Just curious, does Apple deliver iTunes Europe purchases from servers in the U.S. or do they have a European server farm for that ? Is global connectivity now good enough that servers in California can deliver that volume of data around the globe to Europe at about the same throughput and latency as could servers located in Europe ?
"There are also "survey grade" GPS devices that manage much greater accuracy than your $100 Garmin."
I believe that's called "differential GPS". It exploits the fact that positional noise injected into the signal is correlated between receivers. That is, if receiver A gives an absolute positional error of 10 feet to the left at time t, then receiver B will give the same error at the same time. Thus even though the absolute positions reported by any pair of recievers will be inaccurate, at any given instant their reported relative positions with respect to each other will be quite accurate. Calculating that instantaneous difference relies on differential GPS recievers communicating between each other and that is achieved by broadcasting locally between receivers.
Or so I've read. I've never actually used GPS surveying equipment myself. Maybe there is someone more expert here who could comment.
I suppose that its because you need that local, secondary broadcast signal that the military is not working to shut out differential GPS. Maybe it's not adaptable to the battlefield and so not seen as a threat.
"Do you believe in advocating the violent overthrow of the government?"
It would depend on the government. Democratic forms of government, no. But that is because I am against the violent overthrow of democratic governments, not because I am against free speech. If you do actually intend to violently overthrow the US government, it would be a good thing to advocate that so that the authorities were informed of your activities. See my previous post: What appears to be a penalty for free speech is in fact a penatly for a concomitant harm for which there are legal penalties when speech is not involved. It is those activities for which there is a penalty, not the speech per se. It is illegal to violently overthrow the government, whatever your means, advocacy or not. It is thefore incorrect to say that the penalty given to those who advocate for the overtrhow of government is a penalty for engaging in free speech. Rather, it is a penalty for attempting to overthrow the government.
If someone involved an automobile in a plot to overthrow the goverment and was subsequently imprisoned for attempting to overthrow the government, would you then conclude that the right to drive does not really exist ?
"Do you believe in publishing half-blown apart heads on newpaper front pages? "
I support the legal freedom to do that though I do not approve of the practice.
"Do you believe in allowing 50,000 watt stations to set up anywhere on the dial they'd like, trampling on the speech of the stations around them?"
No, because I support free speech. In this case, where radio interference restricts free speech, you seem to support the protection of free speech. However when government officials restric free speech by regulating what can be said, then you are against free speech. How do you reconcile your support of free speech in one case with opposition in the other ? Does this relate to your beliefs that government censorship embodies the collective will of the public, and that restricting the freedom of the public is beneficial to the public ?
me: "I double triple dare you to address this criticism: If your argument holds for anti-payola, why does it not also hold for the DMCA ?"
you: "Your arguments read like a freshman college student trying out new tricks from his rhetoric class."
Oh, right. Well I double extra quadruple triple dare you ! The double extra quadruple triple dare is a maneuver taught only at the graduate level.
"Think through the practical implications of what you are saying."
Well the practical implications of there being a right to free speech is that people can not shut you up when they disagree with what you say. It would be nice if freedom were extened beyond print and the internet to also include the radio.
from the Slate article: "The administration needs to do a better job of providing us with the kind of information that will truly help us--not just this summer, but in decades to come..."
"This administration...in the decades to come". In the author's eagerness to propagandize he ignores the fact that even if Bush is relected to a second term the administration will remain in office for only another four years, not for decades. It is a pitty that he had to go and spoil an interesting historical anecdote by injecting nonsensical expressions of political bias.
Not only by referring to the Bush administration does he commit a factual mistake, but he also implies a double standard; Its not ok for a Bush adminstration to keep some Abu Ghraib photos private but it would be ok for a Kerry administration ?
Instead of: "The administration needs to do a better job of providing us with the kind of information that will truly help us--not just this summer, but in decades to come..."
Try this: "Government needs to do a better job of providing us with the kind of information that will truly help us--not just this summer, but in decades to come..."
"We as a people decide things by electing people who carry out our collective will. That "small group of powerful individuals" are the people who make those laws...
You have slipped in a claim that decisions made by elected officials represent "our collective will." What is meant by "collective will?" Society is certainly not in Borglike agreement, so in the sense of unanimous concensus, there exists no collective will. Did you mean to say "majority will" and mistakenly typed "collective will"? Yet how could you defend even that ? Laws enacted by congress need not emobody the majority will and often in fact do not. Decisions made by national government are made by elected officials and not popular referendum specifically because the founding fathers believed that laws should not reflect the majority will of socieity, but the majority will of elected officials.
You are using misleading language to exaggerate the degree to which laws embody public opinion. It is your intention to argue that government should have power to supress free speach on the radio, so you begin by trying to legitimize that power with the sweeping claim that that the decisions of congress embody "our collective will". Claiming that government represents "our collective will" to justify government regulation of speech is one of two tatctics you use for opposing free speech on the radio. The other is to claim that speech conveyed over the airwaves traveres a medium owned by "the public" and that the public interest is against free speech and for government regulated speech.
As Orwell claimed, careless political reasoning is tied to careless use of language. In this particular case, it is your own sloppy use of "collective will" which reenforces your faulty beliefs. Precisely, laws are enacted by a majority vote of a small minority of citizens, not by "our collective will".
That laws are enacted by elected officials has never been a point of dispute between us. Your unnecessary and sarcastic reiteration of that point is a diversionary tactic; You want to distract from the real point of disagreement, where you are weak; Your contention that laws are necessarily good laws because they were enacted by elected officials. To reiterate: your initial line of argument was that all laws are good laws, that anti-payola was a law, and therefore anti-payola was good. As I pointed out, that line of reasoning was fatally flawed because it could just as well be used to justify the DMCA, the patriot act, and corporate welfare. You have since steadfastly avoided the issue, and your increasingly convoluted attempts to ignore the central flaw in your reasoning are becoming the dominent feature of this conversation. The more I draw attention to it, the harder you work to avoid it. You have not only abandoned your position, you are hiding from it. As a demonstration, I double triple dare you to address this criticism: If your argument holds for anti-payola, why does it not also hold for the DMCA ?
"Yell "Fire!" in a movie theatre for an example of regulated speech that does not harm free speech."
It is a common misconception that what is being regulated in such examples is speech. There is in fact no penalty for speech per se, but rather a pentaly for an associated criminal act of harm directly resulting from an irresponsible exercise of speech. In the case of yelling fire, the penalty exists not for the act of yelling fire, but rather for the trampling deaths resutling from the crowd's attempt to escape. If you bring about death then you are guilty of homicide. That the means by which you cause death is an act of speech does not exonerate you of murder. There is no penalty for speech. There is a penalty for murder. If nobody is trampled, there is a penalty for attempted murder. The severty of the penatly increases with the number of deaths, not with the number of times you shout fire, indicating that the law does in fact penalize homicide, not speech.
"...but I am asking the Government to prevent any one body, who is not a licensed broadcaster, from buying X percentage of airtime on a given outlet."
Well that is just not free speech. That is the government saying "we don't believe you should be able to talk so much. If we think you are saying too much we are going to shut you up. Sure, you have a right to talk some, but not more than we want you to talk. Your ideas represent a danger to the public if you are heard too much so we need to limit how much you can talk"
Admittedly, those are not your own words. Yet don't they represent your attitudes about why and how on-air speech needs to be regulated by the gonvernment?
Free speech means universal free speech. You can not claim to be for free speech and then name expections. If you say "I am for free speech except if you've already talked for two hours on the radio then you are not free to talk any more after that". That's not free speech. That is speech conditioned upon your own terms.
"ANY law is decided by a small group of powerful individuals. They're called your Congressmen and your President. It's how we make MOST laws in a Republic."
So you have abandoned your initial position that "we" have decided "as country" that payola is bad and now agree with me that "a small group of powerful individuals" have decided for us that payola was bad.
But are you still of the opinion that any law enacted by that group of powerful individuals is a good law? That assertion was crucial to your justifing the prohibition of payola. In a nutshell: Any law is a good law, anti-payola is a law, therfore anti-payola is good. You have not reponded to by criticisms that the same line of reasoning could be used to justify the DMCA, the patriot act and corporate welfare.
"As for the bullcrap strawman you set up, I reject it and wonder that you don't see the flaws in your argument without 'anticipating your argument would be thoroughly demolished',..."
It is one thing to remark after demonstrating an error in reasoning (which you have since partly conceded) that it should have been obvious. It is quite another to puff yourself up and make vague references to straw men without explanation. The first is puzzlement (Why didn't he see that?). The second is your effort to save face by threatening that you could show my argument is in error, even though you have not even attempted to do that.
If you see a straw man, you need to point him out to us, not simply mention that you sense one to be in the vicinity. This tactic of saying "Straw man! I win" while retreating from the conversation will not convince anyone. It is an accusation not backed up by reasons.
"No person should be asked to move house and home simply because of a lack of choice in terms of entertainment."
Yes, those who live in Barrow, Alaska are entitled to the same choices in entertainment as those who live in New York City. It's their democratic right. Damn those who opress Alaskans by not building a Metroplotan Opera House, Broadway theaters, and the Guggenheim Museum in Barrow!
Seriously. How do propose to give everyone in the nation the same choices of entertainment? Living further from cities means having less conveneint access to what is provided in those cities. If you want more convenient access to the city, then you have to move to the city. (If you want more convenient access to nature, move out of the city). Those are just the facts of geography and the physics of transportation.
"Please, reply that I am some form of hippie or communist..."
Only if hippies or communists as a class accepted the statement that "No person should be asked to move house and home simply because of a lack of choice in terms of entertainment" could we attribute advocacy of that belief to being a hippie or communist. We can safetly assume that there are both hippies and communists who recognize that it is not feasible to provide everyone the same choices in entertainment. Therefore your statement is not attributable to your being a hippy or a communist. Rather, it would seem that you are just plain stupid.
"So because the radio stations have access to a limited and restricted resource, the are regulations on what they can do with it."
That is non sequitur.
You do not believe that I have a right to free speech on air. Instead, you beleive that government regulators should decide what I am allowed to say and what I am not allowed to say on the air.
You justify that argument by reporting that radio spectrum is scarce. All resources are scarce. The scarcity of radio spectrum is no excuse for government censorship, it is no reason to limit free speech.
"We've decided as a country that payola is bad, so it's bad."
Politicians have decided that payola is bad. You say "we" have decided "as country" to legitimize that decision by falsely implying that is was a choice made by the entire country, when if fact it was made by a comparatively small group of powerful individuals.
Furthermore, your line of reasoning, that any law is a good law because its the law, is certainly indefensible. Need I provide examples ? We have decided as a country that the Patriot act is good, therefore it is good, we have decided as country that the DMCA is good, therfore it is good, we have decided as country that corporate welfare is good, therefore it is good.
(Honestly, I am surprised that you could have employed that line of reasoning without anticipating that your argument would be thoroughly demolished.)
"..a company is allowed to use the public airwaves in a manner deemed suitable by the people"
I don't agree with that policy, but at least you being fairly clear about your own opposition to free speech in that remark; I am not allowed to freely express my opinion on the air if it is not "deemd suitable by the people." If "the public" disagree with what I have to say, then I don't have the right to say it on the radio. But tell me, who presumes to speak for people in deciding what is "deemed suitable for the people?"
"A problem with this line of reasoning is that [it] assumes the free market should determine all outcomes"
When someone advocates granting indviduals the freedom to make decisions on their own behalf, often the retort is to label that a "free market," and then to ridicule free markets. The fact is, if you are againt free markets, then you are against freedom. You choose to substitute the term "free market" for "freedom" to disguise the fact that you oppose freedom.
"Corporate wealth at the expense of social cause."
Corporations and social causes are not distict categories. Corporations embody social causes. Do you imagine that corporate activity operates outside of social consideratoins? On the contrary, businesses which fail to efficiently satisfy social needs fail.
"The airwaves are a public resource, not the private property of Clear Channel or Viacom, et. al."
Radio stations PAY for broadcasting licenses just like newspapers pay for printing and slashdot pays for bandwidth. In all cases, the buyer purchases a means to transmit information to you. You seem to believe that one particular choice of communication medium justifies the revocation of free speech rights. In your view, if I communicate by transmitting electromagentic radation throught the air then I have no right to free speech, but if transmit information on photons through glass light pipes or with carbon imprints on dead trees then I do have free speech rights? Either you are for free speech or you are against it. Free speech means universal free speech, it does not mean free speech conditioned upon your personal sanction of the communication medium.
"As such, the airwaves should reflect minority opinions and give airtime for those without the resources to buy all the airtime."
It is the same old tired socialist rhetoric: First, you deny the existence of private propery. In this case specifically, you deny that paying for a broadast license purchases the right to control a band in the radio spectrum. Instead of allowing that he who licenses a channel owns the right to control that channel, you consign control vaguely to "the public". You then presume to speak for "the public" and advocate for your own listening preferences. Specifically your preference is "minority opinions."
Socialists often attempt to associate "greed" with free markets. Indeed, some "greedy" indivuduals operate in free markets. Yet the system of free markets (the system of freedom) enforces a degree of equity: You have to give in order to get. That is a purchase. In the case of radio broadcast, that means paying for the privelege of controlling a band of radio spectrum by licensing it from the government. Socialisists, on other hand, attempt to sieze the same privelege for themsleves, in the name of the "the public", offering no compensation in return. It is hypocrisy to demand, at no charge to yourself, a degree of control for which others must pay, while presuming to act in the public interest.
Ultimately, a choice is made about what is broadcast on any given channel. Any choice made will satisfy some and dissatisfy others. Is it fair to ask those awarded the priveledge of that decision making to give the price of a broadcast license in return, or is instead the assertion that your own tastes truly represent the public interest adequate compensation for awarding you that priveledge ?
"The problem comes in when this comes from a conglomerate such as Clear channel, who, in some smaller markets is really the only choice in radio..."
That is no reason for the government to dictate content. Some cities have only one newspaper. Should the government regulate news content? Some towns have only one restaurant. Should the government regulate what restuarants have to serve? That some segment of the population is not being served acorrding to their tastes should NEVER be a reason to curtail freedom. Just because you want something does not mean that there should be a law requiring someone to provide it.
People who really believe in freedom do not, like yourself, look for excuses to undermine it. That not everyone is offered free radio programming which suits their tastes happens to be your excuse.
There is an attitude that "Unless government regulates radio content, someone might not broadcast what I want to hear." In other words: "You should not be free to say what you want if it is not what I whish to hear".
How is it unjust that promoters pay broadcasters to play particular tunes?
According to prevailing/. ideology, we are for free speech around here, and if you don't like what is being said, then you don't have to listen to it. So if a radio station plays a tune too much, or one which you don't like, then you don't have to listen to it. Turn off the radio or change the channel. Can someone please explain how it is that involvment of promotional motives somehow negates that principle of free speech ?
Freedom means freedom. It doesn't mean freedom only when it suits your own anti-corporate agenda. Yes, for my taste, clearchannel stations play a too small selection, much of which is overpromoted crap. However, I am not prepared to abandon my principles in opposition to that crap. Stations should be free to make programming decisions based purely on profit motive and I should be free to turn the dial if I don't like it. That's how freedom works folks. People deciding things for themselves. Freedom is not a government regulator dictating how music programming should be decided.
"The first all-artificial movie will be made by an AI that has no access to any outside materials."
"And it will suck. "An AI [with] no access to any outside materials" will by definition also have no reference as to what makes a good movie or not, and thus will probably wind up making a movie that only it thinks is good..."
Your point here seems to be that anything of artistic value must necessarily derive from empirical knowledge. I entirely disagree.
- Mathematical truths are derived without referrence to the material world, and yet accurately describe physical truths about the material world. It is not necessary to reason from empirical axiom to "know" about the world. Nor is math unintersting for not pertaining to the physical world. Does veridical hallucination as well as empirical fact constitute knowledge ? I don't know, but it might sell tickets.
- Many people find instrumental music to be interesting and beautiful. Yet what knowlege about the real world goes into making that ? It is non-referrential, so to what in world could it refer ? Composers may assign an interpretation consisting of real-world references; Peter and Wolf, Flight of the Bumblebee. But would the music be unenjoyable to those unaware of that meaning?
- Abstract expressionism. Mondrian, Pollock, Rothko... There is a substantial body of art, the very definition of which is that it does not refer to the actual world. It is non-representational.
Admittedly, saying that art need not refer to the real world is not the same thing as saying that it need not derive form the real world. But if it need not refer to real world, then why must it derive from it? You could claim that Pollock derives from, and refers to, the physics of flying paint. But it could just as well refer to equations describing the the physics of flying paint, which exist (to the extent which mathematics exists at all) independly of the material universe. You could claim that physics constrains the set all possible equations down to the artistically revelenat, to which I reply that they it demonstrably overconstrains artistic possibilities.
Any instantiation of an AI is necessarily a material entity, and any art which it produces would be therefore a manifestation of the physcial process of its operation. AI art would, in that sense, derive and hence refer to a physical process, thus embodying knowledge of world. In this way a Rothko is a description of the physical process engaging Rothko's brain at the time he created the piece. Truly abstract art can not exist. Indeed, if you have ever seen an abstract art exhibit, you will notice that it is not abstract at all, but consists of material objects.
"As one of last season's Penn & Teller's Bullshit pointed out, the environmental movement is being highjacked by anti-corporate groups."
Exactly. If you look at something like the Clinton EPA new source review regulations, which punished corporations for more efficient energy production, and which environmentalists defend passionately, then its hard to reach any conclusion but that envnironmentalists are now pursuing an environmentally reckless anti-corporate agenda. As a result, there is new demand for legitimate environmentalism. This demand has spawned a conservative environmentalist movement. Among the tenets of conservative environmentalism:
- If the government internalizes externalities by imposing fees for despoiling or consuming public goods (air, water) then this eliminates the "tragedy of the commons" problem and incentivizes business to reduce environmental impact. When resources cost money, the market will favor business which produce the most efficiently, that is, the most output for the least monetary (and therefore environmental) cost. The key idea here is that no government regulations are required. You don't need regulators in the EPA to approve powerplant designs. Just license for the right to pollute, measure the output and enforce the law, and the market works to develop and choose new technology to reduce the overall level of pollution. Liberal environmentalists oppose this plan. Sierra Club and other groups lobby against tradable pollution credits because they "give corporations a license to pollute." But that's just not true. They are selling, not giving, corporations a license to pollute. The selling part is the crucial aspect.
- The primary goal of environmentalism should be to preserve and expand the land area of natural habitat. Liberal environmentalism, on the other hand, has set a whole bunch of additonal goals, such as advancing renewable energy resources, opposing fission, regulating private land use and regulating genetic diversity. These other actually work against expanding natural habitat.
- Reneable energy resources are anti-environmental because they have low-energy density; They take up too much space, displacing natural habitat. Ethanol fuel and solar power both require destruction of vast areas of natural habitat. The flux density of sunlight, collected either by crops or photovoltaics, is just too low to satisfy world energy demands without taking over a large surface area of the planet. The density of an energy source is the correct measure of environmental correctness. High density energy sources produce the most energy in the least space, displacing the least natural habitat. By this measure, petroleum is good. You only need about enough space to drill a hole in the ground and build a refinery. Fission has an even higher energy density. Geneticaly modified crops are good because they produce more food on less crop land, shrinking cropland and expaning natural habitat.
There are books about this stuff. I suggest "Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists". The phrasing is overstylized, manifesto screedish. Like a poor immitations of Abi Hoffman. (Though a more acurrate imitation would be worse). Nonetheless, IMHO its a fact-filled, well-reasoned argument.
Thank your for that honest expression of bigotry. Please share with us more of your conjectures regarding what socio-economic groups could benefit. What about the "poor dumb blacks" and the "poor dumb mexicans?"
Face the facts: You are a bigot. Do you imagine that a poor white person is any less offended by your reference to "red necks" than would be a poor black who is called a "nigger". Actually, no, you probably would not undestand that, which is part of what defines you as a bigot.
As mentioned in James Taranto's Best of the Web column, the authors of that study issued the following disclaimer:
The findings were not meant to and cannot be used as a basis for making broad judgments about the general accuracy of the reporting of various networks or the general accuracy of the beliefs of those who get their news from those networks. Only a substantially more comprehensive study could undertake such broad research questions.
The article to which you link itself states:
PIPA's seven polls, which included 9,611 respondents, had a margin of error from 2 to 3.5 percent. The analysis released Thursday also correlated the misperceptions with the primary news source of the mistaken respondents. For example, 80 percent of those who said they relied on Fox News and 71 percent of those who said they relied on CBS believed at least one of the three misperceptions.
Taking into account the margin of error, there is certainly a solid %2 difference between Fox and CBS viewers. Wow.
Finally, and most importantly, the study confounds the politcal bias of respondants with their political informedness. Consider this: When a repondant does not know the answer to a survey question and he guesses randomly, then on average, binary responses will be just as mutch right as they are wrong. However, for appropriatly chosen questions, when a biased respondant guesses with a political bias, then he guesses more wrong than right. The person who devises the questions can manipulate the outcome of the survey by choosing questions which Fox news viewers will answer incorrectly when guessing. We could just as well conrtrive a set of questions which the (more liberal) NPR listeners would be inclined to answer incorrectly when guessing.
from the parent: "You as a consumer are actually paying well over the listed pump price for gasoline because of these hidden payments."
and from the article: "TCP is more than 80% energy efficient"
What does 80% effiecint mean ? It means that for every 100 barrels of oil that this plant consumes, it produces 80 barrels of oil.
Someone has to pay for that wasted 20 barrels of oil, and you can bet ConAgra has a plan to profit from this wastefulness by getting the taxpayers to cover it. The demand for the service of converting 100 barrels of oil into 80 barrels is pretty low in free market where each consumer bears the cost of his own economic choices. The only way ConAgra can set up a business to waste resources is with government sponsorship, where the people who pay (the taxpayers) are not the same people who make the decisions (the politicians). It is not rational to poor money down a rat hole if its your own money. But as a politician, it is rational to poor tax payers money down a rat hole if a corporation will give you campaign contributions in exchange.
It seems farcicle that a corporation could profit from providing a service of reducing energy and absurd that taxpaying voters would endorse that. However, there is not much we who appose this can do against the combined forces of the "environmental" movement, politicians, and corporations. Anyone who argues against this on the facts (it consumes more than it produces) is brutally cudgled with propaganda that we are against the environment, against the "public good", and that we are shills for big oil.
If ConAgra wants to convince me that they are not crooks, then they need to come through with a real fact which tells me whether this plant is environmentally sound, not merely a prop in their plot to defraud tax payers. Tell me if this business would be profitiable without supsidies. If it is profitalbe without subsidies, then that means that the value of what it produces is less than the value of what it consumes. That is, it is a net provider of resources. If it is not profitiable, then the value of what it consumes is greater than the value of what it produces and it wastes resources. (Barring externalities of course. ).
"If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water."
...and 73 biscuits of solyent green.
Re:The bigger picture -updated version
on
Out of Gas
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· Score: 1
"The summary is roughly that we need to make photovoltaics about 10 fold cheaper than they are today"
"At this low cost, we can even pull CO2 out of the atmosphere directly"
Yes, if only we had machines, devices of some sort, which used solar power to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Perhaps we could make them "viral" so that they reproduced copies of themselves and spread, without us having to manufacture them. They should be biodegradable also, so that when they fail, their wreckage does pollute. It would be good also if they could somehow be made to extract material resources from their local environment, without the need to truck in exotic mineral resources. Also, we should create different varieties of these machines, adapted to their local environment.
That's probably way too optimisitc, sounds like science fiction to me. Also, assuming it was even possible to create such a thing, where would be put them all ? We'd have to cut down entire forrests to make space.
Slashdot Mirror
Just curious, does Apple deliver iTunes Europe purchases from servers in the U.S. or do they have a European server farm for that ? Is global connectivity now good enough that servers in California can deliver that volume of data around the globe to Europe at about the same throughput and latency as could servers located in Europe ?
"There are also "survey grade" GPS devices that manage much greater accuracy than your $100 Garmin."
I believe that's called "differential GPS". It exploits the fact that positional noise injected into the signal is correlated between receivers. That is, if receiver A gives an absolute positional error of 10 feet to the left at time t, then receiver B will give the same error at the same time. Thus even though the absolute positions reported by any pair of recievers will be inaccurate, at any given instant their reported relative positions with respect to each other will be quite accurate. Calculating that instantaneous difference relies on differential GPS recievers communicating between each other and that is achieved by broadcasting locally between receivers.
Or so I've read. I've never actually used GPS surveying equipment myself. Maybe there is someone more expert here who could comment.
I suppose that its because you need that local, secondary broadcast signal that the military is not working to shut out differential GPS. Maybe it's not adaptable to the battlefield and so not seen as a threat.
"Do you believe in advocating the violent overthrow of the government?"
It would depend on the government. Democratic forms of government, no. But that is because I am against the violent overthrow of democratic governments, not because I am against free speech. If you do actually intend to violently overthrow the US government, it would be a good thing to advocate that so that the authorities were informed of your activities. See my previous post: What appears to be a penalty for free speech is in fact a penatly for a concomitant harm for which there are legal penalties when speech is not involved. It is those activities for which there is a penalty, not the speech per se. It is illegal to violently overthrow the government, whatever your means, advocacy or not. It is thefore incorrect to say that the penalty given to those who advocate for the overtrhow of government is a penalty for engaging in free speech. Rather, it is a penalty for attempting to overthrow the government.
If someone involved an automobile in a plot to overthrow the goverment and was subsequently imprisoned for attempting to overthrow the government, would you then conclude that the right to drive does not really exist ?
"Do you believe in publishing half-blown apart heads on newpaper front pages? "
I support the legal freedom to do that though I do not approve of the practice.
"Do you believe in allowing 50,000 watt stations to set up anywhere on the dial they'd like, trampling on the speech of the stations around them?"
No, because I support free speech. In this case, where radio interference restricts free speech, you seem to support the protection of free speech. However when government officials restric free speech by regulating what can be said, then you are against free speech. How do you reconcile your support of free speech in one case with opposition in the other ? Does this relate to your beliefs that government censorship embodies the collective will of the public, and that restricting the freedom of the public is beneficial to the public ?
me:
"I double triple dare you to address this criticism: If your argument holds for anti-payola, why does it not also hold for the DMCA ?"
you:
"Your arguments read like a freshman college student trying out new tricks from his rhetoric class."
Oh, right. Well I double extra quadruple triple dare you ! The double extra quadruple triple dare is a maneuver taught only at the graduate level.
"Think through the practical implications of what you are saying."
Well the practical implications of there being a right to free speech is that people can not shut you up when they disagree with what you say. It would be nice if freedom were extened beyond print and the internet to also include the radio.
"Free Speech...doesn't really exist."
That comment speaks for itself.
Exactly.
from the Slate article:
"The administration needs to do a better job of providing us with the kind of information that will truly help us--not just this summer, but in decades to come..."
"This administration...in the decades to come". In the author's eagerness to propagandize he ignores the fact that even if Bush is relected to a second term the administration will remain in office for only another four years, not for decades. It is a pitty that he had to go and spoil an interesting historical anecdote by injecting nonsensical expressions of political bias.
Not only by referring to the Bush administration does he commit a factual mistake, but he also implies a double standard; Its not ok for a Bush adminstration to keep some Abu Ghraib photos private but it would be ok for a Kerry administration ?
Instead of:
"The administration needs to do a better job of providing us with the kind of information that will truly help us--not just this summer, but in decades to come..."
Try this:
"Government needs to do a better job of providing us with the kind of information that will truly help us--not just this summer, but in decades to come..."
"We as a people decide things by electing people who carry out our collective will. That "small group of powerful individuals" are the people who make those laws...
... regulate s
You have slipped in a claim that decisions made by elected officials represent "our collective will." What is meant by "collective will?" Society is certainly not in Borglike agreement, so in the sense of unanimous concensus, there exists no collective will. Did you mean to say "majority will" and mistakenly typed "collective will"? Yet how could you defend even that ? Laws enacted by congress need not emobody the majority will and often in fact do not. Decisions made by national government are made by elected officials and not popular referendum specifically because the founding fathers believed that laws should not reflect the majority will of socieity, but the majority will of elected officials.
You are using misleading language to exaggerate the degree to which laws embody public opinion. It is your intention to argue that government should have power to supress free speach on the radio, so you begin by trying to legitimize that power with the sweeping claim that that the decisions of congress embody "our collective will". Claiming that government represents "our collective will" to justify government regulation of speech is one of two tatctics you use for opposing free speech on the radio. The other is to claim that speech conveyed over the airwaves traveres a medium owned by "the public" and that the public interest is against free speech and for government regulated speech.
As Orwell claimed, careless political reasoning is tied to careless use of language. In this particular case, it is your own sloppy use of "collective will" which reenforces your faulty beliefs. Precisely, laws are enacted by a majority vote of a small minority of citizens, not by "our collective will".
That laws are enacted by elected officials has never been a point of dispute between us. Your unnecessary and sarcastic reiteration of that point is a diversionary tactic; You want to distract from the real point of disagreement, where you are weak; Your contention that laws are necessarily good laws because they were enacted by elected officials. To reiterate: your initial line of argument was that all laws are good laws, that anti-payola was a law, and therefore anti-payola was good. As I pointed out, that line of reasoning was fatally flawed because it could just as well be used to justify the DMCA, the patriot act, and corporate welfare. You have since steadfastly avoided the issue, and your increasingly convoluted attempts to ignore the central flaw in your reasoning are becoming the dominent feature of this conversation. The more I draw attention to it, the harder you work to avoid it. You have not only abandoned your position, you are hiding from it. As a demonstration, I double triple dare you to address this criticism: If your argument holds for anti-payola, why does it not also hold for the DMCA ?
"Yell "Fire!" in a movie theatre for an example of regulated speech that does not harm free speech."
It is a common misconception that what is being regulated in such examples is speech. There is in fact no penalty for speech per se, but rather a pentaly for an associated criminal act of harm directly resulting from an irresponsible exercise of speech. In the case of yelling fire, the penalty exists not for the act of yelling fire, but rather for the trampling deaths resutling from the crowd's attempt to escape. If you bring about death then you are guilty of homicide. That the means by which you cause death is an act of speech does not exonerate you of murder. There is no penalty for speech. There is a penalty for murder. If nobody is trampled, there is a penalty for attempted murder. The severty of the penatly increases with the number of deaths, not with the number of times you shout fire, indicating that the law does in fact penalize homicide, not speech.
"We
"...but I am asking the Government to prevent any one body, who is not a licensed broadcaster, from buying X percentage of airtime on a given outlet."
Well that is just not free speech. That is the government saying "we don't believe you should be able to talk so much. If we think you are saying too much we are going to shut you up. Sure, you have a right to talk some, but not more than we want you to talk. Your ideas represent a danger to the public if you are heard too much so we need to limit how much you can talk"
Admittedly, those are not your own words. Yet don't they represent your attitudes about why and how on-air speech needs to be regulated by the gonvernment?
Free speech means universal free speech. You can not claim to be for free speech and then name expections. If you say "I am for free speech except if you've already talked for two hours on the radio then you are not free to talk any more after that". That's not free speech. That is speech conditioned upon your own terms.
"ANY law is decided by a small group of powerful individuals. They're called your Congressmen and your President. It's how we make MOST laws in a Republic."
..."
So you have abandoned your initial position that "we" have decided "as country" that payola is bad and now agree with me that "a small group of powerful individuals" have decided for us that payola was bad.
But are you still of the opinion that any law enacted by that group of powerful individuals is a good law? That assertion was crucial to your justifing the prohibition of payola. In a nutshell: Any law is a good law, anti-payola is a law, therfore anti-payola is good. You have not reponded to by criticisms that the same line of reasoning could be used to justify the DMCA, the patriot act and corporate welfare.
"As for the bullcrap strawman you set up, I reject it and wonder that you don't see the flaws in your argument without 'anticipating your argument would be thoroughly demolished',
It is one thing to remark after demonstrating an error in reasoning (which you have since partly conceded) that it should have been obvious. It is quite another to puff yourself up and make vague references to straw men without explanation. The first is puzzlement (Why didn't he see that?). The second is your effort to save face by threatening that you could show my argument is in error, even though you have not even attempted to do that.
If you see a straw man, you need to point him out to us, not simply mention that you sense one to be in the vicinity. This tactic of saying "Straw man! I win" while retreating from the conversation will not convince anyone. It is an accusation not backed up by reasons.
from 1876 case number 71 "Boy Kicked to death"
Characteristics: Killed to death
http://homdev.northwestern.edu/database/70/
"No person should be asked to move house and home simply because of a lack of choice in terms of entertainment."
Yes, those who live in Barrow, Alaska are entitled to the same choices in entertainment as those who live in New York City. It's their democratic right. Damn those who opress Alaskans by not building a Metroplotan Opera House, Broadway theaters, and the Guggenheim Museum in Barrow!
Seriously. How do propose to give everyone in the nation the same choices of entertainment? Living further from cities means having less conveneint access to what is provided in those cities. If you want more convenient access to the city, then you have to move to the city. (If you want more convenient access to nature, move out of the city). Those are just the facts of geography and the physics of transportation.
"Please, reply that I am some form of hippie or communist..."
Only if hippies or communists as a class accepted the statement that "No person should be asked to move house and home simply because of a lack of choice in terms of entertainment" could we attribute advocacy of that belief to being a hippie or communist. We can safetly assume that there are both hippies and communists who recognize that it is not feasible to provide everyone the same choices in entertainment. Therefore your statement is not attributable to your being a hippy or a communist. Rather, it would seem that you are just plain stupid.
"So because the radio stations have access to a limited and restricted resource, the are regulations on what they can do with it."
That is non sequitur.
You do not believe that I have a right to free speech on air. Instead, you beleive that government regulators should decide what I am allowed to say and what I am not allowed to say on the air.
You justify that argument by reporting that radio spectrum is scarce. All resources are scarce. The scarcity of radio spectrum is no excuse for government censorship, it is no reason to limit free speech.
"We've decided as a country that payola is bad, so it's bad."
Politicians have decided that payola is bad. You say "we" have decided "as country" to legitimize that decision by falsely implying that is was a choice made by the entire country, when if fact it was made by a comparatively small group of powerful individuals.
Furthermore, your line of reasoning, that any law is a good law because its the law, is certainly indefensible. Need I provide examples ? We have decided as a country that the Patriot act is good, therefore it is good, we have decided as country that the DMCA is good, therfore it is good, we have decided as country that corporate welfare is good, therefore it is good.
(Honestly, I am surprised that you could have employed that line of reasoning without anticipating that your argument would be thoroughly demolished.)
"..a company is allowed to use the public airwaves in a manner deemed suitable by the people"
I don't agree with that policy, but at least you being fairly clear about your own opposition to free speech in that remark; I am not allowed to freely express my opinion on the air if it is not "deemd suitable by the people." If "the public" disagree with what I have to say, then I don't have the right to say it on the radio. But tell me, who presumes to speak for people in deciding what is "deemed suitable for the people?"
"A problem with this line of reasoning is that [it] assumes the free market should determine all outcomes"
When someone advocates granting indviduals the freedom to make decisions on their own behalf, often the retort is to label that a "free market," and then to ridicule free markets. The fact is, if you are againt free markets, then you are against freedom. You choose to substitute the term "free market" for "freedom" to disguise the fact that you oppose freedom.
"Corporate wealth at the expense of social cause."
Corporations and social causes are not distict categories. Corporations embody social causes. Do you imagine that corporate activity operates outside of social consideratoins? On the contrary, businesses which fail to efficiently satisfy social needs fail.
"The airwaves are a public resource, not the private property of Clear Channel or Viacom, et. al."
Radio stations PAY for broadcasting licenses just like newspapers pay for printing and slashdot pays for bandwidth. In all cases, the buyer purchases a means to transmit information to you. You seem to believe that one particular choice of communication medium justifies the revocation of free speech rights. In your view, if I communicate by transmitting electromagentic radation throught the air then I have no right to free speech, but if transmit information on photons through glass light pipes or with carbon imprints on dead trees then I do have free speech rights? Either you are for free speech or you are against it. Free speech means universal free speech, it does not mean free speech conditioned upon your personal sanction of the communication medium.
"As such, the airwaves should reflect minority opinions and give airtime for those without the resources to buy all the airtime."
It is the same old tired socialist rhetoric: First, you deny the existence of private propery. In this case specifically, you deny that paying for a broadast license purchases the right to control a band in the radio spectrum. Instead of allowing that he who licenses a channel owns the right to control that channel, you consign control vaguely to "the public". You then presume to speak for "the public" and advocate for your own listening preferences. Specifically your preference is "minority opinions."
Socialists often attempt to associate "greed" with free markets. Indeed, some "greedy" indivuduals operate in free markets. Yet the system of free markets (the system of freedom) enforces a degree of equity: You have to give in order to get. That is a purchase. In the case of radio broadcast, that means paying for the privelege of controlling a band of radio spectrum by licensing it from the government. Socialisists, on other hand, attempt to sieze the same privelege for themsleves, in the name of the "the public", offering no compensation in return. It is hypocrisy to demand, at no charge to yourself, a degree of control for which others must pay, while presuming to act in the public interest.
Ultimately, a choice is made about what is broadcast on any given channel. Any choice made will satisfy some and dissatisfy others. Is it fair to ask those awarded the priveledge of that decision making to give the price of a broadcast license in return, or is instead the assertion that your own tastes truly represent the public interest adequate compensation for awarding you that priveledge ?
"The problem comes in when this comes from a conglomerate such as Clear channel, who, in some smaller markets is really the only choice in radio..."
That is no reason for the government to dictate content. Some cities have only one newspaper. Should the government regulate news content? Some towns have only one restaurant. Should the government regulate what restuarants have to serve? That some segment of the population is not being served acorrding to their tastes should NEVER be a reason to curtail freedom. Just because you want something does not mean that there should be a law requiring someone to provide it.
People who really believe in freedom do not, like yourself, look for excuses to undermine it. That not everyone is offered free radio programming which suits their tastes happens to be your excuse.
There is an attitude that "Unless government regulates radio content, someone might not broadcast what I want to hear." In other words: "You should not be free to say what you want if it is not what I whish to hear".
How is it unjust that promoters pay broadcasters to play particular tunes?
/. ideology, we are for free speech around here, and if you don't like what is being said, then you don't have to listen to it. So if a radio station plays a tune too much, or one which you don't like, then you don't have to listen to it. Turn off the radio or change the channel. Can someone please explain how it is that involvment of promotional motives somehow negates that principle of free speech ?
According to prevailing
Freedom means freedom. It doesn't mean freedom only when it suits your own anti-corporate agenda. Yes, for my taste, clearchannel stations play a too small selection, much of which is overpromoted crap. However, I am not prepared to abandon my principles in opposition to that crap. Stations should be free to make programming decisions based purely on profit motive and I should be free to turn the dial if I don't like it. That's how freedom works folks. People deciding things for themselves. Freedom is not a government regulator dictating how music programming should be decided.
"What's negative equity?"
Debt.
"The first all-artificial movie will be made by an AI that has no access to any outside materials."
"And it will suck. "An AI [with] no access to any outside materials" will by definition also have no reference as to what makes a good movie or not, and thus will probably wind up making a movie that only it thinks is good..."
Your point here seems to be that anything of artistic value must necessarily derive from empirical knowledge. I entirely disagree.
- Mathematical truths are derived without referrence to the material world, and yet accurately describe physical truths about the material world. It is not necessary to reason from empirical axiom to "know" about the world. Nor is math unintersting for not pertaining to the physical world. Does veridical hallucination as well as empirical fact constitute knowledge ? I don't know, but it might sell tickets.
- Many people find instrumental music to be interesting and beautiful. Yet what knowlege about the real world goes into making that ? It is non-referrential, so to what in world could it refer ? Composers may assign an interpretation consisting of real-world references; Peter and Wolf, Flight of the Bumblebee. But would the music be unenjoyable to those unaware of that meaning?
- Abstract expressionism. Mondrian, Pollock, Rothko... There is a substantial body of art, the very definition of which is that it does not refer to the actual world. It is non-representational.
Admittedly, saying that art need not refer to the real world is not the same thing as saying that it need not derive form the real world. But if it need not refer to real world, then why must it derive from it? You could claim that Pollock derives from, and refers to, the physics of flying paint. But it could just as well refer to equations describing the the physics of flying paint, which exist (to the extent which mathematics exists at all) independly of the material universe. You could claim that physics constrains the set all possible equations down to the artistically revelenat, to which I reply that they it demonstrably overconstrains artistic possibilities.
Any instantiation of an AI is necessarily a material entity, and any art which it produces would be therefore a manifestation of the physcial process of its operation. AI art would, in that sense, derive and hence refer to a physical process, thus embodying knowledge of world. In this way a Rothko is a description of the physical process engaging Rothko's brain at the time he created the piece. Truly abstract art can not exist. Indeed, if you have ever seen an abstract art exhibit, you will notice that it is not abstract at all, but consists of material objects.
"Make sure you "rough up" the bag a bit ahead of time (just throw it around against some rocks or something, or the pavement)."
Remember to remove the laptop first.
"How else would they know when the camera takes pictures, to avoid getting caught."
Night. Darkness. (duh)
"As one of last season's Penn & Teller's Bullshit pointed out, the environmental movement is being highjacked by anti-corporate groups."
Exactly. If you look at something like the Clinton EPA new source review regulations, which punished corporations for more efficient energy production, and which environmentalists defend passionately, then its hard to reach any conclusion but that envnironmentalists are now pursuing an environmentally reckless anti-corporate agenda. As a result, there is new demand for legitimate environmentalism. This demand has spawned a conservative environmentalist movement. Among the tenets of conservative environmentalism:
- If the government internalizes externalities by imposing fees for despoiling or consuming public goods (air, water) then this eliminates the "tragedy of the commons" problem and incentivizes business to reduce environmental impact. When resources cost money, the market will favor business which produce the most efficiently, that is, the most output for the least monetary (and therefore environmental) cost. The key idea here is that no government regulations are required. You don't need regulators in the EPA to approve powerplant designs. Just license for the right to pollute, measure the output and enforce the law, and the market works to develop and choose new technology to reduce the overall level of pollution. Liberal environmentalists oppose this plan. Sierra Club and other groups lobby against tradable pollution credits because they "give corporations a license to pollute." But that's just not true. They are selling, not giving, corporations a license to pollute. The selling part is the crucial aspect.
- The primary goal of environmentalism should be to preserve and expand the land area of natural habitat. Liberal environmentalism, on the other hand, has set a whole bunch of additonal goals, such as advancing renewable energy resources, opposing fission, regulating private land use and regulating genetic diversity. These other actually work against expanding natural habitat.
- Reneable energy resources are anti-environmental because they have low-energy density; They take up too much space, displacing natural habitat. Ethanol fuel and solar power both require destruction of vast areas of natural habitat. The flux density of sunlight, collected either by crops or photovoltaics, is just too low to satisfy world energy demands without taking over a large surface area of the planet. The density of an energy source is the correct measure of environmental correctness. High density energy sources produce the most energy in the least space, displacing the least natural habitat. By this measure, petroleum is good. You only need about enough space to drill a hole in the ground and build a refinery. Fission has an even higher energy density. Geneticaly modified crops are good because they produce more food on less crop land, shrinking cropland and expaning natural habitat.
There are books about this stuff. I suggest "Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists". The phrasing is overstylized, manifesto screedish. Like a poor immitations of Abi Hoffman. (Though a more acurrate imitation would be worse). Nonetheless, IMHO its a fact-filled, well-reasoned argument.
Thank your for that honest expression of bigotry. Please share with us more of your conjectures regarding what socio-economic groups could benefit. What about the "poor dumb blacks" and the "poor dumb mexicans?"
Face the facts: You are a bigot. Do you imagine that a poor white person is any less offended by your reference to "red necks" than would be a poor black who is called a "nigger". Actually, no, you probably would not undestand that, which is part of what defines you as a bigot.
As mentioned in James Taranto's Best of the Web column, the authors of that study issued the following disclaimer:
The article to which you link itself states:
Taking into account the margin of error, there is certainly a solid %2 difference between Fox and CBS viewers. Wow.Finally, and most importantly, the study confounds the politcal bias of respondants with their political informedness. Consider this: When a repondant does not know the answer to a survey question and he guesses randomly, then on average, binary responses will be just as mutch right as they are wrong. However, for appropriatly chosen questions, when a biased respondant guesses with a political bias, then he guesses more wrong than right. The person who devises the questions can manipulate the outcome of the survey by choosing questions which Fox news viewers will answer incorrectly when guessing. We could just as well conrtrive a set of questions which the (more liberal) NPR listeners would be inclined to answer incorrectly when guessing.
from the parent:
"You as a consumer are actually paying well over the listed pump price for gasoline because of these hidden payments."
and from the article:
"TCP is more than 80% energy efficient"
What does 80% effiecint mean ? It means that for every 100 barrels of oil that this plant consumes, it produces 80 barrels of oil.
Someone has to pay for that wasted 20 barrels of oil, and you can bet ConAgra has a plan to profit from this wastefulness by getting the taxpayers to cover it. The demand for the service of converting 100 barrels of oil into 80 barrels is pretty low in free market where each consumer bears the cost of his own economic choices. The only way ConAgra can set up a business to waste resources is with government sponsorship, where the people who pay (the taxpayers) are not the same people who make the decisions (the politicians). It is not rational to poor money down a rat hole if its your own money. But as a politician, it is rational to poor tax payers money down a rat hole if a corporation will give you campaign contributions in exchange.
It seems farcicle that a corporation could profit from providing a service of reducing energy and absurd that taxpaying voters would endorse that. However, there is not much we who appose this can do against the combined forces of the "environmental" movement, politicians, and corporations. Anyone who argues against this on the facts (it consumes more than it produces) is brutally cudgled with propaganda that we are against the environment, against the "public good", and that we are shills for big oil.
If ConAgra wants to convince me that they are not crooks, then they need to come through with a real fact which tells me whether this plant is environmentally sound, not merely a prop in their plot to defraud tax payers. Tell me if this business would be profitiable without supsidies. If it is profitalbe without subsidies, then that means that the value of what it produces is less than the value of what it consumes. That is, it is a net provider of resources. If it is not profitiable, then the value of what it consumes is greater than the value of what it produces and it wastes resources. (Barring externalities of course. ).
"The summary is roughly that we need to make photovoltaics about 10 fold cheaper than they are today"
"At this low cost, we can even pull CO2 out of the atmosphere directly"
Yes, if only we had machines, devices of some sort, which used solar power to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Perhaps we could make them "viral" so that they reproduced copies of themselves and spread, without us having to manufacture them. They should be biodegradable also, so that when they fail, their wreckage does pollute. It would be good also if they could somehow be made to extract material resources from their local environment, without the need to truck in exotic mineral resources. Also, we should create different varieties of these machines, adapted to their local environment.
That's probably way too optimisitc, sounds like science fiction to me. Also, assuming it was even possible to create such a thing, where would be put them all ? We'd have to cut down entire forrests to make space.