Re:"Sold" probably includes them all
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100 Million iPods
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hm.. I agree, and disagree. Yes, it is a status symbol, and yes it makes someone richer. But, it also is a mere piece of consumer electronics that allows you to listen to music wherever you go, meaning useful. Going by your reasoning just about every-time you don't buy the generic brand your buying "a status symbol", and stealing from the proles. Yes, I can understand your sentiment if we were talking about status symbols completely lacking in utility (like a Hummer).
The only time I use my 4g 20GB ipod these days is with the 15 minute sleep timer. I have trouble sleeping, so I just put it on 15 minute sleep timer and turn off the lights. The risk of strangulation by headphone cord is negligible. Actually they make rather cheap alarm clocks with an audio in jack, with its own timer, and a fader. It's pretty snazzy if you can get over the idiotic color scheme (powder blue), and automatic DST (I live in Az, so it is a rather and presumptuous and annoying design). I tried sleeping with just the iPod, and found that ear bugs are probably the singularly most obnoxious thing to sleep with. There also is several sleep timer applications for computers, if you sleep in the same room.
I'd take the middle route. I'd say that both the economic distress, and religious zealotry are very real causes of geopolitical problems, and both feed off of each other. The economic distress forces people to cling to religion, and the zealotry precludes various social controls that would help generate wealth (education, democratic government, any form of social stability). They feed off of each other.
As to the rich funding, and planning, the effects of religious zealotry, this is because the hyper-religious are easily controlled. Just look at fundamentalism in the united states, a majority of them are uneducated, and poor, but mobilized by the rich, for the riches own ends. You remove the zealotry and the economy will benefit, you fix the economy and the zealotry will diminish. (Using the U.S. again as an example, notice how the more affluent areas of the U.S. are the most religiously moderate, which the poorer "heartland" is bathed in religious extremism?)
Just because you want it to be tractable does make it true, I think the problem is going to be a hideously complex between economic, social/religious, and historical factors. Always fear anyone offering a simple solution.
Well then replace this with "running a country for the benefit of the largest group of people", there we replaced our privileged group form the top 2% to the middle 70%. Seems rather non-objectionable to me. Hopefully soon, in America, we will have a dangerous, vocal, majority attempting to subvert the system. Not only do the bottom 70% control the means of production, and much of the economy, but they can make up for the lack of billions of ill-gotten gains with pure numbers (lets hear it for the middle class Zerg rush).
I prefer a country with eyes towards social-justice, and equality, instead of keeping the top 2% happy at the expense of the 98%. Any solution would, necessarily, make someone unhappy, but we must subscribe to a utilitarian solution ("the greatest good, for the greatest number), and a spirit of compromise.
I personally stopped shopping at smaller record stored because they are more expensive and have less selection of most large box stores (ala Best Buy), or online markets like Amazon. That is the only reason I've stopped shopping at them, there is no big technological excuse, it simply is the fact that they're more expensive. I went to the independent place by my college once, bought something that was rather rare and obscure, only to find out a couple hours later it was 10$ of what it would have cost anywhere else, that was enough to drive me away. This was a small town, so there was no competing Best Buy, or such, only the craptacular selection at Walmart, and some little Tower-clone at the mall. Thus the only choice becomes Amazon. It has nothing to do with hardware or technology, only pricing.
Ease comes into play too, it is so much more convenient to just log onto Amazon, type one word, click on a button or two, and wait a couple days. People are lazy, and will always settle for the easiest solution.
The only other CDs I find myself buying these days are directly from shows. I'm at a concert, I'm liking the sound, into the atmosphere (probably slightly booze-lubricated), so I walk away with their full CD selection. Which again is more convenient (in its way) than going to Bob's Dirty Record Shack (now with slightly more elitist indie types!). The term piracy hasn't come into play, nor has anything even mildly geeky or technology driven.
And your wrong, CDs players are still alive and well. For $30-$100 you can pick up a rather simple one from any box store, or even well stocked grocery store. For more than that you can get a nice component system. Part of the problem with those is that you don't need to replace them, and the market is probably rather saturated. I'm still using my old Sony portable CD player from 1995, and I see no reason to actually buy another one. I'm sure this is rather common. In college it was an even split in the dorms, between people using their computers (using both CD and Mp3s) for music, AND using traditional stereos of varying sizes and costs. Hell the guy next door had an old record players and boxes of vinyl, while his roommate had a $1000+ component system, and an old Zen mp3 player.
A huge majority of people I know use CDs mostly in their cars now, though it seems that this is slowly evolving into iPods and FM transmitters.
Wait... Fluoride isn't natural? Fluoride is a pretty common rock, it shows up about everywhere... Some water is even naturally fluoridated... Imagine that.
I forgot, you really can't argue with a relativist. But then again, that too is just my opinion, so perhaps you can...
I respect opinions as long as their qualified and justified (meaning based in objective fact). Saying that being a journalist implies an interest in concealing truth doesn't seem to be objectively provable. I'm sure it happens from time to time (more often than acceptable, even), but I don't think it is the de facto truth. It seems like a rather paranoiac statement to me, hence the tin foil hat comment. I don't judge all opinions as equal, and thus I can judge it as such. If you have some proof for it, please let me know.
We're obviously never going to agree on anything, but I might as well point out where your objectively wrong:
You can personally recognize whatever you want.
Some people believe what is written in the National Enquirer, some don't.
Who/what to believe is a decision that you make for yourself. It is not a decision that you would want others to make for you. No?
Yeah, I phrased this rather weakly, But it isn't just me, it is a majority of the public too. Would this even be a long standing debate if most people didn't recognize bloggers as credible journalists (and this includes most credible journalists, and media analysts, people who actually understand the media in a concrete manner)
Yes, some people believe the National Enquirer, and some people are idiots. Belief does not equal correct, they can be wrong. A belief is just a strong opinion, which is worthless without justification. You can decide to believe what you want, but without justification your still just an idiot.
Do you think knowledgeable experts or insiders ever want you to know the full story?
Acceptance by either of this groups often requires a quid-pro-quo that you will keep the lid on certain things, or at the very least, water them down.
Sorry, left my tinfoil hat in my other pants. In most industries you are correct, but it isn't a universal. Look at the sciences, or journalism, whose job description includes disclosure. Yes, there are some modern nuances and bad journalists out there who are too busy pandering the powers that be for access, at the cost of being nice. And this is a shame. But investigative journalism isn't dead either, there still are some journalists out there blowing open wrong doing and abuse on all levels. Yes, there still is a balancing act, since they need to maintain credibility on two levels, with the public and with various insiders, but this is a necessary evil.
If they so wish... sure. People who run around saying "Men think about sex every 8 seconds" are called scientists. There is so much junk "science" our there, that Mythbusters may well be toward the top of the profession.
You are correct, they can call themselves whatever they want. I can call myself the president of my living room, or even God, if I'm in the mood. Hell, even colloquially they can pull it off, they are using a truncated and simplified scientific method, but they really aren't scientists than anyone else. We all can agree Einstein was a scientist, 99.9% of scientists would even agree! He has credibility, the Mythbusters don't.
And the value of said information is judged by each individual. The value should not be judged by any particular entity, and passed down to the population as a whole.
I agree, and disagree. There are some things that are going to remain secret, for our own good, and the good of others such as advanced troop movements, who our intelligence assets are, etc... Actually people "gatekeeping" information is inevitable. The minute you publish, or bring information public, your spinning it. Why are you telling people that x is important? Because it is important to your agenda. The value of said information should only matter if judged by knowledgeable individuals though, not lay people lacking the context that people like journalists can bring to the table.
Not true. My Wii, My MacMini, and my old iBook have have slot loaders, and only one of them makes enough noise to be bothersome (the Macmini). They are as quiet, generally, as any tray loader, plus they do work better vertically, that said they still make me paranoid as there is no way to force the disc to eject if things break.
I'm still amused at how the Wii lets me insert the smaller (GC) disks, while my iBook and MacMini's instruction manuals make it clear that no small disk shall EVER enter their slots.
Whereas I would rather not trust any third party opinion.
I am glad the the modern media machine has warped all of our minds into thinking that "opinion == journalism".
Journalism is "event A happened at location B, at time T", and while some bias slips in, this is the basis of what we call journalism. Stuff like O'Reilly, Glen Whatshisname on CNN, and Oberman on MSNBC are what we used to call "yellow journalists". Journalism goes back to the term "reporting", meaning informing the public with less informational means what is the current state of events. Opinion used to be delegated back to the often ignored Editorial/Opinion/Obituary pages.
Bloggers don't have first hand access to current events (generally). Bloggers are nothing but opinion and interpretation, and I can't seem to find why their opinion is much better than mine. We just like to see someone high profile spewing our own flavor of crap, it gives us justification, and conversely, someone of high profile spewing pure crap, that gives us catharsis. But in neither of these cases have we actually touched upon a journalist, only people who smell vaguely of crap.
Most everything is a subjective definition, like the classes; politician, citizen, human, or the more popular general concepts; of freedom and justice. But the fact of the matter is that I can recognize both John Travolta and Walter Cronkite as members of the media, and not some idiot on YouTube or some 13 year old posting on LiveJournal. Yes, they are participating in what could informally be called "media", as in expression, but that are not participating in the more technical arena of professional, or organized media. It comes down to who has higher acceptance by knowledgeable experts or insiders.
Think of the Mythbusters, they are arguably doing science (experimentation, control groups, hypotheses, etc...), but can someone call them scientists with a straight face?
This does allow some bloggers media worthiness, but only by acceptance of the larger body of journalists, which is why Drudge and Huffington are generally accepted on par with more mainstream journalists, and show up often on news broadcasts, while Samantha the thirteen year old emo MySpacer isn't allowed anywhere, or considered anything. Just writing doesn't make you anything, its the content, professionalism, and recognition that gives the the title.
Look at me, I'm a random asshat posting to Slashdot, which is a public medium, can I get my journalist credentials now?
Now I'm not on the Google = Evil train or such, but I don't buy that argument. Ethics should always come above profits, and legality, especially if your a company going under a highfalutin' slogan like "do no evil". The rational of "Well these laws are unjust, but damn they are the law, and boy do we want their money!" is a rather weak ethical justification of contributing to the oppression of a couple billion people.
In fact Google is down right getting rich from said oppression, which is rather mercenary. Of all of Google's recent "not quite not evil" actions, this one still irks me most. Even if there was not implicit approval of China's repressive regime in their actions, I still rather doubt the ethics of ANY American company being involved with China, since they are also implicitly supporting the practices of the Chinese government.
Now this isn't an anti-communism rant either. I really have nothing against communists, I have something against repression, and human rights violations, and those who support them.
It's just another schizophrenic corporate policy. We legally grant them the rights of individuals, but then refuse to give them the responsibilities of individuals. "They're a corporations, their making money, thats okay!" Where we should be wondering why they are profiting against OUR laws (or constitutional rights, as we put it in this case).
BTW, is there a decent alternative to Google yet? I really want to stop using them now, after this rant, completely, since in a light I can be seen as giving tactic approval of their actions.
I'm INTP or ENTP (again based on mood, or time of test), and I am rather cluttered, not dirty mind, just cluttered. I don't think that this has much to do with MBPT either, though.
I tried just about every organizational system there is, but have a hard time following them since they distract me from the tasks at hand. I've tried everything on 43 Folders and Lifehacker, and they all serve as a distraction, since all I do is then sit around and tweak whatever organizational system I'm trying. I finally settled on the idea of Flow, I'm just going to do what I do, organization be damned. If it doesn't work it will slowly evolve to a state that does.
I've noticed that even my clutter is self-minimizing. When it gets too bad it, itself, becomes a distraction. It seems that we somewhat mirror our environment, when things get downright sloppy around me I can't think, but when things are too neat I can't find anything. I come from a family of neatniks, so things were interesting when I was younger, people kept on stressing neatness over something that actually works for me, and I always felt bad having a mild clutter in my work areas.
My take on the article, though, is that overly neat people spend too much time caring about the appearance of their environment over actually doing their tasks.
As a tangent: I've noticed that the INTP type is massively over represented on the internet (especially geeky places). In the real world it is 4% of the total population, but it seems much more common online. I wonder if anyone has done a study on this? It would be interesting to see the clustering of the various types in different environments.
Question, how to I get pages to save as a.doc, it's "save as" dialog is rather sparse on options, and defaults to.pages. It does open.docs mostly flawlessly, though prompts you to save them back to.pages upon closing. I really would like Pages more than Office, if not for the saving issue. Even on an all Mac campus using Pages would still hurt the idea of students being able to choose their OS on a Mac Box, since the kids using XP and Office (via Bootcamp) will not be able to open Pages docs from the other students, still forcing people to use Windows for compatibility.
I doubt it is all hype (though I have seen a large degree of it), I think some other factors come into play, like simplicity. On a Mac (IMO) it is easier to focus on the task at hand without your OS screaming at you to pay attention to it. The software is generally more aesthetic than Windows (and especially Linux) software, as well. Add to this the Services menu, and the tight integration between programs, and you make it more attractive to artists. PCs demand attention, which distracts people from the task at hand.
The actual superficial exterior aesthetics probably plays a role too. Artists like pretty things, and most non-Mac PCs are ugly as sin. Someone who is doing art might think having a large glowing black or silver box growling in the middle of their studio would be rather misplaced.
And none of this have to do with the story. This isn't an "art school", this is a "liberal arts" college. Meaning these Macs are mostly going to be for general research and writing. I find it strange, since Mactel boxes completely fail at the latter at the moment. There isn't a single quality word processor for a Mac right now. NeoOffice is sluggish and slow feeling, Word is a dog through Rosseta, Pages is good, but completely proprietary. They will need Bootcamp to run Office natively so it doesn't crash every 3 seconds. But then again, how much will it still cost them to get 2,000 XP licenses (does Bootcamp even handle Vista?)...
Plus, western culture -- and indeed any culture -- has certain age-roles that an upstanding member of society must fit. You're supposed to do something from age X to age Y, then something completely different between ages Y and Z, and then change your interests completely again at age Z. E.g., ou're supposed to grow up on, say, hopscotch and cowboys-and-indians, then suddenly shun them when you reach a certain age, just because you're told it would be soo unfashionable to be seen doing that as an adult. So basically it was kinda expected that video games would follow the same pattern: you'd play them until you're, say, 20 years old, then suddenly give up and pretend to be no longer interested in that kiddy stuff.
Absolutely correct, I liked movies and books as a kid... And now as an adult...
Video games are a form of media, like movies and books, in themselves they are content neutral. It would be news if they found that 37% of adults played Disney games, just like it would be news if 37% of adults enjoyed children's books, or Spykids movies. I'm sure, like in other media, tastes in content have changed with age.
As a kid I liked books, mostly bad fantasy like Peirs Anthony, and old Pulp Sci-Fi (like Clifford Simak), and I enjoyed silly movies like The Never Ending Story. Now I've aged, and enjoy reading dead Russians and Greeks, and long movies with subtitles and intricate plots, is this news?
Kids like grape juice, adults like wine, but grapes are universal.
Perhaps the real story is "Video Game Consoles are MEDIA, news at 11!"
Its really hard to complain about something you never use, no?
Quicksilver is by far my favorite app, ever. I don't have a single permanent program on my dock, only Finder, Trash, and the Applications Folder, QS is much more efficient than having to mouse down and click on apps. Opening Firefox is just double tapping "command", then holding down the letter "B" (for Bon Echo), poof, browser. Need a contact? Double tap, enter a letter or two, press enter, there the number is in a large type bezel. Want to send a quick email, or append a list without opening a file? QS does it without any others applications open. Want OS wide mouse gestures, or smart radial menus? QS. Etc... I love simple software that can expand to do almost anything. I don't think there is a single user out there who is using a full 60% of its capability.
Use it before you disregard it, and update it, as well, mine hasn't crashed in a couple months running the latest "unstable" beta. I've noticed that every person I've talked into downloading it can't live without it. But then again, it is hard to explain, so most people don't get it.
I am biased though, since it is one of the few apps that have changed how I use computers. How we do stuff on computers has been pretty much the same since well before Win3.1, or DOS.
It sounds pretty good, but it doesn't seem to have a protection against leaches, if I am constantly the "underclass" and don't mind living off a small dole (people do do it, albeit not in such high numbers as Fox News wants us to believe). I've always like the idea of welfare being time limited, with a non-breeding clause in most cases, with the only exception being true disability. Again, no strong opinion there.
I do like how it is flexible though, thats something the current system seems to be lacking (or most of the progressive ones).
As for the structure, I don't think it would work, to much bureaucracy. Too much room for various tax departments to get greedy too.
It also seems to be rather complex internally, which again leaves open more room for politicos to find loopholes.
I am a fan though, it is a rather sane compromise. Unlike the hardline libertarian "taxes = teh ev1l!!1one" philosophy, or the odd "lets tax 80% and buy people houses, schools, etc..." I do like the government competition idea, instead of pure subsidy. Food for thought.
Sadly the chances of anything like this happening is nill,it isn't in the politicos and bureaucrats best interests.
I lean towards the progressive tax, to be honest. Though I really do see the merits of both flat and progressive, I would have a hard time choosing one in a pinch, if the option was forced on me. I've always felt the the wealthy owe more to society, since they have received more benefit from it than the poor. But then again this isn't an area I've researched heavily or anything, so my convictions are rather weak. Preferably I would leave the very bottom untaxed, and the very top more taxed (sanely, of course), with the middle 80-94% paying a generally even tax (perhaps with some small variation, but nothing drastic). The whole thing would be rather mild as to keep incentives to earn more between each bracket. Either that or perhaps something like the carbon market, except with charity. I really don't know.
Actually when I got TP with my Wii I was amazed that I could actually play lefty, I think playing lefty on a console for the first time ever was a bigger deal than the whole motion thing. On all previous consoles all f the movement was for the left, and all of the button mashing is for the right, and as I learned with the silly "chase the Orc and knock of his clothes while on the horse" quest, this leads to drastically underdeveloped D-pad muscles in your right thumb. Thanks to being ambidextrous I can switch it up a bit with no loss of accuracy, though. In TP there really is no difference between which hand you use, to actually answer your question.
I still think that the line can be blurred. Look at the hubbub when someone decides to erect their own personal car-henge in their suburban lawn. It is their property, so they can do what they please, but it is also within public sight, so a public affair. This might just be a pedantic disagreement though, so ignore at will.
Generally when I hear the term libertarian I rankle and my hackles raise, but generally that is due to the lack of the very issue you endorse, public responsibility. It is all of our responsibility to care for the civic good, if for no other reason than insurance against us needing it in the future (though I hope there is a less self-interested rationale too). We will have to agree to disagree with the flat-tax idea though, an issue for another time and place though...
Some kindergarten you went to. Never did they teach me to put out fires. I think I agree with the theme though, law should endorse the basic cohesion of society, and maximize the rights of the person, at the same time, somehow (which will always be tricky).
But aren't ads just really a part of culture, our shared experiences?
Yes and no. They manipulated parts of our culture, existing only for the profit on one small group of people and not the culture as a whole. They are made up, and not organic, and while some might dismiss that as pedantic, I think that authenticity is a very important concept. Most cultural displays exist for a reason good for the culture as a whole, but ads only exist to manipulate people. Advertiser dehumanize us, and use us as mere tools, which is hard to see in a positive light.
Why would they EVER let us have a choice? It's like automatic check-out in supermarkets, they can save money by firing employees and forcing their customers to do their job, with no benefit to the consumer what so ever. We take it because we have to, since there are generally LONGER lines now at check-out. If a discount was passed down to the consumer (ever) I wouldn't mind, but it is forced on us since we don't exist as people, only as nice little "money units" to be manipulated at will.
Perhaps I'm old fashioned and don't like people playing games with me, or using me for their ends with no benefit to me.
It's here to stay, and I bet if you went back and read op-ed pieces from newspapers 100 years ago there'd be people complaining about how ads have "reached the level of absurdity."
And perhaps they were right, and it has just been getting steadily worse since. I know its here to stay, because people are always apathetic cogs who accept what their given, and thanks to advertising this is a psychological fault that we endorse more and more, why would we ever try to bring free-thought as a virtue into our society, you make more money with sheep, it isn't in anyones best interest to raise a critical society. Notice how the same tools used by advertisers are now used by politicians? And that these manipulation gimmicks actually WORK? This is because we are conditioned towards this idiotic reaction.
Sorry for the rant tone, I'm just getting sick of being an instrument for someone else's ends.
I rather doubt it. Not because I think Apple is saintly or such, but because there really is no way to generate too much identifiable information on you. When I bought my copy of Tiger, I was stuck by the lack of a key or serial number to enter, I just got the "register me" cube during install, which is filled in with mostly fake information with no consequences. Even your gratis version of iLife has no real tie to you, only when you buy actual Apple software do they want registration numbers, and even that isn't tied to you. iWork does phone home for updates though, since OSX Update will register new versions, but I think it is only an update ping like the rest of the OS. (I might be wrong on that count)
The only real tie to you is through the iTunes Store, which IS linked to your computer (not by hardware, I'm pretty sure its software), and you CC#. But this is optional, and can be disabled, and only comes to play with using the Store (or Ministore).
Heck, even post-apocalyptic games could work advertising in well. I think it'd be cool to see broken down billboards for Coke or Target in a dead city or something.
You'll take my Nuke-a-cola from my cold dead hands.
No. Imagine Fallout with Coke ads in it, it would somewhat destroy the environment. I can just see it now in FO3, the Slim Jim Iguana on a Stick.
Most of the games I've played with fictional advertisements (when properly handled, like Mr. Flamethrower from Messiah), the fake advertisements added a better sense of unworldliness to the game. I wish they would bugger off in all games except ones implicitly attached to our reality, like sports games.
Advertising is really beggining to reach the level of absurdity. I can understand the line of reasoning behind putting advertisements on non-cable TV, but this strange trend to put advertisements into content that the consumer already has paid for boggles my mind. Yes, advertising to cover the costs free services makes sense, but when it goes towards a pay service it is nothing but greed and trying to sodomize your customers for more money.
I stopped going to baseball games because our stadium here is so peppered in ads that it distracts from the game (heck, when ESPN or such is broadcasting the game, sometimes they even pause the game for ads on TV). Our local school buses (whats left to them, most kids now being forced to use our shoddy public transportation) have ads on them. You buy a new computer and it is covered with useless services which pretty much amount to the same thing as ads. Hell its beginning to seem that a good portion of online "user" content is nothing but ads. Avertisers are now turning to strange manipulations like sending nice looking women to bars to through our nonchalant comments like "Man, my new copy of MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA makes me steamy and hot!".
What ever happened to quality selling a service?
I really think that ubiquitous advertisement is having bad consequences on people psychologically and sociologically. Advertisements depend on people not using judgment, and encouraging snap judgments based on no information, which, last I checked, is not a desirable trait. Second they further fragment society into little classes. "I'm a Nike person, who likes Coke, and runs Windows!", "Oh yeah? I'm a Reebok person who drinks Mountain Dew, and has a Mac!" Call it brand loyalty or idiocy. Hell I even knew a girl with the Nike swoosh tattooed to her arm (willingly, Nike has nothing to do with it), she didn't understand my laughing at her like it was the most absurd thing I've ever seen. She really thought that "Nike" meant something (not the goddess, the corporate symbol), which is the ultimate goal of these companies.
To get a little postmodern here, advertisements try to manipulate us to live in some realm of arbitrary symbols. They try to manipulate us in all ways except rationally. The whole game is creating a need where none really exists, and this extends beyond individual products, to the whole class of consumerism. We actually beleive, now, that we need various consumer goods to survive, and we need to update these every product revision. Take cell-phones for example, how often have people told you that they couldn't live without them? We don't need consumer goods to survive. We don't need to upgrade them daily.
The new form of ads are even subverting the best way to find quality products, word of mouth. How can you trust anyone when shills are spending millions creating artificial word of mouth? I'll continue blocking all ads online, not watching television, and staying away from sporting events, and boycotting services with obnoxious ads (as opposed to innocuous or clever ones saying what a service actually does).
Yes, you can tell that this whole issue pisses me off.
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hm.. I agree, and disagree. Yes, it is a status symbol, and yes it makes someone richer. But, it also is a mere piece of consumer electronics that allows you to listen to music wherever you go, meaning useful. Going by your reasoning just about every-time you don't buy the generic brand your buying "a status symbol", and stealing from the proles. Yes, I can understand your sentiment if we were talking about status symbols completely lacking in utility (like a Hummer).
Relax, its a gadget, nothing more, nothing less.
I'd take the middle route. I'd say that both the economic distress, and religious zealotry are very real causes of geopolitical problems, and both feed off of each other. The economic distress forces people to cling to religion, and the zealotry precludes various social controls that would help generate wealth (education, democratic government, any form of social stability). They feed off of each other.
As to the rich funding, and planning, the effects of religious zealotry, this is because the hyper-religious are easily controlled. Just look at fundamentalism in the united states, a majority of them are uneducated, and poor, but mobilized by the rich, for the riches own ends. You remove the zealotry and the economy will benefit, you fix the economy and the zealotry will diminish. (Using the U.S. again as an example, notice how the more affluent areas of the U.S. are the most religiously moderate, which the poorer "heartland" is bathed in religious extremism?)
Just because you want it to be tractable does make it true, I think the problem is going to be a hideously complex between economic, social/religious, and historical factors. Always fear anyone offering a simple solution.
Well then replace this with "running a country for the benefit of the largest group of people", there we replaced our privileged group form the top 2% to the middle 70%. Seems rather non-objectionable to me. Hopefully soon, in America, we will have a dangerous, vocal, majority attempting to subvert the system. Not only do the bottom 70% control the means of production, and much of the economy, but they can make up for the lack of billions of ill-gotten gains with pure numbers (lets hear it for the middle class Zerg rush).
I prefer a country with eyes towards social-justice, and equality, instead of keeping the top 2% happy at the expense of the 98%. Any solution would, necessarily, make someone unhappy, but we must subscribe to a utilitarian solution ("the greatest good, for the greatest number), and a spirit of compromise.
I personally stopped shopping at smaller record stored because they are more expensive and have less selection of most large box stores (ala Best Buy), or online markets like Amazon. That is the only reason I've stopped shopping at them, there is no big technological excuse, it simply is the fact that they're more expensive. I went to the independent place by my college once, bought something that was rather rare and obscure, only to find out a couple hours later it was 10$ of what it would have cost anywhere else, that was enough to drive me away. This was a small town, so there was no competing Best Buy, or such, only the craptacular selection at Walmart, and some little Tower-clone at the mall. Thus the only choice becomes Amazon. It has nothing to do with hardware or technology, only pricing.
Ease comes into play too, it is so much more convenient to just log onto Amazon, type one word, click on a button or two, and wait a couple days. People are lazy, and will always settle for the easiest solution.
The only other CDs I find myself buying these days are directly from shows. I'm at a concert, I'm liking the sound, into the atmosphere (probably slightly booze-lubricated), so I walk away with their full CD selection. Which again is more convenient (in its way) than going to Bob's Dirty Record Shack (now with slightly more elitist indie types!). The term piracy hasn't come into play, nor has anything even mildly geeky or technology driven.
And your wrong, CDs players are still alive and well. For $30-$100 you can pick up a rather simple one from any box store, or even well stocked grocery store. For more than that you can get a nice component system. Part of the problem with those is that you don't need to replace them, and the market is probably rather saturated. I'm still using my old Sony portable CD player from 1995, and I see no reason to actually buy another one. I'm sure this is rather common. In college it was an even split in the dorms, between people using their computers (using both CD and Mp3s) for music, AND using traditional stereos of varying sizes and costs. Hell the guy next door had an old record players and boxes of vinyl, while his roommate had a $1000+ component system, and an old Zen mp3 player.
A huge majority of people I know use CDs mostly in their cars now, though it seems that this is slowly evolving into iPods and FM transmitters.
Wait... Fluoride isn't natural? Fluoride is a pretty common rock, it shows up about everywhere... Some water is even naturally fluoridated... Imagine that.
I forgot, you really can't argue with a relativist. But then again, that too is just my opinion, so perhaps you can...
I respect opinions as long as their qualified and justified (meaning based in objective fact). Saying that being a journalist implies an interest in concealing truth doesn't seem to be objectively provable. I'm sure it happens from time to time (more often than acceptable, even), but I don't think it is the de facto truth. It seems like a rather paranoiac statement to me, hence the tin foil hat comment. I don't judge all opinions as equal, and thus I can judge it as such. If you have some proof for it, please let me know.
Yeah, I phrased this rather weakly, But it isn't just me, it is a majority of the public too. Would this even be a long standing debate if most people didn't recognize bloggers as credible journalists (and this includes most credible journalists, and media analysts, people who actually understand the media in a concrete manner)
Yes, some people believe the National Enquirer, and some people are idiots. Belief does not equal correct, they can be wrong. A belief is just a strong opinion, which is worthless without justification. You can decide to believe what you want, but without justification your still just an idiot.
Sorry, left my tinfoil hat in my other pants. In most industries you are correct, but it isn't a universal. Look at the sciences, or journalism, whose job description includes disclosure. Yes, there are some modern nuances and bad journalists out there who are too busy pandering the powers that be for access, at the cost of being nice. And this is a shame. But investigative journalism isn't dead either, there still are some journalists out there blowing open wrong doing and abuse on all levels. Yes, there still is a balancing act, since they need to maintain credibility on two levels, with the public and with various insiders, but this is a necessary evil.
You are correct, they can call themselves whatever they want. I can call myself the president of my living room, or even God, if I'm in the mood. Hell, even colloquially they can pull it off, they are using a truncated and simplified scientific method, but they really aren't scientists than anyone else. We all can agree Einstein was a scientist, 99.9% of scientists would even agree! He has credibility, the Mythbusters don't.
I agree, and disagree. There are some things that are going to remain secret, for our own good, and the good of others such as advanced troop movements, who our intelligence assets are, etc... Actually people "gatekeeping" information is inevitable. The minute you publish, or bring information public, your spinning it. Why are you telling people that x is important? Because it is important to your agenda. The value of said information should only matter if judged by knowledgeable individuals though, not lay people lacking the context that people like journalists can bring to the table.
Not true. My Wii, My MacMini, and my old iBook have have slot loaders, and only one of them makes enough noise to be bothersome (the Macmini). They are as quiet, generally, as any tray loader, plus they do work better vertically, that said they still make me paranoid as there is no way to force the disc to eject if things break.
I'm still amused at how the Wii lets me insert the smaller (GC) disks, while my iBook and MacMini's instruction manuals make it clear that no small disk shall EVER enter their slots.
Whereas I would rather not trust any third party opinion.
I am glad the the modern media machine has warped all of our minds into thinking that "opinion == journalism".
Journalism is "event A happened at location B, at time T", and while some bias slips in, this is the basis of what we call journalism. Stuff like O'Reilly, Glen Whatshisname on CNN, and Oberman on MSNBC are what we used to call "yellow journalists". Journalism goes back to the term "reporting", meaning informing the public with less informational means what is the current state of events. Opinion used to be delegated back to the often ignored Editorial/Opinion/Obituary pages.
Bloggers don't have first hand access to current events (generally). Bloggers are nothing but opinion and interpretation, and I can't seem to find why their opinion is much better than mine. We just like to see someone high profile spewing our own flavor of crap, it gives us justification, and conversely, someone of high profile spewing pure crap, that gives us catharsis. But in neither of these cases have we actually touched upon a journalist, only people who smell vaguely of crap.
Most everything is a subjective definition, like the classes; politician, citizen, human, or the more popular general concepts; of freedom and justice. But the fact of the matter is that I can recognize both John Travolta and Walter Cronkite as members of the media, and not some idiot on YouTube or some 13 year old posting on LiveJournal. Yes, they are participating in what could informally be called "media", as in expression, but that are not participating in the more technical arena of professional, or organized media. It comes down to who has higher acceptance by knowledgeable experts or insiders.
Think of the Mythbusters, they are arguably doing science (experimentation, control groups, hypotheses, etc...), but can someone call them scientists with a straight face?
This does allow some bloggers media worthiness, but only by acceptance of the larger body of journalists, which is why Drudge and Huffington are generally accepted on par with more mainstream journalists, and show up often on news broadcasts, while Samantha the thirteen year old emo MySpacer isn't allowed anywhere, or considered anything. Just writing doesn't make you anything, its the content, professionalism, and recognition that gives the the title.
Look at me, I'm a random asshat posting to Slashdot, which is a public medium, can I get my journalist credentials now?
Now I'm not on the Google = Evil train or such, but I don't buy that argument. Ethics should always come above profits, and legality, especially if your a company going under a highfalutin' slogan like "do no evil". The rational of "Well these laws are unjust, but damn they are the law, and boy do we want their money!" is a rather weak ethical justification of contributing to the oppression of a couple billion people.
In fact Google is down right getting rich from said oppression, which is rather mercenary. Of all of Google's recent "not quite not evil" actions, this one still irks me most. Even if there was not implicit approval of China's repressive regime in their actions, I still rather doubt the ethics of ANY American company being involved with China, since they are also implicitly supporting the practices of the Chinese government.
Now this isn't an anti-communism rant either. I really have nothing against communists, I have something against repression, and human rights violations, and those who support them.
It's just another schizophrenic corporate policy. We legally grant them the rights of individuals, but then refuse to give them the responsibilities of individuals. "They're a corporations, their making money, thats okay!" Where we should be wondering why they are profiting against OUR laws (or constitutional rights, as we put it in this case).
BTW, is there a decent alternative to Google yet? I really want to stop using them now, after this rant, completely, since in a light I can be seen as giving tactic approval of their actions.
I'm INTP or ENTP (again based on mood, or time of test), and I am rather cluttered, not dirty mind, just cluttered. I don't think that this has much to do with MBPT either, though.
I tried just about every organizational system there is, but have a hard time following them since they distract me from the tasks at hand. I've tried everything on 43 Folders and Lifehacker, and they all serve as a distraction, since all I do is then sit around and tweak whatever organizational system I'm trying. I finally settled on the idea of Flow, I'm just going to do what I do, organization be damned. If it doesn't work it will slowly evolve to a state that does.
I've noticed that even my clutter is self-minimizing. When it gets too bad it, itself, becomes a distraction. It seems that we somewhat mirror our environment, when things get downright sloppy around me I can't think, but when things are too neat I can't find anything. I come from a family of neatniks, so things were interesting when I was younger, people kept on stressing neatness over something that actually works for me, and I always felt bad having a mild clutter in my work areas.
My take on the article, though, is that overly neat people spend too much time caring about the appearance of their environment over actually doing their tasks.
As a tangent: I've noticed that the INTP type is massively over represented on the internet (especially geeky places). In the real world it is 4% of the total population, but it seems much more common online. I wonder if anyone has done a study on this? It would be interesting to see the clustering of the various types in different environments.
Question, how to I get pages to save as a .doc, it's "save as" dialog is rather sparse on options, and defaults to .pages. It does open .docs mostly flawlessly, though prompts you to save them back to .pages upon closing. I really would like Pages more than Office, if not for the saving issue. Even on an all Mac campus using Pages would still hurt the idea of students being able to choose their OS on a Mac Box, since the kids using XP and Office (via Bootcamp) will not be able to open Pages docs from the other students, still forcing people to use Windows for compatibility.
I doubt it is all hype (though I have seen a large degree of it), I think some other factors come into play, like simplicity. On a Mac (IMO) it is easier to focus on the task at hand without your OS screaming at you to pay attention to it. The software is generally more aesthetic than Windows (and especially Linux) software, as well. Add to this the Services menu, and the tight integration between programs, and you make it more attractive to artists. PCs demand attention, which distracts people from the task at hand.
The actual superficial exterior aesthetics probably plays a role too. Artists like pretty things, and most non-Mac PCs are ugly as sin. Someone who is doing art might think having a large glowing black or silver box growling in the middle of their studio would be rather misplaced.
And none of this have to do with the story. This isn't an "art school", this is a "liberal arts" college. Meaning these Macs are mostly going to be for general research and writing. I find it strange, since Mactel boxes completely fail at the latter at the moment. There isn't a single quality word processor for a Mac right now. NeoOffice is sluggish and slow feeling, Word is a dog through Rosseta, Pages is good, but completely proprietary. They will need Bootcamp to run Office natively so it doesn't crash every 3 seconds. But then again, how much will it still cost them to get 2,000 XP licenses (does Bootcamp even handle Vista?)...
Absolutely correct, I liked movies and books as a kid... And now as an adult...
Video games are a form of media, like movies and books, in themselves they are content neutral. It would be news if they found that 37% of adults played Disney games, just like it would be news if 37% of adults enjoyed children's books, or Spykids movies. I'm sure, like in other media, tastes in content have changed with age.
As a kid I liked books, mostly bad fantasy like Peirs Anthony, and old Pulp Sci-Fi (like Clifford Simak), and I enjoyed silly movies like The Never Ending Story. Now I've aged, and enjoy reading dead Russians and Greeks, and long movies with subtitles and intricate plots, is this news?
Kids like grape juice, adults like wine, but grapes are universal.
Perhaps the real story is "Video Game Consoles are MEDIA, news at 11!"
Its really hard to complain about something you never use, no?
Quicksilver is by far my favorite app, ever. I don't have a single permanent program on my dock, only Finder, Trash, and the Applications Folder, QS is much more efficient than having to mouse down and click on apps. Opening Firefox is just double tapping "command", then holding down the letter "B" (for Bon Echo), poof, browser. Need a contact? Double tap, enter a letter or two, press enter, there the number is in a large type bezel. Want to send a quick email, or append a list without opening a file? QS does it without any others applications open. Want OS wide mouse gestures, or smart radial menus? QS. Etc... I love simple software that can expand to do almost anything. I don't think there is a single user out there who is using a full 60% of its capability.
Use it before you disregard it, and update it, as well, mine hasn't crashed in a couple months running the latest "unstable" beta. I've noticed that every person I've talked into downloading it can't live without it. But then again, it is hard to explain, so most people don't get it.
I am biased though, since it is one of the few apps that have changed how I use computers. How we do stuff on computers has been pretty much the same since well before Win3.1, or DOS.
It sounds pretty good, but it doesn't seem to have a protection against leaches, if I am constantly the "underclass" and don't mind living off a small dole (people do do it, albeit not in such high numbers as Fox News wants us to believe). I've always like the idea of welfare being time limited, with a non-breeding clause in most cases, with the only exception being true disability. Again, no strong opinion there.
I do like how it is flexible though, thats something the current system seems to be lacking (or most of the progressive ones).
As for the structure, I don't think it would work, to much bureaucracy. Too much room for various tax departments to get greedy too.
It also seems to be rather complex internally, which again leaves open more room for politicos to find loopholes.
I am a fan though, it is a rather sane compromise. Unlike the hardline libertarian "taxes = teh ev1l!!1one" philosophy, or the odd "lets tax 80% and buy people houses, schools, etc..." I do like the government competition idea, instead of pure subsidy. Food for thought.
Sadly the chances of anything like this happening is nill,it isn't in the politicos and bureaucrats best interests.
I lean towards the progressive tax, to be honest. Though I really do see the merits of both flat and progressive, I would have a hard time choosing one in a pinch, if the option was forced on me. I've always felt the the wealthy owe more to society, since they have received more benefit from it than the poor. But then again this isn't an area I've researched heavily or anything, so my convictions are rather weak. Preferably I would leave the very bottom untaxed, and the very top more taxed (sanely, of course), with the middle 80-94% paying a generally even tax (perhaps with some small variation, but nothing drastic). The whole thing would be rather mild as to keep incentives to earn more between each bracket. Either that or perhaps something like the carbon market, except with charity. I really don't know.
Actually when I got TP with my Wii I was amazed that I could actually play lefty, I think playing lefty on a console for the first time ever was a bigger deal than the whole motion thing. On all previous consoles all f the movement was for the left, and all of the button mashing is for the right, and as I learned with the silly "chase the Orc and knock of his clothes while on the horse" quest, this leads to drastically underdeveloped D-pad muscles in your right thumb. Thanks to being ambidextrous I can switch it up a bit with no loss of accuracy, though. In TP there really is no difference between which hand you use, to actually answer your question.
I still think that the line can be blurred. Look at the hubbub when someone decides to erect their own personal car-henge in their suburban lawn. It is their property, so they can do what they please, but it is also within public sight, so a public affair. This might just be a pedantic disagreement though, so ignore at will.
Generally when I hear the term libertarian I rankle and my hackles raise, but generally that is due to the lack of the very issue you endorse, public responsibility. It is all of our responsibility to care for the civic good, if for no other reason than insurance against us needing it in the future (though I hope there is a less self-interested rationale too). We will have to agree to disagree with the flat-tax idea though, an issue for another time and place though...
Some kindergarten you went to. Never did they teach me to put out fires. I think I agree with the theme though, law should endorse the basic cohesion of society, and maximize the rights of the person, at the same time, somehow (which will always be tricky).
But aren't ads just really a part of culture, our shared experiences?
Yes and no. They manipulated parts of our culture, existing only for the profit on one small group of people and not the culture as a whole. They are made up, and not organic, and while some might dismiss that as pedantic, I think that authenticity is a very important concept. Most cultural displays exist for a reason good for the culture as a whole, but ads only exist to manipulate people. Advertiser dehumanize us, and use us as mere tools, which is hard to see in a positive light.
Why would they EVER let us have a choice? It's like automatic check-out in supermarkets, they can save money by firing employees and forcing their customers to do their job, with no benefit to the consumer what so ever. We take it because we have to, since there are generally LONGER lines now at check-out. If a discount was passed down to the consumer (ever) I wouldn't mind, but it is forced on us since we don't exist as people, only as nice little "money units" to be manipulated at will.
Perhaps I'm old fashioned and don't like people playing games with me, or using me for their ends with no benefit to me.
It's here to stay, and I bet if you went back and read op-ed pieces from newspapers 100 years ago there'd be people complaining about how ads have "reached the level of absurdity."
And perhaps they were right, and it has just been getting steadily worse since. I know its here to stay, because people are always apathetic cogs who accept what their given, and thanks to advertising this is a psychological fault that we endorse more and more, why would we ever try to bring free-thought as a virtue into our society, you make more money with sheep, it isn't in anyones best interest to raise a critical society. Notice how the same tools used by advertisers are now used by politicians? And that these manipulation gimmicks actually WORK? This is because we are conditioned towards this idiotic reaction.
Sorry for the rant tone, I'm just getting sick of being an instrument for someone else's ends.
I rather doubt it. Not because I think Apple is saintly or such, but because there really is no way to generate too much identifiable information on you. When I bought my copy of Tiger, I was stuck by the lack of a key or serial number to enter, I just got the "register me" cube during install, which is filled in with mostly fake information with no consequences. Even your gratis version of iLife has no real tie to you, only when you buy actual Apple software do they want registration numbers, and even that isn't tied to you. iWork does phone home for updates though, since OSX Update will register new versions, but I think it is only an update ping like the rest of the OS. (I might be wrong on that count)
The only real tie to you is through the iTunes Store, which IS linked to your computer (not by hardware, I'm pretty sure its software), and you CC#. But this is optional, and can be disabled, and only comes to play with using the Store (or Ministore).
Heck, even post-apocalyptic games could work advertising in well. I think it'd be cool to see broken down billboards for Coke or Target in a dead city or something.
You'll take my Nuke-a-cola from my cold dead hands.
No. Imagine Fallout with Coke ads in it, it would somewhat destroy the environment. I can just see it now in FO3, the Slim Jim Iguana on a Stick.
Most of the games I've played with fictional advertisements (when properly handled, like Mr. Flamethrower from Messiah), the fake advertisements added a better sense of unworldliness to the game. I wish they would bugger off in all games except ones implicitly attached to our reality, like sports games.
Advertising is really beggining to reach the level of absurdity. I can understand the line of reasoning behind putting advertisements on non-cable TV, but this strange trend to put advertisements into content that the consumer already has paid for boggles my mind. Yes, advertising to cover the costs free services makes sense, but when it goes towards a pay service it is nothing but greed and trying to sodomize your customers for more money.
I stopped going to baseball games because our stadium here is so peppered in ads that it distracts from the game (heck, when ESPN or such is broadcasting the game, sometimes they even pause the game for ads on TV). Our local school buses (whats left to them, most kids now being forced to use our shoddy public transportation) have ads on them. You buy a new computer and it is covered with useless services which pretty much amount to the same thing as ads. Hell its beginning to seem that a good portion of online "user" content is nothing but ads. Avertisers are now turning to strange manipulations like sending nice looking women to bars to through our nonchalant comments like "Man, my new copy of MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA makes me steamy and hot!".
What ever happened to quality selling a service?
I really think that ubiquitous advertisement is having bad consequences on people psychologically and sociologically. Advertisements depend on people not using judgment, and encouraging snap judgments based on no information, which, last I checked, is not a desirable trait. Second they further fragment society into little classes. "I'm a Nike person, who likes Coke, and runs Windows!", "Oh yeah? I'm a Reebok person who drinks Mountain Dew, and has a Mac!" Call it brand loyalty or idiocy. Hell I even knew a girl with the Nike swoosh tattooed to her arm (willingly, Nike has nothing to do with it), she didn't understand my laughing at her like it was the most absurd thing I've ever seen. She really thought that "Nike" meant something (not the goddess, the corporate symbol), which is the ultimate goal of these companies.
To get a little postmodern here, advertisements try to manipulate us to live in some realm of arbitrary symbols. They try to manipulate us in all ways except rationally. The whole game is creating a need where none really exists, and this extends beyond individual products, to the whole class of consumerism. We actually beleive, now, that we need various consumer goods to survive, and we need to update these every product revision. Take cell-phones for example, how often have people told you that they couldn't live without them? We don't need consumer goods to survive. We don't need to upgrade them daily.
The new form of ads are even subverting the best way to find quality products, word of mouth. How can you trust anyone when shills are spending millions creating artificial word of mouth? I'll continue blocking all ads online, not watching television, and staying away from sporting events, and boycotting services with obnoxious ads (as opposed to innocuous or clever ones saying what a service actually does).
Yes, you can tell that this whole issue pisses me off.