When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.
Ed, man! !man ed ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1)
NAME
ed - text editor
SYNOPSIS
ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ] DESCRIPTION
Ed is the standard text editor. ---
Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED!
"Ed is the standard text editor."
And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look: -rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929/bin/ed -rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970/usr/ucb/vi -rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990/usr/bin/emacs
Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!
"Ed is the standard text editor."
Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:
[damn lameness filter]
Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity.
"Ed is the standard text editor."
Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.
ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!!
When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!
TEXT EDITOR.
When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard.
Ed is for those who can *remember* what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!!
"Even Microsoft can't willy-nilly redefine language so that dogs are really cats."
Yeah, it took them a good two or three years before they went from "browser as a fringe application" to "browser as an integral part of the OS." It's not like they can change it overnight or anything...
"The trouble is that they were then trying to prevent French consumers from buying in Britain and importing directly into France. Now, the EU is an internal free-trade area, so controlling imports between member states is a big no-no."
Yeah, if they were smart like the DVD Consortium, they would have made all of Europe one region and simply price-fix at the continental level.
"I've learned recently that Anime rather annoys me."
Wow, all of it? You've sampled enough to make such a broad statement? Why do I have the feeling you've seen nothing more than what's been aired on Cartoon Network? What if I told you I found nothing redeeming in the Kids WB line-up and decided that all American animation isn't worth seeing? Whoops, did I just lump Futurama into the same category as Jackie Chan Adventures?
About the only truly good thing I've seen in Adult Swim in the way of Japanese animation is Mobile Suit Gundam. It catches the "war is hell" theme very well without being yet another anti-war piece so common on both sides of the Pacific. Unfortunately, so many other serei have ridden in on Gundam's coattails, even on Cartoon Network. While this includes 008th MS Team (which, IMO, is everything Gundam was only better), others have been included like Gundam Wing (mediocrirty) and G Gundam (an abomination of nature that should be put to the torch).
Yes, the rest of the line-up on Cartoon Network was "more of the same." But that is not to say that all Japanese animation can be lumped into that category.
Looking for sience fiction/fantasy? Tenchi had its moments, but they were just that: moments. Nothing on Cartoon Network (even before AOL/TW's "editing") can instill the sense of wonder and amazement in me like either Escaflowne or even El-Hazard.
About the only other scale Tenchi begins to rate on is romance, but it sure as hell ain't Kimagure Orange Road. It doesn't put a goofy smile on my face like Maison Ikkoku. It doesn't cause the physical pain that Video Girl Ai brings with it. Heck, I'm not even sure it rates a Marmalade Boy.
Cowboy Bebop? I agree it's mostly cliche and the only thing it has going for it is the main theme music (which, although nobody seems to believe me, has exactly the same beat and rythm as the main theme to The Tick and even its melody is very close to "dah dweee dah dah dah dweee dow." Sing along when you next see Cowboy Bebop if you don't believe me). Heck, it's pretty tough to tell the difference between it and Outlaw Star at times. But I will say this: some Japanese cliches are at least different from American cliches. You're not going to confuse either one with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
And perhaps some of it you have no sense of humor for. You can't tell me Sailor Moon isn't satire meant to me laughed at! A young teenaged Japanese girl with blonde hair (!!!) falling for a 20-something college student that works in a video game arcade (!!!!!)? It's the wet dreams of the 20-something male artists (as well as satire of the entire "chick anime" genre it was so obviously meant to poke fun at) and was meant to be laughed at as such.
Part of the problem with Sailor Moon is that the English voice-over crew took their jobs a little too seriously, and part of the problem is that people like you require your satire to be as blatent as Futurama before you're able to get it.
At any rate, don't make such broad statements unless you're able to defend them.
"And then you have the people who know the names of every character..."
Yeah! Let's judge a medium by the character of its audience! All I have to do is look at the average South Park fan to know the show doesn't include a whit of satire or political commentary...
Might be kinda interesting. It may leave you free to blatently and publicly violate the EULA on the software? "But I never agreed to anything. Sue the cable company!"
"On the contrary the legal system in the US poses a number of restrictions on free speech."
Being held responsible for what you say and being able to say it are two very different things.
"This includes libel"
You can be as libellous as you want as long as you can pay the fees/fines. After all, a libel suit is civil (ie. another individual sues you), not criminal.
And most states have a clause in their constitution mandating that the truth cannot be considered libel, so the plaintiff is stuck with demonstrating that it's not true.
"porn"
Some of it depends on what you call "porn." A good deal of it isn't considered "speech," but the only restrictions on it (beyond anti-kiddie-porn laws) are a few minor restrictions (no pun intneded) on distribution and advertising. Unlike some/many countries, your porn can be as hardcore as you want so long as you're over 18 when you purchase it.
Hell, from what I've been seeing in recent days, it may soon be easier to get more/hardcore porn in the US than France.
"patent and copyright laws"
As practiced? Hell yes. In theory? A toss-up at worst. The inability to make a profit off of what you publish can in itself be considered a barrier to speech.
"So don't tell me that the US has free speech - because you don't.
Besides I personally think it makes sense for racist propaganda to be illegal. "
Hipocrite. Bans on distributing pantented and copyrighted material are bad but bans on hate speech are OK? And I'm sure you're more than willing to decide for the rest of us just what else is OK and what is not? Personally, I'd rather be able to decide for myself what I should read and what I should not.
You are a shining example of why "hate" speech should be allowed.
"Look at it as a sort of class action libel case"
Can you prove it's wrong? 99.9% of it is so vague and baseless that very little of it can either be proven or disproven. But in a libel suit it needs to be disproven.
"Also rasism is one of the key points governed by the UN Human Rights declaration."
And I'm sure said Human Rights declaration decides for us what is racism and what isn't? Crimethink?
People should be allowed to have whatever opinion they damned well please, so long as they don't act upon them. I'd rather have to deal with the occasional poor judgement of individuals than government-sponsored thought control.
"suddenly they can no longer use that information to defray some of the costs of running a broadband outfit."
First off, I notice you're assuming that they need this money to defray the cost of providing broadband. I suggest that any business using this model doesn't deserve to stay in business long.
Secondly, you seem to be someone who thinks we should all be very happy with the "opt-out list" mentality because we're somehow "saving money." Businesses need to be taught that abusing and not respecting their customers is a Bad Thing and I for one wouldn't mind paying a little more for a business that actually gives a damn about me (but I have yet to be forced into that decision... seems some enterprising business is always there to provide to us somewhere). And I have the feeling that I'm not alone in feeling this way.
"A better course of action would be to quietly uninstall everything the cable guy installed and keep it all under your hat."
You're part of the problem, then, not the solution. I'm simply not going to just sit there and take this sort of abuse from anybody.
"Contributions to politicians from organizations are just thinly veiled bribes. In a democracy, everyone is supposed to be equal, but such contributions make that impossible."
The contributions bit is already skewed in the individuals' favor. Ten individuals are allowed to contribute more money ($1000 each, $10,000 total) than a single organization representing ten people ($5000 total).
The problem isn't the contributions, the problems are:
Nobody knows about them
Nobody cares enough to look into them
Politicians would be a lot less likely to accept contributions if they were heavily criticized for it.
"Why? It does not provide anything extra for the user but problems."
Because it's nice for us site hosts to know where the traffic is coming from, helping us to realize just how few constituents are visiting our sites...
"maximum 24-hour-play lifetime for each downloaded movie"
Considering how long a DVD-quality movie will take to download (without going into bandwidth caps or more draconian ISP measures), that will leave me exactly 37 seconds in which to watch the movie before it erases itself.
"they are often designed more to promote current office-holders than to conduct governmental affairs."
And the other avenues of communications aren't? How is Congressman Tauzin's self-promotional website different from, say, the form letter I got from Congressman Tauzin explaining how good the Tauzin-Dingel through franked mail (who needs to buy stamps when you're a member of Congress?) in response to the complaint I sent to him about said bill? Tell me how that letter and all the other form letters various members of Congress send to concerned voters isn't just so much political advertising?
No, I'm not saying all members of Congress are guilty of this (at the very least somebody read letters I've sent to my Senators, for example), but there are some who are quite guilty of this, and all we've seen come of it is legislation against using franked mail within X number of days of election day.
Come back when you've noticed the problem in general and not just the websites in particular.
"That's not an abuse of monopoly power, any more than a McDonalds giving away free french fries with every Happy Meal."
That's because they can still go to Burger King. It is an abuse of monopoly power when customers, through (for example) BellSouth's monopoly on local telephone service, are forced to decide to pay for internet service for somebody else or to do without telephone service at all. Or being forced to pay for IE or do without Windows.
"If there's a cable company, a DSL provider, a dial-up provider, a satellite provider, and a cellular dial-up provider, then there's not exactly a monopoly, is there?"
Unless, of course, they're all owned by the same people. AT&T is selling cable service and Cox is selling telephone service when last I checked. (And the FCC is worried about EchoStar buying DirecTV?!?)
And then there's the fact that some of these companies can and do abuse their monopolies in other areas while competing as an ISP. "Sign up with our (telephone/cable/etc.) service and get 'free' internet service!" Where "free" means "paid for by jacked up telephone/cable service prices."
Wrong system. You'll have to look at what's in orbit around Saturn. It doesn't teleport to the Jovian system until Kubrick gets involved, and since he's now dead...
... because object recognition is hard for computers? Tetris is all about putting things where they fit, not some grand master strategy. And us biological constructs have an advantage, where we can more or less decide on the fly if X piece will fit decently enough in Y hole without having to go through a bajillion IF-THEN logic loops.
"Alternatives to the cable giants, ala BBC are not readily available."
What, can't find PBS in all those hundreds of channels on digital cable? Heck, even DirecTV carries PBS programs...
And those of us who happen to drive more than 50 miles every once in a while, get sick of hearing the same ClearChannel playlist over and over, but still can't afford a satellite radio find ourselves listening to NPR/PRI programming an awful lot.
At any rate, your conspiracy theory (like most) have a few holes.
"Help to accelerate the destruction of the public education system since an educated populace might not be interested in sensationalized reporting skewed towards a conservative viewpoint."
Except they kinda need an educated pool of workers if they're going to compete with foreign corps...
"Help to ensure that politicians are elected that are sympathetic to their viewpoint. This is accomplished through a combination of biased reporting, emphasizing the faults of political opponents, and prolifieration of punditry disguised as journalism."
Yeah, that explains how Microsoft was able to keep Clinton from being elected and the way the oil companies managed to get permission to drill in the ANWR...
"Self sensorship, and support of governement or corporate sensorship, to maintain a favorable political atmosphere."
That, or because they know they can make more money with 31 flavors of vanilla...
"Monitary support of politicians as a means of encouraging support for the corporate political agenda."
Dude, everybody and their mother throws money at political campaigns. Even the corporations' arch nemesis, the labor unions.
It's useless to try to classify the media as being "left" or "right" as they tend to play both roles from time to time. The only thing they consistantly score in is on the authoritarian/libertarian scale (which we'll call "up = authoritarian" and "down = libertarian" for the sake of this post). Media corporations have a vest interest in the authoritarian "government saving people from themselves" viewpoint because they make most of their money doing research and interpreting information for other people (namely, their audience). The more people feel they need to rely on Somebody Else to do their thinking for them, the more those people will turn to AOL/TW or ClearChannel for their daily dose of disinformation.
Think about it. During the whole Clinton scandal, all we heard about was the fact that he slept around in office, generally feeding the idea that people in government need to be held to "higher moral" (read "external") personal standards. Ask nine out of ten people (even if those people were members of Congress) why Clinton was being impeached, and they'll all tell you it was because he was sleeping around. The news media focused on how he somehow needed a nun to whack his knuckles with a ruler because of his "impure" thoughts, all but forgetting that the real reason he was being impeached is because he may have abused his powers as president to get away with lying on the stand (aka "perjury") and get out of a sexual harassment lawsuit because of it. But all we got out of the media from it is that even the president needs a "Big Brother" to keep an eye on him
And just to show that the upward bias cuts both ways on the left-right axis, how did Clinton get elected to begin with? Because the guy who won the Gulf War was seen (portrayed) as not doing enough about the "failing" economy. He was off globe-trotting with his coalition buddies and wasn't doing enough to steer the economy in the right direct. Never mind the fact that the US economy could probably get by just fine on cruise control for a decade or two (it's called a free market for a reason...), and never mind the fact that he probably has less control over things than either the Fed or Congress, the American people needed somebody to worry about them, to take control of things and take care of the poor defenseless US economy. George H. W. wasn't being enough of the parental figure we "needed."
Even the works of fiction that somehow gets called "entertainment" almost always come off with an authoritarian skew. The poor Republic needs the Wise and Powerful Jedi to protect it. The ring-bearers wouldn't have lasted five minutes without Gandalf's help. Neo was "the One" they needed to guide and protect them in their time of need. And don't even get me started on superheroes.
Television? Cops. Priests. Vampire hunters. Witches. Any number of people protect us from Evil with special powers or uber-courage or whatever else us mere mundanes can't possibly hope to understand. The last time a bunch of normal people were able to take care of themselves that I know of was when the Powerpuff Girls went on strike and the people of Townsville had to rescue themselves. And that was satire!
Republicans aren't portrayed as seeking small government, they're against abortions. Democrats aren't against corporations, they're against automatic weapons. The libertarian half of both parties' ideologies gets ignored for the sake of the authoritarian spins.
Not that media corporations (or corporations in general) are the only people at fault here. Any group of people that has a vest interest in making itself bigger wants people to believe that they "need" their labor union, political party, prescription drug plan, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like the average Regal Cinema in five years to me...
When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.
/bin/ed /usr/ucb/vi /usr/bin/emacs
Ed, man! !man ed
ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1)
NAME
ed - text editor
SYNOPSIS
ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ]
DESCRIPTION
Ed is the standard text editor.
---
Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED!
"Ed is the standard text editor."
And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929
-rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990
Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!
"Ed is the standard text editor."
Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:
[damn lameness filter]
Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity.
"Ed is the standard text editor."
Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.
ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!!
When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!
TEXT EDITOR.
When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard.
Ed is for those who can *remember* what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!!
?
"OK. I'm from New Jersey and I don't appreciate jokes making fun of my state. It's not cool and it's not funny."
How about we just make fun of people with no sense of humor instead?
If you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?
"OMG: /. doing actual journalism!"
What is this world coming to?! What's next, spell-checking? Dupe-checking? Article submissions without editorial commentary?
"Even Microsoft can't willy-nilly redefine language so that dogs are really cats."
Yeah, it took them a good two or three years before they went from "browser as a fringe application" to "browser as an integral part of the OS." It's not like they can change it overnight or anything...
"The trouble is that they were then trying to prevent French consumers from buying in Britain and importing directly into France. Now, the EU is an internal free-trade area, so controlling imports between member states is a big no-no."
Yeah, if they were smart like the DVD Consortium, they would have made all of Europe one region and simply price-fix at the continental level.
"I've learned recently that Anime rather annoys me."
Wow, all of it? You've sampled enough to make such a broad statement? Why do I have the feeling you've seen nothing more than what's been aired on Cartoon Network? What if I told you I found nothing redeeming in the Kids WB line-up and decided that all American animation isn't worth seeing? Whoops, did I just lump Futurama into the same category as Jackie Chan Adventures?
About the only truly good thing I've seen in Adult Swim in the way of Japanese animation is Mobile Suit Gundam. It catches the "war is hell" theme very well without being yet another anti-war piece so common on both sides of the Pacific. Unfortunately, so many other serei have ridden in on Gundam's coattails, even on Cartoon Network. While this includes 008th MS Team (which, IMO, is everything Gundam was only better), others have been included like Gundam Wing (mediocrirty) and G Gundam (an abomination of nature that should be put to the torch).
Yes, the rest of the line-up on Cartoon Network was "more of the same." But that is not to say that all Japanese animation can be lumped into that category.
Looking for sience fiction/fantasy? Tenchi had its moments, but they were just that: moments. Nothing on Cartoon Network (even before AOL/TW's "editing") can instill the sense of wonder and amazement in me like either Escaflowne or even El-Hazard.
About the only other scale Tenchi begins to rate on is romance, but it sure as hell ain't Kimagure Orange Road. It doesn't put a goofy smile on my face like Maison Ikkoku. It doesn't cause the physical pain that Video Girl Ai brings with it. Heck, I'm not even sure it rates a Marmalade Boy.
Cowboy Bebop? I agree it's mostly cliche and the only thing it has going for it is the main theme music (which, although nobody seems to believe me, has exactly the same beat and rythm as the main theme to The Tick and even its melody is very close to "dah dweee dah dah dah dweee dow." Sing along when you next see Cowboy Bebop if you don't believe me). Heck, it's pretty tough to tell the difference between it and Outlaw Star at times. But I will say this: some Japanese cliches are at least different from American cliches. You're not going to confuse either one with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
And perhaps some of it you have no sense of humor for. You can't tell me Sailor Moon isn't satire meant to me laughed at! A young teenaged Japanese girl with blonde hair (!!!) falling for a 20-something college student that works in a video game arcade (!!!!!)? It's the wet dreams of the 20-something male artists (as well as satire of the entire "chick anime" genre it was so obviously meant to poke fun at) and was meant to be laughed at as such.
Part of the problem with Sailor Moon is that the English voice-over crew took their jobs a little too seriously, and part of the problem is that people like you require your satire to be as blatent as Futurama before you're able to get it.
At any rate, don't make such broad statements unless you're able to defend them.
"And then you have the people who know the names of every character..."
Yeah! Let's judge a medium by the character of its audience! All I have to do is look at the average South Park fan to know the show doesn't include a whit of satire or political commentary...
"George Bush junior once owned a company (Arbusto Energy) jointly with one of Osama bin Laden's many brothers."
Is Kevin Bacon also involved?
"The account had a five-letter login"
You'd think someone who has held on to power with a white-knuckled grip for so long would have the foresight to use a slightly longer password...
"Let's hope Senators Hollings and Berman are paying attention."
The same survey pointed out that this happened to be the same 77% that don't make large campaign contributions.
"you might want to consult with your lawyer now."
Might be kinda interesting. It may leave you free to blatently and publicly violate the EULA on the software? "But I never agreed to anything. Sue the cable company!"
"On the contrary the legal system in the US poses a number of restrictions on free speech."
Being held responsible for what you say and being able to say it are two very different things.
"This includes libel"
You can be as libellous as you want as long as you can pay the fees/fines. After all, a libel suit is civil (ie. another individual sues you), not criminal.
And most states have a clause in their constitution mandating that the truth cannot be considered libel, so the plaintiff is stuck with demonstrating that it's not true.
"porn"
Some of it depends on what you call "porn." A good deal of it isn't considered "speech," but the only restrictions on it (beyond anti-kiddie-porn laws) are a few minor restrictions (no pun intneded) on distribution and advertising. Unlike some/many countries, your porn can be as hardcore as you want so long as you're over 18 when you purchase it.
Hell, from what I've been seeing in recent days, it may soon be easier to get more/hardcore porn in the US than France.
"patent and copyright laws"
As practiced? Hell yes. In theory? A toss-up at worst. The inability to make a profit off of what you publish can in itself be considered a barrier to speech.
"So don't tell me that the US has free speech - because you don't.
Besides I personally think it makes sense for racist propaganda to be illegal. "
Hipocrite. Bans on distributing pantented and copyrighted material are bad but bans on hate speech are OK? And I'm sure you're more than willing to decide for the rest of us just what else is OK and what is not? Personally, I'd rather be able to decide for myself what I should read and what I should not.
You are a shining example of why "hate" speech should be allowed.
"Look at it as a sort of class action libel case"
Can you prove it's wrong? 99.9% of it is so vague and baseless that very little of it can either be proven or disproven. But in a libel suit it needs to be disproven.
"Also rasism is one of the key points governed by the UN Human Rights declaration."
And I'm sure said Human Rights declaration decides for us what is racism and what isn't? Crimethink?
People should be allowed to have whatever opinion they damned well please, so long as they don't act upon them. I'd rather have to deal with the occasional poor judgement of individuals than government-sponsored thought control.
"suddenly they can no longer use that information to defray some of the costs of running a broadband outfit."
First off, I notice you're assuming that they need this money to defray the cost of providing broadband. I suggest that any business using this model doesn't deserve to stay in business long.
Secondly, you seem to be someone who thinks we should all be very happy with the "opt-out list" mentality because we're somehow "saving money." Businesses need to be taught that abusing and not respecting their customers is a Bad Thing and I for one wouldn't mind paying a little more for a business that actually gives a damn about me (but I have yet to be forced into that decision... seems some enterprising business is always there to provide to us somewhere). And I have the feeling that I'm not alone in feeling this way.
"A better course of action would be to quietly uninstall everything the cable guy installed and keep it all under your hat."
You're part of the problem, then, not the solution. I'm simply not going to just sit there and take this sort of abuse from anybody.
The contributions bit is already skewed in the individuals' favor. Ten individuals are allowed to contribute more money ($1000 each, $10,000 total) than a single organization representing ten people ($5000 total).
The problem isn't the contributions, the problems are:
- Nobody knows about them
- Nobody cares enough to look into them
Politicians would be a lot less likely to accept contributions if they were heavily criticized for it."Why? It does not provide anything extra for the user but problems."
Because it's nice for us site hosts to know where the traffic is coming from, helping us to realize just how few constituents are visiting our sites...
*mutter* Last damn time I put a URL in my sig...
"in some countries, that would be seen as intolerable corruption."
While in others it would catapult you to the head of government. Just look at Italy and France!
"maximum 24-hour-play lifetime for each downloaded movie"
Considering how long a DVD-quality movie will take to download (without going into bandwidth caps or more draconian ISP measures), that will leave me exactly 37 seconds in which to watch the movie before it erases itself.
"they are often designed more to promote current office-holders than to conduct governmental affairs."
And the other avenues of communications aren't? How is Congressman Tauzin's self-promotional website different from, say, the form letter I got from Congressman Tauzin explaining how good the Tauzin-Dingel through franked mail (who needs to buy stamps when you're a member of Congress?) in response to the complaint I sent to him about said bill? Tell me how that letter and all the other form letters various members of Congress send to concerned voters isn't just so much political advertising?
No, I'm not saying all members of Congress are guilty of this (at the very least somebody read letters I've sent to my Senators, for example), but there are some who are quite guilty of this, and all we've seen come of it is legislation against using franked mail within X number of days of election day.
Come back when you've noticed the problem in general and not just the websites in particular.
"That's not an abuse of monopoly power, any more than a McDonalds giving away free french fries with every Happy Meal."
That's because they can still go to Burger King. It is an abuse of monopoly power when customers, through (for example) BellSouth's monopoly on local telephone service, are forced to decide to pay for internet service for somebody else or to do without telephone service at all. Or being forced to pay for IE or do without Windows.
"It seems we have someone predicting the "Imminent Death of the 'Net" again."
*BSD^H^H^H^HThe Internet is dying!
"If there's a cable company, a DSL provider, a dial-up provider, a satellite provider, and a cellular dial-up provider, then there's not exactly a monopoly, is there?"
Unless, of course, they're all owned by the same people. AT&T is selling cable service and Cox is selling telephone service when last I checked. (And the FCC is worried about EchoStar buying DirecTV?!?)
And then there's the fact that some of these companies can and do abuse their monopolies in other areas while competing as an ISP. "Sign up with our (telephone/cable/etc.) service and get 'free' internet service!" Where "free" means "paid for by jacked up telephone/cable service prices."
"Maybe they should settle this on the 'rink, where fighting only gets you in the penalty box."
And you feel much shame.
"Did Galileo find a Black Monolith yet?"
Wrong system. You'll have to look at what's in orbit around Saturn. It doesn't teleport to the Jovian system until Kubrick gets involved, and since he's now dead...
... because object recognition is hard for computers? Tetris is all about putting things where they fit, not some grand master strategy. And us biological constructs have an advantage, where we can more or less decide on the fly if X piece will fit decently enough in Y hole without having to go through a bajillion IF-THEN logic loops.
"Alternatives to the cable giants, ala BBC are not readily available."
What, can't find PBS in all those hundreds of channels on digital cable? Heck, even DirecTV carries PBS programs...
And those of us who happen to drive more than 50 miles every once in a while, get sick of hearing the same ClearChannel playlist over and over, but still can't afford a satellite radio find ourselves listening to NPR/PRI programming an awful lot.
At any rate, your conspiracy theory (like most) have a few holes.
"Help to accelerate the destruction of the public education system since an educated populace might not be interested in sensationalized reporting skewed towards a conservative viewpoint."
Except they kinda need an educated pool of workers if they're going to compete with foreign corps...
"Help to ensure that politicians are elected that are sympathetic to their viewpoint. This is accomplished through a combination of biased reporting, emphasizing the faults of political opponents, and prolifieration of punditry disguised as journalism."
Yeah, that explains how Microsoft was able to keep Clinton from being elected and the way the oil companies managed to get permission to drill in the ANWR...
"Self sensorship, and support of governement or corporate sensorship, to maintain a favorable political atmosphere."
That, or because they know they can make more money with 31 flavors of vanilla...
"Monitary support of politicians as a means of encouraging support for the corporate political agenda."
Dude, everybody and their mother throws money at political campaigns. Even the corporations' arch nemesis, the labor unions.
It's useless to try to classify the media as being "left" or "right" as they tend to play both roles from time to time. The only thing they consistantly score in is on the authoritarian/libertarian scale (which we'll call "up = authoritarian" and "down = libertarian" for the sake of this post). Media corporations have a vest interest in the authoritarian "government saving people from themselves" viewpoint because they make most of their money doing research and interpreting information for other people (namely, their audience). The more people feel they need to rely on Somebody Else to do their thinking for them, the more those people will turn to AOL/TW or ClearChannel for their daily dose of disinformation.
Think about it. During the whole Clinton scandal, all we heard about was the fact that he slept around in office, generally feeding the idea that people in government need to be held to "higher moral" (read "external") personal standards. Ask nine out of ten people (even if those people were members of Congress) why Clinton was being impeached, and they'll all tell you it was because he was sleeping around. The news media focused on how he somehow needed a nun to whack his knuckles with a ruler because of his "impure" thoughts, all but forgetting that the real reason he was being impeached is because he may have abused his powers as president to get away with lying on the stand (aka "perjury") and get out of a sexual harassment lawsuit because of it. But all we got out of the media from it is that even the president needs a "Big Brother" to keep an eye on him
And just to show that the upward bias cuts both ways on the left-right axis, how did Clinton get elected to begin with? Because the guy who won the Gulf War was seen (portrayed) as not doing enough about the "failing" economy. He was off globe-trotting with his coalition buddies and wasn't doing enough to steer the economy in the right direct. Never mind the fact that the US economy could probably get by just fine on cruise control for a decade or two (it's called a free market for a reason...), and never mind the fact that he probably has less control over things than either the Fed or Congress, the American people needed somebody to worry about them, to take control of things and take care of the poor defenseless US economy. George H. W. wasn't being enough of the parental figure we "needed."
Even the works of fiction that somehow gets called "entertainment" almost always come off with an authoritarian skew. The poor Republic needs the Wise and Powerful Jedi to protect it. The ring-bearers wouldn't have lasted five minutes without Gandalf's help. Neo was "the One" they needed to guide and protect them in their time of need. And don't even get me started on superheroes.
Television? Cops. Priests. Vampire hunters. Witches. Any number of people protect us from Evil with special powers or uber-courage or whatever else us mere mundanes can't possibly hope to understand. The last time a bunch of normal people were able to take care of themselves that I know of was when the Powerpuff Girls went on strike and the people of Townsville had to rescue themselves. And that was satire!
Republicans aren't portrayed as seeking small government, they're against abortions. Democrats aren't against corporations, they're against automatic weapons. The libertarian half of both parties' ideologies gets ignored for the sake of the authoritarian spins.
Not that media corporations (or corporations in general) are the only people at fault here. Any group of people that has a vest interest in making itself bigger wants people to believe that they "need" their labor union, political party, prescription drug plan, etc.