"How do we know this isn't the guy who's been making CNN cover britney instead of actual news huh? Cause I'm all for firing whoever that dude is."
LOL. That's funny dude.... or it would be if it weren't so sad and true. I'm a news junky and I did watch CNN all the time during the early years. They were kind of liberal leaning when Ted Turner was in charge but they did do news. Once Time Warner took over, 9/11 happened and they started getting pasted by Fox CNN completely cratered and I can't stand to watch it anymore. CNN international is OK, CNN US is a complete embarrassment to everything CNN used to stand for.
I think they tried to out fox Fox and they just sucked at it. They didn't get a new audience and lost what was left of their old one. Larry King turned completely tabloid. Nancy Grace is the world's biggest shrew lynching people in the media, Glenn Beck is a dick the put on just to pander to the right, Anderson Cooper has a massive egotistical self promoter and climber not backed up by any talent as a journalist, Dr. Sanjay panders to women who just want to look at the hunk doctor but I would be terrified if that moron every operated on my brain or anyones brain. Rick Sanchez makes Geraldo look good. Kira Philips is the only talking head I can stand to watch on the whole network. Aaron Brown was a little boring and I see why he got axed for Cooper but he did actually cover news and have interesting things to say once in a while and I actually tuned him in.
I switched to BBC and CNBC for news because 24/7 cable news has completely failed at reporting news that matters. They mostly seem to be there to just report on the last cute, white, women kidnapped or murdered recently because it draws the female demographic like flies to honey.
Lol, the concept there is a gigantic global leftist conspiracy is just flat goofy, considering there is less Socialism in the world today than there has been in the last hundred years. The world is increasingly dominated by plutocrats and people who mouth empty praises of free markets and then buy ourt politicians to give them huge barrels of pork. You need look no further than China, to see a supposedly leftist country that is now an extremely right wing Fascist state worshiping at the altar of the beloved buck.
You are also jumping to the conclusion I'm a leftist since its your knee jerk reaction to make every discussion so your convenient off the shelf rants work. Not really a fan of Socialism either, just have no use for people who rant about it like its the root of all evil. The right wing and free marketeers aren't any better, or really any different.
I would be a Libertarian but if you actually did that the top 1% and the ruthless dicks would devour the world and everyone else would end up dirt poor.
Unfortunately once the human population exploded, the world got crowded, we started organizing societies and developing social systems we entered in to a realm in we get a bunch of incompetent self serving people whose goal in life is to order everyone else around no matter where they are on the spectrum,. Its just inevitable some people are going to spend their time telling other people how to live, and now there aren't even any frontiers left which is how people used to escape being bossed around by other people.
I'm just pointing out there isn't really a dimes bit of difference between Socialist bureaucrats bossing everyone around, and wealthy capitalists doing the same thing. In capitalism the power lies in the hands of the ruthless rich who were willing to screw their own mother to get rich(er), and if you don't have any money you are going to be coerced every second of your life by the people who do.
"Leftism has a foothold in all of our institutions"
In case you didn't notice rightism has a foothold in all of those places too. You just hate Leftists so you notice them and choose to ignore the extremists on the other side you are OK with.
The U.S. government was completely dominated by rightists from 2000 through 2006. They were just so horrible at governing people decided they hated the Democrats less.
As for the media you need to look no further than Rupert Murdoch. He controls Fox, Fox News, CNET, DirectTV, MySpace, the Wall Street Journal, scores of newspapers and television stations and he is as right wing as they come. I think it is the largest media empire on the planet and it is entirely controlled by a right wing extremist. Talk radio is also dominated by nothing but right wing nuts.
As for education I'll grant you American teachers do lean pretty strongly left though "No Child Left Behind" was the right wings best attempt to completely destroy the current education system. Unfortunately like everything they've tried in the last 7 years the right wing botched that too. They would certainly prefer all children were moved in to private, preferably religious schools.
"Leftists love coercion."
All people with a thirst for power love coercion, that is what power is, one person or group of people exerting control over another. Its not something unique to "Leftists". Rightists really love coercion too. Capitalists are quite familiar with coercion, its just the way they go about is somewhat more subtle. The ridiculous power big corporations and lobbyists have acquired over the U.S. government has almost completely disconnected the government from the actual people. The people keep voting for them and sending them to the halls of power. Once they get there they mostly vote the way lobbyists and their big campaign contributors tell them, which is usually diametrically opposed to the actual best interests of their constituents.
"No, but the Republican party still wants a chance at this election. If another war was started, it would guarantee a Democrat victory."
Not if you manage an effective propaganda campaign to con the American people in to thinking that they and their children are in imminent danger. It would be somewhat harder to do this time around because everyone is a little jaded from Iraq... It would still be quite possible to use an imagined threat from Iran to actually win an election as long as you are willing to kill a few Americans to get the fear rolling. The Republican's won the 2002 and 2004 elections at least partially based on fear mongering about 9/11 and Iraq, that and skillful use of wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion.
All you would need is another 9/11 scale attack, an attack where you could implicate Iran even if they had nothing to do with it, real or fabricated evidence of an Iranian built nuke, and a repeat of something like the Anthrax letters that followed 9/11.
The neocon cabal, The New American Century had pretty brazenly outlined the importance of modern Pearl Harbors to advance their agenda, and lucky them, they got one on 9/11, followed by a couple more in the London and Madrid bombings.
Those Anthrax letters are the most disturbing indicator of a government conspiracy, even if 9/11 wasn't, where someone killed a small number of Americans in order to create a panic about weapons of mass destruction so it could be used as the propaganda lever to get the American people to support invading Iraq. All indications are the Anthrax came out of American bioweapons labs, not from some Middle Eastern terrorist. You also note the American government made absolutely no progress in finding the responsible party even though they know where the Anthrax came from.
I still remember the run up to Iraq war where Fox News was running news stories suggesting Saddam was going to use drones to spray American cities with chemical and biological weapons. It was complete insanity and blatantly fabrication.... but it worked. Anything is possible if you control an effective propaganda machine.
I'm the first to admit its a little unlikely, but the Neocons are starting to regain some of their malevolent self confidence since things have calmed down some in Iraq. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they are considering ginning up a war with Iran in time to start a new and furious round of flag waving and lapel pins for the next election.
"Unfortunately, they typcially manufacture the CO2 nearby"
"But the hard part is getting the CO2 to the right location, so I don't hold out promise for that."
I think the CO2 used to recover oil from old fields in West Texas is drilled for and pumped out of the ground in the Four Corners (SouthWestern Colorado) where it is naturally occurring in underground deposits and pumped to Texas through a pipeline by Kinder Morgan.
There are huge coal deposits and two going on three huge dirty coal fired power plants near Farmington, New Mexico right next to the same pipeline. If the sequestration technology actually worked it really wouldn't be hard at all to transport it with existing pipeline technology.
I think the problem is the sequestration technology itself isn't practical yet.
I also suspect this whole project was a boondoggle and a propaganda tool of the coal industry and the Bush administration. They've been running a huge ad campaign for years, usually featuring kids, touting "clean coal", the same kids most vulnerable to the heavy metals raining from real power plants. I'm pretty sure they just wanted to brainwash people in to thinking burning coal was "clean" or soon would be "clean" to lessen resistance to the furious building of new "dirty" coal fired power plants that has been going on in recent years. They didn't actually have to succeed in doing "clean coal", they just had to con people in to think somehow burning coal would be "clean" which it probably never will be, until they got all their dirty plants built and then they would be facts on the ground and you are stuck with them.
I also suspect this whole project was an excuse to funnel a billion dollars in to the pockets of some Republican friendly contractors and then do what they usually do, just kill it before the contractor had to actually deliver anything useful. When you are living on Federal subsidies its a lot easier to make money on a project that gets killed before it actually has to be made to work.
Terminator actually seems to have some pretty decent writing and they and the director are pretty witty sometimes. I hope their writesr don't get canned because of the strike. I wouldn't mind most of the network writers getting canned and starting over, especially the ones writing the mind numbing crime/autopsy shows, but would like to see the writers for Terminator, Stewart and Colbert survive in tact.
It was until Kennedy and LBJ launched the civil rights movement and LBJ actually passed laws to do it. At that point the segregationists and the South mostly flipped from Democrats to Republicans. A few blue dog democrats stayed Democrat out of habit but they will eventually all be dead.
Democrats became the party of choice for blacks and the Republicans became an even more lilly white and racist party than they had been.
In some respects it kind of straightened things out. It was just really weird for the Republican party to be the party of choice for blacks just because of Abolition and Lincoln. The Republicans are hostile to just about every issue important to blacks and have been for quite a while.
In defense of network TV, Fox's "Terminator, Sarah Connors Chronicles" is actually pretty decent so far. Its the only network show I go out of my way to watch. I liked the new Battlestar Galactica early on but it faded fast. I like some of the things on History channel, Discover and the military channel but thats because I like history and facts over the bad fiction and reality shows which dominate the networks.
For good conversation PBS's Charlie Rose is hands down the best for thought provoking and informative, though it varies with the guest. Its entirely available on the web at www.charlierose.com
Bottom line is its not about the medium any more. Its all about whether people are producing interesting content whatever the medium. Big TV and record companies have enormous problems because their one and only motivation is to make a buck, and great artists have an enormous problem producing great art from within that kind of system. Their system worked when their were 3 network channels because people watched it whether it was good or bad because there weren't many other options in the old days. Now there are a whole lot of options.
For recreation I would rather play interactive games were I'm doing something and effecting the outcome instead of being a spoon fed vegie.
Probably incorrect on my part to imply the Republican party came entirely from the Whigs but the Whigs did find a home there and they were a prominent faction in the early Republican part. There are factions in all parties, I'm just pointing out the Bush clan are from the elitist, blue blood, Connecticut, Tory/Whig, wealthy faction of the party.
The Whigs and Tories found a much more receptive home in the Republican party than they ever would with the Democrats, at last as far as the Northern Tories of Connecticut are concerned which is what I was talking about.
The Abolotinist issue is a rather complex one to mix in to the point I was making it. Russell, the Skull and Bones founder was an Abolitionist, as I recall. They were also religious fanatics and I think their abolitionist streak was partially religious in origin.
I don't think the Connecticut Tories were heavily invested in the South's plantation economy. They were focused on the Industrial north and in making millions selling drugs to the Chinese. Its just a guess on my part but I suspect they had an agenda which involved undercutting the South economically so they could wrest political and economic control of the country for themselves and the North. Abolition, whether intentional or not, turned in to a tool to give the North complete domininion of the economic and politics of America for nearly a century.
"because they are people who don't support the current heir to the throne of George III"
The current American President is from a family that are for all practical purposes Tories, pro aristocracy both in Britain and in America.
Its quite possible British anarchists would be banned by the current administration precisely because they are vocal critics of the British royal family. The Bush clan are inordinately fond of the British monarchy.
Yale and Connecticut have been a hotbed of Tory sympathizers since the America revolution and its that is the heartland of the Bush clan, not Maine or Texas. The Yale Fraternity Skull and Bones, where most of the Bush men have been members, originates from a group of Connecticut Tories and prominent opium traffickers. The Skull and Bones emblem comes from the pirate flags of Opium smugglers. A number of blue blood American families acquired much of their wealth trafficking in Opium in China in the 1800's. They were more or less the same as Heroine smugglers are today. Reference Wikipedia on William Huntington Russell one of the principal founders of Skull and Bones.
Americans were never universal in their support of the American revolution, for severing ties with the British throne, or establishing a Democracy which many Tories considered mob rule. Tories morphed into the Whig Party which in turn was the foundation of the Republican party which is why Republicans tend to be white, elitist and pro wealth.
One interpretation of the Republican revolution over the last 10 years is it was basically the Tories regaining control of America 200 hundred years after they lost the American revolution. The last 8 years have been marked by the Republican aristocracy regaining control of the reins of power in America and doing away with as much of the American constitution as they could manage. Tories have always held the constitution in complete contempt along with the concept that all men are equal. Tories/Republicans are most decidely of the opinion that some people are better than others.
Cheating is rampant in BF2 and it doesn't really have any grind component other than whoring points to rank up. The ranks really aren't worth much other than prestige and they don't even offer much of that. There is no monetary component at all. Some people place value in their stats but you can usually look at someones stats and tell they are cheating, because their accuracy is way to good.
In WoW there certainly is a huge element using cheats to gold farm, advance their characters, and to circumvent grind time, but people still cheat when all those elements are not there.
Try to explain the rationale of someone paying money for an aimbot in BF2. They don't get any return on the investment. They usually rack up ridiculous stats so everyone knows they are cheating so its not like anyone stands in awe of their ability, everyone instantly hates them.
The only psychologies behind it I can visualize are:
- People are fascinated with beating the system, finding flaws in software especially networked software, and think they are impressing other people in networked games by flaunting the fact they are beating the system.
- Some people have inherent psychological issues that make them want to be vandals. People who use cheats in BF2 rapidly destroy the game play on a server, make everyone playing for fun miserable so they leave, and driver servers in to the tank.
- I get the impression some people cheat just to punish the people who play games for fun and recreation. Maybe their lives are miserable so they want to make everyone else miserable too.
- They are people who are neophyte hackers in training learning to beat game software before they move up to the big leagues and try to beat banking software and become felons. I'm not sure the skill sets of cracking games and cracking websites is exactly the same though.
If you are in places like the U.S. or China most of the electricity you are pouring in to your computer(s) looking for a proverbial needle in a hay stack, is coming from a coal fired power plant, and if SETI achieves a seven fold increase in the electricity they consume maybe we will get a couple more coal fired power plants built. It does take more electricity to run your computer when the CPU is pegged than when its idle you know, quite a bit more. This energy use will in turn accelerate global warming ultimately leading to a climate catastrophe which wipes out civilization as we know it, so we will no longer be able to send or receive signals from ET. Certainly I can't tell you how to use your computer but I can politely ask if you are going to contribute to the severe problems we have with energy on this planet that you at least try to use the energy wisely.
With SETA@Home you are burning significant amounts of electricity pegging your CPU every idle minute, looking for a needle that may not have ever been there, or if it is there the needle may not look ANYTHING like what SETI is searching, or if there ever was a needle we probably weren't listening when it was sent since the universe is billions of years old and human kind has had the tecnology to send or receive such a signal for like a hundred years. It would be an amazing coincidence if some civilization decided to set up a transmitter for this kind of signal and keep it running for like a billion years waiting for some other civilization to acquire the technology to listen for it and then find it in the haystack. Even if you DO ever find one what exactly are you going to do about it other than send an answer that wont get there for a really long time unless ET is in a neighboring star system. If you do answer they may not even hear. And its not like you are gonna start any kind of bidirectional communication where you are figuring out what each other are saying with years to millions of years needed to send each packet.
Just curious is SETI SENDING the same kind of signal they are searching for and if so for how long and with what kind of direction. If SETI isn't sending the signal they are searching for it undermines their whole concept.
I could almost see doing SETI if it were searching for the kinds of radiation technological civilizations are likely to produce just being technological civilizations but to think a civilization is going to go out of their way to broadcast this particular signal forever is weak at best.
Some poster here said if SETI actually discovered the signal it would be an earth shattering technological breakthrough. NO, it wouldn't. Because all you would have is a pulse signal at a certain frequency and you would have enormous problems taking even a tiny step forward with it unless ET is VERY close to us in our galaxy.
Its a breakthrough in that people are no longer buying CD's which have 1 or 2 good songs on them and being forced to pay an arm a leg for the rest of the album that is crap.
It will be a revolution, whether its iTunes or some other online distribution mechanism, if bands can remain free of the big labels and still sell their songs. Unfortunately there could be some DRM in that. If you want good music you are going to need to insure that bands have a big financial incentive to go all out and produce great music.
The things that are killing music or could kill it are:
- Suits at big labels deciding what gets produced, and then shoving it down everyones throat - Widespread theft of music or other artistic works over the Internet so artists don't get compensated for their work
If you want good art you need a service like iTunes that sells it at a reasonable price so artists are compensated, but as quickly as possible cut the monopolistic record companies out of the process of deciding what music and what bands are good.
I think Dvorak's problem is he is a Microsoft fan boy and since Vista was a resounding failure that colors his entire outlook on the world.
He obviously glosses over the Wii which was a huge success and changed the demographics of the game industry. I read recently retirement homes are buying Wii's in increasing numbers because it offers games seniors enjoy playing, encourages modest amounts of exercise and social interaction.
The iPhone is a bit overhyped but it certainly did cause tremors in the mobile space if not an earthquake. It has pushed all the players in the mobile space to work on usability and provide full browser support on mobile devices. When someone builds one with high speed access and low monthly fees it certainly will change how people live. It will also be interesting if Andorid can match it with a more open software stack. A full up mobile browser with Flash and video, GPS, location aware apps, high and unlimited bandwidth and low monthly fees would be awesome.
HDTV has finally started to happen. Unfortunately most of the programming is still crap but it sure is nice that we are finally ditching a 50 year old video standard for something that sucks a lot less. HDTV will accelerate convergence of PC and TV in the living room.
Apple iTunes isn't exactly new in 2007 but it is completely changing the music business and either it or a counterpart will change the video on demand business. It remains to be seen how it will shake out, but if the Internet destroys the monopoly hold a few brain dead companies have on the music industry and we actually get good music again that would be awesome.
Unfortunately Dvorak is sitting there staring at his PC running Vista and life does kind of suck for him. But he is a dinosaur and hasn't realized technology is moving past the Windows PC.
With $100 barrel oil and global warming, that's just what the world needs is to get a couple billion more people sitting in traffic jams burning up the dwindling supply of fossil fuels and polluting the air.
Its a great idea for generating page hits on your ads, especially after someone at Popular Mechanics gets it posted on the Slashdot front page. I imagine it boosted their website revenue by a tidy sum today.
If they had actually wanted to just communicate useful information they would have put all of one candidates positions on one page or put all the candidates positions on each issue on a page for comparison.....but NOOOOOOOO.
"a huge impact on the future of communications in this country"
That's a huge exaggeration if ever there was one. Newspapers are in steep decline, the only time I read one that is actually printed on actual paper is if I'm travelling on some form of mass transit and don't have Internet access. Not sure local TV stations even have that much impact any more. Like what do you actually see on local news other than nightly recounting of the sensational crime of the day, feel good human interest stories, weather and sports neither of which is subject to a lot of editorializing.
I read the Washington Post and New York Times but I read them online and I'm not anywhere near the Washington or New York TV market. You know they invented this Internet thing a while back and all those media market rules are kind of anachronisms in an age with a bidirectional global communication medium. If every newspaper in existence disappeared and turned in to a news website it would be nothing but a massive environmental boon, fewer trees mowed down, and a lot less paper going in to landfills, though coal burned for electricity might go up.
This might have some modest impact on the media watchdog role over local governmnet but that's about it. I wager the percentage of people who even care about their local government is tiny unless they raise your taxes or don't fill the potholes in the street. Not sure bloggers wouldn't be better at this role anyway since real investigative reporters are few and far between and increasingly unlikely to offend anyone with political or economic power.
If you want to name the single most damaging consolidation in the newspaper business lately it was Rupert Murdoch gaining control over the Wall Street Journal though it would be hard for him to make it any more right wing than it already was at least on the editorial page.
Or another hugely damaging consolidation is that 4 or 5 giant companies control nealy all the programming you see on cable and satellite and most of it is really bad.
And of course Clear Channel controls a staggering percentage of radio stations and plays mostly horrible music.
The fact a company can now control a TV station and a newspaper in a top 20 market is so insignificant I completely don't care. TV and Newspapers are both dieing in the face of the Internet and interactive games and that is mostly a good thing, though it might mean people will be even more ignorant about the world and politics than they already are but that is human nature and not something TV or newspapers really contribute to good or bad.
The problem with EVE is its kind of a small company and I'm pretty sure most of their development and QA people spend to much of their time playing their game instead of doing their job developing and testing their game. When you have that kind of dynamic bad things can happen...and they did.
It is a game with a lot of potential, for a niche audience at least, but they are so many glaring defects in it that you are left wishing they would hire some game developers with a clue. For example their game would be vastly improved with a trivial effort if a developer would spend a couple hours making it so you could use the keyboard to steer and put and end to their clicking in empty space to steer insanity. The fact that they put up with that B.S. indicates they have some seriously clueless developers. Their game would also be infinitely less annoying if they made a queue for skill training so you don't have to constantly keep track of when skill training is going to complete. I imagine they do it to force you to think about their game, and login even when you dont want to, but it is a classic sign of developers who are either clueless or have complete contempt for their customer base.
I tried that game and wanted to like it but I mostly left shaking my head because of trivial to fix design flaws they've preserved for years. I'm guessing their developers have been putting up with them since the beginning and have some how rationalized that they were OK just because its always been like that.
None of the work being done at JPL on planetary exploration is even remotely "defense" related. Maybe there is defense work there but I doubt any of these people who have been working there for years went there to work on better ways to kill people. They went their to explore the solar system in an entirely peaceful and benevolent way. I think the rules are being changed on them by an increasingly paranoid and increasingly militarized government.
It brings to mind the sad case of Alan Turing. He was one of the greatest minds in early computing and because he was gay he was hounded by the British government in to committing suicide depriving the world of decades more of his brilliant work. The work Turing did was crucial in cracking German codes and certainly shortened the war, and he well could have made the difference in winning it.
This isn't really new for JPL either. The rocket boys at CalTech started out doing peaceful research before World War II. They did pitch in to the war effort to defeat Fascism, but in 1946 many of them wanted to demilitarize and return to peaceful research. Unfortunately JPL turned in to a cold war military lab. One of their founding fathers Frank Malina resigned when his left leaning politics in 30's became known to the FBI. One of their best mathmeticians, Hsue-Shen Tsien, was fired and placed under house arrest because he was a suspected communist. When he was finally freed he did in fact return to China and became an integral part of their space program. Its an interesting question, was he really a communist spy when at JPL, or did the U.S. witch hunt drive him in to the arms of Communist China, when otherwise he would have been a priceless contributor to the American space program.
Some interesting tidbits on JPL's eary years are here.
I hate to break it to you but a LOT of the world's most brilliant thinkers are non conformists in one way or another, sexual orientation, drug use, pacifism, political leanings etc. If you are going to build your society only on "normal" people you are going to lose many of your greatest thinkers and forego many great breakthroughs.
The only reason gays are a security risk in this day and age is because the defense industrial complex have forced them in to a closet by making homosexuality a basis for termination of their security clearance. Homosexuality isn't illegal in this country any more. If it was completely removed as an factor in granting security clearances it wouldn't be an effective means for blackmailing anyone any more. It used to be a legitimate concern for blackmail because it was illegal. It isn't anymore.
The one point you miss in this clause, where everything you do for six months belongs to your previous employer, is it pretty much makes you unemployable for six months if you do any kind of creative work like programming. If you tell your new employer about it they will get cold feet about hiring you. If you don't tell them about it your old employer, if they are bitter over you leaving, can come after both you and your new employer at which point your new employer will probably fire you for creating this problem for them. I seriously doubt this clause is enforceable but if you sign it will basically move all their employees in to a form of indentured servitude. I half suspicion we can thank out sourcing to China for some of this. American companies are learning the beauty of having indentured servents from their Chinese slave labor and they want the same thing from their American work force too.
You can empathize with employers because it is a pretty common thing for an employee to come up with a great idea while working at the company, probably with the aid of knowledge they gain from their workplace, employees at the company, or from their contacts with the companies customers, and rather than contributing it back to the company that enabled them to discover, instead they take it to a competitor or turn in to a competitor themselves.
It is a hard problem. Adding a clause that seeks to make someone unemployable for six months is a pretty bad attempt at a solution though.
The ideal solution is you provide a good working environment for your employees so they will want to contribute back to your companies success and so they know they will be rewarded handsomely for doing that successfully. Unfortunately most companies save all their rewards for people who are VP, director or above and they completely screw all the engineers and programmers who actually make their products and often have innovative ideas. In those kind of environments people with great ideas are going to take their ideas and leave and abusive contracts just increase that likelihood. Google is the obvious counterexample, they make sure all their employees are well compensated, even the masseuse, and encourage people to share their ideas with their company, and if they are winners they end up millionaires. End result is they are an idea factory while many of their draconian counterparts are devoid of innovative thinking.
"That said, google is an american company, and I'm not sure whether its even planning a launch in Asia. Do you? "
Google isn't launching any phones. Considering two of Google's partners are China Mobile which I think is the largest carrier on the planet and DoCoMo one of the most innovative I think they have some of the most important markets well covered. They are hurting in the U.S. since Verizon and AT&T aren't on board. They have Sprint but Sprint is kind of a train wreck and third in market share, their network is in a mess, their merger with Nextel went bad, serious management problems, a little desperate, etc. AT&T has iPhone so they don't need Android. Verizon has market share and I doubt they want to relinquish any control.
"The public *has* flocked to camera phones and text messaging, but smartphones? No. Not by a long shot."
Maybe you should visit Japan sometime. Maybe is a subject of debate whether DoCoMo's phones are "smart phones" but the Japanese live and breath their cell phones. They are a heavy commuter culture and their phones are a key part of what they do during their commute.
Now if you are in America like Dvorak and probably the parent is then yes smart phones are kind of a disaster. I think that is probably more because American phone companies are a disaster. They are just out to maximize their revenue and milk every dime they can out of every customers. They also have a lot more territory to cover with their networks which makes them expensive and hard to update with the latest technology. Americans also tend to commute solo in their cars which is a little insane but it also means they don't have their hands or brains free to surf on their cell phones and do something productive while they are commuting. Instead they spend a couple hours a day staring at the brake lights of the person in front of them going insane.
If you can get a phone with good bandwidth, a good screen, and reasonable browser performance and most importantly at a reasonable fixed monthly fee there is no reason why people wont drink it in.
Me personally I expect the gPhone to crater in the U.S. because American phone companies wont relinquish the control and will overcharge for everything. I expect it to do fine in China, Japan, India and maybe Europe which covers the lion's share of the people on the planet. This assumes gPhone is well implemented and at a reasonable price. China loves Linux mostly because they hate sending money to foreign devils to license things like Symbian and Windows. This is a reason they have a huge trade surplus.
Nice attempt at a cubby hole. I'm not a Liberal. I'm mostly Libertarian. I don't really have any use for Democrats or Republicans.
Its just a simple fact that as bad as the Democrats are, the Republicans of the last 7 years has been unimaginably worse. I was actually a Young Republican in my youth. Back then the Republican party did still maintain some semblance of conservativism and had a moderate wing.
Unfortunately in the last 7 year Republican party has tilted completely in to Fascism coupled with a propaganda machine, spending like drunk sailors and evangelical Christian nutjobs pretending like they knew how to run a country. I just hope America's economy, government and society isn't so irreparably damaged by these loons that it can't survive another year of them and recover when we are finally rid of them. The plunging dollar tends to suggest its very much in doubt if the U.S. will last another year without a complete collapse.
If you want to see a mental disorder what ever is afflicting the smoldering shell of the Republican party. that is a real and serious mental disorder. Its certainly not Conservatism that they are practicing.
Not all Americans are dumb but there are really a lot of dumb Americans. Though in reality people in general are dumb. Its why propaganda is such an important part of government and why it works so well. In the case of America, Evangelical Christianity and TV are pretty lethal cocktail for rational thought. Most American's spend their lives being told what to think by those two entities. Not sure how popular TV wrestling is in the rest of the world but its telling how huge it is in America. Its is a completely fabricated sport but American's still watch it in huge numbers and actually pay ridiculous sums to watch it on pay per view. Its telling about their susceptibility to deception and self deception.
If you want to find the single person most responsible for the debacle of the last seven years you might be amused to discover he is an Aussie. When Rupert Murdock created the Fox News channel he created a focal point for the propaganda machine that completely snowed the American people in to the war in Iraq. Right before the invasion Fox was running flash news bulletins that Saddam had RPV's that he was planning to use to spray chemical and biological weapons on American cities. Never mind that he had no real way to get them anywhere near America even if he did have something like that. or if he actually had America would have nuked him in to the stone age. It was complete and utter lies and propaganda to whip up a war frenzy but it worked, especially in the wake of 9/11.
It was in the news a while ago that Dick Cheney has a standard check list for the hotels he stays at. Its required the hotel tune the TV to Fox News so its the only thing he sees on the TV. Fox News is the oracle of the current administration. Not sure they could have done half the things they did or gotten reelected without it.
Yes American were snowed, but so were the Germans, Japanese and Italians in the 1930's. You just need good propaganda and a people who are susceptible to it, and most people are.
I think you need to read the Washington Post multi part story on Dick Cheney a month or two ago. He and his aide David Addington have in fact been largely behind most of the sinister things that have happened since 9/11 especially the sanctioning of torture, secret prisons, rendition and wide spread spying on Americans.
You forget Dick Cheney was originally tasked to select a VP for Bush. He quickly deduced George W. was a clueless, easily manipulated tool and he saw his dream come true. He knew he couldn't get elected President especially with his heart condition, but he could be the most power VP in history, and have most of the power of the President without being President, so he picked himself to be VP. When elected he proceeded to install his closest allies at key spots all through the executive branch. He has in fact been running a shadow government. People like Colin Powell tried to stop some of his excesses but Cheney completely out maneuvered everyone who tried to stop him and since he had his allies all over the executive branch, and he knew how to manipulate Bush, he won every round. In particular Rumsfeld and Cheney are best buddies from when they worked together under Nixon and Ford.
Several people who left the Justice Department have spelled it out that David Addington, Cheney's right hand man, was the one that instituted torture as an authorized interrogation technique, defended it against every opponent including people in the DOJ who knew it was illegal and immoral, and has managed to preserve waterboarding as an approved technique to this day. Every time anyone has tried to restore sanity and ban torture Cheney and Addington have out maneuvered them and retained torture as American policy. John Yoo is the other reprehensible low life of a legal academic that helped Cheney's office build the rationalization that torture was acceptable.
Normally VP's are completely impotent figureheads but thanks mostly to the feeble mindedness and naivety of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney is probably the most powerful VP in American history and is the sinister force behind almost everything bad that has been done in the last 7 years.
I realize there is almost no chance you could successfully impeach Cheney but there is probably no one who deserves it more for shredding our Constitution and destroying what little goodwill America had in the world. The crap Clinton got impeached for is insignificant compared to the high crimes Dick Cheney has perpetrated using 9/11 as an excuse.
Slashdot Mirror
"How do we know this isn't the guy who's been making CNN cover britney instead of actual news huh? Cause I'm all for firing whoever that dude is."
LOL. That's funny dude.... or it would be if it weren't so sad and true. I'm a news junky and I did watch CNN all the time during the early years. They were kind of liberal leaning when Ted Turner was in charge but they did do news. Once Time Warner took over, 9/11 happened and they started getting pasted by Fox CNN completely cratered and I can't stand to watch it anymore. CNN international is OK, CNN US is a complete embarrassment to everything CNN used to stand for.
I think they tried to out fox Fox and they just sucked at it. They didn't get a new audience and lost what was left of their old one. Larry King turned completely tabloid. Nancy Grace is the world's biggest shrew lynching people in the media, Glenn Beck is a dick the put on just to pander to the right, Anderson Cooper has a massive egotistical self promoter and climber not backed up by any talent as a journalist, Dr. Sanjay panders to women who just want to look at the hunk doctor but I would be terrified if that moron every operated on my brain or anyones brain. Rick Sanchez makes Geraldo look good. Kira Philips is the only talking head I can stand to watch on the whole network. Aaron Brown was a little boring and I see why he got axed for Cooper but he did actually cover news and have interesting things to say once in a while and I actually tuned him in.
I switched to BBC and CNBC for news because 24/7 cable news has completely failed at reporting news that matters. They mostly seem to be there to just report on the last cute, white, women kidnapped or murdered recently because it draws the female demographic like flies to honey.
Lol, the concept there is a gigantic global leftist conspiracy is just flat goofy, considering there is less Socialism in the world today than there has been in the last hundred years. The world is increasingly dominated by plutocrats and people who mouth empty praises of free markets and then buy ourt politicians to give them huge barrels of pork. You need look no further than China, to see a supposedly leftist country that is now an extremely right wing Fascist state worshiping at the altar of the beloved buck.
You are also jumping to the conclusion I'm a leftist since its your knee jerk reaction to make every discussion so your convenient off the shelf rants work. Not really a fan of Socialism either, just have no use for people who rant about it like its the root of all evil. The right wing and free marketeers aren't any better, or really any different.
I would be a Libertarian but if you actually did that the top 1% and the ruthless dicks would devour the world and everyone else would end up dirt poor.
Unfortunately once the human population exploded, the world got crowded, we started organizing societies and developing social systems we entered in to a realm in we get a bunch of incompetent self serving people whose goal in life is to order everyone else around no matter where they are on the spectrum,. Its just inevitable some people are going to spend their time telling other people how to live, and now there aren't even any frontiers left which is how people used to escape being bossed around by other people.
I'm just pointing out there isn't really a dimes bit of difference between Socialist bureaucrats bossing everyone around, and wealthy capitalists doing the same thing. In capitalism the power lies in the hands of the ruthless rich who were willing to screw their own mother to get rich(er), and if you don't have any money you are going to be coerced every second of your life by the people who do.
"Leftism has a foothold in all of our institutions"
In case you didn't notice rightism has a foothold in all of those places too. You just hate Leftists so you notice them and choose to ignore the extremists on the other side you are OK with.
The U.S. government was completely dominated by rightists from 2000 through 2006. They were just so horrible at governing people decided they hated the Democrats less.
As for the media you need to look no further than Rupert Murdoch. He controls Fox, Fox News, CNET, DirectTV, MySpace, the Wall Street Journal, scores of newspapers and television stations and he is as right wing as they come. I think it is the largest media empire on the planet and it is entirely controlled by a right wing extremist. Talk radio is also dominated by nothing but right wing nuts.
As for education I'll grant you American teachers do lean pretty strongly left though "No Child Left Behind" was the right wings best attempt to completely destroy the current education system. Unfortunately like everything they've tried in the last 7 years the right wing botched that too. They would certainly prefer all children were moved in to private, preferably religious schools.
"Leftists love coercion."
All people with a thirst for power love coercion, that is what power is, one person or group of people exerting control over another. Its not something unique to "Leftists". Rightists really love coercion too. Capitalists are quite familiar with coercion, its just the way they go about is somewhat more subtle. The ridiculous power big corporations and lobbyists have acquired over the U.S. government has almost completely disconnected the government from the actual people. The people keep voting for them and sending them to the halls of power. Once they get there they mostly vote the way lobbyists and their big campaign contributors tell them, which is usually diametrically opposed to the actual best interests of their constituents.
"No, but the Republican party still wants a chance at this election. If another war was started, it would guarantee a Democrat victory."
.... but it worked. Anything is possible if you control an effective propaganda machine.
Not if you manage an effective propaganda campaign to con the American people in to thinking that they and their children are in imminent danger. It would be somewhat harder to do this time around because everyone is a little jaded from Iraq... It would still be quite possible to use an imagined threat from Iran to actually win an election as long as you are willing to kill a few Americans to get the fear rolling. The Republican's won the 2002 and 2004 elections at least partially based on fear mongering about 9/11 and Iraq, that and skillful use of wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion.
All you would need is another 9/11 scale attack, an attack where you could implicate Iran even if they had nothing to do with it, real or fabricated evidence of an Iranian built nuke, and a repeat of something like the Anthrax letters that followed 9/11.
The neocon cabal, The New American Century had pretty brazenly outlined the importance of modern Pearl Harbors to advance their agenda, and lucky them, they got one on 9/11, followed by a couple more in the London and Madrid bombings.
Those Anthrax letters are the most disturbing indicator of a government conspiracy, even if 9/11 wasn't, where someone killed a small number of Americans in order to create a panic about weapons of mass destruction so it could be used as the propaganda lever to get the American people to support invading Iraq. All indications are the Anthrax came out of American bioweapons labs, not from some Middle Eastern terrorist. You also note the American government made absolutely no progress in finding the responsible party even though they know where the Anthrax came from.
I still remember the run up to Iraq war where Fox News was running news stories suggesting Saddam was going to use drones to spray American cities with chemical and biological weapons. It was complete insanity and blatantly fabrication
I'm the first to admit its a little unlikely, but the Neocons are starting to regain some of their malevolent self confidence since things have calmed down some in Iraq. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they are considering ginning up a war with Iran in time to start a new and furious round of flag waving and lapel pins for the next election.
"Unfortunately, they typcially manufacture the CO2 nearby"
"But the hard part is getting the CO2 to the right location, so I don't hold out promise for that."
I think the CO2 used to recover oil from old fields in West Texas is drilled for and pumped out of the ground in the Four Corners (SouthWestern Colorado) where it is naturally occurring in underground deposits and pumped to Texas through a pipeline by Kinder Morgan.
There are huge coal deposits and two going on three huge dirty coal fired power plants near Farmington, New Mexico right next to the same pipeline. If the sequestration technology actually worked it really wouldn't be hard at all to transport it with existing pipeline technology.
I think the problem is the sequestration technology itself isn't practical yet.
I also suspect this whole project was a boondoggle and a propaganda tool of the coal industry and the Bush administration. They've been running a huge ad campaign for years, usually featuring kids, touting "clean coal", the same kids most vulnerable to the heavy metals raining from real power plants. I'm pretty sure they just wanted to brainwash people in to thinking burning coal was "clean" or soon would be "clean" to lessen resistance to the furious building of new "dirty" coal fired power plants that has been going on in recent years. They didn't actually have to succeed in doing "clean coal", they just had to con people in to think somehow burning coal would be "clean" which it probably never will be, until they got all their dirty plants built and then they would be facts on the ground and you are stuck with them.
I also suspect this whole project was an excuse to funnel a billion dollars in to the pockets of some Republican friendly contractors and then do what they usually do, just kill it before the contractor had to actually deliver anything useful. When you are living on Federal subsidies its a lot easier to make money on a project that gets killed before it actually has to be made to work.
Terminator actually seems to have some pretty decent writing and they and the director are pretty witty sometimes. I hope their writesr don't get canned because of the strike. I wouldn't mind most of the network writers getting canned and starting over, especially the ones writing the mind numbing crime/autopsy shows, but would like to see the writers for Terminator, Stewart and Colbert survive in tact.
It was until Kennedy and LBJ launched the civil rights movement and LBJ actually passed laws to do it. At that point the segregationists and the South mostly flipped from Democrats to Republicans. A few blue dog democrats stayed Democrat out of habit but they will eventually all be dead.
Democrats became the party of choice for blacks and the Republicans became an even more lilly white and racist party than they had been.
In some respects it kind of straightened things out. It was just really weird for the Republican party to be the party of choice for blacks just because of Abolition and Lincoln. The Republicans are hostile to just about every issue important to blacks and have been for quite a while.
In defense of network TV, Fox's "Terminator, Sarah Connors Chronicles" is actually pretty decent so far. Its the only network show I go out of my way to watch. I liked the new Battlestar Galactica early on but it faded fast. I like some of the things on History channel, Discover and the military channel but thats because I like history and facts over the bad fiction and reality shows which dominate the networks.
For good conversation PBS's Charlie Rose is hands down the best for thought provoking and informative, though it varies with the guest. Its entirely available on the web at www.charlierose.com
Bottom line is its not about the medium any more. Its all about whether people are producing interesting content whatever the medium. Big TV and record companies have enormous problems because their one and only motivation is to make a buck, and great artists have an enormous problem producing great art from within that kind of system. Their system worked when their were 3 network channels because people watched it whether it was good or bad because there weren't many other options in the old days. Now there are a whole lot of options.
For recreation I would rather play interactive games were I'm doing something and effecting the outcome instead of being a spoon fed vegie.
Probably incorrect on my part to imply the Republican party came entirely from the Whigs but the Whigs did find a home there and they were a prominent faction in the early Republican part. There are factions in all parties, I'm just pointing out the Bush clan are from the elitist, blue blood, Connecticut, Tory/Whig, wealthy faction of the party.
The Whigs and Tories found a much more receptive home in the Republican party than they ever would with the Democrats, at last as far as the Northern Tories of Connecticut are concerned which is what I was talking about.
The Abolotinist issue is a rather complex one to mix in to the point I was making it. Russell, the Skull and Bones founder was an Abolitionist, as I recall. They were also religious fanatics and I think their abolitionist streak was partially religious in origin.
I don't think the Connecticut Tories were heavily invested in the South's plantation economy. They were focused on the Industrial north and in making millions selling drugs to the Chinese. Its just a guess on my part but I suspect they had an agenda which involved undercutting the South economically so they could wrest political and economic control of the country for themselves and the North. Abolition, whether intentional or not, turned in to a tool to give the North complete domininion of the economic and politics of America for nearly a century.
"because they are people who don't support the current heir to the throne of George III"
The current American President is from a family that are for all practical purposes Tories, pro aristocracy both in Britain and in America.
Its quite possible British anarchists would be banned by the current administration precisely because they are vocal critics of the British royal family. The Bush clan are inordinately fond of the British monarchy.
Yale and Connecticut have been a hotbed of Tory sympathizers since the America revolution and its that is the heartland of the Bush clan, not Maine or Texas. The Yale Fraternity Skull and Bones, where most of the Bush men have been members, originates from a group of Connecticut Tories and prominent opium traffickers. The Skull and Bones emblem comes from the pirate flags of Opium smugglers. A number of blue blood American families acquired much of their wealth trafficking in Opium in China in the 1800's. They were more or less the same as Heroine smugglers are today. Reference Wikipedia on William Huntington Russell one of the principal founders of Skull and Bones.
Americans were never universal in their support of the American revolution, for severing ties with the British throne, or establishing a Democracy which many Tories considered mob rule. Tories morphed into the Whig Party which in turn was the foundation of the Republican party which is why Republicans tend to be white, elitist and pro wealth.
One interpretation of the Republican revolution over the last 10 years is it was basically the Tories regaining control of America 200 hundred years after they lost the American revolution. The last 8 years have been marked by the Republican aristocracy regaining control of the reins of power in America and doing away with as much of the American constitution as they could manage. Tories have always held the constitution in complete contempt along with the concept that all men are equal. Tories/Republicans are most decidely of the opinion that some people are better than others.
Cheating is rampant in BF2 and it doesn't really have any grind component other than whoring points to rank up. The ranks really aren't worth much other than prestige and they don't even offer much of that. There is no monetary component at all. Some people place value in their stats but you can usually look at someones stats and tell they are cheating, because their accuracy is way to good.
In WoW there certainly is a huge element using cheats to gold farm, advance their characters, and to circumvent grind time, but people still cheat when all those elements are not there.
Try to explain the rationale of someone paying money for an aimbot in BF2. They don't get any return on the investment. They usually rack up ridiculous stats so everyone knows they are cheating so its not like anyone stands in awe of their ability, everyone instantly hates them.
The only psychologies behind it I can visualize are:
- People are fascinated with beating the system, finding flaws in software especially networked software, and think they are impressing other people in networked games by flaunting the fact they are beating the system.
- Some people have inherent psychological issues that make them want to be vandals. People who use cheats in BF2 rapidly destroy the game play on a server, make everyone playing for fun miserable so they leave, and driver servers in to the tank.
- I get the impression some people cheat just to punish the people who play games for fun and recreation. Maybe their lives are miserable so they want to make everyone else miserable too.
- They are people who are neophyte hackers in training learning to beat game software before they move up to the big leagues and try to beat banking software and become felons. I'm not sure the skill sets of cracking games and cracking websites is exactly the same though.
Playing devil's advocate here....
If you are in places like the U.S. or China most of the electricity you are pouring in to your computer(s) looking for a proverbial needle in a hay stack, is coming from a coal fired power plant, and if SETI achieves a seven fold increase in the electricity they consume maybe we will get a couple more coal fired power plants built. It does take more electricity to run your computer when the CPU is pegged than when its idle you know, quite a bit more. This energy use will in turn accelerate global warming ultimately leading to a climate catastrophe which wipes out civilization as we know it, so we will no longer be able to send or receive signals from ET. Certainly I can't tell you how to use your computer but I can politely ask if you are going to contribute to the severe problems we have with energy on this planet that you at least try to use the energy wisely.
With SETA@Home you are burning significant amounts of electricity pegging your CPU every idle minute, looking for a needle that may not have ever been there, or if it is there the needle may not look ANYTHING like what SETI is searching, or if there ever was a needle we probably weren't listening when it was sent since the universe is billions of years old and human kind has had the tecnology to send or receive such a signal for like a hundred years. It would be an amazing coincidence if some civilization decided to set up a transmitter for this kind of signal and keep it running for like a billion years waiting for some other civilization to acquire the technology to listen for it and then find it in the haystack. Even if you DO ever find one what exactly are you going to do about it other than send an answer that wont get there for a really long time unless ET is in a neighboring star system. If you do answer they may not even hear. And its not like you are gonna start any kind of bidirectional communication where you are figuring out what each other are saying with years to millions of years needed to send each packet.
Just curious is SETI SENDING the same kind of signal they are searching for and if so for how long and with what kind of direction. If SETI isn't sending the signal they are searching for it undermines their whole concept.
I could almost see doing SETI if it were searching for the kinds of radiation technological civilizations are likely to produce just being technological civilizations but to think a civilization is going to go out of their way to broadcast this particular signal forever is weak at best.
Some poster here said if SETI actually discovered the signal it would be an earth shattering technological breakthrough. NO, it wouldn't. Because all you would have is a pulse signal at a certain frequency and you would have enormous problems taking even a tiny step forward with it unless ET is VERY close to us in our galaxy.
Its a breakthrough in that people are no longer buying CD's which have 1 or 2 good songs on them and being forced to pay an arm a leg for the rest of the album that is crap.
It will be a revolution, whether its iTunes or some other online distribution mechanism, if bands can remain free of the big labels and still sell their songs. Unfortunately there could be some DRM in that. If you want good music you are going to need to insure that bands have a big financial incentive to go all out and produce great music.
The things that are killing music or could kill it are:
- Suits at big labels deciding what gets produced, and then shoving it down everyones throat
- Widespread theft of music or other artistic works over the Internet so artists don't get compensated for their work
If you want good art you need a service like iTunes that sells it at a reasonable price so artists are compensated, but as quickly as possible cut the monopolistic record companies out of the process of deciding what music and what bands are good.
I think Dvorak's problem is he is a Microsoft fan boy and since Vista was a resounding failure that colors his entire outlook on the world.
He obviously glosses over the Wii which was a huge success and changed the demographics of the game industry. I read recently retirement homes are buying Wii's in increasing numbers because it offers games seniors enjoy playing, encourages modest amounts of exercise and social interaction.
The iPhone is a bit overhyped but it certainly did cause tremors in the mobile space if not an earthquake. It has pushed all the players in the mobile space to work on usability and provide full browser support on mobile devices. When someone builds one with high speed access and low monthly fees it certainly will change how people live. It will also be interesting if Andorid can match it with a more open software stack. A full up mobile browser with Flash and video, GPS, location aware apps, high and unlimited bandwidth and low monthly fees would be awesome.
HDTV has finally started to happen. Unfortunately most of the programming is still crap but it sure is nice that we are finally ditching a 50 year old video standard for something that sucks a lot less. HDTV will accelerate convergence of PC and TV in the living room.
Apple iTunes isn't exactly new in 2007 but it is completely changing the music business and either it or a counterpart will change the video on demand business. It remains to be seen how it will shake out, but if the Internet destroys the monopoly hold a few brain dead companies have on the music industry and we actually get good music again that would be awesome.
Unfortunately Dvorak is sitting there staring at his PC running Vista and life does kind of suck for him. But he is a dinosaur and hasn't realized technology is moving past the Windows PC.
With $100 barrel oil and global warming, that's just what the world needs is to get a couple billion more people sitting in traffic jams burning up the dwindling supply of fossil fuels and polluting the air.
"Great idea, mediocre execution."
Its a great idea for generating page hits on your ads, especially after someone at Popular Mechanics gets it posted on the Slashdot front page. I imagine it boosted their website revenue by a tidy sum today.
If they had actually wanted to just communicate useful information they would have put all of one candidates positions on one page or put all the candidates positions on each issue on a page for comparison.....but NOOOOOOOO.
"a huge impact on the future of communications in this country"
That's a huge exaggeration if ever there was one. Newspapers are in steep decline, the only time I read one that is actually printed on actual paper is if I'm travelling on some form of mass transit and don't have Internet access. Not sure local TV stations even have that much impact any more. Like what do you actually see on local news other than nightly recounting of the sensational crime of the day, feel good human interest stories, weather and sports neither of which is subject to a lot of editorializing.
I read the Washington Post and New York Times but I read them online and I'm not anywhere near the Washington or New York TV market. You know they invented this Internet thing a while back and all those media market rules are kind of anachronisms in an age with a bidirectional global communication medium. If every newspaper in existence disappeared and turned in to a news website it would be nothing but a massive environmental boon, fewer trees mowed down, and a lot less paper going in to landfills, though coal burned for electricity might go up.
This might have some modest impact on the media watchdog role over local governmnet but that's about it. I wager the percentage of people who even care about their local government is tiny unless they raise your taxes or don't fill the potholes in the street. Not sure bloggers wouldn't be better at this role anyway since real investigative reporters are few and far between and increasingly unlikely to offend anyone with political or economic power.
If you want to name the single most damaging consolidation in the newspaper business lately it was Rupert Murdoch gaining control over the Wall Street Journal though it would be hard for him to make it any more right wing than it already was at least on the editorial page.
Or another hugely damaging consolidation is that 4 or 5 giant companies control nealy all the programming you see on cable and satellite and most of it is really bad.
And of course Clear Channel controls a staggering percentage of radio stations and plays mostly horrible music.
The fact a company can now control a TV station and a newspaper in a top 20 market is so insignificant I completely don't care. TV and Newspapers are both dieing in the face of the Internet and interactive games and that is mostly a good thing, though it might mean people will be even more ignorant about the world and politics than they already are but that is human nature and not something TV or newspapers really contribute to good or bad.
The problem with EVE is its kind of a small company and I'm pretty sure most of their development and QA people spend to much of their time playing their game instead of doing their job developing and testing their game. When you have that kind of dynamic bad things can happen...and they did.
It is a game with a lot of potential, for a niche audience at least, but they are so many glaring defects in it that you are left wishing they would hire some game developers with a clue. For example their game would be vastly improved with a trivial effort if a developer would spend a couple hours making it so you could use the keyboard to steer and put and end to their clicking in empty space to steer insanity. The fact that they put up with that B.S. indicates they have some seriously clueless developers. Their game would also be infinitely less annoying if they made a queue for skill training so you don't have to constantly keep track of when skill training is going to complete. I imagine they do it to force you to think about their game, and login even when you dont want to, but it is a classic sign of developers who are either clueless or have complete contempt for their customer base.
I tried that game and wanted to like it but I mostly left shaking my head because of trivial to fix design flaws they've preserved for years. I'm guessing their developers have been putting up with them since the beginning and have some how rationalized that they were OK just because its always been like that.
None of the work being done at JPL on planetary exploration is even remotely "defense" related. Maybe there is defense work there but I doubt any of these people who have been working there for years went there to work on better ways to kill people. They went their to explore the solar system in an entirely peaceful and benevolent way. I think the rules are being changed on them by an increasingly paranoid and increasingly militarized government.
It brings to mind the sad case of Alan Turing. He was one of the greatest minds in early computing and because he was gay he was hounded by the British government in to committing suicide depriving the world of decades more of his brilliant work. The work Turing did was crucial in cracking German codes and certainly shortened the war, and he well could have made the difference in winning it.
This isn't really new for JPL either. The rocket boys at CalTech started out doing peaceful research before World War II. They did pitch in to the war effort to defeat Fascism, but in 1946 many of them wanted to demilitarize and return to peaceful research. Unfortunately JPL turned in to a cold war military lab. One of their founding fathers Frank Malina resigned when his left leaning politics in 30's became known to the FBI. One of their best mathmeticians, Hsue-Shen Tsien, was fired and placed under house arrest because he was a suspected communist. When he was finally freed he did in fact return to China and became an integral part of their space program. Its an interesting question, was he really a communist spy when at JPL, or did the U.S. witch hunt drive him in to the arms of Communist China, when otherwise he would have been a priceless contributor to the American space program.
Some interesting tidbits on JPL's eary years are here.
I hate to break it to you but a LOT of the world's most brilliant thinkers are non conformists in one way or another, sexual orientation, drug use, pacifism, political leanings etc. If you are going to build your society only on "normal" people you are going to lose many of your greatest thinkers and forego many great breakthroughs.
The only reason gays are a security risk in this day and age is because the defense industrial complex have forced them in to a closet by making homosexuality a basis for termination of their security clearance. Homosexuality isn't illegal in this country any more. If it was completely removed as an factor in granting security clearances it wouldn't be an effective means for blackmailing anyone any more. It used to be a legitimate concern for blackmail because it was illegal. It isn't anymore.
The one point you miss in this clause, where everything you do for six months belongs to your previous employer, is it pretty much makes you unemployable for six months if you do any kind of creative work like programming. If you tell your new employer about it they will get cold feet about hiring you. If you don't tell them about it your old employer, if they are bitter over you leaving, can come after both you and your new employer at which point your new employer will probably fire you for creating this problem for them. I seriously doubt this clause is enforceable but if you sign it will basically move all their employees in to a form of indentured servitude. I half suspicion we can thank out sourcing to China for some of this. American companies are learning the beauty of having indentured servents from their Chinese slave labor and they want the same thing from their American work force too.
You can empathize with employers because it is a pretty common thing for an employee to come up with a great idea while working at the company, probably with the aid of knowledge they gain from their workplace, employees at the company, or from their contacts with the companies customers, and rather than contributing it back to the company that enabled them to discover, instead they take it to a competitor or turn in to a competitor themselves.
It is a hard problem. Adding a clause that seeks to make someone unemployable for six months is a pretty bad attempt at a solution though.
The ideal solution is you provide a good working environment for your employees so they will want to contribute back to your companies success and so they know they will be rewarded handsomely for doing that successfully. Unfortunately most companies save all their rewards for people who are VP, director or above and they completely screw all the engineers and programmers who actually make their products and often have innovative ideas. In those kind of environments people with great ideas are going to take their ideas and leave and abusive contracts just increase that likelihood. Google is the obvious counterexample, they make sure all their employees are well compensated, even the masseuse, and encourage people to share their ideas with their company, and if they are winners they end up millionaires. End result is they are an idea factory while many of their draconian counterparts are devoid of innovative thinking.
"That said, google is an american company, and I'm not sure whether its even planning a launch in Asia. Do you? "
Google isn't launching any phones. Considering two of Google's partners are China Mobile which I think is the largest carrier on the planet and DoCoMo one of the most innovative I think they have some of the most important markets well covered. They are hurting in the U.S. since Verizon and AT&T aren't on board. They have Sprint but Sprint is kind of a train wreck and third in market share, their network is in a mess, their merger with Nextel went bad, serious management problems, a little desperate, etc. AT&T has iPhone so they don't need Android. Verizon has market share and I doubt they want to relinquish any control.
"The public *has* flocked to camera phones and text messaging, but smartphones? No. Not by a long shot."
Maybe you should visit Japan sometime. Maybe is a subject of debate whether DoCoMo's phones are "smart phones" but the Japanese live and breath their cell phones. They are a heavy commuter culture and their phones are a key part of what they do during their commute.
Now if you are in America like Dvorak and probably the parent is then yes smart phones are kind of a disaster. I think that is probably more because American phone companies are a disaster. They are just out to maximize their revenue and milk every dime they can out of every customers. They also have a lot more territory to cover with their networks which makes them expensive and hard to update with the latest technology. Americans also tend to commute solo in their cars which is a little insane but it also means they don't have their hands or brains free to surf on their cell phones and do something productive while they are commuting. Instead they spend a couple hours a day staring at the brake lights of the person in front of them going insane.
If you can get a phone with good bandwidth, a good screen, and reasonable browser performance and most importantly at a reasonable fixed monthly fee there is no reason why people wont drink it in.
Me personally I expect the gPhone to crater in the U.S. because American phone companies wont relinquish the control and will overcharge for everything. I expect it to do fine in China, Japan, India and maybe Europe which covers the lion's share of the people on the planet. This assumes gPhone is well implemented and at a reasonable price. China loves Linux mostly because they hate sending money to foreign devils to license things like Symbian and Windows. This is a reason they have a huge trade surplus.
"Liberalism is a mental disorder."
Nice attempt at a cubby hole. I'm not a Liberal. I'm mostly Libertarian. I don't really have any use for Democrats or Republicans.
Its just a simple fact that as bad as the Democrats are, the Republicans of the last 7 years has been unimaginably worse. I was actually a Young Republican in my youth. Back then the Republican party did still maintain some semblance of conservativism and had a moderate wing.
Unfortunately in the last 7 year Republican party has tilted completely in to Fascism coupled with a propaganda machine, spending like drunk sailors and evangelical Christian nutjobs pretending like they knew how to run a country. I just hope America's economy, government and society isn't so irreparably damaged by these loons that it can't survive another year of them and recover when we are finally rid of them. The plunging dollar tends to suggest its very much in doubt if the U.S. will last another year without a complete collapse.
If you want to see a mental disorder what ever is afflicting the smoldering shell of the Republican party. that is a real and serious mental disorder. Its certainly not Conservatism that they are practicing.
"Either Americans really are dumb as all fuck"
Not all Americans are dumb but there are really a lot of dumb Americans. Though in reality people in general are dumb. Its why propaganda is such an important part of government and why it works so well. In the case of America, Evangelical Christianity and TV are pretty lethal cocktail for rational thought. Most American's spend their lives being told what to think by those two entities. Not sure how popular TV wrestling is in the rest of the world but its telling how huge it is in America. Its is a completely fabricated sport but American's still watch it in huge numbers and actually pay ridiculous sums to watch it on pay per view. Its telling about their susceptibility to deception and self deception.
If you want to find the single person most responsible for the debacle of the last seven years you might be amused to discover he is an Aussie. When Rupert Murdock created the Fox News channel he created a focal point for the propaganda machine that completely snowed the American people in to the war in Iraq. Right before the invasion Fox was running flash news bulletins that Saddam had RPV's that he was planning to use to spray chemical and biological weapons on American cities. Never mind that he had no real way to get them anywhere near America even if he did have something like that. or if he actually had America would have nuked him in to the stone age. It was complete and utter lies and propaganda to whip up a war frenzy but it worked, especially in the wake of 9/11.
It was in the news a while ago that Dick Cheney has a standard check list for the hotels he stays at. Its required the hotel tune the TV to Fox News so its the only thing he sees on the TV. Fox News is the oracle of the current administration. Not sure they could have done half the things they did or gotten reelected without it.
Yes American were snowed, but so were the Germans, Japanese and Italians in the 1930's. You just need good propaganda and a people who are susceptible to it, and most people are.
I think you need to read the Washington Post multi part story on Dick Cheney a month or two ago. He and his aide David Addington have in fact been largely behind most of the sinister things that have happened since 9/11 especially the sanctioning of torture, secret prisons, rendition and wide spread spying on Americans.
You forget Dick Cheney was originally tasked to select a VP for Bush. He quickly deduced George W. was a clueless, easily manipulated tool and he saw his dream come true. He knew he couldn't get elected President especially with his heart condition, but he could be the most power VP in history, and have most of the power of the President without being President, so he picked himself to be VP. When elected he proceeded to install his closest allies at key spots all through the executive branch. He has in fact been running a shadow government. People like Colin Powell tried to stop some of his excesses but Cheney completely out maneuvered everyone who tried to stop him and since he had his allies all over the executive branch, and he knew how to manipulate Bush, he won every round. In particular Rumsfeld and Cheney are best buddies from when they worked together under Nixon and Ford.
Several people who left the Justice Department have spelled it out that David Addington, Cheney's right hand man, was the one that instituted torture as an authorized interrogation technique, defended it against every opponent including people in the DOJ who knew it was illegal and immoral, and has managed to preserve waterboarding as an approved technique to this day. Every time anyone has tried to restore sanity and ban torture Cheney and Addington have out maneuvered them and retained torture as American policy. John Yoo is the other reprehensible low life of a legal academic that helped Cheney's office build the rationalization that torture was acceptable.
Normally VP's are completely impotent figureheads but thanks mostly to the feeble mindedness and naivety of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney is probably the most powerful VP in American history and is the sinister force behind almost everything bad that has been done in the last 7 years.
I realize there is almost no chance you could successfully impeach Cheney but there is probably no one who deserves it more for shredding our Constitution and destroying what little goodwill America had in the world. The crap Clinton got impeached for is insignificant compared to the high crimes Dick Cheney has perpetrated using 9/11 as an excuse.