Jon Stewart is constrained by the commercial format of his show in ways similar that Carlson et al. are constrained by the commercial formats of their shows. For e.g., Jon Stewart has to be funny.
The heart of the difference is that Carlson et al. are practitioners of the only profession which is explicitly protected in a constitutional amendment. Stewart is voicing a widely held criticism of commercial journalism: that commercial journalism is not adequately doing its job under the constitution.
It matters less whether a viewer shares this criticism than the question of whether journalists are obligated to make viewers aware of it.
For the same reason, I think it misses the point to denigrate a Comedy Channel program for its lack of balanced news coverage.
I have a law office, and our largest challenge is translating heavily formatted legal documents between different word processors.
As a result, I run XP Pro so that I can run emergency versions of Word and WordPerfect.
That said, I am very pleased to report that my primary office suite is Open Office. My brother helped me create a template with pleading lines, and all of my legal forms and correspondence are created using Open Office. Its terrific!
Firefox is my browser, Thunderbird is my mail client and I have Knoppix for data recovery in the event of crashes.
I've searched for a long time, but I've never found any reference on a bookshelf, on the web or anywhere else that devoted sufficient attention to translating, creating and formatting legal forms with Open Office or rescuing formatting disasters when documents created with Word or WordPerfect have to be translated into Open Office format. I have to create my forms from plain text format and then add all of the formatting. It may not sound hard, but trust me, its a nightmare.
There are also problems related to proprietary case management software and accounting packages that are necessary to a law practice but which don't play as well as is desirable with the Open Office Suite, Linux or Firefox. I use Gavel & Gown Amicus Attorney at work, and I cannot find a viable open source substitute for it. I keep trying to convince my brother to write one, but apparently that would be an enormous project.:)
If these problems were adequately addressed, I believe that many lawyers would gladly give up their licensing fees and switch to Linux and Open Office.
I'm not sure I agree that the programming you listed qualifies as "creative." Were you to program the same content on the net, you would risk indictment.
I don't think that the aesthetic question of what should count as creative ought to be left to prosecutorial discretion. On the other hand, my reservation hardly matters in the context of programming that would run afoul of constitutional protections whether it was posted on the net or part of a micro-broadcast.
The net effect (hehe) is to moot the question of whether one medium or the other is more desirable for publication of constitutionally objectionable content which purports to be creative.
I think this is a really interesting comment. But doesn't Lawrence Lessig (who thinks a lot about electronics and free speech) write that private interests pose at least as large if not larger threat to free speech rights on the internet?
Maybe low power radio will make a comeback in part because of commercialization of the internet? That is, low-power broadcasts represent an affordable, noncommercial space for creative experimentation and communication within a community (a/k/a free speech)?
The homebrew quality of the transmitter also recalls early descriptions of the personal computer kit-builders in the 70s, also a good time for free speech fans.
The small scale of the communities recalls Linus Torvalds posting about his Minix-alternative project.
Aren't blogs about gaming "experiences" about as close to the fringe of what traditionally gets counted as "experience" as its possible to get?
Excluding blogs about the technical aspects of the game-playing experience (e.g. how the code runs on various types of hardware) the whole thrust of a blog directed in the manner of the Blair Witch Project is to tout the authenticity of the gaming experience as compared with other less authentic varieties.
Is the subjective portion of the gaming experience --- however authentic --- significant mainly for its demoralizing and addictive negation of actual experiences, including connections to actual friends, meaningful work, etc.?
That sort of immersion in the world-of-pretend *could* signify a Matrix-ish dystopian symptom of political disengagement.
But, on the other hand, whose to say its not just another example of great entertainment and inspiring marketing moxie in the esteemed tradition of Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio telecast?
equal a large jury verdict against MS and possibly support a punitive damages award too. A large verdict could represent a tipping point in any number of tactical efforts by MS, for example the ongoing war over consumer desktop space. . . .
Okay I just like the idea of a significant verdict coming from a suit which is basically called, "Burst Microsoft."
At this rate, there may be another round of videocard upgrades before Half Life 2 finally gets released. I upgraded to an ATI 9800 so I could be ready to play, and its no longer the fastest version of that card. Sure it will be plenty fast enough, but I was hoping to have splurged.
Large, under-regulated corporations pose a challenging contemporary threat to civil privacy interests --- esp on the net.
Its confusing --- maybe even a little orwellian --- to contemplate Microsoft as some kind of champion of privacy interests.
Isn't the MS drive for market share and support of the proprietary software as dangerous to civil liberties as spyware?
That dog's name was Plato, and he was more than 40-years-old --- one of the "oldest dogs in California" according to his companion, Martin Warshaw.
I'm not sure that Plato was a happy dog --- though he was a very good dog.
Re:I think Marx would shit a brick if he could see
on
What The Bubble Got Right
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm not sure I follow this post well enough to say that I disagree. However I do want to point out that progressive critiques of market economies are often driven by more than just identifying class conflict.
For example, the mobility of capital was a prediction of Marx and others that has largely come to pass. Its a source of valid concern and has very little to do with whether particular rich people are able to exploit particular poor people. When teams of professionals move vast sums of money around the globe there are real human consequences which accompany those moves.
Sometimes the consequences may be reasonable; other times not. To the extent that the decision is based *only* on a private financial rationale, it does not necessarily follow that the results will be good for the public.
At any rate, I think Marx might've looked through his time portal and thought nothing more than, Boy, I should've lightened up on the Hegel when I was analyzing class conflict.
Well --- bearing in mind that I am *not* a rocket scientist and bear a much closer resemblance to Wile E. Coyote --- I originally thought, "Well maybe the pilot could just fly a really big loop and get rid of the extra momentum that way . . .."
Then I remembered that the ship was in a vacuum, so the loop wasn't such a (ahem!) *hot* idea.
Then I thought, "Too bad the pilot couldn't just fly into something to slow the ship down . . . you know, like a brick wall except made out of really thin bricks . . . "
Then I thought, "Oooooh . . . like the atmosphere maybe?"
So I *eventually* came around to seeing the problem. It just happened really, really slowly.:)
The description of the reentry strategy includes none of the bazillion tiles stuck all over the shuttlecraft. This seems like a better approach --- very simple and apparently a lot less heat.
Did anyone notice that a Canadian team is also competing for the prize?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3539018.stm
Do you know anywhere with recipes for making your own?
This site has some for fun.
http://www.scitoys.com/
It would be cool to find examples of homemade cells that were used for larger applications, like the scooter.
there are two solar cell recipes in Simon Field's book (Electronic Gizmos). They only produce power in the milliamperes range. Are the cells are homemade or ordered from somewhere?
Don't forget the heart warming human interest stories and witty anchor banter!
And how did that guy know I sit around in my underwear typing this stuff?
I agree, but I think that Noam Chomsky has less nuanced arguments than some.
A book that I enjoyed was The Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian --- multiple editions. He focuses on the impact of economic concentration of ownership of media outlets.
My favorite is Lawrence Lessig though. His sensitivity to the interaction between politics and, for e.g., the internet, is amazing.
Don't try to frighten us with your sorceror's ways Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion hasn't helped you conjure the stolen Florida votes . . . .
I agree. Neil Stephenson writes terrific science fiction about the past by restoring the historical dimension to the narrative. The characters agency affects history rather than just their individual lives. There's no need for that sort of writing to necessarily be about the future.
One can distinguish science fiction from, say, fantasy writing based on the difference between history and nature. In sci-fi writing, there are possibilities for the characters to have an impact on their world. In fantasy, the characters are buffeted around by forces larger than themselves and the possibilities are restricted to personal possibilities like success versus failure.
Yes there are exceptions, but I like this distinction because it leaves a more expansive space for science fiction writing. Neil Stephenson is writing literature not just popular fiction.
I suspect the comparison between the current administration and Hitler would not seem at all far-fetched to defendants in the criminal justice system facing sentencing under the federal sentencing guidelines.
Farenheit 451 should have been renominated this year. Half a century later, and it still resonates --- maybe moreso except that I was not alive in 1953 to compare.
Slashdot Mirror
Jon Stewart is constrained by the commercial format of his show in ways similar that Carlson et al. are constrained by the commercial formats of their shows. For e.g., Jon Stewart has to be funny.
The heart of the difference is that Carlson et al. are practitioners of the only profession which is explicitly protected in a constitutional amendment. Stewart is voicing a widely held criticism of commercial journalism: that commercial journalism is not adequately doing its job under the constitution.
It matters less whether a viewer shares this criticism than the question of whether journalists are obligated to make viewers aware of it.
For the same reason, I think it misses the point to denigrate a Comedy Channel program for its lack of balanced news coverage.
I have a law office, and our largest challenge is translating heavily formatted legal documents between different word processors.
:)
As a result, I run XP Pro so that I can run emergency versions of Word and WordPerfect.
That said, I am very pleased to report that my primary office suite is Open Office. My brother helped me create a template with pleading lines, and all of my legal forms and correspondence are created using Open Office. Its terrific!
Firefox is my browser, Thunderbird is my mail client and I have Knoppix for data recovery in the event of crashes.
I've searched for a long time, but I've never found any reference on a bookshelf, on the web or anywhere else that devoted sufficient attention to translating, creating and formatting legal forms with Open Office or rescuing formatting disasters when documents created with Word or WordPerfect have to be translated into Open Office format. I have to create my forms from plain text format and then add all of the formatting. It may not sound hard, but trust me, its a nightmare.
There are also problems related to proprietary case management software and accounting packages that are necessary to a law practice but which don't play as well as is desirable with the Open Office Suite, Linux or Firefox. I use Gavel & Gown Amicus Attorney at work, and I cannot find a viable open source substitute for it. I keep trying to convince my brother to write one, but apparently that would be an enormous project.
If these problems were adequately addressed, I believe that many lawyers would gladly give up their licensing fees and switch to Linux and Open Office.
I'm not sure I agree that the programming you listed qualifies as "creative." Were you to program the same content on the net, you would risk indictment.
I don't think that the aesthetic question of what should count as creative ought to be left to prosecutorial discretion. On the other hand, my reservation hardly matters in the context of programming that would run afoul of constitutional protections whether it was posted on the net or part of a micro-broadcast.
The net effect (hehe) is to moot the question of whether one medium or the other is more desirable for publication of constitutionally objectionable content which purports to be creative.
What does "herringbone covered" and FM Trap mean?
Can you say in more detail how the Wi-Fi boomboxes would work? Its an interesting idea. Would the user need a kit to make it work? Software?
I think this is a really interesting comment. But doesn't Lawrence Lessig (who thinks a lot about electronics and free speech) write that private interests pose at least as large if not larger threat to free speech rights on the internet?
Maybe low power radio will make a comeback in part because of commercialization of the internet? That is, low-power broadcasts represent an affordable, noncommercial space for creative experimentation and communication within a community (a/k/a free speech)?
The homebrew quality of the transmitter also recalls early descriptions of the personal computer kit-builders in the 70s, also a good time for free speech fans.
The small scale of the communities recalls Linus Torvalds posting about his Minix-alternative project.
Its fun stuff. What's not to like?
Aren't blogs about gaming "experiences" about as close to the fringe of what traditionally gets counted as "experience" as its possible to get? Excluding blogs about the technical aspects of the game-playing experience (e.g. how the code runs on various types of hardware) the whole thrust of a blog directed in the manner of the Blair Witch Project is to tout the authenticity of the gaming experience as compared with other less authentic varieties. Is the subjective portion of the gaming experience --- however authentic --- significant mainly for its demoralizing and addictive negation of actual experiences, including connections to actual friends, meaningful work, etc.? That sort of immersion in the world-of-pretend *could* signify a Matrix-ish dystopian symptom of political disengagement. But, on the other hand, whose to say its not just another example of great entertainment and inspiring marketing moxie in the esteemed tradition of Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio telecast?
equal a large jury verdict against MS and possibly support a punitive damages award too. A large verdict could represent a tipping point in any number of tactical efforts by MS, for example the ongoing war over consumer desktop space. . . . Okay I just like the idea of a significant verdict coming from a suit which is basically called, "Burst Microsoft."
At this rate, there may be another round of videocard upgrades before Half Life 2 finally gets released. I upgraded to an ATI 9800 so I could be ready to play, and its no longer the fastest version of that card. Sure it will be plenty fast enough, but I was hoping to have splurged.
Large, under-regulated corporations pose a challenging contemporary threat to civil privacy interests --- esp on the net. Its confusing --- maybe even a little orwellian --- to contemplate Microsoft as some kind of champion of privacy interests. Isn't the MS drive for market share and support of the proprietary software as dangerous to civil liberties as spyware?
That dog's name was Plato, and he was more than 40-years-old --- one of the "oldest dogs in California" according to his companion, Martin Warshaw. I'm not sure that Plato was a happy dog --- though he was a very good dog.
I'm not sure I follow this post well enough to say that I disagree. However I do want to point out that progressive critiques of market economies are often driven by more than just identifying class conflict. For example, the mobility of capital was a prediction of Marx and others that has largely come to pass. Its a source of valid concern and has very little to do with whether particular rich people are able to exploit particular poor people. When teams of professionals move vast sums of money around the globe there are real human consequences which accompany those moves. Sometimes the consequences may be reasonable; other times not. To the extent that the decision is based *only* on a private financial rationale, it does not necessarily follow that the results will be good for the public. At any rate, I think Marx might've looked through his time portal and thought nothing more than, Boy, I should've lightened up on the Hegel when I was analyzing class conflict.
Well --- bearing in mind that I am *not* a rocket scientist and bear a much closer resemblance to Wile E. Coyote --- I originally thought, "Well maybe the pilot could just fly a really big loop and get rid of the extra momentum that way . . . ."
Then I remembered that the ship was in a vacuum, so the loop wasn't such a (ahem!) *hot* idea.
Then I thought, "Too bad the pilot couldn't just fly into something to slow the ship down . . . you know, like a brick wall except made out of really thin bricks . . . "
Then I thought, "Oooooh . . . like the atmosphere maybe?"
So I *eventually* came around to seeing the problem. It just happened really, really slowly. :)
Is there an advantage to orbital flight? Why couldn't an orbiting craft stop orbiting before reentry and return to the atmosphere like SS1?
he's going to cue up Steppenwolf before takeoff and ushering in a new era of peaceful space exploration and mini-skirts?
The description of the reentry strategy includes none of the bazillion tiles stuck all over the shuttlecraft. This seems like a better approach --- very simple and apparently a lot less heat. Did anyone notice that a Canadian team is also competing for the prize? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3539018.stm
I think I've been drinking this stuff out of the coffee pot in my office for several years now.
Do you know anywhere with recipes for making your own? This site has some for fun. http://www.scitoys.com/ It would be cool to find examples of homemade cells that were used for larger applications, like the scooter.
there are two solar cell recipes in Simon Field's book (Electronic Gizmos). They only produce power in the milliamperes range. Are the cells are homemade or ordered from somewhere?
Don't forget the heart warming human interest stories and witty anchor banter! And how did that guy know I sit around in my underwear typing this stuff?
I agree, but I think that Noam Chomsky has less nuanced arguments than some. A book that I enjoyed was The Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian --- multiple editions. He focuses on the impact of economic concentration of ownership of media outlets. My favorite is Lawrence Lessig though. His sensitivity to the interaction between politics and, for e.g., the internet, is amazing.
Don't try to frighten us with your sorceror's ways Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion hasn't helped you conjure the stolen Florida votes . . . .
I agree. Neil Stephenson writes terrific science fiction about the past by restoring the historical dimension to the narrative. The characters agency affects history rather than just their individual lives. There's no need for that sort of writing to necessarily be about the future. One can distinguish science fiction from, say, fantasy writing based on the difference between history and nature. In sci-fi writing, there are possibilities for the characters to have an impact on their world. In fantasy, the characters are buffeted around by forces larger than themselves and the possibilities are restricted to personal possibilities like success versus failure. Yes there are exceptions, but I like this distinction because it leaves a more expansive space for science fiction writing. Neil Stephenson is writing literature not just popular fiction.
I suspect the comparison between the current administration and Hitler would not seem at all far-fetched to defendants in the criminal justice system facing sentencing under the federal sentencing guidelines.
Farenheit 451 should have been renominated this year. Half a century later, and it still resonates --- maybe moreso except that I was not alive in 1953 to compare.