Again, you are leaping from "subject to high costs" to "inordinately influenced by advertisers". That doesn't track, unless you think all journalists are incapable of resisting bribery. If you do, then why is a journalist publishing on the web immune? At the least, if my local newspaper reports glowingly on refuse dumping by the local power company while running full-page ads from the same company, I am aware the power company is sending them money (but not that they influence the paper's reporting.) In the case of a reporter posting the same stories to a weblog with no advertising, I have no way of knowing if that weblog is subject to influence from the power company, or some other source. Someone might be supporting the weblog, funding and paying the journalist, and putting his kids through college, and I would have no clue, because the blogger is essentially an anonymous persona.
I did not complain that there is too much crap on the Internet. I am objectig to the notion that I can trust the words of an anonymous Internet mob more than I can trust the words of professional journalists. I'm not denying that journalists can be subject to influence, but I am objecting to the assumption that they all are, and that somehow, Internet publishers are not and that, as if by magic, the "truth" filters up to the top of all the verbiage spilled by the Internet mob.
Reputations have nothing to do with it. How can I form an opinion about an anonymous mass of unknown people when there is no context to their production and when they have nothing at stake? There is no way to discriminate one post from all the others.
TV, radio and newspapers have always sold advertising. That's how they stay in business. No reason to be shocked about that. Nothing new there, newspapers have been taking ads for hundreds of years. Like I said, the existence of ads in newspapers doesn't imply bias or influence.
The Internet allows people to remain as anonymous as they wish, publishing any content they wish, without any surrounding content that allows me to ascertain it's credibility, apart from agreeing with it. And, the fact that I agree with something is surelyno indicator if its accuracy.
You sill haven't given me a single reason why I should trust voices emerging frm the Interent mob and distrust professional journalists.
The existence of karma has nothing at all to do with the credibility of what's said here. I'm simply stating that I have no interest in whatever reputation may accrue to my/. persona because I cannot be held accountaboe for what I say here and because I have nothing at stake, including my own reputation. The reputation of a poster here can be good, bad, or indifferent, and it has no bearing at all on the objectivity and accuracy of the posts or the poster. It only means that some unknown and anonymous posters have moderated those posts in a particular fashion.
>> Unless you go with highly respectable journals ( 'The Economist' comes to mind, and they are unabashedly pro-market), all news outlets are subject to advertising bias.
"The Economist" is no more or no less subject to influence from advertising than is any other publication. Whether or not someone working at "The Economist". or elsewhere, is subject to infuence from advertising is determined by their, and the advertisers', ethics. If an advertiser is unethical enogu to offer a bribe, and a journalist is unethical enough to accept it, then this reflects only their own moral weakness. It is not a reflection on the profession nor is it something that the nature of the journalism profression uniquely engenders. What I see many saying, including you, is that all journalists are assumed to be biased by advertising. Therefore, you seek to find objective reporting in web posts created by unknown and often deliberately anonymous people. I think the former notion is incorrect and fed primarily by unjustified group-think cyncisim. The latter notion makes no sense because it assumes that an unknown and anonymous individual is somehow free of influence. OF course, that's wrong; you can't discern what influences them because they hide behind a cloak of anonymity.
>> Journalists routinely get their stories cancelled or edited to please some advertiser, or even national sentiment. Case in point, look at US media reporting of the war in Iraq, compared to coverage in other coutries (even ones geographically and culturally as close as Canada). Totally different stories.
No, they don't. People aren't fools. They know when a journalist is slanting to favor an advertiser. I don't want to get into Iraq reporting, excpet to say that it is obvious that reporting by journalists of a given country will reflect the concerns and assumptions of that country and their readers. There's nothing wrong with that.
>> Sad fact is, in order to eat, journalists rely on editors to publish their work , and editors rely on advertisers. The arguments you make seem to have a rather naive view of what goes on in journalism today. Ideally, it's supposed to be unbiased, raw information, but that just flat out doesn't happen.
With rare exception, journalists draw a salry and write on assignment from editors. They don't write stories of their own volitin and then try to peddle them to editors, which you imply. I am not naive about journalism. I don't agree that journlaism is supposed to be "uniased, raw information." Journalism is reporting on events as seen and understood by the reporter, filtered through their experiences, their skills and their professional standards. As consumers of journalism, intelligent readers know and understand that and choose their news sources accordingly. (Only someone very naive relieson a single source.) Again, you seem to be arguing that because journalists can be ubdully influenced, all of them are at all times. I reject that.
On Slashdot: If I don't look to it for news, why would I care about moderation? It becomes simply way of limiting what I read here. I don't need moderators to tell me what's interesting or not.
>> the 'internet mob' is not anonymous or unknown. You and I both have a reputation on slashdot. I can look at your posts, you can look at mine. So we both can decide what level of credence to give to each other. You are no longer a complete stranger to me. You have an identity and a reputation with me now.
The persona I use here has a reputation, not me. I have nothing at stake in what people may think about that persona. My reputation, my income, my self-image, my self-respect are unaffected by what I post here because I post under a pseudonym. I am not held accountable for what I post here. So long as that holds, the reputation of my persona is meaningless and can't be trusted. That's why I don't believe that information emering from the Internet mob is any more or any less credible than information in other media.
The Internet is a place to publish. It does allow people, like Reiser, to publish who might otherwise not be published. But that's all that's going on.
Publishers need to sustain advertising revenue, not reporters or editors. They need to establish and sustain the credibility of their product. If they succumb to pressure (if there is any) from publishers or advertisers to slant their stories, they lose.
I also reject the notion that editord are "awful" and somehow subvert the pure and honest output of writers. When I want the news, I do not want to the voice of an individual writer to get in the way. (That's what columns and editorials are for, not the news pages.) That's one of the things a good editor does.
There's a widespread, unjustifed and more than a little syncophantic feeling among the Internet mob that all professional journalists are on the take, slant their reports, that editors are all evil, and the readers will have access to moreobjective news if only the writers are allowed to speak directly to them. I think all that is bogus. The existence of advertisers in the traditional press is no more an indication that specific reporters or editors are being influenced by money than it is anywhere else.
Bottom line: I read/. because it is interesting and amusing, not because I respect it as a source of accurate, tiely and objective news. I also find conversations in a bar over an after-work drink amusing and interesting, but I don't necessarily believe what I hear there.
I don't care abut moderation, karma and all the rest. As far as I'm concerend, that's just gimmickry. If I know nothing about the people doing the writing here, I certainly know nothing about the people doing the moderation. Why should I trust them? What do they have at stake here?
It's the words that count, not how or where they'are published. There's no more reason for me to give credence to what an unknown person writes on an unknown web site than for me to believe a complete stranger who wanders up on the street and starts ranting at me.
Well, I'm not just talking about Slashdot, (where most people come to prance, not post information). It's the application of the moderation principle that I don't accept, in Slashdot or across teh Internet.
Everyone is subject to bias, influence, and emotion. I trust professional journalists more than I trust an anonymous mob because those journalists have a stake in their own credibiility. They, at least, have been trained to be aware of their own biases and the risk of being influenced by outside forces. It's the same reason I go to a doctor medical care, rather than relying on an anonymous mob for medical advice.
Someone posting to the web has no personal stake in what they are publishing. They can lie, distort, post from complete ignorance, be taking bribes, have a political agenda, etc, etc. There is no countervailing pressure against that.
On the other hand, a professional journalist has a great deal at stake, especially their reputation and their career. A newspaper, for example, stands behind the accuracy of the stories it publishes. If they gain a reputation for inaccuracy, for bias, for perceived willingness to slant stories in return for financial reward, they lose credibility, they lose readers, and they lose advertising revenue.
Contrast this to places like Slashdot, which explicity deny having any responsibility for the content they publish. (As if it appears here by magic.) I'm certain that's simply an attempt to keep their lawyers happy about potential liabilities, but I take it as cowardly avoidance of responsibility.
In sum, I see no way that we can expect accurate and reliable information to filter to the top of an "unknown mob". So long as it's unknown and doesn't take responsibility for what it says, I won't trust it.
Please explain why I should trust something like "mod points" to be able to tell the difference between "accurate, timely, professional" and "bogus, out-dated, amateurish".
I don't have any confidence in moderation schemes because I don't trust a mob of unknown people to make rational choices with which I could agree.
People may "put up stuff they think is worthwhile", but just because they think so, doesn't make it true.
First, here's how that accident happened: A driver ran a red light and struck a car going through the intersection on a green. Other drivers stopped to help. An apparently intoxicated SUV driver plowed through that intersection at excessive speed, striking the people that were gathered there, killing six of them. At least one child witnessed the death of both of his parents.
Happy now?
We have stoplights because we need to stop the flow of traffic through intersections in order to allow the other traffic to pass safely. A device that allows drivers to trigger the light at their own discretion will cause chaos. No one approaching an intersection on green could have any confidence that cross-traffic drivers would stop.
Where I live we already have enough drivers plowing through red lights. Six people are dead in the last incident that made the news.
The last thing anyone on the roads needs is loons who can twiddle the stoplights. If someone ever hits me after using one of those things, they'd better get their lawyers lined up.
Ban 'em and change stoplights so they don't work.
Open Source Licenses Software, Not Freeloaders
on
Fedora Core 1 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
How many of you whiners who have the temerity to bitch about something other people are making and giving away actually bought a shrinkwrapped copy of Red Hat?
Unless you're a stockholder, RedHat owes you squat. If you are a stockholder, RedHat has a moral responsibility to make a profit and pay you dividends.
My experience has been with large organizations supporting several thousand users in globally dispersed locations. IT acquisitions and support costs amount to several million dollars annually, or more. No organization like that makes IT decisions based on the opinion of a single inhouse export. (Typically, the interests of the IT shop -- job security, budget stability/growth, funding for training that tracks personal interests, no large infusions of new technology requiring new skills -- do not parallel the best interests of the organization: improved preformance, lower budgets, smaller support staff and costs, new technology as appropriate, etc.
I don't want to be flooded by "information" created by the "masses". I want to filter away all the rubbish and spend my time dealing with information that's accurate and timely. For that, I need filters -- publishers, editors, moderators, reporters, etc. I'll choose the ones I trust and I'll ignore the others.
A rampant and unjustified cynicism seems to exist that anyone paid to write and publish is, inevitably, biased and corrupted by their desire for money. Conversely, it's asserted that any unpaid and amateur Joe Bloke publishing on the web just for jollies is, inevitably, going to present a less biased and less corrupt view.
Of course, both the cynicism and the assertion are wrong.
Giving (almost) everyone access to the Internet is a great way to increase the amount of noise, but it won't increase the amount of signal.
Seems to me RedHat would have to be mindlessly foolish to build their business around trying to sell something to the likes of you, and most of the ranters around here.
Why go broke, like almost every other commercial Linux distribution except SUSE, giving a product away to people who will never, ever, buy a penny's worth of support?
So, Fedora gives you what you want: free RedHat, plus the level of support you'd buy: zero.
Meanwhile, RedHat will be busy trying to make some money selling to businesses who'd rather buy support than try to maintain the bloody thing themselves. They've got better things to do than worry about their digital plumbing.
...if all the redhat linux hackers out there switch to a different flavor, won't they bring that flavor to the workplace...
Redhat Linux hackers don't get to decide what OS their employer uses. The people running the company do that, while the hackers are busy on trouble calls.
Sure. What's missing is an arbiter to say "This is right. Everything else that's been said is wrong." Absent that, you simply have an overwhelming number of seemingly equal postings. The only way to discriminate among all those posts is the opinion and judgment of the reader.
Uh-uh. I mean make felons out of gun owners. As in, it's a felony to be in possession of a gun.
I'd make exceptions for licensed hunters, target shooters, etc. who provide evidence that they are adequately insured or bonded. (Just like auto insurance.)
I'd also give people a no-questions-asked $200 tax credit for every gun brought in for destruction. (If it works for Bush, it oughta work for guns. Consider it shotgun economics.)
Anyone else who wants a gun can, per the 2nd amendment, join a "militia", i.e., the military or the police.
If you want your kids looking at the NRA site, edit the filter.
For every apocalyptic loon who's angry because Symantec filters the NRA out by default, there's another apocalyptic loon who doesn't kids looking at Yahoo or Google or The New York Times.
If you were selling a website filter product into the mainstream Windows market, and wanted to make more parents happy than you make angry, you'd block the NRA, too.
People who violently resist arrest or who use violence in their protest risk being treated with violence by the police. And, no, I do not know that tanks have been used on American streets against these protestors, because they haven't been.
"Presenting both sides" of a story is not, and never has been, a journalistic ethic. It is, however, a whine used by people who are angered when they learn that reporters don't cover them because their readers aren't interested. Whether you like it or not, the voice of some anonymous individual participant in a professionally organized protest is not going to be given the same exposure or credence that's given to an elected official.
Of course parties do things that are in their own interest. So would any new third party. That's the nature of political parties. Third parties aren't successful in this country because, first, they typically form to advance the political aspirations of a single individual (Perot, Anderson, Wallace) and disappear as soon as that person leaves the scene; second, nascent third parties typically ignore the need to build from the grass roots and immediately target the presidency. Once the lose that race, they disappear because they have no base of local elected party members. People may take a chance on a new party candidate for a school board or town council seat, but they won't risk it in a presidential electon; and, third, the two major parties morph and change while retaining their name. Most aspirations that might nurture a third party are co-opted by one or both of the major parties
Freedom and democracy are liked inextricably because any people who cannot peacefully remove their government are not free. That's the case in China. I didn't claim they had no freedoms. I stated that they live in a one-party state.
Comparing the arrest of violent protestors to what happened in Tiannamen is deliberate and cynical sophism. I haven't seen Army troops and tanks on the streets here because they weren't there, and you know it.
News organizations are not obligated to put anyone on the air for any amount of time. If WTC protestors don't like the coverage they get, that's tough. Freedom of speech doesn't require anyone to listen to you.
If voters really wanted more than two parties in the U.S., they would exist. Every third party that tries and fails whines like you are, but the truth is different. Third parties have allows represented minority interests from their inception. That's why they don't last.
BTW, where is the second partyin China?
It has always taken money to campaign in the U.S., or anywhere else. Sad but true. It's a big country. I don't expect candidates to show up on my doorstep, and I sure don't want my taxes to fund their campaigns.
Freedom and democracy? These are not binary yes-or-no things.
Ludicrous and naive. Of course you must be free to have a democracy, and, of course, if you have no democracy you are not free.
If the two parties agree, your vote is not irrelevant. It just means you're in the minority and you lost. That's what happens in a democracy. You can't condemn a democratic government because you have failed to convince others to vote with you.
Seems to me the Chinese people have had such miserable lives for so long that the Communist Party is able to buy their indfference with a little prosperity in the big cities. But the Party still came to power by force and stays in power by force. The Chinese people may have a better economy since the Party changed course after the collapse of the USSR, but they are not free.
Don't be silly. Ask that coworker if he could call a public meeting to work towards the defeat of the Communist Party of China. Ask him if could put up a website campaigning for the release of political prisoners, automonomy for the Muslim sections of western China, and free elections in Tibet.
Slashdot Mirror
Again, you are leaping from "subject to high costs" to "inordinately influenced by advertisers". That doesn't track, unless you think all journalists are incapable of resisting bribery. If you do, then why is a journalist publishing on the web immune? At the least, if my local newspaper reports glowingly on refuse dumping by the local power company while running full-page ads from the same company, I am aware the power company is sending them money (but not that they influence the paper's reporting.) In the case of a reporter posting the same stories to a weblog with no advertising, I have no way of knowing if that weblog is subject to influence from the power company, or some other source. Someone might be supporting the weblog, funding and paying the journalist, and putting his kids through college, and I would have no clue, because the blogger is essentially an anonymous persona.
I did not complain that there is too much crap on the Internet. I am objectig to the notion that I can trust the words of an anonymous Internet mob more than I can trust the words of professional journalists. I'm not denying that journalists can be subject to influence, but I am objecting to the assumption that they all are, and that somehow, Internet publishers are not and that, as if by magic, the "truth" filters up to the top of all the verbiage spilled by the Internet mob.
Reputations have nothing to do with it. How can I form an opinion about an anonymous mass of unknown people when there is no context to their production and when they have nothing at stake? There is no way to discriminate one post from all the others.
TV, radio and newspapers have always sold advertising. That's how they stay in business. No reason to be shocked about that. Nothing new there, newspapers have been taking ads for hundreds of years. Like I said, the existence of ads in newspapers doesn't imply bias or influence.
The Internet allows people to remain as anonymous as they wish, publishing any content they wish, without any surrounding content that allows me to ascertain it's credibility, apart from agreeing with it. And, the fact that I agree with something is surelyno indicator if its accuracy.
You sill haven't given me a single reason why I should trust voices emerging frm the Interent mob and distrust professional journalists.
/. persona because I cannot be held accountaboe for what I say here and because I have nothing at stake, including my own reputation. The reputation of a poster here can be good, bad, or indifferent, and it has no bearing at all on the objectivity and accuracy of the posts or the poster. It only means that some unknown and anonymous posters have moderated those posts in a particular fashion.
The existence of karma has nothing at all to do with the credibility of what's said here. I'm simply stating that I have no interest in whatever reputation may accrue to my
>> Unless you go with highly respectable journals ( 'The Economist' comes to mind, and they are unabashedly pro-market), all news outlets are subject to advertising bias.
"The Economist" is no more or no less subject to influence from advertising than is any other publication. Whether or not someone working at "The Economist". or elsewhere, is subject to infuence from advertising is determined by their, and the advertisers', ethics. If an advertiser is unethical enogu to offer a bribe, and a journalist is unethical enough to accept it, then this reflects only their own moral weakness. It is not a reflection on the profession nor is it something that the nature of the journalism profression uniquely engenders. What I see many saying, including you, is that all journalists are assumed to be biased by advertising. Therefore, you seek to find objective reporting in web posts created by unknown and often deliberately anonymous people. I think the former notion is incorrect and fed primarily by unjustified group-think cyncisim. The latter notion makes no sense because it assumes that an unknown and anonymous individual is somehow free of influence. OF course, that's wrong; you can't discern what influences them because they hide behind a cloak of anonymity.
>> Journalists routinely get their stories cancelled or edited to please some advertiser, or even national sentiment. Case in point, look at US media reporting of the war in Iraq, compared to coverage in other coutries (even ones geographically and culturally as close as Canada). Totally different stories.
No, they don't. People aren't fools. They know when a journalist is slanting to favor an advertiser. I don't want to get into Iraq reporting, excpet to say that it is obvious that reporting by journalists of a given country will reflect the concerns and assumptions of that country and their readers. There's nothing wrong with that.
>> Sad fact is, in order to eat, journalists rely on editors to publish their work , and editors rely on advertisers. The arguments you make seem to have a rather naive view of what goes on in journalism today. Ideally, it's supposed to be unbiased, raw information, but that just flat out doesn't happen.
With rare exception, journalists draw a salry and write on assignment from editors. They don't write stories of their own volitin and then try to peddle them to editors, which you imply. I am not naive about journalism. I don't agree that journlaism is supposed to be "uniased, raw information." Journalism is reporting on events as seen and understood by the reporter, filtered through their experiences, their skills and their professional standards. As consumers of journalism, intelligent readers know and understand that and choose their news sources accordingly. (Only someone very naive relieson a single source.) Again, you seem to be arguing that because journalists can be ubdully influenced, all of them are at all times. I reject that.
On Slashdot: If I don't look to it for news, why would I care about moderation? It becomes simply way of limiting what I read here. I don't need moderators to tell me what's interesting or not.
>> the 'internet mob' is not anonymous or unknown. You and I both have a reputation on slashdot. I can look at your posts, you can look at mine. So we both can decide what level of credence to give to each other. You are no longer a complete stranger to me. You have an identity and a reputation with me now.
The persona I use here has a reputation, not me. I have nothing at stake in what people may think about that persona. My reputation, my income, my self-image, my self-respect are unaffected by what I post here because I post under a pseudonym. I am not held accountable for what I post here. So long as that holds, the reputation of my persona is meaningless and can't be trusted. That's why I don't believe that information emering from the Internet mob is any more or any less credible than information in other media.
The Internet is a place to publish. It does allow people, like Reiser, to publish who might otherwise not be published. But that's all that's going on.
Publishers need to sustain advertising revenue, not reporters or editors. They need to establish and sustain the credibility of their product. If they succumb to pressure (if there is any) from publishers or advertisers to slant their stories, they lose.
/. because it is interesting and amusing, not because I respect it as a source of accurate, tiely and objective news. I also find conversations in a bar over an after-work drink amusing and interesting, but I don't necessarily believe what I hear there.
I also reject the notion that editord are "awful" and somehow subvert the pure and honest output of writers. When I want the news, I do not want to the voice of an individual writer to get in the way. (That's what columns and editorials are for, not the news pages.) That's one of the things a good editor does.
There's a widespread, unjustifed and more than a little syncophantic feeling among the Internet mob that all professional journalists are on the take, slant their reports, that editors are all evil, and the readers will have access to moreobjective news if only the writers are allowed to speak directly to them. I think all that is bogus. The existence of advertisers in the traditional press is no more an indication that specific reporters or editors are being influenced by money than it is anywhere else.
Bottom line: I read
I don't care abut moderation, karma and all the rest. As far as I'm concerend, that's just gimmickry. If I know nothing about the people doing the writing here, I certainly know nothing about the people doing the moderation. Why should I trust them? What do they have at stake here?
It's the words that count, not how or where they'are published. There's no more reason for me to give credence to what an unknown person writes on an unknown web site than for me to believe a complete stranger who wanders up on the street and starts ranting at me.
Well, I'm not just talking about Slashdot, (where most people come to prance, not post information).
It's the application of the moderation principle that I don't accept, in Slashdot or across teh Internet.
Everyone is subject to bias, influence, and emotion. I trust professional journalists more than I trust an anonymous mob because those journalists have a stake in their own credibiility. They, at least, have been trained to be aware of their own biases and the risk of being influenced by outside forces. It's the same reason I go to a doctor medical care, rather than relying on an anonymous mob for medical advice.
Someone posting to the web has no personal stake in what they are publishing. They can lie, distort, post from complete ignorance, be taking bribes, have a political agenda, etc, etc. There is no countervailing pressure against that.
On the other hand, a professional journalist has a great deal at stake, especially their reputation and their career. A newspaper, for example, stands behind the accuracy of the stories it publishes. If they gain a reputation for inaccuracy, for bias, for perceived willingness to slant stories in return for financial reward, they lose credibility, they lose readers, and they lose advertising revenue.
Contrast this to places like Slashdot, which explicity deny having any responsibility for the content they publish. (As if it appears here by magic.) I'm certain that's simply an attempt to keep their lawyers happy about potential liabilities, but I take it as cowardly avoidance of responsibility.
In sum, I see no way that we can expect accurate and reliable information to filter to the top of an "unknown mob". So long as it's unknown and doesn't take responsibility for what it says, I won't trust it.
Please explain why I should trust something like "mod points" to be able to tell the difference between "accurate, timely, professional" and "bogus, out-dated, amateurish".
I don't have any confidence in moderation schemes because I don't trust a mob of unknown people to make rational choices with which I could agree.
People may "put up stuff they think is worthwhile", but just because they think so, doesn't make it true.
Obviously, you callous bastard, you are wrong.
First, here's how that accident happened: A driver ran a red light and struck a car going through the intersection on a green. Other drivers stopped to help. An apparently intoxicated SUV driver plowed through that intersection at excessive speed, striking the people that were gathered there, killing six of them. At least one child witnessed the death of both of his parents.
Happy now?
We have stoplights because we need to stop the flow of traffic through intersections in order to allow the other traffic to pass safely. A device that allows drivers to trigger the light at their own discretion will cause chaos. No one approaching an intersection on green could have any confidence that cross-traffic drivers would stop.
That concept ought to be simple enough.
Where I live we already have enough drivers plowing through red lights. Six people are dead in the last incident that made the news.
The last thing anyone on the roads needs is loons who can twiddle the stoplights. If someone ever hits me after using one of those things, they'd better get their lawyers lined up.
Ban 'em and change stoplights so they don't work.
How many of you whiners who have the temerity to bitch about something other people are making and giving away actually bought a shrinkwrapped copy of Red Hat?
Unless you're a stockholder, RedHat owes you squat. If you are a stockholder, RedHat has a moral responsibility to make a profit and pay you dividends.
My experience has been with large organizations supporting several thousand users in globally dispersed locations. IT acquisitions and support costs amount to several million dollars annually, or more. No organization like that makes IT decisions based on the opinion of a single inhouse export. (Typically, the interests of the IT shop -- job security, budget stability/growth, funding for training that tracks personal interests, no large infusions of new technology requiring new skills -- do not parallel the best interests of the organization: improved preformance, lower budgets, smaller support staff and costs, new technology as appropriate, etc.
I don't want to be flooded by "information" created by the "masses". I want to filter away all the rubbish and spend my time dealing with information that's accurate and timely. For that, I need filters -- publishers, editors, moderators, reporters, etc. I'll choose the ones I trust and I'll ignore the others.
A rampant and unjustified cynicism seems to exist that anyone paid to write and publish is, inevitably, biased and corrupted by their desire for money. Conversely, it's asserted that any unpaid and amateur Joe Bloke publishing on the web just for jollies is, inevitably, going to present a less biased and less corrupt view.
Of course, both the cynicism and the assertion are wrong.
Giving (almost) everyone access to the Internet is a great way to increase the amount of noise, but it won't increase the amount of signal.
Seems to me RedHat would have to be mindlessly foolish to build their business around trying to sell something to the likes of you, and most of the ranters around here.
Why go broke, like almost every other commercial Linux distribution except SUSE, giving a product away to people who will never, ever, buy a penny's worth of support?
So, Fedora gives you what you want: free RedHat, plus the level of support you'd buy: zero.
Meanwhile, RedHat will be busy trying to make some money selling to businesses who'd rather buy support than try to maintain the bloody thing themselves. They've got better things to do than worry about their digital plumbing.
...if all the redhat linux hackers out there switch to a different flavor, won't they bring that flavor to the workplace...
Redhat Linux hackers don't get to decide what OS their employer uses. The people running the company do that, while the hackers are busy on trouble calls.
Sure. What's missing is an arbiter to say "This is right. Everything else that's been said is wrong." Absent that, you simply have an overwhelming number of seemingly equal postings. The only way to discriminate among all those posts is the opinion and judgment of the reader.
Rather like Slashdot, actually.
Uh-uh. I mean make felons out of gun owners. As in, it's a felony to be in possession of a gun.
I'd make exceptions for licensed hunters, target shooters, etc. who provide evidence that they are adequately insured or bonded. (Just like auto insurance.)
I'd also give people a no-questions-asked $200 tax credit for every gun brought in for destruction. (If it works for Bush, it oughta work for guns. Consider it shotgun economics.)
Anyone else who wants a gun can, per the 2nd amendment, join a "militia", i.e., the military or the police.
Sure. Outlaw guns, make people with guns outlaws, and arrest them. Then melt down their guns.
If you outlaw loons, only Slashdot will miss them.
If you want your kids looking at the NRA site, edit the filter.
For every apocalyptic loon who's angry because Symantec filters the NRA out by default, there's another apocalyptic loon who doesn't kids looking at Yahoo or Google or The New York Times.
If you were selling a website filter product into the mainstream Windows market, and wanted to make more parents happy than you make angry, you'd block the NRA, too.
People who violently resist arrest or who use violence in their protest risk being treated with violence by the police. And, no, I do not know that tanks have been used on American streets against these protestors, because they haven't been.
"Presenting both sides" of a story is not, and never has been, a journalistic ethic. It is, however, a whine used by people who are angered when they learn that reporters don't cover them because their readers aren't interested. Whether you like it or not, the voice of some anonymous individual participant in a professionally organized protest is not going to be given the same exposure or credence that's given to an elected official.
Of course parties do things that are in their own interest. So would any new third party. That's the nature of political parties. Third parties aren't successful in this country because, first, they typically form to advance the political aspirations of a single individual (Perot, Anderson, Wallace) and disappear as soon as that person leaves the scene; second, nascent third parties typically ignore the need to build from the grass roots and immediately target the presidency. Once the lose that race, they disappear because they have no base of local elected party members. People may take a chance on a new party candidate for a school board or town council seat, but they won't risk it in a presidential electon; and, third, the two major parties morph and change while retaining their name. Most aspirations that might nurture a third party are co-opted by one or both of the major parties
Freedom and democracy are liked inextricably because any people who cannot peacefully remove their government are not free. That's the case in China. I didn't claim they had no freedoms. I stated that they live in a one-party state.
No faith in any media. China is not democratic and not free. It won't be so long as the Communist Party is in power.
Comparing the arrest of violent protestors to what happened in Tiannamen is deliberate and cynical sophism. I haven't seen Army troops and tanks on the streets here because they weren't there, and you know it.
News organizations are not obligated to put anyone on the air for any amount of time. If WTC protestors don't like the coverage they get, that's tough. Freedom of speech doesn't require anyone to listen to you.
If voters really wanted more than two parties in the U.S., they would exist. Every third party that tries and fails whines like you are, but the truth is different. Third parties have allows represented minority interests from their inception. That's why they don't last.
BTW, where is the second partyin China?
It has always taken money to campaign in the U.S., or anywhere else. Sad but true. It's a big country. I don't expect candidates to show up on my doorstep, and I sure don't want my taxes to fund their campaigns.
Freedom and democracy? These are not binary yes-or-no things.
Ludicrous and naive. Of course you must be free to have a democracy, and, of course, if you have no democracy you are not free.
If the two parties agree, your vote is not irrelevant. It just means you're in the minority and you lost. That's what happens in a democracy. You can't condemn a democratic government because you have failed to convince others to vote with you.
Seems to me the Chinese people have had such miserable lives for so long that the Communist Party is able to buy their indfference with a little prosperity in the big cities. But the Party still came to power by force and stays in power by force. The Chinese people may have a better economy since the Party changed course after the collapse of the USSR, but they are not free.
You're a lieing fool, but "ancient cultures" that don't have the sense or courage to eliminate undemocratic regimes deserve whatever happens to them.
People deserve to be free. Cultures deserve to be in a museum. I'll let you decide what kind of person values "culture" more than people.
The point is this:
There is no Slashdot in China.
The DMCA?
You've got to be kidding!
You're comparing the DMCA to the the one-party totalitarian regime in China?
I don't see any U.S. Army troops and tanks on the streets killing people who steal CD's. Do you?
Don't be silly. Ask that coworker if he could call a public meeting to work towards the defeat of the Communist Party of China. Ask him if could put up a website campaigning for the release of political prisoners, automonomy for the Muslim sections of western China, and free elections in Tibet.