I would rather Slashdot stop the popup ads. I already do some things to block them, but I can still tell there was an attempt to launch one. Just the idea of a popup ad is greatly annoying, and for the sake of Slashdot, I would hope that they stop trying to annoy their users off their site.
Normally, I don't reply to cowards, but you make a great point, deeply flawed as it is.
When I visit Slashdot, I enter the slashdot.org address or click a bookmark to load Slashdot in *one* browser window. I have not granted them the right to reach into my computer and launch another browser window (via client-side scripting), no matter what. If Slashdot wants to throw ads at me, that's FINE, but keep them inside the browser window I CHOSE to open, thank you very much!
Many, many, many sites are placing ads on the left and right sides of the content area. Why can't Slashdot use this real estate instead of taking control of my PC without my consent?
Further, I will indeed complain to any and all website administrators who employ popup ads. They are insidious, anti-user and will ultimately end up driving all visitors away.
Shame on Slashdot for beginning to use popup ads (via DoubleClick)!!! I suppose Slashdot contributors (aka customers) are "wrong."
Exercise for the reader: Reconcile a commitment to "open source" (and the enriched democracy/freedom entailed with this) with foisting a popup ad on a user by launching a separate instance of the user's browser without the user's consent (which will almost always never exist).
Note: I was actually considering subscribing to Slashdot before the popups started. Now, I am backing away from that, and probably burning up Karma to boot. Does Slashdot understand the "Consumers vs. MPAA/RIAA/Eisner" fight now?
Really it has to do with a trend towards disregarding annoying laws and disrespecting property.
Er, copying digital content for personal use is perfectly legal. I'm not arguing in favor of breaking any laws. But I think you think that everyone who is arguing in favor of Fair Use is a digital pirate, or at least supports digital piracy. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The reality is that the more entertainment CEO's yell about piracy, the more they alienate their customer base, perhaps even pushing many more of them to partcipate in the piracy while boycotting the entertainment products. Meanwhile, the lowly consumer who simply wants to create their own compilation CD for play in their car's CD player is caught in the crossfire, and perhaps they will be the ones who are ultimately screwed the most.
Shame on Slashdot for beginning to use popup ads (via DoubleClick)!!! I suppose Slashdot contributors (aka customers) are "wrong."
Exercise for the reader: Reconcile a commitment to "open source" (and the enriched democracy/freedom entailed with this) with foisting a popup ad on a user using a separated launch of the user's browser without the user's prior consent.
Note: I was actually considering subscribing to Slashdot before the popups started.
I'm saying that perhaps we should consider giving up our love of CD-ripping for the greater good.
Methinks your little social movement will fall flat. If you really want to make a critical difference in the world, get friends and family who smoke cancer sticks to stop. Telling people that they shouldn't be able to copy music that they purchase for their own use is like telling people they can't use anything they purchase for a purpose the manufacturer didn't exactly intend.
Please, please *do not* put good people like Heloise out of business!!
I'm also a software developer born-and-raised and currently living in Louisville, KY. Businesses and people across the USA need to stop thinking of Louisville as a "hick town"--I wildly assure you that IT IS NOT. As a former resident of upstate NY, Charlotte, NC and the SF bay area, I attest that Louisville is a modern city with very upstanding people and lots of things to do for a city its size (and it isn't so small -- 1 million in the metro area!).
Louisville has vibrant arts, sports, architecture, politics, business, attractions and nightspots and a very fun two-week festival in April/May surrounding the Kentucky Derby (including "Thunder Over Louisville", the nation's largest air power and fireworks show). And if that isn't enough, the University of Louisville includes a very good school of engineering.
Of course, the most important aspect of Louisville is her people, among the friendliest you'll ever run into.
"If we rely on HTTP we will melt the Internet. We at least have to raise the level of abstraction, so that we have an industry-wide way to do long-running requests--I need a way to send a request to a server and not the get result for five days."
IANJ (I am not Jewish), but AFAIK, the Torah has been hand-copied exactly word for word for over 2,000 years by Jewish scribes/Rabbis. Therefore, if you want to look at the Old Testament that's closest to the origin, read the Torah.
IANAC, but indeed, there have been hundreds of translations of the Christian Bible, including rewordings of some of the Jewish text from the Old Testament in order to fit into the Christian belief system. Even within the Christian faith itself, there is no agreement on the translations/wordings of the Christian Bible.
Has anyone heard of yard sales? Just slap a $1 sticker on each piece of old, non-working equipment and your local junk collectors (and there are many of them!) will swoop in and take your problems away, leaving you a fist full of singles in their wake. Just don't ask them what they're planning to do with the stuff.
It's strongly apparent that a corporatist dictator is attempting to take over the administration of our Internet. In removing the voices of the end-users, absolutely rejecting direct democracy in ICANN, and dumping the board members we have already elected, I have but one thing to say:
ICANN must be destroyed! destroyed! destroyed!
Anyone on the board who has been conspiring with Stuart Lynn on his little decision need to show up in the center square for their just public flogging. Reputations of those individuals are hereby compromised, and may they never make one more cent in their pathetic careers. You know who you are.
The reasonable balance that Lessig seeks for digital IP, and that worked so well for cable companies (vis a vis broadcasters) is a scary proposition for the music and movie industries. This fear doesn't exist simply because these industries are greedy (although that's a major part of it), but also because there's no good way to police the balance, to ensure that the creators and distributors will even get the compulsory payments that Lessig describes. File sharing via open technologies (and the natural inapplicable model of economic scarcity) has made all digital content effectively free.
Ultimately, Lessig will have to explain how the balance he foresees will work in practical terms. As for me, I hope he wildly succeeds in doing so.
"Do you really want them to have control over you?"
No. Not today. Democratic world government is at least a couple generations away. By then, there will have already been an equalizing effect due to global corporatization.
In other words, the more people give into the cult of global corporate libertarianism at the expense of democracy, people will end up getting the opposite of what they desire.
Please be sure to blast my name and website address in big fonts! (i.e., I agree the future will be quite humorous, when the transnational corporations get their just reward!)
Although I largely concur with the concerns over globalization and treaties like WTTP, I think most are missing the positive other side of the coin that will be necessitated by globalization itself: Global democracy, with actual world leadership and representatives. And direct democracy movements have recently been growing stronger, esp. in Europe. It's only a matter of time before corporations will have nowhere to escape from the world's huddled masses except maybe the planet Mars.
"Absolute power is being channeled into boardrooms that have no government oversight of their actions."
This is precisely correct. Any group or person with absolute (or close to absolute), centralizing power must be democratically accountable to the people. However, simultaneously, we have to beware a centralized government that becomes too big, and thus too resistant to the voices of the people. A new check-and-balance needs to be created.
I favor the creation of a _third_ power force in the US and around the world: An augmenting governance mechanism coming straight from the people, using Internet technologies as a catalyst and ballot initatives as a basis. A deliberative, meritocratic assembly of the people who continuously make nonpartisan, legally binding decisions based solely on the merits of individual issues (but also don't trample individual freedom) is what's called for.
While this form of "more direct" democracy would appear to serve only as a check on our elected representatives, it also serves as a check on the overextending of corporate interests. For example, an assembly of citizens can very well decide to deliberate and vote on a resolution to boycott a company's products and then execute that without creating law, as boycotting is already a derivative right of all citizens in a free society.
The bottom line is that the people themselves have to start taking more direct action (either individually or collectively) against the centralized forces that menace them. Yes, it may seem to make more sense for the government to solve all or most of these issues. But if we allow government alone to work to protect us from corporatist control, then we end up with a government that's too big to not only be ineffective in protecting us, but also becomes a nasty, over-taxing, repressive bully itself.
Napster may have lost the battle for its own life, but they won the war in how they forwarded a simple idea that has largely become accepted by the masses:
Intellectual property that can be digitized can no longer be controlled/distributed under the inapplicable/unrealistic guise of economic scarcity.
In other words, if it's digital, it's free and swappable, whether legal or not. And nothing can stop this phenomenon. Nothing.
Stop visiting and/or linking to websites that utilize popup ads. Don't give them *any* hits. I've already started to do this. This is the _war_ I spoke of; of course, writing companies alone cannot do the trick.
The method of making ads unviewable doesn't really tell these companies anything, as they won't be able to distinguish between a non-clickthru and non-view.
Only a social/political cause against this practice is viable in the long run.
I don't fault Slashdot for moving to an ad-free subscription model. At least they're being upfront about it. And at least they're not bombarding us with insidious popup ads.
Frankly, I don't fault any free website from taking this route. However, I do fault any website that has been resorting to employing popup ads, esp. to coerce movement to a subscription model.
Following is a note I sent to the publisher of OpenP2P regarding their use of popup ads:
Greetings,
I think OpenP2P.com is great, with one major exception: popup ads. It would seem to me that embracing open technologies would also mean that you wouldn't resort to displaying popup ads that visitors haven't chosen to see. Popup ads fly in the face of open source and open technologies. They're anti-democratic. Please confine your ads to the web pages that visitors _choose_ to link to.
Note that I was linking to this site from my web site (that I won't name) until today, when the camel's back broke. I will no longer link to any web sites, no matter what the quality of the content, if the site foists popup ads on visitors. Hmmm... sounds like a good idea for a new movement.
Regards,
Steve
Perhaps we need to organize a war on popup ads. Many users are simply finding ways of eliminating them from their view, but who is working to get websites from using these abusive methods of advertisement?
Slashdot Mirror
I would rather Slashdot stop the popup ads. I already do some things to block them, but I can still tell there was an attempt to launch one. Just the idea of a popup ad is greatly annoying, and for the sake of Slashdot, I would hope that they stop trying to annoy their users off their site.
Well, I suppose I keep it turned on because many sites use Javascript a lot more responsibly.
To-MAY-toes, to-MAH-toes.
Normally, I don't reply to cowards, but you make a great point, deeply flawed as it is.
When I visit Slashdot, I enter the slashdot.org address or click a bookmark to load Slashdot in *one* browser window. I have not granted them the right to reach into my computer and launch another browser window (via client-side scripting), no matter what. If Slashdot wants to throw ads at me, that's FINE, but keep them inside the browser window I CHOSE to open, thank you very much!
Many, many, many sites are placing ads on the left and right sides of the content area. Why can't Slashdot use this real estate instead of taking control of my PC without my consent?
Further, I will indeed complain to any and all website administrators who employ popup ads. They are insidious, anti-user and will ultimately end up driving all visitors away.
Shame on Slashdot for beginning to use popup ads (via DoubleClick)!!! I suppose Slashdot contributors (aka customers) are "wrong."
Exercise for the reader: Reconcile a commitment to "open source" (and the enriched democracy/freedom entailed with this) with foisting a popup ad on a user by launching a separate instance of the user's browser without the user's consent (which will almost always never exist).
Note: I was actually considering subscribing to Slashdot before the popups started. Now, I am backing away from that, and probably burning up Karma to boot. Does Slashdot understand the "Consumers vs. MPAA/RIAA/Eisner" fight now?
Er, copying digital content for personal use is perfectly legal. I'm not arguing in favor of breaking any laws. But I think you think that everyone who is arguing in favor of Fair Use is a digital pirate, or at least supports digital piracy. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The reality is that the more entertainment CEO's yell about piracy, the more they alienate their customer base, perhaps even pushing many more of them to partcipate in the piracy while boycotting the entertainment products. Meanwhile, the lowly consumer who simply wants to create their own compilation CD for play in their car's CD player is caught in the crossfire, and perhaps they will be the ones who are ultimately screwed the most.
Shame on Slashdot for beginning to use popup ads (via DoubleClick)!!! I suppose Slashdot contributors (aka customers) are "wrong."
Exercise for the reader: Reconcile a commitment to "open source" (and the enriched democracy/freedom entailed with this) with foisting a popup ad on a user using a separated launch of the user's browser without the user's prior consent.
Note: I was actually considering subscribing to Slashdot before the popups started.
Methinks your little social movement will fall flat. If you really want to make a critical difference in the world, get friends and family who smoke cancer sticks to stop. Telling people that they shouldn't be able to copy music that they purchase for their own use is like telling people they can't use anything they purchase for a purpose the manufacturer didn't exactly intend.
Please, please *do not* put good people like Heloise out of business!!
Mundie is a conscienceless corporate whore.
I'm also a software developer born-and-raised and currently living in Louisville, KY. Businesses and people across the USA need to stop thinking of Louisville as a "hick town"--I wildly assure you that IT IS NOT. As a former resident of upstate NY, Charlotte, NC and the SF bay area, I attest that Louisville is a modern city with very upstanding people and lots of things to do for a city its size (and it isn't so small -- 1 million in the metro area!).
Louisville has vibrant arts, sports, architecture, politics, business, attractions and nightspots and a very fun two-week festival in April/May surrounding the Kentucky Derby (including "Thunder Over Louisville", the nation's largest air power and fireworks show). And if that isn't enough, the University of Louisville includes a very good school of engineering.
Of course, the most important aspect of Louisville is her people, among the friendliest you'll ever run into.
Yup. This is a no-brainer bug that has gone unfixed for years now. I even reported this as a bug and it was closed for no apparent reason.
What's with not including years in article dates???
It's nice to see Microshaft coming around. :)
IANJ (I am not Jewish), but AFAIK, the Torah has been hand-copied exactly word for word for over 2,000 years by Jewish scribes/Rabbis. Therefore, if you want to look at the Old Testament that's closest to the origin, read the Torah.
IANAC, but indeed, there have been hundreds of translations of the Christian Bible, including rewordings of some of the Jewish text from the Old Testament in order to fit into the Christian belief system. Even within the Christian faith itself, there is no agreement on the translations/wordings of the Christian Bible.
Has anyone heard of yard sales? Just slap a $1 sticker on each piece of old, non-working equipment and your local junk collectors (and there are many of them!) will swoop in and take your problems away, leaving you a fist full of singles in their wake. Just don't ask them what they're planning to do with the stuff.
No. Kyoto is a no-go because it let China off the hook.
It's strongly apparent that a corporatist dictator is attempting to take over the administration of our Internet. In removing the voices of the end-users, absolutely rejecting direct democracy in ICANN, and dumping the board members we have already elected, I have but one thing to say:
ICANN must be destroyed! destroyed! destroyed!
Anyone on the board who has been conspiring with Stuart Lynn on his little decision need to show up in the center square for their just public flogging. Reputations of those individuals are hereby compromised, and may they never make one more cent in their pathetic careers. You know who you are.
The reasonable balance that Lessig seeks for digital IP, and that worked so well for cable companies (vis a vis broadcasters) is a scary proposition for the music and movie industries. This fear doesn't exist simply because these industries are greedy (although that's a major part of it), but also because there's no good way to police the balance, to ensure that the creators and distributors will even get the compulsory payments that Lessig describes. File sharing via open technologies (and the natural inapplicable model of economic scarcity) has made all digital content effectively free.
Ultimately, Lessig will have to explain how the balance he foresees will work in practical terms. As for me, I hope he wildly succeeds in doing so.
"Do you really want them to have control over you?"
No. Not today. Democratic world government is at least a couple generations away. By then, there will have already been an equalizing effect due to global corporatization.
In other words, the more people give into the cult of global corporate libertarianism at the expense of democracy, people will end up getting the opposite of what they desire.
Please be sure to blast my name and website address in big fonts! (i.e., I agree the future will be quite humorous, when the transnational corporations get their just reward!)
Although I largely concur with the concerns over globalization and treaties like WTTP, I think most are missing the positive other side of the coin that will be necessitated by globalization itself: Global democracy, with actual world leadership and representatives. And direct democracy movements have recently been growing stronger, esp. in Europe. It's only a matter of time before corporations will have nowhere to escape from the world's huddled masses except maybe the planet Mars.
This is precisely correct. Any group or person with absolute (or close to absolute), centralizing power must be democratically accountable to the people. However, simultaneously, we have to beware a centralized government that becomes too big, and thus too resistant to the voices of the people. A new check-and-balance needs to be created.
I favor the creation of a _third_ power force in the US and around the world: An augmenting governance mechanism coming straight from the people, using Internet technologies as a catalyst and ballot initatives as a basis. A deliberative, meritocratic assembly of the people who continuously make nonpartisan, legally binding decisions based solely on the merits of individual issues (but also don't trample individual freedom) is what's called for.
While this form of "more direct" democracy would appear to serve only as a check on our elected representatives, it also serves as a check on the overextending of corporate interests. For example, an assembly of citizens can very well decide to deliberate and vote on a resolution to boycott a company's products and then execute that without creating law, as boycotting is already a derivative right of all citizens in a free society.
The bottom line is that the people themselves have to start taking more direct action (either individually or collectively) against the centralized forces that menace them. Yes, it may seem to make more sense for the government to solve all or most of these issues. But if we allow government alone to work to protect us from corporatist control, then we end up with a government that's too big to not only be ineffective in protecting us, but also becomes a nasty, over-taxing, repressive bully itself.
Napster may have lost the battle for its own life, but they won the war in how they forwarded a simple idea that has largely become accepted by the masses:
In other words, if it's digital, it's free and swappable, whether legal or not. And nothing can stop this phenomenon. Nothing.
The pussy is outta the bag.
Stop visiting and/or linking to websites that utilize popup ads. Don't give them *any* hits. I've already started to do this. This is the _war_ I spoke of; of course, writing companies alone cannot do the trick.
The method of making ads unviewable doesn't really tell these companies anything, as they won't be able to distinguish between a non-clickthru and non-view.
Only a social/political cause against this practice is viable in the long run.
I don't fault Slashdot for moving to an ad-free subscription model. At least they're being upfront about it. And at least they're not bombarding us with insidious popup ads.
Frankly, I don't fault any free website from taking this route. However, I do fault any website that has been resorting to employing popup ads, esp. to coerce movement to a subscription model.
Following is a note I sent to the publisher of OpenP2P regarding their use of popup ads:
Perhaps we need to organize a war on popup ads. Many users are simply finding ways of eliminating them from their view, but who is working to get websites from using these abusive methods of advertisement?