Slashdot Mirror
Webby Award 2004 Winners Announced
ivar writes "Over at the official site, the 2004 Webby Award Winners have been announced. There were a few surprises given the last publicly viewable rankings - I guess they keep the last few days in secrecy for a reason." The press release announcing the winners has more detail, noting: "Reflecting the egalitarian spirit of the internet, winners ranged from Wikipedia.org (Best Community), a free, community-built encyclopedia, to the official site for the Oscar-winning documentary The Fog of War (Best Film), to web powerhouses like Google (Best Practices and Best Services)."
And the most coveted award: the best non-entrant, banned for copyright abuse and hot-linking iconsurf.com.
There's nothing worse for the web than Flash. Can't be bookmarked, needs a plugin, version dependent, source can't be studied, and the W3C has no control over it.
Valid XHTML 1.1 and CSS are the way to go, no matter who or what's writing it.
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
The 2004 Webby Award Winners have been announced.
I don't understand. Wikipedia and Google are cool and everything... but what about Slashdot??
Probably the best community page on Wikipedia to get to know people in the community is Wikipedia:Wikipdians. It's a listing of all the differnet indices of Wikipedians. (I personally started Wikipedians by age and the Facebook)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I thought the Webby's were made irrelevant back at the end of the 90s. With so many web sites and services, this award has no meaning what-so-ever. Oh well, I guess some things don't know when they're dead.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I know it's their right as a private company to accept any advertising they choose, but I would have thought Googles anti-gun policies would have precluded them from such an award.
The BBC also have an article about this, predictably considering they also won three awards. They won best news, sports and educational coverage, which really does show how great a resource they are.
If you don't yet know what that is, head there now to see for yourself. You're doing yourself a disservice by not looking :-)
While you're there make sure to contribute to the topics which are marked red (no explanation yet). That way the great service will become even better and we can all benefit from it.
I know of several schools in my country which instruct their students to go look for information there (in case the student knows english, not our native). I suppose it will only get better since academic institutions are beginning to refer to it.
"Intellectual Property" should be an affront to anyone capable of independent thought.
That's not the word I would have picked.
The best part about having almost the entire user base dependent on you, is that you can do what ever the hell you want to, and there isn't much any one can do. Just look at how Microsoft's TCP/IP stacks behave.
404
And here we go again - I post the reason why I *don't* think Google should have won an award, & it's a troll.
Is it just me, or do people on this site mod down posts with which they disagree, rather than debating?
Wikipedia (and affiliates) should be on that list because the interface is clean. It's easy to get around and go off on tangent while searching something. It's open...and it's educational. I learned a lot of cool facts.
Like where the " All your base are belong to us " come from. And yes, ive just proved that I am not worthy of reading Slashdot because I didn't know wtf that came from.MY SECRET DIARIES
The Webby award site has dumbass javascript pop-up windows that link to the award winning web sites. Way to go people... take an award-winning web site and cram it into a 1/4 size pop-up for all the world to appreciate.
Sorry to see Groklaw not on the list, especially in the law group. I've learned more about the law in the last year from that site than I learned anywhere else...by far. It is also an example of a true community site that formed by self-selection. People just flocked to the site and made it what it became. The power of many-eyes in action, this time to discuss legal cases that could greatly impact our tech lives.
nEVER qUESTION tHE cOLLECTIVE! yOU wILL bE sLASHIMILATED!
Especially when the entire Slashdot crowd seems hell-bent on moderating any pro-gun or anti-Google post into obliteration. :-(
/. submission about anti-RKBA bias amongst geek media outlets, but there's no way the cabal would run it :-)
I'd write a
I know that Flash is not popular here on Slashdot. No flamebait or trolling intended, but you gotta realize we are no longer in the world of lynx. You may still use it, I may still use it on occasion (just like you and I may still use vi or emacs), but the general public wants multimedia content. While it is true that Flash requires a plugin, so do many other things (such as java on mozilla). The necessity of a plugin does not make something inherently bad (IMO).
Flash allows for cross-browser, cross-platform web development. If I create a Flash animation I do not have to worry about how it will appear on Mac/Linux/Windows/Netscape/Mozilla/IE/Opera. It will be consistent across all platforms. The same cannot be said for HTML and CSS. Even though standards have been set, rendering software does not always abide by those standards (mainly this only applies to MS).
Long story short, and I know it's slightly OT, I think Flash is a great way to present good looking multimedia content with a (relatively) small footprint. What does bother me are websites that do flash-only, or use flash unnecessarily. You should not design an ENTIRE site in flash, and if you do you should at least provide a non-flash site for your users.
Just my $.02
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
I nominated www.thehun.net and I dont see it as a winner. This contest was rigged. We all know they get 10x as many hits as slashdot. ;)
As it is currently inaccessible, possibly due to webby-driven traffic. Oh, the irony.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It used to be that winning a Webby ment your website wouldn't be around for the next year (they had this great knack at picking websites that were on the verge of shutting down).
This year: Google wins two categories. I'm frightened.
I read the internet for the articles.
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
I'm probably being trolled here, but I'll bite: given that human rights are meaningless without the means to defend oneself against human rights violators (from muggers to Government employees) - how can you support free speech, freedom of religion etc. without supporting RKBA (Right to Keep & Bear Arms)?
And in case you're wondering, I'm not American, I'm a New Zealander. Not all RKBA supporters are American.
I LOVE Wikipedia, but I find myself staying away from it due to the tangents that the parent post mentions. Maybe it is my adult ADD (ha), but I can't keep focused when I am there. I start by looking something up about Alan Turing and then all of a sudden I am reading about the Republic of China (yes, this topic is ~5 jumps from the page on Alan Turing). It kind of reminds me of Everything2.com... i just wish I could keep myself more focused!
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
I signed up for the 'Webby' nominations last year, and got a reasonable number of emails from them (not all-out spam, but maybe 6-7).
Maybe it's just me, but the whole tone of the thing leaves me with the impression that the Webby folks have an extraordinarily high (but unfounded) opinion of themselves. Reading the mails they sent, I was transported back in time to the mid-1990s, when The New Economy was going to leave the brick-and-mortar dinosaurs choking on comet dust.
I think we may have found the last few dozen people who haven't woken up from the Internet Bubble.
Is it just me, or do people on this site mod down posts with which they disagree, rather than debating?
New to Slashdot, I see...
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Heh - no, just new to having my posts modded into oblivion because I'm right ;-)
:-(
Seriously, this is the same kind of thing that pissed me off about the K5 submission queue - people who couldn't be bothered to debate an issue, but instead voted '-1' to any stories with which they disagreed
I'm probably being trolled here, but I'll bite: given that human rights are meaningless without the means to defend oneself against human rights violators (from muggers to Government employees) - how can you support free speech, freedom of religion etc. without supporting RKBA (Right to Keep & Bear Arms)?
We've all seen how well arming yourself works against human rights violations at the hands of the gov't. Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Medina, North Dakota. Years ago (and for years) I was with you all the way. But this isn't the wild west here anymore, and I don't believe it's helping society to consider gun ownership a right. Clearly the guns aren't protecting anyone from the government anymore, and maybe if we didn't allow every bozo to have them there'd be less killing on the streets.
Oh, and I have no idea why most RKBA supporters are American. I'm an American and I recognize that most of the pointless gun violence occurs here.
Suggested moderation: -1 Offtopic
Flash has its good points, you are right. The main problem is the accessibility of it, and the disgusting trend of providing no non-flash alternative, or simply providing a message saying "Sorry, this site requires Flash. Bugger off." This is pretty much like telling everyone who can't see the pretty pictures, for whatever reason, that they are not wanted.
Regardless, as long as there's no content expressed solely in Flash, and as long as it is used effectively it's OK. As a dialup user, it pisses me off, but that's not the designer's problem.
Sorry, looking over this it's actually a bit of a mindless me-too post, but I just wanted to stress the importance of alternatives to animation (and images and imagemaps, for that matter). I guess you could call me an accesibility zealot, but I think the web needs more of those.
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Hey,
disallowing gun advertising is a GOOD thing.
Please wake up.
Try posting anything that isn't 1000% positive about apple, they go insane. I posted something last night and they mod bombed posts I made years ago so much that I was unable to post for abou 12-18 hours. Even the antigun people aren't that bad (yes, I have ran into them also)
I was initially disappointed to see live365 as a people's voice winner. I remember them trying to foist proprietary plugins and poor javascript in bad popup browser windows as a control panel.
... and try to sell you 'PC Booster - Boost PC Speed and stability!"
... bleah.
That was a few years ago. It looks like they've cleaned themselves up quite a lot, and they even correctly detect and identify a linux/konqueror3 setup
Oh, and the crappy popups are still there, and badly mangled html stream control stuff
Truly, i will admit that they have a ton of stations to listen to, if i feel like taking the time to parse the URIs an get the real address of the stream.
Appears to be the same old crap.
You have got to be kidding me. They make Fox look a paragon of unbiased reporting!
Interesting argument - yes, guns are less effective nowadays against Government violations because of the size, funding levels, & armaments of the Government agencies.
However, all the evidence suggests that guns are excellent tools of self-defense against private criminals - see Gun Facts for the proof.
No one is dusputing anyones right to 'RKBA'. That doesn't mean google or anyone has to advertise for gun companies.
Flash animations are ok but sites built entirely out of flash are crap. Yea they look nice but you cant copy and paste anything interesting they're slow to loa and they slow down your computer.
WTF? That's insane! How do the editors expect any reasoned debate in that case? :-(
Absolutely - it is Googles right to refuse whatever advertising they choose. The only appropriate response from those who disagree is to raise awareness, stop supporting them, and possibly organise a boycott.
I'm a Libertarian - hence I'm *not* advocating Google be forced to accept advertising they don't want, even if I'd rather they did.
The Onion has essentially been doing the same joke for years now. They're certainly one of the funnier sites on the Web these days, but I for one found both Modern Humorist and Red vs. Blue more funny and innovative. I can see it winning People's Voice, but I'm surprised that the Webby awarders didn't spice things up a little.
"I would give my right hand to be ambidextrous."
In what way is it a good thing? Because guns are effective defense against mugging & stranger rape? Because target shooting is a fun, safe, family activity?
Carstuckgirls????
WTF is the web coming to???
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Look around the united states today and ask yourself that question again. Yeah yeah, guns don't kill people, people do. But, people with guns kill more people than people without guns.
I suppose your argument would be that if everyone had a gun there would be no mugging, no rape.. Somehow, I don't quite believe it.
The U.S.A. has a problem with violence - that's actually where I agree with Michael Moore. However, a gun is your best protection against such violence - especially if you're a woman. See Gun Facts for details.
Dude, just because it's pre-installed on other OSs doesn't mean they're not using plugins for Java.
Every single Flash app is re-inventing the wheel. Unlike HTML, there are no common Flash widgets (or at least none that I've seen in various places). The usability is shot to hell. Users can't apply their own styles. Can I even cut and paste text from a Flash app? Most don't let me.
Flash does have it's place. The Washington Post and NY Times often have nice Flash side-bars that can make an electoral map or poll results come alive. But in general, I don't think Flash enhances the web experience.
IMO, it's self-perpetuating. More guns, more violence, more guns, etc. A scared single mother shooting a drunk teenager that walks across her lawn at night. There's too much fear and misunderstanding around in todays age for guns to be an option
Because guns are effective at launching high velocity globs of metal into its owner, after a rapist confiscates it and has their way with them?
No comment on the safe family activity bit...
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Yeah, because if people don't see ads for guns, they won't know where to buy them or even that they can buy them! This is about text ads for gun stores, not full page magazine spots showing how cool it is to blow people away.
Who needs to wake up here?
But the stats don't support that opinion - or at least, the stats that I've seen don't. Check out Gun Facts, & my article Firearms And Self Defense.
If you have any stats that suggest otherwise, I'd be keen to see them. So far no-one on K5 has been able to produce any.What's wrong with non-lethals? I.e., tasers (which, granted, are still dangerous if you have a low body mass, like myself) or mace? Frankly, I don't care if an attacker is killed or wounded - I want to survive. If I can mace an attacker, and get away long enough to call the police, get to a car, get somewhere safe, etc., that's good enough. If the guy gets caught, so much the better - but that's just a bonus.
Just FYI, I am not a woman - but I am, for other reasons, very vulnerable to muggers. Yet I do not wish to risk carrying a lethal weapon that could kill someone, or be wrestled out of my hands by an attacker. Besides which, I do not have the manual dexterity to fire a gun, or even hold it steady.
Guns are the most effective form of defense against stranger rape.
Again, if you have any evidence to support your claims, post away. I've posted mine elsewhere in this thread, & so far, no-one's challenged them, only spouted IMHO-disclaimered opinions.
has had some relatively balanced articles by Al-Jazeera on it.
I thought we talked about the internet here, you know
I hate to reply to myself, but I just had an example that made sense:
the Arab world is not the only group pissed that Bush said Rumsfeld was doing "a superb job".
And even if I thought Rumsfeld was doing a superb job, how the hell is he "courageous"? Even if he's a good leader, he's not risking his life or health in any significant way (terrorist attack, perhaps. But what are the odds?).
Look around Canada today and ask yourself that question again. The crime and murder rates are independant of gun ownership rates.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
I dunno, Ghandi and MLK seemed to do a very good job without them. In fact, I seem to remember they defeated those who had the guns.
Amazing! But true! If only certain other leaders *cough* Arafat *cough* were brave enough to lead their people in the same way.
I, incidentally, own a 12-gauge shotgun and go trapshooting on a regular basis. It's lots of fun. Mace simply doesn't knock those clays down as well as good old lead BBs.
This seemed puzzling, until I looked at the FireSomething extension settings (which, if you aren't aware, randomizes FireFox's name) and found that my browser was currently known as "l77tspider" and reporting this information in the agent string, thus the spider-spotting! I removed 'spider' from the list of options and instantly no problems...
On a very /. side note, there is an option which allows you to provide a default name to report in case of difficulty, the standard one reads "All your Mozilla FireFox are belong to us". I changed it to "In Soviet Russia, Mozilla FireFox browses you!". I thought that was a little more up to date.
On a more relevant topic, I browsed most of the winning sites (or do so already) with Mozilla Vermiciousknid 0.8 and found no problems of that nature, not even a "best viewed in" logo or even a fscking stupid resolution recommendation. IMHO they should have won just for that!
Cheers,
Duncan
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Might I point out that Lord Kenneth is a known miscreant who has pulled a number of stunts like this. Keep that in mind when evaluating the worth of his criticisms.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
dude, you're from new zealand, one of the most peaceful countries in the world. low crime rate, low violent crime rate, no nukes, no wars.
cities in america such as new york and washington have amongst the HIGHEST rates of gun murders and assaults in the world.
america is riddled with guns and riddled with gun violence. new zealand is NOT riddled with guns and, coincidentally, NOT riddled with gun violence. hmmm..
look at the school shootings in the US. kids carrying guns to school, guns they have often sourced from their own homes, ie; guns that were intended for self-defence as you describe.
do you really think you'd hold the same view if that was your reality?
am i missing something, or does it seem that this doesnt deserve an award?
http://art.teleportacia.org/exhibition/GRAVITY/
peoples voice winner under the net art category. wtf is this site supposed to be/do?! its a stupid rocket ship. a bad one at that.
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
Yes. Consider Canada, which has comparable firearm ownership rates to the USA, & practically none of the violence. It's a violence problem, not a gun problem.
A quick look at the political and activist webby winners indicates to me that the majority of them are left-leaning. Is this a coincidence?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There weren't any "surprises given the last publicly viewable rankings". There are two sets of awards given out: the Webby award and the People's choice award. The former is decided by the academy and the latter by popular vote. The publicly viewable rankings are for the People's choice award. The nominated websites usually advertise it on their front page and get their readers to spam the people's choice vote, reducing it to a most-visited-site contest. Therefore, IMNSHO, the people's choice award is not very meaningful. For the Webby award itself there is no indication of who the winners are going to be before the final announcement.
if that's the case, i guess they don't always strictly go hand in hand. however, the fact remains, it would have been a lot harder for those school kids to get those guns if they weren't in their own home. and further, if gun ownership wasn't so accepted and common place, it may not have even been an option those kids considered quite so readily in the first place.
Untrue - again, if guns are the problem, why do we not see this in Canada? IMO Michael Moore was right that many parts of the USA have a problem with violence. I disagree that it is due to, or related to, the prevalence of firearms however.
Hey, Taco, I see you found the "post anonymously" option.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The local pizza delivery co has a 100% flash site. It takes orders and everything - very slick. However, it was developed with Flash 7 and the latest plugin for Linux is 6.0.81.0. When I click my location on the map, the web browser segfaults.
This illustrates the problem. Flash makes you dependant on one company for your display software. When they don't keep up the support, you get locked out. Hell is only flash site I actually would use regularly and it doesn't work for me. So much for cross platform.
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
... or more accurately, I don't see a preponderence of anti - gun sentiment, or anti self defense. On the contrary, I think on most geek/tech places I have seen, including slashdot, a libertarian philosophy seems to be of above the average "norm" of sorts, and pro gun, pro self defense, pro second amendment is quite well represented. Like, I've never felt any sort of overt huge anti-bias here whenever the discussion revolved around guns or self defense, and have contributed several times to such discussions and it's been mostly well received. A few exceptions, but that's to be expected with a forum of this size*.
Of course,to be fair, it is offset by geography, I've noticed that places that have "more" private gun ownership tend to more or less support it more, as opposed to nations and posters there-from, who's respective countries disallow or severely restrict private gun ownership. That shows that most likely it's also a learned cultural thing, and also, if it is illegal in some posters nation,and depending on the nation, they might not want to post pro gun ownership thoughts, for some obvious reasons....
It's hard to be "pro" freedom, and be "anti" effective self defense or be anti "tools", which when you get down to it, is all a firearm is, a tool. Geeks usually value freedom, the right to chose, and the right to use tools of choice.
*side issue but it's interesting, and I've wondered before but never found out.. I wonder-does anyone know-what IS the largest active forum on the web? Is this it?
gunfacts.info is run by the NRA you week minded creeton.
you might be interested in this.
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
Mohandas Gandi
Firstly, it's spelled 'cretin' - your gruesome mis-pronunciation of the word is the likely cause of your gruesome mis-spelling of same.
Secondly, so what? If you can disprove their assertions, go ahead. So far, no-one, either here or on K5, has been able to produce stats contradicting theirs.
because I'm right
:)
What exactly do you think you are right about? Google won an award for building the world's most useful website. This fact is completely independent of the fact that they refuse to take ad money from gun makers. Why should something so irrelevant as their ad choices determine whether or not they are eligible for a Webby?
In short, you have failed to consider the possibility that you were modded troll because your post was a troll. i.e., you used a completely unrelated news item to shout about some random pet peeve of yours. That's a troll, isn't it? If not, it's at least off-topic.
Anyway, it's moot now, since your post is now at +5. Congrats on successfully gaming the system...
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Sorry, where did you get that NZ was 'NOT riddled with guns'? NZ has laws almost as liberal (as in free, as in you can own what you want) as the US. Indeed, full auto and so on is a lot cheaper because of the lack of import bans. I can't find any links that list the laws, but for proof look here: http://www.imas.co.nz/
from muggers to Government employees
A mugger will have a cap in yo' ass before you even get your "weapon" out of your jacket.
As for the Government employees bit - what are you going to do; shoot the tax man or something?
Guns in private hands, other than in carefully regulated and supervised shooting ranges, are a bloody idiotic idea.
If /. had won for some category, the net result would have probably ended up with there being /. shirts at Target (or at least Electronics Boutique), and the vast majority of current readers never coming back again....
/. is incomparable. I'm more than content to while away hours of time here, with or without recognition of that fact.
We don't need to see a Webby to know
Of blankness, I know nothing.
Just about every site listed had a tilt to the left.
It's about as egalitarian as Pravda in the old days.
Nice to know that some things never really change.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Fair enough - how would you propose to make armed *criminals* stay away from you, if you yourself are unarmed?
Would you consider it irrelevant if they refused paid ads from Jews, Blacks, or Homosexuals? I submit that you only consider it irrelevant because you don't consider the right to keep & bear arms just that - a right.
PLEASE! STOP RIGHT THERE! THAT'S THE POINT!
There is no need for animations on the web. MAYBE for scientific research, or medical use, but most of that could be done with trusty animated gifs or for real research a video clip.
Flash is used by 99.99999% of web sites because it CAN and because it look cool, not because it SHOULD. ANyone with a modicum of UI know-how and study knows how much of a shitty job most websites do with the basics, simple navigation with tabs and buttons. Give someone who is bad at using buttons to design a UI some Flash and all goes to hell. Oh, and not everyone uses Lynx any more, but that doesn't mean we are all on the web using IE 6.069 on a 3.2ghz Dell. My trusty Treo 600 can handle all the nice sites, including the normal versions of Slashdot and TheRegister. That's what standard complient code like HTML, XML, CSS will do.
An analogy to flash would be, well, really large anal-plugs are good at stretching an ass. doesn't mean I should put one up my ass every time I browse the web. See, that's what Flash animations are like.
Care to post some, *any*, evidence to support your claims? I've posted plenty to support mine elsewhere in this thread.
Stuff Slashdot...how about the best page in the universe? [www.maddox.xmission.com]
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Being an Australian *looks at New Zealander* I find it funny when criminals that can't get their hands on guns get whacked with a cricket bat whilst attempting to rob a petrol station. This ofcourse leads to a failed robbery.
We do have the problem of robbery with a deadly syringe though still a cricket bat has a longer reach. Though I wonder, what bring a person to think they need a gun to protect themselves? what have they done personally to have to worry about this? Or why do they suffer from so much paranoia?
I'm sure Ghandi made his comment because india lost the power to fight back against an invading force. A democratic government is not an invading force, you do have a say you know.
i would agree, we don't see this in canada (or nz, i've since learned they have quite a high % of gun ownership) because the USA has a fundamental problem of violence (ie; guns don't kill people, people kill do).
however, as in my example above, the problem is accentuated by the fact that guns have in some cases been accessible to children, which is a result of people having guns in their homes.
if the guns weren't available, then they would not have been an option in those cases.
and less flash would be helpful. You could use the <em> or <strong> tags instead of SHOUTING, and the <p> tag to create paragraphs.
Raku-something or other.
Sure it's flash. It loaded pretty quick.
BUT I CAN'T DO ANYTHING WITH IT. What the hell? it's intensionally obtuse, it tells me nothing about the person except he or she is a pretty good flash artist.
But pretty styleless, and an utter waste of bandwidth. It's not even remotely interesting.
Whatever.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Less guns in the community = less gun deaths in the community. And if anyone is desperate enough to want to threaten to kill me for my stuff, then they are welcome to it. They obviously need it more than me.
Many posters claim that LordK3nn3th is a kook. They claim that he believes that he and only he is right, and that any "controversy" is really people who are wrong disagreeing with him.
There is, of course, the trollish revision he made to a certain wiki page before being driven away, but reasonable minds might differ about his alleged objections.
Some think that a reasonable person might be able to take all the facts into account, were they presented for them fairly, and make up their own minds. Others believe that, since there can only be one true set of facts (something no one disputes), the oppinion they believe most consistant with those facts should be presented to the exclusion of all others.
Whereas one might contrast on a page the claim that the world is flat with some of the high-quality NASA photos, the other might well post "The world is ROUND, you cretin!"
Moreover, the fact remains, that instead of handling these things in a constructive manner, LK resorted to trolling, rather than resolve such debates peacably, so whether he will ever consider other ways of approaching differing views remains to be seen.
Sadly this is the end result of the mailing list system and also of the concept of a "banned user" (whatever that is, since they always come back).
A recent user (whose name should not be pronounced any more, but who is not a banned user) recently gave as one of the reason for leaving the fact decisions were increasingly taken over irc discussions. The media of decision change, but the clique or cabal does not - although predictably the most determined advocates of cliques and social control (such as those damaging this article) fail to see they are in fact participating in such a system of social control.
IRC offers another canal of discussion which is interesting, and it may actually help in resolve some misunderstandings, but, more likely, it will simply cement those who spend a lot of time as being somehow more credible or "right".
However, it remains that the medium of discussion is not the same as the medium of presentation - the real power is not with those who contribute, not even who contribute the most or best, but with those who spend the most time influencing so-called authority, and trying to gain "infrastructure owners' trust" thereby.
The wrong idea of using another medium to make decisions, that not all users are empowered to use equally, and the wrong idea of "punishing" those who do not accept the power structure, both arise out of the idea of "community".
Neither concept makes for good editorial decisions, for example, often good articles are deleted out of process because of who wrote them, not because of what they say, and articles are "reverted" to being wrong, when they have been corrected. But both are absolutely necessary if there is to be a "community", and absolutely wrong if there is to be an "encyclopedia". The time has come to choose between the two:
The mailing list and other advocates of so-called "community" make rulership and ownership choices that are arguably contrary to the spirit of the GNU FDL - mostly the fault of mediawiki software which matches its terms imperfectly - should mediawiki actually be ditched? no doubt "the community" which includes its developers will argue it must not!
They don't even recognize community bias, or make any attempt to find a representative sample of themselves to actually represent the "users" - who are, amazingly, totally shut out in the unique Wikipedia concept of a "user community consisting only of those who speak up on specific pages by name."
The idea of "virtual community" is stupid, and probably evil - it is epistemic community masquerading as real community with sad and predictable social consequences: people unable to tell a political dispute from a bodily threat, people unable to conceive of political methods of dispute resolution that are not themselves based on invasion and war.
Plus the more pathetic consequences of people thinking they are making friends by typing, when they are really only making conspiracies and alliances to do things that do not matter all that much.
Darwikinism and a battlefield of ideas are more rational ways to run an encyclopedia, and can reward competence and a history of good edits, not whining, lying, and relationships with the bosses:
"The community", like any community, rewards all the wrong things - its social capital is built on pleasing and helping *friends*, NOT actually serving users.
The mailing list system favours those incompetent people who speak up there, over comp
And neither would the millions of uses of firearms for the protection of life & property annually in the USA. Furthermore, do you think gun control actually disarms criminals?
It came this far already... :-)
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Has your right to bear arms ever helped you to support free speech, freedom of religion etc. ?
Of course not.
Next you'll be whining that you're not allowed to own a thermonuclear bomb and can't support free speech, etc.
Your argument is flawed. You say people shouldn't have a right to bear arms, and NZ is not RIDDLED with guns. Well New Zealanders can buy guns, so the reason it is not RIDDLED with guns is because people don't want them, not because the law doesn't let them. And if you ban guns there are still many things to use as deadly weapons. Why not go ahead and ban hands, 'cause you know, they have the possibility to kill people.
Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
I take it you mean people insulting the allmighty Mozilla? :)
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
i'm afraid i still disagree.
firstly just to clarify, i'm saying people shouldn't be able to own guns for self defence - police, sports ownership, etc. is a different issue.
NZers can indeed own guns. however from what i've read, the criteria and rules of gun ownership is strict and i haven't read anywhere that you have the right to own a gun in NZ for the purpose of self defence (correct me if i'm wrong).
Even if that is wrong, take australia then as an example. tight gun control laws, no guns for self defence, only sports, professional, etc.
as previously discussed, violence in the society is the core issue, however widespread gun ownership can only make it worse.
in australia, yes criminals own guns but usually organised crime type criminals, because guns are hard to get. so therefore the argument of guns for self defence is a lot harder to justify, because guns are not as widespread.
i understand that violent crimes will still occur no matter what the level of gun control, however to quote your example, hands clearly have other uses besides killing people. a gun's sole purpose (in the context of this conversation) is to kill people.
You have put yourself in a kinky position, yes.
But if you hadn't given anyone with hands guns in the first place, the criminals you want to defend yourself against, may not have had guns now. And you wouldn't need yours.
People so coward that they will rather kill another human being, than taking a punch themselves, shows a good correlation between cowardness and bad ethics. That's my opinion at least.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
So much for web standards. I tried signing-up at Friendster.com using Mozilla 1.5/OSX 10.3 with cookies and javascript enabled but the site insisted I didn't have cookies enabled. The error message gave instructions for enabling cookies in MS Internet Explorer - no Mozilla, no Opera etc. I can only assume this is an IE-only website in which case I have to ask did any fuckwit actually test these sites with a full spectrum of platforms/browsers before dishing-out these "awards"?
You sir, are what is known on Usenet as a kook. You are getting all worked up about your one little issue, to the total exclusion of all else.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It's not perfect, but here in the UK the number of people who get away with gun crimes is relatively small compared to the number of fuck-ups there would be if everyone was armed and could shoot anyone they felt was attacking them.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Sadly this is the end result of the mailing list/IRC channel system and also of the concept of a "banned user" (whatever that is, since they always come back).
A recent user (whose name should not be pronounced any more, but who is not a banned user) recently gave as one of the reason for leaving the fact decisions were increasingly taken over irc discussions. The media of decision change, but the clique or cabal does not - although predictably the most determined advocates of cliques and social control (such as those damaging this article) fail to see they are in fact participating in such a system of social control.
IRC offers another canal of discussion which is interesting, and it may actually help in resolve some misunderstandings, but, more likely, it will simply cement those who spend a lot of time as being somehow more credible or "right".
However, it remains that the medium of discussion is not the same as the medium of presentation - the real power is not with those who contribute, not even who contribute the most or best, but with those who spend the most time influencing so-called authority, and trying to gain "infrastructure owners' trust" thereby.
The wrong idea of using another medium to make decisions, that not all users are empowered to use equally, and the wrong idea of "punishing" those who do not accept the power structure, both arise out of the idea of "community".
Neither concept makes for good editorial decisions, for example, often good articles are deleted out of process because of who wrote them, not because of what they say, and articles are "reverted" to being wrong, when they have been corrected. But both are absolutely necessary if there is to be a "community", and absolutely wrong if there is to be an "encyclopedia". The time has come to choose between the two:
The mailing list and other advocates of so-called "community" make rulership and ownership choices that are arguably contrary to the spirit of the GNU FDL - mostly the fault of mediawiki software which matches its terms imperfectly - should mediawiki actually be ditched? no doubt "the community" which includes its developers will argue it must not!
They don't even recognize community bias, or make any attempt to find a representative sample of themselves to actually represent the "users" - who are, amazingly, totally shut out in the unique Wikipedia concept of a "user community consisting only of those who speak up on specific pages by name."
The idea of "virtual community" is stupid, and probably evil - it is epistemic community masquerading as real community with sad and predictable social consequences: people unable to tell a political dispute from a bodily threat, people unable to conceive of political methods of dispute resolution that are not themselves based on invasion and war.
Plus the more pathetic consequences of people thinking they are making friends by typing, when they are really only making conspiracies and alliances to do things that do not matter all that much.
Darwikinism and a battlefield of ideas are more rational ways to run an encyclopedia, and can reward competence and a history of good edits, not whining, lying, and relationships with the bosses:
"The community", like any community, rewards all the wrong things - its social capital is built on pleasing and helping *friends*, NOT actually serving users.
The IRC
when is homestarrunner going to be recognized??????? COME ON PEOPLE!!!
I find it a little nasty that one of the humor finalists is a site which makes fun of people who can't speak english.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Suicidegirls: this is going to stir up the panties of a few conservatives. How did this get here?
When their first category is Activism, and the first listing is for Tolerance.org (read: tolerance for all things that "we" approve of), I have little interest in wading through all the other peecee crap that I am sure is to follow...
/.)
(mod- for right-wing posting on
Best Practices Nominee: BBC
/. together.
Uhh, you mean the organization that sexed-up the bogus allegations?
Oh, that's right, birds of a feather
Really, I see hundreds of great sites in a year. There are more great sites than I know what to do with. Picking *one*, one that is the top of the heap in a hugely broad category? What's the point?
Remember, there may be several thousand CDs released in a year, but there are millions of new websites. It just seems pointless and silly.
The truth lies somewhere in between
You mean... Foxzeera?
Ok. Forget it, the name sounds like a XUL-based open-source browser.
I can't view the webby page - my work version of net nanny (websense) dissallows the domain
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
This is a joke. Best practice because of lack of content? STUPID!
One should not be able to qualify for best practices if one doesn;t have to have any!
DUMB!
DC and NYC also have some of the most stringent gun control laws in the US, if not the most stringent. Could it be that all those well-intentioned laws are being simply disobeyed by criminals? Let me put on my shocked face...
I'm an old timey protester, started off with civil rights and the environment, then womens rights, then anti war and anti slavery-draft.
You get beat, gassed, arrested,, now they taser you, and they got microwave beam weapons coming, there exists sonic nausea indusing weapons, and other sorts of mass torture goodies to use on you, along with surveillance and tracking that is sophisticated enough you won't know it if it's used on you, no matter how leet you think you are. and that's just the grade B stuff they use against you, the grade a stuff is phony arrests, manufactured evidence, then crooked judges and incarceration.
Seen that, too. sucks.
And in some cases the goons and their mercenaries kill people, AND get away with it.
Think on that a bit....real hard, just think on that.
I have SEEN with my own eyeballs disgusting goon cops dressed as protesters STARTING violence at demos, I busted several of them myself, followed them because I smelt a rat with their actions, some doofuses we never saw before, then all of a sudden up front in the demo, whip out rocks,they bean some uniformed cop, get the charge-reaction, then they split and melted away. Too suspicious for me, followed them as covertly as I could. I then took it on myself to keep track of people stating violence, the rock throwers, etc, and followed them back after the riots started, they would sneak away, and go "check in" with their bosses/cop handlers way back a few blocks away. I saw this several times, it's a pattern with them.
I also know personally a few guys, some ex cops, some ex military, who either did this stuff, or they were approached in a recruitment effort to go be part of these teams. One guy I know had the smarts and bravery to say NO to them, he was a high ranking cop, the federal government tried to recruit him into an alphabet soup agency for the *express* purpose of infiltrating and being a violence - starter. He just said no thanks, but it freaked him out, being an honest guy and all. He really dislikes uncle sugar now, from that, and other things he saw over the years. And I know some military guys who, when they were younger and brainwashed -their words, not mine-- did much worse than what we are seeing coming out of iraq, both outside the country in other nations and INSIDE the US, where it is quite completely illegal. And I mean some ultra *nasty* stuff. And so on and so forth, I have accumulated *quite* the large amount of anecdotal over the years, being a political activist and researcher. the bottomline is, in around 75% of the cases of "9ncidents" out there, roughly speaking, it's some aspect of the government who pulled it of, then they blame someone lese for it. I'll include the OKC bombing attacks in that as well, that was government inside job. 9-11 I *think* was just they let it go down, they knew it was coming, they are using it as a reichstagg fire like event. My opinion might change on that though, given more evidence.
The bottom line is, the man is NOT impressed by any large scale non violent protest, they will NOT change one single iota of any heinous laws, questionable actions, or stop doing anything apparently illegal. It is almost a complete waste of time.
MLK and passive non violence. Yes, this was somewhat effective,BACK THEN, I will grant that,it was really only non violent for the protesters, on the other side they were as violent as they felt like. But there wasn't any significant change until after the goons shot him (yes, he was probably assassinated by government "contractors"), until after around 68 when it became apparent that all the returning black combat vets were not going to remain "passive", having been first screwed via institutionalised discrimination, THEN screwed by being poor and not having daddy get them out of the draft by buying them a cushy guard spot or being placed in some school with a 2S deferrment, to go fight some redakalus war for profit against other people of color. Starting in 67, then in 68, then into the early
Am I the only one surprised to see a fan fic site on the nominations list? Particularly this fan fiction site, which, if the stories I've heard are true, was created to give a home to an author who was kicked off of fanfiction.net for plagiarism. And not just plagiarism of some other fan fic author either. No, this girl, whose trilogy is immensely popular in the Harry Potter fan fic world, ripped off Pamela Dean and may also have stolen dialogue from Buffy. Is this the kind of thing we want representing online community, even in a nominations list?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I agree with not liking Flash as a navigational tool. I don't like sites designed around flash, and find it irritating that I hear beeping noises just by mouse-overing things, or that I can't bookmark specific pages.
However, I think many anti-Flash people go too far and dislike it entirely, while I do think it has its uses. It's currently the best format for vector-graphics animation with any degree of widespread support. If you want to make web animated comics, you use Flash. (You certainly shouldn't use MPEG or some other raster format.) It also has some uses for interactive manipulatable graphs and so on.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
No, it's not the general answer. The general answer is, as you say, severe laws against the *initiation* of violence - coupled with having some of the population armed for their own defense.
Again, check out the article on my homepage, & how the entire female population of a town benefited from the fact that some of them were armed, and that that fact was public knowledge.
IT must bother you when you can't copy the hard work other people have done. You free software zealots would change your tune if daddy took away your credit card and you couldn't keep buying CowboyNeal RealDolls. Get a real job and get a freaking grip. Lonely-nerd-created-software ("OSS") is going to be punched in the face and slammed into a locker of obscurity just like you were in junior high. Go pop some zits and read a blog, you live journal maggot.
The problem with violence in America has nothing to do with guns. It has everything to do with several generations of American children being given "choices" during their formative years, instead of discipline. Nothing is a child or teen's fault; malicious or criminal behavior in children is forgiven, not punished, and labeled a "disorder".
Dr. Spock, my hippie aunt, and the nearly discipline-free U.S. public schools have brought us where we are today.
You convinced me on the first part, but I still feel for the people who want to have a bit of fun at the shooting range.