Guess what? City streets weren't originally made for cars, though they're legally permitted now. Many cities and communities around the world are converting their streets back to their original condition--pedestrian-only. Sorry your vehicle is obsolete.
Well, of course my notions of "good" and "bad" are colored by my values. My beef is the same as many others I've seen in this discussion: that Slashdot could attract and retain a larger, more informed, more intelligent crowd (that's "good") if only the editors ran things a little differently. Don't get me wrong--the last thing I want to see is Slashdot devolving into Digg-style anarchy, and on the contrary, if Slashdot weren't so successful at pissing off its most thoughtful voices, I don't see any reason why there should be any comparison with Digg at all.
I wonder how many Slashdot users agree with that definition of "good." Certainly if you were the type to want a smaller, more intimate, more personal Slashdot, you'd disagree, and maybe you'd even look kindly on the bitchslapping and perceived editorial hostility towards the readership that serve to drive away potential contributors. That's just as valid a sentiment, but it's one I don't share.
I don't want to be an editor, I just want to have editors who don't bitchslap people for petty personal reasons. It's not as bad as it used to be (before michael got fired), but it's impossible to know for sure.
I like this place, which is why I want to see it improve. Becoming less hostile for intelligent commenters would be a step in the right direction.
What's up with the blurriness and staticky sound? Here's the original version of that video, plus a couple more, which haven't suffered a thousand transcodings. (Or is the copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy motif a subtle commentary? Either way...)
I don't think people care about the bitchslapping per se as much as the lack of transparency and accountability, which makes the process seem more capricious and arbitrary than I'm sure (*rolls eyes*) it really is.
They're more like demonstrations à la March on Washington, not "uprisings" in the revolutionary let's-overthrow-the-bastards sense. The vast majority aren't illegal, though I imagine organizers in the cities need to obtain proper permits and all that. Keep in mind last year's statistics may be a little skewed (depending on methodology, I haven't looked into it) because of widespread demonstrations against Japan, though this in any case would only account for a small portion of all 74,000.
Access to top-flight talent. Ease of meeting face-to-face with business partners. No matter how good telecommunications may get, it will never be quite as good as physical presence. After all, you can choose to videoconference even if you're only one room apart, but the opposite isn't true--you can't simulate physical presence with a telecom link.
Ask yourself why corporate headquarters continue popping up in New York, and nowadays are even moving back. Like the mayor says, from a business perspective, the city is a luxury good. Economies of scale, scope, and agglomeration outweigh the increased tax burden. Same as always.
Outside Chicago, San Francisco, and New York? Yeah, it's very much true. But I bet Europeans, at least those who live outside urban centers, are just as "lazy" after accounting for the increased cost of petrol. Can I ask where you live?
That contention, then, is wrong. Slashdot editors are known to exert the "bitchslap," downmodding a user's entire past comment history (including anonymous postings) at once, locking them out of posting for months. Acknowledgment or explanation is rarely granted. I don't care enough to Google for supporting evidence myself, but you could do it with five minutes free time. Point? It's perfectly valid to criticize Digg for being too closed--but don't think for one second Slashdot is any more transparent.
In case the story's censored by those dastardly profit-motivated editors of the Economist, the most relevant bit is "there were some 74,000 protests last year, involving more than 3.7m people; up from 10,000 in 1994 and 58,000 in 2003. Sun Liping, a Chinese academic, has calculated that demonstrations involving more than 100 people occurred in 337 cities and 1,955 counties in the first 10 months of last year. This amounted to between 120 and 250 such protests daily in urban areas, and 90 to 160 in villages. These figures are likely to be conservative. Chinese officials often try to cover up disturbances in their areas to avoid trouble with their superiors."
I'll add that more than half China's population lives in the rural countryside, eking out sustenance on increasingly infertile soil. Development and industrial pollution threaten their land, and the income gap between them and the privileged urban rich--which makes America's income inequality look like a rounding error--causes a great deal of resentment. At least that's what I'm told.
"Liangzai's" point, if I may be so bold, is that there's nothing in your post that every Chinese citizen doesn't already know. In fact, most people in China (particularly among the urban middle class) probably know more about the Tiananmen Square protests of '89 than the average American knows about Kent State in '70.
It's a mystery why we in the West feel a need to impute ignorance on China's citizens. If only they knew how things worked in the West, they'd cast off their chains of oppression! They'd build a government structured on Western principles of freedom, political equality, and justice! While China is certainly heading towards the recognition of individual rights and liberties, including Western notions such as privacy, it's not because our values are "superior" in any objective third-party sense; rather, China's finding these values appropriate for themselves, by themselves, and they're a good mesh with cultural traditions that are thousands of years older than our own.
Can't speak for "liangzai," but the article tries to convey the idea that Western cultural norms, and specifically our worshipful deference to free speech, aren't universal by any means. Even here in the West, there are limits to freedom of speech--kiddie porn, as has been mentioned, but also things like Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi speech are censored in many parts of what we'd call the "free world." Ultimately the justification is that these policies promote a certain way of thinking, and stigmatize the repugnant; is it so inconceivable to you that Chinese culture might draw the line elsewhere?
This isn't to apologize for the government's repression of Tibetans, or its habit of haphazard and arbitrary detentions (which are growing less haphazard and arbitrary), or any of the rest of it. No government is perfect; the difference, perhaps, is that China's citizens feel theirs is improving, while I'm not so sure you could say the same about ours (I'm American).
Bingo. Mod parent up. One thing you have to realize about Americans (and Westerners in general) is that our culture places such a great importance on individual liberties, including freedom of speech, that we don't tend to believe anyone could possibly have other priorities--and if they do, by golly, it's a problem that needs to be corrected, and for their own good!
We're trained to think this way from birth. It doesn't help that almost all the media we're exposed to is our own, which makes it difficult to remember our priorities are not universal.
I think if given the opportunity, many of China's farmers in the countryside would leap at the opportunity to give their children a better education than they were able to receive. Partly this is due to the importance Chinese culture places on education and self-improvement; partly, too, it's a reaction to the deprivation and sense of loss many Chinese of parenting age feel about having been subjected to the Cultural Revolution, which denied them a liberal, open education.
Basically, it would give the rural poor a chance to educate themselves, so the theory goes, without having to move all the way to Guangzhou or Beijing. Understand also that the rural poor are hugely disaffected with their government right now, for various reasons, and they stage protests all the time (which aren't often violently quashed, contrary to the article's implication). The younger generation is already moving to the cities in great numbers.
This is true, but don't overestimate the predictive power of economics. Companies, like individuals, act against their own rational self-interest all the time. Nations do it too. The stuff you learn in Econ 101 wouldn't predict Japan provoking the U.S. in 1942--and any economic theory that would, is going to have a strong bent towards the anthropological and behavioral sciences, where all the equations in the world won't help you anymore.
Large groups of people behave just as rationally or irrationally as any one of us individually. I can think of a dozen reasonable-sounding justifications off the top of my head for Exxon to suppress innovation in alternative fuels... though I agree it isn't likely; stupid companies do exist, but they tend not to survive.
Don't get me wrong--I have, or had, a profile on thefacebook too--but isn't it telling about its audience that thefacebook enforces such a bland consistency? I mean, if you want a directory, use LDAP. There's nothing wrong with exploiting the Web to its full potential, and MySpace lets everyone do just that.
I've seen lots of MySpace profiles with piss-poor taste, but at least they give you the freedom to experiment. And I've seen many MySpace profiles that make the One Facebook Way look utterly repugnant by comparison.
thefacebook is a coop apartment building where the board imposes strict restrictions on your every move. MySpace is a converted open-plan warehouse with free spraypaints, a stage, a mike, and an invitation to do your worst.
My school was one of the first few as well, and the way things worked out, everyone with interests not restricted to drinking and fucking ended up migrating to MySpace, leaving thefacebook behind for the uptown white-bread toga party types. The advantage of MySpace (to turn your point around) is that you're able to avoid the meatheads. For the most part.
I understand that attitude completely, but you have to understand there's (at least) two very camps of people: those who actively seek out spicy foods, and those who would reject oatmeal if it were too colorful. Certainly, the latter should stick to thefacebook if it offers them the sterile, sanitized environment they prefer. There's no shame in that.
Yeah, I'm painting in overly broad brush strokes, but so what? This is Slashdot, not a C-SPAN roundtable.
Since I see so much bitching on this site over MySpace's perceived shittiness, I just wanted to point out that some of us actually appreciate the flexibility MySpace offers in customizing the appearance of our pages. It's a hell of a lot easier, too, than setting up your own domain with the blogs and friend features MySpace provides as a matter of course.
No, this is not a joke. Compaed to the circus of color, sound, and animation that is MySpace, Facebook is totally boring. I don't know anyone who still uses Facebook other than fratboys and squares.
Even that wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so terrible at copying. When they reinvent, they make it worse, particularly by finding ways to signify their lack of care for the people who inevitably must use their products. Microsoft's focus is on reimplementing cool engineering tricks (which they accomplish passably enough); user interface is an afterthought, and seems always to end up inferior to the original.
Companies and individuals that reinvent and add value in so doing don't attract nearly the vitriol or accusations of evil.
Slashdot Mirror
Guess what? City streets weren't originally made for cars, though they're legally permitted now. Many cities and communities around the world are converting their streets back to their original condition--pedestrian-only. Sorry your vehicle is obsolete.
Well, of course my notions of "good" and "bad" are colored by my values. My beef is the same as many others I've seen in this discussion: that Slashdot could attract and retain a larger, more informed, more intelligent crowd (that's "good") if only the editors ran things a little differently. Don't get me wrong--the last thing I want to see is Slashdot devolving into Digg-style anarchy, and on the contrary, if Slashdot weren't so successful at pissing off its most thoughtful voices, I don't see any reason why there should be any comparison with Digg at all.
I wonder how many Slashdot users agree with that definition of "good." Certainly if you were the type to want a smaller, more intimate, more personal Slashdot, you'd disagree, and maybe you'd even look kindly on the bitchslapping and perceived editorial hostility towards the readership that serve to drive away potential contributors. That's just as valid a sentiment, but it's one I don't share.
Because there's more to a PC than its processor?
Well, I hope you corrected the article.
Seriously, what reason is there to believe it's a one-time pad? Might as well be random noise. What would be the point?
I don't want to be an editor, I just want to have editors who don't bitchslap people for petty personal reasons. It's not as bad as it used to be (before michael got fired), but it's impossible to know for sure.
I like this place, which is why I want to see it improve. Becoming less hostile for intelligent commenters would be a step in the right direction.
Thank you for the only useful comment in this whole discussion.
What's up with the blurriness and staticky sound? Here's the original version of that video, plus a couple more, which haven't suffered a thousand transcodings. (Or is the copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy motif a subtle commentary? Either way...)
I don't think people care about the bitchslapping per se as much as the lack of transparency and accountability, which makes the process seem more capricious and arbitrary than I'm sure (*rolls eyes*) it really is.
They're more like demonstrations à la March on Washington, not "uprisings" in the revolutionary let's-overthrow-the-bastards sense. The vast majority aren't illegal, though I imagine organizers in the cities need to obtain proper permits and all that. Keep in mind last year's statistics may be a little skewed (depending on methodology, I haven't looked into it) because of widespread demonstrations against Japan, though this in any case would only account for a small portion of all 74,000.
Access to top-flight talent. Ease of meeting face-to-face with business partners. No matter how good telecommunications may get, it will never be quite as good as physical presence. After all, you can choose to videoconference even if you're only one room apart, but the opposite isn't true--you can't simulate physical presence with a telecom link.
Ask yourself why corporate headquarters continue popping up in New York, and nowadays are even moving back. Like the mayor says, from a business perspective, the city is a luxury good. Economies of scale, scope, and agglomeration outweigh the increased tax burden. Same as always.
Outside Chicago, San Francisco, and New York? Yeah, it's very much true. But I bet Europeans, at least those who live outside urban centers, are just as "lazy" after accounting for the increased cost of petrol. Can I ask where you live?
That contention, then, is wrong. Slashdot editors are known to exert the "bitchslap," downmodding a user's entire past comment history (including anonymous postings) at once, locking them out of posting for months. Acknowledgment or explanation is rarely granted. I don't care enough to Google for supporting evidence myself, but you could do it with five minutes free time. Point? It's perfectly valid to criticize Digg for being too closed--but don't think for one second Slashdot is any more transparent.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id =4462719
In case the story's censored by those dastardly profit-motivated editors of the Economist, the most relevant bit is "there were some 74,000 protests last year, involving more than 3.7m people; up from 10,000 in 1994 and 58,000 in 2003. Sun Liping, a Chinese academic, has calculated that demonstrations involving more than 100 people occurred in 337 cities and 1,955 counties in the first 10 months of last year. This amounted to between 120 and 250 such protests daily in urban areas, and 90 to 160 in villages. These figures are likely to be conservative. Chinese officials often try to cover up disturbances in their areas to avoid trouble with their superiors."
I'll add that more than half China's population lives in the rural countryside, eking out sustenance on increasingly infertile soil. Development and industrial pollution threaten their land, and the income gap between them and the privileged urban rich--which makes America's income inequality look like a rounding error--causes a great deal of resentment. At least that's what I'm told.
"Liangzai's" point, if I may be so bold, is that there's nothing in your post that every Chinese citizen doesn't already know. In fact, most people in China (particularly among the urban middle class) probably know more about the Tiananmen Square protests of '89 than the average American knows about Kent State in '70.
It's a mystery why we in the West feel a need to impute ignorance on China's citizens. If only they knew how things worked in the West, they'd cast off their chains of oppression! They'd build a government structured on Western principles of freedom, political equality, and justice! While China is certainly heading towards the recognition of individual rights and liberties, including Western notions such as privacy, it's not because our values are "superior" in any objective third-party sense; rather, China's finding these values appropriate for themselves, by themselves, and they're a good mesh with cultural traditions that are thousands of years older than our own.
Can't speak for "liangzai," but the article tries to convey the idea that Western cultural norms, and specifically our worshipful deference to free speech, aren't universal by any means. Even here in the West, there are limits to freedom of speech--kiddie porn, as has been mentioned, but also things like Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi speech are censored in many parts of what we'd call the "free world." Ultimately the justification is that these policies promote a certain way of thinking, and stigmatize the repugnant; is it so inconceivable to you that Chinese culture might draw the line elsewhere?
This isn't to apologize for the government's repression of Tibetans, or its habit of haphazard and arbitrary detentions (which are growing less haphazard and arbitrary), or any of the rest of it. No government is perfect; the difference, perhaps, is that China's citizens feel theirs is improving, while I'm not so sure you could say the same about ours (I'm American).
Bingo. Mod parent up. One thing you have to realize about Americans (and Westerners in general) is that our culture places such a great importance on individual liberties, including freedom of speech, that we don't tend to believe anyone could possibly have other priorities--and if they do, by golly, it's a problem that needs to be corrected, and for their own good!
We're trained to think this way from birth. It doesn't help that almost all the media we're exposed to is our own, which makes it difficult to remember our priorities are not universal.
I think if given the opportunity, many of China's farmers in the countryside would leap at the opportunity to give their children a better education than they were able to receive. Partly this is due to the importance Chinese culture places on education and self-improvement; partly, too, it's a reaction to the deprivation and sense of loss many Chinese of parenting age feel about having been subjected to the Cultural Revolution, which denied them a liberal, open education.
Basically, it would give the rural poor a chance to educate themselves, so the theory goes, without having to move all the way to Guangzhou or Beijing. Understand also that the rural poor are hugely disaffected with their government right now, for various reasons, and they stage protests all the time (which aren't often violently quashed, contrary to the article's implication). The younger generation is already moving to the cities in great numbers.
This is true, but don't overestimate the predictive power of economics. Companies, like individuals, act against their own rational self-interest all the time. Nations do it too. The stuff you learn in Econ 101 wouldn't predict Japan provoking the U.S. in 1942--and any economic theory that would, is going to have a strong bent towards the anthropological and behavioral sciences, where all the equations in the world won't help you anymore.
Large groups of people behave just as rationally or irrationally as any one of us individually. I can think of a dozen reasonable-sounding justifications off the top of my head for Exxon to suppress innovation in alternative fuels... though I agree it isn't likely; stupid companies do exist, but they tend not to survive.
Dude, not that I disagree with you, but the subject matter of Econ 1101 is why everything you learned in 101 was wrong. Oh and your professor hates you.
Don't get me wrong--I have, or had, a profile on thefacebook too--but isn't it telling about its audience that thefacebook enforces such a bland consistency? I mean, if you want a directory, use LDAP. There's nothing wrong with exploiting the Web to its full potential, and MySpace lets everyone do just that.
I've seen lots of MySpace profiles with piss-poor taste, but at least they give you the freedom to experiment. And I've seen many MySpace profiles that make the One Facebook Way look utterly repugnant by comparison.
thefacebook is a coop apartment building where the board imposes strict restrictions on your every move. MySpace is a converted open-plan warehouse with free spraypaints, a stage, a mike, and an invitation to do your worst.
Anyone who points out an alternative viewpoint is a "troll"? It's no wonder you can't handle MySpace.
My school was one of the first few as well, and the way things worked out, everyone with interests not restricted to drinking and fucking ended up migrating to MySpace, leaving thefacebook behind for the uptown white-bread toga party types. The advantage of MySpace (to turn your point around) is that you're able to avoid the meatheads. For the most part.
I understand that attitude completely, but you have to understand there's (at least) two very camps of people: those who actively seek out spicy foods, and those who would reject oatmeal if it were too colorful. Certainly, the latter should stick to thefacebook if it offers them the sterile, sanitized environment they prefer. There's no shame in that.
Yeah, I'm painting in overly broad brush strokes, but so what? This is Slashdot, not a C-SPAN roundtable.
Since I see so much bitching on this site over MySpace's perceived shittiness, I just wanted to point out that some of us actually appreciate the flexibility MySpace offers in customizing the appearance of our pages. It's a hell of a lot easier, too, than setting up your own domain with the blogs and friend features MySpace provides as a matter of course.
No, this is not a joke. Compaed to the circus of color, sound, and animation that is MySpace, Facebook is totally boring. I don't know anyone who still uses Facebook other than fratboys and squares.
Then again, I'm deaf and blind.
Even that wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so terrible at copying. When they reinvent, they make it worse, particularly by finding ways to signify their lack of care for the people who inevitably must use their products. Microsoft's focus is on reimplementing cool engineering tricks (which they accomplish passably enough); user interface is an afterthought, and seems always to end up inferior to the original.
Companies and individuals that reinvent and add value in so doing don't attract nearly the vitriol or accusations of evil.