Not to argue that Mexico isn't a disaster but to ignore the part the States played in the creation of this disaster is conveniently historically myopic. But to simply state it's all us gringos fault is wrong as well.
However, how bad does the economy have to get here before US citizens are in the fields doing stoop labor? (that's not trolling it's an honest question)
I think it's a cultural problem. We live a life of luxury and some of generation z.2(?) just don't feel like working. I've had students say 'why study, it's all a game, look at (pick one or more) Paris Hilton, George Bush, Diddy, generic sports star.'
The phrase was 'middle class India'. You're analysis would be correct if you take all Indian teenagers into account as India has a very large population in extreme poverty. My point - given access to the same education, the South Asian teenagers, because of their culture(?), do better in standard subjects.
The US was 50 % of the global product in the 50s. That was sort of special.
> Talk to the Tibetans or the Kurds sometime.
The entire history of China is the imperialist expansion of the Han. Your point is everyone does it so we still get to complain?
> Or talk to the Japanese - the US dropped two atomic bombs on them. Do they suddenly get the right to emigrate to the US outside of the law?
Not sure where that fits. We built Japan back up after WWII (avoiding OT discussion of B29 runs). We've constantly screwed the people South and Central America to maximize the profits of select US businesses.
Hey that 'illegal Mexican' comes from a country just south of the US that the US has been actively screwing for decades. Does it occur to you that the 'shining city on a hill' was brutally cruel to it's neighbors and smaller countries / peoples all over the world? For some shining examples of the the Monroe Doctrine investigate the history of the United Fruit Company.
It ain't the poor Mexicans that are stealing your children's future, it's a government and culture of corruption right here at home that has systematically looted the country since 1980. If it wasn't for the DLC I'd call them the Republican Party. Get used to biking to work and missing meals just like the Mexicans. Then check out the literacy rate of South Asian high schools as compared to the US and hope your kid can get a job working for 'idiot Indians'. An average high school student from middle class India is an honor student in the USA. Sad, but true.
The original Olympics was a time out for the various armies to get together and show off their battle field trophies. Javelin throwing may seem cute but it was the artillery back in the day. The equivalent now would be to have various police forces, army units and irregulars (read: terrorists / guerillas depending on spin) get together for sniping and bombing competition.
> The needs of the relatively few people that lose their livelihoods in the entertainment industry do not supercede the rights and needs of everyone else.
That could also describe the real estate business.
I'm not saying this process isn't inevitable. Trying to build a wall against the tide coming in is futile. I'm just pointing out that this devaluing of labor will reach everything that can be duplicated digitally and that includes software.
And I think it's over the top to phrase as 'rights and needs'. Unless 'all property is theft' then why should someone's audio creation be inherently valueless when a corporation can own and rent land? Do I have a 'right' to live rent free? Piracy in audio when it was manufacturing bootleg vinyl was illegal. Was that violating someone's rights? The rights of the person(s) duplicating Rolling Stones records? The issue is that there is no way to try and prevent the transfer of digital audio without stopping the free flow of digital information and that's a step I, and I'd guess the majority of slashdoteers, can not accept.
It's a little late in the thread for trolling but...
To read endless posts about 'what's wrong with the entertainment industry is they produce crap' reveals there are very few of you actually in 'the industry' you are talking about. (spare me the 'I've had 4 number one singles yet post anon' thread).
Sticking with the music business. I'm not here to argue that the quality of pop music didn't reach a new low sometime around the Paris Hilton sex tape. Art forms have their eras. If you ask the man in the street about theatrical plays the first guy he mentions died centuries ago. People still write operas (I think) but almost all of the productions are 150+ years old. If you go into a postcard shop chances are the paintings on the cards are from the 19th century. American popular music had a great run, ran out of steam IMHO in the 80s and 90s for various reasons (not file sharing), and has passed into history.
However... the music business was a great jobs engine and that's finished because of digital media. I'm not saying it was good for the actual artists - mileage may have varied - but the cash hoarded by the power lawyers trickled down, paying for publicists, recording engineers, road crews, magazine ads, guys in warehouses moving t-shirts, CDs, posters, people answering phones for said power lawyers.
What percentage of jobs in support still remain? It's ugly out there. Now I'm sure some of these people make a good living writing OS software, no doubt the rest of them can get jobs in magazine publishing - oh wait, that's gone too. But, you say, it's better for the artists. Well, in the majority of cases, it's certainly not worse. Probably good for the music in the end, too.
Now let me ask: Is Adobe to be railed against because they try, with varying degrees of success, to keep their software from being pirated? Quark? I'm sure once the GIMP is up to speed and the Flash haters have finally sorted out SVG (holding breath) all those coders can get jobs in finance surfing what ever bubble has come along to keep the growth engine going. Or do internet advertising because that's a solid growth market. Or become urban farmers and grow and sell vegetables to pay rent.
My point being: When it comes to digital distribution eliminating jobs, ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
(except I'm posting this on a board full of people with 15+ years of AJAX experience who move effortlessly from job to job having nothing to do with the price of gasoline)
Starship Trooper would be a little dry for kids, or did you notice the original posters question? Heinlein's political and social rambling ends up taking over his later works but are kept in check in the juveniles. The point in Starman Jones seems to be 'study real hard and follow your dream' - as opposed to Starship's 'join the Army, earn the vote' or Stranger In A Strangeland's 'sex and talking'.
Citizen of the Galaxy, Farmer in the Sky, Have Space Suit will Travel, Starman Jones - all by Heinlein. These are his juveniles and are all good stories, drama and action along with some moralizing about studying hard etc... I read them as a kid and was hooked. The Larry Niven short stories.
On the cruise you will have peace of mind with a garden reeked of love. For the sake of earnest unity on this voyage to infinity. On the voyage to infinity, can't forget to take your soul. Cause at the port you'll find no double sign.
The two Richard Rhodes bomb books are genius. The first one tells the story of 20th century physics and the rise of the Nazis. The second one ends with the Cuban Missle Crisis. Both are white knuckle history with the physics moving from ceiling wax to Mike.
Poster suggested Moon is a Harsh Mistress as a movie - not a bad idea - but The Menace From Earth has a great cavern where people fly with wings in the low gravity!!! The plot's a teenage romance story so Hollywood would probably need to dumb it down. (but would that be 'Lunawood'?)
> Specifically the fight between Clinton and Obama is a generational struggle for control.
OK I get you now and agree. Sorry if I'd missed that earlier.
> Yeah, I resent the Boomers as a group. I'm one of the Gen-X generation that has been uniformly crapped on by the Boomers since we committed the ultimate sin of not worshiping them.
As someone who falls between the demographics I don't get this. You mean the DLC? read: Clintonians who held power during the 90s? The 'silent majority'? - non counter culture Reagan revolution middle America? How did you not 'worship them'? I'm not disagreeing, just not understanding.
Your historical analysis is flawed. What we're seeing is the final long deserved death of the Reagan revolution and a power struggle amongst the boomer generation about who takes the reins now. While calling GWB an entitled baby boomer is amusing, that's not his constituency.
"One of the most entitled, arrogant, and narcissistic generations in American history" (but how do you really feel?) While that certainly applies to the neocons I can't help but wonder if that's who you're referring to (or is this a generic anti 20 something / hippie / yuppie rant?)
a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money
> "Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."
So it's the image that would be illegal as well as the act.
Jerry Mander's book from the 70s made a crucial distinction between active and passive media. The above slashdot comments seem limited to wikipedia bashing or a splitting of web 2.0 hairs re:2008. That is, the percentage that are coherent, which is low by the usually high standards of non technical commentary on this site... cough...
This reminded me of seeing Esther Dyson and some pundits on Charley Rose a couple of years ago. They all laughed when Dyson said: "I can't tell you what web 2.0 means". Web 2.04 (or wherever we're at) means everyone can be Esther Dyson, everyone can be Charley Rose. Not everyone can be Tom Friedman as it takes years to acquire the ego involved in that much stupidity. Now is everyone going to be Charley Rose? No. Will there still be old school one way media? Yes, at least for a long time.
Mander's point is that TV is passive and active participation works the brain muscles more than then passive staring at the screen. The brain is a muscle, use it or lose it. As someone who quit TV, not unlike drugs, in my teen years I've long argued that TV was the reason for the collapse of literacy in the US. Will the wide open web cure that? Probably not, we shall see, but any change is good. American pop culture, mainstream corporate entertainment, now resembles a piece of chewing gum so worked over there is no flavor left (see: pop music). Are endless sectarian/technical blog exchanges entertaining? YMMV, but compared to what's on TV and the radio they at least measure up.
Sorry to go against the flash=bad group think but the site worked fine when I wandered around it. I like the animated cartoons but, See:Charley Brown, the voices never match the voices in my head (that didn't come out right)
Over the last 40 years the actual physical environment hasn't changed much. Imagine the difference between 1900 and 1940: automobiles, airplanes - or 1920 and 1960: Commercial trans Atlantic jet travel, satellites, H bombs, national highways. I can remember 1968. Since then we've gotten the ATM, cable TV, cell phones, personal computers but, except for the corporate mall-ing of the American highway, which was well underway by 1968 and didn't change the environment so much as stamp out local flavor, and saner environmental regulation, some lakes used to glow in the dark, this is still interstate rust belt America.
In fact, someone waking up right now would find America in the middle of a colonial war, suburban sprawl graying the countryside. "A gallon of gas costs what?!? Hey, can I see your phone?" That is, unless they were in medicine or IT.
(disclaimer: above memories are related to North America)
whoops yeah you're right of course. my brains gone soft (from all that loud music) bought it all on vinyl and then CD so chances are I won't pony up for the mp3
Every time I've tried to use yahoo for ANYTHING it has always sucked. It sucked pre Google as a search engine. The digital music service sucks and they have some deals to keep music off iTunes which at least works. I know people with mail.yahoo.com email and the mail arrives so maybe Yahoo should just give away email accounts.
I'm not a big MS fan so if they bought yahoo and then went out of business that would be a two-fer.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to argue that Mexico isn't a disaster but to ignore the part the States played in the creation of this disaster is conveniently historically myopic. But to simply state it's all us gringos fault is wrong as well.
However, how bad does the economy have to get here before US citizens are in the fields doing stoop labor? (that's not trolling it's an honest question)
I think it's a cultural problem. We live a life of luxury and some of generation z.2(?) just don't feel like working. I've had students say 'why study, it's all a game, look at (pick one or more) Paris Hilton, George Bush, Diddy, generic sports star.'
The phrase was 'middle class India'. You're analysis would be correct if you take all Indian teenagers into account as India has a very large population in extreme poverty. My point - given access to the same education, the South Asian teenagers, because of their culture(?), do better in standard subjects.
> The US isn't special, one way or the other.
The US was 50 % of the global product in the 50s. That was sort of special.
> Talk to the Tibetans or the Kurds sometime.
The entire history of China is the imperialist expansion of the Han. Your point is everyone does it so we still get to complain?
> Or talk to the Japanese - the US dropped two atomic bombs on them. Do they suddenly get the right to emigrate to the US outside of the law?
Not sure where that fits. We built Japan back up after WWII (avoiding OT discussion of B29 runs). We've constantly screwed the people South and Central America to maximize the profits of select US businesses.
> Oh wait I am sorry it is all the evil americans fault .....
Uh ... no ... there's more than enough blame to go around. However, us gringos have had a lot to do with it.
Hey that 'illegal Mexican' comes from a country just south of the US that the US has been actively screwing for decades. Does it occur to you that the 'shining city on a hill' was brutally cruel to it's neighbors and smaller countries / peoples all over the world? For some shining examples of the the Monroe Doctrine investigate the history of the United Fruit Company.
It ain't the poor Mexicans that are stealing your children's future, it's a government and culture of corruption right here at home that has systematically looted the country since 1980. If it wasn't for the DLC I'd call them the Republican Party. Get used to biking to work and missing meals just like the Mexicans. Then check out the literacy rate of South Asian high schools as compared to the US and hope your kid can get a job working for 'idiot Indians'. An average high school student from middle class India is an honor student in the USA. Sad, but true.
The original Olympics was a time out for the various armies to get together and show off their battle field trophies. Javelin throwing may seem cute but it was the artillery back in the day. The equivalent now would be to have various police forces, army units and irregulars (read: terrorists / guerillas depending on spin) get together for sniping and bombing competition.
That said, gymnastics is awesome.
> The needs of the relatively few people that lose their livelihoods in the entertainment industry do not supercede the rights and needs of everyone else.
That could also describe the real estate business.
I'm not saying this process isn't inevitable. Trying to build a wall against the tide coming in is futile. I'm just pointing out that this devaluing of labor will reach everything that can be duplicated digitally and that includes software.
And I think it's over the top to phrase as 'rights and needs'. Unless 'all property is theft' then why should someone's audio creation be inherently valueless when a corporation can own and rent land? Do I have a 'right' to live rent free? Piracy in audio when it was manufacturing bootleg vinyl was illegal. Was that violating someone's rights? The rights of the person(s) duplicating Rolling Stones records? The issue is that there is no way to try and prevent the transfer of digital audio without stopping the free flow of digital information and that's a step I, and I'd guess the majority of slashdoteers, can not accept.
It's a little late in the thread for trolling but ...
To read endless posts about 'what's wrong with the entertainment industry is they produce crap' reveals there are very few of you actually in 'the industry' you are talking about. (spare me the 'I've had 4 number one singles yet post anon' thread).
Sticking with the music business. I'm not here to argue that the quality of pop music didn't reach a new low sometime around the Paris Hilton sex tape. Art forms have their eras. If you ask the man in the street about theatrical plays the first guy he mentions died centuries ago. People still write operas (I think) but almost all of the productions are 150+ years old. If you go into a postcard shop chances are the paintings on the cards are from the 19th century. American popular music had a great run, ran out of steam IMHO in the 80s and 90s for various reasons (not file sharing), and has passed into history.
However ... the music business was a great jobs engine and that's finished because of digital media. I'm not saying it was good for the actual artists - mileage may have varied - but the cash hoarded by the power lawyers trickled down, paying for publicists, recording engineers, road crews, magazine ads, guys in warehouses moving t-shirts, CDs, posters, people answering phones for said power lawyers.
What percentage of jobs in support still remain? It's ugly out there. Now I'm sure some of these people make a good living writing OS software, no doubt the rest of them can get jobs in magazine publishing - oh wait, that's gone too. But, you say, it's better for the artists. Well, in the majority of cases, it's certainly not worse. Probably good for the music in the end, too.
Now let me ask: Is Adobe to be railed against because they try, with varying degrees of success, to keep their software from being pirated? Quark? I'm sure once the GIMP is up to speed and the Flash haters have finally sorted out SVG (holding breath) all those coders can get jobs in finance surfing what ever bubble has come along to keep the growth engine going. Or do internet advertising because that's a solid growth market. Or become urban farmers and grow and sell vegetables to pay rent.
My point being: When it comes to digital distribution eliminating jobs, ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
(except I'm posting this on a board full of people with 15+ years of AJAX experience who move effortlessly from job to job having nothing to do with the price of gasoline)
Starship Trooper would be a little dry for kids, or did you notice the original posters question? Heinlein's political and social rambling ends up taking over his later works but are kept in check in the juveniles. The point in Starman Jones seems to be 'study real hard and follow your dream' - as opposed to Starship's 'join the Army, earn the vote' or Stranger In A Strangeland's 'sex and talking'.
Citizen of the Galaxy, Farmer in the Sky, Have Space Suit will Travel, Starman Jones - all by Heinlein. These are his juveniles and are all good stories, drama and action along with some moralizing about studying hard etc ... I read them as a kid and was hooked. The Larry Niven short stories.
On the cruise you will have peace of mind with a garden reeked of love.
For the sake of earnest unity on this voyage to infinity.
On the voyage to infinity, can't forget to take your soul.
Cause at the port you'll find no double sign.
The two Richard Rhodes bomb books are genius.
The first one tells the story of 20th century physics and the rise of the Nazis. The second one ends with the Cuban Missle Crisis. Both are white knuckle history with the physics moving from ceiling wax to Mike.
Poster suggested Moon is a Harsh Mistress as a movie - not a bad idea - but The Menace From Earth has a great cavern where people fly with wings in the low gravity!!! The plot's a teenage romance story so Hollywood would probably need to dumb it down. (but would that be 'Lunawood'?)
> Specifically the fight between Clinton and Obama is a generational struggle for control.
OK I get you now and agree. Sorry if I'd missed that earlier.
> Yeah, I resent the Boomers as a group. I'm one of the Gen-X generation that has been uniformly crapped on by the Boomers since we committed the ultimate sin of not worshiping them.
As someone who falls between the demographics I don't get this. You mean the DLC? read: Clintonians who held power during the 90s? The 'silent majority'? - non counter culture Reagan revolution middle America? How did you not 'worship them'? I'm not disagreeing, just not understanding.
Your historical analysis is flawed. What we're seeing is the final long deserved death of the Reagan revolution and a power struggle amongst the boomer generation about who takes the reins now. While calling GWB an entitled baby boomer is amusing, that's not his constituency.
"One of the most entitled, arrogant, and narcissistic generations in American history"
(but how do you really feel?) While that certainly applies to the neocons I can't help but wonder if that's who you're referring to (or is this a generic anti 20 something / hippie / yuppie rant?)
a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money
> "Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."
So it's the image that would be illegal as well as the act.
I barely watch tv and when I do the ads are the best part. ... there's bbc world news
well
Jerry Mander's book from the 70s made a crucial distinction between active and passive media. The above slashdot comments seem limited to wikipedia bashing or a splitting of web 2.0 hairs re:2008. That is, the percentage that are coherent, which is low by the usually high standards of non technical commentary on this site ... cough ...
This reminded me of seeing Esther Dyson and some pundits on Charley Rose a couple of years ago. They all laughed when Dyson said: "I can't tell you what web 2.0 means". Web 2.04 (or wherever we're at) means everyone can be Esther Dyson, everyone can be Charley Rose. Not everyone can be Tom Friedman as it takes years to acquire the ego involved in that much stupidity. Now is everyone going to be Charley Rose? No. Will there still be old school one way media? Yes, at least for a long time.
Mander's point is that TV is passive and active participation works the brain muscles more than then passive staring at the screen. The brain is a muscle, use it or lose it. As someone who quit TV, not unlike drugs, in my teen years I've long argued that TV was the reason for the collapse of literacy in the US. Will the wide open web cure that? Probably not, we shall see, but any change is good. American pop culture, mainstream corporate entertainment, now resembles a piece of chewing gum so worked over there is no flavor left (see: pop music). Are endless sectarian/technical blog exchanges entertaining? YMMV, but compared to what's on TV and the radio they at least measure up.
Sorry to go against the flash=bad group think but the site worked fine when I wandered around it.
I like the animated cartoons but, See:Charley Brown, the voices never match the voices in my head (that didn't come out right)
Over the last 40 years the actual physical environment hasn't changed much. Imagine the difference between 1900 and 1940: automobiles, airplanes - or 1920 and 1960: Commercial trans Atlantic jet travel, satellites, H bombs, national highways. I can remember 1968. Since then we've gotten the ATM, cable TV, cell phones, personal computers but, except for the corporate mall-ing of the American highway, which was well underway by 1968 and didn't change the environment so much as stamp out local flavor, and saner environmental regulation, some lakes used to glow in the dark, this is still interstate rust belt America.
In fact, someone waking up right now would find America in the middle of a colonial war, suburban sprawl graying the countryside. "A gallon of gas costs what?!? Hey, can I see your phone?" That is, unless they were in medicine or IT.
(disclaimer: above memories are related to North America)
whoops yeah you're right of course. my brains gone soft (from all that loud music)
bought it all on vinyl and then CD so chances are I won't pony up for the mp3
Now who's the last hold out? Led Z?
Every time I've tried to use yahoo for ANYTHING it has always sucked. It sucked pre Google as a search engine. The digital music service sucks and they have some deals to keep music off iTunes which at least works. I know people with mail.yahoo.com email and the mail arrives so maybe Yahoo should just give away email accounts.
I'm not a big MS fan so if they bought yahoo and then went out of business that would be a two-fer.
Mod this down as OT venting.
> ie, has nothing to do with federal regulation
Wrong. Google EPA.