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Network Associates Loses Battle to Silence Reviewers
ajkessel writes "This article from today's New York Times covers a court ruling against Network Associates in a suit brought by the New York State Attorney General to invalidate Network Associate's shrink-wrap clause which states: 'The customer will not publish reviews of this product without prior consent from Network Associates Inc.' Network Associates has vowed to appeal." Reader SlashDotIDOne points to a CNET story which says "Network Associates could be forced to pay $0.50 for every license which included this draconian requirement: 'The customer will not publish reviews of this product without prior consent from Network Associates Inc.'"
Those who have closely followed the unfolding of NSI since their early days are no doubt unsurprised by this story. Those, like John Gilmore, having tracked the development o f NSI back to SAIC and DARPA are likely to have an ever-increasing "See, I told you so" conspiracy-theorist standpoint. NSI, in many ways, is the Microsoft of the DNS world. NSI wishes to offer services in exchange for money, yet at the same time, wants to also maintain control of those who are their customers.
It is seemingly paradoxical how companies selling technology offer their products as enabling of opportunity and yet, ultimately want to use that opportunity to create further dependency upon themselves. Slashdot itself, at some point will seek refuge in its popularity and economic viability, thus corrupting its own indealism by way of regulating and moderating its "free" speech claims.
LadyboyLovers.comI got those deceptive mails for uncoveror.com, and dontbuycds.org myself, but I stayed with Godaddy. In fact, I got a postcard from godaddy warning me they were a scam before I got the deceptive expiration notices.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Slashdot's little 4F system (Friends, Fans, Foes, Freaks) has it's shortcommings, but I think it is very useful. The moderation system works reasonably well, but it doesn't do enough... Some people consistently have nothing to say, and others are consistenly insightful... However, you are either scored at +1, along with the thousands of other blank-slate slashdotters, or 0 if you post anonymously. It's only after a very long time here that you get up to post at +2, mainly because you post at +1, it is very unlikely you will be seen by a single moderator in a discussion, let alone the several that it takes before one recognizes the value of your comments.
What I think slashdot needs is a much larger number scale... That way, someone's rating can change with every moderation, so their next posting will be done just a little higher or lower. That would certainly allow much more sepration between those posting junk and those that have not recieved enough karma to post at +2 for some other reason. As an added bonus, everyone who has had even a few positive mod points can be a moderator, and more moderation to comments means more likelyhood of a good comment, or a good comment-er, being discovered and moderated up.
Well... until the slashcode starts implimenting things like this, I have little choice but to manually decide who has been posting ``good" comments, and who has not.
Still reading? Good for you.
In addition, the 4F system has what I would consider to be a nasty bug. If you want a +2 bonus (or is it +1? I don't recall the default) on your comments, just make every slashdotter your friend, and they will all see your comment with a higher rating. Even better, change you settings to give a big bonus (+5) to those with good karma, and add everyone who you see (at +5) to your friends list, as they are the ones with good karma, who are the moderators most frequently.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant