're building the American police state, but... ...could someone please give me three examples where your civil liberties were actually violated or you were prevented from performing some legitimate task* by the Patriot Act? Prevented from borrowing a library book because John Ashcroft was reading your library patron log? Anything?
Note for example that there is no inherent RIGHT to board an airplane without ID. As a private business whose major concern is safety, they instead have the RIGHT to refuse service to anyone.
* by legitimate, I mean something pursuant to your daily life. Not simply being a dick to protest how 'inherently unjust' the Patriot Act is.
Slashdot should have a new mod value: +1 'Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
Lara, far from being a one-decade wonder, has legs.
R-i-g-h-t.
Next time you're going to be telling us that Cameron Diaz has ears, or Salma Hayek has elbows.
Balderdash. I can't remember seeing them even ONCE.
Obviously some kind of limit would need to be in place to keep people from hopscotching all over
Not sure why it's obvious. Disney's Toontown does it this way, and as long as you can maintain a friend list and guildie list that is ABOVE the server level (aha, I have 3 friends on bloodscalp and 15 on eldre-thalas tonight), what's the problem?
Since the worlds are all identical (ie the Alliance/Horde ownership of Tarren mill doesn't change), what would be the problem. I know I would ALWAYS try to choose the least busy server with reasonable pingtimes that I could.
Interesting point. I don't think you're insanely leftist, at least by that post. But the OP's attitude actually might be illustrative of why the current public political divide SEEMS so huge, when in fact it's not.
See, it's not that I care that anyone knows my opinion, but the wearing of one's opinion on ones' sleeve is an invitation to friction. It is - it's waving a big red flag about my beliefs, and challenging anyone who thinks I'm wrong to confront me on it. IMO a society can't work like that on a constant basis.
We ALL have differing ideas about things. We express our opinions about our beliefs about how government should run by our casting votes for candidates that we feel (at least somewhat) mirror our views. But we can't all have everything the way we want.
Worth repeating: we can't all have everything the way we want.
So 'society' as a concept is a bunch of people COMPROMISING on their wants to come to a collective existence that's pretty good for all. Part of that collective existence is "not waving my beliefs in others' faces, PARTICULARLY if they are contentious".
I know that probably sounds very tepid and milquetoastish, but the comfort and happiness of the people around me in my life IS important to me (to some degree, anyway), EVEN IF WE DISAGREE ON IMPORTANT ISSUES.
I see our current polity as being all about "me" for everyone: "my wants", "my needs", "my beliefs". Frankly, I see it more from Liberals than I do from Conservatives (ok folks, we can take the Kerry, Gore, and Wellstone stickers off the cars now), although I see it more and more from the part of the Republican party I don't particularly like, the 'demonstrative conservatives' - ick to all of you, on both sides.
Part of society is about getting along with others. I see far more effort being spent on people's own gratification, and very little effort or thought going into consideration of the people around oneself.
As a life philosophy, I like this statement (and see how MUCH of it (boldface) is devoted to OTHERS):
"The TRUE GENTLEMAN is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe."
- John Walter Wayland
Be proud of what you believe in. Work to make your ideas happen, and don't shrink from defending them. But think about how your actions impact others, and simply try to be nice.
Is that so wrong?
Revealing an inept, ridiculous computer voting system: 3 years, 8 months.
l
Raping a 4 year old repeatedly for years: 60 days.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,181498,00.htm
What a great system.
OK, great you now have seats that mitigate impact and motors that aren't really attached to the hull... a couple of questions:
1) I've never been in combat, but I'd expect that damage enough to cause power failure is rather common. With everything else, it's 'repair the damage and start her up again'. With motors mounted on 'maglev' shocks, what happens if you don't have the supplemental power to start with?
2) IMO one of the most impressive things about the modern military is their sensor suites at all levels from the massive carrier group to the individual soldier? How will these be affected by maglev systems in everything? How about Joe Soldier's mark 1 compass?
3) the flip side of #3, I'd expect that you're just giving enemy targeting systems one more 'thing' to aim at; in fact I find it hard to believe that these relatively high-power systems wouldn't make 'stealthing' the using vehicle nearly impossible?
If someone releases what you feel is 'edited' content, there is one surefire way to fight it: release everything.
So if the EU feels that Microsoft is being disingenuous (which it probably is) then they can simply release all the paperwork and let people make up their own minds.
Again, it's a good thing.
I'm sorry, but while this is amusing in a 'speculative-fiction' sense, futurists (and particularly near-futurists) have an abysmal track record on predicting the actual outcomes or impacts of devices, technologies, or concepts. Science Fiction authors actually probably have a better track record than the professional futurists....
/. pedants, I *know* there *exists* a flying car, but it's not an UBIQUITOUS flying car ala the Jetsons, so shut up.)
Underwater Cities?
Living in Space Stations or on the Moon?
Dinner pills?
Impending total exhaustion of X (where X = any natural resource)?
Mass Starvation across the globe?
Cryongenic technology?
300-year lifespan?
All I can say to this book is:
"Where the is my flying car? This is the future, and I was told I was going to get a goddamn flying car, and I want to know where the hell it is!"
(and for the inescapable
Can't wait to see how the seething "hate Microsoft" crowd spins this one.
Flat out: transparency in government is a good thing.
EU government (and the US gov't for that matter) is entirely too opaque for my preference.
More importantly, it screws up tax systems where they take a % of the value of the transactions, doesn't it?
Always wondered how the IRS would audit someone who did business entirely by barter.
From TFA: "Groth took the case on a pro-bono basis, but Murray asked for an accounting of Groth's fees in her ruling. Groth said Tuesday it's likely he could bill several thousand dollars for the case."
He apparently didn't ask for it, so it sounds like it's a little bit of a punitive slap at the city for wasting everyone's time.
BINGO.
At the end of the day, capitalism means a win for the consumer. For every giant manufacturer that buys a chunk of the DoJ or lobbyists to pass ridiculous legislation, there is simply more incentive for the black market to address the demands (legal or illegal) of customers.
As one stout-hearted princess almost put it, "the more you tighten your grip, the more DVD viewers will slip through your fingers".
Yay Taiwan!
Well, I know you're trying to tell us the sky is falling, but IMO
...suggests that the system works as intended.
After Mr. Aid and other historians complained, the archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees government classification, began an audit of the reclassification program, said J. William Leonard, director of the office.
Mr. Leonard said he ordered the audit after reviewing 16 withdrawn documents and concluding that none should be secret.
"If those sample records were removed because somebody thought they were classified, I'm shocked and disappointed," Mr. Leonard said in an interview. "It just boggles the mind."
Some dumbass deskjockey got a little overzealous with his 'classified' stamper, and it's being reviewed. It looks like even the reviewer is shocked that such banal items were classified, so I'm guessing it will be quickly reversed.
Every system has to have error-checking components, to trap errors and to either flag them or correct them. The fact that errors happen isn't proof of a failed system (as much as critics would like to make it so), the fact that errors are identified and flagged PROVES it's working.
As an aside, I'm sorry but your basic premise is stupid. "For as long as Governments are given cart-blanche(sic) to declare their own secrets, they will forever be out of control." Who else is going to declare their secrets? If you submit them to some sort of public process, they're not really secrets then, are they? Or are you one of the pollyannas who believe that 'governments should have no secrets from their people' in which case there is no point even trying to have a reasonable debate.
Anyone know WHY this was censored? That's just silly. It smacks more of stupidity than censorship (or a culture where "all that's not expressly allowed" is forbidden, which is antithetical to the whole CONCEPT of the US and the Constitution).
From TFA
0 05/anatomy_of_a_photograph/ to see how "neutral" the press coverage in the US is.
Violations of the privacy of sources, persistent problems in granting press visas and the arrest of several journalists during anti-Bush demonstrations kept the United States (22nd) away from the top of the list.
So your point (and RSF, cleverly trading on the credibility of the MSF organization) is to say that the US isn't as "free" a press system because the press has in many ways arrayed itself directly AGAINST not "the government", but "the part of the government that we don't like politically"?
I don't find these measurements persuasive, unless they are ALSO accompanied by some sort of measurement of the objectivity of the same press.
- privacy of sources? Would this be the sources that fed CBS news the blatantly false documents about Bush's NG service? Or would this be the source that 'revealed' the the administration was trying to destroy Joe Wilson (disregarding that his wife pulled strings to get his assignment, his testimony to the BIpartisan investigative committee was found to be self-contradictory, and the conclusions in his 'report' (used to pimp his book and to get him a job in the Kerry campaign) implausable and unsupportable?
- press visas, I don't know anything about this issue.
- the arrest of journalists during anti-Bush demonstrations? Perhaps you'd like to check out http://www.zombietime.com/sf_rally_september_24_2
Please. The press cannot claim their 'inalienable rights' as journalists if they simultaneously act as advocates for a political viewpoint....that's not journalism, that's demagoguery.
I know you've already pigeonholed me a a foaming-at-the-mouth conservative. I'm not sure what will 'credential' me as a fairly widely-read media consumer. I'm not going to claim I'm unbaised, nobody is. But I think that, impossible as it may sound in 2006, one should be able to to at least TRY to set aside one's biases and listen critically yet objectively to new items from WHATEVER source.
Generally I listen to NPR for an hour in the morning, and an hour in the evening. Sometimes at lunch I listen to Air America or the Patriot radio stations, in about equal proportions, or just music when I get tired of the right- or left-wing whining. I've read books both by Ann Coulter and Al Franken, both of which nearly nauseated me. As far as those two head-cases are concerned, it's nearly a tossup but I guess I've found Coulter more credible. I was reading one of coulter's books when I had access to lexisnexis, and confirmed (for example) her assertion that the "homeless" - as a subject - pretty much disappeared as a subject from 1993-2000. I didn't have the same resources to confirm/disprove Franken's extended whinging, but I do know that I've never heard of a conservative commentator physically taking down someone at a speech, and then bragging about it. It could be that I'm just repulsed by Franken personally.
I base my comment about media outlets against the president based on my own observations, that's all; I see that while the PRIMARY motivation of "big media" is sensationalism, they are far more likely to choose the sensational story that directly hurts GW Bush and this administration. The NYT, CBS, NBC, NPR all seem to spend a great deal of time concentrating on Abu Ghraib, for example, but then refuse to print the Danish cartoons out of 'sensitivity' to their muslim audience? Double standard?
I'm not sure why you characterize a discussion of Socrates' military service as laughable; I didn't hear that one. He WAS a soldier: (from wiki) "He also saw military action, fighting at the Battle of Potidaea, the Battle of Delium and the Battle of Amphipolis. It is believed, based on Plato's Symposium, that Socrates was decorated for bravery. In one instance he stayed with his wounded friend Alcibiades, and probably saved his life. Despite the objections of Alcibiades, Socrates refused any sort of official recognition and instead encouraged the decoration of Alcibiades. During such campaigns, he also showed his extraordinary hardiness, walking without shoes or a coat in winter." or was it that they were talking to a Naval Academy historian?
In an era where we've already got government-created and funded media outlets and the Pentagon bribing Iraqi journalists to run favorable war stories, not to mention other departments paying journalists to endorse their positions, it begs the question, how much more can they possibly do?"
I think this is simply disingenuous. The United States certainly has propoganda organs, but I think it's indisputable that it also has the most free and open media community (circus) in the world.
I think Rumsfeld's point is more that, Fox news aside, every other media outlet in this country seems dedicated to 'taking down' the president in any way that they possibly can. In an era where a higher percentage of Washington reporters voted Democrat than REGISTERED Democrats, and where media networks formerly of some standing don't hesitate to run stories without research, plaigarize from web blogs, and outright fabricate evidence (Courier Font for the win, Dan) out of their irrational hatred of George Bush, I don't think it's suprising for a senior member of the administration to say that it would behoove the government to act more aggressively to get GOOD news about US efforts out and AROUND the anti-US media conglomerates.
"Why aren't I getting any phone calls for the past 4 hours"
"Because you show as busy in your calendar. You should get the voicemails as emails."
"What?! And where are the voicemails of which you speak?"
"You should be getting them."
"Do you see any in my email?"
"No....I see, you've forwarded your phone to your cellphone, so the voicemails will be forwarded to your PDA."
"But I don't have them in there? It says that the emails were truncated because the PDA omits attachemnts over 128kb."
"Oh then it would have dropped them off."
"So where are they?"
"Deleted. The PDA dropped them, and the voicemail server doesn't save them once sent."
"So they're gone? 4 hours of voicemails - gone?"
"Sorry, it looks like it"
"But I'm not busy in the first place?"
"Hmm...look, you got this email from your wife saying that it's Bill's birthday today."
"So?"
"She marked it as an all day event, when you accepted to add it to your calendar, it marked you as 'out all day'. Also, you're not going to get paid for today, we have our payroll integrated too."
"So let me see if I understand this, according to my accepting a birthday reminder, I've lost 4 hours of vital voicemails, automatically rejected any meeting requests since the system thought I was already in one, and in fact I'm not even going to get paid for today?"
"Yeah, sorry about that."
"So since I'm definitely 'not here', then I guess the police won't suspect me of killing you?"
"?"
[blah]
[blah]
[blah]
The sky is falling! We're going to run out of (*).
[blah]
[blah]
[blah]
wash, rinse, reuse annually, replacing (*) with:
- fresh water
- oil
- food
- land
- habitable temperatures (it's either going to get catastrophically hot or cold)
I'm sure it will stop being considered an "addiction" by the mass media companies (ahem, I mean "objective news organizations" of course) as soon as they can figure out a way to (re)capture those eyeballs reliably for advertising revenue.
You mean someone has given up their 8-hour-a-day TV watching in favor of a 8-hour-a-day internet experience? They MUST be addicted.
However when honest unbiased historian sit down some day to write the history of war the motivations will be far more complex.
I'd be interested to meet him or her.
Ever seen Triumph of the Will?
If you sit in on even some staggeringly obscure history lecture, it doesn't take a careful ear to hear the bias in EVERYTHING.
Landholding and tenancy rights in medieval England? The feminist professor's 3 hour lecture presents a convincing case that we're only hearing the patriarchal view written by the male-dominated monks/scribes of the time, and that most medieval landholders were actually bull-dyke lesbian feminists who assumed men's names to avoid punishment for their carnal preferences.
The fiscal conservative will say that tenancy rights were indicative of the burgeoning economic power of the middle class, and that the legalisms and paperwork reflected archiac notions of Divine Right and serfdom that were long since extinct in actuality.
In fact, sit for 30 minutes in any History Department lobby and LISTEN to the conversations going on, there's a rat's nest of conflicting interpretations of historical events throughout recorded history, each proponent advocating their particular interpretation and denigrating (sometimes viciously) the understanding of someone else.
No, as much as we'd like to pretend, the modern media is no better, and no worse than the media that went before it. And the hindsight of historians, despite the issues of the event having (probably) long since lost historical relevance, is no more objective than the yellow journalist of today.
Then the Americans at NASA would never have any HOPE of understanding what they found.
Which is a perfect, perfect example.
:)
"Graphic Novel" = term used exclusively by fans of the genre, particularly signalling something that purports to be more serious and adult-themed.
"Comic book" or "comics" = term used by the other 95% of people to refer to test publications in which the huge majority of page space is pictures, rather than text.
Ironically, the industry agrees wholeheartedly that they should be called graphic novels, because people will spend $10 on a 'graphic novel' when they wouldn't even consider $3 for a 'comic book'.
Personally, they're still comic books, despite the extraordinarily high quality artwork and compelling stories (cf. Neil Gaiman, among many others) that they contain.
But I'm still not paying $10 for a comic book.
Even further, how are they defining 'spyware'?
I run spybot on my mom's computer, and I get 50 items that need cleaning. Of course 40 are simply icky cookies that need to be swept, 8 are bad links that show up in her cache, and only a couple are what I would actually call something suspicious.
Yes, malware is a problem, but the numbers are just meaningless statistics meant to startle people who don't really understand it anyway.
There's only so many times people can read about young girls being gang raped to punish their brother ... ...before it needs to go up on a for-pay site because there's revenue being lost there. How is a poor Sado/BDSM site supposed to pay its bills with that sort of news available for free?