Slashdot Mirror

Thanks to several of our readers who noted the public version of the Wall Street Journal's interview with Linus, conducted by Lee Gomes. Some of the standard issues - 2.4, Linux on the desktop are talked about but the statements concerning ye olde Mindcraft tests are particularly interesting.

Interested in a free domain for your open-source project? Huh, are ya? "Too bad, sucker," says the .cx registrar. On the other hand, you can drink beer (or sarsparilla) and talk tech with folks smarter than your average bear, create poetry using such fine poetic-sounding things as "Python" and "Java," and even let other people know the names of those who you would call Spammers. Read on, if the gist is really not enough.

See, what we really meant was ... From the inimitable jamie: In February we reported that the .cx registrar was offering free domains to open-source projects. Now, their Board of Directors claims this is "inconsistent with the basic principals [sic] of fairness...this policy has been cancelled." Their FAQ has been changed from this to this accordingly. The board meeting promises "existing registrants will be 'grandfathered-in' and a new second level registry for the oss community will be established." Presumably that means new applicants will get YourOpenSourceProject.free.cx or something. Props to jmason and TBTF for the above links.

LinuxBierwanderungenrundeninkreisen, oder? One of the cool things about Free software is that there's an attitude of joviality and conviviality among its users and developers -- as evidenced by the recurring Linuxbierwangerungen, as reported in Slashdot last week. Even the WSJ notices, evidently: alanw writes "This article is fairly accurate, although we were mostly drinking real ale, not lager."

The article also mentions the oh-so-intriguing idea of simultaneous, net-linked Bierwanderungen on different continents. I vote for the mountains of Maine, New Hampshire or Tennessee as good trial U.S. locations -- if you know any organizers, make sure they leave comments below about a U.S. Bierwanderung!

Opting in, Sir? Opting out? Headphones, Sir? Red Wine? White wine? discHead writes "The Mail Abuse Prevention System has announced that a temporary restraining order filed to prevent them from listing Harris Interactive in the Realtime Blackhole List has been denied."

So long as no one is required to abide by the list that MAPS creates of mail abusers, would a restraining order preventing them from listing a spammer (by their definition) ever work? I rather hope not.

No, not the envelope with "those" pictures, the envelope with the winners! Tim McNerney writes: "The second round winners in the Software Carpentry competition have been announ ced. Though the test harness category got dropped in the process, the config, build and track categories all have winners along with judge's commentary. Next step is to choosing developers to implement the winners." And speaking of lucky winners (you may not already be a winner, in this case), at0m writes "The Haiku Generator Challenge has been completed, and the results have been posted. For those who are not familiar with the contest, the goal was to create a program that used a user-inputted RDF file and created three lines with 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. To see the winning entries, visit the challenge page. dotcomma has also announced a new, less difficult challenge, which can be found here."

Ed Matthews writes " Yesterday's Wall Street Journal profiles the coolest gadgets that either aren't available in the USA or are slow to emerge. It questions whether the U.S.'s reliance on PCs is a ball and chain, and highlights the mistake made by the US in not adopting a single standard for wireless communication. It also refers to the cell-phone carriers as "slow-moving, bureaucratic," and "having a chokehold on innovation." The regular B section requires a paid login, but you can read Walter Mossberg's column for free." Having dealt with the US-cellular companies for the last two weeks, and been extraordinarily unhappy with one company that's sucked away fourteen off my life, I'm curious what everyone else thinks will be the emerging technology - and where it will be.

A number of folks have written in about the article on MSNBC regarding the two faces of Napster. On one hand, they espouse the virtues of "sharing," but seemingly, when it comes to their own material, they are very insular. Good discussion piece. [Updated by timothy, 26 July 2000 at 6:25GMT: Lee Gomes, the author of the piece referred to here, wrote to point out that though MSNBC carried this story, it's originally from the Wall Street Journal, and that it's available from this link, no registration required. Thanks for the note, Lee.

A number of folks have written in about the article on MSNBC regarding the two faces of Napster. On one hand, they espouse the virtues of "sharing," but seemingly, when it comes to their own material, they are very insular. Good discussion piece. [Updated by timothy, 26 July 2000 at 6:25GMT: Lee Gomes, the author of the piece referred to here, wrote to point out that though MSNBC carried this story, it's originally from the Wall Street Journal, and that it's available from this link, no registration required. Thanks for the note, Lee.

Nater writes "I guess it's official now that ICANN is the authority on domain names in the U.S. This article is about a report made by the General Accounting Office that validates the Department of Commerce's authority to designate ICANN. According to the article, the report was prompted by certain members of Congress who didn't like that Commerce put the DNS in the hands of an international body." Not too many surprises in this. Here's the GAO report itself.

Interestingly, the report waffles on whether the government actually has the authority to transfer ownership of the A root server to ICANN. Here's their 180-word answer:

"The question of whether the Department has the authority to transfer control of the authoritative root server to ICANN is a difficult one to answer. Although control over the authoritative root server is not based on any statute or international agreement, the government has long been instrumental in supporting and developing the Internet and the domain name system. The Department has no specific statutory obligations to manage the domain name system or to control the authoritative root server. It is uncertain whether transferring control would also include transfer of government property to a private entity. Determining whether there is government property may be difficult. To the extent that transition of the management control to a private entity would involve the transfer of government property, it is unclear if the Department has the requisite authority to effect such a transfer. Since the Department states that it has no plans to transfer the root server system, it has not examined these issues. Currently, under the cooperative agreement with Network Solutions, the Department has reserved final policy control over the authoritative root server." (p. 4)

Translation:

"Nobody knows."

That second-to-last sentence is interesting. It's repeated on p. 45 more explicitly:

"The Department also states that it has no current plans to transfer policy authority for the authoritative root server to ICANN, and therefore it has not developed a scenario or set of circumstances under which such control would be transferred."

I'd assumed, perhaps like many, that ICANN wanted to end up with some kind of control over the A root server itself. Whoever knows that machine's root password controls the internet. But there are a lot of other ways that control can be had; I suppose it's possible that a private corporation like NSI will continue to administer the machine, with ICANN exerting the force of law from a distance.

On the other hand, as TBTF comments:

"This may only reflect the reality that NSI's contract with Commerce runs for another three years before the question of control of the root server even comes up again."

Or hey, if you're in the mood for conspiracy theories, it might mean something else. Set phasers to speculate.

An Anonymous Coward wrote in about the Salon article of an unedited transcript of Courtney Love's speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference. Gnutella News wrote in and told us that Inside Music is running a story about the RIAA uncovering very incriminating internal memos and e-mails between Napster executives that the RIAA says is "proof that the service represents a haven for music piracy and should be closed immediately". Also, head on over to Camp Chaos for the latest flash cartoons about Napster, including one featuring the real Motley Crue. There's also a parody over at Everything2 to check out. Also here is a Wall Street article about the copyright office and the age of the Internet.

GrokSoup asks: "There is an article [registration required] in a recent Wall Street Journal about the rise of freelance sites like eLance, Guru.com, FreeAgent, and HelloBrain. While I've looked at these things before, I've never used them. Have many Slashdot-ers used them for tech freelance work? What kinds of experiences have you had? Think they're useful? "

There's a backdoor in Microsoft Webserver software. The Wall Street Journal article isn't very technical, so we don't know yet exactly which software is affected: IIS, FrontPage, or both. It apparently doesn't affect Windows 2000 or FrontPage 2000. The workaround Microsoft "urges" is to delete dvwssr.dll. And just to make your Friday a little more surreal, the secret backdoor password apparently has something to do with Netscape engineers being "weenies." Update: 04/14 09:02 by J : It's been a busy day for some programmers at Microsoft and elsewhere. The word as of 3:30 EDT, according to Russ Cooper, is that "there is NO VULNERABILITY IN DVWSSR.DLL. Yup, that's right, different again from what I said earlier, and even more different than what I said yesterday to WSJ." (more)

Here are the basic details from the article (expensive reg. req.), because I can't find this story anywhere else. Strange that the WSJ should have the scoop on a security issue.

Microsoft Acknowledges Its Engineers Placed Security Flaw in Some Software
By TED BRIDIS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Microsoft Corp. acknowledged Thursday that its engineers included in some of its Internet software a secret password -- a phrase deriding their rivals at Netscape as "weenies" -- that could be used to gain illicit access to hundreds of thousands of Internet sites world-wide. [...]

The company planned to warn customers as soon as possible with an e-mail bulletin and an advisory published on its corporate Web site. Microsoft urged customers to delete the computer file-called "dvwssr.dll"-containing the offending code. The file is installed on the company's Internet-server software with Frontpage 98 extensions.

While there are no reports that the alleged security flaw has been exploited, the affected software is believed to be used by many Web sites. By using the so-called back door, a hacker may be able to gain access to key Web-site management files [...]

Russ Cooper, who runs the popular NT Bugtraq discussion forum on the Internet, estimated that the problem threatened "almost every Web-hosting provider." [...]

And, Black Parrot passed along this link to a CBS Marketwatch story, which is free but short on detail.

bitFliper was one of the people who sent us the public version of the Wall Street Journal article that talks about the USPTO proposed overhaul of the way it examines patents for many computer practices. Woo-hoo! Here's to sanity!

A lot of people (even Jon Katz) have been telling me I should write a Slashdot feature myself now and then. Fine. I'm in a strange mood today, and a lot of strange thoughts have been buzzing through my head this week, so here goes. My first "observation of the week" is that the word "suits" is no longer viable to describe managers in tech companies. We need a more accurate term, and I have one for you. (More below.)

I was up at Andover Corporate HQ Tuesday. It's 400 miles from my home office, so I don't get there often. This time, for no particular reason, I happened to notice that while Andover has plenty of administrative and marketing and other suit-type people floating around the office doing whatever those people do, none of them wear suits to work any more!

But there was still a clothing division between the execs and the workers: ironing. The programmers, artists, writers, and hardware wranglers wore basic, simple, unpressed t-shirts and jeans or other working-type pants, while the biggies over in admin-land all looked like they spent significant time and energy getting their casual outfits to look "just right" before they came to work.

After I realized what was happening at Andover, fashion-wise, I called some friends who work in other new media and tech companies and asked them if the same thing was going on in their offices. To a man and women, they said it was. Nowadays, there are no suits in tech companies unless network TV cameras are there and rolling, and often not even then.

From now on, in the interests of journalistic accuracy and linguistic precision, I am going to refer to the executives formerly known as suits as "Its," an acronym for "Ironed T-Shirts."

"Yeah, I had a great idea but the Its were too clueless to figure it out!" is an example of how you might use Its in a normal workday sentence. Feel free to do so. I have not copyrighted the word. It's now yours as much as mine to mess up, mispell, or whatever else you like to do to words in your spare time.

The IT Worker "Shortage" Will End. Soon.
Once upon a time, back when the world was young and "engineer" was a word used to describe hairy-eared men who designed real, physical things and programmers were looked down upon as glorified typists, the U.S. had an "engineering shortage." All through the late 60s and early 70s publications like the Wall Street Journal ran article after article about how America's potential economic growth was being stifled by a shortage of engineers and technicians. Business-owned politicians loosened visa restrictions for engineers and technicians from other countries because of this supposed shortage, engineering salaries shot up, and suits (which is what Its were called back then) constantly whined about the impossibility of managing their arrogant techies, all of whom knew they could find other jobs in seconds and, therefore, demanded all kinds of perqs, up to and including free coffee and sodas, in-house gyms, flextime hours, and so on.

You could take any of those 60s or 70s WSJ stories about the "engineering shortage," change a few words in them, and run them today as panic pieces about how it's impossible to find competent programmers and sysadmins at reasonable salaries, and how when you do scare up a few of these rare beasts, they won't hew to the corporate line and respect corporate authority and salute their MBA bosses like good little workers. Indeed, the WSJ may actually be changing words in those old stories and rerunning them. Who would know?

But those of you beyond a certain age will recall that, one day, all those formerly high-rolling engineers were suddenly seeking exciting new careers in convenience stores, service stations, and fast food outlets that didn't pay enough to cover the mortgages on their nice suburban houses, which suddenly became hard to sell because there weren't enough other engineers with good jobs available to buy them. The economies in places like the Boston suburbs and Silicon Valley and other "high-tech capitals" tanked. Life was rough, and a lot of people (including me) got burned hard and ended up with scars that they/we carry to this day.

All good things come to an end. Right now, yes, it's good to be the king (or at least the Network Administrator). But remember what happened to Louis XVI when the rabble got fed up with paying for his high living and decided to take him down a peg.

And does anyone here remember the oil crisis of 1973? I sure do. The U.S. seemed to be spending all of its money importing Arab oil, which climbed to nearly $50 per barrel at one point when OPEC [the Organization of Petrolem-Exporting Countries] got especially feisty. If this trend went on, economic pundits said, the Arabs would own America (and most of Europe) outright within a decade or two. By extrapolating then-current trends and drawing them as lines on colorful charts, this thesis was easy to display on TV shows, on newspaper front pages and in slideshows at business conferences so that everyone could get nice and worried about it.

But last I looked, OPEC was just about dead and oil was selling in the $10 - $20 per barrel range. The danger of predictions made through extrapolations is that something always seems to come along that messes them up. In the case of oil, it was a major change in consumption patterns. Oil got too expensive, so we (the oil-importing countries) simply stopped using so much of it. The most visible example of this change: what we call a "full-sized American car" today wouldn't be a pimple on the bumper of, say, a 1970 Buick Electra.

Believe me, somewhere in a secret cavern beneath the Wharton School of Business (which is to finance as Stanford is to Computer Science) or someplace similar, teams of fiery-eyed MBA candidates are plotting to take down today's computer professionals as hard as OPEC, engineers, and Louis XVI all got slammed in their respective days.

So enjoy the ride while it lasts. It's great fun. But don't take out a 30-year mortgage based on it. Something - it could be genetic algorithms or some other new, less labor-intensive programming methodology or it could be an overall economic downturn that ripples through the high-tech industries and brings Internet growth to halt the same way the construction-driven economic boom in Austin, TX in the early 80s collapsed in on itself when a comparatively small number of construction workers lost their jobs and couldn't afford to buy houses, which led to even less housing demand, and so on all the way down - will throw a lot of high-tech workers out in the street. I have no more idea than anyone else of what the proximate cause of the next tech-industry recession will be, but I guarantee that it will come. One always does.

Indeed, if this thoughtful article from Linux Journal has any truth to it, today's shortage of computer professionals may be as false as many people thought the 70s oil shortage was, so it may already be time for IT workers to start doing a little financial hunkering-down, especially if they're over 30 and unwilling to work slave-length workweeks.

Is Slashdot a Magazine?
I have always considered Slashdot an online magazine. And I have always respected the American Society of Magazine Editors [ASME] and believe their stringent code of ethics should apply as much to online publications as to those printed on paper. So I decided to join. $225 a year, and Andover'll pay for it anyway, so why not?

But guess what? This august body still only accepts members from print magazines. As a purely online editor, I'm apparently not worthy. Which means, by extension, that you, as an online reader, are not as worthy as a print magazine reader. No big deal. I find it more amusing than alarming - for you and me, at least. But this is sad for the ASME; it is freezing out the most vital, highest-growth part of the periodical news business when, instead, traditional publishers' and editors' organizations should be courting us online people in order to assure their own future survival.

Here is the last paragraph of my e-mail response to the turndown I sent to arhodes@MAGAZINE.ORG:

Depending on your reckoning, the 21st century starts in either ~3 or ~15 months. If ASME decides to enter it at some point, please let me know. I'll be there, waiting for you to catch up. ;)

- Robin "roblimo" Miller
Elkridge, Maryland, USA
10 October 1999, noon EDT

conio writes "The Wall Street Journal published an article on Friday about the open-source BSDs (mainly FreeBSD) and how they're silently serving the Net. " This was submitted yesterday quite a bit, but was in the pay area-thankfully it's free reading now. Good to see BSD get some of the limelight.

conio writes "The Wall Street Journal published an article on Friday about the open-source BSDs (mainly FreeBSD) and how they're silently serving the Net. " This was submitted yesterday quite a bit, but was in the pay area-thankfully it's free reading now. Good to see BSD get some of the limelight.

Matthew Priestley has written an excellent essay on News in the Slashdot Decade. It talks about how The Internet is changing the way that news moves about, and discusses problems and advantages related to it. Interesting its a really excellent piece.

The following was written by Slashdot Reader Matthew Priestley, who, despite his email address, is a pretty cool guy Honest News in the Slashdot Decade
In this paper, we discuss the nature of biased and unbiased news in terms of 'trust decisions', using the cryptographic sense of that phrase. We examine the biases in modern media and identify their causes. Two examples of community news services are examined: Slashdot.org, and FreeRepublic.com. (0) From this analysis we derive a model of community news.

Disclaimer: The author of this paper works for Microsoft, but his opinions may not be the opinions of Microsoft. In fact, they aren't. The author hereby declares that nobody important at Microsoft is even aware of his existence, and that he is about as significant to Bill Gates as a single bacterium in your colon is significant to the weather in France.

0 Introduction
There is a malaise of distrust among news consumers. In recent years the number of news outlets has dwindled due to mergers and attrition, leaving information consumers with a scrawny range of choice. As the global quantity of information grows at a jaw-dropping rate, individuals increasingly despair of their ability to filter the news without aid from massive corporations.

Almost half of adults have little or no trust in media agencies (1), yet almost all delegate news collection to companies they will condemn if asked. When consumers knowingly act against their own interests, a form of coercion must be in operation. In the case of news, this coercion is a stranglehold enjoyed by media companies over filtered information. If their services are not accepted, the consumer sinks in a sea of data. In a world in which no one can process all the news and still enjoy a full life, having all information is as useless as having no information at all.

1 Nature and weakness of trust decisions
The selection of a news-filtering agency resembles what is called in cryptology a 'trust decision'. Briefly, a trust decision is a choice made by the user to validate another user's digital certificate. By assigning trust to the certificate, any content signed by that certificate becomes, in a limited sense, trustworthy. (2)

It is burdensome to evaluate the trustworthiness of every certificate, and a typical user lacks the expertise to investigate each exhaustively. For this reason, most users choose to trust a Certification Authority or CA, a central agency empowered to make trust decisions on their behalf. By endowing a single node with the power to filter certificates, the user is spared this chore. (3)

This process is analogous to the decision to accept news from an established information outlet. It would require an unreasonable effort and scads of time for any individual to audit all the news. Apart from sheer volume, appraising facts often requires background familiarity. Sources must be checked, viewpoints solicited, and impact considered. It becomes clear that this is no task for a person who hopes to conduct, for example, a life on the side. Hence the necessity of the trust decision.

Due to the exhausting claims of evaluating news, authority to filter information must be delegated.

2 Sources of bias in modern media
2.1 Opinion pollution
That trust decisions are subject to predation should be apparent. The most evident form of bias is opinion pollution, in which the subjective feelings of a reporter taint the news. Such bias may either systemic, or it may be the fault of "rogue" reporters, or both.

This form of bias is trivial to establish. In a July 8th article discussing a verdict against tobacco companies, the New York Times dwells on the volume of damning evidence presented by the plaintiffs. The deformities of the smokers are described, and the article drops a helpful tip about joining the suit. (4) Covering precisely the same event, the Wall Street Journal scrupulously avoids discussing the smokers, save to describe their organizers as 'flamboyant'. The spectre of a flooded court system and billions in costs is raised multiple times, and the guilty verdict categorized as a legal 'aberration'. (5)

This form of trust violation can be characterized in two ways. If the tolerance for personal beliefs in the news is not widespread, but isolated to a few reporters, then officials of the corporation have delegated their authority unwisely. An organization that is otherwise trustworthy will eventually correct this error. If the corruption runs throughout, however, then the consumer's initial trust decision was poor. In either event, ongoing opinion pollution can only be sustained by broad organization-wide consensus on the value of certain ideas.

Opinion pollution is a trait of homogeneous groups.

2.2 Advertising revenue and corporate ownership
Often overlooked as a source of bias is the murky relationship between news providers and advertisers. The age-old subscription model has fallen by the wayside, unable to compete with advertiser-funded services that appear to offer information for free. (6)

One fallacy is that advertising flows toward high readership, rewarding popularity with success. In reality, corporations are not interested in buyers, not readers. The Daily Herald, a worker's paper in 1960's England, boasted a readership of 4.7 million the year of its demise - nearly double that of the Times, the Financial Times, and the Guardian combined. (7) But the Herald's readers were demi-socialists, and failed to support the very businesses keeping their paper alive. The advertising money melted away.

A look at subscription income and advertising income emphasizes the dwindling importance of readers. A copy of The Washington Post costs as little as 24 cents a day. By contrast, one inch of black-and-white advertisement in the paper commands $257.55. (8) Economically, it would be more prudent for the Post to alienate 1000 readers than one business buying a daily inch of print. If the lost readership were confined to non-buyers, advertising rates would not even have to drop. When profit per advertiser squashes profit per consumer, the business of advertiser-funded information outlets becomes not the sale of information, but the sale of a receptive audience.

The situation is aggravated when a large corporation owns the news-filtering outlet. Most fans of TV news are unaware ABC is owned by Disney, NBC by GE with investment from Microsoft, and CBS by Westinghouse Electric. Stories critical to these interests are treated gingerly in the news. (9)

Reliance on advertising or corporate ownership selects for news that is business-friendly. High readership is no exemption.

2.3 Feeder authority
Any reader who has attempted to wrest information from the government is aware of its inertia. Similarly, the PR departments of businesses are known for their unhelpful volubility. In the first case the problem is information deficit, in the second it is disinformation glut, but ultimately the predicament is the same.

The situation is no different in a modern newsroom. Effective reporters are those who have established personal relationships with 'sources' inside various institutions who feed them privileged information. These reporters are superior information gatherers because they may ask questions that typically are rebuffed.

Without the goodwill of their 'feeders', even competent journalists drown in a sea of flack. Should an information gatherer alienate an important feeder, the gatherer is instantly severed from a pool of developing information. Pains are taken to ensure feeders are pleased with the treatment of their comments in published accounts. (10) This creates an unhealthy environment for the analysis of news. If an information outlet were to criticize the statements of a feeder, or if fallacies or lies were exposed in the feeder's reasoning, the potential effect on the outlet would be calamitous. This allows the feeder to make use of information outlets as occasional distributors of propaganda, knowing that refusal is unlikely.

Information from a small number of feeders may be propagandized.

3 News distribution over the Internet
Slashdot.org and FreeRepublic.com are representatives of a new class of news filter. While using these sites, consumers alter the fundamental structure of their trust decision. Rather than inhabiting a descending tree, in which trust is derived from progressively higher and fewer nodes, a Slashdotter or Freeper distributes their trust. In a distributed trust model, each consumer inhabits a single node in a formless but highly connected graph. Central authority is weak, participants are anonymous, and all nodes perform small amounts of voluntary labor.

3.1 Slashdot.org
Recently thrown mainstream as a gathering spot for Linux advocates, Slashdot.org has a large and devoted following of geeks and technophiles. Interestingly, because of its adherence to transparency and peer review, Slashdot has evolved a news system that defeats several of the biases described above. Slashdot is the conceptual descendent of the Internet newsgroup and the old-timer's BBS. Members log in to the web board and select one or more current items to discuss, then post their reactions.

3.1.1 Successes of the Slashdot model Participants on Slashdot are only identifiable if they wish to be. Widespread use of aliases insulates participants from real-world reprisal - a Slashdotter may criticize the government, their employer, or other feeders with small risk. Handle-use also renders a state of meritocracy on Slashdot. Comments and topic submissions are judged by their own merits, since little is known about their real-world source. Aliases grow trusted in the forum as a result of their owner's contributions. Deprecated aliases have only themselves to blame.

Members submit topics on Slashdot, and those with promise are posted to the forum. By distributing the labor of reporting, the process of information collection becomes inexpensive, and the likelihood of discovering important news increases - much like the 'Have you seen this child?' ads on milk cartons. (11) When the system requests voluntary labor, it is limited to tasks costing only a few mouse clicks. The decision of what is 'newsworthy' is also simplified, since an audience member has provided the item. If each registered Slashdot member contributed only 1 minute per day, their efforts would sum to 1083 work-hours of labor - absolutely free.

Relinquishing trust to anonymous lurkers appears foolhardy, but as randomness grows, so does quality. The web demographic is a straw poll in the worst sense of the term (12), but there are tide pools of demographic validity if groups are narrowly defined. When a site achieves a certain level of notoriety, Slashdot for example, a cross-section of users may fairly be said to represent its supporting community, in this case idealistic geeks. An information consumer is not interested in topics useful to the average person; rather they are interested in what is useful to people like themselves.

No opinion is authoritative until it runs the Slashdot gauntlet. Members comment on topics, share experiences, and take potshots at sloppy reasoning. This is more egalitarian than the feedback model of magazines, TV, or books. In those cases, if a retort is even possible, it is run in the following issue, with no guarantee to reach the original audience. On Slashdot, user comments frequently upstage the 'official' news, and it is a testament to their quality that reading the primary source is often unnecessary. Because most topics excite a gamut of opinions, Slashdot defeats the threat of opinion pollution.

To tame dull or off-topic comments, Slashdot members are randomly empowered to moderate the 'score' of remarks. Moderators are chosen by the system with a preference towards regular but not ubiquitous readers. Comments that gain the approbation of everyday participants gradually move up through statistical effects. Pointless comments sink into oblivion. Visitors to the forum may choose their own threshold of dependence on this ratings system. On Slashdot, the uniform opinions of classic information outlets are rare.

Finally, the scripts and HTML that run Slashdot are released to the community. This ensures, within reason, that the site truly operates as billed, as well as opening the code to all the benefits of open source.

3.1.2 Failings of the Slashdot model
Among its positive effects, anonymity damages credibility. If Secretary of State Madaleine Albright posted a remark on technology export limitations, her opinion would be more significant than had 'DrDeath' typed precisely the same opinion. Validation of real-world credentials can be desirable. One solution would be to support either the S/MIME or PGP signing standards as a user option. A hash of important messages could be included with the post, thereby validating the identity of the signer. (13)

No Slashdot participant receives a handle until they submit an e-mail address to the Slashdot central authority. Those who do not may participate as 'Anonymous Cowards'. AC's suffer numerous disadvantages, not the least that their posts begin at a lower score. Though this distinction discourages meddling from non-regulars, it is risky. Regular members are no less anonymous or even cowardly than AC's, save that they have disclosed their private information to the Slashdot central authority. This makes criticism of the authority more difficult, since critical remarks are safe only as an AC post from a lab computer, which is immediately scored down.

There is one departure on Slashdot from democracy. While consumers do submit the discussion topics, these are dropped into an administrative black box, unseen until a few emerge handpicked by the central authority. Inside the 'box', a small number of humans, vulnerable to self-interest, choose which of the topics will be news. In theory, the authority could even replace submitted topics with its own. A better system would be an open one, moderated in the same manner as user remarks. Along with their ration of remark-points, moderators would be given a supply of topic-points, which could be spent on proposed topics in a pool. Users could set topic thresholds in the same manner that they set thresholds for remarks. This method would be self-policing and eliminate tedious work for the central authority. (Update: 07/16 01:15 by CT : See the Slashdot FAQ for the reason that I've decided not to do this)

Slashdot is funded by banner advertisements, and on 6/29/99 announced that it had been acquired by Andover.net. (14) While there is little danger of the various Linux distros exerting pressure as yet on Slashdot, and while Andover rarely appeared on Slashdot in the past, nonetheless these developments cast a shadow on the impartiality of the community forum. Is it less likely that a story criticizing Sony will be run when an advertisement for the Sony AIBO adorns the top banner? What would become of stories damaging to Andover? Members should be alert for signs of conflicting interest.

3.2 FreeRepublic.com
Similarly evolved, although less highly automated, is FreeRepublic.com, a forum for the exchange of conservative commentary. FreeRepublic is similar to Slashdot in appearance and general design. We will focus on their differences.

3.2.1 Successes of the FreeRepublic model
FreeRepublic's most notable trait is the freedom members enjoy in topic selection. Power is so far in their hands that every member may post any topic they choose, resulting in dozens of discussed topics per day. A true distributed trust network has no single point of entry. Since the number of daily articles is finite, any given node in a sea of nodes has negligible influence. Individuals may be bought or coerced, but since the merits of each contribution are peer-reviewed and peer-diluted, successful corruption must be hugely widespread. The resources needed to influence a majority of users would be prohibitive, and only dubiously worthwhile. Once accomplished, the forum would cease to serve the needs of valid members and would naturally dissolve. Attempts to corrupt distributed news forums are by nature self-defeating.

FreeRepublic reaps no funding from advertisement or corporate ownership. The site is fed by out-of-pocket donations from participants. Though it should be noted that FreeRepublic's supporting community stereotypically has more disposable income than the average netizen, even so the site is accountable to none save its members. When the object of a news outlet is the aggregation of money, it should be unremarkable when money supersedes the pursuit of information. But in a community forum, participants have no aim other than valuable and convenient news.

Participants on FreeRepublic meet physically, organize in chapters, and crusade in the real world to accomplish their aims. There is little risk to anonymity, since there is no need to divulge onscreen handles. Provided chapters are small and independent, the inevitable discussion of principles will not even dampen diversity of opinion, which could expose the forum to opinion pollution. Participants also leave the meetings with a sense of community, which increases their voluntary labor.

3.2.2 Failings of the FreeRepublic model
Although a blessing, complete freedom of topic selection is also a curse. At times of peak activity, two successive clicks on Refresh may result in two completely different topic lists. Crackpots frequently post and their topics slide off the page untouched by regulars. There is much duplication as news breaks. Most topics receive fewer than twenty comments, reducing the effects of peer-dilution and peer-review. All these problems could be resolved if FreeRepublic were to transition to the scoring-based topic selection approach recommended previously.

FreeRepublic has no moderation method for comments, and consequently all remarks carry equal weight. In its absence, opinions win by volume or position near the top of the remark list rather than insight or appeal to the median qualities of the community. Corruption of an unmoderated forum is trivial given fifty aliases and sufficient time.

On FreeRepublic, community participants are not permitted to comment or post discussion topics unless they are logged on. This is an extreme case of Slashdot's Anonymous Coward dilemma. No contribution can be made to the forum without being noted by the FreeRepublic central authority. There is no guarantee the central authority will not terminate or diminish the accounts of those who criticize its practices.

Finally, FreeRepublic is closed source. Though the site is more static than Slashdot, what scripts it has are not disclosed to the forum. Members must take it on trust that no back doors lurk in the code.

4 Issues in Internet news distribution
4.1 The trouble with enthusiasm
One trait of both Slashdot and FreeRepublic is that their populations contain a percentage of zealots. This fact attracts the attention of non-members and ensures the continued participation of long-standing ones. While allegiance to a specific viewpoint is in no way an exclusionary criterion on Slashdot or FreeRepublic, most users share a common opinion on a few controversial issues. This may reflect the fact that contentious topics generate the most passionate interest.

Regrettably, this bond introduces a capacity for bias. Most information processed on a trust graph will lie outside the emotional boundaries, allowing peer-review and peer-dilution to ensure honest news analysis. But when discussion touches on a 'hot button' topic, rampant uniformity of opinion eliminates these safeguards.

FreeRepublic may safely be termed incapable of objective thought when the topic of President Clinton is broached. One recent post discussing Clinton's attendance at the World Cup bore the helpful keywords 'CLINTON RAPIST EVIL SLEAZY TRAITOR'. (15) Similarly, the high quality of discourse on Slashdot disintegrates when Microsoft enters the headlines. Both communities may be absolutely correct in their opinions on these topics, but the mere fact of consensus mimics the effects of corruption and degrades the community information filter. Whether it is desirable or even possible to generate a community forum without this sort of bias is a question for further debate.

4.2 Overcoming feeder bias
Although incisive analysis may overcome the flaws in a poorly written news article, community forums are ultimately limited by their feeders. These feeders are not usually primary sources, except in cases where significant documents are available online. Far more common is the linking of news articles from established information filtering corporations. The question arises whether community news efforts can surmount partiality on the part of the original reporters.

The answer appears to be yes. When CPU-maker AMD recently released comparisons between its chips and those of rival Intel, Slashdot was quick to dissect the biases in presentation and supply the necessary omitted background. (16) However, it should be noted that processors are a topic enjoying high familiarity among the technical elite who visit the site. Had the discussion been on the political condition of Nicaragua, results would be sketchy at best. Fortunately, community information forums are inherently unlikely to encounter this dilemma. Since the group as a whole selects topics, discussions lying outside the expertise of the majority are rare. A more difficult question is this: will community news replace traditional news outlets, or merely supplement them?

5 Conclusion
Community information filters are a novel approach to news. Trading on the principles of self-interest and distributed trust, they levy the expertise of thousands into producing honest, cheap daily news. In a world where command of information is rapidly becoming the root of institutional power, distributed trust graphs refocus information upon the needs of the citizen. While they remain in a state of infancy, the rise of sites such as Slashdot and FreeRepublic herald the demise of traditional information flows. We have entered the Slashdot decade, and only time will judge our success.

6 References
(0) http://www.slashdot.org, http://www.freerepublic.com
(1) http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr990108.asp
(2) http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/faq/html/4-1-3-11.html
(3) E.g. http://www.thawte.com
(4) "Tobacco Industry Loses First Phase of Broad Lawsuit", New York Times, 6/8/99
(5) "A 'Class' Trial Finds Tobacco Firms Liable; Big Payments May Follow", Wall Street Journal, 6/8/99
(6) Cable is an exception. The means of distribution in cable are monopoly-owned, preserving cable from direct competition with TV.
(7) Herman & Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon Books, p15, [cf.]
(8) As of July 1999, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/guide/sub/sub.htm, http://adsite.washpost.com/rates/retail/fullrun.html
(9) http://www.fair.org/media-woes/media-woes.html
(10) E.g. http://independent.org/tii/content/events/f_macarth.html
(11) http://www.missingkids.org
(12) http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/digitaldivide
(13) http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/faq/html/2-2-2.html
(14) "Slashdot Acquired by Andover.Net"
(15) "Clinton hopes for soccer diplomacy"
(16) "Athlon Benchmarks Out"

Mike McCune wrote in to tell us that news.com has an article that says that Three weeks ago, Microsoft had secret meetings with DOJ in attempt to settle case. Here's a WSJ story that requires a subscription, but has more details. Not much data there tho. They still expect a resolution before the end of the year.

Jim Hill wrote to us about the Puffin Group & Hewlett-Packard, a popular story today being on both MSNBC and in the public section of the Wall Street Journal. It's an interesting business case story for Linux and major corporations-send this out to your bosses to show them it can be done. And if anyone has a HP icon, send it my way. Update: 03/18 02:36 by J : For interested parties, the Puffin Group website.

Luca Lizzeri writes "The WSJ reports that IBM, Novell and Compaq are taking equity stakes in Red Hat (subscription required). An excerpt: "Red Hat Software Inc. [snip] said it obtained equity investments from three more computer companies: International Business Machines Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and Novell Inc." Pretty please will someone find a link we can read and post it? And guys, don't just post the article contents in the comments- if you guys keep doing that I'm gonna get sued for copyright violation. Update: 03/09 09:33 by CT : Joy! stick sent us a free version of the story.

An anonymous reader sent us a link to Wall Street Journal article about the music industry and MP3s. Talks about efforts by IBM and AT&T to create new formats that will successfully prevent the advancement of music and artistic freedom so that the industry can continue to overcharge consumers and rip off the people that make the music. Not that I'm biased. Update: 01/22 09:55 by B : There's another article in Wired about a recent panel discussion on standards in digital music: "It's become un-American to argue against security, but five companies sell 87 percent of the music. They'll say anything to protect their position." Update: 01/22 03:17 by S : An anonymous contributor emailed me his notes on the digital audio panel session of the Fashion Institute of Technology Software Summit yesterday: Industry in "sad state". The consolidation of music labels and radio stations has resulted in reduced variety.It is hard for artists, who must join the system to have a chance at success, but doing so requires giving up rights to master recordings (forever), royalties of 10-20 per cent, but only after paying back costs to producer, etc. Labels only interested in artists who can sell at least 250,000 albums.

Solution is "digital efficiency". For example, mp3 allows artists to leave at any time, artists get 50 per cent royalties, can have special targetting such as sending e-mail to all fans in a particular area where band is about to give concert.

Issue is that we have now way to separate bits from Intellectual Property via internet, and this will change the way that music is distributed. Music is the simplest case of this, in that it can be done "now". Similar problems with arise with video, etc at later time.

Can have multiple formats, but need means to transfer terms and conditions of use, such as "ok to play this song three times until next Thursday" -- this is goal of SDMI initiative.

Today have oligopoly -- 5 companies sell 87 per cent of the music. On pragmatic level, unrealistic to expect securitysystem that will restrict how people will use content. e.g., today cd discs are not encrypted, so people can make copies, but can't make cd from a2b music format. Result is that vendors will have to add value to maintain price (current model of $15/cd won't persist), or else reduce price.

Music industry is mature with structure that is decades old, with tight control of distribution. There will have to be new model for internet. For example, music is given away via radio, and broadcasters are given special exemptions, but there is yet no realistic solution/approach for internet radio.

A slew of rumors have started flying that IBM may be interested in purchasing Sun. However, the word on the Street is that the likelihood of this is pretty small, because IBM's business focus is not where Sun is at currently. Thanks to profesor for being the first to send this one in.

Kevin Postlewaite writes "The Wall Street Journal reports today that Microsoft does not own the name Internet Explorer. Last month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office began registering the name to SyNet Inc. whose founder claims he has been using the name since 1994 (the firm is now defunct, after legal bills in the tens of thousands of dollars fighting Microsoft on this issue). Microsoft is planning to argue that the name Internet Explorer is, in fact, a generic name, like cola. The article is here but you need a subscription to read it. " Could someone please post a non subscribed link to this please?

Chris Short writes "In a move that creates a rift among a industry coalition against MS, HP has announced that it is releasing it own JAVA Virtual Machine. This VM will be a subset of JAVA and will, along with MS, break JAVA's "write once, run anywhere" promise. HP insists that it still supports Sun's JAVA, but has created this subset for commercial appliances. Among the companies that have already licensed the HP VM is Microsoft for Windows CE. For articles on this look at news.com or the Wall Street Journal."