Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 20:04:44 -0700 (PDT) From: kkeller@sirius.com Subject: Advertising links in USENET posts To: comments@deja.com
Dear Deja.com comments,
I recently read your response to a slashdot.org reader's comments concerning embedding advertising links in USENET posts that you host at deja.com. I feel I must voice my concerns that your suggested measures for people who do not wish their posts marked up are far from sufficient. I hope that you can clarify your position on this matter, so that I may continue to recommend people to your site, rather than recommend people *not* visit your site.
You suggest that USENET posters who do not wish their posts to be modified by deja.com use a new x header (x-no-productlinks) in their posts to USENET. I find this suggestion irresponsible. You are assuming, without any information to support your assumption, that all USENET posters would not mind if their material is modified by deja.com, and that people who do object to this practice should implement extra steps to do so.
Your current policy assumes that if there is no "x-no-productlinks" header, then it is okay to modify the post to include product links. This produces an ''opt-out'' policy which, while technically feasible, assumes that the default behavior for deja.com to modify USENET posts is acceptable. This default policy is clearly unacceptable, as many USENET posters are probably not even aware that their post will be modified by deja.com.
As a first suggestion, you can alter your policy to be an ''opt-in'', rather than an ''opt-out'', policy. You can ask posters to use an "x-productlinks: yes" header to allow people to give explicit permission for deja.com to modify their USENET posts. If a posting does not contain this header, or contains an "x-productlinks: no" header, then deja.com would not insert product links into that particular post.
Please note that this differs greatly from your "x-no-archive" policy. It is reasonable to assume that most USENET posters are aware that their articles may be copied verbatim by others for archival purposes, since otherwise USENET would not be able to function in the way it does. Therefore, it is acceptable for deja.com to default to archiving USENET posts, and to force people to ''opt-out'' rather than ''opt-in''.
I sincerely hope that deja.com will reconsider its current policy concerning modifying USENET posts without explicit permission to do so. Thank you for your time.
-- Keith Keller kkeller@sirius.com alt.os.linux.slackware FAQ: http://www.sirius.com/~oryx/linux/aols-faq.shtml
Okay. Many people have mentioned that the meaning of the little triangle thingee is ''obvious'' to anyone with half a brain. This *might* be true (though I do not think it is), and I grant that someone might be able to figure it out.
My issue is that many people who browse the internet do *not* have half a brain. What will those people think when my USENET article is marked up, without my permission? I can't imagine a *lot* of people I know being able to tell the difference between something I authored on USENET (these people probably don't even know what USENET is) and something that they will believe I authored on deja.com.
My conclusion is that Deja's policies fall far short of what they need to be doing if they are going to be marking up USENET postings. I will be writing to them expressing my thoughts, and if it's timely enough I'll post my message here.
Re:battling a great evil
on
MAPS vs. ORBS
·
· Score: 1
Really, the best people to benefit from this war arre going to be the spammers. Why don't they do the corporate thing and merge?
I don't think that all the spammers of the world would be able to form a corporate entity, but if they did, man! That'd be the largest corporation ever!
I was all ready to tear Deja a new . . . well, anyway, unfortunately the original link isn't working so that I can actually see what Deja is doing, and I don't wish to spend the rest of my morning trying to find another post like the original. Does someone know of an article that has the "Deja link" virus that they can post, so that I (and others who haven't seen it yet) can see what the deal is?
When I first read this article, the little blurb at the bottom read:
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
*sigh* I felt the same way.
On another note, I had some suggestions for branding/brainwashing the public:
Coca-Cola == Caffeinated motor oil
Microsoft == Daily systems crash
Mountain Dew == Caffeinated urine
Gap == Clothing I paid $50 too much to obtain
Old Navy == Clothing the Gap deemed not worthy for their store, for which I still paid $50 too much to obtain
Nike == Michael Jordan
AOL == Misrouted email
Napster == Metallica
Open Source == Was, is, or soon will be proprietary
Use these in your daily conversations!
"Hey, I was listening to that new Napster album while I lost some AOL and my computer Microsofted the other day when I installed some Open Source software. Then, while watching TV I saw Nike drinking this cool new motor oil!"
This is actually an old idea. There are pages up on making Napster "bombs" where you record the first half of the song, then put white noise or a message like "Stealing music is wrong!" recorded over and over for the remainder of the time.
This idea is actually much older--witness The Beatles, "Revolution 9". They predicted the Napster phenomenon 30 years ago, and had a perfect solution!
Why can't the FSF simply sell/provide namespace under gnu.org instead? They don't *need* a TLD to provide namespace for those who can't find namespace in.com,.net, or.org.
Even better, the FSF will get to keep all proceeds from providing names under gnu.org, instead of forking over money to a registrar for each.gnu that they would register.
(Unless FSF plans on an alternate method of administering a TLD, which clearly ICANN isn't even close to considering. Jeez, they're still considering how to consider *adding* TLDs...how long will it take them to consider how to consider administering the consideration of considering administration of new TLDs?)
With those assumptions in mind, let's look at the people who adminster servers. There are 4 potential categories of server admins. 1. *nix geeks 2. MC*E winders types 3. "other" (isn't Banyan Vines still in business?) 4. Newbies and aspiring server admins
And shouldn't the goal be to convert categories 2-4 into category 1?
I say that somewhat jokingly, but I think there's a grain of truth there: if (for example) a newbie learns to use the CLI for system administration without learning the GUI, then that newbie doesn't learn to depend on the GUI, and instead learns the ''correct'' way to administer a server. (Or at least a linux server.)
Why make it easier in the short term to administer a server, when in the long term those GUI skills will not be useful in a dire situation? Those GUI skills will help very little in actually learning the CLI method of administration, and may even cause people to forego learning the CLI, since they have the GUI tools available.
[snip] MS have their certification logos and they can be trusted.
Yep, if something has a "Microsoft Certified" logo on it, I go right out and buy it! I place all of my trust in Microsoft. They have consistently been open and honest, and wouldn't allow their logo to be misused for the sake of making money. And their QA department is so good, I am sure that they have time to make sure every "Microsoft Certified" product meets their strict quality control standards!
(See my other post about trust; the only people I'd believe are those who actually got the thing working, not the vendor of the hardware.)
Okay, here's a question: Why would anyone trust a *vendor* when they say that their product is ''Linux tested''? Whenever I'm in the market for new hardware, I find relevant 'net documents from trusted sources that document whether a piece of hardware works in linux or not, and *how* it works: is it a crappy workaround, or a standard method?
Is the documentation I find always perfect, 100% accurate? No, but it's generally more accurate than anything I've ever found from a vendor. I've found this to be true in other OSes, as well.
So, what resort is there for vendors? Other than slapping the ''linux-tested'' logo on their box, they can donate free hardware to trusted people (if it's a kernel issue, to kernel developers; otherwise, it's up to them to find someone reputable) who can then test it and support it with documentation. That's even assuming the vendor cares about linux support at all; if it doesn't, then they can slap their logo on as many boxes as they want; they'll either get linux users pissed at them and lose that business (which they don't care about anyway), or someone will hack drivers and support that hardware the proper way.
You can get the latest version by typing "vi/usr/doc/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO".
This doesn't help with closed-source software (like HP's WebAdmin software for its printers) which is advertised as "Linux-compatible" but is really "RedHat-compatible". And no, saying "don't use closed-source software" isn't always an option here, either.
I am usually much better off buying commercial software because they tend to be superior products.
I was just thinking the same thing! You missed a couple of examples: WindowsNT vs. Linux/*BSD, MS Office/WordPerfect/Lotus SmartSuite vs. just about any non-office editor/LaTeX, IIS vs. Apache. Oh, wait, you covered Apache.
A student of mine told me that he thought the GIMP was actually better than Photoshop. Superiority is in the eye of the beholder.
They tend to innovate more. I've yet to see Open Source software that really redifines a market segment or brings something new to the table.
You know, you're right here, too. Good thing proprietary companies developed closed-source versions of BIND, sendmail, Mosaic, perl, and python, so that others could imitate them and release their imitations as open source.
Okay, so we haven't seen a huge push of innovation from open source lately. We haven't seen a huge push of innovation from closed-source lately, either. Products take time to develop, and to say that companies innovate more than open-source projects, or produce better software than open-source, is a gross overgeneralization. To say the other way around is also an overgeneralization: each software package needs to be evaluated on its merits.
However, whenever *I* do such an evaluation, true open source projects *always* get an extra point or two, because I can trust that if the software gains a solid developer/user base, it will continue to improve, and will continue to be free. I can't ever say the same for closed-source, proprietary software.
So I can't watch the "It's Your Movie" movie, since I don't run Windows or MacOS, and QuickTime is available only for those two operating systems. Guess I'll wait till it comes out on TBS.
You know, there *is* (rarely) still a need to get to a console, even in bsd/unix/linux. If you had three linux boxes in your computer room, would you want three monitors and keyboards (mice are pointless) or only one of each? Or, would you rather have to hook up a monitor and keyboard manually when something fried?
Debian, more than any of the other distros, follows the GNU philosophy.
And if that is your philosophy, then Debian is a good distro for you. Not everybody is as committed to GNU as RMS, and the idea of the GPL is that *you* (not a big conglomerate) have the choice to pick your software. If you choose to run Slackware and simply not install nonfree software, that's your *choice*. It's all about *choice*.
Oh, did I mention that you're free to choose? Well, you are.:) You heard it here first. (Yes, you're even free to choose your distribution based on its lousy name.)
you've got a distribution named "Slackware", hardly the name your tech-savvy CTO wants to represent a core part of their enterprise solution.
A ''tech-savvy'' CTO would be choosing Slackware on its technical merits, not on its lousy name.
If a CTO is choosing software based on name, why wouldn't s/he choose Microsoft? After all, nobody was ever fired for choosing IBM^H^H^HMicrosoft, right?
A while back, a couple of math-geek friends came up with a variation of the traditional roshambo rules. I don't know if this new game got a name, but here's how it went.
Two new items are added: the angel (forming a circle with your thumb and another finger) and Satan (forming devil horns with your forefinger and pinky). Every item loses to two others, beats two others, and ties with itself. The traditional rock-scissors-paper patterns hold, so here are the new combos:
Angel loses to Paper (nasty paper cuts) and Scissors (clipped wings) Angel beats Satan (because good always triumphs over evil) and Rock (because Angel can fly away from a rock-thrower)
Satan loses to Angel and to Rock (because Satan's malice gets turned against him) Satan beats Paper (because it burns in Hell) and Scissors (I forget why, exactly, but it needs to be symmetric)
It was fun, but too hard to keep track of all the rules, so it was quickly discarded. (I might point out that other members of the same group staged a roshambo tournament, in which one player actually did quite well using the pi bot and the rockbot (Good ole rock. Nuthin' beats rock.) strategies.
I wonder: Would the extra items cause the roshambo writers to reevaluate their strategies? Would five items only make decision-making longer, or would it actually cause strategic differences?
Wouldn't a classic Japanese haiku also be written in Japanese?
Can the haiku challenge be rewritten to accomodate this requirement?
--keith
Re:What does it bring us?
on
Linux Mergers?
·
· Score: 2
Everywhere I go, from the FSF, to OSI to even Debian's own social contract with its developers, I keep hearing "it's not free beer and it's okay to sell free software". So why does the Debian crowd always piss on the commercial distros?
Partly because many of the commercial distros are selling non-free software (by bundling non-free software on their CDs with GPL/BSD software) right alongside free software. The Qt incident a while back is one example.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone who runs Linux can't be bad!
Bride Over the River Kwai? Who played Guinness' wife in that movie? And just what was she doing over that river?
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 20:04:44 -0700 (PDT)
l
From: kkeller@sirius.com
Subject: Advertising links in USENET posts
To: comments@deja.com
Dear Deja.com comments,
I recently read your response to a slashdot.org reader's
comments concerning embedding advertising links in USENET
posts that you host at deja.com. I feel I must voice my
concerns that your suggested measures for people who do
not wish their posts marked up are far from sufficient.
I hope that you can clarify your position on this matter,
so that I may continue to recommend people to your site,
rather than recommend people *not* visit your site.
You suggest that USENET posters who do not wish their
posts to be modified by deja.com use a new x header
(x-no-productlinks) in their posts to USENET. I find this
suggestion irresponsible. You are assuming, without any
information to support your assumption, that all USENET
posters would not mind if their material is modified by
deja.com, and that people who do object to this practice
should implement extra steps to do so.
Your current policy assumes that if there is no "x-no-productlinks"
header, then it is okay to modify the post to include product
links. This produces an ''opt-out'' policy which, while
technically feasible, assumes that the default behavior for
deja.com to modify USENET posts is acceptable. This default
policy is clearly unacceptable, as many USENET posters
are probably not even aware that their post will be modified
by deja.com.
As a first suggestion, you can alter your policy to be an
''opt-in'', rather than an ''opt-out'', policy. You can
ask posters to use an "x-productlinks: yes" header to allow
people to give explicit permission for deja.com to modify
their USENET posts. If a posting does not contain this header,
or contains an "x-productlinks: no" header, then deja.com
would not insert product links into that particular post.
Please note that this differs greatly from your "x-no-archive"
policy. It is reasonable to assume that most USENET posters
are aware that their articles may be copied verbatim by others
for archival purposes, since otherwise USENET would not be
able to function in the way it does. Therefore, it is acceptable
for deja.com to default to archiving USENET posts, and to force
people to ''opt-out'' rather than ''opt-in''.
I sincerely hope that deja.com will reconsider its current
policy concerning modifying USENET posts without explicit
permission to do so. Thank you for your time.
-- Keith Keller
kkeller@sirius.com
alt.os.linux.slackware FAQ:
http://www.sirius.com/~oryx/linux/aols-faq.shtm
My issue is that many people who browse the internet do *not* have half a brain. What will those people think when my USENET article is marked up, without my permission? I can't imagine a *lot* of people I know being able to tell the difference between something I authored on USENET (these people probably don't even know what USENET is) and something that they will believe I authored on deja.com.
My conclusion is that Deja's policies fall far short of what they need to be doing if they are going to be marking up USENET postings. I will be writing to them expressing my thoughts, and if it's timely enough I'll post my message here.
I don't think that all the spammers of the world would be able to form a corporate entity, but if they did, man! That'd be the largest corporation ever!
(Watch out for dangling references....)
I was all ready to tear Deja a new . . . well, anyway, unfortunately the original link isn't working so that I can actually see what Deja is doing, and I don't wish to spend the rest of my morning trying to find another post like the original. Does someone know of an article that has the "Deja link" virus that they can post, so that I (and others who haven't seen it yet) can see what the deal is?
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
*sigh* I felt the same way.
On another note, I had some suggestions for branding/brainwashing the public:
Coca-Cola == Caffeinated motor oil
Microsoft == Daily systems crash
Mountain Dew == Caffeinated urine
Gap == Clothing I paid $50 too much to obtain
Old Navy == Clothing the Gap deemed not worthy for their store, for which I still paid $50 too much to obtain
Nike == Michael Jordan
AOL == Misrouted email
Napster == Metallica
Open Source == Was, is, or soon will be proprietary
Use these in your daily conversations!
"Hey, I was listening to that new Napster album while I lost some AOL and my computer Microsofted the other day when I installed some Open Source software. Then, while watching TV I saw Nike drinking this cool new motor oil!"
This idea is actually much older--witness The Beatles, "Revolution 9". They predicted the Napster phenomenon 30 years ago, and had a perfect solution!
Even better, the FSF will get to keep all proceeds from providing names under gnu.org, instead of forking over money to a registrar for each .gnu that they would register.
(Unless FSF plans on an alternate method of administering a TLD, which clearly ICANN isn't even close to considering. Jeez, they're still considering how to consider *adding* TLDs...how long will it take them to consider how to consider administering the consideration of considering administration of new TLDs?)
Actually, I think they're voting in the next internet election.
a) got his start campaigning as an openly racist, segregationist Dixie-crat;
b) made his name by opposing every scrap of Equal Rights legislation for the past 52 years;
c) Is nevertheless re-elected by a landslide every few years.
Don't you think that a + b + (state where Thurmond lives) == c? Or at least, the left side of the equation has large influence on the right.
1. *nix geeks
2. MC*E winders types
3. "other" (isn't Banyan Vines still in business?)
4. Newbies and aspiring server admins
And shouldn't the goal be to convert categories 2-4 into category 1?
I say that somewhat jokingly, but I think there's a grain of truth there: if (for example) a newbie learns to use the CLI for system administration without learning the GUI, then that newbie doesn't learn to depend on the GUI, and instead learns the ''correct'' way to administer a server. (Or at least a linux server.)
Why make it easier in the short term to administer a server, when in the long term those GUI skills will not be useful in a dire situation? Those GUI skills will help very little in actually learning the CLI method of administration, and may even cause people to forego learning the CLI, since they have the GUI tools available.
Yep, if something has a "Microsoft Certified" logo on it, I go right out and buy it! I place all of my trust in Microsoft. They have consistently been open and honest, and wouldn't allow their logo to be misused for the sake of making money. And their QA department is so good, I am sure that they have time to make sure every "Microsoft Certified" product meets their strict quality control standards!
(See my other post about trust; the only people I'd believe are those who actually got the thing working, not the vendor of the hardware.)
Is the documentation I find always perfect, 100% accurate? No, but it's generally more accurate than anything I've ever found from a vendor. I've found this to be true in other OSes, as well.
So, what resort is there for vendors? Other than slapping the ''linux-tested'' logo on their box, they can donate free hardware to trusted people (if it's a kernel issue, to kernel developers; otherwise, it's up to them to find someone reputable) who can then test it and support it with documentation. That's even assuming the vendor cares about linux support at all; if it doesn't, then they can slap their logo on as many boxes as they want; they'll either get linux users pissed at them and lose that business (which they don't care about anyway), or someone will hack drivers and support that hardware the proper way.
This doesn't help with closed-source software (like HP's WebAdmin software for its printers) which is advertised as "Linux-compatible" but is really "RedHat-compatible". And no, saying "don't use closed-source software" isn't always an option here, either.
I was just thinking the same thing! You missed a couple of examples: WindowsNT vs. Linux/*BSD, MS Office/WordPerfect/Lotus SmartSuite vs. just about any non-office editor/LaTeX, IIS vs. Apache. Oh, wait, you covered Apache.
A student of mine told me that he thought the GIMP was actually better than Photoshop. Superiority is in the eye of the beholder.
They tend to innovate more. I've yet to see Open Source software that really redifines a market segment or brings something new to the table.
You know, you're right here, too. Good thing proprietary companies developed closed-source versions of BIND, sendmail, Mosaic, perl, and python, so that others could imitate them and release their imitations as open source.
Okay, so we haven't seen a huge push of innovation from open source lately. We haven't seen a huge push of innovation from closed-source lately, either. Products take time to develop, and to say that companies innovate more than open-source projects, or produce better software than open-source, is a gross overgeneralization. To say the other way around is also an overgeneralization: each software package needs to be evaluated on its merits.
However, whenever *I* do such an evaluation, true open source projects *always* get an extra point or two, because I can trust that if the software gains a solid developer/user base, it will continue to improve, and will continue to be free. I can't ever say the same for closed-source, proprietary software.
--keith
So I can't watch the "It's Your Movie" movie, since I don't run Windows or MacOS, and QuickTime is available only for those two operating systems. Guess I'll wait till it comes out on TBS.
You know, there *is* (rarely) still a need to get to a console, even in bsd/unix/linux. If you had three linux boxes in your computer room, would you want three monitors and keyboards (mice are pointless) or only one of each? Or, would you rather have to hook up a monitor and keyboard manually when something fried?
If Jar Jar is what counts for comic relief these days, I'd hate to have to experience what comic pain must be like!
Lisa: "What's that extra B for?"
Homer (grumpily): "That's a typo."
And if that is your philosophy, then Debian is a good distro for you. Not everybody is as committed to GNU as RMS, and the idea of the GPL is that *you* (not a big conglomerate) have the choice to pick your software. If you choose to run Slackware and simply not install nonfree software, that's your *choice*. It's all about *choice*.
Oh, did I mention that you're free to choose? Well, you are. :) You heard it here first. (Yes, you're even free to choose your distribution based on its lousy name.)
--keith
A ''tech-savvy'' CTO would be choosing Slackware on its technical merits, not on its lousy name.
If a CTO is choosing software based on name, why wouldn't s/he choose Microsoft? After all, nobody was ever fired for choosing IBM^H^H^HMicrosoft, right?
--keith
A while back, a couple of math-geek friends came up with a variation of the traditional roshambo rules. I don't know if this new game got a name, but here's how it went.
Two new items are added: the angel (forming a circle with your thumb and another finger) and Satan (forming devil horns with your forefinger and pinky). Every item loses to two others, beats two others, and ties with itself. The traditional rock-scissors-paper patterns hold, so here are the new combos:
Angel loses to Paper (nasty paper cuts) and Scissors (clipped wings)
Angel beats Satan (because good always triumphs over evil) and Rock (because Angel can fly away from a rock-thrower)
Satan loses to Angel and to Rock (because Satan's malice gets turned against him)
Satan beats Paper (because it burns in Hell) and Scissors (I forget why, exactly, but it needs to be symmetric)
It was fun, but too hard to keep track of all the rules, so it was quickly discarded. (I might point out that other members of the same group staged a roshambo tournament, in which one player actually did quite well using the pi bot and the rockbot (Good ole rock. Nuthin' beats rock.) strategies.
I wonder: Would the extra items cause the roshambo writers to reevaluate their strategies? Would five items only make decision-making longer, or would it actually cause strategic differences?
--keith
Wouldn't a classic Japanese haiku also be written in Japanese?
Can the haiku challenge be rewritten to accomodate this requirement?
--keith
Partly because many of the commercial distros are selling non-free software (by bundling non-free software on their CDs with GPL/BSD software) right alongside free software. The Qt incident a while back is one example.
--keith