It's difficult to talk about what's wrong with tech news reporting without also talking about what's generally wrong with news as an institution. That's because these kinds of problems don't happen in isolation but rather, they reflect the priorities and motivations of the institution. Sort of like the saying "no man is an island."
I am reminded of a sig I have seen belonging to more than one poster, something like "Slashdot does not have a -1 DisagreeAndWishToCensor, and no, Flamebait, Offtopic, and Troll are not substitutes." Now if you don't like what I said and think that there is absolutely no way that the case could be made that it belongs here, at least *try* to look like you have a legitimate reason to feel that way, please. "Offtopic" is a bit too transparent.
I am not trying to split hairs. This is actually a rather important point: they did not manufacture "two artificial atoms, or qubits". They manufactured two clusters of atoms that acted as qubits.
If the quality of journalism we see for politics or for useless celebrity trivia became just like the quality of journalism we see for technical matters, there would be significant backlashes against it. Joe Sixpack might not care about the distinction between abstract qubits and their physical implementation, but by God they better not misreport how many times $POP_SINGER has been divorced!
Though I'm not so sure that blatantly inaccurate (or misleading) statements are worse than the way more mainstream news items are handled. For the mainstream items, they are very careful about which stories become "big news that everyone knows" and which don't, or they selectively omit facts which don't suit their agenda or that they otherwise find to be inconvenient. They do that while being careful that any positive statements that they do choose to make are impeccable.
There's nothing absurd or magical about this. It's not unlike the way Microsoft doesn't make all of their file formats free open standards because they, in a similar fashion, find the idea to be inconvenient and incompatible with their intentions. That doesn't become impossible and unthinkable merely because accurate news is important to you. It just means that it's unwise to be the naive person who takes everything at face value and doesn't question like this:
"Of all the events that happen in the world every day, why promote this thing?"
"If you look carefully at what becomes big news and what doesn't, do you see independent people who stand up for themselves, or do you see victims who need to be rescued from something? Why?"
"Do you see that the news corporations value freedom above all else, or do they call for its removal in the name of safety? Can you pick up any newspaper or turn to any news channel and easily find good representatives of both views? Why or why not?"
"Is the nature of presented debate concerning whether or not it is the role of government to get involved, or does the debate consist merely of two competing proposals for what government should do after it gets involved? Is this a careful consideration of available options before solutions are proposed?"
"Do people like Ron Paul (whether you hate him or love him) get coverage because their ideas are radically different, and so they stand out more? Or do such folks become marginalized because their views are not mainstream? Does this help people to make up their own minds? Does this mean that we have real debate, including dissent, or some mockery of real debate?"
"Do these things, when taken together as an abstract, reflect an agenda? Is that agenda statist in nature? Did it get there by accident?"
The way tech stories are handled can be described as "merely low-quality" or "someone didn't do their homework"... the way the mainstream items are dealt with is really much worse because it takes far more discernment to see what is (deeply) wrong with it. I remember once hearing this on radio news a few years ago (I believe it was Fox): "This new proposal authorizes warrentless wiretapping, which officials state is necessary in order to protect us from the threat of terrorism and will help us to prosecute the War on Terror. However, some civil liberties groups cite privacy concerns *end of show*." Nice how they didn't bother to explain what those concerns are or what the reasoning behind them might be. To quote Bill Hicks, "you'd think that'd be newsworthy..."
But this isn't the 18th century anymore. Think about it. Not paying your bills (instead of running away without paying in a store), credit card fraud and thousands more things are only possible *now*. And easily possible.
ID cards are not a proposed solution for this problem.
Things like that might not have been a problem back then, but today single persons can crash the economy of a small country. And they often do.
For that they need political power. So far we have given it to them and we have reaped what we have sown in the form of a major recession, soon to be followed by hyperinflation.
The world is moving on. Even the US has moved on. You can't have the values and mindsets of a rural and small-scale world and the global village of today at the same time. What works (ideally) in the former won't save you in the latter. In fact it will kill you. Give people a free hand in a world of easy opportunities and enough of them will prefer easy power over easy living.
You cannot cheat a truly honest person because he does not seek to take advantage; therefore, he cannot be taken advantage of. Likewise, you cannot manipulate a virtuous person because he does not participate in that system of interpersonal control. It is our personal weaknesses and our own greed and our own desires for the kind of corrupting power that's not good for us to have which makes us vulnerable to these things. We live right now in a culture where wanting to dominate your fellow man is considered normal and desirable; they call it politics or they call it the corporate ladder. Fail to address that, and the things you have said will unfortunately be true. But to fail to address that is to get so caught up in symptoms that you grossly fall short of understanding the actual problem.
My *personal* take is that we are just apes, very smart and clever apes, bust just apes.
We are apes who can also be human beings. The difference is that animals run on instinct and their primary mode of interaction is reactive. Thus, they can have intelligence but not wisdom. They can have some form of understanding but not intuition. Clever apes are what the public school systems are designed to crank out, factory-style. Clever apes can be manipulated because they cower before bullies and otherwise respond to pressure. That is not actually our nature. In many ways, our species is not evolving into something better but rather, is devolving from a formerly higher state. The difference is that this devolution is cultural in nature, not biological. That means there is an element of choice to it.
I strongly disagree that the simple life means you must give up cars and computers. Friend, I mean no offense or insult but I think that's a common yet superficial interpretation. What's "simple" is dealing with your fellow man in an open, honest, loving, compassionate type of way. Not in a goody-two-shoes sort of way that makes you a pushover either, but rather in a way that will not suffer injustice and understands how to overcome it, constructively. The type of complexity that is contrasted by "the simple life" involves the sort of manipulation and power games and one-upsmanship that so characterizes our cultural attitudes today. Whether you drive a car or a horse-and-buggy has nothing to do with this and believing that it does is a tremendous distraction.
I am going to step out on a limb here. You probably will not have much difficulty chopping off that limb if it pleases you to do so, but I assure you I am aware of that and find this worth saying anyway. If you continue to grow and advance as a person, you will one day come to see the cynicism you just displayed as a wound that very much needs healing. When that wound does heal, the pain it once represented will be replaced by a new sort of courage, a willingness to dare to imagine great and beautifu
Of course it doesn't work this way because there will always be a minority of people trying to get away from what they've done or who switch identities to be able to plot and steel and murder without being caught. And the more complex and mobile a society becomes the less you can rely on people not being able to exploit this. Nowadays and in the future this means that "leave me alone as long as I leave you alone" won't work anymore (if it ever did).
But it did work. It's only recently that we have even had the technology necessary to have this kind of (relatively) secure ID card and the databases that would make it actually useful. Somehow, we managed to get along prior to having this capability. Just think of America during the late 18th century. Back then you could commit a crime, skip town, and effectively disappear. Hand-sketched "WANTED" posters were about the most technologically sophisticated method of finding someone. There were no federal crime databases, so you could have a criminal record and move to another state and tell any employer "I have no criminal record" and they would have no effective way to prove otherwise.
Somehow, this didn't break society or cause it to melt down into a mass of anarchy and crime. In fact, the Americans of the late 18th century didn't even remotely have (especially violent) crime like we do today and the people were much more shocked by things like murders and robberies than we are today. They tended to have strong ideals and beliefs, and generally had faith in something greater than making money in order to have children so that they can grow up to make money in order to have their own children... I don't even think that what the faith is in is the point, but rather, that you have it and know because of it that there are higher ideals than immediate expediency.
There is a serious lack of inability to understand a sentiment. The best expression of that sentiment known to me is found in the Tao de Ching, chapter 57:
The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
The sharper men's weapons,
The more trouble in the land.
The more ingenious and clever men are,
The more strange things happen.
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers.
Therefore the sage says:
I take no action and people are reformed.
I enjoy peace and people become honest.
I do nothing and people become rich.
I have no desires and people return to the good and simple life.
That this is so nearly impossible for us to imagine today is the real problem. The Founding Fathers understood this and their beliefs about freedom, what we often label "Libertarianism" today in order to make it sound like just another option, embodies this realization when it's correctly understood and not merely parroted or preached.
Sorry to burst your illusion of the wise philosopher king.
Isn't that what we all seem to want, in one form or another? I read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (an emperor of Rome) and I see a noble, upright man, the sort of person who really should be running things. Then I see how incredibly rare that actually is, how much of a joke our politicians really are when compared to this sort of standard, and it's a shame.
Thank you; it's a pleasure to talk about this with someone who approaches a discussion with good faith.
I've tried both ways and found good faith to be far superior. In fact, all of my previous failures to show it were caused by ignorance on my part. Too many discussions are more like "talking at" and not much like "conversing with" or "talking to" and I think that, while subtle, this is a bit dehumanizing or degrading.
I think a relevant point here is that the Constitution empowers the Congress to enact copyright laws specifically such as to maximize the common good, so to fulfill their duties as enumerated in the Constitution, they're required to consider what sorts of copyright laws create or preserve the most good. "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries".
I certainly do draw a distinction between the Constitution stating that this is why a law exists and a judge or a politician who just personally feels like something would be a good idea. Maybe I have not done a good job of explaining this, and if so, you have been more merciful towards my inability to clearly articulate that than most. The reason I feel that way is that the government officials we have today are hardly worthy to be called men and would not be worthy to lick the boots of the great men who founded this country. That isn't because I think the Founders were anything other than ordinary human beings who happened to be good, strong, upright, wise men; rather, it is because of the lowly worms that have taken their place and the disgrace they have made of what was once a noble enterprise.
The whole problem with politicians is the whole problem with most people: their deeply held beliefs and principles are for sale. For the politicians, money is the currency. For average people, convenience and the approval of others is the currency. There is no room in any of this for actual integrity. The concept here is that compromised people demand compromised leaders. When you have no beliefs of your own but only those that others have carefully put there, you're less like a human being and more like a computer executing a program while believing that the author of the program is important (it's not, because anyone who programs you could never have your best interests at heart though they will probably praise you for playing along). When those get into power, we end up with the situation we have today. So we talk about flip-flops and lobbyists and legal bribery and monied interests and we expect that "politician" and "liar" are synonymous.
Of course, copyright law has been so dramatically expanded and twisted from how it originally started out that I personally think it's difficult to constitutionally justify the current legal state of affairs, but I do think it's constitutionally defensible to say copyright law has a mandate to maximize the greatest good.
You are quite a bit more generous towards the current state of affairs than I would be. It's for that reason that I am much less concerned about "greater good" arguments because they have not withstood the test of time. The meaning of the phrase "greater good" is far too malleable and tends to mean whatever the speaker thinks it should mean. It does not help that these days it is fashionable to disregard what we know about how the Founders intended certain words (see: "well-regulated militia" or "papers and effects"). I would much rather see something like "this system has erred and has strayed far from its intended purpose, so clearly reform is in order." Because too many restrictions is the immediate problem, and this proposal is yet another restriction, it has no hope of correcting anything.
The way I read Posner's post, he isn't talking about sites like Slashdot that take a snippet and link to the appropriate source.
He is talking about sites that will copy wholesale the content of another site (i.e. myblog.com copies nytimes.com) or will summarize the entire article of the other websites.
I agree with you that sites like Slashdot actually benefit the press.
Then I am genuinely confused by your response because the proposal is to make it illegal to link to copyrighted material. That would be new.
If they are copying articles wholesale and those articles are copyrighted, that's already against the law or at the very least could get them sued. As for summarizing an article, I could be wrong (I am definitely not a lawyer) but as I understand it, "fair use" is a legal defense, meaning it would be up to a judge to determine if it was fair use. Either way, we have existing ways to deal with that. This new proposal is about linking.
The constitution embodies the principles of the enlightenment
That's exactly why I want the government to function according to it, no more and no less.
(which we seem to have sadly forgotten), and those include the presence of a benevolent, utilitarian government that works for the common good (or "general welfare", to use a familiar phrase). Your argument that some abhorrent dictators did what they thought was for the common good, and therefore that the government should never act for the common good, is fallacious, cynical, and specious.
I believe that the common good is best served by a minimal government that has a moral justification for those things that it does do, and a citizenry which has as many freedoms as possible (as a side note, that includes the freedom to irresponsibly live your life and then accept the consequences which is why I reject the nanny state). I never said that government should never act for the common good, only that this cannot be the stated reason for any action it takes. I think you are confused by this point and offended by what you (unintentionally) falsely think I said and that this is the basis of your disagreement. I say this because we seem to agree much more than we disagree.
To put this another way, we already have a good standard for what that "common good" means for the government and that standard is called the U.S. Constitution. I don't want politicians saying "we need to make this new thing illegal for the common good," for that is the very danger I mentioned. I want them saying "we need to make this new thing illegal because Article X of the Constitution says that we have a duty to do so."
The whole problem I have with this proposal is that there is no article in the Constitution which says this needs to be done. There is a staggering difference beween "the Constitution clearly and unambiguously says we have an explicit duty to do this" and "the Constitution has a loosely-worded clause that, among many multiple interpretations, can be interpreted to justify this thing we want to do anyway."
I think it needs to be appreciated that the Founders had a strong distrust of government and a great deal of justification for it. They did not feel that way in a vacuum. Also there needs to be the consideration that, while this judge may genuinely have our best interests at heart, the precedent this would set can easily be abused in the future by others who don't. Having a government is a little better than total anarchy and that's the only good thing about it. It's not something to delight in or to celebrate, but rather, is an expedient necessity that needs to be carefully managed.
But the entire point of a democracy is to provide a feedback mechanism to ensure that what the government thinks is for the common good, actually is.
The reason why we even have a Constitution to spell these things out is because "common good" means whatever the speaker intends it to mean.
In a democracy, it's good and right for a government to act to improve the lot of its people.
The best way it can do that is to never enable a new restriction unless all reasonable objections to it are first overcome.
Have you visited many community news gathering/reporting sites recently? Can you name two of them which stand out as cool, neutral reporters of what happens in the world?
We don't have those right now with mainstream sources. What we have is an image, usually enhanced by leggy blondes with large breasts. Now, I'm all for leggy blondes with large breasts, but don't pretend that this makes the news any more accurate.
My point is that we really don't have the neutral, scientifically skeptical, disinterested, willing-to-go-wherever-the-facts-lead sort of reporting the way we think that we do. We have an idea of "credibility" that is rooted in two things: image and authority (as in "appeal to authority"). If community news sites are more honest about this, that can only be an improvement.
The mainstream news is really not your friend and never was. They are careful to make sure that whatever they report is factually accurate, yes. The techniques of modern propaganda are far more sophisticated than telling provably false lies. The biggest problem with the mainstream news is that they selectively omit information that doesn't suit a rather statist agenda. When I say "agenda" there, I mean that not so much in terms of "smoky back-room conspiracy" as much as plain old-fashioned bias. These are big corporation, institutional, organization type of people who are well known for a pro-government bias (the accusation is often "a left-leaning bias" but that's just the specific form of pro-government bias).
I'll give you an example of statism: the government wants a monopoly on the use of all force. This is why most people don't know that when the news says "the attacker was subdued until police arrived" what usually really happened is that a citizen who legally owned and legally carried a firearm used it to stop a crime and protect innocent people. It's also why most people don't know that when this happens, the criminal is shot by the gunowner in something like three or four out of every one thousand such cases. Now you'd think that factually correct, easily verifiable information like that would be newsworthy... Do you think that's so unique? Do you think it would be difficult to find other examples where certain things are routinely not reported, or reported in deliberately ambiguous ways in stark contrast to the painstaking detail of the rest of the story? Do you think that if you looked at the subject matter of these examples, you would not find that all of them tend to be aligned against the pro-freedom pro-individual position?
I'm sorry; on my initial reading I glossed over where you detailed you feel this infringes upon your rights of freedom of speech and of the press. I take back my criticism re: enunciating rights.
That you handle it this way is quite respectable and refreshing to see. No joke and no sarcasm at all when I say thank you.
I do think the ability to deep link to specific articles, etc, is important for a healthy public debate. I'm not certain linking to someone else's work is completely under the umbrella of speech, however, and would be protected under the speech/press protections.
I can approach that one from two angles. One, the offline equivalent to a Web link is "hey, I read this book by this author, you should really go to the bookstore and check it out." If the folks who want this were interested in consistency, they would want to make it illegal to recommend a book. They don't do that because know it would be absurd. Two, those copyright holders knew that hyperlinking is the very nature of the Web before they decided to put any information on it. They still decided to put information on it. Therefore, let them take responsibility for their decision. I don't see any part of this that requires the use of the police power of government.
I also completely reject this concept (mentioned in your prior post) that the government should be worrying about any sort of "creation of the most good." All I want the government to do is to fulfill their duties as enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, no more and no less. That "most good" or "greater good" concept is far more dangerous than most people appreciate. I'm sure Stalin felt that the Great Purge was "for the good of the land."
I wouldn't pay attention to this. However, he is one of the greatest minds ever to have sat on the bench. Lawrence Lessig (who clerked for him) has said "There isn't a federal judge I respect more, both as a judge and person."
His scholarship is top notch and he contributes to many different areas of understanding outside of law, such as sociology, anthropology, and economics. He's a formidible intelligence.
He can be wrong but that doesn't mean we should quickly dismiss him.
All the intellect in the world won't overcome what you may call an institutional bias. For that you need wisdom. The most obvious difference is that intellect will increasingly complicate, while wisdom will show that all the complication derives from a few simple principles.
Being a prominent figure in a large institution impresses men. That's about as much as it has to do with "truth". It really doesn't take very much to understand why freedom is precious and should be values and protected. Simple, humble minds can easily grasp that. The intellect and complexity and scholarship is necessary in order to create justifications for why freedom should be taken away. The ultimate expression of this is sort of like a priesthood, where you should accept our edicts because as one of the uninitiated laity, you would not be capable of understanding our reasons. An effect like that is why you saw the name and this prevented you from going with your intuition and dismissing this as the maladaptive idea it really is.
While it might be the death of "Big Media", it will be the birth of "lite media" which consists of the blogosphere, twitter, and Facebook. When the incentive to compile news is financial, we will only get news that is sensational and designed to be sticky. However, when that incentive is removed, we will be able to see a rapid advance in news gathering for its own sake. Such an evolution in news gathering is a huge breakthrough for the little guy who prior to this would never have had his voice heard.
Indeed, and this is very much more like the traditional American idea of a free press. That is, a press that is small and local and what you might call "grassroots" in that participation in it is available to the everyday person. This is directly opposed to the national, big-business model based on one-way, one-to-many communications in which your only modes of participation are whether or not you turn on the TV or pick up the paper.
Really it'd be a drastic improvement. Perhaps also when it's "small and local" people will be more discerning about information and what they believe instead of the "appeal to authority" position where it must be true if it's on TV and sponsored by a major name.
I agree.
The TechCrunch post is shrill and doesn't address the central issue that Posner presents: How do you maintain a free press when free-riders can inexpensively and quickly copy and redistribute your original content?
He raises a valid point and the TechCrunch completely sidesteps it.
Let's take Slashdot as an example and the notorious Slashdot Effect. One of the most sure ways to really drive a ton of traffic to a Web site is to link an article to Slashdot. Those Web sites almost always have advertisements. How are those news sites not benefitting from this situation, and what part of this is depriving anyone of their fundamental rights so that it would be appropriate for the government to intervene?
"I am distrustful of people who think they have confident answers to such questions." That goes for both sides in this debate.
I have a confident answer: when in doubt, freedom should prevail. This especially applies to freedom of speech and of the press. The burden of proof is on anyone who thinks that freedom should not prevail. In other words, our fundamental inalienable rights are far more important than whether or not a newspaper goes out of business.
Let's soundly reject this concept, right now, that it is the role of government to determine who wins and who loses in the business world. Newspapers are struggling because they are old technology that is being replaced by a new technology. Even if that weren't the case, their perceived right to do business is absolutely nothing compared to our real rights.
Look, privacy is gone. You want to see the future? Read CFR monographs.
If you use the net (even if you think you're being tricky with Tor and Pgp and steg), your secrets are already revealed. And stored. Not to mention available for later analysis. People who think they're crypto experts will laugh at the RIAA but never realize that what applies to the RIAA applies equally to their own SEKRIT information.
Sometimes I think that the only reason why the average citizen isn't much more painfully aware of this, is because the people who have these capabilities generally have bigger fish to fry.
Even Tor doesn't do so well against an adversary who can view the entire network (and thus see both endpoints). I would be quite surprised if various governments did not have this ability.
It's tough when people just don't get you, isn't it?
Now that made me laugh! Of course that wasn't serious, but I guess if I were to answer that seriously, I'd say I don't care whether random strangers around the world get me or not. I just don't understand how you can hear a meme all the time for months on end and still think it's funny. I'm not surprised that no one really wants to answer that one as they probably know it's, shall we say, less than rational.
Really that did make me laugh. I'd have to add you to the "Friend" list if I knew that you had an account.
I think it's not terrible that a government have a working list of its citizens, especially if they put vital medical and other data on it. This can save lives and can get us more accurate reporting about how important it is to, say, find a cure for AIDS over a cure for cancer.
So sell its virtues and then tell everyone where they can sign up. Voluntarily. Make it opt-in only, so anyone who doesn't want this isn't forced to participate. In the case of minor children, let their parents decide.
You ever wonder why these systems don't fit the description I just gave you? Really, do you ever seriously think about why such voluntary participation isn't considered a basic design requirement?
We're so accustomed in the West to distrust of government that we've lost sight of the basic truth: it matters who you get into government, and how willing they are to fight back corruption (entropy). We can't regulate government into sanity. But we can pick sane people, although mass media democracy isn't so good at that.
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." Thomas Jefferson said that, and he's not the only person throughout history to make a similar observation.
I don't know the situation in India but if they're smart, they will be very careful to avoid the two-party system like what we have in the USA. The two parties are a duopoly designed to create significant barriers to entry in order to prevent any other political forces from taking power. Don't look at who is running for office. Look at who is sponsoring him. Then look at who's sponsoring his "opposition." Hey, that's strange, the same list of banks and corporations is sponsoring both candidates! Why, it's almost as though they don't care who wins, like they would get what they want either way!
This makes it quite difficult to "pick sane people." Speaking generally, we don't have a situation where average people who are willing to work hard can succeed in politics. We have a ruling class. It necessarily follows that their interests are not the same as those of the people.
Letting Google keep records on who we are may be more destructive. A former friend turns enemy blogs about you? That's what the world will know of you when they Google you. Erroneous articles, conviction by public opinion? Just as corrupt as any corrupt government, but not as visible.
The major difference is that I have a lot more control over whether Google knows anything about me. All I have to do is either not use their services or very carefully use their services and they aren't going to have information on me that wasn't publically available anyway. Their google-analytics site resolves to localhost on all machines/networks I control and I otherwise go out of my way to take care of this. There is no such option with government.
Not sure what you mean about erroneous articles, though that sounds like what libel/slander laws are for.
The rest involves being very careful about who your friends are. A lot of people think betrayals and such are impossible to foresee, merely because they did not have the foresight. Really though, it's not too difficult to know if you are dealing with loving people who really do have your best interests at heart. At least, not if you have ever seen what this looks like and appreciated what you saw. That's something to value and appreciate because it is right and good, and for no other reason, though it does have the side-effect of preventing the sort of scenario you are describing.
I don't normally reply to myself but something could be added to this:
The man had a sense of humor.
... and the mods don't. Apparently I didn't have enough repetitive Slashdot memes in there or something.
In Soviet Russia, you inaccurately offtopic the mods!
Natalie Portman and hot grits would have found the humor in that!
A steaming mug of frosty piss would remove some of that uptightness.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those [jokes]...
I for one welcome our humorless Pharisee moderator overlords!
Instead of finding a way to mod me off topic, the mods should have found some sharks and put lasers on their heads!
Sure, but does that moderator run Linux?
Now THAT'S funny. Right? Right?? Maybe if I repeat them multiple times in each story over the next few months they'll be worthy of instant +5 Funny status...
Maybe you don't like the way I am making it, but I DO have a point. Now go make this a -1 post.
Hey dammit, we had the idea of reducing everyone to a number long before you did, and we're the only ones that should have to suffer with that kind of stupidity. You can steal our jobs, but don't steal our retarded government ideas -- as a patriot, I simply must draw the line there!
Yeah. Too bad India's official statements don't add a one-liner to the effect of "When this is abused, please act surprised; your cooperation is appreciated."
When I read "Your Rights Online: India To Put All Citizen Info In a Central Database" I was horrified, But then I read further and realized that, while bad, it wasn't nearly as bad as the headline makes it sound.
Turns out they're only planning on putting some data about the citizens in the database. But it looks like people will still be allowed to keep their own grocery lists and address books etc. and manage them however they wish.
For now at least.
--MarkusQ
I had a boss at work who once explained this to me. He got a little piece of paper and a pen and wrote it out something like this:
Assume. You shouldn't assume because it makes an ass out of 'U' and me.
Slashdot Mirror
It's difficult to talk about what's wrong with tech news reporting without also talking about what's generally wrong with news as an institution. That's because these kinds of problems don't happen in isolation but rather, they reflect the priorities and motivations of the institution. Sort of like the saying "no man is an island."
I am reminded of a sig I have seen belonging to more than one poster, something like "Slashdot does not have a -1 DisagreeAndWishToCensor, and no, Flamebait, Offtopic, and Troll are not substitutes." Now if you don't like what I said and think that there is absolutely no way that the case could be made that it belongs here, at least *try* to look like you have a legitimate reason to feel that way, please. "Offtopic" is a bit too transparent.
I am not trying to split hairs. This is actually a rather important point: they did not manufacture "two artificial atoms, or qubits". They manufactured two clusters of atoms that acted as qubits.
If the quality of journalism we see for politics or for useless celebrity trivia became just like the quality of journalism we see for technical matters, there would be significant backlashes against it. Joe Sixpack might not care about the distinction between abstract qubits and their physical implementation, but by God they better not misreport how many times $POP_SINGER has been divorced!
... the way the mainstream items are dealt with is really much worse because it takes far more discernment to see what is (deeply) wrong with it. I remember once hearing this on radio news a few years ago (I believe it was Fox): "This new proposal authorizes warrentless wiretapping, which officials state is necessary in order to protect us from the threat of terrorism and will help us to prosecute the War on Terror. However, some civil liberties groups cite privacy concerns *end of show*." Nice how they didn't bother to explain what those concerns are or what the reasoning behind them might be. To quote Bill Hicks, "you'd think that'd be newsworthy ..."
Though I'm not so sure that blatantly inaccurate (or misleading) statements are worse than the way more mainstream news items are handled. For the mainstream items, they are very careful about which stories become "big news that everyone knows" and which don't, or they selectively omit facts which don't suit their agenda or that they otherwise find to be inconvenient. They do that while being careful that any positive statements that they do choose to make are impeccable.
There's nothing absurd or magical about this. It's not unlike the way Microsoft doesn't make all of their file formats free open standards because they, in a similar fashion, find the idea to be inconvenient and incompatible with their intentions. That doesn't become impossible and unthinkable merely because accurate news is important to you. It just means that it's unwise to be the naive person who takes everything at face value and doesn't question like this:
"Of all the events that happen in the world every day, why promote this thing?"
"If you look carefully at what becomes big news and what doesn't, do you see independent people who stand up for themselves, or do you see victims who need to be rescued from something? Why?"
"Do you see that the news corporations value freedom above all else, or do they call for its removal in the name of safety? Can you pick up any newspaper or turn to any news channel and easily find good representatives of both views? Why or why not?"
"Is the nature of presented debate concerning whether or not it is the role of government to get involved, or does the debate consist merely of two competing proposals for what government should do after it gets involved? Is this a careful consideration of available options before solutions are proposed?"
"Do people like Ron Paul (whether you hate him or love him) get coverage because their ideas are radically different, and so they stand out more? Or do such folks become marginalized because their views are not mainstream? Does this help people to make up their own minds? Does this mean that we have real debate, including dissent, or some mockery of real debate?"
"Do these things, when taken together as an abstract, reflect an agenda? Is that agenda statist in nature? Did it get there by accident?"
The way tech stories are handled can be described as "merely low-quality" or "someone didn't do their homework"
Why can't people use a real name in Slashdot or Reddit?
I'm sorry you feel that way, Mr. Sybert42.
Can someone explain to me why this phenomenon occurs? Is content loaded serially, one item at a time?
Because you're not blocking ads?
ID cards are not a proposed solution for this problem.
For that they need political power. So far we have given it to them and we have reaped what we have sown in the form of a major recession, soon to be followed by hyperinflation.
You cannot cheat a truly honest person because he does not seek to take advantage; therefore, he cannot be taken advantage of. Likewise, you cannot manipulate a virtuous person because he does not participate in that system of interpersonal control. It is our personal weaknesses and our own greed and our own desires for the kind of corrupting power that's not good for us to have which makes us vulnerable to these things. We live right now in a culture where wanting to dominate your fellow man is considered normal and desirable; they call it politics or they call it the corporate ladder. Fail to address that, and the things you have said will unfortunately be true. But to fail to address that is to get so caught up in symptoms that you grossly fall short of understanding the actual problem.
We are apes who can also be human beings. The difference is that animals run on instinct and their primary mode of interaction is reactive. Thus, they can have intelligence but not wisdom. They can have some form of understanding but not intuition. Clever apes are what the public school systems are designed to crank out, factory-style. Clever apes can be manipulated because they cower before bullies and otherwise respond to pressure. That is not actually our nature. In many ways, our species is not evolving into something better but rather, is devolving from a formerly higher state. The difference is that this devolution is cultural in nature, not biological. That means there is an element of choice to it.
I strongly disagree that the simple life means you must give up cars and computers. Friend, I mean no offense or insult but I think that's a common yet superficial interpretation. What's "simple" is dealing with your fellow man in an open, honest, loving, compassionate type of way. Not in a goody-two-shoes sort of way that makes you a pushover either, but rather in a way that will not suffer injustice and understands how to overcome it, constructively. The type of complexity that is contrasted by "the simple life" involves the sort of manipulation and power games and one-upsmanship that so characterizes our cultural attitudes today. Whether you drive a car or a horse-and-buggy has nothing to do with this and believing that it does is a tremendous distraction.
I am going to step out on a limb here. You probably will not have much difficulty chopping off that limb if it pleases you to do so, but I assure you I am aware of that and find this worth saying anyway. If you continue to grow and advance as a person, you will one day come to see the cynicism you just displayed as a wound that very much needs healing. When that wound does heal, the pain it once represented will be replaced by a new sort of courage, a willingness to dare to imagine great and beautifu
But it did work. It's only recently that we have even had the technology necessary to have this kind of (relatively) secure ID card and the databases that would make it actually useful. Somehow, we managed to get along prior to having this capability. Just think of America during the late 18th century. Back then you could commit a crime, skip town, and effectively disappear. Hand-sketched "WANTED" posters were about the most technologically sophisticated method of finding someone. There were no federal crime databases, so you could have a criminal record and move to another state and tell any employer "I have no criminal record" and they would have no effective way to prove otherwise.
Somehow, this didn't break society or cause it to melt down into a mass of anarchy and crime. In fact, the Americans of the late 18th century didn't even remotely have (especially violent) crime like we do today and the people were much more shocked by things like murders and robberies than we are today. They tended to have strong ideals and beliefs, and generally had faith in something greater than making money in order to have children so that they can grow up to make money in order to have their own children... I don't even think that what the faith is in is the point, but rather, that you have it and know because of it that there are higher ideals than immediate expediency.
There is a serious lack of inability to understand a sentiment. The best expression of that sentiment known to me is found in the Tao de Ching, chapter 57:
The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
The sharper men's weapons,
The more trouble in the land.
The more ingenious and clever men are,
The more strange things happen.
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers.
Therefore the sage says:
I take no action and people are reformed.
I enjoy peace and people become honest.
I do nothing and people become rich.
I have no desires and people return to the good and simple life.
That this is so nearly impossible for us to imagine today is the real problem. The Founding Fathers understood this and their beliefs about freedom, what we often label "Libertarianism" today in order to make it sound like just another option, embodies this realization when it's correctly understood and not merely parroted or preached.
Anyone who doesn't understand why that day is absolutely inevitable once the systems are in place, should not be allowed to vote or run for office.
I don't derive any enjoyment from saying such a thing, but whether I enjoy it or not, it's true.
Isn't that what we all seem to want, in one form or another? I read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (an emperor of Rome) and I see a noble, upright man, the sort of person who really should be running things. Then I see how incredibly rare that actually is, how much of a joke our politicians really are when compared to this sort of standard, and it's a shame.
I've tried both ways and found good faith to be far superior. In fact, all of my previous failures to show it were caused by ignorance on my part. Too many discussions are more like "talking at" and not much like "conversing with" or "talking to" and I think that, while subtle, this is a bit dehumanizing or degrading.
I certainly do draw a distinction between the Constitution stating that this is why a law exists and a judge or a politician who just personally feels like something would be a good idea. Maybe I have not done a good job of explaining this, and if so, you have been more merciful towards my inability to clearly articulate that than most. The reason I feel that way is that the government officials we have today are hardly worthy to be called men and would not be worthy to lick the boots of the great men who founded this country. That isn't because I think the Founders were anything other than ordinary human beings who happened to be good, strong, upright, wise men; rather, it is because of the lowly worms that have taken their place and the disgrace they have made of what was once a noble enterprise.
The whole problem with politicians is the whole problem with most people: their deeply held beliefs and principles are for sale. For the politicians, money is the currency. For average people, convenience and the approval of others is the currency. There is no room in any of this for actual integrity. The concept here is that compromised people demand compromised leaders. When you have no beliefs of your own but only those that others have carefully put there, you're less like a human being and more like a computer executing a program while believing that the author of the program is important (it's not, because anyone who programs you could never have your best interests at heart though they will probably praise you for playing along). When those get into power, we end up with the situation we have today. So we talk about flip-flops and lobbyists and legal bribery and monied interests and we expect that "politician" and "liar" are synonymous.
You are quite a bit more generous towards the current state of affairs than I would be. It's for that reason that I am much less concerned about "greater good" arguments because they have not withstood the test of time. The meaning of the phrase "greater good" is far too malleable and tends to mean whatever the speaker thinks it should mean. It does not help that these days it is fashionable to disregard what we know about how the Founders intended certain words (see: "well-regulated militia" or "papers and effects"). I would much rather see something like "this system has erred and has strayed far from its intended purpose, so clearly reform is in order." Because too many restrictions is the immediate problem, and this proposal is yet another restriction, it has no hope of correcting anything.
The way I read Posner's post, he isn't talking about sites like Slashdot that take a snippet and link to the appropriate source.
He is talking about sites that will copy wholesale the content of another site (i.e. myblog.com copies nytimes.com) or will summarize the entire article of the other websites.
I agree with you that sites like Slashdot actually benefit the press.
Then I am genuinely confused by your response because the proposal is to make it illegal to link to copyrighted material. That would be new.
If they are copying articles wholesale and those articles are copyrighted, that's already against the law or at the very least could get them sued. As for summarizing an article, I could be wrong (I am definitely not a lawyer) but as I understand it, "fair use" is a legal defense, meaning it would be up to a judge to determine if it was fair use. Either way, we have existing ways to deal with that. This new proposal is about linking.
That's exactly why I want the government to function according to it, no more and no less.
(which we seem to have sadly forgotten), and those include the presence of a benevolent, utilitarian government that works for the common good (or "general welfare", to use a familiar phrase). Your argument that some abhorrent dictators did what they thought was for the common good, and therefore that the government should never act for the common good, is fallacious, cynical, and specious.
I believe that the common good is best served by a minimal government that has a moral justification for those things that it does do, and a citizenry which has as many freedoms as possible (as a side note, that includes the freedom to irresponsibly live your life and then accept the consequences which is why I reject the nanny state). I never said that government should never act for the common good, only that this cannot be the stated reason for any action it takes. I think you are confused by this point and offended by what you (unintentionally) falsely think I said and that this is the basis of your disagreement. I say this because we seem to agree much more than we disagree.
To put this another way, we already have a good standard for what that "common good" means for the government and that standard is called the U.S. Constitution. I don't want politicians saying "we need to make this new thing illegal for the common good," for that is the very danger I mentioned. I want them saying "we need to make this new thing illegal because Article X of the Constitution says that we have a duty to do so."
The whole problem I have with this proposal is that there is no article in the Constitution which says this needs to be done. There is a staggering difference beween "the Constitution clearly and unambiguously says we have an explicit duty to do this" and "the Constitution has a loosely-worded clause that, among many multiple interpretations, can be interpreted to justify this thing we want to do anyway."
I think it needs to be appreciated that the Founders had a strong distrust of government and a great deal of justification for it. They did not feel that way in a vacuum. Also there needs to be the consideration that, while this judge may genuinely have our best interests at heart, the precedent this would set can easily be abused in the future by others who don't. Having a government is a little better than total anarchy and that's the only good thing about it. It's not something to delight in or to celebrate, but rather, is an expedient necessity that needs to be carefully managed.
The reason why we even have a Constitution to spell these things out is because "common good" means whatever the speaker intends it to mean.
The best way it can do that is to never enable a new restriction unless all reasonable objections to it are first overcome.
We don't have those right now with mainstream sources. What we have is an image, usually enhanced by leggy blondes with large breasts. Now, I'm all for leggy blondes with large breasts, but don't pretend that this makes the news any more accurate.
My point is that we really don't have the neutral, scientifically skeptical, disinterested, willing-to-go-wherever-the-facts-lead sort of reporting the way we think that we do. We have an idea of "credibility" that is rooted in two things: image and authority (as in "appeal to authority"). If community news sites are more honest about this, that can only be an improvement.
The mainstream news is really not your friend and never was. They are careful to make sure that whatever they report is factually accurate, yes. The techniques of modern propaganda are far more sophisticated than telling provably false lies. The biggest problem with the mainstream news is that they selectively omit information that doesn't suit a rather statist agenda. When I say "agenda" there, I mean that not so much in terms of "smoky back-room conspiracy" as much as plain old-fashioned bias. These are big corporation, institutional, organization type of people who are well known for a pro-government bias (the accusation is often "a left-leaning bias" but that's just the specific form of pro-government bias).
I'll give you an example of statism: the government wants a monopoly on the use of all force. This is why most people don't know that when the news says "the attacker was subdued until police arrived" what usually really happened is that a citizen who legally owned and legally carried a firearm used it to stop a crime and protect innocent people. It's also why most people don't know that when this happens, the criminal is shot by the gunowner in something like three or four out of every one thousand such cases. Now you'd think that factually correct, easily verifiable information like that would be newsworthy... Do you think that's so unique? Do you think it would be difficult to find other examples where certain things are routinely not reported, or reported in deliberately ambiguous ways in stark contrast to the painstaking detail of the rest of the story? Do you think that if you looked at the subject matter of these examples, you would not find that all of them tend to be aligned against the pro-freedom pro-individual position?
That you handle it this way is quite respectable and refreshing to see. No joke and no sarcasm at all when I say thank you.
I can approach that one from two angles. One, the offline equivalent to a Web link is "hey, I read this book by this author, you should really go to the bookstore and check it out." If the folks who want this were interested in consistency, they would want to make it illegal to recommend a book. They don't do that because know it would be absurd. Two, those copyright holders knew that hyperlinking is the very nature of the Web before they decided to put any information on it. They still decided to put information on it. Therefore, let them take responsibility for their decision. I don't see any part of this that requires the use of the police power of government.
I also completely reject this concept (mentioned in your prior post) that the government should be worrying about any sort of "creation of the most good." All I want the government to do is to fulfill their duties as enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, no more and no less. That "most good" or "greater good" concept is far more dangerous than most people appreciate. I'm sure Stalin felt that the Great Purge was "for the good of the land."
I wouldn't pay attention to this. However, he is one of the greatest minds ever to have sat on the bench. Lawrence Lessig (who clerked for him) has said "There isn't a federal judge I respect more, both as a judge and person."
His scholarship is top notch and he contributes to many different areas of understanding outside of law, such as sociology, anthropology, and economics. He's a formidible intelligence.
He can be wrong but that doesn't mean we should quickly dismiss him.
All the intellect in the world won't overcome what you may call an institutional bias. For that you need wisdom. The most obvious difference is that intellect will increasingly complicate, while wisdom will show that all the complication derives from a few simple principles.
Being a prominent figure in a large institution impresses men. That's about as much as it has to do with "truth". It really doesn't take very much to understand why freedom is precious and should be values and protected. Simple, humble minds can easily grasp that. The intellect and complexity and scholarship is necessary in order to create justifications for why freedom should be taken away. The ultimate expression of this is sort of like a priesthood, where you should accept our edicts because as one of the uninitiated laity, you would not be capable of understanding our reasons. An effect like that is why you saw the name and this prevented you from going with your intuition and dismissing this as the maladaptive idea it really is.
Indeed, and this is very much more like the traditional American idea of a free press. That is, a press that is small and local and what you might call "grassroots" in that participation in it is available to the everyday person. This is directly opposed to the national, big-business model based on one-way, one-to-many communications in which your only modes of participation are whether or not you turn on the TV or pick up the paper.
Really it'd be a drastic improvement. Perhaps also when it's "small and local" people will be more discerning about information and what they believe instead of the "appeal to authority" position where it must be true if it's on TV and sponsored by a major name.
I agree. The TechCrunch post is shrill and doesn't address the central issue that Posner presents: How do you maintain a free press when free-riders can inexpensively and quickly copy and redistribute your original content? He raises a valid point and the TechCrunch completely sidesteps it.
Let's take Slashdot as an example and the notorious Slashdot Effect. One of the most sure ways to really drive a ton of traffic to a Web site is to link an article to Slashdot. Those Web sites almost always have advertisements. How are those news sites not benefitting from this situation, and what part of this is depriving anyone of their fundamental rights so that it would be appropriate for the government to intervene?
I have a confident answer: when in doubt, freedom should prevail. This especially applies to freedom of speech and of the press. The burden of proof is on anyone who thinks that freedom should not prevail. In other words, our fundamental inalienable rights are far more important than whether or not a newspaper goes out of business.
Let's soundly reject this concept, right now, that it is the role of government to determine who wins and who loses in the business world. Newspapers are struggling because they are old technology that is being replaced by a new technology. Even if that weren't the case, their perceived right to do business is absolutely nothing compared to our real rights.
How incredibly appropriate. Their uniform will consist of brown shirts, perhaps with pantlegs tucked into their boots.
Look, privacy is gone. You want to see the future? Read CFR monographs.
If you use the net (even if you think you're being tricky with Tor and Pgp and steg), your secrets are already revealed. And stored. Not to mention available for later analysis. People who think they're crypto experts will laugh at the RIAA but never realize that what applies to the RIAA applies equally to their own SEKRIT information.
Sometimes I think that the only reason why the average citizen isn't much more painfully aware of this, is because the people who have these capabilities generally have bigger fish to fry.
Even Tor doesn't do so well against an adversary who can view the entire network (and thus see both endpoints). I would be quite surprised if various governments did not have this ability.
It's tough when people just don't get you, isn't it?
Now that made me laugh! Of course that wasn't serious, but I guess if I were to answer that seriously, I'd say I don't care whether random strangers around the world get me or not. I just don't understand how you can hear a meme all the time for months on end and still think it's funny. I'm not surprised that no one really wants to answer that one as they probably know it's, shall we say, less than rational.
Really that did make me laugh. I'd have to add you to the "Friend" list if I knew that you had an account.
So sell its virtues and then tell everyone where they can sign up. Voluntarily. Make it opt-in only, so anyone who doesn't want this isn't forced to participate. In the case of minor children, let their parents decide.
You ever wonder why these systems don't fit the description I just gave you? Really, do you ever seriously think about why such voluntary participation isn't considered a basic design requirement?
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." Thomas Jefferson said that, and he's not the only person throughout history to make a similar observation.
I don't know the situation in India but if they're smart, they will be very careful to avoid the two-party system like what we have in the USA. The two parties are a duopoly designed to create significant barriers to entry in order to prevent any other political forces from taking power. Don't look at who is running for office. Look at who is sponsoring him. Then look at who's sponsoring his "opposition." Hey, that's strange, the same list of banks and corporations is sponsoring both candidates! Why, it's almost as though they don't care who wins, like they would get what they want either way!
This makes it quite difficult to "pick sane people." Speaking generally, we don't have a situation where average people who are willing to work hard can succeed in politics. We have a ruling class. It necessarily follows that their interests are not the same as those of the people.
The major difference is that I have a lot more control over whether Google knows anything about me. All I have to do is either not use their services or very carefully use their services and they aren't going to have information on me that wasn't publically available anyway. Their google-analytics site resolves to localhost on all machines/networks I control and I otherwise go out of my way to take care of this. There is no such option with government.
Not sure what you mean about erroneous articles, though that sounds like what libel/slander laws are for.
The rest involves being very careful about who your friends are. A lot of people think betrayals and such are impossible to foresee, merely because they did not have the foresight. Really though, it's not too difficult to know if you are dealing with loving people who really do have your best interests at heart. At least, not if you have ever seen what this looks like and appreciated what you saw. That's something to value and appreciate because it is right and good, and for no other reason, though it does have the side-effect of preventing the sort of scenario you are describing.
In Soviet Russia, you inaccurately offtopic the mods!
Natalie Portman and hot grits would have found the humor in that!
A steaming mug of frosty piss would remove some of that uptightness.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those [jokes]
I for one welcome our humorless Pharisee moderator overlords!
Instead of finding a way to mod me off topic, the mods should have found some sharks and put lasers on their heads!
Sure, but does that moderator run Linux?
Now THAT'S funny. Right? Right?? Maybe if I repeat them multiple times in each story over the next few months they'll be worthy of instant +5 Funny status...
Maybe you don't like the way I am making it, but I DO have a point. Now go make this a -1 post.
Hey dammit, we had the idea of reducing everyone to a number long before you did, and we're the only ones that should have to suffer with that kind of stupidity. You can steal our jobs, but don't steal our retarded government ideas -- as a patriot, I simply must draw the line there!
Yeah. Too bad India's official statements don't add a one-liner to the effect of "When this is abused, please act surprised; your cooperation is appreciated."
When I read "Your Rights Online: India To Put All Citizen Info In a Central Database" I was horrified, But then I read further and realized that, while bad, it wasn't nearly as bad as the headline makes it sound.
Turns out they're only planning on putting some data about the citizens in the database. But it looks like people will still be allowed to keep their own grocery lists and address books etc. and manage them however they wish.
For now at least.
--MarkusQ
I had a boss at work who once explained this to me. He got a little piece of paper and a pen and wrote it out something like this:
Assume. You shouldn't assume because it makes an ass out of 'U' and me.
The man had a sense of humor.
Back *waaaaay* off, man. I'm an *extreme* scientist!
That sounds like a nice bumper sticker. For the rear bumper.