By the way, corporations are hardly capitalist institutions. Capitalism is driven by competition. Corporations are central-planning organizations. At least the ones that most people think of as "corporations" -- the large ones -- the ones that are in s&p500 or have a hope of being.
A period of economic development in the US that occurred while Europe was still rebuilding after WWII is hardly a fair comparison. It's also smacks of attempting a correlation argument. The fact that certain policies coincided with a period of development hardly presents an argument for those policies. This being slashdot, I will insist that it is the technological discoveries (and I mean some specific technologies rather than level of general technological engagement of society) that is responsible for the increase of standard of living -- not social policies which may have contributed and may have slowed down. As for your lamentations about hope, here's my essay (I haven't fixed the typos because I want to preserve the date of modification so that it's clear that it was written before the bandwagon started): http://slashdot.org/~superwiz/journal/169837
you are confusing libertarians with social conservatives. they are diametrically opposed sides of the conservative "movement". which is pretty much a 2-dimensional scale (as opposed to 1-dimensional left---center---right scale) is the only way to describe one's political standing.
Only when they are spent on maintaining civilization. Hoping that higher taxes will take care of all that is broken is like hoping that eating will cure every disease that one has.
Ok, but jokes aside, War Games has already discussed all the sides of the issue. At least all the issues that come up with this particular vector of attack.
Compute the variance of the Fourier coefficients within each block and then calculate the average for each image. The better quality image should have lower variance. If a block has a lot of edges, then the higher frequency coefficients should have much higher values than the lower ones. If a block is uniform, then the lower frequency coefficients should have higher values. So if you have a good image, it will be easy to see the difference between uniform parts and edges. That is the coefficients of the most "important" frequency within a block will be higher. If your have a poor quality image, then not.
But the question is, what would a forward-thinking businessman do to pay the bills?
First, syndicate information you gather. And second, get yourself proprietary browser plugins made which would allow to completly control delivery (so that you can make ads as intrusive as you see fit). Third, (if second fails) redesign your delivery so that it is intertwined into your content.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree about the cause and effect of the current consolidation-proliferation. From what I saw, the proliferation happened first (even before the Internet) and is now followed by a necessary consolidation caused by the fact that poor quality MSM have little to offer beyond what Internet commentary can offer. You seem to think that consolidation has already happened and is now followed by proliferation on the Internet. Experiences differ. We'll have to disagree on the timing.
As for the comment on ownership of media being responsible for their message, I would have to disagree with that strongly. Before the Internet there were many sources which were fairly neutral. I am not sure I can agree with calling of WSJ right leaning. They were serving a niche as the name unambiguously states. The left or right bias is only appropriately claimed when a source attempts to present itself as a neutral news source and then develops sudden sins of omission and whatever other tricks a propagandist would use. WSJ were presenting themselves as serving a financial community, so (by the virtue of this fact) they didn't really make the claim of being neutral.
Er, no, that won't verify that source X hasn't told you all the true details, since source Y claiming that those are the details won't prove that they are, in fact, true. Sometimes, regardless of source X claim that Jeff Goldbloom is dead, source Y hasn't told you that detail because, in fact, Jeff Goldbloom is not dead.
I am talking about a different presentation format. The fact that certain details will be false is ok. What's troubling right now is that most sources make outrageous conclusions without presenting the facts on which they base them or the reasoning they used to make them. With an expandable format, an interested observer would be able to see exactly what the news presenter is basing their claim on. If some of the details turn out to be false later on, that's ok. It's just that right now, we have no idea what those details are. It's tough to communicate exactly what I mean without an example, but news is so inflammatory that I am certain that any example that I would bring up to show what I mean by the "level of detail" would cause a shouting session.
In general, trying to define left vs right is very difficult in the US if you go back more than 30 years, so it's only meaningful to talk about what's which way any particular news source was leaning post Nixon.
That's already happened. There a far fewer companies owning TV stations, or newspapers, or radio stations than there were a decade or two ago.
I am sure you know that you tried to smear the difference between news sources and companies owning news. There is no reasonable need for so many 24-hour news sources.
There is no "proliferation", and if there had been, then virtually by definition it would have increased the degree of competition.
They are competing for eyeballs. Most of them are repackaging the same piece of news that they get from news agencies. The bankruptcies will produce is fewer repackagers and more investigators. Think of it, if you will, as the mid 90's website crisis -- with many web "masters" and very little content.
Actually, the news media has seen wave after wave of mergers, layoffs, closures of outlets, and other aspects of contraction and consolidation.
Hopefully, they are not done. There is still too many talking heads and not enough information delivered. Times Square used to be lined up with newspaper companies at some point. By the time all the small ones went out of business and the NY Times controlled the whole square, it became a top-quality newspaper. The same thing is happening now with all venues of MSM news research and delivery. Until it gets cut throat to the point where news investigators see other investigators as enemies (going for their bread), the news will remain an obsequious love fest with their favorite special interests.
I make it a habit to get my news from at least two different sources, and there is no question that there is left wing and right wing media. As long the news business can afford to be an advertisement for their perspective interests, they'll keep bleeding. They haven't even reached the point where a truly competitive independent sources emerge and eat their lunch because they report the news. Heck, we only got to the point where we got a right-wing media source in the past 15 years. The days when news businesses are in cut throat competition and can't afford to omit what's inconvenient are hardly here yet.
On the print side, its not quite to the point where the entire newspaper industry is a wire service with different local branding, but close enough as makes little difference.
I can see it getting to the point where a mom-n-pop news agency beats out both AP and Reuters because the technical costs are so little that they can afford to build their own sale/delivery system. At that point they can just buy up news tips and employ people to check them. The competition among agencies is where it's probably going to go. Current agencies won't survive because they rely on their investment in infrastructure and exchange of political access for goodwill.
We haven't even seen the beginning of the time when small operations publish news tailored for web-delivery -- with content layered by level of interest wherein those interested can see ALL the investigated details while those less interested only read the "front page". This type of news delivery doesn't even exist yet.
At some point the claim "news X hasn't told you all the details" will be easily verifiable because anyone who wants to look will be able to click through and see all the details that were shown. Suffice it to say that until news business owners feel paranoid about getting the story, more layoffs are justified.
The immorality of the choice to run an ad blocker is not in denying the revenue. It's in that such blocker encourages development and proliferation of proprietary locked lock-in media. At the moment there is a good-faith understanding that those download a news page might see an ad. If that understanding stops being justified, news providers will be forced to insist on closed plugins that completely control the browsing functionality. Proliferation of such plugins will deny majority of users a more comfortable viewing experience. So those few who don't demonstrate good-faith even though they take what's given under good-faith arrangement screw everyone else up. Tragedy of the commons, prisoner's dilemma, describe it by any paradigm you wish, but asking everyone to pay a huge price so that you could skip on a tiny expense is largely considered immoral.
You forgot to mention going out of business of most main-stream media (aka consolidation). So that only the intelligent news reporters and news sources would stay in business. The proliferation of MSM has reduced competitiveness of news reporting. Which has reduced quality. This is purely symbolic, but I spotted 2 typos on NYTimes front page (front page!!!) within the last year. If they are this careful with their front page, you can imagine how careful they are with they fact checking and analysis. There is simply too much job security in that business. When we moved from having 80% of people working on farms to 5% of people working on farms, which farmers do you think stayed employed? The least competent ones?
Expect them to give much, much less. The change to current tax system has not only increased the tax rate by 3% on the top bracket. It also removed tax-deductions for charitable contributions by those people. Which means that it will cost those in the upper tax bracket close to 40% more now to donate to charity. You can expect donations from them to drop by the same amount. And they are doing it during the the times when the number of people in need of charity is expected to balloon.
I can't figure out why you were modded Troll while GP was modded +5 insightful.
Both comments were ad hominems. But the party in power is left of the party out of power. So the left doesn't get to sling ad hominems at the moment without looking like bullies.
It wasn't much of a strategy. It was the natural extension of LBJ's capturing of the black vote with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. LBJ was quoted as saying at some point that by passing this act he would get (insert expletive here) to vote for Democrats for the next 30 years. Anyone who wouldn't go after the knee jerk vote would be a political amateur. And Nixon was anything but an amateur.
I think the best way to understand US politics for those not living in the US is to realize that Americans view politics as a religious exercise. They view affiliation to their own political philosophy as an exercise in faith -- rejecting facts that go against it and keeping at hearts the facts that support it. This is equally true for both right and left. And the judges (as the final arbiters on what the law will say) are viewed similar to the way the Pope is viewed by Catholics (as the final arbiter on what the dogma should be).
If only someone would let Chris know that he is a libertarian (and the rest of the people who agree with him), we would have a one party system and both parties in power would have a rude awakening.
Slashdot Mirror
finding a way to pass off their gaming as "academic research into diversity" takes more than mere chutzpah. it takes talent.
I do hope you are kidding. Your argument for greater government control is that during the times of absolute government control life was worse?
By the way, corporations are hardly capitalist institutions. Capitalism is driven by competition. Corporations are central-planning organizations. At least the ones that most people think of as "corporations" -- the large ones -- the ones that are in s&p500 or have a hope of being.
A period of economic development in the US that occurred while Europe was still rebuilding after WWII is hardly a fair comparison. It's also smacks of attempting a correlation argument. The fact that certain policies coincided with a period of development hardly presents an argument for those policies. This being slashdot, I will insist that it is the technological discoveries (and I mean some specific technologies rather than level of general technological engagement of society) that is responsible for the increase of standard of living -- not social policies which may have contributed and may have slowed down. As for your lamentations about hope, here's my essay (I haven't fixed the typos because I want to preserve the date of modification so that it's clear that it was written before the bandwagon started): http://slashdot.org/~superwiz/journal/169837
you are confusing libertarians with social conservatives. they are diametrically opposed sides of the conservative "movement". which is pretty much a 2-dimensional scale (as opposed to 1-dimensional left---center---right scale) is the only way to describe one's political standing.
Taxes are the price of civilization.
Only when they are spent on maintaining civilization. Hoping that higher taxes will take care of all that is broken is like hoping that eating will cure every disease that one has.
Think education is too expensive? Try ignorance and you'll find out what "expensive" means.
What if we are trying both? Higher cost of education and higher level of ignorance (through lower academic accomplishment)?
Low taxes can have high costs.
So can high spendings.
Oh? Rational thought was essentially invented by Aristotle -- the tutor of Alexander.
Ok, but jokes aside, War Games has already discussed all the sides of the issue. At least all the issues that come up with this particular vector of attack.
a nice game of chess?
So their ulterior motive was complying with GPL? Those sinister mofos!
Compute the variance of the Fourier coefficients within each block and then calculate the average for each image. The better quality image should have lower variance. If a block has a lot of edges, then the higher frequency coefficients should have much higher values than the lower ones. If a block is uniform, then the lower frequency coefficients should have higher values. So if you have a good image, it will be easy to see the difference between uniform parts and edges. That is the coefficients of the most "important" frequency within a block will be higher. If your have a poor quality image, then not.
But the question is, what would a forward-thinking businessman do to pay the bills?
First, syndicate information you gather. And second, get yourself proprietary browser plugins made which would allow to completly control delivery (so that you can make ads as intrusive as you see fit). Third, (if second fails) redesign your delivery so that it is intertwined into your content.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree about the cause and effect of the current consolidation-proliferation. From what I saw, the proliferation happened first (even before the Internet) and is now followed by a necessary consolidation caused by the fact that poor quality MSM have little to offer beyond what Internet commentary can offer. You seem to think that consolidation has already happened and is now followed by proliferation on the Internet. Experiences differ. We'll have to disagree on the timing.
As for the comment on ownership of media being responsible for their message, I would have to disagree with that strongly. Before the Internet there were many sources which were fairly neutral. I am not sure I can agree with calling of WSJ right leaning. They were serving a niche as the name unambiguously states. The left or right bias is only appropriately claimed when a source attempts to present itself as a neutral news source and then develops sudden sins of omission and whatever other tricks a propagandist would use. WSJ were presenting themselves as serving a financial community, so (by the virtue of this fact) they didn't really make the claim of being neutral.
Er, no, that won't verify that source X hasn't told you all the true details, since source Y claiming that those are the details won't prove that they are, in fact, true. Sometimes, regardless of source X claim that Jeff Goldbloom is dead, source Y hasn't told you that detail because, in fact, Jeff Goldbloom is not dead.
I am talking about a different presentation format. The fact that certain details will be false is ok. What's troubling right now is that most sources make outrageous conclusions without presenting the facts on which they base them or the reasoning they used to make them. With an expandable format, an interested observer would be able to see exactly what the news presenter is basing their claim on. If some of the details turn out to be false later on, that's ok. It's just that right now, we have no idea what those details are. It's tough to communicate exactly what I mean without an example, but news is so inflammatory that I am certain that any example that I would bring up to show what I mean by the "level of detail" would cause a shouting session.
In general, trying to define left vs right is very difficult in the US if you go back more than 30 years, so it's only meaningful to talk about what's which way any particular news source was leaning post Nixon.
That's already happened. There a far fewer companies owning TV stations, or newspapers, or radio stations than there were a decade or two ago.
I am sure you know that you tried to smear the difference between news sources and companies owning news. There is no reasonable need for so many 24-hour news sources.
There is no "proliferation", and if there had been, then virtually by definition it would have increased the degree of competition.
They are competing for eyeballs. Most of them are repackaging the same piece of news that they get from news agencies. The bankruptcies will produce is fewer repackagers and more investigators. Think of it, if you will, as the mid 90's website crisis -- with many web "masters" and very little content.
Actually, the news media has seen wave after wave of mergers, layoffs, closures of outlets, and other aspects of contraction and consolidation.
Hopefully, they are not done. There is still too many talking heads and not enough information delivered. Times Square used to be lined up with newspaper companies at some point. By the time all the small ones went out of business and the NY Times controlled the whole square, it became a top-quality newspaper. The same thing is happening now with all venues of MSM news research and delivery. Until it gets cut throat to the point where news investigators see other investigators as enemies (going for their bread), the news will remain an obsequious love fest with their favorite special interests.
I make it a habit to get my news from at least two different sources, and there is no question that there is left wing and right wing media. As long the news business can afford to be an advertisement for their perspective interests, they'll keep bleeding. They haven't even reached the point where a truly competitive independent sources emerge and eat their lunch because they report the news. Heck, we only got to the point where we got a right-wing media source in the past 15 years. The days when news businesses are in cut throat competition and can't afford to omit what's inconvenient are hardly here yet.
On the print side, its not quite to the point where the entire newspaper industry is a wire service with different local branding, but close enough as makes little difference.
I can see it getting to the point where a mom-n-pop news agency beats out both AP and Reuters because the technical costs are so little that they can afford to build their own sale/delivery system. At that point they can just buy up news tips and employ people to check them. The competition among agencies is where it's probably going to go. Current agencies won't survive because they rely on their investment in infrastructure and exchange of political access for goodwill.
We haven't even seen the beginning of the time when small operations publish news tailored for web-delivery -- with content layered by level of interest wherein those interested can see ALL the investigated details while those less interested only read the "front page". This type of news delivery doesn't even exist yet.
At some point the claim "news X hasn't told you all the details" will be easily verifiable because anyone who wants to look will be able to click through and see all the details that were shown. Suffice it to say that until news business owners feel paranoid about getting the story, more layoffs are justified.
False dichotomy.
Not if we allow for a (plausible) assumption that they will follow the path of least resistance by using one of the already existing business models.
The immorality of the choice to run an ad blocker is not in denying the revenue. It's in that such blocker encourages development and proliferation of proprietary locked lock-in media. At the moment there is a good-faith understanding that those download a news page might see an ad. If that understanding stops being justified, news providers will be forced to insist on closed plugins that completely control the browsing functionality. Proliferation of such plugins will deny majority of users a more comfortable viewing experience. So those few who don't demonstrate good-faith even though they take what's given under good-faith arrangement screw everyone else up. Tragedy of the commons, prisoner's dilemma, describe it by any paradigm you wish, but asking everyone to pay a huge price so that you could skip on a tiny expense is largely considered immoral.
You forgot to mention going out of business of most main-stream media (aka consolidation). So that only the intelligent news reporters and news sources would stay in business. The proliferation of MSM has reduced competitiveness of news reporting. Which has reduced quality. This is purely symbolic, but I spotted 2 typos on NYTimes front page (front page!!!) within the last year. If they are this careful with their front page, you can imagine how careful they are with they fact checking and analysis. There is simply too much job security in that business. When we moved from having 80% of people working on farms to 5% of people working on farms, which farmers do you think stayed employed? The least competent ones?
Thanks! That's a good source of info. So it's only 7% tax on charitable contributions. Still a reduction, but not quite so drastic.
Expect them to give much, much less. The change to current tax system has not only increased the tax rate by 3% on the top bracket. It also removed tax-deductions for charitable contributions by those people. Which means that it will cost those in the upper tax bracket close to 40% more now to donate to charity. You can expect donations from them to drop by the same amount. And they are doing it during the the times when the number of people in need of charity is expected to balloon.
I can't figure out why you were modded Troll while GP was modded +5 insightful.
Both comments were ad hominems. But the party in power is left of the party out of power. So the left doesn't get to sling ad hominems at the moment without looking like bullies.
It wasn't much of a strategy. It was the natural extension of LBJ's capturing of the black vote with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. LBJ was quoted as saying at some point that by passing this act he would get (insert expletive here) to vote for Democrats for the next 30 years. Anyone who wouldn't go after the knee jerk vote would be a political amateur. And Nixon was anything but an amateur.
I think the best way to understand US politics for those not living in the US is to realize that Americans view politics as a religious exercise. They view affiliation to their own political philosophy as an exercise in faith -- rejecting facts that go against it and keeping at hearts the facts that support it. This is equally true for both right and left. And the judges (as the final arbiters on what the law will say) are viewed similar to the way the Pope is viewed by Catholics (as the final arbiter on what the dogma should be).
If only someone would let Chris know that he is a libertarian (and the rest of the people who agree with him), we would have a one party system and both parties in power would have a rude awakening.