Pretty hillarious news! And here comes the big dumb religious debate and the bogged down server! Oh well, it's entertaining at least.
Actually, this whole flash of idiocy reminds me of the urban legend that someone in the South once tried to legislate the value of our favorite transcendental real number, PI, to be just the integer value 3. According to the legend, some wise-ass mathematician then pointed out that the legislation works just fine and is absolutely true... for very small approximations of PI or very large approximations of the number 3.
Perhaps the biggest political change in recent years has nothing to do with the internet. The fact is, third party candidates are starting to get elected in local elections in record numbers. Recently Arcata, CA elected a Green Party majority to their city council. Needless to say, all kinds of interesting progressive legislation got passed!
I think it's important not to get side-tracked by thinking the Internet is a political tool that will somehow empower voters. Mostly it empowers politicians by facilitating the kinds of manipulation and distortion that go on in the other mass mediums. Does TV empower voters?
What/really/ empowers voters is ultimately very simple: the voting booth. The voting booth is the only true form of power we have as citizens, because there is no other institution in this country in which we have a direct say. But if we use government effectively, we don't need anything more.
It might be okay to fantasize about it (although I don't really see the use of that), but actually killing or even harming another living being never truly feels good or leads to anything good. I think we all know this in our hearts even if we choose to maintain a different public face about it. A harmful action like killing should simply never be taken, even against someone who has done something truly horrible, unless all other immediate options for our own safety and the safety of others around us have been exhausted. I know very well the feeling you're talking about. I just choose to reject it as part of who I am. Anger is not part of human nature. It is a delusion that obscures our true human nature. I find this way of thinking to be a lot more positive and it leads to a more positive and constructive outlook on life. You can't change someone else. You can change yourself. So how do you plan to proceed?
I meant best third party candidate*s*. The local elections coming up this Fall are far more important in determining social policy than presidential elections. This year, with luck, we may just elect the first ever progressive majority to the Seattle city council, thanks in a large part to the Green Party of Seattle. If this happens, it will be a *massive* victory for social justice in Seattle, and by extension in the US. We're going to show that it *can* be done. Social policy *can* be changed.
No, I don't think that's the case at all. The media may have some small effect, but ultimately it is just a convenient scapegoat. If you're part of the media (which is not merely controlled by the power class, but in fact *owned* by it), you have to point the finger at *something* (and preferrably something nebulous like TV violence or genetics which won't lead anywhere substantial) because otherwise people might start looking for facts and truth... and we all know where that might lead...
It might expose what workers, families and children all over America already know: we're engaged in domestic class warfare. And as long as there is enough panic, destruction, confusion, blame, disillusionment, misery and *above all* polarized, anti-governmental and anti-political attitudes, the power class is ensured that they will continue to stay on top. Anti-political sentiment is the nail in the coffin of the lower classes (meaning the bottom 70-80% of America at this point, and rising fast), because it ensures that people will fail to utilize the *sole* institution in which they have a voice - government. Given what we see around us, I'd say things are going pretty well for the power class. And the wanton violence and abuse in the workplace and schools is the sound of the social fabric being torn apart (or rather shredded, as it's already been torn by preceding decades of class warfare). I think any observant kid who hasn't yet had a decent "education" can tell you what's going on in the US today.
Let me make this clear, I'm not saying that class warfare has the sole purpose of causing high school violence, or even that it is the direct cause of it. What I *am* saying is that high school (and workplace) violence is the fully expected side-effect of social policies carefully constructed by the ruling class to divide and conquer (economically) the rabble. The US has sophisticated technology and is arguably the most free society in the world, but socially we are one of the most backward ever. Perhaps French philosopher Jean Baudrillard said it best when he called America "the last great primitive society". All the freedom, democracy, power and technology in the world doesn't ensure social justice. Just look around on the streets here. Are these the conditions one would expect in the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world?
What can we do about this? Well, if you're American and of voting age, you can commit yourself to getting out and voting in *every* election for the best third party candidate available. As long as the power class holds the strings via the Republican and Democratic parties, we will all continue to lose and conditions in the US will continue to get worse. If you think about it, you really have no other choice.
The fulfillment of your angry fantasy would clearly and obviously only make things worse for everyone. What's more, you are presently exhibiting as little compassion and intelligence as your opressors (which is pretty typical when someone gets this out-of-control angry). You're probably too young (I'm guessing here, but it really sounds like you're in middle school or high school) to really understand this, but you do have a wide array of options right now. The sooner you grow up and *demand* help rather than asking for it or hoping for it, the sooner things will start to improve. If you sit around sulking and hoping other people will notice what a hell you're living through or hoping other people will get hurt to bring attention to your own plight, you will get what's coming to you in the meantime. If you're SMART, you will absolutely, totally and obstinately demand for as long as it takes that you be put in a reasonable non-abusive situtation (even if that means a transfer to another school district, private school, home schooling or dropping out entirely. in many cases, just skipping the rest of high school and going on to college is an option). What you don't know because you're young is that these seemingly all-powerful people like your teachers and parents *will* give in if you resist long enough and are coherent and reasonable with your demands. You have the absolute RIGHT not to live in terror at school. I think this is a good lesson for everyone experiencing schoolyard abuse. You *don't* have to just lie there and take it. If you put up enough resistance, adults will be FORCED to do something about it. And if they don't, if you've truly got bad or abusive parents that don't give a damn about you when the chips are down, then there are government agencies that can step in to stop the abuse. So don't be an idiot. Stand up for your RIGHTS. You will feel a lot better once you do.
Seems pretty apropos here and it reminds me of something its frequent quoter, Noam Chomsky, had to say about schoolyard abuse. I can't find the exact quote now, but he roughly said that a weaker kid on the playground got beat up one day by a bunch of stronger kids because he didn't stand up for him. Decades later, he still regrets and feels ashamed by that failure.
So I ask those who "have heard enough" (obviously meaning that you really don't care about others who are weaker than yourself)... Where is your sense of duty? Of compassion? Of shame? Have you any?
This would be more interesting if it were in the commercial stages already. I think by the time it comes out in say 7 years that we'll have such better memory and communications technology that it is likely to be irrelevant to ordinary consumers. Maybe big distributed data servers could use them to store hundreds of terabytes of data... but you see if you've got a chunk of space on a huge server somewhere and you've got unlimited connectivity, there's very little advantage to having "much" local storage, and there are some pretty significant disadvantages. The advantages of moving away from mechanical storage (you have to spin the disc and move the needle still!) like this are also pretty great. I would almost expect a breakthrough in memory technology where we end up with cheap multi-GB flashcards would pretty much kill this product in consumer markets.
"...they will have the same critical thinking skills that I value in myself which tell me that "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer," "American Pie," are the real evil movies..."
Perhaps, but I think that corporate news and advertising are far more socially damaging. They serve to set strict social limits on the range of thinking and political discourse (especially in the US)... and to eliminate the basis for true critical thinking (by obscuring, censoring and distorting the facts we might otherwise reason with). If you haven't already, put your critical thinking cap on and read Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent." It's a real eye opener. Better yet, have your kids read it (once they're old enough to get it).
I used to think that people overreacted to books and that there wasn't anything I'd find offensive enough that I couldn't finish reading it. Then I (tried to) read Naked Lunch. There was nothing that could have prepared me for it -- it was just *incredibly* disgusting and offensive and I gave up after maybe 100 pages. I got the point and the book just wasn't worth slogging through the rest. However, I totally agree with the court decision that it simply should not be banned. I think it's the tough decisions like printing Naked Lunch that are the true test of freedom of speech. And that's pretty much what the courts thought.
In terms of sheer offensiveness, Naked Lunch absolutely towers over South Park. But in spite of that, I think it should not be banned... *even for children*. That's why we have parents. If I were a parent, there's no way I'd give my kid permission to read it before he/she was either 18 or mentally ready for it. "No, Johnny, you can't play in the street and you can't read Naked Lunch".
The problem with censoring is that we can't stop Johnny from playing in the street and we can't stop him from reading Naked Lunch. The best we can do is teach kids as well as we can and hope that they learn. I just really don't see the point in having institutions enforce parental guidance through censorship. It's a blatant violation of freedom of speech. What's worse, it shows that adults don't trust kids and that they don't see them as having or deserving the same human rights. I think that these issues are behind a lot of problems with kids today. I *really* hate to quote Sting, but "If you love someone, set them free."
The part that scares me about GM foods is how incredibly ignorant and passive the American public is. I read recently that 30+% of all corn in America is GM now. Although I think it's an insane risk (worst case, we're talking cascading global crop failures) for a negligible payoff to farmers (and zero payoff to consumers), what's really crazy is that they don't have to label it! I'm greatly heartened by all the protest in Europe. It sounds like they may be forced to label GM food over there soon and there is talk of increasing government subsidies for organic farming. Both are good results. America could really learn some social lessons from Europe. There's more to life than the almighty dollar.
you're really not getting the scale of the thing. my 1 bedroom in mountain view was $1600/mo, not $800/mo. it was just off castro street and probably above average, but still not that far out of line. i wised up, moved back to seattle and now i pay $385/mo to live in a vastly nicer neighborhood. even though i make a lot less money, i actually save more because the cost of living here isn't astronomical.
"All other formats will die, as no one will want to use them (besides the distributors, but we are the ones, who actually listen to the music). Long live MP3."
Actually, Eisenstein's "Battleship Potempkin" was so emotionally effective that some people reportedly confused it with reality, and were convinced that they had fought in the battle in real life (it was a staged battle).
actually, i think another heuristic you could use to cut out ads would be to analyze the audio track. commercials usually have very high compression applied, which is easily detectable.
but why bother with any of these stupid and fallible high tech solutions when you could just have a human being watch the shows and edit out the commercials manually? for each channel, you would have a human watching somewhere and turning off/on thousands of video recorders over the internet... sign people up and sell it as a service. bingo. instant millions.
or you could run it more like slashdot with most people watching while some people have "moderator" status. then you average the times that moderators punch in/out. might not be perfect, but it might be good enough...
and actually, with the time-delay nature of these digital vcrs, you could easily transmit the punch-in/punch-out information *after* the broadcast was over and the punches could be verified.
I don't think so. It has much more to do with advertising/marketing than improvement in quality. How else can you explain the incredible popularity of the painfully incremental upgrades of windows and x86 chips? Is Windows 98 1000x better technology than Windows 95? I don't think so!
The only thing funnier than someone spelling "laissez faire" as "lasses fair" is someone thumbing their nose at them while suggesting ANOTHER INCORRECT SPELLING. Sheesh, if you've got the gall to correct people's spelling in a public forum, at least look it up first (I did)!
I guess we'll never know for sure if they consider it "sport", but I have seen first-hand the remains of several sheep ripped open from end to end by a bear. It was a single attack with no provocation, and it didn't eat any of the sheep. Just killed them and left. What's more, it was a brown bear, not a grizzly. Obviously we may never know why, but cats also hunt for something like "sport" or "training", especially when they are young.
Have to say, as a musician, I agree. I'd rather people heard my music. You can always make money from gigs. Of course, that would mean that the money factor in the music biz becomes less important... you can barely live on gigging money... but that's okay I think, because it means more *true* musicians and fewer music industry yes men. The music is important. The money is not.
The RIAA claims that their value lies in marketing and distribution. With the distribution problem solved, that leaves only marketing. And personally, the best kind of marketing is to just listen to the damn music directly. I don't *want* RIAA marketing. I can (and will) find my own music thankyou very much!
It crashes frequently and randomly hangs my machine and you can't even kill the process with task manager on NT (which i'd never seen before this). Outlook Express, which comes with it, frequently sends a thread into an infinite loop of some kind that pegs the processor and brings the whole machine grinding to an almost-halt. Luckily you can kill it, unlike the situation i'm seeing with IE5. Anyway, I wouldn't call it "rock solid". It could be worse though.
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty hillarious news! And here comes the big dumb religious debate and the bogged down server! Oh well, it's entertaining at least.
Actually, this whole flash of idiocy reminds me of the urban legend that someone in the South once tried to legislate the value of our favorite transcendental real number, PI, to be just the integer value 3. According to the legend, some wise-ass mathematician then pointed out that the legislation works just fine and is absolutely true... for very small approximations of PI or very large approximations of the number 3.
Perhaps the biggest political change in recent years has nothing to do with the internet. The fact is, third party candidates are starting to get elected in local elections in record numbers. Recently Arcata, CA elected a Green Party majority to their city council. Needless to say, all kinds of interesting progressive legislation got passed!
/really/ empowers voters is ultimately very simple: the voting booth. The voting booth is the only true form of power we have as citizens, because there is no other institution in this country in which we have a direct say. But if we use government effectively, we don't need anything more.
I think it's important not to get side-tracked by thinking the Internet is a political tool that will somehow empower voters. Mostly it empowers politicians by facilitating the kinds of manipulation and distortion that go on in the other mass mediums. Does TV empower voters?
What
It might be okay to fantasize about it (although I don't really see the use of that), but actually killing or even harming another living being never truly feels good or leads to anything good. I think we all know this in our hearts even if we choose to maintain a different public face about it. A harmful action like killing should simply never be taken, even against someone who has done something truly horrible, unless all other immediate options for our own safety and the safety of others around us have been exhausted. I know very well the feeling you're talking about. I just choose to reject it as part of who I am. Anger is not part of human nature. It is a delusion that obscures our true human nature. I find this way of thinking to be a lot more positive and it leads to a more positive and constructive outlook on life. You can't change someone else. You can change yourself. So how do you plan to proceed?
I meant best third party candidate*s*. The local elections coming up this Fall are far more important in determining social policy than presidential elections. This year, with luck, we may just elect the first ever progressive majority to the Seattle city council, thanks in a large part to the Green Party of Seattle. If this happens, it will be a *massive* victory for social justice in Seattle, and by extension in the US. We're going to show that it *can* be done. Social policy *can* be changed.
It might expose what workers, families and children all over America already know: we're engaged in domestic class warfare. And as long as there is enough panic, destruction, confusion, blame, disillusionment, misery and *above all* polarized, anti-governmental and anti-political attitudes, the power class is ensured that they will continue to stay on top. Anti-political sentiment is the nail in the coffin of the lower classes (meaning the bottom 70-80% of America at this point, and rising fast), because it ensures that people will fail to utilize the *sole* institution in which they have a voice - government. Given what we see around us, I'd say things are going pretty well for the power class. And the wanton violence and abuse in the workplace and schools is the sound of the social fabric being torn apart (or rather shredded, as it's already been torn by preceding decades of class warfare). I think any observant kid who hasn't yet had a decent "education" can tell you what's going on in the US today.
Let me make this clear, I'm not saying that class warfare has the sole purpose of causing high school violence, or even that it is the direct cause of it. What I *am* saying is that high school (and workplace) violence is the fully expected side-effect of social policies carefully constructed by the ruling class to divide and conquer (economically) the rabble. The US has sophisticated technology and is arguably the most free society in the world, but socially we are one of the most backward ever. Perhaps French philosopher Jean Baudrillard said it best when he called America "the last great primitive society". All the freedom, democracy, power and technology in the world doesn't ensure social justice. Just look around on the streets here. Are these the conditions one would expect in the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world?
What can we do about this? Well, if you're American and of voting age, you can commit yourself to getting out and voting in *every* election for the best third party candidate available. As long as the power class holds the strings via the Republican and Democratic parties, we will all continue to lose and conditions in the US will continue to get worse. If you think about it, you really have no other choice.
The fulfillment of your angry fantasy would clearly and obviously only make things worse for everyone. What's more, you are presently exhibiting as little compassion and intelligence as your opressors (which is pretty typical when someone gets this out-of-control angry). You're probably too young (I'm guessing here, but it really sounds like you're in middle school or high school) to really understand this, but you do have a wide array of options right now. The sooner you grow up and *demand* help rather than asking for it or hoping for it, the sooner things will start to improve. If you sit around sulking and hoping other people will notice what a hell you're living through or hoping other people will get hurt to bring attention to your own plight, you will get what's coming to you in the meantime. If you're SMART, you will absolutely, totally and obstinately demand for as long as it takes that you be put in a reasonable non-abusive situtation (even if that means a transfer to another school district, private school, home schooling or dropping out entirely. in many cases, just skipping the rest of high school and going on to college is an option). What you don't know because you're young is that these seemingly all-powerful people like your teachers and parents *will* give in if you resist long enough and are coherent and reasonable with your demands. You have the absolute RIGHT not to live in terror at school. I think this is a good lesson for everyone experiencing schoolyard abuse. You *don't* have to just lie there and take it. If you put up enough resistance, adults will be FORCED to do something about it. And if they don't, if you've truly got bad or abusive parents that don't give a damn about you when the chips are down, then there are government agencies that can step in to stop the abuse. So don't be an idiot. Stand up for your RIGHTS. You will feel a lot better once you do.
Seems pretty apropos here and it reminds me of something its frequent quoter, Noam Chomsky, had to say about schoolyard abuse. I can't find the exact quote now, but he roughly said that a weaker kid on the playground got beat up one day by a bunch of stronger kids because he didn't stand up for him. Decades later, he still regrets and feels ashamed by that failure.
So I ask those who "have heard enough" (obviously meaning that you really don't care about others who are weaker than yourself)... Where is your sense of duty? Of compassion? Of shame? Have you any?
I agree. Competitive sports have no rightful place in education.
This would be more interesting if it were in the commercial stages already. I think by the time it comes out in say 7 years that we'll have such better memory and communications technology that it is likely to be irrelevant to ordinary consumers. Maybe big distributed data servers could use them to store hundreds of terabytes of data... but you see if you've got a chunk of space on a huge server somewhere and you've got unlimited connectivity, there's very little advantage to having "much" local storage, and there are some pretty significant disadvantages. The advantages of moving away from mechanical storage (you have to spin the disc and move the needle still!) like this are also pretty great. I would almost expect a breakthrough in memory technology where we end up with cheap multi-GB flashcards would pretty much kill this product in consumer markets.
Perhaps, but I think that corporate news and advertising are far more socially damaging. They serve to set strict social limits on the range of thinking and political discourse (especially in the US)... and to eliminate the basis for true critical thinking (by obscuring, censoring and distorting the facts we might otherwise reason with). If you haven't already, put your critical thinking cap on and read Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent." It's a real eye opener. Better yet, have your kids read it (once they're old enough to get it).
In terms of sheer offensiveness, Naked Lunch absolutely towers over South Park. But in spite of that, I think it should not be banned... *even for children*. That's why we have parents. If I were a parent, there's no way I'd give my kid permission to read it before he/she was either 18 or mentally ready for it. "No, Johnny, you can't play in the street and you can't read Naked Lunch".
The problem with censoring is that we can't stop Johnny from playing in the street and we can't stop him from reading Naked Lunch. The best we can do is teach kids as well as we can and hope that they learn. I just really don't see the point in having institutions enforce parental guidance through censorship. It's a blatant violation of freedom of speech. What's worse, it shows that adults don't trust kids and that they don't see them as having or deserving the same human rights. I think that these issues are behind a lot of problems with kids today. I *really* hate to quote Sting, but "If you love someone, set them free."
The part that scares me about GM foods is how incredibly ignorant and passive the American public is. I read recently that 30+% of all corn in America is GM now. Although I think it's an insane risk (worst case, we're talking cascading global crop failures) for a negligible payoff to farmers (and zero payoff to consumers), what's really crazy is that they don't have to label it! I'm greatly heartened by all the protest in Europe. It sounds like they may be forced to label GM food over there soon and there is talk of increasing government subsidies for organic farming. Both are good results. America could really learn some social lessons from Europe. There's more to life than the almighty dollar.
you're really not getting the scale of the thing. my 1 bedroom in mountain view was $1600/mo, not $800/mo. it was just off castro street and probably above average, but still not that far out of line. i wised up, moved back to seattle and now i pay $385/mo to live in a vastly nicer neighborhood. even though i make a lot less money, i actually save more because the cost of living here isn't astronomical.
"All other formats will die, as no one will want to use them (besides the distributors, but we are the ones, who actually listen to the music). Long live MP3."
... ;-)
I don't think so. What about MP4? And MP5?
We can only hope!
Actually, Eisenstein's "Battleship Potempkin" was so emotionally effective that some people reportedly confused it with reality, and were convinced that they had fought in the battle in real life (it was a staged battle).
actually, i think another heuristic you could use to cut out ads would be to analyze the audio track. commercials usually have very high compression applied, which is easily detectable.
but why bother with any of these stupid and fallible high tech solutions when you could just have a human being watch the shows and edit out the commercials manually? for each channel, you would have a human watching somewhere and turning off/on thousands of video recorders over the internet... sign people up and sell it as a service. bingo. instant millions.
or you could run it more like slashdot with most people watching while some people have "moderator" status. then you average the times that moderators punch in/out. might not be perfect, but it might be good enough...
and actually, with the time-delay nature of these digital vcrs, you could easily transmit the punch-in/punch-out information *after* the broadcast was over and the punches could be verified.
I don't think so. It has much more to do with advertising/marketing than improvement in quality. How else can you explain the incredible popularity of the painfully incremental upgrades of windows and x86 chips? Is Windows 98 1000x better technology than Windows 95? I don't think so!
Yeah, this was the best line in the whole movie.
The only thing funnier than someone spelling "laissez faire" as "lasses fair" is someone thumbing their nose at them while suggesting ANOTHER INCORRECT SPELLING. Sheesh, if you've got the gall to correct people's spelling in a public forum, at least look it up first (I did)!
I guess we'll never know for sure if they consider it "sport", but I have seen first-hand the remains of several sheep ripped open from end to end by a bear. It was a single attack with no provocation, and it didn't eat any of the sheep. Just killed them and left. What's more, it was a brown bear, not a grizzly. Obviously we may never know why, but cats also hunt for something like "sport" or "training", especially when they are young.
You mean 12 *extra* fingers, right?
Have to say, as a musician, I agree. I'd rather people heard my music. You can always make money from gigs. Of course, that would mean that the money factor in the music biz becomes less important... you can barely live on gigging money... but that's okay I think, because it means more *true* musicians and fewer music industry yes men. The music is important. The money is not.
The RIAA claims that their value lies in marketing and distribution. With the distribution problem solved, that leaves only marketing. And personally, the best kind of marketing is to just listen to the damn music directly. I don't *want* RIAA marketing. I can (and will) find my own music thankyou very much!
It crashes frequently and randomly hangs my machine and you can't even kill the process with task manager on NT (which i'd never seen before this). Outlook Express, which comes with it, frequently sends a thread into an infinite loop of some kind that pegs the processor and brings the whole machine grinding to an almost-halt. Luckily you can kill it, unlike the situation i'm seeing with IE5. Anyway, I wouldn't call it "rock solid". It could be worse though.