You missed the post I was responding too, in which someone said "Google's US politics are left wing extreme". That other post ended up modded as troll, which sort of broke the connection.
The only reason it occurs is that there is a flaw in their default search algorithm that returns result pages that don't even contain the searched phrase or words. It used to be that search engines did this basic check, and results were more relevant. However, just now, I checked altavista and lycos, and like Google, they produce inaccurate results on such searches now.
It would be nice if Google searches automatically weeded out result pages that did not contain the phrase you were searching for. I always find such results to be irrelevant and they clutter the actual desired result lists. I know that the inanchor specification is there, but that is a clunky way to ensure 100% search result accuracy/relevance.
"Anyway, it's called a levy because it isn't paid to the government for public purposes (wandering by wiktionary for that); it's paid to the Copyright Board for distribution to recording artists."
Is the Copyright Board a branch of the Canadian government? Their own web site is not clear on this, but their mention of their own regulatory ability implies that they are.
Are you so sure the whiners aren't those who make up new meanings and equate different crimes by saying "copyright infringement is stealing"? In any case, trying to justify that "most" people have the incorrect idea that copyright infringement = stealing by using Slashdot arguers is so devoid of any validity as to be pointless. Do you have any real info?
If we do have to look at the anecdotal evidence of Slashdot arguers, there is a trend where those who point out that it is not theft are the most likely to show their knowledge of the meanings of words and laws (and to post links to these). Those who assert the incorrect opinion that it is theft are much less likely to do this.
" recall stories of cheerleaders from my highschool making brownies with laxative mixed in and sending them to the cheerleaders of a rival school. Maybe this is a similar gesture?"
Yeah, because nothing beats the flying hershey squirts as halftime entertainment.
"Eft?" Isn't that something Frodo travels with in Middle Earth? Was looking forward to names more in the line of "Scabby Sloth" or "Tricky Tapeworm" like their previous releases.
In a related story, 2 days after the MSIE team sent the Firefox team "Cake 1.0", some important discoveries were made. A package was sent and the FF team was instructed to take the cake to the kitchen for more work. Turns out that the MSIE team forgot the sugar and flour.
"No offense, but I hope you don't mean to say that all the boutique cable networks out ther actually count."
C-Span actually goes most of the way to counting as a sort of news network. The news and public affairs content of the other ones probably adds up to the rest to count it as a full "one".
So here you have a situation of:
Before: ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, PBS News
After: ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, C-Span, Fox News, CNN, C-Span/etc, Link-TV cable network, various shows such as "Democracy Now" distributed via public access cable.
Rather than consolidation, the offerings (each from a distinct company) have just a little more than doubled. The only instance of consolidation was a very short-lived competitor to CNN that was gobbled up early on. Instead of only 2 or 3 competing with "Uncle Walter" like we had in the early 1970s, there's an ever increasing number of alternatives. Even if we look solely at influence/market share (instead of number of voices), the trend has been diversification and not consolidation.
If we look at airwaves-only (and do not take cable into account) we have an increase from 4 to 5. Not a big increase, but it is an increase. Also, absolutely no consolidation/loss has occured in the airwave-only TV news since the baseline of "the Big 3 plus PBS" networks.
""The Microsoft Internet Explorer Team sent the Firefox team a cake for the release of Firefox 2!"
And being the nerds they are, it was baked into the shape of Counselor Troi. The Firefox nerds, now trendy Galactica fans, merely laughed at the nerds who were so out of it as to still love "Star Trek".
"You really are starting to sound like a troll. We are talking about the amount of influence a media company has. If you ignore their market share, you are an idiot."
If you take into account market share instead of actual station share, you are really using popularity as a criteria. As for focusing on "amount of influence" as a justification for censorship, I'd really love to give you a time machine so you can go back to the Constitutional Convention and try to convince them to add a clause to the Bill of Rights that exempts the press from protections if it gets too popular with people.
It's also interesting that, when you get right down to it, the arguments are entirely content related. If the Clear Channel stations all decided to air one single Tiny Tim song over and over again, their popularity (and thus their market share) would quickly go down.
"They're not "silenced" at all -- everyone else is."
Which might be a concern if we got anywhere here this. With situations where the largest companies control only a small fraction of the stations, this is far away.
You "disagree strongly" that it is not in the public interest to serve the public? I leave my own uninformed opinion out of it, and wish others would too. The public decides what its interest is, whether it is in our personal interest or not. Oprah, Jerry Springer, Rush Limbaugh, Britney Spears instead of opera: it's their choice, not ours.
"Well then, lets see some of your data to backup that statement. As I've stated earlier, I've included links, that you glibly avoid discussing"
They were discussed. I also pointed out the flaw that the studies excluded most media voices in order to make a case for "concentration". You do simply make a statement as if it's a fact without proof. The CJR link is yet another that only looks at a small number of companies owning a small part of the media.
"Lets look at what media consolidation is, it is when more and more media outlets, whether they are television, radio, newspaper, etc;, are owned and controlled by a smaller and smaller group of corporations."
In some sectors, the opposite has happened. National TV news is one where the number of distinct voices has grown. In the overall picture, the number of media voices owned by these giants is a small fraction of the total number of media voices. Looking at the definition of "consolidation", this would appear to fall short. As does the ludicrous idea of Clear Channel "consolidating" control by only having 8% of stations.
I used to take the unsupported claims of media consolidation at face value, like you, without looking at them criticically. Since I lived in a media market with more than 20 radio stations not one owned by Clear Channel, I decided to check the claims that "Clear Channel owns a majority of the stations in the US". The cold hard numbers blew this idea away: 20,000 radio stations in the US. Clear Channel controls 1,200 of them. These cold hard facts in other media sectors do the same thing.
"Here is an article by Ted Turner [washingtonmonthly.com] where he discusses the folly and danger of media consolidation"
Ted Turner's CNN is one of the examples that proves the myth of media consolidation wrong. 30 years ago, it did not exist. It was a new voice that sprang up from nowhere. In Turner's realm, a small sort of media proliferation has occured instead of a consolidation.
"Good journalism is supposed to make people question and think, not blindly accept as the dittohead's do."
That's just your opinion (aside from the fact that "dittoheads" exist that follow many popular media voices, not just Limbaugh). I think I agree with it. However, unlike you I recognize the fact that this is a subjective matter, not for the government to decide. Thankfully, the First Amendment does not distinguish between someone's idea of "good" journalism and "bad" journalism.
"The only real place to find voices of dissent or questioning is on public or "free" radio, those stations not controlled by corporations. "
"Dissent" defined as views you happen to agree with? Also, what dissenting voices are you specifically referring to? Both Pacifica Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are corporations.
"I find that hard to believe, because if you did watch or listen to Democracy Now then you wouldn't have the "world is flat" opinion about media consolidation that you have."
I have a "world is how it really is" view of the myth of media consolidation. In fact, "Democracy Now" is only one more example of the proliferation of differing voices (along with, whether you like it or not, the new phenomenon of AM talk radio both left and right). I clicked the link. It's nice to see the hilarity of a new voice such as "Democracy Now" that has had great success due to the decentralization of media and proliferation of voices complain that there is no freedom of speech anymore.
"They simply dismiss it because they don't like how the data came out."
I'm dismissing these because the data shows a lack of consolidation. This contradicts their conclusions. I'm arguing the point because the facts prove you wrong. I'm a Constitutional rights shill, so to speak. I've spent plenty of time researching this.
"Also, what specifically do you mean by "voices"? Being vague and rhetorical are the weapons of politicians, w
Slashdot Mirror
"Two words: liberals cheat"
What "rule" is broken by putting a link in your page and associating words with that link?
You missed the post I was responding too, in which someone said "Google's US politics are left wing extreme". That other post ended up modded as troll, which sort of broke the connection.
"Googleboming interferes with that."
The only reason it occurs is that there is a flaw in their default search algorithm that returns result pages that don't even contain the searched phrase or words. It used to be that search engines did this basic check, and results were more relevant. However, just now, I checked altavista and lycos, and like Google, they produce inaccurate results on such searches now.
"Google has always maintained a policy of 'Do no evil'"
Only sometimes. This is also the same company that has maintained vast logs of search information which can be identified by user. Pretty evil.
"Google's US politics are left wing extreme. They enjoy the slander and insults that go on"
Errmmmmm yeah. That must be why they link to hundreds of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity fan sites.
"Ah, yes. Google-bombing for politics! This must be the "My candidate's opponent is a poopy-faced dumb-head" of the 21st century. What's next?"
How about blanket domain-squatting? Thus, you go to www.hekickspuppies.com and find a page about a candidate.
If I were to google bomb King, I'd get him for being the American front man for a particular nasty overseas terrorist group.
It would be nice if Google searches automatically weeded out result pages that did not contain the phrase you were searching for. I always find such results to be irrelevant and they clutter the actual desired result lists. I know that the inanchor specification is there, but that is a clunky way to ensure 100% search result accuracy/relevance.
"1. Is profiting too much from intellectual property theft? 2. Is profit in certain context's of intellectual property a form of theft?"
One dictionary and 30 seconds at the very beginning of the class will put this question to bed very quickly.
"Anyway, it's called a levy because it isn't paid to the government for public purposes (wandering by wiktionary for that); it's paid to the Copyright Board for distribution to recording artists."
Is the Copyright Board a branch of the Canadian government? Their own web site is not clear on this, but their mention of their own regulatory ability implies that they are.
I think the word "bears" belongs there somewhere.
"such as his sidekick and attorney, Columbia Law School professor Eben Moglen."
Didn't Eben record that song "Aeiou sometimes y" in the early 1980's? Way cool!
Come on now, if we need to use a newt, why not have the name "Gangrenous Gingrich" ?
Are you so sure the whiners aren't those who make up new meanings and equate different crimes by saying "copyright infringement is stealing"? In any case, trying to justify that "most" people have the incorrect idea that copyright infringement = stealing by using Slashdot arguers is so devoid of any validity as to be pointless. Do you have any real info?
If we do have to look at the anecdotal evidence of Slashdot arguers, there is a trend where those who point out that it is not theft are the most likely to show their knowledge of the meanings of words and laws (and to post links to these). Those who assert the incorrect opinion that it is theft are much less likely to do this.
"They're all types of 'stealing' in most folks minds"
Are you sure on this? Any sort of polls or evidence?
" recall stories of cheerleaders from my highschool making brownies with laxative mixed in and sending them to the cheerleaders of a rival school. Maybe this is a similar gesture?"
Yeah, because nothing beats the flying hershey squirts as halftime entertainment.
"Eft?" Isn't that something Frodo travels with in Middle Earth? Was looking forward to names more in the line of "Scabby Sloth" or "Tricky Tapeworm" like their previous releases.
In a related story, 2 days after the MSIE team sent the Firefox team "Cake 1.0", some important discoveries were made. A package was sent and the FF team was instructed to take the cake to the kitchen for more work. Turns out that the MSIE team forgot the sugar and flour.
"No offense, but I hope you don't mean to say that all the boutique cable networks out ther actually count."
C-Span actually goes most of the way to counting as a sort of news network. The news and public affairs content of the other ones probably adds up to the rest to count it as a full "one".
So here you have a situation of:
Before: ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, PBS News
After: ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, C-Span, Fox News, CNN, C-Span/etc, Link-TV cable network, various shows such as "Democracy Now" distributed via public access cable.
Rather than consolidation, the offerings (each from a distinct company) have just a little more than doubled. The only instance of consolidation was a very short-lived competitor to CNN that was gobbled up early on. Instead of only 2 or 3 competing with "Uncle Walter" like we had in the early 1970s, there's an ever increasing number of alternatives. Even if we look solely at influence/market share (instead of number of voices), the trend has been diversification and not consolidation.
If we look at airwaves-only (and do not take cable into account) we have an increase from 4 to 5. Not a big increase, but it is an increase. Also, absolutely no consolidation/loss has occured in the airwave-only TV news since the baseline of "the Big 3 plus PBS" networks.
""The Microsoft Internet Explorer Team sent the Firefox team a cake for the release of Firefox 2!"
And being the nerds they are, it was baked into the shape of Counselor Troi. The Firefox nerds, now trendy Galactica fans, merely laughed at the nerds who were so out of it as to still love "Star Trek".
"You really are starting to sound like a troll. We are talking about the amount of influence a media company has. If you ignore their market share, you are an idiot."
If you take into account market share instead of actual station share, you are really using popularity as a criteria. As for focusing on "amount of influence" as a justification for censorship, I'd really love to give you a time machine so you can go back to the Constitutional Convention and try to convince them to add a clause to the Bill of Rights that exempts the press from protections if it gets too popular with people.
It's also interesting that, when you get right down to it, the arguments are entirely content related. If the Clear Channel stations all decided to air one single Tiny Tim song over and over again, their popularity (and thus their market share) would quickly go down.
"They're not "silenced" at all -- everyone else is."
Which might be a concern if we got anywhere here this. With situations where the largest companies control only a small fraction of the stations, this is far away.
You "disagree strongly" that it is not in the public interest to serve the public? I leave my own uninformed opinion out of it, and wish others would too. The public decides what its interest is, whether it is in our personal interest or not. Oprah, Jerry Springer, Rush Limbaugh, Britney Spears instead of opera: it's their choice, not ours.
"Well then, lets see some of your data to backup that statement. As I've stated earlier, I've included links, that you glibly avoid discussing"
They were discussed. I also pointed out the flaw that the studies excluded most media voices in order to make a case for "concentration". You do simply make a statement as if it's a fact without proof. The CJR link is yet another that only looks at a small number of companies owning a small part of the media.
"Lets look at what media consolidation is, it is when more and more media outlets, whether they are television, radio, newspaper, etc;, are owned and controlled by a smaller and smaller group of corporations."
In some sectors, the opposite has happened. National TV news is one where the number of distinct voices has grown. In the overall picture, the number of media voices owned by these giants is a small fraction of the total number of media voices. Looking at the definition of "consolidation", this would appear to fall short. As does the ludicrous idea of Clear Channel "consolidating" control by only having 8% of stations.
I used to take the unsupported claims of media consolidation at face value, like you, without looking at them criticically. Since I lived in a media market with more than 20 radio stations not one owned by Clear Channel, I decided to check the claims that "Clear Channel owns a majority of the stations in the US". The cold hard numbers blew this idea away: 20,000 radio stations in the US. Clear Channel controls 1,200 of them. These cold hard facts in other media sectors do the same thing.
"Here is an article by Ted Turner [washingtonmonthly.com] where he discusses the folly and danger of media consolidation"
Ted Turner's CNN is one of the examples that proves the myth of media consolidation wrong. 30 years ago, it did not exist. It was a new voice that sprang up from nowhere. In Turner's realm, a small sort of media proliferation has occured instead of a consolidation.
"Good journalism is supposed to make people question and think, not blindly accept as the dittohead's do."
That's just your opinion (aside from the fact that "dittoheads" exist that follow many popular media voices, not just Limbaugh). I think I agree with it. However, unlike you I recognize the fact that this is a subjective matter, not for the government to decide. Thankfully, the First Amendment does not distinguish between someone's idea of "good" journalism and "bad" journalism.
"The only real place to find voices of dissent or questioning is on public or "free" radio, those stations not controlled by corporations. "
"Dissent" defined as views you happen to agree with? Also, what dissenting voices are you specifically referring to? Both Pacifica Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are corporations.
"I find that hard to believe, because if you did watch or listen to Democracy Now then you wouldn't have the "world is flat" opinion about media consolidation that you have."
I have a "world is how it really is" view of the myth of media consolidation. In fact, "Democracy Now" is only one more example of the proliferation of differing voices (along with, whether you like it or not, the new phenomenon of AM talk radio both left and right). I clicked the link. It's nice to see the hilarity of a new voice such as "Democracy Now" that has had great success due to the decentralization of media and proliferation of voices complain that there is no freedom of speech anymore.
"They simply dismiss it because they don't like how the data came out."
I'm dismissing these because the data shows a lack of consolidation. This contradicts their conclusions. I'm arguing the point because the facts prove you wrong. I'm a Constitutional rights shill, so to speak. I've spent plenty of time researching this.
"Also, what specifically do you mean by "voices"? Being vague and rhetorical are the weapons of politicians, w
"I believe that socialism generally requires some degree state or collective ownership; a corporate monopoly or cartel does not."
Can you deny that once those in this scenario have a monopoly control over everything, that they will likely have also become the government/state?