Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

the vast majority of videosift is viewable on an iPad- (YouTube) besides I'm here for the flame wars- which work even on an iPhone.

>> ^spoco2:

I can't believe you still want a product that you can't view your own site on.

Seeing as surely one of the biggest things it would have in its favour is web surfing (although at a god AWFUL 1024x768 resolution), how would you even manage without flash?
As said above, something to play with for a bit and then become amazingly bored with because you can't DO much with it.
And to try to compare removing floppy drives from a system (which had other input means in a CD drive) vs not having any USB or SD card slots is just not the same.
Whoop de doo that they can make crudloads of money selling something that has little practical use, but rather than being any 'paradigm shift' it will rather be seen as the first successful product that nevertheless had no use.
Only later will products appear that people actually will have use for.

I can't believe you still want a product that you can't view your own site on.


Seeing as surely one of the biggest things it would have in its favour is web surfing (although at a god AWFUL 1024x768 resolution), how would you even manage without flash?

As said above, something to play with for a bit and then become amazingly bored with because you can't DO much with it.

And to try to compare removing floppy drives from a system (which had other input means in a CD drive) vs not having any USB or SD card slots is just not the same.

Whoop de doo that they can make crudloads of money selling something that has little practical use, but rather than being any 'paradigm shift' it will rather be seen as the first successful product that nevertheless had no use.

Only later will products appear that people actually will have use for.

@Stormsinger

There are roughly 2.5 million people serving in the US military, so almost 1 in 100 people. I think most people have at least a few people in their lives who are either active duty or veterans. I can't think of anyone in my family, but I do know a few people over there and have at least one guy I see on a regular basis that is an Iraq war veteran. I have never said anything to him, but I have spent about 6 hours trying to convince one of my friends not to go into the Navy SEALs. If one of my close friends tried to enlist, I would definitely try to talk them out if it - and if my young nephew, who will be 18 in a few years thought of enlisting I would definitely do whatever I could to get him out of it. I think the most reasonable thing you could do at this point with your nephew is make sure he doesn't re-enlist after his 1st term is up.

I think it is more important to condemn the overall philosophy rather than individual people - unfortunately for this guy, when you are in a video being spread akin to a news report, you sort of become the embodiment of the philosophy outside of your individual self.

I think the line in the sand needs to be drawn somewhere, because our current culture practically worships soldiers. People would gasp, if not lynch you, if you said such things in certain groups. If there was a paradigm shift, I don't people would be so quick to enlist - especially those that are young and impressionable.

The paradigm seems to have shifted from sharing videos for its own sake to first and foremost sharing them in order to boost ones ratings, meaning that obscure sifts take a backseat in favour of ones more in tune with the generalized interest that speaks to the larger portion of the ever increasing user base.
The more people we get, the more the normalized internet taste will become predominant, if that makes any sense. Also, the more people who join the community, the less personal and familiar it'll feel. This in turn could speak towards the paradigm shift in sifters' reasons for posting videos.

It's bad news for the people who originally came here for the different atmosphere, the new and varied content as well as the more closely knit community. But as with everything on the internet, things change. As the zeitgeist of the site traditionally encouraged the obscure and thus kept the mainstream largely uninterested, the influx of people lead to obscurity becoming just that in favour of that same mainstream's content.

It's not bad in any way, just different. It might take a while before a new community is formed which resembles the old Sift and which again adheres to your interests, but that's just the nature of the internet.

because of the historical meaning of marriage, which is basically to buy and sell women.
the centuries of marriage = female submission.
and the VERY recent paradigm shift.
its a *femme issue.
>> ^Almanildo:
Just out of curiosity: Why the femme tag?

The important issue is not nationalized health care. The important issue is not the shifting balance of power of the Federal Government. The real issue at hand is not embodied in any of the petty disputes that are bursting like fireworks all around. Those are symptoms of our attempts to understand and rationalize a change which is beyond our ability to grasp.

The issue is imminent paradigm shift.

We tend to identify paradigm shift in terms of social 'ages'. The bronze age, the industrial age, the age of computers and they occur when advances in science and technology suddenly change the fabric of society. Trying to hold them back is like trying to hold back a bursting dam. If you succeed in the short term, you're only increasing the impact when the inevitable happens. These shifts are a result of a fundamental shift in our understanding of the world we live. They result from advances in science and technology which change the way we interact with our environment. A paradigm shift is inevitably destructive to any financial or social construct dependant on the preceding paradigm but they create a wealth of opportunity for the people who best adapt to the new paradigm. Bill Gates became the richest man in the world by positioning himself to exploit the paradigm shift brought about by personal computers in the 1970's.

Here's how it plays into our debates.

The first to adapt to a new paradigm benefit first. After the initial shift, the social and economic changes become easier to understand and everyone adapts. Over time the new rules of industry become institutionalized and the playing field is well understood. In this environment macroeconomics takes hold as the strongest players increase their share of the economic pie. But while all this is happening we're moving inexorably towards the next shift. When it finally comes, all the big players are rooted in the old paradigm and they must resist the coming shift because they have become too large to adapt to the change. These are powerful entities and their continued existance depends on the status quo.

We are suffering the efforts of these powerful forces to resist a paradigm shift that's on the verge of exploding into our lives. We are all being constantly manipulated. We are being distracted with petty arguments and our prejudices and loyalties are being exploited in a tug of war between those who would maintain the status quo and those who want to bring the change. Ultimately it's all futile. Change will come and old fortunes will be lost to those who are smart enough and lucky enough to be in the right place with the right ideas. The reason it's not obvious this is happening is because it's impossible to see the new paradigm until you're looking back at the point of change.

Stop playing into the hands of the people and corporations who are attempting to paralyze the coming paradigm shift for their own benefit. This is not about liberalism versus conservatism. It's not about your faith or your neighbors science. It's about the vested interests of those who have the most to lose from change, using us all as tools to preserve their wealth and power. You'd be better served if you distanced yourself from the battle and committed your energy to understanding the changes that are coming.

God, I hope this signals a real paradigm shift. As always, I'll believe it when I see it.

You have no clue what capitalism is about.

Capitalism adapts. The market changes, and business change with it, or die. Government interference, especially in a case like this, is simply postponing the inevitable.

What I'm talking about is a paradigm shift. Musicians will probably go back to the days before sound recording. You know, that time period which gave us some of the greatest music ever created? Written by luminaries such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart... Oh, my! How did they ever get talented or famous without record contracts?!!?

The days of the big music companies are numbered. Musicians can make their stuff at home these days, put it up on the web, and get fans. It's happened, it is happening, and it will continue to happen. Eventually record contracts will be a thing of the past. Musicians might make a little money if online microtransactions become easy enough, but their only guarantee of earning a living will be to tour, or perhaps to write songs on commission. Or perhaps somebody will come up with an entirely new way of making money from their creations.

This is not a fantasy. It is not anti-capitalism. It is reality. And capitalism will deal with it, and probably come out better on the other end. Such is its nature.

And about that furniture analogy. Yes, if somebody invents a way to copy furniture without paying a manufacturer, there would be a lot of people without jobs. They'll find other jobs. The world will be sooooo much better off if we could reliably copy solid objects, the benefits to society would make those few lost jobs completely insignificant. And that is what is happening with the internet.

"But I fear change! Can't we just go back to the way things were in 1990 and stay that way?"

No. Sorry. Grow up.

>> ^CaveBear:
Okay, let me do a closer analogy.
1. I hack every users computer on the sift and find each persons credit card number.
2. I build a website called "Steal Sifters Credit Cards" that points to your credit card number.
3. Since the website is so popular, I make serious revenue from ad placements.
4. A bunch of mafia guys go to the site and get your credit card number.
5. The Mafia guys go on a spending spree, and you pay.
You're saying that I did nothing illegal? Maybe this exact scenario is not spelled out in current laws, so the prosecutors have to to use existing laws and push their interpretation. Do you follow the letter of the law, or the Intent? The name of the Pirates Bay alone shows their Intent.


That is not a valid analogy. The Pirate Bay does not hack anything, they do not rip movies off DVDs, or games, or TV shows, or anything else.

To correct your analogy, it would be more like this:

1. I notice that people's Credit Card numbers are easily found through Google, Yahoo, and other search services. (Of course they're not, but just for the analogy, go with it.)
2. I find this fact entertaining, so I make a web site that makes searching even easier.
3. The site gets popular... and so on.

Another way of looking at it is this: I'm walking down the street and I notice that the back of an armored car is open and money is within easy reach. Of course it is illegal for me to take the money, but is it illegal for me to stand there and point at it? How absurd.

The Pirate Bay is not stealing anything, and any information found on their site can also be found through many other search engines.

Even if you can shut them down, other sites will simply absorb the traffic and do the same thing. Or another digital file share system will come along. Floppy disc -> FTP -> usenet -> Napster -> Gnutella -> eMule -> suprnova -> Pirate Bay -> ?

Services like The Pirate Bay highlight the need for a paradigm shift in digital distribution. If you lose money due to the theft of your video games, then you need to come up with a better business model, one that takes into account modern internet usage.

I am rather disappointed our paradigm shift wasn't better accepted by the community. I had high hopes for the Grater good. Maybe VideoGarlicPress or VideoShamwow would have better luck.

i read those arguments. they are compelling. i think the problem is that you cant legalize prostitution without having the paradigm shift. attitudes must change for their to be a market for cruelty free prostitution. this means we have to have the discussion that women own their bodies and feminine sexuality lives in the minds and bodies of women, not a patriarchal cultural construct. it seems like in the case of trafficking into the netherlands it only attracted perverts and predators to the netherlands because then they could exploit girls legally. exploitation has to be taken out of sexual desire. this probably ties in alot with the overwhelming misogyny we're sold through marketing. also, what kind of men frequent brothels? its a thorny subject.

They were pictures of some of the single moments that portrayed world-changing events or at least photos that revealed startling and unseen significant events occurring at the ignorance of most of the rest of the world. They are hindsight exemplified for sure. I recognized most of them or at least could identify what they were shooting and I've seen them in my history classes or at least in historical articles. Rougy's right. There wasn't a complete centering on America, but even if it had, America defined many of the paradigm shifts in western culture of the recent decades.

The prohibition pic may have been a bad choice I'll admit, but that's one out of how many? Come on.

Tell me that Tienamen Square, Vietnam, the nuke, Titanic, Hindenburg, flight, exploration of ancient cultures, scaling Everest, the Nazi holocaust, the fall of the Berlin wall, the Indonesian tsunami, and the Beatles are purely a American and I'll eat my hat.

Please tell me the Beatles are purely American. I'd like to watch all the brits around beat you to a pulp.

>> ^MaxWilder:
If it was just one bank failing, they would have let it fail. But this was a LOT of banks about to fail. That would have decimated the economy, probably making the US and many other western countries into third world nations overnight.
It took me a while to figure it out too.
The politicians were tripping over themselves to give away money, because they were not going to be blamed for the resulting fallout of a collapsed economy.


Destruction of the economy on such a global level such as might have happened had the banks been allowed to fail could quite possibly been the best thing for the world. The banks needed to be propped up to maintain a monetary economy that is essential to class stratification.

A paradigm shift in global economics will happen within this century, might as well get it over with now.

Obama's constructive success showed that Jesse Jackson's victim-narrative about his lack of acceptance was illusory and derived purely from his antagonism and unlikeability.

It's never society's fault if people aren't listening to you.

Typically, that kind of paradigm shift seems to come only when figures from the younger generation start to replace the old guard ("science progresses funeral by funeral").

I knew we were hosed when I saw a credit card machine in a McDonald's. Sez I, "Ruh roh!" We have had an ongoing paradigm shift in terms of economics/finance/communication/transportation/regulation over the past twenty years. We won't know how to get through it until we get through it (if we do). Since everything is in a state of flux, one of the concepts I believe we have to rethink is the top-down management/ownership/governance ideology. The internet is showing us the value of bottom-up organization and generation. What we sorely need is education of a rigorous, persistent and emancipating fashion, to see human populations as incubators of entrepreneurship, innovation, progressive ideas. As biological evolution seems to show, smaller, smarter, more agile is the way to go for organisms; perhaps that is the way to go with human organization in industry, education, finance, governance. Seems counterintuitive, doesn't it?