As much as we don't like paying for content, someone has to pay for for the journalist to do their job.
I will argue that a lot of those so called "journalists" are not doing much reporting beyond writing what thoughts occur inside their heads about various issues. And that type of reporting I can get from John down on the corner writing in his blog. As many others have said in their replies on this thread; there is a lot of dead weight in this industry. A relatively small number of journalists are going around seeing, hearing, asking, and fact checking; most seem to be permanently stuck inside their offices whining about the unfairness of "teh internets".
Quite frankly I expect a large number of those that consider themselves journalists to be out of job ten-twenty years down the line. With internet blogs covering most of the opinion piece market, and only a small number of very active people being able to live off being what one could call a full-time journalist. Already a lot of pieces on various sites are written by people who have other jobs (mostly well-knowns from various industries; especially the entertainment industry, and a range of authors).
How much will this content cost? I have no idea, but someone will pay for it.
What the next decades will uncover is exactly what type of content people will pay for and how much they will pay. Maybe my speculation is way off, maybe not; time will tell. One thing is for certain what we get in the end won't look much like what we got right now. And a lot of people will fall by the wayside as the industry changes.
Very few media sources I've found actually provide a significantly better service than many other sources, so it simply doesn't make sense for me as a consumer to pay for product I can get for free.
Since the majority of what these sites offer are opinion pieces I have to agree with you. For me to pay to read such material it would have to have a constant and significant quality, and if I could find that from a particular writer I wouldn't mind paying that person directly to read only their material (on a blog or personal site or whatever). One could argue for paying for news but if I was going to subscribe to a site delivering news it would have to be purely that; new events of significance (and not what so and so celebrity did over the weekend), reported matter of factly and as objectively as possible.
The product these sites are trying to sell us is quite frankly, in my opinion, of little value (taken as a whole) with only a few articles of interest now and again. Maybe they'll be able to carve out their niche over time, but I seriously doubt anything near "20 million unique readers" will bother paying for this type of thing.
This is also impractical, because you can't expect every single citizen to apply for permission just to post videos of their cat onto youtube.
Indeed. One thing that could kill such a policy quickly is the huge number of people applying for permission for all sorts of material would swamp the institution. But seriously the oppressiveness of such a policy seems excessive; even for Italy. And to make this have any sort of effect at all they would have to block all access to foreign sites since they would continue to upload more or less whatever they would wish.
Once, when I was a student, I tried to get a copy of the school's policy manual. I was politely but firmly told to sit down and shut up. To be honest, I don't believe that such things even exist, or if they are they are so broadly defined as to be useless for informing behaviour.
Policies must always be worded in such a convoluted way as to remain open to any interpretation most serving the administration at any given time. Asking for the policy documentation is in itself a breach of policy and highly suspicious and subversive behaviour. Any questioning of authority is a sign of anti-social and destructive behaviour.
The end result is that school officials with a high self interest will put their self interest in front of everyone else (the authorities who are wasting their time, the students out of class, the student directly involved, the parents who have to come pick up all the students early, etc), since they are more worried about the ramifications to themselves than the trouble they may cause for others.
That's why I have always been in favour of school consisting of a transport vehicle going around picking up each kid individually and placing each into their own stasispod. Then said stasispod is driven to a building were they will be stacked up for 10 hours and all interaction will be committed virtually with the kids never leaving their respective pods. If any student violates policy or acts in a threatening manner the pod can be disconnected from the hub and driven directly to the nearest correctional facility. Safety first!
Or maybe the kid was trying to impress his friends by acting like the thing was a bomb. While I'm sure the school/police/fire dept overreacted, kids do strange stuff and often don't realize the consequences of their actions.
All that is mentioned in the article is:
Maurice Luque, spokesman for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, said the student had been making the device in his home garage. A vice principal saw the student showing it to other students at school about 11:40 a.m. Friday and was concerned that it might be harmful, and San Diego police were notified.
The school, which has about 440 students in grades 6 to 8 and emphasizes technology skills, was initially put on lockdown while authorities responded.
Both the student and his parents were "very cooperative" with authorities, Luque said. He said fire officials also went to the student's home and checked the garage to make sure items there were neither harmful nor explosive.
The student will not be prosecuted, but authorities were recommending that he and his parents get counseling, the spokesman said. The student violated school policies, but there was no criminal intent, Luque said.
Now I can't say what policies he might have violated; though from what little is said in the article one is left with the impression that the vice principal in question overacted (or erred on the side of caution). I can understand that after going through such an event that the kid in question might need a bit of counselling to deal with the fact that he got hanged out in-front of the whole school as a possible terrorist. So I hope that is what they are talking about, and not that he "needs counselling" because he inadvertently scared a frightened adult administrator.
Quote:
Some "conspiracy theories" recommended for ban by Sunstein include:
* "The theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud."
* "The view that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."
* "The 1996 crash of TWA flight 800 was caused by a U.S. military missile."
* "The Trilateral Commission is responsible for important movements of the international economy."
* "That Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by federal agents."
* "The moon landing was staged and never actually occurred."
Sure lets ban them and covertly infiltrate their communities to "spread doubt" that'll put these matters to rest once and for all!
It is in no way a violation of freedom of speech to put information out there to clarify a certain point of view but it's the essence of freedom of speech.
From TFA:
In a lengthy academic paper, President Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, argued the U.S. government should ban "conspiracy theorizing."
Among the beliefs Sunstein would ban is advocating that the theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud.
"We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories."
Banning people from "conspiracy theorizing" sounds a heck of a lot more serious than "put information out there to clarify", it sounds like they consider banning "conspiracy theorizing." Which is a ludicrous policy. Almost any definition of "conspiracy theory" would mandate them to take action against almost all criticism of the government, the state or any of its institutions or representatives. Will it be illegal to levy claims of criminal activities against an elected representatives since it will be a "conspiracy theory"? I can imagine a fairly wide range of ways such a policy could be mis-used; if you even consider the original use legitimate.
Banning people from saying that the government is corrupt, or committing acts they disagree with, is a great injustice. It can only lead to a greater credence to their claims, and with policies such as argued for by Sunstein one starts to feel an increasing drag towards becoming one of these radical voices critical of what the government wants people to accept as justified.
I'll submit that calling the central controlling unit a "brain" in any gizmo or device isn't new, nor any sort of sleight against those that "contribute to AI research".
..and that they shouldn't be held to the same standards as everyone else.
Somehow I think that MI6, CIA, FSB, or other major security organizations, are committing countless similar attacks; they are just slightly better at hiding it. And such companies, or organizations, that they do attack wouldn't be investigated or reported by groups such as VeriSign.
Drake's equation has quite a few terms in it and only two of those terms are subject to reevaluation: the average number of planets per star that are suitable for life, and the fraction of planets which are suitable for life that actually have life.
Could also be added that Mars and Earth could have a common source of primordial life, and/or that samples from one crossed over to the other. Far greater would be the impact IF life on Mars turned out to be so radically different from Earth's as to preclude any sort of common ancestry.
Unfortunately, your scotch and bourbon is likely fortified with a corn product.
Bourbon is primarily made from maize corn, while scotch is primarily barley. This is why it is important to ensure that your scotch is pure single malt!
Certain concepts and ideas covered under the umbrella of socialism are not mutually exclusive with democracy. And if people express, through their words and votes, a desire to favour local socialism over corporate privilege I say more power to them.
Come on Discovery channel is way more than explosions. They got computer generated imagery of dinosaurs, shark bites, more dinosaurs, disgusting food from tribals, some more dinosaurs, disaster videos, and some dinosaurs, some more shark bites and did I mention dinosaurs?
Funnily enough they way I remember the programming of Discovery Channel going when I used to watch it (about from the late nighties to early 2000); was from almost pure WWII documentaries (the Armies! The Weapons! The Tactics! The Battles! The Generals! Etc!) to a wider range of shows. To speculate I would say that it is probably beneficial (from a numbers of viewers perspective) to intersect light entertaining shows between documentaries. And in our day light entertainment means anything that doesn't become over technical, include hosts/characters that can provide some measure of comedy, and at least a minimum level of explosions. Thus the success of shows such as Mythbusters, and Scrapheap Challenge (the UK version).
As for TV, the quality of programming has gone downhill, even news shows are nothing more than glorified tabloids. Networks that used to have interesting programming has shifted to more crap. Discovery is more about blowing stuff up than explaining science, the History channel seems to be nothing more than WWII and explosions.
Pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if people with a genuine interest in various subjects that could, or would, have been broadcasted on channels such as History; might use the internet to read, watch and debate their field of interest instead of watching documentaries about it on TV. Probably not, though as far as quality is concerned I still see a good one coming out of BBC every once in a while.
This time the plan is perfect! * License iD Tech 4
* Begin development!
* Drool at Rage and Doom 4
* License iD Tech 5
* Struggle to incorporate previously developed content into new engine
* Start over with a new license of iD Tech 6
* ???
* Profit!
There are a quite a few variations among security tokens. The one I have requires me to type in a 4 digit pin code before it gives me a random number that I have to use in combination with a password and birth code.
Personally when I have to log into my bank account I have to use a generated code from my security token, my personal number (provided by the state at birth), and my BankID code (site in Norwegian only). And so far I have yet to have my bank account hacked. That being said neither have I had my WoW account hacked, though having used computers since getting my very own 486 back in the day; I have learned (sometimes from very bad experiences) to take my computer security seriously. Over the last three years (or more) with the exception of tracking cookies my computers have been clean for viruses and spyware at every scan (much like many other slashdoter's I reckon).
Though as the poster above mentioned if Blizzard does introduce security tokens, and I reckon they will especially since accounts are Battle.net now and not WoW specific, it will probably be packed with the next expansion. Personally I think it might be a good thing all in all, especially if it helps lower account theft. Though it would also help if people in general got some more instruction into how to keep their stuff secret and safe beaten into their skulls. I have family members (don't we all) that use their computers for online banking, among other things, yet fail to update spyware/virus scanners, firewall software, browsers and etc. And no amount of additional layers of login security will ever fully compensate for user ignorance.
I would certainly agree that prince for quality these days is very good. At least my own personal experience with computer monitors would suggest so. Currently I have a 22'' Widescreen LCD screen, it wasn't exactly cutting edge when I bought it a few years back but the price was about 1/3 of what I paid for a 19'' CRT back in the days. And that wasn't exactly cutting edge either, by a long shot. Given an increase in production due to demand could certainly be said to have contributed to this decline in overall computer prices, but quite simply the technology has improved enormously. And I wouldn't for a second return my 22'' WSLCD for my old CRT, nor for that matter for my 19'' LCD screen either.
"Six companies have pleaded guilty to worldwide price fixing of Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Displays from Sept. 14, 2001, to Dec. 1, 2006. For violating the Sherman Act, the companies have agreed to pay criminal fines of over $860 Million. In addition, nine executives have been charged in the scandal. The pricing scam affected some of the largest companies at the time, including Apple, HP and Dell. (If you bought a TFT-LCD from them in that time frame, you may be one of the victimized consumers.) From the DOJ release, 'According to the charge, Chi Mei carried out the conspiracy by agreeing during meetings, conversations and communications to charge prices of TFT-LCD panels at certain pre-determined levels and issuing price quotations in accordance with the agreements reached. As a part of the conspiracy, Chi Mei exchanged information on sales of TFT-LCD panels for the purpose of monitoring and enforcing adherence to the agreed-upon prices.'"
Slashdot Mirror
As much as we don't like paying for content, someone has to pay for for the journalist to do their job.
I will argue that a lot of those so called "journalists" are not doing much reporting beyond writing what thoughts occur inside their heads about various issues. And that type of reporting I can get from John down on the corner writing in his blog. As many others have said in their replies on this thread; there is a lot of dead weight in this industry. A relatively small number of journalists are going around seeing, hearing, asking, and fact checking; most seem to be permanently stuck inside their offices whining about the unfairness of "teh internets".
Quite frankly I expect a large number of those that consider themselves journalists to be out of job ten-twenty years down the line. With internet blogs covering most of the opinion piece market, and only a small number of very active people being able to live off being what one could call a full-time journalist. Already a lot of pieces on various sites are written by people who have other jobs (mostly well-knowns from various industries; especially the entertainment industry, and a range of authors).
How much will this content cost? I have no idea, but someone will pay for it.
What the next decades will uncover is exactly what type of content people will pay for and how much they will pay. Maybe my speculation is way off, maybe not; time will tell. One thing is for certain what we get in the end won't look much like what we got right now. And a lot of people will fall by the wayside as the industry changes.
Very few media sources I've found actually provide a significantly better service than many other sources, so it simply doesn't make sense for me as a consumer to pay for product I can get for free.
Since the majority of what these sites offer are opinion pieces I have to agree with you. For me to pay to read such material it would have to have a constant and significant quality, and if I could find that from a particular writer I wouldn't mind paying that person directly to read only their material (on a blog or personal site or whatever). One could argue for paying for news but if I was going to subscribe to a site delivering news it would have to be purely that; new events of significance (and not what so and so celebrity did over the weekend), reported matter of factly and as objectively as possible.
The product these sites are trying to sell us is quite frankly, in my opinion, of little value (taken as a whole) with only a few articles of interest now and again. Maybe they'll be able to carve out their niche over time, but I seriously doubt anything near "20 million unique readers" will bother paying for this type of thing.
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
This is also impractical, because you can't expect every single citizen to apply for permission just to post videos of their cat onto youtube.
Indeed. One thing that could kill such a policy quickly is the huge number of people applying for permission for all sorts of material would swamp the institution. But seriously the oppressiveness of such a policy seems excessive; even for Italy. And to make this have any sort of effect at all they would have to block all access to foreign sites since they would continue to upload more or less whatever they would wish.
Once, when I was a student, I tried to get a copy of the school's policy manual. I was politely but firmly told to sit down and shut up. To be honest, I don't believe that such things even exist, or if they are they are so broadly defined as to be useless for informing behaviour.
Policies must always be worded in such a convoluted way as to remain open to any interpretation most serving the administration at any given time. Asking for the policy documentation is in itself a breach of policy and highly suspicious and subversive behaviour. Any questioning of authority is a sign of anti-social and destructive behaviour.
The end result is that school officials with a high self interest will put their self interest in front of everyone else (the authorities who are wasting their time, the students out of class, the student directly involved, the parents who have to come pick up all the students early, etc), since they are more worried about the ramifications to themselves than the trouble they may cause for others.
That's why I have always been in favour of school consisting of a transport vehicle going around picking up each kid individually and placing each into their own stasispod. Then said stasispod is driven to a building were they will be stacked up for 10 hours and all interaction will be committed virtually with the kids never leaving their respective pods. If any student violates policy or acts in a threatening manner the pod can be disconnected from the hub and driven directly to the nearest correctional facility. Safety first!
Don't do anything to attract attention to yourself ever.
Anyone actively trying not to attract attention must be a terrorist!
Or maybe the kid was trying to impress his friends by acting like the thing was a bomb. While I'm sure the school/police/fire dept overreacted, kids do strange stuff and often don't realize the consequences of their actions.
All that is mentioned in the article is:
Maurice Luque, spokesman for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, said the student had been making the device in his home garage. A vice principal saw the student showing it to other students at school about 11:40 a.m. Friday and was concerned that it might be harmful, and San Diego police were notified.
The school, which has about 440 students in grades 6 to 8 and emphasizes technology skills, was initially put on lockdown while authorities responded.
Both the student and his parents were "very cooperative" with authorities, Luque said. He said fire officials also went to the student's home and checked the garage to make sure items there were neither harmful nor explosive.
The student will not be prosecuted, but authorities were recommending that he and his parents get counseling, the spokesman said. The student violated school policies, but there was no criminal intent, Luque said.
Now I can't say what policies he might have violated; though from what little is said in the article one is left with the impression that the vice principal in question overacted (or erred on the side of caution). I can understand that after going through such an event that the kid in question might need a bit of counselling to deal with the fact that he got hanged out in-front of the whole school as a possible terrorist. So I hope that is what they are talking about, and not that he "needs counselling" because he inadvertently scared a frightened adult administrator.
Quote:
Some "conspiracy theories" recommended for ban by Sunstein include:
* "The theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud."
* "The view that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."
* "The 1996 crash of TWA flight 800 was caused by a U.S. military missile."
* "The Trilateral Commission is responsible for important movements of the international economy."
* "That Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by federal agents."
* "The moon landing was staged and never actually occurred."
Sure lets ban them and covertly infiltrate their communities to "spread doubt" that'll put these matters to rest once and for all!
It is in no way a violation of freedom of speech to put information out there to clarify a certain point of view but it's the essence of freedom of speech.
From TFA:
In a lengthy academic paper, President Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, argued the U.S. government should ban "conspiracy theorizing."
Among the beliefs Sunstein would ban is advocating that the theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud.
"We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories."
Banning people from "conspiracy theorizing" sounds a heck of a lot more serious than "put information out there to clarify", it sounds like they consider banning "conspiracy theorizing." Which is a ludicrous policy. Almost any definition of "conspiracy theory" would mandate them to take action against almost all criticism of the government, the state or any of its institutions or representatives. Will it be illegal to levy claims of criminal activities against an elected representatives since it will be a "conspiracy theory"? I can imagine a fairly wide range of ways such a policy could be mis-used; if you even consider the original use legitimate.
Banning people from saying that the government is corrupt, or committing acts they disagree with, is a great injustice. It can only lead to a greater credence to their claims, and with policies such as argued for by Sunstein one starts to feel an increasing drag towards becoming one of these radical voices critical of what the government wants people to accept as justified.
I'll submit that calling the central controlling unit a "brain" in any gizmo or device isn't new, nor any sort of sleight against those that "contribute to AI research".
I'll go outside. And have fun with my Natal as well. Double fun.
Right. I'll have fun with my Natal while having sex outside. There! Triple fun!
..and that they shouldn't be held to the same standards as everyone else.
Somehow I think that MI6, CIA, FSB, or other major security organizations, are committing countless similar attacks; they are just slightly better at hiding it. And such companies, or organizations, that they do attack wouldn't be investigated or reported by groups such as VeriSign.
Drake's equation has quite a few terms in it and only two of those terms are subject to reevaluation: the average number of planets per star that are suitable for life, and the fraction of planets which are suitable for life that actually have life.
Could also be added that Mars and Earth could have a common source of primordial life, and/or that samples from one crossed over to the other. Far greater would be the impact IF life on Mars turned out to be so radically different from Earth's as to preclude any sort of common ancestry.
Unfortunately, your scotch and bourbon is likely fortified with a corn product.
Bourbon is primarily made from maize corn, while scotch is primarily barley. This is why it is important to ensure that your scotch is pure single malt!
Starwars. Episodes 1, 2 and 3 especially.
Lets let Uwe Boll remake them, should be an improvement.
You meant fighting local socialism.
Certain concepts and ideas covered under the umbrella of socialism are not mutually exclusive with democracy. And if people express, through their words and votes, a desire to favour local socialism over corporate privilege I say more power to them.
Come on Discovery channel is way more than explosions. They got computer generated imagery of dinosaurs, shark bites, more dinosaurs, disgusting food from tribals, some more dinosaurs, disaster videos, and some dinosaurs, some more shark bites and did I mention dinosaurs?
Funnily enough they way I remember the programming of Discovery Channel going when I used to watch it (about from the late nighties to early 2000); was from almost pure WWII documentaries (the Armies! The Weapons! The Tactics! The Battles! The Generals! Etc!) to a wider range of shows. To speculate I would say that it is probably beneficial (from a numbers of viewers perspective) to intersect light entertaining shows between documentaries. And in our day light entertainment means anything that doesn't become over technical, include hosts/characters that can provide some measure of comedy, and at least a minimum level of explosions. Thus the success of shows such as Mythbusters, and Scrapheap Challenge (the UK version).
As for TV, the quality of programming has gone downhill, even news shows are nothing more than glorified tabloids. Networks that used to have interesting programming has shifted to more crap. Discovery is more about blowing stuff up than explaining science, the History channel seems to be nothing more than WWII and explosions.
Pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if people with a genuine interest in various subjects that could, or would, have been broadcasted on channels such as History; might use the internet to read, watch and debate their field of interest instead of watching documentaries about it on TV. Probably not, though as far as quality is concerned I still see a good one coming out of BBC every once in a while.
This time the plan is perfect!
* License iD Tech 4
* Begin development!
* Drool at Rage and Doom 4
* License iD Tech 5
* Struggle to incorporate previously developed content into new engine
* Start over with a new license of iD Tech 6
* ???
* Profit!
Duke Nukem Forever! Coming soon to a millennium near you!
There are a quite a few variations among security tokens. The one I have requires me to type in a 4 digit pin code before it gives me a random number that I have to use in combination with a password and birth code.
Personally when I have to log into my bank account I have to use a generated code from my security token, my personal number (provided by the state at birth), and my BankID code (site in Norwegian only). And so far I have yet to have my bank account hacked. That being said neither have I had my WoW account hacked, though having used computers since getting my very own 486 back in the day; I have learned (sometimes from very bad experiences) to take my computer security seriously. Over the last three years (or more) with the exception of tracking cookies my computers have been clean for viruses and spyware at every scan (much like many other slashdoter's I reckon).
Though as the poster above mentioned if Blizzard does introduce security tokens, and I reckon they will especially since accounts are Battle.net now and not WoW specific, it will probably be packed with the next expansion. Personally I think it might be a good thing all in all, especially if it helps lower account theft. Though it would also help if people in general got some more instruction into how to keep their stuff secret and safe beaten into their skulls. I have family members (don't we all) that use their computers for online banking, among other things, yet fail to update spyware/virus scanners, firewall software, browsers and etc. And no amount of additional layers of login security will ever fully compensate for user ignorance.
Now considering some companies behaviour I would see why people could be sceptical. Like this story reported on Slashdot.
"Six companies have pleaded guilty to worldwide price fixing of Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Displays from Sept. 14, 2001, to Dec. 1, 2006. For violating the Sherman Act, the companies have agreed to pay criminal fines of over $860 Million. In addition, nine executives have been charged in the scandal. The pricing scam affected some of the largest companies at the time, including Apple, HP and Dell. (If you bought a TFT-LCD from them in that time frame, you may be one of the victimized consumers.) From the DOJ release, 'According to the charge, Chi Mei carried out the conspiracy by agreeing during meetings, conversations and communications to charge prices of TFT-LCD panels at certain pre-determined levels and issuing price quotations in accordance with the agreements reached. As a part of the conspiracy, Chi Mei exchanged information on sales of TFT-LCD panels for the purpose of monitoring and enforcing adherence to the agreed-upon prices.'"
Security debates don't fuel anything to do with think.
Unless you count Doublethink.