Well, how long before the first OpenSSH release was the news of OpenSSH leaked? (It's not rhetorical, I don't know the answer). Then there's also the little fact that registering a domain isn't instantaneous and can take a little while. 9 days isn't all that long, especially when you consider that two out of every seven aren't business days (I don't have a calander handy to check what day of the week Oct 25-Nov 4 were)
That said, my problem with the OpenSSH.org thing isn't that he got there first, it's that he's using it to advertise his site knowing that OpenSSH.org is where people will go to try to find information about (surprise) OpenSSH. If they wanted his site they'd have gone to FreeSSH for obvious reasons. I know that I, for one, usually think ".org" when I think of OpenSSH or Open anything. Even if he does have a legitimate claim to the domain and he isn't trying to squat it for cash (which he isn't), it would still be a good jester to hand over the domain (especially since they offered to pay for it) as an offer of goodwill.
You mean the same freessh.org which, completely coincidentally, also belongs to him? Or the not mentioning that he's also linking to Freessh.org found, say, here?
The/. article was a post taken from a mail. It's hardly fair to claim that "they" are trying to hide info without first doing a little research (and no, reading/. and the comments doesn't count).
-- Reject
Re:Jon, *please* leave the research to the pros.
on
LonelyNet (Part Two)
·
· Score: 3
Er, what?
When did Jon even mention anything about "losers" in his article? I'll admit that Jon's critique of the study isn't very scientific, but neither is the study itself from what I've read (which admitedly, isn't much). When isolation is defined as watching _less_ TV and more time online (whether it's IRCing, usenet or surfing) then there's definately something wrong, for obvious reasons.
As for the anonymity factor: Are people more likely to fudge the truth when their names are attached to something? Yes. But where do you think is more anonymous, in an email or/. post where all the info anyone has is a name or handle that doesn't even need to be real, or in fact attached at all if they choose to post AC or in a study where they need to know your name, sex, age, television viewing habits, how much correspondance you have with your family, and so on?
I'd definately put this in my "bad thing" category. Put the shoe on the other foot for a minute. What would the/. crowd be saying if it was a different company, say, Microsoft, Etoys or Amazon threatening anyone who uses the names "amazon", "etoy", or "microsoft" or any variation of them in their names? (Just search the archives for "Etoy" if you can't answer that)
Don't get me wrong here, domain squatters are a bunch of lowlife scum who should be lined up and shot.. but threatening lawsuits for using the name of a supposedly free operating system isn't the free thing to do. And yelling and screaming about how stupid intellectual property laws are and then praising them when they suit you is hypocracy in it's finest form.
To make a short story shorter: Domain squatters suck. IP laws suck. Domain squatters just suck less.
There's one in The NY Times, one in Wired, one on MSNBC, one on CNN and probably one on every other news site under the sun, but I just feel like giving a few more articles. It's always nice to get some more points of view.
You're right, for now PNG isn't really a viable alternative, it simply isn't widely supported enough to be the one true format, but it IS good enough to replace GIFs in most situations.
It's supported (to some degree) in both NS and IE (Don't know about Opera), except not fully. There are some links at the bottom of http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/ to test how well your browser supports it.
Netscape can't do translucencies (but it can do transparencies), and I'm pretty sure IE has some issues with it (It'll load PNGs embedded into a web page but not by themselves, it's odd). But both do have some degree of PNG support. However, I don't think they have MNG support, so it'll be difficult to replace animated GIFs (they should be elimated anyways)
Besides, the point of this isn't really to permanently replace all images on all pages, it's to get a message across about patents and gifs. There is definately enough support for that (Both in software and mindshare).
I've went off on a tangent here. I only meant to reply to say that IE does semi-support PNG. So I'll shut up now.
Er, so, explain to me why you aren't converting to PNG? I just made a test image with the gimp. Gradient black/white from the top-right to bottom-left. 256x256. The PNG one was RGB, the GIF indexed (only because it couldn't RGB) then I made another indexed PNG just to be fair. Here are the results (All the same images):
First off: This survey is a month or two old, that's irrelevant but I'd just like to point it out..
Second, is this really surprising? As a faithful visitor of the Freedom Forum, I can't say it's the least bit surprising to me. A quick glance at their archives shows a lot more articles than this that scare the crap out of me. I don't think there's really any one thing you can do. As far as I can tell, the problem isn't one thing, it's just the overall attitude of society. There is no quick "Do this" answer. You just need to keep informed about issues (As someone mentioned Freedom Forum, the ACLU website and YRO are good starts), try to keep other people informed and let them know why surveys like this are so scary. Educate the ignorant masses, don't flame them, don't yell at them.
On a local level, start debates with friends/family/people who you know would be on the side of the majority in that survey, or borderline. Slowly but surely if you're convincing they'll start to get the point. Just don't think "We need to change this now!" think "We need to show these people what's wrong with their logic".
> If you apply this same argument, there shouldn't be age limits to anything.
Yes, and? I'd have no problems with an 8 year old driving a car, providing he can pass the drivers test (and see over the wheel). If he can, then why is he any less qualified than an (insert random age here) year old? It's not a slippery slope at all. If people are qualified to do something, then what does their age matter?
Sure, lines need to be drawn somewhere. Perhaps qualification? Maturity? Something that's actually relevant to the question at hand? (Which would vary depending on the issue, obviously)
And before anyone starts yelling at me about "Would you trust kids with full second amendment rights?" I'd just like to point out that I'm not American, and I wouldn't trust adults with them either.
Argh. The slashdot posting system doesn't like me today. I can't seem to put greater or less than signs in comments. So just ignore the last post, since it makes absolutely no sense since my comments seem to be getting trimmed for any pseudo tags (But they appear in preview, go figure [bug?]).
I'm glad someone brought this up. I'm really sick of this societal attitude too. The main difference between the censors and the majority of the/. readers (well, posters) as far as I can tell is that the censors want it outright banned. Everyone around here seems to be saying "Well, as long as the parents are the censors.."
Did it ever occur to anyone that it's the _individual's_ responsibility? It's not the parents' responsibility to determine what their kids watch. It's the kids'. You're absolutely right, there's no difference maturity wise between a 17 year old and an 18 year old. Yet somehow the 18 year old gets treated like an adult while anyone 1 year younger gets nothing. It's insane. Will there be people under 18/19/21/whatever who go and buy HL then go kill someone? Uh, no.. bad example, but are there children who are negatively influenced by the media they play/watch/listen to? Yes. Are there adults in the exact same boat? Hell yes, you're an idiot if you disagree. Age has nothing to do with it (Or not enough to make the broad generalization of the censors valid). The only reason the attempts to ban it for children work and not adults is that children don't have a voice. And the reasons we have these things determined by revolutions around the sun instead of actual maturity is that anything else would cost money and time and (gasp) we can't have a fair system if it costs more than a broad generalization would.
Who cares? Really, it's just paint (or whatever) on the side of a rocket. I hate ads as much as the next guy, but it's just an ad on the side of a rocket. As a result, the Russian Space Program gets money, Pizza Hut gets an ad and life goes on. No one will probably even see or hear of it besides this article. Besides, at least Pizza Hut makes better pizza than most places..
The part that SHOULD worry people, for obvious reasons, is this
"Company officials had wanted to use lasers to shine a giant logo on to the surface of the moon, but they started looking for an alternative promotional idea when they learnt that the image would have to be as big as Texas to be seen by earthlings more than 380,000 kilometers (238,000 miles) away."
But an advertisement on the side of a rocket? It doesn't hurt anyone and it helps the space program, so why complain?
If eBay is so concerned about search engine's not archiving their site, why don't they just set up a robots.txt? It's a simple, technical solution and no one gets hurt..
Oi vey. Did all that REALLY need to be posted on the front page? I mean, wouldn't a "read more" link suffice?
Anyways, what are the usual venues for challenging (proposed) laws in Chile? Is there a way? Considering I don't know the "normal" ways of protesting there, may I suggest you try a largeish media campaign? (And no, a single non-frontpage article on/. doesn't count) Just raise public awareness of this, in particular make sure everyone who uses the net there knows about it. I doubt this article will help much, since most/. readers are American, and I doubt the government there really cares about non-citizens. You need to attack this _locally_ and make sure _local_ citizens know about the law and it's effects.
Excuse me? Minor's can't give consent? (/me travels to M-w.com). I'll ignore that rather devoid of intelligence remark for now.
The fact is, this IS a violation of his privacy. Rather, going by what the article says (and I realize forming an opinion based on a single article is rather bad practice) it was a set-up. Did the FBI agents have any reason whatsoever to pose as a 13-year old girl for him? Had they had any reason to believe he was a pedophile and in possession of child porn, it would be a different matter, but again, going by what information the article gives, I don't see anything suggesting that the agents had probable cause.
If this is the case, (And again I've only read one article, I could be wrong) then I hope he gets off. Otherwise, you can get set up by any reason or no reason at all at any time.
That being said, possession of child pornography is a crime, and he should be charged and convicted of _that_ offense, not some "attempting to have sex with a minor" charge.
The problem (as far as I can tell) is that since NSI were "nice" enough to setup the account for you, and set up the password, they'll assume that it's you coming from that account. Because of that, and the fact that it's so easy for someone to steal the account, someone can just steal your free email account, then pose as you in an email to NSI and have whatever they want done to your domain. That makes it incredibly easy to steal a domain in my eye.
Then, maybe I'm totally wrong. I might not be giving them enough credit. I'm also not a security expert, so there may be some other totally different problem(s). This is just what's wrong as I can see it.
Are you usually logged in when you read/post? I noticed you're an AC now and since you won't get moderation points unless you're logged in that could be the problem.
Here are my thoughts on/. moderation and what some of the good/bad ideas I've seen from other people are.
#1. Make moderation points last longer, or maybe not even expire. In the couple times I've had moderation points I only saw a couple things that I thought were worthy of them, and all the rest of the points ended up in/dev/null. Then when I don't have the points, I see things that deserve to be moderated up or down and I can't. I think giving the moderators points and letting them keep them but putting a roof on the number of moderation points they can have (5? 8? 10?) would allow people to moderate what they think is worthy but stop the tyranny of a bad moderator.
#2. Someone else mentioned that maybe instead of an averaged score it would be a good idea to divide the score of a post into each category and comments could have something like 50% flamebait, 30% troll, 20% funny. I never thought of this before, but it seems like a good idea to me. It would be more accurate, but on the other hand make filtering the bad posts more difficult.
#3. The idea of allowing users to log in and then post anonymously also sounds great to me and requiring people to do this to post anonymously sounds even better. I oppose completely eliminating anonymous posting because there ARE quality anonymous posts and it's a necessary evil. But still, if you make the anonymous users jump through hoopes to do it it'll stop the knee-jerk ACs while those who actually have something worthwhile to say but need to be anonymous for fear of their job or the like will still be able too.
#4. Dynamically generate the moderators. I'm not sure how it's done now, but as slashdot grows the number of moderators it will need grows too. If the number of moderator points given out is based on the number of comments posted in the last (insert time period here) instead of static, it would make keeping the code up to date a hell of a lot easier.
All in all, I don't mind the moderating system as it is but think the above would help improve it, in particular #1.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, how long before the first OpenSSH release was the news of OpenSSH leaked? (It's not rhetorical, I don't know the answer). Then there's also the little fact that registering a domain isn't instantaneous and can take a little while. 9 days isn't all that long, especially when you consider that two out of every seven aren't business days (I don't have a calander handy to check what day of the week Oct 25-Nov 4 were)
That said, my problem with the OpenSSH.org thing isn't that he got there first, it's that he's using it to advertise his site knowing that OpenSSH.org is where people will go to try to find information about (surprise) OpenSSH. If they wanted his site they'd have gone to FreeSSH for obvious reasons. I know that I, for one, usually think ".org" when I think of OpenSSH or Open anything. Even if he does have a legitimate claim to the domain and he isn't trying to squat it for cash (which he isn't), it would still be a good jester to hand over the domain (especially since they offered to pay for it) as an offer of goodwill.
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You mean the same freessh.org which, completely coincidentally, also belongs to him? Or the not mentioning that he's also linking to Freessh.org found, say, here?
The /. article was a post taken from a mail. It's hardly fair to claim that "they" are trying to hide info without first doing a little research (and no, reading /. and the comments doesn't count).
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Er, what?
/. post where all the info anyone has is a name or handle that doesn't even need to be real, or in fact attached at all if they choose to post AC or in a study where they need to know your name, sex, age, television viewing habits, how much correspondance you have with your family, and so on?
When did Jon even mention anything about "losers" in his article? I'll admit that Jon's critique of the study isn't very scientific, but neither is the study itself from what I've read (which admitedly, isn't much). When isolation is defined as watching _less_ TV and more time online (whether it's IRCing, usenet or surfing) then there's definately something wrong, for obvious reasons.
As for the anonymity factor: Are people more likely to fudge the truth when their names are attached to something? Yes. But where do you think is more anonymous, in an email or
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I'd definately put this in my "bad thing" category. Put the shoe on the other foot for a minute. What would the /. crowd be saying if it was a different company, say, Microsoft, Etoys or Amazon threatening anyone who uses the names "amazon", "etoy", or "microsoft" or any variation of them in their names? (Just search the archives for "Etoy" if you can't answer that)
Don't get me wrong here, domain squatters are a bunch of lowlife scum who should be lined up and shot.. but threatening lawsuits for using the name of a supposedly free operating system isn't the free thing to do. And yelling and screaming about how stupid intellectual property laws are and then praising them when they suit you is hypocracy in it's finest form.
To make a short story shorter: Domain squatters suck. IP laws suck. Domain squatters just suck less.
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I just thought I'd throw out one more link that wasn't mentioned in the post: Here is the ACLU's press release about the issue.
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I think there's a copy on Bruce Peren's Technocrat. I'm too lazy to find the exact URL, but it should be somewhere on this URL.
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Here are some more stories about the case:
There's one in The NY Times, one in Wired, one on MSNBC, one on CNN and probably one on every other news site under the sun, but I just feel like giving a few more articles. It's always nice to get some more points of view.
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You're right, for now PNG isn't really a viable alternative, it simply isn't widely supported enough to be the one true format, but it IS good enough to replace GIFs in most situations.
It's supported (to some degree) in both NS and IE (Don't know about Opera), except not fully. There are some links at the bottom of http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/ to test how well your browser supports it.
Netscape can't do translucencies (but it can do transparencies), and I'm pretty sure IE has some issues with it (It'll load PNGs embedded into a web page but not by themselves, it's odd). But both do have some degree of PNG support. However, I don't think they have MNG support, so it'll be difficult to replace animated GIFs (they should be elimated anyways)
Besides, the point of this isn't really to permanently replace all images on all pages, it's to get a message across about patents and gifs. There is definately enough support for that (Both in software and mindshare).
I've went off on a tangent here. I only meant to reply to say that IE does semi-support PNG. So I'll shut up now.
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Er, so, explain to me why you aren't converting to PNG? I just made a test image with the gimp. Gradient black/white from the top-right to bottom-left. 256x256. The PNG one was RGB, the GIF indexed (only because it couldn't RGB) then I made another indexed PNG just to be fair. Here are the results (All the same images):
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reject reject 21095 Oct 31 13:56 test.gif (GIF)
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reject reject 1910 Oct 31 13:54 test.png (Indexed PNG)
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reject reject 6412 Oct 31 13:58 test2.png (RGB PNG)
So does this mean you'll be converting all your pages to PNG now?
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>i just turned 18 and i'm not bothered at all by this.
(complete and utter look of shock)
Huh, go figure..
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First off: This survey is a month or two old, that's irrelevant but I'd just like to point it out..
Second, is this really surprising? As a faithful visitor of the Freedom Forum, I can't say it's the least bit surprising to me. A quick glance at their archives shows a lot more articles than this that scare the crap out of me. I don't think there's really any one thing you can do. As far as I can tell, the problem isn't one thing, it's just the overall attitude of society. There is no quick "Do this" answer. You just need to keep informed about issues (As someone mentioned Freedom Forum, the ACLU website and YRO are good starts), try to keep other people informed and let them know why surveys like this are so scary. Educate the ignorant masses, don't flame them, don't yell at them.
On a local level, start debates with friends/family/people who you know would be on the side of the majority in that survey, or borderline. Slowly but surely if you're convincing they'll start to get the point. Just don't think "We need to change this now!" think "We need to show these people what's wrong with their logic".
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> If you apply this same argument, there shouldn't be age limits to anything.
Yes, and? I'd have no problems with an 8 year old driving a car, providing he can pass the drivers test (and see over the wheel). If he can, then why is he any less qualified than an (insert random age here) year old? It's not a slippery slope at all. If people are qualified to do something, then what does their age matter?
Sure, lines need to be drawn somewhere. Perhaps qualification? Maturity? Something that's actually relevant to the question at hand? (Which would vary depending on the issue, obviously)
And before anyone starts yelling at me about "Would you trust kids with full second amendment rights?" I'd just like to point out that I'm not American, and I wouldn't trust adults with them either.
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Oh, nevermind.. I was looking at the topics, not reading the article. Found it :)
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I'm looking..Can't find any first level slippery slope post let alone a second level one.. care to elabourate? A url would be helpful.
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Argh. The slashdot posting system doesn't like me today. I can't seem to put greater or less than signs in comments. So just ignore the last post, since it makes absolutely no sense since my comments seem to be getting trimmed for any pseudo tags (But they appear in preview, go figure [bug?]).
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Bah. don't work when in plain text mode. Insert and pseudo-HTML (or XML, take your pick) tags around that last paragraph.
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I'm glad someone brought this up. I'm really sick of this societal attitude too. The main difference between the censors and the majority of the /. readers (well, posters) as far as I can tell is that the censors want it outright banned. Everyone around here seems to be saying "Well, as long as the parents are the censors.."
Did it ever occur to anyone that it's the _individual's_ responsibility? It's not the parents' responsibility to determine what their kids watch. It's the kids'. You're absolutely right, there's no difference maturity wise between a 17 year old and an 18 year old. Yet somehow the 18 year old gets treated like an adult while anyone 1 year younger gets nothing. It's insane. Will there be people under 18/19/21/whatever who go and buy HL then go kill someone? Uh, no.. bad example, but are there children who are negatively influenced by the media they play/watch/listen to? Yes. Are there adults in the exact same boat? Hell yes, you're an idiot if you disagree. Age has nothing to do with it (Or not enough to make the broad generalization of the censors valid). The only reason the attempts to ban it for children work and not adults is that children don't have a voice. And the reasons we have these things determined by revolutions around the sun instead of actual maturity is that anything else would cost money and time and (gasp) we can't have a fair system if it costs more than a broad generalization would.
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Who cares? Really, it's just paint (or whatever) on the side of a rocket. I hate ads as much as the next guy, but it's just an ad on the side of a rocket. As a result, the Russian Space Program gets money, Pizza Hut gets an ad and life goes on. No one will probably even see or hear of it besides this article. Besides, at least Pizza Hut makes better pizza than most places..
The part that SHOULD worry people, for obvious reasons, is this
"Company officials had wanted to use lasers to shine a giant logo on to the surface of the moon, but they started looking for an alternative promotional idea when they learnt that the image would have to be as big as Texas to be seen by earthlings more than 380,000 kilometers (238,000 miles) away."
But an advertisement on the side of a rocket? It doesn't hurt anyone and it helps the space program, so why complain?
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Er, typo. "not crawling their site" is what I meant.
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If eBay is so concerned about search engine's not archiving their site, why don't they just set up a robots.txt? It's a simple, technical solution and no one gets hurt..
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Oi vey. Did all that REALLY need to be posted on the front page? I mean, wouldn't a "read more" link suffice?
/. doesn't count) Just raise public awareness of this, in particular make sure everyone who uses the net there knows about it. I doubt this article will help much, since most /. readers are American, and I doubt the government there really cares about non-citizens. You need to attack this _locally_ and make sure _local_ citizens know about the law and it's effects.
Anyways, what are the usual venues for challenging (proposed) laws in Chile? Is there a way? Considering I don't know the "normal" ways of protesting there, may I suggest you try a largeish media campaign? (And no, a single non-frontpage article on
These are my uninspired suggestions, at least.
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Excuse me? Minor's can't give consent? (/me travels to M-w.com). I'll ignore that rather devoid of intelligence remark for now.
The fact is, this IS a violation of his privacy. Rather, going by what the article says (and I realize forming an opinion based on a single article is rather bad practice) it was a set-up. Did the FBI agents have any reason whatsoever to pose as a 13-year old girl for him? Had they had any reason to believe he was a pedophile and in possession of child porn, it would be a different matter, but again, going by what information the article gives, I don't see anything suggesting that the agents had probable cause.
If this is the case, (And again I've only read one article, I could be wrong) then I hope he gets off. Otherwise, you can get set up by any reason or no reason at all at any time.
That being said, possession of child pornography is a crime, and he should be charged and convicted of _that_ offense, not some "attempting to have sex with a minor" charge.
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The problem (as far as I can tell) is that since NSI were "nice" enough to setup the account for you, and set up the password, they'll assume that it's you coming from that account. Because of that, and the fact that it's so easy for someone to steal the account, someone can just steal your free email account, then pose as you in an email to NSI and have whatever they want done to your domain. That makes it incredibly easy to steal a domain in my eye.
Then, maybe I'm totally wrong. I might not be giving them enough credit. I'm also not a security expert, so there may be some other totally different problem(s). This is just what's wrong as I can see it.
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Are you usually logged in when you read/post? I noticed you're an AC now and since you won't get moderation points unless you're logged in that could be the problem.
Just a thought.
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Here are my thoughts on /. moderation and what some of the good/bad ideas I've seen from other people are.
/dev/null. Then when I don't have the points, I see things that deserve to be moderated up or down and I can't. I think giving the moderators points and letting them keep them but putting a roof on the number of moderation points they can have (5? 8? 10?) would allow people to moderate what they think is worthy but stop the tyranny of a bad moderator.
#1. Make moderation points last longer, or maybe not even expire. In the couple times I've had moderation points I only saw a couple things that I thought were worthy of them, and all the rest of the points ended up in
#2. Someone else mentioned that maybe instead of an averaged score it would be a good idea to divide the score of a post into each category and comments could have something like 50% flamebait, 30% troll, 20% funny. I never thought of this before, but it seems like a good idea to me. It would be more accurate, but on the other hand make filtering the bad posts more difficult.
#3. The idea of allowing users to log in and then post anonymously also sounds great to me and requiring people to do this to post anonymously sounds even better. I oppose completely eliminating anonymous posting because there ARE quality anonymous posts and it's a necessary evil. But still, if you make the anonymous users jump through hoopes to do it it'll stop the knee-jerk ACs while those who actually have something worthwhile to say but need to be anonymous for fear of their job or the like will still be able too.
#4. Dynamically generate the moderators. I'm not sure how it's done now, but as slashdot grows the number of moderators it will need grows too. If the number of moderator points given out is based on the number of comments posted in the last (insert time period here) instead of static, it would make keeping the code up to date a hell of a lot easier.
All in all, I don't mind the moderating system as it is but think the above would help improve it, in particular #1.
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