When Ted Turner colorized all those movie classics. Or the choice to release a movie in a foreign market dubbed (I'm talking about foreign films brought to the US and only released dubbed by the distributor).
The owner of the rights to the film can do with it what he choses. Simple.
Turner owned those reels of movies and he did what he wanted. Of course the public backlash stopped it in the end.
Similarly local distributors in a country count as the owner's proxy in those states. But the general dislike of dubbing has stopped them from releasing dubbed versions of Crouching Tiger and Life is Beautiful. Of course it has also limited the distribution of foreign movies (the assumption being people don't like dubbing but only film critics like to read subtitles so you can only release it in art houses).
Like an earlier poster said, anyone who doesn't own rights to a movie but works on it is just an employee.
A good example is Fox owning the original Star Wars. Lucas had to buy it back from them. Of course when he did he added in "Greedo shooting first."
Originally Fox could have stopped him from adding it. Later they couldn't. Neither could the LucasFilm employees or Harrison Ford.
Control of the final product is one of the benefits of being a big time director.
I really gotta ask because she has about as much push in the industry as I do (read: none). Now you might say that she is an influential founder of the sound of blah-blah-blah in the era of the 70's/60's/whenever folk/blues but the current problem is this:
None of the large, influential artists of today are making statements like this. Courtney Love? What, between her "acting" and holding back Nirvana material? Yeah, she is a great advocate to have for P2P... Even the loudest voices are a) still on the industry teat and b) not making any waves other than a post to their website.
And then there is the problem of the Metallicas and Dr Dre's of the world (read: the bands people would listen to if they spoke out) are on the side of the RIAA.
Don't just blame them. A lot of more "with it" artists aren't on the free and open bandwagon. Missy Elliot, the Beastie Boys, and the Chemical Brothers are all notorious for not licensing their material for sampling and willing to fight to protect it. Do you expect any of them to jump for a reasonable P2P system?
They might all be for a free Tibet but as long as it doesn't mess with them getting paid.
So what will happen: 1. RIAA will push out their P2P solution. 2. It will fail. 3. Free P2P will continue to thrive, above the levels of old ratio MP3 ftp sites (remember those days?) but below the heyday of Napster. 4. The industry and its top 100 artists will pat each other on the back and present gifts of ivory backscratchers to each other for a job well done.
You seem to be putting a lot of stock in the common End User pushing development. In the RW though, this is not true (especially in high tech).
The thing that pushes technology are Big Clients like the government, universities, and businesses.
A technological innovation needs to find a niche of a small customers with a big need. The key is that it is far easier to get one university to buy 5000 of X instead of convincing 5000 Joe Sixpacks to buy one.
Once the groundwork has been laid out by the Big Clients then you can push it out to the masses. Big Clients are more tolerant of less reliable technology and bleeding edge because the risk is always worth the possible $$$ infusion to the bottom line.
Joe Sixpack just wants things that a) make life easier b) entertain him.
Do you think end users were ready for the Internet in 1983? Or those massive military cellphones in the 70's? No. The product had to be refined and, once it was and could be produced massively and cheaply, it could find commercial applications.
You mention RDMA solutions (the dream of No More Local Devices as there is bandwidth enough for everyone). Things like Infiniband. Well, Infiniband is tanking because it requires too much special hardware and is too specialized for businesses to get it up and running. Still, many are using it in datacenters. Why? Because the gains outway the fact that the sysadmins are running around all day debugging them.
And so, by your hypothesis, if some hardware company put out the technology there for the Joe Sixpacks, the industry would boom. Sorry, guy, but end users are very resistent to change. And it would go the way of DivX recorders. The only thing that keeps a lot of tech alive is the for-free work of enthusiasts: Linux, the DivX codec, etc. By your theory if some company would have released a distro based on the 1.0 kernel, it could have survived purely on the Best Buy customers alone. The "possibility" of future releases would keep the end users coming back for more. Heh, I don't even think you believe that.
One thing I learned when listening to the Steven Soderbourgh commentary on Traffic was that... set your faces to shocked... politicians are much more objective than you think.
The problem is that we, the constituents, do not elect them for objectivity but for being subjective, stubborn, and close-minded. It's true... that's how you get elected (or stay in office).
So what is Richard Clarke doing here? It is quite possible he is beginning to switch popular perception. Using "hacker" correctly is a good start. And I assume most of us can agree that this is a step in the right direction.
The problem is that too many of the posts in this thread say "He isn't going far enough, therefore its a complete waste of time." because "the end users will never know any better."
Well I hate to say it, but this is how you get the end users informed: slowly start moving in the right direction, educating the masses, letting them put their fears to rest bit by bit. I think Clarke could really start something here IF we, the supposed IT professionals, didn't just discard what he says right off of the bat.
As a sidebar, I always wondered why people don't try for more publicity campaigns to get laws passed... especially in foreign countries. Bush can say no to Kyoto because the American people don't care/want him to. You can't much expect to force a population to do what you want by saying "You are an idiot! Think differently!" (and it hasn't ever worked).
So why don't all concerned parties deluge primetime with an ad campaign? Slowly change popular opinion? Maybe in a year you could get huge differences. The key to remember is that politicians are nothing more than fonts of popular opinion. Clinton proved it. G Dubs is proving it: it doesn't matter what you think it matters what the people believe you think by what you say.
Clarke seems to be doing that but since it isn't the Free Software/Free Beer/Free Nekkid solution so many on/. want it gets tossed out in favor of waiting for something better to come along. Heh, if that is your modus operandi, you're going to be waiting a very long time.
Ok this is probably going to get me flamed to hell so I'll try to be as untroll-like as possible: I think it is wrong to think ill of someone who is rich and not automatically a humanitarian.
The key difference between democracy and socialism is that the first asks what to do with your money, the second commands you. In the democracy Money is Free as in free to do with it what ever the hell you want.
Ok, so he didn't give it to Third World Debt relief or Cancer research. Fine, then I guess he won't be on your Christmas card list. But then I know guys who look down at you if you don't give money to their religous charities or missionary funds to convert the backwoods of some country to Religon X by telling them how ungodly they are. Just as it is their (and your) choice to give to the funds you so wish, it is anyone else's to decline.
All those red dots are heading right for our tiny blue dot!
Re:The creator are sexists
on
Social Robot?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The Register had a good article on pronoun usage.
In English the masculine is used in gender-neutral cases where the gender cannot be specified before hand ("The officer should have his standard equipment present").
The feminine is used in cases of abstract personification ("The United States has her hands full") of a concept or an object (Freedom or automobiles).
Much like a car, to give it "personality" would move it from the first case to the second. Thus when you give a generic machine a specific voice, it is (usually) female).
But, as with all usage, it is up to the user. There is a strong push for gender neutral language in most things. The problem is that in cases that are purely up to personal taste, these rules apply.
So you can't tell someone to not make their robot feminine. But you can tell someone to make their manual not masculine.
And you seem to think their purpose was purely political (ie that there was a certain quota that needed to be maintained so they added a female robot to offset the male engineers). I really think it is much simplier than that.
This reads as FUD to me. A bunch of unverified concerns regarding a weapon that isn't off of the drawing board.
And FYI, the purpose of the laser is to attack electronics targets not to blind civilians. Blinding is a side effect everyone is afraid of (and, as FUD is want to do, implied to be the real goal of this weapon).
Also the US, a country that has shown that even it is unwilling to disregard the Geneva Conventions, wouldn't be so stupid as to blatantly break the GC.
I know there are going to be people asking why is blinding worst than death according to the Geneva Conventions. Well the gist of the GC is that combat should be a noble enterprise: weapons should avoid unnecessary pain and suffering. It would be nice if wars could be fought kill-less. If not, then if injuries would be simple things that just disable combatants for a period yet don't leave them scarred for life. But since neither of these are too realistic, it is best to make sure that we are not just going out and crippling people (combatants or civilians) en mass. That is why biological, chemical, blinding weapons, and non-Full Metal Jacketed ammunition are illegal under the GC.
If you want to contact those 535 Americans who have the power to get rid of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's circumvention ban once and for all, you may contact them here:
I would but everytime I try to send my heartfelt plea to trafficant@house.gov it gets bounced back!
Wait, are you telling me Inherit the Wind lied to me? The next thing you'll tell me is that everything isn't full of gasoline or there is no way to h4x0r the Gibson. Last time I use movies to learn anything!
The problem here is not about a single law, but it is about a whole system that is showing signs of unrealibility, the so called Democracy.
Actually I thought civil disobedience (and this example) shows the strength of Democracy.
The problem is that, no matter how much bureaucracy you make, it is still possible to get an unjust law passed. So trying to improve the system won't work.
The key is that Democracy allows for grass-roots reevaluation of legal precedent (through intentional civil disobedience or unintentionally [Scopes Monkey Trial]).
How many important US laws have been passed due to activism? Women's sufferage, Civil Liberties Act, etc etc.
Demonstrations are the most legally protected and peaceful. Civil Disobedience comes right after it.
The problem is when you decide that the system is beyond repair and so you take to illegal action with little interest in federal procedure. If Perens was just going to hand out a thousand Region-free copies of the Matrix or if he was going to assassinate the President, then he would only be breaking the law for his own self-interest. He isn't and that's why I wish him the best of luck.
What so if I can find several unemployed black men who's only life thrill is to commit crime I can then say that the stereotype of the criminal black man is true? This is not an argument.
Stating a belief as a declaration does not an argument make
I should know. I live here. I have since birth.
Ok and? This makes you an authority of national sociology or psychology? Maybe you've lived your entire life up in the Aryan Nation compound in Coeur d'Alene? Or in a igloo in Nome, Alaska? How do you know this then? Racial memory?
We believe...claims.
You then make a general statement that completely contradicts your first statement by going from an unspecified amount to a specified one. The usage of "we" implies "all Americans" when you in fact mean "what I believe most Americans think".
To speak one nation's wrongs and not other implies that all other nations are without guilt. I don't see you jumping to arms over France denying Ebay the ability to sell Nazi memorabilia or Germany fighting the Church of Scientology.
No. You don't like American policy. Fine. But you provide no constructive argument and instead make inflammatory comments that do nothing but complicate the issue.
I guess in your perfect world we could only exercise Freedoms that you approve of.
Probably the best American parallel is the Horror Movie. As a genre they are at best misunderstood. You have the generic serials (with the decline in quality as they extend into the double digits... Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween), the pure exploitive trash (Sleepaway Camp, the joyous (almost avant garde) cult/underground films (Evil Dead, Troma Films), and the amazing masterworks (Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Shining, John Carpenter's the Thing).
A lot of people think Horror Movies are crap. And a lot of people just go to get their willies off at seeing B,G,T&A (blood, gore, tits and ass). And then there is a large loyal underground composed of fanatics and fanzines.
And no matter how hard the genre tries it still can't overcome the lowest common denominator.
Of course I think the best works of Horror movies far exceed anything done in anime. Personal opinion? Yes. But a movie like Dawn of the Dead seems to reverberate with zeitgeist fears: Nuclear Annihilation, slow death from radiation poisoning, the Cold War, isolation of the self in modern consumer civilization... The best Akira did was: fear technology, stuff blows up real good.
First off: Moderators, I am responding to a post and not starting a flame. Mod down if you must but please take that into consideration.
Brilliant article. Very intrerresting and has me interrested in looking for such films. It seems I'll reopen my Quake 1 box soon.:-)
Very true. Every once in a while it seems there is a good reason to reopen an old game. I just got back into Fallout 2.
Stop thinking 9/11
Oh great... here we go...
and give the rest of the world a rest and stop adding terrorist consipiracies and references to everything you write.
Um. Correct me if I'm wrong but the word terrorist is not synonymous with "Evil foreigners that we must defend ourselves against since that tragic day... almost a year ago... *sniff*... I remember when..."
From where I'm sitting you were the first and only person to bring 9/11 into the mix (and after a good opening point). Excuse me if I'm too blunt but that is a spin on an article that would make Jon Katz green with envy.
FYI: There had been terrorist attacks before 9/11/2001. Several against US interests (USS Cole, African Embassy bombings, and the Riyadh Marine barracks just to name the most recent) and many more against others. Americans died over Lockerbie. Americans died along with people of all nationalities.
that it took you two towers and the death thousands of rich americans to realize the horror of MILLIONS of poor 3rdworld habitants.
Except for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have worked in 3rd World debt relief, AIDS medication relief, anti-globalization movements, humanitarian groups, Red Cross, missionary groups, Greenpeace, etc etc.
This seems to be the same argument against "American Movies" when they really mean "Hollywood big budget movies". "There are no good American film makers"... except for Steven Soderburgh, David Lynch, Jim Jarmush, Spike Lee, John Singleton, the Hughes Brothers, the Coen Brothers, Michael Mann, Marion Herron, Larry Clark, etc.
Everyone who criticizes a country always seems to do it based off of some comical stereotype of the nation. Like England is just a bunch of chinless wonders walking around with Pith helmets and monocles or a bunch of mindless footie hooligans.
Sometimes, I think that americans... Here you go off on a tirade that seems to stem from your own overexposure to the media. Granted, you watch FoxNews for an hour and it gets hard to stomach but then, and this is the neat thing about modern technology, you can turn it off. Like hitting the Back button to get out of the article.
I'd like to have someone prove me wrong on this... and someone who will say other things than "F*** YOU, A**HOLE."
I hope I've been cordial in my response.
But maybe that changed with 9/11, and you people finally fell back from your cloud.
Again, the popular assumption that American == worldless slob... except for all of those millions of Americans who aren't. I spent yesterday reading some facinating stuff on Dayan and Amer after catching a program on the Six Day War... oh wait, I forgot I'm an American!
*Thinks* Ok, I spent yesterday getting schlitzed while masturbating over pictures of dead immigrant workers. This while setting about the destruction of Indonesia and holding back the cure for AIDS and cancer we've had but just never shared with the world.
*Begin Sarcasm* The government? Trying to help... the People? What's the catch? *End Sarcasm*
So often people seem to treat their relationship with their government as a monarchy: word comes down from on high, we pay taxes to be protected from other kingdoms, and we pay them or they will do mean things to us.
Maybe it doesn't speak well for the government but its odd how that when the government tries to help people seem to think they are lying.
I think the problem with this article is the leap at saying since the populous has technology it can obtain the knowledge to make informed decisons (and therefore fascism cannot take hold).
Of course things we have seen in the last decade has proven that false: the 90's being the most prolific era of post 1945 National Socialism and the rise of a-political Islamic terrorism is only now coming to light.
Both of these groups use technology to find each other. In the midst of it, they plan the "free world"'s downfall. Neither of these groups have been enlightened by the information superhighway. Instead they've used it to become more hardened, fanatical, and closed off. Hell, why go out and make friends with your new Indian neighbors when you can go online and bitch about the smell of kuri and plot their death with like minded e-fanatics (sorry Katz, I got to that one first)?
Some of the WTC terrorist were known to have visited porno stores. Did that stop them ("Man, the only thing I would kill for now would be another moneyshot of Jenna Jameson!")?
Ok, Capitalism and democracy have proven capable of toppling intellectual systems (e.g. we killed the USSR with Big Macs and Levis). But reactionary fear militants? That has only grown stronger. According to this article, using the world wide web to look up articles on the Church of the Creator or intelligent design is a contradiction. Of course it isn't.
The most popular use of the WWW is porno. The second most popular is paranoia.
I hope this doesn't descend into a US freedoms versus someone elses freedoms because there is no universal set of freedoms humans need (other than things like food, shelter, air, etc).
Most everyone understands that there are limitations to freedom. Hell, even a perfect omniscient judiciary couldn't make a totally free society exist (e.g. how to choose between two parties' gripes when both are contradictory? Someone is going to have to lose).
So governments chose which freedoms are best limited and those that need to be preserved. In the end I think it is all arbitrary. You just have to have some system that allows for a decision to be made. Firearms are legal or they aren't. Nazi Memorabilia is legal or it isn't. The same with encryption.
Basically you can limit anything people can do without forever. But that goes against what freedom stands for. In the end countries have to make choices. And I doubt that any one (say France's versus the US versus Japan) are better than any other.
In the end I think it comes down to economic interest. What jobs/corporations/industries does a company need to have strategic overlay in order to survive. Saudi Arabia is concerned about its oil interest and the people who own and work for it, not the nature of the shoe industry in Malasyia. From that point outward the society's policy is formed.
nearly every major market has at least one "free" newspaper, and most markets do have some smaller newspaper, not owned by conglomerates
Ok, be very very careful about this statement. Most "free press" newspapers are owned by conglomerates: Village Voice Media Inc. (which owns the Village Voice, LA Weekly, Seattle Weekly, Cleveland Free Times, Nashville Scene, and OC Weekly) or New Times Media Inc to name a few.
For the last few years "local alternative" papers have been eaten up by these conglomerates (and have minority members like Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Weiss, Peck, & Greer.)
Of course these papers deny or eschew their corporate ownership with their witty commentary and flippy attitude. But in the end it is still corporate homongenization.
Sidebar: Maybe I'm a little pissed about this since my favorite local paper has just gone down the crapper the last few months due to an "editorial change". What has this meant? 1) New oh-so-cool-but-not-self-conscious-like format redesign 2) removal of any enjoyable entertainment content 3) features that are just bastardizations of two year old stories (the IBM-Nazi Germany connection), poorly written/argued (the current one on Maven/Queen Bee girl socialization behavior that starts out on the topic, switches to a completely different topic to prove its point against the former) or insulting (like how the WNBA should support its lesbian fan base more 'cause "we all know female atheletes are dykes"... good job at reinforcing 19th century stereotypes Cleveland Free Times!). Oh and then they whine and mince at the local big paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Um, hello? What, were you fired from there or something? Didn't return your calls? Anyway: tell someone who gives a damn and don't waste ink on it!)
Summary: Just because it is Propaganda you like doesn't mean it ain't Propaganda. So read a lot of different stuff and make your own choice.
What about X-Wing* (for flight sims) and Dark Forces (for FPS's)? Both were pretty stellar at the time of their releases and are still fun as heck to play.
I loved naming the pilots and getting the wacky pictures in X-Wing: Asskicke, Shamu...
And what about the intro movies?
Adm. Ackbar: "Werr arr Runnder rattak by impirrial forcres! Begrin evasive manrurvers! Rawch the Rex-ring riders!"
Hell I still say that to this day and it still kills me.
*In truth I thought TIE Fighter was even better than X-Wing even though it was just kind of a cut and paste. I preferred the thrill of flying the fast and fragile TIEs around slaying things with your wingmen. As far as I can remember the wingman in both games was topnotch.
Why not run both on two separate boxes connected with a KVM (thus to cut down on the desktop space but having the benifit of direct access to both). Hell, that's what I do. I can fiddle with my ipchains all I want and then cut over to hack through Neverwinter Nights for a few hours.
Ok, so there is a cost associated (ie two boxes) and it doesn't solve the "single machine => single solution" everyone seems to be championing.
But is there ever a single best solution at anything? Maybe I'm greedy but now I have the strengths and weaknesses of both OSes. Personally I hated having to live with one and not the other.
So many moderation points, so little time
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High Score
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· Score: 4, Funny
I have some moderation points sitting in front of me. Is there any way I can mod down a couple sentences in this article?
They embody a value system, mind-boggling inspiration, common language and experience. Huh?
But then I figured it out. I realized that I just needed to run it through babelfish a few times and then I got the original decrypted message: They include a worthy system, inspiration of lie-hesitate, common language and experience. And they finally receive their defeated.
I wonder if Katz writes all of his articles that way?
Of course if you have never read Michael Farber's Under the Skin this may make no sense. I would suggest it. Quite good in a Lovecraftian sort of way (not really but... hey.).
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, very important. Read the article.
It is not about the right of the consumer to edit films.
It is about the right of the director to have some control over the final edit of films to avoid butchered versions of his vision.
So posts about The Phantom Edit are off topic.
When Ted Turner colorized all those movie classics. Or the choice to release a movie in a foreign market dubbed (I'm talking about foreign films brought to the US and only released dubbed by the distributor).
The owner of the rights to the film can do with it what he choses. Simple.
Turner owned those reels of movies and he did what he wanted. Of course the public backlash stopped it in the end.
Similarly local distributors in a country count as the owner's proxy in those states. But the general dislike of dubbing has stopped them from releasing dubbed versions of Crouching Tiger and Life is Beautiful. Of course it has also limited the distribution of foreign movies (the assumption being people don't like dubbing but only film critics like to read subtitles so you can only release it in art houses).
Like an earlier poster said, anyone who doesn't own rights to a movie but works on it is just an employee.
A good example is Fox owning the original Star Wars. Lucas had to buy it back from them. Of course when he did he added in "Greedo shooting first."
Originally Fox could have stopped him from adding it. Later they couldn't. Neither could the LucasFilm employees or Harrison Ford.
Control of the final product is one of the benefits of being a big time director.
I really gotta ask because she has about as much push in the industry as I do (read: none). Now you might say that she is an influential founder of the sound of blah-blah-blah in the era of the 70's/60's/whenever folk/blues but the current problem is this:
None of the large, influential artists of today are making statements like this. Courtney Love? What, between her "acting" and holding back Nirvana material? Yeah, she is a great advocate to have for P2P... Even the loudest voices are a) still on the industry teat and b) not making any waves other than a post to their website.
And then there is the problem of the Metallicas and Dr Dre's of the world (read: the bands people would listen to if they spoke out) are on the side of the RIAA.
Don't just blame them. A lot of more "with it" artists aren't on the free and open bandwagon. Missy Elliot, the Beastie Boys, and the Chemical Brothers are all notorious for not licensing their material for sampling and willing to fight to protect it. Do you expect any of them to jump for a reasonable P2P system?
They might all be for a free Tibet but as long as it doesn't mess with them getting paid.
So what will happen:
1. RIAA will push out their P2P solution.
2. It will fail.
3. Free P2P will continue to thrive, above the levels of old ratio MP3 ftp sites (remember those days?) but below the heyday of Napster.
4. The industry and its top 100 artists will pat each other on the back and present gifts of ivory backscratchers to each other for a job well done.
You seem to be putting a lot of stock in the common End User pushing development. In the RW though, this is not true (especially in high tech).
The thing that pushes technology are Big Clients like the government, universities, and businesses.
A technological innovation needs to find a niche of a small customers with a big need. The key is that it is far easier to get one university to buy 5000 of X instead of convincing 5000 Joe Sixpacks to buy one.
Once the groundwork has been laid out by the Big Clients then you can push it out to the masses. Big Clients are more tolerant of less reliable technology and bleeding edge because the risk is always worth the possible $$$ infusion to the bottom line.
Joe Sixpack just wants things that a) make life easier b) entertain him.
Do you think end users were ready for the Internet in 1983? Or those massive military cellphones in the 70's? No. The product had to be refined and, once it was and could be produced massively and cheaply, it could find commercial applications.
You mention RDMA solutions (the dream of No More Local Devices as there is bandwidth enough for everyone). Things like Infiniband. Well, Infiniband is tanking because it requires too much special hardware and is too specialized for businesses to get it up and running. Still, many are using it in datacenters. Why? Because the gains outway the fact that the sysadmins are running around all day debugging them.
And so, by your hypothesis, if some hardware company put out the technology there for the Joe Sixpacks, the industry would boom. Sorry, guy, but end users are very resistent to change. And it would go the way of DivX recorders. The only thing that keeps a lot of tech alive is the for-free work of enthusiasts: Linux, the DivX codec, etc. By your theory if some company would have released a distro based on the 1.0 kernel, it could have survived purely on the Best Buy customers alone. The "possibility" of future releases would keep the end users coming back for more. Heh, I don't even think you believe that.
One thing I learned when listening to the Steven Soderbourgh commentary on Traffic was that... set your faces to shocked... politicians are much more objective than you think.
/. want it gets tossed out in favor of waiting for something better to come along. Heh, if that is your modus operandi, you're going to be waiting a very long time.
The problem is that we, the constituents, do not elect them for objectivity but for being subjective, stubborn, and close-minded. It's true... that's how you get elected (or stay in office).
So what is Richard Clarke doing here? It is quite possible he is beginning to switch popular perception. Using "hacker" correctly is a good start. And I assume most of us can agree that this is a step in the right direction.
The problem is that too many of the posts in this thread say "He isn't going far enough, therefore its a complete waste of time." because "the end users will never know any better."
Well I hate to say it, but this is how you get the end users informed: slowly start moving in the right direction, educating the masses, letting them put their fears to rest bit by bit. I think Clarke could really start something here IF we, the supposed IT professionals, didn't just discard what he says right off of the bat.
As a sidebar, I always wondered why people don't try for more publicity campaigns to get laws passed... especially in foreign countries. Bush can say no to Kyoto because the American people don't care/want him to. You can't much expect to force a population to do what you want by saying "You are an idiot! Think differently!" (and it hasn't ever worked).
So why don't all concerned parties deluge primetime with an ad campaign? Slowly change popular opinion? Maybe in a year you could get huge differences. The key to remember is that politicians are nothing more than fonts of popular opinion. Clinton proved it. G Dubs is proving it: it doesn't matter what you think it matters what the people believe you think by what you say.
Clarke seems to be doing that but since it isn't the Free Software/Free Beer/Free Nekkid solution so many on
And if "they" can tell one of the richest men in the world what to do with his money, "they" sure as hell can do it to any one of us.
Ok this is probably going to get me flamed to hell so I'll try to be as untroll-like as possible: I think it is wrong to think ill of someone who is rich and not automatically a humanitarian.
The key difference between democracy and socialism is that the first asks what to do with your money, the second commands you. In the democracy Money is Free as in free to do with it what ever the hell you want.
Ok, so he didn't give it to Third World Debt relief or Cancer research. Fine, then I guess he won't be on your Christmas card list. But then I know guys who look down at you if you don't give money to their religous charities or missionary funds to convert the backwoods of some country to Religon X by telling them how ungodly they are. Just as it is their (and your) choice to give to the funds you so wish, it is anyone else's to decline.
That is the beauty and blemish of Democracy.
I just play Ventolin off of Aphex Twin's I Care Because You Do at full volume.
It works pretty well. Although now when I turn off my computer, I can still hear it.
All those red dots are heading right for our tiny blue dot!
The Register had a good article on pronoun usage.
In English the masculine is used in gender-neutral cases where the gender cannot be specified before hand ("The officer should have his standard equipment present").
The feminine is used in cases of abstract personification ("The United States has her hands full") of a concept or an object (Freedom or automobiles).
Much like a car, to give it "personality" would move it from the first case to the second. Thus when you give a generic machine a specific voice, it is (usually) female).
But, as with all usage, it is up to the user. There is a strong push for gender neutral language in most things. The problem is that in cases that are purely up to personal taste, these rules apply.
So you can't tell someone to not make their robot feminine. But you can tell someone to make their manual not masculine.
And you seem to think their purpose was purely political (ie that there was a certain quota that needed to be maintained so they added a female robot to offset the male engineers). I really think it is much simplier than that.
This reads as FUD to me. A bunch of unverified concerns regarding a weapon that isn't off of the drawing board.
And FYI, the purpose of the laser is to attack electronics targets not to blind civilians. Blinding is a side effect everyone is afraid of (and, as FUD is want to do, implied to be the real goal of this weapon).
Also the US, a country that has shown that even it is unwilling to disregard the Geneva Conventions, wouldn't be so stupid as to blatantly break the GC.
I know there are going to be people asking why is blinding worst than death according to the Geneva Conventions. Well the gist of the GC is that combat should be a noble enterprise: weapons should avoid unnecessary pain and suffering. It would be nice if wars could be fought kill-less. If not, then if injuries would be simple things that just disable combatants for a period yet don't leave them scarred for life. But since neither of these are too realistic, it is best to make sure that we are not just going out and crippling people (combatants or civilians) en mass. That is why biological, chemical, blinding weapons, and non-Full Metal Jacketed ammunition are illegal under the GC.
Wait, are you telling me Inherit the Wind lied to me? The next thing you'll tell me is that everything isn't full of gasoline or there is no way to h4x0r the Gibson. Last time I use movies to learn anything!
BTW, thanks for the info.
The problem is that, no matter how much bureaucracy you make, it is still possible to get an unjust law passed. So trying to improve the system won't work.
The key is that Democracy allows for grass-roots reevaluation of legal precedent (through intentional civil disobedience or unintentionally [Scopes Monkey Trial]).
How many important US laws have been passed due to activism? Women's sufferage, Civil Liberties Act, etc etc.
Demonstrations are the most legally protected and peaceful. Civil Disobedience comes right after it.
The problem is when you decide that the system is beyond repair and so you take to illegal action with little interest in federal procedure. If Perens was just going to hand out a thousand Region-free copies of the Matrix or if he was going to assassinate the President, then he would only be breaking the law for his own self-interest. He isn't and that's why I wish him the best of luck.
But true in a lot of cases.
What so if I can find several unemployed black men who's only life thrill is to commit crime I can then say that the stereotype of the criminal black man is true? This is not an argument.
Stating a belief as a declaration does not an argument make
I should know. I live here. I have since birth.
Ok and? This makes you an authority of national sociology or psychology? Maybe you've lived your entire life up in the Aryan Nation compound in Coeur d'Alene? Or in a igloo in Nome, Alaska? How do you know this then? Racial memory?
We believe...claims.
You then make a general statement that completely contradicts your first statement by going from an unspecified amount to a specified one. The usage of "we" implies "all Americans" when you in fact mean "what I believe most Americans think".
To speak one nation's wrongs and not other implies that all other nations are without guilt. I don't see you jumping to arms over France denying Ebay the ability to sell Nazi memorabilia or Germany fighting the Church of Scientology.
No. You don't like American policy. Fine. But you provide no constructive argument and instead make inflammatory comments that do nothing but complicate the issue.
I guess in your perfect world we could only exercise Freedoms that you approve of.
Probably the best American parallel is the Horror Movie. As a genre they are at best misunderstood. You have the generic serials (with the decline in quality as they extend into the double digits... Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween), the pure exploitive trash (Sleepaway Camp, the joyous (almost avant garde) cult/underground films (Evil Dead, Troma Films), and the amazing masterworks (Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Shining, John Carpenter's the Thing).
A lot of people think Horror Movies are crap. And a lot of people just go to get their willies off at seeing B,G,T&A (blood, gore, tits and ass). And then there is a large loyal underground composed of fanatics and fanzines.
And no matter how hard the genre tries it still can't overcome the lowest common denominator.
Of course I think the best works of Horror movies far exceed anything done in anime. Personal opinion? Yes. But a movie like Dawn of the Dead seems to reverberate with zeitgeist fears: Nuclear Annihilation, slow death from radiation poisoning, the Cold War, isolation of the self in modern consumer civilization... The best Akira did was: fear technology, stuff blows up real good.
First off: Moderators, I am responding to a post and not starting a flame. Mod down if you must but please take that into consideration.
:-)
Brilliant article. Very intrerresting and has me interrested in looking for such films. It seems I'll reopen my Quake 1 box soon.
Very true. Every once in a while it seems there is a good reason to reopen an old game. I just got back into Fallout 2.
Stop thinking 9/11
Oh great... here we go...
and give the rest of the world a rest and stop adding terrorist consipiracies and references to everything you write.
Um. Correct me if I'm wrong but the word terrorist is not synonymous with "Evil foreigners that we must defend ourselves against since that tragic day... almost a year ago... *sniff*... I remember when..."
From where I'm sitting you were the first and only person to bring 9/11 into the mix (and after a good opening point). Excuse me if I'm too blunt but that is a spin on an article that would make Jon Katz green with envy.
FYI: There had been terrorist attacks before 9/11/2001. Several against US interests (USS Cole, African Embassy bombings, and the Riyadh Marine barracks just to name the most recent) and many more against others. Americans died over Lockerbie. Americans died along with people of all nationalities.
that it took you two towers and the death thousands of rich americans to realize the horror of MILLIONS of poor 3rdworld habitants.
Except for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have worked in 3rd World debt relief, AIDS medication relief, anti-globalization movements, humanitarian groups, Red Cross, missionary groups, Greenpeace, etc etc.
This seems to be the same argument against "American Movies" when they really mean "Hollywood big budget movies". "There are no good American film makers"... except for Steven Soderburgh, David Lynch, Jim Jarmush, Spike Lee, John Singleton, the Hughes Brothers, the Coen Brothers, Michael Mann, Marion Herron, Larry Clark, etc.
Everyone who criticizes a country always seems to do it based off of some comical stereotype of the nation. Like England is just a bunch of chinless wonders walking around with Pith helmets and monocles or a bunch of mindless footie hooligans.
Sometimes, I think that americans... Here you go off on a tirade that seems to stem from your own overexposure to the media. Granted, you watch FoxNews for an hour and it gets hard to stomach but then, and this is the neat thing about modern technology, you can turn it off. Like hitting the Back button to get out of the article.
I'd like to have someone prove me wrong on this... and someone who will say other things than "F*** YOU, A**HOLE."
I hope I've been cordial in my response.
But maybe that changed with 9/11, and you people finally fell back from your cloud.
Again, the popular assumption that American == worldless slob... except for all of those millions of Americans who aren't. I spent yesterday reading some facinating stuff on Dayan and Amer after catching a program on the Six Day War... oh wait, I forgot I'm an American!
*Thinks* Ok, I spent yesterday getting schlitzed while masturbating over pictures of dead immigrant workers. This while setting about the destruction of Indonesia and holding back the cure for AIDS and cancer we've had but just never shared with the world.
Welcome to the real world.
Hmm. Never knew I had left.
*Begin Sarcasm*
The government? Trying to help... the People? What's the catch?
*End Sarcasm*
So often people seem to treat their relationship with their government as a monarchy: word comes down from on high, we pay taxes to be protected from other kingdoms, and we pay them or they will do mean things to us.
Maybe it doesn't speak well for the government but its odd how that when the government tries to help people seem to think they are lying.
Have things gotten that bad?
I think the problem with this article is the leap at saying since the populous has technology it can obtain the knowledge to make informed decisons (and therefore fascism cannot take hold).
Of course things we have seen in the last decade has proven that false: the 90's being the most prolific era of post 1945 National Socialism and the rise of a-political Islamic terrorism is only now coming to light.
Both of these groups use technology to find each other. In the midst of it, they plan the "free world"'s downfall. Neither of these groups have been enlightened by the information superhighway. Instead they've used it to become more hardened, fanatical, and closed off. Hell, why go out and make friends with your new Indian neighbors when you can go online and bitch about the smell of kuri and plot their death with like minded e-fanatics (sorry Katz, I got to that one first)?
Some of the WTC terrorist were known to have visited porno stores. Did that stop them ("Man, the only thing I would kill for now would be another moneyshot of Jenna Jameson!")?
Ok, Capitalism and democracy have proven capable of toppling intellectual systems (e.g. we killed the USSR with Big Macs and Levis). But reactionary fear militants? That has only grown stronger. According to this article, using the world wide web to look up articles on the Church of the Creator or intelligent design is a contradiction. Of course it isn't.
The most popular use of the WWW is porno. The second most popular is paranoia.
I hope this doesn't descend into a US freedoms versus someone elses freedoms because there is no universal set of freedoms humans need (other than things like food, shelter, air, etc).
Most everyone understands that there are limitations to freedom. Hell, even a perfect omniscient judiciary couldn't make a totally free society exist (e.g. how to choose between two parties' gripes when both are contradictory? Someone is going to have to lose).
So governments chose which freedoms are best limited and those that need to be preserved. In the end I think it is all arbitrary. You just have to have some system that allows for a decision to be made. Firearms are legal or they aren't. Nazi Memorabilia is legal or it isn't. The same with encryption.
Basically you can limit anything people can do without forever. But that goes against what freedom stands for. In the end countries have to make choices. And I doubt that any one (say France's versus the US versus Japan) are better than any other.
In the end I think it comes down to economic interest. What jobs/corporations/industries does a company need to have strategic overlay in order to survive. Saudi Arabia is concerned about its oil interest and the people who own and work for it, not the nature of the shoe industry in Malasyia. From that point outward the society's policy is formed.
nearly every major market has at least one "free" newspaper, and most markets do have some smaller newspaper, not owned by conglomerates
Ok, be very very careful about this statement. Most "free press" newspapers are owned by conglomerates: Village Voice Media Inc. (which owns the Village Voice, LA Weekly, Seattle Weekly, Cleveland Free Times, Nashville Scene, and OC Weekly) or New Times Media Inc to name a few.
Actually here is a list of Alterno-conglomerates and don't be surprised if your fave local paper is in there.
For the last few years "local alternative" papers have been eaten up by these conglomerates (and have minority members like Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Weiss, Peck, & Greer.)
Of course these papers deny or eschew their corporate ownership with their witty commentary and flippy attitude. But in the end it is still corporate homongenization.
Sidebar: Maybe I'm a little pissed about this since my favorite local paper has just gone down the crapper the last few months due to an "editorial change". What has this meant? 1) New oh-so-cool-but-not-self-conscious-like format redesign 2) removal of any enjoyable entertainment content 3) features that are just bastardizations of two year old stories (the IBM-Nazi Germany connection), poorly written/argued (the current one on Maven/Queen Bee girl socialization behavior that starts out on the topic, switches to a completely different topic to prove its point against the former) or insulting (like how the WNBA should support its lesbian fan base more 'cause "we all know female atheletes are dykes"... good job at reinforcing 19th century stereotypes Cleveland Free Times!). Oh and then they whine and mince at the local big paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Um, hello? What, were you fired from there or something? Didn't return your calls? Anyway: tell someone who gives a damn and don't waste ink on it!)
Summary: Just because it is Propaganda you like doesn't mean it ain't Propaganda. So read a lot of different stuff and make your own choice.
What about X-Wing* (for flight sims) and Dark Forces (for FPS's)? Both were pretty stellar at the time of their releases and are still fun as heck to play.
I loved naming the pilots and getting the wacky pictures in X-Wing: Asskicke, Shamu...
And what about the intro movies?
Adm. Ackbar: "Werr arr Runnder rattak by impirrial forcres! Begrin evasive manrurvers! Rawch the Rex-ring riders!"
Hell I still say that to this day and it still kills me.
*In truth I thought TIE Fighter was even better than X-Wing even though it was just kind of a cut and paste. I preferred the thrill of flying the fast and fragile TIEs around slaying things with your wingmen. As far as I can remember the wingman in both games was topnotch.
Why not run both on two separate boxes connected with a KVM (thus to cut down on the desktop space but having the benifit of direct access to both). Hell, that's what I do. I can fiddle with my ipchains all I want and then cut over to hack through Neverwinter Nights for a few hours.
Ok, so there is a cost associated (ie two boxes) and it doesn't solve the "single machine => single solution" everyone seems to be championing.
But is there ever a single best solution at anything? Maybe I'm greedy but now I have the strengths and weaknesses of both OSes. Personally I hated having to live with one and not the other.
I have some moderation points sitting in front of me. Is there any way I can mod down a couple sentences in this article?
They embody a value system, mind-boggling inspiration, common language and experience. Huh?
But then I figured it out. I realized that I just needed to run it through babelfish a few times and then I got the original decrypted message:
They include a worthy system, inspiration of lie-hesitate, common language and experience. And they finally receive their defeated.
I wonder if Katz writes all of his articles that way?
Of course the aliens are showing up in Scotland. That's where all the delicious vodsuls are. Humans have been eating them for years!
Of course if you have never read Michael Farber's Under the Skin this may make no sense. I would suggest it. Quite good in a Lovecraftian sort of way (not really but... hey.).