Wait. You're calling out the parent for poorly supporting a claim, then you say: "He has a bunch of money, therefore he knows what he's doing."? You can't see the hypocrisy there?
If CSIR-Tech was privately run, it would have been shut down long ago.
HA HA! Good one. If CSIR-Tech were privately run, as soon as quarterly earnings showed a decline they would start suing anyone and everyone remotely connected to their patents. As soon as this was shown to more profitable than whatever those scientists had been doing they'd announce a "restructuring" and fire most of them, replacing them with patent lawyers.
All right, now you've lost me. The question that I asked was not, "Why do you dislike the Switch?" it was, "Why are they done if they don't release for third parties?"
I can't follow how anything that you're talking about addresses that question anymore.
Well... mostly that was just complaining about system performance, along with the lack of a second screen. That's hardware. You also said, "I had hints of that thought with the Wii," for an unexplained reason, even though you also said that it was interesting and novel. So I don't know why you almost didn't like the Wii, but there isn't that much setting consoles apart from one another. Unless you were unhappy about clicking on the little buttons in the Wii menu, it's probably hardware related.
Ah, I see. I had read your previous comment as "They need to release for 3rd party consoles (because they'll be insolvent otherwise)" but you meant it as "They should release for 3rd party consoles (because I don't like their hardware)".
Why are they done if they don't release for third parties? The Switch seems to be doing fine, their handhelds have always been big money makers, two generations ago they had the top-selling console and that wound up being one of the best selling consoles ever. Not three years ago they had something like $10 billion in cash reserves, and lackluster Wii U sales haven't cost them anywhere close to that much.
I don't mean to pick on you here, but I see a lot of baseless doom and gloom when it comes to Nintendo and... where the hell does that come from? Why would you, or anyone, think this? Where did you get the idea that they're on the verge of needing to pull a Sega?
Well, first of all, that language is too definitive. I was being more careful in my previous posts, but arguments always seem to lead to more extreme positions than originally intended. I should have said something like, "I'm trying to suggest that not being current could do that." - I was trying to point out that what speech is, and what free speech protects, is more complicated than the parent poster was suggesting, not that I knew exactly what those things were. No one knows exactly what those things are.
For the rest: Maybe i should ask what it is which you think makes those Roman diatribes speech in the present day? Speech isn't a solo affair, after all, it needs an audience and everyone at whom those diatribes were directed is gone. Someone now can read these things, and possibly be interested, but they are not the subject of the communication, they are an outside observer.
The other aspect is: even if this is speech, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that it's constitutionally protected. You brush aside the exceptions to free speech, but they certainly aren't "very specific" (pornography is whatever Justice Stewart says it is?) and non-political speech has been inconsistently protected by the courts. Under an originalist interpretation of the constitution I don't think it would be crazy to suggest that it isn't protected by the constitution at all. Though I haven't read the Federalist Papers, maybe there's someone in there expounding on the virtues of free expression.
None of this says that free expression isn't protected, just that perhaps it isn't protected by the constitution.
Ugh, did that make any sense? I'm tired, I think I'm just rambling at this point. Does this law even apply to the source material anyway? It seems to be specific to search engines.
I'm not trying to suggest that being recorded is what makes the label of "speech" questionable, I'm trying to suggest that not being current is what does that. Particularly when it comes to free speech - the point of free speech is to allow for political dissent, and while those Roman diatribes were political speech at the time, they're now reference material.
Maybe I can clarify what I'm trying to get at here. Let's say that you're talking in a forum and someone says something that you don't like. You start to write your own diatribe in response but at some point you realize that everything you're trying to say has already been said by Marcus Aurelius. So, feeling good about yourself for being so smart, you delete what you wrote and instead just quote him. You contribute none of your own words to your forum post, it is just a quote. Who is speaking, in this situation?
What I'm saying is that in this situation you are the one who is speaking, the only one who is speaking, even though none of the words are yours. Speech, at least in the context of free speech, is about communication in the present day, and if by quoting someone else you are communicating your thoughts then you are speaking and the person who you are quoting is (probably) not. (Exception if you're just regurgitating what someone else said, without believing or understanding it. Then they are communicating through you.)
So this is what I mean by the difference between speech and history, even though you could probably come up with a better name for old speech than just "history." It's important to keep in mind what we're protecting and why when we talk about free speech though, it's specifically political speech. It's not free expression. We have laws against obscenity and some forms of hate speech and rules against swearing on air and so on.
Not when the "something" is obviously unconstitutional.
Right... "obviously." Bleh, I knew when I said that that it would be controversial. Controversy isn't a problem, I don't mind discussing things, but invariably someone doesn't read all of the replies, or two people post at the same time or something, and I do mind repeating myself.
All right, if by "obviously unconstitutional" you're talking about free speech, then you can read the thread started by the insulting guy. He seemed to think this was about free speech too. I don't think that's so obvious. If you're talking about some other constitutional clause, then by all means share.
For your bit about "something needs to be done" you can read what the AC said and what I said in reply, but the gist is that when you're starting from nothing it is hard to go down. Possible maybe, but difficult. What we have right now when it comes to privacy is, almost literally, nothing. So almost any gesture in that direction would be welcomed by me, and this particular law is not as cataclysmic as you all are seeming to suggest. (Though, granted, it all comes down to how it's enforced.)
The thing about arguing via easily parroted slogan is that you tend to miss out on subtleties like what it is, exactly, that you're arguing about. I can tell from your previous post that you think this is a discussion about free speech, and I assume that's your "defining characteristic of the United States" which you think you're defending.
I don't mean to dismiss that entirely, freedom of speech probably factors into this somewhere, but speech is a notoriously difficult thing to nail down and its freedom has never been absolute. Not even here in the US. I could make a comparison between what the summary is describing and libel, but let me point something else out instead: "after a significant lapse in time from its first publication" is stipulated as a requirement for this law. Does this sound like suppressing speech, or does it sound like burying history?
Or do you not distinguish between those things? "Free speech" is the term that's used, but speech is transient, ephemeral. It is of the moment. Once the issue has passed and "no longer material to current public debate or discourse" then it's not so crazy to think that what was said at that time is no longer speech, but rather history.
History, of course, has its own value, but that's a separate discussion.
On the one hand, this is a reasonable point. On the other... the PATRIOT Act wasn't created in a vacuum. It took functioning intelligence and law enforcement services and upended them all because of a single failure. If we had no law enforcement whatsoever, and then some disaster struck, is the right response to that, "No, we should just keep on having no law enforcement at all unless we can be totally certain that it's perfect."?
There are perhaps some dystopian scenarios where anarchy is the preferable state, but this doesn't seem to be one of those.
While this law would be incredibly hard to enforce, maybe we shouldn't be so down on politicians actually doing something, anything at all, in favor of protecting privacy?
As far as I'm concerned public data is much less of a problem than private data collection, but I'm really glad to see at least some legislative effort being directed at privacy in this country. As it stands now we have almost no protections at all.
Regarding your cynicism about suppressing political speech: any law can be abused, but given the stipulation about public discourse it seems as though it would be harder for a public figure like a politician to abuse this than it would be for someone else.
The Republicans could be authoritarian, as was seen by the Reign of Terror after the French Revolution.
Robespierre was authoritarian, or he became so over time. The fact that he seized power does not mean that the republicans (small r - not a political party) of the French revolution were authoritarian. The Rein of Terror was... well it depends how narrowly you want to define that. A portion of it was purely political, in support of maintaining the power of the committee of public safety, but always under the guise of rooting out enemies of the revolution. In other words, monarchists. In that respect it was explicitly anti-authoritarian.
Yes, if you're making an appeal to authority then you're acting in an authoritarian manner. And yes, republicans (of any stripe) can act in both an authoritarian and anti-authoritarian manner at different times. One hopes that they do - if they stick to only one of those then it puts them on one of the extremes of either fascism or anarchy. This doesn't change anything though: if a person on the left occasionally has right-leaning opinions or tendencies, it doesn't mean that the left isn't really the left. It just means that this particular person isn't all the way on the left.
And neither does the right have a monopoly on authoritarianism.
This is literally what it means to be right wing. Look, I'll spell this out: the terms right and left wing come from the French revolution. When the National Assembly moved from Versailles to Paris the new assembly hall had seating which was split in two. In Versailles the members had sat according to district, but in Paris they started sitting according to ideology - monarchists, who supported the king (i.e.: the authority) sat on the right, and republicans, who opposed the king, sat on the left. That is where the terms come from, and that is what the terms continue to mean today.
What you seem to be suggesting is that anyone who tells you what to do is acting as an authoritarian. That is not true. An anarchist can certainly boss you around, if they are a bossy person. Being a bully does not make you an authoritarian. An authoritarian is someone who favors a strong central authority, an anti-authoritarian is someone who favors a weak central authority, or no central authority at all.
Authoritarianism does not have a monopoly on violence, I don't know where you got that idea. I'll repeat myself: "authoritarian" is not a catch-all label for "everything which is bad."
Authoritarianism is about promoting an authority - a person or central body who will... do what needs be done. Usually this means protecting you from whatever it is that you are afraid of, possibly because you've been instructed to be afraid of that thing. Facism is the governmental system at the extreme of this. This is right-wing.
Anti-authoritarianism is about tearing that down - opposition to central rule. Anarchy is the "governmental system" at the extreme of this. This is left-wing.
This is fundamentally what the left/right split is about, this is practically the definition. There is nothing authoritarian about anarchy.
It's true that if you're killed by jack-booted thugs then you're just as dead as if you're killed by radical anarchists, but this does not mean that there's no value in distinguishing between them. For one thing, if you just start labeling everything bad about the government as "authoritarian" then you push people further into radical anti-authoritarianism: "If authoritarianism is always bad, then that means that fighting the power is always good... right?"
I don't know what you mean by "the people" becoming the state. Sometimes an authoritarian figure will claim to be acting on behalf of the people, and not of the state, but even though their actions may be similar to an openly fascist leader the rhetoric is still influential - it effects how people think of themselves and their role as citizens and ultimately what the leader can and can not do. Further, this is not the inevitable consequence of revolution.... I wrote a whole thing about federalists and anti-federalists, but I deleted it because I think I'm just rambling now.
You're right to criticize left-wing ideologues for this, but "authoritarian" is the wrong word when you're describing someone who has been labeled as an enemy of the revolution (or whatever). Those are opposite extremes, and authoritarianism is the domain of the right - the actions are similar, but the rhetoric is different.
It's the difference between an "enemy of the state" and an "enemy of the people." It seems silly to nitpick this, since they're both just excuses to get rid of someone, but they come from different places and someone who is anti-authoritarian can wind up on the left extreme just as someone who is anti-dissident can wind up on the right.
So you're saying that porn creates perverts. This is, at best, only part of the reason why child pornography is banned. I would question whether it was reasoned through even as carefully as you have done here - most laws like this one are grounded in moral outrage, rather than any consideration of the societal impact of the crime in question or how these laws may shape behavior. Your explanation sounds more like an excuse than a motivator: "Pedophilia? Ew. I have enough trouble imagining my daughter with someone her own age, and the whole thing grosses me out anyway. Also, that Rupert Murdoch fellow has been making boatloads of money getting the public good and scared about their children, even though those children are safer than ever. (Not making this part up - before Murdoch got all political, this was how he sold newspapers.) There must be some reason we can come up with to ban this."
For evidence, let me point out the fact that it is not just the abusers and their products which are banned - drawings, cartoons, and other victimless depictions of child pornography also carry exactly the same penalty as pornography in which actual children were involved. The excuse for this ban is the same reason you give above: porn creates perverts. Never mind that this claim is dubious at best, that's not the important part of this. The real reason is: "Ew."
I kinda like it, though I like it more for political reasons than I do for it's nerdy factor. MSM (as it's used on TV) is a buzzword intended to lump everyone who disagrees with you together into an outgroup - "You shouldn't listen to the MSM, they're all the same. Only we, who are not the MSM, only we are trustworthy."
These kind of buzzwords get used for a lot of stuff. AGW, for example, was originally a denier phrase: global warming was becoming increasingly difficult to deny completely, so the 'A' was tacked on to imply that the human element wasn't certain. Go to Google and search for "climate change" and then search for "anthropogenic global warming" and compare the results - you'll get a lot more fringe sites and conspiracy theorists with the second search.
Or how about Xbox One? Microsoft's marketing department thought that they could sell some additional Xbones by confusing people into thinking they were buying something else.
Sure you can laugh at all the smoke and mirrors, but if you start adopting their terms then you're granting them, in some measure at least, exactly what they're after. So I appreciate this resistance to using the stupid buzzwords. It serves a function, even if it is pedantic.
One presumes that it won't. The summary claims that this is a new thing, reusable sponges like this haven't existed before, so this would have to differ in some respect from an existing product. Do those belts function via a coating, perhaps? One which maybe wears off over time, or contaminates the oil or something?
I'd hate to think that this wasn't the revolutionary product that the article is claiming. Surely we would never be mislead by the internet.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait. You're calling out the parent for poorly supporting a claim, then you say: "He has a bunch of money, therefore he knows what he's doing."? You can't see the hypocrisy there?
If CSIR-Tech was privately run, it would have been shut down long ago.
HA HA! Good one. If CSIR-Tech were privately run, as soon as quarterly earnings showed a decline they would start suing anyone and everyone remotely connected to their patents. As soon as this was shown to more profitable than whatever those scientists had been doing they'd announce a "restructuring" and fire most of them, replacing them with patent lawyers.
... man, ha. ::wipes away tear::
Heh heh, "shut down"
All right, now you've lost me. The question that I asked was not, "Why do you dislike the Switch?" it was, "Why are they done if they don't release for third parties?"
I can't follow how anything that you're talking about addresses that question anymore.
Well... mostly that was just complaining about system performance, along with the lack of a second screen. That's hardware. You also said, "I had hints of that thought with the Wii," for an unexplained reason, even though you also said that it was interesting and novel. So I don't know why you almost didn't like the Wii, but there isn't that much setting consoles apart from one another. Unless you were unhappy about clicking on the little buttons in the Wii menu, it's probably hardware related.
Ah, I see. I had read your previous comment as "They need to release for 3rd party consoles (because they'll be insolvent otherwise)" but you meant it as "They should release for 3rd party consoles (because I don't like their hardware)".
Why are they done if they don't release for third parties? The Switch seems to be doing fine, their handhelds have always been big money makers, two generations ago they had the top-selling console and that wound up being one of the best selling consoles ever. Not three years ago they had something like $10 billion in cash reserves, and lackluster Wii U sales haven't cost them anywhere close to that much.
I don't mean to pick on you here, but I see a lot of baseless doom and gloom when it comes to Nintendo and... where the hell does that come from? Why would you, or anyone, think this? Where did you get the idea that they're on the verge of needing to pull a Sega?
Well, first of all, that language is too definitive. I was being more careful in my previous posts, but arguments always seem to lead to more extreme positions than originally intended. I should have said something like, "I'm trying to suggest that not being current could do that." - I was trying to point out that what speech is, and what free speech protects, is more complicated than the parent poster was suggesting, not that I knew exactly what those things were. No one knows exactly what those things are.
For the rest: Maybe i should ask what it is which you think makes those Roman diatribes speech in the present day? Speech isn't a solo affair, after all, it needs an audience and everyone at whom those diatribes were directed is gone. Someone now can read these things, and possibly be interested, but they are not the subject of the communication, they are an outside observer.
The other aspect is: even if this is speech, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that it's constitutionally protected. You brush aside the exceptions to free speech, but they certainly aren't "very specific" (pornography is whatever Justice Stewart says it is?) and non-political speech has been inconsistently protected by the courts. Under an originalist interpretation of the constitution I don't think it would be crazy to suggest that it isn't protected by the constitution at all. Though I haven't read the Federalist Papers, maybe there's someone in there expounding on the virtues of free expression.
None of this says that free expression isn't protected, just that perhaps it isn't protected by the constitution.
Could you source this? All I remember is something about "nothing actionable."
Ugh, did that make any sense? I'm tired, I think I'm just rambling at this point. Does this law even apply to the source material anyway? It seems to be specific to search engines.
I'm not trying to suggest that being recorded is what makes the label of "speech" questionable, I'm trying to suggest that not being current is what does that. Particularly when it comes to free speech - the point of free speech is to allow for political dissent, and while those Roman diatribes were political speech at the time, they're now reference material.
Maybe I can clarify what I'm trying to get at here. Let's say that you're talking in a forum and someone says something that you don't like. You start to write your own diatribe in response but at some point you realize that everything you're trying to say has already been said by Marcus Aurelius. So, feeling good about yourself for being so smart, you delete what you wrote and instead just quote him. You contribute none of your own words to your forum post, it is just a quote. Who is speaking, in this situation?
What I'm saying is that in this situation you are the one who is speaking, the only one who is speaking, even though none of the words are yours. Speech, at least in the context of free speech, is about communication in the present day, and if by quoting someone else you are communicating your thoughts then you are speaking and the person who you are quoting is (probably) not. (Exception if you're just regurgitating what someone else said, without believing or understanding it. Then they are communicating through you.)
So this is what I mean by the difference between speech and history, even though you could probably come up with a better name for old speech than just "history." It's important to keep in mind what we're protecting and why when we talk about free speech though, it's specifically political speech. It's not free expression. We have laws against obscenity and some forms of hate speech and rules against swearing on air and so on.
Not when the "something" is obviously unconstitutional.
Right... "obviously." Bleh, I knew when I said that that it would be controversial. Controversy isn't a problem, I don't mind discussing things, but invariably someone doesn't read all of the replies, or two people post at the same time or something, and I do mind repeating myself.
All right, if by "obviously unconstitutional" you're talking about free speech, then you can read the thread started by the insulting guy. He seemed to think this was about free speech too. I don't think that's so obvious. If you're talking about some other constitutional clause, then by all means share.
For your bit about "something needs to be done" you can read what the AC said and what I said in reply, but the gist is that when you're starting from nothing it is hard to go down. Possible maybe, but difficult. What we have right now when it comes to privacy is, almost literally, nothing. So almost any gesture in that direction would be welcomed by me, and this particular law is not as cataclysmic as you all are seeming to suggest. (Though, granted, it all comes down to how it's enforced.)
The thing about arguing via easily parroted slogan is that you tend to miss out on subtleties like what it is, exactly, that you're arguing about. I can tell from your previous post that you think this is a discussion about free speech, and I assume that's your "defining characteristic of the United States" which you think you're defending.
I don't mean to dismiss that entirely, freedom of speech probably factors into this somewhere, but speech is a notoriously difficult thing to nail down and its freedom has never been absolute. Not even here in the US. I could make a comparison between what the summary is describing and libel, but let me point something else out instead: "after a significant lapse in time from its first publication" is stipulated as a requirement for this law. Does this sound like suppressing speech, or does it sound like burying history?
Or do you not distinguish between those things? "Free speech" is the term that's used, but speech is transient, ephemeral. It is of the moment. Once the issue has passed and "no longer material to current public debate or discourse" then it's not so crazy to think that what was said at that time is no longer speech, but rather history.
History, of course, has its own value, but that's a separate discussion.
You fuck off too friend. Thanks for keeping up a high level of discourse, I certainly find your argument to be compelling.
On the one hand, this is a reasonable point. On the other... the PATRIOT Act wasn't created in a vacuum. It took functioning intelligence and law enforcement services and upended them all because of a single failure. If we had no law enforcement whatsoever, and then some disaster struck, is the right response to that, "No, we should just keep on having no law enforcement at all unless we can be totally certain that it's perfect."?
There are perhaps some dystopian scenarios where anarchy is the preferable state, but this doesn't seem to be one of those.
Oh for fuck's sake. I wrote a whole reply here and then misclicked on the cancel button. I'm not going to write that again.
The short: your tautology is a gross oversimplification. Bad legislation may be bad legislation, but it can none the less produce positive effects.
While this law would be incredibly hard to enforce, maybe we shouldn't be so down on politicians actually doing something, anything at all, in favor of protecting privacy?
As far as I'm concerned public data is much less of a problem than private data collection, but I'm really glad to see at least some legislative effort being directed at privacy in this country. As it stands now we have almost no protections at all.
Regarding your cynicism about suppressing political speech: any law can be abused, but given the stipulation about public discourse it seems as though it would be harder for a public figure like a politician to abuse this than it would be for someone else.
The Republicans could be authoritarian, as was seen by the Reign of Terror after the French Revolution.
Robespierre was authoritarian, or he became so over time. The fact that he seized power does not mean that the republicans (small r - not a political party) of the French revolution were authoritarian. The Rein of Terror was... well it depends how narrowly you want to define that. A portion of it was purely political, in support of maintaining the power of the committee of public safety, but always under the guise of rooting out enemies of the revolution. In other words, monarchists. In that respect it was explicitly anti-authoritarian.
Yes, if you're making an appeal to authority then you're acting in an authoritarian manner. And yes, republicans (of any stripe) can act in both an authoritarian and anti-authoritarian manner at different times. One hopes that they do - if they stick to only one of those then it puts them on one of the extremes of either fascism or anarchy. This doesn't change anything though: if a person on the left occasionally has right-leaning opinions or tendencies, it doesn't mean that the left isn't really the left. It just means that this particular person isn't all the way on the left.
I'm done, this feels like arguing with that idiot in the white house himself. You go ahead and make up your own facts if you want.
And neither does the right have a monopoly on authoritarianism.
This is literally what it means to be right wing. Look, I'll spell this out: the terms right and left wing come from the French revolution. When the National Assembly moved from Versailles to Paris the new assembly hall had seating which was split in two. In Versailles the members had sat according to district, but in Paris they started sitting according to ideology - monarchists, who supported the king (i.e.: the authority) sat on the right, and republicans, who opposed the king, sat on the left. That is where the terms come from, and that is what the terms continue to mean today.
What you seem to be suggesting is that anyone who tells you what to do is acting as an authoritarian. That is not true. An anarchist can certainly boss you around, if they are a bossy person. Being a bully does not make you an authoritarian. An authoritarian is someone who favors a strong central authority, an anti-authoritarian is someone who favors a weak central authority, or no central authority at all.
Authoritarianism does not have a monopoly on violence, I don't know where you got that idea. I'll repeat myself: "authoritarian" is not a catch-all label for "everything which is bad."
Authoritarianism is about promoting an authority - a person or central body who will... do what needs be done. Usually this means protecting you from whatever it is that you are afraid of, possibly because you've been instructed to be afraid of that thing. Facism is the governmental system at the extreme of this. This is right-wing.
... I wrote a whole thing about federalists and anti-federalists, but I deleted it because I think I'm just rambling now.
Anti-authoritarianism is about tearing that down - opposition to central rule. Anarchy is the "governmental system" at the extreme of this. This is left-wing.
This is fundamentally what the left/right split is about, this is practically the definition. There is nothing authoritarian about anarchy.
It's true that if you're killed by jack-booted thugs then you're just as dead as if you're killed by radical anarchists, but this does not mean that there's no value in distinguishing between them. For one thing, if you just start labeling everything bad about the government as "authoritarian" then you push people further into radical anti-authoritarianism: "If authoritarianism is always bad, then that means that fighting the power is always good... right?"
I don't know what you mean by "the people" becoming the state. Sometimes an authoritarian figure will claim to be acting on behalf of the people, and not of the state, but even though their actions may be similar to an openly fascist leader the rhetoric is still influential - it effects how people think of themselves and their role as citizens and ultimately what the leader can and can not do. Further, this is not the inevitable consequence of revolution.
You're right to criticize left-wing ideologues for this, but "authoritarian" is the wrong word when you're describing someone who has been labeled as an enemy of the revolution (or whatever). Those are opposite extremes, and authoritarianism is the domain of the right - the actions are similar, but the rhetoric is different.
It's the difference between an "enemy of the state" and an "enemy of the people." It seems silly to nitpick this, since they're both just excuses to get rid of someone, but they come from different places and someone who is anti-authoritarian can wind up on the left extreme just as someone who is anti-dissident can wind up on the right.
So you're saying that porn creates perverts. This is, at best, only part of the reason why child pornography is banned. I would question whether it was reasoned through even as carefully as you have done here - most laws like this one are grounded in moral outrage, rather than any consideration of the societal impact of the crime in question or how these laws may shape behavior. Your explanation sounds more like an excuse than a motivator: "Pedophilia? Ew. I have enough trouble imagining my daughter with someone her own age, and the whole thing grosses me out anyway. Also, that Rupert Murdoch fellow has been making boatloads of money getting the public good and scared about their children, even though those children are safer than ever. (Not making this part up - before Murdoch got all political, this was how he sold newspapers.) There must be some reason we can come up with to ban this."
For evidence, let me point out the fact that it is not just the abusers and their products which are banned - drawings, cartoons, and other victimless depictions of child pornography also carry exactly the same penalty as pornography in which actual children were involved. The excuse for this ban is the same reason you give above: porn creates perverts. Never mind that this claim is dubious at best, that's not the important part of this. The real reason is: "Ew."
I kinda like it, though I like it more for political reasons than I do for it's nerdy factor. MSM (as it's used on TV) is a buzzword intended to lump everyone who disagrees with you together into an outgroup - "You shouldn't listen to the MSM, they're all the same. Only we, who are not the MSM, only we are trustworthy."
These kind of buzzwords get used for a lot of stuff. AGW, for example, was originally a denier phrase: global warming was becoming increasingly difficult to deny completely, so the 'A' was tacked on to imply that the human element wasn't certain. Go to Google and search for "climate change" and then search for "anthropogenic global warming" and compare the results - you'll get a lot more fringe sites and conspiracy theorists with the second search.
Or how about Xbox One? Microsoft's marketing department thought that they could sell some additional Xbones by confusing people into thinking they were buying something else.
Sure you can laugh at all the smoke and mirrors, but if you start adopting their terms then you're granting them, in some measure at least, exactly what they're after. So I appreciate this resistance to using the stupid buzzwords. It serves a function, even if it is pedantic.
One presumes that it won't. The summary claims that this is a new thing, reusable sponges like this haven't existed before, so this would have to differ in some respect from an existing product. Do those belts function via a coating, perhaps? One which maybe wears off over time, or contaminates the oil or something?
I'd hate to think that this wasn't the revolutionary product that the article is claiming. Surely we would never be mislead by the internet.