"But while not entirely censored, political speech in the US is still marginalized if contrary to the "acceptable" norm. "
so what you are saying is that unpopular opinions are unpopular? pffffft. i really don't understand what you are getting at. every crackpot theory deserves to be treated with equal time and deferential respect?
"The government doesn't even need to make much effort either, the population has been raised to do it for them now."
in every society, that ever existed, and ever will exist, less popular opinions will be less popular and will be dismissed out of hand. this has nothing to do with the government. it has to do with simple human social existence
if such opinions are actually the correct ones- and every opinion that is popular was at one time unpopular, then such opinions need to fight their way to acceptance. that's NORMAL, nor do i understand the idea that it should ever be any other way
there will never exist a government, now or in the future, that won't block access to something. for example, child pornography
so you gauge governments not by the fact they block (they all do, and always will, and if you don't understand that, stop commenting on a subject matter you don't want to have a realistic grasp on), but by WHAT they block
so what makes places like china genuinely worse the usa, morally and logically genuinely much worse the usa, is that they block political speech. they reserve the right to harshly punish those who speak things the government does not like. and they frequently do this
compared to this, the intellectual property shenanigans that goes on in the west is evil, but a much smaller, much less worse evil, than what goes on in china, by any moral or logical measure of proportionality you wish to employ
if you do not understand that what china does with censorship on the web is indeed clearly worse than in the west, i openly question your intellectual capacities and your grasp of the concepts you comment on
it's called false equivalency, and it merely announces a deficit in your logical coherence that you don't understand something like censoring political speech is much, much worse than any kind of censorship happening in the west. that really is the truth. understand why it is so much worse, or you are simply announcing your irrelevancy to the subject matter
stop it with the blatantly ignorant false equivalencies please, silly teenagers (at least, for your sake, i hope you are a teenager. then you have a valid excuse for your ignorance. for if you are not chronologically a teenager, you certainly are intellectually a teenager)
the reason country (X) is not as rich as country (Y) is because country (X) has a value system and/ or government that is ineffective. part of the reason why things remain this way is that country (X) will invent imaginary stories about the evils of country (Y) rather than getting their fucking act together and taking some fucking responsibility for their sorry fucking attitude
economics is not a zero sum game, where someone must lose so that someone else must win. economics is a more-for-everyone game. the chinese are enjoying more prosperity than they had before. you are assuming if they weren't manufacturing iPads their life would be better. compared to the usa, indeed, their life is worse, right now. but it would be even more worse without this plant
the chinese are where the usa and great britain were in the 1800s. and they are already fighting for their rights, like workers in the west had to to enjoy protections:
the chinese will eventually become just as prosperous as the usa, eventually, if not surpassing the usa, as soon as workers start fighting for their rights. but you don't get something by not fighting for it in this world
and you don't become economically prosperous by doing nothing. and you certainly don't get to complain about not having something that someone else has because you are doing nothing while the prosperous are doing something that made them prosperous. the chinese know that, why don't you?
the end game of globalization is prosperity for everyone. of course that's not painless. but stopping globalization perpetuates inequalities, it doesn't solve them
with watchmen, it was popular, but a financial failure because it cost so much to produce and market
if you make a movie for $1 million, and it makes $2 million in theatres, its unpopular but a financial winner
if you make a movie for $150 million, and it makes $100 million in theatres, its popular but a financial loser
there's also cases like shawshank redemption, which was a box office failure, but went on to be greatly loved in the television and video afterlife. here popularity grows over time (starting out as obscure, not starting out as unpopular)
so no, sorry, Y is a firmly independent variable of X and Z
hmmm, why would i turn a blind eye to something that "might have" happened, according to your political agenda, rather than a realistic reading of intentions and motivations, also quoted in the media? hmmm
1. take the shawshank redemption. one of the most beloved movies ever. but it was a box office disappointment. some movies grow on you over time, prove durable and to wonderful stories. but due to bad marketing or timing, just didn't recoup the production fee. i'm not saying watchmen is as good as the shawshank redemption, but reactions have been mostly positive
2. not enough people showed up at the theatres to make the thing profitable. of course, it wasn't even remotely unpopular in theatres: it made over a hundred million dollars. its just that it cost $150 million to make and market! although, with hollywood accounting, dvd, ancillary sales, syndication, blah blah blah, who knows what the real figures are
"We have introduced the idea to demographic panels assembled from shoppers at Mall of America, and feedback is generally ambivalent, with many blank stares. However, we have found that this movie will do better in the 18-34 female demographic if 'Neuromancer' is retitled 'New Romancer.' Also, there should be more bodily humor and scatological jokes. 'Too weird', 'I don't get it', 'Something your weird brother would watch', and a doodle of a cat is the dominant impression of the movie from the questionnaire forms. We also suggest cutting the running length from 2 hours, 30 minutes to 45 minutes. This can be accomplished with little damage to the source material and remaining true to the author's original intent, by removing only the plot and the coherency. Plot and coherency seemed to matter the least to the demographic in our surveys."
if we are going to consider the cdc's case and talking points, we should also consider what the zombie nation offers us, their motivations and their point of view:
but more dangerous is a self-selecting subgroup who believes they know better than anyone else, and based on that, feel they have a right to impose their "wisdom" on everyone else. no, i'm not talking about math or hard science, i'm talking soft sciences or ideology. education isn't a protection, as "education" is often just indoctrination into a set of assumptions that cannot be doubted on fear of banishment from the group
so i cast my lot with the wisdom of the mob. i don't trust the mob, but at least its allegiances are simple and easy to discern. in other words, yes, the mob is dumb, but the mob is also honest. so-called experts meanwhile are more often just ideologues with a political agenda to promote
do you need a socket to manufacture a plug? do you need a screwdriver to manufacture a screw? same principle: we already have the vaccine, so we can copy it, without the original virus the vaccine is meant for needed
unlike SIV/ HIV or influenza which loves making species jumps, there are no natural smallpox reservoirs out there except us, other human beings. so it is genuinely dead in the wild
yes, there are related cousins to smallpox, like cowpox, but these diseases need to evolve into something like smallpox over an extended period of time, they won't simply spontaneously recreate smallpox in the wild
if you already have a functional vaccine, you can make copies of it. you don't need the original virus to do that. yes, some methods depend upon the original virus to do that, but not all methods
In 1986, the World Health Organization first recommended destruction of the virus, and later set the date of destruction to be 30 December 1993. This was postponed to 30 June 1999.[73] Due to resistance from the US and Russia, in 2002 the World Health Assembly agreed to permit the temporary retention of the virus stocks for specific research purposes.[74] Destroying existing stocks would reduce the risk involved with ongoing smallpox research; the stocks are not needed to respond to a smallpox outbreak.[75] Some scientists have argued that the stocks may be useful in developing new vaccines, antiviral drugs, and diagnostic tests,[76] however, a 2010 review by a team of public health experts appointed by the World Health Organization concluded that no essential public health purpose is served by the US and Russia continuing to retain virus stocks.[77] The latter view is frequently supported in the scientific community, particularly among veterans of the WHO Smallpox Eradication Program.[78]
you know its actually hard to get infectiousness and delivery vector just right. humans are puny in their ability to fine tune that. you need to stop basing your appraisals of human biotech ability on hollywood movies
however, mother nature is a much better laboratory for this purpose. SARS and swine flu are just a taste of things to come. mother nature abhors imbalance, and whenever a homogenous population gets too large within mother nature (which is what we are), then the other part of mother nature thinks "food that should be exploited". for our purposes, since no large carnivores threaten us, the threat is from the other end of the scale: the diseases that don't care about anything except reproducing, looking at us like a giant pristine smorgasbord, just waiting for exploitation. and, mark my words, some microroganism will crack that magical infectiousness/ delivery vector code someday, catch us unawares, and spread like wildfire. it's just a matter of time and probability. and our population is just too huge and dense to escape this corrective mechanism
Slashdot Mirror
you have some really malformed ideas about the role and function of government
"But while not entirely censored, political speech in the US is still marginalized if contrary to the "acceptable" norm. "
so what you are saying is that unpopular opinions are unpopular? pffffft. i really don't understand what you are getting at. every crackpot theory deserves to be treated with equal time and deferential respect?
"The government doesn't even need to make much effort either, the population has been raised to do it for them now."
in every society, that ever existed, and ever will exist, less popular opinions will be less popular and will be dismissed out of hand. this has nothing to do with the government. it has to do with simple human social existence
if such opinions are actually the correct ones- and every opinion that is popular was at one time unpopular, then such opinions need to fight their way to acceptance. that's NORMAL, nor do i understand the idea that it should ever be any other way
there will never exist a government, now or in the future, that won't block access to something. for example, child pornography
so you gauge governments not by the fact they block (they all do, and always will, and if you don't understand that, stop commenting on a subject matter you don't want to have a realistic grasp on), but by WHAT they block
so what makes places like china genuinely worse the usa, morally and logically genuinely much worse the usa, is that they block political speech. they reserve the right to harshly punish those who speak things the government does not like. and they frequently do this
compared to this, the intellectual property shenanigans that goes on in the west is evil, but a much smaller, much less worse evil, than what goes on in china, by any moral or logical measure of proportionality you wish to employ
if you do not understand that what china does with censorship on the web is indeed clearly worse than in the west, i openly question your intellectual capacities and your grasp of the concepts you comment on
it's called false equivalency, and it merely announces a deficit in your logical coherence that you don't understand something like censoring political speech is much, much worse than any kind of censorship happening in the west. that really is the truth. understand why it is so much worse, or you are simply announcing your irrelevancy to the subject matter
stop it with the blatantly ignorant false equivalencies please, silly teenagers (at least, for your sake, i hope you are a teenager. then you have a valid excuse for your ignorance. for if you are not chronologically a teenager, you certainly are intellectually a teenager)
wow, shit loads of the usage of the term "shit load" in this thread
too much fibre in your intestines/ infrastructure?
the reason country (X) is not as rich as country (Y) is because country (X) has a value system and/ or government that is ineffective. part of the reason why things remain this way is that country (X) will invent imaginary stories about the evils of country (Y) rather than getting their fucking act together and taking some fucking responsibility for their sorry fucking attitude
economics is not a zero sum game, where someone must lose so that someone else must win. economics is a more-for-everyone game. the chinese are enjoying more prosperity than they had before. you are assuming if they weren't manufacturing iPads their life would be better. compared to the usa, indeed, their life is worse, right now. but it would be even more worse without this plant
the chinese are where the usa and great britain were in the 1800s. and they are already fighting for their rights, like workers in the west had to to enjoy protections:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/business/global/09labor.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire
the chinese will eventually become just as prosperous as the usa, eventually, if not surpassing the usa, as soon as workers start fighting for their rights. but you don't get something by not fighting for it in this world
and you don't become economically prosperous by doing nothing. and you certainly don't get to complain about not having something that someone else has because you are doing nothing while the prosperous are doing something that made them prosperous. the chinese know that, why don't you?
the end game of globalization is prosperity for everyone. of course that's not painless. but stopping globalization perpetuates inequalities, it doesn't solve them
LOL ;-)
with watchmen, it was popular, but a financial failure because it cost so much to produce and market
if you make a movie for $1 million, and it makes $2 million in theatres, its unpopular but a financial winner
if you make a movie for $150 million, and it makes $100 million in theatres, its popular but a financial loser
there's also cases like shawshank redemption, which was a box office failure, but went on to be greatly loved in the television and video afterlife. here popularity grows over time (starting out as obscure, not starting out as unpopular)
so no, sorry, Y is a firmly independent variable of X and Z
i think i even have a cuecat somewhere. no flooz though
so where's my bubble 2.0 swag?
i need to have my museum contributions ready for 2040
hmmm, why would i turn a blind eye to something that "might have" happened, according to your political agenda, rather than a realistic reading of intentions and motivations, also quoted in the media? hmmm
happens a lot, due to 2 reasons:
1. take the shawshank redemption. one of the most beloved movies ever. but it was a box office disappointment. some movies grow on you over time, prove durable and to wonderful stories. but due to bad marketing or timing, just didn't recoup the production fee. i'm not saying watchmen is as good as the shawshank redemption, but reactions have been mostly positive
2. not enough people showed up at the theatres to make the thing profitable. of course, it wasn't even remotely unpopular in theatres: it made over a hundred million dollars. its just that it cost $150 million to make and market! although, with hollywood accounting, dvd, ancillary sales, syndication, blah blah blah, who knows what the real figures are
"We have introduced the idea to demographic panels assembled from shoppers at Mall of America, and feedback is generally ambivalent, with many blank stares. However, we have found that this movie will do better in the 18-34 female demographic if 'Neuromancer' is retitled 'New Romancer.' Also, there should be more bodily humor and scatological jokes. 'Too weird', 'I don't get it', 'Something your weird brother would watch', and a doodle of a cat is the dominant impression of the movie from the questionnaire forms. We also suggest cutting the running length from 2 hours, 30 minutes to 45 minutes. This can be accomplished with little damage to the source material and remaining true to the author's original intent, by removing only the plot and the coherency. Plot and coherency seemed to matter the least to the demographic in our surveys."
the measurements for each dimension are:
x: popular with general audiences, unpopular with general audiences
y: financially successful, financial failure
z: popular with subculture fanatics, unpopular with subculture fanatics
ok, now amongst those 8 spaces, place your bets:
like lord of the rings? (winner on all 3 dimensions)
like watchmen? (winner in both popularities, loser financially)
like solaris? (only a winner with the subculture of diehards)
like tron? (winner in general popularity, failure in subculture popularity, winner financially)
etc., etc.
8 possible outcomes
cool story bro
if we are going to consider the cdc's case and talking points, we should also consider what the zombie nation offers us, their motivations and their point of view:
http://zombo.com/
zombie snipers
brushed aluminum skin is not an option
however, you can get chrome plating
you mean he WAS
but more dangerous is a self-selecting subgroup who believes they know better than anyone else, and based on that, feel they have a right to impose their "wisdom" on everyone else. no, i'm not talking about math or hard science, i'm talking soft sciences or ideology. education isn't a protection, as "education" is often just indoctrination into a set of assumptions that cannot be doubted on fear of banishment from the group
so i cast my lot with the wisdom of the mob. i don't trust the mob, but at least its allegiances are simple and easy to discern. in other words, yes, the mob is dumb, but the mob is also honest. so-called experts meanwhile are more often just ideologues with a political agenda to promote
so what you are saying is i should trust the word of an anonymous coward on a comment board over the word of WHO infectious disease experts
do you need a socket to manufacture a plug? do you need a screwdriver to manufacture a screw? same principle: we already have the vaccine, so we can copy it, without the original virus the vaccine is meant for needed
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2166584&cid=36169256
unlike SIV/ HIV or influenza which loves making species jumps, there are no natural smallpox reservoirs out there except us, other human beings. so it is genuinely dead in the wild
yes, there are related cousins to smallpox, like cowpox, but these diseases need to evolve into something like smallpox over an extended period of time, they won't simply spontaneously recreate smallpox in the wild
but it wouldn't take a lot of money to get an early warning system up and running. its worth a try at least
if you already have a functional vaccine, you can make copies of it. you don't need the original virus to do that. yes, some methods depend upon the original virus to do that, but not all methods
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Post-eradication
you know its actually hard to get infectiousness and delivery vector just right. humans are puny in their ability to fine tune that. you need to stop basing your appraisals of human biotech ability on hollywood movies
however, mother nature is a much better laboratory for this purpose. SARS and swine flu are just a taste of things to come. mother nature abhors imbalance, and whenever a homogenous population gets too large within mother nature (which is what we are), then the other part of mother nature thinks "food that should be exploited". for our purposes, since no large carnivores threaten us, the threat is from the other end of the scale: the diseases that don't care about anything except reproducing, looking at us like a giant pristine smorgasbord, just waiting for exploitation. and, mark my words, some microroganism will crack that magical infectiousness/ delivery vector code someday, catch us unawares, and spread like wildfire. it's just a matter of time and probability. and our population is just too huge and dense to escape this corrective mechanism