There's also the "brand" name, which is supposed to represent trust by their audience. But the modern media has abused that trust so much that newer audiences don't expect it, so even fun by nonrigorous rags like Slashdot get readership.
I don't know about the US, but in Oz the real problem with "brand name" is that the brand is an illusion. There is such a concentration of ownership of newpapers, radio stations etc that the "brand" is what the outlet used to be before it was bought up by some behometh and turned into the usual blancmange.
These old media can't sustain their privilege much longer. The barrier to entry to their fiefdoms is so low, especially on the limited functions of mobile devices, that little guys can compete with them. And compete better, if they offer the diversity of corroboration that people associate with accuracy. They will crash under the weight of their lies, and good riddance.
I think mobile phones with cameras will accelerate that trend. Once you can have media-rich global collaboration for pennies, why would you want multi-million dollar manufactured news?
For more good American satire, look for the Firesign Theater out of San Francisco. Or 1980s Letterman, the 1970s movies _Kentucky Fried Movie_ and the _Groove Tube_ or the complete works of Frank Zappa.
Well we get Letterman now, probably 30 years too late, and I find it pretty asinine. Firesign Theatre? Do they have material on the web? I will check out KFCM and Groove Tube. Frank Zappa? Isn't he a musician? I've seen some of George Carlin's stuff tho and he's pretty funny. Another problem here is that Saturday Night Live has never been shown on TV. I might look at getting a DVD compilation (checks on Amazon), hmmm, mostly best of [comic].
NY Times, BBC News, CNN, Washington Post. Actually, those were classified as "media sites", and Slashdot was the top "blog". It's interesting that those "media" sites have a "readership". Myself I just use google news and I most of the time I barely notice whose site the article is on.
They're ranked by "outbound links" to other sites, feeding them traffic. Just to clarify, did you mean "inbound links" from other sites feeding them traffic?
Other than the open author/moderation model, I think the difference betwen media and blogs is pretty blurry. Isn't the author/moderation model the whole point?
The centralized media are sucking up political, economic and cultural privileges they cannot sustain. They can sustain it until the number of people obtaining their news/opinion from multiple internet sources reaches a threshold.
Especially when most 20somethings get their news from _The Daily Show_. I LOVE the daily show, pity I can't see it on free-to-air in Oz. When I first saw it I thought it must have been Canadian because I didn't know the Americans could do satire.
.... everyday seems to bring the country as a whole in to a police state. Didn't we fight a war against a government that tried to this sort of thing once before ?
Ah yes, but since the National Socialists failed to adequately protect their intellectual property, the police state methodology assets were seized by the United States, along with a bunch of rocket scientists, genetic researchers and what not.
So really your government is simply maximising shareholder value by leveraging assets gained as part of a settlement from a failed hostile takeover.
The gov. will also gain new market share by exploiting the synergy between the police state assets and under-utilised cold war assets, and will form new alliances with strategic global partners, who will bring fully securitised energy commodities and low-dollar human resources to the partnership mix.
and what are your links to Apple and Microsoft and some book supposed to prove?
In today's "IP" climate, Xerox would have never let Apple just rip their ideas off to make a new personal computer operating system. They would have just patented it and sat on it waiting to sue. By ignoring Xerox's intellectual "property", Apple gained a short term technical lead. Then Microsoft ignored Apple's IP to gain a technical lead in the commodity hardware/PC market.
As for the book, well if you want a summary in 25 words or less, people in the United States ignored intellectual property rights for nearly 50 years in order to industrialise quickly to catch up to Europe. Inventions were blatantly stolen, patent rights routinely ignored. It was this behaviour that allowed the rapid development of US industrial base. (Sorry, that was 55 words).
Remember, even under your Greek "ability to act or perform effectively" most powerful things will need to apply their effectiveness to outside elements to maintain OR increase power. In fact to perform, any object must apply foarde on an outside object: a wrench's torque over a nut, a lender's power over my credit rating, a martyr's pleat over human emotion, or a business's financial benefit over a lawmaker. Force can be more than kinetic or violent.
How about an ambulance's power to get a patient to a hospital in time to save his/her life? Or a parents power to teach their children a value system? Or an arbitrators power to get two countries to ceasefire? Or the power of a movie or book to make you laugh? Or the power of your children to make you feel good? How about the power of discovery to quicken the pulse? The power of empathy to change fundamental attitudes or beliefs? How about the power of righteousness to overturn criminal convictions when new evidence comes to light?
1. our primary products will be 10x more valuable when global warming 1/2 destroys americas primate producers.
You mean Taronga zoo will step into the primate supply business?
2. when was the last time a modern country got invaded, espeically one SO LARGE as OZ that is about 50% of the land in the southern hemisphere, No it isn't. Not even close.
yes a #1 asset, but god damn, no one has the man power to do that, who has a spare 10m military guys to pull it off?
Indonesia, China. The way Indonesia could do this is to send 10million+ to Australia in uniforms, who all surrender when they arrive. Under Geneva conventions, we would be required to house and feed the prisoners, thus bankrupting our economy.
Besides, if USA wont help (which they will), Britain can easily launch a few nukes to help.
You must be thinking of them strategic, genospecific nukes that only kill brown people.
3. Dont we have subs designed by Sweden? What exactly is you point?
4. we have 5000 days supply of beer thoough, who needs amo. I assume we will just throw beer cans at the invaders?
5. Our wildlife/spiders/snakes/crocks will kill all invaders, just watch Steve Irwin:) Yeah, that's why the white settlers all died out and Australia reverted to the Kooris.
... the place to fight this is the courts. I'd assume that to be a good place in Australia, Canada and the UK as well.
In Australia you can't sue the government unless they occasionned harm, or legislation is unconstitutional. Otherwise, once the legislation passes, we're fucked.
There is no real wealth made in the service industry, it just moves the money around and is zero-sum-gain.
Not true. By aggregating a task, a service can reduce the time to obtain tangible items.
Even though "time" is neither tangible or measured on the balance sheet does not mean that it is not valuable, as the efficient use of time leads to greater wealth.
You mention McDonalds making hamburgers. But how do the buns, patties and tomatoes get to McDonalds? By transport, a service. The transportation company is made more efficient by logistics (usually computerised), another service. The computers in the logistics operation need to be kept running optimally by some kind of skilled person, yet another service.
The more efficient the transport, the less McDonalds can charge customers for their hamburbers, thus, the less the customers pay for their requirement of food, giving them more money to spend on other items such as luxuries. If that doesn't meet your definition of wealth, then I would have to ask what economic model or assumptions you use to define wealth?
From the Greek... "the ability to act or perform effectively"
It is not the use of force per se. Although, using just the right amount of force at exactly the right time, in exactly the right place would be considered power.
The tin-foil hat is a much discussed, and from what I can gather, much needed item in the counter-geek apparrel. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any tin foil in the country in which I live, only aluminium foil.
So my question to the geek community is (and it's a technical question)... To avoid the government/illuminati mind control waves, does the foil have to be tin? Or will aluminium suffice? And if aluminium is not suitable, what can be done? It's impossible to find tin foil here, and tin cans are not very malleable, so shaping them into a hat presents new difficulties, besides which the tin can is mostly steel anyway.
Small nutbag parties have got a bad rap. I always vote for the flying yogis party, because when they finally get elected we will all be treated with a demonstration of a thousand flying yogis.
If they aren't running in this election, I'll pay the $50 fine, it's worth it not to encourage the other "right honourable" assholes in the major parties.
Pure vegetable oil is a different thing, but can also run on an engine somewhat cleanly (I ran some short term experiments at a previous job). The problem is that it is so thick, you have to heat up the engine first.
IIRC, there was a Canadian company (whose name escapes me), that makes a box that heats the vegetable oil before it enters the engine, which saves heating the engine.
"In the US, the annual amount of solar energy captured by vegetation -- agricultural crops, forests, lawns, gardens and wild growth -- is 54 quads (one quad equals one quadrillion British Thermal Units). Americans currently use 40 percent more fossil energy than the total amount of solar energy captured by plants."
So it's lucky that Mother Nature(tm) compresses millions of years worth of plants into oil each year, otherwise we might run out!!
What happens if the government "rewards" those who look favorably on its policies and "punishes" those who don't?
Doesn't this happen already. I thought both the Clinton and current administration use(d) "personal interview time" to reward journalists that wrote favourably about the Administration, and effectively punish the critics?
Well, we could produce a nuclear powered SUV that would run on very little gas too. But it doesn't mean it would be any cheaper.
Had to go back a few posts to get your point. Even though I don't know exactly how much the "concept cars" cost to produce, estimates were that they would cost no more than 10% more than current cars to produce, and possibly 20% less depending on the design and manufactuing techniques used.
As for maintainence, it is entirely hypothetical because the cars have to be out on the road being used by consumers before you know how often they break down, and how much the repairs will cost.
Oh, and BTW, there was a concept car produced in the 80's (exact details escape my memory) with a plutonium battery. It was very cheap to produce, but nobody wanted to be in a fender-bender with a plutonium battery.
My only point was that I think these guys intended to make a movie that would've caused Heinlein to hurl.
I agree. It was meant to be a satire. The fact that it failed so miserably at the box office may suggest that it was the wrong direction to take.
Personally I enjoyed the movie, not having read the book when I saw it. But having read the book, I think that using the name "Starship Troopers" for the movie was misleading.
Starship troopers contained alot of nutty ideas, and Heinlein probably believed all of them. The movie makers' disgust with those ideas came across pretty clearly, I thought.
So Hollywood needs to screen out nutty ideas and replace them with the politically correct?
Because the audience doesn't have the intellectual capacity to reject nutty ideas for themselves?
Slashdot Mirror
Do you really think that if my employer was Nokia then Samsung wouldn't benefit commercially from knowing the code to the software I write?
Nokia would also benefit. Ever heard of Metcalfe's Law?
blah blah Windows rulz linux is the suxors
(just continuing the experiment)
There's also the "brand" name, which is supposed to represent trust by their audience. But the modern media has abused that trust so much that newer audiences don't expect it, so even fun by nonrigorous rags like Slashdot get readership.
I don't know about the US, but in Oz the real problem with "brand name" is that the brand is an illusion. There is such a concentration of ownership of newpapers, radio stations etc that the "brand" is what the outlet used to be before it was bought up by some behometh and turned into the usual blancmange.
These old media can't sustain their privilege much longer. The barrier to entry to their fiefdoms is so low, especially on the limited functions of mobile devices, that little guys can compete with them. And compete better, if they offer the diversity of corroboration that people associate with accuracy. They will crash under the weight of their lies, and good riddance.
I think mobile phones with cameras will accelerate that trend. Once you can have media-rich global collaboration for pennies, why would you want multi-million dollar manufactured news?
For more good American satire, look for the Firesign Theater out of San Francisco. Or 1980s Letterman, the 1970s movies _Kentucky Fried Movie_ and the _Groove Tube_ or the complete works of Frank Zappa.
Well we get Letterman now, probably 30 years too late, and I find it pretty asinine.
Firesign Theatre? Do they have material on the web?
I will check out KFCM and Groove Tube.
Frank Zappa? Isn't he a musician?
I've seen some of George Carlin's stuff tho and he's pretty funny.
Another problem here is that Saturday Night Live has never been shown on TV. I might look at getting a DVD compilation (checks on Amazon), hmmm, mostly best of [comic].
Anyways, be well.
NY Times, BBC News, CNN, Washington Post. Actually, those were classified as "media sites", and Slashdot was the top "blog".
It's interesting that those "media" sites have a "readership". Myself I just use google news and I most of the time I barely notice whose site the article is on.
They're ranked by "outbound links" to other sites, feeding them traffic.
Just to clarify, did you mean "inbound links" from other sites feeding them traffic?
Other than the open author/moderation model, I think the difference betwen media and blogs is pretty blurry.
Isn't the author/moderation model the whole point?
The centralized media are sucking up political, economic and cultural privileges they cannot sustain.
They can sustain it until the number of people obtaining their news/opinion from multiple internet sources reaches a threshold.
Especially when most 20somethings get their news from _The Daily Show_.
I LOVE the daily show, pity I can't see it on free-to-air in Oz. When I first saw it I thought it must have been Canadian because I didn't know the Americans could do satire.
Or Slashdot, despite its recent ranking by _Wired_ mag (paper issue only) as the #5 most influential blog.
If you don't mind my asking, what were the first four?
.... everyday seems to bring the country as a whole in to a police state. Didn't we fight a war against a government that tried to this sort of thing once before ?
.... all is well.
Ah yes, but since the National Socialists failed to adequately protect their intellectual property, the police state methodology assets were seized by the United States, along with a bunch of rocket scientists, genetic researchers and what not.
So really your government is simply maximising shareholder value by leveraging assets gained as part of a settlement from a failed hostile takeover.
The gov. will also gain new market share by exploiting the synergy between the police state assets and under-utilised cold war assets, and will form new alliances with strategic global partners, who will bring fully securitised energy commodities and low-dollar human resources to the partnership mix.
So relax
and what are your links to Apple and Microsoft and some book supposed to prove?
In today's "IP" climate, Xerox would have never let Apple just rip their ideas off to make a new personal computer operating system. They would have just patented it and sat on it waiting to sue.
By ignoring Xerox's intellectual "property", Apple gained a short term technical lead. Then Microsoft ignored Apple's IP to gain a technical lead in the commodity hardware/PC market.
As for the book, well if you want a summary in 25 words or less, people in the United States ignored intellectual property rights for nearly 50 years in order to industrialise quickly to catch up to Europe. Inventions were blatantly stolen, patent rights routinely ignored. It was this behaviour that allowed the rapid development of US industrial base. (Sorry, that was 55 words).
Remember, even under your Greek "ability to act or perform effectively" most powerful things will need to apply their effectiveness to outside elements to maintain OR increase power. In fact to perform, any object must apply foarde on an outside object: a wrench's torque over a nut, a lender's power over my credit rating, a martyr's pleat over human emotion, or a business's financial benefit over a lawmaker. Force can be more than kinetic or violent.
How about an ambulance's power to get a patient to a hospital in time to save his/her life? Or a parents power to teach their children a value system? Or an arbitrators power to get two countries to ceasefire? Or the power of a movie or book to make you laugh? Or the power of your children to make you feel good?
How about the power of discovery to quicken the pulse? The power of empathy to change fundamental attitudes or beliefs?
How about the power of righteousness to overturn criminal convictions when new evidence comes to light?
What evidence do you have that any technological lead can be had by ignoring IP?
Here and here and here.
1. our primary products will be 10x more valuable when global warming 1/2 destroys americas primate producers.
:)
You mean Taronga zoo will step into the primate supply business?
2. when was the last time a modern country got invaded, espeically one SO LARGE as OZ that is about 50% of the land in the southern hemisphere,
No it isn't. Not even close.
yes a #1 asset, but god damn, no one has the man power to do that, who has a spare 10m military guys to pull it off?
Indonesia, China. The way Indonesia could do this is to send 10million+ to Australia in uniforms, who all surrender when they arrive. Under Geneva conventions, we would be required to house and feed the prisoners, thus bankrupting our economy.
Besides, if USA wont help (which they will), Britain can easily launch a few nukes to help.
You must be thinking of them strategic, genospecific nukes that only kill brown people.
3. Dont we have subs designed by Sweden?
What exactly is you point?
4. we have 5000 days supply of beer thoough, who needs amo.
I assume we will just throw beer cans at the invaders?
5. Our wildlife/spiders/snakes/crocks will kill all invaders, just watch Steve Irwin
Yeah, that's why the white settlers all died out and Australia reverted to the Kooris.
In Australia you can't sue the government unless they occasionned harm, or legislation is unconstitutional. Otherwise, once the legislation passes, we're fucked.
There is no real wealth made in the service industry, it just moves the money around and is zero-sum-gain.
Not true. By aggregating a task, a service can reduce the time to obtain tangible items.
Even though "time" is neither tangible or measured on the balance sheet does not mean that it is not valuable, as the efficient use of time leads to greater wealth.
You mention McDonalds making hamburgers. But how do the buns, patties and tomatoes get to McDonalds? By transport, a service. The transportation company is made more efficient by logistics (usually computerised), another service. The computers in the logistics operation need to be kept running optimally by some kind of skilled person, yet another service.
The more efficient the transport, the less McDonalds can charge customers for their hamburbers, thus, the less the customers pay for their requirement of food, giving them more money to spend on other items such as luxuries. If that doesn't meet your definition of wealth, then I would have to ask what economic model or assumptions you use to define wealth?
>> "And nobody grows powerful by using their existing wealth to create an envirinment that is free-er."
The American Founding Fathers?
Bzzzt. No, but thankyou for playing.
The founding fathers used their wealth to grant free men some inalienable rights, not freedoms. The founding fathers were slave owners after all.
What definition of power are you using?
... "the ability to act or perform effectively"
From the Greek
It is not the use of force per se. Although, using just the right amount of force at exactly the right time, in exactly the right place would be considered power.
The tin-foil hat is a much discussed, and from what I can gather, much needed item in the counter-geek apparrel. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any tin foil in the country in which I live, only aluminium foil.
... To avoid the government/illuminati mind control waves, does the foil have to be tin? Or will aluminium suffice? And if aluminium is not suitable, what can be done? It's impossible to find tin foil here, and tin cans are not very malleable, so shaping them into a hat presents new difficulties, besides which the tin can is mostly steel anyway.
So my question to the geek community is (and it's a technical question)
Your answers are greatly appreciated.
(and then the small nutbag parties).
Small nutbag parties have got a bad rap. I always vote for the flying yogis party, because when they finally get elected we will all be treated with a demonstration of a thousand flying yogis.
If they aren't running in this election, I'll pay the $50 fine, it's worth it not to encourage the other "right honourable" assholes in the major parties.
Pure vegetable oil is a different thing, but can also run on an engine somewhat cleanly (I ran some short term experiments at a previous job). The problem is that it is so thick, you have to heat up the engine first. IIRC, there was a Canadian company (whose name escapes me), that makes a box that heats the vegetable oil before it enters the engine, which saves heating the engine.
"In the US, the annual amount of solar energy captured by vegetation -- agricultural crops, forests, lawns, gardens and wild growth -- is 54 quads (one quad equals one quadrillion British Thermal Units). Americans currently use 40 percent more fossil energy than the total amount of solar energy captured by plants."
So it's lucky that Mother Nature(tm) compresses millions of years worth of plants into oil each year, otherwise we might run out!!
This is rhetorical and wishful: when are we going to get some anti-virus software that protects us before an outbreak?
:(
I'm currently evaluating F-Secure. It looks to be all that and more, now if I could just figure out their confusing pricing scheme.
Doctor it hurts when I do this.
... doh!
Then stop doing that.
Good enough for me.
Doctor it hurts when I have sex.
Then stop having sex.
Good enough for
... most other white color criminals
I know that's probably a spelling mistake, but it sure made me laugh.
What happens if the government "rewards" those who look favorably on its policies and "punishes" those who don't?
Doesn't this happen already. I thought both the Clinton and current administration use(d) "personal interview time" to reward journalists that wrote favourably about the Administration, and effectively punish the critics?
Well, we could produce a nuclear powered SUV that would run on very little gas too. But it doesn't mean it would be any cheaper.
Had to go back a few posts to get your point. Even though I don't know exactly how much the "concept cars" cost to produce, estimates were that they would cost no more than 10% more than current cars to produce, and possibly 20% less depending on the design and manufactuing techniques used.
As for maintainence, it is entirely hypothetical because the cars have to be out on the road being used by consumers before you know how often they break down, and how much the repairs will cost.
Oh, and BTW, there was a concept car produced in the 80's (exact details escape my memory) with a plutonium battery. It was very cheap to produce, but nobody wanted to be in a fender-bender with a plutonium battery.
My only point was that I think these guys intended to make a movie that would've caused Heinlein to hurl.
I agree. It was meant to be a satire. The fact that it failed so miserably at the box office may suggest that it was the wrong direction to take.
Personally I enjoyed the movie, not having read the book when I saw it. But having read the book, I think that using the name "Starship Troopers" for the movie was misleading.
Starship troopers contained alot of nutty ideas, and Heinlein probably believed all of them. The movie makers' disgust with those ideas came across pretty clearly, I thought.
So Hollywood needs to screen out nutty ideas and replace them with the politically correct?
Because the audience doesn't have the intellectual capacity to reject nutty ideas for themselves?