Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the we-prefer-to-say-'borrow' dept.
XiceeX writes "Wired has up a story about HP, as part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups of people, scientifically proving what most people already knew: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers."
yes, I agree, but I read somewhere that this story was plagarised from yahoo:)
-- -*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Re:duh.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
and the gratuitous repost syndrome... where somebody takes somebody else's commment, copies it enbloc, and reposts it in a higher subthread.
The higher-posted comment gets "insightful" and "interesting" mods, while the lower post gets "redundant" mods, regardless of the fact that the lower comment was posted first.
I think the Slashtrolls have turned this technique into an online sport.
It's not "stealing"
by
turnstyle
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· Score: 4, Funny
While it's not "stealing", neither is it "sharing". It's closer to mass un-think than anything else. In my opinion, it's truly scary how conformant these bloggers are to each other. Individiualism is dead.
-- Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Yes, yes; this is a sad reflection on the decline of elemetary school life in the modern era-- and a direct consequence of our failure as role models. For example, I've often noticed that bloggers plagiarize their ideas from other bloggers. Is it any wonder that our kids have no moral compass?
Re:Bad writers plagiarize?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
-1, unfunny
Re:Bad writers plagiarize?
by
iamacat
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Wow. Attribution rules are for academic research and published books. Software licenses can well allow "plagarism" - GPL for example doesn't require attribution. As for one-paragraph slashdot comments - well they should be up for grabs unless we want to see 10 pages of references after each of them. Folk culture can't very well spread with academic research restrictions.
Re:Bad writers plagiarize?
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karnal
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· Score: 2, Funny
This is going on your "permanent record".
Just so you know.
-- Karnal
Re:Bad writers plagiarize?
by
jjsjeff
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· Score: 1
Wow! I never did that when I was in elementary/middle school...not more than 4 or 5 times anyways:)
Searched the web for genious. Results 1 - 10 of about 102,000. Search took 0.68 seconds.
Tip: In most browsers you can just hit the return key instead of clicking on the search button.
Well shit in my fucking cotton candy why don't you. I hit preview. You said it was all good, slashdot. Yeah? Well, fuck you, get the fuck out then, and take your stinky fucking shampoo with you.
No, that's a terrible example. That's an example that only worked because lots of people did the same thing. And they knew they had to do the same thing, and there was no pretension of originality.
--
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Re:wait
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yes but are any of those people (GW Bush, M Moore in particular) failures ? Seems to me that they set out to do something, and suceeded, despite public opinion. They haven't failed (themselves). They just haven't done what the public wants.
I've found that there are very few original thoughts or ideas, and very few people who come up with them. It isn't a matter of plagerism. It's just that there are only so many viable ideas out there. And the more that are already taken, the harder it is to come up with a new one. If you reach too far just to have an original thought, then you end up a wacko.
It isn't just bloggers.
--
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Re:Few Original Ideas
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Funny
I do support plagiarism in one area: spelling. Please grab a dictionary and look up plagiarism. It's not spelled plagerism. Thanks.
Re:Few Original Ideas
by
Dystopian+Rebel
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't agree that there are "few original ideas" or there is "nothing new under the Sun". However, there are few original thinkers.
If memory serves, a 19th century sociologist by the name of "Darde" posited that out of 100 people, 1 is truly creative and the remaining 99 are echoic.
The research in question suggests the same. And so does the nature of television.
-- Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Re:Few Original Ideas
by
AndrewWood
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Right. It's also basic human nature. You know how there are some people who have great personalities, who speak like it is really them talking, who, while they are almost certainly not 100% original, still give that impression? Then, there are people who seem to have half a personality, who parrot excessively, who, when you're having a conversation with them, they keep picking up words you use and throwing them back at you, and you notice because it's mildly odd. Or maybe you overhear them repeating an idea that you know you formulated, but they're repeating it to somebody else and taking the credit.
It seems to me that this article is merely pointing out that a lot of people are like the latter. I'm also not surprised to find lots of these types of people among bloggers, since so many are overt attention ho's, and attention ho's are often notorious "borrowers" of other people's personalities.
(Mind, I'm not saying this of all bloggers, as I have found plenty of interesting, well-written, informative, and entertaining blogs. You know the kind I'm talking about.)
Re:Few Original Ideas
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Dun+Malg
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· Score: 5, Funny
I've found that there are very few original thoughts or ideas, and very few people who come up with them. It isn't a matter of plagerism. It's just that there are only so many viable ideas out there. And the more that are already taken, the harder it is to come up with a new one. If you reach too far just to have an original thought, then you end up a wacko.
Interesting, as I've found that there are very few original thoughts or ideas, and very few people who come up with them. It isn't a matter of plagerism. It's just that there are only so many viable ideas out there. And the more that are already taken, the harder it is to come up with a new one. If you reach too far just to have an original thought, then you end up a wacko.
-- If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Re:Few Original Ideas
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
've found that there are very few original thoughts or ideas, and very few people who come up with them.
YOU have found that there are few original ideas? Common this is slashdot right, anybody can _see_ this daily.
Re:Few Original Ideas
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
true,
"a poem is just a reconstruction of another poem. a strong poem is a peom that looks like the begining, but neverterless, it's still a reconstruct of another peom"
it happens all the time, people take other people ideas and make it all over again/make it better. that's where inspiration comes from.
that's why we got too many browsers out there.
Re:Few Original Ideas
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
If memory serves, a 19th century sociologist by the name of "Darde" posited that out of 100 people, 1 is truly creative and the remaining 99 are echoic.
Or maybe you overhear them repeating an idea that you know you formulated, but they're repeating it to somebody else and taking the credit.
I'm most amused when they quote my idea back to me a few days later, and try to take credit for it. It usually provides at least a couple minutes worth of entertainment.;-D
-- 'And all the monkeys aren't in the zoo Every day you meet quite a few...'
Re:Few Original Ideas
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Dirac, Faraday, Planck, Kelvin, Maxwell and Einstein beleived in God. So do I.
I'm sure you're not trying to pull an appeal to authority here? Anyway... Whether Newton, Galileio and Kepler believed in a god is irrelevant, as they were products of their time. Back then, religion and superstition played a great role in society (too big, in fact) and most people believed in god. Einstein did not believe in god, he used the word in a metaphorical sense, and he said several times that he was an atheist, that the thought of a personal god directly affecting our lives was ridiculous. That some scientists were raised to believe in fables and fairytales mean absolutely nothing and carry no weight whatsoever. It does show, however, that it's not easy to get rid of such brainwashing, not even for scientists, who, if anyone, should be aware of such trivial things as Ockham's razor, skepticism and common sense.
There. Feel free to mod me down if you feel that I have insulted your belief in fables. I don't need to insult it. The belief is doing it on itself just fine by simply existing.
Re:Few Original Ideas
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GoofyBoy
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· Score: 1, Funny
>there are very few original thoughts or ideas
According to the US patent office, brand new ideas are created every hour by just appending "... on the Internet" to the end of existing ideas.
-- The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I've found that there are very few original thoughts or ideas, and very few people who come up with them
Only stupid people who can't think for themselves ever say this.
Ironically, you're just repeating some idiotic, untrue idea that many people before you have stated. Falsely.
Now, in terms of bloggers I might have to agree with you, as really anybody with important and/or exciting ideas will undoubtedly find a better forum than a blog to share his/her ideas.
Like/. perhaps? (Ha!)
-- why?forty-two.
Re:Few Original Ideas
by
Suidae
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I wonder if the particular ratio of original thinkers to the rest of the population has been optimized by evolution. New ideas are good, but only if there are enough people to test them and filter out the stuff that doesn't work. If everybody was busy coming up with new ideas instead of using what they already had, the entire world would look like... well, like programming.
Re:Few Original Ideas
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
This, from my own perspective, is true. I do this myself, more then I'd like to admit, and not always on purpose. I don't know what it is, but my personality seems to change depending on the people around me, sometimes without even me realising it. I consider it to be a type of defence mechanism, since I was a shy geeky type as a kid. I was always told by adults "Don't do that" or "Don't act like that around people", even though the rules seemed to constantly change. So I got good at adapting to social situations by standing back and watching how people are behaving, and mimicking they're behavior the best I can. It was the best way I found to fit into social groups. I also found I enjoyed it too, because of the amazing variety of topics discussed. I like talking about everything from geek stuff to cars and greasemonkey stuff to politics to the womens movement...anything and everything. I can form an opinion on most topics fairly quickly, by hearing what others have to say first.
Now don't get me wrong...I'm not a sychophant. I don't necessarily agree with people have to say about a topic, even if I know less about it then people around me. And especially not just to fit in by handing over my backbone. I have my own morals and principles that I check everything I hear against, as I'm sure most people do. But while talking to people, I try to debate or converse about a subject in the same way as other people around me. Most of the time. You do have to stand out a bit and show you are different, but you don't want to do it in such a way as to make everyone turn away from you.
I think this type of behaviour is prevelent in our society. It's our way of "fitting in". Not everyone does it. Not everyone can do it. Not everyone wants to do it, because they truly want to be unique. But I believe most people just want to fit in and be a part of society. Some people are just better at making it look like they're the leader...
Re:Few Original Ideas
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
And this thought you just had is also not original.
If memory serves, a 19th century sociologist by the name of "Darde" posited that out of 100 people, 1 is truly creative and the remaining 99 are echoic.
i bet darde was in that one percent, right? good job darde.
Re:Few Original Ideas
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PurpleWizard
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· Score: 1
I've always found the more you know the more you know there is to know. Usually leaving you chasing a rainbow.
Re:Few Original Ideas
by
neelm
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· Score: 3, Funny
Us web "programmers" have been stealing back and forth the same piece of javascript since 1995...
We call it "code resue" though =)
Re:Few Original Ideas
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timeOday
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· Score: 3, Informative
If memory serves, a 19th century sociologist by the name of "Darde" posited that out of 100 people, 1 is truly creative and the remaining 99 are echoic.
Hence the rest of us peons are reduced to recycling the wisdom of long-dead academics. (get it?)
Actually I mostly agree. Except I think everybody is at least slightly original, just to different degrees. Even Einstein's work wasn't a total discontinuity out of the blue.
I like to rank originality, at least in science, by the number of years I guess it would have taken for the thing to be invented anyways, if the original inventor had not. The TV, for instance, was a virtual tie among several people.
Back in the dark ages there weren't too many scientists and it was relatively easy to move a discovery up by 100 years IMHO. Nowadays so many people are working every problem that it's harder to jump ahead even by 1-2 years.
Re:Few Original Ideas
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It is kind of like people who say "I could care less" when it is far more likely that they mean to say "I couldn't care less". They "stole" the phrase without even comprehending it's appropriate usage!
Re:Few Original Ideas
by
Dystopian+Rebel
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Yes, good thinking... it's a kind of social Quality Assurance team, doing the clicking and bounds-testing and pushing the "product" around.
Notions have to be tested by application or creative misapplication. There's a certain prestige associated with showing good taste in your choosing what memes you "echo". There's a strong trace of that in blogging.
It's interesting to consider humour memes, that is little bits of "humour" creativity (quirks, expressions, situations) that are widely echoed by television viewers. For example, several Seinfeld memes (as in "Moops") are still circulating. But a humour meme, unlike a physical invention, once "tested" and "approved" is dead when it has circulated widely and been repeated enough not to produce laughter anymore.
Then 20 years later, the memes can be re-circulated (That 70s Show) for new profit. In my experience, machines don't have this virtue. (My TRS-80 is long gone!)
Less creative television and movies resort to "jolts per minute". We could also call this "weak memes per minute". An actor celebrated for his weak-meme work can pursue a career as Governor.;^)
-- Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
So, in the world the amount of truly creative people is a little less than half the population of the United States.
That sounds optimistic.
Original ideas are like original songs. They are in some way new, yet--like as not--there is a similar melody that seems to be occuring.
Most folk tend to churn out what amounts to one chord droning.:( If we are lucky perhaps it's a
basic three chord pop/punk song. Either way people seem to labour under some majestic delusion that they have come up with somewhat new.
Yes, but if you find a problem somewhere you solve it. This may require thought or just trying all of the possible combinations to arrive @ an answer. Accidents and failure can also cause creative things to happen.
Re:Few Original Ideas
by
Rostin
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
I notice that most people post spelling and grammar critiques as AC. It's like they realize they are being asses and can't resist, but don't want to risk the karma hit like an adult.
Re:Few Original Ideas
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Why does everything on Slashdot have to be about Karma (especially since, as the FAQ says, karma doesn't matter)? Why can't they just don't want their actual name to be dragged in the mud? If I'm going to call someone an idiot, I'd rather not do it with my name - since, well, I'm a chicken shit and don't want people to hate me.
Idiot.
Re:Few Original Ideas
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Nah, just lazy. I don't even have an account. I just go nuts with all the misspellings. Besides, it went to +5 funny, much to mutual surprise, I'm sure.
I've found that there are very few original thoughts or ideas, and very few people who come up with them. It isn't a matter of plagerism. It's just that there are only so many viable ideas out there. And the more that are already taken, the harder it is to come up with a new one. If you reach too far just to have an original thought, then you end up a wacko.
It's like my physics teacher said, `It was a lot easier to be a science teacher in the past.'
This assumes that ideas and scripts for TV are conjured up by people. I think that if you could plug a bunch of plot snippets or fragments into my Atari 800XL and then have it arrange them randomly into a 45 minute plot, most of the output would be comparable to what I see on TV. And I'm not even suggesting that the old Atari add anything in the way of plot coherence or flow. Just pump out words at random.
There is also the issue of time. If you look at graduate/academic research in engineering, there are not many "brand spanking new" ideas on anything. Most research (that I've seen) contributes a tiny little piece onto the end of of the state of the art. With time and budget constraints, it kind of makes sense to start with what others have contributed, but it is at the expense of finding a better or significantly different way of doing something.
A couple of quotes from Mark Twain: "I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way." and "Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination."
Also, the popular blogs are the aggregators (like/.) to which the article refers. If someone goes to the trouble of bringing together lots of different, interesting ideas, and presents them in a clear, clever way, they've succeeded in adding value to the ideas. So, why bother going to the source?
I think it's the fact that the more popular bloggers put their ideas across in a clearer way than the less know bloggers..
Also, it's a matter of gathering the interesting ideas. There are a lot of things being said - if someone can put together the most interesting things that's worth a lot. What I looked for in the Wired article (but never came to) was a mention of whether the blogs that they claimed were "plagiarized" came up with the interesting ideas repeatedly, or if they were one-offs. If so, you can't expect people to link to them, but it's wise to link to the best aggregators.
Re:Bloggers
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"Of course, this begs the question" No, it doesn't. Do you even know what that means?
So, you are saying the same rules that apply to information dissemination in the rest of society apply in this part of society as well?
shocking, just shocking. I thought everything having to do with computers was new and different and could only be explained by highly trained futurists.
</sarcasm>
wow, i really need some coffee this morning, that was totally uncalled for!
Re:Bloggers
by
AndroidCat
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Aggregators also filter and concentrate. If they get their good ideas from somewhere else, but filter out the bad ideas, then that's a valuable service. (Good, bad.. are just labels for ideas that spread or don't in the blog zeitgeist.)
-- One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
It does not beg the question. It raises the question. Please don't use that term unless you actually honestly know what the hell you're doing. "Begging the question" has nothing to do with an actual question anyway. If your statement has a question mark in it you're almost certainly NOT begging the question.
Check out the Tipping Point (http://www.gladwell.com/books.html)
Malcom Gladwell points out in this book that there are 3 (or 4? It's been awhile since I've read the it) different agents that help ideas tip.
One of the agents is the "connected person." This is a person, such as a blogger, that for some reason or another, just knows of and connects with more people. I'd expect that the Popular Bloggers are examples of this sort of person.
It's a good "gee whiz" sort of book, and is reasonably researched.
This begs the question: Why are you such an uptight twit?
Re:Bloggers
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Informative
Using "beg the question" to mean "raise the question" is becoming more and more a common and accepted practice. It may be distasteful to those that know the true origins of the phrase (Aristotle and the latin translation, "petitio principii"), but languages evolve, and sometimes words and phrases come to mean something quite different to (or even the opposite of) what the original meaning was. Evolution is a good thing. It adds richness and complexity.
This has been stated as an acceptible meaning in the Oxford English Dictionary. Its only a matter of time before it gets wider support. Clinging to what was right in the past will only bring stagnation, IMHO. Embrace the new and its craziness.
Popular bloggers are the ones who are faster than everyone who's better than them and better than everyone who's faster. If you hit the right balance of speed and insightfulness, you can't fail.
(This idea 100% plagiarized from Mickey Kaus, who I'm sure thought of it himself.
Re:Bloggers
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AshtangiMan
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Perhaps a troll . . . but so wrong.
If you allow language to evolve through ignorance of actual meaning, you allow it to devolve. That is, you slowly lose the ability to express certain ideas easily. We see this in the US quite often, and I believe it to be principle in our accelerating downward spiral. De-evlolution is not a good thing, as it reduces richness and complexity.
What does "beg the question" mean, anyway? [strongbrains.com].
I would like to suggest that we solve this problem by never using the phrase "begs the question" at all. If you want to talk about circular reasoning, say "circular reasoning". If you want to talk about raising a question, say "raises the question".
-- A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
Re:Bloggers
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I think ironic would be a far less popular word if "recursive" ever caught on.:)
I don't tolerate ignorance in language any more than I tolerate spyware on my computer. Neither are immediately damaging, but they're both somewhat distasteful. I don't think it makes me uptight, but you're welcome to your opinion.
Besides, I consider the demonstration of ignorance an open invitation to be educated. Whether they choose to listen or not is up to them.
The most-read webloggers aren't necessarily the ones with the most original ideas, say researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs.
Otherwise know as the 'Slashdupe' syndrome. One site is even know for it's inability to keep stories original within a 24 hour period.
In other news...
by
Paul+Crowley
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· Score: 4, Funny
And another thing:
Wired has up a story about HP, as part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups of people, scientifically proving what most people already knew: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers.
Wired [wired.com] has up a story [wired.com] about HP, as part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups of people, scientifically proving what most people already knew: bloggers steal [hp.com] their ideas from other bloggers.
Well that explains that!
by
DakotaK
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· Score: 3, Funny
So that's why all the whiny angsty poetry on blogs looks the same...it IS the same! /hates whiny teenage blogs
-- I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
If you consider intellectual property law to define the value, sometimes the value lies in the idea itself (patents, for example, where someone independently coming up with the same idea still has to licence it from you), whereas in other cases the value lies in the expression of the idea (copyright).
But, but, how can an idea be stolen? Isn't the whole point that ideas are supposed to be valueless since they can be copied effortlessly?
This is the fundamental distinction between copyright infringement and plagiarism. Copyright is about protecting the value of the particular expression of an idea. Plagiarism is about intellectual dishonesty. Copyright infringement is illegal. Plagiarism is not.
The reason plagiarism is morally questionable is not because it devalues ideas (as you said, that is impossible since ideas have no intrinsic value). Plagiarism is repugnant because it devalues people. When you come up with a great idea, and your coworkers or friends pat you on the back and say "Nice one, cublicledrone, that's a brilliant idea! I wish I could think of things like that," doesn't it make you feel good?
Why should another person take that idea, attribute it to themselves, and get happy feel-good comments for it? They didn't earn that respect. They stole it from you, and as a result you are not as highly valued because the credit for the idea has been spread over multiple people.
Plagiarism is ultimately a problem of ego. In an ideal world, the ideas we create only have value in their application to the improvement of human life. In the real world, part of the motivation for producing new ideas is the respect we gain by proving ourselves to be creative and intelligent. Plagiarism is offensive because it mocks this respect and makes it hard to determine who really deserves credit for an idea.
Slight confusion detected. Ideas are inherently valuable--the good ones at least. But the amount that a good idea can be sold for (due to copyright/patent protection) is miniscule compared to the value that comes from applying the idea (reading a published work or using an invention based on the idea). So ideally, the protection of an idea's sale value should be enough to keep the good ideas coming, without adversely affecting the application value.
Now, an idea cannot be "stolen", unless it's so sophisticated that the owner has to keep it all on paper instead of inside the cerebellum. Copyright/patent infringement happens when someone takes advantage of the use value without compensating the legal "owner" for the idea's sale value. The owner still has the idea to use for himself, but the sale value of his "property" is diminished.
Hope that confuses you further.
--
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Yes, horrible plagiarism!
by
musingmelpomene
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Idea theft?
You don't say!
I suppose we're going to start burning Shakespeare's works because they were blatantly stolen from other writers, right?
Idea modification and adaptation is not plagiarism - much of human progress in the arts has happened because of this phenomenon, and the internet neither started nor ended it.
The problem lies in the fact that the 21's century is the century of "MINE MINE GIMMIE GIMMIE!" where it's profitable to try and protect that which was traditionally openly shared over the past 5000 years.
computers would be nothing like they are today (nor as cheap as) if it wasnt for "stealing" and "plagiarism" My god, Compaq stile IBM's IP and shout be punished severly! OMG! Texas Instruments STOLE the idea of a processor from Intel!
today too many people are worrying about how to make the most money with the least effort..
How about being proud of the fact that your idea is so good that everyone want's to copy it? and use that supposedly superior brain to tink up another one...
that is why every "invention" I come up with I market the hell out of until I see copies show up on the market, then simply switch to something else after selling the rights cheaply to one of the copycats. (no I wont tell any of you what items I invented, many are gizmos for hunters and camping/hiking)
The louder someone whines about stolen
Re:Yes, horrible plagiarism!
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TopShelf
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· Score: 1
I'll leave it to a karma whore to dig up the attribution, but to paraphrase the old saying, "bad artists copy, great artists steal."
Re:Yes, horrible plagiarism!
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Pike
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Shakespeare did use subject material from other writers as well as his own. Copying subject material is not plagiarism, neither does Shakespeare's genius lie in his subject matter.
Shakespeare's genius was that he had a "music" all his own. He could craft a sentence with devastating effect. He was a wordsmith. This was what saved him from being a crappy playwright. Other people can say the same things, but their music is not the same.
So it's only one person's cat who did "the most amazing thing today" and only one person's friend "acted like my friend but was really just a big bitch all along" and everyone else is just copying?
Oh to find that cat...
Re:Next Question...
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LostCluster
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That's a very interesting one. Slashdot is definitely a blog in its layout of article and comments, but it also has news credibility that most blogs don't.
It's kind of the difference between the tabloid news paper format, and the tabloid style of news reporting. There are some credible newspapers, such as the Boston Herald which publish in the tabloid shape. Meanwhile, the not so credible The Onion has a broadsheet shape.
Don't knock NNTP... if there's one thing I absolutely HATE about blogs, news sites, forums in general, it's the absolutely shitty implementation of the board layout. (slashdot aside, na klar) WHERE ARE MY THREADS????? And this 'private message' shit? Send me a damned e-mail, goofus.
I will now return to a.a.v.f.f.f and alt.flame. Thank you.
Re:Next Question...
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I once said that I hated blogs, and then I got a predictable smart reply about how Slashdot is a blog.
Since I can't change my generalized stance, I must now hate Slashdot.
Re:Next Question...
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Adrian+De+Leon
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· Score: 2, Funny
News credibility? Slashdot?
You must be new around here:-)
"If so, its quite well known it links to copyrightten articles all the time."
The alternative being what? To link to articles more than 90 years old, or those written by the US government?
Presume that was the spelling you meant, because I doubt most people would describe slashdot articles as copywritten (having been laid out by a copy writer), rather than "copyrighted"
Exactly. This research doesn't prove jack. Why, everyone knows that all of Shakespeare's works would eventually be duplicated by an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters. And basically, that's all the internet is anyway:-) /me scratches head and eats a banana
--
--------
This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
well obviously.... - there are only limited number of ideas, - and there are more blogs than ideas, - so it follows that ideas will have to copied from one blog to another.
Re:well obviously
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Exactly. Just because an idea is common, accepted and shared, dosn't really make it stolen. It's just the passing of information.
-- I steal signatures from blogs.:(
Generally stealing ideas is good for growth
by
kompiluj
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I think generally "stealing" gives high growth rates. In medieval times people were stealing ideas easily - this led to renaissance, arts and science as we know them were born. Scientists "steal" ideas - they modify other's ideas. This is how the progress works. Patents that would prevent any "stealing" like the last try from NEC on idea of nanotubes, not some way of making them is against progress. Perhaps you disagre...
-- You can defy gravity... for a short time
Re:Generally stealing ideas is good for growth
by
mechaZardoz
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The key difference here, as noted in the Wired article, is that the aggregate bloggers often use ideas without attribution. Researchers, while making use of data produced elsewhere, are required to cite sources and provide appropriate credit.
Yes, patenting 'ideas' (or facts) is absurd (and currently prohibited in the law), but processes, such as creating nanotubes is not.
Again, it comes down to securing some manner of recognition for the original creator or creators.
Whether or not this amounts to stifling progress seems to come down to how rights to information (and access) are administered.
(standard IANAL disclaimers apply)
Re:Generally stealing ideas is good for growth
by
Jotaigna
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· Score: 1
I agree with the process of an idea being contributed by others. Heck my thesis cited at leas 30 articles and all i did was putting them together and make something else out of them. Of course, those ideas were there for me to use, published in journals and stuff. Is not the same when people want credit and ownership for their ideas, so others wont come up with something better. For example there is a rumor that says Pasteur didnt discover the penicilium, some other guy did, do we know his/her name? are those facts in the history books?...we'll never know. One thing is for certain, if you have an idea that you dont want others to know, just dont tell anyone...or dont relase the source;).
-- "The quality of life is inversely proportional to the number of keys on your keyring."
Re:Generally stealing ideas is good for growth
by
PurpleWizard
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· Score: 1
It's a bit like many eyeballs and lots of beta testers. It helps test the ideas and hopefully only the best survive.
Please can anyone identify whose idea that was?
Re:Generally stealing ideas is good for growth
by
Eccles
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· Score: 1
For example there is a rumor that says Pasteur didnt discover the penicilium, some other guy did, do we know his/her name?
Yes, it was Alexander Fleming. Pasteur's most remembered (but far from his only) claim to fame is, fittingly, pasteurization; that is, heating stuff to kill germs.
-- Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Re:Generally stealing ideas is good for growth
by
Jotaigna
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· Score: 1
man i just read it at wikipedia. I suck at history!, and my teachers, AND my textbooks. I have a textbook(Chilean) that actually says Pasteur discovered the penicilium.
/me looks down ashamed of his former post
-- "The quality of life is inversely proportional to the number of keys on your keyring."
Re:Generally stealing ideas is good for growth
by
pclminion
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· Score: 1
Scientists "steal" ideas - they modify other's ideas.
And they attribute them. Failing to do so will get you kicked off committees, fired from professorships, ejected from laboratories, and basically make you an unhireable laughing stock.
Yes, the dissemination of ideas is nothing but beneficial. But to fail to attribute is morally reprehensible. There comes a point when an ideas is so far-flung and well known that the attribution becomes implicit, but it is always there.
Notice that we don't list Maxwell in the bibliography of a paper on electromagnetism. However, we attribute Maxwell by naming his equations after him: Maxwell's Equations. The attribution is therefore eternal, in a sense.
Depends really
by
Ratface
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I mean my blog is more like an online journal of what I've been up to and been thinking about. It's very rare that I post memes or links to "popular" sites (though it does happen occassionally).
I guess in this case they're referring to bloggers as people who blog lots of links. Maybe they're the majority of bloggers, but they're not the majority of *interesting* bloggers (imho!)
I know that I've lost the battle on this one, but if it is "more like an online journal" then why on earth do you use that other, really ugly word?
I have had an online journal for going on eight years now, and the thought that people call their personal essays and ideas "blogging" makes my skin crawl.
Like I said, I know I've lost this battle. The general population doesn't know the difference between a blog (which I consider to be more of the linky variety) and an online journal (which I consider to be more personal), and with the way that this stuff is reported by the "real"media, never will.
What an ugly word, though.
That's not just blogs...
by
LostCluster
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· Score: 5, Insightful
It's also how news spreads. Afterall, Slashdot is very rarely the first to report a story, it just links to somebody else who has posted information on a topic. From there, several other media outlets see the story on Slashdot and therefore report on it themselves.
Re:That's not just blogs...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
From there, several other media outlets see the story on Slashdot and therefore report on it themselves.
Message from SCO to everyone: All your blogs are belong to us.
Here's the article text
by
scumbucket
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
The most-read webloggers aren't necessarily the ones with the most original ideas, say researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs.
Using newly developed techniques for graphing the flow of information between blogs, the researchers have discovered that authors of popular blog sites regularly borrow topics from lesser-known bloggers -- and they often do so without attribution.
These findings are important to sociologists who are interested in learning how ideas grow from isolated topics into full-blown epidemics that "infect" large populations. Such an understanding is also important to marketers, who hope to be able to pitch products and ideas directly to the most influential people in a given group.
"There is a lot of speculation that really important people are highly connected, but really, we wonder if the highly connected people just listen to the important people," said Lada Adamic, one of the four researchers working on the project.
To satisfy their curiosity, the researchers began analyzing data from Intelliseek's BlogPulse Web crawler, which regularly mines thousands of blogs for references to people, places and events.
When they plotted the links and topics shared by various sites, they discovered that topics would often appear on a few relatively unknown blogs days before they appeared on more popular sites.
"What we're finding is that the important people on the Web are not necessarily the people with the most explicit links (back to their sites), but the people who cause epidemics in blog networks," said researcher Eytan Adar.
These infectious people can be hard to find because they do not always receive attribution for being the first to point to an interesting idea or news item.
Indeed, the team at HP Labs found that when an idea infected at least 10 blogs, 70 percent of the blogs did not provide links back to another blog that had previously mentioned the idea.
To get past this obstacle, the researchers developed techniques to infer where information might have come from, based on the similarities in text, links and infection rates.
For instance, if Blog A used the words "furry germs" to link to an infectious topic like Giantmicrobes just days after Blog B in the same social circle used the exact same words and link, that would be a good sign that Blog A copied Blog B.
The researchers have incorporated their techniques into a search algorithm they call iRank. Unlike Google's PageRank algorithm, which ranks websites based on overall popularity, the iRank algorithm ranks sites based on how good they are at injecting ideas into the mainstream.
"A lot of sites that get listed by search engines as most relevant are not always the most relevant," said Adar. "For instance, Slashdot often gets listed at the top, but it's just an aggregator. I may want to go to the source."
Adar and Adamic say it's too soon to tell if iRank will be incorporated into popular search engines.
For one thing, they plan to refine the algorithm after seeing how it works on more data. They would also like to modify the algorithm to resist manipulation from Google-bomb-type attacks, where collaborators link to each other's sites to boost themselves in Google's ranking mechanism.
In the meantime, the team has made some of its research available online in the form of the Blog Epidemic Analyzer, a Java program that reveals the implicit and inferred links between blogs in an interactive, visual form.
"Blogs are helping us get a better understanding of how things happen on the Internet," said Adar. "We're hopeful that in being able to do this research, we can apply the technology to other information, like e-mail, to improve productivity."
-- CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
Re:Here's the article text
by
ZaMoose
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think what this article really ignores is: this is how information generally spreads, regardless of medium. An idea is not going to receive widespread attention until someone with either 1) power or 2) wide exposure takes notice and makes an issue of it.
The link-aggregating blogs, like Metafilter, Instapundit, Little Green Footballs,/., etc. provide the clout and exposure that these little blogs/sites lack. All the little sites have to do is gain the interest of the aggregators and they should get noticed.
There's already a way to track the propagation of an idea across multiple blogs, developed by MovableType called TrackBack.
TrackBack-enabled blogging systems will generate a TrackBack URL. When a blogger links to/writes about a story on another blog, they can "pingback" the TrackBack URL of the "parent" blog entry. These pingbacks are aggregated by the originator and can allow visitors to see who's linking to the post they're reading and what those linkers are saying.
Of course, all of this depends on the secondary linkers being dedicated TrackBackers...
If you have a blog, I'd recommend looking into TrackBack.
-- I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Is "Today I had Cheetos and talked to Sara" or "I think Imma gonna brush mah teef now" really something worth stealing? C'mon.. most things worth stealing have at least _some_ value..
Current Mood: Thefty
I wrote about this on my blog
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Funny this. I wrote about how ideas 'infect' large groups of people, scientifically proving what most people already knew: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers, on my blog!
Now there is proof that there is only 1 blog to go with the well known fact that there is only 1 makefile.
philosophical questions about old planks and new boats aside of course... and Al Gore probably wrote it...
-- "The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away"
-Tom Waits
Re:Makefiles and blogs....
by
corbettw
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· Score: 1
Now there is proof that there is only 1 blog
In the land of blogging, where the plagiarists lie
One blog to copy them all
One blog to store them
One blog to steal them all
And in the darkness bore them In the land of blogging, where the plagiarists lie
-- God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Its not stealing...
by
mtrupe
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Its commentary. What's wrong with that? Now, if you're stealing commentary from other people, then I guess you never really had any original thoughts on a topic to begin with. That's pretty lame.
Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it, pliz, 'research'.
It's what Open Source is all about
by
Chemisor
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· Score: 3, Insightful
t's what Open Source is all about: "sharing" other people's ideas and making sure they remain "shared".
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
Frymaster
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Open Source is all about: "sharing" other people's ideas
yes, but open source is also about contributing new stuff to the existing body of work. that's what we call "innovation" - which is another strong point of oss.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
NDPTAL85
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm pretty sure the overwhelming bulk of OSS is taking what has already been created in the proprietary world, emulating or outright copying it and then releasing it to everyone else as "free" software.
Of course SOME actual innovation occurs but its very very minor.
-- Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
FroMan
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Depends on the license.
That is what the GPL is about.
BSD is about sharing and not looking for anything in return.
-- Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Right, because the only value software ideas have is in the TIME spent manifesting them. So long as you expend the same amount of TIME re-manifesting them, you must not really be stealing anything of value. Right? We call that a criminal's logic where I come from. As the mainstream catches up with technology, they will begin tossing you SOBs in jail by the dozens.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Grr..
'outright copying' is pure, blatant bullshit. 'outright copying' implies that source code is being 'stolen' and used vertabrim from non-oss projects, which isn't even possible.
it's not even possible because
1) the source isn't available to rip off 2) the source would be there, visible, waiting for a lawsuit to happen
remember, copyright is the only reason copyleft works, and while a lot of copyleft supporters may lean away from the concept of 'ip', we still understand that we are nothing without copyright law. without copyright law, someone could take oss code, rip it off and put it into a closed source app.
also, if you honestly believe that only the open source world 'copies' ideas from other companies and that only the closed source world 'innovates' then i encourage you to get fucking informed.
think about the gaming industry, where a few genres are rehashed again and again.
think about the groupware industry, where dozens of companies offer solutions to unify your email/calendar/contacts/inventory/etc.
think about the os industry. think PARC, think X11, think MacOS, think windows, think KDE/Gnome..
i'm pretty sure you're a troll. ihbt, etc. but it's fun to rant in the morning at work.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
turnstyle
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
"I'm pretty sure the overwhelming bulk of OSS is taking what has already been created in the proprietary world, emulating or outright copying it and then releasing it to everyone else as "free" software."
From my own experience, I've been working on my MP3 juke/server software Andromeda since about 1999. A few years later some guy came up with a GPL'd app Zina (Zina is not Andromeda, which he describes: "It is similar to Andromeda, but released under the GNU General Public License"). And, in turn, I've seen others with forked versions of Zina.
So, I've certainly seen OS projects following a proprietary work, BUT I've also seen proprietary projects that follow other proprietary projects too.
Most ideas are part of a flow, and I don't think that I would characterize OS as any more or less derivative than proprietary work -- except when it comes to the endless GPL forking.
IMHO, the main problem with OS is that the coders aren't getting paid.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
geeber
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· Score: 1
Open Source is NOT about sharing without attribution. Use my code all you want, but I still get credit for the initial work. This article talks about stealing ideas without crediting the originator.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
name 3 popular closed source programs that weren't started in order to mimic a pay-for piece of software.
you won't be able to.
oh, and pretending you're clever because of the CLI comment? haha. Start -> Run -> cmd
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
C:\Documents and Settings\coward>ipconfig
Windows IP Configuration
Ethernet adapter Bob the Network Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix:
IP Address : 10.1.1.36
Subnet Mask : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway : 10.1.1.5
C:\Documents and Settings\coward>
(the above is not true output. it has been changed to pass the lameness filter)
you can start/stop services from the command line. you can control the registry. you can control software installations, printer connections, etc. you can run the damn OS from the CLI if you want.
and a microsoftie would call that 'innovation', because of the automation / remote administration possibilities.
also, go get informed on just what you can get done on a proven, reliable system. start with the ibm os/400. the department of defense rates it as secure and object code from 20 years ago runs flawlessly today. six-9s of reliability. old != sux. but thanks for trying.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
FYI, CMD.EXE came much later than *nix shells like bash. In this instance, Microsoft copied OSS, not the other way around.
But there's nothing wrong with copying software ideas, I applaud all efforts to give Linux and Windows similar look & feels.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
Sunda666
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· Score: 2, Insightful
sure, sure, CMD.EXE first debut was in windows NT (1993, I think...). but, you know, its purpose is to emulate that thing called "DOS", which is around much longer, and is a direct descendant of CP/M, which is surely as old, if not older, than UNIX.
CLIs are not a new thing, you know... kids today...
cheers
--
``If a program can't rewrite its own code, what good is it?'' - Mel
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
teromajusa
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· Score: 1
You can't steal an idea because the originator of the idea still has it - you just copy it. I think you mean they are stealing credit for the idea. In particular, you are talking about stealing credit for the idea of linking to a particular site. Of course the one who really deserves credit for that idea was the person who built the site in the first place as they probably furnished the original link. And by linking to that site, you are crediting the originator of the idea. So no harm done!;)
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
All the Party members in Oceania were to share the same ideas.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
hesiod
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· Score: 1
> the main problem with OS is that the coders aren't getting paid.
Simple answer: it's not a problem if no one is complaining. If they were worried about getting paid, they would not do it for free. They do it because they like to program, want to help out, like the concept of free*/free**, etc. I'm a bit tired of hearing people (who do not write the programs) complain that these coders are being taken advantage of. I could write software for free for MS if I damn well pleased, so I can write it for OSS too. I prefer it for OSS since no one profits directly from my work, except by gaining & using what I wrote. If it helps them in some way, great! If it doesn't, no skin off your nose, so why do you care.
* as in 'Speech' ** as in 'Air'
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
hesiod
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· Score: 1
> CP/M, which is surely as old, if not older, than UNIX.
Sorry, but CP/M was made in 1974. UNIX was started in 1969.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
turnstyle
·
· Score: 2, Informative
"Simple answer: it's not a problem if no one is complaining. If they were worried about getting paid, they would not do it for free."
Hey, I'm all for people making their own choices.
But I can also tell you that I've been in touch with a number of coders behind fairly popular OSS projects who told me that their next project wasn't going to be OSS.
And also note that folks like me regularly get asked (and not always kindly): "hey, why don't you GPL your code?" and I think it's just as fair for me to ask: "hey, why don't you think about charging for your work?"
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
benjcurry
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Actually, the overwhelming bulk of SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT IN GENERAL is taking what has already been created, emulating or outright copying it and then releasing it to everyone else as "proprietary" software.
The OSS community simply gives it away, while MS and Apple actually profit financially from the whole thing.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
hesiod
·
· Score: 1
> coders behind fairly popular OSS projects who told me that their next project wasn't going to be OSS.
Fine, that is their decision, I have no problem with that -- only when you say that someone should not write OSS just because they don't get paid. That is their decision. Basically, it comes down to (within reason) do what you want, charge, don't charge, it doesn't matter: as long as you are happy with it.
> "hey, why don't you GPL your code?" and I think it's just as fair
It would be just as fair for you to say "hey, why don't you give me a million dollars." Of course, if those people can't see the value in closed-source, that is their problem. If you can't see the value in Open Source... well, that's yours.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
UserGoogol
·
· Score: 1
No, command.com emulates DOS. cmd.exe provides a shell for Windows almost but not entirely DOS-like.
But yeah, CLIs have been around for eons.
-- "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
Bill_Royle
·
· Score: 1
Bull.
Open source is about sharing, but it's also about crediting the original author. A simple duplication of content isn't contributing, unless *at the minimum* credit is given where credit is deserved.
If someone replicates someone else's article, then doesn't even credit the author or source, that's not open source. It's someone stealing someone else's thunder in an attempt to look informative. This is akin to someone setting up an install of PHP-nuke, Postnuke, or something else that's ridiculously easy to install - then claiming that they built it themself.
No. It's not open-source. It's an example of how dumbasses flourish on the net.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
iminplaya
·
· Score: 1
I think he's more worried about the value of his project. If someone is coding a similar project, it could make it more dificult for him to charge the price he thinks he should get. I'll always believe that people who write programs for free can make better code, because they like to, not because they're looking for a fast buck.
-- What?
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
You mean like Lotus 123 and Excel?
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
turnstyle
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· Score: 1
"I'll always believe that people who write programs for free can make better code, because they like to, not because they're looking for a fast buck."
The problem with your thinking is the presumption that just because somebody wants to make a living from their work, that they're just doing it "for fast buck."
I like what I do, my users like my work, and -- GASPS! -- I pay my bills.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
iminplaya
·
· Score: 1
That's all well and good. Just don't get so upset when someone likes to do it for nothing.
-- What?
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
iminplaya
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· Score: 1
...rip it off and put it into a closed source app.
Can someone please explain how "closed source" can exist without copyright law? It's amazing that anybody can defend something that has become so obsolete and destructive, especially in the last 15 years.
-- What?
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
paul.dunne
·
· Score: 1
MS-DOS was not a direct descendent of CP/M. It started life as a quick hack based on ideas from CP/M; not quite the same thing.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
hkmwbz
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· Score: 1
"Can someone please explain how "closed source" can exist without copyright law?"
Simple. Keep the source private. Keep it closed. And you have closed-source.
"It's amazing that anybody can defend something that has become so obsolete and destructive, especially in the last 15 years."
There's money in it, and it is up to me whether I want to release the source or not. Why is it destructive? Because one major company, Microsoft, has been destructive? There are plenty of non-destructive closed-soure applications.
-- Clever signature text goes here.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
iminplaya
·
· Score: 1
Simple. Keep the source private. Keep it closed. And you have closed-source.
Nonsense. I can reverse engineer, disassemble, whatever, and open it right back up again. Copyrights/Patents did not protect Edison when the movie makers(some of the biggest infringers of all) moved away from the East Coast to avoid paying royalties.
It's destructive because it's crippling our technologies(think DAT and mini-disk, and soon our computers)I would bet that it has set us back anywhere between 50 and 200 years. Without copyrights/patents we would probably be traveling in nice comfortable mag-lev tubes pushing.8 mach for a penny a mile, and it would be as safe as an elevator, and as simple
-- What?
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
hkmwbz
·
· Score: 1
"I can reverse engineer, disassemble, whatever, and open it right back up again."
Good luck. If only it were that simple...
As for setting us back. How? Without billions of dollars to push it, we might never have been able to do even half of what's been done today. It is impossible to know, and anyone's guess is as good as any other.
-- Clever signature text goes here.
Re:It's what Open Source is all about
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I had used CP/M on my C64 and 128. I also used DOS 1.something on a PC. They were pretty identical from a user's point of view -- except perhaps CP/M had more support.
Remember, IBM couldn't get Intergalatic Digitial Research to port CP/M to the PC at first which is why they got MicroSoft to provide them with an OS. Once IDR did provide CP/M, it was too late.
It's all the same
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers
Isn't exactly that what Slashdot do by copying other websites content?
Is that not how blogging started in the first place?
"wow that is neat that person is posting his diary on the web, maybe i should do the same, but ill write a script to do it"
Self-Pleasure Circuit
by
Melvin+Daniels
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Has anyone else ever noticed how much blogs just reference eachother and talk about how amazing blogs are, while not really doing anything all that insightful or significant? Most of the time they just keep posting the same old thing you saw on that other guy's blog, while offering nothing new.
I'm just suprised that this whole fad has lasted this long.
Let's be realistic here. The scripting ability necessary to create a weblog is next to nil. It's not that amazing of a thing. It's a nice format, I'll give you that, but it doesn't deserve the hype. It's just about time that people start noticing this and pointing out the vapidity in the 'blogging scene'.
Re:Self-Pleasure Circuit
by
Aliencow
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· Score: 2, Funny
You mean the "blogosphere" or some other retarded word I think..
Re:Self-Pleasure Circuit
by
addie
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Oh please get off your high horse. I know exactly what you're saying, these things are pretty self-indulgent but so is posting on/. for the most part. Blogs are entertainment for many people, and there's a good reason for it. Blogs are free to read, often have discussions associated with them, and touch on subjects that mass media just don't bother with (because they are trivial in a world sense). Personally I'd like to see this "fad" become a norm. People sharing stories and information is not a common thing these days! We all get our information from "trusted" media sources, and then talk about it the next day. What's so wrong with deciding what we think is important, posting it on our own blog, and generating our own discussion on it?
And as far as your comment on the simplicity of the scripting required, that's just snobbery. I'll bet your design and scripting skills are miles further ahead than those of most bloggers, but so what? How is that relevant?
There is vapidity everywhere these days from TV, to movies, to music, even to the bloody news! Something as simple and community oriented as a blog does not deserve to be passed off as insignificant and vapid. The content is not necessarily as important as the medium. Blogs are part of our modern oral tradition, and from a sociological standpoint they're extremely relevant and important media.
Re:Self-Pleasure Circuit
by
Brown
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It is in human nature to believe in one's own importance; it is a self-defence mechanism as much as anything - most people really aren't important or respected in 'Society' (whatever that might be), and these give a harmless boost to self-confidence.
The reason it lasts is of course percisly due to their habit of referencing each other, explicitly or implicitly - there's no external force which slows the process down, only internal encouragement - a positive feedback loop. Most people 'outside' don't find it interesting or insightful, but within, the competition, community respect and recognition encourage people to continue.
Pretty similar to many of the fluffier 'academic' subjects in many ways, really:-)
-Chris
Re:Self-Pleasure Circuit
by
NSash
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Let's be realistic here. The scripting ability necessary to create a weblog is next to nil.
Your point being? People don't read blogs because they're hard to set up: they read them because they (presumably) find the writer interesting.
Re:Self-Pleasure Circuit
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
The scripting ability necessary to create a weblog is next to nil.
Yes, and we all know that scripting ability and prose writing ability are exactly the same thing.
Heck, Shakespeare couldn't write JavaScript to save his life. And I understand that Mark Twain has yet to upgrade to CSS format.
Thank you for proving my point for me. Blogs aren't part of the mass media, they're part of a more traditional trading of stories approach to information. Why is the slashdot crowd so hostile to bloggers? I don't get it.
Re:Self-Pleasure Circuit
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Has anyone else ever noticed how much blogs just reference eachother and talk about how amazing blogs are, while not really doing anything all that insightful or significant? Most of the time they just keep posting the same old thing you saw on that other guy's blog, while offering nothing new.
Some blogs, yes. Others, absolutely not. For example:
Healing Iraq A 24-year-old dentist with a digital camera has repeatedly given thousands an inside look at post-Saddam Iraq, from an Iraqi's perspective. The MASSIVE anti-terror demonstations in Iraq last year were only covered in depth here, not on any international news source.
Steven den Beste A retired engineer who writes quite thorough articles. Many I don't agree with but are usually an interesting read.
In a more extreme case, there's no doubt in my mind Scott Koenig lost Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney her re-election due to exposing her unusual support base after September 11.
There's also at least 20-30 Iranian blogs that give a perspecitve simply not present anywhere else. There's the CaribPundit in the Carribbean, Chief Wiggles in Iraq who started a toy drive for Iraqi children and Homelss Guy Blog who is indeed, a homeless man utilizating the public library.
Some, like Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennesee law professor, merely provides short commentary and links. I don't see how this is bad in any way. All most syndicated columnists do is pick a topic du jour and write about it with minimalist research anyway.
At least with blogs, you can get first-hand accounts of events and cultures, with no illusion that the source is not biased.
Re:Self-Pleasure Circuit
by
MooseByte
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· Score: 1
"It is in human nature to believe in one's own importance;"
And it is your company's mission to crush this erroneous belief.
Re:Self-Pleasure Circuit
by
Frennzy
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Mod parent up. Well spoken.
I, for one, use my blog not only for something to do that keeps me from playing video games, but it's a simple and easy method to keep my family and friends up to date on the inane and silly things going on in my household.
The primary reason I write on my blog is to do just that...write. It helps me to polish what little skill I may have, and keep the 'writing juices' flowing. I, like many unpublished writers (well, I had some poetry published in college, but that and $1.50 will get you a coffee at Starbuck's), still keep hope alive in the back of my mind that someday I will actually get a story or a novel published. I write my blog as a way of keeping my typing skills up, without worrying about excessive editing or typos. Occasionally, I'll actually have something of (what I consider) import to say, and I'll say it on my blog.
But guess what? Usually those are things that are fairly common to the human condition. As an example, what happens if I happen to be watching CNN and see a completely obvious falsehood presented as fact. I can go to their story on line, read it, and judge whether it was a mistake or not. If the error exists online, I can link to it in my blog, and post my correction. But, and this is the important part, I am VERY likely not the only person to do so. I am also VERY likely not to be the only person with a particular viewpoint, especially in the blogging community. People with viewpoints like to express them. It's not even remotely odd that many people, sharing the same viewpoint, would link to the same items on their blogs.
Re:Self-Pleasure Circuit
by
Apathetic1
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Blogs are free to read, often have discussions associated with them, and touch on subjects that mass media just don't bother with (because they are trivial in a world sense). Personally I'd like to see this "fad" become a norm. People sharing stories and information is not a common thing these days!
A thousand years from now when the Archeologists dig up the LiveJournal servers and figure out how to extract the information from them, they're going to be ecstatic - one of the hardest aspects of human history to learn anything about is the mundane, day to day detail of a person's life. Not very many people write that kind of stuff down. Or at least they didn't. Sure people kept diaries but it's not quite the same as a public journal and certainly not as widespread.
So yes, I agree with you completely, being a bit of a History junkie.
--
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
Re:Self-Pleasure Circuit
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I don't have a high opinion of the blogspace. I heard so much hype that I decided to look around at the blogs that are most "respected" according to national awards. I found "look, boobies!" and complaints about trying to get a job at a video staore ("I made more money than your manager during the boom!"). Please. They talk like they are out to change the world. People who really change the world just don't act like that.
Maybe because/. itself is the Blog to End All Blogs, and they don't like competition?
-- -Hentai
[in vita non pacem est]
Re:Self-Pleasure Circuit
by
quickflash
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· Score: 1
Ever listen to Rap songs? 50% of it is about how good the rapper is at rapping. Most of it is about the same things over and over again. People complain that it doesn't take much skill to create a rap song.
They still make millions of dollars off of it, and the "fad" still hasn't ended despite 20+ years.
The mainstream news media has been reduced to parroting press releases from any group whatsoever and calling it "reporting" for years now.
Just yesterday I heard a radio news story about how thousands of people are dying from something or other every year. When I looked into the data deeper, it was an estimate (read: ideologically motivated wild ass guess) by some political group, and had no actual science behind it whatsoever. But it was still just reported without any thought because the group issued a press release.
About how ideas 'infect' large groups of people, scientifically proving what most people already knew: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers. I will post them shortly.
Re:I have some ideas
by
Zeinfeld
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I think the false underlying assumptions here are that originality is always good and that if two people have the same idea one must have copied from the other.
The idea that copying is bad is a recent one. Prior to the industrial revolution the highest form of the craftsman's art was often considered to be the ability to create perfect copies of other people's work. Innovation is a relatively new idea. If you go to recently industrialized countries the bias for originality is often absent.
Several people have the same idea all the time. Whit Diffie was not the first to think up public key cryptography, but nobody claims he copied it off Cocks at GCHQ. I often take apart other people's schemes and find they have had ideas that are similar to my own.
Invention is not just originality, it is also reuse of existing ideas, improving where necessary and useful. In many case it is the circumstances that lead to the result.
Take a look at the Cagle cartoons on Slate. They have all the editorial cartoons from 40 odd papers across the country. The number of times that the same cartoon idea appears again and again is uncanny. These people might be copying to a small extent, but it simply isn't possible for them to all come out with the same idea in such a short time.
I am probably not the only person who thinks that the latest '24x7' hunt for Bin Laden is something we should have been doing for the past two years. If you read the blogs you will find page after page of people outraged that the start of the hunt for Bin Laden seems to have been timed to coincide with the first Bush election ads. I doubt many of them have seen my slashdot.sig. Clearly much of this is independent thought.
Blogs are an entertainment and a political movement. They are not academic journals or treatises. Not that there is much of importance or originality in the academic litterature. Sure people lift ideas but thats why most people are putting them out there.
For years people have been asking if I am angry that Microsoft has copied many of my ideas. Oddly enough nobody has ever asked me if I minded other people copying my ideas (and passing them off as their own which Microsoft has never done), but that is another story. The fact is that I want people to use my ideas, they are useless unless they are put into action. Microsoft use a lot of my ideas because I spend a lot of time persuading them to use them. My principal complaint about Netscape is that they just shut themselves off from the Web community, they got the idea that they were the only people who had the good ideas.
--
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Re:I have some ideas
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Informative
If you read the article they _don't_ assume "that if two people have the same idea one must have copied from the other."
They attempt to do programatically the same thing teachers do every day. If the prose is a little too close to a previously published item it suggests copying, not original thinking. Obviously this is extremely subjective.
Re:I have some ideas
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Prior to the industrial revolution the highest form of the craftsman's art was often considered to be the ability to create perfect copies of other people's work
Somehow, I doubt this. Do you really think that the "craftsmen" who copied (even very well or perfect) Michael Angelo's David were of a "highest form" of regard, even above the original artist?
Re:I have some ideas
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I think the false underlying assumptions here are that originality is always good and that if two people have the same idea one must have copied from the other.
Blogs are an entertainment and a political movement. They are not academic journals or treatises. Not that there is much of importance or originality in the academic litterature. Sure people lift ideas but thats why most people are putting them out there.
Re:I have some ideas
by
Zeinfeld
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· Score: 2, Informative
Somehow, I doubt this. Do you really think that the "craftsmen" who copied (even very well or perfect) Michael Angelo's David were of a "highest form" of regard, even above the original artist?
I said craftsman's art. Artists were considered slightly differently, but not all that much. Caravaggio's work was admired because of his technique and the skill with which he produced sculpture in the Greek-Roman tradition.
In his day the innovative elements of his work were not considered in the same light we consider them today. And for the next couple of centuries artists were judged by their ability to replicate the techniques and subjects of Carravaggio, Raphael, da Vinci et. al.
The example you give 'David' was admired because it represented a 'hero' of the old testament in the style of a Greek Hercules. It was the mastery of the Greek heroic that won praise at the time. The innovative homerotic theme was not admired in the same light. In any case Carravagio is being praised for his ability to copy the human form, not for innovating a new form.
The idea of pure originality without any demonstration of skill or technique only appears in the Modernist movement 1890 or so. Duchamp certainly could not have got away with his ready-mades any earlier. Even the idea that art could represent sensation rather than merely depict nature was controvertial when Turner started to show his abstract sea scenes. In his day the innovation was dismissed as 'soap suds and white wash'. It hurt his career and the career of Ruskin.
So no, I don't think you do manage to show that innovation was appreciated as a good in itself prior to the industrial revolution. If you look at some of the loopier pieces of modern art (the unmade bed) I think it is time to consider innovation for its own sake as probably overrated. The shock of being invited to consider something new as art wears thin after a while. The day that Damian Hirst exhibits one of his own turds pickled in his own urine is not far off, beat that one.
--
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Anyone else bothered about the term "infect" being applied to ideas?
I'm not implying anything, just making an observation, but if I was this current government, I'd want technology that could track this in the name of putting down dissent. And that's what I'd call dissent, infection.
-- Think for yourself, destroy your television.
Ideas ideas
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
"...part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups of people..."
Expect to see this mistake repeated across 1,000,000 blogs in the next few minutes.
Blogging is to idea as invention is to....
by
dylan_baxter
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· Score: 1
recycled concepts, arranged in new order so as to provoke thought.
What can we really expect? Most of the information contained in blogs is useless. You want new concepts? Read books.
-Dylan
Re:Blogging is to idea as invention is to....
by
Almond+Tree
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· Score: 0
That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done. So, there is nothing new under the sun. (plagerized from Ecc. 1:9 NASB) That about settles it.
--
bau bau chicka chicka mau mau
Nerds vs. Jocks
by
Chemisor
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· Score: 1, Insightful
> Why are the popular bloggers popular if other bloggers are thinking these ideas up first?
Everyone here should know that popularity is inversely proportionate to intelligence. Only intelligent people like other intelligent people. The idiots are just resentful.
No, you are assuming some are unpopular because they are intellegent. More accurate would be to say people are unpopular because they lack people skills or communication skills necessary to convince other people of their arguments. Some fo the most well known intellegent people were also popular. For instance, Einstein.
Also, the idiots are resentful comment is very broad and sweeping. Do 10 years in this industry and you'll find that some smart people are just as resentful and will try to attack you for such reasons. It's part of life I think.
The nerds vs jocks comparison smells of high school thinking. Many of us love the outdoors and play sports but yet could engage in intelligent conversation and debate just as well.
Re:Nerds vs. Jocks
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
[Intelligence and popularity] are not mutually exclusive
I'd say they the two are almost comletely unrelated. Two great examples: Slick Willie and Dubya. Both enjoy(ed) widespread popularity. As a Rhodes Scholar, Clinton's intelligence is undeniable. Likewise, the Shrub's academic achievment (or more accurately, his lack thereof) is also well documented.
However, they are not totally unrelated because there are personality traits, which are often associated with high intelligence, which do not engender popularity. Many smart people do not suffer fools, which is not exactly an endearing characteristic. Likewise, many intelligent people come off as aloof, condescending, or superior; none of which are mannerisms likely to make friends and influence people. Finally, there is some evidence to suggest that people with high IQs tend to be more polarized on the I-E scale of Meyers/Briggs type personality gauges -- a smart person has a higher probability of being either highly introverted or highly extraverted than a person of average intelligence.
-- Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
That's the first time I've seen graduating from Yale and getting an MBA from Harvard called a "lack" of academic achievement. It seems a laughably partisan comment when considered alongside your assertion that a Rhodes scholarship is undeniable evidence of "intelligence".
I don't consider having Daddy buy your way into an ivy league school and squeaking by with a "gentleman's" C average to be sterling academic achievement. If The Shrub didn't have a rich and well-connected daddy he would have been lucky to have been admtted into a second-tier state college (which he would have promptly failed out of), wouldn't have gotten a safe and cushy national guard gig flying an obsolete and soon-to-be-decommissioned plane, nor would he have gotten away with going AWOL from said N.G. posting, and would actually had to face the concequences for his DWI arrests.
I didn't vote for either one of the assholes, but given the choice between:
A pot-smoking Rhodes Scholar who lied about screwing an intern, who got where he is on his personal merit and accomplishments and
A coke-snorting drunken fratboy who lied about why he wanted to start a war, who got a free ride through life courtesy of daddy's money and daddy's friends
I'll chose the former any day.
Slick Willie ended his term in office with one woman's spit on his knob. The Shrub will end his presidency with over 3700 soldiers' blood on his hands. Which do you consider to be the lesser of these two evils?
-- Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
It isn't stealing -
by
meshmar
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It's news aggregating. A lot of the popular sites gather topics on a common theme and present them in a (sometimes) more coherent fashion then the original source.
Of course, there are the cut&pasters that couldn't come up with an original thought of their own if they had to.
Can you imagine what the people who had to sort through those blogs felt like afterward? One job I think I would have turned down...
-- If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
LOTS OF MONEY..
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Insightful
please, for the love of god, tell me a lot of money wasn't spent to figure this out. Knowing the existence of rss and/or asking any college-aged, tech savy blowhard polisci student would have gotten you this answer.
Aggregators
by
truthsearch
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· Score: 5, Insightful
One reason is that good bloggers who don't have many original thoughts are good aggregators. They may or may not state the ideas in a clearer fashion. But they know what people are interested in and bring it together. That's one reason/. is popular. It's a collection of information you'd have to go to hundreds of other places to find yourself.
Good point. In fact, if we look at our own surfing habits, what Web tools we use, where we shop, what we bookmark, it is usually sites that have a high quality in their aggregation of resources, whether it be tools, products,...
They provide guidance or tutorial with high clarity and quality (high precision) for all the items/products/links in their site.
In the language of Information Retrieval measurements, with precision and recall, we see that single sources have high precision (high quality), but low recall (talking only about themselves.) A site that points to everyone else has low precision but high recall. So the best sites would be those with a good balance of precision and recall (an f-measure).
This is simply a technical way of saying your point again: good sites are high-quality aggregators.
The last time I remember the stats being revealed, something like 80% of Slashdot visitors never read the comments. This seemed odd to me, as I also feel that it's the comments that makes Slashdot more interesting than just visiting a few news sources myself.
-- "What if they're using IE?" "I've dumbed Mozilla down to cope with it." - BOFH
Good point - while not a blogger per se, benmaller.com is some sports radio guy that must read every major media market newspapers' sports sections daily, or get tons of submissions from readers. His main page is a good aggregation of weird/ deep background sports stories that the nationwide media tends to miss or not cover as in depth (which is natural because it is generally the local beat writers who know most about what is actually going on with the team.
ostiguy
Okay, lemme get this straight..
by
stratjakt
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If I reiterate some dude's thoughts on birth control in my blog, you slashbots point your fingers and go "stealing! stealing! you thief!"
But if you download copyrighted music off of kazaa, you're all oh-so-quick to point out "it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement!"
Anyhow, what HP didn't mention: people with boring enough lives devoted to online diaries, are all likely to come up with the same stupid ideas. Its not so much stealing as in they're all equally boring.
I bet you think you're the only one who thought to wipe his ass with a washcloth to save the trees. Well you're not!
--
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Sounds more like transient social consciousness
by
MooseByte
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· Score: 5, Funny
OK, I actually read the article and this doesn't sound like "stealing" at all to me. Granted we'd need to see the underlying blogs and topics in question, but let's face it - social awareness of various topics ebb and flow.
Those of you who follow U.S. media may recall "The Summer of the Shark". There was no peak in shark attacks that year. In fact I think it was a below-average year. It just became the socially-focused topic.
Then there's the "everything's now in place" effect. Competing teams coming up with similar vaccines at the same time. Or manned flight.
Just part of the Great Filtered Aquifer of the human experience.
Of course it may well be that humans are just a bunch of damn thieving cheaters.;-)
Re:Sounds more like transient social consciousness
by
MisterFancypants
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· Score: 0, Troll
While marked Funny, I think this is absolutely true. This idea also presents itself in movie releases. Witness the Year of the Asteroid Films or the Year of the Volcano Films, etc.
Re:Sounds more like transient social consciousness
by
ArsonSmith
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· Score: 1
we need a year of helicopter vs dragon films. the one that came out just didn't hold up well enough. It could have been so much more fun.
-- Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Re:Sounds more like transient social consciousness
by
TheWickedKingJeremy
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· Score: 1
Those of you who follow U.S. media may recall "The Summer of the Shark". There was no peak in shark attacks that year. In fact I think it was a below-average year. It just became the socially-focused topic.
I agree that the "Summer of the Shark" (tm) was laughably silly. I don't, however, feel it says as much about the "ebb and flow" of "social awareness" -- moreso, a text-book example that our media controls and presents thought and perception, rather than simply reporting facts. The Summer of the Shark was a media creation, designed to sell newspapers. Not much about human nature can be derived from this, other than they pretty much do and think as they're told.
--
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
Re:Sounds more like transient social consciousness
by
17028
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· Score: 1
That is a slight misconception. The similar movies result from script writers shopping their scripts to different studios. Every once in a while a producer will think "That's a great idea, but why pay this dude hundreds of thousands of dollars when I can have my own staff hack write a similar story for peanuts?"
Re:Sounds more like transient social consciousness
by
arose
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· Score: 1
Which brings us back on topic...
-- Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Blog tracking services
by
G4from128k
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm surprised there are not blog-rating/tracking services that watch this kind of phenomenon. One could even do side-by-sides of how different blogs reported/copied material on a given topic. Different blogs might become known for originality of new ideas, while others might become known for long-term insightful commentary on copies of other blogs.
Routine tracking of blatant, unacknowledged copying of other's blogs would certainly separate the poseurs from the thinkers. Tracking the provenence of ideas would also reduce the truth-by-repetition problem on the internet wherein an erroneous fact looks widely accepted due to mere duplication.
-- Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Re:Blog tracking services
by
_Sharp'r_
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· Score: 1
Next you'll be reading the article they linked to above and find out that they are using their blog content analysis to to create a ranking system where they rank blogs by how much their original ideas get dispersed among other blogs.
In other words, don't be surprised that they don't exist, as the article is actually ABOUT such a blog-rating/tracking service.
But of course, this is slashdot and I must be new here...
-- The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
and the gratuitous repost
by
The+Tyro
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· Score: 2, Interesting
syndrome... where somebody takes somebody else's commment, copies it enbloc, and reposts it in a higher subthread.
The higher-posted comment gets "insightful" and "interesting" mods, while the lower post gets "redundant" mods, regardless of the fact that the lower comment was posted first.
I think the Slashtrolls have turned this technique into an online sport.
-- Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
...that is so untrue! I just copied and pasted your "news story" into my blog so I could tell everybody about it and how wrong you are.
They don't copy ...
by
jobbegea
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· Score: 2, Interesting
they all use this Blog Drone. That's why it all looks the same.
--
Net sa best, mar it koe minder
If Shakespeare were a blogger
by
truthsearch
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· Score: 2, Interesting
But if Shakespeare were a blogger he'd put everyone else to shame. Few of his time were able to express things with as much passion. Almost no bloggers stand out to such an extent.
Did I just write "But if Shakespeare were a blogger..."? Wow, that's a first...
Re:If Shakespeare were a blogger
by
finkployd
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· Score: 1
WHERE location = '4artThou'
Actually "wherefor art thou, romeo?" means "why are you (named) romeo?". Kinda meaning "I love you, why do you have to be romeo, a member of the family that is sworn enemy of my family"
Finkployd
Re:If Shakespeare were a blogger
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The customer is always right, drop it.
Re:If Shakespeare were a blogger
by
WWWWolf
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· Score: 1
Did I just write "But if Shakespeare were a blogger..."? Wow, that's a first...
Re:If Shakespeare were a blogger
by
Paradise+Pete
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· Score: 1
But if Shakespeare were a blogger he'd put everyone else to shame.
He'd quit in frustration after the 987th time someone responded "Dude, what's up with all that flowery shit? And learn to spell while your at it. All your sweet sorrow are belong to us."
Re:If Shakespeare were a blogger
by
1iar_parad0x
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· Score: 1
Have you seen Citizen Kane?
-- What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
Slashdot is a prime example
by
pkcs11
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· Score: 0
No one here has ever had an original idea posted up, with the possible exception of the book/movie/game reviews.
-- "I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
scientifically proving
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Which is why patents should only be granted the demonstration of a working example...
--
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Re:Ideas are easy
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
> Which is why patents should only be granted the demonstration of a working example...
This is totally incorrect. If I design a new circuit design that could revolutionize computing I don't have the resources available to make a working prototype. The same could be said for a lot of high energy physics developments. I shouldn't have my patent rejected based on the fact that I don't have the resources available to implement it.
I do agree that I should be able to demonstrate that I have a (possibly) working design for what I want to patent. This way the patent is on the design and not just the idea.
CNN? FoxNews? NYTimes?
by
ubiquitin
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I wonder how much different blogs are in this respect than "traditional" journalism. Newspapers have to make efforts at times to ensure that they don't have the exact same headline. Also, it probably isn't too terribly suprising that in a world of mass-media, the collective consciousness is a bit hard to redirect. Mass-originality and memes are opposite concepts.
And the few times I actually RTFA I usually find that the Slashdot summary--with no quote marks--is copied verbatim from an opening paragraph of the article.
But has it been scientifically proved? THAT is the question. btw if more and more "scientific" lose their time to prove that kind of things, "scientifically proved" might become an other way to say "mentally challenged".
I think this comment deserves to go into my blog...
The major media determine what's 'news'
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Funny
And we all talk about what we see on the news. The real plagiarism story is about the current weather. I'd like to see an expose uncover this shocking fact.
Are you sure that the right use of the word? A plagiarist is someone who copies wholesale, words and paragraphs not belonging to him. A plagiarist exploits people who attribute depth to some idea, but short-circuits the thought processes that went into creating the idea. Instead the plagiatist copies.
Now if someone reads about an idea, digests it, and is able to communicate the idea BETTER, is that plagiarism?
What is it with you slashdotters? You seem to have a grade school understanding of ideas and plagiarism. Have you ever seen DIFFERENT WORDINGS of the same idea? Have you ever seen DIFFERENT IDEAS worded similarly? Have you ever taken an undergraduate philosophy class? Until you can tell those situations apart and come up with a nuanced opinion, please learn not to label such things as plagiarism. It's akin to calling a flirt a rapist, or a lab mouse a rat.
Re:"Plagiarism"
by
Asprin
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Are you sure that the right use of the word? A plagiarist is someone who copies wholesale, words and paragraphs not belonging to him. A plagiarist exploits people who attribute depth to some idea, but short-circuits the thought processes that went into creating the idea. Instead the plagiatist copies.
Plagiarism is trying to pass off someone else's work as your own. Other than that, I agree with you.
-- "Lawyers are for sucks." - Doug McKenzie
Re:"Plagiarism"
by
stewby18
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Now if someone reads about an idea, digests it, and is able to communicate the idea BETTER, is that plagiarism?
Actually, yes. Yes it is.
Plagiarize (from Dictionary.com)
v. tr.
1. To use and pass off (the ideas or writings of another) as one's own.
2. To appropriate for use as one's own passages or ideas from (another).
v. intr.
To put forth as original to oneself the ideas or words of another.
I'm sorry, but the idea that plagiarizing refers only to use of copy and paste is actually the understanding that comes from grade school. Believe me, I do understand the situation and have a nuanced opinion (I've been deeply involved with an academic integrity board at a research university for several years). There are different degrees of plagiarism, some blatantly wrong and some blurring the line of acceptibility, but they are all plagiarism.
I've written several conference papers, and am finishing a master's thesis now. In the process of my research, I've read a number of papers, I've digested them, and I'm now expanding on them in new ways. I don't have any direct quotes, but I do have many, many references in my papers. Why? Because many of the ideas are not mine. So what if I digested them; I didn't create them independently. Not referencing the works that gave me my understanding, but instead passing it off as having sprung full-form from my head, would indeed be plagiarism.
Just because an idea has been considered by the person who re-tells it doesn't mean that the place that gave them the idea doesn't deserve credit. Granted, an academic environment is much stricter about these things... but that's a difference in tolerance of plagiarism, not of the definition of what plagiarism fundamentally is.
This is a very clever way to avoid the argument, by embracing it. In other words, we are all plagiarists. For example: Is Stephen Jay Gould's "punctuated equilibria" a new original idea? Is it? If you reduce the idea of gradualism to an equation, you will notice that one is missing an idea. That idea, suitably interpreted, becomes "Punctuated Equilibria".
Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. That the true "originalists" are abstract mathematicians.
Oh wait - I wonder if you've heard of that idea before. If you haven't, remember, you heard it here first! If you have, then please, tell me your sources!
If there is any evidence of intellectual rot, this is it. There are clear examples of plagiarism, and there are clear examples of originality. In between, there are lots of ambiguity. So we reserve our accolades for the truly original, and none for those not. Where you want to set that dial, is up to you. It has nothing to do with academia. But within those system of academic references, is a way to track the movements of ideas, and that we have this system is good. Someone else can choose to hold a different criterion of originality.
There are different degrees of plagiarism, some blatantly wrong and some blurring the line of acceptibility, but they are all plagiarism.
And just in case you still don't get it, let me rephrase that line of yours:
There are different degrees of originality, some blatantly wrong and some blurring the line of acceptibility, but they are all originality.
This is how I detect you are telling me the same thing, using different words, but from a different point of view. From one academic to another: One certainly can take the opposite POV.
Now if someone reads about an idea, digests it, and is able to communicate the idea BETTER, is that plagiarism?
In scientific circles, yes. Even if you completely rephrase the idea. You must provide an attribution to the source of the idea. There are exceptions for things which are considered "common knowledge" -- we don't have to credit Newton every time we use the equation F = ma, and it's true that the line is blurry. However, reading about an idea, digesting it, and recommunicating it in your own words without attribution to the source is plagiarism, and will get you kicked out of a lot of schools in a hurry.
It is important, also, to realize that there is no law against plagiarism. Copyright legally protects the particular expression of ideas, but the only thing preventing a person from plagiarizing is a guilty conscience (and the risk of being ejected from an academic institution).
So every calculus student should be thrown out of school because they didn't credit their test answers to Newton, and therefore plagiarized him? After all, they are appropriating Newton's original thoughts...
So every calculus student should be thrown out of school because they didn't credit their test answers to Newton, and therefore plagiarized him?
No, that is considered common knowledge. The line between the ideas you must attribute and those you don't have to attribute is very wide and fuzzy, but it's there.
I don't agree that your rephrasing has the same meaning: you are assuming that my "different degrees" span the entire spectrum of "stolen verbatim" to "completely orginial", which is not the case. My range encompases "stolen verbatim" to "significantly influenced/inspired by".
If your ideas were recently shaped in a significant way by one or more specific sources (i.e., not common knowledge), and you don't acknowledge that, it's plagiarism.
However, reading about an idea, digesting it, and recommunicating it in your own words without attribution to the source is plagiarism, and will get you kicked out of a lot of schools in a hurry.
Wouldn't that be punishment against good memory? How am I supposed to know where every bit of information I have picked up over my lifetime came from? I don't think I could judge over what is original/plagiarised/common knownledge with clear consciousness. More so because I know that most ideas have no "single source" and proper attribution is simply impossible whithout leaving someone out.
-- Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
How am I supposed to know where every bit of information I have picked up over my lifetime came from?
You're not really expected to memorize every source of everything you've ever learned. If you're writing a paper, however, it's expected that you'll put in the effort required to track down your sources.
There's a big difference between a casual conversation about a topic, and a thesis. "I heard this somewhere, I can't remember where..." doesn't cut it in a piece of academic writing.
What do you call someone who reads about an idea an digests it and communicates it better? A teacher. Yes. Since you are just finishing up a Masters, you very likely took courses. In each course, teachers plagiarized....
Can you honestly tell me that is using a word intelligently?
Please take this simple test: To look up a chemical element's mass, I looked up the Periodic table. Is or is that plagiarism? Another student simply computed that based on the proton and electron numbers. Is that plagiarism? Who do you think is more accurate and precise? Do you think it matters?
To win an argument in slashdot, I checked up dictionary.com. Plagiarism. Waitaminute. Isn't the function of a dictionary to settle disputes like that? So it's plagiarism, but is ALLOWED PLAGIARISM. But me, asking people to make take the time to think about such differences, is somehow arguing against you.
The chief effect of your stupid play with words, is to dull yourself into not thinking plagiarism is a crime. NOW THAT, is simply moronic.
What do you call someone who reads about an idea an digests it and communicates it better? A teacher. Yes. Since you are just finishing up a Masters, you very likely took courses. In each course, teachers plagiarized....
I don't know where you went to school, but my teachers never pretended that they had created all the ideas that they taught. They routinely gave direct credit to specific people who had first thought of the concepts they taugh, and the rest of the time the information was available right in our textbooks, in the form of very specific previous works. Essentially, the syllabus saying what the textbooks were was a default citation. A textbook that aggregates knowledge is a good textbook. A textbook that aggregates knowledge without any citation is a wholesale work of plagiarism, very very plainly. Similarly, any teacher pretending to have created the idea of, say, evolution or calculus is not likely to last long.
Can you honestly tell me that is using a word intelligently?
I'm not sure what you mean by "that". If you mean, "according to it's definition, rather than according to a massive oversimplification of the definition," then yes, I can honestly say that it is using the word intelligently.
Please take this simple test: To look up a chemical element's mass, I looked up the Periodic table. Is or is that plagiarism? Another student simply computed that based on the proton and electron numbers. Is that plagiarism? Who do you think is more accurate and precise? Do you think it matters?
Looking something up is never plagiarism. There's a "passing off as your own element" that is missing. Besides, it's a stupid example, because you've deliberately chosen something that is common knowledge, which many other posts have discussed.
To win an argument in slashdot, I checked up dictionary.com. Plagiarism. Waitaminute. Isn't the function of a dictionary to settle disputes like that? So it's plagiarism, but is ALLOWED PLAGIARISM. But me, asking people to make take the time to think about such differences, is somehow arguing against you.
What are you smoking? I attributed the source of the definition, I didn't pretend to have written it myself. You think citing your source is plagiarism, and you think I don't understand the word?
The chief effect of your stupid play with words, is to dull yourself into not thinking plagiarism is a crime. NOW THAT, is simply moronic.
Once again, you seem to have left the realm of reality. I'm not playing with words, I'm being more precise. I'm not saying plagiarism is ok, I'm saying that not only is it wrong, but a whole lot of other things are plagiarism, and therefore also wrong, that you simply eliminated from consideration with your vast oversimplification of the word.
But hey, if you want to make things up, pretend I said them, and then attack me for saying them just to feel better about yourself, who am I to stop you. Have fun with that.
I don't plagiarize...
by
Zarf
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm merely standing on the shoulders of a bunch of other midgets. We can see nearly as high as those who stand on the shoulders of giants... it just takes more of us and a little bit more walking.
I am shocked, shocked.
by
deacon
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Lets see:
Large "establised" "media" outlets, such as Wired, NYT, "Rooters", etc., etc. need readers to sell either their content or their ads or both. Pushing their bias and ideology is a desireable plus.
Bloggers provide a complete spectrum of viewpoints. They do this usually for free, some of them have a tip jar. Sure, there are some stupid blogs about fur balls under the bed, but I am talking about serious bloggers here.
Here is the key: In many cases, bloggers have pointed out gross errors, plain lies, and other biases in "established" "media", which in the case of NYT has resulted in "corrections", where the NYT web page is changed quietly.
Make no mistake, bloggers are a threat to big "media", to the control and the monopoly on the distribution and spin of information that the "media" has enjoyed for decades.
Expect to see more big "media" outlets assuring you that bloggers are boring/venal/stupid/Republican, steal all their ideas, and put puppies thru blenders*.
Nothing to see here, Citizen, move along.
*bonus points to the first 3 million people who get the "puppy blender" ref.
Now they're going back further to plagiarize
by
Allen+Varney
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· Score: 1
UK programmer, maintainer of perl.com, and Anglican missionary Simon Cozens has re-rendered the 10th-century Japanese classic Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon as a blog. It works waaay too well.
This idea needs to spread like a virus
by
WormholeFiend
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· Score: 1
While in an epidemic it's pretty bad if you are Patient Zero, in the blog memetics universe, it is good to be Blogger Zero.
that the Wired story did not reference Richard Dawkins, who coined the term "meme" in the Selfish Gene, and drew an analogy between the transmission of information with the transmission of viruses.
Then again, I don't know if Richard Dawkins got the idea from William S. Burroughs or vice versa.
Don't most non-personal bloggers just circulate links and provide commentary on current events? Like, you know, newspapers? You don't see anyone accusing the Washington Post of plagiarizing from the New York Times when they both publish op-ed pieces on the same topic.
Maybe it's good manners to provide a linkback to the blog you got the link from originally, but omitting it is hardly plagiarism. (A word which the article never uses, incidentally. I'm not on the hate-michael bandwagon, but that blurb headline has some nasty spin.)
-Carolyn
-- Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
I agree... I'd think the only way it could qualify as plagarism is if they lifted word-for-word someone else's commentary. Same as high school. Paraphrase, put it in your own words, and it's not plagarism.
The write-up here does obviously make it sound much worse than it is... the article seems to just be about how ideas and memes spread, more than anything else. It's a sociological study.
When you stand around the water cooler talking about recents The Apprentice or Survivor episodes are you plagiarising?
No, because that is a discussion of facts, not ideas. Last I checked, most television shows were pretty much devoid of any sort of ideas. It's all shit.
How many jokes that you tell on a daily basis are ones you made up yourself?
Not many, and it's definitely plagiarism to retell someone else's joke without crediting them. However, nobody said that was a bad thing! "Plagiarism" is just a word, with a specific definition. It has a negative connotation, yes. But according to the technical meaning of the word, your example would be plagiarism.
I think it's quite true that blogs plagiarize each other. I also think it's not a bad thing at all. Of course, there are exceptions, such as people copy and pasting other people's entire comments, which I've seen on multiple occassions... It's a matter of personal judgment which things are "right" and which are "wrong."
An old friend told me once..
by
nmaeone
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· Score: 1
While working as a project manager for one of the world's largest web design firm, by buddy tells me that the *best* ideas are always "Someone Else's". Funny how illustrated it becomes in almost every environment, especially the IT (OSS, M$ Embrace and Extend, etc..) field and even moreso within technology design firms (Web Design, Media etc..).
1) Create mind-virus about blog mind-viruses. 2) Post about said mind-virus on Slashdot 3) ??? 4) Profit!
(sigh)
-- Vote in November. You won't regret it.
something here just isn't right.
by
DirtyBirdy
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· Score: 1
Imagine that. Plagiarism isn't spreading, really.
"Blog Epidemic Analyzer
HP Information Dynamics Lab
Searching for Plagiarism
No results found"
http://www-idl.hpl.hp.com/cgi-bin/blogs/search_new.cgi?s=Plagiarism
Re:something here just isn't right.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Imagine that. Plagiarism isn't spreading, really. "Blog Epidemic Analyzer HP Information Dynamics Lab Searching for Plagiarism No results found" http://www-idl.hpl.hp.com/cgi-bin/blogs/search_new.cgi?s=Plagiarism
Huge Potential in Memetic Tracking
by
TwistedGreen
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Wow! This idea is incredibly exciting ! This is on the verge of being able to semantically track information flow between people... with the Internet, tracking like this is made possible which can show evidence for so many fascinating kinds of socioinformational phenomena. We're not just talking about quizzes here, we're talking about actual ideas.
This is evidence of a massive unconscious distributed process, which is indeed akin to the physics of a disease epidemic. The idea is seeded somewhere, and it is passed along through the social network, each person considering it and modifying it slightly, processing it more and more as it propagates. Think of it as evolutionary telephone - a mechanism for knowledge purification.
I have noticed myself that interactions with other people have a huge effect on the particular directions my own thoughts take... and, in fact, many of my own ideas are the result of conversations such as these. In a conversation, you are forced to express your ideas, to solidify its form within the structure of language. And then it can be manipulated and communicated and corrected: it is allowed to be processed further and percolated through society.
This is most wonderful stuff.
Reminds me of a book...
by
bbrazil
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· Score: 3, Interesting
'The Tipping Point' by Malcom Gladwell.
Looks at the spread of ideas/diseaeses. Quite interesting but the conclusion is a bit strong.
My Thoughts
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I've been researching Blogs, with hopes to learn new marketing techniques. I've found that many Bloggers steal ideas from other Bloggers. I think this might be worth something.
What is blogging? I mean I know the "definition" but what is blogging, or is this blogging? I M SO CONFUSED!!!
stealing/infecting is a wee bit of an exagerration
by
TheUberBob
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· Score: 0, Redundant
I don't mean to flame, but it seems like the poster has been 'infected' with the FUD. We really should be careful with words like steal for knowledge sharing/conversation... of course I believe the article used the term infect. I did a find for steal on the article...nothing...it seems like even here people are implicitly buying into the whole IP/I own all my 'original' ideas system. Sigh.
Please PLEASE folks, don't get infected by what other people have to say, just go back to watching CNN and FOX News and...consume consume consume!
--
All your preview button are belong to Hello Kitty.
i don't need the karma but you're a dick
by
proj_2501
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· Score: 1
"Plagiarism is necessary; progress implies it." -- Comte de Lautreamont, 1870
"Plagiarism is necessary; progress implies it." -- Guy Debord, 1967
Re:i don't need the karma but you're a dick
by
notbob
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· Score: 0
Google states that "Plagiarism is necessary; progress implies it." has been put on the internet 210 times you f'in plagiarist.
I mean really what honor is there to be #211, I'm proudly #212... so there:P
Gotta love the net... what a waste of time but it's better then tv;)
If I ever set up a blog myself, I'll just charge $699 for a license to read it.
-- The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
It is how ideas spread...
by
flogger
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· Score: 2, Insightful
before the internet, before TV, before radio, before books, ideas were spread by talking. A perosn would hear something, and if the person liked this idea, he/she would propigate this idea. It the person really liked this idea, then he/she would pass this idea down to his/her children. back in the old days, there were, for want of a better term, "Story guilds" would passon information and it would be spread....Then came books (The first best seller then is now one of the top movies). With books, people that were so inclined would read these ideas and pass the idea onto others. Nobility and Clergy read and the ideas they kept and passed on pretty much became law. Then with Radio and the birth of modern mass media, people would listen to ideas, and the ideas that were accpted were talked about and sometime these ideas affected people in interesting ways. Same thing with TV. But by the time TV came along, the ideas weren't ideas per say, they were gossippy comments on Dick van Dyke's wife (50's) to Janet's boob (2004). Now with the internet, some people are propagating ideas again. (Some are not.) But as always, the ideas are coming from other sources and the ideas that are being accepted are being passed on. Anecdote: On a quiz with my class, I asked to briefly explain communism, capitalism, and so forth...A student answered this: Communism: All your profits are belong to us Great answer that assimulated ideas from the net and spread them around. What am I getting at? It ok that others borrow/steal/copy ideas. Ideas are meant to be shared and debated. To own an idea and say, "Mine" is like trying to own the air you breathe. You can;t stop it from spreading.
(breaks over...no time to proofread... sorry)
-- ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
blog is the lamest word, ever. articles about blogs? slow day today, eh?
funny and insightful!
by
simpl3x
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· Score: 3, Interesting
isn't that the purpose of the internet--interconnection? i look at various blogs not for news, but for filtered connections to stuff. "there is nothing new under the sun," as my grandfather used to say, and from an engineering/invention perspective this is very often the case. Nature is the most plagarized of all!
Re:funny and insightful!
by
Lawbeefaroni
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· Score: 4, Interesting
What is the point of blogs though? I thought they were to convey some sense of individuality on the old interweb. Instead, in everyone's rush to be some kind of blog king, blogs are forcing people think and express themselves in the same way. Stealing someone's ideas means you can't or don't come up with your own.
Giving into the "nothing new under the sun" just means that if there is, it won't be from you.
-- "When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
Re:funny and insightful!
by
AK+Marc
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Like some of the people into alternative scenes. They want to be unique, just like everyone else.
"I got a belly button ring becuase it expresses my individuality, and because I saw someone else that did it."
Re:funny and insightful!
by
kevlar
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· Score: 2, Funny
What is the point of blogs though? I thought they were to convey some sense of individuality on the old interweb. Instead, in everyone's rush to be some kind of blog king, blogs are forcing people think and express themselves in the same way. Stealing someone's ideas means you can't or don't come up with your own.
Re:funny and insightful!
by
teromajusa
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· Score: 1
I thought the point of blogs was to put together a bunch of interesting links. I take it as a given that the person who puts together a blog gets the links from somewhere else. How should they be coming up with them? Building URLs from random letters until they hit an interesting site?
Re:funny and insightful!
by
AME
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· Score: 1, Funny
I'm torn... Insightful or Funny?
-- "I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
I think the concept shows more that information is incestuous between related websites, rather than outright plagerism. I highly doubt any "good ideas" are publicized on blogs, versus commenting on existing ideas.
Re:funny and insightful!
by
paul.dunne
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· Score: 1
You're posting to a weblog asking, "what's the point of weblogs"? Hmm...
They want to be unique, just like everyone else. "I got a belly button ring becuase it expresses my individuality, and because I saw someone else that did it."
Yeah, if you really want to be unique, get an eyeball ring.
-- Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Re:funny and insightful!
by
oregonnerd
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· Score: 1
I'm quite sure that the 'infection' that the scientists covered in the Wired article is exactly comparative to current studies in social networking...the most interesting (to my (mind?)) being that people in authority...are rarely the ones with the facts. No, I knew we all knew that (except the execs); it was just interesting that scientists could accept something like that (although I'm sure we're all sure it doesn't apply to the ones making the studies, or scientists in general).
-- oregonnerd...a nerd in Oregon, of course
Things misconstrued as Plagiarism
by
adzoox
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I find the problem of plagiarism much like copyrights problems.
Aren't we after all human? Two people can't have the same idea? I will admit that i sometime get ideas from bloggers, but if this was considered stealing or plagiarism then ALL news outlets are plagiarists. BLOGs should be looked at as personal news with personal views.
My best example was this/. journal entry. I got the idea from a church sermon. AFTER I WROTE IT, I did some more research on the topic and found out some others had similar thoughts. I, of course, think I "worded" it better!;)
-- Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
In other news, a recent study shows that nine out of ten Popes have been Catholic.
Coming up, what bears are doing in your woods, right after this message from our sponsors.
Re:CNN? FoxNews? NYTimes?
by
OECD
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I wonder how much different blogs are in this respect than
"traditional" journalism.
Not very, from what I can see. And, I think, for the same reason: they all read each other's stuff.
The nice thing about blogs is that they'll call each other out on errors. You won't see the Wall Street Journal run a correction on something the New York Times wrote (even when Jason Blair happened, the NYT did the bulk of the reporting.)
The downside of blogs is that they're like HyperCard Stacks: Anyone can write one, but it takes talent and effort to write one well.
-- One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
totally flawed to me
by
grocer
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· Score: 2, Insightful
so bascially HP analyzed all the links for May 1-21, 2003 and then decided that based on the fact a link appeared 1 or 2 days in a few blogs before appearing in a statistically significant number of blogs, everyody *must* be copying links from those blogs.
It doesn't evaluate any potential value of the link (i.e. how to remove worms would be more valuable and more likely to be repeatedly link than, say, here's the laptop I just bought. Or a funny picture that also has own intrinistic value). Plus all this information is on the internet...freely dessiminated and available for the most part. It's a bit like claiming because every newspaper is covering a story, all newspapers must be copying the first story run.
Back in '95 when I started my Blog (it wasn't called that then) one of my readers wrote to me and asked, "What you're doing is really cool, how would I go about setting up a site like yours?". To which I replied, "Don't, do something original." (Roughly...hopefully I was a little more polite.)
Bloggers are just information aggregators. They cull from their sources and post the interesting stuff. Slashdot's been doing it for years. There's too much on the web, and Bloggers act as (real, not top 40) DJs by selecting the best of what's out there and giving it a better. No one seems to complain that DJs don't end every song with "I heard that album from my friend Ted."
The service they provide is going through hundreds of bad links to find the interesting ones to recommend to their readers. I think this report is simply stating the obvious.
Also, if this is a big deal, why doesn't Slashdot include a "via" field for submissions to give credit to where the poster found the link? Personally, I always give credit for links when the site I found the link from supports TrackBack, any other times it's a crapshoot.
-- Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
I try to keep my blog's content balanced among legitimate news, personal stories, and random shit. I always link to source material when I quote directly. When there are no direct quotes but I'm just spreading information, I only cite a source if (a) I know who said it first and (b) there aren't so many sources so as to make it common knowledge. Also, I tend to cite my sources just because I wish people would link the cool stuff they find back to the sources.
But there are ups and downs to the good work of the plagiarism police. Imagine if everything anyone ever said on the internet was linked back to where it was found first. Sure, we could find anything and everything we ever wanted to find, but we would have an ungodly sea of links to sift through, not to mention links to a helluva lot of trash that we usually don't link to for very good reasons. So pick your poison.
Personally, I think the balance is about where it needs to be. Fight to protect copyrights just enough to give people credit and an incentive to keep producing more, but not so much that no one else will dare try to expand on their work.
email tracking
by
donbrock
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· Score: 2, Interesting
As a somewhat related topic, I would to see a study on how fast and widespread shared emails spread around the internet such as jokes or cartoons. This could be quite useful in tracking emails with a political message.
It seems that tracking emails shouldn't be too difficult to do because so many people leave the topics and email chain intact in their forwarded emails.
Nerds? Jocks? That certainly wasn't my first thought, but OK...
It may be that the popular bloggers have ease-of-use on their side (they aggregate the information in a better format).
It may be that they are linked to by other popular bloggers, and get referrals/popularity/hits that way... popularity begeting popularity.
Also, on an unrelated note, intelligence doesn't necessarily imply misanthropy... intelligent people are not only liked by other intelligent people. Being a nice, likeable guy doesn't necessarily imply intelligence or lack thereof. On the other hand, if you combine intelligence and an obnoxious/ostentatious attitude, you'll get resentment for sure, and not just from idiots.
-- Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Re:er, what?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
A certain part of intelligence is also how to be reasonable and open-minded. Certain there are very bright people out there who are also obnoxious, but if you had insight into a problem that others didn't get, you might be obnoxious as well.
To that extent intelligence denotes a certain amount of misanthropy: it's hard not to have disdain for someone who insists 1+1=3 when you know better.
The crudely obnoxious are usually not that intelligent.
spreading memes = plagiarism
by
geoffspear
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· Score: 2, Insightful
So each political and religious leader should sue all of his followers for stealing the ideas he had to work so hard to make them accept?
Should scientists start suing each other for building research on earlier published papers and referencing them in their new publications?
Do these "researchers" really think news outlets and "original" bloggers put out information hoping no one else will discuss it in print or online? Am I stealing their research by discussing it here?
I quote liberally from other sources in my blog. I don't have time to paraphrase and reword every single article I happen to find interesting. I don't consider it plagiarism because:
I credit my source, and often provide a link to it in my posts.
I include the full text of the article in case it goes away, gets slashdotted, gets edited, gets censored, etc.
As to the latter bullet: This happens ALL THE TIME in the age of electronic media, and the only way to prove it is to copy-paste a "snapshot" of what the article looked like at a given point in time before some editor does a hackjob on the original article because its slant was doubleplusungood.
So I'm providing a public service to my many readers, all 50 or so of them. Thbbbbbt!
-- You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
"When you copy the work of one, it's called plagiarism. When you copy the work of many, it's called research." - author unknown
In defense of Slashdot...
by
aelfric35
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· Score: 1
At least we usually try to point to the original source, when it can be determined. Of course, that has no bearing on whether or not anyone actually RTFA...
--
"Den som vover mister Fodfaeste et Oieblik;
den som ikke vover mister Livet." -Soren Kierkegaard
Re:CNN? FoxNews? NYTimes?
by
LostCluster
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· Score: 1
CNN and Fox News also get a lot of their content through sharing agreements with localized news outlets. Usually, it's a pure swap with no cash involved, the local station gets to use the network's reports for stories outside its area, while the network gets to use and distribute stories that the local station puts out that are of national interest.
Newspapers have had such a system for years as well. They call it the Associated Press.
_______________________________________ Why is it the annonymous cowards have the biggest balls?
duh.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Funny
And that last story about Microsoft cameras was stolen directly from Yahoo. FP
Prrof in the Pudding : Microsoft DOES innovate
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
TabletPC is another example.
Linux helps servers, but Microsoft helps people.
Maybe there ARE no creative people
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Are all the new ideas actually coming from a few people? Maybe they're just spread out randomly and the popular bloggers are the ones who collect them.
Slashdot has few original articles
by
peter303
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· Score: 1
I am not criticizing Slashdot in this regard. Its just that I've been reading the scientific and popular literature (including online) for more decades that I care to count. I notice many so-called original ideas in Slashdot postings have been thought of before. Particularly if you a younger person, or have focused your media attention narrowly, you may have not noticed these ideas.
In fact, this posting is an old idea! A Hebrew philospoher said in Ecclesiasts 1:9 twenty five centuries ago "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done there is nothing new under the sun"
Re:Slashdot has few original articles
by
jandrese
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· Score: 1
Well, it's not exactly plagiarism if the second person had never even heard of the first. It's more the result of somewhat obvious ideas being published and then other people coming up with the same ideas at a later date.
This is also the basis for the submarine patent. You think up some novel but not-too-difficult idea for a solution to a problem we will have in the future. Something like a method for syncronizing multiple PVRs using IP maybe. Then you wait for the problem to come up, someone to come up with the same (fairly straightforward) solution, and sue them for millions. Of course you can't guarentee that people will have the problem or use the same solution, but you can submit thousands of patents for various ideas (basically just spam the patent system) and wait for one of them to come up.
--
I read the internet for the articles.
Interesting, but missing half the point
by
BoneFlower
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· Score: 2, Insightful
A lot of bloggers launch off other ideas they read and put their own spin on it. Thats part of the power of it, sparking wide discussion and expression of multiple points of view of a topic.
This article isn't saying that bloggers outright copy... just that often, a common topic will explode among many bloggers. Sometimes when I write about something in my LiveJournal that I've seen elsewhere, I've seen it in so many blogs that proper attribution would be difficult at best...
Most bloggers don't really give a shit if their ideas for topics are used elsewhere... if their words are used without permission/attribution, then there is an issue, but the ideas and subjects flow freely for a reason... we WANT them to.
Posters do it too
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Sometimes they repost a highly modded comment in an earlier thread.
The higher-posted comment gets "insightful" and "interesting" mods, while the lower post gets "redundant" mods, regardless of the fact that the lower comment was posted first.
Actually, after reading a bunch of posts, and even posting one myself...can we just give a -1 Redundant to every post under this article?
"Stealing" an Idea?!
by
sabat
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· Score: 5, Insightful
This just goes to show how fucked up we've become.
If I, blogger, quote someone else, even unattributed, or talk about someone else's idea, that's "theft?" Gimme a break. You don't automatically own ideas just because you write them down.
You can't really "own" an idea anyway -- there's no US constitutional provision for that, just an allowance for a limited monopoly to encourage more creation.
Blogs are, by definition, a conversation. Calling that conversation "theft" is ridiculous to an extremem. What, if I'm talking to someone IRL, should I force them to "license" my ideas before continuing?
"Sorry, before we can continue, please sign here and pay this fee. Then we can keep talking about my ideas about how to set up a new centralized login server."
-- I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Re:"Stealing" an Idea?!
by
Zarf
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I agree that you can't really own an idea. But our problem is this: A song is essentially and idea, a business is essentially the execution of a collection of ideas, a story is an idea, a government is the execution of a group of ideas, a program is a collection of ideas, a product is the fruit of a group of ideas and methods derived from ideas.
Ideas are the Genesis of all the elements of our human made society. How do you allow people to get paid for creating an idea? If I generate millions of wonderful ideas and never get credit, what incentive is there for me to continue doing so.
All our IP laws are about trying to find a way to give a person credit for an idea. You can own an idea in the sense that you birthed it. Once the idea is in another person's mind, do they own it as much as you did? They can be said to own the idea but they did not birth it. They "stood on your shoulders" to get the idea.
Do you deserve credit? yes. Can you get compensation for it? maybe. Is it fair that the person who "birthed" VisiCalc doesn't get any royalties for "Excel" even though the Genesis for the idea of an Electronic Spreadsheet was birthed in his mind? No.
So life's not fair and ideas do get "stolen" but that's the nature of an idea.
Re:"Stealing" an Idea?!
by
swcrissman
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· Score: 1
Ideas are the Genesis of all the elements of our human made society. How do you allow people to get paid for creating an idea? If I generate millions of wonderful ideas and never get credit, what incentive is there for me to continue doing so.
How about a little thing called self respect? Pride? Desire to help your fellow man? Advancing science?
It's a sad trend that in today's society, more people don't take pride in their work, and work toward good ideas for reasons other than self-advancement. Good ideas are worth cultivating simply because they are good ideas.
How do you allow people to get paid for creating an idea? If I generate millions of wonderful ideas and never get credit, what incentive is there for me to continue doing so.
Ask yourself how they did it before there were printing presses or recording devices. What incentive was there for Homer to write The Odyssey, or for Chaucer to write Canterbury Tales?
No one said direct financial reward had to go away, but you obviously recognize that in the future, we're not going to try and shoehorn the concept of "property" into the world of ideas, the way Baby Boom World has tried. A new model will arise. Alas, it'll be the next generation that finds it, not us.
They "stood on your shoulders" to get the idea. Just as I stood on millions of other shoulders to come up with this hypothetical idea to begin with. "No man is an island, entire to itself." (And, quoting John Donne -- why did he write Meditation XVII? Certainly not for massive financial reward in the 16th century.)
-- I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
It's a sad trend that in today's society, more people don't take pride in their work, and work toward good ideas for reasons other than self-advancement. Good ideas are worth cultivating simply because they are good ideas.
It's also very very sad that you can't simply get money for creating good ideas. I would love to keep creating good ideas for the good of humanity... but my job at the Grocery store and my second job as a security guard require so much of my time that I forget most of my good ideas. I'm so tired at night I just can't keep coding...
In other words, with out any sarcasm... you are a naive person to believe that "good ideas" are somehow just borne into the world without effort. Those efforts require resources. Those resources cost money. The person who births the idea deserves some kind of compensation for their effort.
If that's not the case... stop buying JK Rowling books and just photo copy them at the local library.
Just as I stood on millions of other shoulders to come up with this hypothetical idea to begin with. "No man is an island, entire to itself." (And, quoting John Donne -- why did he write Meditation XVII? Certainly not for massive financial reward in the 16th century.)
Just as Microsoft stood on the shoulders of Visicalc to create Excel. They stood on the shoulders of Netscape to create Internet Explorer. They stood on the shoulders of Xerox and Macintosh to create Windows. They stood on the shoulders of all the other ideas out there in the cyber world to create the best OS on the planet.
Is that the point you're trying to make?
It's not so much the reward as the credit... not so much the credit as OTHER PEOPLE taking the credit or reaping the reward.
Just incase we're still talking about software, ideas, and the internet... here's a link:
http://www.bricklin.com/default.htm
Actually I'll take this all the way to the bank. No one "owns" money. Furthermore, if money suddenly went from being scarce to easily reproducible, the whole system would fall apart. That's exactly what's happening to the "commerce" of ideas that practically reproduce themselves.
It is easy -- you can't own something if you cannot physically hold it, and especially if it's easy to duplicate it as well.
What's hard is getting a society founded on physical materials to realize that non-physical reality isn't the same thing.
-- I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Re:"Stealing" an Idea?!
by
swcrissman
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· Score: 1
It's also very very sad that you can't simply get money for creating good ideas.
My response to your first post was only to point out that there are good reasons to cultivate good ideas and share them with others that go beyond profitting from them monetarily. You specifically asked what motivation you would have to go on sharing your ideas, and I strongly believe that such reasons exist.
I don't doubt you have to do what you have to do to survive, but just because it would be a dream come true if you could get rich from your good ideas, doesn't mean that if you don't get rich from them, they aren't worth pursuing, refining, and sharing.
I am not naive, in that I understand perfectly well the effort involved in developing a new idea. You mention that the reason you do not share your ideas is because you are too tired to develop them after you come home from working two jobs. I can understand that, and I certainly dont condemn anyone for that situation.
However, I think there are alot more people out there who have the time, but cannot be motivated to invest the work in an idea unless there is a monetary reward to it. The other items I listed off as potential motivations appear to mean less and less to society, from what I have recently seen. And I find that to be highly regrettable.
I don't doubt you have to do what you have to do to survive, but just because it would be a dream come true if you could get rich from your good ideas, doesn't mean that if you don't get rich from them, they aren't worth pursuing, refining, and sharing.
No, you are being naive. Trying to stay generic: Any great work requires effort, effort costs money, people need money. People can't refine and create as many "great works" if they can't pay for them.
Given the opportunity many people would become couch potatoes. Very few pursue "great work" and fewer still pursue it for altruistic purposes. If more people did pursue "great work" without monetary incentive then Mother Theresa wouldn't be all that remarkable.
You are being naive. Hobbes said that Philosophy was born of leisure and I think most of the "great work" type things which you would identify as a "great work" would be borne of the same ilk. I am making the assumption that you are referring to: novels, poems, source code, paintings, philosophy, music, charity, and other "great works" of western society.
Who creates these works? Who buys them? How are they financed both now and in history? They are borne of the leisure of the rich. Pop culture, Bach, Da Vinci, are all products of the excess of culture and of economies that can support them.
memes and zeitgeist
by
peter303
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Memes are ideas that flow through and define a culture. Blogs are just mechanism of doing this. In the past other media- gossip, schools, and newspapers- facilitated the flow of memes. Only a small fraction of memes are original, but are endless propagated. Wired tries to capture a few of this in its monthly section on new memes.
The collection of memes defining a culture, an era, and a place is the Zeitgeist. It is interesting to look at other Zeitgeists to see what people took for granted compared what believe now. Future cultures will be amused by our own Zeitgeist too.
Information Week, eWeek, other IT press hacks
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
For a moment there I thought you were talking about Information Week, eWeek, and the other IT press hacks that have their own agenda (mainly pushing their advertiser's products) and are being marginalized by the web.
The graphs produced by HP resemble this self-referential meme: a meme tree that maps its own propagation.
iRank doesn't tell you much...
by
GAVollink
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· Score: 2, Insightful
First off, the HP technology is called iRank, whish is similar to Google's PageRank. So HP starts a research about lack of original ideas by modifying an idea from something else. Hmm...
But what I really wanted to say was that there is no method to verify if the same person posted the blog idea to several different sites. It's quite common that someone would post an idea on their personal Blog, and subsequently submit it to SlashDot and Yahoo, etc.
I'm trying to say that it's not necessarily plagurism, but it certainly opens up new discussion on some long standing questions about information ownership. Oh, wait, that means my whole post was a re-used idea. Hmph. So much for innovation..
Oh, and the obligatory... In related news, it was found that some people post the content of entire articles that were pointed to by the story itself, sometimes attributed, sometimes not.
Re:iRank doesn't tell you much...
by
AnyNoMouse
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· Score: 2, Funny
First off, the HP technology is called iRank,
Okay, I have to say this... who came up with that name? Is it something Tarzan says when he stinks?
-- -Redundancy Man strikes again!
Why is this surprising?
by
Dan+East
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The tool at HP tracks the spread of "infection", or more specifically, the number of blogs that contain a specific url. Why would it be surprising that many blogs would contain the same urls at around the same time? For example, an announcement is made that the Mars Rovers have found strong evidence that parts of mars were saturated with water. I would expect many bloggers to comment on that, and post a url to Nasa/JPL or Space Flight Now. So we need an HP tool to verify this type of blogging behavior?
I once wound up on a blog whose author blatantly copied Seinfeld's quotes from his (not so funny btw) book (the one about nothing). When I harassed him on the comments as 'Jerrry' he would only erase my comments. Those are the blogs not worth visitng.
But I also believe in trending. It's like fashion! Everybody's doing, everybody's talking about it, so the blogger also does and posts his impressions.
I wonder if google, who acquiredPyra Labs a while ago, is working on something to detect trends.
Not plagiarism
by
Salamander
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· Score: 4, Interesting
You can't steal what is freely given. The distinction between quoting with and without attribution, which you fail to make, is also important. Much of what's written on blogs is deliberately put into the public domain, with a clear desire on the authors' part to see it get broader distribution. Many bloggers obsessively track who's linking or responding to them, or how they stand on the various blogger rankings, or where they are on Google's list of hits for particular pet terms. It's a universal enough phenomenon that it's the exceptions - the people who do not want their material used elsewhere - who should be required to identify themselves. The default assumption, which mirrors copyright law, should be that if someone made a concrete effort to publish and didn't make an effort to limit the scope of that publication then it's public domain.
-- Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
<IRONY>Perhaps in the future, we will be forced to own all your ideas, and be prohibited from sharing them. Then we can finally fully realize the future of Idea Commerce.</IRONY>
-- I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Re: Not the Idea, the Expression
by
crashnbur
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· Score: 2, Informative
According to copyright law in America -- and this makes sense -- you don't own the idea, because the idea is not your creation.
You own the "fixed creative expression" of the idea. And by extention, it is that expression that is copyrighted to you. Not the idea itself.
It ain't just the blogs
by
wytcld
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Read the NY Times and then check the network newscasts that night - the networks will more often than not pick up on whatever the Times puts on the frong page, even when there's no necessary tie of the story to the particular day it's told. Then check the concensus of the talking heads on all those TV panels, and watch them move like square dancers between shows teaching each other the newly fashionable steps. It's enough to make you scream like Dean.
Or look at academic journals, and notice that most of the articles just recycle accepted variants on ideas. The exception is professors from just a few top schools - Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton, Berkeley, MIT - who have enough faith in their individual minds to actually follow ideas into new terrain. This is similar to why the NY Times reporters sometimes lead, too: their institution lends them the status to assume their instincts are good, while most of us are too insecure to be other than sheep.
-- "with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Few Original Ideas-Dependencies.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
"I don't agree that there are "few original ideas" or there is "nothing new under the Sun". However, there are few original thinkers."
Now what does that say about overall US economic recovery? Remember everyone's somehow depending on the "next big thing" to save our collective bacon.
Also to think, if there are "few original thinkers". Were's their reward for having an original idea in a world dedicated to the principle "what's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine"?
Wired has a story about how HP, as part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups of people, is scientifically proving what most people already know: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers !!!
-- "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
The word "scientific" is overused
by
Asprin
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· Score: 2, Insightful
There is no control group, the methods and techniques of interrogation have not been made public so they can be scrutinized and these results have not yet been independently verified. Therefore, this conclusion was NOT reached by applying the scientific method.
Sincerely,
Mr. Pedantic (TM)
[grin]
-- "Lawyers are for sucks." - Doug McKenzie
It's like jazz, baby. Or monkeys.
by
teamhasnoi
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Just like a tune where all the artists riff off the other. Instead of being a band of 4 or 5, you're seeing 5 or 6 million. You're going to remember the good stuff (or supremely bad) and filter out the rest - you have to, it's the nature of the brain, and you'd go flat foot crazy if you didn't.
Then it'll percolate in that cute little head of yours, and you'll have your own version. Just like witnesses to a crime and snowflakes, baby.
The worst bloggers are going to stand out because they're just like monkeys - they're the trend followers. They like the idea of a blog, but never had to think an original thought in their life. So they do what the other blogs are doing, even when they don't understand the reason. Just like monkeys running around in a cage, see?
Now the best monkeys see the walls and know that they're in a cage, so they figure, 'I'm outta sight and outta mind if I don't get out of here', and they make the leap to bigger and better things, ya dig?
Getting back to the band, the true cream of the crop ain't going to be liftin' the gold stars from their neighbors paper - they're not gonna care what YOU think. They gave at the office, and they're past that.
They got a whole different filter in their head; what goes in must come out, but in ways the regular joe just won't understand. Joe's just gonna take that train and see where it goes.
The best conductors are going to take you for a spin, make the ride entertaining, and leave you right back where you came from with a pocket of souvenirs.
At least, that's how I see it.
also known as the gratuitous repost
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
syndrome... where somebody takes somebody else's commment, copies it enbloc, and reposts it in a higher subthread.
The higher-posted comment gets "insightful" and "interesting" mods, while the lower post gets "redundant" mods, regardless of the fact that the lower comment was posted first.
I think the Slashtrolls have turned this technique into an online sport.
--- my other.sig says that this article was reposted from a comment further down the page
Re:CNN? FoxNews? NYTimes?
by
Stallmanite
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· Score: 1
Originality is to the meme pool as random mutation is to the gene pool.
Echoing is valuable because it filters out bad originality.
Well, there's a great deal of variability in credibility in Slashdot postings.
Empirically, one interesting sign of credibility of Slashdot I noticed a few months back was that Google searches for various technical terms would point to Slashdot stories and postings.
-- "Provided by the management for your protection."
Of course, everyone copies.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
That is because there is no such thing as an original idea, and there never has been in the history of man. All ideas are based upon phenonema and sensation within our universe. Justice is based on cause and affect, etc. The basis of each idea, not the details, but the form is based upon either one or a collection of various naturally occuring events. All we do is arrange the ideas of these events in greater detail.
"today too many people are worrying about how to make the most money with the least effort.."
Yes, "stealing" is a good way to facilitate that goal.
"How about being proud of the fact that your idea is so good that everyone want's to copy it? and use that supposedly superior brain to tink up another one..."
Why should they? Were's the incentive to have a good idea, without the corresponding reward? Alturism is easy when there's little to no pain in following it's principles. It's when it starts hurting that the men are seperated from the boys.
Try this Mr AC. 1-Become a street person. 2-Come up with an original, "save your bacon" idea. 3-Now just give it away. 4-Lather, rinse, repeat.
"that is why every "invention" I come up with I market the hell out of until I see copies show up on the market, then simply switch to something else after selling the rights cheaply to one of the copycats. (no I wont tell any of you what items I invented, many are gizmos for hunters and camping/hiking)"
You're depending on their being a long enough time between making the product, and the copies to get your investment back and some "reward". With present day technologies that can no longer be assumed, and the future only promises to make not only the gap smaller, but widen the number of things that will apply to. You're also assuming that any copycat will purchase your "rights". Why should they? They didn't need them before. Why would they need them now?
Memes unscientific
by
falsification
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Plagiarism is not a scientific term. Plagiarism is a literary term. You can't prove plagiarism scientifically. You can only prove it in the sense that other people agree with you.
The HP study is a purportedly scientific study of memes. That is where they erred.
Memes are unscientific. They have no validity in social science.
Don't cite some asshat scientific journal that talks about memes to me. The key to science is whether it can be falsified. (Note the username.)
As Karl Popper would say, there is nothing about the notion of a meme that can be falsified. Hence, it is not a scientific notion.
It's easy to see why computer scientists can be taken in by them. You see the world as if it were a computer. In fact, it is more complicated.
Go ahead, though, and play around. Waste your time with memes.
Actually, plagerism is a legal term. Just ask SCO.
Although you cannot scientifically prove that someone has committed a crime, you can prove scientifically that the person had the opportunity, motive etc. to commit the crime. In the case of plagerism it is usually a simple case of proving who "published" first and if the "plagerer" has added anything of value.
The law is a subjective thing.
Re:Memes unscientific
by
pohl
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· Score: 2, Insightful
As Karl Popper would say, there is nothing about the notion of a meme that can be falsified. Hence, it is not a scientific notion.
You are misusing the concept of falsification here, and Karl Popper would probably call you on this just the same as I: falsification applies to assertions or hypotheses.
But notion of a "meme" is an entity: a labled observable, so it is not even eligible for the falsification test. You can't falsify the concept of mass either...but you can falsify an assertion that involves mass, such as "eating too much can result in increasing the mass of your body".
Now, if you wish to discuss whether or not a specific claim regarding memes is falsifiable, that's possible. Take the claim that "memes cannot be propagated without using language as a vector". There's an assertion about memes that is, indeed, falsifiable: if one observes meme transfer based upon silent observation and imitation, then you will have falsified that assertion.
You are right that "memes" are unscientific. Just as "mass" is unscientific. Science is a complicated filter that we apply to assertions. There's nothing inherently scientific about any of the entities that we study, whether they be memes or mass.
--
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
This isn't actually plagiarism. Blogging is a discussion community. When you stand around the water cooler talking about recents The Apprentice or Survivor episodes are you plagiarising?
How many jokes that you tell on a daily basis are ones you made up yourself?
-- "Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women." - Conan
yes, he did say that the saying was a quote... but he also said that it was true. as an inventor and engineer, and having been beaten to market by people working on the same type of product, one quickly becomes aware that ideas are generally not original, sure some are--quantum mechanics--but most are ideas generated from association or connection. think back over the last decade and name the truly original ideas. ideas which cannot be reduced to "the next step," or "like this, but different..."
Ideas in the public domain...
by
Vellmont
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· Score: 2, Insightful
To some degree I agree with you. But this whole idea of people owning ideas is ridiculous. Are you saying every time I reference the idea of freedom I have to reference whoever came up with it first? Is Thomas Jefferson a plagarist because he didn't put references to the "original authors" of his ideas in the Declaration of Independance? Eventually ideas become part of the mainstream consciousness. How big does an idea have to be to be "copyrightable" Say I read John Stuart Mill, and his ideas influence mine. Are my ideas suddenly infected with Mills work and I have to reference him each time I speak?
The whole concept is kind of ridiculous. Everyone steals everyone elses ideas. It reminds me of the music world where everyone steals everyone elses work. The plagarism part comes when the music is similar enough to be considered the same work. There's also a minimum number of notes you have to have for a work to be copyrightable. What you're talking about is gross plagarism and perhaps stealing entire concepts. It's also something that mostly applies to acadamia where people care about that sort of thing. The whole argument just begs the question how original is anyones work? Ideas don't come out of a vacuum, they come from other ideas.
-- AccountKiller
Re:Ideas in the public domain...
by
pclminion
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· Score: 1
Is Thomas Jefferson a plagarist because he didn't put references to the "original authors" of his ideas in the Declaration of Independance?
Yes. So he's a famous guy. Your point?
Eventually ideas become part of the mainstream consciousness.
Exactly, and at that point it is considered "common knowledge," and the rules change somewhat. However, even when an idea has become common knowledge, often it is still attributed, for the sake of respect for the originator. Behold, "Newton's Laws," "Maxwell's Equations," "Fermi-Dirac Statistics," "The Haber Process," etc. We attribute simply by mentioning.
It's also something that mostly applies to acadamia where people care about that sort of thing.
You're absolutely right. Notice that plagiarism is not illegal. It is considered wrong, but there's nothing illegal about failing to attribute ideas.
Perhaps you do not recognize the emotional need people have to be recognized for their profound ideas, because you have not contributed any profound ideas?
Re:Ideas in the public domain...
by
stewby18
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· Score: 1
But this whole idea of people owning ideas is ridiculous. [...] How big does an idea have to be to be "copyrightable"
That's a whole separate issue. Citing sources has little to do with ownership of ideas, and a whole lot to do with recognition of people's ideas.
Are you saying every time I reference the idea of freedom I have to reference whoever came up with it first?
Of course not. Many, many ideas are common knowledge. We have spent a long time learning and synthesizing common knowledge as a community. Freedom is a concept we all have an understanding of that (hopefully) goes beyond any one piece of previous work. If I write a weblog entry about the idea of freedom, just because, there's nothing to attribute. On the other hand, if I just read someone else's weblog entry about freedom as it pertains to flying in a post-9/11 US, with specific examples of loss of freedom, then write about that very same topic, and give some of those same examples, but don't say where they come from, that's plagiarism, even if I contribute original thought. That's the kind of stuff that I (and the Wired article--see the example about "furry germs") am talking about.
Re:Ideas in the public domain...
by
Vellmont
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· Score: 1
On the other hand, if I just read someone else's weblog entry about freedom as it pertains to flying in a post-9/11 US, with specific examples of loss of freedom, then write about that very same topic, and give some of those same examples, but don't say where they come from, that's plagiarism, even if I contribute original thought. That's the kind of stuff that I (and the Wired article--see the example about "furry germs") am talking about.
I think this is the difference between casual conversation, and professional dialogue. If I print a paper in an academic journal that goes as far as using someone elses specific examples, that's plagarism. Is this really the same thing as writing on a blog as BillaBong13 about what you read on some other Blog posted by PowerPuffGirl45?
The wrong thing about plagarism is that academics live and die by their academic reputation. Me talking to my friends and not quoting sources for ideas is quite a different thing than posting an academic paper.
-- AccountKiller
Re:Ideas in the public domain...
by
Vellmont
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· Score: 1
Yes. So he's a famous guy. Your point?
The point is no one gets all huffy about "plagarism" in the US Constitution or Declaration of Independence. The world isn't one big academic journal.
Perhaps you do not recognize the emotional need people have to be recognized for their profound ideas, because you have not contributed any profound ideas?
Or perhaps I'm not an egoist who requires constant re-filling of my own self worth through others quoting me on the internet as BillaBong13? Anyone that gets upset over people not crediting their ideas on a blog needs to grow up.
We still have this idea that print is some cherished medium where high-level conversation takes place. We're now in an era where print has begun to take on a much less respected role. . When you write in a blog it's not the same thing as publishing something in a newspaper or magazine. Blogs are a lot closer to casual conversation you have with your friends than they are to any other printed medium. Quite frankly I'd be more flattered that people are listening to what I have to say among the thousands of other voices than worried about "idea theft".
-- AccountKiller
Re:Ideas in the public domain...
by
pclminion
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· Score: 1
Or perhaps I'm not an egoist who requires constant re-filling of my own self worth through others quoting me on the internet as BillaBong13? Anyone that gets upset over people not crediting their ideas on a blog needs to grow up.
I actually agree with you, but I was trying to point out that it's still plagiarism even if we don't get all upset over it. I still think it would be appropriate to link back to a blog where you first saw something...
Quite frankly I'd be more flattered that people are listening to what I have to say among the thousands of other voices than worried about "idea theft".
My point was that plagiarism isn't about "idea theft." It's about attribution theft, and theft of respect. People do not insist on attribution because it inflates their egos. They insist on it so that other people do not falsely earn respect by piggybacking on someone else's work. A subtle but definite difference.
Re:Ideas in the public domain...
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stewby18
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· Score: 1
I think this is the difference between casual conversation, and professional dialogue. If I print a paper in an academic journal that goes as far as using someone elses specific examples, that's plagarism. Is this really the same thing as writing on a blog as BillaBong13 about what you read on some other Blog posted by PowerPuffGirl45?
See my earlier post. They are both plagiarism, it's just that people feel like it's ok if there are no consequences (as there are in academics).
The wrong thing about plagarism is that academics live and die by their academic reputation. Me talking to my friends and not quoting sources for ideas is quite a different thing than posting an academic paper.
It's sad that you (and so many others) think that way. I think the wrong thing about plagiarism is that it's dishonest and disrespectful to pass someone else's ideas off as your own. Period.
Re:Ideas in the public domain...
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Vellmont
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· Score: 1
It's sad that you (and so many others) think that way. I think the wrong thing about plagiarism is that it's dishonest and disrespectful to pass someone else's ideas off as your own. Period.
Dishonest? Ideas don't belong to anyone. None are original, they're all built off someone elses ideas. This is a basic disagreement over the nature of ownership. Taking someones verbatim text is certainly one thing. We generally recognize that someones words are personal enough that taking them and calling them "your own" is dishonest. But this notion that everyone should be spouting off accredidation every time they utter a phrase is ridiculous.
-- AccountKiller
Re:Ideas in the public domain...
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stewby18
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· Score: 1
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Just to clarify my position a little though: it's not that I think that the ideas belong to anyone... it's not about ownership at all for me. It's just about respect. If someone has made an impression, passed on knowledge I might well never have seen otherwise, or given me a whole new way of looking at things, I think they deserve acknowledgement, and I think it's rude not to give it.
If someone gives me, say, a nice piece of art, then when friends compliment me on it I usually say, "I really like it too; It was a gift from so-and-so." It's not about who owns the gift, it's a way of expressing appreciation for it, and for the person who gave it to me. As hokey as it may sound, I view knowledge as a gift too.
Besides, if the line between plagiarism is between words and ideas, then where is the line? How many words, exactly, do I have to rearrange before I no longer need to recognize my source? I prefer to believe that the issue of plagiarism goes deeper, and that it's about respect for people's additions to my store of knowledge and world view instead a matter of what preposition I use and other details of sentence construction.
Memes unscientific-Gradiant Morality.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Insightful
"You can't prove plagiarism scientifically. You can only prove it in the sense that other people agree with you."
The very definition of modern day Morality.
Ethics however disagree's with you.
Try this: You have written a paper on the propagation of sound waves in 10W30 oil.
Someone copies it not only without attribution, but claims it as his own.
Is this plagiarism? By your definition, if the majority say it isn't, then you're screwed with no recourse. Now what does that do to your "incentive" to produce more papers on the propagation of sound waves in 10W30 oil.
-- James Fenimore Cooper The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.
Re:Memes unscientific-Gradiant Morality.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Try this: what of an individual who is not concerned with peer recognition so much as that of furthering the knowledge of a given subject?
I believe you're alluding to Kant's Categorical Imperative. Unfortunately, it assumes that there can be no moral stances that a person would wish on others and himself that others wouldn't agree to.
Ethics might disagree with the grandparent, but then again, I've noticed that there is little Ethics can agree upon with itself.
Edgar Allan Poe...
by
decep
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· Score: 2, Interesting
discusses this in "Criticism". Although this concept was not the point of his article, it is still applicable.
http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/criticis/toc .h tml (first few lines)
Books are tired, too
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Read books.
Be sure to avoid most of the books in the bookstore; it has been said that there are only 20 plots in existence....
Slashdot IS A BLOG
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Insightful
It's just a place where people post links and comment on them. No different from MetaFilter....
"I learned it from watching you!"
by
cyranoVR
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· Score: 2, Insightful
bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers."
And this is different from the traditional media HOW???
Re:wait - Similar to:
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Not for individuality...
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Azureflare
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Blogs aren't necessarily for the individuality! I feel they primarily exist for a sense of community. You are reading that blog to join other like-minded people who you can converse with and talk about things that interest you. You don't browse blogs just so you can read some weirdo ranting on about some bizarro ideas they have. (unless you feel the same way...;)
In a society where small communities are nonexistent, I think blogs are filling a void. That void is a result of the changing world; before there were cars, globalization, et. al., we used to live in very close-knit societies where everyone knew everyone else, as well as everyone else's business.
I view my blog as just that, a log of my meanderings through the web. I stumble upon a few other blogs and when I do so (and I like what I see) I'll make mention of them. I also cite where my stuff comes from though.
I try to include other stuff too, breif reviews of products, sometimes comments on slashdot stories that don't seem to fit with the overall comments in the thread, stuff like that.
I'm also fairly certain I won't be seeing much of my content replicated because google won't talk to php pages for some reason.
Blatent plug for my blog aside, I think it's good that content propigates through the blogs. It results that information rising in the public awareness, which basicly means that blogs serve as a human crawler for interesting web content. The inherently democratic nature of the internet forces that content to the surface as more people link to it and comment on it.
Note -- I'm one of those crazy liberal people. If you're inclined to get angry about that I'll advise you to spare yourself the heartburn and just not read my blog.
-- Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Channel for (mis)information
by
Nynaeve
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· Score: 2, Interesting
From the article:
Such an understanding is also important to marketers, who hope to be able to pitch products and ideas directly to the most influential people in a given group.
Note that this also means that FUD can be spread in the same way. Suppose you want to do a pump-and-dump scheme. If you can deceive an influential blogger or two, then you've gained yourself a lot of ground for a relatively small amount of effort.
Knowing who the most influential individuals are for a particular topic is extremely valuable for both good and bad information!
Not "stealing", nothing physical.
by
Thinkit4
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Is the original idea still there? Yes! So don't call it stealing.
-- -I am an elective eunuch.
Re:Not "stealing", nothing physical.
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pclminion
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· Score: 1
Is the original idea still there? Yes! So don't call it stealing.
[ Reply to This ]
The theft is of credit, not ideas.
straw men, yay!
by
moral+kiosk
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· Score: 5, Informative
The title of this Slashdot story, as well as most of the comments, have missed the point.
I spoke with Lada Adamic Wednesday, and she gave a talk on this and several other of her research directions. They are not out to determine whether people plagiarize. They are interested in information flow within complex networks. That is to say, if I want to find good information, where should I look? The typical answer has been "those who agglomerate".
It is no surprise to the HP group or anyone that some information sources are simply aggregating agents. But if your area of research is information flow in complex networks, this type of study contains many insights. For example, a common question is "what information nodes are important?". This study seeks to look beyond the naive answer "high-degree nodes" and attribute some importance, in an informational sense, to lower-degree nodes that act as sources for the network.
The iRank scheme mentioned several times in the article, which I read, demonstrates this thrust. A scheme like PageRank will almost always rank most highly the aggregates, because they are highest-degree in terms of backlinks. But who is to say that such a ranking is optimal? If you care about quickly scanning much information, it probably is. But if you care about seeking more detailed or perhaps more well-informed sources of information on a topic, iRank may well be a closer-to-optimal scheme.
The comments regarding this story have been a straw man excercise if i've ever seen one on Slashdot. HP doesn't spend its research money to find out that some information sources gather information from many others and distribute it widely. It does spend its money to find out more about how complex networks operate and how the flow of information can be analyzed and exploited to improve query responses in those networks.
-- It's so much more attractive / inside the moral kiosk.
Re:straw men, yay!
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yeah, that's obvious if you read the article. But if you didn't, you probably got infected with the idea of what the article was about.
Maybe this was intentional.../. is trying to recreate the experiment.
From the great man himself.
by
CGP314
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· Score: 2, Funny
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
-Albert Einstein.
Current ideas erupt concurrently
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gobbo
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· Score: 1
If something's in the air, it's only natural that people working on the same problem will be influenced by the ideas that are already out there, then come to the same or similar conclusions. Not all the duplication in blogs is unethical, nor would it be fair to characterize it as mere coincidence.
Just one typical example: After finishing a grad thesis, then going to a conference to give a lecture, I sat through an excruciating keynote that preceeded my presentation. Not that it was boring or bad, it just stated some of my core themes, and came to conclusions that, when I was writing, I thought were rare, if not unique. I distinctly remember my supervisor sitting two rows in front of me turning around to give me the ol' raised eyebrows look, as if to say, "did you plagiarize her?" and me shrugging deflatedly.
I don't do it on my blog, but I hear that a popular way for bloggers to pretend to be in the know is to use the Technorati Current Events list to find things to post about. Then they pretend as though they found it themselves or an insider on the event emailed them the link.
One of the big problems...
by
holygoat
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· Score: 1
...I'm hitting in academia is, indeed, that "it's all been done before". The number of times that I've run across a paper from 1997 a week after coming up with some incredible idea, and finding that it's done it, but better, in amazing.
The thing about academia, of course, is that you have to make an original contribution...
Perhaps you would enjoy this....
by
Skim123
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· Score: 1
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Re:CNN? FoxNews? NYTimes?
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ubiquitin
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· Score: 1
:: Originality is to the meme pool as random mutation is to the gene pool. Insight.:: Echoing is valuable because it filters out bad originality. Here I have to disagree. This implies that good is what is easily repeated, i.e. good ideas and powerful ideas are synonymous. Sometimes the minority is right. Often the weak are correct. You cannot expect the truth to always be the stronger.
That's not to say that echoing isn't valuable, just that good and bad originality are not determined by it.
-- http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Your knowledge of meme research is very out of dat
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
e.
Seriously, go read up on some recent studies and developments. Memes are scientific in the same way a catchy musical hook is, they do affect brain patterns and chemical concentrations. Knowing that we can figure out why and then to satisfy you come to a point where falsification is possible.
Yes, but the value of the idea decreases...
by
gatkinso
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· Score: 1
...to the one who come up with it.
So it is indeed theft.
-- I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
"Plagerism" is subjective. You can't measure it!
by
Fantastic+Lad
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· Score: 1
'Thinking' is not yet a scientifically measurable phenomenon, so scientifically 'proving' something in this realm is a load of nonsense. Of course, it's good to watch for and be aware of patterns, but don't tell me you've 'proven' something through 'science'. That just screams 'Ego' and 'Fear' and a clawing for respectability in your observations so that people will listen without laughing at you.
Which is, of course, what this is always about. Those who most fear being scorned are the ones who most often scorn and laugh at others.
As such, I find that many of the bits of popular 'science' which are used to marginalize people tend to themselves be grounded on flakiness.
Yes, as with any group of people, a percentage of Bloggers are going to be air-heads. 90% crap rules, and all. . . But the idea of citizens discussing important subjects without censorship in public forum is bad. . , how exactly?
I measure the degree of underlying social importance a subject bears by the degree of ridicule it receives from the media.
There is NO SUCH THING as a scientific proof.
science works like this.
problem--> hypothesis--> data.
if data support hypothesis, do not throw out.
If data shows hypothesis is wrong, throw it out.
When something hasn't been thrown out for a while, it becomes a theory, though it can still be edited modified or thrown out if something better comes along.
There are no Proven scientific anythings.
Hooray for teh groupthink!!!1
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
You're just liek me! You use MT and think you're a real writer but just have verbal diarrhea and can't shut your emo e/n spewing trap up!
When reading this, I was reminded of a fitting comic I had read some time back
--
I was thinking of converting to paganism, but where the hell can you find sacrificial virgins these days?
They evalatute the merit of the ideas similarly
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
The reason that so many bloggers frequently hop onboard the bandwagon of ideas, is that so many of them frequently think similarly, and evaluate as favorable, similar ideas. There is nothing "wrong" with this in any way such that we would say it is "wrong" in other situations.
The stereotypical blogger is a early to mid 20-something, technically inclined, college student or college graduate, and compared to mainstream america is radically liberal in his, her, or its politics.
Of course they associate themselves with similar expressions of ideas! They do so because they evaluate the merit of this ideas similarly.
I happen to disagree with "them" tremendously. I despise middle-class, pseudo-intellectual elitists. So many of them have yet to move beyond the stage of intellectual development we might describe as, "my self identity is that I am not like my parents, not a product of a tradition, and different then the 'mainstream.'" Yes, that may be well and good, but it is pitiful that these people fail to move past the stage of intellectual development of a whiny, rebelious teenager.
But nonetheless, I don't see why we should possibly think it is "wrong" to express association to similar ideas in a community of agreement. That's what makes a community after all!
You start by taking an interesting looking (or sounding) idea. Then you try to internalize it. Then you try to restate it. If you can get past the incoherent mumbling stage, then you might throw it out there for other people to criticize. If it works out, then you might adopt it into your own personal philosphy and try to build from there.
Nothing new here, people. Move along. WAIT! NO! I mean stop and look and criticize!
What is the point of blogs though? I thought they were to convey some sense of individuality on the old interweb. Instead, in everyone's rush to be some kind of blog king, blogs are forcing people think and express themselves in the same way. Stealing someone's ideas means you can't or don't come up with your own.
Giving into the "nothing new under the sun" just means that if there is, it won't be from you.
Showing that ideas are "stolen" (what a loaded word) from blog to blog only shows the information-spreading power of the autonomous-agent-based and amorphous blog network.
Not everyone has time to read every blog. Not everyone even has time to pore over the entire AP/UPI/Reuters/Knight-Ridder feeds to pull out the stories that interest them.
No, not even blog editors.
If you were building an autonomous news-spreading network where you would create custom portals for each possible refinement of interest, it would be a standardization of what blogspace looks like right now. (It wouldn't make sense to call it "blogspace" if it wasn't an information transfer network, now would it?) You'd promote the formation of news-collecting agents that filter news towards certain prominent/popular interest areas, and then you'd promote the creation of more refined agents that took from a selection of those existing agents to create their own refined information collections.
Woohoo! Instant, decentralized (sort of), distributed information network! Better than any Old Media company has been able to implement from their linear, print-based or property-minded ways!
Just leave these things to the geeks, and keep your marketing, copyright, and decency nonsense out of it. Content is king, and blogs are nothing without content.
-- Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
TechTV's The Screen Savers just ran the story about how blogs spread stories that other more popular blogs and news sources without crediting the intermediairy source who they saw it first on. No credit was given to Slashdot in Sarah Lane's report.
Just because all bloggers are boring...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
...doesn't mean that they are stealing ideas from each other. There's plenty of mediocrity to go around.
Track the most popular stories
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CTho9305
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· Score: 1
BlogDex works by looking at popular topics across lots of blogs.
Re:Memes even worse than unscientific...
by
bayvult
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· Score: 2, Informative
Meme advocates remind me of the annoying kid in the class who has one only answer to every question. That answer is to shout "Meme!" to everything, whether the answer is best explained psychologically, sociologically or by a combination of approaches.
For a really torching critique of how stupid and limiting this idea really is, see Mary Midgley's famous essay from 1979, here.
Answering the point that "A cultural trait may have evolved in the way that it has, simply because it is advantageous to itself... Once the genes have provided their survival machines with brains that are capable of rapid imitation, the memes will automatically take over."
Midgley writes -
So, apparently, if we want to study (say) dances, we should stop asking what dances do for people and should ask only what they do for themselves. We shall no longer ask to what particular human tastes and needs they appeal, how people use them, how they are related to the other satisfactions of life, what feelings they express or what needs cause people to change them, Instead, presumably, we shall ask why dances, if they wanted a host, decided to parasitize people rather then elephants or octopuses. This is not an easy question to handle for dances, but it will be still harder for scientific theories. Dawkins explicitly includes them as memes, so that the proper way to enquire about them seems to be, not to investigate their truth or any other advantage which they might have for the people using them, but to study the use they make of people.
So "mimetics" basically assumes we're Borg'd robots and all other studies of how ideas are valued, evaluated or accepted should be thrown out of the window.
No wonder people find the idea creepy.
She elaborated on this in her chapter in Alas Poor Darwin [link] where she described it as "...an entirely understandable move in view of the success of similar methods in the physical sciences... The trouble is that thought and culture are not the sorts of thing that can distinct units at all.... Information is not a third kind of stuff."
She's pretty much on the money. Meme-advocates are dazzled by patterns, but the approach is so philosophically narrow the answers don't have any context, and so no value.
Why do you run Linux, BSD or Mac OS X? Don't even bother answering, your operating system chose you...:-/
"You slashdotters"
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
What is it with you slashdotters always
criticizing us poor slashdotters? Don't you
realize that you slashdotters are no better than
us slashdotters? You slashdotters really make
me mad.
The important result of this research, and almost everyone else on/. seems to be missing it, is that the plagarism is routinely being committed by the big bloggers against little bloggers. It's as if the next version of the World Book Encyclopedia's articles were verbatim copies of sixth-graders research papers.
I guess we should have guessed that these titans of the blogosphere get just too many good links for them to be discovering them legitimately, but it's sad how many eyeballs these guys get without any attribution. I always had a bad feeling about the people who run popular blogs...
And I was skeptical about that theory about those monkeys on typewriters.
-- I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
The many faces of loss.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Insightful indeed. "Physicality==stealing"[1] Isn't true. I could very well steal your identity and hence your reputation, and totally trash both. The fact that your sitting at home with your physical original would be irrelevent to satisfying the definition of loss. Don't belive me? Provide your SSN# and we'll see.
[1] Theft would apply more here than stealing (and yes there's a difference)
Many of the "smart" people that I know...
by
jd_esguerra
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· Score: 1
... have not ever conveyed an original idea to me. They're smart as hell because they know a lot. But they know a lot about what other people have done, and how they have dealt with issues. If a person who understands every page of an advanced engineering textbook is asked to write a book on the same topic, you can be damn sure that that the two books are going to be strikingly similar--even if the author has never seen that first text.
I'm not too faimiar with the whole "blog" thing. (I'm too old ?) But it seems to me that there is an interesting gullibility that people have developmed towards written content and especially towards content posted by "reputable sources." People will "learn" from what they read. Even if what they learn is wrong. The best example I have is ralated to the situation above, where two textbooks, written by two different people during two different eras contain an identical (HUGE, easily shown, but not immediately visible) flaw in the logic of a given proof. (It is obvious that the latter author used the older auhor's text as a learning reference.)
Other good examples are jounal and conference papers, which very often contain references back to papers, the content of which is not relevant to the material in which it was cited. An author sees a paper referenced in an explanation of "A," and then references the same paper in his/her explanation of "A" without verifying that the reference was legit. The authors simply believes that the credible source (other author) is correct, and then "spreads the word." What's even more supriseing is how infrequently the peer review process misses this.
Dictionary definition of recursion
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Cryacin
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· Score: 1
Recursion(noun)
See Recursion
-- Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
thanks for not doing your job
by
TheUberBob
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· Score: 1
hopefully the meta-mod knows how to set to FLAT,No threading,oldest. if you're too lazy to actually look around before negative modding, you probably should be focusing on funny/postive modding instead. i.e. i don't believe anyone commented on the actual article vs the poster's spin (which expands upon the article's).
--
All your preview button are belong to Hello Kitty.
Re: Not the Idea, the Expression
by
crashnbur
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· Score: 1
Patents do not hide the idea, though; they merely identify it as your idea and allow you to decide how it is duplicated, exploited, etc. People may still use and expand upon a patented procedure, process, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
And that last story about Microsoft cameras was stolen directly from Yahoo. FP
To understand recursion,
you must first understand recursion.
It's "sharing"
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
I would have never guessed!
In other news, sixth-graders routinely hand in articles copied verbatim from the World Book Encylopedia as "research papers".
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
Isn't that google search for Miserable Failure enough of an example?
...bloggers steal their ideas from other people.
I've found that there are very few original thoughts or ideas, and very few people who come up with them. It isn't a matter of plagerism. It's just that there are only so many viable ideas out there. And the more that are already taken, the harder it is to come up with a new one. If you reach too far just to have an original thought, then you end up a wacko.
It isn't just bloggers.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Of course, this begs the question.. Why are the popular bloggers popular if other bloggers are thinking these ideas up first?
I think it's the fact that the more popular bloggers put their ideas across in a clearer way than the less know bloggers..
it's not the idea that's important.. it's how you present it.
Simon.
The most-read webloggers aren't necessarily the ones with the most original ideas, say researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs.
Otherwise know as the 'Slashdupe' syndrome. One site is even know for it's inability to keep stories original within a 24 hour period.
And another thing:
Wired has up a story about HP, as part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups of people, scientifically proving what most people already knew: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers.
Xenu loves you!
So that's why all the whiny angsty poetry on blogs looks the same...it IS the same!
/hates whiny teenage blogs
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
But, but, how can an idea be stolen? Isn't the whole point that ideas are supposed to be valueless since they can be copied effortlessly?
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
You don't say!
I suppose we're going to start burning Shakespeare's works because they were blatantly stolen from other writers, right?
Idea modification and adaptation is not plagiarism - much of human progress in the arts has happened because of this phenomenon, and the internet neither started nor ended it.
I typed in cnn.com in the search box and got
"gay serfin parents" or something, a bunch of CNN sites, but no blogs copying other blogs
Mod this -1 troll if you want but that's kinda weird.
So it's only one person's cat who did "the most amazing thing today" and only one person's friend "acted like my friend but was really just a big bitch all along" and everyone else is just copying? Oh to find that cat...
So did they also specifically account for the syndication factor?
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
... is slashdot considered a blog?
If so, its quite well known it links to copyrightten articles all the time.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
with four-hundred and eighty-nine quintillion-zillion blogs, how many did they think were going to be original?
Operator, give me the number for 911!
well obviously....
:(
- there are only limited number of ideas,
- and there are more blogs than ideas,
- so it follows that ideas will have to copied from one blog to another.
I steal signatures from blogs.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
I think generally "stealing" gives high growth rates. In medieval times people were stealing ideas easily - this led to renaissance, arts and science as we know them were born. Scientists "steal" ideas - they modify other's ideas. This is how the progress works. Patents that would prevent any "stealing" like the last try from NEC on idea of nanotubes, not some way of making them is against progress. Perhaps you disagre...
You can defy gravity... for a short time
I mean my blog is more like an online journal of what I've been up to and been thinking about. It's very rare that I post memes or links to "popular" sites (though it does happen occassionally).
I guess in this case they're referring to bloggers as people who blog lots of links. Maybe they're the majority of bloggers, but they're not the majority of *interesting* bloggers (imho!)
A little planning goes a long way...
It's also how news spreads. Afterall, Slashdot is very rarely the first to report a story, it just links to somebody else who has posted information on a topic. From there, several other media outlets see the story on Slashdot and therefore report on it themselves.
Message from SCO to everyone:
All your blogs are belong to us.
The most-read webloggers aren't necessarily the ones with the most original ideas, say researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs.
Using newly developed techniques for graphing the flow of information between blogs, the researchers have discovered that authors of popular blog sites regularly borrow topics from lesser-known bloggers -- and they often do so without attribution.
These findings are important to sociologists who are interested in learning how ideas grow from isolated topics into full-blown epidemics that "infect" large populations. Such an understanding is also important to marketers, who hope to be able to pitch products and ideas directly to the most influential people in a given group.
"There is a lot of speculation that really important people are highly connected, but really, we wonder if the highly connected people just listen to the important people," said Lada Adamic, one of the four researchers working on the project.
To satisfy their curiosity, the researchers began analyzing data from Intelliseek's BlogPulse Web crawler, which regularly mines thousands of blogs for references to people, places and events.
When they plotted the links and topics shared by various sites, they discovered that topics would often appear on a few relatively unknown blogs days before they appeared on more popular sites.
"What we're finding is that the important people on the Web are not necessarily the people with the most explicit links (back to their sites), but the people who cause epidemics in blog networks," said researcher Eytan Adar.
These infectious people can be hard to find because they do not always receive attribution for being the first to point to an interesting idea or news item.
Indeed, the team at HP Labs found that when an idea infected at least 10 blogs, 70 percent of the blogs did not provide links back to another blog that had previously mentioned the idea.
To get past this obstacle, the researchers developed techniques to infer where information might have come from, based on the similarities in text, links and infection rates.
For instance, if Blog A used the words "furry germs" to link to an infectious topic like Giantmicrobes just days after Blog B in the same social circle used the exact same words and link, that would be a good sign that Blog A copied Blog B.
The researchers have incorporated their techniques into a search algorithm they call iRank. Unlike Google's PageRank algorithm, which ranks websites based on overall popularity, the iRank algorithm ranks sites based on how good they are at injecting ideas into the mainstream.
"A lot of sites that get listed by search engines as most relevant are not always the most relevant," said Adar. "For instance, Slashdot often gets listed at the top, but it's just an aggregator. I may want to go to the source."
Adar and Adamic say it's too soon to tell if iRank will be incorporated into popular search engines.
For one thing, they plan to refine the algorithm after seeing how it works on more data. They would also like to modify the algorithm to resist manipulation from Google-bomb-type attacks, where collaborators link to each other's sites to boost themselves in Google's ranking mechanism.
In the meantime, the team has made some of its research available online in the form of the Blog Epidemic Analyzer, a Java program that reveals the implicit and inferred links between blogs in an interactive, visual form.
"Blogs are helping us get a better understanding of how things happen on the Internet," said Adar. "We're hopeful that in being able to do this research, we can apply the technology to other information, like e-mail, to improve productivity."
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
Is "Today I had Cheetos and talked to Sara" or "I think Imma gonna brush mah teef now" really something worth stealing? C'mon.. most things worth stealing have at least _some_ value.. Current Mood: Thefty
Funny this. I wrote about how ideas 'infect' large groups of people, scientifically proving what most people already knew: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers, on my blog!
You got it all wrong...
when you copy from one person, that's stealing, theft, plagiarism...
when you copy from many different sources, then that's called research...
and if you see me strut, remind me of what left this outlaw torn...
Not that surprising really....
Now there is proof that there is only 1 blog to go with the well known fact that there is only 1 makefile.
philosophical questions about old planks and new boats aside of course... and Al Gore probably wrote it...
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
Its commentary. What's wrong with that? Now, if you're stealing commentary from other people, then I guess you never really had any original thoughts on a topic to begin with. That's pretty lame.
[FromTheMorning]
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it, pliz, 'research'.
Shamelessly researched from a Tom Lehrer song.
t's what Open Source is all about: "sharing" other people's ideas and making sure they remain "shared".
bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers
Isn't exactly that what Slashdot do by copying other websites content?
I'm Blogging this!
Is that not how blogging started in the first place?
"wow that is neat that person is posting his diary on the web, maybe i should do the same, but ill write a script to do it"
Has anyone else ever noticed how much blogs just reference eachother and talk about how amazing blogs are, while not really doing anything all that insightful or significant? Most of the time they just keep posting the same old thing you saw on that other guy's blog, while offering nothing new.
I'm just suprised that this whole fad has lasted this long.
Let's be realistic here. The scripting ability necessary to create a weblog is next to nil. It's not that amazing of a thing. It's a nice format, I'll give you that, but it doesn't deserve the hype. It's just about time that people start noticing this and pointing out the vapidity in the 'blogging scene'.
...Keith Richards will claim he stole his licks from Elvis!
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Just yesterday I heard a radio news story about how thousands of people are dying from something or other every year. When I looked into the data deeper, it was an estimate (read: ideologically motivated wild ass guess) by some political group, and had no actual science behind it whatsoever. But it was still just reported without any thought because the group issued a press release.
--- Ban humanity.
About how ideas 'infect' large groups of people, scientifically proving what most people already knew: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers. I will post them shortly.
"...part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups of people..."
Expect to see this mistake repeated across 1,000,000 blogs in the next few minutes.
recycled concepts, arranged in new order so as to provoke thought. What can we really expect? Most of the information contained in blogs is useless. You want new concepts? Read books. -Dylan
> Why are the popular bloggers popular if other bloggers are thinking these ideas up first?
Everyone here should know that popularity is inversely proportionate to intelligence. Only intelligent people like other intelligent people. The idiots are just resentful.
It's news aggregating. A lot of the popular sites gather topics on a common theme and present them in a (sometimes) more coherent fashion then the original source.
Of course, there are the cut&pasters that couldn't come up with an original thought of their own if they had to.
Just my $.03 (inflation is everywhere)
Can you imagine what the people who had to sort through those blogs felt like afterward? One job I think I would have turned down...
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
please, for the love of god, tell me a lot of money wasn't spent to figure this out. Knowing the existence of rss and/or asking any college-aged, tech savy blowhard polisci student would have gotten you this answer.
One reason is that good bloggers who don't have many original thoughts are good aggregators. They may or may not state the ideas in a clearer fashion. But they know what people are interested in and bring it together. That's one reason /. is popular. It's a collection of information you'd have to go to hundreds of other places to find yourself.
Developers: We can use your help.
If I reiterate some dude's thoughts on birth control in my blog, you slashbots point your fingers and go "stealing! stealing! you thief!"
But if you download copyrighted music off of kazaa, you're all oh-so-quick to point out "it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement!"
Anyhow, what HP didn't mention: people with boring enough lives devoted to online diaries, are all likely to come up with the same stupid ideas. Its not so much stealing as in they're all equally boring.
I bet you think you're the only one who thought to wipe his ass with a washcloth to save the trees. Well you're not!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
OK, I actually read the article and this doesn't sound like "stealing" at all to me. Granted we'd need to see the underlying blogs and topics in question, but let's face it - social awareness of various topics ebb and flow.
Those of you who follow U.S. media may recall "The Summer of the Shark". There was no peak in shark attacks that year. In fact I think it was a below-average year. It just became the socially-focused topic.
Then there's the "everything's now in place" effect. Competing teams coming up with similar vaccines at the same time. Or manned flight.
Just part of the Great Filtered Aquifer of the human experience.
Of course it may well be that humans are just a bunch of damn thieving cheaters.
I'm surprised there are not blog-rating/tracking services that watch this kind of phenomenon. One could even do side-by-sides of how different blogs reported/copied material on a given topic. Different blogs might become known for originality of new ideas, while others might become known for long-term insightful commentary on copies of other blogs.
Routine tracking of blatant, unacknowledged copying of other's blogs would certainly separate the poseurs from the thinkers. Tracking the provenence of ideas would also reduce the truth-by-repetition problem on the internet wherein an erroneous fact looks widely accepted due to mere duplication.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
syndrome... where somebody takes somebody else's commment, copies it enbloc, and reposts it in a higher subthread.
The higher-posted comment gets "insightful" and "interesting" mods, while the lower post gets "redundant" mods, regardless of the fact that the lower comment was posted first.
I think the Slashtrolls have turned this technique into an online sport.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Creativity always builds on the past !
Ceci n'est pas une signature
...that is so untrue! I just copied and pasted your "news story" into my blog so I could tell everybody about it and how wrong you are.
they all use this Blog Drone. That's why it all looks the same.
Net sa best, mar it koe minder
But if Shakespeare were a blogger he'd put everyone else to shame. Few of his time were able to express things with as much passion. Almost no bloggers stand out to such an extent.
Did I just write "But if Shakespeare were a blogger..."? Wow, that's a first...
Developers: We can use your help.
No one here has ever had an original idea posted up, with the possible exception of the book/movie/game reviews.
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
*sigh*
*gently banging head against wall, repeatedly*
oh, the pain...
It's implementing them that is difficult...
Which is why patents should only be granted the demonstration of a working example...
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I wonder how much different blogs are in this respect than "traditional" journalism. Newspapers have to make efforts at times to ensure that they don't have the exact same headline. Also, it probably isn't too terribly suprising that in a world of mass-media, the collective consciousness is a bit hard to redirect. Mass-originality and memes are opposite concepts.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Mushroom! Mushroom!
There, I also linked the original.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
"And in related news, it's been discovered that a website called SlashDot links to stories run by other media outlets..."
Coming soon to Slashdot: meta-meta-moderation!
And we all talk about what we see on the news. The real plagiarism story is about the current weather. I'd like to see an expose uncover this shocking fact.
Now if someone reads about an idea, digests it, and is able to communicate the idea BETTER, is that plagiarism?
What is it with you slashdotters? You seem to have a grade school understanding of ideas and plagiarism. Have you ever seen DIFFERENT WORDINGS of the same idea? Have you ever seen DIFFERENT IDEAS worded similarly? Have you ever taken an undergraduate philosophy class? Until you can tell those situations apart and come up with a nuanced opinion, please learn not to label such things as plagiarism. It's akin to calling a flirt a rapist, or a lab mouse a rat.
I'm merely standing on the shoulders of a bunch of other midgets. We can see nearly as high as those who stand on the shoulders of giants... it just takes more of us and a little bit more walking.
[signature]
Large "establised" "media" outlets, such as Wired, NYT, "Rooters", etc., etc. need readers to sell either their content or their ads or both. Pushing their bias and ideology is a desireable plus.
Bloggers provide a complete spectrum of viewpoints. They do this usually for free, some of them have a tip jar. Sure, there are some stupid blogs about fur balls under the bed, but I am talking about serious bloggers here.
Here is the key: In many cases, bloggers have pointed out gross errors, plain lies, and other biases in "established" "media", which in the case of NYT has resulted in "corrections", where the NYT web page is changed quietly.
Make no mistake, bloggers are a threat to big "media", to the control and the monopoly on the distribution and spin of information that the "media" has enjoyed for decades.
Expect to see more big "media" outlets assuring you that bloggers are boring/venal/stupid/Republican, steal all their ideas, and put puppies thru blenders*.
Nothing to see here, Citizen, move along.
*bonus points to the first 3 million people who get the "puppy blender" ref.
UK programmer, maintainer of perl.com, and Anglican missionary Simon Cozens has re-rendered the 10th-century Japanese classic Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon as a blog. It works waaay too well.
While in an epidemic it's pretty bad if you are Patient Zero, in the blog memetics universe, it is good to be Blogger Zero.
that the Wired story did not reference Richard Dawkins, who coined the term "meme" in the Selfish Gene, and drew an analogy between the transmission of information with the transmission of viruses. Then again, I don't know if Richard Dawkins got the idea from William S. Burroughs or vice versa.
Don't most non-personal bloggers just circulate links and provide commentary on current events? Like, you know, newspapers? You don't see anyone accusing the Washington Post of plagiarizing from the New York Times when they both publish op-ed pieces on the same topic.
Maybe it's good manners to provide a linkback to the blog you got the link from originally, but omitting it is hardly plagiarism. (A word which the article never uses, incidentally. I'm not on the hate-michael bandwagon, but that blurb headline has some nasty spin.)
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
While working as a project manager for one of the world's largest web design firm, by buddy tells me that the *best* ideas are always "Someone Else's". Funny how illustrated it becomes in almost every environment, especially the IT (OSS, M$ Embrace and Extend, etc..) field and even moreso within technology design firms (Web Design, Media etc..).
This is also true of bad jokes on Slashdot.
In Soviet Russia, the blog steals you!
Who poured hot grits on my blog?!?
1) Create mind-virus about blog mind-viruses.
2) Post about said mind-virus on Slashdot
3) ???
4) Profit!
(sigh)
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
Imagine that. Plagiarism isn't spreading, really. "Blog Epidemic Analyzer HP Information Dynamics Lab Searching for Plagiarism No results found" http://www-idl.hpl.hp.com/cgi-bin/blogs/search_new .cgi?s=Plagiarism
Wow! This idea is incredibly exciting
! This is on the verge of being able to semantically track information flow between people... with the Internet, tracking like this is made possible which can show evidence for so many fascinating kinds of socioinformational phenomena. We're not just talking about quizzes here, we're talking about actual ideas.
This is evidence of a massive unconscious distributed process, which is indeed akin to the physics of a disease epidemic. The idea is seeded somewhere, and it is passed along through the social network, each person considering it and modifying it slightly, processing it more and more as it propagates. Think of it as evolutionary telephone - a mechanism for knowledge purification.
I have noticed myself that interactions with other people have a huge effect on the particular directions my own thoughts take... and, in fact, many of my own ideas are the result of conversations such as these. In a conversation, you are forced to express your ideas, to solidify its form within the structure of language. And then it can be manipulated and communicated and corrected: it is allowed to be processed further and percolated through society.
This is most wonderful stuff.
'The Tipping Point' by Malcom Gladwell. Looks at the spread of ideas/diseaeses. Quite interesting but the conclusion is a bit strong.
I've been researching Blogs, with hopes to learn new marketing techniques. I've found that many Bloggers steal ideas from other Bloggers. I think this might be worth something.
Earlier I ordered pizza.
What is blogging? I mean I know the "definition" but what is blogging, or is this blogging? I M SO CONFUSED!!!
I don't mean to flame, but it seems like the poster has been 'infected' with the FUD. We really should be careful with words like steal for knowledge sharing/conversation... of course I believe the article used the term infect. I did a find for steal on the article...nothing...it seems like even here people are implicitly buying into the whole IP/I own all my 'original' ideas system. Sigh. Please PLEASE folks, don't get infected by what other people have to say, just go back to watching CNN and FOX News and...consume consume consume!
All your preview button are belong to Hello Kitty.
"Plagiarism is necessary; progress implies it." -- Comte de Lautreamont, 1870
"Plagiarism is necessary; progress implies it." -- Guy Debord, 1967
If I ever set up a blog myself, I'll just charge $699 for a license to read it.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
before the internet, before TV, before radio, before books, ideas were spread by talking. A perosn would hear something, and if the person liked this idea, he/she would propigate this idea. It the person really liked this idea, then he/she would pass this idea down to his/her children. back in the old days, there were, for want of a better term, "Story guilds" would passon information and it would be spread....Then came books (The first best seller then is now one of the top movies). With books, people that were so inclined would read these ideas and pass the idea onto others. Nobility and Clergy read and the ideas they kept and passed on pretty much became law.
Then with Radio and the birth of modern mass media, people would listen to ideas, and the ideas that were accpted were talked about and sometime these ideas affected people in interesting ways.
Same thing with TV. But by the time TV came along, the ideas weren't ideas per say, they were gossippy comments on Dick van Dyke's wife (50's) to Janet's boob (2004).
Now with the internet, some people are propagating ideas again. (Some are not.) But as always, the ideas are coming from other sources and the ideas that are being accepted are being passed on.
Anecdote: On a quiz with my class, I asked to briefly explain communism, capitalism, and so forth...A student answered this:
Communism: All your profits are belong to us
Great answer that assimulated ideas from the net and spread them around.
What am I getting at? It ok that others borrow/steal/copy ideas. Ideas are meant to be shared and debated. To own an idea and say, "Mine" is like trying to own the air you breathe. You can;t stop it from spreading.
(breaks over...no time to proofread... sorry)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
"Wired has up a story about HP, as part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups"
Perhaps through repitition?
blog is the lamest word, ever. articles about blogs? slow day today, eh?
isn't that the purpose of the internet--interconnection? i look at various blogs not for news, but for filtered connections to stuff. "there is nothing new under the sun," as my grandfather used to say, and from an engineering/invention perspective this is very often the case. Nature is the most plagarized of all!
but it's my idea...
Aren't we after all human? Two people can't have the same idea? I will admit that i sometime get ideas from bloggers, but if this was considered stealing or plagiarism then ALL news outlets are plagiarists. BLOGs should be looked at as personal news with personal views.
My best example was this /. journal entry. I got the idea from a church sermon. AFTER I WROTE IT, I did some more research on the topic and found out some others had similar thoughts. I, of course, think I "worded" it better! ;)
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
In other news, a recent study shows that nine out of ten Popes have been Catholic.
Coming up, what bears are doing in your woods, right after this message from our sponsors.
I wonder how much different blogs are in this respect than "traditional" journalism.
Not very, from what I can see. And, I think, for the same reason: they all read each other's stuff.
The nice thing about blogs is that they'll call each other out on errors. You won't see the Wall Street Journal run a correction on something the New York Times wrote (even when Jason Blair happened, the NYT did the bulk of the reporting.)
The downside of blogs is that they're like HyperCard Stacks: Anyone can write one, but it takes talent and effort to write one well.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
so bascially HP analyzed all the links for May 1-21, 2003 and then decided that based on the fact a link appeared 1 or 2 days in a few blogs before appearing in a statistically significant number of blogs, everyody *must* be copying links from those blogs.
It doesn't evaluate any potential value of the link (i.e. how to remove worms would be more valuable and more likely to be repeatedly link than, say, here's the laptop I just bought. Or a funny picture that also has own intrinistic value). Plus all this information is on the internet...freely dessiminated and available for the most part. It's a bit like claiming because every newspaper is covering a story, all newspapers must be copying the first story run.
Back in '95 when I started my Blog (it wasn't called that then) one of my readers wrote to me and asked, "What you're doing is really cool, how would I go about setting up a site like yours?". To which I replied, "Don't, do something original." (Roughly...hopefully I was a little more polite.)
Kind thoughts do not change the world
my original, non-plagiarised blog
See also: flog, rant, drone
any of the below occuring online
a : to beat with or as if with a rod or whip
b : to criticize harshly
c : to make a sustained deep murmuring, humming, or buzzing sound
d : to talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner
All your preview button are belong to Hello Kitty.
Bloggers are just information aggregators. They cull from their sources and post the interesting stuff. Slashdot's been doing it for years. There's too much on the web, and Bloggers act as (real, not top 40) DJs by selecting the best of what's out there and giving it a better. No one seems to complain that DJs don't end every song with "I heard that album from my friend Ted."
The service they provide is going through hundreds of bad links to find the interesting ones to recommend to their readers. I think this report is simply stating the obvious.
Also, if this is a big deal, why doesn't Slashdot include a "via" field for submissions to give credit to where the poster found the link? Personally, I always give credit for links when the site I found the link from supports TrackBack, any other times it's a crapshoot.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
When Journalists do it it's called journalism...
When Bloggers to it it's called stealing
Free Web based FTP
As a somewhat related topic, I would to see a study on how fast and widespread shared emails spread around the internet such as jokes or cartoons. This could be quite useful in tracking emails with a political message. It seems that tracking emails shouldn't be too difficult to do because so many people leave the topics and email chain intact in their forwarded emails.
The Truth About Slashdot
... as usual, were ahead of their time:
The Apathetic Online Journal Entry Generator
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Nerds? Jocks? That certainly wasn't my first thought, but OK...
It may be that the popular bloggers have ease-of-use on their side (they aggregate the information in a better format).
It may be that they are linked to by other popular bloggers, and get referrals/popularity/hits that way... popularity begeting popularity.
Also, on an unrelated note, intelligence doesn't necessarily imply misanthropy... intelligent people are not only liked by other intelligent people. Being a nice, likeable guy doesn't necessarily imply intelligence or lack thereof. On the other hand, if you combine intelligence and an obnoxious/ostentatious attitude, you'll get resentment for sure, and not just from idiots.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Should scientists start suing each other for building research on earlier published papers and referencing them in their new publications?
Do these "researchers" really think news outlets and "original" bloggers put out information hoping no one else will discuss it in print or online? Am I stealing their research by discussing it here?
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
As to the latter bullet: This happens ALL THE TIME in the age of electronic media, and the only way to prove it is to copy-paste a "snapshot" of what the article looked like at a given point in time before some editor does a hackjob on the original article because its slant was doubleplusungood.
So I'm providing a public service to my many readers, all 50 or so of them. Thbbbbbt!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
You mean there are other bloggers? I've just been posting the same stuff to all of my dupe accounts.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
"When you copy the work of one, it's called plagiarism. When you copy the work of many, it's called research." - author unknown
At least we usually try to point to the original source, when it can be determined. Of course, that has no bearing on whether or not anyone actually RTFA...
"Den som vover mister Fodfaeste et Oieblik; den som ikke vover mister Livet." -Soren Kierkegaard
CNN and Fox News also get a lot of their content through sharing agreements with localized news outlets. Usually, it's a pure swap with no cash involved, the local station gets to use the network's reports for stories outside its area, while the network gets to use and distribute stories that the local station puts out that are of national interest.
Newspapers have had such a system for years as well. They call it the Associated Press.
"bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers"
Just for that, I'm going to blog this.
_______________________________________
Why is it the annonymous cowards have
the biggest balls?
And that last story about Microsoft cameras was stolen directly from Yahoo. FP
TabletPC is another example.
Linux helps servers, but Microsoft helps people.
Are all the new ideas actually coming from a few people? Maybe they're just spread out randomly and the popular bloggers are the ones who collect them.
I am not criticizing Slashdot in this regard. Its just that I've been reading the scientific and popular literature (including online) for more decades that I care to count. I notice many so-called original ideas in Slashdot postings have been thought of before. Particularly if you a younger person, or have focused your media attention narrowly, you may have not noticed these ideas.
In fact, this posting is an old idea! A Hebrew philospoher said in Ecclesiasts 1:9 twenty five centuries ago "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done there is nothing new under the sun"
A lot of bloggers launch off other ideas they read and put their own spin on it. Thats part of the power of it, sparking wide discussion and expression of multiple points of view of a topic.
This article isn't saying that bloggers outright copy... just that often, a common topic will explode among many bloggers. Sometimes when I write about something in my LiveJournal that I've seen elsewhere, I've seen it in so many blogs that proper attribution would be difficult at best...
Most bloggers don't really give a shit if their ideas for topics are used elsewhere... if their words are used without permission/attribution, then there is an issue, but the ideas and subjects flow freely for a reason... we WANT them to.
Sometimes they repost a highly modded comment in an earlier thread.
The higher-posted comment gets "insightful" and "interesting" mods, while the lower post gets "redundant" mods, regardless of the fact that the lower comment was posted first.
This just goes to show how fucked up we've become.
If I, blogger, quote someone else, even unattributed, or talk about someone else's idea, that's "theft?" Gimme a break. You don't automatically own ideas just because you write them down.
You can't really "own" an idea anyway -- there's no US constitutional provision for that, just an allowance for a limited monopoly to encourage more creation.
Blogs are, by definition, a conversation. Calling that conversation "theft" is ridiculous to an extremem. What, if I'm talking to someone IRL, should I force them to "license" my ideas before continuing?
"Sorry, before we can continue, please sign here and pay this fee. Then we can keep talking about my ideas about how to set up a new centralized login server."
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
I could stand it more if no one decided blog was an acceptable name for them.
Another sensational post that exaggerates the article on SLASHDOT.
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
next they're going to prove that i steal all of my conversation from someone else. why did they bother?
-ninjaneer
Read my withering rebuttal of this tosh here.
--
Sal
Writings: saltation.blogspot.com
Wravings: go-blog-go.blogspot.com
Memes are ideas that flow through and define a culture. Blogs are just mechanism of doing this. In the past other media- gossip, schools, and newspapers- facilitated the flow of memes. Only a small fraction of memes are original, but are endless propagated. Wired tries to capture a few of this in its monthly section on new memes.
The collection of memes defining a culture, an era, and a place is the Zeitgeist. It is interesting to look at other Zeitgeists to see what people took for granted compared what believe now. Future cultures will be amused by our own Zeitgeist too.
For a moment there I thought you were talking about Information Week, eWeek, and the other IT press hacks that have their own agenda (mainly pushing their advertiser's products) and are being marginalized by the web.
The graphs produced by HP resemble this self-referential meme: a meme tree that maps its own propagation.
But what I really wanted to say was that there is no method to verify if the same person posted the blog idea to several different sites. It's quite common that someone would post an idea on their personal Blog, and subsequently submit it to SlashDot and Yahoo, etc.
I'm trying to say that it's not necessarily plagurism, but it certainly opens up new discussion on some long standing questions about information ownership. Oh, wait, that means my whole post was a re-used idea. Hmph. So much for innovation..Oh, and the obligatory... In related news, it was found that some people post the content of entire articles that were pointed to by the story itself, sometimes attributed, sometimes not.
The tool at HP tracks the spread of "infection", or more specifically, the number of blogs that contain a specific url. Why would it be surprising that many blogs would contain the same urls at around the same time? For example, an announcement is made that the Mars Rovers have found strong evidence that parts of mars were saturated with water. I would expect many bloggers to comment on that, and post a url to Nasa/JPL or Space Flight Now. So we need an HP tool to verify this type of blogging behavior?
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I once wound up on a blog whose author blatantly copied Seinfeld's quotes from his (not so funny btw) book (the one about nothing). When I harassed him on the comments as 'Jerrry' he would only erase my comments. Those are the blogs not worth visitng.
But I also believe in trending. It's like fashion! Everybody's doing, everybody's talking about it, so the blogger also does and posts his impressions.
I wonder if google, who acquired Pyra Labs a while ago, is working on something to detect trends.
You can't steal what is freely given. The distinction between quoting with and without attribution, which you fail to make, is also important. Much of what's written on blogs is deliberately put into the public domain, with a clear desire on the authors' part to see it get broader distribution. Many bloggers obsessively track who's linking or responding to them, or how they stand on the various blogger rankings, or where they are on Google's list of hits for particular pet terms. It's a universal enough phenomenon that it's the exceptions - the people who do not want their material used elsewhere - who should be required to identify themselves. The default assumption, which mirrors copyright law, should be that if someone made a concrete effort to publish and didn't make an effort to limit the scope of that publication then it's public domain.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
According to copyright law in America -- and this makes sense -- you don't own the idea, because the idea is not your creation. You own the "fixed creative expression" of the idea. And by extention, it is that expression that is copyrighted to you. Not the idea itself.
Read the NY Times and then check the network newscasts that night - the networks will more often than not pick up on whatever the Times puts on the frong page, even when there's no necessary tie of the story to the particular day it's told. Then check the concensus of the talking heads on all those TV panels, and watch them move like square dancers between shows teaching each other the newly fashionable steps. It's enough to make you scream like Dean.
Or look at academic journals, and notice that most of the articles just recycle accepted variants on ideas. The exception is professors from just a few top schools - Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton, Berkeley, MIT - who have enough faith in their individual minds to actually follow ideas into new terrain. This is similar to why the NY Times reporters sometimes lead, too: their institution lends them the status to assume their instincts are good, while most of us are too insecure to be other than sheep.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
"I don't agree that there are "few original ideas" or there is "nothing new under the Sun". However, there are few original thinkers."
Now what does that say about overall US economic recovery? Remember everyone's somehow depending on the "next big thing" to save our collective bacon.
Also to think, if there are "few original thinkers". Were's their reward for having an original idea in a world dedicated to the principle "what's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine"?
Perhaps that's how SCO litigious bastards got their copy of Linus ABI headers.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
In other news, Apple's iBlog software now comes with a sticker affixed to it stating "Don't steal blogs" ...
What exactly do you mean by "Don't touch this button?"
Yes, that's copyright. Patents (also allowed for in the US Constitution) are for ideas.
Wired has a story about how HP, as part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups of people, is scientifically proving what most people already know: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers !!!
Check it out !
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
There is no control group, the methods and techniques of interrogation have not been made public so they can be scrutinized and these results have not yet been independently verified. Therefore, this conclusion was NOT reached by applying the scientific method.
Sincerely,
Mr. Pedantic (TM)
[grin]
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Then it'll percolate in that cute little head of yours, and you'll have your own version. Just like witnesses to a crime and snowflakes, baby.
The worst bloggers are going to stand out because they're just like monkeys - they're the trend followers. They like the idea of a blog, but never had to think an original thought in their life. So they do what the other blogs are doing, even when they don't understand the reason. Just like monkeys running around in a cage, see?
Now the best monkeys see the walls and know that they're in a cage, so they figure, 'I'm outta sight and outta mind if I don't get out of here', and they make the leap to bigger and better things, ya dig?
Getting back to the band, the true cream of the crop ain't going to be liftin' the gold stars from their neighbors paper - they're not gonna care what YOU think. They gave at the office, and they're past that.
They got a whole different filter in their head; what goes in must come out, but in ways the regular joe just won't understand. Joe's just gonna take that train and see where it goes.
The best conductors are going to take you for a spin, make the ride entertaining, and leave you right back where you came from with a pocket of souvenirs.
At least, that's how I see it.
syndrome... where somebody takes somebody else's commment, copies it enbloc, and reposts it in a higher subthread.
.sig says that this article was reposted from a comment further down the page
The higher-posted comment gets "insightful" and "interesting" mods, while the lower post gets "redundant" mods, regardless of the fact that the lower comment was posted first.
I think the Slashtrolls have turned this technique into an online sport.
---
my other
Originality is to the meme pool as random mutation is to the gene pool.
Echoing is valuable because it filters out bad originality.
Well, there's a great deal of variability in credibility in Slashdot postings.
Empirically, one interesting sign of credibility of Slashdot I noticed a few months back was that Google searches for various technical terms would point to Slashdot stories and postings.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
That is because there is no such thing as an original idea, and there never has been in the history of man. All ideas are based upon phenonema and sensation within our universe. Justice is based on cause and affect, etc.
The basis of each idea, not the details, but the form is based upon either one or a collection of various naturally occuring events. All we do is arrange the ideas of these events in greater detail.
"today too many people are worrying about how to make the most money with the least effort.."
Yes, "stealing" is a good way to facilitate that goal.
"How about being proud of the fact that your idea is so good that everyone want's to copy it? and use that supposedly superior brain to tink up another one..."
Why should they? Were's the incentive to have a good idea, without the corresponding reward?
Alturism is easy when there's little to no pain in following it's principles. It's when it starts hurting that the men are seperated from the boys.
Try this Mr AC.
1-Become a street person.
2-Come up with an original, "save your bacon" idea.
3-Now just give it away.
4-Lather, rinse, repeat.
"that is why every "invention" I come up with I market the hell out of until I see copies show up on the market, then simply switch to something else after selling the rights cheaply to one of the copycats. (no I wont tell any of you what items I invented, many are gizmos for hunters and camping/hiking)"
You're depending on their being a long enough time between making the product, and the copies to get your investment back and some "reward". With present day technologies that can no longer be assumed, and the future only promises to make not only the gap smaller, but widen the number of things that will apply to. You're also assuming that any copycat will purchase your "rights". Why should they? They didn't need them before. Why would they need them now?
The HP study is a purportedly scientific study of memes. That is where they erred.
Memes are unscientific. They have no validity in social science.
Don't cite some asshat scientific journal that talks about memes to me. The key to science is whether it can be falsified. (Note the username.)
As Karl Popper would say, there is nothing about the notion of a meme that can be falsified. Hence, it is not a scientific notion.
It's easy to see why computer scientists can be taken in by them. You see the world as if it were a computer. In fact, it is more complicated.
Go ahead, though, and play around. Waste your time with memes.
A plague on all the meme foolishness.
This isn't actually plagiarism. Blogging is a discussion community. When you stand around the water cooler talking about recents The Apprentice or Survivor episodes are you plagiarising?
How many jokes that you tell on a daily basis are ones you made up yourself?
"Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women." - Conan
I'm just going to wait a few days and see what everyone else says about this.
Dick reads Jane's post, then blogs his take on it.
Sally reads Dick's blog, and blogs her twist.
Tom catches Sally's blog, and then spins his blog.
Jane notices Tom's blog and says, "Gee this looks familiar, sort of..."
yes, he did say that the saying was a quote... but he also said that it was true. as an inventor and engineer, and having been beaten to market by people working on the same type of product, one quickly becomes aware that ideas are generally not original, sure some are--quantum mechanics--but most are ideas generated from association or connection. think back over the last decade and name the truly original ideas. ideas which cannot be reduced to "the next step," or "like this, but different..."
Isn't there something deeply wrong with any article where that phrase occurs?
Buy Text Processing in Python
To some degree I agree with you. But this whole idea of people owning ideas is ridiculous. Are you saying every time I reference the idea of freedom I have to reference whoever came up with it first? Is Thomas Jefferson a plagarist because he didn't put references to the "original authors" of his ideas in the Declaration of Independance? Eventually ideas become part of the mainstream consciousness. How big does an idea have to be to be "copyrightable" Say I read John Stuart Mill, and his ideas influence mine. Are my ideas suddenly infected with Mills work and I have to reference him each time I speak?
The whole concept is kind of ridiculous. Everyone steals everyone elses ideas. It reminds me of the music world where everyone steals everyone elses work. The plagarism part comes when the music is similar enough to be considered the same work. There's also a minimum number of notes you have to have for a work to be copyrightable. What you're talking about is gross plagarism and perhaps stealing entire concepts. It's also something that mostly applies to acadamia where people care about that sort of thing. The whole argument just begs the question how original is anyones work? Ideas don't come out of a vacuum, they come from other ideas.
AccountKiller
"You can't prove plagiarism scientifically. You can only prove it in the sense that other people agree with you."
The very definition of modern day Morality.
Ethics however disagree's with you.
Try this: You have written a paper on the propagation of sound waves in 10W30 oil.
Someone copies it not only without attribution, but claims it as his own.
Is this plagiarism? By your definition, if the majority say it isn't, then you're screwed with no recourse. Now what does that do to your "incentive" to produce more papers on the propagation of sound waves in 10W30 oil.
-- James Fenimore Cooper
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.
discusses this in "Criticism". Although this concept was not the point of his article, it is still applicable.
c .h tml
http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/criticis/to
(first few lines)
Be sure to avoid most of the books in the bookstore; it has been said that there are only 20 plots in existence....
It's just a place where people post links and comment on them. No different from MetaFilter....
bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers."
And this is different from the traditional media HOW???
the slashdot effort
In a society where small communities are nonexistent, I think blogs are filling a void. That void is a result of the changing world; before there were cars, globalization, et. al., we used to live in very close-knit societies where everyone knew everyone else, as well as everyone else's business.
Such an understanding is also important to marketers, who hope to be able to pitch products and ideas directly to the most influential people in a given group.
Note that this also means that FUD can be spread in the same way. Suppose you want to do a pump-and-dump scheme. If you can deceive an influential blogger or two, then you've gained yourself a lot of ground for a relatively small amount of effort.
Knowing who the most influential individuals are for a particular topic is extremely valuable for both good and bad information!
Is the original idea still there? Yes! So don't call it stealing.
-I am an elective eunuch.
I spoke with Lada Adamic Wednesday, and she gave a talk on this and several other of her research directions. They are not out to determine whether people plagiarize. They are interested in information flow within complex networks. That is to say, if I want to find good information, where should I look? The typical answer has been "those who agglomerate".
It is no surprise to the HP group or anyone that some information sources are simply aggregating agents. But if your area of research is information flow in complex networks, this type of study contains many insights. For example, a common question is "what information nodes are important?". This study seeks to look beyond the naive answer "high-degree nodes" and attribute some importance, in an informational sense, to lower-degree nodes that act as sources for the network.
The iRank scheme mentioned several times in the article, which I read, demonstrates this thrust. A scheme like PageRank will almost always rank most highly the aggregates, because they are highest-degree in terms of backlinks. But who is to say that such a ranking is optimal? If you care about quickly scanning much information, it probably is. But if you care about seeking more detailed or perhaps more well-informed sources of information on a topic, iRank may well be a closer-to-optimal scheme.
The comments regarding this story have been a straw man excercise if i've ever seen one on Slashdot. HP doesn't spend its research money to find out that some information sources gather information from many others and distribute it widely. It does spend its money to find out more about how complex networks operate and how the flow of information can be analyzed and exploited to improve query responses in those networks.
It's so much more attractive / inside the moral kiosk.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
-Albert Einstein.
Just one typical example: After finishing a grad thesis, then going to a conference to give a lecture, I sat through an excruciating keynote that preceeded my presentation. Not that it was boring or bad, it just stated some of my core themes, and came to conclusions that, when I was writing, I thought were rare, if not unique. I distinctly remember my supervisor sitting two rows in front of me turning around to give me the ol' raised eyebrows look, as if to say, "did you plagiarize her?" and me shrugging deflatedly.
[aside: the conference in question was "The Tuning of the World" and the keynote was "Silence and the Notion of the Commons" by Ursula Franklin. While I was honoured to be in illustrious company, I felt badly upstaged.]
Damn those pesky terrorists
I don't do it on my blog, but I hear that a popular way for bloggers to pretend to be in the know is to use the Technorati Current Events list to find things to post about. Then they pretend as though they found it themselves or an insider on the event emailed them the link.
...I'm hitting in academia is, indeed, that "it's all been done before". The number of times that I've run across a paper from 1997 a week after coming up with some incredible idea, and finding that it's done it, but better, in amazing.
The thing about academia, of course, is that you have to make an original contribution...
Perhaps you would enjoy this.... Why your Movable Type blog must die.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Insight.
Here I have to disagree. This implies that good is what is easily repeated, i.e. good ideas and powerful ideas are synonymous. Sometimes the minority is right. Often the weak are correct. You cannot expect the truth to always be the stronger.
That's not to say that echoing isn't valuable, just that good and bad originality are not determined by it.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
e.
Seriously, go read up on some recent studies and developments. Memes are scientific in the same way a catchy musical hook is, they do affect brain patterns and chemical concentrations. Knowing that we can figure out why and then to satisfy you come to a point where falsification is possible.
...to the one who come up with it.
So it is indeed theft.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Which is, of course, what this is always about. Those who most fear being scorned are the ones who most often scorn and laugh at others.
As such, I find that many of the bits of popular 'science' which are used to marginalize people tend to themselves be grounded on flakiness.
Yes, as with any group of people, a percentage of Bloggers are going to be air-heads. 90% crap rules, and all. . . But the idea of citizens discussing important subjects without censorship in public forum is bad. . , how exactly?
I measure the degree of underlying social importance a subject bears by the degree of ridicule it receives from the media.
-FL
Perhaps it happens more in some than others.
-I am an elective eunuch.
There is NO SUCH THING as a scientific proof. science works like this. problem--> hypothesis--> data. if data support hypothesis, do not throw out. If data shows hypothesis is wrong, throw it out. When something hasn't been thrown out for a while, it becomes a theory, though it can still be edited modified or thrown out if something better comes along. There are no Proven scientific anythings.
You're just liek me! You use MT and think you're a real writer but just have verbal diarrhea and can't shut your emo e/n spewing trap up!
At least you can spot one from miles away.
When reading this, I was reminded of a fitting comic I had read some time back
I was thinking of converting to paganism, but where the hell can you find sacrificial virgins these days?
The reason that so many bloggers frequently hop onboard the bandwagon of ideas, is that so many of them frequently think similarly, and evaluate as favorable, similar ideas. There is nothing "wrong" with this in any way such that we would say it is "wrong" in other situations.
The stereotypical blogger is a early to mid 20-something, technically inclined, college student or college graduate, and compared to mainstream america is radically liberal in his, her, or its politics.
Of course they associate themselves with similar expressions of ideas! They do so because they evaluate the merit of this ideas similarly.
I happen to disagree with "them" tremendously. I despise middle-class, pseudo-intellectual elitists. So many of them have yet to move beyond the stage of intellectual development we might describe as, "my self identity is that I am not like my parents, not a product of a tradition, and different then the 'mainstream.'" Yes, that may be well and good, but it is pitiful that these people fail to move past the stage of intellectual development of a whiny, rebelious teenager.
But nonetheless, I don't see why we should possibly think it is "wrong" to express association to similar ideas in a community of agreement. That's what makes a community after all!
You start by taking an interesting looking (or sounding) idea. Then you try to internalize it. Then you try to restate it. If you can get past the incoherent mumbling stage, then you might throw it out there for other people to criticize. If it works out, then you might adopt it into your own personal philosphy and try to build from there.
Nothing new here, people. Move along. WAIT! NO! I mean stop and look and criticize!
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
What is the point of blogs though? I thought they were to convey some sense of individuality on the old interweb. Instead, in everyone's rush to be some kind of blog king, blogs are forcing people think and express themselves in the same way. Stealing someone's ideas means you can't or don't come up with your own.
Giving into the "nothing new under the sun" just means that if there is, it won't be from you.
moo.
Showing that ideas are "stolen" (what a loaded word) from blog to blog only shows the information-spreading power of the autonomous-agent-based and amorphous blog network.
Not everyone has time to read every blog. Not everyone even has time to pore over the entire AP/UPI/Reuters/Knight-Ridder feeds to pull out the stories that interest them.
No, not even blog editors.
If you were building an autonomous news-spreading network where you would create custom portals for each possible refinement of interest, it would be a standardization of what blogspace looks like right now. (It wouldn't make sense to call it "blogspace" if it wasn't an information transfer network, now would it?) You'd promote the formation of news-collecting agents that filter news towards certain prominent/popular interest areas, and then you'd promote the creation of more refined agents that took from a selection of those existing agents to create their own refined information collections.
Woohoo! Instant, decentralized (sort of), distributed information network! Better than any Old Media company has been able to implement from their linear, print-based or property-minded ways!
Just leave these things to the geeks, and keep your marketing, copyright, and decency nonsense out of it. Content is king, and blogs are nothing without content.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
TechTV's The Screen Savers just ran the story about how blogs spread stories that other more popular blogs and news sources without crediting the intermediairy source who they saw it first on. No credit was given to Slashdot in Sarah Lane's report.
...doesn't mean that they are stealing ideas from each other. There's plenty of mediocrity to go around.
BlogDex works by looking at popular topics across lots of blogs.
My server
For a really torching critique of how stupid and limiting this idea really is, see Mary Midgley's famous essay from 1979, here.
Answering the point that "A cultural trait may have evolved in the way that it has, simply because it is advantageous to itself... Once the genes have provided their survival machines with brains that are capable of rapid imitation, the memes will automatically take over."
Midgley writes -
So "mimetics" basically assumes we're Borg'd robots and all other studies of how ideas are valued, evaluated or accepted should be thrown out of the window.No wonder people find the idea creepy.
She elaborated on this in her chapter in Alas Poor Darwin [link] where she described it as "...an entirely understandable move in view of the success of similar methods in the physical sciences... The trouble is that thought and culture are not the sorts of thing that can distinct units at all.... Information is not a third kind of stuff."
She's pretty much on the money. Meme-advocates are dazzled by patterns, but the approach is so philosophically narrow the answers don't have any context, and so no value. Why do you run Linux, BSD or Mac OS X? Don't even bother answering, your operating system chose you... :-/
What is it with you slashdotters always criticizing us poor slashdotters? Don't you realize that you slashdotters are no better than us slashdotters? You slashdotters really make me mad.
The important result of this research, and almost everyone else on /. seems to be missing it, is that the plagarism is routinely being committed by the big bloggers against little bloggers. It's as if the next version of the World Book Encyclopedia's articles were verbatim copies of sixth-graders research papers.
I guess we should have guessed that these titans of the blogosphere get just too many good links for them to be discovering them legitimately, but it's sad how many eyeballs these guys get without any attribution. I always had a bad feeling about the people who run popular blogs...
And I was skeptical about that theory about those monkeys on typewriters.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Insightful indeed.
"Physicality==stealing"[1]
Isn't true. I could very well steal your identity and hence your reputation, and totally trash both.
The fact that your sitting at home with your physical original would be irrelevent to satisfying the definition of loss. Don't belive me? Provide your SSN# and we'll see.
[1] Theft would apply more here than stealing (and yes there's a difference)
I'm not too faimiar with the whole "blog" thing. (I'm too old ?) But it seems to me that there is an interesting gullibility that people have developmed towards written content and especially towards content posted by "reputable sources." People will "learn" from what they read. Even if what they learn is wrong. The best example I have is ralated to the situation above, where two textbooks, written by two different people during two different eras contain an identical (HUGE, easily shown, but not immediately visible) flaw in the logic of a given proof. (It is obvious that the latter author used the older auhor's text as a learning reference.)
Other good examples are jounal and conference papers, which very often contain references back to papers, the content of which is not relevant to the material in which it was cited. An author sees a paper referenced in an explanation of "A," and then references the same paper in his/her explanation of "A" without verifying that the reference was legit. The authors simply believes that the credible source (other author) is correct, and then "spreads the word." What's even more supriseing is how infrequently the peer review process misses this.
Recursion (noun)
See Recursion
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
hopefully the meta-mod knows how to set to FLAT,No threading,oldest. if you're too lazy to actually look around before negative modding, you probably should be focusing on funny/postive modding instead. i.e. i don't believe anyone commented on the actual article vs the poster's spin (which expands upon the article's).
All your preview button are belong to Hello Kitty.
Patents do not hide the idea, though; they merely identify it as your idea and allow you to decide how it is duplicated, exploited, etc. People may still use and expand upon a patented procedure, process, etc.