Some may be old enough to remember Turbo Pascal. Back when Microsoft and Digital Research were selling Pascal compilers for DOS for a few hundred dollars or more -- in the days before C took off on that platorm -- fast Turbo Pascal hit the market for $39.95. They sold bunches. I sure fewer people would have acquired Turbo Pascal if it had been released for no cost with a free license of some sort.
Linux is not held back as much by the "it's free" factor as it is by its unavailability in places where many people look for software. I know that sounds incongruous to everyone here, but the world is full of people who expect software to come in a shiny box sold by a store in the mall.
That, of course, is marketing, something that Turbo Pascal had and Linux has never had. More precisely, it's something no single commercial Linux distribution has ever taken seriously: market Linux to a mainstream audience. (Plenty of distributions have decalred they were targeting the mainstream audience, but they never bothered to tell the mainstream.)
To add to this, I don't "trust" traditional or hierarchical reporters or editors any more that I trust "user-generated" news. But, I do think it is much more difficult to determine the credibility of any single "user" because I will never be exposed to their writing in the depth or at the length I'm exposed to traditional news writing. E.g., I can read the NYT every day, and form an assessment of that paper based on that exposure. I'm never going to be able to form an equivalent assessment of some anonymous "user".
("Trust", I think, is not what I'm looking for from news creators. Credibility comes closer.)
How do you know someone is an "obvious wacko"" How do you know someone has presented a "reasoned argument"? However you make that determination on/., it is exactly the same method you use anywhere else, with any source.
When a commenter points out what he alleges to be a mistake or a bias in an article, that is precisely the same editorial function performed in a more "hierarchical" structure. (It's worth noting that/. is also hierarchical in that a very few people determine the stories that are published. That's a traditional editorial function.)
I don't need to rely on some anonymous person to tell me a story might be wrong or biases. I assume that going in.
I don't expect editors to be on my side. I think that's pretty much an irrelevancy. Nor do I equate "news" with "truth". News is reporting, i.e. an attempt to accurately produce a snapshot of a specific event. As such, I don't see that opening the news-creating arena to people with a myriad of opinions does me any good. The opinions of the general public - including mine -- on the news are just that, opinions. They are not the news.
>>"If someone more knowledgeable on the topic comes along and points out that something is BS... "
But there is no way to know who among all the/. commenters is credible on any given topic. Besides, knowledge about a subject is not necessarily a prerequisite for creating a credible and accurate news story. Would you trust a story about Microsoft that was bylined by Bill Gates? No. What you need to create a credible news story, among other attributes, is an ability to recognize your own biases and limitations and filter them out. Most people do that imperfectly, which is why editors were created.
>> "With regular news outlets, you have little opportunity for someone to suggest that an aspect of the story is flawed."
I'm the one who does that.
I just think the search for a single perfect news source is silly and a waste of time. I also think there is no more reason to expect a "flat" bunch of anonymous "users" to be any better at producing news than a "hierarchy" of professionals. The process you say you use here at/. is exactly the same process sensible people have always applied to gathering their news: read a lot of different sources and understand the motivations and track records of the people making the news.
Why should I think someone who says an earlier post is a lie is any more credible than I do the original poster?
I don't know about you, but I decide the credibility of any single source -- CNN or a Slashdot commenter -- by spending a lot of time with that source and seeing how it measures up against everything else I read.
Sounds like Slashdot. Just what I don't want. "Unfiltered and unedited" means writers' mistakes, biases and lies slip through because there's no one in the loop to catch and eliminate them, and the readers won't either. Result: more jabber, less news.
QuickTime, Real Player, Acrobat, Flash, etc., etc., are all technologies that most people experience inside their browser. They're all just more stuff you need to download to get your browser to work. If the web was just HTML, it would be pretty boring. And Slashdot wouldn't exist.
"This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited."
is standard boilerplate and attached to every professional sports broadcast.
Now, fair use applies to the broadcasts as much as it does to anything else. What constitutes fair use of a live boadcast? I don't know. But, copying an entire work and redistributing it is typically not considered fair use.
But, that's not what the churches are doing.
That said, if the NFL is going to go after churches who let a couple hundred of the faithful watch the game, then why don't they go after sports bars who let a couple hundred of the unfaithful watch the game over beer and wings?
It isn't the prevalence of cable TV in the U.S. that dissuades me from buying a DCD recorder. It's the fact that there's nothing worth recording.
I just get the bare minimum cable package -- the one that costs about $10 and has about a dozen channels -- because I periodically look at the cable listings in the newspaper and can't find a bloody thing worth paying $100 a month to watch. When I do see a show I enjoy, it's not like it's so amazingly good that I want to record it and watch it over and over.
Why should I buy a DVD recorder to preserve the rubbish that's on TV when the networks are so good at making new rubbish?
As I understand it, the courts view of fair use is confined to how much is copied, in what context, and how that copy is used. The courts typically do not view the medium used to record the data or the technology used to copy it as major factors in a fair use dispute. Watching a legally obtained DRM-ed DVD on the 'wrong' equipment doesn't seem like a fair use issue to me. It seems like an issue revolving around whether or not use of a legally obtained piece of software (which is how digital entertainment should be seen) can be restricted to certain pieces of hardware.
How do the courts determine when an altered copy, of anything, represents "added value"?
If the courts can do that, how, then, can they decide how to apportion the revenue from the altered copy?
My fundamental problem with the notion of added value is that it is an "in the eye of the beholder", "he says, she says", kind of opinion. In practical terms, no one is likely to tell a court that his altered copy removes value.
Cotton is correct to argue that the simple ability to copy and manipulate digital data does not translate to fair use. We've had the capability to copy and make unlimted copies of printed data for centuries and that has never been considered fair use. You can't make special rules for data on one kind of medium versus another.
Beyond that, Cotton is mostly wrong.
Wu's "added value" position is wrong. Who is to determine if value has been added or eliminated? For that matter, what is "value"? If I copy a popluar song, add 5 seconds of silence at the end and call it "added value", can I then sell it under my own name?
If you are essentially giving away your products and the vast majority of consumers choose to buy something else, you need to do two things.
First, make a better product. Don't just be competitive, be overwhelming. Don't emulate other products. Be better.
Second, be sure more people know you exist, i.e., better marketing. You aren't trying to build a community. You're trying to get people to use your product.
Get off your high horse. You may decry how Microsoft and Apple market their products. So what? It seems to work.
Few, if any, employers have the time and patience to run an applicant through a series of tests intended to determine if he/she has the skills and knowledge expected of any high school or college graduate. That's the purpose of a diploma or degree. If an applicant is a graduate -- a product -- of a school that proactively inculcates its students with an antiscience stance, then an employer has every reason to prefer an applicant from a school that does not indoctrinate its students in that way. While the applicant from the antiscience school may have supplemented his education on his own, an employer has no reason, and no obligation, to go to any special effort to discover that.
Employers who expect their employees to be conversant with modern science and the scientific method should send letters to these school districts decalring they won't hire anyone who is a product of their schools.
Yes, that's unfair to some students, but these willful Luddites need to be taught a lesson.
I used Linux on my desktop for most of the nineties. Then, I bought a G5 iMac. Initially, I looked for ports of the software I used on Linux. Now, however, I use nothing that I used on Linux. More importantly, none of the software I use on the iMac is available on Linux. Approximate equivalents, yes, but if Linux is only offering that -- not something obviously different and better -- why switch back?
I really need to replace this aging G5 machine. Once, I thought I'd run Linux on it when Apple moved on. it looks like that won't happen, since no distribution seems to fully support the hardware. In particular, Ubuntu has walked away from it after never really getting things right for my machine (the last revision 20-inch G5 before the switch to Intel).
When I do buy new hardware, I'm almost certainly not going to run Linux on it. I keep up with developments in the Linux desktop area and I simply see no incentive to do that.
The fact that I can take a 15-minute drive, walk into an Apple store, walk out with a new machine, drive home, plug it in, plug in a cable and migrate over my stuff from the old machine, and then go to work is a very comforting thought. I''ve installed Linux dozens of times, built distros from source, etc., but why would I do all that again to get second string results?
To really compete on the desktop, Linux needs to compete with Apple in software polish and innovation, and then make itself available in the retail channel. Linux might be free, but it's visible only to people who already know it exists. Better to selling it for $30 in shiny boxes.
And, it's hypocrite. Hippocrate's was the ancient Greek doctor who came up with that oath, you know.
Obviously, I'm unlikely to assault someone who orders coffee with a phone. But I am very likely to stop patronizing a shop that makes me wait because someone else called ahead. I mean, we're talking about coffee, which takes only a few seconds to prepare for a customer. How much time is gained by ordering a cup of coffee in advance? Maybe they'll pour the coffee as soon as they get the call, so it will be nice and cold when that customer arrives.
News to me. I'm rarely at fastfood joints, much less the drivethru. I was inside some coffee shop recently ordering at the counter. Midway through, the kid stops taking my order and starts yapping on his headset. I walked out.
The first guy with an iPhone who jumps ahead of me at Starbucks might just get some coffee spilled on his shirt. Orders should be taken first come, first served, period. If someone gives iPhone users an advantage, I'll go elsewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Some may be old enough to remember Turbo Pascal. Back when Microsoft and Digital Research were selling Pascal compilers for DOS for a few hundred dollars or more -- in the days before C took off on that platorm -- fast Turbo Pascal hit the market for $39.95. They sold bunches. I sure fewer people would have acquired Turbo Pascal if it had been released for no cost with a free license of some sort.
Linux is not held back as much by the "it's free" factor as it is by its unavailability in places where many people look for software. I know that sounds incongruous to everyone here, but the world is full of people who expect software to come in a shiny box sold by a store in the mall.
That, of course, is marketing, something that Turbo Pascal had and Linux has never had. More precisely, it's something no single commercial Linux distribution has ever taken seriously: market Linux to a mainstream audience. (Plenty of distributions have decalred they were targeting the mainstream audience, but they never bothered to tell the mainstream.)
To add to this, I don't "trust" traditional or hierarchical reporters or editors any more that I trust "user-generated" news. But, I do think it is much more difficult to determine the credibility of any single "user" because I will never be exposed to their writing in the depth or at the length I'm exposed to traditional news writing. E.g., I can read the NYT every day, and form an assessment of that paper based on that exposure. I'm never going to be able to form an equivalent assessment of some anonymous "user".
("Trust", I think, is not what I'm looking for from news creators. Credibility comes closer.)
How do you know someone is an "obvious wacko"" How do you know someone has presented a "reasoned argument"? However you make that determination on /., it is exactly the same method you use anywhere else, with any source.
/. is also hierarchical in that a very few people determine the stories that are published. That's a traditional editorial function.)
When a commenter points out what he alleges to be a mistake or a bias in an article, that is precisely the same editorial function performed in a more "hierarchical" structure. (It's worth noting that
I don't need to rely on some anonymous person to tell me a story might be wrong or biases. I assume that going in.
I don't expect editors to be on my side. I think that's pretty much an irrelevancy. Nor do I equate "news" with "truth". News is reporting, i.e. an attempt to accurately produce a snapshot of a specific event. As such, I don't see that opening the news-creating arena to people with a myriad of opinions does me any good. The opinions of the general public - including mine -- on the news are just that, opinions. They are not the news.
>>"If someone more knowledgeable on the topic comes along and points out that something is BS... "
/. commenters is credible on any given topic. Besides, knowledge about a subject is not necessarily a prerequisite for creating a credible and accurate news story. Would you trust a story about Microsoft that was bylined by Bill Gates? No. What you need to create a credible news story, among other attributes, is an ability to recognize your own biases and limitations and filter them out. Most people do that imperfectly, which is why editors were created.
But there is no way to know who among all the
>> "With regular news outlets, you have little opportunity for someone to suggest that an aspect of the story is flawed."
/. is exactly the same process sensible people have always applied to gathering their news: read a lot of different sources and understand the motivations and track records of the people making the news.
I'm the one who does that.
I just think the search for a single perfect news source is silly and a waste of time. I also think there is no more reason to expect a "flat" bunch of anonymous "users" to be any better at producing news than a "hierarchy" of professionals. The process you say you use here at
Sure, I've watched Fox News. Do I watch it? No, it's a right-wing propaganda tool. I'd only watch it if I wanted the right-wing spin on something.
Why should I think someone who says an earlier post is a lie is any more credible than I do the original poster?
I don't know about you, but I decide the credibility of any single source -- CNN or a Slashdot commenter -- by spending a lot of time with that source and seeing how it measures up against everything else I read.
>>"unfiltered and unedited content..."
Sounds like Slashdot. Just what I don't want. "Unfiltered and unedited" means writers' mistakes, biases and lies slip through because there's no one in the loop to catch and eliminate them, and the readers won't either. Result: more jabber, less news.
>>"... does your html-only world eliminate cgi as well?"
Yes. People want executable content, they want to be able to "do stuff" inside their browser. CGI and Perl can't deliver that.
QuickTime, Real Player, Acrobat, Flash, etc., etc., are all technologies that most people experience inside their browser. They're all just more stuff you need to download to get your browser to work. If the web was just HTML, it would be pretty boring. And Slashdot wouldn't exist.
This statement:
"This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited."
is standard boilerplate and attached to every professional sports broadcast.
Now, fair use applies to the broadcasts as much as it does to anything else. What constitutes fair use of a live boadcast? I don't know. But, copying an entire work and redistributing it is typically not considered fair use.
But, that's not what the churches are doing.
That said, if the NFL is going to go after churches who let a couple hundred of the faithful watch the game, then why don't they go after sports bars who let a couple hundred of the unfaithful watch the game over beer and wings?
Who said the deorbit will be uncontrolled?
Gmail isn't much help if you want to keep your firm's internal email off other peoples' servers.
It isn't the prevalence of cable TV in the U.S. that dissuades me from buying a DCD recorder. It's the fact that there's nothing worth recording.
I just get the bare minimum cable package -- the one that costs about $10 and has about a dozen channels -- because I periodically look at the cable listings in the newspaper and can't find a bloody thing worth paying $100 a month to watch. When I do see a show I enjoy, it's not like it's so amazingly good that I want to record it and watch it over and over.
Why should I buy a DVD recorder to preserve the rubbish that's on TV when the networks are so good at making new rubbish?
As I understand it, the courts view of fair use is confined to how much is copied, in what context, and how that copy is used. The courts typically do not view the medium used to record the data or the technology used to copy it as major factors in a fair use dispute. Watching a legally obtained DRM-ed DVD on the 'wrong' equipment doesn't seem like a fair use issue to me. It seems like an issue revolving around whether or not use of a legally obtained piece of software (which is how digital entertainment should be seen) can be restricted to certain pieces of hardware.
How do the courts determine when an altered copy, of anything, represents "added value"?
If the courts can do that, how, then, can they decide how to apportion the revenue from the altered copy?
My fundamental problem with the notion of added value is that it is an "in the eye of the beholder", "he says, she says", kind of opinion. In practical terms, no one is likely to tell a court that his altered copy removes value.
Cotton is correct to argue that the simple ability to copy and manipulate digital data does not translate to fair use. We've had the capability to copy and make unlimted copies of printed data for centuries and that has never been considered fair use. You can't make special rules for data on one kind of medium versus another.
Beyond that, Cotton is mostly wrong.
Wu's "added value" position is wrong. Who is to determine if value has been added or eliminated? For that matter, what is "value"? If I copy a popluar song, add 5 seconds of silence at the end and call it "added value", can I then sell it under my own name?
Other than that, he's mostly right.
If you are essentially giving away your products and the vast majority of consumers choose to buy something else, you need to do two things.
First, make a better product. Don't just be competitive, be overwhelming. Don't emulate other products. Be better.
Second, be sure more people know you exist, i.e., better marketing. You aren't trying to build a community. You're trying to get people to use your product.
Get off your high horse. You may decry how Microsoft and Apple market their products. So what? It seems to work.
Few, if any, employers have the time and patience to run an applicant through a series of tests intended to determine if he/she has the skills and knowledge expected of any high school or college graduate. That's the purpose of a diploma or degree. If an applicant is a graduate -- a product -- of a school that proactively inculcates its students with an antiscience stance, then an employer has every reason to prefer an applicant from a school that does not indoctrinate its students in that way. While the applicant from the antiscience school may have supplemented his education on his own, an employer has no reason, and no obligation, to go to any special effort to discover that.
Employers who expect their employees to be conversant with modern science and the scientific method should send letters to these school districts decalring they won't hire anyone who is a product of their schools.
Yes, that's unfair to some students, but these willful Luddites need to be taught a lesson.
I used Linux on my desktop for most of the nineties. Then, I bought a G5 iMac. Initially, I looked for ports of the software I used on Linux. Now, however, I use nothing that I used on Linux. More importantly, none of the software I use on the iMac is available on Linux. Approximate equivalents, yes, but if Linux is only offering that -- not something obviously different and better -- why switch back?
I really need to replace this aging G5 machine. Once, I thought I'd run Linux on it when Apple moved on. it looks like that won't happen, since no distribution seems to fully support the hardware. In particular, Ubuntu has walked away from it after never really getting things right for my machine (the last revision 20-inch G5 before the switch to Intel).
When I do buy new hardware, I'm almost certainly not going to run Linux on it. I keep up with developments in the Linux desktop area and I simply see no incentive to do that.
The fact that I can take a 15-minute drive, walk into an Apple store, walk out with a new machine, drive home, plug it in, plug in a cable and migrate over my stuff from the old machine, and then go to work is a very comforting thought. I''ve installed Linux dozens of times, built distros from source, etc., but why would I do all that again to get second string results?
To really compete on the desktop, Linux needs to compete with Apple in software polish and innovation, and then make itself available in the retail channel. Linux might be free, but it's visible only to people who already know it exists. Better to selling it for $30 in shiny boxes.
Linux needs apt, Apple doesn't.
Tsk, tsk. Such a literalist. Must be an engineer.
And, it's hypocrite. Hippocrate's was the ancient Greek doctor who came up with that oath, you know.
Obviously, I'm unlikely to assault someone who orders coffee with a phone. But I am very likely to stop patronizing a shop that makes me wait because someone else called ahead. I mean, we're talking about coffee, which takes only a few seconds to prepare for a customer. How much time is gained by ordering a cup of coffee in advance? Maybe they'll pour the coffee as soon as they get the call, so it will be nice and cold when that customer arrives.
News to me. I'm rarely at fastfood joints, much less the drivethru. I was inside some coffee shop recently ordering at the counter. Midway through, the kid stops taking my order and starts yapping on his headset. I walked out.
The first guy with an iPhone who jumps ahead of me at Starbucks might just get some coffee spilled on his shirt. Orders should be taken first come, first served, period. If someone gives iPhone users an advantage, I'll go elsewhere.