wtf are you posting this here?
its so darn offtopic, take this somewhere else.
Where? I think this is something the community should be aware of. I can't post it anywhere ontopic as there will never be a story about what a hypocrite taco is.
I've been on this site since before there were registered nicks, and I can't sit by while all this crap goes on behind closed doors.
Cheers,
~Axel~
Why I love slashdot.
The best part of slashdot is the hypocrisy. Slashdot has a definite "do as I say, not as I do" policy.
Example 1: Censorship Slashdot claims to be anti-censorship. They make prominent figures in the anti-censorware movement authors. I'm talking about Michael Sims and Jamie. They claim to promote free speech. But do they really?
I'm not going to bore you with tales of the dreaded bitchslap.
Here's an article you might find interesting. It's about Michaels real position on censorware.
Also, here's a charming article.
Example 2: Auctions Taco and Hemos find the idea of auctioning virtual property to be interesting. Here's a story by Hemos, and here's one by taco.
But what happens when someone tries to auction a slashdot account? Here's a snippet from an IRC log:
[22:25:58] [Questions] JustSomeGuy asks: How do you feel about the recent sale of user accounts on ebay?
[22:26:06] [CmdrTaco] should we fess up?
[22:26:11] [CmdrTaco] we fucked with the first guys karma.
[22:26:14] [CmdrTaco] it was funny as hell.
[22:26:28] [CmdrTaco] we wrote a script to give him random karma from 0.. number of seconds until ebay auction ends.
[22:26:35] [CmdrTaco] so he had 0 karma when the sale ended.
[22:26:41] [CmdrTaco] he updated his account to cry.
[22:26:44] [CmdrTaco] it was so funny.
What's this? Taco writing a script just to fuck with a user? Say it isn't so.
You can view the complete IRC log here.
Oddly enough, this never gets mentioned in any story on virtual property auctions.
Why is that?
Example 3: Community Slashdot is a community oriented website. They win webbys for this. It's the community that helped Taco and Hemos to a big pile of VA Linux stock.
But they don't really give a fuck about the community.
Here's a quote from an email Taco sent to Shoeboy:
> Anyway, to go back to my original point, I think a fair
> number of readers are interested in who the trolls are
> and why they post what they do.
That may be, but I don't care. I post Slashdot stories that *I* want to read.
You can get the whole email thread here.
(Shoeboy kicks Taco's ass hardcore)
Want more? How about the theft of user accounts?
Famous slashdot poster Signal 11 grew tired of this site. So he gave away his account. Dear beloved free speech advocate Michael discovered this and used his authorial privileges to steal the account. No warning was given. No explanation either. The account was simply stolen and that was that.
These are all reasons I love this site. If I wanted a site that wasn't run by assholes, I'd read kuro5hin.
NOTE: this post is entirely factual. If you have any doubts about the veracity of these claims, feel free to contact Taco.
In a free market system, the products with the best price/performance ratio should win, in a Darwinian manner. In the presence of advertising however, typically the product that screams the loudest wins, and this is why ads should be outlawed and replaced by mere informational compendiums listing specifications and prices.
Most ads directly offend the customer: "Here's how stupid you are: we can increase your likelihood of buying our car by simply showing you a hot chick, some nice music, driving through an unpolluted landscape on free roads, and then tell you that you can get $2000 cash back (without telling you the price of the car in the first place). You are such a stupid fuck, you don't even care about mileage, security
ratings or features. Now have a nice day and don't forget to buy Ford."
The most dangerous effect of advertising is that it repeatedly hammers the same message into our heads: "BUY MORE STUFF AND YOU'LL BE HAPPY!!" Instead of merely satisfying the people's material needs, as is the purpose of any economy,
advertising constantly tries to create bogus new needs. This insanity has got to stop and ads should therefore be outlawed.
No government agency is needed to enforce an advertising ban: simply let competitors sue each other for advertising. There is no first amendment issue here because economical speech doesn't enjoy full protection anyway.
Problem is, this is a capitalist society. Money makes the world go round. The all mighty buck rules, and another half dozen similar sayings that get the point across.
All those sayings have been proven wrong by the emergence of free software and free content on the internet in the nineties. What *really* makes the world go round is enthusiastic volunteers. Moneyed interests are nothing but boring.
The problem is that we need a new way to pay for the free information on the 'net. That will probably either be an "Internet Tax" where users pay a certain amount of cash a month and then that cash gets divied up among all of the sites that the user accesses. Or a micropayment system that is reasonably painless.
I disagree. Content on the net should be free (and that includes: free of ads). This of course only works if the content providers are enthusiastic volunteers. The first 25 years of the internet have proven that that model works just beautifully. People who want to make a buck on the net will soon figure out that it won't work and will leave.
Double Standard? No, just one single standard, world-wide. Our spys good, your spys bad. It's quite simple.
In formulating an ethical rule, you cannot refer to particulars. Either spying for a country other than one's own is wrong or it is not. If you maintain that this guy did wrong, then you have to claim that those double agents in the KGB did wrong too.
Punishing this guy because he broke US laws is easy; arguing that he did morally the wrong thing is a lot harder if not impossible.
The universe popped into existance from nothing, a concept that doesn't seem to have any proof, and evades the next question: Where did the laws that determined why and how he universe was created Ex nihilo come from
Quantum theory claims that things pop in and out of existance constantly, everywhere around us. So the universe itself might very well have popped up just like that, as a consequence of the laws of quantum mechanics.
Now, where those laws come from, that's a really good question. Maybe they themselves are God? That's Spinoza's (and Einstein's) view, basically. In that view, scientists are the ultimate theologicians because they study God.
If god cannot override our free will, then he is not omnipotent. If on the other hand he chooses not to override the free will of the torturers, than he is not good. In any event, he's not worth our while.
I find believeing that we are only here because of random chance impossible to believe, just look at the work around us - it's incredible, I can't believe it wasn't designed by God.
God, being able to create the universe, must be even more complex than it, so his existence is even more incredible than its existance.
People of different races have a right to be treated equally. Regardless of genetic makeup, a person deserves the same rights as anyone else.
However, that does not mean all people _are_ equal. Nor does it mean that people of different behaviors have a right to be treated equally.
Shouldn't background and the past taken into account as well? Hypothetical example: person A was put down all their live, whenever they picked up a book, drunken mom said "put that down, it's for geeks". Person B had supportive parents who encouraged her couriosity and paid for her private schooling. Both apply for a job, and perform equally well on all tests administered. Who deserves the job?
But let the unpopularity of their ideas shine. Let them feel free to make asses of themselves.
But see, some of us come from countries where
completely fucked up ideas once won out in the open market place,
with terrible results. We cannot take your noble
position. Whenever those ideas show up again, we hit them over the head, out of
sheer fear. Mere arguing didn't help the first time either; believe me, many people tried.
The whole anti-abortion campaign is built
on the fata morgana that life begins at
fertilization. Guess what: clones don't
need to be fertilized. The religious right
will have a very hard time trying to argue
against aborting clones. After all, where exactly is the difference between a clone and one of my
blood cells I cultivated in a biochem lab?
This is a fact of life: the wealthy will always have more at their disposal than the poor.
Sure, by definition of wealth. But most people believe that the wealthy don't deserve better health care, better access to the legal system or more political influence, since these are basic human rights which apply to every person equally. So equalization at least in those areas is completely justified.
By the way, since you were talking about the miserable failures of communism, you may also want to investigate the embarassing recent failures of trying to introduce capitalism in Eastern Europe.
The GMD has a pretty sizeable archive of free sheet music. The pieces
are in various formats and come under various licenses, but at least downloading for personal use is free for all of them.
By downloading music like this off of the Internet, you are denying -- in a very real way -- a profit to many companies who would otherwise benefit from your capital
Sure. So what? The principle of capitalism is not: "Thou shalt pay money to and thereby protect the profits of companies". Quite the opposite: "Thou shalt maximize your own profits". If this latter principle, as a result, kills off some useless company, so much the better. Corporations try to screw consumers, consumers try to screw coroporations: that's the name of the game after all.
I believe the Gutenberg project is committed effort run by monks
Gutenberg is a committed effort run by enthusiastic volunteers, with one *very* enthusiastic volunteer at the center. Exactly like all the successful projects on the internet.
No monks needed.
There's a law on the books in the US that allows
you to file a prohibitory order against anybody
who sends you obscene or sexual unsolicited mail.
The Supreme Court ruled that it is in the recipient's sole discretion what he or she considers obscene; the government cannot review that decision. In fact, the ruling says explicitly that there is no constitutional right to send somebody stuff they don't want. This prohibitory order can therefore be used against any junk mailer. More info, including the complete Supreme Court decision and the relevant form to fill out are at
Junkbuster's website.
The protest is not misguided; in fact, in a society that's structurally based on profit and greed, the *only* effective way to protest is to make somebody pay. They will never listen unless it affects their bottom line. To fight telemarketers, putting them on old is the optimal strategy because it increases their cost of doing business. This is not the same as opening the windows of your apartment in the winter, because heating cost is ultimately paid by me, while telemarketing is ultimately paid by the advertising business, which I of course avoid.
It's amazing that Slashdot posters agree that porn should not be censored from public libraries, yet censoring entire network blocks in the name of "eliminating spam" is ok.
What's so hard to understand? Spam is wrong and porn is not.
turn the computer so that the screen faces a public area
That's ridiculous: it's nobody's business what I read. The exact opposite is the obvious solution: provide visual shields so that nobody can be offended by what is on my screen. Problem solved.
Where was the oh-so benevolent billionaire owner when that happened?
Face it: given that advertising dollars are drying up and more and more people ignore or filter out web ads, Britannica's owner will soon find out that providing content for free actually costs money, and the site is gone. Kept alive as a muchly ignored pay site, at best.
You cannot rely on corporations for something as important as knowledge.
Well, he does seem to be unaware that www.Britannica.com has been up and free for well over a year
It's not free in the sense RMS and many others would prefer it to be: you can't freely modify or mirror the material. Basically, as soon as the corporate dickheads decide that some downsizing would be appreciated by Wall Street, the material vanishes from the web without a trace, just like Eric Weinstein's World of Mathematics.
Read the announcement: there won't be an editorial board and no organization will be in control. Nobody can decide what goes in and what stays out.
Good articles bubble to the top by receiving endorsements of respected individuals and by being included into respected catalogs (which are produced by third parties). But even the bad articles remain part of the encyclopedia.
Slashdot Mirror
--
The best part of slashdot is the hypocrisy. Slashdot has a definite "do as I say, not as I do" policy.
Example 1: Censorship
Slashdot claims to be anti-censorship. They make prominent figures in the anti-censorware movement authors. I'm talking about Michael Sims and Jamie. They claim to promote free speech. But do they really?
I'm not going to bore you with tales of the dreaded bitchslap.
Here's an article you might find interesting. It's about Michaels real position on censorware.
Also, here's a charming article.
Example 2: Auctions
Taco and Hemos find the idea of auctioning virtual property to be interesting. Here's a story by Hemos, and here's one by taco.
But what happens when someone tries to auction a slashdot account? Here's a snippet from an IRC log:
[22:25:58] [Questions] JustSomeGuy asks: How do you feel about the recent sale of user accounts on ebay?
[22:26:06] [CmdrTaco] should we fess up?
[22:26:11] [CmdrTaco] we fucked with the first guys karma.
[22:26:14] [CmdrTaco] it was funny as hell.
[22:26:28] [CmdrTaco] we wrote a script to give him random karma from 0.. number of seconds until ebay auction ends.
[22:26:35] [CmdrTaco] so he had 0 karma when the sale ended.
[22:26:41] [CmdrTaco] he updated his account to cry.
[22:26:44] [CmdrTaco] it was so funny.
What's this? Taco writing a script just to fuck with a user? Say it isn't so.
You can view the complete IRC log here.
Oddly enough, this never gets mentioned in any story on virtual property auctions.
Why is that?
Example 3: Community
Slashdot is a community oriented website. They win webbys for this. It's the community that helped Taco and Hemos to a big pile of VA Linux stock.
But they don't really give a fuck about the community.
Here's a quote from an email Taco sent to Shoeboy:
> Anyway, to go back to my original point, I think a fair
> number of readers are interested in who the trolls are
> and why they post what they do.
That may be, but I don't care. I post Slashdot stories that *I* want to read.
You can get the whole email thread here.
(Shoeboy kicks Taco's ass hardcore)
Want more? How about the theft of user accounts?
Famous slashdot poster Signal 11 grew tired of this site. So he gave away his account. Dear beloved free speech advocate Michael discovered this and used his authorial privileges to steal the account. No warning was given. No explanation either. The account was simply stolen and that was that.
These are all reasons I love this site. If I wanted a site that wasn't run by assholes, I'd read kuro5hin.
NOTE: this post is entirely factual. If you have any doubts about the veracity of these claims, feel free to contact Taco.
Cheers,
~Axel~
--
Most ads directly offend the customer: "Here's how stupid you are: we can increase your likelihood of buying our car by simply showing you a hot chick, some nice music, driving through an unpolluted landscape on free roads, and then tell you that you can get $2000 cash back (without telling you the price of the car in the first place). You are such a stupid fuck, you don't even care about mileage, security ratings or features. Now have a nice day and don't forget to buy Ford."
The most dangerous effect of advertising is that it repeatedly hammers the same message into our heads: "BUY MORE STUFF AND YOU'LL BE HAPPY!!" Instead of merely satisfying the people's material needs, as is the purpose of any economy, advertising constantly tries to create bogus new needs. This insanity has got to stop and ads should therefore be outlawed.
No government agency is needed to enforce an advertising ban: simply let competitors sue each other for advertising. There is no first amendment issue here because economical speech doesn't enjoy full protection anyway.
--
All those sayings have been proven wrong by the emergence of free software and free content on the internet in the nineties. What *really* makes the world go round is enthusiastic volunteers. Moneyed interests are nothing but boring.
--
I disagree. Content on the net should be free (and that includes: free of ads). This of course only works if the content providers are enthusiastic volunteers. The first 25 years of the internet have proven that that model works just beautifully. People who want to make a buck on the net will soon figure out that it won't work and will leave.
--
In formulating an ethical rule, you cannot refer to particulars. Either spying for a country other than one's own is wrong or it is not. If you maintain that this guy did wrong, then you have to claim that those double agents in the KGB did wrong too.
Punishing this guy because he broke US laws is easy; arguing that he did morally the wrong thing is a lot harder if not impossible.
--
Quantum theory claims that things pop in and out of existance constantly, everywhere around us. So the universe itself might very well have popped up just like that, as a consequence of the laws of quantum mechanics.
Now, where those laws come from, that's a really good question. Maybe they themselves are God? That's Spinoza's (and Einstein's) view, basically. In that view, scientists are the ultimate theologicians because they study God.
--
--
God, being able to create the universe, must be even more complex than it, so his existence is even more incredible than its existance.
--
Shouldn't background and the past taken into account as well? Hypothetical example: person A was put down all their live, whenever they picked up a book, drunken mom said "put that down, it's for geeks". Person B had supportive parents who encouraged her couriosity and paid for her private schooling. Both apply for a job, and perform equally well on all tests administered. Who deserves the job?
--
But see, some of us come from countries where completely fucked up ideas once won out in the open market place, with terrible results. We cannot take your noble position. Whenever those ideas show up again, we hit them over the head, out of sheer fear. Mere arguing didn't help the first time either; believe me, many people tried.
--
--
--
--
Sure, by definition of wealth. But most people believe that the wealthy don't deserve better health care, better access to the legal system or more political influence, since these are basic human rights which apply to every person equally. So equalization at least in those areas is completely justified.
By the way, since you were talking about the miserable failures of communism, you may also want to investigate the embarassing recent failures of trying to introduce capitalism in Eastern Europe.
--
--
Sure. So what? The principle of capitalism is not: "Thou shalt pay money to and thereby protect the profits of companies". Quite the opposite: "Thou shalt maximize your own profits". If this latter principle, as a result, kills off some useless company, so much the better. Corporations try to screw consumers, consumers try to screw coroporations: that's the name of the game after all.
--
Gutenberg is a committed effort run by enthusiastic volunteers, with one *very* enthusiastic volunteer at the center. Exactly like all the successful projects on the internet. No monks needed.
--
--
--
What's so hard to understand? Spam is wrong and porn is not.
--
That's ridiculous: it's nobody's business what I read. The exact opposite is the obvious solution: provide visual shields so that nobody can be offended by what is on my screen. Problem solved.
--
Where was the oh-so benevolent billionaire owner when that happened?
Face it: given that advertising dollars are drying up and more and more people ignore or filter out web ads, Britannica's owner will soon find out that providing content for free actually costs money, and the site is gone. Kept alive as a muchly ignored pay site, at best.
You cannot rely on corporations for something as important as knowledge.
--
It's not free in the sense RMS and many others would prefer it to be: you can't freely modify or mirror the material. Basically, as soon as the corporate dickheads decide that some downsizing would be appreciated by Wall Street, the material vanishes from the web without a trace, just like Eric Weinstein's World of Mathematics.
--
Good articles bubble to the top by receiving endorsements of respected individuals and by being included into respected catalogs (which are produced by third parties). But even the bad articles remain part of the encyclopedia.
--