I see a few problems with having real names that are inherent to the system, but a lot of the problems exist because of things that weren't a factor back in the Usenet days. The internet is more popular, meaning a lot more people are aware of it. It's semi-permanent, meaning there's a good chance something you say now will still be visible ten years from now. Plus, it's searchable: if someone's looking for you specifically, they'll be able to find what you said if you associated your name with it. What this means is that if people are looking for dirt on you, if your name is tied to everything you say, they're likely to find it. Maybe you said something controversial, maybe you just associated with something that seems "weird." It doesn't matter, the problem is that if your name is attached, someone might use it against you in some way, and that leads to people being overly cautious and opting to remain silent on things that they shouldn't need to remain silent about. That's the biggest problem I see: people shouldn't be scared just to talk about something. There are other things at play, but that's the most important, I think. There's nothing inherently wrong with just discussing things and it shouldn't be something that can come back to bite you in the ass. I don't think that was a major issue back in the days of Usenet, but I don't think I could spell "internet" then, so I might be wrong.
I agree that letting overtly malicious people say whatever they want is a bad thing. I'm not advocating chaos, just the freedom to talk about things without fear of consequences, whether it be intelligent discussion or just for fun. You're right, there is no "right" answer, but I do think that real name association is definitely a "wrong" answer. At this point, it just causes too much harm.
Discussing issues with others, hearing critical feedback, better informs you about the issue. It's unlikely that any one particular anonymous comment is going to directly affect the world at large (though it might), but that's not the point. The point is to have a more informed and intelligent population, one that is able to come to their own conclusions, see and admit the flaws in their own reasoning, and possibly reach a consensus on an issue that is better than where we were before. Discussing a controversial topic at length in an anonymous setting, you might one day be confident enough in the truth of your position to speak on it publicly, to take a stand on an issue when it matters. And others may do the same.
There are already limits anywhere you go, even in places with almost completely anonymous speech (4chan has rules, too, and a moderation team to enforce them). This real name system won't lead to people "watching what they say;" look on Facebook and you'll see that real name tie-ins have very little effectiveness on that. What it will do is lead to a certain set of people choosing not to speak their mind and voice their opinions where there may be real life consequences (which is to say, anything outside cultural norms or anything that goes against the "accepted opinions" of society at large). In the worst case, someone who has something insightful to say about an issue that really needs to be discussed will opt to remain silent when it matters most. I don't think this is where we should be going. I think we as a society should be moving toward a place of more free discussion of ideas and issues, not a less free place. I think there are better solutions out there to deal with individuals who are acting outright malicious that don't stifle intelligent discussion.
Listen, part of the reason anonymous (and to a lesser extent, pseudonymous) commenting is a good thing is because you can say something you wouldn't normally be able to say for fear of some sort of real life consequences. I'm not talking about "trolling," I'm talking about political opinions or affinity for ideas or concepts that are looked down upon in polite society. Tying your real name to this means that anyone can find it and stifles free speech. Additionally, truly anonymous speech has to be judged on content, since there is no concept of reputation. If you say something stupid, someone will probably call you out on it and construct a logical explanation as to why you are wrong. Ironically, anonymous speech tends toward a place of more well-informed opinions, even if individual messages may vary greatly in quality.
This move away toward "real name" tie-ins is bad any way you cut it. Yes, it cuts down on "trolling," but the cost is too high. There are other ways to cut back on that, anyway, like hiring more effective moderation staff. Even 4chan has a moderation team and users are able to report individual posts (though their moderation team is rather spotty and various less effective solutions often crop up in their absence). There are problems with any solution, but real-name tie-ins will end up with people tip-toeing around, which stifles intelligent discussion and leads to relative echo chambers where only the popular opinion is parroted.
I get that there can be high load during holidays, and I'm not upset that I didn't get my purchase by the 25th (I wasn't expecting to), but when they miss my delivery date by as much as they're predicting they're going to, I should be compensated to some degree. I paid for 3-5 day shipping and it doesn't look like it's going to be 3-5 business days (I ordered Thursday and the estimate was this Thursday, they're now estimating it won't get here until next week). It has nothing to do with procrastination, the thing I ordered wasn't even a Christmas present, it was a replacement graphics card for my desktop (the current one failed about two weeks ago). The issue is that I paid for a particular service and I expect it to be completed as advertised. If it's not, then they should reasonably compensate me for the difference between advertised and delivered. Don't advertise "3-5 day shipping" if it's not 3-5 day shipping.
Don't confuse the issue. The problem is that Apple believes it's illegal to root your own device. The italicized portion is the important part. It is perfectly legal to exploit a root vulnerability on hardware you own. Exploiting software on your own devices is often used in penetration testing, among other things.
I have no idea how this reached +5 insightful. What a gigantic load of shit. Are you somehow implying that being more tolerant isn't a good thing? That letting people live without persecuting them for every slight is somehow not better than the converse? And you're not even implying this, you're outright saying that we're "racist thugs" for things we didn't do or even think about. Unbelievable! And people agreed with you! Ugh!
Yes, maybe some (or even most) of us would have, after years of environmental influence leading us to that conclusion, also been among those who persecuted them. But we haven't, and we're not those people. Your entire post is a justification of something even worse than thoughtcirme: that people should be considered evil for things they didn't even think of doing. Un-fucking-believable that people modded you up. I'm extremely disappointed in the mods. And yes, we are "better" for not going discriminating against people for whatever thing happens to set them apart. The fact that we could theoretically be on the other end is utterly meaningless; that's not who we are, and trying to paint us as that does a disservice to a lot of good people who work hard to help others.
In summary: fuck you, and fuck everyone who modded you up. It's attitudes like yours, ones that suggest that any sort of positive social change is irrelevant because people are still "bad at heart," that prevent us from ever moving forward.
Who is Justine Sacco and why should I care? My 70 year old Dad makes stupid, racist comments all the time (love him anyway, but man, some old people). I think he has even had a few internet mobs after him because he kept posting stupid, racist things to a primarily left-leaning internet forum for the better part of five years.
I understand that I could Google this or read the article, but the point is that the summary should offer some context for people unfamiliar with whatever this story is about, and it utterly fails to do that. It's a mess, the editor didn't do his job at all here.
I support the FSF, but I can really just install free software on my own computers. This even includes coreboot usually. And they're a lot less expensive and a lot more powerful. I suppose it might be good to buy if your child needs a laptop or something.
DSL. Hah. I lived on DSL for the better part of a decade, from the early 00s well into 2008. I've lived with dial-up several times in the past few years alone (see here for a detailed post about that and how I coped if you care). I sure as hell didn't try to submit it as an article, though. Maybe I should start a blog with a fancy newsy-sounding name and submitting every entry to/. at the rate articles are getting greenlighted these days.
And your proposed solution is what? If the answer is "to ban guns completely," you're trading one evil for another. Guns won't magically disappear if they're banned, there are too many of them currently in circulation in the US. And as gun advocates like to say (ad nauseum), when you ban the guns, only the criminals will have guns. This much is true in light of the sheer amount of guns already in circulation in the US. You would be removing a significant means of protection from the vast majority of the carrying population that uses guns responsibly and presumably doing little to curb gun use among the extremely small minority that is misusing or just not observing proper procedure and being irresponsible. Not to mention banning guns simply won't happen in the current political climate even if it was a cure-all.
Now, if you propose better and more sane controls on guns, something that would actually make an impact in some of these accidental or malicious deaths you're talking about, then yeah. I don't think any reasonable person on either side would oppose talking about those kinds of things and getting some ideas into practice.
I think what he was saying isn't that "all people are good," merely that people are shaped by their environment. And that much is absolutely true. There are people who are inherently "broken" and unfixable, but I do recall a story a while back (I think it was on NPR) that only about 5% of convicts in prisons are actually sociopaths or something of the sort. That means that there is at least a significant majority that were there because they made bad decisions that were influenced by their upbringing. Yes, maybe "some kids are simply unfit to fit into society," but that number is probably a small minority and we're skirting our responsibility by assuming that every one of these people is a sociopathic monster.
I carry a firearm for personal protection. I don't have kids (it is/., after all), so there's no risk of it falling into their non-existent hands. I also was required to take courses in firearms safety and operation before getting a license.
You can't reasonably pin the blame of "50,000 deaths a year" on responsible firearm owners. There are people who aren't as responsible or who are outright malicious, but that's not our fault, we're just trying to keep ourselves safe. As swamp boy did above, let's compare it to social drinking. You wouldn't pin the blame of drunk driving accidents on people who responsibly drink alcohol, would you? And you can't really use alcohol for personal protection, either.
That isn't a crime in the US, and the story in OP took place in AU. There are plenty of reasons why the US should be on your bottom 10 list, but not for that reason, nor for anything in the OP.
Reading/. isn't an inconvenience to him, it's entertainment. And he didn't say he makes $200/hr, he said that's what he values his time at for people who want him to deal with their logistical mistakes.
That's kind of fair. I agree that getting indignant over it is silly, you are taking advantage of a mistake. However, I find it hard to sympathize with a corporation that probably pulls in net profits of close to or over a billion each year over a mistake in my favor for a few hundred dollars. I think if it was me, I'd keep quiet unless they started bugging me about it to the point where it's not worth it, in which case I'd return it. Which is basically what this story is about; if I got legal threats over it, it'd probably precipitate my return of the product, since that's a pretty big "not worth it."
I don't think GP is suggesting that smoking is the healthiest thing, merely that over-legislating it is ridiculous. I agree with several of his points: banning outdoor smoking is ridiculous, shooting someone over cigarettes is absurd, and public figures having to hide their perfectly legal habits is silly. That said, I see nothing wrong with a smoking ban in brothels and I don't know enough about the anti-tobacco treaty he mentioned to provide an informed opinion about it. Overall, I agree that where we are now is a bit past where we should be.
How does that relate at all to what GP said? Newegg isn't fighting people that promised they wouldn't sue over patents. Quite the contrary, since they're fighting people who are suing over patents. I don't know about the rest of your examples, but I'm guessing they're similar, in which case they are completely irrelevant to what GP said.
Yes, that's a very nice red herring, but the point isn't about the history, it's about fairness. If one group of people are given a set of legal benefits for "joining," so should any other group of people who engage in that activity. If the original spirit of the law is different, that's irrelevant. If the current letter of the law is different, then it needs to change. The fair thing to do here is perfectly clear and anyone arguing against it is arguing against fair treatment under the law, which is unethical. Plain and simple. If you or anyone else has problems with nomenclature, then change the nomenclature, but that's not the big issue.
Right now, I’m working on some accessibility controller mods for the next generation. I’m using my 3D printer to develop better ways to make them, but a lot of the hacks for the old media consoles have become irrelevant and are not worth going back to.
There are some projects I’ve done on element14’s The Ben Heck Show that I would like to revisit. I would love to get the automatic can crusher to work. The Raspberry Pi portable gaming system is one that I would go back and revisit. If anything, though, I prefer to keep going forward rather than go back and re-do things – to take my good ideas and progress them.
I'm happy with that answer. I'm glad to see Ben is going to still be working on accessibility controller mods going forward. Using 3D printing as a design tool seems like a great idea, I look forward to seeing the results.
I'd be interested in a RasPi portable gaming system, too. If it had emulator support (even just for systems like NES, GBC, etc.) and sensible inputs, I'd probably already be sold at that point.
Are you implying those things aren't problems in proprietary software? I'm not saying free software is a panacea, I'm just saying that, unlike proprietary software, we can audit free software and have more options available in the case where we find that it's not up to scratch.
Also, specifically in regards to a "Linux distro sharing keys with the NSA," if you're that worried about it, fork it and take care of security yourself. Use your own keys. One of the major benefits of free software is that you're not forbidden from doing something your own way if you don't trust others with it. Now, that doesn't solve the problem of "built-in exploitable vulnerabilities" (though that is mitigated a bit by the ability for anyone to audit the code), but again, that's a problem that exists on proprietary software, as well (and only a select few can audit most proprietary code).
Slashdot Mirror
I see a few problems with having real names that are inherent to the system, but a lot of the problems exist because of things that weren't a factor back in the Usenet days. The internet is more popular, meaning a lot more people are aware of it. It's semi-permanent, meaning there's a good chance something you say now will still be visible ten years from now. Plus, it's searchable: if someone's looking for you specifically, they'll be able to find what you said if you associated your name with it. What this means is that if people are looking for dirt on you, if your name is tied to everything you say, they're likely to find it. Maybe you said something controversial, maybe you just associated with something that seems "weird." It doesn't matter, the problem is that if your name is attached, someone might use it against you in some way, and that leads to people being overly cautious and opting to remain silent on things that they shouldn't need to remain silent about. That's the biggest problem I see: people shouldn't be scared just to talk about something. There are other things at play, but that's the most important, I think. There's nothing inherently wrong with just discussing things and it shouldn't be something that can come back to bite you in the ass. I don't think that was a major issue back in the days of Usenet, but I don't think I could spell "internet" then, so I might be wrong.
I agree that letting overtly malicious people say whatever they want is a bad thing. I'm not advocating chaos, just the freedom to talk about things without fear of consequences, whether it be intelligent discussion or just for fun. You're right, there is no "right" answer, but I do think that real name association is definitely a "wrong" answer. At this point, it just causes too much harm.
Discussing issues with others, hearing critical feedback, better informs you about the issue. It's unlikely that any one particular anonymous comment is going to directly affect the world at large (though it might), but that's not the point. The point is to have a more informed and intelligent population, one that is able to come to their own conclusions, see and admit the flaws in their own reasoning, and possibly reach a consensus on an issue that is better than where we were before. Discussing a controversial topic at length in an anonymous setting, you might one day be confident enough in the truth of your position to speak on it publicly, to take a stand on an issue when it matters. And others may do the same.
There are already limits anywhere you go, even in places with almost completely anonymous speech (4chan has rules, too, and a moderation team to enforce them). This real name system won't lead to people "watching what they say;" look on Facebook and you'll see that real name tie-ins have very little effectiveness on that. What it will do is lead to a certain set of people choosing not to speak their mind and voice their opinions where there may be real life consequences (which is to say, anything outside cultural norms or anything that goes against the "accepted opinions" of society at large). In the worst case, someone who has something insightful to say about an issue that really needs to be discussed will opt to remain silent when it matters most. I don't think this is where we should be going. I think we as a society should be moving toward a place of more free discussion of ideas and issues, not a less free place. I think there are better solutions out there to deal with individuals who are acting outright malicious that don't stifle intelligent discussion.
Listen, part of the reason anonymous (and to a lesser extent, pseudonymous) commenting is a good thing is because you can say something you wouldn't normally be able to say for fear of some sort of real life consequences. I'm not talking about "trolling," I'm talking about political opinions or affinity for ideas or concepts that are looked down upon in polite society. Tying your real name to this means that anyone can find it and stifles free speech. Additionally, truly anonymous speech has to be judged on content, since there is no concept of reputation. If you say something stupid, someone will probably call you out on it and construct a logical explanation as to why you are wrong. Ironically, anonymous speech tends toward a place of more well-informed opinions, even if individual messages may vary greatly in quality.
This move away toward "real name" tie-ins is bad any way you cut it. Yes, it cuts down on "trolling," but the cost is too high. There are other ways to cut back on that, anyway, like hiring more effective moderation staff. Even 4chan has a moderation team and users are able to report individual posts (though their moderation team is rather spotty and various less effective solutions often crop up in their absence). There are problems with any solution, but real-name tie-ins will end up with people tip-toeing around, which stifles intelligent discussion and leads to relative echo chambers where only the popular opinion is parroted.
I get that there can be high load during holidays, and I'm not upset that I didn't get my purchase by the 25th (I wasn't expecting to), but when they miss my delivery date by as much as they're predicting they're going to, I should be compensated to some degree. I paid for 3-5 day shipping and it doesn't look like it's going to be 3-5 business days (I ordered Thursday and the estimate was this Thursday, they're now estimating it won't get here until next week). It has nothing to do with procrastination, the thing I ordered wasn't even a Christmas present, it was a replacement graphics card for my desktop (the current one failed about two weeks ago). The issue is that I paid for a particular service and I expect it to be completed as advertised. If it's not, then they should reasonably compensate me for the difference between advertised and delivered. Don't advertise "3-5 day shipping" if it's not 3-5 day shipping.
You say "not IE," but I'm on IE11 and I get the behavior you describe and it works fine.
Don't confuse the issue. The problem is that Apple believes it's illegal to root your own device. The italicized portion is the important part. It is perfectly legal to exploit a root vulnerability on hardware you own. Exploiting software on your own devices is often used in penetration testing, among other things.
I have no idea how this reached +5 insightful. What a gigantic load of shit. Are you somehow implying that being more tolerant isn't a good thing? That letting people live without persecuting them for every slight is somehow not better than the converse? And you're not even implying this, you're outright saying that we're "racist thugs" for things we didn't do or even think about. Unbelievable! And people agreed with you! Ugh!
Yes, maybe some (or even most) of us would have, after years of environmental influence leading us to that conclusion, also been among those who persecuted them. But we haven't, and we're not those people. Your entire post is a justification of something even worse than thoughtcirme: that people should be considered evil for things they didn't even think of doing. Un-fucking-believable that people modded you up. I'm extremely disappointed in the mods. And yes, we are "better" for not going discriminating against people for whatever thing happens to set them apart. The fact that we could theoretically be on the other end is utterly meaningless; that's not who we are, and trying to paint us as that does a disservice to a lot of good people who work hard to help others.
In summary: fuck you, and fuck everyone who modded you up. It's attitudes like yours, ones that suggest that any sort of positive social change is irrelevant because people are still "bad at heart," that prevent us from ever moving forward.
Who is Justine Sacco and why should I care? My 70 year old Dad makes stupid, racist comments all the time (love him anyway, but man, some old people). I think he has even had a few internet mobs after him because he kept posting stupid, racist things to a primarily left-leaning internet forum for the better part of five years.
I understand that I could Google this or read the article, but the point is that the summary should offer some context for people unfamiliar with whatever this story is about, and it utterly fails to do that. It's a mess, the editor didn't do his job at all here.
Yes.
Oh, you mean like this data?
I support the FSF, but I can really just install free software on my own computers. This even includes coreboot usually. And they're a lot less expensive and a lot more powerful. I suppose it might be good to buy if your child needs a laptop or something.
DSL. Hah. I lived on DSL for the better part of a decade, from the early 00s well into 2008. I've lived with dial-up several times in the past few years alone (see here for a detailed post about that and how I coped if you care). I sure as hell didn't try to submit it as an article, though. Maybe I should start a blog with a fancy newsy-sounding name and submitting every entry to /. at the rate articles are getting greenlighted these days.
And your proposed solution is what? If the answer is "to ban guns completely," you're trading one evil for another. Guns won't magically disappear if they're banned, there are too many of them currently in circulation in the US. And as gun advocates like to say (ad nauseum), when you ban the guns, only the criminals will have guns. This much is true in light of the sheer amount of guns already in circulation in the US. You would be removing a significant means of protection from the vast majority of the carrying population that uses guns responsibly and presumably doing little to curb gun use among the extremely small minority that is misusing or just not observing proper procedure and being irresponsible. Not to mention banning guns simply won't happen in the current political climate even if it was a cure-all.
Now, if you propose better and more sane controls on guns, something that would actually make an impact in some of these accidental or malicious deaths you're talking about, then yeah. I don't think any reasonable person on either side would oppose talking about those kinds of things and getting some ideas into practice.
I think what he was saying isn't that "all people are good," merely that people are shaped by their environment. And that much is absolutely true. There are people who are inherently "broken" and unfixable, but I do recall a story a while back (I think it was on NPR) that only about 5% of convicts in prisons are actually sociopaths or something of the sort. That means that there is at least a significant majority that were there because they made bad decisions that were influenced by their upbringing. Yes, maybe "some kids are simply unfit to fit into society," but that number is probably a small minority and we're skirting our responsibility by assuming that every one of these people is a sociopathic monster.
I carry a firearm for personal protection. I don't have kids (it is /., after all), so there's no risk of it falling into their non-existent hands. I also was required to take courses in firearms safety and operation before getting a license.
You can't reasonably pin the blame of "50,000 deaths a year" on responsible firearm owners. There are people who aren't as responsible or who are outright malicious, but that's not our fault, we're just trying to keep ourselves safe. As swamp boy did above, let's compare it to social drinking. You wouldn't pin the blame of drunk driving accidents on people who responsibly drink alcohol, would you? And you can't really use alcohol for personal protection, either.
That isn't a crime in the US, and the story in OP took place in AU. There are plenty of reasons why the US should be on your bottom 10 list, but not for that reason, nor for anything in the OP.
Reading /. isn't an inconvenience to him, it's entertainment. And he didn't say he makes $200/hr, he said that's what he values his time at for people who want him to deal with their logistical mistakes.
That's kind of fair. I agree that getting indignant over it is silly, you are taking advantage of a mistake. However, I find it hard to sympathize with a corporation that probably pulls in net profits of close to or over a billion each year over a mistake in my favor for a few hundred dollars. I think if it was me, I'd keep quiet unless they started bugging me about it to the point where it's not worth it, in which case I'd return it. Which is basically what this story is about; if I got legal threats over it, it'd probably precipitate my return of the product, since that's a pretty big "not worth it."
I don't think GP is suggesting that smoking is the healthiest thing, merely that over-legislating it is ridiculous. I agree with several of his points: banning outdoor smoking is ridiculous, shooting someone over cigarettes is absurd, and public figures having to hide their perfectly legal habits is silly. That said, I see nothing wrong with a smoking ban in brothels and I don't know enough about the anti-tobacco treaty he mentioned to provide an informed opinion about it. Overall, I agree that where we are now is a bit past where we should be.
How does that relate at all to what GP said? Newegg isn't fighting people that promised they wouldn't sue over patents. Quite the contrary, since they're fighting people who are suing over patents. I don't know about the rest of your examples, but I'm guessing they're similar, in which case they are completely irrelevant to what GP said.
n/t
Yes, that's a very nice red herring, but the point isn't about the history, it's about fairness. If one group of people are given a set of legal benefits for "joining," so should any other group of people who engage in that activity. If the original spirit of the law is different, that's irrelevant. If the current letter of the law is different, then it needs to change. The fair thing to do here is perfectly clear and anyone arguing against it is arguing against fair treatment under the law, which is unethical. Plain and simple. If you or anyone else has problems with nomenclature, then change the nomenclature, but that's not the big issue.
I'm happy with that answer. I'm glad to see Ben is going to still be working on accessibility controller mods going forward. Using 3D printing as a design tool seems like a great idea, I look forward to seeing the results.
I'd be interested in a RasPi portable gaming system, too. If it had emulator support (even just for systems like NES, GBC, etc.) and sensible inputs, I'd probably already be sold at that point.
Are you implying those things aren't problems in proprietary software? I'm not saying free software is a panacea, I'm just saying that, unlike proprietary software, we can audit free software and have more options available in the case where we find that it's not up to scratch.
Also, specifically in regards to a "Linux distro sharing keys with the NSA," if you're that worried about it, fork it and take care of security yourself. Use your own keys. One of the major benefits of free software is that you're not forbidden from doing something your own way if you don't trust others with it. Now, that doesn't solve the problem of "built-in exploitable vulnerabilities" (though that is mitigated a bit by the ability for anyone to audit the code), but again, that's a problem that exists on proprietary software, as well (and only a select few can audit most proprietary code).