The Nation is a total piece of shit. Nor do I consider it lefty, as it advocates US protectionism. Any genuine lefty would not advocate artificially protecting American jobs at the expense of jobs in Third World countries. That is an ugly and arbitrary promotion of the interests of one nationality at the expense of interests of people outside that group. Right wing.
There is plenty of quality niche journalism on glossy paper, however. (And on the web).
AC: And what is wrong with state funded broadcasting ?
The same thing that is wrong with any extraneous government spending. If I subscribe to a commercial channel, that is my decision. If a government decides to finance a channel, I pay for it merely by virtue of being a citizen of that country, whether or not I want to watch that channel. I consider that an affront to my liberty. But as long as the BBC is good value for money, I will be a hypocrite and keep quiet about the compulsion issue.
What is your opinion of them using their editorial power to lobby for more money?
In the UK, the BBC does not carry commercials, but recently had a large public advertising campaign (delivered via themselves, so it was free), which was essentially an enourmous lobbying effort for an increased licence fee. This struck me as unethical to say the least. An irresponsible use of their undeniable influence on members of the public.
Even articles on CNN etc are often very slightly dressed up excerpts from the Reuters news ticker.
But really, nobody reads slashdot for the journalism, do they? I thought the whole point was the message board system. As long as there is an interesting collection of people, you don't even need a link to CNN to start an interesting discussion. They could just say "gnome vs kde. discuss".
The article begins by berating the way that "The news business used to be a craft, but now it has turned into a manufacturing operation". The authour makes a distinction between "commercial" journalism and "serious" journalism. He seems to think that serious journalism is incapable of self-financing, and must be funded as though it were a charity. However, he manages to come up with several examples of privately run quality journalism, not least the wonderful Economist.
I would accuse him of being too easily distracted. True, the media business is enourmous and pumps out a lot of sterile crap. However, just because lots of people are willing to pay for commoditised snippets of information, and lots of companies will provide that information, the market for quality journalism is no smaller. You just have to know where to look.
The authour is worried that it is hard to turn a profit from modern serious journalism because everybody expects information to be free. Well, printed media has relied on advertising and tie-in promotions (rather than cover price) for a while now anyway.
Ultimately, though, the authour is trying to protect his job. ABC is funded by the ozzie government. ABC's budget is currently being reviewed. This article is a piece of propoganda trying to protect ABC's budget.
Much as I hate the idea of state funded broadcasting, the BBC is so damned good that I happily pay my licence fee. What do ozzies think of their state media?
Now that everything about each soldier will be transmitted, what would happen if an enemy broke the encrpytion (assuming they ARE using some), a la Enigma
Strong encryption is already used in the field to such an extent that if the enemy broke it, we would be buggered. They will just have to use strong enough ciphers and be extremely paranoid all of the time.
Apple have a vested interset in making money. For the moment, their cash-cow is the hardware. NeXT dropped the hardware and became more profitable. The same could happend to apple on a much larger scale.
It always surprises me that Apple are so insistent on remaining a hardware company. They have a reasonably strong OS, they have a lead in multimedia software, yet they have refused to acknowledge plans to capitalise on the huge x86 OS market. I don't get them. Nobody gets rich selling just hardware. Well, not _that_ rich.
No, you can use 0800 numbers for access. 'Course, here in cambridge, NTL are doing 512k cable modem service for 25squid a month, free installation. That makes me smug.
Oh yeah,, installation happened the same week I ordered it.
Slashdot Mirror
There is plenty of quality niche journalism on glossy paper, however. (And on the web).
ideut win ideut
ideut wen ideut
They obviously mean 204dpi, not 200 pixels per square inch. Christ knows how this got past the proof readers.
The same thing that is wrong with any extraneous government spending. If I subscribe to a commercial channel, that is my decision. If a government decides to finance a channel, I pay for it merely by virtue of being a citizen of that country, whether or not I want to watch that channel. I consider that an affront to my liberty. But as long as the BBC is good value for money, I will be a hypocrite and keep quiet about the compulsion issue.
In the UK, the BBC does not carry commercials, but recently had a large public advertising campaign (delivered via themselves, so it was free), which was essentially an enourmous lobbying effort for an increased licence fee. This struck me as unethical to say the least. An irresponsible use of their undeniable influence on members of the public.
But really, nobody reads slashdot for the journalism, do they? I thought the whole point was the message board system. As long as there is an interesting collection of people, you don't even need a link to CNN to start an interesting discussion. They could just say "gnome vs kde. discuss".
no chicken egg problem.
I would accuse him of being too easily distracted. True, the media business is enourmous and pumps out a lot of sterile crap. However, just because lots of people are willing to pay for commoditised snippets of information, and lots of companies will provide that information, the market for quality journalism is no smaller. You just have to know where to look.
The authour is worried that it is hard to turn a profit from modern serious journalism because everybody expects information to be free. Well, printed media has relied on advertising and tie-in promotions (rather than cover price) for a while now anyway.
Ultimately, though, the authour is trying to protect his job. ABC is funded by the ozzie government. ABC's budget is currently being reviewed. This article is a piece of propoganda trying to protect ABC's budget. Much as I hate the idea of state funded broadcasting, the BBC is so damned good that I happily pay my licence fee. What do ozzies think of their state media?
It's currently 200 light years away. The closest this thing will get is 170 light years. And that's in 300,000 years. In summary, no.
bud.
You're fantastic.
Strong encryption is already used in the field to such an extent that if the enemy broke it, we would be buggered. They will just have to use strong enough ciphers and be extremely paranoid all of the time.
Is that like mickey black market?
It always surprises me that Apple are so insistent on remaining a hardware company. They have a reasonably strong OS, they have a lead in multimedia software, yet they have refused to acknowledge plans to capitalise on the huge x86 OS market. I don't get them. Nobody gets rich selling just hardware. Well, not _that_ rich.
And it only uses one PCI slot, even though the connectors are spread over two plates.
Oh yeah,, installation happened the same week I ordered it.
It was supposed to be funny.
please can i have a new box?
ninhg