Slashdot Mirror
Mainstream Media on Slashdot and Microsoft
Its happened before, but with the recent MS happenings,
MacWeek,
MSNBC and to a certain extent Wired have written stories based largely on Slashdot comments: Specifically those that appeared on
Microsoft Addresses World, Instant Legal Analysis and
Microsoft==Monopoly. The mainstream media now thinks that picking a few comments from a thread on Slashdot is a story (of course they often don't properly credit or link them). More interesting is that by picking a few extreme comments, or poking fun of "Anonymous Coward" that they somehow have the pulse of Slashdot as a whole.
Regardless, they are watching, its fascinating to see what they think we think.
Seems that this is good news for Andover and Slashdot. For a while now it seemed that /. was getting an undeserved rap as merely regurgitating Wired, c|net et al. Now it looks like the shoe's on the other foot.... One question, since the copyright/licensing of Slashdot seems to be pretty freewheeling, how would they (trad. media outlets) properly attribute quotes (especially AC's) - look up every User Info page?
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
It might be better for journalists today to study the news itself, and not the biased opinion of a website that is reporting what they feel is news.
So maybe the Slashdot way of life is taking hold..
With all the media attention, I wonder how long it will be before Slashdot becomes just another techie tabloid? Time to change the URL and go into hiding so the content stays good...
I think slashdot is becoming a regular resource for some journalists. Is this a problem? Perhaps it's not the best idea if you're a journalist, but it can be good for the community as a whole.
Journalists ought to work to find out all they can about a story, and certainly the geeks reaction as gauged by slashdot is part of that. It's not the whole story, but it's part of it.
What does it mean for slashdot users? I think we ought to keep in mind that things you say here are taken to represent a community of linux users. No one should jump to the conclusion that any of us speak for anyone else, but it's easy to see general trends in controversial stories.
I guess it also means we ought to congratulate Rob & co, they've worked hard to make this a legitimate news site and I believe (and have believed for awhile) that they are successful.
-Scott
Any good reporter knows that there are many ways to view something. When reporting on issues regarding open-source software and many other technical issues, Slashdot is an excellent place to do some quick and thorough research on what people are doing with it and how they feel. The alternative would be extensive research through surveys and polls... looking through Slashdot comments is much faster and probably more accurate. Plus, Slasdots gathering of techinical articles from around the world is a great source of background material on the issues in question as well. Any journalist covering OSS should definitely have Slashdot on their bookmarks list, and others who cover the tech world in general should as well.
what we read in mass media about /. isn't necessarily what they think we think. It's what they think people would like to read about us thinking. A lot (most?) of the time they're the same thing, though
It is kind of funny that /. would have this opinion, since a lot of your content is taken from other sites.
Are we really suprised by the media's sensationalization of this whole affair?
Despite the number of offtopic or flamebait comments, /. does represent a significant base of people who are able to think, and who can express their ideas. Therefore it's entirely reasonable for news stories to quote slashdotters. /. for the same reason I do; to get the opinions (and points of view) of others. I've had to change my opinion on several topics based on information or POVs of others, and I hope I've convinced one or two people to consider my position on various topics. /. comments, I wouldn't be able to resist doing it either.
Journos read
As for taking the piss out of ACs: if I were writing an article which featured
I imagine that main-stream media outlets are starting to get a little frightened of Slashdot. CmdrTaco & company are making media two-way, which is something that even The Great Wired is not accustomed to.
One one hand, Slashdot can get huge amounts of traffic, and therefore money, to websites. But, on the other hand, they know that they're going to get flak. No matter how intelligently-written the article that's being discussed, there will almost always be more intelligent people on Slashdot to pull it apart and expose the flaws.
We're both a blessing and a curse. Ain't it great what a little brainpower can do?
Slashdot on Mainstream Media on Slashdot and Microsoft
slashdot broke my sig
What a wonderful tool for your average hack - 10 Slashdot comments from recent times - there is bound to be something in there that can be totally taken out of context and misquoted. I meta moderate daily (that sounds rude now that I come to read it) and sometimes it can be quite funny to read a comment taken out of it's thread - however while funny it also fails to bring the nature of the thread across and can result in a diametrically opposite meaning.
Seriously though - the mainstream media is not necessarily something to worry about as the people who cover the news properly for the people who are truly affected are getting the stories right. It doesn't really matter what Joe Public thinks as he doesn't have any say in the matter - however your (Computer Weekly)/(Insert Foreign Computing Mag Here) [delete as appropriate] reader is more likely to be the sort of person who makes decisions for more than one persons IT needs - these are the people who can affect the market and these are the people who matter.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
A good example is when JFK was giving his speech in Berlin and said at the end 'I am a jelly donut' in german (trying to say 'I am from Berlin'). It was all in context... just think if suddenly Wired had JFK on the cover with the title 'I am a donut: Your future life in a donut-based e-commerce.'
Anyway, as long as they give the URL's to where they got the quotes, I think it's a good thing for the community.
Now about that singles forum on slashdot.... `8r)
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Lets face it. Journalists, editors, "major" businesspeople, are not required to be accountable for their opinions and actions anymore. Why? Truly, I do not know. Yet we see them act as they well please, mostly to pander to external bucks, instead of their supposedly readership's best interest. Doesn't this seem strange to you all? Alarming even?
I mean... If ("if") I had a business of my own, I surely wouldn't hire a person who has a questionable professional record (where "questionable acts" are depending on his profession), then, why do newspapers, magazines, corporations, etc... constantly hire people who EVERYONE knows have done damaging things in the past? Some will say "because the industry demands it", does that mean that everyone's corrupt? Anything for a buck?
Truly I don't understand, can someone shed some light on this for me?
-elf
Ever wonder how long it will be before what computer geeks are thinking becomes the mainstream? kinda scary...
jonsey
I wonder how much longer it will be until someone submits a joke article, perhaps just as part of a quickie or something, and it is snatched by a more mainstream site as truth because they didn't get it.
And if they quote this reply, I want some compensation:}
From the MSNBC article...
/. and therefore it would be incorrect to call me a /. correspondent)
"Tough for Slashdotters to pick between two (roughly) equivalent evils: Microsoft and the U.S. government," one correspondent wrote.
Which is remarkably similar to comments from this posting. It would seem that my comments (Comments are owned by the Poster.) have been taken and reproduced without my permission. Not to mention edited and taken out of context from a comment made in jest (this was a reply to the story that the ruling would be out in a few hours, and included a smily).
So my comments were stolen, changed and reused without permission when they are clearly owned by me and contact information was easily available.
Legal recourse? Should I bitch and moan? e-mail bomb msnbc?(j/k) Ask for my cut of the ad revenue from that page? This is more of a curiosity, but I am still taken aback that someone would so blatantly steal another's idea without attribution (I am not paid by
+&x
Damn.
-- "Big Brother is Watching..."
So does that mean I can define "gun" as "murdering someone in cold blood in front of their children and pets with an illegal, likely stolen millitary-issue automatic rifle"?
At least TRY to learn what the buzzwords mean before using them. God, I'm bitching alot today!
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
So does that mean I can define "gun" as "murdering someone in cold blood in front of their children and pets with an illegal, likely stolen millitary-issue automatic rifle"?
At least TRY to learn what the buzzwords mean before using them. God, I'm bitching alot today!
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
Just finished reading the MSNBC article. I hardly see why they even RAN it. What was it? A few quotes from /., MSNBC and AOL forums. None of them indicated what the majority thought. They ranged from "Yeah, MS Sucks" to "The DOJ should bugger off!"
/. even more 'out there' and 'against the flow.' Sure, it's between-the-lines, but it's still there.
/.'ing the MSNBC poll running with that article? It was 33/33/33 between MS is a good monopoly/MS is an evil monopoly/MS is not a monopoly. I seriously wonder how 33% of voters could know about the FOF and still not believe it.
None of them were attributed to author. No indication of context or what the consensus of the forum was there either. Strangely though, the pro-MS type quotes ("DOJ go home!"-style ones) were given to the AOL/MSNBC groups. I suppose they just wanted to make
And while we're up, who feels like
The majority of the comments I read (especially from Anonymous Cowards) were extremely uninformed and most likey came from a 15 year old.
The articles make a slashdot sound more like a chat room, which it is not.
If I formed an opinion on those articles of Slashdot, I would come here expectnig to see such ingenious one-liners as:
"Linux Ruuulz!!!"
"Microsoft Blows!!!"
Oh well, what the hell do I care... I enjoy the news.
I have no problem with the media, or who ever wants to read comments, looking at the opinions posted here.
However if they are going to use those comments or posted articles then they should give credit to the authors. And if those choose not to leave their names then they should declair that the submission was annonymous.
But probabally the most important thing of all would be to give credit to Slashdot itself.
Just my 2.5 cents.
Hey what can I say i'm weird
A couple of years ago, I got mail bombed for posting some anti Microsoft stuff on a LINUX news group. Which is why I post here as: "Anonymous Coward". Who wants to be put on the Microsoft "hit" list?... Another Anonymous Coward.
Thank you, Merriam and Webster.
I'm sure some people are flattered that their ideas are being republished in "major" media, and that's enough to make their day.
Some people, though, might not be so happy... The problem is, of course, that proving plagiarism is well-nigh impossible to do in court. (And how many /.'ers have the money to sue CNN or MSNBC anyway?)
Maybe it's time to take that little copyright/disclaimer bar at the bottom of every page and make it just a little bigger...
ZDNN also "created" a piece which amounted to nothing more than selected
Its a crock of shit. Check it out. It lumps all 'open sourcers' into the same bucket. It assumes that because initial posts were largely ecstatic, and some later posts were critical of the judges Linux remarks, that the opinion of the 'open source movement' changed along the way.
Typical ZD yellow journalism.
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
I don't think they need to ask your permission any more than a roaming reporter needs to ask permission to quote someone on the street. If something you said on the street popped up on the 4 o'clock news, would you still feel offended?
I would just like to go on the record as stating that having read the MSNBC article, I can say with much confidence that MSNBC was not at all biased. Oh sure they took Microsoft's side and pointed out comments from AOL and other non-slashdot forums that seemed to side with Microsoft while portraying Slashdot'ers as near fringe lunatics. And certainly its true that MSNBC is a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC. Despite this, we must carry in mind that NBC is a reputable news source and they would certainly never show any bias whatsoever. -Cyberllama
Slashdot's reporting on mainstream media is fair in a way that their reporting on us isn't, because Slashdot includes the link to their content and you're expected to look for yourself. The mainstream media very clearly *don't* expect you to go and look, they want you to take their word for it, and usually they don't even do the easy, obvious thing of including the hyperlink. I can only conclude that they'd much rather you weren't in a position to conveniently compare their description of anything with the thing itself.
Let's see those hyperlinks please. And not just to the head of the story - link to every comment you've exerpted, so we can see the words you quote in context, and the replies it garnered. True, it will make it easier for us to judge the quality of the reporting, but if you would like to be seen to be honest then it's just a burden you'll have to bear.
(Mike@ABC - if you're reading this, I'd love to know what you think!)
--
Xenu loves you!
since a lot of your content is taken from other sites.
/. is the comments. So all the actual good reading content is in fact generated by /.'s readers. Look ma, truly interactive media.
What is discussed might be located on other sites, but the reason I read
+&x
Remember Jesux -- the Linux distribution for Christians? ZDNet pretty much bought that hook, line, and sinker.
I can just see a followup to those article...
"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"
I'd rather see Linux and other non-Microsoft OSes take on Microsoft without the crutch from big brother. It would be better to defeat Microsoft in good form, despite their anti-competitive practices. I can see why we need to give Microsoft a spanking, that is for forcing the computer suppliers to use their products. Reporters just bring us news that is good or bad, they bring us news that is fact or fiction. They do this because it's in their nature.
I'm starting to get really tired of the press paying the most attention to the hotheads and ignoring reasonable voices. I'm also getting fairly tired of hotheads on /. shooting themselves (and all of us) in the foot. The fact is that the judge did know what he was talking about. At THIS TIME and from the normal user's perspective linux and BeOS and *BSD and the others are, in fact, fringe OS's. I love my linux server, but even I still use Windoze for most of my day-to-day computer use. The OS may be more prone to crashing, but it is much more stream-lined from a user perspective. As far as user-interface is concerned unix just can't compete with Windoze. The apps I use are faster and, by and large, more stable in Windoze. IE5 almost never crashes, and usually appears pretty much instantly when I launch it. I can't even come close to saying either of these things for Netscape in Linux. At this point, the software available makes Win by far the best choice for normal computer users. This is the case because Microsoft DOES have a monopoly on the consumer operating system market. That has made it impractical for most software developers to release unix versions of their software. This is slowly changing, but in the context of this day and age, the finding of facts is absolutely accurate. (Note: the fof (at least the parts I've read quoted) does not really say anything about the comparative quality of the OS's.)
Anybody ever wonder why Jean-Louis Gasse of Be, Inc. made a conscious and public decision NOT to try to compete with Microsoft? Why would somebody choose to accept a niche market with a versatile product?
Cheers,
Perrin.
-Perrin.
Now I want you to go in that bag and find my lightsaber. It's the one that says bad mother-fscker on it.
Do note that the opinions of MacWeek and Macworld do not necessarily represent the opinions of most, or even all Mac users. Take a second to check out the URL...
http://macweek.zdnet.com
I stopped subscribing to Macworld as they've become increasingly out-of-touch with most Mac users. For a while, they ran articles on how to set up windows NT, until the deluge of letters reminding them just what exactly they were supposed to be writing about...
Can't you guys add a bit on every page that says that no portion of any comment can be taken without link and credit?
It might require that all comments become property of Slashdot, but that's life
Got a HTTP/1.1 Server Too Busy error.. does that count as MSNBC being slashdotted?
-palp
This is because today's journalist picked journalism in college because it was easy. Where are all of the *real* journalists that care about providing the facts, crediting their sources, and just plain doing a good job?
At least they didn't mention first posts or beowulf clusters.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Yes, there are issues with quoting Anonymous Coward and wondering who he is...
Yes, there are issues with how they are taking a shortcut by just going to slashdot...
BUT... think about all the times that you've read a mainstream media article which didn't seem to have much sense of how it really was. At least now, we have the opportunity to provide these people with the right information.
Now if only FUD master John C. Dvorak would get a clue...
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
How could they not love us. Here they have a public opinon poll of sorts where they can steal material from without compensation to the authors. Breaking the rule of not mentioning a news competetor in print is no big deal to these types.
The smart ones fear us, they don't quote slashdot because they see that this is the future of news. When I'm reading an article, I usually click off when I get to any part which mentions slashdot.
Fish! LipHo
People as a whole have always been fascinated by lynchmobs. I mean, what's more fun than watching that?
Let me get this straight.
1) We have an actual story
2) Coverage ensues.
3) Commentary goes forth.
4) Coverage of the commentary ensues.
5) Commentary on the coverage of the commentary goes forth.
Another couple of loops and we'll have us an honest to god circle-jerk - all in less than 72 hours.
To a certain degree, Slashdot encourages this sort of behavior. We've managed to pigeonhole ourselves ("News for Nerds") as the most recognizeable repository of geek-screed on the web. Since a lot of the opinions posted here are on the incendiary side, it figures that journalists looking for the "what geeks think of the Jackson decision" story would look to Slashdot first.
What's a little frustrating about the situation, though, is the fishbowl-like feeling you get while reading thse stories. No one has ever (to my knowledge) used a series of "ZDNet Talkback" posts as fodder for a story of its own. While I'm of the opinion that the reader posts here are of a higher quality than Talkback's (by an order of magnitude), I think this has more to do with the fact that ZDNet has lawyers. Lots of 'em. In a variety of fruit flavors. They consider those posts to be essentially their property, and fair-use clauses aside, they'd likely pursue legal action against rival publications quoting them hither and yon.
I'm not sure I really see this as too much of a problem: prohibiting people from quoting Slashdot posts seems antithetical to a group of people known for supporting, say, open source initiatives. But it still kind of bothers me that Slashdot does the work, and MacWeek and MSNBC get a cheap story.
People (and the press) have long based their opinions of whether or not someone was worth listening to on some arbitrary, like if they can sing or act or are cute... That's old news.
The new thing here is that our words are being quoted not because of _who_ we are, but because of _where_ we said them!
This may be a first in the history of fame... This could be, in some warped and twisted way, progress. Heh.
Some would question just how cool it was to begin with. Nevertheless, it is indisputably lame now.
But to get back on topic, the main problem with mainstream media looking to slashdot comments to flesh out a story is ... drumroll please ... yes, slashdot comments suck too. The noise2signal ratio metaphor is way overused, but it's completely appropriate here. Good lord, how do "I don't know but I think I heard somewhere that bladda freaking bla" and "I haven't read the article yet but I think yooga blooga" *not* get moderated down into the negatives?
There are, of course, the hard core nerds who are actually knowledgeable(sp?) and who have not yet forsaken slashdot. Good for them, posting links to mirrors and sharing their real wisdom... We'll see how long it lasts.
I, for one, am I disgusted every time I click on "Read More..." This really is "News For Nerds" now. Harsh nerds. The kind that really do deserve to be beat up and bullied. Dorks. Losers.
If you are getting ready to blast me away with "Well who the hell do you think *YOU* are?": the answer is Nobody Special. Just an agitator, a sh*t disturber. You might be one of the non-nerds or wisemen I'm praising here.
And if you are getting ready to moderate me down: think first. Is it because this is "flamebait" - or more likely, because you disagree? That's the worst kind of censorship.
So, do I have anything useful to say?
You bet. Moderation needs an overhaul. There should be for's and against's. The final score shouldn't be the sum of the two, but the sum of the absolute values. If there are 50 people moderating a comment down and 49 people moderating up, *that's* an interesting comment. (But the mainstream media will never see it because it's scored as -1) The truly lame ones will get moderated down and never up, and disappear into sweet oblivion.
Nobody Special
I don't want to name webservers, but their page names end in .asp Maybe if MS gets broken up, they'll be free to run faster web servers.
The chinese version of /.
If M$ was a monopoly, they would have bought Netscape, Sun and AOL instead of competing with their own products. M$ could have owned the Internet, Gates would be a trillionaire instead of just a billionaire and been in no worse trouble with the Feds.
I miss being able to say rash things on Slashdot. It used to be, you could say things that were a little bit out there, a little bit abrasive, a little bit stupid. Then along came moderation. Comments like that got moderated down. People have now begun qualifying their statements with "...now I just *know* this will get moderated down".
Now, I'm as guilty as the next guy of reading comments with a +2 threshold, but it was nice when the volume of contents was lower, so you got the good with the bad, and the bad was kind of fun, like the wackos that call into Art Bell. Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't miss "First Post," and I don't even like having to think about the mean idiocy that took place after W. R. Stevens died, but in a way, some of Slashdot's innocense is lost. I miss people telling coarse jokes, using the F(uck)-Word, making sly comments about Microsoft that weren't "Micro$haft sux"
And now that the media is doting on Slashdot's every stray and off-color comment, I don't want to see a stupid quote taken out of context and published on MSNBC.
Oh well, I'd be happy with a UID+score threshold, even if it is somewhat elitist.
Microsoft had its defenders as well: relatively few on Slashdot, somewhat more in other forums, such as America Online's message boards and MSNBC's chat auditorium.
/sarcastic > we were compared to forums on America Online and MSNBC. First, AOL is made up primarily non technical people (I know there are several techies using AOL, but you are not the majority). And I should hope that there would be Microsoft supporters on a forum that has "MS" in its name!!!!
I'm < sarcastic > glad <
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
I wish people whould quite bashing the media just because they think they're this big bad entity that's just out to rip everybody off. I've already read several posts about plagerism which pissed me off.
/. opinions off as thier own, they explicitly said that they came from /. Everyone wants to complain about thier name not bieng metioned when a sentence of thier's gets quoted along with half a dozen others. To those people I say "What the hell is your problem??". I think it's a good thing that the media is telling other people that they think the opinions of /.'ers are important. Half the time people here are saying they wish the world would read /. and then when some of our posts do get metioned in the news, you go and jump and scream that "they stole my stuff!", "they didn't mail me a fat check for quoting me!", "my name won't be metioned in a national news article!". Loosen up people.
Cool off people, come on. These articles never attemped to pass
-Ky'dishar
The worst part is that it's not only from Slashdot that people are stealing info without credits. Take Apps sites for example: the are only two worthy sites at the moment, Freshmeat and AppWatch. All the others just suck up their announcements. Like Linuxberg, IceWalkers, and others. What good is it to present second hand information on the Net these days? I just hope that the general public can see the difference between the original work and effort and the sucked up crap.
slashdotters post comments, media quotes, slashdotters comment on media quoted comments, media quotes slashdotters commenting on media quoting slashdotters, slashdotters comment on media quoted comments on slashdotters commenting on media quoting comments....
This (a)convinced the average TV-watching American that the movement against the Vietnam War was populated entirely by weirdos, because that's what they saw on TV; (b)encouraged people in the antiwar movement to act more scruffy and dangerous, because they confused getting their images on TV with having an impact on public opinion.
For more details, see Todd Gitlin's book, The Whole World is Watching.
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Jeepers. With all these wide and varied comments on slashdot, how's the media supposed to discern which of our comments are actually indicative of the views of the hacker community? (Comments ranked at 5 are a pretty good place to start. Duh...)
But the troll and flamebait posts ranked at -1 are soooo much more fun to quote -- especially if your goal is to demonstrate that we're a bunch of kooks. Don't expect your views to be accurately represented anywhere in the media -- what good are comments unless they can be used out of context to help make someone's point. :-)
Judge - Microsoft is Monopoly and Linux is small potatoes.
Media - Judge says Microsoft is Monopoly and Linux is small potatoes.
Slashdot - Media says Judge says Microsoft is monopoly and Linux is Small potatoes.
Slashdot Readers - Opinions about Judge saying that Microsoft is a Monopoly and Linux being small potatoes.
Media - Slashdot Readers have opinions about Judges ruling that Microsoft is a Monopoly and Linux is small potatoes.
Slashdot - Media reports that Slashdot Readers have opinion about Judges ruling about Microsoft being monopoly and Linux being small potatoes.
Slashdot Reader - There is a loop here. To see the loop start at the top of this response.
After readint the 3 articles
I MSNBC one was the worst. It was based almost
entirly on a few slashdot comments, very little
original thought. Big deal, they can take random
comments from people who don't necissarily have
any credentials. Its basically a Man on the street
opionon without leaving your cushy office.
II The wired article had a stupid title, but was
the most substance of the 3. The title was
something to the effect of "Judge says linux wont
last". No. He said linux is not going to be a
threat to windows in the short term.
This is true. There are not so many people
migrating to linux that its going to hurt MS
anytime soon. However...the future is open.
III The judge was stating fact as it is now and
has been for years. There is nothing to say that
sanctions against microsoft wont change this
and give linux a boost (afterall, isn;t the
poin tof this antitrust stuff to break the
monopoly stranglehold on competition?)
IV The 3rd article was almost as bad as the
MS article. It seems this author was more
interested with peoples comments on the trial
and how juvenile people can be (which isn't bad...
I like juvenile as much as th enetx guy).
Big deal...there is a general dislike of Microsoft
in this community...we are rejoycing at their bad
fortune (which they brough on themselves).
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
How about those of us who think that Fridays court action is overblown?
I really don't care about this anymore. I don't think that MS is evil nor do I think that MS is being unjustly vilified. I just don't care. But I am still a slashdotter.
Hell, MSFT stock is only down a bit so far in the day. No serious, earth-shattering, news-breaking action there.
Oh, and its quite shameful that these news sites will spend time on formating and news banners yet can't even make a simple hyper-text link to the quotes they used.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
As much as I think journalistic standards and ethics have jumped into the shitter recently, I should admit that online news sites have far more more fluffy and "throw-a-away" content than in the real world. It's just the nature of feeling you need to throw together a story immediately, since people will see it immediately (even faster than Tv). The really sad thing is that online journalists are, for some inexplicable reason, following the tradition of Tv reporters when it comes to sampling opinions and quoting "the peons" as they call us. HTML news reports are great places to lay out, or at least link to, really sophisticated, nuanced arguments, but instead we're still stuck with soundbytes in a medium currently without sound. There's also still this idea that "getting every side" means that you CANNOT go into depth on issues, or quote people who do, because then you have the potential for one side to look better than the other. "DOJ sucks" and "M$ sucks" are safe. And isn't that what news is all about?
No...
I'm a newbie. Please define Flamebait.
Netcraft says:
www.msnbc.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT3 or Windows 95
Hotmail uses Unix, why can't MSNBC?!
-----
"A man is judged by his every word." -RW Emerson
"They misunderestimated me." -GW Bush
I'm wondering if we should really be surprised by this or not? ZDNet has proven itself to be in MS's pocket many times in the past, and MSNBC, well, the MS isnt there just to make it look good.
The subversive way they're writing these articles, no links, no attribution to author, only taking the extreme points of view, etc. just makes me belive that they're trying to spin it all and make us all look like a bunch of jerks.
I saw many posts about this only being a Finding of Fact and not a verdic which were, rightly so, moderated up, and neither of these articles mentioned that. No mention about the moderation score of the quotes mentioned, or even the moderation scheme.
Its just a downplay spin, more FUD for the fire, but this time not about Linux, but its users and advocates. I suppose MS is taking the position that if you cant FUD off the product, FUD off the people who use it. I think we need to be very careful about this in the future.
-- iCEBaLM
Then why would they come out with a story within minutes of Judge Jackson's finding of fact saying that a breakup would actually be a good thing?
Here's an excerpt:
"... it would also mean that Bill Gates' net worth would probably quadruple, the Baby Bills created by the breakup would move out to dominate the areas they're already in, and we'd see a spectacular leap in the value of software stocks."
So, why do all these "reputable" news organizations look to slashdot for analysis? There are several reasons, I suppose.
:) But the effect is obvious, Slashdot is very important in Tech reporting.
1. The speed at which analysis is collected. Usually, Slashdot posts news before it hits ALL of the mainstream outlets, and has been commented on by members of the Slashdot community.
2. The value of the analysis. Except for the flamebait and Anonymous Coward posts, people from all walks of life add valuble comments. Remember, many of us work in the industry. It's almost like instant insider analysis.
3. Slashdot is focused. For the most part, Slashdot reports on only the High Tech news, or things related to it. Granted, there is a spin to it, but that's life on any web site. People know they can get good info on Tech here, so they come.
4. Slashdot isn't boring. There's more than enough humor here that our would-be journalist won't go back with a dry, boring article. Maybe that's where those flamebait posts fit in.
Maybe I'm looking into this too much, and they just like CmdrTaco's style. It's entirely possible.
Seems to me what the stories are actually about slashdot.
None really discuss the FoF in any detail, they simply survey comments of slashdot posters. It may seem pointless to slashdot readers, but it is more evidence that the media is actually paying attention to us. Through slashdot, we have at least some influence on what the media reports. Slashdot is probably the only 'place' on the planet where a community executed an analysis and wide-ranging discussion of the FoF in mere hours.
The articles didn't come out and say that, but I see them as a sort of 'recognition' of the true power of slashdot.
Not that they realize the full potential of that power, but they at least see that the power does exist.
-- Jeremiah
They should just come over, post the views they want to quote as an AC, and then turn around and quote them in their article. Instant news!
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well, when you get to be somewhat successful and then well-known, you're going to be in the press one way or t'other. Reading the articles cited was kinda like scanning through the grocery store chekout-line tabloids - it was funny in one sense - but they really didn't get the true flavor of /. - no references to phurrst poast! I mean, c'mon guys, let's get an accurate sampling :)
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
I understand that Slashdot is, technically, a "free forum," where people write things for others to read, but it clearly states down at the bottom of the page that "Comments are owned by the Poster."
So I really don't see how they can just take comments from Slashdot and make a news story out of them (from which both MSNBC and the author, Alan Boyle, are profiting) without first asking for the permission of the comments' authors.
Especially in a story such as the one on MSNBC, in which the comments are the story, I strongly feel that the posters' permission should be granted before the comments are mashed up and spit out in a for-profit form. And if Alan Boyle is making money from my comments, he should also be paying me.
I doubt the media will ever reimburse us for our comments, regardless of what we say, but is it so hard for them to ask permission first? I mean, people can get sued now for posting things to financial message boards, so maybe we can sue MSNBC for exploiting our comments. Well... maybe not.
PS - None of my comments were used in any of the stories.
rooooar
I've already changed my sig ;-)
is that anti-Linux, anti-Open Source, and pro-M$ post can be (and have been) posted freely. When one of these mainstream media types grabs a couple of posts off of /. there's nothing that stops them from getting these. When we read posts here, sure we see those, but we see them in context; we see how they are marked "flamebait," we see the responses, and we see the vast majority of comments directed the other way. We know those are not representative of /.ers. It's bad enough that the media can select joke posts out of context, and try to pass them off as actual beliefs of /.ers, but it would be much worse if they chose posts which simply contradicted the beliefs of the majority of us. Although I think people should be free to post whatever they want, I think we need to take steps to ensure they we are properly represented. (Maybe it's time to implement a three-strikes-and-you're-out policy - get marked with -1 from three moderators and be deleted.) We'll have to demand that journalists choose posts which fairly represent the majority of /.ers who posted to that topic, and if they don't comply, we /. 'em into submission. Or poke them with the soft cushions, your choice.
The one quoted Slashdot comment (something to the effect of "Slap them sanctions on now") sounded just as frivolous and poorly-considered as the ones from AOL and MSNBC message areas. There was no representation of the depth and insight that Slashdot can rightfully pride itself on.
Like, that was majorly schwag, d00d. I wuz p1553d.
I can see the fnords!
No, but that's assuming I was approached by a camera crew and had a microphone stuck in my face. To look at it from another angle: if you were talking to some friends on the street and an eavesdropping reporter put something you said on the 4 o'clock news, would you feel offended?
IANAL but:
As quasi-traditional (rich, establisment) media, they are on pretty solid ground claiming that any limited quoting that they're doing is fair use.
Paradoxically, the very thing that most Slashdotters think makes much more sense - linking not just to
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
Look, don't get angry that they are using your posts.
:-)
You can't sue them. Fair use allows quoting. Admittedly they should attribute the quote to you, but there's nothing that requires them to do so in a specific manner. "Howdy," said one guy on Slashdot is attribution enough for the law. The fact is that when you say something in a public forum, it is then public. Deal with it.
I don't see why anyone would be angry (as many commenters seem to be) in the first place. Guess what people, that means they're listening! Certainly took 'em long enough.
Instead of focusing on this new power for itself, perhaps we should focus on making all our comments a little more well-reasoned and thought out. After all, the world (via the media) may be paying attention to what you say.
Stop shooting from the hip so much. THINK about what you say, and make sure that it's your honest opinion. Opinions are good, disagreeing opinions are even better. But when what you say really gets the point across, more people will read it.
(You realize I'm just angling for a major news organization to quote me, don't you?
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
That the people who are paid to come in here and astroturf are always quoted by these news sources. How convenient to be able to write whatever opinion that you want/need and then quote that opinion as a fact in another article.
As for being an Anonymous Coward, I do this for many reasons. Number one is that I am able to fully express by view without any fear of retrobution.
I vote in national/state/local elections as an Anonymous Coward in a secret ballot as well and for the same reason. Am I wrong there?
I am a computer professional and have to work with microsoft more and more over the years. I would rather not get put on a "hit list" of people that Microsoft or its lackeys keep an eye on.
Also I have many different views of politics. I happen to believe that we have the best form of government that ever existed on Earth. The US government isn't perfect, but then neither are the people that vote or the people that hold office.
After having studied the history of the industrial age and having worked for huge businesses for several years (at over 60 hours a week at one company) I happen to believe that all businesses are corrupt dehumanizing dictatorships that are held in check only by the rule of law.
Since I support the existing government and am opposed to the current corporate business forms my views are 180 degrees opposed to many of the people who post in these forums.
I don't want these people to know who I am either.
And finally, I don't want my view on one issue to cloud your reading of my view on another issue.
Is that where the 'Net has left us (and will leave the rest of the world when they catch up:) ?
+&x
After many unanswered phone calls and requests for an interview, the online celebrity Anonymous Coward was quoted as saying:
"First Post!!"
Industry pundits have not been able to agree on the meaning of this cryptic response to the Microsoft = Monopoly ruling. Though technology expert John C. Dvorak stated that this may be a comment of outrage directed at the President of the United States rather than Bill Gates. Mr. Coward could not be reached for further comment.
In other news, the online community is believed to be rediscovering their spiritual roots, as observed in the slashdot readerships frequent references to Karma. Church officials claim that this is probably brought on by the upcoming end of the millenium.
Ima Freud, a psychologist at Deutchmacher University, claims that references to Karma are an attempt at closure in the wake of the Columbine Masacre, which shook the close-knit geek community to it's core earlier this year.
Executives at Warner Brothers deny that the concern with one's Karma, as demonstrated by members of the Slashdot cult, is actually a clendestine publicity stunt to promote End of Days staring Arnold Shwarzenegger. Mr. Shwarzenegger did not return phone calls.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Much more darkly, there's a very real possibility that an ambitious reporter (legal assistant, whatever) would quote an anoymous post so he could quote it to prove how rabid we are.
Can't find a quote saying that Bill Gates should be lined up against the wall and shot? No problem - post it as an A/C and then quote it as "proof" that we're completely unreasonable. No one will ever know.
(BTW, this particular quote is *too* extreme, but some of the comments I've seen over the weekend looked like they could have been postering for such quotation. It's also untrue that nobody would ever know; I don't know if slashdot keeps the IP address of A/Cs, but it *could* if necessary.)
Sadly, American journalism has a long tradition of creating news at least as much as it reports it. Many people believe that the Maine was sunk in Havana harbor (leading to the Spanish-American war) by agents of Randolf Hearst(?). The purpose was to increase newspaper circulation.
More recently, there were some serious questions raised about whether a traffic death during a high speed police chase was caused, in large part, by the presence of a film crew for _Stories of the Highway Patrol_ in the chase car. Obviously the trooper had the final word, but having a film crew asking why you aren't chasing that clown (and knowing that your answer will be seen nationwide) is a profound psychological pressure.
What the hell was that msnbc story? I'm pissed, it's not like I expected a quality piece from them but ""Slap them sanctions on now! No more running people out of business then jacking up the price!" one Slashdotter wrote."?! I can't decide if the author was targeting an audience with a third grade reading level or whether he was intentionally smearing us.
The good thing is probably 90% of the people who hit that site followed the link from slashdot. Rob should get Alan Boyle in here for an interview ass chewing. That would be sweet...
The worst thing that could happen would be a commercialization of /. Then I'm out...
By the way, a question for readers (maybe a question for Slashdot?): what part of /. readers - IYO - comes from USA?
Regards,
January
Saying "let's slashdot their poll" is equivalent to saying "let's line up and slashdot their wallets". These polls are meaningless, and all stuffing them does is rack up some ad impressions for the company running the page. It's what they're counting on having people do, and though it's not dishonest at this level, it needn't be encouraged.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Always has been, always will be. Its one of the sites you visit each morning right next to news.com, etc... It hasnt ever been 'underground' - Its just a geek site that we all have been reading for years... Maybe its new for you, but certainly not to the this industry.
Not "what's ./" but "WHOIS ./" ... I am certain that dotslash.org used to link to slashdot.org ... it doesn't anymore though ... I wonder if Rob did sell this domain ...
"better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07
MS is a monopoly and they have abused their power. Bill Gates is evil and has mad MS sell overpriced, inferior products with built in bugs, so people can be forced to buy bug fixes costing $100. In conclusion, MS is a monopoly, they're evil, Gates is evil, and MS should be broken up into 3 different companies. Not everything stated here has been proven. All things stated here represent my opinons. Copyright Nov8, 1999.
So there I was, between a rock and a hard place, when suddenly I think "Wait a minute. . . what am I doing on this side
Hey, if we comment on this story, do you think the media will write an article commenting on how we commented on the commentary of our comments? :)
True, it's in the byline, but the original can be found here. This way you get the wonderful rants of readers. :-)
It seems that (best case,) they're using Slashdot as an electronic source of "man on the street" quotes. Worst case, they're implicitly defining Slashdot in some way that fits the spin of the article at hand.
:) This target audience is most likely to be swayed by spin.
If I take the cheezy tv ad at its word, there are 7 people logging on to the internet every second. The thing to keep in mind is that 4 of those people are actually logging onto AOL, and 4-6 of those seven people think ftp is a florist.
Here's something to toss about: what do we think about limiting press-quotable comments to those that have been moderated higher than one?
Seams like the Media is taking the reverse of my subject statement, and presumming Good News is No News. The Media is like any other business. They want to make money, and negitive news or comments is what drives there ratings.
Sad but True isn't it? Why else are we getting a negitive spin off of most media most of the time?
Come see my website.
http://come.to/streiff
Here's the answer, score 'im up!
The posters & readers of Slashdot do NOT necessarily represent the views of the majority of the computing industry, and often are contradictory to popular opinion. I find the comments to commonly be extremist, and unfounded.
Slashdot readers and "posters" are a group of widely different persons, ranging from adolescents to senior proffesionals.
Extracting the dumbest comments on the threads and "cuting & pasting" them in an article is very biased and unethic.
I really don't care about mass media (you), and I think journalists are usefull idiots who casually have the same point of view of your editorial. If the editorial change it's point of view, journalists are just discarded or converted to the new dogma.
I know that, you know that and your readers know that (hey, we all agree!)
But this is MY PERSONAL point of view, and not necesarilly means that every person who writes something in slashdot thinks the same. As you see, common people is not enforced to think and write in a determinated way...we are IT professionals, techies, geeks or just "nerds" who use a different scale to measure things.
We are not a bunch of stupid people saying "Windoze SuKs, BiLL Gate$ is EvIL!"
There are a tons of more interesting things to report from here...If your judgment is still clean and you are not worried of terminating your usefullness cycle in a particular publication.
Just my 0.02$ comment
not so anonymous, find me as snullo at yahoo dot com
It could be that the media have reported on Slashdot in this way (not for the first time) could possibly be for one of the following reasons:
1. Traditional media type folks consider Slashdot to be nothing more than a chat forum, consisting solely of Linux users and M$ bashers. The attitude then towards this site is therefore one of irrelevance and arrogance, and who cares if they get a few quotes from the obviously (at least to most of the rational minds here) wrong people.
2. The media giants recognize the potential of a Slashdot site. Imagine if we started to discuss social issues, or politics in greater frequency. Maybe Slashdot would split into local sites, using the model to discuss any news item relevant.
Imagine when all you check is are a few sites for news during the day, and all of them are Slashdot! Slashot.org (the original) ny.slashdot.org, politics.slashdot.org....etc,
I think you get the point, and so might they. The Slashdot model might be the future of news reporting. Not so much reporting the news, as discussing it.
Water cooler talks brought to an international level.
As much as I think journalistic standards and ethics have jumped into the shitter recently, I should admit that online news sites have far more more fluffy and "throw-a-away" content than in the real world.
/.), the interactivity of the web leads to a new emergent phenomenon which is arguably more worthwhile than the original story itself.
Yes, but...
The real world doesn't have hypertext. The beauty of the web is, you get to only read the news you want, whenever you want it. If you're watching the news on TV, and there's a badly reported story, or just one you're not interested in, you have (assuming you have a whole bunch of channels) at most 6 or 7 other choices at any given time, and chances are they're not appreciably different from what you're watching.
The newspaper is a bit better, but it's day-old news, and assuming you only get one newspaper, you only get one perspective on any given story.
These days on the internet, you can get the full text of every major newspaper in the world (except The Wall Street Journal), the full text of many of the world's best magazines, and coverage of nearly every story any of the national TV news programs do as well. So you've already got nearly the entire "real world" media there at your fingertips--completely free, available anytime, and a whole lot easier to get to.
Plus, you've got dozens and dozens of web-only sources providing often very insightful, informative, and thought-provoking takes on the news that the mainstream media generally misses. Plus, there's the interactivity of the web: while the message boards at most internet news sites are worthwhile only to demonstrate how little intelligence it takes to use the internet, feedback from users makes web journalism noticably closer to the sorts of ideals journalism should aspire to. In a couple cases (well, ok, mostly just
I'm rambling here, but the point is, if you don't like it, point your browser someplace else. There may be more fluff on the web, but only because there's a whole lot more meat there as well.
"Then I'll tell the truth. We're allowed to do that in emergencies."
The fact is that when you say something in a public forum, it is then public.
This is what I would expect also. I don't know if anyone notice this, but here we are on slashdot, where few people can utter a sentence without promoting Open Source, but people are saying "you can't use my words without giving me a cut".
Let me see if I understand: people should write code for free and distribute it without charge, even if they could make money off it, but the media shouldn't be able to compile stories (regardless of whether they're any good) from what you post in a public forum without your permission? Is version 3 of the GPL going to include "separate permission is required if you use this code in crappy products, or products which I don't approve of"?
what about filling a slash-action lawsuit against the offending websites?
You say you want a revolution?
Most of what I've seen re: responses to the finding of fact from Justice Jackson illustrates three things very clearly:
1) Very few people understand the history of the personal computing industry.
2) Very few people understand the history of Microsft.
3) Even in this late day and age, most people by far would much rather voice a loud and strong opinion, no matter how wrong it is, than do a little research and temper their ignorance with a modicum of fact.
We're so gullible to manipulation by the press that I'm ashamed to even be human.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
You saw quotes? That's funny, all I saw were comments seperated by "?". Since I don't read a question mark as a quote, the comments were not quoted but plagarized as far as I'm concerned...
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
We've seen ample examples of the media using anyone who works on a computer as an "expert". Now they don't even have to track down someone with a PC. They can just go online, find the most sensationalistic flamebait post, and increase their ratings, or subscriptions or whatever. After all, if someone is smart enough to post to /. they must be a computer expert.
Matthew Hawk,
computer expert
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
P.S. There are absolutely, definitely NO rumours, whatsoever that CmdrTaco is due to appear on both Oprah and Jerry Springer. It is also COMPLETELY unfounded that the other two guests for JS are Bill Gates and a stuffed penguin.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I remember sending an email response to Polly a year (or so) ago regarding some Linux related news. She seemed well informed and was _very_ polite and professional. It was a positive experience for me and it was interesting to read that she is still in touch with slashdot readers and others in the community.
I haven't been folowing her career or anything like that, but from my experience with her and from the email above, it seems like she does a great job researching her articles and getting a feel for our community's response.
-Derek
This question was raised here two months ago and although there were no huge surprises, some answers have been quite interesting. One of the main motives is the desire to help people. It is remarkable that this is usually the first reason that people think of but it is also the reason that many of them feel uncomfortable about. But this altruism can be viewed in a different way: Nothing is really given away because you just help reestablishing the original, free, status. To quote Phil Garcia who put it in a good way: "I work on free software because the practice of restricting what people can do with software goes against my principles. [...] Legal restrictions on software effectively take an unlimited resource and turn them into a limited one." What personally fascinates me every time I think about it is the fact that it is also an equally good idea to work on Free Software for absolutely non-altruistic reasons; but explaining this would lead to far off the path at this point.
Besides altruism there are several other big reasons why people work on Free Software. Very high on the list also is the desire to write software that makes sense and gets used. This may sound a little weird at first, but working on Free Software gives developers a satisfaction that is extremely rare when working on proprietary software. To say it in Francesco Potortis words: "I like programming and doing real things, i.e. things that work. Programming for free software is not wasted time, as my work will be used by may people."
Another approach deliberately ignores all social and altruistic sides and focuses solely on the technical part of it. Its followers see software as a mere tool comparable to a medical procedure or a legal proceeding. This has been suggested by Jimen Ching: "We need to view software as a tool, not merely a collection of expressions of an idea. When we do this, then it is natural that software should be free. I mean free as in freedom, not price."
Long Live GNU and Linux for delivering the goods!
was what I saw your comment at. Unfortunately your rant about it being moderated down call into question that rating. Relax, even Karma has to work under the contrainsts of Time.
+&x
Hey Rob, can we get extra karma points every time one of our comments is quoted by a clueless mainstream journalist?
Seems to me like some of these journalists have no regard for attributing comments to the original posts, so what's to stop them from posting their own inflamatory comments and quoting themselves? Well, with all of the noise at the low end of the moderation spectrum on /. I guess this wouldn't be necessary--all the juicy material is already there, ripe for the picking.
Interesting when you see a post where someone looked up a word in the dictionary to find out exactly what it means, and still managed to misspell the word. Not meant to be rude, i'm sure it was just a typo. Just commenting on the irony.... One could see this as misquoting Merriam and Webster...
Waiting for this breaking story...
We now have a credible source to reveal the identity of the badly-moderated, yet vocal, Slashdot user 'Anonymous Coward.'
"Remember what they told us in last week's meeting, Slashdot mention = Slashdot effect = banner revenues!"
Posting on slashdot is more akin to putting yourself in front of the camera, IMO. This is a very public forum, and to act surprised when someone else has read and quoted you would just be fooling yourself into thinking what? That slashdot is a private gathering? C'mon.
From Wired:
But he didn't mention RedHat's successful initial public offering, or even popular products, such as Apple Computer's iMac.
Yeah, we got them to list Linux and the iMac as examples for a threat to M$ market domination.
How is that meant, that we should start distracting the IE dev-team by throwing iMacs at them, then steal the source-code and port it to Linux?
letters@macweek.com I just emailed them (politely) to stop doing this kind of thing and to actually see how badly it goes over.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2389 661,00.html ZDNet does an article on /. too... Check out some of the comments posted by their readers, especially some of them that are about us...
---------------
Yes! That guy!
Have you _EVER_ considered that is how the average non-Linux user views Slashdot? Everyone I know that just reads the stories, that doesn't respond, and that don't use Linux view all the Open Source and Linux people the same way as did ZDNet. This is the kind of publicy you get for Linux, whether you like it or not. This is not soley "ZD yellow journalism", this is how the rest of the non-Linux community views the Linux community. I'm frankly disgusted and ashamed at the way Slashdot acted in response to the Microsoft ruling.
..but I don't think it quite falls under this. Excerpting for a book review or critiqe is a special case, as in a classroom example. In this case actual content for MSNBC (a for-profit compnay) was taken w/o my permission. So here's the e-mail I wrote and am awaiting a response.(I found the author's e-mail on a different story)
/.'s reaction to the MS verdict, you wrote..
/. at this location.
5 1216&cid=132
------
Alan,
In your recent article on
"Tough for Slashdotters to pick between between two (roughly) equivalent evils: Microsoft and the U.S. government," one correspondent wrote."
Which are my comments first made on
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/11/05/09
What I would like to know is why my comment was stolen, edited, and reprinted without my permission. Each page on Slashdot clearly states "All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster." and this is the agreement under which my comments were submitted.
It would not bother me nearly as much if you had contacted me, not edited the comment or at least attibuted the comment by name. As it stands the comment, originally made in jest, was edited and reused in another context. In reading the original comment one's eyes MUST pass over a link that goes straight to my e-mail address (minus a couple spaces) so I know there was a conscious decision to NOT contact me for permission.
I am unhappy that such action has been taken and am anxious to hear your reply.
Sincerely,
Roy Taylor
-------
Roy/Wah, get it?
+&x
SEPARATED sep*a*rated Sorry, that just bugs me...
I was reading an article on ZDNet re OS & /. response to the M$ trial (I think there was a link in yesterday's /.) I was amazed at how one-eyed the whole coverage of the MS case was, but the /. article was something else. The "story" (which I can summarise for you in one line, but which took ZDNet a few pages to get across) was that slashdot contributors were pleased with Judge Jackson's ruleing, but disagreed (or should that be respectfully disagreed!) with him since they felt that Linux was a legitimate contender. Great. Big deal. The story itself was not the amazing part, it was the not-so-subtle way ZDNet attempted to marginalize and discredit /. that really stood out. References to Startrek to imply cultishness, thinly veiled allegations of /. selling out from hacks who did it long ago, the implication that all discussion on /. degenerates into flame bate, and the insinuation that people on /. are not prepared to post under their own name (yes slashdoters ususally post under pseudonyms, so what). If the insights of a few slashdotters are worth writing a story on then don't spend the rest of the article rubbishing /. Perhaps /. should insist that every time a quote from a /. post is used that the score that the post was given should also be published. You could easily pick through all the postings and print a select few and make /. look bad, but in my experience every slashdot posting with a score of 2 or more usually has more substance than any ZDNet article.
From the MacWeek article:
Collectively, they are the maintainers and visitors at Slashdot.org, the most prominent Linux community site,which has become something of a cultural phenomenon -- its founder landing in Rolling Stone and earning more than $1 million when he sold the site.
A million bucks. Damn that's a lot. Well, Malda, apologies for my profane email sent earlier regarding this. Enjoy the bucks and AIBO. One more post to make, then I'm history (under this alias, anyways).
..who'da thunk it?
Within 5 minutes of sending the above e-mail I received a phone call from Alan Boyle (the editor of the original article). We talked for a few minutes about the weather, slashdot, and his grandkids, no wait....
Anyway, I requested that he remove my comment from the story (not a bad idea since it wasn't even a sentence to begin with) and he said he would be happy to. He also said that the purpose of the article was to point people towards the lively discussion that occurs here. Nice guy.
This goes down as the day I challenged MS(NBC) and won, yippee! hehe
+&x
This is largely an urban legend
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
TV reporters covering rallies against the Vietnam War would usually point their cameras at the scruffy hippies or the people waving Vietcong flags, and not at the protesters who looked like normal college students.
...they confused getting their images on TV with having an impact on public opinion.
Since one poster's comments look about like the next, and no one can tell who's a "scruffy hippie" and who's a necktie-wearing industry insider (not to mention the scruffy industry insiders) just from their text, how are the mainstream media going to determine whose posts to report on? Are ALL CAPS, obscenties, and anonymous posts the text equivalent of long hair, sandals and love beads?
Oh, they had an impact on public opinion all right. It just wasn't the sort of impact they wanted.
You're right, it makes no sense.
-[ World domination - rains.net ]-
"Ich Bin Ein Auslander" is the excellent first track on "Dos Dedos Mis Amigos" by Pop Will Eat Itself; it's about the rise of the far right, though of course the name is inspired by JFK's famous quote. In fact everything by this band is wonderful and you should go out and get it all.
--
Xenu loves you!
Whenever Slashdot does a story, it does more than most journalists do for citing sources. It actually gives a LINK back to the original source. That's even better than what 'respected' journalists generally do. Not only does that cite the source, it also makes it quick and convienient for you to double-check it with the proper context.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Why is anyone really suprised by this? Think about it: these news sites are free, and make money solely through advertising. I'm not sure exactly how much that brings in, but in general it's been shown that this is not the way to get rich on the Internet. Unless you run a porn site of course. :) Which means that whoever gets employed by these professional news sites is not going to get the same money that a journalist for Newsweek is going to get. Which in turn means that news reports on the web are often done by poor saps who barely passed their english classes, and wouldn't know plagiarism from a hole in the ground. As a result, it shouldn't come as a surprise that many of the professional news sites (CNET, MSNBC, even good ol' CNN at times) run stories that are frankly appalling. Those that are backed by regular print magazines manage to do a little better as they can get their regular editors to do a little blurb on the side, or they can just flat-out post entire articles on their site (which is rare). But what you will see quite often is that fan sites - i.e. sites run by people who love what they are doing - not only scoop MSNBC and Co., but also manage to write better articles about the news they are covering. Why? Because the the low cost of web-publishing associated with the near-impossibility of deriving revenue from it completely blocks the hiring of expert journalists. Factor in that journalism was never know for its ethics and focus on facts in the first place, and it should be obvious that the Internet will dilute, rather than improve then flow of information. The sad part about this is that there is nothing you can do. You can try and sue their asses each time they quote you out of context, but if that would work, the National Enquirer would have gone broke decades ago. The only thing you can do is find sites that do provide good information, and spread the word about it. Welcome to the glorious world of e-Journalism, where any monkey with Word2000 and a modem can become an authority on anything from Super-String theory to Ethnic strife in Ethiopia. It's up to you to stop him.
So if I do this:
;o)
Actually, there already is one at the bottom of every page. And I quote, "All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-99 Andover.Net." (Quoted material Copyright Andover.Net
will I violate your copyright? (That's not a dig, just an interesting question.)
Unfortunately, I don't think copyright law works real well in the context of a conferencing system. On the one hand, it doesn't seem right that a third party ought to be able to steal your words without citing them. On the other hand, the idea that a two-line post is "copyrighted" seems a little odd as well. I'm willing to bet that whoever used that quote just assumed "fair use" (if they thought of it at all) as normally a one line quote is fair use. But then, normally a one line quote is not 50% of the original "document".
The cake is a pie
No, I don't mean that the "AC" comments they quoted were poor representatives of our discussions (that too, though). If I meant that, I wouldn't have quoted "Anonymous Coward" in my subject line. Instead, I mean that the label itself detracts from the respectability of the quotes.
I guess that's the whole point, but I've always been opposed to this: the label is (or should be) simply a default value put in place of a name to indicate that the poster did not identify himself. It should simply say "Anonymous" -- there is absolutely no need to make it a value judgement. There is at best a weak correlation between anonymous posts and bad posts, yet a lot of people talk as if the two are one and the same. Those who believe that anonymous posters are inherently cowards are free to make that judgement for themselves, but the site should not automatically label them as such. All that does is create antagonism, making the "AC"s more likely to want to post flamage because they are given such an unnecessarily insulting label.
This has been argued before, and is not particularly on-topic here, but now it takes on a new significance. The MacWeek article, at least, tended to make us seem like a chat room full of immature geeks spouting mindless Micros~1-bashing. I guess I have to be honest enough to acknowledge that that's not too far off, but they didn't really convey the fact that there's a lot more to it. Now, you might say that the problem is that they were quoting "AC"s instead of "real" slashdotters, but that only shows how thoroughly you fail to see the fallacy of "AC"-bashing. Not all the bad quotes were from "AC"s. I keep trying to point out that logging in doesn't magically prevent people from posting garbage; the fact is that there will always be at least some dumb posts on Slashdot. The point here is that if journalists wants to make Slashdot look dumb, they will always be able to find some of those posts to quote. That's a separate issue. However, they also emphasized the label itself, which, I think is harmful to the overall effect:
'Anonymous Cowards' speak
"November 5, 1999, The Duh heard round the world," one Anonymous Coward posted.
(Actually, I thought that was a pretty good comment -- both funny and insightful. I'd missed it on the actual discussion.)
All they did was repeat the label that the site itself attaches to anonymous posts, but in effect this passes the judgement on, making it sound like it is their opinion too that anonymous posters are cowards, and, by extension, the entire site loses some respectability. This made Slahsdot look even worse than it would have if it had been:
Anonymous users speak
"November 5, 1999, The Duh heard round the world," someone posted anonymously.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Reporters reporting on what other reporters are doing. Happens when they've spun every conceivable angle and exhausted every conceivable source: they broaden their scope and comment on the commentators. Soon, you have a gigantic media circle-jerk. Remind you of anyone? ;-)
BTW-not starting a Katz-bashing thread, just commenting on his methodology.
In my opinion, the journalizm community has a deep understanding and commitment to copyright and fair use issues. If the comments were not given due credit, it is probably because it was not clear enough what comprises due credit. The reputation and continued success of a journalist depends on his fair treatment of sources. If we make it clear exactly what the Slashdot community considers fair treatment, I beleive that most reporters will respect it.
Here are some thoughts for possible fair use guidelines:
- http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/11/08/122
6 255&mode=thread
(where the date/unique number is replaced with the appropriate value).- http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=userinfo&nick=c
m drtaco
(where the text following "nick" is replace by the user's nickname). Please do not link to the poster's email address, even if it appears in the post.- "Discussion title." Slashdot Discussion. [Accessed date].
For example,To cite a post, use the format
- Poster Name, "Post Title," opinion expressed in Slashdot Discussion "Discussion title." [Accessed date].
For example,That with this they'll now write about this thread and how they use Slashdot for news stories, and then we'll see an entry on Slashdot about how the news industry is writing about how they write about Slashdot, and then...
- ----
I think we need a new category.
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If anything, I figure the use of such an epithet as "Anonymous Coward" would cause those who have no knowledge of Slashdot and what an AC represents to become curious and want to search out the point for labeling such an inane comment as the words of a coward.
"That was cute, but why are they calling the author an Anonymous Coward? I'll go take a look at this Slashdot site and find out... Hey, this place is cool!"
BTW, whoever posted "November 5, 1999, The Duh heard round the world," is probably kicking themselves now for doing it anonymously (what a coward!).
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It's ironic that so many people here defend freedom in words, but act up in a big hissy snit when when "their" words are freely used. Who cares at this point and in this context if ideas are "fixed in a tangible medium" and subject to copyright protection by the US Congress, Courts, and Armed Forces? Attribution would be nice, but can lead to unmanagably obnoxious advertising, right? Why perpetuate the legal fictions and try to assert property rights? It's a losing battle. Wanna consult your lawyer every time you think a thought? Like they say, what goes around, comes around..
At least they stopped poking fun at the "News for Nerds" tagline. I don't remember seeing a mention of it anywhere...
/.
Not that I don't like the tag line, its just really pathetic that that's what the "mainstream" media harps on when writing about
Vote Technocratic! Government by killer robots!
The famous line from John F. Kennedy's Berlin speech is as follows:
...according to http://www.historyplace.com/speec hes/berliner.htm. The German phrase could be interpreted as either "I am a citizen of Berlin" or "I am a jelly doughnut". Those listening knew perfectly well that he meant the former, although "Ich bin Berliner" (no "ein") would be more grammatically accurate. This is briefly explained at http://www.urbanle gends.com/language/kennedy_berliner_quote.html.
For that matter, so does Babel Fish. InterTran translates Ich bin Berliner as "I am doughnut" and Ich bin ein Berliner as "I am one doughnut" -- not too swift. At least it handles a ton more languages than Babel Fish does (even Japanese with Shift JIS encoding to some extent).
And you don't have to always have English as a language being translated to or from, either.
The Slashdot community is representative of one segment of the public, and an important one in that it is more technically aware than the average.
M$ has spent the last year "making friends" and "building support" in Congress (see story in Sunday's New York Times). Whether Congress might intervene is subject to public pressure. Adverse public opinion might also make the Dept. of Justice less eager to agressively pursue M$, especially if the administration changes hands next election.
Thus public sentiment is an important part of the story. (After all, that's what wins elections.) Is it all there is? No. But I think we can safely assume that the articles linked above weren't the only ones about M$ that those publications posted.
Think about it, they post First Post and get to write news stories about it.
A quick search for the user name MSNBC revals no users....
Aaron "PooF" Matthews
E-mail: aaron@fish.pathcom.com
To mail me remove "fish."
ICQ: 11391152
Quote: "Success is the greatest revenge"
...that at least one cited comment must be rated '-1, flamebait' per article on slashdot ?
We are witnessing what are known as suits. Behind all the formalwear, gold plated pens, and Florsheim shoes there is only a picture of slashdotters as unemployed biologists who are fascinated by tinkering with basic sciences but offer little justification for stating as sources. To the suit we're all supposed to be flipping hamburgers and cleaning toilets so there's little lost, much gained in not referencing us.
To me it seemed as if the news aritcles were accusing slashdot readers of hypocrisy. That we think Judge Jackson is great becuase he ruled MS has a monoply, but then we think he sucks becuase he ruled linux is a fringe operatoring system. What relevance this has to the MS case or anything else, I don't know, but that's the feeling I got from the article.
"Linux aficionados who are applauding US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's bitter denunciation of their archrival Microsoft might want to read the fine print first. In the 207-page preliminary ruling, Jackson says that "fringe" operating systems like Linux are destined for continued niche market status."
... that a sufficient number of open source developers will commit to developing and continually updating the large variety of applications that an operating system would need to attract in order to present a significant number of users with a viable alternative to Windows," Jackson predicted." (Emphasis mine)
I'm still applauding. The fact is, Linux does not have what it needs to be a good desktop OS right now. I can't get Opera, or a reasonably stable version of NS under Linux (NS is even more stable under Windows, which is scarey). But Linux does have what I need to use it as my firewall, and to develop for, etc. It's very much a WIP (Work In Progress), but it's only going to get better. And if you do compare the ratio of x86 PCs running Windows to x86 PCs running Linux, then you can also call it a fringe based on that ratio (as would be *BSD, OS/2, and any other x86 OS).
"When Judge Jackson said: "It is unlikely
He was right. How many people do you know (remember the intelligence factor applies) that even understand the concept "there are two kinds of files -- executables and data" or that "executables exist to work with data"? Well, if the Good Times Virus has anything to say on the subject, no. These are the blinking 12:00 generation -- people too stupid, tired, or busy to bother with the simplest of things around. These people expect the PC to know instantly what they want to do, or to be very inflexible and only offer them a few choices so they can go ahead and do what few tasks they know they can do on a PC without having to worry about thinking.
"In other words, Jackson needed to rule that Linux has virtually no chance to go mainstream. But he didn't mention RedHat's successful initial public offering, or even popular products, such as Apple Computer's iMac."
Linux going mainstream is still a possibility to many people, that is, people who know how to use a computer. The only other "mainstream" users who will use Linux (for the time being only) will, of course, require a local Linux guru to setup Linux for them before they can start enjoying the benefits of this "fringe" operating systems (this is why we support out local LUG). Jackson ignored this because he doesn't have much direct experience by Linux, besides Microsoft trying to use it as a straw man argument (which may very well have led him to be too harsh on it).
Wired also tried to decry his ruling with other points. The Red Hat IPO was successful because companies use it on workstations, not because of mainstream users.
As for the iMac -- how many people bought the iMac for basic, basic word proc/browser usage (which is the "reason to buy" right now) over PCs just because of the case design? A fair amount, I'd say. The iMac is not a choice of operating systems or hardware, it's a choice of flavours! Most people know NOTHING about the insides of a computer, and telling them that they use different proccessors would just confuse them. Instead, slap a pretty shell on it, and it'll sell alright. The same people (whom I've met and talked with) who bought iMacs, where the same people who bought the new beetle for its looks (over, say, its performance stats).
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Hey, Rob! "Its" means "belonging to it" I think you meant the contraction of "it is", which is "it's". Normally I wouldn't point this out, but you made this mistake twice in an article about how we look to outsiders. We look like we can't spell.
Yes that's right. We all know that the comments that we write here on slashdot makes Billy's willy ready hard and sterdy.
Oh yyyeeeahh mmmm BABBYYYYY!!!
Our comments are, in willy gates' point of view, are stuff he gets off with.
He jacks his cock while reading our comments.... and using that strap on on himself..
mmm turns me on just know about what he does while reading our comments.
what you think is what we think -- we all have one common point to make -- we all want to fulfill billy's fantasies...
this is better than going to the strip bar down the block baby!!! yummy!!!
until next time... gates' rape fantasy with the penguin...
oh baby, your ass is so nice and tight...
Also sprach Cochran's German Review Grammar (pg. 16):
Where English uses the indefinite article as a determiner before a predicate noun denoting vocation, rank, or nationality, German idiom requires that the article be omitted. This is a source of repeated difficulty for English-speaking learners of German.
Ex.: Meine Schwaegerin ist Aerztin.
My sister-in-law is a physician.
Ich bin Berliner.
I am a citizen of Berlin.
Therefore it is more idiomatic to leave out the article (though I think everybody understood what he meant).
'Course, the real clincher that Kennedy said he was a jelly doughnut is that Kennedy said that during the '60's. QED.
1. Stolen
2. Edited
3. Taken out of context
4. Not made in jest
Those offenses seem mutually exclusive.
Man! I seriously thought they might quote my "Booyah" statement... I guess they just don't understand what has real meaning.
Well, let's not forget that news topics on Slashdot have to get the approval of CmdrTaco, Hemos, etc. So it's still pretty seriously filtered.
Now does this make more sense? No one on
If you're a BSD-minded
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
They are reporting what I have known for a long time. Most slashdoters are not to bright and have the maturity level of a 13 year old boy. Instead of informative discussions all you get here is flamebait. All the bashing of opinions, ideas, and peoples preferences here is very childish. This is why editorials about the news here will never be read in a serious manner because all it sounds like is some 13 year old whining about something they don't have or can't control. You people need to get a life because 90% of you do not know half the crap you are talking about.
Do you mean that we are suppose to actually give our well thought out intelligent answers rather than the off the top of my head emotional contributions? Are we really suppose to care what others think about our comments? What about what our forefathers fought for: Life, Liberty, and the ability to tell everyone to fuck off.
I have a big bag full of two cents and I'm coming your way.
The intent of posting to slashdot is to convay a thought not to make a proffit and in essence by the news relaying your comments they have done nothing more than comply with your desire to have your comments be known. /.ers long ago. It's also a sentiment I agree with. /.ers could get the wrong idea and to say the least they'll have absolutly no understanding of the depth from this deceptive simplification. /. allows anyone to refer back to the comments in question. But that ability to inform dosn't make a hill of beens when the news dosn't make use of it.
I also doupt they came to this conclusion with just your one comment as I personally came to this conclusion of
Still to have comments sliced up, predigested and spoon fed is very annoying. Part of Slashdot is the lack of sterilising of comments. Spelling errors and all.
People hearing a news story about the general sentiment of
It's not so simple as a comparason of government intrusion and Microsofts monopolistic ways. There is a greater consern of the damage that could be done to non-monopoltisic busnesses or even cases where a busness earned market control and mainatins it with quality not market exclusion.
It's not like Windows is accually a bad product but more of an oversold product. Who would like to say the Commodore 64 sucks? Now use it as an Internet server. Get the picture?
But grand simplications of my opinion of Windows could be reduced to the two words "Windows Sucks" but I'd never say that becouse it's not true. Windows is mearly insuffecent for most people.
This depth of idealism is what comes with being able to see the accual comments.
Real world views do not comform to sound bytes and
I don't actually exist.
If they really wanted to know how we think then they would have read everyone's bio. That's where the true personality lies.
I have a big bag full of two cents and I'm coming your way.
So, since it seems that /. was worth more than a million dollars according to one report for it's founder - I wonder what the latest reasons are for continuing to keep the code closed and proprietary.
/.?
Personally, I am all for it if someone wants to have closed code - but then you would have to drop a little of the "OpenSource is god" attitude around here.
Much better to pretend to support open code, keep your closed and have the best of both worlds I suppose.
If it was MS pulling this trick, you'd all scream - but who really dares speak out about
The law makes no distinguish between critiquing one copyrighted work, a book let's say, or another. They absolutely do not need your permission to briefly excerpt your comment to critique it. This is what fair use is all about.
The Australian Version of this Article Had the Almighty quote
As "Scumdamn" wrote, "Is it just me or did the world just gain color? I feel like dancing around singing 'Ding Dong the witch is dead!'"
Did this appear in the US version??
After I checked out the the original Posting Here it looks like they even quoted the wrong author.
The MyTh - I am a figment of the Imagination - [Im Probably even not here]
I remember the funniest one ever: a poll asking "Do you think Web polls are vulnerable to robot vote attacks?" When I first saw it, the option "No" was winning by a good amount; when I checked back in half an hour, the results had been "retired because of a robot attack". Then I check /., and someone had posted a Perl script to get around the site's voter-tracking measure, and vote "Yes" repeatedly. Hehehe.
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Hi there Slashdot monkeys. M$ still has more money that you. Their stock was not effected almost at all. Your little "crusade" is a pathetic attempt at a computer nerds rebellion. Script monkeys use linux, morons who just bought a new puter and wanna be a "hax0r" run linux. And yes, it finally has a fucking debugger!! Welcome to the 20th century, perhapps you will make it to the 21st.
So, when is /. going to get Yahooed?
:)
hmmm.... that's funny... you seem to be repeating what I just said about hypertext, and you speak as if you are disagreeing with me...
At the time I worked for the Pacific Stock Exchange on their options trading floor, and it always seemed fishy that whenever big takeover news broke, the DL trader had been trading big in that company days/hours/minutes before Reuters carried the news. The market makers in the pits HATED trading with DL because they knew they were about to get screwed, and sometimes an Exchange official had to compel market makers to make a trade with DL under Exhchange rules.
Just the same, during this period Milken (very young and very rich)and DL were lionized in the press. When the government finally exposed the scandal, it was old news to anyone who worked in the industry.
Perhaps it's instructive ten years later, although Milken is still a wealthy man, he's not a "player" in his industry, and Drexel, Lambert is long gone as a securities firm.
Seems to be they were unjustifiably nice to both Microsoft and SlashDot.
In your last paragraph you advocate giving a high moderation score to posts that evoke flames. Sure, you don't phrase it that way, but that's what it boils down to. (Give a high score to posts that have a lot of negative and posative moderations together.) This is not going to raise the level of debate. It will lower it.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The consent decree was to include an injunction disallowing Microsoft to enter into any new non-disclosure agreements with developers or any exclusive contracts with computer manufacturers for 7 years. The district judge, refused to issue the consent decree, citing a book he had read called "Hard Drive" which alleged that Microsoft was sleazy. He was demanding that the Justice department also expand its investigation to include allegations that Microsoft had been guilty of pre-announcing non-existent products - commonly known as "vaporware."
He (Judge Sporkin) also allowed 3 companies to anonymously file a brief supporting the vaporware charges and over a month after the filing deadline no less. The Judge wanted the government to continue it's investigation and so refused to issue the consent decree on the grounds that it wasn't in the public interest as defined by the Tunney act 15 U.S.C. 16(e) (1988).
BOTH Microsoft and the Justice department appealed. Microsoft on the grounds that the anonymous filings were improper, the Government on grounds that the consent decree was in the public interest. The DC circuit court ruled against the Judge and remanded the case back to the district court with the instruction that it was to be handled by a different judge. They found Judge Sporkin to be grossly biased.
The appeals decision is important for two reasons:
One would think, based on the rulings so far and especially this one, United States Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit No. 95-5037 June 16, 1995, that the government has never been able to show harm to itself:
So Microsoft was lucky. How dare they take advantage of this situation eh?
It's important to note that the government is so convinced that the practice of entering into exclusive agreements is NOT illegal that they do not demand in the original consent decree that Microsoft refrain from entering into them in the matter of the NT operating system:
What you have here is a clear double standard. The Justice department is attempting to punish MS for it's success with Windows3.1 and perhaps Windows95, but is allowing MS to continue with practices it claims are "harmful" with WindowsNT.
This proves that the Justice department is either utterly clueless with regards to the software industry, or is only interested in getting a quick settlement and the resultant cash that would result. They are not in any way interested in creating a remedy for the software industry but in extorting money from Microsoft.
You can be sure that they do not give a hoot about MS competitors. Why? Because it is widely reported that Windows2000 will be based on the NT kernel. Therefore they have a solid legal basis by which they can continue their "anticompetitive" agreements.
Game, set and match Microsoft.
If the new consent decree is similar to the original, it will be entirely moot well before the 7 year prohibition is reached. To those who believe that Microsoft is a monopoly, this is horrible news. It proves that the government is totally inept. To those that believe, as I do, that Microsoft has done nothing wrong (that would include the Justice department) it is also tremendously bad news. The government will be effective in extorting and manipulating a company that has not broken the law.
Anyone and everyone is fair game for this sick practice. Keep cheering. But don't pretend to be interested in "fixing" the problem. This is about class envy and persuing an unpopular icon in the buisness community. If the Justice department can sue anyone willy nilly for not breaking the law, then everyone is fair game. That is everyone who is unpopular with the ignorant masses.
Exactly.
/. is the topics discussed, and especially the overall anti-Microsoft sentiment. Notice I don't call it a bias. I think MOST /. citizens value rational arguments over flamage, (hence the moderation system). While Pro-Microsoft arguments are accepted, it is carefully examined for FUD, and held to a very high standard. The rest of the world is talking about how great Active Directory is, and how DCOM will change your life, /. is gettng past Microsoft's marketing machine and talking about the nitty gritty truth of technical matters, and that is exactly why I like it here. I don't HATE Microsoft per se, but I have always disagreed with their business practices, on a "little voice" level (that little voice that tells you when you're doing something wrong).
While I have messed with Linux, I think it's just not for me. Either I'm not ready for Linux, or Linux isn't ready for me yet.
I am a semi-geek,(at least a geek in spirit, I don't claim to hack kernels) and my OS of choice is Mac. At work, I work on Wintel machines, and soon, a little Solaris.
What attracts me to
There IS sort of a "geek morality" at play here, that involves a set of ethics valuing "technological advancement for everybody" over "profits for shareholders", and that's embodied in the whole Open Source thing, but it plays out again and again in the discussions. And THAT'S what I'm here to be a part of.
Plus - geeks have a wild sense of humor.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The poster was probably getting JFK confused with Quayle. Quayle, who in an effort to compare himself to Kennedy in his debate with Benson, said in English, "I am a jelly donut!" Benson (played by Robert Guillaume, co-starring with Odo) replied, "I knew jelly donuts. Jelly donuts were friends of mine. And you, sir, are no jelly donut!"
So, you see, it was Quayle who wasn't a jelly donut. JFK was, which explains why Marilyn Monroe took such an interest in his creamy filling.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I think the media suks