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Think the media has a liberal bias? watch G4
Sunday March 30, @01:56AM
For years I as a liberal have been subjected to the torture that is fox news calling itself "fair and balanced" and the republican lemmings here in the southeastern US rant on and on about the liberal bias of cnn and msnbc, both of which are at best center right.
Mentioning the bbc in front of law enforcement in this region will get you sacked off to gitmo where the ghost of mccarthy himself will try you for communism, after which you will be pilloried in the RNC headquarters with the plackard reading "pinko-godless-commie"
After abandoning tech tv when g4 acquired it I stumbled across the wayward channel again today. It has become the perfect left wing antithesis to fox (with a liberal dose of technology advertising disguised as mtv news).
The hosts speak in nonstop sexual innuendo which would make stick-in-the-muds like O'reilly climb the walls in horror. The particular feed I was watching transfixed me in fascination as they portrayed McCain (someone I would consider over clinton if obama is forced out of the running) as a skeleton rambling on with great senility. Pitching off his image with great disdain, a prolonged period is taken from the tech oriented programming to give a huge root to hillary on her way to the whitehouse.
The channel is like a retarded televised little brother of slashdot, except even further to the left on the spectrum.
So, to all of you whiners about ABC CNN, and MSNBC being left wing propaganda arms, I urge you to watch this channel for a few days. Then imagine a soundbyte proclaiming "fair and balanced" after a particularly harsh bash toward a right leaning figure or right wing talking point.
You now have your example of a real left wing media. You can sit down and enjoy the slight rightward slant of pretty much every respected news house.
For further reference on the lack of "liberal media bias", please see "what liberal media?"
Mentioning the bbc in front of law enforcement in this region will get you sacked off to gitmo where the ghost of mccarthy himself will try you for communism, after which you will be pilloried in the RNC headquarters with the plackard reading "pinko-godless-commie"
After abandoning tech tv when g4 acquired it I stumbled across the wayward channel again today. It has become the perfect left wing antithesis to fox (with a liberal dose of technology advertising disguised as mtv news).
The hosts speak in nonstop sexual innuendo which would make stick-in-the-muds like O'reilly climb the walls in horror. The particular feed I was watching transfixed me in fascination as they portrayed McCain (someone I would consider over clinton if obama is forced out of the running) as a skeleton rambling on with great senility. Pitching off his image with great disdain, a prolonged period is taken from the tech oriented programming to give a huge root to hillary on her way to the whitehouse.
The channel is like a retarded televised little brother of slashdot, except even further to the left on the spectrum.
So, to all of you whiners about ABC CNN, and MSNBC being left wing propaganda arms, I urge you to watch this channel for a few days. Then imagine a soundbyte proclaiming "fair and balanced" after a particularly harsh bash toward a right leaning figure or right wing talking point.
You now have your example of a real left wing media. You can sit down and enjoy the slight rightward slant of pretty much every respected news house.
For further reference on the lack of "liberal media bias", please see "what liberal media?"
The Fallacy of Conservative Economic Dogma
Tuesday January 01, @05:09AM
Republicans and libertarians adhere to a fundamentally fallacious economic policy which ignores such basic concepts as moral hazard.
Some may call this a "favorite gut reflex of left-liberals", i'm sure many will attack me with similarly baseless accusations of blind, partisan railing against the "system". This is, to be as blunt as Dick Sutphen, bull****.
I'm degreed in the field, partisan hackery has nothing to do with this issue.
Modern conservatives and libertarians neglect we have, in the history of the us, already applied both of their policies in actual practice in the modern age:
Around the the turn of the century, we took a "hands off" approach to capitalism.
This led to vast and horrendous poverty, monolithic and abusive monopolies, and eventually to the depression and the collapse of the economy as a whole.
Then in the Reagan era we had a "supply side" approach which attempted to create jobs and economic growth by offering wealth incentives to corporate owners and controllers, which also led to recession because the worker was not receiving that wealth to spend on finished goods.
Both of these approaches ignore the moral hazard of placing proprietors in control of the distribution of wealth. They will invariably, if unchecked , take every opportunity to keep this wealth to themselves rather than pass it on to consumers and facilitate the consumption which expands our economy.
The problem is conservative elements seem to think economics has a "goal" of absolute efficiency. Economics is a science, a tool to be used to shape policy toward society's benefit.
The most "absolutely efficient" system involves labor working for minimum subsistence, and without regulation to insure a middle class there won't be one. Business proprietors will suck up every bit of profit they can at the expense of the majority of the populace.
It goes further than this as we enter the twenty-first century, however.
Today's multinational conglomerates have power through market dominance which rivals or even surpasses governments, and as such need to be required to obide by the constitutional standards of life, liberty, property, and due process, or they can and will commit abuses against human and consumer rights.
This is already quite visible in the DMCA, under which hollywood has legislative control over the tech industry, and plays judge, jury, and executioner against senior citizens, college students, and single parents for a morally accepted, everyday activity.
Another quite visible example is the corporate assertion that property they sold to you, such as video game consoles, is still "theirs" to govern.
Is this neo-serfdom what conservatives really want? The absolutist opposition to regulation they display seems to support this perception.
I'm especially astonished that libertarians, who champion a life of self determination, would rail against invasive government on one end and support invasive corporate practice on the other.
The open, perfectly competitive market does not exist; nothing even close to it exists, and this fact has absolutely nothing to do with regulations. Tacit collusion, network externalities, and monopolistically competitive markets (this is different from the purist "monopoly") pose serious barriers to entry for some new guy to ride to the rescue in the marketplace. Only careful regulation can assist in this regard, and today this is just not the case. Regulation needs to be overhauled under careful public scrutiny, not eliminated or placed further into corporate control. Such a process can never be perfect, nothing in politics ever is, but this is no reason to oppose change.
To all who are not degreed in economics, please just stop with the "armchair" speculation.
The science is much more complex than the simplistic and unrefined models you were shown in high school or early college 101 or even 201 courses.
You never see armchair surgeons, armchair microbiologists, or armchair computer programmers.
How would you like it if some pizza delivery man walked into your office and started telling you how to do your job? Wouldn't you get mad and throw the "know it all" out? That's how I feel whenever I see these pundits who secluded themselves to law or journalism preach about "the free market".
Some may call this a "favorite gut reflex of left-liberals", i'm sure many will attack me with similarly baseless accusations of blind, partisan railing against the "system". This is, to be as blunt as Dick Sutphen, bull****.
I'm degreed in the field, partisan hackery has nothing to do with this issue.
Modern conservatives and libertarians neglect we have, in the history of the us, already applied both of their policies in actual practice in the modern age:
Around the the turn of the century, we took a "hands off" approach to capitalism.
This led to vast and horrendous poverty, monolithic and abusive monopolies, and eventually to the depression and the collapse of the economy as a whole.
Then in the Reagan era we had a "supply side" approach which attempted to create jobs and economic growth by offering wealth incentives to corporate owners and controllers, which also led to recession because the worker was not receiving that wealth to spend on finished goods.
Both of these approaches ignore the moral hazard of placing proprietors in control of the distribution of wealth. They will invariably, if unchecked , take every opportunity to keep this wealth to themselves rather than pass it on to consumers and facilitate the consumption which expands our economy.
The problem is conservative elements seem to think economics has a "goal" of absolute efficiency. Economics is a science, a tool to be used to shape policy toward society's benefit.
The most "absolutely efficient" system involves labor working for minimum subsistence, and without regulation to insure a middle class there won't be one. Business proprietors will suck up every bit of profit they can at the expense of the majority of the populace.
It goes further than this as we enter the twenty-first century, however.
Today's multinational conglomerates have power through market dominance which rivals or even surpasses governments, and as such need to be required to obide by the constitutional standards of life, liberty, property, and due process, or they can and will commit abuses against human and consumer rights.
This is already quite visible in the DMCA, under which hollywood has legislative control over the tech industry, and plays judge, jury, and executioner against senior citizens, college students, and single parents for a morally accepted, everyday activity.
Another quite visible example is the corporate assertion that property they sold to you, such as video game consoles, is still "theirs" to govern.
Is this neo-serfdom what conservatives really want? The absolutist opposition to regulation they display seems to support this perception.
I'm especially astonished that libertarians, who champion a life of self determination, would rail against invasive government on one end and support invasive corporate practice on the other.
The open, perfectly competitive market does not exist; nothing even close to it exists, and this fact has absolutely nothing to do with regulations. Tacit collusion, network externalities, and monopolistically competitive markets (this is different from the purist "monopoly") pose serious barriers to entry for some new guy to ride to the rescue in the marketplace. Only careful regulation can assist in this regard, and today this is just not the case. Regulation needs to be overhauled under careful public scrutiny, not eliminated or placed further into corporate control. Such a process can never be perfect, nothing in politics ever is, but this is no reason to oppose change.
To all who are not degreed in economics, please just stop with the "armchair" speculation.
The science is much more complex than the simplistic and unrefined models you were shown in high school or early college 101 or even 201 courses.
You never see armchair surgeons, armchair microbiologists, or armchair computer programmers.
How would you like it if some pizza delivery man walked into your office and started telling you how to do your job? Wouldn't you get mad and throw the "know it all" out? That's how I feel whenever I see these pundits who secluded themselves to law or journalism preach about "the free market".
The Economist's Rationale Behind Socialize Medicine.
Tuesday November 06 2007, @03:39PM
When it comes to socialized medicine, i've heard it all.
"I shouldn't pay for other people's services", arch conservatives say.
Others who believe the government incompetent simply consider the implementation too complicated to be pulled off successfully or efficiently.
People for this respond with numerous good reasons for their position.
The divorce of medical coverage from jobs frees family workers to be more mobile and ambitious.
The prices under the current private system are abusively high.
There are 45+ million americans currently uninsured.
Then there are the many proposals which seek "middle of the road" solutions retaining private control.
I'm not here to talk about any of these reasons. I'm here to provide a hard economic analysis.
I present to you a basic demand curve.
This demand curve represents the typical capitalist "free" market at equilibrium price dictated by competition for the majority of buyers while seeking to maximize profits. (price as the product of supply and demand)
Specific to my case, however, is the proper interpretation of this curve so far as cost/benefit analysis or consumer surplus as it applies to the distribution of healthcare in such a market.
At the market price indicated by the horizontal line, the people in the portion above this line are those who are able to afford and thus receive healthcare/health insurance. The higher up you go, the less the burden and the greater the surplus is to the consumer.
What I want to draw your attention to though is the portion below this price line. In every private marketplace such a portion exists, and I'm sure by now you can guess it represents people who can't afford it, and are thus not served. While this model is simplified, other factors come into play on this regard, such as health screenings singling people out for outrageously higher rates or outright exclusion. The point I'm making here is no matter what scheme you come up with to try to make healthcare universally obtainable, any which involve unregulated private markets will always have this "unserved" portion of the market
Every essential factor to first world lifestyle requires socialization or very stiff regulation to assure services are provided universally at the minimum possible price (or free). This includes water, electricity, phone lines, roads, shelter(welfare, unemployment, and housing subsidies), and food (food stamps).
Given this, the only relevant question we should be asking when deciding if socialized medicine should be introduced is "does basic medical care qualify as essential for a first world lifestyle".
If your answer is yes, then it's your duty to assure medical coverage is obtainable by every man, woman, and child sane enough to desire it. This means removing the "free market" forces which always result in a group of people unserved; this means socializing healthcare, either by direct government intervention/takeover, or by the stiff regulations similar to those requiring universal phone services without location-based price discrimination.
Because it sets nominal amounts with no relative bearing on the cost of medical care, medicaid is failing to cut it by a long shot.
"I shouldn't pay for other people's services", arch conservatives say.
Others who believe the government incompetent simply consider the implementation too complicated to be pulled off successfully or efficiently.
People for this respond with numerous good reasons for their position.
The divorce of medical coverage from jobs frees family workers to be more mobile and ambitious.
The prices under the current private system are abusively high.
There are 45+ million americans currently uninsured.
Then there are the many proposals which seek "middle of the road" solutions retaining private control.
I'm not here to talk about any of these reasons. I'm here to provide a hard economic analysis.
I present to you a basic demand curve.
This demand curve represents the typical capitalist "free" market at equilibrium price dictated by competition for the majority of buyers while seeking to maximize profits. (price as the product of supply and demand)
Specific to my case, however, is the proper interpretation of this curve so far as cost/benefit analysis or consumer surplus as it applies to the distribution of healthcare in such a market.
At the market price indicated by the horizontal line, the people in the portion above this line are those who are able to afford and thus receive healthcare/health insurance. The higher up you go, the less the burden and the greater the surplus is to the consumer.
What I want to draw your attention to though is the portion below this price line. In every private marketplace such a portion exists, and I'm sure by now you can guess it represents people who can't afford it, and are thus not served. While this model is simplified, other factors come into play on this regard, such as health screenings singling people out for outrageously higher rates or outright exclusion. The point I'm making here is no matter what scheme you come up with to try to make healthcare universally obtainable, any which involve unregulated private markets will always have this "unserved" portion of the market
Every essential factor to first world lifestyle requires socialization or very stiff regulation to assure services are provided universally at the minimum possible price (or free). This includes water, electricity, phone lines, roads, shelter(welfare, unemployment, and housing subsidies), and food (food stamps).
Given this, the only relevant question we should be asking when deciding if socialized medicine should be introduced is "does basic medical care qualify as essential for a first world lifestyle".
If your answer is yes, then it's your duty to assure medical coverage is obtainable by every man, woman, and child sane enough to desire it. This means removing the "free market" forces which always result in a group of people unserved; this means socializing healthcare, either by direct government intervention/takeover, or by the stiff regulations similar to those requiring universal phone services without location-based price discrimination.
Because it sets nominal amounts with no relative bearing on the cost of medical care, medicaid is failing to cut it by a long shot.
Objective Study, is comcast actually throttling bit torrent?
Sunday August 19 2007, @03:21AM
So I read this story concerning comcast bit torrent throttling last night and quite frankly it concerns me, but not for a reason you might think.
As a comcast user, I hopped on azureus and tested out the allegations, which tracked back to only this single site. So i fire up the client and am presented with the perfect opportunity for an initial test, the patch file, which gets auto-seeded.
That patch file seeds just fine considering the 10 to 1 seed to leech ratio. Non comcast users connected in 2's and 3's and stayed connected for a few minutes at a time. Long enough to gain a couple pieces.
Next i find the nearest "questionable" file from a tracker not to be acknowledged but which everybody knows. I grab 1/3 of this file, and once again the majority of peers connecting stay connected long enough to grab at least one piece if not more, and generally reflect the same performance i've seen for at least a year. They are also non-comcast suffixes.
While I dislike monopolies and huge centralized corporate power, I also believe judgment should be passed upon them in an objective manner. Said originating site for this story did not have any linked testimonials or actual technical data save that surrounding a new firewall software.
This is what i'm interested in, comcast users actually making tests on their connections using similar clients.
basic network configuration:
dmz'd machine (firewall dropped)
azureus(now latest version) with lazy bitfield set to "yes".
stating general geographical region might also be a good idea.
As a comcast user, I hopped on azureus and tested out the allegations, which tracked back to only this single site. So i fire up the client and am presented with the perfect opportunity for an initial test, the patch file, which gets auto-seeded.
That patch file seeds just fine considering the 10 to 1 seed to leech ratio. Non comcast users connected in 2's and 3's and stayed connected for a few minutes at a time. Long enough to gain a couple pieces.
Next i find the nearest "questionable" file from a tracker not to be acknowledged but which everybody knows. I grab 1/3 of this file, and once again the majority of peers connecting stay connected long enough to grab at least one piece if not more, and generally reflect the same performance i've seen for at least a year. They are also non-comcast suffixes.
While I dislike monopolies and huge centralized corporate power, I also believe judgment should be passed upon them in an objective manner. Said originating site for this story did not have any linked testimonials or actual technical data save that surrounding a new firewall software.
This is what i'm interested in, comcast users actually making tests on their connections using similar clients.
basic network configuration:
dmz'd machine (firewall dropped)
azureus(now latest version) with lazy bitfield set to "yes".
stating general geographical region might also be a good idea.
Are xbox360's "e-fuses" illegal?
Sunday May 20 2007, @09:46AM
As an avid XBMC fan i've been checking up every few months or so on progress toward homebrew on the new 360.
Apparently a recent hypervisor crack has been permanently sealed by " blowing e-fuses" to remotely damage individuals' consoles, physically disabling the ability to downgrade to earlier firmware versions.
The rub is they are not licensing or leasing but selling the consoles, and gave no notification of the silent changes they made to other people's hardware. To excerpt the relevant material from this discussion:
If i'm not mistaken, the activity detailed in this account constitutes a violation of the computer fraud and security act as well as other laws governing both cybercrime and vandalism. I'm interested in whether or not the FSF among others have examined this matter.
While I fully agree Microsoft has the right to void warranties, deny repair, and ban users from xbox live, I would like to see a precedent set requiring at the very least active contractual consent before a company is allowed to remotely cripplemy hardware.
Apparently a recent hypervisor crack has been permanently sealed by " blowing e-fuses" to remotely damage individuals' consoles, physically disabling the ability to downgrade to earlier firmware versions.
The rub is they are not licensing or leasing but selling the consoles, and gave no notification of the silent changes they made to other people's hardware. To excerpt the relevant material from this discussion:
"There was nothing printed on the box or in the owner's manual stating that physical changes will be made to the product after purchasing. As far as I'm concerned the product is no longer the product I originally purchased. I'm not licensing the hardware....Notification and consent only pertained to a stated software update, not a hardware update."
"i looked all over the ms website and checked the eula for the 360 and live service and all it says in a nutshell is that m$ can upgrade the SOFTWARE of our consoles without prior notice."
"someone will compare this to satellite receivers but that is very different. You own the receiver and the smart card that gets modified is owned by the service provider."
If i'm not mistaken, the activity detailed in this account constitutes a violation of the computer fraud and security act as well as other laws governing both cybercrime and vandalism. I'm interested in whether or not the FSF among others have examined this matter.
While I fully agree Microsoft has the right to void warranties, deny repair, and ban users from xbox live, I would like to see a precedent set requiring at the very least active contractual consent before a company is allowed to remotely cripplemy hardware.
