There's lots of talk here about the importance of advertising to the revenues of various companies and how its so integral to the business model of ebullshit.com, or whatever. I screen out as much of this dreck as I can, and the rest I ignore. I have trained myself to have some kind of visual blind spot for banner ads.
I remember when the Internet was ad-free. It was a better place, on the whole. Yes, it was smaller, and yes, you couldn't order your groceries online, and yes, you couldn't do [insert useless crap here]. You could, however, get information without the inundation of commercialism. It's really disgusting. How much of the "content" on time.com, for example, has any intrinsic worth? You are paying (via advertising) for "premium", "branded" content, not intelligent thought or discussion. Does anyone here remember the USENET of days past? Is it better or worse now that it's 95% spam?
And for the/. crowd, I might note that Linux and the open source movement grew up just fine in the non-commercial internet, completely seperate from profit-mongering corporations. Call me a "socialist" if you like (and that's not necessarily a dirty word to the world outside the USA). It seems to me that, instead of a brand new method to schlepp your schlock on the public, the primary purpose and innovation of the Internet is (or should be) the sharing of information. Like, for example, the sharing of information that has been happening in universities across the world for hundreds of years. How many of the past millenium's great innovations in science, thought, art and technology have been from corporations? How many from the universities?
So, I say good riddance. Goodbye priceline.com! Goodbye theglobe.com! I was happier here before you came.
There has never been any kind of a radioactive leak or spill at any of Ontario's three nuclear power plants. There have been a few instances of heavy water spills, which is something altogether different. Heavy water (D2O) is not radioactive.
It seems to me that this concentration of power will certainly lead to abuse. I had been hoping that the FTC would impose restrictions on this new behemoth, but that does not appear to be the case. You've all heard the arguments before, but no one expresses the need for dissent better than Noam Chomsky.
From Noam Chomsky:
"There's a general tendency for the whole system to move toward oligopoly, a small number of huge corporations which dominate one or another area and usually interact."*
"The current merger is... a step towards restricting control over the global media system to an even narrower range of private power interests, relying -- as is often the case -- on publicly funded initiatives, ideas, development, provided to them as a gift without public consent, even awareness."*
Not to start a flamewar here, but it's not mentioned in the article that the new, snazzy, make-your-internet-browsing-experience-better-than -ever-before Google toolbar runs only on Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.
You can find more information from IBM here and here.
Printing Press Did Not Bring About Renaissance
on
The Renaissance
·
· Score: 5
I haven't read the book, but I can tell you for certain that the printing press was not the major cause of the Renaissance. I don't know if this is a distortion of Johnson's words by Katz, or a gross error by the author, but the Renaissance (as conventionally defined) predated the printing press by at least a hundred years.
Gutenberg produced the first Bible c. 1455, but the Italian Renaissance was in full swing by then, largely an outcome of the mercantile culture of the Italian city-states. The later European Renaissance movements were more outgrowths of the Italian one than spawned by the printing press. They too seem to have been caused mostly by the growth of town culture and the rise of the middle class.
A solid argument can be made for the printing press as the greatest single cause for the Reformation. However, it is incorrect to name it as the primary cause of the Renaissance. I'm not saying that it had no effect, but other factors were at play.
In Canada, given the Florida situation, we would have a by-election. I understand that there is no mandate for this in the US Constitution, but wouldn't that be the logical choice?
If Florida were given the chance to vote again, it is exceedingly unlikely that the results would be as close as last time. There has not been a clear winner, despite Bush's 500 vote lead. From 6 million votes cast, a margin of 500 says to me that they tied.
Of course, I also recognize that this by-election could never happen, even though it may be the fairest way to determine who won the presidency and even though it may be the best possible course for the country. The partisan rhetoric down there stuns me. In Canada, we have just finished a rather vitriolic (for us) election campaign, but in the US, the anger defies reason. Literally. Anything a Democrat says(and vice versa) is instantly irreconcilably biased and roughly equivalent to lies from Satan himself.
It seems to me that there is no real debate among the upper levels of US government anymore. Where has this come from? Was it always this mindless name-calling? Does this irrationality hurt the country, or does it benefit it? Does powerlessness at the top allows the country to function without impediments?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
And, for the record, I would have voted for Nader.:)
Copyrights were not, in fact, granted originally as a means of piracy prevention. While I don't mean to deny that credibility and authenticity are useful (and perhaps the only useful) functions of copyright, the notion of copyright originated in Elizabethan England.
It was granted by the monarch as a means of bestowing royal favour, and originally had no connection with authorship. A printer would be, for example, given the "copy rights" to print all books on medicine, or all the works of Aristotle. Similarly, the monarch would use copyright as a means of censorship, since anything printed without royal approval was illegal.
Copyright's connection to authorship didn't evolve until the late 17th/early 18th century.
A noble idea, but not accurate. The notion of copyright emerged in England with the rise of the printing press. Copyright was granted (or denied) to a printer by the king/queen, as a sign of royal favour or as a means of censorship. Copyright was not based on authorship. The modern notion of copyright DID evolve purely as a means for artists to profit from their work.
Still, it's nice to see someone a little more eloquent than that Limp Bizkit dude on our side.
I think it pretty damned unlikely that anyone would pay $15 a month to use Napster. The CEO is greatly mistaken if he thinks that Napster has any great advantage over Gnutella. Napster has more users, but as many sites and services have shown (see Encyclopedia Britannica, or the New York Times, for two examples of sites that were formerly pay services, but are now free and much more successful), trying to charge for something that's available for free elsewhere is a poor business model. It's extremely difficult to convince someone to pay for that which he has already been receiving for free. No one has any loyalty to Napster. Napster's users are after free music, and that's it. Gnutella provides them with the same thing, and people will run to it in droves if Napster starts charging.
Of course, feel free to insert your own argument about how those who would commit the mortal sin of piracy (or "sharing") aren't likely to want to pay to pirate music.
I'm also from Canada, and new gun purchases now have to be registered in this country. Current gun owners have a year or two to get registered. Regardless of actual weapon registration, one has to have a FAC (Firearms Acquisitions Certificate) in this country to own/use a firearm. It's a good bet that the people with a FAC are the people with guns.
Has there ever been a war that wasn't fought for lack of weaponry, though? In a civil war, if I am fighting the government, I will get a gun and chances are that I won't tell the government about it. The government will know about all registered guns from before the war began, but I would imagine that the majority of the weapons used to fight the war would be acquired after the war began. Not only does the general public not keep a major armoury in their basements, a lot of the weapons necessary for a modern war are currently illegal, and if you've got 'em, you'd better hope that the government doesn't know about it.
As far as I see it, the only argument against gun registration that has any substance is that the government will know where to collect the guns. I'm as rabid and paranoid as the rest of you, but the benefits of gun registration outweigh the risks. If the Canadian government is overrun by... oh... say... right-wing hicks from Alberta, and imposes a totalitarian system, I'll find all the weapons I need.
Perhaps this hole explains why Hotmail is down. Could they actually be fixing the problem? Naaah.
Here's the message one gets on login:
"We apologize, but your account is temporarily unavailable. This delay does not affect the entire site or relate specifically to your account, but the machine that holds your account information is temporarily unavailable. We do not expect this delay to last much longer, so please continue to check our site for your account status.
We will do our best to make your account available as quickly as possible. We appreciate your support, and sincerely apologize for the inconvenience."
The perfect game doesn't necessarily mean a win every time. It means that the worst you can do is a draw, as in tic-tac-toe.
Shortly after discovering tic-tac-toe, every kid solves it and never does worse than a draw. Well... most kids.
Same principle for chess.
Frankly, I don't think solving chess is that far off. There are a lot of moves, but there are only 64 squares on the board, and most pieces are restricted to a much smaller set of those squares. As the poster from 'way up there said, Go presents a much more difficult problem.
You're right when you say that the music industry is not going to be able to prevent piracy in the future. As technology progresses, it will surely become easier for the average Joe to get access to information. That has been the trend throughout history.
One might suggest that the notion of copyright is somehow flawed, as well. I believe that I have a right to protect the integrity of what I have said (ie, do not misquote me), but once I have said something, do I have a right to determine when and how it is used?
Isn't/shouldn't music be about expression, not about making money? By giving our artists millions upon millions of dollars, do we really promote art?
Can't Dr Dre make enough money from live shows to support his art? Other than pure greed, why would someone be worried about the dissemination of his music?
I set up a bot that trades my music back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and...
Sounds better than All Advantage to me!
B
Re:Is it just me.. or is this incredibly silly?
on
Pay Lars
·
· Score: 1
The premise of your argument is that Slashdot, by posting this story, is condoning piracy. The rest of your post consists of a diatribe about the evils of piracy.
Has it occured to you that many people, pirates or not, are repulsed by the posturing, narrow-mindedness and narrow-sightedness that goes along with the lawsuits regarding MP3s, Napster, etc?
However you cut it, Napster is not illegal (yet), even though it is a tool that may be used for an illegal purpose. Whether the trading of MP3s has a tangible effect on the money received by record labels--never mind the artists--is unanswerable. I have downloaded MP3s illegaly. However, most of the things I have downloaded I would never have bought. Have I cheated the artist out of money?
Furthermore, if artists are losing money because of MP3 trading, perhaps the problem could be solved by making music cheaper for people to buy. I don't know exactly how this could be done... oh, say, maybe, legal electronic distribution of music? Elimination of the record labels from the mix? Their only purpose seems to be--as far as I can tell--to determine which music gets played on the radio and is therefore successful.
My great hope for MP3 and wide distribution of music is that music may come to be evaluated on its merits rather than its marketing, although I am likely living in fantasyland.
Artists like Metallica fail to see that the wide, cheap distribution of music will help them in the long run.
I am not coming at the situation from a technical/scientific perspective -- I am an artsie. In arts, moreso than in science, education is about learning how to think. However, the advantage that this new system offers over traditional university study is that it is intensive and thematic. I have often thought that I would benefit far more from an entire day of lectures in Russian history than from an hour every couple of days. An entire month of solid Russian history would put me far above my competitors who get the same number of lecture-hours over the span of a year.
Why? It's not because I am getting more information in a shorter time, but it's because I am immersed in the subject. My thoughts are focussed all day, every day on Russian history. The same system, to a larger extent, exists in India, with the notion of guruship. I like it.
I may be alone in this, but I really do feel that university doesn't give me enough to do. I'd welcome an immersive environment in which to study. I'd be more interested in something artsy, but maybe when I'm done my degree I'll apply down there in Cambridge anyways. By then, I am sure that we'll have a better idea one way or the other whether their system works. I'm confident that it will.
B
Re:Stocks *have been* and will continue to be cove
on
Tech Stocks Tumble
·
· Score: 2
Ok, first, none of the stories you listed were posted by CmdrTaco. Second, as he said in his intro to the article, he "only brings up the market when it deals with specific companies that we're interested in, not when the story is "The Market."
This does not mean that the stock market is never mentioned. It means that Slashdot is a niche news site and mainstream news is covered only when it relates directly to Slashdot's niche, ie. News for Nerds.
Who's to say that pornography is bad for children?
I think there might even be a solid argument for pornography being good for children. It seems to me that children would get over their initial titillation and will progress to more interesting material. Pornography, by definition, has little valid content apart from crass sexuality. Are we really afraid that children will become consumed by this? Don't they find it exciting simply because it is something forbidden?
I can't say that I saw a huge amount of porn when I was a kid, but my friends and I would sometimes steal a porno mag from one of our parents or older brothers. I don't think that I've been warped by that. Sexual curiosity is natural among children of all ages.
I really have a tough time understanding where the harm comes from. Have I missed a major point, here? As far as I can tell, the only thing wrong with pornography is that it is proscribed by a religion to which some Americans adhere. Moreover, isn't it incumbent on those who wish to ban porn to demonstrate its harm on children and society?
Ok, I am going to have to agree with you on one point. Many people who claim to be athiests do so with as little thought as some people who adhere blindly to religious doctrine. Moreover, you are right (as far as I know) that there could have been a God who created the universe with a big bang, billions of years ago.
Religion IS a blind pursuit for most, however. That does not mean that people enter into a faith without any thought, but it entails a rejection of rational thought to do so. If one accepts the theory of reason, science is by far the most successful theory at explaining the earth, the universe and human motivations. Although I admit the possibility of God in some form, I cannot accept the Bible as the word of God. I have studied the Bible for years, and it is a thoroughly human document, albeit beautiful and meaningful.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a response to this article that my brother wrote on some BBS many moons ago:
h ristmas/santa2.html
http://www.uea.ac.uk/menu/student_media/MAG-NET/C
Thank you, quantum physics.
Here's a similarly themed, but funnier, article from Satirewire.com.
Fewer ads, as well.
While you are there, check out their George W. Bush weblog--it's really witty.
There's lots of talk here about the importance of advertising to the revenues of various companies and how its so integral to the business model of ebullshit.com, or whatever. I screen out as much of this dreck as I can, and the rest I ignore. I have trained myself to have some kind of visual blind spot for banner ads.
/. crowd, I might note that Linux and the open source movement grew up just fine in the non-commercial internet, completely seperate from profit-mongering corporations. Call me a "socialist" if you like (and that's not necessarily a dirty word to the world outside the USA). It seems to me that, instead of a brand new method to schlepp your schlock on the public, the primary purpose and innovation of the Internet is (or should be) the sharing of information. Like, for example, the sharing of information that has been happening in universities across the world for hundreds of years. How many of the past millenium's great innovations in science, thought, art and technology have been from corporations? How many from the universities?
I remember when the Internet was ad-free. It was a better place, on the whole. Yes, it was smaller, and yes, you couldn't order your groceries online, and yes, you couldn't do [insert useless crap here]. You could, however, get information without the inundation of commercialism. It's really disgusting. How much of the "content" on time.com, for example, has any intrinsic worth? You are paying (via advertising) for "premium", "branded" content, not intelligent thought or discussion. Does anyone here remember the USENET of days past? Is it better or worse now that it's 95% spam?
And for the
So, I say good riddance. Goodbye priceline.com! Goodbye theglobe.com! I was happier here before you came.
Incorrect.
There has never been any kind of a radioactive leak or spill at any of Ontario's three nuclear power plants. There have been a few instances of heavy water spills, which is something altogether different. Heavy water (D2O) is not radioactive.
It seems to me that this concentration of power will certainly lead to abuse. I had been hoping that the FTC would impose restrictions on this new behemoth, but that does not appear to be the case. You've all heard the arguments before, but no one expresses the need for dissent better than Noam Chomsky.
... a step towards restricting control over the global media system to an even narrower range of private power interests, relying -- as is often the case -- on publicly funded initiatives, ideas, development, provided to them as a gift without public consent, even awareness."*
From Noam Chomsky:
"There's a general tendency for the whole system to move toward oligopoly, a small number of huge corporations which dominate one or another area and usually interact."*
"The current merger is
A good Chomsky resource.
For those with a taste for the ironic, here's the transcript of a chat with Prof. Chomsky in 1995 on AOL.
For general corporate news, try http://www.corpwatch.org/
Check out this concern from the ACLU about the possibility of censorship as a result of this decision.
Not to start a flamewar here, but it's not mentioned in the article that the new, snazzy, make-your-internet-browsing-experience-better-than -ever-before Google toolbar runs only on Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.
You can find more information from IBM here and here.
I haven't read the book, but I can tell you for certain that the printing press was not the major cause of the Renaissance. I don't know if this is a distortion of Johnson's words by Katz, or a gross error by the author, but the Renaissance (as conventionally defined) predated the printing press by at least a hundred years.
Gutenberg produced the first Bible c. 1455, but the Italian Renaissance was in full swing by then, largely an outcome of the mercantile culture of the Italian city-states. The later European Renaissance movements were more outgrowths of the Italian one than spawned by the printing press. They too seem to have been caused mostly by the growth of town culture and the rise of the middle class.
A solid argument can be made for the printing press as the greatest single cause for the Reformation. However, it is incorrect to name it as the primary cause of the Renaissance. I'm not saying that it had no effect, but other factors were at play.
Perhaps I betray my ignorance here, but:
:)
In Canada, given the Florida situation, we would have a by-election. I understand that there is no mandate for this in the US Constitution, but wouldn't that be the logical choice?
If Florida were given the chance to vote again, it is exceedingly unlikely that the results would be as close as last time. There has not been a clear winner, despite Bush's 500 vote lead. From 6 million votes cast, a margin of 500 says to me that they tied.
Of course, I also recognize that this by-election could never happen, even though it may be the fairest way to determine who won the presidency and even though it may be the best possible course for the country. The partisan rhetoric down there stuns me. In Canada, we have just finished a rather vitriolic (for us) election campaign, but in the US, the anger defies reason. Literally. Anything a Democrat says(and vice versa) is instantly irreconcilably biased and roughly equivalent to lies from Satan himself.
It seems to me that there is no real debate among the upper levels of US government anymore. Where has this come from? Was it always this mindless name-calling? Does this irrationality hurt the country, or does it benefit it? Does powerlessness at the top allows the country to function without impediments?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
And, for the record, I would have voted for Nader.
heinzkeinz
Copyrights were not, in fact, granted originally as a means of piracy prevention. While I don't mean to deny that credibility and authenticity are useful (and perhaps the only useful) functions of copyright, the notion of copyright originated in Elizabethan England.
It was granted by the monarch as a means of bestowing royal favour, and originally had no connection with authorship. A printer would be, for example, given the "copy rights" to print all books on medicine, or all the works of Aristotle. Similarly, the monarch would use copyright as a means of censorship, since anything printed without royal approval was illegal.
Copyright's connection to authorship didn't evolve until the late 17th/early 18th century.
Yup.
B
Still, it's nice to see someone a little more eloquent than that Limp Bizkit dude on our side.
B
Of course, feel free to insert your own argument about how those who would commit the mortal sin of piracy (or "sharing") aren't likely to want to pay to pirate music.
B
Sorry, man, chill out. The right-wing hick thing was a joke.
I'm originally from Alberta too.
B
You make it sound as if there are two groups of people in the world: law-abiding citizens and criminals, and never the twain shall meet.
Has there never been a person cross from one category to the other?
B
I'm also from Canada, and new gun purchases now have to be registered in this country. Current gun owners have a year or two to get registered. Regardless of actual weapon registration, one has to have a FAC (Firearms Acquisitions Certificate) in this country to own/use a firearm. It's a good bet that the people with a FAC are the people with guns.
Has there ever been a war that wasn't fought for lack of weaponry, though? In a civil war, if I am fighting the government, I will get a gun and chances are that I won't tell the government about it. The government will know about all registered guns from before the war began, but I would imagine that the majority of the weapons used to fight the war would be acquired after the war began. Not only does the general public not keep a major armoury in their basements, a lot of the weapons necessary for a modern war are currently illegal, and if you've got 'em, you'd better hope that the government doesn't know about it.
As far as I see it, the only argument against gun registration that has any substance is that the government will know where to collect the guns. I'm as rabid and paranoid as the rest of you, but the benefits of gun registration outweigh the risks. If the Canadian government is overrun by... oh... say... right-wing hicks from Alberta, and imposes a totalitarian system, I'll find all the weapons I need.
B
Perhaps this hole explains why Hotmail is down.
Could they actually be fixing the problem? Naaah.
Here's the message one gets on login:
"We apologize, but your account is temporarily unavailable. This delay does not affect the entire site or relate specifically to your account, but the machine that holds your account information is temporarily unavailable. We do not expect this delay to last much longer, so please continue to check our site for your account status.
We will do our best to make your account available as quickly as possible. We appreciate your support, and sincerely apologize for the inconvenience."
The perfect game doesn't necessarily mean a win every time. It means that the worst you can do is a draw, as in tic-tac-toe.
Shortly after discovering tic-tac-toe, every kid solves it and never does worse than a draw. Well... most kids.
Same principle for chess.
Frankly, I don't think solving chess is that far off. There are a lot of moves, but there are only 64 squares on the board, and most pieces are restricted to a much smaller set of those squares. As the poster from 'way up there said, Go presents a much more difficult problem.
B
You're right when you say that the music industry is not going to be able to prevent piracy in the future. As technology progresses, it will surely become easier for the average Joe to get access to information. That has been the trend throughout history.
One might suggest that the notion of copyright is somehow flawed, as well. I believe that I have a right to protect the integrity of what I have said (ie, do not misquote me), but once I have said something, do I have a right to determine when and how it is used?
Isn't/shouldn't music be about expression, not about making money? By giving our artists millions upon millions of dollars, do we really promote art?
Can't Dr Dre make enough money from live shows to support his art? Other than pure greed, why would someone be worried about the dissemination of his music?
B
I set up a bot that trades my music back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and ...
Sounds better than All Advantage to me!
B
The premise of your argument is that Slashdot, by posting this story, is condoning piracy. The rest of your post consists of a diatribe about the evils of piracy.
Has it occured to you that many people, pirates or not, are repulsed by the posturing, narrow-mindedness and narrow-sightedness that goes along with the lawsuits regarding MP3s, Napster, etc?
However you cut it, Napster is not illegal (yet), even though it is a tool that may be used for an illegal purpose. Whether the trading of MP3s has a tangible effect on the money received by record labels--never mind the artists--is unanswerable. I have downloaded MP3s illegaly. However, most of the things I have downloaded I would never have bought. Have I cheated the artist out of money?
Furthermore, if artists are losing money because of MP3 trading, perhaps the problem could be solved by making music cheaper for people to buy. I don't know exactly how this could be done... oh, say, maybe, legal electronic distribution of music? Elimination of the record labels from the mix? Their only purpose seems to be--as far as I can tell--to determine which music gets played on the radio and is therefore successful.
My great hope for MP3 and wide distribution of music is that music may come to be evaluated on its merits rather than its marketing, although I am likely living in fantasyland.
Artists like Metallica fail to see that the wide, cheap distribution of music will help them in the long run.
Bah.
B
OK, I am going to have to disagree with this.
I am not coming at the situation from a technical/scientific perspective -- I am an artsie. In arts, moreso than in science, education is about learning how to think. However, the advantage that this new system offers over traditional university study is that it is intensive and thematic. I have often thought that I would benefit far more from an entire day of lectures in Russian history than from an hour every couple of days. An entire month of solid Russian history would put me far above my competitors who get the same number of lecture-hours over the span of a year.
Why? It's not because I am getting more information in a shorter time, but it's because I am immersed in the subject. My thoughts are focussed all day, every day on Russian history. The same system, to a larger extent, exists in India, with the notion of guruship. I like it.
I may be alone in this, but I really do feel that university doesn't give me enough to do. I'd welcome an immersive environment in which to study. I'd be more interested in something artsy, but maybe when I'm done my degree I'll apply down there in Cambridge anyways. By then, I am sure that we'll have a better idea one way or the other whether their system works. I'm confident that it will.
B
Ok, first, none of the stories you listed were posted by CmdrTaco. Second, as he said in his intro to the article, he "only brings up the market when it deals with specific companies that we're interested in, not when the story is "The Market."
This does not mean that the stock market is never mentioned. It means that Slashdot is a niche news site and mainstream news is covered only when it relates directly to Slashdot's niche, ie. News for Nerds.
B
Hah!
As if the people who watch Inside Edition have any idea who the Hitler Youth was.
Hey! Lookie-here! Maybe that's part of the problem!
Who's to say that pornography is bad for children?
I think there might even be a solid argument for pornography being good for children. It seems to me that children would get over their initial titillation and will progress to more interesting material. Pornography, by definition, has little valid content apart from crass sexuality. Are we really afraid that children will become consumed by this? Don't they find it exciting simply because it is something forbidden?
I can't say that I saw a huge amount of porn when I was a kid, but my friends and I would sometimes steal a porno mag from one of our parents or older brothers. I don't think that I've been warped by that. Sexual curiosity is natural among children of all ages.
I really have a tough time understanding where the harm comes from. Have I missed a major point, here? As far as I can tell, the only thing wrong with pornography is that it is proscribed by a religion to which some Americans adhere. Moreover, isn't it incumbent on those who wish to ban porn to demonstrate its harm on children and society?
Boydo
Ok, I am going to have to agree with you on one point. Many people who claim to be athiests do so with as little thought as some people who adhere blindly to religious doctrine. Moreover, you are right (as far as I know) that there could have been a God who created the universe with a big bang, billions of years ago.
Religion IS a blind pursuit for most, however. That does not mean that people enter into a faith without any thought, but it entails a rejection of rational thought to do so. If one accepts the theory of reason, science is by far the most successful theory at explaining the earth, the universe and human motivations. Although I admit the possibility of God in some form, I cannot accept the Bible as the word of God. I have studied the Bible for years, and it is a thoroughly human document, albeit beautiful and meaningful.