Exactly what do you mean "Today, communism is completely gone from the world stage"? Or that the "$ord world" classification is obsolete? The Chinese goverment, despite extreme inconsistency in policy, is a Communist nation (and, in case you missed the news, the most populous nation in the world). There are several states in various nations with Marxist or Communist administrations.
The Third World, originally coined by French writers in the 50s, has become more synonymous with the periphery of a capitalist world system. This periphery, of course, is where most people live. Many of the nation-states in the Third World have a very ambivalent relationship with capitalism. So perhaps before you dismiss "a silly thing like communism", you should examine why you're so patronizing and a culture chauvanist. What do you mean by communism? The U.S.S.R. implemented a centralized, state socialism; the workers never owned their means of production. And before you discuss the obsolescence of such classification, you should note that it still articulates the average American view of the world--even if that view is astonishingly ignorant.
Additionally, the whole global information age thing is not part of a new paradigm; it's been around for a long time, at least since technological developments in communications and travel in the seventeenth century and onwards. This change in the tiering of import/exports is a response to corporate lobbying, and not a recognition of some new "paradigm". And don't think this will be some type of free-market either; guess which region of the world this most benefits? Hmmm...
If you're more worried about hiring Indian programmers now because of this incident, you are either ignorant or racist, or both. Many of the biggest proponents of open source software are in India, and many of the local and national governments in the country are pushing open source solutions for various nationalized industries, health care, etc. Look at coverage on http://freeos.com
The ethics problems exist everyone, and should certainly spring up in a country with four times the US population. No, I think you should start worrying about hiring about anyone, beginning with US citizens. Considering the ethics of most multinational and transnational corporations whose capital generally flows to the U.S., if you want to talk ethics you should be worried about them.
Actually, I don't think I would've been too happy with Gore, either (I assume that is "a certain other candidate"). But I felt that Bush and the Republican party collectively attacked any attempt to assess the validity of the election. Since you insinuate that I am a hypocrite, I'll remind you that it was Bush who has pushed forward recount legislation in Texas, but was completely content to deny recounts in Florida.
The issue in the case that the Democratic legal team brought up in court, that richer counties has better equipment (optical scans) and less roadblocks in the voting process than poorer and blacker counties, seems to me to be a crucial point. But rather than question and resolve these matters in a democratic manner, Republicans wanted to certify the votes because they favored Bush. They certainly would've done the same thing as Gore in his position.
Gore certainly is not a shining knight for democracy, but don't be a flamebait who actually believes a fair election occurred.
This seems like one more nail in the coffin of an independent, free radio in the United States. The Congress has shown its true colors in its commitment to corporate lobbying rather than a more democratic media.
Right now, any independent public radio is only available at the extreme left of the dial, with a few good college stations for those lucky enough to live near one. And I wouldn't count on those stations, because the public and private universities are shifting increasingly more to corporate-style management in which accounting, not relevance, is the crucial basis of judgement for funding. Humanities departments are feeling the pressure to justify small but relevant classes, so I expect these college radio stations to be in trouble soon.
The only alternatives to radio now are internet radio, cable radio, and music channels. Of course, not only do you have to have a broadband connection for internet radio, which effectively limits access to a very few, the internet radio stations have been recently burdened with the ruling that they would have to pay additional fees for certain types of content (that the transistor radio licenses didn't cover broadband radio, basically). This promises to limit the number of valuable internet stations to an already very limited audience. Cable radio is no real comparison (also must be paid for, more expensive equipment), and music television is a joke, providing corporate sponsorship with some affiliated music.
You know, with a new president-elect installed through a very undemocratic power grab, and a Republican congress, I'm afraid that any effective means of independent media will be curtailed at every pass. Radio is the most accessible medium for most people in the U.S., and it's a shame the Congress didn't seem fit to allow a little room for small, community-based groups in the ranks of the big boys.
Ah, I can hear the familiar call of the classic capitalist. "You don't get things for free", "it is remarkably fair" "don't think the world owes you." The traditional voice of the privileged.
What do you mean it is "fair and workable", "a funny and remarkable thing"? Do you mean for yourself? If you want to talk about these ads, you should first note that the majority of the world's population is excluded from the internet because they do not have the means to purchase the tech and do not have the time because of work. Well, one might say, you don't need the internet to live. True. Unfortunately, this "funny and remarkable" system does do a good job of distributing things people need to live, like food. More than 50% of the world population is malnourished, underfed.
That might seem offtopic, but if you see people excited about getting a good thing like web content, and then disappointed by the more crass forms of web commercialization like these developing ad technologies, don't simply repeat the logic of these advertisers. You don't get anything for free? That isn't a natural law, it's something you've accepted because you're in a privileged position. What about the Linux developers, like Torvald, who appear quite comfortable with giving away something for free? It seems to be a quite successful way to go. Free things are a significant part of what will enable most of the world to eventually experience the Internet. Don't get angry if some people want to be involved too, without stomaching vapid advertisements.
The advertising on TVs and radios works because the media is continually streaming, and has been already programmed. The only thing the audience does is pick a station out of a pool of only several hundred (at the most) choices. On the internet, at the average user's download time, the experience is fragmented and the choice is potentially limitless. It's a possibility that once everyone has broadband, we'll see more audio-only ads and interactive pop-ups, but the way web content is divided up in numerous pages that may be chosen in a nonlinear fashion seems to demand a completely different paradigm for advertising.
Probably, it will be increasingly difficult to get on the web without going through numerous ad-heavy pages since ISPs will consolidate into fewer, larger corporations that force ads on the user. I believe that the ISPs we must deal with for access will be more significant than the actual websites, and advertisers will use them more and more. Just look at the big rise in free internet that rely upon banners and pages you have to visit to keep on-line. It doesn't matter whether you visit Slashdot or the most backwaters website, you'll still have to face ads.
You're right: the site wasn't being held to resell at a profit, but was registered for a genuine content-driven purpose.
How much protection will the average domain-name owner have in the future against corporate legal action? Obviously the normal Joe and Jane can't afford to defend their sites in court while earning a living (especially if their site is just for fun).
Other posters are discussing ICANN and the possibilities of creating an exclusive TLD for companies with registered trademarks, but what protection does this give to.com,.org,.etc?
I'm worried that in the future, the law will favor corporate interests in domain name possession, using the logic of productivity and profit. I'm really interested in hearing from someone who knows more about the present law and and the kind of legislation being discussed in the US and other countries. How can domain-holders defend themselves from potential abuses of the laws like Fandom.com?
Regardless of some limits, of course you can plan a community. In fact, a cult, an army, and the corporation are all examples of planned communities. In addition, you can put communes, suburbs, and nations on that list. They are all products of some level of community planning, whether it's due to local government, state and corporate funding of various social engineering projects, or other possibilities.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "you can't plan a community." If you look at communities, most are solidified by proximity, shared interests and experiences, which are often the result of years of planning and social engineering. Even the family itself and how it is a community is carefully planned by parents.
Yes, Katz-bashing is a big activity here. And yes, he does bring up important or provacative issues. But, my god, can't they find someone who does that but better?
Anyway, the Katz-bashing is bad because most of it is wildly off-topic or ill-considered. It needs to better, too.
This isn't surprising. Katz, who I guess has good intentions, seriously seem to be using completely different paradigms, here, and ones I think are mostly inoperable. Katz has posts and writing that try to "get" the Internet and understand "geeks", but the way he envisions the virtual communities he's participating in already at/. consistently shows he doesn't. Sometimes, he appears to think of the web as some type of utopia and/or carnival, and "geeks" as mostly enlightened citizens who want to talk about themselves because no one else cared in high school or whatever, but he never realizes that talking about "geeks" simply assumes everyone feels like a freak, which is off-putting. Katz's writing and vocabulary reeks of stupid optimism, the worst of media journalism, which examines its subject with an uncritical and hopelessly irrelevant methodology. He seems to think that virtual communities are some great thing marred by a few corporate abuses, and that vc's can somehow be a replacement for real life. Unfortunately, while he's pondering how to police the virtual community, he neglects to see how most people have no access to vc's because of real world economic inequities and social injustice. Before you start kicking those bratty pivileged kids out of your supposed community, you need to learn how to help others in.
To return to my original point, you don't get Katz cause Katz doesn't get it. He's in his own world, populated by "geeks", in which Katz is always on the cutting edge of irrelevance.
The problem with considering virtual communities now is its unavoidably exclusive nature. If you think about the suburban communities, which have been historically exclusionary in terms of race and class and are becoming in many cases like mini-compounds with gates, security, and private parks and recreational facilities, they don't really look like such a great model to work from. Many feel that virtual communities erase those differences, but you have to remember not many people in most of the world will have access to the virtual communities of today. Perhaps the first principle, so to speak, should be a real-world advocacy of changes to increase access to the Internet, to computers, and education that facilitates participation on the web. Otherwise, these virtual communities will simply be one more elite club of like-minded individuals of the same class and origins, just like the suburbs.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly what do you mean "Today, communism is completely gone from the world stage"? Or that the "$ord world" classification is obsolete? The Chinese goverment, despite extreme inconsistency in policy, is a Communist nation (and, in case you missed the news, the most populous nation in the world). There are several states in various nations with Marxist or Communist administrations. The Third World, originally coined by French writers in the 50s, has become more synonymous with the periphery of a capitalist world system. This periphery, of course, is where most people live. Many of the nation-states in the Third World have a very ambivalent relationship with capitalism. So perhaps before you dismiss "a silly thing like communism", you should examine why you're so patronizing and a culture chauvanist. What do you mean by communism? The U.S.S.R. implemented a centralized, state socialism; the workers never owned their means of production. And before you discuss the obsolescence of such classification, you should note that it still articulates the average American view of the world--even if that view is astonishingly ignorant. Additionally, the whole global information age thing is not part of a new paradigm; it's been around for a long time, at least since technological developments in communications and travel in the seventeenth century and onwards. This change in the tiering of import/exports is a response to corporate lobbying, and not a recognition of some new "paradigm". And don't think this will be some type of free-market either; guess which region of the world this most benefits? Hmmm...
If you're more worried about hiring Indian programmers now because of this incident, you are either ignorant or racist, or both. Many of the biggest proponents of open source software are in India, and many of the local and national governments in the country are pushing open source solutions for various nationalized industries, health care, etc. Look at coverage on http://freeos.com
The ethics problems exist everyone, and should certainly spring up in a country with four times the US population. No, I think you should start worrying about hiring about anyone, beginning with US citizens. Considering the ethics of most multinational and transnational corporations whose capital generally flows to the U.S., if you want to talk ethics you should be worried about them.
Actually, I don't think I would've been too happy with Gore, either (I assume that is "a certain other candidate"). But I felt that Bush and the Republican party collectively attacked any attempt to assess the validity of the election. Since you insinuate that I am a hypocrite, I'll remind you that it was Bush who has pushed forward recount legislation in Texas, but was completely content to deny recounts in Florida.
The issue in the case that the Democratic legal team brought up in court, that richer counties has better equipment (optical scans) and less roadblocks in the voting process than poorer and blacker counties, seems to me to be a crucial point. But rather than question and resolve these matters in a democratic manner, Republicans wanted to certify the votes because they favored Bush. They certainly would've done the same thing as Gore in his position.
Gore certainly is not a shining knight for democracy, but don't be a flamebait who actually believes a fair election occurred.
This seems like one more nail in the coffin of an independent, free radio in the United States. The Congress has shown its true colors in its commitment to corporate lobbying rather than a more democratic media.
Right now, any independent public radio is only available at the extreme left of the dial, with a few good college stations for those lucky enough to live near one. And I wouldn't count on those stations, because the public and private universities are shifting increasingly more to corporate-style management in which accounting, not relevance, is the crucial basis of judgement for funding. Humanities departments are feeling the pressure to justify small but relevant classes, so I expect these college radio stations to be in trouble soon.
The only alternatives to radio now are internet radio, cable radio, and music channels. Of course, not only do you have to have a broadband connection for internet radio, which effectively limits access to a very few, the internet radio stations have been recently burdened with the ruling that they would have to pay additional fees for certain types of content (that the transistor radio licenses didn't cover broadband radio, basically). This promises to limit the number of valuable internet stations to an already very limited audience. Cable radio is no real comparison (also must be paid for, more expensive equipment), and music television is a joke, providing corporate sponsorship with some affiliated music.
You know, with a new president-elect installed through a very undemocratic power grab, and a Republican congress, I'm afraid that any effective means of independent media will be curtailed at every pass. Radio is the most accessible medium for most people in the U.S., and it's a shame the Congress didn't seem fit to allow a little room for small, community-based groups in the ranks of the big boys.
Ah, I can hear the familiar call of the classic capitalist. "You don't get things for free", "it is remarkably fair" "don't think the world owes you." The traditional voice of the privileged.
What do you mean it is "fair and workable", "a funny and remarkable thing"? Do you mean for yourself? If you want to talk about these ads, you should first note that the majority of the world's population is excluded from the internet because they do not have the means to purchase the tech and do not have the time because of work. Well, one might say, you don't need the internet to live. True. Unfortunately, this "funny and remarkable" system does do a good job of distributing things people need to live, like food. More than 50% of the world population is malnourished, underfed.
That might seem offtopic, but if you see people excited about getting a good thing like web content, and then disappointed by the more crass forms of web commercialization like these developing ad technologies, don't simply repeat the logic of these advertisers. You don't get anything for free? That isn't a natural law, it's something you've accepted because you're in a privileged position. What about the Linux developers, like Torvald, who appear quite comfortable with giving away something for free? It seems to be a quite successful way to go. Free things are a significant part of what will enable most of the world to eventually experience the Internet. Don't get angry if some people want to be involved too, without stomaching vapid advertisements.
The advertising on TVs and radios works because the media is continually streaming, and has been already programmed. The only thing the audience does is pick a station out of a pool of only several hundred (at the most) choices. On the internet, at the average user's download time, the experience is fragmented and the choice is potentially limitless. It's a possibility that once everyone has broadband, we'll see more audio-only ads and interactive pop-ups, but the way web content is divided up in numerous pages that may be chosen in a nonlinear fashion seems to demand a completely different paradigm for advertising.
Probably, it will be increasingly difficult to get on the web without going through numerous ad-heavy pages since ISPs will consolidate into fewer, larger corporations that force ads on the user. I believe that the ISPs we must deal with for access will be more significant than the actual websites, and advertisers will use them more and more. Just look at the big rise in free internet that rely upon banners and pages you have to visit to keep on-line. It doesn't matter whether you visit Slashdot or the most backwaters website, you'll still have to face ads.
You're right: the site wasn't being held to resell at a profit, but was registered for a genuine content-driven purpose. How much protection will the average domain-name owner have in the future against corporate legal action? Obviously the normal Joe and Jane can't afford to defend their sites in court while earning a living (especially if their site is just for fun). Other posters are discussing ICANN and the possibilities of creating an exclusive TLD for companies with registered trademarks, but what protection does this give to .com, .org, .etc?
I'm worried that in the future, the law will favor corporate interests in domain name possession, using the logic of productivity and profit. I'm really interested in hearing from someone who knows more about the present law and and the kind of legislation being discussed in the US and other countries. How can domain-holders defend themselves from potential abuses of the laws like Fandom.com?
Regardless of some limits, of course you can plan a community. In fact, a cult, an army, and the corporation are all examples of planned communities. In addition, you can put communes, suburbs, and nations on that list. They are all products of some level of community planning, whether it's due to local government, state and corporate funding of various social engineering projects, or other possibilities.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "you can't plan a community." If you look at communities, most are solidified by proximity, shared interests and experiences, which are often the result of years of planning and social engineering. Even the family itself and how it is a community is carefully planned by parents.
Yes, Katz-bashing is a big activity here. And yes, he does bring up important or provacative issues. But, my god, can't they find someone who does that but better? Anyway, the Katz-bashing is bad because most of it is wildly off-topic or ill-considered. It needs to better, too.
So, I'm not really sure what Katz is getting at.
/. consistently shows he doesn't. Sometimes, he appears to think of the web as some type of utopia and/or carnival, and "geeks" as mostly enlightened citizens who want to talk about themselves because no one else cared in high school or whatever, but he never realizes that talking about "geeks" simply assumes everyone feels like a freak, which is off-putting. Katz's writing and vocabulary reeks of stupid optimism, the worst of media journalism, which examines its subject with an uncritical and hopelessly irrelevant methodology. He seems to think that virtual communities are some great thing marred by a few corporate abuses, and that vc's can somehow be a replacement for real life. Unfortunately, while he's pondering how to police the virtual community, he neglects to see how most people have no access to vc's because of real world economic inequities and social injustice. Before you start kicking those bratty pivileged kids out of your supposed community, you need to learn how to help others in.
This isn't surprising. Katz, who I guess has good intentions, seriously seem to be using completely different paradigms, here, and ones I think are mostly inoperable. Katz has posts and writing that try to "get" the Internet and understand "geeks", but the way he envisions the virtual communities he's participating in already at
To return to my original point, you don't get Katz cause Katz doesn't get it. He's in his own world, populated by "geeks", in which Katz is always on the cutting edge of irrelevance.
The problem with considering virtual communities now is its unavoidably exclusive nature. If you think about the suburban communities, which have been historically exclusionary in terms of race and class and are becoming in many cases like mini-compounds with gates, security, and private parks and recreational facilities, they don't really look like such a great model to work from. Many feel that virtual communities erase those differences, but you have to remember not many people in most of the world will have access to the virtual communities of today. Perhaps the first principle, so to speak, should be a real-world advocacy of changes to increase access to the Internet, to computers, and education that facilitates participation on the web. Otherwise, these virtual communities will simply be one more elite club of like-minded individuals of the same class and origins, just like the suburbs.