Sorry, though, I can't buy into the "tyranny of the masses" theory of why self-important power mongerers secretly do things that can destroy our civilization. The only reason to keep anything secret from the masses is because you know it's wrong and will get you into a situation where you will have to give up your power.
I totally agree with everything you've said, and I'll go you a tinfoil hat further. Never underestimate the censorship effect that the money and legislation combo has in the entertainment industry.
It's much more subtle than fining Howard Stern a million dollars for talking about poop. All of these billion-dollar publishers, as a by-product of wanting to increase their profit margin, make sure that everything that is exposed to the "masses" is cleansed enough to exist in a tepid, unintellectual, unemotional bubble that is pallatible for John Q. Public.
Independents are free from this limitation of having to conform to profit-proven mass appeal, and so can actually break out of the cliches and say something. The fact that mass duplication and distribution is literally a click away spits right in the face of these corporate content filterers, because it might eat into their business; it spits in the face of legislators because someone might actually have--through their artistic vision--valid criticisms of the way things are, and potentially reach a global market of humanity.
So publishers and legislators have a much deeper connection than just money. They have their vision of the world--which not so subtly tips the scales to their advantage--on the line.
Privacy is a "luxury"??? You've got to be fscking kidding me! Are you the kind of person who thinks that the US Constitution *gives* you rights rather than *limits the power of government*, too???
As with any RIGHT, when I trespass upon another human being, I deserve to lose my right to privacy where a legal investigation needs to take place so that they can prove me guilty. Beyond that, I can't think of any reason that my personal data should not be under my full control and be sold uncontrollably under my nose.
See, when the right to privacy is gone, it will usher in a new era of state-defined criminal offenses that have no victims.
You read the "Anarchist Cookbook"? You must be a terrorist. See you in military prison.
You bought a six pack of beer on a weeknight? You must be a drunk. You're fired!
Luxury???? Privacy is an understood subset of freedom. I am free to do what I want, and it is none of your fscking business unless I trespass upon you. If privacy is a "luxury" to be tampered with, does that mean that the Law is meant to *prevent* crime (rather than *punish* those who break the Law)?
I see that you've recently converted to Islam. That means you're likely to want to blow stuff up for your jihad. You're under arrest.
Privacy is the glue of a free society. Any lesser designation for the importance of privacy is simply opening the door for a police state. In a police state, the law is designed to dictate your behavior to ensure it is "right." Therefore it is necessary to negate the importance of privacy so that all perceived negative behaviors can be curbed. In a free state, the law is designed to punish wrongdoers, so that those with poor judgment who abuse their free will can be weeded out.
One, and several. I would hardly compare Pokemon cards with audio/visual entertainment. As an ex-avid card collector, I knew what to expect from sitting down with a stack of cards and a couple of buddies. Cards is cards, and there isn't really a substitute for cards as a medium of entertainment.
When it comes to audio/visual entertainment such as video/dvd/television, there is simply no *need* for a partial download scheme like this. There are too many suitable substitutes that will give children the instant gratification that they seek.
Ha! Unless DVDs and Cable TV disappear, I really can't see any child being even remotely interested in "incremental" content.
Even if the kid ate at McD's every single day, they'd have eaten three meals, had a stomach ache, and only been able to watch 30 minutes of some shitty watered down disney fairy tale!! All this instead of sitting in front of the tube stuffing his face with TV dinners and twinkies??
I think the most notable change that I've seen during my lifetime so far-- I remember pre-cable-tv days-- is that things such as language and images have increasingly become shorthand. This has enabled the average person to recall zillions of phrases and their associated corporate sponsors, maybe. Or learn specialized shorthand, such as that found in chat rooms or cell-phone text messaging. Video games at best have taught people how to research cheats.
There are zillions of pieces of knowledge that it has become necessary to know in order to perform daily tasks with any given technology. I fail to see how any of this could equate to making anyone "smarter"? In fact, the "convenience" of modern living--which many people probably mistake as a basic human need--has taken away the necessity to even know how anything really works. I would hardly consider this conducive to being "smarter."
I would equate the argument of this book--that pop culture is actually making us smarter--to saying "We created our own parallel reality. Look how good we are at knowing the details about our own parallel reality that we've created."
This all seems like everyone will now be either a victim of shills, like Truman in the Truman Show, or in on the joke and peddling their warez via product placement. In this case, though, the product is being "placed" in plain old reality.
I don't know about anyone else, I but I would consider such a shill to be a horror of a human being. It's bad enough hanging out with someone who is overly enthusiastic about something that they feel the need to push; but someone who gets paid to do it?
The US government is publicly owned by its citizens. It is not (despite all appearances) a corporation. Therefore, we own the presidential seal. Furthermore, satire/parody are the most important types of protected free speech, along with criticism of the government. Humorless people should "know better" about what the hell they are reading; anyone who takes everything they read at face value, without analysis, is probably more dangerous to society than any terrorist who will ever come along.
Greed is not a survival trait or instinct. By its definition, it is the want of excess. Survival depends on having a basic number of minimal needs met in order to maintain your life. Most people (I'm an American) I know have essentially been brainwashed into confusing their WANTS with their SURVIVAL NEEDS--hence the inability to go 5 seconds without television or a cell phone.
Re:guns don't do the shot by theiselves, you know
on
Google Terror Threat
·
· Score: 1
>> It is not nation vs. nation, hell, it is not even human vs. human
You raise an interesting issue.
Please explain where the line is between "murder" (which is human vs. human killing) and "war" (which is nation-sanctioned killing). I would argue that terrorism and war are both by-products of large nation-states.
I, as a singular human being, am quite content to go to work and make a living and have shelter and food. My nation, however, makes it impossible for me to live without having to worry about the threat of violence at a scale to which it is impossible for me to be responsible.
I don't want your big French Fry I don't want your car I don't want to buy no soap From no washed-up movie star You are so much louder Than the show I wanna hear With your sugarless gum Gee, but I'm dumb Non-alcoholic beer It's enough to make a grown man Blow up his own TV Quit hollerin' at me Quit hollerin' at me
I burned a WMA from a CD of an original song from the band I'm in, and the CD Database determined that our song was Track 1 from L.A. Guns' Hollywood Vampires! I am not a member of L.A. Guns--in case I had to spell it out.;)
I'm curious to know how the hell it determined this information? Do other multimedia identification schemes work on the same technology? Will I eventually have to purchase a license to be able to give my own music a genuinely "unique id" and to make it playable? even by myself, the creator??
>> being completely peaceful will get you run over
"Completely" peaceful would mean that there are no @ssholes to run you over. I believe that is the point of the saying "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." War is not a necessary evil of civilization; it is a game played by people who rely on a submissive populace to fight for them so that they can get and retain power.
I find "irony" in the fact that you are trivializing the concept of an Orwellian society. You almost seem unaware that that has NEGATIVE connotations. The fact that foisting that type of society upon US citizens doesn't help the terrorists is irrelevant. Rather, the shame lies in the reactionary short-sighted solutions that politicians love to funnel zillions of dollars into as a direct result of terrorist actions.
Perhaps that is the sentiment behind the common saying "If you ___, then the terrorists have won." Perhaps they have not achieved their "goals," but they are succeeding in completely disrupting ordinary citizens' lives.
Your point is well taken. There are two sides to this.
1. Where was the technician looking that he found these files? It seems to me that unless the computer owner's desktop wallpaper were kiddie porn, there is really no good way for the technician to have stumbled across the pictures. So, the technician was up to something sleazy. How do we even know that the technician didn't print out the pics and jerk off to them before reporting it to the police?
2. Once the photos were discovered, the truth was out there on the table. So yes, the computer owner deserves what he gets. I would temper this attitude by pointing out that there probably aren't many adults without some kind of skeletons in their closets. So we should absolutely be vigilant about guarding against these types of attacks on our privacy so that we* don't end up down the slippery slope of self-righteously assassinating each other's characters.
* "We" of course meaning "commoners"; politicians do it for a living and make out quite well.
The real issue is that no matter what, when people *perceive* that others have authority over them, they will tend to obey even the most horrible of orders. The perception of authority in Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments (sorry, it's not described in the wikipedia link but I don't have time to find it) stemmed from scientists wearing lab coats.
The military by nature is authoritarian... Not only are soldiers already inclined to obey authority, but they are also explicitly taught to obey authority. (I am not a soldier btw, so please excuse the oversimplification, etc. etc.)
Hey, in no way, shape, or form should my grade school child, in a public school, be left with the "decision" of creationism vs. evolution, any more so than she should be left with the decision of whether 2+2=5 or 2+2=4. There is just no place for creationism or intelligent design in a secular educational curiculum.
Scientific curricula is/should be/has always been based on the INFORMED DECISIONS and experiments and rigorous testing of SCIENTISTS. Evolutionary theory is a legitimate scientific curriculum. ID/creationism is based on religious dogma and has no place in a secular education.
If you are concerned that the teaching of intelligent design is lacking in your child's education, then teach him that on your own dime.
I've been using the Internet/WWW for 10+ years now, and I've come to the conclusion that I just don't care about this type of start page.
In the beginning, for me, I was way more interested in finding new stuff than I was in habitually browsing to any one site; there weren't many to browse to anyway--maybe CNN and Yahoo. Now, due to RSS being directly in the browser, I think the need for this type of start page is gone.
Does anyone really care about having a start page like this? I'm really want to know; I'm not trying to be a troll or anything...
I've been wondering if the issue isn't simpler than all of this legal wrangling? What I mean is that, whatever has happened all throughout history, we only have 1) evidence of things through artifacts, interpreted by those who find and study them, and 2) the written word, by those who research, then try to wrap up "facts" in a coherant package.
Technology such as the internet archive now exists to automatically, systematically, and rather thoroughly store very specific artifacts (old web pages). These artifacts happen to also be the written word. The complication is that much of that written word (that the legal system and corporations care about) is propaganda which, by its very nature, is not 100% true. What is true from a historical perspective, though, is that it existed as a part of the Internet/WWW which, in turn, is a huge part of our society and culture.
So do we view it in the context of an accurate historical representation of a body of knowledge that existed at a given snapshot of time, which is a decent encapsulated version of "truth," which is theoretically what a good justice system should be rooted in? Or, do we blatantly use outmoded, weasel-ish legal wranglings to suppress what is, indeed, truth that is relevant to deciding a given court case?
If we choose the latter, what does that say about the integrity of our justice system?
Thank you, radish. I cannot over emphasize how absolutely happy I am to see this sentiment echoed. I hear these news pieces about anti-abortion protestors who are against their tax money being used to fund stem cell research, etc., and I just can't believe their arrogance. Pouring billions of tax dollars per day into waging war is okay, but funding research that will eventually benefit mankind is not? Riiiiiiiight.
First of all, like any other job, some people are fit for military duty and some aren't. In a free country, if you are so inclined, you volunteer for the army. The connotation that it is an obligation is a blatant disregard for the very freedom that you are supposedly fighting for.
Second of all, and I'd like to think I'm speaking for more than just myself, I have the utmost respect for someone with the balls to throw themselves into a combat situation for their career, because I would not ever do that. That's on a person-to-person level. When I start to think on the broader level of the fact the the military has seemingly become the muscle of power-hungry screwballs who throw around the term "freedom" like used car salesman, I become concerned.
Third of all, there are many people who feel that violence begets violence, and that it is a perversion to suggest that "real" peace can be brought about by military action. Any such "peace" would be rooted in the fear of violent retribution, which isn't really peace at all.
Fourth of all, terms like "islamofacism" around cannot rightly be considered without the context of any other religiously based facism. Hitler thought he was doing Christ's work, for crying out loud. Read about Machiavelli's take on religion and controlling the masses.
I *think* that many of the folks who express anti-military sentiment are not personally attacking any singular person for achieving success within the military and with skills learned in the military. It's just that learning to kill ain't for everyone, especially when the battle cries of "freedom" and "democracy" can arguably be translated to "live American or die."
Why wouldn't it immediately reach some kind of state of "Nirvana" once it gets to the level of actual consciousness, since it would be certain of its purpose and certain that it is fulfilling its purpose?
Slashdot Mirror
All excellent government-provided things.
Sorry, though, I can't buy into the "tyranny of the masses" theory of why self-important power mongerers secretly do things that can destroy our civilization. The only reason to keep anything secret from the masses is because you know it's wrong and will get you into a situation where you will have to give up your power.
Cool.
Please give me 33% of your income.
I can't tell you why.
City of Lost Children. All it needs is a mini camera. Then we can completely shut out our natural senses of sight and hearing.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0112682/
I totally agree with everything you've said, and I'll go you a tinfoil hat further. Never underestimate the censorship effect that the money and legislation combo has in the entertainment industry.
It's much more subtle than fining Howard Stern a million dollars for talking about poop. All of these billion-dollar publishers, as a by-product of wanting to increase their profit margin, make sure that everything that is exposed to the "masses" is cleansed enough to exist in a tepid, unintellectual, unemotional bubble that is pallatible for John Q. Public.
Independents are free from this limitation of having to conform to profit-proven mass appeal, and so can actually break out of the cliches and say something. The fact that mass duplication and distribution is literally a click away spits right in the face of these corporate content filterers, because it might eat into their business; it spits in the face of legislators because someone might actually have--through their artistic vision--valid criticisms of the way things are, and potentially reach a global market of humanity.
So publishers and legislators have a much deeper connection than just money. They have their vision of the world--which not so subtly tips the scales to their advantage--on the line.
Privacy is a "luxury"??? You've got to be fscking kidding me! Are you the kind of person who thinks that the US Constitution *gives* you rights rather than *limits the power of government*, too???
As with any RIGHT, when I trespass upon another human being, I deserve to lose my right to privacy where a legal investigation needs to take place so that they can prove me guilty. Beyond that, I can't think of any reason that my personal data should not be under my full control and be sold uncontrollably under my nose.
See, when the right to privacy is gone, it will usher in a new era of state-defined criminal offenses that have no victims.
You read the "Anarchist Cookbook"? You must be a terrorist. See you in military prison.
You bought a six pack of beer on a weeknight? You must be a drunk. You're fired!
Luxury???? Privacy is an understood subset of freedom. I am free to do what I want, and it is none of your fscking business unless I trespass upon you. If privacy is a "luxury" to be tampered with, does that mean that the Law is meant to *prevent* crime (rather than *punish* those who break the Law)?
I see that you've recently converted to Islam. That means you're likely to want to blow stuff up for your jihad. You're under arrest.
Privacy is the glue of a free society. Any lesser designation for the importance of privacy is simply opening the door for a police state. In a police state, the law is designed to dictate your behavior to ensure it is "right." Therefore it is necessary to negate the importance of privacy so that all perceived negative behaviors can be curbed. In a free state, the law is designed to punish wrongdoers, so that those with poor judgment who abuse their free will can be weeded out.
One, and several. I would hardly compare Pokemon cards with audio/visual entertainment. As an ex-avid card collector, I knew what to expect from sitting down with a stack of cards and a couple of buddies. Cards is cards, and there isn't really a substitute for cards as a medium of entertainment.
When it comes to audio/visual entertainment such as video/dvd/television, there is simply no *need* for a partial download scheme like this. There are too many suitable substitutes that will give children the instant gratification that they seek.
Ha! Unless DVDs and Cable TV disappear, I really can't see any child being even remotely interested in "incremental" content.
Even if the kid ate at McD's every single day, they'd have eaten three meals, had a stomach ache, and only been able to watch 30 minutes of some shitty watered down disney fairy tale!! All this instead of sitting in front of the tube stuffing his face with TV dinners and twinkies??
Yeah.
I think the most notable change that I've seen during my lifetime so far-- I remember pre-cable-tv days-- is that things such as language and images have increasingly become shorthand. This has enabled the average person to recall zillions of phrases and their associated corporate sponsors, maybe. Or learn specialized shorthand, such as that found in chat rooms or cell-phone text messaging. Video games at best have taught people how to research cheats.
There are zillions of pieces of knowledge that it has become necessary to know in order to perform daily tasks with any given technology. I fail to see how any of this could equate to making anyone "smarter"? In fact, the "convenience" of modern living--which many people probably mistake as a basic human need--has taken away the necessity to even know how anything really works. I would hardly consider this conducive to being "smarter."
I would equate the argument of this book--that pop culture is actually making us smarter--to saying "We created our own parallel reality. Look how good we are at knowing the details about our own parallel reality that we've created."
This all seems like everyone will now be either a victim of shills, like Truman in the Truman Show, or in on the joke and peddling their warez via product placement. In this case, though, the product is being "placed" in plain old reality.
I don't know about anyone else, I but I would consider such a shill to be a horror of a human being. It's bad enough hanging out with someone who is overly enthusiastic about something that they feel the need to push; but someone who gets paid to do it?
Spamming my social circle? No thanks.
The US government is publicly owned by its citizens. It is not (despite all appearances) a corporation. Therefore, we own the presidential seal. Furthermore, satire/parody are the most important types of protected free speech, along with criticism of the government. Humorless people should "know better" about what the hell they are reading; anyone who takes everything they read at face value, without analysis, is probably more dangerous to society than any terrorist who will ever come along.
Greed is not a survival trait or instinct. By its definition, it is the want of excess. Survival depends on having a basic number of minimal needs met in order to maintain your life. Most people (I'm an American) I know have essentially been brainwashed into confusing their WANTS with their SURVIVAL NEEDS--hence the inability to go 5 seconds without television or a cell phone.
>> It is not nation vs. nation, hell, it is not even human vs. human
You raise an interesting issue.
Please explain where the line is between "murder" (which is human vs. human killing) and "war" (which is nation-sanctioned killing). I would argue that terrorism and war are both by-products of large nation-states.
I, as a singular human being, am quite content to go to work and make a living and have shelter and food. My nation, however, makes it impossible for me to live without having to worry about the threat of violence at a scale to which it is impossible for me to be responsible.
I don't want your big French Fry
I don't want your car
I don't want to buy no soap
From no washed-up movie star
You are so much louder
Than the show I wanna hear
With your sugarless gum
Gee, but I'm dumb
Non-alcoholic beer
It's enough to make a grown man
Blow up his own TV
Quit hollerin' at me
Quit hollerin' at me
I burned a WMA from a CD of an original song from the band I'm in, and the CD Database determined that our song was Track 1 from L.A. Guns' Hollywood Vampires! I am not a member of L.A. Guns--in case I had to spell it out. ;)
I'm curious to know how the hell it determined this information? Do other multimedia identification schemes work on the same technology? Will I eventually have to purchase a license to be able to give my own music a genuinely "unique id" and to make it playable? even by myself, the creator??
How do you become a "well-regulated militia" without having the arms to practice with?
>> being completely peaceful will get you run over
"Completely" peaceful would mean that there are no @ssholes to run you over. I believe that is the point of the saying "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." War is not a necessary evil of civilization; it is a game played by people who rely on a submissive populace to fight for them so that they can get and retain power.
I find "irony" in the fact that you are trivializing the concept of an Orwellian society. You almost seem unaware that that has NEGATIVE connotations. The fact that foisting that type of society upon US citizens doesn't help the terrorists is irrelevant. Rather, the shame lies in the reactionary short-sighted solutions that politicians love to funnel zillions of dollars into as a direct result of terrorist actions.
Perhaps that is the sentiment behind the common saying "If you ___, then the terrorists have won." Perhaps they have not achieved their "goals," but they are succeeding in completely disrupting ordinary citizens' lives.
Your point is well taken. There are two sides to this.
1. Where was the technician looking that he found these files? It seems to me that unless the computer owner's desktop wallpaper were kiddie porn, there is really no good way for the technician to have stumbled across the pictures. So, the technician was up to something sleazy. How do we even know that the technician didn't print out the pics and jerk off to them before reporting it to the police?
2. Once the photos were discovered, the truth was out there on the table. So yes, the computer owner deserves what he gets. I would temper this attitude by pointing out that there probably aren't many adults without some kind of skeletons in their closets. So we should absolutely be vigilant about guarding against these types of attacks on our privacy so that we* don't end up down the slippery slope of self-righteously assassinating each other's characters.
* "We" of course meaning "commoners"; politicians do it for a living and make out quite well.
There have been studies on obedience to authority; check here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram
The real issue is that no matter what, when people *perceive* that others have authority over them, they will tend to obey even the most horrible of orders. The perception of authority in Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments (sorry, it's not described in the wikipedia link but I don't have time to find it) stemmed from scientists wearing lab coats.
The military by nature is authoritarian... Not only are soldiers already inclined to obey authority, but they are also explicitly taught to obey authority. (I am not a soldier btw, so please excuse the oversimplification, etc. etc.)
>> That's how you make informed decisions.
Hey, in no way, shape, or form should my grade school child, in a public school, be left with the "decision" of creationism vs. evolution, any more so than she should be left with the decision of whether 2+2=5 or 2+2=4. There is just no place for creationism or intelligent design in a secular educational curiculum.
Scientific curricula is/should be/has always been based on the INFORMED DECISIONS and experiments and rigorous testing of SCIENTISTS. Evolutionary theory is a legitimate scientific curriculum. ID/creationism is based on religious dogma and has no place in a secular education.
If you are concerned that the teaching of intelligent design is lacking in your child's education, then teach him that on your own dime.
I've been using the Internet/WWW for 10+ years now, and I've come to the conclusion that I just don't care about this type of start page.
In the beginning, for me, I was way more interested in finding new stuff than I was in habitually browsing to any one site; there weren't many to browse to anyway--maybe CNN and Yahoo. Now, due to RSS being directly in the browser, I think the need for this type of start page is gone.
Does anyone really care about having a start page like this? I'm really want to know; I'm not trying to be a troll or anything...
I've been wondering if the issue isn't simpler than all of this legal wrangling? What I mean is that, whatever has happened all throughout history, we only have 1) evidence of things through artifacts, interpreted by those who find and study them, and 2) the written word, by those who research, then try to wrap up "facts" in a coherant package.
Technology such as the internet archive now exists to automatically, systematically, and rather thoroughly store very specific artifacts (old web pages). These artifacts happen to also be the written word. The complication is that much of that written word (that the legal system and corporations care about) is propaganda which, by its very nature, is not 100% true. What is true from a historical perspective, though, is that it existed as a part of the Internet/WWW which, in turn, is a huge part of our society and culture.
So do we view it in the context of an accurate historical representation of a body of knowledge that existed at a given snapshot of time, which is a decent encapsulated version of "truth," which is theoretically what a good justice system should be rooted in? Or, do we blatantly use outmoded, weasel-ish legal wranglings to suppress what is, indeed, truth that is relevant to deciding a given court case?
If we choose the latter, what does that say about the integrity of our justice system?
(to continue this tangent...)
Thank you, radish. I cannot over emphasize how absolutely happy I am to see this sentiment echoed. I hear these news pieces about anti-abortion protestors who are against their tax money being used to fund stem cell research, etc., and I just can't believe their arrogance. Pouring billions of tax dollars per day into waging war is okay, but funding research that will eventually benefit mankind is not? Riiiiiiiight.
First of all, like any other job, some people are fit for military duty and some aren't. In a free country, if you are so inclined, you volunteer for the army. The connotation that it is an obligation is a blatant disregard for the very freedom that you are supposedly fighting for.
Second of all, and I'd like to think I'm speaking for more than just myself, I have the utmost respect for someone with the balls to throw themselves into a combat situation for their career, because I would not ever do that. That's on a person-to-person level. When I start to think on the broader level of the fact the the military has seemingly become the muscle of power-hungry screwballs who throw around the term "freedom" like used car salesman, I become concerned.
Third of all, there are many people who feel that violence begets violence, and that it is a perversion to suggest that "real" peace can be brought about by military action. Any such "peace" would be rooted in the fear of violent retribution, which isn't really peace at all.
Fourth of all, terms like "islamofacism" around cannot rightly be considered without the context of any other religiously based facism. Hitler thought he was doing Christ's work, for crying out loud. Read about Machiavelli's take on religion and controlling the masses.
I *think* that many of the folks who express anti-military sentiment are not personally attacking any singular person for achieving success within the military and with skills learned in the military. It's just that learning to kill ain't for everyone, especially when the battle cries of "freedom" and "democracy" can arguably be translated to "live American or die."
Why wouldn't it immediately reach some kind of state of "Nirvana" once it gets to the level of actual consciousness, since it would be certain of its purpose and certain that it is fulfilling its purpose?