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KaZaa Suspends Downloads
chill writes: "'Download Temporarily Suspended -- Download of the KaZaA Media Desktop software is temporarily and voluntarily suspended pending Dutch court decision on January 31. We apologise for the inconvenience. Please check back at www.kazaa.com for more information.'
--- Both the Linux and Windows client downloads are offline. I wonder what the judge thinks this will do to the tens, if not hundreds of thousands who already have the software?"
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=9, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=4, Interesting=4, Informative=4, Total=23.
For all you fags rating this offtopic, suck it. I am sure there are all sorts of important comments about what an ass Ellison is or how evil PHB's believe when marketers say that something is unbreakable.
How many freaking times can you repeat the same crap? The answer - until you have farmed 50 points of karma.
Oh! When I read your message the first time it got +4 Karma points. Now it has 0. Here's the current breakdown:
;-)
Offtopic=6, Troll=1, Insightful=4, Interesting=3, Informative=2
Okay, who else will mod this post? It's one of the most modded posts I've ever saw.
Anyway, there are SIX off topic mods, and one ridiculous troll. Troll? That was a high intelligent post. Not one dirty word. It didn't attack anyone else than the moderators themselfs, who seem to get upset when the hard earned karma is discussed and challenge with well formed point of views.
Yes, it's hard to earn karma (for most of 99% people here), and I now see an overreacted protection of this 'work'. That's how some mods see what they do, "I keep the community stronger".
Which complements my second issue with the moderations on this post so far, SIX off topic. Well, yes, it is off topic. But MORE than that, it's insightful. When will the poster have the chance to present this opinion? I have never seen slashdot talking about itself, only when a new slashcode version is released, which is a large period of time for something like this to wait.
MORE than off topic, this post is insightful and interesting. That's how things should get modded, the impact the opinions have. Yes, I have seen, this community protect their interests so highly that I feel strange some of us are advocates of Open Source.
Aren't we 'supposed' to contribute with each other? And isn't healthy discussions about opposing point of views that improve a lot of stuff? It's rare to see someone saying good things about Microsoft. I have seen posts doing so, none got modded up.
Why not?
I feel like *I* am getting slashdotted. Some of the recent talks I had with my friends were about copyright! I have never talked about it so strongly with them.
And the whole community is getting slashdotted. I thought it was better to accept the casual insightful, but off topic, post.
Guess what? The community is only narrowing their opinions with this kind of attitude.
Well, I am ready to lost my hard earned karma, but just as a final note, this topic should be a future article on Slashdot (and please don't let Katz write it!
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
What is a waste of moderation points is having to moderate this kind of posts. About 10 to 20 percent of the M2 i'm doing is having to rate "offtopic" and "redundant" M1 as fair. The current topic here is not the /. moderating system but something completely different. The links you said were "clever" and "funny" might have been "clever" and "funny" in you eyes, but they were certainly not on-topic. I visit /. to read articles and interesting replies. I don't need to hear stories about ghosts and how Microsoft (that's the correct way to spell it btw) will lose it's market share in the future when I'm reading interesting posts on space exploration or a new handheld.
/. didn't start off as big as it is now and the M1/M2 system was introduced to keep up with the enormous increase in postings.
Just one other thing, the poll you refer to, it has 1600 votes. Nowadays polls have about 16000 votes. I was wondering from when that poll originates as, as you probably know,
(Btw, can someone tell me why the layout of this article is in blue instead of the usual green? the rest of the website is functioning just fine)
"We live in our minds, and existance is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality" Ayn Rand
?
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" I " .
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. .
. !
Which doesn't prevent it from being a troll.
The giveaway is the comparison between /.'s moderation system and government oppression of dissidents. He compared moderators (who express their opinion) to Nazis (who killed people by the millions). That's either trolling, or so dumb as to be indistinguishable.
Godwin's Law as applied to /. would make a "troll", "flamebait", or "clueless" moderation appropriate. Too bad the last doesn't exist.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Let me suggest that you re-post this in a slashback where people have less of a dedication to being "on-topic". Also, perhaps there should be a thread once a month about Slashdot itself.
There are plenty of sites that manage much, much more useful and interesting discussion than this bunghole site without resorting to gestapo tactics. If you cockstones really cared about not reading troll posts, then you could freaking set to read at +2 or whatever and only read the posts that give verbal rimjobs to open source and jamie.
It is a great delight to trolls and crapflooders to watch a site full of bitches who cry about censorship and free speech to be so hellbent on censoring certain people.
Anything that has 34 mods (at the time of this post) has earned respect enough for anyone to read, for the controversy generated by the moderators alone. If thirty people can't agree on whether it's a good, relevant post or not, it's probably a good, relevant post.
This is the sort of post your journal is designed for. After you drop in a journal entry, change your ".sig file". And before anyone asks, the only reason I don't do this myself is that I'm still working on entry #1.
Please, I want to read discussions related to the story they're posted under. Don't tell me about Slashdot's moderators when the parent story is about Oracle's faulty advertizements.
Do you like Japanese imports?
It is blue because it is in the developers section.
Repost? Now that would be -1 : redundant, wouldn't it? I'd hate to loose my newly acquired karma again.
No security through obscurity: my password is goatse. Stop me before I troll again.
Logged in people are also modded up faster than anonymous cowards. Presumably all this means is that more moderators read non-AC posts.
parent: Moderation Totals: Offtopic=12, Troll=1, Redundant=2, Insightful=4, Interesting=9, Informative=5, Overrated=1, Total=34. (just to keep statistics. When i wtached it was at +5, now it is at 0. hey mod him up again.
And i hope some moderator spend his precious point to mod ME down. Why doesnt taco post a topic on moderation?
There are several things wrong with this current system:
-Moderation wars. (like happened to this parent)
-Moderators who mod something down where there was much more interresting stuff to mod up.
-Early post get modded. (up OR down.) late posts get seldom a moderation point. Moderators are just lazy that is something that is not reflected in metamoderation.
-There is very little documentation how the moderation actually works. This leads to conspicay theorys. (They say: read the source, but how the system is tuned is not readable there.)
repeat after me: karma is just a number. (bye bye karma). (hint for moderators: THIS is certainly offtopic!)
Rock on, home chicken!!! W00t! Preach it like there ain't no tomorrow!
BLING BLING! Yo gotz da skillz do pay da billz! AWWWW YEAH.
He never said "Nazis." The fact of the matter is that dissenters in matters of techno-politics often do get modded down (or up, some moderators are also techno-political dissenters) for the political content of their posts, without regard to the post's logic, originality, innate interest or quality of thought. The parallel he saw to oppressive government (not Nazis) does not invoke Godwin's law -- particularly since his post was the initiation of the thread.
Besides, with all regards to Godwin. his "law" is full of shit -- it is too often invoked by Nazis who don't wish their nazism discussed.
National CyberCrime Prevention Foundation
Oh yes, dumbfuck. Go on nitpicking.
/. gang care about Oracle and it's security issues...
Anyway, the lenght of this - completely offtopic - thread shows how much the
So your stupid addition is actually ok. It would be better to get a life, though.
National CyberCrime Prevention Foundation
I have written both normal and troll posts, 1st posts, etc., both logged in and anonymously, and I have found these rather shocking results:
Statistics based only on your posts are definitely not enough. For starters, maybe you experienced more modding down because you don't post anything interesting, even when you mean to. Your assumption that there are concrete objective categories for modding is without merit. The distinction between troll and normal posts is a judgment call, if it were not the moderation system would not be needed.
even when it's not a particularly interesting or clever post [slashdot.org]. There are a LOT more +5 posts than +3 or +4.
Again, this is a judgement call, apparently it was interesting to enough people to get it modded up.
Digging deep into the history of slashdot, I found this poll [slashdot.org], which clearly indicates the vast majority does NOT want the moderation we have here today. 'nuff said.
I didn't even bother to check the results of this poll, anyone who points to a web poll as statistical evidence should have all of his conclusions immediately called into question, even if they appear to be solid, which your do not. Trying to prove anything by an easily stuffable poll is ridiculous. But for arguments sake let's say that each vote represents the opinion of one and only one person. Still the poll's accuracy is highly questionable. In fact if I were to predict the outcome of such a poll ahead of time I would have guessed that the greatest number would vote against the moderation system. Why? Because those that post anonymously or having nothing to say would have more reason to vote (negatively) since they are the ones constantly being modded down.
Of course as off topic as your post and my resultant response (damn I'll take two karma hits in one day) were I do commend you for trying.
As one final thought let me leave you with this, I disagree with the action of modding (not the fact that it exists) for the most part. But you need to remember that most likely the majority of the readers of slashdot are the young and the internet, that's a natural result of popularity and a sure reason to expect the lowest common denominator.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Another thing I could do is make my entire post a link to my journal page by forgetting to put in a tag.
.sig of a user with negative karma? You'd have to be extremely keen on gay porn or a total /. newbie
Exactly how many times do people actually follow links in the
No security through obscurity: my password is goatse. Stop me before I troll again.
It would have been good to provide some specifics (how many posts, of which type, etc.)
That's because it's a lot easier and quicker to spot trolls, firsts posts, links to goatse and assorted other crap, so more of them will get moderated. No big surprise there. Time may be a factor (see below)
That's an interesting one, probably a case of (unconscious?) karma whoring on the part of moderators. This may be an area where tweaking with the point system may prevent this herd mentality, so I hope Taco or whomever is reading this thread.
I don't think there's any conspiracy against ACs or individual posters. This probably happens because moderators often may browse at 1 instead of -1, instructions to the contrary notwithstanding. That means you won't see the ACs at all; no conspiracy theory necessary to explain this, just that the moderator can't or won't browse at 0 or -1.
For some reason my turn to moderate has come up an unusually large number of times in the past two months or so. I tend to do moderation at work but not during work hours (first thing in the morning, or in the late afternoon). If I happen to be having a busy day at work (which is most of the time) I may decide to browse at a higher level to be done more quickly, on the theory that it's better to do some moderation than none at all.
For the same reason (lack of time, the mod points about to expire, etc.) it takes a lot less time to moderate down a first post, troll, etc. than to wade through 300+ messages looking for some good ones. So if you're busy (or tired of reading junk) it's the most expedient thing to do.
See above.
Meta-moderation is supposed to help on this, but the feedback loop probably takes too long and furthermore you are right that overall there tend to be clear biases in the Slashdot population.
That's not an argument for not having a moderation system, though.
Rather, I think that the moderation system should perhaps distinguish moderations done to opposing or unpopular viewpoints (the odd pro-MS or anti-Linux post that's not a flamebait), and up the rewards for the moderators who do them.
So, of the two things I agree with you, they could be translated into proposals such as:
One interesting (encouragning?) thing is that your message got modded up. Good thing, IMHO.
Furthermore, when modding a post up, every moderator seems to follow previous moderators in their choices, even when it's not a particularly interesting or clever post [slashdot.org]. There are a LOT more +5 posts than +3 or +4.
One reason that this happens is that many moderators probably read at a threshold of 3 or so.
Also, for those at 50 karma, it is "safer" to moderate up a posting that others have already moderated up, rather than risking your standing in the 50-karma club on an "unproven" post.
I like slashdot... it moves quickly, but theres plenty of insight and humor, even among the trolls. This proves it. It's sad tho, to see points used up in this little war. Points are just points after all, and anyone who wants to can read unrated and raw, can do so.
my prediction on your final score... +2
parent present:
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=18, Troll=1, Redundant=2, Insightful=7, Interesting=14, Informative=6, Overrated=2, Total=50.
Holy crap! WWIII has erupted.
You missed the "random moderators". Whenever I get moderator points, I open the first story on the front page and randomly moderate 5 posts. And then watch everyone complain that I am *on crack*.
OSS Girlzzz Unite!
Digging deep into the history of slashdot, I found this poll [slashdot.org], which clearly indicates the vast majority does NOT want the moderation we have here today.
:o)
Been contradicting yourself much lately? Interesting use of 'deep into the history' and 'today' in one sentense.
I'll sacrifice my precious Karma to point that out.
Parent: Moderation Totals: Offtopic=19, Troll=1, Redundant=2, Insightful=7, Interesting=15, Informative=6, Overrated=2, Total=52.
If your intention was to stir up a hornet's nest, I think you succeeded.
And I also think you hit the nail on the head....
G'head, mod me down. G'head. I got a life outside karma....
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=19, Troll=1, Redundant=2, Insightful=7, Interesting=15, Informative=6, Overrated=2, Total=52.
OSS Girlzzz Unite!
Another reason is that +5 actually means "3 or more" people willing to mod up exist. (Assuming it was posted by a logged in user with good karma so it starts at +2).
Why are mods limited to +5?
Why can you only moderate a few messages under an article?
Here is an idea. I am not sure if you have a valid point or not but you are definetly off topic. If you have something that is important, go create a discussion topic so you have a place to talk about it?
That way you won't have to worry about the offtopic moderations to your post.
You can't grep a dead tree.
Whenever a new version of Slashcode is made available, there are lots of suggestions for ways to improve moderation options, but I don't recall ever seeing any substantive discussion of the topic with participation of the real powers behind /.
In short, the poll does not have to be accurate to be significant. What it signifies is subject to interpretation.
National CyberCrime Prevention Foundation
your logic for why web polls are bad doesn't hold in this case. don't mind the all lowercase, my shift key is broken. the main argument against web polls is that they aren't a random sample of the target population, but in this case it is. a good counterpoint is, though, that some people may be more inclined to vote than others, so that could skew votes one way or the other, and usually those who vote will have axes to grind.
so in short, i have changed my mind by the end of my post and now agree with you.
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Amazing occurance: In the time it takes the page to refresh (about 10 seconds, over my connection), every single reply to the message was modded down to 0: Offtopic or below. Every one, including ones that were at 2 or 3.
Methinks the gods have been angered....
Interesting observations.
Too bad it's offtopic. (ooh, if only I hadn't squandered all my moderation points on the penis bird!)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Yeah, I noticed that too. Very disappointing. And the moderation system is flawed, of course. But we knew that already.
Place this comment somewhere a bit more appropriate. As of the time I'm typing this there are 27 mods for "off topic" on this allready. In fact its dissapeard from the main link all together.
It would have been better to submit this as a story.
Acaila
Growing Old is Inevitable; Growing Up is Optional.
Finally, the system of doing moderation and allocating moderation points (assigning the task of moderation and meta-moderation) is totally broken from a UI point of view, which is why I opted out of the whole mess a long while ago. Why should there be 3 seperate activities, some gated or restricted, and some partially hidden from view? And use-it-or-lose-it moderator point assignment? And forcing a choice between moderation and posting? It is a kludge, a bad design. There should be only 1 activity, done in the open, that can contain a comment (to rebut or agree, and/or to justify moderation of it's parent), and logged-in users can also vote on the parent post - including other "moderation" posts. Voting totals cascade up the tree, with reversals for negative moderation (if the system includes it - I have seen posts that really justify it - see this recent post for a comment on such).
Maybe some of the other ideas of the current system should be kept - but the entire system is crying out for a redesign. It is choking on a chain of bad choices, each one which may have seemed justifiable at the time but whose culmative effect is to lower the quality of the site (which I find myself visiting less and less over time).
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool
Until I'm modded down to 0 or -1 too, here is your chance to be informed about one of the most controversial posts moderationwise I have ever seen. It sure is interesting and offtopic. I believe it is more interesting than offtopic. Anyway, this post won't last long, so it should better be brief too.
One of the -1 gems on /. (was +4 when I first read it), how many more we have to see until people stop not looking at low scores!
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Actaully, I was hoping they were going to let the moderations run a little longer, just to see where everyone's post would end up -- but then again, strictly speaking, its offtopic.
You see, the moderation system works - its all offtopic... oh, well, its only karma
Do yourself a favor and read the parent on this post. Yes, it's offtopic. Yes, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Oracle's poorly-conceived marketing. But it is nonetheless an interesting post, and with 58 (as of this writing) moderation points spent on it, is significant enough to deserve your attention....
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=26, Troll=1, Redundant=2, Insightful=7, Interesting=16, Informative=6, Overrated=2, Total=60.
Read the Parent!
Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down. If you think this is unfair, please email jamie@mccarthy.vg /. editor conspiracy theories, but this looks VERY suspicious.
Methinks the editors have awoken.
I must say I've never quite believed the
Ow well, my negative karma is safe for a while again.
Moderators are self-selecting themselves as censors, to enforce some sort of groupthink PC. Trolls are posting more and more outreageous stuff, just to attack the system.
CT, it may be too late to save /., this is no longer such a fun site, a place for a community to form - it's just your JOB. Bleah.
Maybe you should just forget about the whole thing??? (Or maybe you have no choice - house and car, too many debts, wage slavery chaining you to a task you no longer love? I've been there.)
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool
A few hours ago many posts in this thread had scores above 0. Now every one is -1, offtopic. What gives?
First of all only the parent is offtopic, all replies kept the topic of the parent, so why do we have all these off-topic mods.
/. crew don't want us talking about this, so they fucked all the posts off.
And why has 100 odd posts, some of which were at +2 - +4 now all -1?
Its censership. The
What gives is editors have unlimited points for moderation. It's censorship from the top. Of course what this entire thread deserves is to be re-parented to the top/front page (but the software probably doesn't allow that). Beacuse it is a matter of utmost importance to the /. community.
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool
Why is "offtopic" bad? Slashdot should be a friendly forum, where people allow their conversation to wind wherever it wants to.
OK, I know this is technically offtopic, but something very fishy is going on here.
I've been watching this thread most of the afternoon, enjoying the moderation fight and discussion. I know for a fact that as recently as 4:45-5:00, this was still hovering around the 4-5 range, and MANY of the replies were in the 2-4 range as well.
And now, all of the sudden, everything in here is 0 or lower? With a suspicious amount of OffTopics as well? Hell, some of the ones that have been modded down don't even list why they were.
I'm probably risking a little mod-down myself posting at +2 here, but this seems wrong. Editors/moderators: I realize this whole thing is off-topic, but what's the harm with a little discussion? It's not like we haven't seem a million off-topic threads in other stories, I don't see why this one has to be smacked down so harshly.
It hurts when I pee.
Agreed. Interesting threads will live and uninteresting ones will die by their nature.
Okay, Slashdot admins: here's a challenge. Do a month-long test with no negative moderation and with no "offtopic" flag. See what happens. I'll bet it's good.
The funny thing is , the /. community WANTED this to be discussed, this is why there are so many high moderations. Stupid editors
Do you honistly thing the fuckwad editors would put this as a story?
Sad. I like to post AC for the privacy...yet I'm penalized (in a community of security, privacy-consicious folks) for doing so.
Frankly, I don't like AC penalization, I don't like the freaking 2 minute rule...I can't see why the Slashdot people can't cope with the occasional troll. *I* have not seen much of a troll problem, but I'm constantly getting frusterated because Slashdot ate another one of my posts because I'm typing too quickly.
Reading this *thread* it appears that the vast majority of Slashdot readers are unhappy with the current direction of the moderation system.
Bullshit. This is a single action on the part of one of the Slashdot admins. The community was happily discussing this.
Offtopic is GPLed, if you make any derivative work, it must be released with Offtopic tag too.
The main problem with this moderation system is the total lack of visibility to anybody except the editors. For all their talk about open-source and freedom, they don't even practice it on their own site!! The moderators who mod comments are totally hidden from public scrutiny, so when editors throw their points in, who the fuck knows what's going on in there?? Moderation plays a very big role in shaping a discussion, and if the editors mod stuff it is conflict of interest when users comment about the site, the editors, etc.
Bottom line is the editors are unbelievable hypocrites who put up a facade of freedom and openness when their own site is the perfect example of a fake democracy.
Welcome to /.'s vision of "Freedom of Speach". The freedom is controlled by the elite few that have the only *real* power. Now doesn't that sound familier?
Then a few days later, Jon Katz will write an article "INTERNET USERS RISE UP AGAINST FASCIST EDITORS", where he would drop buzzwords left and right about how the Internet has degraded from its original purposes.
.
Let's see how long this takes to get modded down.
Yup, been there, done that. A great way to waste your moderator points.
Well, I mostly don't get involved in these debates. But this is just FUCKED UP. You will never make me believe that all those -1 Off-topic mods where done by earnest moderators.
0 660
Prove: normally there would be more variety (off-topic, troll, redundant, what not).
I'm convinced that someone did abuse their power to mod this entire thread down. And I don't like it. See, I think the moderating system works pretty well as it is (it's not perfect, but what is). HOWEVER, if someone that has the power to do so silences an entire thread, that's just pathetic.
In fact, I would ask anyone that does not agree with this behaviour to report this as abuse to Rob Malda (aka CmdrTaco). In other words: email the guy. Don't forget to add a link to the original thread: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=26315&cid=285
I can't find where now, but somewhere he asks us to report abuse.
That stupid fucktard CmdrTaco Jamie Michael must have modded down the whole thread. You can kiss my black ass taco.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
if you mod me down, you admit to being a dicksucking faggot.
root> man -k lunix heterosexuality hygiene
nothing appropriate
root>
if you mod this down, you admit to sucking a horse's cock.
root> man -k lunix heterosexuality hygiene
nothing appropriate
root>
it's times like this i'm glad Klerk and CmderTaco are there to show how shitty slashcode is. and if this is modded down, then you admit that the slashcoders are incompetent programmers.
root> man -k lunix heterosexuality hygiene
nothing appropriate
root>
Oracle Breakable? perhaps...
Slashcode Breakable? that's a given.
root> man -k lunix heterosexuality hygiene
nothing appropriate
root>
You know, Taco and friends are always the first to point out news articles in regard to software bugs, such as the smear campaign against Microsoft. However, when other people criticize how shitty slash runs, and how it practically has no useful UI, it either gets ignored, or it gets modded down. Really, don't throw stones in glass houses...
root> man -k lunix heterosexuality hygiene
nothing appropriate
root>
Dear god the editors here are lame. It's incredibly obvious that every response to this post is being knocked down to -1 Offtopic not by individual mods, but rather by an editor. The editors and the same droids who expect us to pay tribute to each kernel revision with the aforementioned "ooooohs" and "ahhhhs" are busy trying to knock down the parent, but amazingly it keeps making its way back up to 2 or 3.
I'm personally disgusted by this. I'd just like to say a big AMEN BROTHER to the stated view that distraction posts can make things alot more enjoyable around here, and I'd like to say a big "FUCK YOU" to the individuals diligently modding this down and most of all to the crack-smoking editors smacking down every reply. YOU are the problem, much more so than the occasional off-topic post ever will be.
I don't think the slashdot moderation system is broken by any means. It's the idiot humans behind the mod points who are broken.
right on, brother. but, hey, if they can't afford to hire competent, experienced programmers to write a blog system, then how are they gonna afford competent, intelligent editors to run it?
root> man -k lunix heterosexuality hygiene
nothing appropriate
root>
50 replies this this, and they have *all* been moderated down to -1 -- are there even that many mod points kicking around normally?
Well, go ahead and knock this down as well - it'll be the first time I'll have been modded down for years, and I could do with some karma breathing space.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Offtopic=30, Troll=1, Redundant=2, Insightful=8, Interesting=22, Informative=7, Overrated=2, Total=72.
Actually - fuck it, mod this one down as well. Being stuck at the karma cap for so long takes all the fun out of life.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Nice to see you getting into the swing of it Johnny boy .-)
FYI - there was ~100 posts in this thread, a lot of which were 2/4 some 5. All got slapped down to -1 between page refreshes for me. Someone scripted em down.
Nice isn't it.
I lost track of time, was that 40 minutes or so?
I'm looking at this post and the thread of replies extending from it currently, at approximately 11:00pm EST on 01/16/02. Every single post is at -1, some because the posters default to -1, but many which have been modded to -1. A lot of these posters appear to be serious (i.e. "non-troll") and appear to have insightful comments and opinions on these issues. I'm asking for two things: 1. If CmdrTaco et al. respect the intelligence of their patrons, one of the editors should at least post in this thread a serious reply to these allegations, and others brought up in the thread. At the very most, they should post an article to raise the topic for discussion, since it obviously interests many. 2. Everyone who was modded down in this thread: if you have the "Slashdot Messaging" enabled, which notifies you of when your comment was moderated, please post and let us know exactly when your comment was moderated down. This information could clearly show abuse of the moderation system by one or more editors (the infamous thread-slap, which they simultaneously claim doesn't exist and nobody uses anyway). Thank you for your time.
that I wish for some much needed features in Slashdot, for example it has a view from highest to lowest but where is the view from lowest to highest. I mean fair is fair and no it would not just be to give trolls the glory. What if I want to save the *cough* best *cough* for last or what if I don't want to waste my time reading a diatribe describing all the security features including in every RDBMS product out there. Also, along those same lines a upper theshhold for viewing posts should be available so that you can dump those lofty posts that just rehash the Slashdot party line. Ok mods go to it and mod this to hell.
This is very interesting
but what i really want to know is how fast this will get modded down.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
When you get moderator access, you are told to browse at -1 to watch out for abuses in the system. I finally see what they meant. Every single response to this thread got modded (-1, Offtopic). Abuse? Never...
Look at this:
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=34, Flamebait=1, Troll=2, Redundant=2, Insightful=8, Interesting=25, Informative=8, Overrated=2, Underrated=1, Total=83.
Absolutely unbelievable!! I think there is more here than what meets the eye. 1 flamebait but 34 offtopic? 25 interesting but 8 informative? come on, something is wrong here.
I can't believe that people are bothering to mod posts in this very thread down to -1, considering that it's just your journal, and considering that it's all about moderation to begin with.
I've already posted several times a medium-length message asking why specific posts that I thought were both on-topic and also interesting were modded down in Slashdot stories. Some of these posts were modded up to +4 or +5, then modded all the way down to -1 within a day or so.
It's obviously a representation of American stupidity; we all claim to love free speech, but only if we agree with what's being said. Otherwise, they damn well better shut up, or we'll shut them up forcefully.
I complained about the very same thing to CmdrTaco in an email a while ago. He responded on 8/30/01. Below is the text of my email as well as his reply.
;)
My email:
I
> enjoy the site because of the moderation system, where users can post
> comments and only the most informative or best comments can get read.
> In other words, I don't have to waste my time sorting through 75-100
> awful comments to find the few true gems.
>
> I've noticed recently (in fact, since the upgrade) that the moderation
> system seems to have gone downhill. First, a lot of good insightful
> comments don't get moderated, and the few comments that do get
> moderated seem to have been modded down as "offtopic" or something
> similar. I know you say in your moderation guidelines to try to mod up
> instead of down, so I don't think the moderation system itself is at
> fault. Rather, it seems that there are very few moderators actually
> perusing the stories!
>
> For instance, there was an article today about AMD. With 150 comments
> posted, there were NONE moderated above 2. With 175 posted, there was
> ONE moderated to a 3. Something is seriously wrong here. If the
> comments aren't being moderated, this is no better than the imbecile
> flamewars on fc or ZDNet.
CmdrTaco's reply:
I think part of it is that I'm out of town and not moderating much
-----
My comments:
I only find something wrong with this if the editors of Slashdot aren't doing their job. I believe that part of the job of owning a community site is listening to that community. It's very similar to running a company -- if you don't listen to your target market, they will leave for a company that does.
However, this thread, and moreover the fact that this entire thread has been moderated to -1, says that someone at Slashdot is not listening. That endangers the very idea of being the self-appointed king of a community -- that you listen to your constituents. At this point, Slashdot has become ridiculed for everything from its UI to CmdrTaco's grammar to Jon Katz to the asinine comments posted without moderation possibilities to submitted articles. (Witness the war today about CmdrTaco's comment regarding the cheating system used at a university.)
The fact is that Slashdot needs to change. Personally, I have several ideas about how it can change for the better, ranging from more moderation points in the system to the abolishment of the "Offtopic" moderation. (Can you imagine if you were at a dinner party and the conversation drifted to something besides the "assigned" topic and you complained about it? This is the same type of thing.)
On a slightly unrelated note, I believe the 50-karma point cap should be abolished because it doesn't encourage people to post good comments after hitting 50 karma. Furthermore, I believe karma should be milked for all it is worth, and that people should be praised for high karma -- even to the point of putting a "Top Karma Whores" box on the front page listing the 5-10 people in the system with the biggest karma (ala FuckedCompany's scoring system.) Why not? Positive karma means you have posted what is viewed as a good comment. Why not make it a contest? People love competition.
The way to solve all of this, of course, is to simply make a Slashdot discussion forum, and have user input not only discussed but actively implemented. The whole point of open source is that anyone can contribute. It's sad to see that one of the biggest open-source-proponent websites can't encourage the same level of participation.
a lot of rapid moderating, and then no more moderating...
could they make it any more obvious that editors are monkeying with the moderation?
All very interesting (though I might suggest that you get a life) but WTF has it got to do the the topic of the article (Oracle security) ? Yet it gets scored 5!
"I deny nothing, but doubt everything." Lord Byron
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=42, Flamebait=1, Troll=3, Redundant=2, Insightful=9, Interesting=29, Informative=9, Overrated=2, Underrated=3, Total=100.
Pretty amazing.
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=42, Flamebait=1, Troll=3, Redundant=2, Insightful=9, Interesting=29, Informative=9, Overrated=2, Underrated=3, Total=100.
Pretty amazing.
ADDENDUM: Apparently an editor decided to abuse his power (ie. his unlimited mod points) a few seconds prior to me posting the above comment - and indeed, *all* comments in this intriguing thread dropped to -1 Offtopic in an instant, as in previous instances reported by others. It's a rather sobering experience to witness an incident that in it's part serves to mark the decline of a formerly great news/discussion site. Looks like some of the most dooming Slashdot conspiracy theories were true...
It will be very interesting to see if this thread, or at least the post that started it, gets archived (readers win) or not (editors win - site loses).
The users really don't have any real power here, it's only a facade. The only power lies with the editors.
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=42, Flamebait=1, Troll=3, Redundant=2, Insightful=9, Interesting=29, Informative=9, Overrated=2, Underrated=3, Total=100
Pathetic editorial moderation continues - an entire thread does not get modded down to -1 in a minute by normal means. The parent loses 6 points in between refreshes. Power corrupts.
Oddly, I'm getting never-before-seen effects when trying to post this.
amazing that every new post at this time is STILL getting modded down!
the tighter they squeeze, the more posts will slip through their fingers.
Un-fucking-believable!
+5 in my book, if only from what I've seen the editors do to this thread. At least twice, and maybe three times, some editor has been bitchslapping the ENTIRE THREAD down to -1. Mod totals are up to 105, with a net of +1! Couple hundred of responses, too.
I'm not posting AC, and will take the 3 pt. karma hit, just because I think this guy is right.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
This is interesting, but it doesn't help solving the problem. If you allow AC and do not ban people, you need something to control the S/N ratio! At that point, I think that the Friend/Foe system is the most efficient system!
Let's try again - my reply was eaten.
I have a post above that was marked down offtopic twice, both moderations about 20 minutes apart. At the same time as the first moderation the reply to my post was marked down, also as offtopic.
So they have got a little more devious - instead of straight to -1 they're taking off a point at a time to make it look less obvious.
Now I'm having trouble posting this again - I've posted dozens (if not hundreds) of posts from this machine and have never had this difficulty before. Posted just now to another article - absolutely no problem. Something fishy is going on (and no, it is not the delay between articles - the problem was there before I posted to the other thread).
Larry Ellison is a braggart and a blowhard. However, his words do contain a kernal of truth, and must be interpreted with moderation to get the true message. When he says "unbreakable" he means "less breakable". When he says "100 times faster" he means slightly faster.
Unfortuately, when he says National-ID card, he means it.
Now up to 110, and still the thread gets modded down. Amazing. I've been reading Slashdot for a while, and always thought the stuff about editors abusing the system was folklore. Anyone mirroring this thread just in case it goes (ahem) missing when it's archived ?
N/T FOO
Its like finding a needle in a haystack. Yes, Oracle as the 800lb gorilla in the database world, but this does not mean that their products are bad. They are propriatory, sure, but almost all databases have got their own tweaks to the standard that allows them to operate more effectively. There is nothing more irritating than trying to port from one product to another and finding a feature on one that makes you rlife easy entirely missing on the other one, which compells you to try and reinvent the wheel yet again, except that your wheel is buggy and slow and takes lots of your valuable time to try and get this cackhanded implementation working. Anyway, eds abusing the mod system is true. But another thing to look at about Oracle is that their influence is actually quite small for their size - probably because Ellison is seen a quite an abusive person and not to be trusted. This lack of trustworthyness should also be applied to the people marking down so violently this thread. But that is another matter - Oracle is happy in its market and is showing no stomach for cancerous expansion like Larry's old friend BillG. A little reverse engineering on my part here to see how the abuse is being done. Oracle biggest weakness is that it is a one trick pony - best hope that people want the trick for a long time to come.
112 moderations on the parent alone, and all replies at -1 (Offtopic)? Why won't the editors let us users discuss what we want? It's obvious that it's not user moderators alone that has been doing all the moderating to this thread.
I for one has finally lost faith in slashdot.
And, remember, whoever the editor was that did all the moderating - it is YOU that have made me lose that faith.
Just wait till the next slashback or other slashdot related article.
Count me in.
/. is an open, free and user-moderated forum out of one side of your mouth, while instantly nuking entire threads to get rid of discussions that you (apparently) don't like. The parent post may be off-topic, but the last time I checked, user moderators have an "Offtopic" option and could have marked it as such if they desired. (Many, in fact, did so; many did not.)
/. editor. This is beginning to happen with some regularity; your credibility would be helped if you would at least come clean. None of this namby-pampy fiddly-fuck "um, we don't do that sort of thing."
/. for a long time; I liked it, and in general I still do like it. But IMHO the editors would do well to let the moderators do their jobs. Moderating and meta-moderating is not exactly the easiest or most enjoyable task in the world, you know. It takes time and effort to find insightful comments to moderate up. It takes time and effort to pour through people's moderations and judge them on their merits. And frankly, it does piss me off a little that these efforts are being overshadowed by skriptz that will handily dispose of all "subversive" comments in a manner that is not subject to metamoderation.
I find this clandestine mass-robomoderation to be thoroughly distasteful. I'm not going to yell "censorship", as so many others have; after all, it is your site and you are free to do what you like. However, it is entirely hypocritical to claim that
If you're going to be doing this type of thing, the least you could do is have the cajones to come clean about it. Explain that editors may, on occasion, wipe out threads that they find undesirable; explain that this nullifies the expressed wishes of the existing moderators, and explain that people should attempt to preserve their karma by avoiding discussions that could potentially invoke the ire of a
I've been reading
There's my $0.02. I could check the "No Score +1 Bonus", but I won't. I think three karma points is worth it, when there is a point to be made. I hope I've made one.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Very well said post. I hope the "first" in the title means there are more to come.
/. janitors: Fuck off you hypocritical facist sons of bitches.
We all know it's going to disappear when archived.
.....i guess i'll lose mine the same as everyone else who has posted on this thread,i've seen the parent go from +4 to -1,even tho he's offtopic he is still correct,this has been the most intelligent and worthy of reading thread on slashdot in a long time and from the look of everyone else posting i'm not the only one that thinks that,right now karma has very little value after this thread...
[I've posted two other AC comments in this thread (in the same subthread), if it matters]
:-|
This thread will never be allowed to be archived in the Slashdot archives. Even if people moderate posts up in the last second before the cut-off line, I'm sure a script will be in place to counteract these - the editors will then have the ability to ignore the whole thing, citing the fact that -1 posts do not get archived. (Maybe we should start submitting this thread to various other news-related discussion sites? Or would that be too drastic? Well at least we should bring this up in the next Slashback.)
So, to everyone reading this while the thread is active:
You are witnessing the undoing of Slashdot.
I really do hope that I'm being overly dramatic with that statement, since I've been reading Slashdot for quite some time, and liked it for the most part. But now, it seems that any efforts to improve the current situation may be too little too late.
What kind of high degree of pettyness do you need to try to silence AN ENTIRE THREAD of this discussion? So much for slashdot being a 'user-moderated' system, eh?
unless you dispute otherwise that you have been down-modding this thread, you will have utterly thrown away any credibility this site has left. not too mention the hypocrisy and corruption you guys have fallen for.
Brilliant. I've never seen such an obvious attempt at censorship.
This is the most ridiculous display of censorship I've seen ever. Modding down a whole thread. Shame on you. Obviously the community do not agree!!!
Oh, that, and the parent thread. Reading it may illimunate what may possibly happen if government can track all your actions and act without any wisdom and respect for different ideas.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
I've been reading /. for well over a year now and have never seen such a petty, small-minded display of chicanery on the part of the editors like this. This thread is a disgrace to a site that claims to be an open and user moderated forum. I know I'm burning a karma point by posting here but, like others here, I don't care since I feel the need to express my (logged in) opinion.
/. editors for their juvenille behavior.
Shame on the
---
I didn't want to leave this space blank.
Hi.
Thanks for your time and research. I appreciate you speaking out on issues like this.
testing out my trending skills
Count me in.
Please mod me down 3 times to -1 Offtopic. I know that you refuse to take responsibility for your actions - you won't even admit that Editors are different from Slashdot users in priveleges and visibility. It's absurd. I know that the last revision of the moderation guidelines is dated 1999. And I know you won't even read my post before you moderate it to -1. I know this because you've already IP banned me, removed my moderation priveleges, and removed my metamoderation priveleges. All this is your right. Slashdot is privately owned, I take nothing for granted here, if you delete my account, so be it.
But as I have said, as the parent poster has said, as everyone else has said: please, grow a pair and take responsibility for what you're doing. Please, at the very least, tell the god damned truth. I admire the way you people skewer large corporations. But wielding the sharp sword of Truth bears with it the responsibility of being Truthful in your dealings with your readership.
And let me tell you, modbombing an entire thread with a 10,000 pound Offtopic bunker-buster while claiming that the moderation system is self governing while refusing to message people when you've Editor-moderated them is going to peg anyone's bullshit meter.
Moderation is not Censorship. I would never claim that; it's a stupid position and if we throw it up it's easily shot down. Moderation simply governs visibility. What people talk about determines what people know and learn about at Slashdot. It controls the propogation of memes. And you are hellbent on suppressing this meme. I'll refrain from speculating about your motivation... but consider how angry it makes you that the MPAA is trying to suppress memes about copy protection and the MPAA. Now step into the shoes of the people who are pissed off about modbombing and find themselves suddenly pounded into -1 oblivion the moment they open their mouth. That's where the bile comes from.
It'd be nice to take your rhetoric seriously but 300 Offtopic moderations make the hypocrisy too deafening to hear anything over.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=52, Flamebait=1, Troll=3, Redundant=2, Insightful=10, Interesting=36, Informative=10, Funny=2, Overrated=2, Underrated=4, Total=122.
My god, I dont believe this. Not just the fact this has recieved a huge amount of moderation, but the fact the entire thread is bitch slapped!
The ONLY post offtopic is the parent. I am replying to that parent, that means I am On-topic. Thence, I only can presume the subsequent moderations on this thread is censorship, Slashdot style.
Proof in this will be a moderation of -1 Offtopc, not -1 Troll like it deserves.
Moderators, mod this up as 'insightful' and 'funny'... Make sure you read the parent's of this post. It shouldn't get modded down, well, at least its ontopic :)
Mod the other ontopic posts up too, they might last a while.
I just want to point my support for this man and what he's done...
/. homosexuals ought to be ashamed of yourselves...
you
I must burn in hell, suffer and pay for my sins
But Gods the one who's losing, Satan always wins!
Not that I have anything to add, but I haven't seen any new replies to this thread...which makes me wonder if it's modded to hell (I browse at -1 without showing moderation) or if it got stale...or is it blocked? I suppose I'll find out when I try and post this.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Fuck. I'm a retard. I didn't bother to look at the day, just the time.
Now I'm surprised it's still as lively as it was last night.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
come on now..are these guys professionals or 10 year olds who just had their toys taken away from them?
Its a pointless battle. I'm in, have been in it. I would just like to see what moderations are editor moderations vs. user moderations. I bet over half the mods on your post (currently 134!!!!) are editor moderations...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The parent had a +1 Interesting, and now I see it's been slapped down again (135 now). Is there really some mod just sitting there monitoring the thread in order to bring down its rating all the time?
Last time I checked an individual moderator could get no more than 5 moderation points at a time. For this to happen through peer moderation, a horde of moderators would have to closely watch this thread for several days. Nope, can't be.
Hello! I've got 3 karma points to burn. Just a test to see how fast the robomoderation kicks in.
This post starts with a score of 2. I will post again when it's modded down, and compare timestamps to see how fast the modding was.
This is amazing and chilling stuff.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
it's a really sad commentary on the part of the editors. and they STILL haven't bothered to respond on the record to this crap.
The stories posted themselves are not closely fact-checked. Without the tireless eyes of the thousands of Slashdot readers examining the stories, this site would be worthless. Only because they check your information, dig deeper, and share their knowledge does this site become useful.
This abuse of moderation is against the entire spirit of open-source software. Without being able to bring faults into the light, Linux (and other operating systems) would not have grown into the stable system that it is today. Without competition and cooperation, open source would fail miserably.
You, Mister Editor, are actively attempting to kill Slashdot by moderating down all posts in this thread. You will succeed in driving us "trolls" to other websites, or to found our own... leaving Slashdot in the rubble of history.
I demand the following things from Slashdot:
If Slashdot wants to be the powerhouse in the open source movement, it needs to be responsive to its users -- or it will lose them.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
Conclusion: robomoderation
This one dropped even faster. 2 to -1 in less than 5 minutes.
Offtopic, but also interesting. :-)
Is it more interesting than it is offtopic?
Of course, with the editors sending the entire thread to -1, you can't tell.
I'm Spartacus!
Wasting your time since 1997.
I do hope that the moderators realize that a link to this very discussion is shooting up the moderation queue over in Kuro5hin . Unless they delete the parent to this message completely from their system, they're going to get an awful lot of bad press...
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
Get it through you head. We don't like this. This is extremely unprofessional and just plain paternalism. You guys would be all over it with a YRO article if another site did this. You have shown yourselves to be utter hypocrites.
Proof that the same Slashdot editors who champion free speech use everything they can to squash that same right when used against them.
/. over the past few weeks. I read things like the parent and, quite frankly, I'm sick of this. Fuck Slashdot. I've been trying to reach the 50pt karma cap as a personal goal. Now I couldn't give a shit.
The parent of my comment has been moderated: Offtopic=64, Flamebait=1, Troll=3, Redundant=2, Insightful=13, Interesting=41, Informative=12, Funny=2, Overrated=2, Underrated=5, Total=145.
I just watched it go from -1 Offtopic to +1 Insightful and back down to 0 in three page refreshes.
I've become more disillusioned with
Editors, why do you bother bitchslapping this entire thread? It's all invisible anyway if you just mod down the parent. Or are you just trying to fuck with the karma of everyone who dares reply to this post made by someone who is clearly an enemy of All That Is Good About Slashdot?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Quite interesting to look at the proportion of posts in this topic that are -1.
As of this moment:
-1: 489 comments
0: 270 comments
1: 216 comments
2: 113 comments
3: 49 comments
4: 22 comments
5: 9 comments
... which means fully 219 comments in this story have been moderated to -1 -- probably most of this thread.
Just showing a little solidarity here. /. posters unite!
To quote a previous poster:
Mr Taco, tear down this wall!!!
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
Here's a hint editors, you are looking like bigger fools every time you mod down this thread, and turn the majority of users against you or your policies.
Stop it now and save yourselves before it is too late.
Funny that this was down to -1 by the time I was able to refresh the page.
:-)
I doubt any real moderators are wasting their points moderating everything here to -1. Something that has 150+ moderations has to be interesting (offtopic or not.)
I think we should link this thread from sigs and regular posts for a while.
Posts may get moderated down -- but a sig can never be offtopic.
This is uninsightful and off-topic, it doesn't belong on an excellent sight like slashdot.
yeah, great method of quelling the voices of dissent.....fuck you, slashdot
I gots me some karma to burn.
MOD THE PARENT UP! HE MAKES AN EXCELLENT POINT!
'nuff said. Moderators, it's your choice... mod me down or mod the parent up. Think positive!!!!
Kinda proves the point: Moderating down is the more common choice. ;) It's just that apparently nobody has to waste a precious modpoint on this thread, 'cause where these -1s come from, there's an unlimited supply of 'em.
I don't believe that Oracle's software is necessarily immune to bugs. The advertising does make it sound like that but it no software can ever be completely error free. The very fact that a security problems with oracle make news indicates that it must be pretty good. Also think about the sheer number of people using Oracle's products. The more people use a product the more likely it is for problems to be found. Oracle perhaps is not mistaken in saying that their database is reliable. The mistake is of course saying that the system is completely secure. As stated many times before there is no such thing as absolute security.
We must keep this thread alive. The trick is to put a link to this thread in your sig and then make Insightful, On-topic posts. These get modded up and more people see the tyranny of the /. editors.
Example post:
Letting Microsoft develop <insert technology> is like having the wolf guard the hen house.
--
Mr. Taco, tear down this wall!!!
test test test
This is not a First Post.
...fuck you in your sperm soaked asshole
C==/_o|^|o_\
| _\ )
\ '---'/ HEY GUESS WHAT ??????
_/`-. __.'_
/ \
/ , ||| |\ , \ WHEN WE GREW THE FUCK UP
| |:===: / | | |
|
\ \ '-' \/ /
`\ \==I==[]=/
\o_\ |o/ P.S. NICE FUCKING POCKET
/ ) |\ PROTECTOR DIPSHIT
|
|/| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
\ > >
| | |
|_____|__|
[_____]__]
|==|==|
ass ( , `~~)`~~)
"""`~~~`~~~`
Allowed HTML: <B> <I> <P> <A> <LI> <OL> <UL> <EM> <BR> <TT> <STRONG> <BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV>
Important Stuff:
don't forget the real story,something that exposes the moderation system for what it is.....
red my sig for more and remember to browse at -1.this is what the editors ere trying to bury
Hero's been bitchslapped into oblivion....
is that i'm sure the kazaa client is available for download from Morpheus, or one of the hundreds of other file sharing programs. Effectively, once one copy exists, software gains a sort of immortality... which the courts can't effectively dismantle.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
I always found the Linux client, which uses the FastTrack proprietary-but-cross-platform (http://www.fasttrack.nu/) P2P stack, to be buggy to the extent of being unusable. Could've been a libc mismatch with my Debian-unstable system, but it wouldn't accept user input after starting up and logging in.
fp! hahaha! I WIN
Ha!! All this time I just thought it was our shitty shitty school network admins here at my campus and their inability to properly configure routers and firewalls!!!
WinMX
Audiogalaxy
Morpheous
Bearshare
LimeWire
Should I go on? Not to mention that only shutting off the server and only shutting off the front end application is like someone giving out cheat sheets to a test and the instructor later telling everyone not to use them.
But I'm sure that the Einstein-like geneouses in the RIAA/MPAA are on top of the situation. Don't worry folks.
yup
indeed
Attention Slashdot Readers: Please read this important thread about the present and future conditions of slashdot.
Well, he's either naive, or overwhelmed by the technology.
Does this really solve anything? There are almost 500 000 users online at any time on Kazaa/Morpheus and you can download the client from mirrors still and it won't go away. What is the point of suspending the download from their homepage?
I'm uploading the windows installer to a tripod website right now, gimme a few minutes and this story will be more or less worthless.
Great. In one 24 hour period we have had stories on Universal's general screwing of it's customers, the network's reluctance to let us record shows in any shape or fashion, and now Kazaa shutting down pending litigation.
What a happy joyous world I live in. How in the FUCK did we get to this point?
-------------------------------------------------
IT does everything kaZaa does.
Anybody care to make odds on the upcoming nuclear war between India and Pakistan? I figure India's got the upper hand: say, 5-3, India.
To get Kazaa, I'll have to use WinMX or Morpheus to find it? No big deal.
Eventually they will simply have to go after individual users if they want to stop illegal sharing. I know that if word got around on perhaps a college campus that students were being kicked out of the dorms that it would cause the casual pirates to think twice.
No doubt a similar fear campaign could be orchestrated in other demographics.
I'm looking at Kazaa's website at the moment and I'm not seeing anything about suspension of downloads, just a big download button and a quote from c|net. Am I missing something here?
Could've been a libc mismatch with my Debian-unstable system, but [KaZaA for Linux] wouldn't accept user input after starting up and logging in.
That might be the whole point: if I remember correctly, you start a client daemon (with &), and then you use other apps to send commands to that daemon and interact with the network. (Normally, a GUI wrapper would handle that for you.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
''Never in human history has technology allowed the big to crush the small with so little effort, and never have the laws and infrastructure of the world been so set up to expedite this process. [...] In reality, the legal system is a nasty, ugly thing that unless you have a great deal of time, resources and money, you're up the creek.''
He also explores the various myths of how the system works. For example -
Myth #1: What matters is who is right. Sorry, wrong -- it matters who is willing to spend the most money proving they are "right."
- and on it goes.
I wish these guys well with their fight
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
12-230-133-211.client.attbi.com
cs2416272-88.jam.rr.com
scooby.videomaker.com
d226-68-164.home.cgocable.net
cs2424242-147.hot.rr.com
resnet129-210.medford.tufts.edu
orinoco.portland.co.uk
Except for the ads servers, no commericial servers appear to be contacted. So once KaZaa gets shut down, we just won't see their ads.
...ass raping an eight year old, only to pull out and make her clean the shit off your cock while you blow insane amounts of sperm onto her tonsils.
I just wish all the record labels would agree on a pay service that gives me (legal) access to almost any music title out there.
I can dream, can't I?
--
Mr. Taco, tear down this wall!!!
--
I WIN
For windows users, you can still use Morpheus for all your mp3 and pr0n downloads. I wouldn't be suprised if Morpheus is next considering Kazaa and Morpheus are based on the same technology from fastrack. Both morpheus and kazaa are similar to napster in the sense that they have centralized authentication, but they differ in the fact that there is not a centralized index. There is a good writeup on morpheus and kazaa available here.
Yeah. I pay for music. See, I don't like record companies, so I just buy music online from bands I like. If that's not an option, well, I break down and buy the cd, but since I hate most music put out by the big guys, it all works out. MP3.com had some good stuff, particularly Americana (which is my personal choice)
Writers imply. Readers infer.
1) Even if the stupid Kaaza client is no longer available, Morpheus still is, and is a lot more popular a client anyways. That's like trying to shut down the WWW by banning Netscape.
2) Morpehus/Kaaza suck anyways. Even though the idea behind it is pretty genius, in practice their software sucks. Besides crashing constantly, being spyware, bloatware, and every other type of negative ware there is, and just plain being a crappy client, there is no friggin music on their network. I try searching for something somewhat well known but not quite mainstream, say "The Descendents", and I get 0 results back. And any results I do get download at 1.1 k/sec, despite claiming the user has a bandwith of "300" whatever that means. Worst of all you can only get mp3s of up to 128kpbs. I'll stick with WinMX or eDonkey2000 for now. There are plenty of alternatives to Kaaza/Morpheus that don't suck ass.
When will everyone realize that you can't put the cat back into the bag. Once the technology is out, telling someone, "Don't use it, or you'll be sorry" becomes an invitation to flaut its use.
It's really too bad that a Judge doesn't order Windows banned--because most people who pirate MP3's, etc. use Windows to do it. Hey, there's a good idea in there somewhere..
i downloaded that video from kazaa too
KaZaa users are still connecting as of 06:00 GMT today. The main problem is if the courts go after the authentication servers. This isn't happening yet.
See my journal, I write things there
It will get a story posted on /., prompting millions of users to simultaneously fire up their existing KaZaA software to see if the network is still up, thus melting the servers and shutting down the network...
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
It would be extremely interesting to see when the court actually makes Kazza to shut down, I wonder what would happen since Kazza doesn't have a centralized server.
Next step? I think the cournts will try to force ISPs to refuse any incoming/outgoing connection to kazza or similar services.
kawai
How does this affect Morpheus and other FastTrack clients I wonder? Well, no news of MusicCity doing the same as yet, and I would assume this does not affect that company at all, as the case was brought against Kazaa.
So, as I'm sure a million others will say, download Morpheus! And enjoy everthing Kazaa does, _minus_ the spyware!
Morpheus is up and running and has the added benefit of not having spyware. Or if you're at college like me, get stuff on the campus network.
In the book "Microserfs", by Douglas Coupland, the writer muses (This was, by the way, in about 1993):
"Someday life will be nothing more than jail and shopping."
'Nuff said.
By preventing the download of Kazaa you will have to have the Kazaa client creating a whole new 'chicken and the egg' paradox that will make file sharing applications cease to exist in a fit of logic.
Oh well looks like its back to ripping dvds for me. Just like fat tony when he said he would go back to smuggling drugs instead of licker :P...
Dont u just love the simpsons ? :-)
"You win again Gravity!" -Futurama (Zapp)
Sure, lots of people use Fasttrack, and the network is fairly decent (in that it sort of works sometimes), unlike Gnutella, Open Napster, and Direct Connect. But now that Fasttrack implemented a cryptographic challenge (such that no open source client can enter the network easily without cracking the code) they have shot themselves in the foot since it's easier to shut down with only one company licensing the technology. I wouldn't download Kazaa anyways, since it's loaded with sypware, 3rd party programs, and the like. Morpheus is another Fasttrack program, and it is pretty decent, although it does have ads that popup through Internet Explorer (!) and they even often have sound or shockwave, or take up the whole screen! Your best bet is to use Freenet once version 0.5 is released (really soon now) with Frost. All those who know the old, non-working Freenet will be impressed by 0.5, as it works incredibly well now.
One other thing worth mentioning: Kazaa wants you to use it so that it can make money off your processing cycles, memory, and network connection. That's right; Kazaa plans to introduce technology to allow businesses to use the Kazaa network to burden the load of distributing large quantities of data.
Won't it be nice when things like giFT and freenet are standards and we won't have to worry about the man keeping us down?
It is now on Kuro5hin. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/1/17/21155/1564
True file sharing technology should not sneak Gator onto your hard drive or try to sell you CDs you don't want
The future of P2P belongs to technologies like GNUtella, which can be used to set up truly decentralized file-sharing networks that CANNOT be struck down by tyrants disguised in business suits
Yes, GNUtella is harder to use, klunkier, and tends to access smaller listings of files, but given time and work, these problems will be alleviated as greed-driven fake P2P systems like Napster and Kazaa are crushed by the moneyed interests controlling the legal system.
Anyway, True Freedom belongs to those willing to work for it. Strong, free geeks will always find a way to overcome the forces of oppression. Forget Kazaa. P2P4Profit is a deservedly dead end.
Well, that takes care of THAT! Piracy is finally solved. Move along now! Nothing to see here!
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Is there a country where there would be no sort of recourse? [no copyright laws]
The only country I would see where this would work is China, but they have government censor proxies.
Or, would we have to set up something on some micronation island? I remember hearing something about someone trying this.
-twb
There are other decent file-sharing networks people can get on besides FastTrack, like OpenNap or Gnutella. Good riddance to Kazaa, I say.
I just wish someone would write a file-sharing client for windows that doesn't suck so badly. Almost all of them have ads, spyware, and crummy interfaces.
now, more than ever, it's important to open up your outgoing bandwidth when you're not actively using your machine and share the love. i recommend downloading a gnutella client too and share your files over both networks. the only thing that can keep this technology alive is selfless participation...
Well, it worked so well for DeCSS, didnt it? Didnt it?
Liberty in your lifetime
Suspending downloads of Internet Explorer and expecting the web to automatically disappear?
Way to go BUMA/STEMRA! (Dutch record company mob), a fine example of clear thinking...
Is it normal for a male to masturbate while watching women's tennis? Or is that one of those perversions they have a special name for, like necrophilia?
good to see the lameness filter is doing its job.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
It is still possible to download KaZaA, a quick search found a copy here
Greetings!
I just logged on to KaZaA, did a search on 'Spears' and lots of images, MP3s, videos, etc. are available for download. Could someone please explain?
Thanks,
Ehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
Because Slashdot editors didn't post the story...
Aimster has gone from a free service to a pay for service (about $5/month) and have shut down their www.aimster.com and www.clubaimster.com sites. Their new service is at www.madster.com and is exactly the same as their old service but you pay for it. The old service is shut down and you can't download them without paying.
I think this was a huge mistake, Napster will fail for doing this and so will Aimster. The best way to make a profit is to use advertisements and although I hate to admit it spyware.
People have gotten used to the free internet and sure as hell don't want to pay money. AOL's legal downloading service and any others will bomb as long as there are free services available.
Thanks. Now my karma is so low, my posts start at -1. All thanks to a certain negative modding that has been taking place in the past few days.
We should do this more often, and call it the "International Internet Is Fast Again Day".
Affectionatly known as IIIFAD.
Murphy(c)
youre just another lame leecher
C|Net is reporting on this, check out the article which includes a few more details that haven't been mentioned here.
forma3
Just get one of the many other good clients out there:
http://www.bearshare.com
http://www.limewire.com
http://www.winmx.com
http://www.filenavigator.com
Resistance is futile the RIAA has been assimilated. they just don't realize it yet. Afternapster has a list of 100 other filesharing programs. Song long KaZaA. Next!
It seemed to me that it was would be a rather fruitless thing to try stop KaZaa, and that the guys named in the suit were just gonna get screwed. Judge: "Shut it off." Them: "uhhhh...." I find it honorable that they are at least 'trying' to meet the responsibility set out. How can it be that the judicial system doesn't know that port blocking across many ISPs would be the only solution? Do judges really not talk to people in the know?
1. Morpheus clearly states on their website "No Spyware"
2. Bloatware? Its a 1.6Mb download. Tiny by todays standards.
3. I just did a search for "The Descendents" and got hundreds of replies back.
4. If you care about "The Descendents" that much then maybe you should be buying their cds instead of downloading tracks illegally.
5. What kind of douchebag talks about himself in the 3rd person?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
All I can say to that is a big simpsons Nelson-style "HA-HA!"
Yeah, the content companies suck ass, no doubt, but that doesn't mean that NOT PAYING FOR THE SHIT YOU DOWNLOAD is going to make things any better. If you hate stupid restrictions, stop buying records from the opporessive major labels. Frequent places like Emusic.com, where the downloads are all real MP3s, no bullshit copy prevention. The albums are sold for a reasonable price, and the artists GET PAID.
And finally, would everyone stop acting like they're somehow oppressed because they actually have to PAY for their media? Cry me a river. Don't put up with copy prevention bullshit, but don't go back and *REINFORCE ITS APPARENT NEED* by "trading" stuff on Kazaa...
The Free desktop that Just Works
Chinese version of Intel/AMD comes out with a "unlocked" linux friendly computer, everyone buys it to play their mp3's (or other files). Hardware isn't that hard to make, most of it is made overseas anyway. Hell, if I had enough time, I would make a new BIOS/patch. There is no stopping mp3's.
I uploaded a mirror here: Windows, Linux. If everyone uploads a copy of the program this thing will never go away!
Are a total hippie/GNU/RMS/linux certified cockgnome. Gnutella is a piece of shit and so is its design. In case you didn't read the report its here at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/15/222922 3&mode=thread
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Copywrite laws existed to protect the artist and not the corporations that bought the artists out.
Music is intellectual property, not physical property. When are people going to figure this out?
I remember the days when music copywrite was simply so that someone couldn't blatantly rip off some artist and then claim it as their own work. For instance, if The Verve decided to blaringly take a riff from a Rolling Stones tune without permission, the Rolling Stones should be given all the money that The Verve makes on said song, or at least a portion thereof.
Now all of a sudden intellectual property means The Ability To Listen To said song.
Since when do Music corporations have a right to limit how far the music is reached? Doesn't this compromise the artist's intent in itself? Honestly, what this is doing is once again putting more power in the hands of those with the money and reinforcing Murphy's Golden Rule (whoever has the etc.).
Morons. All of them. Especially since they don't realize the awesome power (wow, this sounds like a speech from Masters of the Universe or something) of Filesharing, and that the existence of mp3s/Divx/mpgs/exes/whatevers is going to negate any attempt to control flow of music/information. napster got shut down. Everybody said it was over. Out sprung a dozen clones. Now Kazaa gets shut down. If Morpheous, Audiogalaxy et al follow suit, I personally guarantee this number reaching out in the fifties. And eventually genre-driven ones and all that kind of stuff.... It'll be glorious.
Wow. That was cheesy. I'm gonna stop before it gets worse.
Karma: Non-Heinous
A. Courts squash what they can define.
Just like America turned (rightly or wrongly) a non-nation-state terrorism incident into an old-fashioned "my country vs. yours" war, courts/governments will try and shut down companies with business models that (they argue) are based on piracy and individuals that write "harmful code".
<pessimism>
The day someone anonymously builds a true peer2peer network that scales well and people choose it ahead of something with advertising in it, the genie really will be out of the bottle. Sadly, that's when governments will decide that "anti-supply" laws we're talking about now are useless, and the "anti-demand" laws will get tougher - in essence, they'll start going after 'users' rather than 'dealers'.
</pessimism>
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
Try getting the link here: dowload kazaa
Looks like I might just have to download it from 1 of another billion locations like this one:
l
http://www.mpex.net/software/download/kazaa.htm
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Your thinking of something else... KaZaa has a curses based ui.
I guess I was thinking of eDonkey and Freenet.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It is my understanding that if Kazaa/Morpheus/Grokster's servers were all removed, that the network would continue anyway. Meanwhile you can access the network by downloading Grokster at http://www.grokster.com or Morpheus at http://www.musiccity.com
I find it odd that, even though KaZaA has suspended downloads, their download counter (at the top of the page at http://www.kazaa.com/en/defend.htm, for example) is still going up. This might be automatic (it's going up very smoothly and uniformly), but even so it's amusing. In addition to Morpheus, there's also Grokster, which likewise licenses the FastTrack technology. Is file sharing really dead? I don't think so. I mean, the way courts generally work, organizations like the RIAA and MPAA would have to sue every file sharing program making company separately. In addition to the legal fees, the industries are lagging behind by a year or at least several months... Programs are around for a while before any suit gets filed, and then the suits take time. True, it's hardly optimal that file sharing programs rise and fall every so often, but a bit of a shakeup is good now and then. Besides, they're growing faster than people can try to get them shut down. Direct Connect is quite good for some things. Gnutella, although it sucks, cannot be eradicated. And if something like Freenet ever gets somewhat usable and efficient, they won't really have anyone left to sue. Maybe then they'll concentrate on making movies and music and software good enough that we want to buy it, instead of producing crap on a stick, trying to limit what we can do with it, and suing everyone in sight. Marketing can only do so much to sell a bad product (although M$ has done an entirely too good job of it...).
When Napster closed Kazaa was my next move.
I found the interface far less friendly than Napster, but it also allowed searching for other file types (I rarely used this feature anyway).
I also disliked the addware/spyware installed with the program. After installing it, an extra program appears in my unistall list, which it won't let me remove.
I also thought the mechanism for sharing directories was meant to be intuitive, but it wasn't really. My searches for audio only ever yielded 128 kbps and less bitrate files.
Maybe the closing of this service will force users to migrate to other services. I'm going to start looking.
Speaking about legal action against people/companies providing content (files and web pages), I strongly believe that prosecution should only happen in the country of origin, not the destination. For example, eBay should not have to block German Nazi relics and items, but German ISPs should. A judge in one country should not be able to affect the services available to users around the entire world.
My 2
"I would like to change the world, but they won't give me the source code!"
I'm 23 years old and I live at home with my parents. Okay, so I'm a loser. Shut the fuck up. Last night I stuffed a towel under the door, spritzed apple-cinnamon Odor Absorber(TM) all over myself and smoked pot in my room. I accidentally smoked a little too much, though, because I got FUCKED THE FUCK UP. I only remember setting at my iMac, listening to music and flailing my arms and head around like a madman. Why am I writing about this now? Because I'm at work and I just popped a whopper of a THC bubble. God I'm stoned.
Life is a scam. - Steve McQue
Slashdot. Tripod.
Think about it...
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
I'll just go get it on my other 4 or 5 P2P programs. And then, once I got KaZaa that way I'll trade again.
Hey, wait, this node goes through Holland...?
WOOHOO!!! Now our college campus network's bandwidth won't be nearly as hyper-saturated! Why...why...I can actually browse the Web again!! And download via FTP!! I'd almost forgotten what 10Base-T felt like!
The problem there is that, let's face it. The reason you can log on to Gnutella or any other filesharing network and find almost any MP3 you're looking for is because of the sheer number of people ripping them from CDs. If this fantasy world were to become reality (which I think is highly improbable) then only a relativly few geeks would be left to feed the network. So you've then gone from a pool of say 2 Million active users to what? 2000? Note that the reason these numbers seem low is because it's only the ones that contribute (rip tracks) that count, not just anyone on the network.
Remember, there are MILLIONS of filesharing system users out there that are using prefabbed compaqs or Dells or iMacs and logging on though AOL who can barley figure out how to rip MP3s. Most of them are certainly not savy/brave enough to go out and order new hardware to hack past DRM.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
This is kinda off topic, but I know at my school here they just recently limited the KazaA traffic with a packet shaping program. Kinda crazy, I doubt it will actually limit how many people use it, but they're trying. In my experience there's always been a way to get files. At first it was FTP, then iMesh, then Audiogalaxy, then BearShare, then Morpheus(KazaA). Once each one is shut down a new one pops up. The courts should give up, the cat's out of the bag, why try to stop it now?
Nate Tobik
ahh, the egg in the basket..
Just letting you know that people that are not logged in do not get to see other peoples sigs. So do you ming posting it for me, so I can read it?
TIA.
i'm sure the kazaa client is available for download from Morpheus
If you've got Morpheus, you don't need KaZaa. KaZaa is the main company, and Morpheus [music city] is just another client on the network.
While their goals may be different-the software is effectively the same. If you use KaZaa, you notice that some users are @musiccity, while others are @kazaa.
I've actually had people tell me that Music City is better than Kazaa.. but because there was more stuff on Music City.
Get your Unix fortune now!
128 bit limit can be switched off. It's in the registry somewhere. I think it is limitbitrate and set it to 0. (I think. I am too lazy to dig out regedit and confirm the details. Maybe someone else can.)
HTH.
They use the same network don't they? So getting Morpheus would be redundant AFAIK.
But do you seriously believe that The Police, Steve Miller and all the other aforementioned bands didn't give permission or anything?
Honestly... think about it... If Sting sang Every Breath You Take at the MTV music awards and almagamated it into I'll Be Missing You wouldn't that imply that perhaps he condoned it?
The Verve is simply an example of someone who didn't ask permission for it.
I'm more pointing out the difference between Copywrite laws that protect the artist and copywrite laws that give more money to corporations.
If the artist gives their permission for someone to bastardize their music, that's their own damn fault.
Karma: Non-Heinous
This is not the case. They have taken the CLIENT software download off the website. The actual service seems unchanged.
I can replicate most music, right here from my computer. I may have to screw around with different clients, networks, etc, but I can replicate almost any music I would care to hear. Wouldn't it be great I could replicate the beer I am drinking right now? Or the dinner I had a couple of hours ago? Or the computer I bought two months ago? When I was a kid and cared about music a lot, I would make tapes for my friends. It was a lot of work. I had to setup my stuff, flip the LP over, and buy a decent tape for $1 or $2 dollars (not adjusted for inflation). The whole process took at least an hour. Now, I can plop a cd in one player, and a $0.15 blank cd in another, and have a perfect copy in 5 minutes. I can get music from other "friends," whose names I do not know, in just a few minutes, too. I think the music publishers are somewhat worried because they no longer have any manufacturing based advantages over their customers. Book publishers are not worried, because who would bother Xeroxing a book? It would cost more than buying another copy. Sooner or later, the music publishers will figure out the new media, and make even more money, and nobody will care very much. For now, be glad you live in interesting times.
> Chinese version of Intel/AMD comes out with a
> "unlocked" linux friendly computer, everyone
> buys it to play their mp3's
That's a strange definition of everyone. I've never seen it defined as "about 10 people" before.
> Hardware isn't that hard to make,
Sorry, "4 people".
"All representatives are busy. The estimated hold time is one..hundred..sixty..four..minutes." Detroit Edison, 02/01/02
when Puff Daddy Blatantly Ripped off the Police (I'll be *MISSING* You?)
Hrmm.. we all saw Sting on MTV singing WITH Puffy right? Puffy has loads of cash, he paid everyone enough to sample those songs.
Shaggy Blatantly Ripped off Steve Miller Band (Listen to ANGEL and then The Joker, my lord!),
Steve Miller Band? Come on! Shaggy has had way more 'hits' than them... they are basically one hit wonders. Whoever ownes the rights to SMB songs needed the cash, trust me. But, just because two songs sound similar doesn't make them the same. Plenty of songs are ripped from each other... you just didn't bother to listen close enough because it's not rap vs. classic rock.
and countless other rappers decided that other *good* classic rock songs didn't actually deserve their copywrites.
It's copyrights and since you are obviously a racist, you should know that the only Rap song that didn't pay to use the beat [etc] is Ice Ice Baby.
But while we are on the subject, most Rap songs don't take beats or lyrics from classic rock songs. They take many of their beats from Funk songs. They also take their beats from other rap songs.
No one ever points out that Country songs take from Classic Rock songs. Just noticed that.
People get paid... this isn't a rip off, it's business. I like Classic Rock first, but I'm also a Rap fan. Sometimes I don't like the 'new' songs, but at times I find myself applauding the 'new' song for the work they've done.
Look at "Changes" by Tupac. It's a good song if you listen to the lyrics. If you don't like it, I'm sure there are other reasons.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Okay, they have shutoff downloads of the client from their website.
.exe file and post it elsewhere?
Wouldn't the ultimate irony be if people then used their own Kazaa/Morpheus clients to move the client
I think Morpheus and Kazaa and the ilk do exactly what the internet was designed to do: Survive a major failure at one point and still operate (in this case share the client files).
Granted, shutting down the Kazaa Master Servers would be a huge hit, but that is the point of distributing them to multiple people, across multiple providers around the globe.
- Nothing is true, everything is permitted
KaZaA are supposedly acting in accordance with the court decision by stopping download of their software - BUT - this will not stop the network from existing.
In order to really stop the network from existing, the KaZaA guys nead to really break it - for instance, force a download of a newer version of KaZaA media desktop and disable it on a particluar date.
Thinking about it, maybe the versions we all have contains a remote control code which disables them, thus disabling the entire network.
It is enough that the network is inactive for a few days or fragmented enough to make it stop. There are some mechanisms built into KaZaA to prevent that from happening, but it is not impossible.
-- Arik
at least, by not being able to download kazaa, you don't get the spyware :-)
I live in the uk and have lots of encrypted stuff- if they ask me to turn over my decryption keys I'll just say- it's not encrypted! It's supposed to be like that!
Kinda like having a sentence "oeurlal/aouws/lou##" on your hard drive and claiming that's what it's supposed to say.
All my stuff is encrypted with my own super secret encryption which means the encryption is undoubtedly super-weak compared to real systems, but hey- I like writing it, and security/obscurity.
graspee
How? Easy, just tell the writers at all those magazines that target the population at large to write an article about a 'useful' ;) tool or service (eg. DVD Genie in the January 15th PCWorld newsletter). The general public downloads the program, use it, and the worst part is flaunt it. "Look ma, I can play these DVD's that are cheaper from other countries." Soon after, everyone and their grandma knows about it. D'oh, attention from the authorities and soon followed by a lawsuit from a company.
I went out for drinks tonight, and when I returned kazaa was still operational [as a service(duh)].
A google search for the full install package's filename revealed an online download site (from taiwan).
what's the big deal?
It's a shame the youth of today seem to be, more and more, sucking off masses of random media and imagery, and not learning more about how things work.
I enjoy any kind of outage for the fact that it usually provides me with some fresh air and exercise. too bad this crap is redundant.
then again - I suppose you COULD learn something from porn.
peace.
rehab, captain ahab, you're chasing the wrong fish!
Why? Because their opposition has more money, and you can't fight money in this money-driven society of ours.
What's going on is nothing new, and it is a well known and (mostly) accepted fact that it's all about wealth (money). Some people resist this notion, but they usually end up not having the money to prove their point, or to even survive for that matter. Wealth is what makes you smarter, stronger, and generally better. If you own more stuff than the next guy, you're better than the next guy. It's even better if you own the next guy. It's been going on since the guy with a club met the guy with a rock and they founded a town between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Since then, it's been slavery, empires, slavery, more empires, some more slavery, feudalism, slavery, colonization, good amounts of slavery, empires, slavery, industrial revolution, glorious amounts of slavery, and now, in the 21st century, we are in the age of law, and if you follow the pattern, what's bound to follow is slavery. I don't know about you, but I can't wait.
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
dd if=/dev/random of=somefile.crypt count=437k
repeat as needed.
They'll go crazy trying to figure out what you've got encrypted there!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Kazaa sucks anyway! Wasn't it Kazaa who had trojan program shipped nicely with it's client?! Perhaps I should sue them for abusing my computer.
Troll, Redundant, Insightful, Informative, Interesting, Funny
Well, all these words describe me perfectly.
(Score : Montreal:1 - Carolina:1)
Is this post ontopic or off? It sure got bitchslapped.
It's easy. If the track you want is not available from Emusic what are you going to do?
:)
I want new Vangelis. EMusic has a whopping TWO albums of "Best songs" from 1984. Sweet. Oh wait... I already have those, bought for less than $5 each. Now I am supposed to pay 9.99 per month for right to download those two albums. I don't think it's a good deal.
As for other new services where you can pay for download -- you either can't burn downloaded copies or you have to pay a full price (that exceeds the cost of a "regular" CD album) with a limit of songs. Until it gets to the level of Tivo where for 9.95 a month I can record and play and do whatever I want with the tv shows without limits it won't be a good deal and big guys will be giving out interviews screaming that "those bastards don't want to use our legal system!". Hope they'll get smart one day
Hyperom.com
A recipe for a society where the weak are crushed and utter selfishness has been made a virtue.
Reason, socialism and solidarity
The yellow face! It burns us, my precious!
I do not think that means what you think it means.
Which is chump change. Telephone and communications companies make more in a year than hollywood has made SINCE THE INVENTION OF THE VCR.
Furthermore, they, as a group, have a monopoly on the creation of new fictional entertainment... Does this give you ideas?
If hollywood could (say) get even a small part of the communications (aka, the delivery) pie, they'd make more money a year than they do now.
Does this give you ideas for other sources of revenue? Make everything literally free (to download) on the internet. With, maybe, a royalty on home-user (IE, non-business) bandwidth, with statistical sampling to determine how much of that royalty should go to which entertainment industries for mass-market entertainment. Maybe add in hard drives or cd blanks. Basically, make something similar to the Audio-CDR mechanism.
After all, if they increased home telephone/communication bills by even 10% for such a royalty. 100 million people spending $100/month (cable, telephone, internet), with a 10% royalty toward entertainment production starts moving into the billions of dollars/year range.
Not only that, but suddenly there is MUCH less fighting over copyrights, hollywood doesn't have to worry about extra duplication, caues every duplication is more profit for them. It lets people do whatever they want on and with their computers.
Yeah, its annoying, and if you only backup your hard drive onto CD's, you're subsidizing brittney spears. But on the other hand, it *will* give hollywood billions and billions of dollars, and stop digital control technology.
And, in such a world, napster/gnutella/morpheus for movies would be the best thing ever for movies. 10x the bandwidth, means 10x the money coming in! Furthermore, they could make even more money from premium servers where you pay, but you get high-quality, uncorrupted, fast downloads.
The idea is to not fight humanity, but try to go along with them.
I heard about this idea, oh, about 3 years ago.
So, what do you think.
search for kza.linux.tar.gz on one of the other P2P's - If someone hasn't already mailed it to you - it's only 287KB.
Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc
Isn't the real reason for the war the fact that they didn't turn over the terrorists?
IE, we're not invading them because they have terrorists inside their borders (in which case, we'd have to invade half of the world), but because they didn't turn over *the* group of terrorists that killed 3000 of our people.
IMPORTANT: Please read the whole post
I'm sure many of you are aware of this thread already.
If you are interested in helping against the moderators who have been "editing" the thread, please read this.
Please do not moderate this post down. It is good for the long term, but if you still feel like being someone who denies the horrible truth, give me your best shot. You will help hold all of Slashdot users back in the long term.
For more info, read this piece from an apparently superior news site.
Personally, I'd like to see Kazaa, Grokster & Morpheus taken down. Don't get me wrong, I'm an avid Grokker, but every time a popular P2P service gets taken down, a newer and better one rises to the top.
When people wanted more than Napster, Scour appeared. When they both stopped, Kazaa etc.. hit the scene.
It's only a matter of time before Kazaa etc.. are stopped completely and I look forward to the "next big thing". Although annoying, this leads to progress and I hope it'll end up with a P2P network that you *can't* kill and that's better than Gnutella.
My life is one big siesta in which I'm dreaming I wished my life was one big siesta.
So, you're still a virgin?
Sex involves "grunts" and lots of sweat -- at least if done properly.
BTW, the Linux client doesn't have any spyware. Guess they figured there wasn't much mileage in ASCII banner ads.
Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc
When was the last time you send your congressperson a letter? When was the last time you then got all of your friends to send your congressperson a letter? It might take 5 fucking minutes, but everyone is so lazy and apathetic these days. If you feel strongly enough about it to emphasize FUCK, I suggest you do something. As least maybe it will ease your troubled mind a bit. Besides, if every one simply goes about doing what they do with good intentions, eventually everything will work out. We are not helpless.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
would "authentification" be a word.
LimeWire contains trojan backdoor program.
It's amazing how closely this lawsuit coincides with the release of Napshare v1.0. Napshare v1.0 being the best Gnutella client out there.
Based loosely on GTK-Gnutella, it has the best features I've seen in any type of downloader. You feed it a string to search for, the minimum file size, a string that the files SHOULD NOT contain, and the minimum server speed if you like. (someone I know *cough**cough*) personally downloaded Jurassic Park 3 and Pulp Fiction in the past 2 days since they got Napshare... and that's 700MB/piece over a SLOW cable-modem (30KBps/7KBps).
Did I mention it's been running for two days constantly, under heavy load, without any memory leaks, and not a single crash.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
WTF? Your dumb little rant on the GPL is retarded. The GPL only states that you have to distribute the code if you distribute your binaries. If you do an in-house code change, and never distribute that change, you DO NOT have to distribute your source code.
You are insane, or a Microsoft shill.
...was the fact that a huge file could be downloaded from several people that had the same file. In essence, enough people with 1.5mb down 300kb up cable modems could effectively share a file with a guy on a DS3 and have it be efficient.
I don't know of any other file sharing clients that allow this kind of transfer capability, so if anyone knows of one, it might be a good idea to get the hype started!
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
I think it's called capitalism and pure evil greed.
get the hell outta here....you're offtopic! ;)
i can only assume that all the mirror sites have complied.
update comments set karma=-1, reason='offtopic' where sid=26315
I went to download the Windows client a couple of days ago and the download page on Kazaa.com said something to the effect of "Downloads are temporarly unavailable". But meanwhile the little download counter on the top of the page was still chugging along past 3mil downloads or so.
Stupid Cheap Guitars
Despite that this client is available elsewhere, just hearing that is is slowed in spreading is wonderful. This kind of application was installed by a f**king 20-something moron on my network at work - hosed a T-1 for almost three hours. I'll bet she got a really good rating as a source. This crap deserves a slow painful death into oblivion.
Unfortunately that doesn't help.
(2) If any person with the appropriate permission under Schedule 2 believes, on reasonable grounds-
(a) that a key to the protected information is in the possession of any person,
(b) that the imposition of a disclosure requirement in respect of the protected information is-
(i) necessary on grounds falling within subsection (3), or
(ii) necessary for the purpose of securing the effective exercise or proper performance by any public authority of any statutory power or statutory duty,
(c) that the imposition of such a requirement is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by its imposition, and
(d) that it is not reasonably practicable for the person with the appropriate permission to obtain possession of the protected information in an intelligible form without the giving of a notice under this section,
the person with that permission may, by notice to the person whom he believes to have possession of the key, impose a disclosure requirement in respect of the protected information.
In other word, if they believe that your data is encrypted, then they can impose a disclosure requirement on you. Not supplying the key is an offence under the act. The only defence is to prove that the document isn't encrypted. This is one of the many problems with the act, that you have to prove that a random block of bytes that they have discovered on your hard disk is not really encrypted.
Dosen't the word imply a right to copy?
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." --Unknown
http://www.mds.mdh.se/~cel95eig/secret/k_M_d_/
Here can u get both the windows and the linux version.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
it's amazing that the _protection and preservation one's rightful property_ transformed overnight from an inalienable human right acknowledged by almost every society (though not by every political system) throughout time, into an "obsolete business practice."
Intellectual Property is a fiction, it is not property (as in tangible asset) at all. The act of creation ceases when the work is born, only in the 'intellectual property world" does a producer feel the right to control a work once he has borne it. Does a plumber call you and ask for a fee every time you flush your toilet? No, neither should a musician, actor, author or inventor ask for fees to exercise the purpose of their past creation. Meaning, that by its regular availability, the thing *has been created* and no further compensation is necessary.
If I copy a book, I am creating a book. The original author was not present or required to make my copy - why should he be compensated? If a creator feels he needs to reach some artificial economics of scale to make his time worthwhile, thats his issue -- i refuse to have *MY* liberties eroded to enforce a concept of capitalist business practice. The creator has no business telling me what I may or may not do with my own time and equipment.
Intellectual Property, (Copyright, Trademarks and Patents) have no place in an intellectually free society. Intellectual Property is a tool of economics and not a 'rightful property by inalienable human right' -- to suggest such is absolutely ridiculous. It is neither a 'right' nor a natural, self-evident thing. It is a concept, a construct, an agreement... and those who would use it as a economic hammer are no longer entitled to it.
I no longer purchase any item that would re-enforce this system. I copy all my music CDs*, I download movies and use the library for all books and magazines. I also advocate the rest of us do as well.
Ideas dont exist in a vacuum, and to suggest that a creation of the mind has a sole creat or with inalienable right to then control it is offensive to the rest of us.
* Canadians, because our government collects a fee for the RIAA types with every CDR sold, are legally allowed to make copies of Music CDs OTHERS have bought at record stores. Stop buying and burn those discs!
It does not matter what kind of spyware crap gets installed on your system, getting rid of it is much easier. A nice way to tell them up yours with Gator and the rest. Lavasoft ad-ware will remove these beasts (and others) from your computer. It even has a reference library that is updated by people who hate spyware as much as we do. Install, scan, select, and remove. Send Gator and its spyware alike where it belongs, in the garbage. Download ad-ware from here: http://www.lavasoft.de
And put a copy of the kazaa client up on kazaa!
=)
Modbomb me harder!
Thank you sir may I have another!
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
I have a feeling you're just a sockpuppet of the original poster.
I had KaZaa installed for a whole three days. When I found out here that it REQUIRES the CyDoor spyware to run I removed it. Removing it takes a bit of work as it tries to leave CyDoor installed, and it RUNS CyDoor as part of the uninstall script.
Feh! Shoo! Go away!
I wouldn't have been that interesting to watch anyway.
Wake up call, guys: The VC ain't coming. The KaZaa IPO ain't coming. I guess these scumbags will have to back and work for a living. Don't let the bankruptcy hit ya on the ass. McDonalds is hiring.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Don't worry! You can still find copies of kazaa on this wonderful P2P network I heard about called kazaa. I havn't tried it out yet but I intend to download a copy of kazaa off of kazaa tonight and give it a try.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
Unfortunately, Slashdot won't ever move to the k5 engine. :(
Anyone posting in this thread is pretty much doomed to extinction in the slashdot world. We're seeing the editors true colors showing through - I got modded as offtopic in my own SID (I didn't even know we could create our own sids!). But the link is in my signature. Bottom line is, I can't wait till some of this stuff hits the metamod queue. If it does - the editors may have an override for -that-, too.
( could you imagine? the ancestor post would have to be metamodded hundreds of times.. )
Taco needs a karma of -155.
Let's face it... this abuse of moderation is already being publicized outsize Slashdot, and if they continue to attack us, the publicity will just get worse.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
k5 is already carrying it.. If only theregister would carry it.. the "nonmainstream" media. If we can get a big enough uproar going... ah, im dreaming again.
AK, Sacrificing Karma for the sake of what I believe in.
disabling of P2P programs would probobly be bad for the music industry in general. Think about it the only way to find out about new music is to either hear it on the radio and mtv or download it from P2P. And since mtv stopped playing music video's long ago and the radio plays the same crap over and over again, P2P is the only way to find out about music. Ive proboly bought more cds at record stores becuase i heard them through morpheus then i ever did listening to the radio.
Sounds like the typical spew from some folks over at Emusic. What a bunch of sore losers. Back before Napster, they acted like they were taking on the recording industry. It hear them talk in the pre-Napster days, they acted like some tough rebels who were "shifting paradigms", shaking up the industry and fighting for artists. Now they are owned by Vivendi Universal and are just another arm of the recording industry.
Fact is, they never gave a shit about most of the artists that they had on their roster in the first place, and with the few exceptions of artists that sign with them directly, 90% of the artists who are on Emusic because their labels made deals don't see any more than the sucky deals their labels gave them.
I've got a band for you..... They Might Be Hypocrits! Available "exclusively" at Emusic.com
Today I jost got a threatening message from Pixar (The makers of Monsters, Inc.), threatening me with a lawsuit for sharing copyrighted material.
What would you do in this situation?
Can they track my IP?
I went to their site for the first time yesterday to download it, only to find the nice message that they had suspended downloads of the client. Guess I'll have to find a mirror.
If you're not part of the solution, try postponing it.
Kazaa has had some SERIOUS security flaws in the past. These were glaring errors in their code that allowed people to read your entire hard drive(well, if running a proper OS, just the files you had read access to). This is completely unacceptable, and I refuse to support a program like that.
It is for similar reasons that I do not run Microsoft products anymore either.
Kazaa Vuln:
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/3125
SpamapS -- Undernet #Linuxhelp
Underrated moderations give a +1 bonus but don't show the reason.
Been there, done that. It's really not as fullfilling as you might imagine. And afterwards... What's the point of posting? You are just risking scratches to your shine.
that if this type of technology wasn't available (the easy exchange and music and video), most people wouldn't be buying the stuff their downloading anyway because:
1. Spending $18 for a cd with 1 or 2 good songs on it isnt worth it
2. Most television shows and videos aren't even available to purchase
If these major companies would actually listen to their customers once in awhile instead of only thinking of themselves we wouldn't be having all these lawsuits going on.
If your sole reason for slapping everyone is that this is purely off topic, than that's just sad.
If, in fact, you find the fact that we, the denizens of slashdot, find your editor moderation tactics to be somewhat fascist, and therefore resent our right to free speech, then just come out and say so. Delete the posts. Hell, delete our accounts. But just slapping down everyone who posts to -1 is a waste of your time.
Kill 3 of my karma. Have fun.
Gawyn
Freedom of Speech?
I'm trying to think of other good non-mainstream media that would be interested... the problem is, there aren't THAT many. And I'd rather the mainstream media (like ZDNet / CNET, MSNBC, and technical savvy newspapers) have to read the non-mainstream media. (Yes, I know that Dan Gillmor works for the San Jose Mercury News. They're still quite cool in my book.)
What the heck. I'm sending the letter on to them, as well.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
Lets see if this gets moderated down to -1 too...
Frankly, what I find in this thread is disgusting. I don't think any moderator would spend this many points on one thread...
No offense, and I don't agree with the legal decision, but if you're running a server-based file sharing system, you're just asking to get shut down.
It doesn't matter what kind of lawsuit it is, but the big guys with big lawyers can laid down any kind of lawsuit to get you shut down, and you'll have to pay out the ass in your own lawyers to get it turned back on.
At least with a server-less option, the worse you could do is remove the client, and the protocol would still exist in the underground.
Zodiac Survey
To quote Jack Valenti...
Service in an antipiracy campaign that included raids on college campuses last month. "The great moat that protects us, and it is only temporary, is lack of broadband access," Mr. Valenti said.
Greed is all right, by the way . . . I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.
Ivan F. Boesky, U.S. financier. Commencement Address, 18 May 1986, School of Business Administration, University of California, Berkeley. Boesky's words were later picked up in Oliver Stone's film, Wall Street (1987), spoken by Gordon Gecko. Boesky himself was later convicted of conspiring to file false documents with the federal government, involving insider trading violations, and agreed to pay $100 million in fines and illicit profits.
Intellectual Property IS a fictional representation of what "innovators" (I use the term loosely) use to maintain a stranglehold on what has been given TOO MUCH power. Should the Bible or collections of Plato's or Aristotle's work be paid to whomever distributes it? They were not the author of the work, so why should the publisher be reimbursed for their time and effort. Plato, Aristotle, and God did not ASK for the publisher to publish and distribute their good works, so why are we forced to actually spend money to purchase their work?
Musicians and movie producers produce movies and music for people to watch and listen to. They put a copyright on their work so nobody else can make identical copies of their work and distribute it as their own work, and so that the proper author's are credited, not necessarily in monetary value. However, well paid politicians are "lobbied" coincidentally enough by the people seeking to earn more money for the labor of love by others -- distributers such as you and me who use such services as Kazaa, and Gnutella. The entertainment industry tries to implant a guilt trip in the consciousness of it's consumers stating that anybody who copies and distributes the work of their artists without retribution is a THIEF. This I find an apaulling lie as the artist only keeps a tiny fraction of the original price of the CD or DVD. From this fraction they are forced to reimburse the studio (who is again making money on the guilt of it's consumers and contractual agreements of it's artist) for use and promotion. Where the artist really makes their money from is T-SHIRT/paraphernalia sales, and concerts. These can not be distributed via the internet, nor any medium, since they are actual TANGIBLE items.
Over time the BILLIONS that the RIAA and MPAA have made from not giving the consumer a choice has gone into protecting their huge fortune by inventing a term known as "INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY." This fictional asset has been adopted into the legal system as an actual law. It is a law that is not right and is used to control people unjustly. Yes, it is a law that governs you and me, but in the past we have seen unjust laws come and go. Slavery, and segregation were also considered "fair" and "just" laws at the time that governed people but over time were deemed WRONG. However to get those laws overturned large groups of people over time needed to rebel against the unjust laws, and send a signal to big business and the government that WE THE PEOPLE WILL NOT be trampled upon. Eventually, after hard work by the consumers and the people who bring us great software such as Kazaa and Gnutella, reason will prevail and bring an end of an era to unjust "intellectual property" laws.
Never have a prob finding what I need. Of course, you need a decent news server...but it still takes less time than reading all this claptrap on /. about kazaa/napster/spywear :-)
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Intellectual Property IS a fictional representation of what "innovators" (I use the term loosely) use to maintain a stranglehold on what has been given TOO MUCH power. Should the Bible or collections of Plato's or Aristotle's work be paid to whomever distributes it? They were not the author of the work, so why should the publisher be reimbursed for their time and effort. Plato, Aristotle, and God did not ASK for the publisher to publish and distribute their good works, so why are we forced to actually spend money to purchase their work? Musicians and movie producers produce movies and music for people to watch and listen to. They put a copyright on their work so nobody else can make identical copies of their work and distribute it as their own work, and so that the proper author's are credited, not necessarily in monetary value. However, well paid politicians are "lobbied" coincidentally enough by the people seeking to earn more money for the labor of love by others -- distributers such as you and me who use such services as Kazaa, and Gnutella. The entertainment industry tries to implant a guilt trip in the consciousness of it's consumers stating that anybody who copies and distributes the work of their artists without retribution is a THIEF. This I find an apaulling lie as the artist only keeps a tiny fraction of the original price of the CD or DVD. From this fraction they are forced to reimburse the studio (who is again making money on the guilt of it's consumers and contractual agreements of it's artist) for use and promotion. Where the artist really makes their money from is T-SHIRT/paraphernalia sales, and concerts. These can not be distributed via the internet, nor any medium, since they are actual TANGIBLE items. Over time the BILLIONS that the RIAA and MPAA have made from not giving the consumer a choice has gone into protecting their huge fortune by inventing a term known as "INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY." This fictional asset has been adopted into the legal system as an actual law. It is a law that is not right and is used to control people unjustly. Yes, it is a law that governs you and me, but in the past we have seen unjust laws come and go. Slavery, and segregation were also considered "fair" and "just" laws at the time that governed people but over time were deemed WRONG. However to get those laws overturned large groups of people over time needed to rebel against the unjust laws, and send a signal to big business and the government that WE THE PEOPLE WILL NOT be trampled upon. Eventually, after hard work by the consumers and the people who bring us great software such as Kazaa and Gnutella, reason will prevail and bring an end of an era to unjust "intellectual property" laws.
Here you go.
Omnes arx vestrum sunt adiuncta nobis.
My journey through music sharing.
It started with borrowing your friend's cd and ripping the big files to your hard drive.. Or copying it to a 4$ CD-R.
Then came the MP3, and password ftp sites came along with the endless run of phony music WebPages.
Then Napster came, I know there were a few before it, but Napster- worked... It was finally the perfect alternative to searching for FTP passwords or waiting in endless IRC lines.
It was great at first, you could throw around your George Carlin, Doors, or the newest Grateful Dead Re-Release. We were rarely bothered by a Jessica Simpson. Then the 10-13 year old girls discovered this magical service, suddenly they could click their friendly AOL 6.0 shoutcuts, open a cute little kitten, and listen to their "boy bands" through their gateway speakers and the magical Napster audio player.
It spread like a plague, every day more and more 98 degrees fans joined, using cute little symbolized usernames and their hotmail e-mail addresses. It was madness thousands and thousands of songs and servers bloated with them. Here comes the bad part, they told their friends, who in turn told their friends and they kept coming. Eventually their parents found out and eventually the record companies realized that the parents of this 12 year old don't have to go spend 21.95 on the newest 11 track cd, when they could let them simply download the music. This pissed off the record companies.
Napster Died
Then came Scour, and CuteMx.. Also died, almost no profit, could not fight the endless supply of lawsuits.
A few services came to try and fill the napster void, Napigator, Bearshare etc, all failed..
Then came Kazaa, it was great at first. Geeks could trade the newest excerpt of Linux source code, or the latest Avery Brooks IBM commercial. But like I expected: - two weeks later every girl scout with a Barbie computer and a brain powerful enough to spell download.com strolled in, flooded the service with N'SHIT and told all their 11 year old purse carrying friends that "It was just like napster" Goodbye Kazaa. Almost every 13 year old girl would come home after school fire up Windows Me, clear through the endless adds that pop up with their computer from all the crap they have downloaded. Open their Icq, MSN, YahooChat, Hotmail Mailboxes, and now Kazaa.
Turn on Kazaa, type in any of a hundred key words, street, oops, love... And your screen will be flooded with the endless lip-syncing remixes.
It's not all bad, we still have IRC, they cannot dominate that, they lack the brainpower. Anything that takes actual interface with other users, or requires a distant thought is out of their league. How often have you seen a person jump into a warez channel and yell "SOMEONE DCC ME THE NEWEST TIMBERLAKE REMIX." It won't happen.
I know I'm ranting, and I may be wrong, they're just trying to get some free songs the same way that I am. Regardless of music tastes, they do not contribute, the second they accidentally find the "Disable Sharing With Other Users" and put the D section of the encyclopedia back on the shelf. They stop sharing. Freeloaders. I also understand I may be biased, but I think the majority of the problem is coming from them, feel free to argue with me, I don't mind.. They don't actually contribute to the community, they just take. How many of them do you think have ripped and encoded a cd. How many of them do you think have ever run a free FTP?
I could go on and on with different rants and the problems with these people, I think I've written enough to be heard. These are just my thoughts.
Kevin Franklin
Windsor Ontario.
that Kazaa suddenly stops being available for download so soon after it's spyware had been admitted to.. ??
It seems like you're only allowed to use it if you want give up your privacy...
Afghanistan is just the fall guy, and a convenient site for a new oil pipeline. How many Afghanis were on the planes in 9/11?
It's a good thing that the Bush Gang have frozen many "suspect" international bank accounts... but they specifically excluded those with ties directly to Bush or his dodgy family oil company, Harken. That banks in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia are not being investigated, where most of the Al Qaeda funding must have come from, is ludicrous and abdurd and patently dishonest.
Da Blog
I'll take that as a complement.
But to answer your question, no, I'm just really involved in this subject.
BTW, love your journal.
No replies made to AC posts. Please log in.
...but of course all of us know that Audiogalaxy rules when it comes to share and download music.
Also check FortKnox's journal and the the parent post for more information.
I'll take the karma hit. Scriptmods may be okay for dumbass stuff like goatsex ascii art, but for a legitimate discussion about slashdot? I don't think so.
sulli
RTFJ.
In this day an age when copyright infringements and all this stuff is going on, everyone turns at the court to settle a case. I should have become a lawyer not a programmer, I could now make millions.
:(
Dagnabit
They did it in a clever fashion too... apparently they released small dormant bits of code hidden in other updates, and then one update all the little bits of code combined and erased some important memory by rewriting it with the message GAMEOVER.
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
I realize this is an amazing concept, and I'm going to get flamed all over for this, but taking music/movies/software without paying for it, when the thing being taken isn't freely offered by its creator, is called STEALING
If you don't do it in the first place, you won't get thos threatening letters you're so scared of. Face up to the consequences of your decision and take it like a man...not a snivelling snot.
What is your Slash Rating?
If you disagree with the moderation in this thread, please take up posting in this discussion as a protest of what's going on here. I hope there's enough people who care to get that discussion among Slashdot's most active ones. That's on the page to create a discussion if you don't know.
Sorry if it seems like I'm spamming this, but it needs to be done if the editors are going to wake up and conclude that what they did to this thread was wrong.
Post here to protest editor moderation.
I this http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=26315&cid=2860 621 offtopic?
score -1
By the way, please stop wasting mod points on this story, both positive and negative. They could be much better spent on the new articles.
--
I have a real problem with the offtopic mods. Often when discussing an article, discussion will drift away from the original article. I think this is to be encouraged or at least looked upon neutrally. Not everyone is so anal retentive that they need every post to be under its "proper" article. Sometimes there isn't a proper place for it, like the comment that spurred this extended conversation.
Cat
So you agree that the creators of art, music, cinema, etc., should be compensated for their work. In fact, to quote your later reply, you say: "The * act * of creation should be compensated."
I agree, the *act* of creation should be compensated. Of course its value cannot be compensated immediately after creation, because its true value to society cannot be evaluated this quickly.
So let's say we release the creation into society with a set price. The due compensation for this creation is then gauged by the demand of society to aquire the creation at the set price. If 1,000,000 people felt this creation (let's say an album) was worth its purchase price, then the artist will be compensated proportionatly for his creation.
This system, basically the status quo, isn't perfect, mainly because only artists who cater to the tastes of the majority will get paid the most. But, arguably, this is the way it should be, because their creations will affect the greatest number of lives.
Your "system", on the other hand, is inherently flawed and unrealistic. You argue that only the *act* of creation should be compensated. I really wished you explained this in more detail. $300 a song, as simple as that? Perhaps $100/minute. These methods obviously don't reflect the value of the creation. And the only relevent judge of that is society itself, which allows every potential audience to be reached and its demand measured.
Furthermore, your later argument suggesting selling beds is exactly the same is selling music is simply INANE. If you cannot comprehend the difference between a physical object (such as a bed) which can be used by only a few people at a time, and music, which can be 'used' by a limitless amount of people, then this argument is futile. I'm going to stop now, maybe something can seep in.
Love my sausage, Taco!
If you disagree with the moderation in this thread, please blah, blah, blah...
Spamming, the seventh.
Is *that* why I keep getting e-mails telling me to browse at -1???