Is there an alternative to Youtube where you can find the stuff that gets censored off? For a brief time there was a clip from SNL showing Kevin Spacey doing a parody of Neil Young. Would love to see it again, but NBC killed it quickly off Youtube.
"The fact the slashdot summary says artists will have a choice is just ridiculous. Artists have a choice of what company they sell their rights to."
The artists have plenty of choice. Not only can they sell their rights to a wide variety of companies, they can also easily choose not to see their rights, and put the content on their own web site (or put it up in one of those indie sites with many artists where rights are preserved). Don't get paranoid.
Interesting idea. You could have your Dharma Initiative food drops have parachutes so they land lightly in civilian areas, but no parachutes when dropped on military ideas. But seriously, what good is the wifi? Along with the food, you should drop those $100 laptops that some have talked about. Or little AM radios (a lot cheaper).
" To isolate 'corporatist' (that's what you meant to type, I know it)"
What is nonsensical is the idea that "corporatism" exists.
"Typically, though, a democratic government is a tool used by the public to constrain the actions of corporations and other powerful entities whose interests do not match those of the public"
The free market (by which the public directly influences the corporations) actually does the best job of constraining the corporations that are not in the public interest. The combined decisions of the people individually deciding whether or not to deal with a company and how to deal with it ends up being the most accurate determination of how the company meets the public interest. This also gets rid of the middleman (government) which has its own agenda. Trusting the government with such power really ends up giving the government power (which it will gladly take) to serve its own ends and enrich itself). If a corporation does not serve your interest, you can ignore it. If the government does not serve your interest, you can't ignore it or the cops will come and kill you.
Good stuff you said about nuking North Korea though.
Every one of those examples was Communist. You are correct that they are "governments run by a single person or very small group where everything in the country is owned by them". That is how communism ends up being out here in the real world. We have seen plenty of communism in all of its glory. What this probably boils down to is disagreements among factions of communists as to which are the real communists. Then it becomes a matter similar to 7th Day Adventists saying that Catholics are not Christians. If the majority of those involved in a movement can't go a long way to DEFINING it, who can? Scores of millions of members of the ruling Communist Parties of these countries can't be ignored.
"The only socialism the world has seen has been in democratic countries."
Socialism is the degree to which ruling elites control the private and personal economic affairs of the people. Socialism has been very strong in the named communist countries. It has been weak in the democracies.
"Google has already been providing a flash based user submitted video service through google video. Why does adding youtube to the google empire change anything?"
Google has online video just as Lycos.com has web based email. It really doesn't matter. Youtube is "it", the one with critical mass, the one everyone goes to first. Youtube is to online video what eBay is to online auctions.
"North Korea on the other hand have nothing to lose..."
It's "North Korea has.". The place is just one country. "Have" would have been correct if you had been using a plural ("North and South Korea have...").
"About Iraq I said (before the second war) that it would be cheaper and more effective to gain control of the country by dropping bales of cash all over the countryside from cargo planes than by actually going to war. Looking at the current cost and effectiveness of the war, I guess I was right."
Sounds interesting, but would would the result have been? I'm assuming the money would be valid-looking counterfeit Saddambux. What then? Hyperinflation and the collapse of yet another part of the Iraqi system?
Count again. USB? PCs had it at the same time as Macs. I even had a PC that had USB before the iMac even came out. The difference is that PCs did the better thing and always offered legacy ports alongside USB, so the users had a choice and didn't have to ditch their useful peripherals. That's because you have a bunch of manufacturers that compete to best serve the users, rather than one company that decrees from on high "non-USB is immoral" and rams the decision down everyone's throat, to the great delight of conversion-dongle vendors.
SATA? Can't really verify this one. IS there a reference that it was on the Mac first?
Demise of the floppy? Apple bungled on this one. The got rid of it when it was still useful. It lingered in the PC world until people actually did not NEED them anymore, then it vanished. This one should not have been on the list. Getting rid of a useful feature is not a good thing.
"Modern OSes with a usable GUI"? Most users find the other non-Mac OS to suit their purposes better than the one from Apple. Besides, the version of the Mac OS prior to OS-X were crippled and harder to use due to lack of command-line flexibility. Because, no matter what the GUI, it has its flaws and there are always some tasks that are easier and quicker on a command line. The best OS will offer users the choice of command line and GUI. The Windows and Linux world always knew this. Apple only learned relatively recently.
Bluetooth? can't find who is first on that.
Firewire? Yes, look. It wasn't on your list. Apple did have this first. I'm giving this one to you. Now most PCs have it. I know about this, because I used the Firewire port a couple of years ago. Have not used it since.
"Better a colorful shell than an eternity of beige and black boxes. Even there Apple led."
Because the color of the box is much more important than what is on the screen? Well, actually, I checked: most machines by Apple, Dell, and everyone else are the same old black, beige, silver, and white. These are the same colors most all computers have had since the late 1970s (Apple's was beige then).
"Yes, practically every time you touch your PC you can thank Apple for what happens next."
Rarely, if ever. I still have an iMac colored USB hub, however. I guess I can thank Apple for that. In some cases, we can be pretty sure that certain Mac "advances" will always be ignored by more free-market (usefulness-driven) computers, such as the Mac's missing media eject buttons and the single-button mouse. There is one Apple "advance" that did make it to the PC world, unfortunately: the terrible Aqua color fad. When I saw mp3 software skins with UNREADABLE low-contrast pale control bars, I know that Mac was influencing things again.
I'll close by thanking Apple for its most influential design: the funny iMac colors. I still use my George Foreman grill with the semitransparent turqouise shell.
"Actually there ARE a lot of people who dislike Bush and abhor Chavez. Of course not everyone on the left wants a Hugo Chavez."
Where on the mainstream left are they speaking out against Chavez? There are so many like Mark Weisbrot, "The Progressive" magazine, who grovel at his feet, and I've read numerous articles in "The Nation" as well. Michael Moore is a passionate fan of his.. I don't think I need to even look to see what Chomsky says. Every mainline left magazine and individual I check out so far loves the fascist dictator of Venezuela.
...except this one, dear AC, like all the others, is supported. Refer to Chavez' speech on Dec 24, 2005. If you didn't know the fact that Chavez made this speech, you really aren't qualified to say anything about him. Where have I twisted the truth? No where.
Chavez gave the speech blaming Jews for all the evil in the world on December 24, 2005. I forgot to point out the speech where Chavez said he would bury the United States. That one was pretty funny. (I saw him do this one on C Span. No, he didn't have a shoe).
"Anyone who isn't Republican will be your friend if you hate Bush, and even some of them are starting to have their doubts. Take a look at the polls sometime, you ignorant asswipe."
Have you looked at the polls? The same hardcover 20%-30% of Americans hate Bush. There's a similar amount on the other end that love him. The rest, in the middle, are easily swayed by such factors as gas prices. However, they are easily swayed, and do not have deep-rooted feelings about Bush either way.
"Aside from the first one, which was the Iranian president and not Chavez"
It was the Venezuelan dictator who made the speech blaming Jews for all the evil in the world for the last 2,000 years. This speech was Dec. 24, 2005.
"But one thing is still true about him, this being pretty much the fundamental law of communism--he's still better than the nasty right-wing fucker who immediately preceded him(Lenin and the Tsars, Mao and Chiang Kai-shek, Castro and Batiste)."
You need to check your history:
Lenin: The Tsars (who had already moderated a whole lot) were gone by the time Lenin seized power. Lenin actually overthrew a fledgling post-Tsar democracy. He made things significantly worse, grabbing for himself more power than the Tsars ever had, re-invading the former vassal states that the Tsars had actually let go free, and slaughtering many hundreds of thousands of people.
Mao and Chiang Kai-shek: Clearly no comparison at all here. Mao ordered more than 30,000,000 people killed. The relatively mild legacy of Chiang has been apparent in how Taiwan was ran after Mao's conquest. Chiang's government, the Nationalists, had run all of China for quite a while before Mao came along: pre-Mao China was significantly lacking in the routine atrocity that Mao ushered in. Do you really know anything about it at all?
Castro and Batista: Aside from the mass execution of political prisoners by Castro, and the many tens of thousands killed by his invasions of other countries (Batista stayed home), there are so many other factors such as freedom of religion, freedom of the press (many beleaguered newspapers under Batista, no independent ones at all under Castro).
Every single one of these was much worse than the one before. That's the fundamental law of Communism.
"I don't pretend to know you or your politics so I won't direct these words at you personally but I have heard US American Neocons spout that kind of rhetoric on TV"
For one thing, American neocons aren't in power. There's a difference between speaking in front of your think tank and being a world leader speaking on the world stage. Chalk this one up to another mention of the "neocon" bogeyman in conversations where it does not belong. Aside from that: can you CITE references where Neocons did what Chavez did: 1) blame Jews for all the evil in the world 2) put lewd sexual language about female diplomats in their speeches? 3) Neocons wanting to censor all music they did not like from the radio?
Can you back up your claim?
Thanks also for the alternatve history of the Cold War... you described things that never happened except PRIOR to WW2.
Thanks for naming a new "axis of evil". Chavez recently announced that he will side with and support Iran's new wars of expansion, and he supports Chavez using nuclear weapons against Israel.
"Though that doesnt stop the administration from making you think otherwise."
When has anyone, inside the administration or out, said that the three countries were the SAME country? Pointing out alliance is not the same as saying that allied countries are equal to each other.
"Yes minor player... just like how in every marching band of thousands, there's just one guy in the front showing it where to go."
Not particularly. Apple was earlier than the PC world when it came to the GUI (but so was Atari, Amiga, and even Commodore). The rest of it is examples where the drum major marched off on his own direction without looking over his shoulder to find that the band has gone down another street. Or silly superficial fads like translucent blue computer shells.
"If you dislike Bush, you should abhor Chavez [umb.edu]"
OT, but good call. Can you imagine what people would have done if Bush had given a big loud speech blaming Jews for all the evil in the world for the last 2,000 years? Chavez did this. Or if Bush made a public speech with crude sexist comments about foreign female diplomats? Chavez did this (about Rice). Or, to show how petty he was, Bush passed laws to force all the radio stations in the country to play only the music he personally liked? Chavez did this...
I guess this proves the rule "A fascist dictator is my friend if he happens to hate George W. Bush".
"The Apple OS was more successful before Microsoft's OS dominated"
When you are looking at? Microsoft's OS was in the PCs a couple of years prior to the Mac and was already running away with the OS market. If you want to go into the early 1970s, the two were so intertwined as to have the same "success": the Apple ][ OS with Microsoft ("Applesoft") BASIC in it. So, in the Apple ][ era, the two were interjoined, and in the Mac era, the Microsoft OS's always had a lot more sales and domination success. Can't find any time of Apple OS "dominance" over Microsoft OS in terms desktop penetration.
You are entirely correct, though, about others dominating Microsoft for a long time when it came to "office" and word processing.
"It wasn't until the early nineties that PC was a synonym for IBM compatible"
You forget to mention that prior to this "switchover" (which I think was earlier than the early 1990s, but no matter), the PC term referred almost exclusively to IBM's model. Since Apple did not make IBM-PCs (before) or PC compatibles until very recently (after), they certainly were never a historic PC maker.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there an alternative to Youtube where you can find the stuff that gets censored off? For a brief time there was a clip from SNL showing Kevin Spacey doing a parody of Neil Young. Would love to see it again, but NBC killed it quickly off Youtube.
"but on the other end of the scale does it also set up a president"
When did the Supreme Court get involved???
"The fact the slashdot summary says artists will have a choice is just ridiculous. Artists have a choice of what company they sell their rights to."
The artists have plenty of choice. Not only can they sell their rights to a wide variety of companies, they can also easily choose not to see their rights, and put the content on their own web site (or put it up in one of those indie sites with many artists where rights are preserved). Don't get paranoid.
"[bomb them with food and free WiFi]"
Interesting idea. You could have your Dharma Initiative food drops have parachutes so they land lightly in civilian areas, but no parachutes when dropped on military ideas. But seriously, what good is the wifi? Along with the food, you should drop those $100 laptops that some have talked about. Or little AM radios (a lot cheaper).
" To isolate 'corporatist' (that's what you meant to type, I know it)"
What is nonsensical is the idea that "corporatism" exists.
"Typically, though, a democratic government is a tool used by the public to constrain the actions of corporations and other powerful entities whose interests do not match those of the public"
The free market (by which the public directly influences the corporations) actually does the best job of constraining the corporations that are not in the public interest. The combined decisions of the people individually deciding whether or not to deal with a company and how to deal with it ends up being the most accurate determination of how the company meets the public interest. This also gets rid of the middleman (government) which has its own agenda. Trusting the government with such power really ends up giving the government power (which it will gladly take) to serve its own ends and enrich itself). If a corporation does not serve your interest, you can ignore it. If the government does not serve your interest, you can't ignore it or the cops will come and kill you.
Good stuff you said about nuking North Korea though.
Every one of those examples was Communist. You are correct that they are "governments run by a single person or very small group where everything in the country is owned by them". That is how communism ends up being out here in the real world. We have seen plenty of communism in all of its glory. What this probably boils down to is disagreements among factions of communists as to which are the real communists. Then it becomes a matter similar to 7th Day Adventists saying that Catholics are not Christians. If the majority of those involved in a movement can't go a long way to DEFINING it, who can? Scores of millions of members of the ruling Communist Parties of these countries can't be ignored.
"The only socialism the world has seen has been in democratic countries."
Socialism is the degree to which ruling elites control the private and personal economic affairs of the people. Socialism has been very strong in the named communist countries. It has been weak in the democracies.
"Google has already been providing a flash based user submitted video service through google video. Why does adding youtube to the google empire change anything?"
Google has online video just as Lycos.com has web based email. It really doesn't matter. Youtube is "it", the one with critical mass, the one everyone goes to first. Youtube is to online video what eBay is to online auctions.
"%country_trust_level("Albania" => 5, "Andorra" => 6 ... )"
Andorra? Their twitchy antennea and their smurfy complexion always make me so nervous.
"Yea. but they are all right next to each other in the middle east."
Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea are not right next to each other. Their borders do not touch: countries like Rohan and Narnia lie between them.
"North Korea on the other hand have nothing to lose..."
It's "North Korea has.". The place is just one country. "Have" would have been correct if you had been using a plural ("North and South Korea have...").
"About Iraq I said (before the second war) that it would be cheaper and more effective to gain control of the country by dropping bales of cash all over the countryside from cargo planes than by actually going to war. Looking at the current cost and effectiveness of the war, I guess I was right."
Sounds interesting, but would would the result have been? I'm assuming the money would be valid-looking counterfeit Saddambux. What then? Hyperinflation and the collapse of yet another part of the Iraqi system?
Count again. USB? PCs had it at the same time as Macs. I even had a PC that had USB before the iMac even came out. The difference is that PCs did the better thing and always offered legacy ports alongside USB, so the users had a choice and didn't have to ditch their useful peripherals. That's because you have a bunch of manufacturers that compete to best serve the users, rather than one company that decrees from on high "non-USB is immoral" and rams the decision down everyone's throat, to the great delight of conversion-dongle vendors.
SATA? Can't really verify this one. IS there a reference that it was on the Mac first?
Demise of the floppy? Apple bungled on this one. The got rid of it when it was still useful. It lingered in the PC world until people actually did not NEED them anymore, then it vanished. This one should not have been on the list. Getting rid of a useful feature is not a good thing.
"Modern OSes with a usable GUI"? Most users find the other non-Mac OS to suit their purposes better than the one from Apple. Besides, the version of the Mac OS prior to OS-X were crippled and harder to use due to lack of command-line flexibility. Because, no matter what the GUI, it has its flaws and there are always some tasks that are easier and quicker on a command line. The best OS will offer users the choice of command line and GUI. The Windows and Linux world always knew this. Apple only learned relatively recently.
Bluetooth? can't find who is first on that.
Firewire? Yes, look. It wasn't on your list. Apple did have this first. I'm giving this one to you. Now most PCs have it. I know about this, because I used the Firewire port a couple of years ago. Have not used it since. "Better a colorful shell than an eternity of beige and black boxes. Even there Apple led."
Because the color of the box is much more important than what is on the screen? Well, actually, I checked: most machines by Apple, Dell, and everyone else are the same old black, beige, silver, and white. These are the same colors most all computers have had since the late 1970s (Apple's was beige then).
"Yes, practically every time you touch your PC you can thank Apple for what happens next."
Rarely, if ever. I still have an iMac colored USB hub, however. I guess I can thank Apple for that. In some cases, we can be pretty sure that certain Mac "advances" will always be ignored by more free-market (usefulness-driven) computers, such as the Mac's missing media eject buttons and the single-button mouse. There is one Apple "advance" that did make it to the PC world, unfortunately: the terrible Aqua color fad. When I saw mp3 software skins with UNREADABLE low-contrast pale control bars, I know that Mac was influencing things again.
I'll close by thanking Apple for its most influential design: the funny iMac colors. I still use my George Foreman grill with the semitransparent turqouise shell.
"Actually there ARE a lot of people who dislike Bush and abhor Chavez. Of course not everyone on the left wants a Hugo Chavez."
Where on the mainstream left are they speaking out against Chavez? There are so many like Mark Weisbrot, "The Progressive" magazine, who grovel at his feet, and I've read numerous articles in "The Nation" as well. Michael Moore is a passionate fan of his.. I don't think I need to even look to see what Chomsky says. Every mainline left magazine and individual I check out so far loves the fascist dictator of Venezuela.
"Used Nuclear Weapons on another country, even after they have attempted to surrender?"
That one specifically is quite wrong, concerning Japan. They even kept refusing to surrender AFTER a bomb was dropped, too.
...except this one, dear AC, like all the others, is supported. Refer to Chavez' speech on Dec 24, 2005. If you didn't know the fact that Chavez made this speech, you really aren't qualified to say anything about him. Where have I twisted the truth? No where.
Chavez gave the speech blaming Jews for all the evil in the world on December 24, 2005. I forgot to point out the speech where Chavez said he would bury the United States. That one was pretty funny. (I saw him do this one on C Span. No, he didn't have a shoe).
"Anyone who isn't Republican will be your friend if you hate Bush, and even some of them are starting to have their doubts. Take a look at the polls sometime, you ignorant asswipe."
Have you looked at the polls? The same hardcover 20%-30% of Americans hate Bush. There's a similar amount on the other end that love him. The rest, in the middle, are easily swayed by such factors as gas prices. However, they are easily swayed, and do not have deep-rooted feelings about Bush either way.
"Aside from the first one, which was the Iranian president and not Chavez"
It was the Venezuelan dictator who made the speech blaming Jews for all the evil in the world for the last 2,000 years. This speech was Dec. 24, 2005.
"But one thing is still true about him, this being pretty much the fundamental law of communism--he's still better than the nasty right-wing fucker who immediately preceded him(Lenin and the Tsars, Mao and Chiang Kai-shek, Castro and Batiste)."
You need to check your history:
Lenin: The Tsars (who had already moderated a whole lot) were gone by the time Lenin seized power. Lenin actually overthrew a fledgling post-Tsar democracy. He made things significantly worse, grabbing for himself more power than the Tsars ever had, re-invading the former vassal states that the Tsars had actually let go free, and slaughtering many hundreds of thousands of people.
Mao and Chiang Kai-shek: Clearly no comparison at all here. Mao ordered more than 30,000,000 people killed. The relatively mild legacy of Chiang has been apparent in how Taiwan was ran after Mao's conquest. Chiang's government, the Nationalists, had run all of China for quite a while before Mao came along: pre-Mao China was significantly lacking in the routine atrocity that Mao ushered in. Do you really know anything about it at all?
Castro and Batista: Aside from the mass execution of political prisoners by Castro, and the many tens of thousands killed by his invasions of other countries (Batista stayed home), there are so many other factors such as freedom of religion, freedom of the press (many beleaguered newspapers under Batista, no independent ones at all under Castro).
Every single one of these was much worse than the one before. That's the fundamental law of Communism.
"I don't pretend to know you or your politics so I won't direct these words at you personally but I have heard US American Neocons spout that kind of rhetoric on TV"
For one thing, American neocons aren't in power. There's a difference between speaking in front of your think tank and being a world leader speaking on the world stage. Chalk this one up to another mention of the "neocon" bogeyman in conversations where it does not belong. Aside from that: can you CITE references where Neocons did what Chavez did: 1) blame Jews for all the evil in the world 2) put lewd sexual language about female diplomats in their speeches? 3) Neocons wanting to censor all music they did not like from the radio?
Can you back up your claim?
Thanks also for the alternatve history of the Cold War... you described things that never happened except PRIOR to WW2.
"NK != IRAN != VENEZUELA"
Thanks for naming a new "axis of evil". Chavez recently announced that he will side with and support Iran's new wars of expansion, and he supports Chavez using nuclear weapons against Israel.
"Though that doesnt stop the administration from making you think otherwise."
When has anyone, inside the administration or out, said that the three countries were the SAME country? Pointing out alliance is not the same as saying that allied countries are equal to each other.
"Yes minor player... just like how in every marching band of thousands, there's just one guy in the front showing it where to go."
Not particularly. Apple was earlier than the PC world when it came to the GUI (but so was Atari, Amiga, and even Commodore). The rest of it is examples where the drum major marched off on his own direction without looking over his shoulder to find that the band has gone down another street. Or silly superficial fads like translucent blue computer shells.
"If you dislike Bush, you should abhor Chavez [umb.edu]"
OT, but good call. Can you imagine what people would have done if Bush had given a big loud speech blaming Jews for all the evil in the world for the last 2,000 years? Chavez did this. Or if Bush made a public speech with crude sexist comments about foreign female diplomats? Chavez did this (about Rice). Or, to show how petty he was, Bush passed laws to force all the radio stations in the country to play only the music he personally liked? Chavez did this...
I guess this proves the rule "A fascist dictator is my friend if he happens to hate George W. Bush".
"what do you do? either you punch him in the face rightaway for having crapped in your locker, or you don't believe him..."
Why, I bomb the locker for a few weeks and then send in 150,000 troops. What else could I possible DO in a situation like this???
"The Apple OS was more successful before Microsoft's OS dominated"
When you are looking at? Microsoft's OS was in the PCs a couple of years prior to the Mac and was already running away with the OS market. If you want to go into the early 1970s, the two were so intertwined as to have the same "success": the Apple ][ OS with Microsoft ("Applesoft") BASIC in it. So, in the Apple ][ era, the two were interjoined, and in the Mac era, the Microsoft OS's always had a lot more sales and domination success. Can't find any time of Apple OS "dominance" over Microsoft OS in terms desktop penetration.
You are entirely correct, though, about others dominating Microsoft for a long time when it came to "office" and word processing.
"It wasn't until the early nineties that PC was a synonym for IBM compatible"
You forget to mention that prior to this "switchover" (which I think was earlier than the early 1990s, but no matter), the PC term referred almost exclusively to IBM's model. Since Apple did not make IBM-PCs (before) or PC compatibles until very recently (after), they certainly were never a historic PC maker.