This item has already left the front page and I have previous engagements that will keep me too busy to do it justice until Monday. But let me propose the following:
I'll set up an article in my journal, quote the relevant postings so far, maybe make an initial "kickoff" argument. We (and perhaps others) can discuss this issue further there, starting Monday.
If I do it, will you come?
Every side to a divisive issue? Name one, and what sides of it you think the media should cover compared to which sides you saw covered and where you looked?
OK: Let's start with the media's coverage of guns and crime.
Yawn. Yet another liberal anonymously attempting to use gratuitous assertions - of paranoia, lack of intelligence, disconnection from a higher-status social group, lack of left-leaning media bias, corporate conspiracy (OBVIOUSLY right-wing, of course) to name just five - to avoid and shut down actual discussion of issues.
You lose.
Come back if you're ever willing to actually discuss media bias. Until then you might as well not bother posting such jibberish.
The slashdot readership - or at least the subset I'm interested in communicating with - can recognize such social games. And most posters here with anything significant to say are immune to them by now.
Its a graphical novel, not a comic you insensitive clod!
Not until it's collected and published as a book or installments it's not. As long as it's on the "comics" page of a newspaper it's a "comic" - regardless of its humor value. (See Alley Oop, among many others, for a strip-serialized adventure story.)
And last I heard the term was "graphic novel", not "graphICAL...".
How about we settle on "sequential art" for now, eh?
How about carrying all major sides to every divisive issue (rather than carrying only one to the left of Joe Stalin and mentioning others, if at all, only to deride them)?
How about giving an unbiased view of probabilities, rather than focusing on a few rare occurrences and ignoring commoner ones - without even mentioning in the reportage of the rarer events that they're the exception rather than the rule? (For instance: Covering every offensive firearm use or firearm accident as a national tragedy, but ignoring the much-more-common defensive, hunting, and sporting uses - to the point that even olympic firearms events are not carried by the network that buys the coverage rights.)
How about not fabricating news to fit the paper's agenda?
But I was under the impression that one large distinction was the set of graphic conventions used. (For instance: lightbulb-over-head versus laserbeam into head for idea, smoking head versus bulging veins for anger, etc.)
I suspect when an american comic syndicate executive says "manga" he undersands it to mean a comic that uses the stylistic and graphic-linguistic convention set of manga, rather than whatever the "real" definition is.
Come now, hot fusion used to always be 40 years away. Now, finally, it will always be 35 years away.
Perhaps it's something like the "doomsday clock" of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Currently at 7 minutes to midnight (where it started back in 1947) it has been adjusted as close as three minutes and as far out as seventeen.
Which makes one wonder what a "minute" is supposed to mean, anyhow. (Obviously, like time-to-product, it doesn't mean what it says.)
WTF??? Please define "success". The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed years before MLK was assassinated. What great success in the "movement" occurred after MLK, and as a direct result of violence (according to your assertion).
Actually being ABLE to vote, for starters, not just having a piece of paper in a federal archive that was unenforced in most jurisdictions. The passage of the civil rights act was fine. But it wasn't enforced until after the cities burned.
The cities burned because, without enforcement (or with enforcement proceeding "at all deliberate speed" - like the flow of molasses, or glass), the act was JUST a piece of paper and the problems continued. Unrest in the cities was growing, but slowly, and in a way that allowed the gradual picking off of the hotter heads. MLK's assasination dumped a bale of straw on the camel's back, providing the "shelling point" to get the frog to jump out of the pot.
(After that the power structure had to spend decades finding ways to sucker blacks and other out-groups into re-segregating themselves voluntarily, to get to the situation we have now.)
Why does the mainstream media consistently fail to call George W. Bush on his utter lack of leadership and disastrous policies?
Because he exhibits extrordinary leadership and his policies have been wildly successful, and if they tried to "call him on it" they couldn't maintain the contrary illusion?
I have a number of gripes about Bush. But "utter lack of leadership" and "disastrous policies" are not on the list.
For instance: Can you imagine getting as far with 1930s Japan, Germany, or Italy, 1950s North Korea, or 1960s North Vietnam as he has with Iraq, completely toppling a mass-murdering totalitarian regime, setting up an interm ELECTED government, and getting a new constitution WRITTEN BY THE LOCALS approved by 78% of the voters in a 63% turnout election (despite terrorist threats to kill anyone voting), while losing only 2,000 US soldiers in the process? (Given the number of soldiers over there that death rate is comparable to staying home and commuting to work on the freeways.)
Give the man credit where credit is due.
Why was the last election (completely orchestrated by Rove), focused completely on Swift Boats and other things that happened 30 years ago instead of policy?
I don't know. Ask John Kerry and Dan Rather. B-)
(They must have been complete fools to follow Rove's instructions, don't you think?)
So it's hardly surprising to see the Democrats - with a solid lock on the media - trying to stifle grass-roots free speech, or the Republicans - its main beneficiaries - trying to defend it.
I suggest you do some research on who owns the media. It ain't the democrats running GE and Westinghouse. You've fallen hook, line, and sinker for Republican talking point #1: Despite the fact that we own the media, the media is against us.
I suggest you do some research into who RUNS the media, and how they run it.
Hint: Owners mostly are interested in the bottom line and generally don't interfere in the editors' choice of political content. Meanwhile, activists among the boomer generation were consciously grooming themselves to take over and/or replace the "establishment media" to "get their message out to the people". (I was there - hanging out at a college newspaper as the journalism types learned their trade. Trust me on this.) These are the people who worked their way into the editorial and reportorial positions of the current mainstream media over the next 40 years.
But you don't HAVE to trust me. Look into the research on objective measures of media bias that was done atStanford and UCLA. (And I trust you won't try to claim that THOSE are bastions of the right wing. B-) )
Summary: Using:
- The congress as a measure of US public opinion. (Congresscritters are elected by a large sampling of citizens and can be expected to roughly model the citizenry's biases)
- Number and length of quotations of various thinktanks - by both congresscritters and media outlets - as a measure of the congress critters' or media outlets' bias.
- ADA ratings to calibrate the congresscritters on a left-right scale.
- Regression analysis to calibrate the thinktanks on a left-right scale from the congresscritters' quoting habits and build a single model that does a good job of predicting each critter's ADA rating from his quoting habits.
- Applying the model to the media outlets' quoting behavior to get an "ADA rating" of the media outlets. they placed various media outlets on a left-right scale compared to the US voting population.
The process is objective (and potentially automatable) through each step.
Guess where the media outlets came out? B-)
Since the end of the "equal time provision" of the FCC regulations the mainstream media have moved to the left fringe. They did it over a number of years, in good old boil-the-frog style. They're now so far out they can convince people that an outlet which merely gives Conservative and Liberal positions equal time (rather than voicing only Liberal positions while ignoring Conservatives' completely except when misrepresenting and/or ridiculing them) is on the wacky right fringe.
This bill is all about trashing campaign finance reform laws.
No, it isn't. It's about exactly what it says it's about, which is exempting some opinionated dude in his pajamas from having to hire lawyers and accountants in order to exercise his first amendment right to free speech.
Actually it's about both. That's because the campaign finance laws were intended, from the start, to stifle the free speech of grass-roots campaigners.
Grass roots actions have been very successful, primarily in unseating Democratic candidates: Roberti, Roos, and Foley to name just three. (Tom Foley was the first House Speaker ever to be voted out of office, and that was entirely due to a grass-roots letter campaign.) These grass roots actions were organized via internet communication tools: Newsgroups, email, and blogs. (Campaign finance laws were "reformed" to make such grass-roots organization more difficult immediately thereafter. Now that blogging has been similarly effective on its own, it's time for another round of "reform" to spike it.)
Major media gets the Democrats' viewpoints on issues out while the Republicans' side gets out mainly over talk shows (which preach to the choir), part-time on Fox News, and via internet outlets such as blogs. When the media omits or distorts in the Democrats' favor it's mainly the blogs that act as a truth squad to expose the omissiions and falisifications. (Think of Drudge and the Monica scandals, or Powerline and LittleGreenFootballs vs. Dan Rather's forged letters.)
The Democrats also get lots of free publicity from major media and billions in campaign contributions from certain organizations (notably: labor unions) that were carefully exempted from the campaign finance laws. Practically the only place Republicans get such unregulated support is internet blogging.
And then there's the likes of George Soros. (If you had any illusions left that "campaign finance reform" was really about keeping a few billionaires from trying to buy elections and control over political party machinery you need only look at what he's been up to, and how it was enabled by the last round of "reforms".)
So it's hardly surprising to see the Democrats - with a solid lock on the media - trying to stifle grass-roots free speech, or the Republicans - its main beneficiaries - trying to defend it.
However, that's not the only factor: Both parties tend to attract compensated psychopaths and put them in positions of power. But the two parties attract psychopaths with different styles of compensation. Democrats tend to get the "anything goes" type, Republicans the "rule-bound" type. So it's also not surprising to see Democratic politicians voting for whatever is most expedient for their own plans and programs, Republicans for whatever their theories say is "right" - even if it's not necessarily to their benefit. In this case theory calls for free speech, limitation on government power, and the people discussing candidates and making informed choices about who to select. This is perceived as a benefit for Republicans, so among Republicans both the idologues and the pragmatists are on the same page.
"Campaign finance reform" is also known as "the incumbent protection act". It helps them keep their seats despite what they do to tick people off by erecting barriers against speech for anyone not part of the established power structure. (The big guys have the time and money to run the maze, while you and I would get stuck if we tried.)
The Internet is the main way we little people have escaped the institutional roadblocks and shaken the power structure. So now the power-brokers are moving to extend their controls over political speech into the internet. Since the internet community's main power base is internet free speech, we should recognize and oppose this move - regardless of what candy-coating is applies.
Also: Any new rootkit-writer wannabe can buy a sample rootkit object for the price of a CD, to disassemble and study, while leaving no traces whatsoever (beyond a cash music purchase like a few million other peoples'). Meanwhile the black hat old hands are already all over it, checking for any improvements they can port to their own stuff.
The guy who discovered it and cracked it had a few things to say about some minor flaws. But it's a professionally developed and pretty well-debugged and robust rootkit nontheless. (Note that was "in the wild" for several months before said security expert happened to notice the traces - while working on a tool designed to detect and identify exactly such software.)
Once they crack it they can take his criticisms as bug reports - of things to fix when they do their own version.
The MPAA (or any group with money to pay for politicians) will continue to extort your money from you until you either (1) kill the lawyers yourself, or (2) pay someone to do it for you.
(Wasn't this an audio disk? That would be the RIAA.)
Given the RIAA's origin in organized crime (the jukebox syndicate) and ongoing business model (extortion), I strongly suspect that even going after them with tommyguns - and killing off a number of them - would affect their strategy. (In fact, some of them might find it a refreshing return to the good old days of gang wars - and come after you in return. B-) )
There are alternatives to violence. Reread the works of Dr. Martin Luther King or Gandhi for powerful accounts of effective alternatives. Nonviolent tactics did work against far more dangerous and evil enemies than the entertainment industry.
The canonization of King and Ghandi is convenient for the ruling class. But claiming they prove the success of non-violence is a rewrite of history:
Ghandi succeeded in India - against the British colonial occupation, when a major British government faction was already trying to unload the colony. Ghandi's movement helped empower them to achieve their aims. But remember that he started his political carreer in South Africa, attempting to end Apartheit by similar tactics - a dismal failure. And his prescription for the Jews in Nazi Germany was to commit mass suicide in protest of their treatment.
MLK's non-violent opposition to Jim Crow segregation was a necessary step in the Civil Rights movement. But the movement didn't succeed until it switched to violence after his assasination and cities burned. King's contribution was to sieze the moral high ground, enabling the claim that non-violence had been tried and had failed.
(Ghandi's revolution was getting a bit bloody toward the end, too.)
The current ruling class raises King and Ghandi as role models and conveniently forgets the roles of people like H. Rap Brown an Muhammad X. This detours people from the not-so-non-violent tactics that finished the job - and were the whole of many other successful revolutions - and gets them stuck in an endless loop of non-violent and ineffective protests that can be easily ignored.
(Please note that I'm not advocating the use of violence - merely trying to correct the never-ending misstatement of the historic record.)
IMHO (IANAL) the copyright law recognizes that catching any particluar copyright violator and collecting actual damages is a low-probability thing. So if the law only awarded actual damages it would not deter, because the expected cost would be so low.
(If you've got a one-in-20,000 chance of being caught for cloning a $20 movie, and the punishment is to pay the $20, your average expected cost from violating the copyright is a tenth of a cent. That's far less than typical sales tax on the medium you use to make the copy.)
So the law compensates by applying a draconian penalty to those who do get caught - bringing the expected average cost of violation up to something big enough to hurt - and to give the copyright holder some significant recovery.
24mbit/sec? Sounds like "across the street from the provider" has suddenly become prime nerd real estate
When you combine it with fiber to the curb (FTTC) you get your 24 Mbps just fine all over the place, not just on the same block with the Central Office (CO).
The fiber carries the signal to the RT ("remote terminal" in telephone parlence: a line concentrator located outside the CO). That is located within a couple blocks of your house. The ADSL2+ carries it from there to your house over a copper pair.
Even if your neighborhood is too sparse and/or the company planners goofed and put the RTs too far apart for everybody to get full speed, you'll do a lot better with ADSL2+ than with the older ADSL standards.
For your perusal: Renunciation of U.S. Citizenship right from the State Department.
The US IRS claims taxes on those who have moved abroad and renounced citizenship for some long period afterward. (I don't recall if it's 10 years, 20, or what - consult a tax attorney. But it's a significant fraction of a person's working life.) That is one of the ways the US is different from most other countries. (And even after they get free, if they visit for more than some small time - like 30 days - they can get hooked again by your state and/or fed tax man.)
Another is that most other countries don't tax people who spend less than a half year there.
This was the origin of the "jet set": Citizens of countries with tax laws like that (typically Europeans), with carreers that don't tie them down to a particular location, could split their year among three or more countries at less than 6 months in each and pay no income tax. Given the high income tax rates this meant people with ordinary incomes ended up keeping so much more that they could pay for mutiple dwellings and transport between them and have enough extra left over to live like the truly rich. But because of the US' tax laws, US citizens could only join the jet set if they WERE truly rich.
The only defense they could have is that they didn't know it was in there and shouldn't be forced to "accidentally" GPL code via an act of copyright violation. This doesn't fly, however, because they continued to distribute the linux kernel, and the code they claim is infringing in it, under the GPL for a year after they initially made the claims. It's hard to say you didnt know it was in there when you've filed a lawsuit specifically about it.
Actually, it may fly just fine. When they released the code they took on an additional obligation to continue to provide the source of what they had released for a certain time period - both under the GPL and likely in contract obligations to their customers.
Stopping the distribution immediately upon (allegecd) discovery that some of their stuff was included somewhere in the mass would be a violation of these additional obligations. In particular, it would violate the GPL (by stopping the distribution of the parts that DIDN'T include "their" code), which would jepoardize their ability to ever use GPLed code again. Meanhwile, the cat was now out of the bag on any proprietary techniques in the code in question.
So they can easily argue that their continued distribution of the code that "others had contaminated" was the minimum damage-to-them (and also to others) way to proceed, and that the GPL was void to the extent that it claims their continued distribution (when others are already distributing the same code) constitutes placing the allegedly proprietary code under the GPL terms.
If they stop the distribution, that damages others. (Especially if it turns out they were mistaken in their claims on even one piece of the code.) Meanwhile, leaving the code up on their distribution site while broadcasting a warning about their claims doesn't cause extra damage to them, because people can get the same code from other sources anyhow. So better for all (including them) to leave it up and sort it out after the dust settles in court. Caught in a lose-lose situation they minimize loss, and that meets the requirement to attempt to protect their own copyright DESPITE their continued publication of the code under circumstances that appear to waive their rights.
The court might find this argument compelling - especailly since it might be the most reasonable thing they've done in the whole debacle. B-)
Also: Case law saying that, by continuing to it distribute after discovering the problem, you don't claims to code that someone ELSE incorporated into a GPLed package without your permission (despite terms to the contrary), might actually be GOOD for the GPL code base. It would eliminate a perceived boobytrap, encouraging more use and support of GPLed products by major software vendors.
It might be beneficial against HIV, but what if it has side-effects?
In particular, another virus with similar mechanisms to AIDS could target this form of the protein rather than te commoner one. Back to square one.
Presenting a moving target by rapidly evolving and diverging is one of the characteristics of immune systems - which must be able to handle the even shorter-generation faster-evolving diseases. (Even technology can't come to bear on a new disease organism without first having a few cases to bring it to attention.) Thus we are likely to have new plagues and mass deaths from them for the forseable future.
Not "proof". "Probable cause (to believe)" that a crime has been committed or in progress.
"Proof" is a matter of courts, with advocates for both sides punching holes in each other's arguments.
"Probable cause" is a far lower standard than "proof", but a higher one that "suspicion". It requires some objective evidence of a form that has been shown in the past to indicate with reasonable probability that a crime is really taking place. Gut feelings by cops (that might be driven by personal bias) and similarity of a person to a stereotype of what past crooks have been like and have done ("profiles") need not apply. You must have something that the person actually DID that looks like he's doing dirty work.
This seems like the fundamental basis of police protection - their job is to investigate crimes and prosecute the perps. Not to monitor people they don't like in case they commit a crime. The crime has to come before the surveillance.... Do you think the FBI should act as our watchers before any crime is committed?
The FBI has (at least) two jobs (relavant to this discussion). One is to investigate crime. The other is to do the domestic part of intelligence gathering for national security: finding and stopping spys, heading off sabotage, hunting down the local instalations of an international military network attacking US or its interests, etc.
The two functions have different thresholds on when investigation can start - and correspondingly different limits on what can be done with the result. This is appropriate, since the two have different goals - one to stop major organized military action, the other to punish and deter civilian crimes. You need to start investigations with lower thresholds of suspicion if you want to head off military attacks and the like. The higher standard for criminal intelligence gathering can remain intact because foiling a plot can be done without applying criminal scanctions to its members if the start of the investigation didn't happen to meet the higher threshold. (Nevertheless, consolidation of the two functions in one agency for efficiency leads to temptation and confusion.)
One of the ways the Clinton administration went wrong was to try to build too high a wall between the two. (Some say this was done deliberately to abort the investigation into alleged trading of MIRV tech to China for campaign contributions.) Another was to try to treat terrorism as crime - with its safegaurds and proof levels - rather than war (with the result that they chose to pass up several chances to get Bin Laden before he could set up 9/11.)
The Bush administration and the Patriot Act go too far in the other direction, eroding the distinction, circumventing the legal limits on criminal investigation by passing information from national security investigations to law enforcement, and so on. (They also seem to be using rules intended for battlefield emergencies to apply the equivalent of long-term/indefinite jail sentences to US citizens without due process.)
Oh, yes. They also did one on that pattern that was disguised as an olive-on-a-toothpick, to put in a martini glass and carry around or leave sitting about at embassy parties.
And the diode trick also turns anything with a diode in it into a bug.
This stuff has been happening since the fifties. Nothing new here.
The russians did that to the US, too. With a nice giant carving of the Great Seal - with a device behind a small hole beneath the beak.
Consisted of a cavity resonator about the size of a stack of 10 or so dimes, with a tuning post up the middle, a diaphragm for one end (to detune it according to air pressure) and a wire antenna maybe a foot long coupled into the cavity. Excite it with a microwave signal near but not dead-on the resonance and the reflection is amplitude modulated by the sound from the room.
Better yet: Put a diode in a movable surface. Excite it and it returns harmonics (easy to sort out from other reflections because they're on a different frequency), phase-modulated by doppler shift from the object's motion (like its variant FM, PM is very noise-resistant).
Russian laborers constructed an embassy where the walls were FULL of thousands of diodes - embedded in the construction material. US had to abandon the building and build one of their own. News items suggested the diodes were to make it hard to sniff for bugs. But IMHO they were the bugs themselves, using the harmonic-generation/doppler/PM trick.
Like the posting in the root article, this makes every surface a bug. You have to get diodes into them, but the return is cleaner and stronger than echoes from a passive reflector.
OSTG--the company that owns Linux.com. The company that owns Slashdot.org
Isn't it interesting that, for all the bitching Slashdotters do about corporate-owned shills, advertising, poor service, and biased reporting, they turn none of that critical eye toward Slashdot?
Slashdot's corporation has a vested interest in reporting pro-Linux stories and anti-Microsoft stories.
Slashdot is a news outlet for a class of people who tend to be Linux users. As such they are after news related to Linux, often interested in problems with other OSes (especially the dominant Microsoft offerings), and so on.
The Slashdot "coverage" displayed all the "bias" you complain about while it was independent - long before it received significant support from any other company, let alone being bought by one. Especially the anti-Microsoft flamefests by the posters.
OSTG has a number of Linux-related segments. Of course they, too, want to have available a news outlet/discussions forum giving coverage of Linux-related news, and acquiring one that was doing a dandy job makes more sense than constructing one from scratch.
Slashdot would, IMHO, have continued to cover things in about they way they are now if they had continued to be independent and found no-strings-attached financing to grow to the current size.
Sure there's a risk that they might give offerings from their corporate brethern more attention than they might have if independent. But that would be true anyhow: Being part of a company can give added opportunity to find out about what is going on in other parts.
And sure there's a risk of giving them favorable treatment in reportage. But IMHO Slashdot's format (stories picked by the editors to kick off a thread, followed by lots of discussion by readers, moderated only by other readers and not totally removed even if moderated down to the minimum) cerates a giant truth-squad that will jump on any distortions or outright falsehoods posted or selected by the editors.
Add to that their careful attachment of disclaimers when selecting a story about another operation owned by the same holding company, and they're IMHO squeaky-clean. (How often do you see or hear similar disclaimers when a news operation of a media conglomerate, reporting on another of THAT operation's holdings? Pretty rare, eh?)
As I see it the only significant risk is of OMISSION - the choice not to post something of importance that might harm another branch of the company. But Slashdot is not the only news operation out here - not even the only one covering Linux and other "news for nerds". Between that and several things users can do (such as post a story on their own journal and point to it in their sig lines, or make off-topic comments on everything related), Slashdot would have a hard time hiding anything.
So I'm not at ALL concerned when Slashdot covers something in another holding of OSTG. And I think you're wasting your breath when you berate them for doing so. IMHO they'd be lax to NOT cover such things.
You should save your breath and energy for hunting down and exposing any actual lies or distortions in such stories, rather than griping about their existence.
Anyone who has been in the computer industry for more than a few months knows this. Its prevalent everywhere. Don't let them say "there aren't enough engineers to go around", thats pure horse hockey. HIB workers arre cheaper, plain and simple.
H1-B workers also makes it easier to hire a few people with degrees from a handfull of ivy-league or otherwise exceptionally reputable (among suits) schools for core teams, people from India and the like for the bulk of the rest of the slots, and ignore anybody who's black, hispanic, female, and/or educated in a state college. (And claiming such are unqualified helps perpetuate the myth that there are no "qualified" applicants available, giving them an excuse to hire the cheaper H1-Bs.)
Helpful hints:
- Intelligence is not confined to people who were able to attend one of about three high-prestige schools, are male, and are white or oriental.
- Technical expertese - especially in computer-related subjects - is not developed solely in a set of schools you can count on one hand with fingers left over.
(For starters: the bulk of the actual rocket scientists have a southern or western accent.)
Al, for one, uses a hell of a lot of electrical energy to be produced.
And it's "high quality" energy, (electricity, mechanical motion, etc.). Using it to make hydrogen, even if 100% efficient, then burning the hydrogen to make heat and run a heat engine, wastes at least 2/3s of it (and probably more) to the carnot cycle limit in the heat engine.
Given that you could use it, instead, in an aluminum-oxygen battery (with little weight beyond the aluminum itself and producing enormous electrical power output) and get nearly all of the juice back, then use the juice in electric motors at efficiencies near 90%, using it to make hydrogen in the car is nuts.
Slashdot Mirror
Great! A real conversation.
This item has already left the front page and I have previous engagements that will keep me too busy to do it justice until Monday. But let me propose the following:
I'll set up an article in my journal, quote the relevant postings so far, maybe make an initial "kickoff" argument. We (and perhaps others) can discuss this issue further there, starting Monday.
If I do it, will you come?
Every side to a divisive issue? Name one, and what sides of it you think the media should cover compared to which sides you saw covered and where you looked?
OK: Let's start with the media's coverage of guns and crime.
Yawn. Yet another liberal anonymously attempting to use gratuitous assertions - of paranoia, lack of intelligence, disconnection from a higher-status social group, lack of left-leaning media bias, corporate conspiracy (OBVIOUSLY right-wing, of course) to name just five - to avoid and shut down actual discussion of issues.
You lose.
Come back if you're ever willing to actually discuss media bias. Until then you might as well not bother posting such jibberish.
The slashdot readership - or at least the subset I'm interested in communicating with - can recognize such social games. And most posters here with anything significant to say are immune to them by now.
Its a graphical novel, not a comic you insensitive clod!
...".
Not until it's collected and published as a book or installments it's not. As long as it's on the "comics" page of a newspaper it's a "comic" - regardless of its humor value. (See Alley Oop, among many others, for a strip-serialized adventure story.)
And last I heard the term was "graphic novel", not "graphICAL
How about we settle on "sequential art" for now, eh?
B-)
While we're at it:
How about carrying all major sides to every divisive issue (rather than carrying only one to the left of Joe Stalin and mentioning others, if at all, only to deride them)?
How about giving an unbiased view of probabilities, rather than focusing on a few rare occurrences and ignoring commoner ones - without even mentioning in the reportage of the rarer events that they're the exception rather than the rule? (For instance: Covering every offensive firearm use or firearm accident as a national tragedy, but ignoring the much-more-common defensive, hunting, and sporting uses - to the point that even olympic firearms events are not carried by the network that buys the coverage rights.)
How about not fabricating news to fit the paper's agenda?
Not to get into a "is" "isn't" flap...
But I was under the impression that one large distinction was the set of graphic conventions used. (For instance: lightbulb-over-head versus laserbeam into head for idea, smoking head versus bulging veins for anger, etc.)
I suspect when an american comic syndicate executive says "manga" he undersands it to mean a comic that uses the stylistic and graphic-linguistic convention set of manga, rather than whatever the "real" definition is.
Come now, hot fusion used to always be 40 years away. Now, finally, it will always be 35 years away.
Perhaps it's something like the "doomsday clock" of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Currently at 7 minutes to midnight (where it started back in 1947) it has been adjusted as close as three minutes and as far out as seventeen.
Which makes one wonder what a "minute" is supposed to mean, anyhow. (Obviously, like time-to-product, it doesn't mean what it says.)
WTF??? Please define "success". The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed years before MLK was assassinated. What great success in the "movement" occurred after MLK, and as a direct result of violence (according to your assertion).
Actually being ABLE to vote, for starters, not just having a piece of paper in a federal archive that was unenforced in most jurisdictions. The passage of the civil rights act was fine. But it wasn't enforced until after the cities burned.
The cities burned because, without enforcement (or with enforcement proceeding "at all deliberate speed" - like the flow of molasses, or glass), the act was JUST a piece of paper and the problems continued. Unrest in the cities was growing, but slowly, and in a way that allowed the gradual picking off of the hotter heads. MLK's assasination dumped a bale of straw on the camel's back, providing the "shelling point" to get the frog to jump out of the pot.
(After that the power structure had to spend decades finding ways to sucker blacks and other out-groups into re-segregating themselves voluntarily, to get to the situation we have now.)
Why does the mainstream media consistently fail to call George W. Bush on his utter lack of leadership and disastrous policies?
Because he exhibits extrordinary leadership and his policies have been wildly successful, and if they tried to "call him on it" they couldn't maintain the contrary illusion?
I have a number of gripes about Bush. But "utter lack of leadership" and "disastrous policies" are not on the list.
For instance: Can you imagine getting as far with 1930s Japan, Germany, or Italy, 1950s North Korea, or 1960s North Vietnam as he has with Iraq, completely toppling a mass-murdering totalitarian regime, setting up an interm ELECTED government, and getting a new constitution WRITTEN BY THE LOCALS approved by 78% of the voters in a 63% turnout election (despite terrorist threats to kill anyone voting), while losing only 2,000 US soldiers in the process? (Given the number of soldiers over there that death rate is comparable to staying home and commuting to work on the freeways.)
Give the man credit where credit is due.
Why was the last election (completely orchestrated by Rove), focused completely on Swift Boats and other things that happened 30 years ago instead of policy?
I don't know. Ask John Kerry and Dan Rather. B-)
(They must have been complete fools to follow Rove's instructions, don't you think?)
So it's hardly surprising to see the Democrats - with a solid lock on the media - trying to stifle grass-roots free speech, or the Republicans - its main beneficiaries - trying to defend it.
I suggest you do some research on who owns the media. It ain't the democrats running GE and Westinghouse. You've fallen hook, line, and sinker for Republican talking point #1: Despite the fact that we own the media, the media is against us.
I suggest you do some research into who RUNS the media, and how they run it.
Hint: Owners mostly are interested in the bottom line and generally don't interfere in the editors' choice of political content. Meanwhile, activists among the boomer generation were consciously grooming themselves to take over and/or replace the "establishment media" to "get their message out to the people". (I was there - hanging out at a college newspaper as the journalism types learned their trade. Trust me on this.) These are the people who worked their way into the editorial and reportorial positions of the current mainstream media over the next 40 years.
But you don't HAVE to trust me. Look into the research on objective measures of media bias that was done atStanford and UCLA. (And I trust you won't try to claim that THOSE are bastions of the right wing. B-) )
Summary: Using:
- The congress as a measure of US public opinion. (Congresscritters are elected by a large sampling of citizens and can be expected to roughly model the citizenry's biases)
- Number and length of quotations of various thinktanks - by both congresscritters and media outlets - as a measure of the congress critters' or media outlets' bias.
- ADA ratings to calibrate the congresscritters on a left-right scale.
- Regression analysis to calibrate the thinktanks on a left-right scale from the congresscritters' quoting habits and build a single model that does a good job of predicting each critter's ADA rating from his quoting habits.
- Applying the model to the media outlets' quoting behavior to get an "ADA rating" of the media outlets.
they placed various media outlets on a left-right scale compared to the US voting population.
The process is objective (and potentially automatable) through each step.
Guess where the media outlets came out? B-)
Since the end of the "equal time provision" of the FCC regulations the mainstream media have moved to the left fringe. They did it over a number of years, in good old boil-the-frog style. They're now so far out they can convince people that an outlet which merely gives Conservative and Liberal positions equal time (rather than voicing only Liberal positions while ignoring Conservatives' completely except when misrepresenting and/or ridiculing them) is on the wacky right fringe.
This bill is all about trashing campaign finance reform laws.
No, it isn't. It's about exactly what it says it's about, which is exempting some opinionated dude in his pajamas from having to hire lawyers and accountants in order to exercise his first amendment right to free speech.
Actually it's about both. That's because the campaign finance laws were intended, from the start, to stifle the free speech of grass-roots campaigners.
Grass roots actions have been very successful, primarily in unseating Democratic candidates: Roberti, Roos, and Foley to name just three. (Tom Foley was the first House Speaker ever to be voted out of office, and that was entirely due to a grass-roots letter campaign.) These grass roots actions were organized via internet communication tools: Newsgroups, email, and blogs. (Campaign finance laws were "reformed" to make such grass-roots organization more difficult immediately thereafter. Now that blogging has been similarly effective on its own, it's time for another round of "reform" to spike it.)
Major media gets the Democrats' viewpoints on issues out while the Republicans' side gets out mainly over talk shows (which preach to the choir), part-time on Fox News, and via internet outlets such as blogs. When the media omits or distorts in the Democrats' favor it's mainly the blogs that act as a truth squad to expose the omissiions and falisifications. (Think of Drudge and the Monica scandals, or Powerline and LittleGreenFootballs vs. Dan Rather's forged letters.)
The Democrats also get lots of free publicity from major media and billions in campaign contributions from certain organizations (notably: labor unions) that were carefully exempted from the campaign finance laws. Practically the only place Republicans get such unregulated support is internet blogging.
And then there's the likes of George Soros. (If you had any illusions left that "campaign finance reform" was really about keeping a few billionaires from trying to buy elections and control over political party machinery you need only look at what he's been up to, and how it was enabled by the last round of "reforms".)
So it's hardly surprising to see the Democrats - with a solid lock on the media - trying to stifle grass-roots free speech, or the Republicans - its main beneficiaries - trying to defend it.
However, that's not the only factor: Both parties tend to attract compensated psychopaths and put them in positions of power. But the two parties attract psychopaths with different styles of compensation. Democrats tend to get the "anything goes" type, Republicans the "rule-bound" type. So it's also not surprising to see Democratic politicians voting for whatever is most expedient for their own plans and programs, Republicans for whatever their theories say is "right" - even if it's not necessarily to their benefit. In this case theory calls for free speech, limitation on government power, and the people discussing candidates and making informed choices about who to select. This is perceived as a benefit for Republicans, so among Republicans both the idologues and the pragmatists are on the same page.
"Campaign finance reform" is also known as "the incumbent protection act". It helps them keep their seats despite what they do to tick people off by erecting barriers against speech for anyone not part of the established power structure. (The big guys have the time and money to run the maze, while you and I would get stuck if we tried.)
The Internet is the main way we little people have escaped the institutional roadblocks and shaken the power structure. So now the power-brokers are moving to extend their controls over political speech into the internet. Since the internet community's main power base is internet free speech, we should recognize and oppose this move - regardless of what candy-coating is applies.
Also: Any new rootkit-writer wannabe can buy a sample rootkit object for the price of a CD, to disassemble and study, while leaving no traces whatsoever (beyond a cash music purchase like a few million other peoples'). Meanwhile the black hat old hands are already all over it, checking for any improvements they can port to their own stuff.
The guy who discovered it and cracked it had a few things to say about some minor flaws. But it's a professionally developed and pretty well-debugged and robust rootkit nontheless. (Note that was "in the wild" for several months before said security expert happened to notice the traces - while working on a tool designed to detect and identify exactly such software.)
Once they crack it they can take his criticisms as bug reports - of things to fix when they do their own version.
OK, black hats: Time to say "7|-|4nx u 50|\|33"
I strongly suspect that even going after them with tommyguns - and killing off a number of them - would affect their strategy.
Oops. Make that "strongly doubt"
The MPAA (or any group with money to pay for politicians) will continue to extort your money from you until you either (1) kill the lawyers yourself, or (2) pay someone to do it for you.
(Wasn't this an audio disk? That would be the RIAA.)
Given the RIAA's origin in organized crime (the jukebox syndicate) and ongoing business model (extortion), I strongly suspect that even going after them with tommyguns - and killing off a number of them - would affect their strategy. (In fact, some of them might find it a refreshing return to the good old days of gang wars - and come after you in return. B-) )
There are alternatives to violence. Reread the works of Dr. Martin Luther King or Gandhi for powerful accounts of effective alternatives. Nonviolent tactics did work against far more dangerous and evil enemies than the entertainment industry.
The canonization of King and Ghandi is convenient for the ruling class. But claiming they prove the success of non-violence is a rewrite of history:
Ghandi succeeded in India - against the British colonial occupation, when a major British government faction was already trying to unload the colony. Ghandi's movement helped empower them to achieve their aims. But remember that he started his political carreer in South Africa, attempting to end Apartheit by similar tactics - a dismal failure. And his prescription for the Jews in Nazi Germany was to commit mass suicide in protest of their treatment.
MLK's non-violent opposition to Jim Crow segregation was a necessary step in the Civil Rights movement. But the movement didn't succeed until it switched to violence after his assasination and cities burned. King's contribution was to sieze the moral high ground, enabling the claim that non-violence had been tried and had failed.
(Ghandi's revolution was getting a bit bloody toward the end, too.)
The current ruling class raises King and Ghandi as role models and conveniently forgets the roles of people like H. Rap Brown an Muhammad X. This detours people from the not-so-non-violent tactics that finished the job - and were the whole of many other successful revolutions - and gets them stuck in an endless loop of non-violent and ineffective protests that can be easily ignored.
(Please note that I'm not advocating the use of violence - merely trying to correct the never-ending misstatement of the historic record.)
IMHO (IANAL) the copyright law recognizes that catching any particluar copyright violator and collecting actual damages is a low-probability thing. So if the law only awarded actual damages it would not deter, because the expected cost would be so low.
(If you've got a one-in-20,000 chance of being caught for cloning a $20 movie, and the punishment is to pay the $20, your average expected cost from violating the copyright is a tenth of a cent. That's far less than typical sales tax on the medium you use to make the copy.)
So the law compensates by applying a draconian penalty to those who do get caught - bringing the expected average cost of violation up to something big enough to hurt - and to give the copyright holder some significant recovery.
24mbit/sec? Sounds like "across the street from the provider" has suddenly become prime nerd real estate
When you combine it with fiber to the curb (FTTC) you get your 24 Mbps just fine all over the place, not just on the same block with the Central Office (CO).
The fiber carries the signal to the RT ("remote terminal" in telephone parlence: a line concentrator located outside the CO). That is located within a couple blocks of your house. The ADSL2+ carries it from there to your house over a copper pair.
Even if your neighborhood is too sparse and/or the company planners goofed and put the RTs too far apart for everybody to get full speed, you'll do a lot better with ADSL2+ than with the older ADSL standards.
For your perusal: Renunciation of U.S. Citizenship right from the State Department.
The US IRS claims taxes on those who have moved abroad and renounced citizenship for some long period afterward. (I don't recall if it's 10 years, 20, or what - consult a tax attorney. But it's a significant fraction of a person's working life.) That is one of the ways the US is different from most other countries. (And even after they get free, if they visit for more than some small time - like 30 days - they can get hooked again by your state and/or fed tax man.)
Another is that most other countries don't tax people who spend less than a half year there.
This was the origin of the "jet set": Citizens of countries with tax laws like that (typically Europeans), with carreers that don't tie them down to a particular location, could split their year among three or more countries at less than 6 months in each and pay no income tax. Given the high income tax rates this meant people with ordinary incomes ended up keeping so much more that they could pay for mutiple dwellings and transport between them and have enough extra left over to live like the truly rich. But because of the US' tax laws, US citizens could only join the jet set if they WERE truly rich.
The only defense they could have is that they didn't know it was in there and shouldn't be forced to "accidentally" GPL code via an act of copyright violation. This doesn't fly, however, because they continued to distribute the linux kernel, and the code they claim is infringing in it, under the GPL for a year after they initially made the claims. It's hard to say you didnt know it was in there when you've filed a lawsuit specifically about it.
Actually, it may fly just fine. When they released the code they took on an additional obligation to continue to provide the source of what they had released for a certain time period - both under the GPL and likely in contract obligations to their customers.
Stopping the distribution immediately upon (allegecd) discovery that some of their stuff was included somewhere in the mass would be a violation of these additional obligations. In particular, it would violate the GPL (by stopping the distribution of the parts that DIDN'T include "their" code), which would jepoardize their ability to ever use GPLed code again. Meanhwile, the cat was now out of the bag on any proprietary techniques in the code in question.
So they can easily argue that their continued distribution of the code that "others had contaminated" was the minimum damage-to-them (and also to others) way to proceed, and that the GPL was void to the extent that it claims their continued distribution (when others are already distributing the same code) constitutes placing the allegedly proprietary code under the GPL terms.
If they stop the distribution, that damages others. (Especially if it turns out they were mistaken in their claims on even one piece of the code.) Meanwhile, leaving the code up on their distribution site while broadcasting a warning about their claims doesn't cause extra damage to them, because people can get the same code from other sources anyhow. So better for all (including them) to leave it up and sort it out after the dust settles in court. Caught in a lose-lose situation they minimize loss, and that meets the requirement to attempt to protect their own copyright DESPITE their continued publication of the code under circumstances that appear to waive their rights.
The court might find this argument compelling - especailly since it might be the most reasonable thing they've done in the whole debacle. B-)
Also: Case law saying that, by continuing to it distribute after discovering the problem, you don't claims to code that someone ELSE incorporated into a GPLed package without your permission (despite terms to the contrary), might actually be GOOD for the GPL code base. It would eliminate a perceived boobytrap, encouraging more use and support of GPLed products by major software vendors.
It might be beneficial against HIV, but what if it has side-effects?
In particular, another virus with similar mechanisms to AIDS could target this form of the protein rather than te commoner one. Back to square one.
Presenting a moving target by rapidly evolving and diverging is one of the characteristics of immune systems - which must be able to handle the even shorter-generation faster-evolving diseases. (Even technology can't come to bear on a new disease organism without first having a few cases to bring it to attention.) Thus we are likely to have new plagues and mass deaths from them for the forseable future.
Not "proof". "Probable cause (to believe)" that a crime has been committed or in progress.
... Do you think the FBI should act as our watchers before any crime is committed?
"Proof" is a matter of courts, with advocates for both sides punching holes in each other's arguments.
"Probable cause" is a far lower standard than "proof", but a higher one that "suspicion". It requires some objective evidence of a form that has been shown in the past to indicate with reasonable probability that a crime is really taking place. Gut feelings by cops (that might be driven by personal bias) and similarity of a person to a stereotype of what past crooks have been like and have done ("profiles") need not apply. You must have something that the person actually DID that looks like he's doing dirty work.
This seems like the fundamental basis of police protection - their job is to investigate crimes and prosecute the perps. Not to monitor people they don't like in case they commit a crime. The crime has to come before the surveillance.
The FBI has (at least) two jobs (relavant to this discussion). One is to investigate crime. The other is to do the domestic part of intelligence gathering for national security: finding and stopping spys, heading off sabotage, hunting down the local instalations of an international military network attacking US or its interests, etc.
The two functions have different thresholds on when investigation can start - and correspondingly different limits on what can be done with the result. This is appropriate, since the two have different goals - one to stop major organized military action, the other to punish and deter civilian crimes. You need to start investigations with lower thresholds of suspicion if you want to head off military attacks and the like. The higher standard for criminal intelligence gathering can remain intact because foiling a plot can be done without applying criminal scanctions to its members if the start of the investigation didn't happen to meet the higher threshold. (Nevertheless, consolidation of the two functions in one agency for efficiency leads to temptation and confusion.)
One of the ways the Clinton administration went wrong was to try to build too high a wall between the two. (Some say this was done deliberately to abort the investigation into alleged trading of MIRV tech to China for campaign contributions.) Another was to try to treat terrorism as crime - with its safegaurds and proof levels - rather than war (with the result that they chose to pass up several chances to get Bin Laden before he could set up 9/11.)
The Bush administration and the Patriot Act go too far in the other direction, eroding the distinction, circumventing the legal limits on criminal investigation by passing information from national security investigations to law enforcement, and so on. (They also seem to be using rules intended for battlefield emergencies to apply the equivalent of long-term/indefinite jail sentences to US citizens without due process.)
Consisted of a cavity resonator ...
Oh, yes. They also did one on that pattern that was disguised as an olive-on-a-toothpick, to put in a martini glass and carry around or leave sitting about at embassy parties.
And the diode trick also turns anything with a diode in it into a bug.
This stuff has been happening since the fifties. Nothing new here.
The russians did that to the US, too. With a nice giant carving of the Great Seal - with a device behind a small hole beneath the beak.
Consisted of a cavity resonator about the size of a stack of 10 or so dimes, with a tuning post up the middle, a diaphragm for one end (to detune it according to air pressure) and a wire antenna maybe a foot long coupled into the cavity. Excite it with a microwave signal near but not dead-on the resonance and the reflection is amplitude modulated by the sound from the room.
Better yet: Put a diode in a movable surface. Excite it and it returns harmonics (easy to sort out from other reflections because they're on a different frequency), phase-modulated by doppler shift from the object's motion (like its variant FM, PM is very noise-resistant).
Russian laborers constructed an embassy where the walls were FULL of thousands of diodes - embedded in the construction material. US had to abandon the building and build one of their own. News items suggested the diodes were to make it hard to sniff for bugs. But IMHO they were the bugs themselves, using the harmonic-generation/doppler/PM trick.
Like the posting in the root article, this makes every surface a bug. You have to get diodes into them, but the return is cleaner and stronger than echoes from a passive reflector.
OSTG--the company that owns Linux.com. The company that owns Slashdot.org
Isn't it interesting that, for all the bitching Slashdotters do about corporate-owned shills, advertising, poor service, and biased reporting, they turn none of that critical eye toward Slashdot?
Slashdot's corporation has a vested interest in reporting pro-Linux stories and anti-Microsoft stories.
Slashdot is a news outlet for a class of people who tend to be Linux users. As such they are after news related to Linux, often interested in problems with other OSes (especially the dominant Microsoft offerings), and so on.
The Slashdot "coverage" displayed all the "bias" you complain about while it was independent - long before it received significant support from any other company, let alone being bought by one. Especially the anti-Microsoft flamefests by the posters.
OSTG has a number of Linux-related segments. Of course they, too, want to have available a news outlet/discussions forum giving coverage of Linux-related news, and acquiring one that was doing a dandy job makes more sense than constructing one from scratch.
Slashdot would, IMHO, have continued to cover things in about they way they are now if they had continued to be independent and found no-strings-attached financing to grow to the current size.
Sure there's a risk that they might give offerings from their corporate brethern more attention than they might have if independent. But that would be true anyhow: Being part of a company can give added opportunity to find out about what is going on in other parts.
And sure there's a risk of giving them favorable treatment in reportage. But IMHO Slashdot's format (stories picked by the editors to kick off a thread, followed by lots of discussion by readers, moderated only by other readers and not totally removed even if moderated down to the minimum) cerates a giant truth-squad that will jump on any distortions or outright falsehoods posted or selected by the editors.
Add to that their careful attachment of disclaimers when selecting a story about another operation owned by the same holding company, and they're IMHO squeaky-clean. (How often do you see or hear similar disclaimers when a news operation of a media conglomerate, reporting on another of THAT operation's holdings? Pretty rare, eh?)
As I see it the only significant risk is of OMISSION - the choice not to post something of importance that might harm another branch of the company. But Slashdot is not the only news operation out here - not even the only one covering Linux and other "news for nerds". Between that and several things users can do (such as post a story on their own journal and point to it in their sig lines, or make off-topic comments on everything related), Slashdot would have a hard time hiding anything.
So I'm not at ALL concerned when Slashdot covers something in another holding of OSTG. And I think you're wasting your breath when you berate them for doing so. IMHO they'd be lax to NOT cover such things.
You should save your breath and energy for hunting down and exposing any actual lies or distortions in such stories, rather than griping about their existence.
Anyone who has been in the computer industry for more than a few months knows this. Its prevalent everywhere. Don't let them say "there aren't enough engineers to go around", thats pure horse hockey. HIB workers arre cheaper, plain and simple.
H1-B workers also makes it easier to hire a few people with degrees from a handfull of ivy-league or otherwise exceptionally reputable (among suits) schools for core teams, people from India and the like for the bulk of the rest of the slots, and ignore anybody who's black, hispanic, female, and/or educated in a state college. (And claiming such are unqualified helps perpetuate the myth that there are no "qualified" applicants available, giving them an excuse to hire the cheaper H1-Bs.)
Helpful hints:
- Intelligence is not confined to people who were able to attend one of about three high-prestige schools, are male, and are white or oriental.
- Technical expertese - especially in computer-related subjects - is not developed solely in a set of schools you can count on one hand with fingers left over.
(For starters: the bulk of the actual rocket scientists have a southern or western accent.)
I'm floored.
Al, for one, uses a hell of a lot of electrical energy to be produced.
And it's "high quality" energy, (electricity, mechanical motion, etc.). Using it to make hydrogen, even if 100% efficient, then burning the hydrogen to make heat and run a heat engine, wastes at least 2/3s of it (and probably more) to the carnot cycle limit in the heat engine.
Given that you could use it, instead, in an aluminum-oxygen battery (with little weight beyond the aluminum itself and producing enormous electrical power output) and get nearly all of the juice back, then use the juice in electric motors at efficiencies near 90%, using it to make hydrogen in the car is nuts.