Of course we're against this claptrap, but let's for a second say OK, do it. BUT, if you're going to do it for games, do it for all entertainment media.
Make it a federal offense to allow anyone under 17 to see/rent/purchase an R+ movie without a parent's written permission. Better yet, come up with a "V" rating for violence -- that way those films that have all the killing without the R-baiting sex can be excluded from exposure to kids as well. Do the same for all music with the Parent Advisory sticker on it.
And after we've done that, we can move on to books. You know how much violence there is in The Lord of the Rings, Catcher in the Rye, The Chocolate War, etc. One of our youngsters might go out and hurt another while "pretending to be Aragorn." And don't forget all the articles about the violence in Afghanistan, Rwanda, and Chechnya one finds in your local newspaper. Perhaps we can have a law that makes them put all that in a special sealed section of the paper.
If you're trying to cleanse our media of violence, this is the road you travel down. Conflict. Anger. Opposition. These are parimary, basic elements of plot and story. They're also endemic to living on this planet. Trying to pretend that you don't need violence or conflict to have a good story is more than dumb, it's positively Orwellian.
Many states are enacting laws such as that which goes into effect in California as of January 2003.
The law mandates that the state maintain a website where people may, for a minor fee of $3 to maintain the database, assign their name and number to a state "Do Not Call" list. Anyone doing telemarketing toward anyone in CA must then refer to this list or risk a $500 fine for each breach of the law.
The effect is that once I pony up $3 my number is protected for 3 years, and I can get $500 from each telemarketing company that breaks the law by calling me though I'm on the state no-call list by suing them in enforcement of the law.
I work in R&D at a major pharma company, and you are an asshole.
We bust our hump trying to cure everything from osteoporosis to AIDS and you sit there smugly alleging that we're either holding back cures or not trying to make them? You're a fool. Everyone I work with spends every minute of the work day and most of our weekends trying to develop treatments AND CURES for ungrateful dickheads like you. And we don't do it for the money, which pays the bills but isn't that great, trust me.
While you're busy making unsubstantiated allegations I'll be inventing drugs to make your life better, you pig.
He doesn't talk much about the sequel Tron 2.0 (because of a Disney gag order)
Ah yes, this must be one of those "stealth" marketing jobs, where they get signed agreements and/or threaten to sue anyone who so much as mentions a prospective film before its release. That way, nobody knows a damn thing about it until it comes out. I mean, we don't want to generate any buzz, develop a fan community, or leak out info that might drive potential customers mad with lust for the sequel, right? Right. I mean, it's all just so much darn work!
Where do I go to become a corporate marketing genius like the folks at Disney?
My problem with all ideas like this is that there's a great tradition, at least in America, of the fresh start. Since the first Puritans hit the shore after longstanding poor relationships with their previous neighbors in England, we've been a group of people who've always felt that if we'd completely made a fool of ourselves where we were we could always pick up & go somewhere else. Give it another go without all the baggage of history.
Of course, I'm not talking about dodging your bad credit or anything illegal -- just going off to somewhere like Seattle, where the weather's different, the names of the streets are strange, nobody knows who you are or where you're from, and you can be, not who you'd like to pretend to be, but who you really are because you're unencumbered of the weight of your past transgressions. What's wrong with that?
Well, I guess for some in gov't, quite a bit. If we ever get an ID here, I think by far the worst aspect of it would be the destruction of this element in American life. Everything you've done -- every traffic ticket, every place you've lived, every bad job you quit after a few months -- will be easily available to anyone with a decent excuse for looking. You'll no longer be able to erase all that history if you like -- you'll have to carry it around with you, with all of us. I believe it'll drag on us and make us a less vital, less industrial country where your past is examined in detail before decisions are made about you. And eventually it's back to the old days of 18th century Europe, where you were denied a position or place amongst friends because of who your family is, or was.
All in all, the fact that we forget things and fragments of history get lost in the swirl of day-to-day living -- that's a good thing. It lets us live now, not 20 years ago when we were young & irresponsible. I'd really like to keep that part of our lives.
Now, the general populus isn't paranoid about their gov't, but even so most people will balk at the gov't saying, "Here's some nice friendly software courtesy of Uncle Sam that we'd like EVERYONE to run on their computer. It, um, looks for flaws 'n stuff."
For myself, and I assume most of the geeks here, I'd want to read every single line of any code given to me to run by the gov't, compile it myself, and run it. Love your country, yes. Trust your country, never.
Go to the nearest toy store of decent size - not the Kay-Bee in the mall but like a Toys R Us, and check out the prices for toys. You'll easily find that Legos, Kenex (sp?), Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, TinkerToys, etc remain some of the more expensive objects, and it's not because they're hard to make or sell. It is because these toys spark imagination, incite creativity, and can be played with again & again ad nauseum and NEVER get old or fall out of fashion. Hell, in my teens I was goofing off with Legos I'd had since I was 8. Compared to the latest Power Ranger, that's value.
And that's also the crux of the whole issue. The toy companies exist to make money like any other industry, and the way they keep your kid continually wanting the latest-greatest is with advertising and the synthesis of "cool" around the latest toy. Every one of us felt that left-out feeling when they were the only kid who didn't have the toy of the moment (check South Park's "Chinpokomon" episode for a reminder). Hell, I still remember how excited I was when I got Optimus Prime for Christmas. Nobody else I knew had it, and for the next month I was the center of attention amongst my friends. Sure the toys are fun many times, but the kids get a thrill out of that attention just as you or I do when we bring in the latest tech gadget to work to the squeals of envy from fellow geeks.
Toy makers aren't stupid -- they know that licensed toys are a source of unending turnover and that with enough up-front marketing they can have your kid driving you insane for a $10 piece of crap over & over again each week from 5 to 12 years of age, and so this is what they do. There'll always be a new Care Bear of Stretch Armstrong or Barbie outfit. Not so with "construction set" games -- even the most adamant Lego fiend reaches an eventual point of saturation where they have all the blocks they need.
I'm still curious about your previous soundbite. ("Yahoo! Where your civil liberties are what your government tells us they are.") What other kinds of civil liberties [dictionary.com] are there?
Here's what I mean:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Now, I'm not sure if you paid too much attention to the material of that sentence in history class, but it essentially says that no person, no institution, no government gives anyone their liberties. Those liberties simply exist for you by virtue of being a human being. That being true, it means that a human, whether Chinese or American, has the same rights, whether or not they're currently being subjugated or not. End of civics lesson.
To address your other point, I at no point mentioned an embargo. I said that Yahoo should choose not to assist the Chinese in the repression of their people. That's a far cry from an enforced prohibition of trade with them. Yahoo SHOULD have said no and taken whatever consequences came - in this case, the Chinese gov't would be isolating itself with its own policies. Thus, there's no relationship to an embargo.
The dillusion that our companies can trade with, make money from, and collaborate with dictatorial powers while still somehow changing their systems is a popular one, but I feel wrong. Look at the corporate payouts in this country that keep politicians' mouths shut about Chinese human rights abuses and renewing MFN trading status. We're hypocrites, and we know it. But the opportunities are just too good and the money too inticing. We're collaborating with the bad guys at the expense of the Chinese people to make money, not to turn them into democrats.
I'm not talking about chivalry as much as I'm talking about what is simply the decent, ethical thing to do. If this were 20 years ago no company would ever have subscribed to such an agreement with the gov't. They would've been excoriated out of the market as willing to kowtow for dollars to Commies. Yet this is where we are, and today it's OK to make compromises, long as you're making money doing it.
And it's not necessarily against corporate motives, either. What sort of business can Yahoo expect to conduct in China if the gov't has so much control over them? The real answer apparently is only the sort of business the government says they can. the gov't can shut dow nthe 'net there tomorrow and poof go all of Yahoo's investment in a Chinese portal.
China's "taking care of" 1 billion people? Bullshit. Those 1 billion take care of themselves while the gov't drills them in what to think, what to do for a living, and how many children to have. Curtailed civil rights? Sure, the latest gov't excesses are wrong, but try disappearing into a jail for 1 or more decades where nobody can find you because someone overhead you saying the local mayor was a jerk. It's not an uncommon experience in that neck of the woods.
The contention that the US government bears any resemblance to that of China is one that could only be made by a knee-jerk hippie asshole who's never known what it is to really be oppressed, to be publicly flogged for saying what you think, for having a family member rot in jail without a trial for unknown charges, to immolate yourself because it feels so hopeless, or to have to practice your religion in a dark basement with lookouts posted. Your mere mention of the two systems in the same sentence make my blood boil - how could you hold the rights maintained for you by this gov't in such low esteem? I have no idea, but the excressence you posted is exactly the sort of material you'd be imprisoned for if my gov't was as you imply it is. Your sad doctrine of moral equivalence makes me ill.
Nobody's saying the US gov't is perfect, but it sure as hell isn't China.
This is exactly my point. Yahoo should accept being banned from China's network instead of sanitizing its content as the Chinese government dictates. Yahoo should, indeed to keep its integrity must, pull its operation out of China if this is what's demanded of them. Participation in such an agreement inevitably puts the blood of Chinese political prisoners on the hands of Yahoo's board, and it's repellent.
There's a word for what you propose: appeasement. It's the acceptance of a dictate while maintaining the hope that they won't ask any more of you, that they'll be satisfied and you'll somehow be able to work under the new system. It failed to work in the late 30's, and it won't work in this analogous situation. No option? There's always an option, and the proper one here is to not collaborate with tyranny.
You're right though about our own government; it's composed of politicians who'd rather appease a large economic market than oppose oppression where it plainly exists, and I'm sure Yahoo takes some of its cues from them. None of that makes their behavior acceptable though.
When companies like Yahoo! look across the Pacific at a large group of people fed bullshit & held under the thumb of an oppressive dictatorship and all they can think of is how they can buddy up to the gov't in order to get a crack at these "new consumers", I'd say that we have larger corporate ethics problems than Enron, kids.
Yahoo! Where your civil liberties are what your government tells us they are.
I agree with you (and Mr. Anthony) that a portrayal is not advocacy, not at all, thank God & damn censorhip for it. But your position of "why can't we just let everyone do what they like without putting a stigma on it" is at best idealistic and at worst ignorant of the history of civil and women's rights in the past century.
There have always been and continue to be groups of people who have vested interests in keeping certain sexes, sexual orientations, and races in certain positions in society. Pretending that after women being explicitly, completely subservient in Western culture until the 1970's that all's well and good and we can all go our separate ways now, doing whatever we wish, is ridiculous, because sexism, like racism, still runs rampant in our society. Those who disagree need to look at the representation of women in government, corporate management, etc. On the level of women's employment alone, women work in more lower-level professions for less & per capita (70% of men's pay), and get promoted less often than men do. The average percentage of women in management drops geometrically the higher the pay grade, from middle management up to CEO. And most people seem to feel that's the way it should be, that all's well & good.
I'm not saying that there should be enforced parity, quotas, etc, not at all. But what our society needs to focus on for true equality is an equal start in life. Equal educations, equal expectations for girls and boys through to adulthood is what's needed, and it simply doesn't exist because it's not truly wanted. Hell, there's a movement starting to re-segregate public education by seq in some places under the rubric that it's just too hard for girls to learn with all those dominant boys around!
As an example -- my wife works in the finance department of a Fortune 500 company. In talking to coworkers and her boss about caring for the baby after birth, she still recieves surprised responses when she tells them no, she's not taking a year off to raise the baby, that she'll be back in 2 months. People act like she's short-changing her kid. The world you want doesn't exist and stands little chance of existing in the future because of that sort of persistent attitude.
With regard to our "short-sightedness" regarding space in general & meteor strikes in specific:
Suppose we were to find out & verify, ala Armageddon, that meteor X, about the diameter of Texas, composed of a mixture of metal ore, rock, and ice as most meteors are, is hurtling toward us to destroy earth & humanity. What those politicians you refer to as short-sighted realize that you may not is that there's not a damn thing we can do about it. There is no ICBM collection, no space shuttle that can do jack shit for us no matter what story Jerry Bruckheimer likes to tell. There's also no form of technology we even have an inkling of that can deflect a meteor large enough to do serious damage to our planet. You can do the calculations yourself, but there aren't enough nuclear weapons on the planet to put a dent in a rock that big. We'd all have to face the fact that we're fucked and everything wasn't meant to last.
For fuck's sake, if there's any situation it's not the US government's job to handle, that's it. It's bend-over-&-kiss-your-ass-goodbye time, because almost all of us would die and the state of the US budget would instantly cease to be a concern for any survivors.
American Physics Society head Robert Park has been saying that there's no research of any consequence going on in the ISS since its inception. Most science was cut out of the budget because of all the cost over-runs, Russia & US inability to synchronize production timelines, & other ISS bullshit. The Mars Pathfinder mission alone provided more new information about space & Mars than the ISS at a fraction of the cost.
Practically, being on the ISS is hell. You've got to wear ear protection because the noise of the machinery is like sitting front-row at a Metallica concert. It's smaller than you think due to missing modules that haven't been put in place yet, and you spend so much time putting it together and keeping it a safe, clean place to live there's no time to do anything else. It's like a tiny house that's so poorly designed all you can do is clean & fix it all day. Basically, without pouring tons MORE cash into this yawning vacuum of funding, it's a dead horse. Unless someone steps up to the plate with money, probably the US, this thing'll be abandoned within the decade. Good riddance. Fund more satellites & probes like Pathfinder.
Fat budget-heavy projects featuring humans simply aren't feasible without the confluence of factors seen in the 60's. With all the smart engineers in NASA it's troubling that they're still so driven by publicity & flash at the expense of real science.
Not that these movies are of any real importance as an issue whatsoever, but here goes:
Despite people's misconceptions about Spielberg being a warm/fuzzy director, Lucas is not, nor has he ever been, 1/10th the director Spielberg is. Spielberg with some good writing support probably wanted to help, to try to turn the epI characters back into human beings for epII after Lucas' major pooch screw. Nobody knows what Lucas thinks - is he cashing in? Is he a megalomaniac? Who knows? Who gives a shit? All I know is the past two movies are tripe I wouldn't allow in my home to poison my DVD collection. And I really liked IV & V too, and thought VI wasn't great, but OK.
Nevermind what the fanboys think, the prequels have been fucked over by one thing -- Lucas' total control over all aspects of the project. The SW prequels are a tragedy caused by a lack of hollywood industry control & standards, not an overbearance of them. Any major studio management/production team on any other project would've seen the dailies of epI & II and demanded a change in directors, but because Lucas has the $ and carte blanche to do what he wants he never has to answer to anyone, and with his inability to write or direct simple believable dialogue he's the biggest liability to his own legacy.
Think about it -- since the first three, outside of some TV production he hadn't directed a feature film since Jedi in '83. That's 16 fucking years out of practice. So now he's a hack, and somewhere deep I think he knows it. He should've been a deeply involved producer and brought in a big-time director that knows how to direct actors instead of mainframes, who hasn't been out of the game for a generation, someone like Spielberg, for all of these prequels.
Despite the verbosity above, none of it really matters for me - to me it's just movies, give or take. But to Lucas I have to assume it's something more, that it's art, and he's actively fucking it to shit. Too bad. I guess even the best painters eventually became bad imitators of themselves, but it doesn't make it any fun to watch.
It's obvious Sen. Boucher fails to understand that the RIAA's undertaking steps to protect American CDs from copyright infringment is a thoughtful action by the responsible corporate sector of our economy toward preventing terrorists from profiting from the piracy trade. They're acting in our best interests, can't you all see that? Boucher and the rest of you rabble-rousers should get out of the way and let our congress, the administration and the corporate sector protect our country before another attack occurs.
Are there any Linux puns yet cavorting in the happy land of the Ogrechobee? A daemon amongst the demons? If not, on bahalf of Slashdot at large, I'd like to beg for one.
I know many people are aware that most "bestseller lists", even the venerable New York Times lists, are faulty, subject to bias, and sometimes influenced by publishers & retailers, but does it ever stick in your craw that almost all organizations claiming to list the best-selling books of the week / month / year purposefully exclude children's / sci-fi / romance literature? Does it ever matter to you, or are you happy with your royalties & fan mail?
No matter what some may think of your work (I enjoyed it but grew out of it a long time ago) you remain a successful writer making a living by writing, which is more than most writers of "meaningful", well-reviewed, yet inscrutable literature can say. What are your feelings about the lack of respect much popular literature gets amongst these "cri-tics"?
Apologies, couldn't avoid the Xanth pun there at the end. I'm sure I've got the first dozen or so Xanth books along with most of IoI in a box somewhere in the attic back home...
All 99.999% of the public gives a shit about is if their car stereo plays CDs and sounds "fine". Most people will look at the price tag on the Sony deck and laugh, as anyone who isn't a damn moron should.
In any case, for $600 I can get a good MP3/CD player with a front input AND either an Ipod (5GB) or a Creative Nomad 3 Jukebox to plug into it. With this configuration I get the open MP3 format instead of Sony ATRACs AND the ability to take my MP3 player anywhere & sync betwen it and my computer, all for less than half the price of the Sony deck.
What a wasteful piece of shit. Not even enthusiasts should like this thing. Only people who should are those who like to blow hard-earned money on crap.
Maybe it could just be like taking that millionaire sponsorship thing to another level. Get Pepsi to chip in as well, to have their logo on everything.
I vote for Britney to go along as fuck toy / mascot.
Jon has his head completely up his keester if he thinks Mencken was somehow a non-biased, non-sensationalistic journalist. Quite the opposite; it was his stances and deft, witty articulation of them based on fact as well as innuendo that made him a great journalist. Hell, it was the age of yellow journalism. Mencken, Winchell et al were always looking for any story that could make the most people plunk down a nickel and pick up a paper.
Take the Scopes trial alone. Mencken, goes down to the south and turns a stupid little rigged case into a media feeding frenzy, makes it a battle between the theory of evolution and the forces of ignorance, when it was really nothing much to get jazzed about. Like the Smart kidnapping business the story was in the telling, not the facts themselves.
Thus it has always been, thus it always shall be, and thank God for it. The news needs readers to survive and to get readers, like it or not, you have to entertain them in one way or another.
It's an old saw, but if you don't like what's out there, don't watch. Turn off CNN & pick up the papers of your choice, which have overall had relatively little Smart coverage. If CNN lost even just 10% of its audience during times it was covering this thing it'd drop it like a bad habit -- it's the fact that the opposite occurs that keeps it on the air and that's our fault, not CNN's. It's your eyes that create the market, and advertisers are paying because YOU are watching & reading. That, Jon, is a good thing, not a bad thing, because it makes the responsibility for what's on the air ours, not AOL/Time Warner's. Stop paying attention to the crap and it'll die.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course we're against this claptrap, but let's for a second say OK, do it. BUT, if you're going to do it for games, do it for all entertainment media.
Make it a federal offense to allow anyone under 17 to see/rent/purchase an R+ movie without a parent's written permission. Better yet, come up with a "V" rating for violence -- that way those films that have all the killing without the R-baiting sex can be excluded from exposure to kids as well. Do the same for all music with the Parent Advisory sticker on it.
And after we've done that, we can move on to books. You know how much violence there is in The Lord of the Rings, Catcher in the Rye, The Chocolate War, etc. One of our youngsters might go out and hurt another while "pretending to be Aragorn." And don't forget all the articles about the violence in Afghanistan, Rwanda, and Chechnya one finds in your local newspaper. Perhaps we can have a law that makes them put all that in a special sealed section of the paper.
If you're trying to cleanse our media of violence, this is the road you travel down. Conflict. Anger. Opposition. These are parimary, basic elements of plot and story. They're also endemic to living on this planet. Trying to pretend that you don't need violence or conflict to have a good story is more than dumb, it's positively Orwellian.
Heck, I LOVE fixing my friends' Windows machines -- that's why I carry a burn of Mandrake v8.2 with me at all times.
"Hey, Greg? What's the deal with the penguin?"
That's about the only damn way to fix 'em anyways.
I got all excited and everything 'cause I thought someone had invented a way of jamming camcorders by some sort of radio frequency emission.
Would've been great for all those jackasses I see at museums.
Many states are enacting laws such as that which goes into effect in California as of January 2003.
The law mandates that the state maintain a website where people may, for a minor fee of $3 to maintain the database, assign their name and number to a state "Do Not Call" list. Anyone doing telemarketing toward anyone in CA must then refer to this list or risk a $500 fine for each breach of the law.
The effect is that once I pony up $3 my number is protected for 3 years, and I can get $500 from each telemarketing company that breaks the law by calling me though I'm on the state no-call list by suing them in enforcement of the law.
I work in R&D at a major pharma company, and you are an asshole.
We bust our hump trying to cure everything from osteoporosis to AIDS and you sit there smugly alleging that we're either holding back cures or not trying to make them? You're a fool. Everyone I work with spends every minute of the work day and most of our weekends trying to develop treatments AND CURES for ungrateful dickheads like you. And we don't do it for the money, which pays the bills but isn't that great, trust me.
While you're busy making unsubstantiated allegations I'll be inventing drugs to make your life better, you pig.
He doesn't talk much about the sequel Tron 2.0 (because of a Disney gag order)
Ah yes, this must be one of those "stealth" marketing jobs, where they get signed agreements and/or threaten to sue anyone who so much as mentions a prospective film before its release. That way, nobody knows a damn thing about it until it comes out. I mean, we don't want to generate any buzz, develop a fan community, or leak out info that might drive potential customers mad with lust for the sequel, right? Right. I mean, it's all just so much darn work!
Where do I go to become a corporate marketing genius like the folks at Disney?
My problem with all ideas like this is that there's a great tradition, at least in America, of the fresh start. Since the first Puritans hit the shore after longstanding poor relationships with their previous neighbors in England, we've been a group of people who've always felt that if we'd completely made a fool of ourselves where we were we could always pick up & go somewhere else. Give it another go without all the baggage of history.
Of course, I'm not talking about dodging your bad credit or anything illegal -- just going off to somewhere like Seattle, where the weather's different, the names of the streets are strange, nobody knows who you are or where you're from, and you can be, not who you'd like to pretend to be, but who you really are because you're unencumbered of the weight of your past transgressions. What's wrong with that?
Well, I guess for some in gov't, quite a bit. If we ever get an ID here, I think by far the worst aspect of it would be the destruction of this element in American life. Everything you've done -- every traffic ticket, every place you've lived, every bad job you quit after a few months -- will be easily available to anyone with a decent excuse for looking. You'll no longer be able to erase all that history if you like -- you'll have to carry it around with you, with all of us. I believe it'll drag on us and make us a less vital, less industrial country where your past is examined in detail before decisions are made about you. And eventually it's back to the old days of 18th century Europe, where you were denied a position or place amongst friends because of who your family is, or was.
All in all, the fact that we forget things and fragments of history get lost in the swirl of day-to-day living -- that's a good thing. It lets us live now, not 20 years ago when we were young & irresponsible. I'd really like to keep that part of our lives.
Now, the general populus isn't paranoid about their gov't, but even so most people will balk at the gov't saying, "Here's some nice friendly software courtesy of Uncle Sam that we'd like EVERYONE to run on their computer. It, um, looks for flaws 'n stuff."
For myself, and I assume most of the geeks here, I'd want to read every single line of any code given to me to run by the gov't, compile it myself, and run it. Love your country, yes. Trust your country, never.
Go to the nearest toy store of decent size - not the Kay-Bee in the mall but like a Toys R Us, and check out the prices for toys. You'll easily find that Legos, Kenex (sp?), Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, TinkerToys, etc remain some of the more expensive objects, and it's not because they're hard to make or sell. It is because these toys spark imagination, incite creativity, and can be played with again & again ad nauseum and NEVER get old or fall out of fashion. Hell, in my teens I was goofing off with Legos I'd had since I was 8. Compared to the latest Power Ranger, that's value.
And that's also the crux of the whole issue. The toy companies exist to make money like any other industry, and the way they keep your kid continually wanting the latest-greatest is with advertising and the synthesis of "cool" around the latest toy. Every one of us felt that left-out feeling when they were the only kid who didn't have the toy of the moment (check South Park's "Chinpokomon" episode for a reminder). Hell, I still remember how excited I was when I got Optimus Prime for Christmas. Nobody else I knew had it, and for the next month I was the center of attention amongst my friends. Sure the toys are fun many times, but the kids get a thrill out of that attention just as you or I do when we bring in the latest tech gadget to work to the squeals of envy from fellow geeks.
Toy makers aren't stupid -- they know that licensed toys are a source of unending turnover and that with enough up-front marketing they can have your kid driving you insane for a $10 piece of crap over & over again each week from 5 to 12 years of age, and so this is what they do. There'll always be a new Care Bear of Stretch Armstrong or Barbie outfit. Not so with "construction set" games -- even the most adamant Lego fiend reaches an eventual point of saturation where they have all the blocks they need.
Well, maybe not Zack. He's a Lego maniac.
I'm still curious about your previous soundbite. ("Yahoo! Where your civil liberties are what your government tells us they are.") What other kinds of civil liberties [dictionary.com] are there?
Here's what I mean:
Now, I'm not sure if you paid too much attention to the material of that sentence in history class, but it essentially says that no person, no institution, no government gives anyone their liberties. Those liberties simply exist for you by virtue of being a human being. That being true, it means that a human, whether Chinese or American, has the same rights, whether or not they're currently being subjugated or not. End of civics lesson.
To address your other point, I at no point mentioned an embargo. I said that Yahoo should choose not to assist the Chinese in the repression of their people. That's a far cry from an enforced prohibition of trade with them. Yahoo SHOULD have said no and taken whatever consequences came - in this case, the Chinese gov't would be isolating itself with its own policies. Thus, there's no relationship to an embargo.
The dillusion that our companies can trade with, make money from, and collaborate with dictatorial powers while still somehow changing their systems is a popular one, but I feel wrong. Look at the corporate payouts in this country that keep politicians' mouths shut about Chinese human rights abuses and renewing MFN trading status. We're hypocrites, and we know it. But the opportunities are just too good and the money too inticing. We're collaborating with the bad guys at the expense of the Chinese people to make money, not to turn them into democrats.
I'm not talking about chivalry as much as I'm talking about what is simply the decent, ethical thing to do. If this were 20 years ago no company would ever have subscribed to such an agreement with the gov't. They would've been excoriated out of the market as willing to kowtow for dollars to Commies. Yet this is where we are, and today it's OK to make compromises, long as you're making money doing it.
And it's not necessarily against corporate motives, either. What sort of business can Yahoo expect to conduct in China if the gov't has so much control over them? The real answer apparently is only the sort of business the government says they can. the gov't can shut dow nthe 'net there tomorrow and poof go all of Yahoo's investment in a Chinese portal.
What high-grade crap that is.
China's "taking care of" 1 billion people? Bullshit. Those 1 billion take care of themselves while the gov't drills them in what to think, what to do for a living, and how many children to have. Curtailed civil rights? Sure, the latest gov't excesses are wrong, but try disappearing into a jail for 1 or more decades where nobody can find you because someone overhead you saying the local mayor was a jerk. It's not an uncommon experience in that neck of the woods.
The contention that the US government bears any resemblance to that of China is one that could only be made by a knee-jerk hippie asshole who's never known what it is to really be oppressed, to be publicly flogged for saying what you think, for having a family member rot in jail without a trial for unknown charges, to immolate yourself because it feels so hopeless, or to have to practice your religion in a dark basement with lookouts posted. Your mere mention of the two systems in the same sentence make my blood boil - how could you hold the rights maintained for you by this gov't in such low esteem? I have no idea, but the excressence you posted is exactly the sort of material you'd be imprisoned for if my gov't was as you imply it is. Your sad doctrine of moral equivalence makes me ill.
Nobody's saying the US gov't is perfect, but it sure as hell isn't China.
This is exactly my point. Yahoo should accept being banned from China's network instead of sanitizing its content as the Chinese government dictates. Yahoo should, indeed to keep its integrity must, pull its operation out of China if this is what's demanded of them. Participation in such an agreement inevitably puts the blood of Chinese political prisoners on the hands of Yahoo's board, and it's repellent.
There's a word for what you propose: appeasement. It's the acceptance of a dictate while maintaining the hope that they won't ask any more of you, that they'll be satisfied and you'll somehow be able to work under the new system. It failed to work in the late 30's, and it won't work in this analogous situation. No option? There's always an option, and the proper one here is to not collaborate with tyranny.
You're right though about our own government; it's composed of politicians who'd rather appease a large economic market than oppose oppression where it plainly exists, and I'm sure Yahoo takes some of its cues from them. None of that makes their behavior acceptable though.
When companies like Yahoo! look across the Pacific at a large group of people fed bullshit & held under the thumb of an oppressive dictatorship and all they can think of is how they can buddy up to the gov't in order to get a crack at these "new consumers", I'd say that we have larger corporate ethics problems than Enron, kids.
Yahoo! Where your civil liberties are what your government tells us they are.
I agree with you (and Mr. Anthony) that a portrayal is not advocacy, not at all, thank God & damn censorhip for it. But your position of "why can't we just let everyone do what they like without putting a stigma on it" is at best idealistic and at worst ignorant of the history of civil and women's rights in the past century.
There have always been and continue to be groups of people who have vested interests in keeping certain sexes, sexual orientations, and races in certain positions in society. Pretending that after women being explicitly, completely subservient in Western culture until the 1970's that all's well and good and we can all go our separate ways now, doing whatever we wish, is ridiculous, because sexism, like racism, still runs rampant in our society. Those who disagree need to look at the representation of women in government, corporate management, etc. On the level of women's employment alone, women work in more lower-level professions for less & per capita (70% of men's pay), and get promoted less often than men do. The average percentage of women in management drops geometrically the higher the pay grade, from middle management up to CEO. And most people seem to feel that's the way it should be, that all's well & good.
I'm not saying that there should be enforced parity, quotas, etc, not at all. But what our society needs to focus on for true equality is an equal start in life. Equal educations, equal expectations for girls and boys through to adulthood is what's needed, and it simply doesn't exist because it's not truly wanted. Hell, there's a movement starting to re-segregate public education by seq in some places under the rubric that it's just too hard for girls to learn with all those dominant boys around!
As an example -- my wife works in the finance department of a Fortune 500 company. In talking to coworkers and her boss about caring for the baby after birth, she still recieves surprised responses when she tells them no, she's not taking a year off to raise the baby, that she'll be back in 2 months. People act like she's short-changing her kid. The world you want doesn't exist and stands little chance of existing in the future because of that sort of persistent attitude.
With regard to our "short-sightedness" regarding space in general & meteor strikes in specific:
Suppose we were to find out & verify, ala Armageddon, that meteor X, about the diameter of Texas, composed of a mixture of metal ore, rock, and ice as most meteors are, is hurtling toward us to destroy earth & humanity. What those politicians you refer to as short-sighted realize that you may not is that there's not a damn thing we can do about it. There is no ICBM collection, no space shuttle that can do jack shit for us no matter what story Jerry Bruckheimer likes to tell. There's also no form of technology we even have an inkling of that can deflect a meteor large enough to do serious damage to our planet. You can do the calculations yourself, but there aren't enough nuclear weapons on the planet to put a dent in a rock that big. We'd all have to face the fact that we're fucked and everything wasn't meant to last.
For fuck's sake, if there's any situation it's not the US government's job to handle, that's it. It's bend-over-&-kiss-your-ass-goodbye time, because almost all of us would die and the state of the US budget would instantly cease to be a concern for any survivors.
American Physics Society head Robert Park has been saying that there's no research of any consequence going on in the ISS since its inception. Most science was cut out of the budget because of all the cost over-runs, Russia & US inability to synchronize production timelines, & other ISS bullshit. The Mars Pathfinder mission alone provided more new information about space & Mars than the ISS at a fraction of the cost.
Practically, being on the ISS is hell. You've got to wear ear protection because the noise of the machinery is like sitting front-row at a Metallica concert. It's smaller than you think due to missing modules that haven't been put in place yet, and you spend so much time putting it together and keeping it a safe, clean place to live there's no time to do anything else. It's like a tiny house that's so poorly designed all you can do is clean & fix it all day. Basically, without pouring tons MORE cash into this yawning vacuum of funding, it's a dead horse. Unless someone steps up to the plate with money, probably the US, this thing'll be abandoned within the decade. Good riddance. Fund more satellites & probes like Pathfinder.
Fat budget-heavy projects featuring humans simply aren't feasible without the confluence of factors seen in the 60's. With all the smart engineers in NASA it's troubling that they're still so driven by publicity & flash at the expense of real science.
My favorite quote of this most quotable film is...
Bob #2: "We're letting go of Michael Bolton & Samir Naya...Naga... Nagonna work here anymore, anyway. Ha!"
That, and the fax machine beat-down...ah...
--G
Not that these movies are of any real importance as an issue whatsoever, but here goes:
Despite people's misconceptions about Spielberg being a warm/fuzzy director, Lucas is not, nor has he ever been, 1/10th the director Spielberg is. Spielberg with some good writing support probably wanted to help, to try to turn the epI characters back into human beings for epII after Lucas' major pooch screw. Nobody knows what Lucas thinks - is he cashing in? Is he a megalomaniac? Who knows? Who gives a shit? All I know is the past two movies are tripe I wouldn't allow in my home to poison my DVD collection. And I really liked IV & V too, and thought VI wasn't great, but OK.
Nevermind what the fanboys think, the prequels have been fucked over by one thing -- Lucas' total control over all aspects of the project. The SW prequels are a tragedy caused by a lack of hollywood industry control & standards, not an overbearance of them. Any major studio management/production team on any other project would've seen the dailies of epI & II and demanded a change in directors, but because Lucas has the $ and carte blanche to do what he wants he never has to answer to anyone, and with his inability to write or direct simple believable dialogue he's the biggest liability to his own legacy.
Think about it -- since the first three, outside of some TV production he hadn't directed a feature film since Jedi in '83. That's 16 fucking years out of practice. So now he's a hack, and somewhere deep I think he knows it. He should've been a deeply involved producer and brought in a big-time director that knows how to direct actors instead of mainframes, who hasn't been out of the game for a generation, someone like Spielberg, for all of these prequels.
Despite the verbosity above, none of it really matters for me - to me it's just movies, give or take. But to Lucas I have to assume it's something more, that it's art, and he's actively fucking it to shit. Too bad. I guess even the best painters eventually became bad imitators of themselves, but it doesn't make it any fun to watch.
It's obvious Sen. Boucher fails to understand that the RIAA's undertaking steps to protect American CDs from copyright infringment is a thoughtful action by the responsible corporate sector of our economy toward preventing terrorists from profiting from the piracy trade. They're acting in our best interests, can't you all see that? Boucher and the rest of you rabble-rousers should get out of the way and let our congress, the administration and the corporate sector protect our country before another attack occurs.
Mr. Anthony,
Are there any Linux puns yet cavorting in the happy land of the Ogrechobee? A daemon amongst the demons? If not, on bahalf of Slashdot at large, I'd like to beg for one.
I know many people are aware that most "bestseller lists", even the venerable New York Times lists, are faulty, subject to bias, and sometimes influenced by publishers & retailers, but does it ever stick in your craw that almost all organizations claiming to list the best-selling books of the week / month / year purposefully exclude children's / sci-fi / romance literature? Does it ever matter to you, or are you happy with your royalties & fan mail?
No matter what some may think of your work (I enjoyed it but grew out of it a long time ago) you remain a successful writer making a living by writing, which is more than most writers of "meaningful", well-reviewed, yet inscrutable literature can say. What are your feelings about the lack of respect much popular literature gets amongst these "cri-tics"?
Apologies, couldn't avoid the Xanth pun there at the end. I'm sure I've got the first dozen or so Xanth books along with most of IoI in a box somewhere in the attic back home...
All 99.999% of the public gives a shit about is if their car stereo plays CDs and sounds "fine". Most people will look at the price tag on the Sony deck and laugh, as anyone who isn't a damn moron should.
In any case, for $600 I can get a good MP3/CD player with a front input AND either an Ipod (5GB) or a Creative Nomad 3 Jukebox to plug into it. With this configuration I get the open MP3 format instead of Sony ATRACs AND the ability to take my MP3 player anywhere & sync betwen it and my computer, all for less than half the price of the Sony deck.
What a wasteful piece of shit. Not even enthusiasts should like this thing. Only people who should are those who like to blow hard-earned money on crap.
Maybe it could just be like taking that millionaire sponsorship thing to another level. Get Pepsi to chip in as well, to have their logo on everything.
I vote for Britney to go along as fuck toy / mascot.
Jon has his head completely up his keester if he thinks Mencken was somehow a non-biased, non-sensationalistic journalist. Quite the opposite; it was his stances and deft, witty articulation of them based on fact as well as innuendo that made him a great journalist. Hell, it was the age of yellow journalism. Mencken, Winchell et al were always looking for any story that could make the most people plunk down a nickel and pick up a paper.
Take the Scopes trial alone. Mencken, goes down to the south and turns a stupid little rigged case into a media feeding frenzy, makes it a battle between the theory of evolution and the forces of ignorance, when it was really nothing much to get jazzed about. Like the Smart kidnapping business the story was in the telling, not the facts themselves.
Thus it has always been, thus it always shall be, and thank God for it. The news needs readers to survive and to get readers, like it or not, you have to entertain them in one way or another.
It's an old saw, but if you don't like what's out there, don't watch. Turn off CNN & pick up the papers of your choice, which have overall had relatively little Smart coverage. If CNN lost even just 10% of its audience during times it was covering this thing it'd drop it like a bad habit -- it's the fact that the opposite occurs that keeps it on the air and that's our fault, not CNN's. It's your eyes that create the market, and advertisers are paying because YOU are watching & reading. That, Jon, is a good thing, not a bad thing, because it makes the responsibility for what's on the air ours, not AOL/Time Warner's. Stop paying attention to the crap and it'll die.