I for one don't think they are evangelical - just defensive, because people routinly group them in with what are seen as 'offensive' groups
Eh, perhaps. While I think that most non-religious people aren't very "evengelical" about their views, I've met agnostics and athiests who were extremely disparaging of anyone with religious beliefs - these are the "abortion clinic bombers" of the non-religious world, the fanatics who give their views a bad name because they use it as an excuse to persecute, belittle and denigrate others. These people are the equivilent of Christian-right homophobes who believe their viewpoint is right, all others are wrong, and that this gives them moral superiority and the right to treat people who disagree with them as less than human. They practice conversion by denigration, instead of by evangelism.
Just about every set of coding standards that I've ever seen (including the GNU standards) specify not only brace style, but indentation (2,4,8 spaces) and how that indentation should be done (usually, all spaces, or "you must convert tabs to spaces", etc.)
<RANT>
So what's the big deal? You're either (a) doing it anyways, or (b) your code is so freaking sloppy that any amount of structure is anathema to you.
"It confuses CVS" is about the lamest excuse I've ever heard of. Since when do you base your choice of language around which source code control system you use? Sheesh.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the Mac Gestalt Manager in this thread... from what I remember (years out of date by now, I'm sure) it offered an extensible way to query the OS for installed capabilities. While there were several standard gestalt selectors to query for information common to every system, third-party software (primarily system extensions, IIRC) could install additional selectors to indicate their presence, configuration information, etc.
Much as you may not want to admit it, this is one area where Windows products literally kick the crud out of the various free os's (osii?)
Not that there aren't any number of post-installation problems that can cause nightmares for Windows users; but generally, the installation of new software tends to go extrememly smoothly. This really doesn't have as much to do with MS as it does with InstallShield being the default end-all-be-all of installer builders for WinTel software, though some of the installer support included in W2K looks exceptionally neat, and a year or two ahead of what's available on Linux.
Your average user, when faced with RPM, DEB, tarballs, and the like will look at you and wonder what kind of crack you were smoking to come up with all these different ways to do the same thing, when all they want to do is just get something on thei machine so they can do X...
To say the Linux and Free Software community doesn't listen to it's "customers" is incorrect. It's gotten where it is by doing precisely that. It's just that Linux's "customers" are technical users for whom Windows and MacOS are inadequate; and also those who need to deploy stable, secure systems for non-technical users in a traditional office environment.
Part of his point, though, is that there is a large - and vocal - segment of Linux advocates who insist that Linux does meet the needs of your "first group" (the non-technical desktop market.) This segment either needs to live up to what it claims, and meet the needs of that group, or learn to accept that Linux just isn't ready for the non-technical user yet.
I have to admit, when I first started reading it, I was suprised... I never thought that Pratchett was the type of author to use vulgarity, even if the word was never actually printed.
I literally fell out of bed laughing when I got to the part where I realized that it wasn't some sort of Victorian-era censorship, but that Tulip was actually pausing before saying "ing"... such a well-cultured thug. I couldn't help but feel sorry for him during the course of the book, and happy that he finally ended up where he did.
Re:never read the series but..
on
The Truth
·
· Score: 1
Adams' books are essentially parodies - the humor and the silliness are the points of the book. Pratchett started off in that vein, too; but has managed to grow as a writer, and the humor in his books is no longer the sole point. The humor is still there, and still makes the books very enjoyable; but it's much sharper and more satirical in his later books, and no longer the sole purpose of the story. "Feet of Clay", for example, would have been an excellent fantasy detective story, even without the humorous asides.
I think you miss the point made by the previous poster: yes, GC improves productivity, because it removes the burden of memory management from the programmer. However, there are classes of problems where speed and/or effeciency is part of the problem space; in other words, where the solution does not only need to be correct, the implementation of the solution needs to run as quickly as possible (a good example would be writing the GC for a high level language:-) Once you reach that point, if you understand that you're increasing development complexity (doing your own memory management) and speed (reviewing and testing to make sure you did it right) in order to meet performance requirements, then not using a GC is just a rational choice.
I hate to say this... much as I dislike AOL, and think that their software sucks rocks, I hope they win the lawsuit. No, more than that - I hope they stomp the class-action suit filers into the freaking ground. Not because they didn't bother to read the installation instructions. Not because they didn't examine the "About AOL 5.0" documents on the installation CD. Not because they couldn't be bothered to pay attention and actually try to understand what the hell it was they were installing?
Because they didn't pay attention to the license and warranty... and even if they did, what good would it have done them?
There is no single entity in the software industry that provides any sort of guarantee that their software is fit for a particular purpose, even the intended purpose for which it is sold.
To reiterate: I hope the AOL class-action filers loose.... and I hope that they, their lawyers, their friends, the press, and random people on the street get peeved enough about the loss that public pressure forces the government to dump the UCITA and implement the software equivilent of the automotive "lemon laws" on the books in many states.
Affiliate may not alter the
HTML code within the Program boxes. If changes to boxes are detected, all accrued payments to Affiliate will be canceled. This includes changes that affect functionality, performance or tracking capabilities of Affiliate Links.
(Italics added for emphasis.)
I don't really see how Altavista giving people some HTML source - no matter how "proprietary" - counts as them opening their source code to their search engine, which seems to be what the article is trying to imply. Many other sites - Lycos, for one - have had similar programs in the past, though the $0.03 per clickthrough sounds like a different twist.
Chalk it up as effective marketing - they put the words "open" and "source" in the same sentence, and managed to generate the expected amount of talk about what is essentially a non-event. 'Course, I may have missed the "Download Altavista search engine source here!" link on their site, but I don't think so:-)
IIRC, Aladin has an arrangement where the latest & greatest version of ghostscript is proprietary... however, when they have the followup version to that ready for release, they release the source for the previous version under a new license (not the GPL, I don't think, though.) While this might disturb some open-source zealots/purists, it does have it's advantages - you (the publisher) have an exclusive product for a period of time, and the users eventually get the source to their current version... which gives you, the publisher, a strong incentive to release a new version that has significant features/enhancements/fixes (ones that a competent user group with the source couldn't make) in order to get the users to buy the new version (instead of the now-traditional bugfix releases that get palmed off as "major upgrades").
Go one step further - create the banner add, and use stenography to encode the DeCSS code as part of the ad. Or, you could split the code into 3-4 chunks, and create 3-4 different ads, saying something like "1/4 of the reason the MPAA is scared out of their wits.", along with a bitmap representation for the chunk o' code... make it an animated image, and have that fade away to say "Collect all four."
As per your request, hugely successful pieces of Open Source software, one list of:
...
For what definition of success? There is no question that these are all widely used pieces of software... then again, so are Windows 95 and DOS. You could also argue that they are "successful" because they function as intended (ie, they're non-trivially useful).
By other criteria - profit made from sale of software, or from sale of support for the software - there has never been an open source project that even approaches the success of the larger closed-source software releases. In time, perhaps, but not yet.
it is not about writing software "for free" ... but it is about releasing all rights you might have to the software you've written.
it is not about not being paid a lot of money for writing it ... although it is about having abuse heaped upon you, your company and your product if you don't give into the demands of the mob.
it is not about giving your competitors the ability to put you out of business ... unless, of course, your business is writing software.
Sigh. Same old, same old... There are any number of extremely convincing arguments for using and supporting open source; to spout the useless and emotionally-charged rhetoric you did contributes little or nothing to the discussion at hand. It does not answer the questions raised by the original poster:
Once we invested time, effort and money to write this software, how can we avoid having someone larger than us profit from our labors at our expense?
What is the economic model that allows me to profit from my knowledge and skills, since you insist I am to give away the fruits of my labor for free?
Who would write this highly-specialized software if we didn't, and why would we do it if there was no incentive for us to do so?
These are serious questions, from someone who is at least willing to listen to an explanation... and instead of trying to answer his questions, or explain to him why you believe what you do, you deride him for not being a believer. I'd say that I'm staggered and shocked by your arrogance, but unfortunately, it appears to be all too common among open source advocates in general, and/. trolls in particular.
You know, this type of attitude really ticks me off.
I'm a decent programmer, but I'm not a compiler writer, or a kernel hacker, or a device driver guru. I have no doubt that if I absolutely had to, I could modify gcc, the kernel, or some device driver to fix a bug or add a minor feature. But you know what? Instead of spending thousands of hours building the tools I need to work with, I rely on someone else to write my compiler, my editor, my device drivers, my filesystems, and the kernel that runs 'em all.
My point? You can apply this description to both proprietary and OSS software; and in both cases, if the folks who are writing your software (Metrowerks, MS, the Apache Group, etc.) decide to stop working on a project/feature/enhancement you were waiting for, you're SOL. In both cases, you have the same choices - buy a replacement product; build your own replacement product; or hire someone to build you a replacement product. The only real advantage the OSS case has is that you have access to the source code, which means that it will be less expensive (although not neccesarily inexpensive) to choose either of the development options.
MS already makes any number of grants to schools; here's another one, apparently... an excellent chance for inner city schools to finally "catch up" and equip some of their classrooms with modern machines. Hmmm... not just the schools, either. How about the students? "Mom, see, Microsoft is giving away free computers..."
What about charitable organizations that are continually strapped for donations - the Salvation Army, women's shelters, homeless shelters, minority education programs,...
Please don't "screw" MSN over this, it'll just end up hurting a lot of future possible computer users if MSN closes this deal offering.
Doubtful... the worst that could happen is that MS modifies recinds the offer in CA and OR. In the first case, they can get the computers under slightly different terms - as a rebate, maybe, instead of a loan. In the second case, they can drive over state lines or go through mail order to buy a computer (which many folks in SoCal do now, anyways, to buy cars, since CA taxes on auto sales are so ruinous.)
The only thing that's technically cool about Pittsburgh are the Honda Civic (???) with the LYCOS paint scheme.
Actually, it was a Honda Prelude, though I removed the stickers when I left Lycos (odd to see your car referenced on/.:-)
with CMU there, one would believe that it would be healthy area for startups...I guess not.
You probably weren't looking in the right places... In the past six years in Pittsburgh, I've worked for four companies, three of them startups. Last year, I was looking for a new job, again with a startup... even with that limiting criteria, I had resumes out to over two dozen companies.
For people interested in Pittsburgh, and wondering about the availability of interesting jobs, here's a few resources:
The amount of deforestation that would occur if every household in America received a paper 'census computer' would be devastating.
Excuse me? Junk mail alone - catalogs, fliers, charity solicitations - dwarfs the amount of paper that a 'census computer' like this would 'waste'. Also, as others have pointed out, such computers can easily be reused, which is better than recycling, correct?
Given the choice between recieving a dozen dead tree's worth of catalogs every year, and recieving the equivilent data delivered via 'paper computer', I'll go out on what seems to be a sturdy limb and guess that using paper computer catalogs would save more resources than they wasted, even if they were never reused or recycled.
My wife and I were outside at our farm last night, and I commented to her about how bright it was... she reminded me of this whole "brightest moon" event. Now, while I had seen it reported here, it certainly wasn't on my mind at the time... so it appears that the difference in brightness is noticeable (at least it was to me, out in the country in almost complete darkness.)
I was in the Navy for a few years and had the chance to see many a full moon in complete darkness out at sea - bright enought to read by, with a little squinting on my part. This current moon isn't as bright as I remember under those circumstances, so I would guess that atmospherics and (lack of) proximity to other light sources makes up most of the perceived increase in brightness... particularly if someone who isn't used to seeing a full moon away from streetlights and the like makes the effort to do so.
I recall hearing somewhere (can't remember the source, but I remember it was a congressional staffer - can any one else place this?) that it takes on the order of four (that's 4, 2*2, IV) handwritten letters to make a someone in the house/senate take action on an issue.
So perhaps, instead of emailing your congresscritters, you might want to take the 2-3 minutes it takes to write them a letter on the subject.
"Given the importance of anonymity as a component of free speech..." I am just thrilled to see someone base an argument on an assumption.
It's really hard not to respond to this as if you were a troll... particularly since you go on to provide examples that buttress what you apparently consider a faulty assumption. Yes, it is an assumption - a fairly good one, I think; but in any case, logically you can either accept the assumption, and argue it's consequences, or reject the assumption, and attempt to show why it is invalid. You do neither, instead prefering an ad homeneim attack on the issuer of the statement, which makes you appear unwilling (or unable) to debate the substance of the argument.
Secondly, you make the mistake of equating "freedom" with "lack of responsibility". The NYT is free to print whatever they damn well please - as long as they take responsibility for their actions. If that includes being sued for libel, fine - they may be willing to take that risk, in some instances and for some reasons.
Finally - the right of the accused to confront their accuser applies in a court of law. If I claim (in print) that my old fourth-grade teacher was an ex-Nazi war criminal child molester, he's got every right to accuse me of libel in a court of law, and I have every right to face him there, as he is my accuser.
I don't see how this would hurt Slashdot. Will it prevent anyone from seeing slashdot? W ill it reduce the number of people who see these adverts?
No... but it's the readers and the advertisers who benefit then, not Slashdot (the site, Andover.net, Rob, whatever your personal perception of "Slashdot" happens to be. It certainly includes the readers and the advertisers, but neither of those groups would be here unless there was something to bring them together.)
Slashdot Mirror
Eh, perhaps. While I think that most non-religious people aren't very "evengelical" about their views, I've met agnostics and athiests who were extremely disparaging of anyone with religious beliefs - these are the "abortion clinic bombers" of the non-religious world, the fanatics who give their views a bad name because they use it as an excuse to persecute, belittle and denigrate others. These people are the equivilent of Christian-right homophobes who believe their viewpoint is right, all others are wrong, and that this gives them moral superiority and the right to treat people who disagree with them as less than human. They practice conversion by denigration, instead of by evangelism.
Just about every set of coding standards that I've ever seen (including the GNU standards) specify not only brace style, but indentation (2,4,8 spaces) and how that indentation should be done (usually, all spaces, or "you must convert tabs to spaces", etc.)
<RANT>
So what's the big deal? You're either (a) doing it anyways, or (b) your code is so freaking sloppy that any amount of structure is anathema to you.
"It confuses CVS" is about the lamest excuse I've ever heard of. Since when do you base your choice of language around which source code control system you use? Sheesh.
</RANT>
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the Mac Gestalt Manager in this thread... from what I remember (years out of date by now, I'm sure) it offered an extensible way to query the OS for installed capabilities. While there were several standard gestalt selectors to query for information common to every system, third-party software (primarily system extensions, IIRC) could install additional selectors to indicate their presence, configuration information, etc.
Much as you may not want to admit it, this is one area where Windows products literally kick the crud out of the various free os's (osii?)
Not that there aren't any number of post-installation problems that can cause nightmares for Windows users; but generally, the installation of new software tends to go extrememly smoothly. This really doesn't have as much to do with MS as it does with InstallShield being the default end-all-be-all of installer builders for WinTel software, though some of the installer support included in W2K looks exceptionally neat, and a year or two ahead of what's available on Linux.
Your average user, when faced with RPM, DEB, tarballs, and the like will look at you and wonder what kind of crack you were smoking to come up with all these different ways to do the same thing, when all they want to do is just get something on thei machine so they can do X...
To say the Linux and Free Software community doesn't listen to it's "customers" is incorrect. It's gotten where it is by doing precisely that. It's just that Linux's "customers" are technical users for whom Windows and MacOS are inadequate; and also those who need to deploy stable, secure systems for non-technical users in a traditional office environment.
Part of his point, though, is that there is a large - and vocal - segment of Linux advocates who insist that Linux does meet the needs of your "first group" (the non-technical desktop market.) This segment either needs to live up to what it claims, and meet the needs of that group, or learn to accept that Linux just isn't ready for the non-technical user yet.
I have to admit, when I first started reading it, I was suprised... I never thought that Pratchett was the type of author to use vulgarity, even if the word was never actually printed.
I literally fell out of bed laughing when I got to the part where I realized that it wasn't some sort of Victorian-era censorship, but that Tulip was actually pausing before saying "ing"... such a well-cultured thug. I couldn't help but feel sorry for him during the course of the book, and happy that he finally ended up where he did.
Adams' books are essentially parodies - the humor and the silliness are the points of the book. Pratchett started off in that vein, too; but has managed to grow as a writer, and the humor in his books is no longer the sole point. The humor is still there, and still makes the books very enjoyable; but it's much sharper and more satirical in his later books, and no longer the sole purpose of the story. "Feet of Clay", for example, would have been an excellent fantasy detective story, even without the humorous asides.
I think you miss the point made by the previous poster: yes, GC improves productivity, because it removes the burden of memory management from the programmer. However, there are classes of problems where speed and/or effeciency is part of the problem space; in other words, where the solution does not only need to be correct, the implementation of the solution needs to run as quickly as possible (a good example would be writing the GC for a high level language :-) Once you reach that point, if you understand that you're increasing development complexity (doing your own memory management) and speed (reviewing and testing to make sure you did it right) in order to meet performance requirements, then not using a GC is just a rational choice.
I hate to say this... much as I dislike AOL, and think that their software sucks rocks, I hope they win the lawsuit. No, more than that - I hope they stomp the class-action suit filers into the freaking ground. Not because they didn't bother to read the installation instructions. Not because they didn't examine the "About AOL 5.0" documents on the installation CD. Not because they couldn't be bothered to pay attention and actually try to understand what the hell it was they were installing?
Because they didn't pay attention to the license and warranty... and even if they did, what good would it have done them?
There is no single entity in the software industry that provides any sort of guarantee that their software is fit for a particular purpose, even the intended purpose for which it is sold.
To reiterate: I hope the AOL class-action filers loose.... and I hope that they, their lawyers, their friends, the press, and random people on the street get peeved enough about the loss that public pressure forces the government to dump the UCITA and implement the software equivilent of the automotive "lemon laws" on the books in many states.
The Altavista Affiliate Program Agreement states:
(Italics added for emphasis.)
I don't really see how Altavista giving people some HTML source - no matter how "proprietary" - counts as them opening their source code to their search engine, which seems to be what the article is trying to imply. Many other sites - Lycos, for one - have had similar programs in the past, though the $0.03 per clickthrough sounds like a different twist.
Chalk it up as effective marketing - they put the words "open" and "source" in the same sentence, and managed to generate the expected amount of talk about what is essentially a non-event. 'Course, I may have missed the "Download Altavista search engine source here!" link on their site, but I don't think so :-)
IIRC, Aladin has an arrangement where the latest & greatest version of ghostscript is proprietary... however, when they have the followup version to that ready for release, they release the source for the previous version under a new license (not the GPL, I don't think, though.) While this might disturb some open-source zealots/purists, it does have it's advantages - you (the publisher) have an exclusive product for a period of time, and the users eventually get the source to their current version... which gives you, the publisher, a strong incentive to release a new version that has significant features/enhancements/fixes (ones that a competent user group with the source couldn't make) in order to get the users to buy the new version (instead of the now-traditional bugfix releases that get palmed off as "major upgrades").
Go one step further - create the banner add, and use stenography to encode the DeCSS code as part of the ad. Or, you could split the code into 3-4 chunks, and create 3-4 different ads, saying something like "1/4 of the reason the MPAA is scared out of their wits.", along with a bitmap representation for the chunk o' code... make it an animated image, and have that fade away to say "Collect all four."
As per your request, hugely successful pieces of Open Source software, one list of:
...
For what definition of success? There is no question that these are all widely used pieces of software... then again, so are Windows 95 and DOS. You could also argue that they are "successful" because they function as intended (ie, they're non-trivially useful).
By other criteria - profit made from sale of software, or from sale of support for the software - there has never been an open source project that even approaches the success of the larger closed-source software releases. In time, perhaps, but not yet.
it is not about writing software "for free"
... but it is about releasing all rights you might have to the software you've written.
it is not about not being paid a lot of money for writing it
... although it is about having abuse heaped upon you, your company and your product if you don't give into the demands of the mob.
it is not about giving your competitors the ability to put you out of business
... unless, of course, your business is writing software.
Sigh. Same old, same old... There are any number of extremely convincing arguments for using and supporting open source; to spout the useless and emotionally-charged rhetoric you did contributes little or nothing to the discussion at hand. It does not answer the questions raised by the original poster:
These are serious questions, from someone who is at least willing to listen to an explanation... and instead of trying to answer his questions, or explain to him why you believe what you do, you deride him for not being a believer. I'd say that I'm staggered and shocked by your arrogance, but unfortunately, it appears to be all too common among open source advocates in general, and /. trolls in particular.
You know, this type of attitude really ticks me off.
I'm a decent programmer, but I'm not a compiler writer, or a kernel hacker, or a device driver guru. I have no doubt that if I absolutely had to, I could modify gcc, the kernel, or some device driver to fix a bug or add a minor feature. But you know what? Instead of spending thousands of hours building the tools I need to work with, I rely on someone else to write my compiler, my editor, my device drivers, my filesystems, and the kernel that runs 'em all.
My point? You can apply this description to both proprietary and OSS software; and in both cases, if the folks who are writing your software (Metrowerks, MS, the Apache Group, etc.) decide to stop working on a project/feature/enhancement you were waiting for, you're SOL. In both cases, you have the same choices - buy a replacement product; build your own replacement product; or hire someone to build you a replacement product. The only real advantage the OSS case has is that you have access to the source code, which means that it will be less expensive (although not neccesarily inexpensive) to choose either of the development options.
Not suprising that Clinton would use 'hack' incorrectly... he's probably still struggling with what the definition of 'is' is.
MS already makes any number of grants to schools; here's another one, apparently... an excellent chance for inner city schools to finally "catch up" and equip some of their classrooms with modern machines. Hmmm... not just the schools, either. How about the students? "Mom, see, Microsoft is giving away free computers..."
What about charitable organizations that are continually strapped for donations - the Salvation Army, women's shelters, homeless shelters, minority education programs, ...
Doubtful... the worst that could happen is that MS modifies recinds the offer in CA and OR. In the first case, they can get the computers under slightly different terms - as a rebate, maybe, instead of a loan. In the second case, they can drive over state lines or go through mail order to buy a computer (which many folks in SoCal do now, anyways, to buy cars, since CA taxes on auto sales are so ruinous.)
The only thing that's technically cool about Pittsburgh are the Honda Civic (???) with the LYCOS paint scheme.
Actually, it was a Honda Prelude, though I removed the stickers when I left Lycos (odd to see your car referenced on /. :-)
with CMU there, one would believe that it would be healthy area for startups...I guess not.
You probably weren't looking in the right places... In the past six years in Pittsburgh, I've worked for four companies, three of them startups. Last year, I was looking for a new job, again with a startup... even with that limiting criteria, I had resumes out to over two dozen companies.
For people interested in Pittsburgh, and wondering about the availability of interesting jobs, here's a few resources:
A person will stay in an area if he is happy there. Period.
Agreed... but the question is, how do you get someone who's unhappy where they are to consider moving to where you are?
The amount of deforestation that would occur if every household in America received a paper 'census computer' would be devastating.
Excuse me? Junk mail alone - catalogs, fliers, charity solicitations - dwarfs the amount of paper that a 'census computer' like this would 'waste'. Also, as others have pointed out, such computers can easily be reused, which is better than recycling, correct?
Given the choice between recieving a dozen dead tree's worth of catalogs every year, and recieving the equivilent data delivered via 'paper computer', I'll go out on what seems to be a sturdy limb and guess that using paper computer catalogs would save more resources than they wasted, even if they were never reused or recycled.
My wife and I were outside at our farm last night, and I commented to her about how bright it was... she reminded me of this whole "brightest moon" event. Now, while I had seen it reported here, it certainly wasn't on my mind at the time... so it appears that the difference in brightness is noticeable (at least it was to me, out in the country in almost complete darkness.)
I was in the Navy for a few years and had the chance to see many a full moon in complete darkness out at sea - bright enought to read by, with a little squinting on my part. This current moon isn't as bright as I remember under those circumstances, so I would guess that atmospherics and (lack of) proximity to other light sources makes up most of the perceived increase in brightness... particularly if someone who isn't used to seeing a full moon away from streetlights and the like makes the effort to do so.
I recall hearing somewhere (can't remember the source, but I remember it was a congressional staffer - can any one else place this?) that it takes on the order of four (that's 4, 2*2, IV) handwritten letters to make a someone in the house/senate take action on an issue.
So perhaps, instead of emailing your congresscritters, you might want to take the 2-3 minutes it takes to write them a letter on the subject.
"Given the importance of anonymity as a component of free speech..."
I am just thrilled to see someone base an argument on an assumption.
It's really hard not to respond to this as if you were a troll... particularly since you go on to provide examples that buttress what you apparently consider a faulty assumption. Yes, it is an assumption - a fairly good one, I think; but in any case, logically you can either accept the assumption, and argue it's consequences, or reject the assumption, and attempt to show why it is invalid. You do neither, instead prefering an ad homeneim attack on the issuer of the statement, which makes you appear unwilling (or unable) to debate the substance of the argument.
Secondly, you make the mistake of equating "freedom" with "lack of responsibility". The NYT is free to print whatever they damn well please - as long as they take responsibility for their actions. If that includes being sued for libel, fine - they may be willing to take that risk, in some instances and for some reasons.
Finally - the right of the accused to confront their accuser applies in a court of law. If I claim (in print) that my old fourth-grade teacher was an ex-Nazi war criminal child molester, he's got every right to accuse me of libel in a court of law, and I have every right to face him there, as he is my accuser .
I don't see how this would hurt Slashdot. Will it prevent anyone from seeing slashdot? W ill it reduce the number of people who see these adverts?
No... but it's the readers and the advertisers who benefit then, not Slashdot (the site, Andover.net, Rob, whatever your personal perception of "Slashdot" happens to be. It certainly includes the readers and the advertisers, but neither of those groups would be here unless there was something to bring them together.)