"Certainly there have been plenty of cultures which have not accepted any of the principles which we want to "defend" today."
Just because a few despotic governments deny their people these rights does not mean the culture itself is what is doing the denying.
"On some level, the concept of "human rights" is a claim that our cultural beliefs are better, and more right, then those that do not agree with them."
One of the founding tennants of the UN, which everybody supposedly signed on to and which has been ignored ever since, has been the right to self-determination. Essentially this means people should be free to choose how they live their lives on their own. What we call "human rights" are essentially the ability for a people to decide whether or not they want to be "oppressed" in any particular way instead of having their governments make up their minds for them.
In other words, the difference between S&M and rape.
You seem to be victim of the same logical fallacy that dominates international diplomacy today: Just because a group of people are in charge of a country does not mean they truly represent the people of that country.
"And there are certain things that we believe so strongly, that we are willing to impose them on others."
There is a difference between not wanting to know and not being allowed to know. In the case of free speech on the internet, making this information available to the people is the only way to know which of the two options the people truly want.
"Dude that just station ID. " "What's so bad about that?"
I'm not complaining. But there's a big difference over how commercial-based radio does it.
Sirius Stream: "Hi, we're stream X. We play Y music."
FM Station: "We're frequency X. We play the music you want to hear. You love us! Here are some three-second teasers of songs we'll play for you later (but not right now!). Keep listening!" $commercial $commercial $commercial
(It's kinda funny. They've gone beyond playing music to get you to listen and are now just saying they'll be playing music... eventually...)
Sirius (and probably XM, never listened to it) has the advantage of knowing that they are playing what people want to hear (or else they wouldn't be paying for the subscription and/or would be over at another stream). The business model of commercial-based broadcasters is based on convincing the audience that what they play is good, because they make money on the audience believing it.
When you get right down to it the anti-satellite commercials aren't anything all that new for "commercial broadcasters" (gotta love double entendre). Broadcasting things people want to listen to has never been as important to them as the audience thinking that they want to listen, and they're airing that ad for exactly the same reason they're airing the music to begin with.
"When ClearChannel took over most of the stations in the Fargo area, trying to get any kind of news or weather report out of the radio became a lot harder."
RIAA members aren't paying ClearChannel to broadcast news.
"The reason the radio broadcasters are annoyed is because the repeaters (being about the size of a desk, and having no external antennas and is installed inside of a building) were allowed to bypass local red tape for installation. AKA they only needed to get federal approval, not local."
Why would they need local approval? If they're wholly enclosed within the building then the building's owner can't be violating any local ordinances and rescstrictions on putting up antennae. And, with the size we're talking about, I'm not sure the local folks could get involved if the owners tried to put it outside (much like how local folks can't say anything about putting up a satellite dish less than a meter in diameter).
"What about satellite TV, they are allowed to air local television, why shouldn't satellite radio be allowed to air local reports as well."
There are a few reasons.
First off, DirecTV and Dish aren't just putting out local information, they're re-broadcasting local VHF/UHF stations, basicly stuff you could get with some rabbit ears. Sirius and XM are putting out their own content for the local markets, with their own traffic and weather people.
Secondly, DirecTV and Dish are using both special satellite transmitters and the hardware lockouts in the receivers to keep only people in the local area from getting that local content; somebody living in Los Angeles isn't going to be getting New York television stations from either DirecTV or Dish. Neither XM nor Sirius have the technology nor the inclination to do that; they have a few dozen streams set aside for the information and all of their subscribers can listen to it, no matter where they are. Even though I live in the New Orleans area I can listen to traffic and weather in Baltimore.
And finally the streams on Sirius and XM are only carrying traffic and weather. No talk shows, no music, no commercials, just reports that are repeated and updated once every five minutes or so.
"The trouble is that XM and Sirius are still monthy fee services, while I can tune in to FM radio stations free over the airwaves."
In both models you get what you pay for.
Try going over to Sirius' website, they have some (long) samples there of what their streams sound like available for free. After five minutes or so turn it off and turn on an FM receiver. Force yourself to listen to it as long as you did the Sirius streams.
"I just don't listen to the radio enough to make it worth my while to pay for a service,"
I don't blame you, but I find that I listen to radio far more now that I got my Sirius receiver.
I have, and the true irony of it is that it's a commercial.
The worst I've heard on Sirius music streams are the DJs talking about what else there is to listen to on other streams, including then the occasional joke about other streams ("This is the hard rock stream! If you want pussy rock, go over to stream 9!"). In general there's nobody there telling me what I like or what I should be listening to, which is all broadcast radio does these days.
When next you listen to an FM station keep track of how many times they tell you that you're listening to the songs you love (and "none of the songs you don't") or how often they play recordings of other people talking about how great the station is.
(Hell, I still don't see the point in "HD radio." Why pay for better-sounding car commercials?)
Personally, I'm happier with the satellite radio philosophy where the paying subscriber is the ultimate arbiter of what they want or do not want to hear. Not the advertisers, not the government, and usually not even the record companies (Sirius is making it much easier for me to find CDs published by non-RIAA members).
Out of curiousity, is there anybody out there who had been a customer of either XM or Sirus and actually left? Like the commercials put out by the FM/AM broadcasters suggest?
Dude, committee. It wasn't before the entire chamber. They only needed 7 because there are 13 on the committee.
At any rate, I am of the opinion that the fewer "important" things a government needs to do, the better. With a bill like this, if my 'critter were on the committee, unless the vote doesn't need a quorum I think I'd rather they be off golfing.
"With this type of mindset we never should have fought a Civil War. Just have the slaves sign an employee agreement in which they consent to accepting nothing more than a shack, a plot of land, and arbitrary termination at any time."
Part of the American Civil War was that several of the states felt that the United States Constitution was just such a contract, and North Carolina and Virginia attempted secession specifically because of that. They (probably) would not have seceded if Lincoln hadn't decided to use force against the states that followed South Carolina's example.
Of course they then went on to complain about a few Virginia counties deciding to "opt out from the opt out" so there really isn't any moral high ground there either (kinda like fighting slave owners with conscripts).
"The author references Metroid ("I don't appreciate that Samus being a woman is a punch line")"
Yeah, that Metroid game, nothin' but a barrel of laughs...
If Samus' sex is a "punch line," what was the joke?
I admit that the character art at the end of the two GBA games makes me roll my eyes (a little too "cheesecake" for my tastes), but here he's arguing that the entire premise is flawed, that her sex is a gimmick no matter what she may look like. This makes me wonder just what he thinks about women in general. He seems to be awfully sensitive to Samus' lack of a Y-chromosone and I wonder if this means that he finds the idea of a woman doing all those things to be unbelievable. After all, he's the only one I've seen who thinks her sex is a "punch line" to begin with.
"each game in the series encourages them to reach the finish line as quickly as possible to catch a glimpse of the woman beneath the suit."
Personally, I try to get the endings so I can catch a glimpse of the person beneath the suit. One of the series' cornerstone is the tantalizingly little information on just who she is and why she does what she does. I'm more interested in situations and facial expressions than her body (and on that note I'm happier with what Retro did with her than what Nintendo has done in the last two GBA installments). I chalk the cheesecake up as a failing by Nintendo to understand just what makes the games popular outside of Japan to begin with, the inability of a group of Japanese programmers to quite relate to gaijin gamers, not a failing of men in general.
Being as sensitive as he is to the pictures at the end, why exactly does the author himself play through the games? How many other gamers here are actually encouraged by the drawings of a scantilly-dressed woman at the end of the game?
Ah, wait a second...
"That's also not what I've been taught by my parents. My mother is a neurologist. Her mother is a physician, as well. The women have always worn the pants in my family, so to speak. Perhaps this helps you understand my perspective."
Now this is interesting. Here he implies that women must "wear the pants" in order to be worth something.
"Alis wears a pink hair band, lipstick, and a skirt, but she's still OK in my book."
I'm as sick of seeing women in pink as much as the next guy, but I didn't realize that actually liking pink is such a black mark against a woman. They can have any favorite color in the spectrum so long as it's not pink?
I think his problem is that he's equating strong female characters with characters acting more male, that men are inherently better and women must act more like men to be better themselves.
Personally, the more I think of what I've seen Samus do so far, I'm not sure if she could have been a man.
Nintendo kept referring to the console as the "Ultra 64" pretty much right on up until it was released. That's why some of the first emulators for the system had names like "UltraHLE."
"Yet, I can't help feeling that the executives in Hollywood have an alterior motive behind their involvement in the video game world."
Well, duh! It's called "money." If they were truly interested in a new artistic medium they would have given it serious consideration a decade ago. Hollywood is catching wind of what some of the more popular games are worth these days.
Whether or not it would work is debatable, but it's better than what we have now.
If/when we ever get around to a national sales tax replacing national income tax, replace/reform the IRS so that it functions as a sales tax clearing house. The mail-order/internet shop could then place a 1-800 call or go to a.gov website, punch in the delivery ZIP code and then be told how much state and local sales tax they have to collect from the shopper. Anually/quarterly/whatever they then send that money and paperwork off to said agency which then redistributes it to the states and localities it belongs.
The only real problem I can see here is the added record-keeping for the store, but I'm not sure it's all that much worse than what they have to do already. And on the flip side you get rid of this silly idea of all but declaring everybody a criminal by default.
It won't touch those "use taxes" some states have for products you actually physically purchase elsewhere (since they're already paying the sales taxes of where the store is located), but as I write this I wonder if those taxes are even constitutional (they sound like interstate tariffs to me...)
Alright, I actually RTFA and I still don't get it. Scammers are abusing TTY services (or, more accurately, web-based applications intended to replace Ye Olde Teletypes). What I still don't understand is why?
I suppose the scammers realize their accents or (relatively) poor grasp of English might make the recipient of the calls suspicious, but it seems that TTY calls are rare enough to garner attention of their own. Are the scammers that short-sighted?
Or is it related to Penny Arcade's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory and the scammers don't have the nerve to try pulling the scam "face-to-face"?
At any rate, how much to these TTY terminals cost?
"Story about a sicilian village? Sure, they must be a bunch of superstitious peasants with a mental age of 11. Story about women? Cue for side-splitting 'jokes' about how dumb they are with computers and or crude sexual innuendo."
Well, we could combine the two, but I wouldn't want to make fun of Italian women; they can be downright vicious!
Slashdot Mirror
"Certainly there have been plenty of cultures which have not accepted any of the principles which we want to "defend" today."
Just because a few despotic governments deny their people these rights does not mean the culture itself is what is doing the denying.
"On some level, the concept of "human rights" is a claim that our cultural beliefs are better, and more right, then those that do not agree with them."
One of the founding tennants of the UN, which everybody supposedly signed on to and which has been ignored ever since, has been the right to self-determination. Essentially this means people should be free to choose how they live their lives on their own. What we call "human rights" are essentially the ability for a people to decide whether or not they want to be "oppressed" in any particular way instead of having their governments make up their minds for them.
In other words, the difference between S&M and rape.
You seem to be victim of the same logical fallacy that dominates international diplomacy today: Just because a group of people are in charge of a country does not mean they truly represent the people of that country.
"And there are certain things that we believe so strongly, that we are willing to impose them on others."
There is a difference between not wanting to know and not being allowed to know. In the case of free speech on the internet, making this information available to the people is the only way to know which of the two options the people truly want.
"Dude that just station ID. "
"What's so bad about that?"
I'm not complaining. But there's a big difference over how commercial-based radio does it.
Sirius Stream: "Hi, we're stream X. We play Y music."
FM Station: "We're frequency X. We play the music you want to hear. You love us! Here are some three-second teasers of songs we'll play for you later (but not right now!). Keep listening!" $commercial $commercial $commercial
(It's kinda funny. They've gone beyond playing music to get you to listen and are now just saying they'll be playing music... eventually...)
Sirius (and probably XM, never listened to it) has the advantage of knowing that they are playing what people want to hear (or else they wouldn't be paying for the subscription and/or would be over at another stream). The business model of commercial-based broadcasters is based on convincing the audience that what they play is good, because they make money on the audience believing it.
When you get right down to it the anti-satellite commercials aren't anything all that new for "commercial broadcasters" (gotta love double entendre). Broadcasting things people want to listen to has never been as important to them as the audience thinking that they want to listen, and they're airing that ad for exactly the same reason they're airing the music to begin with.
"When ClearChannel took over most of the stations in the Fargo area, trying to get any kind of news or weather report out of the radio became a lot harder."
RIAA members aren't paying ClearChannel to broadcast news.
"The reason the radio broadcasters are annoyed is because the repeaters (being about the size of a desk, and having no external antennas and is installed inside of a building) were allowed to bypass local red tape for installation. AKA they only needed to get federal approval, not local."
Why would they need local approval? If they're wholly enclosed within the building then the building's owner can't be violating any local ordinances and rescstrictions on putting up antennae. And, with the size we're talking about, I'm not sure the local folks could get involved if the owners tried to put it outside (much like how local folks can't say anything about putting up a satellite dish less than a meter in diameter).
"What about satellite TV, they are allowed to air local television, why shouldn't satellite radio be allowed to air local reports as well."
There are a few reasons.
First off, DirecTV and Dish aren't just putting out local information, they're re-broadcasting local VHF/UHF stations, basicly stuff you could get with some rabbit ears. Sirius and XM are putting out their own content for the local markets, with their own traffic and weather people.
Secondly, DirecTV and Dish are using both special satellite transmitters and the hardware lockouts in the receivers to keep only people in the local area from getting that local content; somebody living in Los Angeles isn't going to be getting New York television stations from either DirecTV or Dish. Neither XM nor Sirius have the technology nor the inclination to do that; they have a few dozen streams set aside for the information and all of their subscribers can listen to it, no matter where they are. Even though I live in the New Orleans area I can listen to traffic and weather in Baltimore.
And finally the streams on Sirius and XM are only carrying traffic and weather. No talk shows, no music, no commercials, just reports that are repeated and updated once every five minutes or so.
"The trouble is that XM and Sirius are still monthy fee services, while I can tune in to FM radio stations free over the airwaves."
In both models you get what you pay for.
Try going over to Sirius' website, they have some (long) samples there of what their streams sound like available for free. After five minutes or so turn it off and turn on an FM receiver. Force yourself to listen to it as long as you did the Sirius streams.
"I just don't listen to the radio enough to make it worth my while to pay for a service,"
I don't blame you, but I find that I listen to radio far more now that I got my Sirius receiver.
"This just fits the pattern of what the Bushies love to do"
Can you tell me what president it was that appointed Michael Powell to his job at the FCC?
"has been running advertisements poking fun at satellite radio services,"
Yeah, we're going to tell you about how awful commercial-free music is... by running commercials...
I have, and the true irony of it is that it's a commercial.
The worst I've heard on Sirius music streams are the DJs talking about what else there is to listen to on other streams, including then the occasional joke about other streams ("This is the hard rock stream! If you want pussy rock, go over to stream 9!"). In general there's nobody there telling me what I like or what I should be listening to, which is all broadcast radio does these days.
When next you listen to an FM station keep track of how many times they tell you that you're listening to the songs you love (and "none of the songs you don't") or how often they play recordings of other people talking about how great the station is.
(Hell, I still don't see the point in "HD radio." Why pay for better-sounding car commercials?)
Personally, I'm happier with the satellite radio philosophy where the paying subscriber is the ultimate arbiter of what they want or do not want to hear. Not the advertisers, not the government, and usually not even the record companies (Sirius is making it much easier for me to find CDs published by non-RIAA members).
Out of curiousity, is there anybody out there who had been a customer of either XM or Sirus and actually left? Like the commercials put out by the FM/AM broadcasters suggest?
Yeah, then we can sue them for our prior art!
Georgia's on my mind
Dude, committee. It wasn't before the entire chamber. They only needed 7 because there are 13 on the committee.
At any rate, I am of the opinion that the fewer "important" things a government needs to do, the better. With a bill like this, if my 'critter were on the committee, unless the vote doesn't need a quorum I think I'd rather they be off golfing.
"The joke, at least in the original Metroid, is the player's assumption throughout the game that Samus is a man."
Alright, but who do we blame for that? Nintendo or the presumptive gamer?
"With this type of mindset we never should have fought a Civil War. Just have the slaves sign an employee agreement in which they consent to accepting nothing more than a shack, a plot of land, and arbitrary termination at any time."
Part of the American Civil War was that several of the states felt that the United States Constitution was just such a contract, and North Carolina and Virginia attempted secession specifically because of that. They (probably) would not have seceded if Lincoln hadn't decided to use force against the states that followed South Carolina's example.
Of course they then went on to complain about a few Virginia counties deciding to "opt out from the opt out" so there really isn't any moral high ground there either (kinda like fighting slave owners with conscripts).
Apu was right the first time.
"The author references Metroid ("I don't appreciate that Samus being a woman is a punch line")"
Yeah, that Metroid game, nothin' but a barrel of laughs...
If Samus' sex is a "punch line," what was the joke?
I admit that the character art at the end of the two GBA games makes me roll my eyes (a little too "cheesecake" for my tastes), but here he's arguing that the entire premise is flawed, that her sex is a gimmick no matter what she may look like. This makes me wonder just what he thinks about women in general. He seems to be awfully sensitive to Samus' lack of a Y-chromosone and I wonder if this means that he finds the idea of a woman doing all those things to be unbelievable. After all, he's the only one I've seen who thinks her sex is a "punch line" to begin with.
"each game in the series encourages them to reach the finish line as quickly as possible to catch a glimpse of the woman beneath the suit."
Personally, I try to get the endings so I can catch a glimpse of the person beneath the suit. One of the series' cornerstone is the tantalizingly little information on just who she is and why she does what she does. I'm more interested in situations and facial expressions than her body (and on that note I'm happier with what Retro did with her than what Nintendo has done in the last two GBA installments). I chalk the cheesecake up as a failing by Nintendo to understand just what makes the games popular outside of Japan to begin with, the inability of a group of Japanese programmers to quite relate to gaijin gamers, not a failing of men in general.
Being as sensitive as he is to the pictures at the end, why exactly does the author himself play through the games? How many other gamers here are actually encouraged by the drawings of a scantilly-dressed woman at the end of the game?
Ah, wait a second...
"That's also not what I've been taught by my parents. My mother is a neurologist. Her mother is a physician, as well. The women have always worn the pants in my family, so to speak. Perhaps this helps you understand my perspective."
Now this is interesting. Here he implies that women must "wear the pants" in order to be worth something.
"Alis wears a pink hair band, lipstick, and a skirt, but she's still OK in my book."
I'm as sick of seeing women in pink as much as the next guy, but I didn't realize that actually liking pink is such a black mark against a woman. They can have any favorite color in the spectrum so long as it's not pink?
I think his problem is that he's equating strong female characters with characters acting more male, that men are inherently better and women must act more like men to be better themselves.
Personally, the more I think of what I've seen Samus do so far, I'm not sure if she could have been a man.
Nintendo kept referring to the console as the "Ultra 64" pretty much right on up until it was released. That's why some of the first emulators for the system had names like "UltraHLE."
Don't forget "NUS" which stuck even after they dropped "Ultra" from the name of the Nintendo 64.
"Yet, I can't help feeling that the executives in Hollywood have an alterior motive behind their involvement in the video game world."
Well, duh! It's called "money." If they were truly interested in a new artistic medium they would have given it serious consideration a decade ago. Hollywood is catching wind of what some of the more popular games are worth these days.
Whether or not it would work is debatable, but it's better than what we have now.
.gov website, punch in the delivery ZIP code and then be told how much state and local sales tax they have to collect from the shopper. Anually/quarterly/whatever they then send that money and paperwork off to said agency which then redistributes it to the states and localities it belongs.
If/when we ever get around to a national sales tax replacing national income tax, replace/reform the IRS so that it functions as a sales tax clearing house. The mail-order/internet shop could then place a 1-800 call or go to a
The only real problem I can see here is the added record-keeping for the store, but I'm not sure it's all that much worse than what they have to do already. And on the flip side you get rid of this silly idea of all but declaring everybody a criminal by default.
It won't touch those "use taxes" some states have for products you actually physically purchase elsewhere (since they're already paying the sales taxes of where the store is located), but as I write this I wonder if those taxes are even constitutional (they sound like interstate tariffs to me...)
Alright, I actually RTFA and I still don't get it. Scammers are abusing TTY services (or, more accurately, web-based applications intended to replace Ye Olde Teletypes). What I still don't understand is why?
I suppose the scammers realize their accents or (relatively) poor grasp of English might make the recipient of the calls suspicious, but it seems that TTY calls are rare enough to garner attention of their own. Are the scammers that short-sighted?
Or is it related to Penny Arcade's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory and the scammers don't have the nerve to try pulling the scam "face-to-face"?
At any rate, how much to these TTY terminals cost?
"Free TTY services be allowed to issue usernames and passwords to their customers, keep text logs of the conversations,"
Yeah, because only hearing people should be allowed private phone conversations. The Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to deaf people.
"What do you have? NOTHING. You have nothing."
Phyllis Weaver should have held on to the red snapper.
Huh? EMI? Don't tell me the RIAA is blaming all this on file-swapping already!
"Isaac Newton, when he was developing calculus and his theory of gravity, was trying to understand God."
I thought he was trying to do something far more important, such as giving Leibniz the finger.
"Story about a sicilian village? Sure, they must be a bunch of superstitious peasants with a mental age of 11. Story about women? Cue for side-splitting 'jokes' about how dumb they are with computers and or crude sexual innuendo."
Well, we could combine the two, but I wouldn't want to make fun of Italian women; they can be downright vicious!
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