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You can't because the IP holders are greedy pigs that think ripping your cd to your iPod is stealing because you didn't cut them another check. For those of you that think copyrights are fine as they are,I have one sentence for you: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. The man has been dead for half a century,yet the first cartoon he made,which was made at a time when most cars still had to be started with a handcrank,is still under copyright. That is just fucked up.

Copyrights are SUPPOSED to be a contract between the public and the copyright holder. We give them a limited monopoly on their creations in return for enriching our society through addition to our public domain. As it is now we get nothing in return but screams of "piracy!" and demands for more money every time we buy a new device. I repeat that is just fucked up.

Wrong. PC users always insult Mac users for having "been had," for being "chumps" and "gullible" and "sheeps" [sic] and whatever other asininity they can come up with.

I like having a real Unix machine with fonts that don't make my eyes bleed and the ability to play DVDs out of the box. I don't want to have to tinker, I don't want to have to reinstall my OS every 6 months, and I don't want to have to break the law just to watch a movie. And frankly, I shouldn't have to.

Honestly, the problem is that gadget freaks and tinkerers have infiltrated the field of software engineering, leading to the proliferation of bad engineering and tweakable settings ad nauseum.

If you can read John Siracusa's review of OS X Tiger and not be impressed (particularly with respect to the versioned kernel interface system, something Linux would do well to mimic), then you're probably not a real Slashdotter. Getting excited about hardware specs is all fine and dandy when it pertains to what you can do with it, but people without a design outlook are engaging in "my GHz is bigger than your GHz" p*ssing contests.

Seriously, no FireWire?

Not to say I agree, but Steve's response to this was:

"Actually, all of the new HD camcorders of the past few years use USB 2."

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/10/17/steve-jobs-concisely-answers-the-macbook-firewire-question

Personally, I would miss the Target Disk Mode that FireWire offered.

I read TFA, but I think they released the Beta version of the article. More and more interesting info here.

by using someone else's hardware and software to do your computing and store your data, you risk losing access to and control over said hardware and software resources, as well as your data.

Then run for the hills! Abandon your Slashdot account immediately because it's an evil web service that you can't control! Go run your own web server for your own IMAP email, or abandon IMAP entirely and use POP! Look, contrary to your condescending attitude, I understand Stallman's argument perfectly. And like plenty of other people, I happen to find Stallman's intentions good, but his conclusions so far from practical that he comes off sounding vaguely kooky.

The bottom line is it isn't in any web service operator's best interest from a business or a reputation standpoint to suddenly deny their customers access to the service and/or their data. Otherwise you get Slashdot stories like this one. On top of that, there are plenty of folks out there whose data is better in the hands of, say, GMail than their ISP provided POP email account because there are plenty of folks out there who don't know the first thing about keeping regular backups. GMail does this for them.

I, like most people, just don't buy Stallman's argument. For him to be correct, something apocalyptic would have to happen. And even if being that paranoid was legitimate, Stallman's solution of confining your computing to computers you own is so inconvenient that most people would sooner prefer to just lose some data. Even the folks unable to comprehend regular backups tend to store the really important data in multiple places anyway, such as in the cloud, in a text file somewhere, and on some good old fashioned paper too.

So while you're sticking your nose in the air waiting for that apocalyptic scenario to happen so you can join Stallman and the < 1% who agree with him in saying "I told you so!" so you can feel smarter than everyone, the rest of the world is going to carry on using web services. Because whatever negligible risks of data loss and even privacy invasion that exist are well worth the convenience.

The world is coming to people bitching and moaning whenever any of their precious stability in life is taken away. Between the new Facebook, the new Flickr, and now iGoogle, I've seen so many people complaining for no other reason than that it's different.

If you don't like a newer version of a downloaded program, you stick with the old one. If you don't like a newer version of a webpage, then you (usually) have to go out of your way to change it back. Or just switch services.

When /. changed to the D2 system, I just switched it back. Easy peasy. There's an option to do it in the settings. Changing iGoogle back means either changing your locale or setting a javascript var or using a Greasemonkey script. Though fairly easy, it's still a hack.

I'm all for change, but where possible, why not provide the version of the app before the change? Stick a 'This older version of $x is unsupported. Use at your own risk' if you want.

The Ars story about the switch put across the point that the new canvas view makes it a much more attractive proposition for advertising. Sure, there are many other values, but with the amount of people complaining (the main issue being the screen-hogging sidebar) if Google doesn't provide a realistic fix for this 'feature', it's just going to look as if they care more about revenue than customers. True or not, it doesn't make Google look as shiny as before.

Even if it doesn't, relying on a free service to keep ANY of your data probably makes you one.

I wouldn't have any more faith in the paid ones.

I don't get all this talk of cruelty and extortion and peoples rights. At the end of the day, If you don't illegally download copyrighted music, you will not get into that state.

You wanna bet your life on that one? In the link, I reference something that falls under fair use. There was no illegally downloaded stuff, but a DMCA filing, etc. was made against a home movie of a baby being cute with a Prince song in the background.

No piracy- but they were in court over all of it all the same. In the same sort of way the "downloaders" are.

If you think that you can avoid this sort of problem by "just don't download", think again.

Yes, tons of window managers, but the average user only has to pick one of 2 (or three if you count in XFCE) but if you stick with all the apps with a G as the first letter you can be assured a standard UI if you are using Gnome, likewise if K is the first letter you can be assured that it uses a standard UI for KDE, compare that with MS who has tons of different icons, etc. for different products which are all in the same time frame and first-party applications, see http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/microsoft-learn-from-apple-II.media/vista.png for an example of what I'm talking about.

That article says people are now buying Macs. It means nothing without actual numbers of how many macs there are. Let's use something close to real numbers. http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/01/01/mac-os-x-market-share-sets-new-record-at-the-end-of-2007. 7% of PCs are running some form of MacOS. Let's be nice and say 3% run *nix of some flavor. That means 90% of the market runs Windows. Do you risk any part of the 90% to try and gain the 7%? Here's the Vista marketshare (http://www.e-janco.com/browser.htm). Do you think games should be made for Vista specifically, since they are DOUBLE the Mac marketshare?

I've never used Target Disk Mode myself, but I did read about ImageBoot, which will apparently be a feature of OS X Snow Leopard, when it eventually comes out.

4th paragraph down, linky below.
Does this help at all?

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/10/17/latest-build-of-snow-leopard-brings-cocoa-finder-imageboot

The Steve was quick to point out that "Actually, all of the new HD camcorders of the past few years use USB 2."

See it on Ars.

Apple has always been a step ahead of the industryâ"anyone remember when the original iMac debuted, and companies suddenly got off their duff and started making USB peripherals? Or the cries of suffering when it launched with OMG NO FLOPPY? Users may find it frustrating, but FW400 is going to that great technology dustbin in the sky.

Uh,you want me to stop whining about DRM by buying a box that was built first and foremost FOR DRM? Does that make ANY sense to you? And if I'd have wanted a freaking console I would have got one,thank you very much. There are plenty of us out there that can game just fine on a keyboard and mouse,but those game controllers cause pain(in my case this,but I have talked to many with other conditions who also can't take a controller) and more importantly you are missing the point.

The point is this: the DRM does NOTHING to stop piracy. I repeat,it does NOTHING AT ALL to stop piracy! Don't believe me? Go to any torrent site and you'll find games INCLUDING Xbox360 and PS3 often before the release date. And if they want to stop casual piracy that is as simple as the old altered disc sector trick. So the ONLY folks they are burning is guys like me,you know,the ones who will actually give them money for their game.

So if trying to play games with those damned funky inaccurate controllers and swapping games everytime you want to play and watching on a TV make you happy,so be it. But this is NOT about consoles,this is about the PC version of Dead Space. And as a firm believer in the free market I will vote with my hard earned cash and avoid EA like the clap until idiots like the CEO of EA stops calling me and everyone who dares to complain a pirate.

And I quote "I'm guessing that half of them were pirates and the other half were people caught up in something that they didn't understand." So if I don't accept a lousy 3 installs for their precious $60 "IP" then I'm a pirate or too stupid to understand what I'm talking about. Sorry Mr. CEO,but I understand EXACTLY what I'm talking about. You want me to come crawling to you when my machine breaks,when your DRM fucks up,when I upgrade my PC,etc. But I am of the opinion(and apparently I am FAR from alone) that when I purchase something I can use it as long as I want,which is why it's called a purchase and not a rental. I have bought a TON of EA games in the past,but until I actually GET what I PAY for from EA they won't see another dime from me.

If I purchase a copy of the game, I *DO* own it. Otherwise, I have the right to get a replacement and or refund if my CD or DVD gets scratched. Does that really happen? I don't think so.

If we gave money and got a CD, it's not a license. It's a sale. Especially when you go to the website and see the words "purchase", "order" and "buy". See Vernor v. Autodesk. A good review of the decision is available at http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080523-court-smacks-autodesk-affirms-right-to-sell-used-software.html

So what DRM is really about, is an attempt at circumventing the first sale doctrine. Therefore, it should be declared illegal.

Thanks for the reply. It doesn't look like USB has a target disk mode from a quick google search. But it does looks like eSata will if it doesn't already. Apple may eventually plan to phase out Firewire for eSata for hard drives. Though if they were going to start doing that it would have been nice if it had appeared on this refresh of the laptops...

The latch is locked when the kensington cable is in. I don't remember where I read this, but I'm 100% positive.

Just to make other readers 100% HIV positive, here's one place I read this: "Hands on with the Macbook/Pro's removable hard drive".

From TA:

• "First, the battery cover is now removed with a latch instead of the old rotational lock that required a coin to turn. Secondly, the Kensington lock port, when activated, will also lock this latch and keep anyone from stealing your battery, and more importantly your removable hard drive."

I'm surprised anyone would complain about an easy-to-replace hard drive on a Mac. Some current and previous model Macs make it a pain in the arse to replace the hard drive.

I'm not confusing NAT and PAT. There was a nice writeup at ars technica recently about the IETF's efforts to define a v6/v4 NAT - http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081006-ietf-working-on-making-ipv6-and-ipv4-talk-to-each-other.html

Consider that the current administration lost a ton of emails due to crappy closed proprietary software and shoddy data retention policies. Having somebody at the top who believes in sensible computing is actually rather important. I'm not saying he'll be pushing Ubuntu onto the office desktops, but the basic philosophy is very refreshing.

Your post sounds perfectly reasonable and solid on the outset. Too bad it's complete nonsense.

On the matter of Thief, here is the Looking Glass post-mortem.

Looking Glass died because a series of problems compounded each other into a financially lethal situation. No single factor is to blame. No single person or entity killed Looking Glass. No one problem was enough, on its own, to kill the company. Nonetheless, the problems were deadly when combined.

Interestingly, you'll find that piracy isn't even mention. Piracy did not kill Looking Glass studios. Difficult financials did, same as Origin, Westwood, and a multitude of other classic studios.

And take "world of goo", an awesome game, that (like mine) ships totally DRM-free. It's pirated to oblivion, and they are no doubt losing tons of sales.

"No doubt" is not a real-world metric. In fact, 2D Boy EXPLICITLY shipped with no DRM on the honor system. So far, it has not hurt them. And with the recent release on the Nintendo Wii, 2D Boy is flying high with the first 10/10 review from WiiWare World.

As much as I'd like to believe your post is simply ignorant, I cannot ignore your posting history. All posts on copyright topics, all in favor of stronger copyrights. You are most certainly a shill. The question is, for whom do you shill?

Mod parent -1 Troll.

Legend has it that the Celeron processor began its life as a way for Intel to make money off of the Pentiums that didn't pass quality control. If they sell the low performing processors at a discount, why shouldn't they sell the over performing ones at a premium?

Did they drop the 17"? not update it? or just not mention it...

From http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081014-apple-gives-entire-macbook-lineup-a-serious-makeover.html :

The 17" MacBook Pro is "still around," according CEO Steve Jobs, and is being "refreshed."

The problem with China though is the rampant piracy. They were selling Vista disk for a few dollars before it was even released.
Then, MS had to cut prices to $66 just to sell any copies.

Here in the west at least most of the customers actually pay.

No. Follow the first link in the linked story (here, I'll save you the trouble.) It is precisely about the legislation being proposed which would ELMINATE OR STRONGLY RESRICT that acess, being lobbied for by the publishers (using the (poor) arguments in today's linked article.)

"But it's not up to the CUSTOMER to provide the product with a perception of value. That's the responsibility of the seller. If the seller fails at that task, the customer won't pay what the seller is asking for that product"

What you are talking about is a customer not wanting to pay the price and going elsewhere. What is actually happening is that the customer doesn't want to pay the price and they get it for free anyway.

"the seller might need to dress it up or do differential pricing -- STARTING at "free". (Witness the success of the recent NIN marketing experiment.)"

You forgot to mention the experiment that trent reznor tried earlier with his friend saul williams . Most people did not pay and he couldn't even cover the production costs. Sadly, this is what will happen when most people try this.

Something else interesting about his experiment:

He made $750,000 on a $300 deluxe package. He didn't have to sell as many copies as a regular album (12X as less) and I would imagine that most people that bought it at $300 wouldn't want to pirate it. I guess what we have learned from this experiment is that as an artist, you should charge $300 for you stuff. You won't have to sell nearly as many copies.

How do you think they're going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?

So then we've done the most we can under the law.

Well, the Judiciary will not allow his prosecution, but the Executive not only may, but must treat him with suspicion... Don't be ridiculous — had he done something you actually disapprove of yourself (and escaped prosecution on a technicality), you would've agreed with me.

If somebody walked up to a cop and said: "I think, all cops should be killed," — would you not call the cop an idiot, if he didn't take a goooood look at the guy, jotted down his description, and shared the info with his colleagues? Although Ayers' actual crimes were committed when Obama was 8 years old, his public insistence on regretting only not setting more bombs continues to this day — both law enforcement and the rest of us would, indeed, be idiots, if we didn't carefully watch, what he is doing and whom he is helping to get ahead...

Then, again, looking at the polls today, perhaps, we are, indeed, mostly comprised of idiots...

You can't list drivers licenses as a counterexample, because drivers licenses are about driving cars, not traveling by car.

Yes, I suppose, you can walk too — except, you are still likely to be on a public highway and may be picked up by the Executive government at their whim — whether or not you are on any list. And then, again, you ignored my other example — provision of very basic services (be it plumbing or floating horses' teeth or even use of whois and traceroute ) increasingly requires an Executive Government's license, which can be taken away on a whim and without Judiciary's review.

Yet, somehow, I see neither ACLU nor yourself complaining about these outrages — and I suspect, you actually celebrated (along with most Slashdotters) the one requiring MediaSentry to have a private investigator (!) license to run whois and traceroute...

Then let's say that they placed people on this list any time they saw someone who, say, supported whatever political party they don't like. Even though pulling people over for lengthy traffic stops any time they exceed the speed limit is entirely within their rights, this still counts as persecution.

Well, that depends on what that hypothetical political party is advocating and known for. For example, if repeated trespassing (as was the case with Max Obuszewski and pals) is part of that party's action plan, then suspecting all its members of trespassing is quite reasonable.

Unless I actually said somewhere that I don't have a problem with Osama bin Laden being on the list, do not assume that this is the case.

You just missed a great opportunity to state, for the record, whether or not you actually have a problem with Osama bin Laden being on the list of suspected terrorists... I wonder, why you chose not to state your opinion... Khmm...

They're seeing competition from Microsoft according to MS's fans in the press. The market considers the Zune material for comedy. I was joking when I mentioned the possibility of a Zune phone ...

Microsoft's problem is that Apple is clearly much better at evil these days than they are. Microsoft used to have the best and most popular evil; these days they can't even successfully pay people to use their evil. And they've been trying for a while.

To keep on-topic, Android's main function will be to lift the iPhone's game. Existing and not sucking will be a win for Android and Google. Then, as others have noted, someone will come up with a killer Android app that leaves Apple playing catchup as they've pissed off too many developers. Interesting times and a win for credible competition. Which Microsoft just isn't in this space.

Guitar hero kinda sucks in the first place its just a popular fad.

Sadly, you're missing the point that the gazillion people who are playing Guitar Hero like games legitimately find them to be fun, and are willing to spend money on them. You may dislike them and think they suck. But, seriously, look at the sales figures for these games. This isn't "just a popular fad".

For a lot of people, games like this are fun, and games like FPS are annoying and tedious. These games appeal to "non-gamers". I'm one of them. You're welcome to your FPS on your PC, but you're being shockingly arrogant to think that a game like GH3 which sold 1.4 million copies in October of last year and which seem to drive actual music sales is just a fad.

Like it or not, GH3 and that kind of game are not going to go away anytime soon. I know a ton of people who fall well outside of any realm of what you can call gamers who are absolutely into the instrument rhythm games.

Cheers

Anyone else notice that Bush's term is leaving the US space program without a Space Shuttle or alternative for staffing or servicing the Space Station that we paid more than our share to build, and actually devastating the manned missions to Mars that would keep our lead among our global competitors? Remember when Bush ran for reelection in 2004 promising us a Mars mission, though everyone knew he was "kidding"?

What we'll have left, after Bush's term is done (in which he put Star Wars scientist and CIA venture capitalist Michael Griffin in charge of NASA) is a space program that mainly launches spy satellites and promotes "space supremacy" for the Pentagon and the CIA. Military satellites now used to spy on Americans.

...remember Palm?

I predict the community will spike then level off to a small but stable size, as every other post-WoW MMO has done.
Most recently observed in Age of Conan.

Except how Android is linux based? And Google sponsored Wine improvements. And open sourced Gadgets to Linux. And of course gOS.

Except how Android is linux based? And Google sponsored Wine improvements. And open sourced Gadgets to Linux. And of course gOS.

TPB is very large and well into the profit making range for an advertising based web site.

Fair enough. --After looking more closely, I must admit that I am amazed by the kind of figures bandied about by advertising companies!

I'd also read through this with some interest. But without official figures, believing the assertions of TPB guys themselves as opposed to the media, it's hard to figure out who is telling the truth.

I guess it will all come out in the wash. I'll be waiting, like everybody else, with bated breath to find out what the real story is.

For my part, I wouldn't be heart-broken in the slightest to see Hollywood, the Networks and Big Music come crashing down in a spectacular fireball of snowstorming TV sets as a result of TPB, and television and computer screens go blank from lack of funding. I despise 99% of the brain-rotting garbage produced as news and entertainment today, and consider it to be largely responsible for the mess the human race is currently in. And it is for this exact reason that I really don't think there is any danger of the flow of televised brain-rot ever diminishing. It is simply far too valuable an asset to the elite. Opiate of the masses, and all that. --Keeping the masses well-drugged is a vital ingredient in successful global control, so it hardly matters how the brain-rot is distributed. I take that to be a self-evident truth, and as such, all this nonsense about copyright and intellectual property theft is a giant, stupid laugh. A total, nonsense distraction at best, and at worst, yet another excuse to ratchet up the level of oppressive population control.

I can see two basic likely outcomes; 1. Successful oppressive control over the internet. Or 2., TPB model evolve into a sort of profit-sharing system emerge for the most-often downloaded items. It'd be nice to see the middlemen bypassed and money actually accrue to the artists. With TPB, that might just have a sliver of a chance of happening, but it's not terribly likely. Greed tends to dominate.

-FL

Ars technica did a nice review of Dropbox, titled, "How Dropbox ended my search for seamless sync on Linux" (but it works on OSX 7 Windows too) http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080914-how-dropbox-ended-my-search-for-seamless-sync-on-linux.html

The Cell is a perfect example of how not to design and build a multicore processor. It's a powerful processor but it's a pain in the ass to program. The worst thing that a multicore designer can do is build a processor before the programming model is designed and tested and all the chinks ironed out. But Sony and IBM are not alone. Intel is making the same mistake with Larrabee. AMD is soon to follow suit with its Fusion hybrid. It's enough to make a grown man cry. The truth should be clear to everyone by now. Heterogeneous processors are not the way to go simply because there is no easy software model that makes them easy to program. GPUs are not the answer either because they lack universality. As Tim Sweeny said recently, what is needed is a homogeneous processor. It will do wonders for productivity. Homogeneity and universality is what is called for. The Cell is anything but.

In my opinion, both the CPU and the GPU are doomed for the simple reason that they are not universal. There is only one type of parallel processor core that can handle anything you can throw at it and that's a pure MIMD vector core. None of the multicore vendors have one none are planning to build one. Why? Because they don't have the right programming model. Unless they see the error of their ways, some other organization will do the right thing and rocket past them. They won't know what hit them until it's too late. The writing is on the wall.

Seems to be a moot point anyway:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081002-royalty-rate-stays-same-for-itunes-other-download-services.html

Uh?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080201-pirate-bay-big-revenue-claims-fabricated-by-prosecutors.html/

That works fine, except for the fact that MAC addresses can be easily spoofed.

I don't keep up on wireless security too much, but I thought that WPA2 was, as of now at least, unbreakable? Or at least nowhere close to as bad as WEP.

It's worth noting that it works both ways. There's a study that claims playing certain games causes an increase in risky/dangerous driving, which would make you an increased threat.

So while game may cause better hand-eye coordination and reaction times, they could also subconsciously make you more dangerous behind the wheel with your decision making and speed.

I think 'mass exodus' was maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but there have been instances of developers moving in that direction:

Already, Cool O' Meter developer Tseng and Exposure developer Fraser Speirs have sworn off iPhone development. And Williams told us, "I downloaded the Android SDK. I'm not sure I will do anything on the platform, but Apple's actions over the past few months has made me actually think about it. Six months ago, I couldn't have imagined that."

Ars Technica: iPhone SDK

Anyone with other tipps?

The parent post is just saying what everyone secretly knows is true.

People are making massive amounts of money from the iPhone App Store. There is nothing else out there like it. Google doesn't even have their store up yet, and after their last attempt at something like that, it is not at all certain that they can actually make it work.

Not to mention the fact that Android hasn't so far turned out to be the open-source panacea that everyone thought it would be. You have to program in Java and don't have access to low-level hardware like bluetooth any more so than on the iPhone.

The cellphone industry isn't "rapidly" doing anything other than playing catch-up to Apple. So far they still have a long way to go.

Considering how much the guts have in common with a TI development kit, I would say what took them so long? You can get the TI kit pretty cheaply now. Check out the Beagle Board at ArsTechnica.

See Dropbox. I use it as an SVN service of sorts with my supervisor. It runs on Linux and is open source, although you do have a 2GB limit on free accounts. It's quite good. The Ars article discusses in detail how cloud computing and FOSS can work together. Use the cloud only as storage and encrypt in the frontend with suitable open code.

The U.S. is run by religious nutcases who will vote for anyone as long as they proclaim they're in the same god faction they are. There was a time when U.S. presidents actually had some form of humility, and alignments like religion weren't purposefully pushed out into the open as cheap ways of scoring points. The U.S. has become an even bigger disgrace than ever, especially for letting him stay in office. Stupidity in schools has kept many from thinking for themselves and only serves to put this country into even more of a Nazi mindset marching forward in the name of patriotism and religion instead of denouncing ideas like these like they should be as mentally unfounded and foolish. The day everyone in the U.S. stops with the flag waving and finally starts praising intelligence and thought will be a great one indeed, if it ever comes. Unfortunately, the future looks kind of bleak for that ever changing as those who don't want it to happen are at the helm.

Yes, it does not follow, but in this particular case, it's probably correct nevertheless. Studies have shown that patents cost more money than they generate in most cases:

Most shockingly, Bessen and Meurer's data suggest that outside of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, litigation costs for the average public firm actually exceed profits from their patent portfolio by a wide margin

via ars technica.

Patents are bad for the economy because they destroy competition, and throwing out the baby would - in this particular case - improve the situation tremendously for almost everyone involved.

billionaires are ALL making their money off off the 1970's copyright act

No, Carlos Slim, a Mexican who edged out Bill Gates to be the world's second richest person didn't make his wealth from copyrights. His fortune is based on telephones, both landline and cellphones. Warren Buffet, the world's richest person, didn't make his wealth in copyright either. Only a few of the World's richest people got there by copyright.

Falcon

It's not just biased reporting, it's very bad editing both by the submitter and by Slashdot.

This whole story is just link spamming by the submitter. I did think that if the submitter was linking to two of their own websites, they might at least link to something related to the text of the link they provided in the story. In other words, it might have been an "example" of "crumbling hegemony or indolence as [the Microsoft] empire burns".

The first linked blog entry written by some guy called 'Glenn'. That blog entry immediately links to the other blog entry that's already referenced in the Slashdot submission, using text indicating that the same person wrote both. Furthermore, the second blog entry resides on a website for a company founded by a guy called 'Glenn'.

To top it off, neither blog entry really talks about anything like this being an "example" of a "crumbling hegemony or indolence as [the Microsoft] empire burns". The second entry is only a comment about Extreme Programming, with a loose non-descriptive reference half way down to something about Microsoft documentation. That link leads to a "WARNING: You're about to leave our website" page, which then links to the very same ars technica article that the Slashdot submission already links to directly.

It's not only leading people around in circles (via the submitters' websites), it's also failing to back up the submission's assertion that "some people see this as an example of [etc]", given that neither link really does that and they're both very likely to be from the same person anyway. (Okay, we can't tell for sure that the submitter is this 'Glenn' person, but at the very least it's someone who wants to promote his websites and blogs.)

this is the actual article - http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080925-judge-microsoft-documentation-unfit-for-us-consumption.html