Slashdot Mirror
Y2K Movie Followup: The Slashdot Effect Gone Wrong
Addition: 11/30 by michael : I thought I'd chime in here, since I started the fracas.
Blaming the ISP is sometimes appropriate, and sometimes not. Huge national ISPs have legal staffs to evaluate whether something should or should not be pulled. In general, they display an astonishing lack of backbone in defending customer sites, because even minor hassle from law enforcement just isn't worth it to them, and they don't have much excuse when they knuckle under. Small ISPs are a much different matter. No legal staff, facing the loss of your entire business if you guess wrong. Let's say he stood up for this guy and refused to pull the site, and the FBI seized the ISP's computers. Would all you flamers have stood up for him, sent him money to fight the good fight, talked to his other customers and begged them to stay on even though their sites were down? Yeah, sure you would. He made the best business decision available to him. The difference between this guy and one of the national ISPs is that they wouldn't have put the site back up again at all.
And if Wired has it right and you people are writing to the ISP's other clients, that's just sad. Save your anger for someone who's actually done something wrong. You want to get pissed off, give the FBI a call and ask them how their "investigation" is going.
While we're at it, Slashdot needs a "stupid" moderation category. Because sometimes it's not a troll, it's not off-topic, and it's not flamebait... it's just stupid.
The Your Rights Online articles tend to be the worst example of biased, unresearched stories. Most real journalists make a lot of effort to present the facts and both sides of the issue to let the reader decide what's right and what's wrong. Most Slashdot articles, on the other hand, instead of just presenting us with a link and a summary, they try to offer their interpretation of the event and inevitably include a healthy dose of bias along with it.
For controversial topics, we need article *summaries*, not *editorials*. We're smart enough to make up our own minds without having to read "Big Brother" every other line.
>>How many atrocities have been committed in history just because the people commiting them were in the majority?
./ers (and Linux users in general, in some cases).
And how many were committed because the majority remained wilent and willfully ignorant?
>>But how does spamming (how could anyone consider flames intelligent) solve the situation? Especially to the victim!
It is NOT SPAMMING to send e-mail to a company to express your unhappyness with one of their decisions.
Spam is UCE, these companies provide e-mail addresses for customers (or potential customers) to communicate with them. I don't see where the problem is.
>>It's this kind of 'hack the world' mentality that makes people look down at
It's this type of "we need to fit in" mentality that will forever keep geeks on the outside of things.
I don't see where you extract "hack the world" from my comment. Expression of dissatisfaction through e-mail and telephone calls is the 1990's version of the sit-in. It's a method of civil disobedience and it gets results. It is LEGAL, it is non-destructive and it is effective.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Perhaps a solution would be to implement a feature in email clients that would by default keep all messages in a queue for a set period of time (say 24 hours) so that you can edit some hastily written words after you've had a good night's sleep. i'm sure this post would benefit from editing of some sort :)
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
The FBI has not been the friend of militia groups... and they might try to use their power by claiming that such videos incite violence, conspiracy and so forth, thus presenting an allegedly clear-and-present danger. They'd probably have much of the media on their side, as well.
Despite the First Amendment, it's not unusual to see journalists going on and on about the evils of, say, Paladin Press, or hate groups, or militias; and then cheerily, but incorrectly, implying that they're all part of some Hillaryesque Right-Wing Conspiracy headed by Limbaugh, Buchanan and the Aryan Nation.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
..might be for a few of you who have no good reason not to use this guys ISP (maybe yours pisses you off and you have been meaning to switch) to actually ask him if he has much of a back bone for this sort of stuff now (FBI threats) and switch to his ISP if you believe that he dose.. and tell him so.. /. may have made his life miserable for a little bit, but if he is really one of the good guy there is no reason that we can't make shure that he ends up better off for it (financially).
I seem to remember that the artist lives in New Jersey? Is the ISP located in NJ too? and dose it matter where he is located, i.e. dose he do web hosting. I would definitly talk to the guy about switching.. execpt that I'm in school and I get everything for free.
Regardless, if the guy really is more protecting of people's rights now, then someone out there sould definitly figure this out (by talking to him) and switch to his service. If people were to switch to him specifically for freedom based reasons then the FBI is the only looser here.. and we can all home happy.
Jeff
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The old carpentry saying
"Measure twice, cut once"
has some important, useful information that it would behoove us in the information age to take heed of:
"Think twice, click once".
...and be civil!
I'd highly suggest reading the slashdot article mentioned in this posting Thoughts from the Furnace
-core
Utter crap. Both the SS and the Wehrmacht routinely massacred people (mostly Jews) in Poland, the Baltic States, the USSR, wherever.
In Kiev (for example), several thousand were walked up to large pits, ordered to strip and then shot.
In the Pripet marshes, the Jews were walked into the swamp and shot so they fell there, babies were to be held close to their mothers so one bullet would do for both.
In France and Italy, whole villages were expunged.
Sorry about this rant, but you have absolutely no idea of the scale of the operations.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
>>Civil disobediance is one thing. Purposefully destroying someone's business is another. I mean, the guy is hardly, like he said, an AOL. Which, I'm sure you'll say: That's no excuse! .. maybe it isn't. But that's no reason to crucify the poor man's business over the head of his (over?)reaction to Big Brother.
What do you think the sit-ins and bus boycotts of days gone by were? They were a deliberate attempt to change conduct through hurting businesses financially. I have no problem with it, as long as facts are the weapons that get used.
>>I made no intention of saying they should 'fit in'. Your self-imposed geek exile is a fallacy. We're all alone on this big, dumb rock. Get over it.
I don't have anything to get over, I'm a college student with a good GPA, I makedecent money at my job and I'm married to a big breasted blonde.
You and your desire to fit in amongst people who don't want you, will forever keep you an alone bitter little man.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Exactly!
/. article. I watched the video clip, and I read the wired article as well. And here's what I would like to add to your insightful comment.
This has turned out to be a very interesting story. I read the initial
I agreed with Weiger's comments on the wired article. He seems like an intellegent person. But running a business is another story. And as a business student, it seems to me that he has gotten what he deserved. The 2 most important things you do before setting up a business are:
1. take some sort of business class... you need to know more than how to balance a book, or advertise... you need to know ethics, and laws, and the whole 9 yards.
2. you find a lawyer! You don't find one when you need one. This is the single most important thing to do before setting up a business. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You don't go with the first lawyer you talk to... you interview many... because your lawyer is going to be your lifeline in a situation you least expect to happen.
I happen to have a really excellent corporate law professor this semester so I feel empowered by my knowledge now. And if Weiger wouldn't have been so entreprenuer gung ho... he would have done things "right". He also would know that he's probably got a very good Defemation case against the FBI, depending on the events that took place. It's sad that he's not sophisticated enough to know this.
Now as for the video, if he had any business sense... he would have never put that on his servers to begin with. Have you seen this video? omg! You're damn right the FBI wanted that taken down. Now wait a second... I didn't say it shouldn't be on the web. This is what the web is all about. But if I was a web hosting business owner... there is no way in hell I'd allow that on my server. It looks like some kind of terrorist plot and to tell you the truth.. it sent chills up my spine. I'm not tempted to email his clients and flame them for his actions, I'm tempted to email them and tell them that their are better businesses out there. Run by people with education. I'm sorry... but he really did get what he deserved. If his business goes down because of all of this, well... Darwin lives again.
Hizonner I'm glad someone else saw this. It seems to me that a lot of people are getting all caught up in the "no censorship!" and "I have rights dammit" parts of this issue. I want to be a hippy as much as the next person, but look at this from an entrepreneur prespective. Now think about it.... there ya go.. yikes.. what was he thinking.
You have paid for a total of 0 pages and so far 0 have been used up (0 today).
Everyone knows if you want a real news website, you go to The Onion.
>>Terminating a customer's account is not the same as stealing assets or killing Jews.
The swiss banks might not have killed a single Jew, but they DID hold onto their assets after the Nazis expatriated and murdered them.
>>If his customers had been told that, do you really think Wieger would be facing the loss of his business, which he is?
Maybe he should have thought about the consequences of that BEFORE he pulled a paying customer's site.
Even the least constitutionally aware among us knows that the FBI would need a court order or a warrant to force us to do anything that we did not want to do. I don't buy the "they bullied me" defense. (I'll say it again) I've stood face to face with two armed BATF agents when I was falsely accused of owning an illegal firearm. I stood my ground and I haven't seen hide nor hair of either one of them in years. You don't have to be "brave" or "foolish" to stand up for yourself, just aware.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Slashdot effect gone wrong? Nobody got hurt, it just created some more publicity, and there's no such thing as bad publicity, right? And it created an investigation at the FBI because of complaints. That's good. Everybody calm down. Good I say.
A friend of mine told me that Segfault.org had a problem with sick twisted perverts like this one posting crap about females and such, and it got to the point that Segfault stopped allowing user comments or something. Not being a Segfault reader myself, I can't personally attest to this. But if these are the same sick people who caused the Segfault user comment demise as I heard it, may Slashdot PLEASE do something about them.
the real at&t mix
The best way, IMO, to handle problems like this was what I (among several) suggested as the most direct solution: Mirror the site in an area outside FBI jurisdiction. As recent times have shown, once something is released to the 'net, it's pretty damn hard to get it off again. Throw up a couple mirror sites and that information is forever guaranteed to stay in circulation.
Well, maybe not forever, but at least until people get bored of it. ;)
<sarcasm>Save the flame wars for something useful, like the linux vs. bsd "Fork!", "Spoon!" debate.</sarcasm>
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
There are many many arguments surrounding this whole issue... but in my opinion the 2 main ones are:
1) Nothing is effective unless it is constructive, this goes for criticism, conversation, relationships *anything*. Flaming is a pointless excersize and a complete waste of energy. Think of it from a simple point of view, surely it is so much better for both sides if the energy put into the argument was of a positive nature rather than negative. Not to mention the simple aspect of respect. - It's all be forgotten about on the web, primarily IMO because you are faceless and it's very unlikely you will get any comeback. Unlike IRL!
2) Dumbing down.... are we really getting more stupid??? Are we unevolving into chimps who don't understand subtleties anymore. Where satire and humor is lost totally? After all it was a satirical movie and if people decide to get scared about it then what are we to do. Is pulling it really the answer?
It's a strange situation, but one which is happening everywhere. TV, politics, almost everything has been dumbed down for the masses. It's a disturbing trend.
I have no easy answers, but the whole thing worries me deeply. It has such far reaching consequences not just to do with privacy and rights, but on a much more basic human interaction level.
Well, well. So it did work. People have complained that the ISP didn't stand for freedom of speech and it gave them a spine. Frankly, Weiger is trying to play the victim here. Saying stuff like, 'Oh, but we're just a lil' company, it wasn't our fault.' Yeah. But it's never anybody's fault when freedom of speech is concerned. You pull content from a website, and you're claiming you're just paying the rent. What you're doing next is approving of massive censorship in the name of passivity.
How do you think the Nazis pulled it off? Not one worker ever killed Jews en masse: the only thing they did is pull a lever, drive a locomotive, show the Jews to the gas chamber. I'm not saying genocide and censorship are of the same scale; I'm saying that in both cases, institutions promoting them hope everyone involve will say, 'Well, I didn't really do anything.'
Like I said, flames is never the solution. But making your voice heard is. In the light of the conclusion of this story, the Slashdot effect, civilised or not, did have a positive effect. I'm not endorsing it, but... Well, you gotta wonder.
I'm certainly not the first person to say it in this discussion, but I'm going to add my voice to the chorus. /.'s influence has grown tremendously over the last couple of months. Major news agencies regularly read here now. A news story on /. can have huge repercussions, as the story at the head of this thread and other recent articles here have demonstrated. With /.'s growth must come more respnsibility. Its one thing to yell "fire" out in the wilderness, quite another to yell it in a crowded building. When a news story that is bound to generate a lot of activity, such as something on privacy, or your rights online, at the very least, the parties involved should be contacted, and invited to present their side of the story here.
Not really. There are plenty of bbs's brimming with people with attitudes like this. Not to mention IRC's, Usenets, Churches...
It took me a long time to teach myself to take a couple of deep breaths first and really imagine what was going on in the other person's mind (and whether anybody needed to hear my angst over a post) before replying.
Most people never do. They feel that they have the innate right to express ANYTHING they may feel, at any time, because somewhere, somebody got the idea that we have the right to never be offended, that life is fair, etc.
Life only becomes fair, methinks, when people don't respond to any possible upbraidance of their "rights" with anger and flames.
With people as edgy as they are these days, and people out there flying off the handle and walking into work with shotguns...you bet the FBI is going to be edgy about anything that can possibly generate a buttload of flames. All they need is for just ONE of those people to decide that flaming just isn't enough to get that point across...
And just enough people, every year, do just that. Some stupid stunt that started out enlightened, but just winds up hurting somebody, and certainly damaging the rights of others.
Sophistry is not a big step toward species wide survival.
Listen to me Peter, I want this bench. You go sit on that bench over there, and if you're good I'll tell you the rest of
I propose a new modding category:
"What the..."
Question is, do you make it a positive or negative mod? Either way, that's what I'd have to mod this. It's definitely the strangest post I've seen on Slashdot yet. It'd be a shame to mod it down, but it kind of deserves it (it's offtopic, after all).
I clearly meant readers. In the context of the original discussion, it's not all that important how many people are posting to Slashdot, but what percentage of those who learn about something through Slashdot may be sending "angygrams", no matter whether they post or not.
And I know it's hard (or rather impossible) to do, but I also know that at least soms counting is being done, since there are lists of the most frequently accessed stories. Maybe if one has access to all the data that Rob has, it would be possible to make a (very) rough estimation of the number of readers. Accuracy is not all that important, anyway. What counts is to get a feeling for the order of magnitude.
Anyway, it's just a thought.
--
Linux user since early January 1992.
You know I read this on Wired yesterday and I thought, I was shocked... shocked... to find gambling going on at Rick's...er, that Slashdotters flew off the handle in their usual subtle as a brick way.
However, there is also no excuse for Wired and these guys posting those flames. If I posted every "bad" e-mail I got, the 'net would have run out of bandwidth long before now.
This is about a guy who is probably going to lose his business becuase a bunch of busybodies decided to start contancting his customers since he isn't "defending his rights" or whatever. Sounds like a news story to me.
Could this post have been worded better? Probably. At the moment, I'm alittle upset - both at how people responded, and how it was handled. The 'net is anonymous... stuff like this threatens that anonymity
I really don't see what this has to do with anonymity. Its not like the guy didn't want people to know he was behind the site or anything.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Um. So you think that some of the people who ranted on the ISP for caving in instead of standing up to the authorities did so in part because they would rather do that than risk standing up to the authorities themselves?
Hmmm. You know, I wouldn't be surprised.
I didn't send an e-mail.
Though with a site like Slashdot, given the amount of people who read it, I'm not surprised that people did. I'm sure that some of the e-mail was well-written, thought out arguments for why the person should have kept the site up. I'm also sure that the majority of the e-mail wasn't of this form at all.
I'm a bit optimistic when it comes to the slashdot populace. I think most people here are of above average intelligence, and are capable of rational argument. I think what happened in this case was that these people did what I did. Nothing. I didn't have all the facts, and I knew it. I wasn't going to take it upon myself to mail this person and tell him to do something that I myself might not have done. I think the majority of clearheaded slashdotters thought the same way.
But there are a lot of people on slashdot, and not all of them are exactly clearheaded. There are flamers for all types of wars (KDE, Beowulf, Emacs, pick your favorite holy war), and those who are simply abusing slashdot for their own bizzare reasons (petrified posts, anyone?). Most likely, it's these people who are flaming and using the Slashdot Effect for ill. That's what I'd like to think.
Personally, there's not much I can do about it. I could flame the flamers, but then I'm at their level (some would say that's exactly what I'm doing here). I certainly don't advocate the canceling of slashdot accounts. The only action I see as being fair is to push the positive side of the slashdot effect more. It can be done. Some positive things that slashdotters have done in the past include the Mass mirroring of deCSS and helping to critique and rewrite for Jane's Intelligence review. Those on slashdot who are well-spoken, intelligent and can actually get their point across without the caps lock key could help turn our failing reputation around.
-Denor
Oh, well. Hopefully nobody found my site too slow this weekend. It felt neat to see "http://moxy.wtower.com/mirrors/timesq.ram" mentioned all over the net, though.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
+1 (Flamebait) FIRST POST!!!! (99/11/30/1258205-1, 3 points left)
Since when was flamebait +1?
The FBI does this sort of thing quite a lot. It is a pattern of conduct and their practice. I would like to see some concerned attorney (with the time of course - a slashdot alumn?) bring an action for damages naming the FBI as defendant for the deprivation of individual civil rights under color of law. The FBI in this case at least has clearly deprived the ISP of there rights under the Constitution and federal law to the detriment of the ISP an has acted under the auspicies of its office.
It's not going to do one bit of good. It *can't*. Because in any crowd, there's always going to be *some* flamers writing nastygrams. It's not because Slashdotters are particularly rude, it's simply because the huge number of responses means that even a vanishingly small percentage of flamers will still produce enough of them for a news article or a section on a web site. If Wired *wants* to run a story about nasty flamers, they will, even if the flamers are only 0.01 of all the replies--you can't stop them. The media likes to sensationalize.
Telling people here not to be rude, in an attempt to avoid situations like the Wired article, is like getting a bin of ten thousand apples and expecting there not to even be a single bad one. It doesn't work that way.
All right, so quite a few crusaders around here went off half-cocked and blamed the wrong man. Also a number of inappropriate assumptions were made that might cast certain Slashdotters in the role of buffoons.
On the other hand, I hasten to point out the obvious redeeming characteristic of this mass action: Hello! It worked!
What did the flamers accomplish apart from gratifying their egos ("laid my life on the line" - please!) and offending a number of inoffensinve people? Well, for one thing they riled up Wired, a cool-wannabe but nonetheless mainstream media publication, to run a story about the violation of a man's rights. For another, they provided Wieger with a glimpse of the boiling vehemence of thousands of people who - although they were insulting him - were also expressing their support for his rights in their own emotionally strangled fashion. Do you think Wieger will back down from his rights a second time without an explicit written court order signed and in triplicate? I doubt it - he is now all too aware that he is not alone.
Did you read his final quote at the end of the Wired story? "I'm going to tell the FBI, 'Fuck you! You've probably cost us our business, you assholes!'" Now a man who might have backed down timidly has the defiance of a fucking lion.
Suppression tactics work by cultivating a sense of isolation in the victim. The government works to portray artists as exhibitionist misfits. The christian right works its damndest to instill the idea that people who enjoy pornography or drugs are freaks and loners. The liberal left demonizes christians as a tiny and irrational sect working to install pews in every classroom. Eventually the ostracised target accepts the lesson, begins to believe that he or she is really all alone, and capitulates.
Wieger won't do that. He can't. He's been taught the opposite lesson in a most unforgettable manner. I won't say there are no negatives to flame - I've had more than my share of lost hair due to it myself - but I also reject the contention that it is useless and immoral.
Something to ponder.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
I have to agree with Hemos on this one as well. Blaming the host is just not right. I might not agree with the FBI's stance, however if they came to my door and told me to take something off our systems at our company, it would be hard to say no.
I don't think we can expect every host who's pressured by the gov or any group to stand up to them all the time. There's more than just the question of removing a video here. There could be massive time, financial, and legal expenses for the host to fight such action. Goodness knows I don't have the resources to fight the FBI, and I can't be sure I would get help from organizations that do.
As a small web host myself (less than 100 clients), I know how terrible situations like this can be. While I've never had this extreme, there have been many situations where lawyers and companies have contacted me saying that one of my clients is infringing on so and so's rights. In my opinion (and in our terms of service), all content of the site is property of the client, and therefore all responsibility of content is that of the client. I will take the material down either a) at the request of the client, or b) by court order. It's easy to get scared as a "little guy". If I had been in this small hosts' shoes, I think I probably would have removed the material too until I verified the legitimacy of the FBI's claims.
In a suffiently large group of people, there are idiots. Some are true idiots, some are half idiots tipped over the line for a momemnt, and some are just ok people who happened to have a bad day or overeact to a story and act stupidly. Most of us try to control ourselves and think things over before we say them, but some people are better at that then others.
In my opinion, Michael jumped the gun the other day when he started painting id and John Carmack out to be evil, when in fact the lack of documentation on the disabling of the hardware string was just an oversight. He wasn't flaming profanities by any means, but I would assume that him writing for slashdot must mean somebody thinks of him as a rather levelheaded and thoughtful dude. And if even the most levelheaded of us can overeact on issues we are emotional about, should we really be surprised that there are others who do so more often, and with less grace?
I'm sure there isn't a reader here who hasn't overeacted and flamed someone unecesarily at one time or another. A few years ago I made a vow never again to send an email while I am angry because of trouble that had gotten me into. Its a good rule that I try to apply even today (though older and wiser), but not even it is foolproof.
Now onto my real point: given the size of the Slashdot community, and compared with other communities I have taken part in on the Internet, the flames emerging from us have been rather benign. We have been through this with somebody posting the examples of horrible mails they have recieved from Linux users and Slashdot readers a number of times now, and my surprise has always been at how mild the flames actually are. In my Usenet days I once had a person I had been arguing with over some pitiful subject post hundreds of messages to a popular group with subject lines containing explicit sexual insults about me. Just an idiot, they happen, and I certainly did not attack or blame the majority of the subscribers of the group.
The nature of free expression is that stupid things are said. The redeeming quality is that the smart things are more plentiful, more provocative, and more important.
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
However, there is also no excuse for Wired and these guys posting those flames. If I posted every "bad" e-mail I got, the 'net would
/.'ers to harass this poor guy in the name of him standing up for free speech, it's also okay for Wired to excercise that same free speech and write a story about it. Welcome to the brave new world. Sucks to be on the other side of the fence doesn't it?
have run out of bandwidth long before now. We don't need to air other people's dirty laundry or our own.
Sure there is. Wired is excercising their free speech. If it's okay for
-Rich
I know what you mean.. There is a comforting feeling to get that dose of 'Petrified/Grits' along with the regular commentary. Kind of like the moronic poking/prodding/slapping bit the Three Stooges did; Moe always won, Curly always got it the worst, and we always laughed.
I must say that 'Mr. Petrified' has gone above and beyond his usual effort for this one. He's moving beyond the standard one-line 'xxxx xxxxx NAKED AND PETRIFIED'. Either that, or we're seeing a new 'Mr. Petrified'.
Keep up the good work!
.sig: Now legally binding!
Slashdot isn't just pretending to be A news agency, they want to be THE GEEK news agency. And if they want that, as I've said a million times, they will have to DO IT RIGHT.
Every Slashdot "editor" (especially Taco, Hemos and Katz) needs to take classes in:
---
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
So the more over-reactionary elements of slashdot have over-reacted
(again) sent useless flames Wieger instead of well-informed
objections to the FBI.
This article nearly overwhelmed me with deja vu.
Now, now people. We are all familiar with slashdot. We are all
familiar with how easy it is to be immature on the Internet. We all
know how easy it is to misunderstand these things and get mad at the
wrong party.
I think the most likely chain of events was became obvious when the
original article was posted on slashdot.
We all knew this was going to happen
What I don't know is why wired thinks this is news.
After I read that wired article, I (once again) wished I hadn't given
wired's hit counters one more little boost that (a) they don't
deserve, and (b) will encourage them to become still more
sensationalist, continuing their transformation from a typical lousy
computer magazine to the Enquirer of the net.
It is certainly regrettable that these things happen. It is worth
pointing out that slashdot at least tries to apologize and convince
its more over-reactionary members to be better behaved next time.
But news? Come now. This happens all the time.
Slashdot can be forgiven for posting a link to this article because
they are trying to apologize (A Good Thing(tm), even if it doesn't
change the behavior of slashdot's more reactionary readers).
Oh, btw the way, if share my opinion, moderate me up. If you don't,
moderate me down. Encourage like-mindedness.
Go ahead and moderate this one down if you want, but I think it needs to be said.
/. has done an awful lot of posts that are just fanning the flames, and what's really wrong is that this is generally done without looking into the issue at all.
/. has grown, and grown huge, and with the growth should really come some responsibility.
/. started, it was perfectly reasonable for Rob to just post some pointers to stories on other sites; it was more of a personal thing, like sending e-mail to friends. But now slashdot has really become a news service, but still refuses to adopt the responsibility that news services should have; the responsibility to at least try to independently verify a story before publishing it.
/. had tried to contact the people involved before posting the story. And in many cases, the commentary on the /. posting has turned out to be plain ol' wrong.
/. (at least I don't), but a minimal re-checking of the source is a pretty reasonable expectation.
Lately,
/. used to be a small site, that basically gave 'sightings' rather than stories. But
When
The last few weeks have seen a lot of stories that would have read very differently if
It's easy to blame the flamers for getting out of control, but at some point slashdot has to accept the responsibility for what is posted here by the staff. When somebody like CNN posts a story without checking the facts, everyone here gets very upset. Slashdot has grown to the point where they should begin adopting the same kind of journalistic integrity they insist from others.
Nobody expects a full private investigation into stories from
Ummm, hasn't anyone else noticed?
You called him a coward because he wouldn't 'stick up for himeself' in the face of the FBI. Now, the name FBI has a fair bit of weight behind it (wether it's from actually, the movies, or x-files...?) and I don't blame him for what he did. (I think what he did was a kind of instinctual response)
Now you're saying that he's no longer the coward because he's facing up to the FBI?
No, He's still the coward he was... he just has a few hundred bullies knocking at his email.
All your 'flaming' and 'telling him his rights' did was give him something else in this world to be afraid of...
Hope you enjoy this type of popularity.
EFF, the Electronic Freedom Foundation, is one of the most respected advocates of "electronic civil liberties" in the United States. This includes the freedom to communicate, and the freedom to protect your communications from unwanted interlopers. You can suppport your continuing right to use data protection tools-- which Administration oficials are working to remove-- by supporting the EFF.
EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, concerns itself with publicity, lobbying, and court challenges, in the continuing battle over personal privacy in the Information Age. How much of your private business and personal habits do you want to be freely available to corporate and government busybodies? If your answer is anything less than "I don't care, let them have it all," you probably want to support EPIC.
And what's the crap about a "rogue government agency"??? If such an agency existed and produced a video, why shouldn't it be put on web sites?
As usual, it seems like the FBI is going way overboard in their zeal to "protect" us. Welcome to the police state.
"What the..."
Question is, do you make it a positive or negative mod?
You could have it twice, one positive and one negative.
It shouldn't be more confusing that the post that you are moderating is anyway.
No, /. is not a news agency, but they are a media outlet. Slashdot is cited and quoted in mainstream news with regularity. Rob & co. have done an excellent job in the past of running the site, and /. has now has a reputation as the starting point for all issues that are geeky.
/. should have to verify everything they post, but they need to be fair and impartial, and need to have reasonable confidence in anything they say. For the most part most everything on /. is a reprint of something else which has already been printed online, but it's going to require a bit of old fashioned journalism for the content that's not.
I think that's great.
The problem is with that sort of credibility comes a certain responsibility to be correct. I'm not saying that the folks at
-Rich
So the FBI strongarmed a small business. Not good. People flamed the isp's other customers because he caved in. Thats fine with me. If his customers think this is a bad move on his part, and think that for some reason any other isp would act different, it's their own choice to leave. Thats the unfortunate reality for the isp's owner. Freedom of choice means freedom to be stupid and uninformed as well.
Sure, flaming isn't very mature, but is it any different than arguing in real life? Telling the average person to not flame is like asking the human race to evolve an order of magnitude beyond what we're at now. You should work for change but you have to deal with the current reality as well.
Selfishness is a root probem in our society. He put his money (and perhaps well being) in front of a right we need to stand up for. Sure this is just some silly y2k movie but the principle is the same.
"I have put my life on the line several times for [free speech] and all the freedoms guaranteed under the US Constitution," one angry advocate wrote Wieger. "You were not given a court order. You just got scared for your mortgage and your Lexus payment and are in that light a coward."
Obviously a flame but in a way he's right as well. People in the past did fight and die for the freedoms we have today. I know this sounds preachy and holier than thou since I can't live up to the people who really did put their lives on the line. But lets not simply ignore the fact. Simply saying that "thats just the way it is" is part of the reason the world is the way it is.
Anyway, I think that as you read the article and think about the situation that developed, the most important thing to remember was nicely stated by Wieger:
"The [free speech advocates] are saying,'Why didn't [Wieger] stand up for the Constitution?'" Zieper said. "I think that's very easy to say from afar. But when the knock comes for you, it's a terrifying experience."
It is one thing to stand up for certain things no matter what, there comes a point where one has to say, is this worth losing my house, my car, my computer, my whatever? And I'm sure someone will flame me saying that if they don't have their 'rights' they don't want to live, let alone have any of those possessions. While that too may be true, Wieger was simply taking precautions in order to prevent the ruining of his life. And when dealing with anything like this, situation and individual preferences will dictate.
And finally, I think we need to remember that not everyone has the same morals nor does everyone choose the same level of involvement. Me, for example, I support forest and wildlife conservation efforts and show my support passively by donating money to groups like the Canadian Wildlife Federation. But I can't ever see chaining myself to a tree and actively protesting in that manner. Does that make me any less of a supporter? I dunno for sure, but I don't think so.
-dr
It can be good for a company's bottom line to lie to cheat and steal from consumers. Does that make it right?
I am one who has had multiple accounts cencelled by multiple ISPs, not for breaking their rules but for getting complaints from too many people because they didn't like what I had to say.
(While I'm at it, Tim Gaiches from Telerama likes to suck big dicks!Ý)
If the FBI couldn't get a warrant to pull the site WHY would anyone be concerned with the FBI confiscating their computers? In case you didn't know it does require a court decision to deprive a person in the US of property.
This ISP pussied out, plain and simple. The FBI asked and the FBI got. I'd be wary about spending any money with these people in the future. It's because of spineless actions like these that threaten to turn the internet into the largest infomercial that the world has ever seen. If opinion is punished, denied and censored, commerce is all that will remain. Controvercial ideas are the reason why the first amendment was written. If we are all homogenous, then why do we need protection?
I say that this is the correct response to this IS a nice slashdotting. Clogging a company's e-mail server with 10 thousand complaints about their practices is a GREAT way to get their attention.
I also think that informing a company's customers of their actions is a great way to force a company to re-examine their business practices. If their customers agree with those actions, then they'd be more likely to stick with that company and not defect to others, but if they're unhappy that company will pay a definate financial penalty for their actions.
From the standpoint of the Swiss banks it was the right business decision at the time to hold the stolen assets of expatriated european Jews. Was it the right thing to do? From a business standpoint it was. After all SOMEONE would have taken the money, why not them?
For Microsoft it's always a good business decision to stomp out competition before they get a chance to mount a serious threat to the corporate bottom line.
I could go on for years citing example like this.
My point is this, just because it's the best "business decision" is no more valid an excuse than the "Just following orders" excuse of Nazi war criminals.
I say WAY TO GO SLASHDOTTERS! You're on the way to becoming one of the most powerful forces of change on the 'net. Lest I remind you all of that peope PC commercial? "Strength in numbers my friends." It is people like us who built the internet, it must be people like us who fights against the commercialization of the net where "the bottom line" is always the most important motivating factor.
LK
ÝI don't have any personal knowledge of Tim Gaiches as it regards to his penchant for sucking dicks (big or small), I'm just venting.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Some aspects of the message were funny. But I found them completely overshadowed by the scary sexual overtones of being able grope unwilling females held in permanent bondage. I don't doubt that the whole thing was a joke. I just find it in very poor taste.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
The moderaters can't decide what to do with this either. It has been moderated 14 times already... standing at 1: Off topic right now. Who knows what it will be when I finish this.
Pretty interesting. I think it deserves a 1 or a 2 myself. The comments underneath are interesting enough to warrant a few plusses.