And once again

"the way the internet already works" depends on whether you talking about the internet up until 2005, when it was governed by the "common carrier" rules that mandated equal service, or AFTER 2005, when the law was changed.

make substantive arguments about what's better about the different ways it has worked, but arguing from a 3-year-old status quo is just silly.

yeah what's the all the dandelion hate?

especially when lawns are generally harmful to the environment, and wasteful! Unnaturally homogenous growth that usually require lots of chemicals to maintain.. Lawns are also killing off much of the coastal areas since their shallow roots allow sandy soil to wash away (and take all their nasty fertilizers with them into the ocean). Dandelions manage to live without poisoning the world around them, that's not such a bad thing..

Dandelions are pretty, nutritious, hardy, and adaptable. They are a great example of playing to natural strengths rather than enforcing a rigid vision on the world and expending enormous energy in order to try to maintain that rigidity.

in other words, nice analogy!

Roboton, whatever it's like now, AFAIK it wasn't like that up until 2005, when ISPs were required by law to maintain neutral services as common carriers. It wasn't until a court decision (and lotsa lobbying) relabeled internet service as "information" rather than "communication" that they were legally allowed to discriminate. that was only 3 years ago!

Patent examiners get paid on approval of patents. That's incentive to approve.

plus it's faster to improve than to investigate, and with the million-patent backlog, that's even more incentive to approve.

I blame the patent office, but I also blame its being totally understaffed and under-funded, and also the expansion of patent applicability to new things and processes which increases the backlog and the expertise required.

Decius, you are pretty much utterly wrong.

critiquing culture is not censorship. Telling people they can't critique culture? blinkered but not censorship, unless you are the government. But surely closer to censorship than the people engaged in critique. This idea that visual/artistic/popcultural representations don't matter, that people exist in some kind of psychological bubble, apparently fully formed without input from their environment --that is a total fantasy with no basis in psychology or any other systematic exploration of human thought and development. It doesn't mean we are puppets, or programmed by the images we interact with, but they do affect us. Along with discounting science, do you also think advertising is a billion-dollar industry based on having no predictable, systematic effects?

In fact, the best argument for us NOT being fully controlled by the images we see, is the presence of people contradicting, analyzing and critiquing those images. Yet when we have a critique, you are the one who wants us to shut up and take it as given? You seem to think that "counter-culture" means going along with whatever dumb-ass marketing scheme some company has come up with.

GTA is part of culture, as many people have pointed out, it reflects particular aspects of our culture while masking, hiding, or filtering other parts (again, for all you people who argue that it is just reflecting reality, your vision of the world is pretty narrow and sad, and if GTA reinforces that it is clearly problematic). But anyway, GTA is part of culture, it is consciously manufactured by a profit-seeking company that makes use of extensive research on what will sell. That's not in itself bad, but how on earth is it "counter-culture" to take all those choices as given? How is it "counter-culture" to avoid criticizing culture?

you seem to think "counter-culture" means "consuming certain products marketed to me as counter-culture."

all that control doesn't seem to get more than 6% of rapists into jail... but I'm sure KA has some exciting explanation for that.

wow, Kyle just when I think the 1950s (or the Victorian era) was over, someone pops up to tell me how my feminine wiles are the way to power. yeah, i don't need the vote either because my "control" over Teh Menz will make sure I'm represented. Of course if I am not 'attached' to any Menz I have nobody to control, so get me back to the kitchen in some man's house! Or get me to breedin' *but I'll need to make sure to have boys to "control"

More generally I think some of the point is that although the game is based on killing everyone, female characters are particularly limited, and that aspect reinforces stereotypes of women in a way that reinforces some pretty nasty sexist stereotyping. I think that's true for a lot of racial and gender stereotyping in GTA too, but the killing-hookers thing is pretty stark. Also, the fact that the game is popular is probably partly because of the way it portrays the world (which is not "reality" btw, do you see the hooker's kid starving to death or selling his tail because some asshole shot his mom? or does the hooker have a chance to grab the gun and shoot you to death?), which is kinda sad and revealing.

it's not that games are more to blame than other aspects of society.. but it's particularly lazy to keep pointing at OTHER media - when people target movies' reinforcement of sexism than it's all "nooo, why aren't complaining about that OTHER thing." Sexism is worth pointing out wherever you find it. Admitting it's sexist and figuring out how you want to deal with that is your call. Pretending it's not really sexist leads you into Kyle's fantasy-land, and, coincidentally, makes you an enabler of sexism.

I'd like to hold them accountable, but considering a bunch of them just got off scot free for shooting to death an unarmed guy on his wedding day (with pauses to reload).. I'm not so optimistic about the cyclists. Then again, are the cyclists mostly white? If so maybe there's a chance the media will make a big deal of it.

that's as may be, but is "environmental determinism" a method or a world view? because it's the method of 'proving'one's questions that's partly at stake in how "good" he is.

when you say "evolutionist" you mean "social evolutionist," right> because that seems to me more questionable than biological evolution..

If I understand it, that means he thinks that there are different societies on the same scale of evolution, at different stages, so presumabl the state-ruled ones are at the "top" and non-state ruled ones are at "lower" on the scale? I can see that in his paper.

is there only one way to have a better society (i.e only one scale)? that was my question, reading his piece as well.

It does matter whether he is an anthropologist, although of course there are good anthropologists and bad ones, because the field of anthropology has spent some time dealing with what it means to be presenting or representing people, what are the ethics or implications of generalizing about an entire culture based on whatever interactions one has had on it, how to structure interactions in ways that generate more than (for example) a male-centric view of the culture..

and the idea that "people should be judged on their work" kind of falls apart in the social sciences. How would you "judge" Diamond? what kind of information do you need to know if his work is good or not?

the point some folks are trying to make is that he may not be meeting the standards of anthropology, which are different in some ways from those of journalism, travel writing, and personal memoir.

I think the standards of anthropology are pretty good ones, because they usually try to cope with the ethics and effects of speaking on behalf of, or representing different cultures. The field has developed a set of methodological and representational tools to work against, for example, reifying racist or colonial attitudes or representing people in ways that differ from how they see themselves. a personal memoir, for example, is usually held to no such standard in terms of its value.

I don't buy the generalization that "an armed population is harder to control than an unarmed population," it's just the control is differently expressed. It looks to me like guns in the US serve symbolic purposes that prevent us from organizing to resist tyranny.

At what point do we get or have we gotten armed resistance to government in recent years within the US? Mostly when there has been a fanatic religious group involved. It wasn't gun ownership that fueled resistance, it was a rival ideology where those who held it believed in it enough to challenge the government in an organized way.

Having a world view that supports organized resistance to government does not require guns.
And judging from recent examples in the US, having guns AND a rival world view doesn't seem to work out so well either..

Cdarville - these guys have been doing it for at least 9 years - when I lived in london in 1999 the place looked pretty established then..

but of course it isn't new - DIY kidz have been re-purposing thrift store clothes for as long as I can remember. It's the cool look tat counts. their stuff is hella fun!

Teresa

That was a great summary of why blaming the victims of the mortgage crisis is a total misreading of the situation. I have seen a lot of people saying that, and it totally ignores the reality of information, power, culture and history. Please post it more publicly?

aw was the big bad man bullying poor widdle wall street? and those helpless little CEOs, was he scawy to them?

half those things are not really something that turns me against him.

betraying his wife/being a dumbass, yes

the inability for people to recognize the difference between greed, ignorance, desperation, and weakness is pretty depressing.

Even if you think greedy people should be punished, I don't think weak, ignorant or desparate people ought to be made homeless, starved, or otherwise taken advantage of.

Why so much judgment on the victims, while the people who take advantage of victims apparently aren't to be strongly condemned? Being weak is a choice, but taking advantage of the weak is natural?

and speaking of weakness, desperation and ignorance, those can all be transitory, it's possible to move on or improve from those positions if you are not targeted by a predator and exploited. Giving people a chance to improve their position through some protection (much like most people think a good education and nutrition in childhood isn't coddling but simply necessary) isn't a bad thing.

But heck I wear a strong glasses prescription, i.e. my vision is weak, and in a hunter-gatherer society I probably would have broken a leg and died due to poor vision. would that be a better society? I could be biased but I don't think it would be.. I don't want to live in a society where the weak are considered deserving of exploitation, starvation and death. Even weak people, if given a chance, can contribute to society (as well as sometimes become less weak). I don't get this horror folks seem to hace of someone, somewhere, getting more than they "deserve."

People who are born into wealthy families, with good nutrition and good education don't deserve it either. Neither do people who are born with 20/20 vision. It isn't just a matter of personal responsibility, it's also a matter of social responsibility. What we make of those of us who are disadvantaged in various ways is a measure of our society.

Famines don't occur because of lack of nutrients in rice, they occur because of political situations. Not just because of first world attitudes, but also local politics.

focusing on a product that someone has to be transported/given/sold to starving people misses the point, and just exacerbates the power differential between whoever is developing that product and the people who are supposed to receive it.

Who will guarantee that the producers treat the receivers fairly? (no terminator genes, no unfair contracts etc) after all they will have to recoup their investment in this product somehow.. who better to extract it from than a subject, dependent population?

nu-uh. I don't know enough about the science to know what other dangers (biological or other) could be imported into the food supply, but the politics of this are obvious enough to make this look like a bad deal.

The "first ever" phrasing is a bit confusing. I think what is meant is "collecting society explicitly supports cc-licensed album for the first time"

For actually great music that is CC-licensed, check out Jahtari (http://jahtari.org), a web label that has been releasing albums and singles that are CC licensed for years

chiptunes reggae forever!

yeah, so if one of my grandmothers starved on the shtetl, and the other one was dirt poor (ketchup sandwiches on white bread), and then slightly better off, cooking with karo syrup and crisco and spam... sorry, not eating like that.

not sure what assumptions go with "your grandmother" - what era did she live in, how poor or wealthy was she, what country...

Larisa (being a law student myself, I can only ask), are we sure that technically we only have the right to personal copies because the companies let us?

Didn't the supreme court affirm the right to make personal copies in SONY v. Betamax? Doesn't that overrule the wishes of the companies involved?

But even beyond that, in physical property, once you allow people to trespass, over time it can become an easement, whereby the "trespassers" come to rely on the access they have been granted. After some amount of time, property law affirms this right of non-owners to use/access/trespass, even when it is not explicit in a license or deed. So could that be the case here?

the Berlin Museum for Communication is cool, and has three robots to say hello to.

http://www.museumsstiftung.de/berlin/d211_rundgang.asp

It's the hypocrisy, folks.

It's Fox who are sue-happy about (c), so it's especially ludicrous that they do what they sue other people for doing.

I don't think what Fox did should necessarily be illegal, I think Fox should not sue people for doing exactly what they do.

I think all of hip-hop should join.

So if I leave a coffee cup with my DNA on it, that's "abandoned" and cops are allowed to pick it up and scan it.

And if there is something identifying/incriminating in my garbage that I have put in bags behind my house, it's also "abandoned" and the cops can rifle though it.

but if the cops leave a purse on the street, just picking it up is a crime? feh.

Is it true that it's "not infringement once fair use kicks in" ?

Fair use is a defense to infringement where you admit infringement but say it was justified, isn't it? You affirm the boundaries of copyright but justify crossing them, rather than arguing that the boundaries should be moved. This is why it's argued on a case-by-case basis.

This article suggests some good reasons to move the boundaries, I think.

It's totally real.

I would say it is people in cabals revealing their frat-ish sense of humor about it.

This guy is a great scholar and an artist. He has some work up in SF at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

you can check out his credentials here - his previous book is also pretty badass

http://www.paglen.com/

Law (& society) couldn't function if law was enforced to the letter all the time.

It'd be like working-to-rule, one of the smartest nonstrike union tactics.

these are great essays, also because they suggest a lot about why and when things ARE enforced (which, surprise surprise, doesn't always have to do with things that cause the greatest harm, and often more to do with reinforcement of social hierarchies).

so much for "the rule of law" as a positive good.

It seems likely that scientists cite blogs for evidence of certain opinions or attitudes. Even scientists discuss attitudes about science. Or maybe people post preliminary findings, even before publication?

my question is, why no citation to to the Internet Archive since eventually whatever blog page may change? Wouldn't that be a more reliable and permanent reference?

I think it's good to not link directly to hate sites. Especially if they make money off ads. Also because it's less likely to bring those sites' writers to the comment sections here (which kinda poisons the well for a while). And because everyone should make the choice for themselves what the meaning of linking or possibly supporting such a crew is (I know nobody is forcing us to click the link, but I really appreciate the lack of link anyway).

Although some parts of the previous comment on racism and comfort make some sense, the evolutionary argument is weak and weakens our ability to fight racism. "In" and "out" groups can be signaled socially (even at a very young age kids pick up the message of difference through parents' body language etc). And the "biological" argument for rape is totally spurious - because genetic survival in social animals like humans include what happens after sex - i.e. social cohesion. Even though it's a well-meaning point on some level (we are not slaves to biology), the evolutionary 'explanation' of what we are fighting against is useless- we need to fight against the social structures that perpetuate fear and hatred (and rape).

having a legal system that is skewed against black folk, and a public discourse that ignore the facts of the case and paints only the black teenagers as "thugs" (when they were facing threats of shooting, lynching, and the absence of any legal recourse to protect themselves) is the more likely cause.

Spenser,

are you saying that since the US is a totalitarian dictatorship just like Stalin's Soviet Union was, it's no big deal that the US was experimenting with torture techniques?