Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Corporate media doesn't act in public's interes (Score 1) 113

What you call "the slow way" is called journalism. Journalism, like scientific work or any other work worth doing, takes time to do. There are plenty of examples of independent journalism being done well, some have already been shared in this thread by others. Here are some more that come to mind: Democracy Now!, NOW with Bill Moyers and Bill Moyers Journal were both quite well done and worth watching reruns/archives (moreso the Journal), CounterPunch, Harry Shearer's weekly Le Show, and The Real News. All of these focus on issues of importance, get more deeply into those issues via interviews with those who have studied the topic in-depth via investigative journalism and those who work in the field, and leave you with pointers to more information you can study yourself. I'm sure there are so many more examples of this work being done well I didn't list but don't let that stop you from trying various sources and reading books (paper books, not DRM'd proprietary-driven computer-based readers that track you, threaten to cut off your reading, or deny you the other freedoms paper grants). You won't agree with everything you see, hear, and read but the point isn't to manufacture your consent, it's to get you thinking critically about the world outside the allowable limits of debate so often featured in mainstream coverage.

Comment Corporate media doesn't act in public's interest (Score 1) 113

But the corporate media (including repeaters like /.) are designed to hew closely to the "firehose" reportage which includes drawing conclusions quickly so people stay focused on what's coming next, and anything undesirable that somehow gets reported doesn't stick around in the reported consciousness for long. This is inherently incompatible with real life where, as you say, real change takes far longer to be seen. Adherents to the firehose approach implicitly say their take is a good thing (obviously few would argue they're actively promoting something bad) despite the foreseeable adverse impact on the public's welfare.

Comment Re: but I thought 90fps was the thing (Score 2) 35

The 90fps is pretty much required everywhere, as the issue is your head motion, not the action happening in the game world itself. If the screen image and your head motion aren't in sync the whole virtual world is wobbling around and can make you motion sick extremely very fast. However both Sony and Oculus have a form of timewarp frame interpolation that can take the last rendered image and reproject it to your new head position, this allows smoothing out lower framerates a little. Sony is using it in some games all the time to scale an 60fps input to a 120fps output. On the Rift it's used more as an emergency tool when the framerate dips.

Comment Comparing proprietors is not freedom. (Score 1) 531

So you're switching away from a browser that is still Free Software (which provides the ultimate configurability), the basis of variants (GNU IceCat, for example) that make it more convenient to respect your software freedom by only showing you Free addons by default, for a proprietary browser. And then you're getting lost in the weeds by debating the purported merits of one proprietor over another (Google vs. Opera) where you know so little about both such comparisons pale to what you give up by choosing any proprietary software.

I'd rather keep my software freedom, run more Free Software, and enjoy the wide variety of Free Software addons to help me keep browser privacy (NoScript, Priv3+, disabling Javascript-based clipboard manipulations, browser ID spoofing, and so on).

Submission + - Sandcats.io: free dynamic DNS for Sandstorm users (sandstorm.io)

paulproteus writes: Sandstorm is open source server software that makes it easy to install web apps like Ethercalc or Let’s Chat. But that’s not much use if your server doesn’t have a name, and setting up DNS correctly for a server can be a complicated, fiddly process.

I've been working on sandcats.io, a free dynamic DNS service for Sandstorm users, and it's now ready. It now takes 120 seconds to go from an empty Linux virtual machine to a working personal server, DNS and all. I'm hopeful to get Slashdot's feedback!

Comment Re:Men's Rights morons (Score 1) 776

Still, when you look at some proxy variables for discrimination, such as imprisonment, homelessness, victimization rates in violence, suicide rates and average lifespan it's quite interesting how most groups suffering discrimination are overrepresented in those negative outcomes. Except when it comes to women vs. men, when apparently women are so discriminated against, yet somehow seem to avoid actually suffering from the worst outcomes that usually follow such discrimination.

But well, hey, they're not as well represented on corporate boards, which most men are.

Comment Le Show and The Big Uneasy are both excellent (Score 5, Interesting) 214

By which you're referring to "Le Show" which covers items in the news and his very well researched documentary "The Big Uneasy" which shows how the Army Corps of Engineers made Hurricane Katrina far worse than it would have been and evades responsibility throughout. Speaking of showing, Shearer backs up his points by quoting and interviewing experts in the relevant fields of discussion and by quoting published hypocrisy from those in power. That's far more backing for his points than I see you giving your views which purport to know what he thinks. In short, you apparently don't think he's funny or insightful but "without actual good context" for anyone to see your views as anything but a name-calling accusation.

Comment Digital Restrictions hand in hand with Open Source (Score 1) 371

Quite right about how Digital "Rights" Management is a propaganda term designed to frame the issue as though it's okay to take user/reader rights away from them in the switch from one means of seeing media to another. But Mozilla has always framed its work as "open source". So one should expect with "open"ness -- the open source movement is, as Brad Kuhn pointed out recently, the greenwashing movement it was defined to be. The Free Software Foundation has long pointed out how "open source" differs from "free software" (older essay, younger essay). The younger open source movement accepts proprietary software and the older free software movement does not because open source was defined as a proprietor-friendly response to the user freedom-seeking social movement.

Comment Re:Compares well (Score 2) 408

No-fault is about taking money away from lawyers, who used to litigate each and every auto accident as a lawsuit in court before the insurers would pay. Eventually the insurers decided that they spent more on lawyers than accident payments, and they had no reason to do so.

If you want to go back to the way things were, you are welcome to spend lots of time and money in court for trivial things, and see how you like it. I will provide you with expert witness testimony for $7.50/minute plus expenses. The lawyers charge more.

In general your insurer can figure out for themselves if you were at fault or not, and AAA insurance usually tells me when they think I was, or wasn't, when they set rates.

Comment Re:More than $100 (Score 1) 515

If we don't have more than two children per couple, the human race would've died out a long time ago.

I think the proper way to state that is "If we didn't in the past", not "If we don't". If we were to have 2 children per couple (approximately, the real value is enough children to replace each individual but not more) from this day on, it would not be necessary to adjust the number upward to avoid a population bottleneck for tens of thousands of years.

Comment Re:$30 (Score 1) 515

The Northern California Amtrak is actually pretty good for commuting from Sacramento to the Bay Area and back because the right of way is 4 tracks wide in critical places and it has priority over other trains for much of the time.

Acela in the Boston/NY/DC corridor is also good, because the right of way is 4 tracks or more for most of the way, and it has a track to itself along a lot of the route. Other railroads run on parallel tracks.

For the most part, though, Amtrak suffers from not having exclusive track. It runs on freight lines that host cars so heavy that the rail bends an inch when the wheels are on top of it (I've seen this first hand).

Slashdot Top Deals

Today is a good day for information-gathering. Read someone else's mail file.

Working...