You sunk your otherwise viable rant when you began drooling over the possibility of a terrorist attack.
Consumerism can be a mark of sheepishness. But at least it isn't a catastrophic moral failure on the order of publicly desiring people you don't even know dead. That's really cockroachville.
Sure, Apple and the artists are being screwed. The real profit here, though, for Apple is mindshare.
If you are Apple trying to diversify let alone continue to exist in a Microsoft world, you have just gained a foothold on Mount Windoze. Maybe on the way up, you can make a little jing.
What's less cool is that you've been turned into a sherpa for the music industry. We'll see if it's a profitable model for Apple.
I'm enjoying this tremendously as a replacement for Winamp. What luck it is to have got this splended app ported - it's as if the Windoze platform has been civilized overnight.;-)
Mind, I still won't trust Windoze for anything more "mission critical" than a round of Quake. But now it's good for organizing music, too.
That was not a big deal for me as I don't have any important data on my Macs, but it may be troublesome for people who who are trying to install on their primary machine.
Heh. Yeah, no important data on my Mac. Just my life!
Sure, it's backed up, but I have neither the time nor the interest in putting things on hold while I reinstall everything - jeez, that's why I'm not on a Windoze platform.
I might wait for 10.3.1. But I'll definitely wait long enough to see what the early adopters go through.
...and the flexibility of the willow, grasshopper.;-)
If you bought your PB from an Apple Store, then the simple answer is: broken record time.
I'll spare the psychological theory, other than to observe that you must not "complain." You have an open and shut case, so to speak, of being burned by an arbitrary and capricious rule. Now, how to press your case?
Call the store manager. Calling is better in this instance because the manager can not afford to be seen "bending the rules for you" in "just this one instance" - the words that signify you have become too much of a pain to continue to subject to the arbitrary rule.
Keep politely telling the manager, and I emphasize politely, that you feel entitled to the upgrade and you'll be disappointed if you don't get it and yes, you understand the company's position (not "your" position - avoid being personal), but it's only been three weeks since you spent nearly two thousand dollars and you feel entitled to the upgrade and you'll be disappointed if you don't get it. Repeat as necessary. You may find yourself saying the same words as many as ten times. Just keep saying the same things, over and over. Corporate America practices this technique; so can you.;-)
Call him or her during a busy time of day to increase your chances of success. Persist for 15-20 minutes. Unless you earn at least $387/hr, this is well worth your time. Good luck!
"The Project is studying how hackers think..."
on
Get Paid To Crack?
·
· Score: 1
More than piracy ever could, what hurts Hollywood's bottom line is a business and creative model that takes its cues from high-stakes gambling.
In the decades since the collapse of the studio system, moviemaking costs have been driven higher and higher for bad reasons - namely, sky-high star salaries and the desperate emphasis on blockbusters.
What can also be measured is how the majors make fewer movies involving fewer actors, and take fewer risks. Monoculture, thy name is Hollywood.
This would be OK if it worked, but it works less and less: other media like the Net and gaming are overtaking movies, and many megabucks stars (e.g., the unusually bland Costner) can't make a profitable movie to save their lives. The frantic, eggs-in-one-basket hunt for opening weekend success - think of all the screeching hype that has replaced honest movie reviewing - also grows from this narrow-minded approach.
But it's not only the movie industry's fortunes that are affected by this model. One of the great means for transmission of ideas and values in society is film. Unlike films of even 30 or 40 years ago, Hollywood's navel-gazing product today rarely has much to say to anybody older than 13 (and when it does, the message is inevitably, "You should be 13 again!"). Independent film, which can sometimes do much more, isn't distributed because all the screens at the gigaplex are showing the corporate product. The festival circuit is literally teeming with hundreds of cool films you'll never see because they are crowded out of contention by, say, a single Gigli, which is one Gigli too many.
Thus do a few unimaginative men make a less interesting world for all of us. Excuse me if I'm not too worried about them.
As a pinball fan, my only complaint is: Where are the flippers?!;-)
The molded interactive landscape is a beautiful quaint metaphor to use for this purpose - sort of drawing its influences from a grab bag of model train sets, folk sculpture and Advent Calendars. Most of all I'm glad they opted for something tactile rather than a 3d computer model; this will impress children in particular long after they've forgotten one more computer screen (and that's who you want historical representations to impress - the young ones - otherwise why bother?). In its sprawling size and interactivity, it reminds me of the legendary gadgets and contraptions that I used to mess around with as a kid at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry - back in the 60s, the coolest nerd playground in the midwest.
I find it rather disturbing that a company can fire you for something you do of your own accord. What's next, are companies who like to suck up to MS gonna fire you for developing a linux program?
Am I just being naiive, or does this bother other people too?
Oh, it had better bother other people. Tomorrow, it might be them.
Whistle-blowing is never a popular job, but it's even riskier during bad economic times. Most of the backlash against this employee is due to the spineless quivering, in management, about losing vital business. Once again, we see why monopolies are unhealthy for society.
What are you gonna do, though, if you're canned? The employment-at-will doctrine has essentially always allowed bosses to hire and dump whomever they wish for any reason; dear old kooky Walt Disney used to go nuts with this easily abused freedom, and the 1990s left a trail of shattered lives and communities behind the rapacious "downsizing" of workers. Except where protected by civil rights or state employment law (and good luck bringing a case!), this is where you stand as an employee in America - at the mercy of the Man's whims. Learn to kiss ass; learn to run your own business; learn to work for decent people; these are among the few options for workers, and guess which one is most popular.
But this is also a hysterical time politically. Under the New McCarthyism the pasture of sacred cows has been enlarged: now not only our Glorious Leader is supposed to be beyond reproach, but so are certain corporate entities. And by burrowing like a common bacterial spirochete into the guts of American national security, Microsoft has begun to undergo the transformation - symbolically - from mere lawless and sloppy monopolist to vital U.S. institution. Yesterday, MS merely brought you BSODs, viral weakness and data loss. Today, it defends America against her enemies with its arsenal of...er...BSODs, viral weakness and data loss.
If this transformation continues, it will be more and more costly to criticize Microsoft as it mutates into an adjunct of the security state. HomeSec is already MS's taxpayer-subsidized tech support service, busily issuing warnings about the latest viruses and worms. This relationship should be promptly terminated by the next administration when the adults get to run things again.
The choice of Microsoft has a kind of nice symmetry, though, you must admit.
We rely upon half-baked right wing Dr. Strangeloves to choose the foreign countries that will welcome our invasions...
We rely upon deregulated billionaires to keep our stock market and investment firms honest...
We rely upon greedy employers not to send our jobs overseas in order to ratchet up the stock value and buy themselves extra homes and diamonds...
So why shouldn't we rely on a convicted monopolist with a track record of utter failure behind it to keep our national computer infrastructure secure, too?
Having drop-dead gorgeous, private, windowed offices makes it a lot easier to recruit the kinds of superstars that produce ten times as much as the merely brilliant software developers.
I'm sure it does, but just wait until they discover you didn't remove the brown M&M's and smash the office up.
Yesterday a fellow Mac owner posted this "insightful" boast on Slashdot:
OK, so how many of you Apple owners saw this, and reached instantly for the Software Update with glee?
And how many thought the same when the latest Windows Bloat Patch ^W^WUpdate came along? not many? thought as much:)
oh the joys of being a proud owner or a 12" PB.....
hmm maybe I need to update my.sig -... And Mac OS X just gets out of the way, letting you do what you wanted to do...
And today, as the saying goes, pride goeth before the fall, eh, Puggs?
Any wise Mac user who has seen the crippling tendencies of at least two prior OS X updates knows better than to crow about them, let alone apply them on the same day they're released. Except in the mind of fanboys, the age of the 100% trustworthy Software Update has yet to arrive.
It's pretty easy to avoid getting burned. Ask yourself: is my Mac working? Do I need this update today? Have I waited a few days to see what happened to the early adopters and, er, the glee club?;-)
The brave, bold McNealy who begins the interview bragging about his warrior creed...
I believe the beauty of the Darwinian capitalist market battles is that nobody gets -- I shouldn't say nobody -- very few people actually get physically injured.
Market discipline is very aggressive, very strong and very precise in who it clobbers -- those who don't perform.
And gloats over his pot of gold...
We have $5.7 billion of cash in the bank. We didn't have that five years ago. We have generated positive cash flow from operations for 35 straight quarters.
Only to end up pouting...
Worker's comp and family leave -- there's just a million rules here. There's a million rules that make the cost of operating here just off the charts.
Oh, that awful worker's comp! Oh, that horrible family leave! Can you believe the terrible things that our wonderful billionaires must put up with after a hard day of fighting their "Darwinian capitalist battles"? Imagine those lazy good-for-nothing employees wanting worker's comp or family leave; what nerve!
Look, you poor oppressed prick; at least you didn't have to wear a bustier and French kiss Madonna.
How do you afford your right wing lifestyle?
on
No Americans Need Apply
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Indians, my friends, aren't the ones we have to blame. We need to look closer to home.
The philosophy of market fundamentalism--the mantra of Fox, Wired, Rush, Gilder, Friedman and every zealous conservative and libertarian pundit--is doing an excellent job of encouraging business to turn its back on US employees. We'll see much, much more job flight in the short term until the brakes are applied to this savage anti-social approach.
Plainly this is what happens when you shatter the social contract and replace it with an ideology of dog-eat-dog. When times are good, it's nice to be able to bark, "Hands off my bone!" Not so nice, is it, when times are bad... Then, living under dog ideology isn't all it's cracked up to be, and you may come to see that millions and millions of your fellow Americans have been given the same raw deal.
For America, reeling under the destructiveness of this philosophy, a reordering of priorities is necessary. Increasing shareholder wealth may be the highest goal of a company; but it should never be the highest goal of a nation.
Above all, as you see jobs go to India, or elsewhere, and worry that it might be yours next, remember whose advice and guidance led you to this low hour. Remember also who made historically high profits from your labor in the 1990s, but now pleads the inability to continue your employment. And ask yourself if you can afford to subscribe to the politics of plutocrats who don't care if you and your family sink or swim.
Having said that, I would like to see another go at a 'cube type' solution.
Me, too! The small form factor PC is now the inheritor of the Cube experiment. Some look dumb, some look nice, but none as cool as the original Cube. But importantly those making the smaller PC have taken up the torch that Apple so memorably dropped.
The Cube would make the ultimate upgradeable headless hobbyist entry for Apple, but surely only as a niche item. Not that Apple is averse to niches.;-)
Owning the Mac does put you in a statistical minority, to be sure, but taking some barbs from PC owners shouldn't be compared with something important like racism or sexism. Pleading you're discriminated against because someone doesn't like your computer and forecasting the end of society is going too far, my friend.
It's especially unfortunate that you don't like being called an elitist, when everything from Apple's ads to pricing is pitched at elites. You don't think it's the Volkswagon Beetle of computers, now, do you? (I'm referring to the cheap VW Bug of yesterday, obviously, not the expensive mutation built today for elites--and featuring an iPod deal right now, LOL!)
I bought my Mac for various reasons, and people can think whatever they please. But one thing is certain: Apple designs and markets its machines for a niche audience, not for Everyperson, and that strategy invites invidious response just as all expensive goods do. Why pretend otherwise?
In other words, when this is deployed to Windows (the other 95% of the computer using population) - it will suddenly make up a lot more than 10 mill in revenue. It will go spastic.
You are conflating principles with prediction. Governments do this all the time; see the recent Bush tax cuts, for example. If it turns out as you predict, great. If it does not turn out as you predict, then Apple will swallow all those costs.
That will in turn encourage iPod sales, and those iPod sales will in turn encourage more music store purchases. Then they can start the real cross-pollination; "buy an iPod, get 10 free songs at the Apple Music Store".
The only risk Apple faces is if MS/whoever starts eating Apple's dinner. OTOH, very few of the other solutions will work with the world's most popular MP3 player - the iPod.
That's being optimistic! Actually, Apple faces many risks, including:
-- People choosing to support the world's most popular model for mp3 downloads (P2P)
-- Paying customers preferring to buy CDs
-- Competitors of the ITMS driving future mp3 player purchases to other hardware
-- Rising infrastructure costs for supporting Windoze users
-- Compatibility obstacles introduced by MS into the Windoze OS to favor its delivery method
Apple is dreaming, very mischievously, of supporting its threatened business model by way of the ultimate Trojan Horse: it will continue to make hardware that only 3-5% of consumers want, while underwriting its declining market share and rising R&D costs by driving this wonderful ITMS horse into the enemy's fortress. If it can make it work, super; I relish the thought of Windoze music fans subsidizing my favorite company. Time will tell.
Well, I don't care about antitrust law
Rob, rob, rob n' rule high school
Cause Bill's worth more than Bogota
Rob, rob, rob n' rule high school
Think of him as a public utility
Who needs Word compatibility?
Rob, rob, rob, rob, rob n' rule high school
Well, Bill's teaching us all there is to know
Rob, rob, rob n' rule high school
'Bout how laws work when you have dough
Rob, rob, rob n' rule high school
Would've done that homework shit
But my PC went beepBEEPbeepBEEP and ate it
Rob, rob, rob, rob, rob n' rule high school
I like Macs, but Bill Noll's photos have a certain desperation to them--as if he's trying to prove that even the banal aspects of the G5 are beautiful. Here comes the aesthetic clue bus: soft focus doesn't make the banal more beautiful. It just makes it look look like you took your G5 to the high school prom, then got lucky afterward.
Sure, I'll take the G5 over Bad Boy Asher Bond's Pentium box in a heartbeat, but give me the parody site over the original's puffery and fetishizing any day.
You want to blast Pacifica and Democracy Now because you don't agree with their politics, so you call for "more mainstream news sources."
But, ha ha, you're a little too Fair-and-Balanced for your own good. Even if the mainstream media were alert enough to be covering this issue, we'd still be discussing the very same issue. As it happens, we're discussing a report from a news source that cared enough to cover the issue critically. This is a proof that the failure of mainstream media to inform the public makes alternative news sources all the more necessary, indeed vital.
You need to take a long hard look at why the mainstream media don't ask difficult questions about these matters. Your "moderate" and "mainstream" media corporations have quite a lot vested in the election process and a lot at stake in sustaining the appearance of electoral fairness: every four years election advertising makes them very, very rich. In that context the adjective "mainstream" is hardly synonymous in any way with "objective" or "neutral"--the mainstream media are better seen as fulfilling a commercial contractual bargain, not inquiring or informing the general public.
Slashdot Mirror
This feature might turn out to be pretty significant. Anyone with Panther have comments on how well import/export works?
Consumerism can be a mark of sheepishness. But at least it isn't a catastrophic moral failure on the order of publicly desiring people you don't even know dead. That's really cockroachville.
If your hatred of liberty is representative, then the republic is in a lot of trouble.
If you are Apple trying to diversify let alone continue to exist in a Microsoft world, you have just gained a foothold on Mount Windoze. Maybe on the way up, you can make a little jing.
What's less cool is that you've been turned into a sherpa for the music industry. We'll see if it's a profitable model for Apple.
Mind, I still won't trust Windoze for anything more "mission critical" than a round of Quake. But now it's good for organizing music, too.
Heh. Yeah, no important data on my Mac. Just my life!
Sure, it's backed up, but I have neither the time nor the interest in putting things on hold while I reinstall everything - jeez, that's why I'm not on a Windoze platform.
I might wait for 10.3.1. But I'll definitely wait long enough to see what the early adopters go through.
It's a pity to see war celebrated in this manner. Let those who exalt such stuff pray war never sweeps away their homes and/or loved ones.
If you bought your PB from an Apple Store, then the simple answer is: broken record time.
I'll spare the psychological theory, other than to observe that you must not "complain." You have an open and shut case, so to speak, of being burned by an arbitrary and capricious rule. Now, how to press your case?
Call the store manager. Calling is better in this instance because the manager can not afford to be seen "bending the rules for you" in "just this one instance" - the words that signify you have become too much of a pain to continue to subject to the arbitrary rule.
Keep politely telling the manager, and I emphasize politely, that you feel entitled to the upgrade and you'll be disappointed if you don't get it and yes, you understand the company's position (not "your" position - avoid being personal), but it's only been three weeks since you spent nearly two thousand dollars and you feel entitled to the upgrade and you'll be disappointed if you don't get it. Repeat as necessary. You may find yourself saying the same words as many as ten times. Just keep saying the same things, over and over. Corporate America practices this technique; so can you. ;-)
Call him or her during a busy time of day to increase your chances of success. Persist for 15-20 minutes. Unless you earn at least $387/hr, this is well worth your time. Good luck!
Probably won't be the most surprising findings in history.
God knows, it's time somebody based their company logo on this special lady.
In the decades since the collapse of the studio system, moviemaking costs have been driven higher and higher for bad reasons - namely, sky-high star salaries and the desperate emphasis on blockbusters.
What can also be measured is how the majors make fewer movies involving fewer actors, and take fewer risks. Monoculture, thy name is Hollywood.
This would be OK if it worked, but it works less and less: other media like the Net and gaming are overtaking movies, and many megabucks stars (e.g., the unusually bland Costner) can't make a profitable movie to save their lives. The frantic, eggs-in-one-basket hunt for opening weekend success - think of all the screeching hype that has replaced honest movie reviewing - also grows from this narrow-minded approach.
But it's not only the movie industry's fortunes that are affected by this model. One of the great means for transmission of ideas and values in society is film. Unlike films of even 30 or 40 years ago, Hollywood's navel-gazing product today rarely has much to say to anybody older than 13 (and when it does, the message is inevitably, "You should be 13 again!"). Independent film, which can sometimes do much more, isn't distributed because all the screens at the gigaplex are showing the corporate product. The festival circuit is literally teeming with hundreds of cool films you'll never see because they are crowded out of contention by, say, a single Gigli, which is one Gigli too many.
Thus do a few unimaginative men make a less interesting world for all of us. Excuse me if I'm not too worried about them.
The molded interactive landscape is a beautiful quaint metaphor to use for this purpose - sort of drawing its influences from a grab bag of model train sets, folk sculpture and Advent Calendars. Most of all I'm glad they opted for something tactile rather than a 3d computer model; this will impress children in particular long after they've forgotten one more computer screen (and that's who you want historical representations to impress - the young ones - otherwise why bother?). In its sprawling size and interactivity, it reminds me of the legendary gadgets and contraptions that I used to mess around with as a kid at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry - back in the 60s, the coolest nerd playground in the midwest.
Whistle-blowing is never a popular job, but it's even riskier during bad economic times. Most of the backlash against this employee is due to the spineless quivering, in management, about losing vital business. Once again, we see why monopolies are unhealthy for society.
What are you gonna do, though, if you're canned? The employment-at-will doctrine has essentially always allowed bosses to hire and dump whomever they wish for any reason; dear old kooky Walt Disney used to go nuts with this easily abused freedom, and the 1990s left a trail of shattered lives and communities behind the rapacious "downsizing" of workers. Except where protected by civil rights or state employment law (and good luck bringing a case!), this is where you stand as an employee in America - at the mercy of the Man's whims. Learn to kiss ass; learn to run your own business; learn to work for decent people; these are among the few options for workers, and guess which one is most popular.
But this is also a hysterical time politically. Under the New McCarthyism the pasture of sacred cows has been enlarged: now not only our Glorious Leader is supposed to be beyond reproach, but so are certain corporate entities. And by burrowing like a common bacterial spirochete into the guts of American national security, Microsoft has begun to undergo the transformation - symbolically - from mere lawless and sloppy monopolist to vital U.S. institution. Yesterday, MS merely brought you BSODs, viral weakness and data loss. Today, it defends America against her enemies with its arsenal of...er...BSODs, viral weakness and data loss.
If this transformation continues, it will be more and more costly to criticize Microsoft as it mutates into an adjunct of the security state. HomeSec is already MS's taxpayer-subsidized tech support service, busily issuing warnings about the latest viruses and worms. This relationship should be promptly terminated by the next administration when the adults get to run things again.
We rely upon half-baked right wing Dr. Strangeloves to choose the foreign countries that will welcome our invasions...
We rely upon deregulated billionaires to keep our stock market and investment firms honest...
We rely upon greedy employers not to send our jobs overseas in order to ratchet up the stock value and buy themselves extra homes and diamonds...
So why shouldn't we rely on a convicted monopolist with a track record of utter failure behind it to keep our national computer infrastructure secure, too?
I'm sure it does, but just wait until they discover you didn't remove the brown M&M's and smash the office up.
Any wise Mac user who has seen the crippling tendencies of at least two prior OS X updates knows better than to crow about them, let alone apply them on the same day they're released. Except in the mind of fanboys, the age of the 100% trustworthy Software Update has yet to arrive.
It's pretty easy to avoid getting burned. Ask yourself: is my Mac working? Do I need this update today? Have I waited a few days to see what happened to the early adopters and, er, the glee club? ;-)
Look, you poor oppressed prick; at least you didn't have to wear a bustier and French kiss Madonna.
Likely to get GUI, isn't it?
The philosophy of market fundamentalism--the mantra of Fox, Wired, Rush, Gilder, Friedman and every zealous conservative and libertarian pundit--is doing an excellent job of encouraging business to turn its back on US employees. We'll see much, much more job flight in the short term until the brakes are applied to this savage anti-social approach.
Plainly this is what happens when you shatter the social contract and replace it with an ideology of dog-eat-dog. When times are good, it's nice to be able to bark, "Hands off my bone!" Not so nice, is it, when times are bad... Then, living under dog ideology isn't all it's cracked up to be, and you may come to see that millions and millions of your fellow Americans have been given the same raw deal.
For America, reeling under the destructiveness of this philosophy, a reordering of priorities is necessary. Increasing shareholder wealth may be the highest goal of a company; but it should never be the highest goal of a nation.
Above all, as you see jobs go to India, or elsewhere, and worry that it might be yours next, remember whose advice and guidance led you to this low hour. Remember also who made historically high profits from your labor in the 1990s, but now pleads the inability to continue your employment. And ask yourself if you can afford to subscribe to the politics of plutocrats who don't care if you and your family sink or swim.
Me, too! The small form factor PC is now the inheritor of the Cube experiment. Some look dumb, some look nice, but none as cool as the original Cube. But importantly those making the smaller PC have taken up the torch that Apple so memorably dropped.
The Cube would make the ultimate upgradeable headless hobbyist entry for Apple, but surely only as a niche item. Not that Apple is averse to niches. ;-)
It's especially unfortunate that you don't like being called an elitist, when everything from Apple's ads to pricing is pitched at elites. You don't think it's the Volkswagon Beetle of computers, now, do you? (I'm referring to the cheap VW Bug of yesterday, obviously, not the expensive mutation built today for elites--and featuring an iPod deal right now, LOL!)
I bought my Mac for various reasons, and people can think whatever they please. But one thing is certain: Apple designs and markets its machines for a niche audience, not for Everyperson, and that strategy invites invidious response just as all expensive goods do. Why pretend otherwise?
-- People choosing to support the world's most popular model for mp3 downloads (P2P)
-- Paying customers preferring to buy CDs
-- Competitors of the ITMS driving future mp3 player purchases to other hardware
-- Rising infrastructure costs for supporting Windoze users
-- Compatibility obstacles introduced by MS into the Windoze OS to favor its delivery method
Apple is dreaming, very mischievously, of supporting its threatened business model by way of the ultimate Trojan Horse: it will continue to make hardware that only 3-5% of consumers want, while underwriting its declining market share and rising R&D costs by driving this wonderful ITMS horse into the enemy's fortress. If it can make it work, super; I relish the thought of Windoze music fans subsidizing my favorite company. Time will tell.
Well, I don't care about antitrust law
Rob, rob, rob n' rule high school
Cause Bill's worth more than Bogota
Rob, rob, rob n' rule high school
Think of him as a public utility
Who needs Word compatibility?
Rob, rob, rob, rob, rob n' rule high school
Well, Bill's teaching us all there is to know
Rob, rob, rob n' rule high school
'Bout how laws work when you have dough
Rob, rob, rob n' rule high school
Would've done that homework shit
But my PC went beepBEEPbeepBEEP and ate it
Rob, rob, rob, rob, rob n' rule high school
(With apologies to The Ramones)
Sure, I'll take the G5 over Bad Boy Asher Bond's Pentium box in a heartbeat, but give me the parody site over the original's puffery and fetishizing any day.
But, ha ha, you're a little too Fair-and-Balanced for your own good. Even if the mainstream media were alert enough to be covering this issue, we'd still be discussing the very same issue. As it happens, we're discussing a report from a news source that cared enough to cover the issue critically. This is a proof that the failure of mainstream media to inform the public makes alternative news sources all the more necessary, indeed vital.
You need to take a long hard look at why the mainstream media don't ask difficult questions about these matters. Your "moderate" and "mainstream" media corporations have quite a lot vested in the election process and a lot at stake in sustaining the appearance of electoral fairness: every four years election advertising makes them very, very rich. In that context the adjective "mainstream" is hardly synonymous in any way with "objective" or "neutral"--the mainstream media are better seen as fulfilling a commercial contractual bargain, not inquiring or informing the general public.