So NOW you're changing to an entirely different argument. First, you talk about how identical machines were programmed (apparently by evil Republicans) to deprive blacks of votes for Democrats. When it's pointed out that that's not the case, you completely ignore your previous ignorant statemant and move on to the next thing on your list. Can you not stick to the subject of just ONE of your lies (or just mistakes of ignorance?) before we debunk the next one?
LOTS of public officials are corrupt and will steal votes. I've seen a lot of it, both as a newspaper reporter and as a political consultant. But anybody who thinks that Republicans are more corrupt or dishonest than Democrats has a very, very serious blind spot.
Perhaps you should stick to nuclear physics. Perhaps you actually know something about that.
You've been reading way too much of the Weekly World News and other supermarket tabloids if you're ignorant enough to believe that machines were programmed to cheat black voters in this way. There is ZERO evidence to support this crazy notion, unless you're part of the left-wing equivalent of the black helicopter crowd.
LOCAL officials control these things, not some centralized state official who might have the power to do as you claim. To the extent that the machines in predominantly black areas were technologically inferior (a point which I'm not necessarily conceding), it is a reflection of decisions made by the local election officials. In the black areas, those officials are Democrats. In order to believe your crackpot idea, you have to believe that the Democrat election officials in those counties were trying to rig the system to give votes to Republicans.
I'm rarely dismissive about someone's intelligence just from such a short post, but your acceptance of this makes me question your ability to reason and to gather relevant facts.
I don't know whether this is what you're thinking of, but there are numerous cheap casette adapters you can use to plug an iPod (or other MP3 player) into your car's stereo system. I bought one at Radio Shack and it's worked fine for me with my iPod.
This question has been answered SO many times. Can we retire it? Apple doesn't see any need to support your favorite codec. Fine. Buy something that does. The end.
Whether you think Apple should support Ogg Vorbis or (like me) you don't think it matters, the issue has been beaten to death. Asking the same old thing again isn't even vaguely interesting. It's only modded that way because some people agree with you -- and that's not the purpose of moderation.
No, there are just TOO MANY subjects. What car do I buy? What toilet paper do I buy? What brand of washing machine? What kind of carpet do I put into my house? What baby food do I give my child? What hard drive is best? What type of roof is best for my house? Which school should my child attend? There are thousands upon thousands of decisions we make -- many of them much smaller than these -- and it's literally impossible to make a fully informed decision about all of them. People tend to take the easy way and choose "the leading brand" or what their friends buy. It just isn't possible to learn everything they need to know about everything.
And I'll guarantee that you do the same thing about some things, even if you don't realize it. We ALL do. You can't be an expert on everything. Besides, there are plenty of things you don't even know that would be of interest to you, because no one has ever articulated the benefits or let you know that something existed.
It's impossible for people to make educated decisions about everything they have to buy or consume. There is just too much to know -- too many choices to investigate. At some point, it becomes a matter of priorities. "Do I spend 24 hours a day studying technical journals and Consumer Reports or do I have a life?"
I run far more apps than the typical Mac OS X user, and I can guarantee that your father's Mac was not forced to do three or four updates/patches per day. Either one of you is lying or else it's an exaggeration to try to support a position.
I just checked my software update log, and I received a TOTAL of seven updates for the month through the Mac OS X software update system, the last one of which was on Dec. 19. If you want us to believe what you're saying about your father's system, show us the update log. But you won't do it, because that number of updates just don't exist.
What you describe isn't really about the "laziness of the public," but rather the laziness (or stupidity?) of the providers. It's not reasonable to expect the public to investigate the advantages of every new thing in every area and make educated decisions. People can only decide they want something when providers are explaining WHY they want something.
For instance, some automakers push things in their ads which don't explain a benefit to the public. I've never known what "dual overhead cams" are. I've never known why I should care that a car has 24 valves. I've never known why I should care about "independent front and rear suspension." I'm sure there is a benefit to all of these, but fewer and fewer people want to be mechanics in order to buy cars. We want to know about specific benefits, not about lists of technology that we don't really understand. We shouldn't have to learn about auto mechanics in order to decide whether we want a certain feature.
In the same way, consumers of IT products shouldn't have to know what 3G means, for instance. They just have to be sold on a network's ability to transmit a picture or whatever else it might mean to them. That's not laziness. That's simply reasonable in a world where no one can know everything.
You and other customers might see it that way, but the carrier is ONLY obligated to give you a certain number of minutes for that price. From a business point of view, the issue is whether the provider has limited his liability to having to give someone an unlimited supply at a flat rate. Just because you commit yourself to a higher number of minutes than you know you want doesn't mean it's a flat rate. It just means that you're willing to commit yourself to paying for more than you'll use -- in order to have a predictable bill. That's something like telling your grocery store that you'll pay them a flat $300 a week for your groceries -- even if you buy less -- but you'll still pay extra if you go over that amount. Obviously, that's a little bit of an exaggeration (and obviously there is a presumed discount built in for the phone user who commits to a higher number of minutes), but cell phone pricing is NOT an example of flat-rate pricing -- unless there is a carrier I'm not aware of who provides unlimited service for one price.
I was similarly hooked on caffeine until a few years ago. I used to drink so much diet Coke that the cashiers at the grocery store thought I was stocking up for a huge party every few days. I used to joke that Coke's stock would fall if I quit drinking the stuff. I HAD to have it all the time. Based on a lot of things, I decided I wanted to get it out of my system.
For me, there were two keys. First, I had to simply accept that I was going to feel lousy for several days -- and I did. I had horrible, pounding headaches while my body was de-toxing. The second key was to drink a LOT of water.
One of the things I realized in retrospect is that I had been dehydrating my body by drinking soft drinks instead of water. I had assumed the the water in the soft drinks would have the same effect as drinking water, but I've discovered (both from reading and experience) that that assumption was wrong. I now drink somewhere in the neighborhood of four or five liters of water every day. When I first started doing it, I had to go to the bathroom more often, but your body seems to adjust. You might also find that you feel your thirst more than you formerly did, and you realize that it's WATER you want instead of the caffeine.
One other factor, for me at least, is how much sugar or other carbohydrates I consume. I can't speak for everyone, but I KNOW that I feel much better and have lots more energy when I get sugar out of my system, too. In general, the way my body is "happiest" is when I'm eating according to the methods promoted by the Atkins Center, which was founded by the late diet doctor and nutritionist Dr. Robert Atkins. If you'd like to know more about their nutritional approach (not just for weight loss, contrary to popular belief), see their web site at http://www.atkins.com/
This is a bit outside the bounds of where we started, but a lot of people don't understand what a huge difference it makes whether your system is a "winner take all" system or a proportional system. In a winner-take-all system, there is always going to be a strong tendency for people to choose (and identify with) one of two major parties, because a vote for anyone other than the top vote-getter (in each district) is essentially worthless as anything other than a protest vote. Groups which would otherwise attract minor support (10-20 percent of the voters, for instance) are going to vote for the major party which is closest to their positions, because they know that depriving that party of their votes would be an advantage for the other major party which is the worse choice from their point of view. In this way, it's very hard for a third party to EVER emerge with serious support.
In a proportional system, though, a group which attracts 10 percent of the overall vote will have 10 percent of the seats in the legislature. Because of this, there is an incentive to support minor parties if they truly reflect your views. Even if that party doesn't have enough votes in the legislature to pass any legislation, it is at least "at the table" when issues are discussed and the bigger parties have to make deals to win its votes.
To take my 10 percent example, let's assume that 10 percent of the voters all over the United States voted for the congressional candidate of the New Idea Party. Because the top vote-getter in each district wins off, the New Idea Party is left with zero votes in Congress. In the same situation if we had a proportional system, the New Idea Party would end up with 10 percent of the seats in Congress.
There are advantages and disadvantages of each system, of course. The proportional system is good for representing minority opinions and making it possible for new ideas and new voices to be heard. The disadvantage of the proportional system is that it can give tremendous power to minority parties when there are to larger power blocks competing for their support as part of a coalition. It also tends to give power to people with new and untried ideas fairly quickly. In the winner-take-all system, stability is the advantage. Radical new ideas must reach a very high threshold of acceptance before they have a chance of winning (by which time one of the major parties will probably have hijacked a watered-down version of the idea, preventing a "pure" form of the radical idea of gaining more traction. The disadvantage of winner-take-all is the flip side of that. It's hard for change to happen when the major entrenched parties get far off course.
Personally, I would tend to favor a proportional system, BUT I have to say that could be because 1) I'm a risk-taker, and 2) My political views are very much in the minority.
One thing that I've found interesting is that the UK has managed to have to major parties for many years without any of the splinter parties gaining major power. That's not the common pattern in countries with some form of parliamentary rule. Since you're in the UK, do you have any thoughts about why that's true?
I'm sorry, but you're SO ignorant about the way the process works that I can't begin to correct all of your misunderstandings. If you really and truly believe that it's even possible to give readers ALL of the available information every single day, you're completely unaware of how much information is out there.
Do you want to report what is on the menu at every restaurant in town every day? What about an attendance list of who made it to school at every school in town? What about the results of every medical test at every medical provider in town? What? You say those things aren't news under normal circumstances? Well, you've just made a judgment about what should be reported. At the most elementary level -- and as simplified absurd examples -- that's the first step of what a reporter learns to do.
There is far, far, far too much information to do what you propose. The reporter is a "gatekeeper of information," whether he likes it or not. Someone has to decide what's news and what is going to be included and what is going to be cut. SOMEONE MUST MAKES THOSE DECISIONS. Reporters and editors do it every day. You might not always agree with their decisions -- and I'm a huge critic of many decisions made in news organizations today -- but to say that nobody should be making those decisions betrays a lack of understanding of the volume of information available.
Maybe you're not clear about the difference between a reporter and an editor.
It's theoretically possible that an editor could be replaced in some instances by software, but not the reporter. The reporter doesn't have anything to start with -- no sentences for software to analyze. A reporter normally starts with some vague thing like a source in the city clerk's office telling him that some bogus expenditures are being put into the sanitation department budget for next year, but nobody really knows what's going on. It's about rumor and bits and pieces of evidence picked up almost from the wind. The reporter has to follow up on lots and lots of little wisps of nothing and figure out which ones are worth checking out and maybe writing about.
Software cannot do that. Until there is really perfect AI software -- which I think is so unlikely as to preclude reasonable speculation for the purpose of this conversation -- reporters won't be replaced by software.
But even BAD journalism requires abilities that software just doesn't have. Software can't have sources and the ability to call them on the phone. Software doesn't have the ability to differentiate between good information and patently false stuff. A bad journalist might write a sensational or even purely false story, but even doing THAT requires abilities that software can't have in anything like a forseeable future.
For you to say that this technology will someday replace reporters makes me think that you're clueless about what reporters do. Do you realize that the biggest parts of a reporter's job are gathering facts and making judgments about 1) which stories are worth reporting, 2) which are the relevant facts about a story and 3) who's lying and who's telling the truth about a story? The actual writing that you see is many times almost incidental to most of what a reporter does. You might not like the judgments that a reporter makes (and I could agree with that in many cases), but software can't go out into the world and talk to people and use judgment and intuition to find information to write about.
As an ex-reporter and editor, I find it laughable that anyone might think this technology will replace reporters. It's sort of like suggesting that machines that can read source code and interpret it can somehow figure out what new software people want and then write it. Both possibilities are equally insane.
You're right. I noticed that after I had posted, but I didn't bother to correct it.
Thanks for the link to the other test. While I don't happen to agree with all of their definitions, it's very well thought-out and produces useful results. Any such chart is only a model of reality, so none of them is going to be perfect in modeling the real world. This is an intellectually honest attempt at it, though, and it is MUCH better than the traditional one-dimensional scale that most people seem to think of.
Notice that I didn't make the same mistake again in that last sentence.:-)
One thing which was pointed out at the end of that test is that there is little philosophical difference between the Tories and Labour, as compared to the broader spectrum of beliefs. That same situation exists between many people in the two major U.S. parties. The biggest problem with most people's political thinking today is that it focuses on those two groups as the "extremes," and nothing outside of those two points is thought to exist. When people do that, they can't even think about other alternatives.
I've been in the midst of various libertarian groups long enough to know that you're mistaken. Cato is very consistently libertarian. As I said in another message, the people who run the organization probably don't CARE whether they money comes from people who are ideologically libertarian or just people whose views coincide in limited areas. And you're badly mistaken to believe that nobody who amasses a lot of money cares about individual freedom. I happen to personally know a few who do. They're they exception, but they exist.
If you want to claim that some of the people who fund Cato are giving money because it's pragmatic rather than that they are libertarian, that's most likely accurate. But to say that the organization itself isn't libertarian is just plain wrong. I've known too many of them personally to have any doubt about it.
You clearly don't have a clue what libertarians really are -- or what Cato is about. Accepting what People for the American Way has to say about ANY group that doesn't support them is like asking Satanists to delineate the differences between theist groups. It makes as much sense as grouping Unitarians and Pentacostals together. You're wrong. 100 percent. Some libertarians are former conservatives who have "discovered" social freedom, and some libertarians are former liberals who have "discovered" economic freedom. I know both kinds.
One of my political science professors back in college (a very liberal Democrat) admitted that the one thing he knew libertarians had going for them is that they were at least consistent, unlike both conservatives and liberals.
Just for the record, Republicans are just as disdainful of libertarians -- and just as clueless about them -- as you are.
I'm very familiar with Cato and its history. If you'll check the record, the organization has been extremely consistent with the underlying philosophy that it was created to espouse. I don't have a clue whether members of the John Hazen White family are truly libertarian or they just see it as a good business decision to help an organization which they see as helpful to a position they take. That's not relevant. The only thing that would be relevant -- or would make your implied smear reasonable -- would be if the organization flip-flopped on issues depending on who was funding it from year to year. That has not been the case. Cato has been very consistent with its state philosophy.
By your logic, no organization can be credible if anyone has ever given money to it who would be benefited by the organization's agenda succeeding. Cato's agenda is consistent and principled. I doubt the people running the place care whether the money they need to do their work comes from dedicated libertarians or self-interested businesspeople. The effect of the work is the same, and Cato's consistent record speaks for itself.
You either can't listen well or else your're mistaking Cato for someone else, because the organization is radically pro-individual and anti-state control. Or maybe you're just very confused about the meaning of the word, "fascists."
Slashdot Mirror
The spot aired on Jan. 22, 1984, the date of that year's Super Bowl.
The Quicktime version didn't work in Safari, but it worked fine in IE. Odd.
So NOW you're changing to an entirely different argument. First, you talk about how identical machines were programmed (apparently by evil Republicans) to deprive blacks of votes for Democrats. When it's pointed out that that's not the case, you completely ignore your previous ignorant statemant and move on to the next thing on your list. Can you not stick to the subject of just ONE of your lies (or just mistakes of ignorance?) before we debunk the next one?
LOTS of public officials are corrupt and will steal votes. I've seen a lot of it, both as a newspaper reporter and as a political consultant. But anybody who thinks that Republicans are more corrupt or dishonest than Democrats has a very, very serious blind spot.
Perhaps you should stick to nuclear physics. Perhaps you actually know something about that.
You've been reading way too much of the Weekly World News and other supermarket tabloids if you're ignorant enough to believe that machines were programmed to cheat black voters in this way. There is ZERO evidence to support this crazy notion, unless you're part of the left-wing equivalent of the black helicopter crowd.
LOCAL officials control these things, not some centralized state official who might have the power to do as you claim. To the extent that the machines in predominantly black areas were technologically inferior (a point which I'm not necessarily conceding), it is a reflection of decisions made by the local election officials. In the black areas, those officials are Democrats. In order to believe your crackpot idea, you have to believe that the Democrat election officials in those counties were trying to rig the system to give votes to Republicans.
I'm rarely dismissive about someone's intelligence just from such a short post, but your acceptance of this makes me question your ability to reason and to gather relevant facts.
I don't know whether this is what you're thinking of, but there are numerous cheap casette adapters you can use to plug an iPod (or other MP3 player) into your car's stereo system. I bought one at Radio Shack and it's worked fine for me with my iPod.
This question has been answered SO many times. Can we retire it? Apple doesn't see any need to support your favorite codec. Fine. Buy something that does. The end.
Whether you think Apple should support Ogg Vorbis or (like me) you don't think it matters, the issue has been beaten to death. Asking the same old thing again isn't even vaguely interesting. It's only modded that way because some people agree with you -- and that's not the purpose of moderation.
No, there are just TOO MANY subjects. What car do I buy? What toilet paper do I buy? What brand of washing machine? What kind of carpet do I put into my house? What baby food do I give my child? What hard drive is best? What type of roof is best for my house? Which school should my child attend? There are thousands upon thousands of decisions we make -- many of them much smaller than these -- and it's literally impossible to make a fully informed decision about all of them. People tend to take the easy way and choose "the leading brand" or what their friends buy. It just isn't possible to learn everything they need to know about everything.
And I'll guarantee that you do the same thing about some things, even if you don't realize it. We ALL do. You can't be an expert on everything. Besides, there are plenty of things you don't even know that would be of interest to you, because no one has ever articulated the benefits or let you know that something existed.
It's impossible for people to make educated decisions about everything they have to buy or consume. There is just too much to know -- too many choices to investigate. At some point, it becomes a matter of priorities. "Do I spend 24 hours a day studying technical journals and Consumer Reports or do I have a life?"
I run far more apps than the typical Mac OS X user, and I can guarantee that your father's Mac was not forced to do three or four updates/patches per day. Either one of you is lying or else it's an exaggeration to try to support a position.
I just checked my software update log, and I received a TOTAL of seven updates for the month through the Mac OS X software update system, the last one of which was on Dec. 19. If you want us to believe what you're saying about your father's system, show us the update log. But you won't do it, because that number of updates just don't exist.
What you describe isn't really about the "laziness of the public," but rather the laziness (or stupidity?) of the providers. It's not reasonable to expect the public to investigate the advantages of every new thing in every area and make educated decisions. People can only decide they want something when providers are explaining WHY they want something.
For instance, some automakers push things in their ads which don't explain a benefit to the public. I've never known what "dual overhead cams" are. I've never known why I should care that a car has 24 valves. I've never known why I should care about "independent front and rear suspension." I'm sure there is a benefit to all of these, but fewer and fewer people want to be mechanics in order to buy cars. We want to know about specific benefits, not about lists of technology that we don't really understand. We shouldn't have to learn about auto mechanics in order to decide whether we want a certain feature.
In the same way, consumers of IT products shouldn't have to know what 3G means, for instance. They just have to be sold on a network's ability to transmit a picture or whatever else it might mean to them. That's not laziness. That's simply reasonable in a world where no one can know everything.
You and other customers might see it that way, but the carrier is ONLY obligated to give you a certain number of minutes for that price. From a business point of view, the issue is whether the provider has limited his liability to having to give someone an unlimited supply at a flat rate. Just because you commit yourself to a higher number of minutes than you know you want doesn't mean it's a flat rate. It just means that you're willing to commit yourself to paying for more than you'll use -- in order to have a predictable bill. That's something like telling your grocery store that you'll pay them a flat $300 a week for your groceries -- even if you buy less -- but you'll still pay extra if you go over that amount. Obviously, that's a little bit of an exaggeration (and obviously there is a presumed discount built in for the phone user who commits to a higher number of minutes), but cell phone pricing is NOT an example of flat-rate pricing -- unless there is a carrier I'm not aware of who provides unlimited service for one price.
I was similarly hooked on caffeine until a few years ago. I used to drink so much diet Coke that the cashiers at the grocery store thought I was stocking up for a huge party every few days. I used to joke that Coke's stock would fall if I quit drinking the stuff. I HAD to have it all the time. Based on a lot of things, I decided I wanted to get it out of my system.
For me, there were two keys. First, I had to simply accept that I was going to feel lousy for several days -- and I did. I had horrible, pounding headaches while my body was de-toxing. The second key was to drink a LOT of water.
One of the things I realized in retrospect is that I had been dehydrating my body by drinking soft drinks instead of water. I had assumed the the water in the soft drinks would have the same effect as drinking water, but I've discovered (both from reading and experience) that that assumption was wrong. I now drink somewhere in the neighborhood of four or five liters of water every day. When I first started doing it, I had to go to the bathroom more often, but your body seems to adjust. You might also find that you feel your thirst more than you formerly did, and you realize that it's WATER you want instead of the caffeine.
One other factor, for me at least, is how much sugar or other carbohydrates I consume. I can't speak for everyone, but I KNOW that I feel much better and have lots more energy when I get sugar out of my system, too. In general, the way my body is "happiest" is when I'm eating according to the methods promoted by the Atkins Center, which was founded by the late diet doctor and nutritionist Dr. Robert Atkins. If you'd like to know more about their nutritional approach (not just for weight loss, contrary to popular belief), see their web site at http://www.atkins.com/
I sometimes make short videos to be shown in a church. The finished product is FAR too big for a CD. DVD is the only reasonable delivery medium.
This is a bit outside the bounds of where we started, but a lot of people don't understand what a huge difference it makes whether your system is a "winner take all" system or a proportional system. In a winner-take-all system, there is always going to be a strong tendency for people to choose (and identify with) one of two major parties, because a vote for anyone other than the top vote-getter (in each district) is essentially worthless as anything other than a protest vote. Groups which would otherwise attract minor support (10-20 percent of the voters, for instance) are going to vote for the major party which is closest to their positions, because they know that depriving that party of their votes would be an advantage for the other major party which is the worse choice from their point of view. In this way, it's very hard for a third party to EVER emerge with serious support.
In a proportional system, though, a group which attracts 10 percent of the overall vote will have 10 percent of the seats in the legislature. Because of this, there is an incentive to support minor parties if they truly reflect your views. Even if that party doesn't have enough votes in the legislature to pass any legislation, it is at least "at the table" when issues are discussed and the bigger parties have to make deals to win its votes.
To take my 10 percent example, let's assume that 10 percent of the voters all over the United States voted for the congressional candidate of the New Idea Party. Because the top vote-getter in each district wins off, the New Idea Party is left with zero votes in Congress. In the same situation if we had a proportional system, the New Idea Party would end up with 10 percent of the seats in Congress.
There are advantages and disadvantages of each system, of course. The proportional system is good for representing minority opinions and making it possible for new ideas and new voices to be heard. The disadvantage of the proportional system is that it can give tremendous power to minority parties when there are to larger power blocks competing for their support as part of a coalition. It also tends to give power to people with new and untried ideas fairly quickly. In the winner-take-all system, stability is the advantage. Radical new ideas must reach a very high threshold of acceptance before they have a chance of winning (by which time one of the major parties will probably have hijacked a watered-down version of the idea, preventing a "pure" form of the radical idea of gaining more traction. The disadvantage of winner-take-all is the flip side of that. It's hard for change to happen when the major entrenched parties get far off course.
Personally, I would tend to favor a proportional system, BUT I have to say that could be because 1) I'm a risk-taker, and 2) My political views are very much in the minority.
One thing that I've found interesting is that the UK has managed to have to major parties for many years without any of the splinter parties gaining major power. That's not the common pattern in countries with some form of parliamentary rule. Since you're in the UK, do you have any thoughts about why that's true?
I'm sorry, but you're SO ignorant about the way the process works that I can't begin to correct all of your misunderstandings. If you really and truly believe that it's even possible to give readers ALL of the available information every single day, you're completely unaware of how much information is out there.
Do you want to report what is on the menu at every restaurant in town every day? What about an attendance list of who made it to school at every school in town? What about the results of every medical test at every medical provider in town? What? You say those things aren't news under normal circumstances? Well, you've just made a judgment about what should be reported. At the most elementary level -- and as simplified absurd examples -- that's the first step of what a reporter learns to do.
There is far, far, far too much information to do what you propose. The reporter is a "gatekeeper of information," whether he likes it or not. Someone has to decide what's news and what is going to be included and what is going to be cut. SOMEONE MUST MAKES THOSE DECISIONS. Reporters and editors do it every day. You might not always agree with their decisions -- and I'm a huge critic of many decisions made in news organizations today -- but to say that nobody should be making those decisions betrays a lack of understanding of the volume of information available.
Reporters would typically be happy if editors didn't exist, because they tend to believe their copy doesn't ever need ANY changes. ;-)
Maybe you're not clear about the difference between a reporter and an editor.
It's theoretically possible that an editor could be replaced in some instances by software, but not the reporter. The reporter doesn't have anything to start with -- no sentences for software to analyze. A reporter normally starts with some vague thing like a source in the city clerk's office telling him that some bogus expenditures are being put into the sanitation department budget for next year, but nobody really knows what's going on. It's about rumor and bits and pieces of evidence picked up almost from the wind. The reporter has to follow up on lots and lots of little wisps of nothing and figure out which ones are worth checking out and maybe writing about.
Software cannot do that. Until there is really perfect AI software -- which I think is so unlikely as to preclude reasonable speculation for the purpose of this conversation -- reporters won't be replaced by software.
But even BAD journalism requires abilities that software just doesn't have. Software can't have sources and the ability to call them on the phone. Software doesn't have the ability to differentiate between good information and patently false stuff. A bad journalist might write a sensational or even purely false story, but even doing THAT requires abilities that software can't have in anything like a forseeable future.
For you to say that this technology will someday replace reporters makes me think that you're clueless about what reporters do. Do you realize that the biggest parts of a reporter's job are gathering facts and making judgments about 1) which stories are worth reporting, 2) which are the relevant facts about a story and 3) who's lying and who's telling the truth about a story? The actual writing that you see is many times almost incidental to most of what a reporter does. You might not like the judgments that a reporter makes (and I could agree with that in many cases), but software can't go out into the world and talk to people and use judgment and intuition to find information to write about.
As an ex-reporter and editor, I find it laughable that anyone might think this technology will replace reporters. It's sort of like suggesting that machines that can read source code and interpret it can somehow figure out what new software people want and then write it. Both possibilities are equally insane.
Educate yourself about different political ideas sometime. The change will do you good.
You're right. I noticed that after I had posted, but I didn't bother to correct it.
:-)
Thanks for the link to the other test. While I don't happen to agree with all of their definitions, it's very well thought-out and produces useful results. Any such chart is only a model of reality, so none of them is going to be perfect in modeling the real world. This is an intellectually honest attempt at it, though, and it is MUCH better than the traditional one-dimensional scale that most people seem to think of.
Notice that I didn't make the same mistake again in that last sentence.
One thing which was pointed out at the end of that test is that there is little philosophical difference between the Tories and Labour, as compared to the broader spectrum of beliefs. That same situation exists between many people in the two major U.S. parties. The biggest problem with most people's political thinking today is that it focuses on those two groups as the "extremes," and nothing outside of those two points is thought to exist. When people do that, they can't even think about other alternatives.
I've been in the midst of various libertarian groups long enough to know that you're mistaken. Cato is very consistently libertarian. As I said in another message, the people who run the organization probably don't CARE whether they money comes from people who are ideologically libertarian or just people whose views coincide in limited areas. And you're badly mistaken to believe that nobody who amasses a lot of money cares about individual freedom. I happen to personally know a few who do. They're they exception, but they exist.
If you want to claim that some of the people who fund Cato are giving money because it's pragmatic rather than that they are libertarian, that's most likely accurate. But to say that the organization itself isn't libertarian is just plain wrong. I've known too many of them personally to have any doubt about it.
You clearly don't have a clue what libertarians really are -- or what Cato is about. Accepting what People for the American Way has to say about ANY group that doesn't support them is like asking Satanists to delineate the differences between theist groups. It makes as much sense as grouping Unitarians and Pentacostals together. You're wrong. 100 percent. Some libertarians are former conservatives who have "discovered" social freedom, and some libertarians are former liberals who have "discovered" economic freedom. I know both kinds.
One of my political science professors back in college (a very liberal Democrat) admitted that the one thing he knew libertarians had going for them is that they were at least consistent, unlike both conservatives and liberals.
Just for the record, Republicans are just as disdainful of libertarians -- and just as clueless about them -- as you are.
I'm very familiar with Cato and its history. If you'll check the record, the organization has been extremely consistent with the underlying philosophy that it was created to espouse. I don't have a clue whether members of the John Hazen White family are truly libertarian or they just see it as a good business decision to help an organization which they see as helpful to a position they take. That's not relevant. The only thing that would be relevant -- or would make your implied smear reasonable -- would be if the organization flip-flopped on issues depending on who was funding it from year to year. That has not been the case. Cato has been very consistent with its state philosophy.
By your logic, no organization can be credible if anyone has ever given money to it who would be benefited by the organization's agenda succeeding. Cato's agenda is consistent and principled. I doubt the people running the place care whether the money they need to do their work comes from dedicated libertarians or self-interested businesspeople. The effect of the work is the same, and Cato's consistent record speaks for itself.
You either can't listen well or else your're mistaking Cato for someone else, because the organization is radically pro-individual and anti-state control. Or maybe you're just very confused about the meaning of the word, "fascists."