Actually, curing it is perfectly in line with Darwin's theory. Consider cephalization. Humans are at the top of the chain (well, according to us) because we've got the brains to beat just about anything that can kill us -- big or small. Some things we have to work harder at than others. And if we don't get it figured out, well, don't say Darwin didn't warn us.
You are correct. But the problem with journalism in America is not its bias. It is a two-fold problem of striving to give the people what they want and maintaining a (limited) monopoly.
Corporate media outlets fight to meet shareholder expectations of better bottom lines, etc... . One way to increase your bottom line is to diversify your revenue stream and consolidate your redundant expenses. To normal people, that means you buy newspapers, radio stations and television stations and cable companies and anything you can then get rid of any overlap you can. For newspapers (and let's face it, the super-vast majority of any real news gathering still happens through newspapers), that means getting rid of reporters (usually through attrition, so it's not ugly) and replacing the stories they would write with wire service (AP, Reuters, NY Times, etc) stuff. Own multiple papers in the same state? Make them all cover the statehouse with the same reporter. Fill with stuff from the wires. National coverage? One Washington man can handle the needs of five or six papers, right? Fill with stuff from the wires.
I watched the Wichita Eagle newsroom go from a 130-person newsroom to 85 in less than seven years. Only a half dozen people got downsized out of a job. But when I left, the old guys who could not only name every county in the state but could tell a long story about each one (that inevitably involved a pickup truck and the county seat) were gone. The Eagle used to have three state house reporters and one in Washington; now (or at least, the last time I checked) it has one state house reporter that it shares with the Kansas City Star (same parent company) and one in Washington that is shared with five other midwestern states. And the Eagle is lucky, because those really are Eagle guys there; the other papers get seconds.
The average age and experience had dropped by about 20 years and the bulk of the journalists in the room were imported from other states, because no one goes up at their own newspaper but jumps paper to paper to climb the ladder. There were actually more people from North Carolina in charge of Kansas' largest newspaper than than there were Kansans.
They didn't know shit from shineola, except to take marketing surveys to find out what people _wanted_ to read. They took the bias of the market and reflected it back on itself. There was no "corporate" bias besides giving people "what they want."
And that's bullshit.
Reporters are, by nature, more liberal than the population. That's a given: People who want to be journalists and expose the truth and do all the heroic things that they go to journalism school for are, in some way, upset with the status quo. They want change.
Editors, however, are much more conservative than their reporters. They have to deal with the consequences of upsetting the status quo. They used to be reporters, but they've grown up and understand the needs of the corporation. Corporate editors tend to actively stifle controversy that isn't absolutely necessary. They won't (usually) walk away from the giant corruption scandals, but they won't take unnecessary risks on seemingly trivial points. Those scandals have to fall in their laps.
So, again, you have this corporate pressure to cut redundancy and a local pressure to resist controversy and lean, when it can, towards what it thinks the public wants to hear.
With fewer sources to choose from and even a slight bias about what gets reported, the public is easily mislead.
Reporters don't waste time on things they think the editor will spike anyway; politicians can spin control and get away with lies because there tell fewer reporters to deal with; bias is magnified by reporters second guessing what the editors will want and editors second guessing what people will want.
I broke the floppy drive in my then-two-year-old Mac in 1998, the same year I got broadband. My mantra become "if it's small enough for a floppy, it's small enough to email." It wasn't until I sold that Mac to a friend so I could buy myself a new G4 that I realized I'd had a broken floppy drive for three years. I'd simply forgot. It was like I had my appendix taken out and there wasn't even a scar. I probably wouldn't have noticed if my friend hadn't been trying to upload her old files via floppy.
You may personally think that the media is liberal, but you would think wrong. And no Lexis-Nexis will help you support any idea other than you can, in fact, find articles with a liberal slant.
I'll give you that this list is a list made by a liberal group and does display a leaning. But do they "have no basis in fact?" No. That's not why they were under reported.
As a person who used to work in a daily newspaper in a very conservative market (that I grew up in), I can tell you that large media corporations will skew the news to avoid upsetting the readers' world view so that they can make the guys in marketing happy. They want a good image with the public, and if you are in the center and the public is to the right, then you look like you're to the left. So then you move your paper to the right and suddenly everything is OK.
I saw the editor of our paper tell the entire staff that his goal was that he wanted his phone to stop ringing. He didn't want to have to deal with calls about our liberal rag, which wasn't liberal.
Now, for critical thinking, you should RFA on all these stories so you know what you're talking about.
I'm glad the Army met it's 2003 recruiting goals, but that doesn't mean it has all the troops it needs - the goals were not moved to anticipate our current needs; Rumsfeld has lied before; and the instances of the Joint Chiefs of Staff changing its mind about what it wants.
But Congress did put forth two bills to reinstate the draft -- one a protest bill by Democrats.
And more troubling is why the White House increased the Selective Service budget by millions this year.
Regardless, I haven't read the article on the list (and neither have you) so there's nothing to argue about. But nothing you link to here displays any critical thinking, just lapping up the words of conservative mouthpieces.
From one of the links that you probably can't get to by now:
I'm happy to welcome the influx of new visitors who found the site via the "Step aside TiVo, here comes Freevo " Reuters story CNN Money | Yahoo News | etc.
I'm very sorry that our modest hosting buckled under the strain. Ironically I was in the middle of moving the site to a new dedicated server to better cope with the growing interest in the site, when this hit the fan. We are now on that dedicated server, and it seems to be holding up fine (*knocks on wood*) I'm a little afraid this article will end up on slashdot then the site will really be toast.
Even if they could technically do this (they probably can't), it would still rely on people actually paying money to allow themselves to be fingerprinted.
No way.
Average people aren't going to like that. Sure, maybe on a door lock for their own house or car, but your Internet-compatible music device? No way.
The market for finger print devices will always be for people to protect their property and privacy, not to participate in the protection of giant media companies' dollars.
I don't know the specifics of your camera, but having used a dozen digital cameras and a number of digital camcorders, they all pretty much just work.
Just plug the camera in (I'm assuming the firewire cable, but USB if that's what it has) and the appropriate program should launch. iMovie, I'm again assuming.
My question is this: Did you try just plugging it in to see what happen, or were you looking for some complicated solution before you found a problem?
On the other hand, I just got mine back from Apple a couple of weeks ago. I'm very poor right now, and had to just shrug knowing that my 1-year warrenty would run out on Jan. 28... How kick-ass is this timing?
I'm still screwed if anything else happens, but aside from this problem I've never had a problem with any Apple hardware that was more than a year old but less than three years. It seems to me that if it goes past the first year it's golden. If it's older than three years, I'd be likely to replace it instead of fixing it.
It's called "fair use" and journalists use it all the time. If you say something in public, I can quote you as saying it. You can quote me. If you have a corporate name, I can use it in my publication to identify you. If you have a logo, the same. If you say the sky is red and someone else says it's yellow and a third says it's blue, I can quote and identify them all.
These companies, of course, aren't interested in "fair use." They are interested in making it as hard as possible for consumers to compair prices.
Too bad they don't have a leg to stand on.
My best friend does exactly what you are asking about. He has even written a book about it (coming out in January from Villard Press). But check out his website for most of the answers: Rolfpotts.com
The other answers are in the book.;)
Seeing the world isn't nearly as expensive as we Americans think it is, and now is the perfect time in your life to do this.
"[Sith] are cold and calculating, almost robotic -- in the standard Hollywood motif of offering audiences snidely-superior villains to hate. In fact it's almost silly the way they calmly keep telling Luke to give in to his anger, reminding him of what he's been warned about. But they don't seem to give into anger themselves."
A girlfriend of mine had a cat that would sit and watch you all day long, not moving, not reacting to anything. If you got close enough, it would try to claw your eyes out. If you escaped and could still use your eyes, you would see the cat sitting there looking at you calm and cool. That cat was evil.
Giving into anger is more about making a person evil than it is about displaying emotion. Any master is calm, cool and collected. Luke was a student, not a master. They wanted him to be an evil student, and the quick path to that is anger.
Overall, I don't think that article was any more accurate or insightful than the movie it chose to criticize. It, too, was somewhat obvious and full of factual errors. (Lucas did not direct all five movies, for example.) I'm glad he found it entertaining, though.
"I wonder if the/. effect could drain the batteries of this Newton quickly?"
Absolutely. And since I seem to have caught this seconds after is was posted, I'll just share what the server says...
Paul Filmer's Dedicated MP2100 NewtonOS Server
This server runs on 4 AA batteries, in only 10K of heap on a 162MHz StrongARM SA-110 RISC processor, using NewtonOS Personal Data Sharing software (nHTTPd v2.043). This Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 is a multi-tasking, object oriented PDA with 4Mb of RAM and a 16Mb Flash storage card, connected via a Farallon PN895 Ethernet card. More details.
And this is the "more details"...
How is this server set up/run?
This server is a stripped Newton MP2100. (Pictures) The Newted Community asked me for an article about the server, which is here.
The server only has packages that are necessary for serving (NPDS: nHTTPd v2.043, NPDS Watcher v1.014ac, NPDS Traq Client 2.035) or editing these webpages, and a bunch of background images for Avi's Backdrop. All of the settings for these packages and plug-ins are listed here. The server is connected to the Internet using a Farallon PN895 Ethernet card over the NSF LAN. Our connection from there to the backbone is what makes this puppy sing - any speed problems are at your end, bub.
I originally tried to run this thing off a set of rechargeables and a solar panel, but the card drains the charge before sunrise, so I abandoned that strategy - the intent was to run it at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station where sunlight is not a problem (well, OK, not for six out of twelve months...).
I try to synchronize the server's Names and Dates soups with my principal MP2100's about once a week by beaming them over with SBM's SoupTransport. I am slowly (...very slowly...) collecting the names of Newton-related developers, companies and products (including signatures) and putting them in my Names Soup so that they can be searched. I am also collecting Apple parts numbers for any and all Newton products - feel free to tell me what you would like to see listed on this thing.
The following is a list of the package names of all packages installed on this Newton device as of 9/12/02 5:34 pm:
That's the neat part, though. The whole idea that evolution has a "goal" is wrong. The goal is to do what it takes to get more resources that the other things so you can make more of yourself. Anything to reach that goal is fair. That's what makes these algorithms so damn cool -- they work just like life. Do exactly what it takes to make it to the next level. The "problem" with the experiment was that there were ways to have the same end result that the researchers where testing for -- not looking for. The flaw is not the algorithms but the testing method.
Just like how aunt Ginny was likely somehow able to grasp that her name is written aunt Ginny and not aunt gInNy, aunt gINNy, or other combination. Give her a little credit. Simply explain that the case is part of the file name.
The difference is that when you type "aunt gInNy" or "aunt gINNy" she -- and we -- understand that you mean her, the same person. The name identifies the same thing no matter how you capitalize it. It's better to give her credit for not being confused by a shift in case.
Things are great, Scott. Crazy little world we live in, isn't it?
Truth be told, I'm a closet geek. Litterally. In my closet, behind my ties, belts and jackets there is an assortment of CAT 5, USB, Firewire and power cables. Hanging there on a hook, visible only if you dig for them. The top drawer of my dresser is filled with CD-Rs, spare video cards, manuals and general junk.
But, you know, I'm still cool, too. Or something.
--Mike
I learned a dozen different British accents watching Dr. Who as a kid. I grew up on it. Loved everything about it -- particularly loved the Tom Baker episodes. I must have watched it faithfully for a decade, catching up on the really old episodes when I could.
I caught my first exposure to Buffy a month ago. I don't watch TV anymore, unless someone makes me. Someone made me, and it was good. Really. I liked it. I got online, read the plot summeries, got myself caught up, and just think it's great. Clever, self-aware, unafraid of new things, unconcerned about critics...
Everything that was Dr. Who. Except a good budget and nice (though somewhat pointy) teeth.
--Mike
I can't speak for CNN or Time or The New York Times, but I can say -- as a person who works at a daily newspaper and studies media -- that this is mostly crap.
What gets the most coverage is the unexpected.
That's it. There's no more of a formula than that. No conspiricy, no marketing people telling us what to cover*, no lawyers telling us what to do**.
Everyone expected Mother Teresa to die. No one expected Princess Di to die. It happened the same week and there is only one front page. Sorry, MT, you're going below the fold.
People are drawn to tragedy. Tragedy is not tragic without the unexpected. It is when the rich kid in the gated neighborhood goes missing that we aren't expecting it.
If you want to alter that coverage, you'll need to trump it. You want more science coverage? Teleport a laser beam into the White House, not a university lab.***
--Mike
*Marketing people will tell us what has worked in the past and encourge us to do it again. And, if we could, let them know ahead of time so they can advertise it, too. But they will conceede that the best thing for newspaper sales is breaking news and rainy days (where people sit inside and curl up with the paper and a cup of coffee). I assure you that any marketing advice affects feature stories, not breaking news.
**We ask lawyers to take a look at the stories we've written and see if we will get our assess sued. If they think we might, we re-work it so that we won't. This almost never kills a story, and usually makes them much stronger.
I dusted off my copy of Fallout this winter and threw it on my 2X 800 MHz G4 and played it under OS X -- obviously in Classic mode. But I was shocked at the lack of bugs. There was a problem with the mouse pointer trailing, but the 1/2 hour it used to take to load saved games was gone. Most importantly, sawing a mutant in half with a mini gun was still just as satisfying.
I'll buy the OS X version just in case my trigger finger gets itchy.
The sad thing is not that cloning research is going on but that all the U.S. researchers who are any good at it are likely to leave the United States. That sucks for the U.S. because the end result will be a whole lot of people who know how to do these procedures but don't live here. It's not just a brain drain, but financial drain. And, if you are morally opposed to theraputic cloning, don't forget that if you want to legislate your morals you have to have jurisdiction over the people you want to control. An outright ban will just move these researchers to a country that will let them keep working -- just like the researcher at the top of that article.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, curing it is perfectly in line with Darwin's theory. Consider cephalization. Humans are at the top of the chain (well, according to us) because we've got the brains to beat just about anything that can kill us -- big or small. Some things we have to work harder at than others. And if we don't get it figured out, well, don't say Darwin didn't warn us.
Which theology?
Corporate media outlets fight to meet shareholder expectations of better bottom lines, etc... . One way to increase your bottom line is to diversify your revenue stream and consolidate your redundant expenses. To normal people, that means you buy newspapers, radio stations and television stations and cable companies and anything you can then get rid of any overlap you can. For newspapers (and let's face it, the super-vast majority of any real news gathering still happens through newspapers), that means getting rid of reporters (usually through attrition, so it's not ugly) and replacing the stories they would write with wire service (AP, Reuters, NY Times, etc) stuff. Own multiple papers in the same state? Make them all cover the statehouse with the same reporter. Fill with stuff from the wires. National coverage? One Washington man can handle the needs of five or six papers, right? Fill with stuff from the wires.
I watched the Wichita Eagle newsroom go from a 130-person newsroom to 85 in less than seven years. Only a half dozen people got downsized out of a job. But when I left, the old guys who could not only name every county in the state but could tell a long story about each one (that inevitably involved a pickup truck and the county seat) were gone. The Eagle used to have three state house reporters and one in Washington; now (or at least, the last time I checked) it has one state house reporter that it shares with the Kansas City Star (same parent company) and one in Washington that is shared with five other midwestern states. And the Eagle is lucky, because those really are Eagle guys there; the other papers get seconds.
The average age and experience had dropped by about 20 years and the bulk of the journalists in the room were imported from other states, because no one goes up at their own newspaper but jumps paper to paper to climb the ladder. There were actually more people from North Carolina in charge of Kansas' largest newspaper than than there were Kansans.
They didn't know shit from shineola, except to take marketing surveys to find out what people _wanted_ to read. They took the bias of the market and reflected it back on itself. There was no "corporate" bias besides giving people "what they want."
And that's bullshit.
Reporters are, by nature, more liberal than the population. That's a given: People who want to be journalists and expose the truth and do all the heroic things that they go to journalism school for are, in some way, upset with the status quo. They want change.
Editors, however, are much more conservative than their reporters. They have to deal with the consequences of upsetting the status quo. They used to be reporters, but they've grown up and understand the needs of the corporation. Corporate editors tend to actively stifle controversy that isn't absolutely necessary. They won't (usually) walk away from the giant corruption scandals, but they won't take unnecessary risks on seemingly trivial points. Those scandals have to fall in their laps.
So, again, you have this corporate pressure to cut redundancy and a local pressure to resist controversy and lean, when it can, towards what it thinks the public wants to hear.
With fewer sources to choose from and even a slight bias about what gets reported, the public is easily mislead.
Reporters don't waste time on things they think the editor will spike anyway; politicians can spin control and get away with lies because there tell fewer reporters to deal with; bias is magnified by reporters second guessing what the editors will want and editors second guessing what people will want.
In the end, we're lucky we know anything at all.
... it doesn't handle Slashdotting.
I broke the floppy drive in my then-two-year-old Mac in 1998, the same year I got broadband. My mantra become "if it's small enough for a floppy, it's small enough to email." It wasn't until I sold that Mac to a friend so I could buy myself a new G4 that I realized I'd had a broken floppy drive for three years. I'd simply forgot. It was like I had my appendix taken out and there wasn't even a scar. I probably wouldn't have noticed if my friend hadn't been trying to upload her old files via floppy.
I'll give you that this list is a list made by a liberal group and does display a leaning. But do they "have no basis in fact?" No. That's not why they were under reported.
As a person who used to work in a daily newspaper in a very conservative market (that I grew up in), I can tell you that large media corporations will skew the news to avoid upsetting the readers' world view so that they can make the guys in marketing happy. They want a good image with the public, and if you are in the center and the public is to the right, then you look like you're to the left. So then you move your paper to the right and suddenly everything is OK.
I saw the editor of our paper tell the entire staff that his goal was that he wanted his phone to stop ringing. He didn't want to have to deal with calls about our liberal rag, which wasn't liberal. Now, for critical thinking, you should RFA on all these stories so you know what you're talking about.
I'm glad the Army met it's 2003 recruiting goals, but that doesn't mean it has all the troops it needs - the goals were not moved to anticipate our current needs; Rumsfeld has lied before; and the instances of the Joint Chiefs of Staff changing its mind about what it wants.
But Congress did put forth two bills to reinstate the draft -- one a protest bill by Democrats.
And more troubling is why the White House increased the Selective Service budget by millions this year.
Regardless, I haven't read the article on the list (and neither have you) so there's nothing to argue about. But nothing you link to here displays any critical thinking, just lapping up the words of conservative mouthpieces.
From one of the links that you probably can't get to by now:
No way.
Average people aren't going to like that. Sure, maybe on a door lock for their own house or car, but your Internet-compatible music device? No way.
The market for finger print devices will always be for people to protect their property and privacy, not to participate in the protection of giant media companies' dollars.
You have a couple of GUI-less options:0 603190314390 4 .php
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2003
http://cocoa.mamasam.com/MACOSXDEV/2002/12/1/5161
But I always use the GUI. I'm less likely to break things that way.
Just plug the camera in (I'm assuming the firewire cable, but USB if that's what it has) and the appropriate program should launch. iMovie, I'm again assuming.
My question is this: Did you try just plugging it in to see what happen, or were you looking for some complicated solution before you found a problem?
On the other hand, I just got mine back from Apple a couple of weeks ago. I'm very poor right now, and had to just shrug knowing that my 1-year warrenty would run out on Jan. 28 ... How kick-ass is this timing?
I'm still screwed if anything else happens, but aside from this problem I've never had a problem with any Apple hardware that was more than a year old but less than three years. It seems to me that if it goes past the first year it's golden. If it's older than three years, I'd be likely to replace it instead of fixing it.
The word they are looking for is "antivenin," not "anti-venom." Sounds almost the same, but "anti-venom" isn't really a word. Antivenin is.
;)
My dad is a herpetologist, and antivenin is an important word to know.
It's called "fair use" and journalists use it all the time. If you say something in public, I can quote you as saying it. You can quote me. If you have a corporate name, I can use it in my publication to identify you. If you have a logo, the same. If you say the sky is red and someone else says it's yellow and a third says it's blue, I can quote and identify them all. These companies, of course, aren't interested in "fair use." They are interested in making it as hard as possible for consumers to compair prices. Too bad they don't have a leg to stand on.
The other answers are in the book. ;)
Seeing the world isn't nearly as expensive as we Americans think it is, and now is the perfect time in your life to do this.
A girlfriend of mine had a cat that would sit and watch you all day long, not moving, not reacting to anything. If you got close enough, it would try to claw your eyes out. If you escaped and could still use your eyes, you would see the cat sitting there looking at you calm and cool. That cat was evil.
Giving into anger is more about making a person evil than it is about displaying emotion. Any master is calm, cool and collected. Luke was a student, not a master. They wanted him to be an evil student, and the quick path to that is anger.
Overall, I don't think that article was any more accurate or insightful than the movie it chose to criticize. It, too, was somewhat obvious and full of factual errors. (Lucas did not direct all five movies, for example.) I'm glad he found it entertaining, though.
Absolutely. And since I seem to have caught this seconds after is was posted, I'll just share what the server says ...
And this is the "more details" ...
That's the neat part, though. The whole idea that evolution has a "goal" is wrong. The goal is to do what it takes to get more resources that the other things so you can make more of yourself. Anything to reach that goal is fair. That's what makes these algorithms so damn cool -- they work just like life. Do exactly what it takes to make it to the next level. The "problem" with the experiment was that there were ways to have the same end result that the researchers where testing for -- not looking for. The flaw is not the algorithms but the testing method.
I vote for "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace -- but that's because I think giant hurds of free-roaming hamsters would rule. --MM
Things are great, Scott. Crazy little world we live in, isn't it? Truth be told, I'm a closet geek. Litterally. In my closet, behind my ties, belts and jackets there is an assortment of CAT 5, USB, Firewire and power cables. Hanging there on a hook, visible only if you dig for them. The top drawer of my dresser is filled with CD-Rs, spare video cards, manuals and general junk. But, you know, I'm still cool, too. Or something. --Mike
I learned a dozen different British accents watching Dr. Who as a kid. I grew up on it. Loved everything about it -- particularly loved the Tom Baker episodes. I must have watched it faithfully for a decade, catching up on the really old episodes when I could. I caught my first exposure to Buffy a month ago. I don't watch TV anymore, unless someone makes me. Someone made me, and it was good. Really. I liked it. I got online, read the plot summeries, got myself caught up, and just think it's great. Clever, self-aware, unafraid of new things, unconcerned about critics ...
Everything that was Dr. Who. Except a good budget and nice (though somewhat pointy) teeth.
--Mike
I can't speak for CNN or Time or The New York Times, but I can say -- as a person who works at a daily newspaper and studies media -- that this is mostly crap.
What gets the most coverage is the unexpected.
That's it. There's no more of a formula than that. No conspiricy, no marketing people telling us what to cover*, no lawyers telling us what to do**.
Everyone expected Mother Teresa to die. No one expected Princess Di to die. It happened the same week and there is only one front page. Sorry, MT, you're going below the fold.
People are drawn to tragedy. Tragedy is not tragic without the unexpected. It is when the rich kid in the gated neighborhood goes missing that we aren't expecting it.
If you want to alter that coverage, you'll need to trump it. You want more science coverage? Teleport a laser beam into the White House, not a university lab.***
--Mike
*Marketing people will tell us what has worked in the past and encourge us to do it again. And, if we could, let them know ahead of time so they can advertise it, too. But they will conceede that the best thing for newspaper sales is breaking news and rainy days (where people sit inside and curl up with the paper and a cup of coffee). I assure you that any marketing advice affects feature stories, not breaking news.
**We ask lawyers to take a look at the stories we've written and see if we will get our assess sued. If they think we might, we re-work it so that we won't. This almost never kills a story, and usually makes them much stronger.
***Do not tell them it was my idea.
I dusted off my copy of Fallout this winter and threw it on my 2X 800 MHz G4 and played it under OS X -- obviously in Classic mode. But I was shocked at the lack of bugs. There was a problem with the mouse pointer trailing, but the 1/2 hour it used to take to load saved games was gone. Most importantly, sawing a mutant in half with a mini gun was still just as satisfying.
I'll buy the OS X version just in case my trigger finger gets itchy.
Ich bin ein Penguin.
The sad thing is not that cloning research is going on but that all the U.S. researchers who are any good at it are likely to leave the United States. That sucks for the U.S. because the end result will be a whole lot of people who know how to do these procedures but don't live here. It's not just a brain drain, but financial drain. And, if you are morally opposed to theraputic cloning, don't forget that if you want to legislate your morals you have to have jurisdiction over the people you want to control. An outright ban will just move these researchers to a country that will let them keep working -- just like the researcher at the top of that article.