Note that I am against this ban, but your post seems to have a few holes in the argument:
The honest truth is that images NOT ONCE ever "for this stuff to trigger an unbalanced mind."
So, nobody has ever gone off the deep end when they saw their girlfriend appear in some porn photos, or pictures of her performing bondage with another man? That doesn't seem very plausible.
One of the main problems that prudes have is that any fair study of this disgusting filth shows that people that view it are LESS likely to commit crimes, whether violent or not.
So, you admit that images hav an effect on the mind and people's behavior? If looking at violent images makes people less likely to commit violence - does that mean that looking at peaceful images (butterflies, puppies, sunflowers) makes people more likely to commit violence? I don't think espousing a causal link between violence and images helps your argument at all. It's basically the same argument the British MP is making.
a NetworkWorld blog post about the incredible rock-em-sock-em mainframe.
I clicked on the link, but did not see any photos of mainframes fighting each other to the death. It wasn't even mentioned in the text! I want my money back.
Everybody wins? I'm sorry, having mobile phones affordable enough for teenagers to afford is not good for anybody. How is it a good thing the way that people use these things on public transport, in cinemas, in school classes, while driving?
It's a fucking travesty. Everybody would be much better off if mobile phones were still rare, ultra-expensive, and only owned by the occassional person who really needed it for work.
If I understand the idea correctly this allows you to use it without activating it and having a mandatory contract.
Right. So what does that have to do with "unbricking"? That would be if you got a D.O.A iPhone and managed to bring it back from the dead. Bricked = not working.
Being older and wiser you can see plain as day that the plot structure was basically the same on every show... almost down to the very second the plotline would unfold the same way.
Michael: Faster, Knight Boat! We gotta catch those starfish poachers. Knight Boat: You don't have to yell, Michael, I'm all around you. Michael: Oh, no! They're headed for land. Michael: We'll never catch them now. Knight Boat: Incorrect--look! A canal. Homer: Go, Knight Boat, go! Bart: Oh, every week there's a canal. Lisa: Or an inlet. Bart: Or a fjord. Homer: Quiet! I will not hear another word against the boat. Marge: OK, TV off. It's family time. Homer: Oh, but Marge! Knight Boat, the crime-solving boat! Marge: Homer, you promised. One night of family time a week. Besides, that back-talking boat sets a bad example. Bart: Says you, woman.
Moore's a polarizing element in an issue that is primarily driven by a misallocation of funds in a highly technical field (medical research), not by politicians. We couldn't do what Canada or France does because we currently do the vast majority of medical research in the world.
1. What does medical research have to do with providing basic healthcare? 2. How is Michael Moore stopping funds from being allocated correctly?
Everything that man spews onto film is designed to make you hate something(Bush, HMO's, etc.), instead of make you think about anything.
I'd say it made a lot of people think. Moast people seem to think that if you have private health insurance, you will be fine -you'll be taken care of properly. Moore demonstartes how that is often untrue. I think that would have got a lot of people thinking more deeply about the insurance system.
Moore is making it worse by convincing people who agreed with him previously that the solution is simple, just vote Democrat and we can simply copy the system used by other countries
Where is the part of the film where he tells viewers to vote Democrat? I don't recall that.
completely ignoring the fact that if we did that, medical research as a whole would virtually stop.
Why would that happen? I don't see why decent public health care would mean an end to medical research.
I'm not a doctor OR an economist, I have no clue. I'm saying that if I want to see where ground is being broken to fix our problem, where the real work is being done, those are the kind of people I'd ask. NOT a political clown with a camcorder.
That seems really strange to me. Why would you expect a doctor or economist to fix the problem? Economists have little interest in good health care, and doctors are great at providing care, but not great at influencing public opinion or policy. To fix the problem, you need voters to care about the problem, and politicians to be pressured to make a difference. Doctors and economists aren't going to fix a political problem on their own. Especially as the doctors and economists will probably have completely opposite "solutions" to each other.
A popular film has a lot more chance of having impact on the actual problems, which are mainly due to public ignorance and lack of political willpower.
The only way the government could possibly help is A)Lower taxes (impossible right now with two wars and a deficit), B)Fund more universities with medical schools, or C)Roll up their sleeves and start doing more research themselves.
Why are those the only options?
Making healthcare universal is only going to make it marginally cheaper...
So, why is it massively cheaper in places with universal healthcare? And even if it is only marginally cheaper, then what's wrong with that? Surely any saving is a good thing, given how ridiculously expensive health care is in America.
Where the product model will disappear, is in the mass market arena, where there is a big push to create applications so that companies and end users aren't locked in to highly expensive proprietary apps.
That seems pretty counter-intuitive. Firstly, in the mass market arena, most applications are quite cheap, and there's not very strong lock-in. There are often hundreds of alternative products. On the other hand, the niche markets are where software is really expensive (often $5,000 and up. way up.) and the lock-in is much stronger. Often there are only a couple of product choices, sometimes only 1.
Not only all of the above, but it's the niche users who have more expertise, and would be more open to a FOSS solution. They are able to put up with less polished interfaces and usability if it gets the job done. The mass market doesn't like the lack of polish of FOSSy software, and doesn't really care much about finding "alternatives". They feel much safer with the box from a company bought from the shelves or an online store. And heck, it's only like $50 to $100 - what's the big deal?
No, it's the niche professional applications where FOSS has the most potential, and it's also an area they aren't doing very well in. Freeing a company from hundreds of thousands of dollars in software investment, license management (which is often a byzantine minefield for niche titles) and proprietary format lock-in - freeing a company from that would make FOSS developers heroes. The companies who do this kind of work would LOVE to escape the proprietary world, far more than any mainstream consumer. The reason they can't is that FOSS is miles behind when it comes to making serious productivity software. If I want to run a server, or want some geeky widget to entertain myself, that's a different story. But linux doesn't really do professional+productivity.
Nothing can hold Linux. It was born to be free, like a wild mountain goat crossed with some kind of tiger. Trying to hold Linux would be like trying to bottle sunshine.
That's the problem. It's impossible to have a "just the facts" documentary. They were considered facts at the time, so if we had made your hypothetical fact-no-opinion documentary, then ultimately it would have been misleading. Opinion could have mitigated the problem (or compounded it, depending on the opinion).
Yeah, Ned's a nice guy and a good Christian. But that's only because of the University of Minnesota Spankological Protocol.
Perhaps the Belters should look more at Flanders as a rolemodel of acceptance and devotion.
To be fair, some of them do. There are Ned Flanders fan clubs and lookalike competitions in some church community. But there are also those Christians who are offended, particularly in the early days. Do you remember the outrage when the Simpsons first came out? It was totally nuts. Looking back on those early episodes, they are so innocent. It's hard to believe that there was so much outrage in America over a cartoon, but it happened. I think the younger generation of Christians "get it" and embrace things like the Simpsons.
Don't all the futurists and physicists and wicked smaht people think we need to colonize other planets/ areas/ moons/ etc. in the event that the Earth gets all screwed up, either from ourselves or something else? If all we've got is Earth and that goes away, we're hosed.
But taking a joyride to the moon hasn't done anything at all to advance our technology or methods for colonizing other planets. It was mostly for political propaganda.
Oh, we made the Soviet Union spend more money than they had on space related programs, help shorten the Cold War a bit.
Talk about damning with faint praise!
What if shortening the Cold War actually enabled our enemies? Gave them more time to regroup and whatnot? It's quite likely that the collapse of the Soviet union actually gave weapons and encouragement to our current terrorist enemies, and eliminated a major enemy of theirs that distracted them from attacking the US. If it had gone on for longer, our enemies might be even more screwed. In fact, your comment basically says that space travel was bad for the defense of the Soviet Union. It could have easily been America sending ourselves bankrupt on space programs. This is all very sketchy - some vague unintended effects as justification, without any real evidence of the space program actually helping to protect America in concrete ways.
Because facts should stand on their own. I don't need someone else telling me how to interpret them.
But what does that have to do with documentaries not being documentaries just because they include opinions? That aside, I think you're wrong. Opinion is not somebody telling you how to interpret them, it's just someone offering their opinion on their interpretation.
I also really doubt you can interpret obscure facts from outside your area of expertise. If you weren't a biologist, wouldn't it help to have an expert on biology giving you an overview of what the facts imply? One of the roles of documentary is to introduce subjects to lay people in a way they can digest. Plus, they could get really boring without opinions. And what about documentaries on subjects like politics or religion, where everything is subjective and bound to opinion?
To me, opinions have less legitimacy because that's all they are. Facts are, by definition, irrefutable.
That's where you have it wrong. What we take for "fact" is often later disproved. on the other side of the coin, sometimes opinions are ahead of what are considered fact, in terms of accuracy.
Interestingly enough, in all my posts on this Slashdot story, nobody has yet asked me if I agree with Mr. Moore's films.
Why should they? It's not really of any interest to me whether you agree with Moore or not. Why do you find that so interesting?
Universal will use its market dominating position and withhold product in order to bully Apple around? If this works doesn't that completely put Apple at the mercy of all the big labels?
Except that the likelihood of it working seems extremely slim. What is more likely is a backlash from Universal artists. Even if some big names do go along with plans for a non-iTunes release, I'd think that most would find the idea highly objectionable. So, this may breed discontent in the artist stable, and possibly even some big names leaving Universal for greener pastures.
I don't think they'd get away with pulling all of their artists from iTunes - that would lead to mass revolt.
Mr Simpson, A Mounds bar is not a sprinkle. A Twizzler is not a sprinkle. A Jolly Rancher is not a sprinkle, sir. Perhaps in Shangra-la they are, but not here.
Yeah, funny how nobody gets upset about all the white-guy stereotypes on the show
Whiney white guys on internet message boards seem to spend plenty of time getting upset about it. In my lifetime, as a Simpsons fan, I've probably only seen a couple of complaints about Apu or other foreigners being racist. But I've seen scores of white guys complaining about fat white guy stereotypes, and how nobody ever complains about them. I've also seen nearly as many complaints from Bible-belters about Ned Flanders and the portrayal of Christianity.
It took the iPod to bring mp3 players to the masses but it wasn't really an evolution change in technology.
Actually, it was a significant evolutionary step. It was the first MP3 player with high-speed transfer. It had Firewire, while all the others had USB1.1, making them painfully slow to use. It was also the first with such a compact form factor for so much storage. Devices with comparable storage were like bricks. Additionally, it was the first player to properly integrate the desktop software in a satisfying manner. iTunes is a huge part of what made the iPod so attractive to consumers.
It was more marketing and design, such as the white headphones serving as a constant "join us, it's great!" advertisement.
Hang on, isn't design an important part of any technology product? Probably the most significant advances in computers have come because of design. I don't understand why you would lump design in with "marketing." If anything, it belongs with "technology," because technology has to be designed, after all.
Anyway, I think you are mistaken about the marketing. The early iPod ads starred a dorky Jeff Goldblum, for fuck's sake! The blitz of silhouette ads didn't begin until the iPod was already successful as a product. The first wave was almost all word-of-mouth among satisfied users. There's no way it's all just due to marketing. If the iPod was a sucky device, it wouldn't matter how much advertising there was. People don't tend to buy expensive devices just because an ad told them too. Microsoft can blitz the world with "Wow" ads, but nobody thinks that Vista is cool because of it.
If you look at the history, I think it's pretty clear that Apple only really ramped up the marketing once it was already a phenomenon. I don't think that Apple themselves had any idea just how successful the iPod was going to be. If it had been less successful, it probably would have stayed Mac-only and been a niche product.
Just because they aren't renewing a long-term contract doesn't mean that Universal's music won't be available on iTunes. They'll probably just withold a few albums which are expected to be "monster hits" and leave the rest on iTunes.
Slashdot Mirror
Leaf, or focal-plane?
Note that I am against this ban, but your post seems to have a few holes in the argument:
The honest truth is that images NOT ONCE ever "for this stuff to trigger an unbalanced mind."So, nobody has ever gone off the deep end when they saw their girlfriend appear in some porn photos, or pictures of her performing bondage with another man? That doesn't seem very plausible.
One of the main problems that prudes have is that any fair study of this disgusting filth shows that people that view it are LESS likely to commit crimes, whether violent or not.So, you admit that images hav an effect on the mind and people's behavior? If looking at violent images makes people less likely to commit violence - does that mean that looking at peaceful images (butterflies, puppies, sunflowers) makes people more likely to commit violence? I don't think espousing a causal link between violence and images helps your argument at all. It's basically the same argument the British MP is making.
I clicked on the link, but did not see any photos of mainframes fighting each other to the death. It wasn't even mentioned in the text! I want my money back.
When was height mentioned in the original post?
Everybody wins? I'm sorry, having mobile phones affordable enough for teenagers to afford is not good for anybody. How is it a good thing the way that people use these things on public transport, in cinemas, in school classes, while driving?
It's a fucking travesty. Everybody would be much better off if mobile phones were still rare, ultra-expensive, and only owned by the occassional person who really needed it for work.
Right. So what does that have to do with "unbricking"? That would be if you got a D.O.A iPhone and managed to bring it back from the dead. Bricked = not working.
Michael: Faster, Knight Boat! We gotta catch those starfish poachers.
Knight Boat: You don't have to yell, Michael, I'm all around you.
Michael: Oh, no! They're headed for land.
Michael: We'll never catch them now.
Knight Boat: Incorrect--look! A canal.
Homer: Go, Knight Boat, go!
Bart: Oh, every week there's a canal.
Lisa: Or an inlet.
Bart: Or a fjord.
Homer: Quiet! I will not hear another word against the boat.
Marge: OK, TV off. It's family time.
Homer: Oh, but Marge! Knight Boat, the crime-solving boat!
Marge: Homer, you promised. One night of family time a week. Besides, that back-talking boat sets a bad example.
Bart: Says you, woman.
1. What does medical research have to do with providing basic healthcare?
Everything that man spews onto film is designed to make you hate something(Bush, HMO's, etc.), instead of make you think about anything.2. How is Michael Moore stopping funds from being allocated correctly?
I'd say it made a lot of people think. Moast people seem to think that if you have private health insurance, you will be fine -you'll be taken care of properly. Moore demonstartes how that is often untrue. I think that would have got a lot of people thinking more deeply about the insurance system.
Moore is making it worse by convincing people who agreed with him previously that the solution is simple, just vote Democrat and we can simply copy the system used by other countriesWhere is the part of the film where he tells viewers to vote Democrat? I don't recall that.
completely ignoring the fact that if we did that, medical research as a whole would virtually stop.Why would that happen? I don't see why decent public health care would mean an end to medical research.
I'm not a doctor OR an economist, I have no clue. I'm saying that if I want to see where ground is being broken to fix our problem, where the real work is being done, those are the kind of people I'd ask. NOT a political clown with a camcorder.That seems really strange to me. Why would you expect a doctor or economist to fix the problem? Economists have little interest in good health care, and doctors are great at providing care, but not great at influencing public opinion or policy. To fix the problem, you need voters to care about the problem, and politicians to be pressured to make a difference. Doctors and economists aren't going to fix a political problem on their own. Especially as the doctors and economists will probably have completely opposite "solutions" to each other.
A popular film has a lot more chance of having impact on the actual problems, which are mainly due to public ignorance and lack of political willpower.
The only way the government could possibly help is A)Lower taxes (impossible right now with two wars and a deficit), B)Fund more universities with medical schools, or C)Roll up their sleeves and start doing more research themselves.Why are those the only options?
Making healthcare universal is only going to make it marginally cheaper...So, why is it massively cheaper in places with universal healthcare? And even if it is only marginally cheaper, then what's wrong with that? Surely any saving is a good thing, given how ridiculously expensive health care is in America.
Yeah, I don't like gay porn either.
If you like driving men, that is.
Whoa. An affront to real efforts? What real efforts are you speaking of, and why is this an affront to them? Propaganda - How?
It's politicizing a technical issueA technical issue? How on earth is it a technical issue? It's a totally political and social issue.
the best way Moore can help people being hurt by the current system is to shut up and just keep making films about how much Bush sucks.How would that do any good for the health care system? What's Moore doing to make things worse?
Like a fnord crossed with a möebius strip, so are the days of our linux.
That seems pretty counter-intuitive. Firstly, in the mass market arena, most applications are quite cheap, and there's not very strong lock-in. There are often hundreds of alternative products. On the other hand, the niche markets are where software is really expensive (often $5,000 and up. way up.) and the lock-in is much stronger. Often there are only a couple of product choices, sometimes only 1.
Not only all of the above, but it's the niche users who have more expertise, and would be more open to a FOSS solution. They are able to put up with less polished interfaces and usability if it gets the job done. The mass market doesn't like the lack of polish of FOSSy software, and doesn't really care much about finding "alternatives". They feel much safer with the box from a company bought from the shelves or an online store. And heck, it's only like $50 to $100 - what's the big deal?
No, it's the niche professional applications where FOSS has the most potential, and it's also an area they aren't doing very well in. Freeing a company from hundreds of thousands of dollars in software investment, license management (which is often a byzantine minefield for niche titles) and proprietary format lock-in - freeing a company from that would make FOSS developers heroes. The companies who do this kind of work would LOVE to escape the proprietary world, far more than any mainstream consumer. The reason they can't is that FOSS is miles behind when it comes to making serious productivity software. If I want to run a server, or want some geeky widget to entertain myself, that's a different story. But linux doesn't really do professional+productivity.
Yeah, because eye candy is exactly what we want more of in interface design.
Professor Frink's sarcasm detector explodes.
Nothing can hold Linux. It was born to be free, like a wild mountain goat crossed with some kind of tiger. Trying to hold Linux would be like trying to bottle sunshine.
That's the problem. It's impossible to have a "just the facts" documentary. They were considered facts at the time, so if we had made your hypothetical fact-no-opinion documentary, then ultimately it would have been misleading. Opinion could have mitigated the problem (or compounded it, depending on the opinion).
Yeah, Ned's a nice guy and a good Christian. But that's only because of the University of Minnesota Spankological Protocol.
Perhaps the Belters should look more at Flanders as a rolemodel of acceptance and devotion.To be fair, some of them do. There are Ned Flanders fan clubs and lookalike competitions in some church community. But there are also those Christians who are offended, particularly in the early days. Do you remember the outrage when the Simpsons first came out? It was totally nuts. Looking back on those early episodes, they are so innocent. It's hard to believe that there was so much outrage in America over a cartoon, but it happened. I think the younger generation of Christians "get it" and embrace things like the Simpsons.
But taking a joyride to the moon hasn't done anything at all to advance our technology or methods for colonizing other planets. It was mostly for political propaganda.
Oh, we made the Soviet Union spend more money than they had on space related programs, help shorten the Cold War a bit.Talk about damning with faint praise!
What if shortening the Cold War actually enabled our enemies? Gave them more time to regroup and whatnot? It's quite likely that the collapse of the Soviet union actually gave weapons and encouragement to our current terrorist enemies, and eliminated a major enemy of theirs that distracted them from attacking the US. If it had gone on for longer, our enemies might be even more screwed. In fact, your comment basically says that space travel was bad for the defense of the Soviet Union. It could have easily been America sending ourselves bankrupt on space programs. This is all very sketchy - some vague unintended effects as justification, without any real evidence of the space program actually helping to protect America in concrete ways.
But what does that have to do with documentaries not being documentaries just because they include opinions? That aside, I think you're wrong. Opinion is not somebody telling you how to interpret them, it's just someone offering their opinion on their interpretation.
I also really doubt you can interpret obscure facts from outside your area of expertise. If you weren't a biologist, wouldn't it help to have an expert on biology giving you an overview of what the facts imply? One of the roles of documentary is to introduce subjects to lay people in a way they can digest. Plus, they could get really boring without opinions. And what about documentaries on subjects like politics or religion, where everything is subjective and bound to opinion?
To me, opinions have less legitimacy because that's all they are. Facts are, by definition, irrefutable.That's where you have it wrong. What we take for "fact" is often later disproved. on the other side of the coin, sometimes opinions are ahead of what are considered fact, in terms of accuracy.
Interestingly enough, in all my posts on this Slashdot story, nobody has yet asked me if I agree with Mr. Moore's films.Why should they? It's not really of any interest to me whether you agree with Moore or not. Why do you find that so interesting?
Except that the likelihood of it working seems extremely slim. What is more likely is a backlash from Universal artists. Even if some big names do go along with plans for a non-iTunes release, I'd think that most would find the idea highly objectionable. So, this may breed discontent in the artist stable, and possibly even some big names leaving Universal for greener pastures.
I don't think they'd get away with pulling all of their artists from iTunes - that would lead to mass revolt.
Mr Simpson, A Mounds bar is not a sprinkle. A Twizzler is not a sprinkle. A Jolly Rancher is not a sprinkle, sir. Perhaps in Shangra-la they are, but not here.
Whiney white guys on internet message boards seem to spend plenty of time getting upset about it. In my lifetime, as a Simpsons fan, I've probably only seen a couple of complaints about Apu or other foreigners being racist. But I've seen scores of white guys complaining about fat white guy stereotypes, and how nobody ever complains about them. I've also seen nearly as many complaints from Bible-belters about Ned Flanders and the portrayal of Christianity.
Actually, it was a significant evolutionary step. It was the first MP3 player with high-speed transfer. It had Firewire, while all the others had USB1.1, making them painfully slow to use. It was also the first with such a compact form factor for so much storage. Devices with comparable storage were like bricks. Additionally, it was the first player to properly integrate the desktop software in a satisfying manner. iTunes is a huge part of what made the iPod so attractive to consumers.
It was more marketing and design, such as the white headphones serving as a constant "join us, it's great!" advertisement.Hang on, isn't design an important part of any technology product? Probably the most significant advances in computers have come because of design. I don't understand why you would lump design in with "marketing." If anything, it belongs with "technology," because technology has to be designed, after all.
Anyway, I think you are mistaken about the marketing. The early iPod ads starred a dorky Jeff Goldblum, for fuck's sake! The blitz of silhouette ads didn't begin until the iPod was already successful as a product. The first wave was almost all word-of-mouth among satisfied users. There's no way it's all just due to marketing. If the iPod was a sucky device, it wouldn't matter how much advertising there was. People don't tend to buy expensive devices just because an ad told them too. Microsoft can blitz the world with "Wow" ads, but nobody thinks that Vista is cool because of it.
If you look at the history, I think it's pretty clear that Apple only really ramped up the marketing once it was already a phenomenon. I don't think that Apple themselves had any idea just how successful the iPod was going to be. If it had been less successful, it probably would have stayed Mac-only and been a niche product.
Just because they aren't renewing a long-term contract doesn't mean that Universal's music won't be available on iTunes. They'll probably just withold a few albums which are expected to be "monster hits" and leave the rest on iTunes.
And I'd like a pony.