Indeed. This is a very informative book, which concludes that the media have a power-friendly bias. I've yet to see a detailed, convincing rebuttal of the conclusions.
The book is quite heavy weight, and anyone looking for a lighter, more accessible introduction to the subject should get a copy of the film documentary "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" (available on Amazon).
To elaborate a little on some of the ideas in the parent post... in a totalitarian society it doesn't matter what you think - if you step out of line, the torture chamber will take care of things. In modern Western society we don't have such brutal means of control, so it's far more important for those 'with power' to concern themselves with what people think. Hence the importance people with real power and wealth place on influence over the media. And they do influence the mdeia through a number of means.
Much of the modern media, for example, takes the form of huge corporations, ecah themselves being part of larger conglomerates: the tv networks, newpapers, and so on. They make their money through advertising, and if they start to lose advertising (because of their content), their profits dip. If that happens, CEO's get fired. And so on.
There are also litigious avenues that can be used to influence the media, as well as others. It's well outline in Ed Hermann's propaganda model.
And it's not a so much a conspiracy, as a feature of the system.
It's important because Linux over time will fill the whole of it's memory with cached disk reads, as well as running applications and so on. So if you look at your memory usage (e.g. through/proc/meminfo, which I think is what most GUI tools will read) it looks full, but that's only because Linux has actually used the memory for something useful: caching disk reads, so you don't need to go back to disk if you want to re-read something. This used memory can be reused for something more important at a moment's notice, if it's needed.
At least that's my understanding of things. I'm afraid I don't know what Windows does.
Well, kind of. Your manager doesn't pay you, the company pays you. But everyone in the company contributes to the continuation of the company, incoming money, etc. Your manager is someone in the company who has been put in a position of power over you, to coordinate your work. I'm challenging the legitimacy of this arrangment.
This book reminds me of Disciplined Minds, a book about the subjugation of personal political and ideological beliefs to the need to 'get on'. In a nutshell, we may all think we're nice people, and we may all believe that it's right to help others, to 'do good' and so on, but when it comes to the modern workplace, particularly the corporate workplace, these ideas are pushed aside. In fact in the modern corporation internal competition is encouraged: i.e. don't see your team mates as your friends, colleagues, etc. See them rather as competitors on the promotion ladder.
When I step back and think about it, I'm amazed that we put up with it. For example, annual appraisals are the norm. Some people will tell you that these are a necessary part of any modern business, and that they benefit the appraised as well as the company. Fine, but never forget who's in the driving seat and has all the power at these things. Who appraises who, and why should the world be like that? We should look at these power structures and challenge them for their legitimacy: what exactly is it that gives *your manager* - who is, after all, another flawed human being, not unlike yourself or anyone else you might meet - the right to actually pass judgement on you and give you a rating? Why do we as a society let this happen? It's not the way normal 'more voluntary', natural human relationships work.
What gives managers that power right now, is their ability to climb the greasy pole quicker than you. And it goes right up the chain, to the top few (in relative terms, absolutely minute) people at the very top of the chain - the people with all the wealth/capital (== power).
The nature of corporations as "systems" is to maximise profit, market share, and so on. That's what they do. If they don't, they cease to exist, because some other bigger corporations either wipes them out or gobbles them up. But this motivation to maximise profit in these huge, powerful corporations does not always, in fact many would argue, does not typically sit well with what we should do as a human society. So we eat up the planet's oil resources and worry about tomorrow tomorrow, we ignore global warming, and occasionally (as was recently shown), we go to war and kill people.
Corporations, the biggest of which are now larger than many countries, and which hold huge political sway in supposedly democratic countries, are 'tyrannical' in nature. Internally they are extremely hierarchichal, with the power flowing from the top downwards. We wax lyrical about how great democracy is and so on, but the vast majority of people spend a huge amount of their lives in a workplace with zero democracy (ever been asked to vote for your manager?). They're pretty much told what to do, and they do it to get on. Or they're weeded out.
Anyway, I've kind of strayed from my main point, which is that the modern world requires "professionals" to behave a certain way - in fact when people say 'be professional' they mean control your natural reactions and behave in a way that the surrounding entity dictates. Anyone who doesn't conform to this either (1) doesn't get on, or (2) is weeded out of the system.
Typical naivete about markets. America doesn't run on markets, it runs on a managed economy. Take, for example, Bush's recent doctoring of tarrifs on steel. Market economics? I don't think so. Or a company like Boeing, which wouldn't exist were it not for government (i.e. public) funds.
Citing Noam Chomsky, speaking a few years ago (mid nineties, though not much has changed), "of the top 100 leading transnationals in the Fortune list of transnationals, there was a recent study of how they related to the states in which they were located, it turns out all 100 had benefited from industrial policies (state intervention), and 20 of them had been saved from total collapse".
Witness the recent war on Iraq, and the companies now profiting from government policy.
What tends to happen in general, is that free market economics are applied to the poor, discipline, tough love, etc. but the rich get a form of socialism. They don't want risk, and when they're in trouble, the state bales them out.
Same is true of high tech industry. Companies don't want to take risks, so high risk research is done under public funds (giving birth to electronics, computers, the Internet, aeronautics, whatever), and then - when at a suitable stage - it is handed over to the free market, and a select few make a massive amount of money out of it.
Free markets are a myth. Ask anyone in a 3rd world country.
It's totally legitimate to measure these things in monetary terms because economic damage is the only real kind of damage these disasters cause (at least in Europe, which is what the figure refers to).
Well I disagree Ed, they damage happiness, quality of life, and indeed life itself. And longer term, though not necessarily that far away, environmental damage may cost our and other species. This is a well documented topic.
I'm sorry but I do not agree with that. There are innumerable cases of money being placed before human life, it happens a million times a day, every day. Witness the poor starving in Africa for an example. Or to take another topical example, witness the wars waged for American business interests, both those past and the currently pending conflict with Iraq (as many as 500,000 casualties by UN estimates). And we could go on, the list is long, and in fact well documented if you're interested in taking a look ("Understaning Power" by Noam Chomsky is as good a place as any to start; or if you're not much of a reader, try the Ackbar/Wintonick "Manufacturing Consent" documentary).
Those in power (by which I mean corporate chiefs and their cohorts in government) almost always place profit over people, be it human happiness and general well-being, human life, or in this case, the future of the species. In fact the way the economic system is currently set up compels them to do so, it's systemic. Short-term profits always take priority, and if they don't, then the corporate chief/'elected' official is out of a job. That's simply how the current power system works.
I refer you to my other reply in this thread containing links to the work of people working to change this.
It's depressing that the primary reason for action, quoted, is expressed in monetary terms, and not human ones. This happens time and again, and is a reflection of the values of the times we live in. When we speak of damage to the environment, the future of the human race itself is at stake, but our primary reason for wanting to do something about it is how much it might cost? PLEASE WAKE UP.
Watch for this, watch for how often things are expressed in monetary terms, as though that was all that mattered.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. This is a very informative book, which concludes that the media have a power-friendly bias. I've yet to see a detailed, convincing rebuttal of the conclusions.
i lepages/chomskyn1.shtml d ea.html
The book is quite heavy weight, and anyone looking for a lighter, more accessible introduction to the subject should get a copy of the film documentary "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" (available on Amazon).
To elaborate a little on some of the ideas in the parent post... in a totalitarian society it doesn't matter what you think - if you step out of line, the torture chamber will take care of things. In modern Western society we don't have such brutal means of control, so it's far more important for those 'with power' to concern themselves with what people think. Hence the importance people with real power and wealth place on influence over the media. And they do influence the mdeia through a number of means.
Much of the modern media, for example, takes the form of huge corporations, ecah themselves being part of larger conglomerates: the tv networks, newpapers, and so on. They make their money through advertising, and if they start to lose advertising (because of their content), their profits dip. If that happens, CEO's get fired. And so on.
There are also litigious avenues that can be used to influence the media, as well as others. It's well outline in Ed Hermann's propaganda model.
And it's not a so much a conspiracy, as a feature of the system.
See also:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/prof
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/mc/index.cfm
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/interviews/9602-big-i
No it hasn't.
How are you measuring your memory usage?
/proc/meminfo, which I think is what most GUI tools will read) it looks full, but that's only because Linux has actually used the memory for something useful: caching disk reads, so you don't need to go back to disk if you want to re-read something. This used memory can be reused for something more important at a moment's notice, if it's needed.
It's important because Linux over time will fill the whole of it's memory with cached disk reads, as well as running applications and so on. So if you look at your memory usage (e.g. through
At least that's my understanding of things. I'm afraid I don't know what Windows does.
Yeah, and they could have dropped them somewhere other than on cities. And did they really need to use two?
For crying out loud.
They pay you.
Well, kind of. Your manager doesn't pay you, the company pays you. But everyone in the company contributes to the continuation of the company, incoming money, etc. Your manager is someone in the company who has been put in a position of power over you, to coordinate your work. I'm challenging the legitimacy of this arrangment.
This book reminds me of Disciplined Minds, a book about the subjugation of personal political and ideological beliefs to the need to 'get on'. In a nutshell, we may all think we're nice people, and we may all believe that it's right to help others, to 'do good' and so on, but when it comes to the modern workplace, particularly the corporate workplace, these ideas are pushed aside. In fact in the modern corporation internal competition is encouraged: i.e. don't see your team mates as your friends, colleagues, etc. See them rather as competitors on the promotion ladder.
When I step back and think about it, I'm amazed that we put up with it. For example, annual appraisals are the norm. Some people will tell you that these are a necessary part of any modern business, and that they benefit the appraised as well as the company. Fine, but never forget who's in the driving seat and has all the power at these things. Who appraises who, and why should the world be like that? We should look at these power structures and challenge them for their legitimacy: what exactly is it that gives *your manager* - who is, after all, another flawed human being, not unlike yourself or anyone else you might meet - the right to actually pass judgement on you and give you a rating? Why do we as a society let this happen? It's not the way normal 'more voluntary', natural human relationships work.
What gives managers that power right now, is their ability to climb the greasy pole quicker than you. And it goes right up the chain, to the top few (in relative terms, absolutely minute) people at the very top of the chain - the people with all the wealth/capital (== power).
The nature of corporations as "systems" is to maximise profit, market share, and so on. That's what they do. If they don't, they cease to exist, because some other bigger corporations either wipes them out or gobbles them up. But this motivation to maximise profit in these huge, powerful corporations does not always, in fact many would argue, does not typically sit well with what we should do as a human society. So we eat up the planet's oil resources and worry about tomorrow tomorrow, we ignore global warming, and occasionally (as was recently shown), we go to war and kill people.
Corporations, the biggest of which are now larger than many countries, and which hold huge political sway in supposedly democratic countries, are 'tyrannical' in nature. Internally they are extremely hierarchichal, with the power flowing from the top downwards. We wax lyrical about how great democracy is and so on, but the vast majority of people spend a huge amount of their lives in a workplace with zero democracy (ever been asked to vote for your manager?). They're pretty much told what to do, and they do it to get on. Or they're weeded out.
Anyway, I've kind of strayed from my main point, which is that the modern world requires "professionals" to behave a certain way - in fact when people say 'be professional' they mean control your natural reactions and behave in a way that the surrounding entity dictates. Anyone who doesn't conform to this either (1) doesn't get on, or (2) is weeded out of the system.
Please excuse the excess verbiage.
Typical naivete about markets. America doesn't run on markets, it runs on a managed economy. Take, for example, Bush's recent doctoring of tarrifs on steel. Market economics? I don't think so. Or a company like Boeing, which wouldn't exist were it not for government (i.e. public) funds.
Citing Noam Chomsky, speaking a few years ago (mid nineties, though not much has changed), "of the top 100 leading transnationals in the Fortune list of transnationals, there was a recent study of how they related to the states in which they were located, it turns out all 100 had benefited from industrial policies (state intervention), and 20 of them had been saved from total collapse".
Witness the recent war on Iraq, and the companies now profiting from government policy.
What tends to happen in general, is that free market economics are applied to the poor, discipline, tough love, etc. but the rich get a form of socialism. They don't want risk, and when they're in trouble, the state bales them out.
Same is true of high tech industry. Companies don't want to take risks, so high risk research is done under public funds (giving birth to electronics, computers, the Internet, aeronautics, whatever), and then - when at a suitable stage - it is handed over to the free market, and a select few make a massive amount of money out of it.
Free markets are a myth. Ask anyone in a 3rd world country.
It's totally legitimate to measure these things in monetary terms because economic damage is the only real kind of damage these disasters cause (at least in Europe, which is what the figure refers to).
Well I disagree Ed, they damage happiness, quality of life, and indeed life itself. And longer term, though not necessarily that far away, environmental damage may cost our and other species. This is a well documented topic.
I'm sorry but I do not agree with that. There are innumerable cases of money being placed before human life, it happens a million times a day, every day. Witness the poor starving in Africa for an example. Or to take another topical example, witness the wars waged for American business interests, both those past and the currently pending conflict with Iraq (as many as 500,000 casualties by UN estimates). And we could go on, the list is long, and in fact well documented if you're interested in taking a look ("Understaning Power" by Noam Chomsky is as good a place as any to start; or if you're not much of a reader, try the Ackbar/Wintonick "Manufacturing Consent" documentary).
Those in power (by which I mean corporate chiefs and their cohorts in government) almost always place profit over people, be it human happiness and general well-being, human life, or in this case, the future of the species. In fact the way the economic system is currently set up compels them to do so, it's systemic. Short-term profits always take priority, and if they don't, then the corporate chief/'elected' official is out of a job. That's simply how the current power system works.
I refer you to my other reply in this thread containing links to the work of people working to change this.
It's depressing that the primary reason for action, quoted, is expressed in monetary terms, and not human ones. This happens time and again, and is a reflection of the values of the times we live in. When we speak of damage to the environment, the future of the human race itself is at stake, but our primary reason for wanting to do something about it is how much it might cost? PLEASE WAKE UP.
Watch for this, watch for how often things are expressed in monetary terms, as though that was all that mattered.