>> ^JiggaJonson:

>>>>>>>>>This just in<<<<<<<<<
From Slashdot: "Apple has done it again. All threads about Consumer Report's iPhone4 non-recommendation are removed or deleted. If it happened once, maybe you'd say it was a glitch. But what if it happened ? Three times? Four times, five, six?"
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/07/12/apple-drops-con
sumer-reports-discussion-threads-down-memory-hole/



I don't suppose you actually went to the forums did you? The deleted threads were largely those threads that badmouthed consumer reports itself, not Apple. There are still plenty of threads on the forums discussing the consumer reports non-recommendation. Further, here is an example of a 25 page thread titled "serious antenna problem." I think everyone is blowing the Orwellian implications of this way out of proportion. Apple didn't want to be found guilty of libeling CR on its own site. It's a forum meant for discussing solutions to problems, not ranting about poor reporting by third-party publications.

Blanky, let me tell you the rags to riches story of young entrepreneur Terry Gou. He fled communist China to Taiwan, where he used $7500 borrowed from his mom to start a business manufacturing TV dials. In 3 and a half decades, he turned his small business into Foxconn, a billion dollar manufacturing corporation which employs a million workers and produces popular items for Apple, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.

Foxconn operates a huge facility called 'the campus', which is a humongous all inclusive structure/city that includes factories, work facilities, living quarters, stores, shops, markets and entertainment. Employees spend almost their entire lives in 'the campus'.

Foxconn is pretty much regulation free, which makes it an ideal environment for workers. Workers on average make $5 to $10 a day and are expected to work multiple 12 hour shifts. They have little recourse for the many injuries and deaths caused by unsafe working conditions and the negative psychological effects of not sleeping. They are not allowed to congregate in groups of more than 2 people on the sidewalk. They have access to one single corporate TV channel, which is produced in house. Motivational slogans are posted all over the campus for encouragement. Anyone who steps out of line or questions authority is met with punishment and intimidation. Employees are also not permitted to leave or enter the campus without a corporate ID badge in good standing.

Foxconn has been in the news recently because its employees have started committing suicide in increasingly larger numbers. Terry Gou has attempted to slow this trend by raising pay from a nickel an hour to a dime.

This is how your free market utopia went wrong.

This is an Orwellian nightmare, but from a purely capitalist perspective, this place is a raging success. It provides millions of jobs and produces high quality, popular consumer products for a very reasonable price; products that you and I both own and cherish.

In a deregulated free market, how does anyone compete with this? What's to keep this from becoming the status quo if it isn't already? This, in a nutshell, is why I fear the Ron Paul Love-o-lution. Foxconn could not happen today in America because of regulations, but with each little bit of accountability that republicans, libertarians and democrats strip away, the closer we get.

Your vision is a beautiful one. The tiny village with a baker, a butcher, a tailor, a shopkeep, a barber and a 5 cent nickelodeon, all working hard and living well together in peace and harmony. It's beautiful. I want to live there too, at least until Terry Gou discovers it and builds a factory there.

Okay, back to Econ 101 with all you libertarians.

Free Markets hinge on the idea of consumer choice as much as anything else.

Part of your usual arguments against government is that it systematically limits consumers' ability to freely make their own choices. This is in fact, why I generally don't contest the orwellian usage of the word "free" in this phrase which you associate with the laissez-faire economic model you guys espouse.

Okay, so aren't other systematic attempts to limit choice also problems?

Isn't the problem with fraud basically that it distorts people's market choices? Isn't discrimination practiced by market actors also an intolerable distortion of the free market?

This is not my normal argument in favor of Civil Rights, it's just one tailored to appeal to people who think freedom means defending a right to limit other people's liberty, and tyranny means defending the right to free market choice and freedom of action.

Skeeeve: If you think I'm "covering for the government" you don't know me very well.

Shit like this starts with the people directly involved. YES, I want an end to the phony WOD immediately, which should've been known not only by the fact that I sifted this video, but also created the sensational headline.

I am a card-carrying medical marijuana "patient" in Los Angeles. I directly identify with the people terrorized by this horrible event caused by local police and judges.

I will first condemn the police officers who raided this poor guys house and shot his dogs in front of his fucking kids, and then go after politicians who are involved in making this type of evil, beyond-Orwellian shit be possible.

Just because Lyndie England was just some country dumbass following orders, doesn't excuse her taking thumbs-up pictures with piles of tortured, innocent civilians.

Again, if politicians didn't have thugs with badges, these types of events could never happen. This is why I believe in criminal punishment for police officers.

>> ^blankfist:

Sure wish we'd focus on that same-sex marriage thing in California before jumping into new territory. I suppose it's to be expected from Dems seeing how they seemed to forget about the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act since HCR became all the rage.


I don't see what in the hell you are talking about.

Richard Lee has been pushing for legalisation since 1992. Is he supposed to give up his personal decade-long fight because of Prop 8? Or because we're not out of Iraq or Afghanistan?

And where in this video or anywhere online does it say he's a Democrat?

You're off into la-la land with this one Blanky. Mr.Lee has absolutely fuckall to do with national politics. He's a dude trying to destroy the Orwellian prohibition that currently incarcerates tens of thousands of people, and laws that destroy lives and piss away our states budget on a daily basis. I thought libertarians would feel good about that.

>> ^videosiftbannedme:

Can Texas secede already? They want to. Let 'em!


I'll help 'em pack!

>> ^gwiz665:

Also covered in the following
http://religion.videosift.com/talk/Texas-State-Board-of-Educ
ation-Rewrites-History
http://religion.videosift.com/talk/Hey-Texas-you-re-fucked



And: http://videosift.com/video/Don-McLeroy-The-Creationist-in-Charge-of-Education-in-Texas

But no one seemed to care when it was new news for some reason.

Is it still Orwellian if it's not Big Brother watching you, but everyone watching everyone else?

I'm not sure, I guess we're gonna find out.

You make 3 points. One, someone filming in a PUBLIC area is not only NOT suspect of wrong doing, it should be expected...even mores o in this day and age of gadgets. Furthermore, their own policy states that filming them is not warrant of any internal scrutiny.

Secondly, he did no inquiring about their procedures, THEY approached HIM and attempted to trap HIM into answering questions that would MAKE him appear suspect of wrong doing. He was a dude, a dude with a camera, a dude with a camera filming the goings on at an airport...that should of been the end of it.

The waste is on the TSA officials which blew a completely harmless situation WAY out of proportion. What he didn't do, which you seem to try and frame it like, is to go around filming sensitive security information that isn't in view of the public eye. Going around opening up closed doors and prying up the innards of some scanning machine to surrender its mysteries! He filmed people doing stuff in hallways, doing their normal thing. This is about as much of a security risk as a dude doing the same thing with his eye balls and a note pad...or just his eyeballs and a good memory.

While I think his child pron angle isn't completely on base, it isn't completely off base either. A person, of which has done nothing wrong being subjected to a violation of their personal body for nothing other than the chance they might catch someone trying to bring contraband on a plane is lunacy. I made a joke earlier this month about what we "really need" too keep us safe is to be strip searched as we leave our house...this is just one step closer to that Orwellian state. There is no such thing as perfect safety. The more control you give the government the less safe you are. Because not only are you being sold the illusion of safety, you also now must endure the oppression of the state. You are less safe from the police then you are a terrorist; what I mean is you are more likely going to get in trouble with the police far sooner than get blown up by a terrorist, and this should alarm you.

@dystopianfuturetoday, I agree with that 100%. But does that mean you're dancing with glee because the single left-wing radio outlet folded, while all the right-wing talk radio thrives?

I'd love it if they all went away at once, but I think a situation where all political opinion radio is essentially one giant right-wing zoo is unhealthy for society, and not something to really cheer about.

I'd probably listen to a left-wing political shock-jock, but Air America really didn't have any. I could strike the pose that "that kind of thing doesn't appeal to liberals", but that's not true -- I love inflammatory left-wing rhetoric, and so do most of the liberals I know.

Our rhetoric is definitely different in content, but we loves a good no holds barred smackdown and a good righteous rant.

@blankfist, I'm just saying that steering conversations into literally semantic battles isn't helping your advocacy for libertarian (or whatever made-up word you'd prefer everyone use) ideas.

Me personally, I really love arguing semantics; I've got something of a fetish for it (it's part of why I'm a programmer in my day job). However, I think it's important to speak the same language as your audience if you're looking to be understood.

People who use words with their colloquial, rather than archaic meanings aren't brainwashed by some sort of government indoctrination they received in public school (fun fact: I didn't go to a public school), they're using the words they think will convey their meaning most accurately and concisely to the listener.

What you're doing is like trying to hijack a conversation about due process for police officers with a story about how the word "cop" originally referred to the criminals being chased by officers of the law, and not the police themselves, and then act as though this implies something nefarious about the very idea of having public defenders.

At best, this fixation on trying to dust off the old meaning of liberal is a strange sort of non-sequitor. At worst, it's some Orwellian plan to shape thought by trying to erase the modern definition of the name your ideological opposition uses. In either case, it's usually deployed as an attempt to change the subject.

As I said originally, I'm just trying to convey to you that I think it's an intellectually lazy tactic, and that I think you can and should do better.

I'm not surprised. The UK has gone downhill fast in terms of losing their personal liberties. We've got it bad over here, too, but I think they've since surpassed us.

In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6210255/EU-funding-Orwellian-artificial-intelligence-plan-to-monitor-public-for-abnormal-behaviour.html

EAK!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6210255/EU-funding-Orwellian-artificial-intelligence-plan-to-monitor-public-for-abnormal-behaviour.html

EAK!

Just brilliant!

It's so fantastic that America is still fighting about health care reform. Hopefully it will go on for another 3 years and nothing will get done about climate change or the Orwellian war of terror.

Go status quo!

^Solution: Just say equal rights for everyone. I don't see the real reason for wordplay. Words change their meaning all the time, often prompted by media spin/distortion. If enough people think that "feminism" means "women above all else" then it sort of actually does mean that. That's what I meant with "They're all right depending on who you ask". This is certainly a bad thing, I can agree to that, but these semantic arguments are what makes it difficult. It's the same when someone like Glenn Beck say socialism, he doesn't really mean actual socialism, he means a particular type of fascism, orwellian society. This is a problem, but that doesn't change what it is.

Just because you stomp your feet and say "It doesn't mean that!" won't change the meaning in many peoples heads. That's why, to avoid confusion, I would rather say equal rights for everyone. A rose by any other name, eh?

^ From a good article on DKos about this very topic:

When Glenn Beck says — almost in the same breath — that President Obama "hates white people" and then, "I never said he doesn’t LIKE white people," and your head does NOT explode, it’s because — as a Fox News viewer — you AGREE with this unresolvable dichotomy. If you DON’T agree with it, it’s because you’re brainwashed by the liberal MSM and can’t think for yourself — like Limbaugh tells them THEY can.