Then the RIAA exec walks up to the kid, empties his pockets and stuffs the valuables and cash into his own. He then tosses the major artist a couple coins. Finally he spits on the kid and says to him "let that be a lesson to ya" in a mafioso voice.
This is fun, I think I'll start casting for my own PSA
It's only a problem if you think freedom is a problem.
There is no balance, either you are monitored or you aren't. The balance actually comes in to play when the authority doing the monitoring decides to use the data or not.
So maybe you like trusting authority to decide what your balance between privacy and security is, but you do not like freedom.
Personally I am for freedom. Even if it means kiddie porn networks will thrive alongside ubuntu distributions and copyright violations, I think the net benefit to humanity comes from a compeletely free exchange of information. It's ok if you don't share that belief, it takes a lot of faith, and you are not alone at all in your fear of weirdos.
You make an interesting point, but I question if we are not already desensitized to violations of personal privacy. In fact, I would put forth an arguement that as important as people claim privacy to be, it is not important to us as a society.
There are very few laws protecting the concept of privacy, especially at the federal level. The Supreme Court hasn't made any breakthrough privacy rulings in its existance. The only thing protecting your privacy is really the apparent goodwill of other citizens.
You see, it is legal to record people in public, it is apparently legal for AOL to release private data, and I don't know Google or Yahoo's TOS but I bet they can legally do whatever they want. People use credit cards at chain stores, don't you know that they compile databases tying your name and address to what you buy? Surveilance is everywhere, it is becoming more eubiquitous, and like you said, we don't seem to have a problem with it.
Look at the popularity of reality TV, blogs, myspace, livejournal all these things are sharing personal information. We can pretend all we want that we control our image and our information, but in the end that control is merely an illusion. The only thing giving you privacy is how unimportant you are. Look at how much money celebrities have, and they have an impossible time with privacy. Technology is giving everybody the potential to be a celebrity, privacy violations and all.
So what do we do? How do we come to terms with our lack of privacy? There is no real system in place to protect our privacy, and without a system to deter behaviour, its hard to imagine the behavior not happening. You cannot count on the decency of people to protect your privacy by calling on their sympathies, because nobody is decent.
I don't know either, but the less I focus on controlling what is known about me the easier my life is. I try to influence other people's image of me for sure, but I accept that I cannot control how other people feel. This is why I do not fight for privacy, as I do not believe it is a universal concept that can be fought for.
You are under the misconception that the RIAA is in the business of MAKING music. The parent post made the important distinction that the RIAA is in the business of MARKETING music. P2P is competition because it is free marketing. It completely destroys the RIAA and the major record label's business models, and it violates copyright law, but it does NOT stop music from being made.
Why do you think artists sign with labels? To get their music distributed. They want their music distributed because they want to make money. So if p2p comes along and makes it hard to make money with the old distribution method, artists will have to make money in a new way. The times they are a changin, and you are one of the many people who still believe music can only be made if huge amounts of money are thrown around by middlemen.
It is also fallacious to say that the music industry shouldn't be afraid of independant artists because they aren't popular now. It's not the artists the industry is ever afraid of, because that isn't important to them. They control distribution, thats where the power and money comes from. We take that away with p2p and we get the artists back.
Fuck the RIAA, fuck the major labels. I "steal" music and I'm proud of it. You'll thank me in 10 years when people have realized that you don't need a cartel of 3 multibillion dollar corporations to tell you what to listen to.
I am not saying that a wiki will replace academic journals. I am predicting a technology or a system that hasn't been made yet. This system will replace academic journals in the sense that authority wont come from money and history, but the system will work so well it will generate its own authority.
Members of the field will be involved in reviewing these works, but they won't be selected by a board of directors, they will have proven themselves on their own merits.
No one has the time or energy to know everything about everything, we will always delegate to authority a great portion of our knowledge. I am predicting that the nature of this authority will change to our great benifit. Perhaps it will be the journals that implement this technology I am talking about, but I seriously doubt it since I don't think there is as much easy money to be made from doing so.
I agree with your points, but I was intending a different meaning. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.
When I say "all of the sudden nobody is an expert" and "information can come from anywhere" I am referring to the perspective many people hold that is shattered by the internet. Before the internet experts had PHDs or were experienced in their field and they could prove it with certificates or pieces of paper (physical objects). Before the internet information came from central authorities, from schools, parents, tv or (gasp) the government. Now all of the sudden you can access information from people who claim to be experts and aren't, who are experts and don't claim to be, and from just ordinary people publishing their trivial thoughts. The point is the anonymity of the internet removes the ability to have (misguided, yet historic) trust in authority. Sure there are places on the internet where real life authority can prove itself, but those sites aren't causing a shift in perspective.
I am not advocating that experts will dissapear. I am saying that their credibility can only be proven by demonstration of their expertise. My point is that technology will allow us to move towards more of a meritocracy based on the actual worth of the content rather than the reputation of the publisher.
Wikipedia can't be reliable. People do not take it seriosly, and therefore don't care if it's facts are true. I had teachers who would put false info up to see if we would cite it or not. This is a load of bull. If people put what they were sure to almsot certain was true, we wouldn't have these problems.
The way you are framing the problem makes it a futile effort. You cannot say "if only everybody would do this, then..." because you will never get everybody to do one thing or act in one way.
In the real world solutions involve creating systems that encourage certain behavior. Capitalism "works" because it encourages the creation of wealth. Communism didn't work out because it expected people to behave a certain way, it didn't encourage behavior.
If you look at wikipedia in this way, it is just a new type of system made possible because of new technologies. Wikipedia encourages people to contribute, and it is being refined as a system to handle uses and abuses that don't contribute to its goal. If the goal is to be an encyclopedia of human knowledge, I believe it stands a far better chance then any encyclopedia or company in history. Wikipedia is just a very efficient way of collaborating on information, with few limits. It is more like the first time the abstract class of information sharing has been instantiated, even tho its children classes have been objects for a long time. Look at a dictionary, communication is a lot more flexible than the words in a dictionary but it is still an attempt to collaborate on meaning. Look at peer-reviewed journals, its just a few people collaborating and we all trust them (for the most part) because they are experts. Look at published books, its one or a few peoples expression of knowledge.
For so long we have trusted these children objects because we believe in experts and we believe in authority. The dissemination of knowledge has always been from the top down, from authority to the masses, from experts to the laymen. The internet has gone and thrown a nice big wrench in this historical system. All of the sudden nobody is an expert, all of the sudden information can come from anywhere. All of the sudden we don't have this magical authority anymore to tell us what is right and wrong, and for many people that is unimaginable.
I firmly believe that the internet will do away with peer-reviewed academic journals, and all other sorts of authority. It may be a while off, and many people may call me crazy, but I see it. Instant communication using wiki like technologies will allow the efficient review and commenting of any academic work. I envision a system that has been worked out over time, perhaps derived from wikipedia or even slashcode that allows people to weigh in on the merits and flaws of a work. History of revision, immediate feedback and efficient communication will all supercede the percieved authority that money can buy.
Perhaps today you cannot cite wikipedia in an academic setting, but do not laugh at the thought that one day wikipedia, google scholar, slashdot, and all of the similar endevours in their vein will bring about a complete shift in what information is trusted. Bloggers were supposed to do this with news, and I argue that they have only begun. I predict in the next 5 years the media landscape will be completely unrecognizable from the one we have today, and further more todays media landscape will be laughed at for the inefficient joke that it is.
You must never be impressed. How can we have a secure election if nobody can physically access the machines? If thats not what you want, we will never have a secure election. I can accept that, but what I can't accept is a private corporation exerting its influence on the election process by directly affecting the machines that count our votes.
This is "impressive" because it shows either incompetence or bad intent. Sure physical access can mean compromising a computer, but that doesn't mean you have to make it EASY or efficient for your corporation to defraud elections.
It is narrow IN scope? I think not. What is porn? What is tricking somebody? What is metadata?
Further more restrictions on speech must be content neutral. You cannot stop somebody from speaking because you do not like what they are saying.
Apparently when we think of the children we like to forget about that. Why can't parents teach children to be responsible internet users? Why does the government have to make sure that everybody moves their websites outside of the US? Why do they need to add one more impossible to enforce, broad in scope law to the books about something that doesn't even matter (but could if abused).
You say "trying to trick kids" in italics as if that makes it any more of a pressing issue. Stop thinking of the children damnit! They will grow up to be adults that can decide for their selves how much of the internet they want to see. If we keep "thinking" of the children there may well not be an internet (in America) for them to surf.
I love it when people posting to message boards complain about the decline in quality of printed material when more people gain access to it. Maybe we should just go back to medievil times when it was only legal for bibles to be published by the church. God forbid peasants learn to read and write, imagine what those "dumbheads" would say!
People like you have been brainwashed to believe in the system. The only way good art gets made is with patronage. The only way for patronage to happen in our modern world is through large conglomerate industries. WTF? So more people have access to printing books, and this is bad WHY? You probably complain about blogs, myspace music, and any other recent spawn of the internet that allows the "illiterate" a chance. I fully understand that you may not hold these opinions, but I see them all repeated here, and its embodied in your post.
Of course the average quality declines, but the internet has made it irrelevant to calculate average. Communication is instant, all it takes is for one person to find the quality content and BOOM it spreads like wildfire.
People need to wake up, especially you slashdotters who spread this ignorance that every publication needs to be quality for something to be worthwile. Most slashdot posts aren't worth much, but we still come here right? Hell I don't read the articles, I come for posts like yours;P
You are not alone in your arguement. You are supported by medieval scholars who decried the rise of literacy, the government of the UK when the printing press was made, and many more anti-intellectual pessimists throughout history. They held your very same belief, what sort of chaos and tragedy will occur if everybody is literate? Peasants are dumb and uncultured, they will only polute the literary pool. You say the same shit about the internet.
The only difference now is that we have SEARCH ENGINES, computers, and instant communication to help us sort through the bullshit. People like you like to ignore the fact that if only 1 out of every 99 people posting to myspace create something worthwhile, thats one more worthwhile thing on the internet to be found and shared.
I believe the viral spread of information has not reached its full potential, myspace is a step in the right direction. Google and other search engines are helping too. You act as if removing the hundreds of worthless expressions are worth the cost of forgoing one worthwhile contribution. You conveniently forget that by reading slashdot you are getting a selection of top articles for discussion over thousands of "unworthy" articles submited a day.
I think the only reason people like you get depressed is because you dont understand the internet. You don't see how instant communication changes the way things work. We can't rely on an intellectual authority anymore to tell us what is good and bad. Millions of people on myspace are expressing themselves in ways they never knew they could, even if most of it is terrible html they are having a learning experience and real social interaction. You want to take all that away because its easy to dismiss as trash? Don't add them as your friends, don't even sign up for myspace. In fact you should probably stop visiting slashdot, it should depress you that so many articles get submitted that are worthless, wasting the editors time, and our time when one slips through. You'd rather not have slashdot and save the internet the trouble right?
In your example Bob IS the passionate person. From the factors the manager listed there is no way he hates his job and can write top code and work well with everybody. Being passionate about what you do isn't about saying how much you love it, its about waking up in the morning and WANTING to go to work and get stuff accomplished.
The manager you imagined is just an example of a bad manager, and not how I imagine hiring passionate employees at all. I would imagine the manager hiring Bob and hearing Bob talk with enthusiasm about all the ideas he has to implement. Hed probably pass over the cookie cutter from Nabisco;P
Because you think that monetary loss is the only harm there is. There are 4 factors commonly used when analyzing fair use in a copyright case, check out this wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use .
I'm talking fair use because you think this company is not hurting anyone, therefor making a fair use. This is not the case, lets look at the four factors: 1. Purpose and Character. The use is intended for commercial purposes. They are not fulfilling the intentions of copyright by stimulating creativity, they are removing it for personal profit 2. Nature of the work. not that relevant, we are talking movies and entertainment 3. Amount and substantiability. This is huge, the work is essentially kept the same, intended to convey the same message, and most of the work is left untouched. 4. Effect on the works value. This is where the monetary blood you wish to see spills. These guys took over a potential market from the copyright holders (selling cleansed dvds) Furthermore by providing their own versions they are diluting the value of the copyright holders
If you want to know why this hurts people you need to understand that the media world is ruled by copyrights, and any weakening there of hurts those companies. I personally would like to see alot about copyrights weakened, and even more derivative works accepted (sampling in music, clips in shows). This just crosses the line, they are not taking a piece of our culture and creating something new, they are really destroying a piece of our culture and making money off of it.
You point out many flawed arguements pirates make, but you are basing your entire arguement on the flawed premise that things HAVE to be the way the are for music to be created. You think it takes 10 layers of middlemen to get CDs to the public, you think you only deserve $.20 per album because the RIAA is protecting you. Sure you aren't brainwashed, those choices just might be the best ones you could make at this moment.
What you don't see is how the internet and its technologies (pioneered by pirates) are creating opportunities for artists to make some money, build fan bases and gain credibility without the industry. These artists will be the future because they are undercutting the beast that is the industry. I think that is really what people are scared of. They can not fathom a world where big money doesn't determine success, where middlemen can't "pay the mortgage" and Nielson doesn't determine whats hot.
This is why I'm not worried about music or copyrights, because there is no leash on these "myspace" artists. Copyrights are way more restrictive than just making sure people buy cds, they also limit sampling and other creative uses. These up and coming independant artists are sampling and reusing the culture around them far more than ever before, probably a lot of it has to do with digital technology. There are way to many to sue, just like the pirates, and they are actually creating new music.
I hardly ever pirate now, but thats only out of laziness, I don't really care what happens when I pirate industry music, because I don't really care about the industry. They've fucked over artists and consumers for long enough. I'm just sitting back and enjoying watching them slowly crumble while jamming out to so independant artists on their myspace page.
Fuck the RIAA, Fuck the MPAA. We don't need them to make art, I've already seen it.
While I find your simulation unnervingly realistic, I think it focuses too much on the bad side of internet discussion. We have exactly that situation on/. but I still come here and read the comments everyday. That's because for every post I make it doesn't matter how many dismissive, simplistic replies I get, all I need is one decent response to know I have communicated.
I think a lot of people want this, a lot of people want a forum for discussion that can't turn into a shouting match. While it can fall victim to wiki abuse, since the pages are in text format and they will most certainly have history it makes it harder to distort arguements others have made.
Wikipedia is only now starting to prove its worth, but to me its not important that wikipedia prove that it is credible, rather I find it remarkable that wikipedia is starting to prove just how UNcredible most print sources are. Until I really started thinking about it I used to take what was in a book as fact, now that I realize that books are just wikipedia contributers who have been writting for longer it feels like my eyes are opened.
You and I might see American politics for the puppet show that it is, but many people may not. What happens if this wiki works even slightly? What happens if a large amount of people wake up and actually talk about issues instead of flaming each others parties?
Maybe I'm too idealistic, but I think its wrong to discount the positive aspects of this new medium just because you have seen how it can be abused. I trust these abuses are pretty obvious to the creators, and I hope they do something to combat them. I'm interested to see this work.
You may want Google to only have noble intentions, but really thats silly. Why is it bad if a company is doing the right thing because it is in its own self interest. Isn't that an ideal situation? The whole idea of our economy is that wealth is created, so here Google is just protecting the public's wealth because it is also protecting its own pockets.
I favor a system where the participants do the right thing because it is benificial to them. Big telco are definately not doing the right things, putting their profits in front of their customers and not pursuing the longterm. Well, I guess they figure their long term is just more government subsidies...
How about several economic concepts? Tarrifs - taxes on foreign products to give domestic products an advantage Quotas - limiting the amount something is imported to give domestic market a boost Subsidies - boosting domestic industries at the expense of foreign industries
All forms of economic protectionism serve no other ECONOMIC purpose other than to hurt free trade. They serve plenty of political purposes though...
While I agree with your sentiment, I would be careful of what you are saying. It is not the few large publishers that give us interest in the internet, it is the millions of enabled small publishers that communicate across the globe. We want net neutrality because we don't want the little guys to get squashed. Net neutrality is about keeping the barier to entry low.
The internet is magical not because of Google and not because of the telcos, but because of all the little people it connects. If Google and Yahoo started charging them, they would go bankrupt. Its a lovely thought that they command that much power, but they simply don't. If Google became unprofitable someone else would take up the slack. The internet is already an integrated part of the worlds economy and we need it to stay up and stay open. Connectivity should be a utility not a commodity, that everyone can have access to. How that translates into law I have no idea, and I'm betting most legislators do not either.
A less scary and more useful application would be something that helps track TV remotes or keys.
You would attach an RFID tag to each item, then set up a few readers to triangulate the position. If all the equipment becomes cheap enough (it will) you could set up readers around the house/appartment, then just look at your computer to see where your keys are on the map of your appartment.
You just made me think of a useful application of position tracking with RFID
Your point is well taken. I still don't think Google is doing wrong for one reason, they are already filtering based on quality of content. They don't add just any blog to their news index, and what they are doing now is reassessing some of their indexed content as bad quality. I DO agree that they shouldn't be doing this based on "hate speech" as I concur with other posters that however trite and offensive these blogs are they are not hate speech.
Personally I think blogs are causing a lot of confusion in what we consider news, and its going to take some time for us (and Google) to figure out how to deal with this. Actually this reminds me of that googlezon video.
I used to have a 12" powerbook that I was borrowing from my dad. 3 of my friends asked me if I was going to sell it when I got my new computer. All 3 just wanted simple web browsing/word processing, they liked the small smooth form factor of the apple, and none of them had much computer experience at all.
$300 for a laptop, and they just need to buy a nice little external harddrive and they would be set. I think this is the perfect thing for a lot of people who do not know anything about pentium 1s or damn small linux, and I don't have time/energy to set up something like that for each of them. Hell if I had just a little bit more disposable income I would totally buy one of these!
What do you think Google does? Both the search engine and the news service do nothing but FILTER results to be relevant to you. Notice how you say "find the information I am looking for" which means they must NOT find information you are NOT looking for.
Seeing as they are running a news service, one would expect the users of the service to be searching for NEWS. A few blogs that are slightly more read than the average bitchfest apparently do not count as news sites for google anymore.
I understand some people might agree with the drivel posted on those sites, but that doesn't make those sites news. The Google News service is nothing but a FILTER that only shows you sites on the internet that are news.
"Oceans lash our coasts. Deserts Burn. The sky provides no shelter. Turmoil of Biblical proportions threatens not just our weather but life itself."
Don't those sound like great reasons to fight back?:)
In all seriousness I feel totally out of the loop on global warming, but Al Gore's scaremongering movie makes me think the current attitude is exaggerated. I believe that there is truth to global warming, but I am starting to disbelieve anything that threatens impending doom (this includes terrorism).
Every generation thinks theirs is the last, why should ours be any different?
Slashdot Mirror
Then the RIAA exec walks up to the kid, empties his pockets and stuffs the valuables and cash into his own. He then tosses the major artist a couple coins. Finally he spits on the kid and says to him "let that be a lesson to ya" in a mafioso voice.
This is fun, I think I'll start casting for my own PSA
I got 13.2gigs of rhino pictures and video, how about you?
(hey, I'm PROUD of my rhino collection, I don't need to hide behind AC)
It's only a problem if you think freedom is a problem.
There is no balance, either you are monitored or you aren't. The balance actually comes in to play when the authority doing the monitoring decides to use the data or not.
So maybe you like trusting authority to decide what your balance between privacy and security is, but you do not like freedom.
Personally I am for freedom. Even if it means kiddie porn networks will thrive alongside ubuntu distributions and copyright violations, I think the net benefit to humanity comes from a compeletely free exchange of information. It's ok if you don't share that belief, it takes a lot of faith, and you are not alone at all in your fear of weirdos.
You make an interesting point, but I question if we are not already desensitized to violations of personal privacy. In fact, I would put forth an arguement that as important as people claim privacy to be, it is not important to us as a society.
There are very few laws protecting the concept of privacy, especially at the federal level. The Supreme Court hasn't made any breakthrough privacy rulings in its existance. The only thing protecting your privacy is really the apparent goodwill of other citizens.
You see, it is legal to record people in public, it is apparently legal for AOL to release private data, and I don't know Google or Yahoo's TOS but I bet they can legally do whatever they want. People use credit cards at chain stores, don't you know that they compile databases tying your name and address to what you buy? Surveilance is everywhere, it is becoming more eubiquitous, and like you said, we don't seem to have a problem with it.
Look at the popularity of reality TV, blogs, myspace, livejournal all these things are sharing personal information. We can pretend all we want that we control our image and our information, but in the end that control is merely an illusion. The only thing giving you privacy is how unimportant you are. Look at how much money celebrities have, and they have an impossible time with privacy. Technology is giving everybody the potential to be a celebrity, privacy violations and all.
So what do we do? How do we come to terms with our lack of privacy? There is no real system in place to protect our privacy, and without a system to deter behaviour, its hard to imagine the behavior not happening. You cannot count on the decency of people to protect your privacy by calling on their sympathies, because nobody is decent.
I don't know either, but the less I focus on controlling what is known about me the easier my life is. I try to influence other people's image of me for sure, but I accept that I cannot control how other people feel. This is why I do not fight for privacy, as I do not believe it is a universal concept that can be fought for.
You are under the misconception that the RIAA is in the business of MAKING music. The parent post made the important distinction that the RIAA is in the business of MARKETING music. P2P is competition because it is free marketing. It completely destroys the RIAA and the major record label's business models, and it violates copyright law, but it does NOT stop music from being made.
Why do you think artists sign with labels? To get their music distributed. They want their music distributed because they want to make money. So if p2p comes along and makes it hard to make money with the old distribution method, artists will have to make money in a new way. The times they are a changin, and you are one of the many people who still believe music can only be made if huge amounts of money are thrown around by middlemen.
It is also fallacious to say that the music industry shouldn't be afraid of independant artists because they aren't popular now. It's not the artists the industry is ever afraid of, because that isn't important to them. They control distribution, thats where the power and money comes from. We take that away with p2p and we get the artists back.
Fuck the RIAA, fuck the major labels. I "steal" music and I'm proud of it. You'll thank me in 10 years when people have realized that you don't need a cartel of 3 multibillion dollar corporations to tell you what to listen to.
I am not saying that a wiki will replace academic journals. I am predicting a technology or a system that hasn't been made yet. This system will replace academic journals in the sense that authority wont come from money and history, but the system will work so well it will generate its own authority.
Members of the field will be involved in reviewing these works, but they won't be selected by a board of directors, they will have proven themselves on their own merits.
No one has the time or energy to know everything about everything, we will always delegate to authority a great portion of our knowledge. I am predicting that the nature of this authority will change to our great benifit. Perhaps it will be the journals that implement this technology I am talking about, but I seriously doubt it since I don't think there is as much easy money to be made from doing so.
I agree with your points, but I was intending a different meaning. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.
When I say "all of the sudden nobody is an expert" and "information can come from anywhere" I am referring to the perspective many people hold that is shattered by the internet. Before the internet experts had PHDs or were experienced in their field and they could prove it with certificates or pieces of paper (physical objects). Before the internet information came from central authorities, from schools, parents, tv or (gasp) the government. Now all of the sudden you can access information from people who claim to be experts and aren't, who are experts and don't claim to be, and from just ordinary people publishing their trivial thoughts. The point is the anonymity of the internet removes the ability to have (misguided, yet historic) trust in authority. Sure there are places on the internet where real life authority can prove itself, but those sites aren't causing a shift in perspective.
I am not advocating that experts will dissapear. I am saying that their credibility can only be proven by demonstration of their expertise. My point is that technology will allow us to move towards more of a meritocracy based on the actual worth of the content rather than the reputation of the publisher.
The way you are framing the problem makes it a futile effort. You cannot say "if only everybody would do this, then..." because you will never get everybody to do one thing or act in one way. In the real world solutions involve creating systems that encourage certain behavior. Capitalism "works" because it encourages the creation of wealth. Communism didn't work out because it expected people to behave a certain way, it didn't encourage behavior.
If you look at wikipedia in this way, it is just a new type of system made possible because of new technologies. Wikipedia encourages people to contribute, and it is being refined as a system to handle uses and abuses that don't contribute to its goal. If the goal is to be an encyclopedia of human knowledge, I believe it stands a far better chance then any encyclopedia or company in history. Wikipedia is just a very efficient way of collaborating on information, with few limits. It is more like the first time the abstract class of information sharing has been instantiated, even tho its children classes have been objects for a long time. Look at a dictionary, communication is a lot more flexible than the words in a dictionary but it is still an attempt to collaborate on meaning. Look at peer-reviewed journals, its just a few people collaborating and we all trust them (for the most part) because they are experts. Look at published books, its one or a few peoples expression of knowledge.
For so long we have trusted these children objects because we believe in experts and we believe in authority. The dissemination of knowledge has always been from the top down, from authority to the masses, from experts to the laymen. The internet has gone and thrown a nice big wrench in this historical system. All of the sudden nobody is an expert, all of the sudden information can come from anywhere. All of the sudden we don't have this magical authority anymore to tell us what is right and wrong, and for many people that is unimaginable.
I firmly believe that the internet will do away with peer-reviewed academic journals, and all other sorts of authority. It may be a while off, and many people may call me crazy, but I see it. Instant communication using wiki like technologies will allow the efficient review and commenting of any academic work. I envision a system that has been worked out over time, perhaps derived from wikipedia or even slashcode that allows people to weigh in on the merits and flaws of a work. History of revision, immediate feedback and efficient communication will all supercede the percieved authority that money can buy.
Perhaps today you cannot cite wikipedia in an academic setting, but do not laugh at the thought that one day wikipedia, google scholar, slashdot, and all of the similar endevours in their vein will bring about a complete shift in what information is trusted. Bloggers were supposed to do this with news, and I argue that they have only begun. I predict in the next 5 years the media landscape will be completely unrecognizable from the one we have today, and further more todays media landscape will be laughed at for the inefficient joke that it is.
What we really need is Google to run the national voting system and they can just run their MapReduce algorithm using spare CPU time.
.08 seconds
This election returned 250 million votes in
1. Skynet
2. Mickey Mouse
3. GW Bush
You must never be impressed. How can we have a secure election if nobody can physically access the machines? If thats not what you want, we will never have a secure election. I can accept that, but what I can't accept is a private corporation exerting its influence on the election process by directly affecting the machines that count our votes.
This is "impressive" because it shows either incompetence or bad intent. Sure physical access can mean compromising a computer, but that doesn't mean you have to make it EASY or efficient for your corporation to defraud elections.
It is narrow IN scope? I think not. What is porn? What is tricking somebody? What is metadata?
Further more restrictions on speech must be content neutral. You cannot stop somebody from speaking because you do not like what they are saying.
Apparently when we think of the children we like to forget about that. Why can't parents teach children to be responsible internet users? Why does the government have to make sure that everybody moves their websites outside of the US? Why do they need to add one more impossible to enforce, broad in scope law to the books about something that doesn't even matter (but could if abused).
You say "trying to trick kids" in italics as if that makes it any more of a pressing issue. Stop thinking of the children damnit! They will grow up to be adults that can decide for their selves how much of the internet they want to see. If we keep "thinking" of the children there may well not be an internet (in America) for them to surf.
I love it when people posting to message boards complain about the decline in quality of printed material when more people gain access to it. Maybe we should just go back to medievil times when it was only legal for bibles to be published by the church. God forbid peasants learn to read and write, imagine what those "dumbheads" would say!
;P
People like you have been brainwashed to believe in the system. The only way good art gets made is with patronage. The only way for patronage to happen in our modern world is through large conglomerate industries. WTF? So more people have access to printing books, and this is bad WHY? You probably complain about blogs, myspace music, and any other recent spawn of the internet that allows the "illiterate" a chance. I fully understand that you may not hold these opinions, but I see them all repeated here, and its embodied in your post.
Of course the average quality declines, but the internet has made it irrelevant to calculate average. Communication is instant, all it takes is for one person to find the quality content and BOOM it spreads like wildfire.
People need to wake up, especially you slashdotters who spread this ignorance that every publication needs to be quality for something to be worthwile. Most slashdot posts aren't worth much, but we still come here right? Hell I don't read the articles, I come for posts like yours
You are not alone in your arguement. You are supported by medieval scholars who decried the rise of literacy, the government of the UK when the printing press was made, and many more anti-intellectual pessimists throughout history. They held your very same belief, what sort of chaos and tragedy will occur if everybody is literate? Peasants are dumb and uncultured, they will only polute the literary pool. You say the same shit about the internet.
The only difference now is that we have SEARCH ENGINES, computers, and instant communication to help us sort through the bullshit. People like you like to ignore the fact that if only 1 out of every 99 people posting to myspace create something worthwhile, thats one more worthwhile thing on the internet to be found and shared.
I believe the viral spread of information has not reached its full potential, myspace is a step in the right direction. Google and other search engines are helping too. You act as if removing the hundreds of worthless expressions are worth the cost of forgoing one worthwhile contribution. You conveniently forget that by reading slashdot you are getting a selection of top articles for discussion over thousands of "unworthy" articles submited a day.
I think the only reason people like you get depressed is because you dont understand the internet. You don't see how instant communication changes the way things work. We can't rely on an intellectual authority anymore to tell us what is good and bad. Millions of people on myspace are expressing themselves in ways they never knew they could, even if most of it is terrible html they are having a learning experience and real social interaction. You want to take all that away because its easy to dismiss as trash? Don't add them as your friends, don't even sign up for myspace. In fact you should probably stop visiting slashdot, it should depress you that so many articles get submitted that are worthless, wasting the editors time, and our time when one slips through. You'd rather not have slashdot and save the internet the trouble right?
In your example Bob IS the passionate person. From the factors the manager listed there is no way he hates his job and can write top code and work well with everybody. Being passionate about what you do isn't about saying how much you love it, its about waking up in the morning and WANTING to go to work and get stuff accomplished.
;P
The manager you imagined is just an example of a bad manager, and not how I imagine hiring passionate employees at all. I would imagine the manager hiring Bob and hearing Bob talk with enthusiasm about all the ideas he has to implement. Hed probably pass over the cookie cutter from Nabisco
Because you think that monetary loss is the only harm there is. There are 4 factors commonly used when analyzing fair use in a copyright case, check out this wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use .
I'm talking fair use because you think this company is not hurting anyone, therefor making a fair use. This is not the case, lets look at the four factors:
1. Purpose and Character. The use is intended for commercial purposes. They are not fulfilling the intentions of copyright by stimulating creativity, they are removing it for personal profit
2. Nature of the work. not that relevant, we are talking movies and entertainment
3. Amount and substantiability. This is huge, the work is essentially kept the same, intended to convey the same message, and most of the work is left untouched.
4. Effect on the works value. This is where the monetary blood you wish to see spills. These guys took over a potential market from the copyright holders (selling cleansed dvds) Furthermore by providing their own versions they are diluting the value of the copyright holders
If you want to know why this hurts people you need to understand that the media world is ruled by copyrights, and any weakening there of hurts those companies. I personally would like to see alot about copyrights weakened, and even more derivative works accepted (sampling in music, clips in shows). This just crosses the line, they are not taking a piece of our culture and creating something new, they are really destroying a piece of our culture and making money off of it.
You point out many flawed arguements pirates make, but you are basing your entire arguement on the flawed premise that things HAVE to be the way the are for music to be created. You think it takes 10 layers of middlemen to get CDs to the public, you think you only deserve $.20 per album because the RIAA is protecting you. Sure you aren't brainwashed, those choices just might be the best ones you could make at this moment.
What you don't see is how the internet and its technologies (pioneered by pirates) are creating opportunities for artists to make some money, build fan bases and gain credibility without the industry. These artists will be the future because they are undercutting the beast that is the industry. I think that is really what people are scared of. They can not fathom a world where big money doesn't determine success, where middlemen can't "pay the mortgage" and Nielson doesn't determine whats hot.
This is why I'm not worried about music or copyrights, because there is no leash on these "myspace" artists. Copyrights are way more restrictive than just making sure people buy cds, they also limit sampling and other creative uses. These up and coming independant artists are sampling and reusing the culture around them far more than ever before, probably a lot of it has to do with digital technology. There are way to many to sue, just like the pirates, and they are actually creating new music.
I hardly ever pirate now, but thats only out of laziness, I don't really care what happens when I pirate industry music, because I don't really care about the industry. They've fucked over artists and consumers for long enough. I'm just sitting back and enjoying watching them slowly crumble while jamming out to so independant artists on their myspace page.
Fuck the RIAA, Fuck the MPAA. We don't need them to make art, I've already seen it.
While I find your simulation unnervingly realistic, I think it focuses too much on the bad side of internet discussion. We have exactly that situation on /. but I still come here and read the comments everyday. That's because for every post I make it doesn't matter how many dismissive, simplistic replies I get, all I need is one decent response to know I have communicated.
I think a lot of people want this, a lot of people want a forum for discussion that can't turn into a shouting match. While it can fall victim to wiki abuse, since the pages are in text format and they will most certainly have history it makes it harder to distort arguements others have made.
Wikipedia is only now starting to prove its worth, but to me its not important that wikipedia prove that it is credible, rather I find it remarkable that wikipedia is starting to prove just how UNcredible most print sources are. Until I really started thinking about it I used to take what was in a book as fact, now that I realize that books are just wikipedia contributers who have been writting for longer it feels like my eyes are opened.
You and I might see American politics for the puppet show that it is, but many people may not. What happens if this wiki works even slightly? What happens if a large amount of people wake up and actually talk about issues instead of flaming each others parties?
Maybe I'm too idealistic, but I think its wrong to discount the positive aspects of this new medium just because you have seen how it can be abused. I trust these abuses are pretty obvious to the creators, and I hope they do something to combat them. I'm interested to see this work.
You may want Google to only have noble intentions, but really thats silly. Why is it bad if a company is doing the right thing because it is in its own self interest. Isn't that an ideal situation? The whole idea of our economy is that wealth is created, so here Google is just protecting the public's wealth because it is also protecting its own pockets.
I favor a system where the participants do the right thing because it is benificial to them. Big telco are definately not doing the right things, putting their profits in front of their customers and not pursuing the longterm. Well, I guess they figure their long term is just more government subsidies...
How about several economic concepts?
Tarrifs - taxes on foreign products to give domestic products an advantage
Quotas - limiting the amount something is imported to give domestic market a boost
Subsidies - boosting domestic industries at the expense of foreign industries
All forms of economic protectionism serve no other ECONOMIC purpose other than to hurt free trade. They serve plenty of political purposes though...
While I agree with your sentiment, I would be careful of what you are saying. It is not the few large publishers that give us interest in the internet, it is the millions of enabled small publishers that communicate across the globe. We want net neutrality because we don't want the little guys to get squashed. Net neutrality is about keeping the barier to entry low.
The internet is magical not because of Google and not because of the telcos, but because of all the little people it connects. If Google and Yahoo started charging them, they would go bankrupt. Its a lovely thought that they command that much power, but they simply don't. If Google became unprofitable someone else would take up the slack. The internet is already an integrated part of the worlds economy and we need it to stay up and stay open. Connectivity should be a utility not a commodity, that everyone can have access to. How that translates into law I have no idea, and I'm betting most legislators do not either.
A less scary and more useful application would be something that helps track TV remotes or keys.
You would attach an RFID tag to each item, then set up a few readers to triangulate the position. If all the equipment becomes cheap enough (it will) you could set up readers around the house/appartment, then just look at your computer to see where your keys are on the map of your appartment.
You just made me think of a useful application of position tracking with RFID
Your point is well taken. I still don't think Google is doing wrong for one reason, they are already filtering based on quality of content. They don't add just any blog to their news index, and what they are doing now is reassessing some of their indexed content as bad quality. I DO agree that they shouldn't be doing this based on "hate speech" as I concur with other posters that however trite and offensive these blogs are they are not hate speech.
Personally I think blogs are causing a lot of confusion in what we consider news, and its going to take some time for us (and Google) to figure out how to deal with this. Actually this reminds me of that googlezon video.
I used to have a 12" powerbook that I was borrowing from my dad. 3 of my friends asked me if I was going to sell it when I got my new computer. All 3 just wanted simple web browsing/word processing, they liked the small smooth form factor of the apple, and none of them had much computer experience at all.
$300 for a laptop, and they just need to buy a nice little external harddrive and they would be set. I think this is the perfect thing for a lot of people who do not know anything about pentium 1s or damn small linux, and I don't have time/energy to set up something like that for each of them. Hell if I had just a little bit more disposable income I would totally buy one of these!
What do you think Google does? Both the search engine and the news service do nothing but FILTER results to be relevant to you. Notice how you say "find the information I am looking for" which means they must NOT find information you are NOT looking for.
Seeing as they are running a news service, one would expect the users of the service to be searching for NEWS. A few blogs that are slightly more read than the average bitchfest apparently do not count as news sites for google anymore.
I understand some people might agree with the drivel posted on those sites, but that doesn't make those sites news. The Google News service is nothing but a FILTER that only shows you sites on the internet that are news.
We better fuck her back!
:)
"Oceans lash our coasts. Deserts Burn. The sky provides no shelter. Turmoil of Biblical proportions threatens not just our weather but life itself."
Don't those sound like great reasons to fight back?
In all seriousness I feel totally out of the loop on global warming, but Al Gore's scaremongering movie makes me think the current attitude is exaggerated. I believe that there is truth to global warming, but I am starting to disbelieve anything that threatens impending doom (this includes terrorism).
Every generation thinks theirs is the last, why should ours be any different?