The problem that Occupy Wall Street has getting its message out is the same problem the left has had in the post-Reagan era: they haven't come up with a good way to articulate their argument that the state needs to take an active role in society, especially the economy. In the face of "government is the problem" rhetoric, many Democrats have simply caved and accepted the basic premise, ala Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama. Obama started to go in a different direction, but his general ineptitude with messaging hasn't gotten anywhere.
The left needs to articulate that it's not a question of the size of government, it's a question of whose interests the government is protecting; is it us, or them? Then they need to come up with clear, specific things that could be done. How about putting Americans back to work through a new CCC, a new WPA? Putting people back to work puts real money in peoples' pockets and back into the economy, reduces the real long-term problems caused by long-term unemployment, and most importantly would restore peoples' faith in their government. It worked in the 30s, at the very least restoring peoples' faith in the promise of America. People simply want jobs, not handouts.
There have been some good points raised about history being more than narrative that I would like to weigh in on. As a Ph.D student in history, I have thought about the fascinating possibilities of using video games as teaching tools, for video games, especially complex non-linear ones such as Grand Theft Auto and others, tend to emphasize a sense of contingency: that choices are are made for many different and often personal reasons, and that unexpected consequences result. World of Warcraft and other MMOs have gone even farther in this direction. Contingency is one of the most important facets of history that I try and emphasize with my students: that narration is just a tool to help us understand events, but when it comes down to it determining causality is an extremely difficult enterprise in which a multitude of factors need to be considered when considering human actors. I, unlike some, do not want to completely discard narrative or to give up on determining causality; for me, the ultimate project is to humanize the past, to get down to the individual level, beyond crude economic determinism and hollow constructs. I haven't worked it out completely, but basic parameters such as being able to experience an event from multiple perspectives on replays, having the subject be able to make choices within the parameters of available evidence, and not having endings predetermined would go a long way towards furthering the project of understanding the past not as a series of inevitable events, but as complex human stories.
Perhaps this is a pipe dream, but we're talking about sci-fi technology here, so why not? Imagine what would happen if we invest in alternative energy sources on a massive scale - say 500 billion dollars, which could come from the defense budget (still leaving the United States as the top single spender on for defense, spending nearly twice as much as the next largest spender, France, according to wikipedia's figures). If we didn't need fossil fuel, we would most certainly be able to pull out of the middle east, and ignore them just like we ignore Africa (not that this is a good thing, but that's another issue...). There goes the main reason for war cited by those who attacked us on 9/11 - the fact the we are occupying muslim lands. See Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. In fact, we could view investing in alternative energy sources AS defense spending - a solid investment in a crucial strategic interest of the United States, not to mention a great way to attack the current environmental problems we face. This sort of investment would not solve the problem overnight, and undoubtedly it would need to be allocated very carefully, but just look at what we did back during the Cold War era when we seriously invested in education and technology - we reached the moon, something that would have been considered science fiction 30 years previously! Call me naive, but I can hope, right?
It would appear that the America's Test Kitchen people have adopted this business model as well, selling the content from their magazines on the web with some additional web-exclusive enticements. I can imagine they also make a pretty penny off of it. They have a similar reputation to Consumer Reports as a source of unbiased information, although their marketing seems to be getting a bit out of hand as of late.
The key here is not to say that they've declared war on it. Whenever they do that to phenomena, it doesn't work very well, like the whole "war on drugs" or "war on poverty."
After reading over my phone company's privacy policy, http://att.sbc.com/gen/privacy-policy?pid=2506#4 it seems that they have violated said policy. According to AT&T, "We must disclose information, when requested, to comply with court orders or subpoenas," but there clearly weren't any court orders involved with them turning the information over to the NSA, according to this article: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/38 59829.html.
AT&T says that the data is "Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI), http://att.sbc.com/gen/privacy-policy?pid=2566, and that "Protecting the privacy of your service and usage records is your right and our duty under federal law," although "our local SBC telephone company may also be required to disclose CPNI for legal and regulatory reasons such as a court order," but again there was clearly no court orders involved according to the article about Qwest's refusal to cooperate.
If they didn't break any laws (which I doubt, but is a possibility) they certainly have broken their promise to their customers. That might be grounds for legal action, false advertising perhaps?
"In the book 1984, the government maintained a perpetual state of phoney war to distract the population. Today, the opposite is happening. We are in a real war with terrorist networks groups that swear they will kill us any way they can, yet the myopic deny reality and imagine that the war is phoney."
Isn't a "perpetual state of phony war" what this so-called "war on terror" is? I don't see the government doing the logical things to make us safer such as securing our borders, scanning the cargo containers coming into our ports, and adequately funding first responders. The disaster in New Orleans only proves how unprepared we are. And that was a diaster we could see coming, unlike an actual terrorist attack, considering how pathetic the state our intelligence services are.
And what has the government done with is so-called "war on terror?" Aside from Afghanistan, which I believe was more of less justified, it has invaded a sovereign nation that had nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and was actually an enemy of Al-Quaeda, engaged in the supression of human rights in places like Guantanamo Bay, and erode the freedoms and privacy of regular Americans. Oh yeah, and they created the department of homeland security. Because more buerocracy means we're safer.
If you believe that the terrorists are out to destroy our way of life, I'd say the terrorists are winning at this rate. Certainly some sacrifices must be made, but this is going too far.
Yes the threat of terrorism is real, but I'm think we have a lot more to fear from our own government than from terrorists.
I'm afraid you missed my point, which is that there are people on the other end of the telephone. More often than not, where I worked the majority of people came from the lower socio-economic levels of society. There will always be people willing to work as a caller because it is certainly better than Wal-Mart, although still crappy. As for myself, the job was convenient, and could at times be very interesting. Some people like to do polls, believe it or not, finding them to be interesting and informative (shock!). But I'm afraid many choose jobs like that because they are simply not skilled enough to find other jobs, or there simply aren't other jobs avaliable.
It seems that you regard people who work at call centers with nothing but contempt, judging by your comment that you hope to increase the crappiness factor of their jobs. Treat people with some dignity and respect, why don't you. Even telemarketers deserve to be treated with a shred of decency. I do sympathize with the fact that you don't want to be bothered, but that doesn't mean that you should take out your anger on the little guy-something I witness all too often in the forms of rude customers at convenience stores, e.c.t.
After working at a polling company during my summers breaks at school, I can say reading this reminds me of why I have such a low opinion of the general public.
I demur the assertion that this kind of behaviour is polite. While some will give in to this kind of a respondent, other callers will laugh at this kind of behaviour because it is really rather rude, and then have the computer call them back immediately to bug them. Rude behaviour demands a response in their eyes. It's not like the company really cares, because they were calling from an anonymous number and giving a fake name, so there was no real way for the person to find out who was doing the survey unless an employee majorly messes up.
Market research is a CRAPPY job, and many people forget that there are actually people on the other end trying to make a living, sometimes even in your own country. Most people at the call center I worked at were senior citizens trying to make ends meet. Most people did not "mess with" people on the other end and do things like that mentioned above.
Very few people were actually that rude, and in fact many were polite enough to hear me out, and politely decline to participate in the survey I was conducting. I never did stuff like the people mentioned above, and in fact I did not push people to do the surveys at all. Either they want to or not; there are plenty of people out there on the randomly-generated list who actually like to do surveys.
Telemarketers have made it difficult for pollers. There are rude people doing polls too, but it is not surprising considering how most people treat them.
What do you propose to do about funding higher education in this country? The amount of aid given to most students is paltry compared with the cost of higher education, whose cost is only increasing.
The Cuban embargo is there to protect American sugar farmers. Cuba's main export is sugar, and US sugar farmers wouldn't be able to compete with the prices they could achieve due to the labor rate, similar to China. You also can't forget the Cuban vote, very imporant considering what happened in Florida last year. They like the embargo.
http://www.alamut.com/subj/economics/misc/clash.ht ml
Everyone should check out this article. According to the author's theory first proposed in 1993, we are moving toward new type of global conflict. 14 years later, it doesn't seem so far off.
Tube amplification is quite alive, even thriving in the guitar world. Despite the many technological advances many would say doom tube amps, they keep making them, and people keep playing them. As a guitarist, where distortion is an important component of the sound in many cases, I find tube distortion more pleasing than distortion boxes or solid state preamps. Even with solid state amps, some will include a 12ax7 preamp tube for the distortion stage.
Some of many great manufacturers: www.soldano.com www.mesaboogie.co m - one of the best in my opinion. www.voxamps.co.uk - you can't go wrong with an AC/30 ____________________
I know for me, when I surf the internet I usually have at least three different tabs open at once. As I was reading that article I was reading another article on www.macslash.org in addition to checking my email... ooh the rush!!!
And let's not also forget the evolution of cable news, with an american flag, the time in all different time zones, the scrolling news bar, the news program itself AND the terror threat level. My parents are odviously addicted to fox news because it gets them high.
I hope no one 'wins' the GPU war. It's because of ATI that NVidia is pressed to do things like this, and release all these cool new cards we're talking about. Competition is healthy.
Talent is just half of the battle. Careful study and hard work will never replace gimmickey quick-fixes. On this note, I know at my school, the Crane School of Music, we have very few courses dedicated to music technology. I know that it is hard to stay at the cutting edge of technology, but neverless the potential of music technology is starggering, and I feel that at least my school is years behind. It would be nice to have courses in synth programming, sampling, and other basic techniques. The only bright spot is a course on digital audio using ProTools on a Macintosh. There is no mention of software synthesizers though. Do they offer courses like these at other schools?
If chess players are paranoid thrillseekers, I wonder what go players are... In comparing go and chess, they can both be compared to war. Chess would be 'classical' (napoleonic) warfare while go would be 'modern' warfare. Do go players get the same rush of victory?
I loved the report on NBC news tonight on the ruling, which said that this is a huge ruling in favor of Microsoft, and then a pundit said 'all they get will now be a slap on the wrist'. They then cut to Bill Gates himself, who didn't answer a single question asked of him, just like a politician. Is this spin or what?
At first glance, it seems that the decision helps freelancers, but now it seems that this hurts them as well. It seems like this decision really favours big business. Where do people get their news and rhetoric afterall? I remember a vast majority reading MSNBC and CNN's websites.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem that Occupy Wall Street has getting its message out is the same problem the left has had in the post-Reagan era: they haven't come up with a good way to articulate their argument that the state needs to take an active role in society, especially the economy. In the face of "government is the problem" rhetoric, many Democrats have simply caved and accepted the basic premise, ala Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama. Obama started to go in a different direction, but his general ineptitude with messaging hasn't gotten anywhere.
The left needs to articulate that it's not a question of the size of government, it's a question of whose interests the government is protecting; is it us, or them? Then they need to come up with clear, specific things that could be done. How about putting Americans back to work through a new CCC, a new WPA? Putting people back to work puts real money in peoples' pockets and back into the economy, reduces the real long-term problems caused by long-term unemployment, and most importantly would restore peoples' faith in their government. It worked in the 30s, at the very least restoring peoples' faith in the promise of America. People simply want jobs, not handouts.
There have been some good points raised about history being more than narrative that I would like to weigh in on. As a Ph.D student in history, I have thought about the fascinating possibilities of using video games as teaching tools, for video games, especially complex non-linear ones such as Grand Theft Auto and others, tend to emphasize a sense of contingency: that choices are are made for many different and often personal reasons, and that unexpected consequences result. World of Warcraft and other MMOs have gone even farther in this direction. Contingency is one of the most important facets of history that I try and emphasize with my students: that narration is just a tool to help us understand events, but when it comes down to it determining causality is an extremely difficult enterprise in which a multitude of factors need to be considered when considering human actors. I, unlike some, do not want to completely discard narrative or to give up on determining causality; for me, the ultimate project is to humanize the past, to get down to the individual level, beyond crude economic determinism and hollow constructs. I haven't worked it out completely, but basic parameters such as being able to experience an event from multiple perspectives on replays, having the subject be able to make choices within the parameters of available evidence, and not having endings predetermined would go a long way towards furthering the project of understanding the past not as a series of inevitable events, but as complex human stories.
Perhaps this is a pipe dream, but we're talking about sci-fi technology here, so why not? Imagine what would happen if we invest in alternative energy sources on a massive scale - say 500 billion dollars, which could come from the defense budget (still leaving the United States as the top single spender on for defense, spending nearly twice as much as the next largest spender, France, according to wikipedia's figures). If we didn't need fossil fuel, we would most certainly be able to pull out of the middle east, and ignore them just like we ignore Africa (not that this is a good thing, but that's another issue...). There goes the main reason for war cited by those who attacked us on 9/11 - the fact the we are occupying muslim lands. See Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. In fact, we could view investing in alternative energy sources AS defense spending - a solid investment in a crucial strategic interest of the United States, not to mention a great way to attack the current environmental problems we face. This sort of investment would not solve the problem overnight, and undoubtedly it would need to be allocated very carefully, but just look at what we did back during the Cold War era when we seriously invested in education and technology - we reached the moon, something that would have been considered science fiction 30 years previously! Call me naive, but I can hope, right?
It would appear that the America's Test Kitchen people have adopted this business model as well, selling the content from their magazines on the web with some additional web-exclusive enticements. I can imagine they also make a pretty penny off of it. They have a similar reputation to Consumer Reports as a source of unbiased information, although their marketing seems to be getting a bit out of hand as of late.
The key here is not to say that they've declared war on it. Whenever they do that to phenomena, it doesn't work very well, like the whole "war on drugs" or "war on poverty."
After reading over my phone company's privacy policy, http://att.sbc.com/gen/privacy-policy?pid=2506#4 it seems that they have violated said policy. According to AT&T, "We must disclose information, when requested, to comply with court orders or subpoenas," but there clearly weren't any court orders involved with them turning the information over to the NSA, according to this article: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/38 59829.html.
AT&T says that the data is "Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI), http://att.sbc.com/gen/privacy-policy?pid=2566, and that "Protecting the privacy of your service and usage records is your right and our duty under federal law," although "our local SBC telephone company may also be required to disclose CPNI for legal and regulatory reasons such as a court order," but again there was clearly no court orders involved according to the article about Qwest's refusal to cooperate.
If they didn't break any laws (which I doubt, but is a possibility) they certainly have broken their promise to their customers. That might be grounds for legal action, false advertising perhaps?
"In the book 1984, the government maintained a perpetual state of phoney war to distract the population. Today, the opposite is happening. We are in a real war with terrorist networks groups that swear they will kill us any way they can, yet the myopic deny reality and imagine that the war is phoney."
Isn't a "perpetual state of phony war" what this so-called "war on terror" is? I don't see the government doing the logical things to make us safer such as securing our borders, scanning the cargo containers coming into our ports, and adequately funding first responders. The disaster in New Orleans only proves how unprepared we are. And that was a diaster we could see coming, unlike an actual terrorist attack, considering how pathetic the state our intelligence services are.
And what has the government done with is so-called "war on terror?" Aside from Afghanistan, which I believe was more of less justified, it has invaded a sovereign nation that had nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and was actually an enemy of Al-Quaeda, engaged in the supression of human rights in places like Guantanamo Bay, and erode the freedoms and privacy of regular Americans. Oh yeah, and they created the department of homeland security. Because more buerocracy means we're safer.
If you believe that the terrorists are out to destroy our way of life, I'd say the terrorists are winning at this rate. Certainly some sacrifices must be made, but this is going too far.
Yes the threat of terrorism is real, but I'm think we have a lot more to fear from our own government than from terrorists.
I'm afraid you missed my point, which is that there are people on the other end of the telephone. More often than not, where I worked the majority of people came from the lower socio-economic levels of society. There will always be people willing to work as a caller because it is certainly better than Wal-Mart, although still crappy. As for myself, the job was convenient, and could at times be very interesting. Some people like to do polls, believe it or not, finding them to be interesting and informative (shock!). But I'm afraid many choose jobs like that because they are simply not skilled enough to find other jobs, or there simply aren't other jobs avaliable.
It seems that you regard people who work at call centers with nothing but contempt, judging by your comment that you hope to increase the crappiness factor of their jobs. Treat people with some dignity and respect, why don't you. Even telemarketers deserve to be treated with a shred of decency. I do sympathize with the fact that you don't want to be bothered, but that doesn't mean that you should take out your anger on the little guy-something I witness all too often in the forms of rude customers at convenience stores, e.c.t.
After working at a polling company during my summers breaks at school, I can say reading this reminds me of why I have such a low opinion of the general public.
I demur the assertion that this kind of behaviour is polite. While some will give in to this kind of a respondent, other callers will laugh at this kind of behaviour because it is really rather rude, and then have the computer call them back immediately to bug them. Rude behaviour demands a response in their eyes. It's not like the company really cares, because they were calling from an anonymous number and giving a fake name, so there was no real way for the person to find out who was doing the survey unless an employee majorly messes up.
Market research is a CRAPPY job, and many people forget that there are actually people on the other end trying to make a living, sometimes even in your own country. Most people at the call center I worked at were senior citizens trying to make ends meet. Most people did not "mess with" people on the other end and do things like that mentioned above.
Very few people were actually that rude, and in fact many were polite enough to hear me out, and politely decline to participate in the survey I was conducting. I never did stuff like the people mentioned above, and in fact I did not push people to do the surveys at all. Either they want to or not; there are plenty of people out there on the randomly-generated list who actually like to do surveys.
Telemarketers have made it difficult for pollers. There are rude people doing polls too, but it is not surprising considering how most people treat them.
Is she anything like this woman?
WARNING... LINK TO SEXUALLY EXPLICIT MATERIAL!!!
http://www.erosblog.com/archives/00000386.htm
I hope this isn't going against some decency thing here on slashdot...
This is the first step to building the Romulan Warbird I've always wanted!!!
What do you propose to do about funding higher education in this country? The amount of aid given to most students is paltry compared with the cost of higher education, whose cost is only increasing.
The Cuban embargo is there to protect American sugar farmers. Cuba's main export is sugar, and US sugar farmers wouldn't be able to compete with the prices they could achieve due to the labor rate, similar to China. You also can't forget the Cuban vote, very imporant considering what happened in Florida last year. They like the embargo.
http://www.alamut.com/subj/economics/misc/clash.ht ml
Everyone should check out this article. According to the author's theory first proposed in 1993, we are moving toward new type of global conflict. 14 years later, it doesn't seem so far off.
Tube amplification is quite alive, even thriving in the guitar world. Despite the many technological advances many would say doom tube amps, they keep making them, and people keep playing them. As a guitarist, where distortion is an important component of the sound in many cases, I find tube distortion more pleasing than distortion boxes or solid state preamps. Even with solid state amps, some will include a 12ax7 preamp tube for the distortion stage.
o m - one of the best in my opinion.
Some of many great manufacturers:
www.soldano.com
www.mesaboogie.c
www.voxamps.co.uk - you can't go wrong with an AC/30
____________________
I know for me, when I surf the internet I usually have at least three different tabs open at once. As I was reading that article I was reading another article on www.macslash.org in addition to checking my email... ooh the rush!!!
And let's not also forget the evolution of cable news, with an american flag, the time in all different time zones, the scrolling news bar, the news program itself AND the terror threat level. My parents are odviously addicted to fox news because it gets them high.
I hope no one 'wins' the GPU war. It's because of ATI that NVidia is pressed to do things like this, and release all these cool new cards we're talking about. Competition is healthy.
Talent is just half of the battle. Careful study and hard work will never replace gimmickey quick-fixes. On this note, I know at my school, the Crane School of Music, we have very few courses dedicated to music technology. I know that it is hard to stay at the cutting edge of technology, but neverless the potential of music technology is starggering, and I feel that at least my school is years behind. It would be nice to have courses in synth programming, sampling, and other basic techniques. The only bright spot is a course on digital audio using ProTools on a Macintosh. There is no mention of software synthesizers though. Do they offer courses like these at other schools?
Wow... I meant X-10 but damn... this joke popped up faster on here than the damn adds on yahoo!!!
Maybe you can get one of those X-5 cameras that pops every time you go on Yahoo...
If chess players are paranoid thrillseekers, I wonder what go players are... In comparing go and chess, they can both be compared to war. Chess would be 'classical' (napoleonic) warfare while go would be 'modern' warfare. Do go players get the same rush of victory?
I thought this was about something useful and beneficial to mankind like biotechnology... skin trade my ass!
I wonder if there will be an article about this on alt.tasteless...
I loved the report on NBC news tonight on the ruling, which said that this is a huge ruling in favor of Microsoft, and then a pundit said 'all they get will now be a slap on the wrist'. They then cut to Bill Gates himself, who didn't answer a single question asked of him, just like a politician. Is this spin or what?
At first glance, it seems that the decision helps freelancers, but now it seems that this hurts them as well. It seems like this decision really favours big business. Where do people get their news and rhetoric afterall? I remember a vast majority reading MSNBC and CNN's websites.