Mind you that comment was not aimed at the current government, as a hypothetical libertarian government, which I see to have someof the same problems as the current one.
*bzzz*
Wrong.
It is not about outspending or keeping down the third parties.
It is that a majority of the people who bother to vote do have fairly moderate views on things. NONE of the parties appeal enough to the 50% who do not vote to get them to the polling booth, including alternate parties. I suspect this is more apathy than outrage.
Just to let you know, most of the libertarian philosophy I have read would do absolutly nothing to fix the patent mess. Intellectual Property is just that. Property. To be enforced through force like any other property.
Unless you are a commu-anarchist...
It IS decent. And fun. Nothing groundbreaking 'tho. Just your standard console shooter with standard limited multiplayer support*. The SP is not even close to as interesting as Metroid Prime, and the Multiplayer is not even in the same ballpark as Timesplitters 2.
*Playing through the LAN tunnler CTF with teams of 4 IS a hell of a lot of fun. But this is not officially supported, unfortunately so I do not count this. Halo 2 may be an amazing game with online support and all that. Although, I believe that the reliance on grenades is unbalancing for multiplayer. Maybe they will fix these things. And by the way? TimeSplitters 2 is just as fun over LAN...but the good part of it is that I don't need a LAN for it. Playing DM against bots is mindless fun.
1. These astroturf campaigns are somewhat new, but the tactics are rather old. Meaning that one of the ideas that is making the GOP so successful is their use of talking points and catch phrases. Note the widespread description of Bush's tax plan as "bold", one of these letters stating that he is showing "genuine leadership", and accusing the Democrats of "obstruction". They have been doing this since Newt stormed into power, his PAC called GOPAC initiating htis campaign.
2. As far as I know the Dems have not ever done this. They are nowhere as near organized as the GOP are...(if you ask me they are just politically innocent/naive). Never getting a catch phrase or anything like that in.
3. This story, if it is worth it's worth (I can't access nytimes right now:p), will be sure to mention that this is only newspaper editors that are looking to scan for astroturf, NOT congressmen. Such form letters to congressmen are akin to a petition, where to letters to the editor are more for personal opinion. That is a huge difference.
AFAIK the Democrats have not done such a campaign targeted at the letters-to-the editor section. At least I have never seen one.
The second point bothers me. What exactly is "bias"? Generally speaking, it is unfair reporting. Tell me this..is this "bias"?
A major newspaper reports that a poll of economists show that 80% do not think that the tax cuts will be a stimulus on the economy.
Is reporting this constitute "bias"? No, it would be simply reporting the facts of the case. "Bias" would be reporting something other than that fact. Saying all economists are sceptical of it is bias, as well as saying that none are.
Reporting the facts is never bias.
Too many conservatives tend to use this "liberal bias" argument to maintain cognitive dissonence. It allows them to ignore arguments that obliterate their positions.
I hope I meet the people who modded this down in meta..
BTW, as someone who watched this situation from when it first developed (gotta love blogs), the above post is pretty much one of the astroturf messages. They come from GOPTEAMLEADER.com. You can actually exchange points you earn for sending out these things with your name for things like coolers and mouse-pads! (no joke)
Since when did producers become a symbol of the record industry? In fact, all the services you have listed I still view as being underneath the label part.
Especially for producers. If you ask me, producers are part of the whole experience. If you are into rap, you can hardly discount the effect that people have had like Dr. Dre and The Neptunes. Likewise for rock, one can hardly discount the role people like Danial Lanois and Brian Eno (who also produced one of my other favorite bands, James) have had on U2, or personal favorites like Butch Vig or Flood.
Good producers are necessary, however in most cases they are picked by the artist, not the label. (With the exception of pre-fab music).
A blanket limit on copyright to 28 years is an improvement..but it is not good enough. If the media conglomerates can be greedy and look for the best for them, why can't we?
I propose a radical departure from the idea of copyright...okay it is not that radical. It is simply this.
30 year *COMMERCIAL* copyright...
In addition, Fair use would be extended to cover non-commercial copying-sharing. This right would kick in after 3-5 years after initial release, or when the work becomes obsolete.
This would allow the copyright holders and only the copyright holders to profit from their work, but also to ensure that parts of our culture do not fall into the black hole that is being created. Anything important enough to be a part of our culture will be cultivated by those interested in it, regardless of what the corps think. They just can't make money off of it.
Back when VHS and Beta were first released, they were pretty much only marketed towards personal recording. There was no after-market video, nor rental option.
These days, with cheap after-market videos and DVDs, this is not much of a concern.
Halo wasn't ruined because it was exclusive, it was ruined because it wasn't even close as good as it's original ideas are. It's just not a great game. All hype, unfortunately.
Halo was originally intended to be a dynamic squad based FPS, very similar to the multiplayer mode of CandC Renegade. This was a very exciting idea..battling in a persistant world where your success or failure would affect a battle at large. Instead, it because a one-man army FPS. Ho-Hum. The Multiplayer mode is fun, but it lacks Bots, which severely limits it.
Radio tries to break things down into Genres. Which is fine and dandy I guess...but...but...lets face it..it just doesn't work for me.
Whatever genre you like, you have favorites and not-so favorites. In fact, you more than likely have things you downright HATE. In even more detail, you may like some songs by an artist, but not others, even within the same album. The fact is the only programming that is truely satisfactory is that you do yourself.
Furthermore, I want more than the singles. I want the album tracks, I want b-sides, I want LIVE music god damnit. That is what I want. The only way to get this is through doing it yourself. I use a MP3 CD player hooked up through one of those CD-Tape converters. With CDs filled with MP3s of my favorite acts divided into Eras with both b-sides and live songs, that is the way to ensure the programming I want.
What is with the Linkin Park hate anyway? I've never understood this. It comes from the assumption that they are some sort of media-created boy band. I'm no huge fan, but they're not. They came from the grassroots like all the other great acts. They just happened to get a VERY devoted fan base early on that the record companies did not want to miss out on. The first starts of the P2P era? Oh yes.. (BTW, In The End is a great rock song, like I said, I didn't really like their first album, but I'll be sure to give their future albums a try.)
The problem for music as I see it, is that the "modern wave" is moving into "Punk-Emo"..which for my tastes is really. Really. REALLY bad. Worse than R&B Pop and Rap all combined together. I'm as angsty as the next guy...but it can't all be so sour and plain. A little bit of happiness makes the sadness so much more powerful. (and vice versa)
For one, "Socialism" is such a loaded term at this point it is worthless. People whine and scream socialism for anything they disagree with..painting anything they don't like red.
"Socialism vs. Capitalism" as you like to put it, is like watching two elephants fight...only the grass suffers. You're talking about elitism..either way...government and society by, for the elite.
Take China and Russia for example. Both had/have massive starvation to support an elite style of living for a few. Myself, I like a governing for the whole..with feet firmly planted in the free market, but not with my head up my ass. (Basic social infrastructure must be taken care of by society for anything to work in a modern era.)
For a free market to truely work, society must be free to agressivly investigate and punish fraudulant statements..especially with the lack of any sort of investigative powers in the hands of the average citizen. This is simply Nike trying to weasel out of this.
As for the first ammendment issue..the individual making the statement has protection under a strict reading..but the individual at that point would lose all the protection that the Corporate structure provided. You can only have one or the other, as I'm sure you will agree...unless you're one of those salad-bar Libertarians who pick and choose which parts of it you like and which you don't.
A "link farm" more than likely would be a large series of pages that link to each other. Like a very thick web right?
Lets just say a certain search engine decided to give a sort of diminishing returns for repeat links. In a nutshell, the PR would be based on the number of unique links that it pulled..for example..it would look at links from pages that did not have links to the other pages that also linked to that page. Kinda confusing sounding...
If Google made a change like this (why wouldn't they?) that would kill SearchKing. SearchKing does not have a leg to stand on. They were abusing a system that got fixed. They have no legal or moral basis.
But now I think I know what it is..
MS is pissed because they are not allowed to steal code. It is only a matter of time until MS is going to have to play the code cards, and we will see how much is taken.
It's slightly more than that however, it's the "danger of a good example". MS does not want people to decide on anything else than marketing and market control. Maybe some people will decide by software quality, maybe some other people will decide because they can only trust code they can get their hands on.
In the end however, what OS and the GPL are is a slow juggernaut, forever marching ahead that cannot be stopped. Improvements are always coming, the quality is constantly improving. Eventually it will overwhelm companies who do not have a positive image such as Microsoft.
On a side note, that is why Apple's charging for iTools is important. Apple should realize in this day and age the only currency you have is the respect and value you have among computer users..and Apple is spending it quickly. Microsoft does not have any at all.
The sad thing is that a site like WND will go ahead and post something that makes a few good points (if not surrounded in paranoid drudge), yet the very next day go ahead and rah-rah the people who are making this very thing happen.
It's almost like random words with no thought surrounding it.
Well, I don't consider things like math and language to be knowledge..they are more in the skill catagory, something that takes practice and time to learn.
Computers are changing EVERYTHING. Just because we do not know how to use them does not mean that they are not effective. In fact, the main problem is that computers are close to at odds with mainstream academic thought.
What happens when within 5 minutes I can gain most any knowledge I desire? Well..it kinda breaks down the walls, that is what it does.
The problem with such limitless resources, is not a problem with the resource itself, it's a cultural problem. Our modern education system sucks. Absolutly, positivly sucks. All it does is turn a majority of students completly off of knowledge. It does not encourage the kind of curiosity and logical thought that make for an intelligent person.
Our education system should consist of the basic fundimentals..Math general scientific method, language and grammer, and logical thought are the most important things we can teach. Everything else stems from these base things, and should be taught as such.
Love of knowledge is the most important thing that can be gained at such a young age. We should not throw this away just so we can have good little Christian worker bees.
I'm actually more talking about getting rid of their mini-case format, or at least having a tower size option. Mini-cases are ugly and just don't feel right, even excluding the lack of upgrades. Just my personal taste 'tho..
Seriously 'tho..after reading the patent I don't think this is anything that special. It seems like Apple is going to start putting RGB LED lights inside a specially designed case so you can change the color of it to match your surroundings.
Is it just me or is this the hardware version of feature creep? Is Apple going to fit all its devices full of cute doodads just to raise the price more? My opinion is that Apple should be investigating an open architechture for its hardware..but that's just me.
Like it or not, for most of these people, Israel is nothing more than a speaking point. It's not their main concern. Their main concern is the westernization of their cultures..of their youth. It's a legitimate concern I guess..but it's not something to get violent over..in fact, I believe that tolerance trumps religion every day of the week. (A dozen times on Sunday!). Isreal to them is a western country on their holy land. No wonder they are so offended. Their issues are mostly cultural, not political.
The other interesting thing is that Hussein is not liked by these people either. In a lot of ways Hussein is the most western of the Arab leaders. The idea that Hussein aided Bin-Laden is laughable..now the opposition groups...well..lets just say that putting them in power is creating another Afghanastan for 20 years down the road. Not good.
No matter what our bombers are doing, our radio signals, our media, our satallites are always there.."corrupting and poisoning" their world. Mind you in my mind the poison is actually an elixir..but I guess that's why they hate us.
Like it or not taxes are a necessary evil. Without taxation the infrastructure would not be in place to allow a country to compete in the world market. It would be impossible for the private sector to replicate the same services and still make a profit. Nobody would do it, and if you could pull it off, the shockwaves it would create through an economy would be devestating. Imagine if every highway had a 10 dollar toll or something like that. Very possible with monopoly situations..
Even social infrastrcture is important. Imagine if a good portion of our society was forced to restrt to crime just to live..and forget about a police force or prisons to deal with the problem..just a mess.
Slashdot Mirror
Good question.
Mind you that comment was not aimed at the current government, as a hypothetical libertarian government, which I see to have someof the same problems as the current one.
*bzzz* Wrong. It is not about outspending or keeping down the third parties. It is that a majority of the people who bother to vote do have fairly moderate views on things. NONE of the parties appeal enough to the 50% who do not vote to get them to the polling booth, including alternate parties. I suspect this is more apathy than outrage. Just to let you know, most of the libertarian philosophy I have read would do absolutly nothing to fix the patent mess. Intellectual Property is just that. Property. To be enforced through force like any other property. Unless you are a commu-anarchist...
Halo just is not that good.
It IS decent. And fun. Nothing groundbreaking 'tho. Just your standard console shooter with standard limited multiplayer support*. The SP is not even close to as interesting as Metroid Prime, and the Multiplayer is not even in the same ballpark as Timesplitters 2.
*Playing through the LAN tunnler CTF with teams of 4 IS a hell of a lot of fun. But this is not officially supported, unfortunately so I do not count this. Halo 2 may be an amazing game with online support and all that. Although, I believe that the reliance on grenades is unbalancing for multiplayer. Maybe they will fix these things. And by the way? TimeSplitters 2 is just as fun over LAN...but the good part of it is that I don't need a LAN for it. Playing DM against bots is mindless fun.
*Coming from a Liberal*
1. These astroturf campaigns are somewhat new, but the tactics are rather old. Meaning that one of the ideas that is making the GOP so successful is their use of talking points and catch phrases. Note the widespread description of Bush's tax plan as "bold", one of these letters stating that he is showing "genuine leadership", and accusing the Democrats of "obstruction". They have been doing this since Newt stormed into power, his PAC called GOPAC initiating htis campaign.
2. As far as I know the Dems have not ever done this. They are nowhere as near organized as the GOP are...(if you ask me they are just politically innocent/naive). Never getting a catch phrase or anything like that in.
3. This story, if it is worth it's worth (I can't access nytimes right now:p), will be sure to mention that this is only newspaper editors that are looking to scan for astroturf, NOT congressmen. Such form letters to congressmen are akin to a petition, where to letters to the editor are more for personal opinion. That is a huge difference.
AFAIK the Democrats have not done such a campaign targeted at the letters-to-the editor section. At least I have never seen one.
The second point bothers me. What exactly is "bias"? Generally speaking, it is unfair reporting. Tell me this..is this "bias"?
A major newspaper reports that a poll of economists show that 80% do not think that the tax cuts will be a stimulus on the economy.
Is reporting this constitute "bias"? No, it would be simply reporting the facts of the case. "Bias" would be reporting something other than that fact. Saying all economists are sceptical of it is bias, as well as saying that none are.
Reporting the facts is never bias.
Too many conservatives tend to use this "liberal bias" argument to maintain cognitive dissonence. It allows them to ignore arguments that obliterate their positions.
Agreed, I do not have any Mod points right now.
Please for the love of god mod this back up.
I hope I meet the people who modded this down in meta..
BTW, as someone who watched this situation from when it first developed (gotta love blogs), the above post is pretty much one of the astroturf messages. They come from GOPTEAMLEADER.com. You can actually exchange points you earn for sending out these things with your name for things like coolers and mouse-pads! (no joke)
Since when did producers become a symbol of the record industry? In fact, all the services you have listed I still view as being underneath the label part.
Especially for producers. If you ask me, producers are part of the whole experience. If you are into rap, you can hardly discount the effect that people have had like Dr. Dre and The Neptunes. Likewise for rock, one can hardly discount the role people like Danial Lanois and Brian Eno (who also produced one of my other favorite bands, James) have had on U2, or personal favorites like Butch Vig or Flood.
Good producers are necessary, however in most cases they are picked by the artist, not the label. (With the exception of pre-fab music).
A blanket limit on copyright to 28 years is an improvement..but it is not good enough. If the media conglomerates can be greedy and look for the best for them, why can't we?
I propose a radical departure from the idea of copyright...okay it is not that radical. It is simply this.
30 year *COMMERCIAL* copyright...
In addition, Fair use would be extended to cover non-commercial copying-sharing. This right would kick in after 3-5 years after initial release, or when the work becomes obsolete.
This would allow the copyright holders and only the copyright holders to profit from their work, but also to ensure that parts of our culture do not fall into the black hole that is being created. Anything important enough to be a part of our culture will be cultivated by those interested in it, regardless of what the corps think. They just can't make money off of it.
Back when VHS and Beta were first released, they were pretty much only marketed towards personal recording. There was no after-market video, nor rental option. These days, with cheap after-market videos and DVDs, this is not much of a concern.
Halo wasn't ruined because it was exclusive, it was ruined because it wasn't even close as good as it's original ideas are. It's just not a great game. All hype, unfortunately.
Halo was originally intended to be a dynamic squad based FPS, very similar to the multiplayer mode of CandC Renegade. This was a very exciting idea..battling in a persistant world where your success or failure would affect a battle at large. Instead, it because a one-man army FPS. Ho-Hum. The Multiplayer mode is fun, but it lacks Bots, which severely limits it.
MS has already ruined one groundbreaking game (Halo), lets see how many more companies they can ruin, eh?
Radio tries to break things down into Genres. Which is fine and dandy I guess...but...but...lets face it..it just doesn't work for me. Whatever genre you like, you have favorites and not-so favorites. In fact, you more than likely have things you downright HATE. In even more detail, you may like some songs by an artist, but not others, even within the same album. The fact is the only programming that is truely satisfactory is that you do yourself. Furthermore, I want more than the singles. I want the album tracks, I want b-sides, I want LIVE music god damnit. That is what I want. The only way to get this is through doing it yourself. I use a MP3 CD player hooked up through one of those CD-Tape converters. With CDs filled with MP3s of my favorite acts divided into Eras with both b-sides and live songs, that is the way to ensure the programming I want.
Where's the nirvana of the 21st century? Where's the Perl Jam, where's the Smashing Pumpkins!?
Right here. But I digress.
What is with the Linkin Park hate anyway? I've never understood this. It comes from the assumption that they are some sort of media-created boy band. I'm no huge fan, but they're not. They came from the grassroots like all the other great acts. They just happened to get a VERY devoted fan base early on that the record companies did not want to miss out on. The first starts of the P2P era? Oh yes.. (BTW, In The End is a great rock song, like I said, I didn't really like their first album, but I'll be sure to give their future albums a try.)
The problem for music as I see it, is that the "modern wave" is moving into "Punk-Emo"..which for my tastes is really. Really. REALLY bad. Worse than R&B Pop and Rap all combined together. I'm as angsty as the next guy...but it can't all be so sour and plain. A little bit of happiness makes the sadness so much more powerful. (and vice versa)
Google I believe looks at the domain entry and uses that to determine your country of origin, more than likely for marketing reasons (yes it's true)
At work we do not have such an entry so it takes me to google.com. Nothing intrusive.
It's not "Socialism vs. Capitalism"
For one, "Socialism" is such a loaded term at this point it is worthless. People whine and scream socialism for anything they disagree with..painting anything they don't like red.
"Socialism vs. Capitalism" as you like to put it, is like watching two elephants fight...only the grass suffers. You're talking about elitism..either way...government and society by, for the elite.
Take China and Russia for example. Both had/have massive starvation to support an elite style of living for a few. Myself, I like a governing for the whole..with feet firmly planted in the free market, but not with my head up my ass. (Basic social infrastructure must be taken care of by society for anything to work in a modern era.)
For a free market to truely work, society must be free to agressivly investigate and punish fraudulant statements..especially with the lack of any sort of investigative powers in the hands of the average citizen. This is simply Nike trying to weasel out of this.
As for the first ammendment issue..the individual making the statement has protection under a strict reading..but the individual at that point would lose all the protection that the Corporate structure provided. You can only have one or the other, as I'm sure you will agree...unless you're one of those salad-bar Libertarians who pick and choose which parts of it you like and which you don't.
The reason Nike was in court in the first place was because their speech was proven fales. It's a simple cause of fraud. Nothing more, nothing less.
A "link farm" more than likely would be a large series of pages that link to each other. Like a very thick web right?
Lets just say a certain search engine decided to give a sort of diminishing returns for repeat links. In a nutshell, the PR would be based on the number of unique links that it pulled..for example..it would look at links from pages that did not have links to the other pages that also linked to that page. Kinda confusing sounding...
If Google made a change like this (why wouldn't they?) that would kill SearchKing. SearchKing does not have a leg to stand on. They were abusing a system that got fixed. They have no legal or moral basis.
But now I think I know what it is.. MS is pissed because they are not allowed to steal code. It is only a matter of time until MS is going to have to play the code cards, and we will see how much is taken. It's slightly more than that however, it's the "danger of a good example". MS does not want people to decide on anything else than marketing and market control. Maybe some people will decide by software quality, maybe some other people will decide because they can only trust code they can get their hands on. In the end however, what OS and the GPL are is a slow juggernaut, forever marching ahead that cannot be stopped. Improvements are always coming, the quality is constantly improving. Eventually it will overwhelm companies who do not have a positive image such as Microsoft. On a side note, that is why Apple's charging for iTools is important. Apple should realize in this day and age the only currency you have is the respect and value you have among computer users..and Apple is spending it quickly. Microsoft does not have any at all.
The sad thing is that a site like WND will go ahead and post something that makes a few good points (if not surrounded in paranoid drudge), yet the very next day go ahead and rah-rah the people who are making this very thing happen. It's almost like random words with no thought surrounding it.
Well, I don't consider things like math and language to be knowledge..they are more in the skill catagory, something that takes practice and time to learn.
Computers are changing EVERYTHING. Just because we do not know how to use them does not mean that they are not effective. In fact, the main problem is that computers are close to at odds with mainstream academic thought.
What happens when within 5 minutes I can gain most any knowledge I desire? Well..it kinda breaks down the walls, that is what it does.
The problem with such limitless resources, is not a problem with the resource itself, it's a cultural problem. Our modern education system sucks. Absolutly, positivly sucks. All it does is turn a majority of students completly off of knowledge. It does not encourage the kind of curiosity and logical thought that make for an intelligent person.
Our education system should consist of the basic fundimentals..Math general scientific method, language and grammer, and logical thought are the most important things we can teach. Everything else stems from these base things, and should be taught as such.
Love of knowledge is the most important thing that can be gained at such a young age. We should not throw this away just so we can have good little Christian worker bees.
I'm actually more talking about getting rid of their mini-case format, or at least having a tower size option. Mini-cases are ugly and just don't feel right, even excluding the lack of upgrades. Just my personal taste 'tho..
Apple invented the light bulb!!
Seriously 'tho..after reading the patent I don't think this is anything that special. It seems like Apple is going to start putting RGB LED lights inside a specially designed case so you can change the color of it to match your surroundings.
Is it just me or is this the hardware version of feature creep? Is Apple going to fit all its devices full of cute doodads just to raise the price more? My opinion is that Apple should be investigating an open architechture for its hardware..but that's just me.
No, the west makes Israel a target.
Like it or not, for most of these people, Israel is nothing more than a speaking point. It's not their main concern. Their main concern is the westernization of their cultures..of their youth. It's a legitimate concern I guess..but it's not something to get violent over..in fact, I believe that tolerance trumps religion every day of the week. (A dozen times on Sunday!). Isreal to them is a western country on their holy land. No wonder they are so offended. Their issues are mostly cultural, not political.
The other interesting thing is that Hussein is not liked by these people either. In a lot of ways Hussein is the most western of the Arab leaders. The idea that Hussein aided Bin-Laden is laughable..now the opposition groups...well..lets just say that putting them in power is creating another Afghanastan for 20 years down the road. Not good.
No matter what our bombers are doing, our radio signals, our media, our satallites are always there.."corrupting and poisoning" their world. Mind you in my mind the poison is actually an elixir..but I guess that's why they hate us.
Like it or not taxes are a necessary evil. Without taxation the infrastructure would not be in place to allow a country to compete in the world market. It would be impossible for the private sector to replicate the same services and still make a profit. Nobody would do it, and if you could pull it off, the shockwaves it would create through an economy would be devestating. Imagine if every highway had a 10 dollar toll or something like that. Very possible with monopoly situations..
Even social infrastrcture is important. Imagine if a good portion of our society was forced to restrt to crime just to live..and forget about a police force or prisons to deal with the problem..just a mess.