No, I don't think that the presence or absence of government oversight has much effect on the quality of the content provided. My intent was to point out that the American people will, as a whole, never object to the current governmental control of broadcast media as long as the current status quo is maintained; even if that governmental intrusion no longer serves any useful purpose.
Incidentally, the broadcast media aren't (IMHO) completely filled with poor quality content - I have found the occasional gem shining clear in the media. Unfortunately, such gems are the exception rather than the rule.
I have served in the Armed Forces here. I vote. I pay attention to the issues and act as I see fit.
I do not believe that the government "of the people" has a mandate to ignore the popular sentiment (which our government does in many instances) in favor of preserving its own authority and the "status quo". I do not believe that the government should insert itself into matters of morality.
Unfortunately, our government has already done all of these things; I don't believe it will cease to do so of its own accord.
In closing, have a care whome you would call "not an American". I am quite certain I have earned the right not to be so addressed.
An unfortunate truth of human affairs in general and politics in particular is that once power is granted, it is nearly impossible to rescind.
The FCC will never go away, so long as the United States government exists - our government will never cede any power it has back to the populace it governs. The effect is similar to entropy - our government will grow progressively more and more powerful, more and more intrusive, until the day somebody is inspired by the phrase "When in the course of human events . .."
Then again, so many of us want the kind of "cradle-to-grave" care our government has evolved into providing. "Let them continue to regulate radio communications" the people will say, "just keep my television spewing out mountains of mindless pap, keep the radio airwaves full of the musical tripe which the music industry has decreed I should find entertaining."
A camera mounted in the faceplate of all Blu-Ray enabled televisions (what, you mean the thing won't require a secure monitor? Even M$ is up to speed on that one), enabling Sony executroids to monitor the activities of all people viewing their precious content.
Ahhh . . . never mind television or HDTV. I'm going to play in the big blue room outside my house later.
It would seem so, until the statistic-gathering process realizes that in the (FF) pairing it has asked about the same family, a situation which won't arise in the (FM) and (MF) pairings.
Instead of harvesting as much information as possible about everyone they can and then winnowing that down to information they can use, the cybercrooks are now targetting those individuals from whome they expect to be able to steal something, and then going after all the information they can on that select group?
This is great!!! With my credit history, I'm safer than ever now! Nobody in his right mind would try to use my identity for any money-making venture!;^D
So rather than physical shielding, perhaps magnetic shielding would be more effective? After all, if Earth's (immense but diffuse) magnetic field protects us all from cosmic rays and the solar wind, how about a (localized but intense) magnetic shield? Hellfire, we could even use the thing to provide a little thrust (a la solar sail), at least on the way away from the Sun.
Yes, with the best of intentions to further the lofty goal of supporting the free software ideal, Mozilla has created a commercial entity.
X years from now, when that corporation gets a new CEO who wants to do his job and improve the corporation's bottom-line, we'll be at the bottom of that slippery slope. Remember: it's easier to slide down the hill than it is to climb back up it!
I notice that the weather for Redmond, WA is the default if no zip code is entered in the 'weather' form and the default stock quotes are for GOOG, MSFT and YHOO -- two M$ companies and an M$ competitor.
I'll stick with good ol' Google; it does what I want it to do the way I'm used to seeing it done. I might have another look at 'start.com' if the situation ever changes, but so far Google seems to smart to break a good thing!
Of course, M$ may come up with something truly original which changes my viewpoint, but I can't conceive what that possibly could be at this point.
Let's assume four possibilities: MM, MF, FM, FF. Now, we're not asking about females who are the second of a pairing, just about females and their sibs. The 1/4 of the overall set that are MM will never be asked anything. That leaves FM, MF and FF. Hmmm . . . whaddya know? There's twice as many brothers as sisters out there!
Remember -- we are only interviewing girls about their siblings (it was an all-girl school, remember?), not a random sampling from the overall sample set. In effect, we're not getting a truly representative sample set.
Of course, with the internet down we could all agree to meet and pretend to chat with each other in the big blue room. I'd even be willing to use my face to emulate emoticons, if that'll help.
If exactly half of all children are male and the other half female and you ask only the females what sex their sibs (if any) are, you're gonna get an overwhelmingly biased response.
Uh, I served for four years in the United States Army.
But, you're right - the fine young men and women of our military's intelligence services have a perfect right to be outraged at my likening their efforts to those of the security team at Redmond. Which reminds me, somebody tell me again how we ended up invading Iraq?
While it's true that M$ is spending a great deal of time an effort in an attempt to provide a robust, secure computing platform this seems to be an example of a "swing and a miss" on their part. Sorta like MI a few years ago, eh?
which found that there were nearly twice as many brothers as there were sisters in the families of the alumni. The obvious conclusion: more boys were being born than girls!
This makes sense until you realize that the sample set was all girls. Once you factor that in, it's hardly surprising to find that 66% of their siblings were male. Had the sample set included an equal number of male and female participants, the actual ratio would more closely approach 50%.
This is a survey based upon a narrow subset of all computer users in the specified age bracket. Had the sample set been representative of all computer users in the specified age range, I suspect that a very different set of conclusions would be forthcoming.
Sure, they have a track record of buggy, insecure code, system crashes so common that they've entered the vernacular (BSOD).
That said, they've invested hundreds of millions of dollars addressing these issues. No, they haven't arrived where they need to be yet but they're getting awfully close. Remember, M$ started on a shoestring back in the days of the 8088. Back then, Mr. Gates had to move pretty fast and be pretty quick with what people wanted; there was a veritable world of people providing cobbled-together solutions for the IBM PC (was there ever going to be any other kind of PC on the market?).
Okay, so the enhanced stability of the NT kernel comes from code that may have come from a *NIX kernel. Who cares where it came from, as long as it works and won't get me sued? Yet there's the triumphant hue and cry from *NIX zealots that this is the only way M$ could make it work. Now, M$ wants to improve their platform by adding features other (open source) products already have. Are they to be criticized for this?
Lemme get this straight -- just because Ford was first to use an assembly line to manufacture inexpensive automobiles, no other manufacturer should emulate that successful example because it's no longer a radical new idea? C'mon people, I may not particularly care for Winduhs (it's fine for desktops, but keep it outta my server farm!), but dogging them for not being the first to have and implement some good ideas? Am I to understand that everybody would rather Windows was still at 3.1, and WFW at 3.11?
Then again, given his net worth I'm sure Mr. Gates will survive public excorciation for not producing the ultimate OS.
Isn't this exactly the kind of business practice which has landed Intel in hot water with the Japanese (and may soon give them similar problems witht the EU)?
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No, I don't think that the presence or absence of government oversight has much effect on the quality of the content provided. My intent was to point out that the American people will, as a whole, never object to the current governmental control of broadcast media as long as the current status quo is maintained; even if that governmental intrusion no longer serves any useful purpose.
Incidentally, the broadcast media aren't (IMHO) completely filled with poor quality content - I have found the occasional gem shining clear in the media. Unfortunately, such gems are the exception rather than the rule.
I do not believe that the government "of the people" has a mandate to ignore the popular sentiment (which our government does in many instances) in favor of preserving its own authority and the "status quo". I do not believe that the government should insert itself into matters of morality.
Unfortunately, our government has already done all of these things; I don't believe it will cease to do so of its own accord.
In closing, have a care whome you would call "not an American". I am quite certain I have earned the right not to be so addressed.
The FCC will never go away, so long as the United States government exists - our government will never cede any power it has back to the populace it governs. The effect is similar to entropy - our government will grow progressively more and more powerful, more and more intrusive, until the day somebody is inspired by the phrase "When in the course of human events . . ."
Then again, so many of us want the kind of "cradle-to-grave" care our government has evolved into providing. "Let them continue to regulate radio communications" the people will say, "just keep my television spewing out mountains of mindless pap, keep the radio airwaves full of the musical tripe which the music industry has decreed I should find entertaining."
I guess we'll get what we desserve.
Ahhh . . . never mind television or HDTV. I'm going to play in the big blue room outside my house later.
It would seem so, until the statistic-gathering process realizes that in the (FF) pairing it has asked about the same family, a situation which won't arise in the (FM) and (MF) pairings.
This is great!!! With my credit history, I'm safer than ever now! Nobody in his right mind would try to use my identity for any money-making venture! ;^D
After all, who's there? Who's butt'll end up a cloud of rapidly expanding superhot gas if the wrong decision gets made?
You're all a bunch of imposters! Well, you'll never get my valuable posts here, buster!
Won't they reproduce on their own, or are they an endangered species there on the Asian continent?
So rather than physical shielding, perhaps magnetic shielding would be more effective? After all, if Earth's (immense but diffuse) magnetic field protects us all from cosmic rays and the solar wind, how about a (localized but intense) magnetic shield? Hellfire, we could even use the thing to provide a little thrust (a la solar sail), at least on the way away from the Sun.
X years from now, when that corporation gets a new CEO who wants to do his job and improve the corporation's bottom-line, we'll be at the bottom of that slippery slope. Remember: it's easier to slide down the hill than it is to climb back up it!
I'll stick with good ol' Google; it does what I want it to do the way I'm used to seeing it done. I might have another look at 'start.com' if the situation ever changes, but so far Google seems to smart to break a good thing!
Of course, M$ may come up with something truly original which changes my viewpoint, but I can't conceive what that possibly could be at this point.
Nobody has ever asked me about it - I wonder if anybody has ever seen it?
Let's assume four possibilities: MM, MF, FM, FF. Now, we're not asking about females who are the second of a pairing, just about females and their sibs. The 1/4 of the overall set that are MM will never be asked anything. That leaves FM, MF and FF. Hmmm . . . whaddya know? There's twice as many brothers as sisters out there!
Remember -- we are only interviewing girls about their siblings (it was an all-girl school, remember?), not a random sampling from the overall sample set. In effect, we're not getting a truly representative sample set.
Of course, with the internet down we could all agree to meet and pretend to chat with each other in the big blue room. I'd even be willing to use my face to emulate emoticons, if that'll help.
If exactly half of all children are male and the other half female and you ask only the females what sex their sibs (if any) are, you're gonna get an overwhelmingly biased response.
Do the math.
That exempts him from observing S. A. D., but I still get to clean up the mess!
But, you're right - the fine young men and women of our military's intelligence services have a perfect right to be outraged at my likening their efforts to those of the security team at Redmond. Which reminds me, somebody tell me again how we ended up invading Iraq?
While it's true that M$ is spending a great deal of time an effort in an attempt to provide a robust, secure computing platform this seems to be an example of a "swing and a miss" on their part. Sorta like MI a few years ago, eh?
When it stops glowing, it's time to rejuvinate!
Is that anything like Military Intelligence?
---
Somewhere in Redmond, a developer is emptying his desk.
This makes sense until you realize that the sample set was all girls. Once you factor that in, it's hardly surprising to find that 66% of their siblings were male. Had the sample set included an equal number of male and female participants, the actual ratio would more closely approach 50%.
This is a survey based upon a narrow subset of all computer users in the specified age bracket. Had the sample set been representative of all computer users in the specified age range, I suspect that a very different set of conclusions would be forthcoming.
Oh, wait, no . . . never mind.
That said, they've invested hundreds of millions of dollars addressing these issues. No, they haven't arrived where they need to be yet but they're getting awfully close. Remember, M$ started on a shoestring back in the days of the 8088. Back then, Mr. Gates had to move pretty fast and be pretty quick with what people wanted; there was a veritable world of people providing cobbled-together solutions for the IBM PC (was there ever going to be any other kind of PC on the market?).
Okay, so the enhanced stability of the NT kernel comes from code that may have come from a *NIX kernel. Who cares where it came from, as long as it works and won't get me sued? Yet there's the triumphant hue and cry from *NIX zealots that this is the only way M$ could make it work. Now, M$ wants to improve their platform by adding features other (open source) products already have. Are they to be criticized for this?
Lemme get this straight -- just because Ford was first to use an assembly line to manufacture inexpensive automobiles, no other manufacturer should emulate that successful example because it's no longer a radical new idea? C'mon people, I may not particularly care for Winduhs (it's fine for desktops, but keep it outta my server farm!), but dogging them for not being the first to have and implement some good ideas? Am I to understand that everybody would rather Windows was still at 3.1, and WFW at 3.11?
Then again, given his net worth I'm sure Mr. Gates will survive public excorciation for not producing the ultimate OS.
Isn't this exactly the kind of business practice which has landed Intel in hot water with the Japanese (and may soon give them similar problems witht the EU)?