My point about the quote is that they modify it without notation. The quotes in the sidebar have always been there, but usually they match up with the actual quote or else there is notation to indicate paraphrase or omission. The BBC is just modifying the quotes with no indication that they are not really quotes. This means that if I say, person X said, "blah," and you say, no they actually said, "foo," we can both go to BBC online and find evidence for the accuracy of our version of the quote. This means that you can't verify what someone really said, which is important.
Generally in print, ellipses and other means of indicating editing of the quote aren't included in those excerpt/quote boxes that pepper the layouts. Hell, the New York Times does this. PC Mag does it to Dvorak. The fact is that journalists are very similar to trolls (at least most journalists are). They go for shock. Why? It gets you to read them. If they can post a quote like "We knew about the security flaw." off to the side, it gets your attention. I'm not saying it's a great thing to do, and it does raise a lot of questions (such as what editing went on), but it's a journalistic fact of life. And it happens in non-profit publications, so it's not a profit thing. It's most likely a desire to be heard.
I'm just wondering who benefits from an article of this type - the nerds all know it, the non-nerds won't even understand it.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Visitors to Slashdot are pretty uniformly in the techie category. Hell, probably less than 5% of techies (which I'll define loosely as employed in a high-tech field, or pursuing an education in such a field) read Slashdot on any regular basis. ZDNet and CNet might have higher readership, but what percentage of Americans have visted CNet during the past 12 months? Not many.
Chalk this up as a side effect of the media revolution of the past twenty years: lack of universal media. This is a side-effect of decentralization. With narrowcasting the norm combined with a finite amount of time, the overlap in media consumption between two random people in the USA is apt to be near nil.
While there is something to be said for the Internet media revolution, I feel sort of wary in trumpeting this as one of them.
I guess it's better than the constantly repeated line, "the utilities are facing bankruptcy due to California's failed energy deregulation experiment." The deregulation experiment (crafted by the utilities) was a total success. They wanted to see if they could rob CA blind, and they did. Nothing failed about that experiment. If you live in CA then you heard that quote approximately 1.2 billion times.
California deregulated the wrong end of the business (or they should have dereg'd the whole shebang). And then the increase in demand while there was a steady refusal to increase supply... what else could be expected?
And one more disturbing collapse of journalistic integrity - keep an eye on the bold quotes in the sidelines of BBC online articles. They will "quote" someone (no brackets to indicate paraphrase or elipses to indicate omissions), but when you read the quote in the article it it slightly different. I haven't seen any that twist the meaning, but a quote is a quote - you said it or you didn't. It prevents you from using it as a source for exactly what someone said.
That's more of an editorial function. The quotes get your attention. Since the goal of any writer who is writing for others to read is to get your attention so you read they're writing, this tactic has been used since the dawn of print. Pick up any magazine and you'll see quotes from people and tidbits from the article emphasized off to the side.
Is it dishonest? In most cases, I think not. As long as the meaning is not changed, it's a side effect of the human desire to be heard, imo. YMMV.
I don't think it'd come back very big. Any user with a significant degree of knowledge and desire to trade music is already using IRC or one of the next generation P2P networks, such as Gnutella, Morpheus, or eDonkey2000. Some of these networks offer abilities Napster never had, such as aggregating the bandwidth and availability of multiple sources, ad hoc networking with no central server. And if the music "industry" succeeds in killing those, the market for residential broadband is dead, as well.
That's bullshit. Napster can add all the features of the decentralized networks (save for their distributed nature). Download from multiple sources would be a trivial hack. What advantage would Napster hold over, say KaZaA? One thing: speed and reliability. I'm on a reasonably fast connection here at UMass, and I rarely see/saw a rate with Gnutella or (before giFT was blocked) FastTrack that was even half of what my average Napster download was.
People will go back to Napster if it comes back like it did before (especially with features like bandwidth aggregation). With less hassle and faster speeds, I'd say it's a given.
This is because Metallica (through Creeping Death Music and E/M Ventures) actually own their own recordings, unlike most artists. I imagine Dre also owns his recent work (Death Row still owns his old material, IIRC).
Interestingly enough, Metallica never sued to get Napster shut down and have, afaik, refused to provide any sort of brief for the RIAA against Napster. I get the impression that they merely wanted to see their studio material kept off. They never even asked to have live bootlegs banned.
One other feature that could get some payers: rescue privelege. After a story is rejected, it would sit in a "Save Me" bin for a few days. Subscribers could see what was in the bin and vote on whether it should be posted. After a few days, if a majority of subscribers who voted like the submission, it gets posted to the front page (perhaps instead of posted by, the blurb would be"Rescued from CmdrTaco's rejection bin"...).
Yeah, there's a potential for abuse, but how many trolls would pay $5 a month to crapflood. And if a troll wants to pay for/., I say let him. He's funding it for the rest of us.
Another feature that could be interesting: allowing subscribers to moderate the editors. I can envision subscribers having a dropdown box on the article pages asking "Does this article belong on Slashdot"? Kind of like metamod...
More controversial might be putting in a five-minute delay for logged-in users and a 10-minute delay for AC's, while subscribers get a live view of the discussions and articles. By this I mean that the AC would only see the state of the site 10 minutes before, the logged-in user sees a 5-minute delay, and a subscriber gets it as it happens.
First Post trolls would then be limited to paying subscribers.
And IMHO China isn't Communist, it's State Capitalist (much like America was under FDR)
I tend to think of China as the dream of Mussolini: the corporate state....
Actually, I guess we're both right. FDR was very similar to Mussolini and Hitler. Might have something to do with why I consider him one of the worst presidents of this century.
[T]he penguins and the mac heads" don't need to stick together -- they're after totally different goals. On one end, superb computing, on the other end, profit.
And only one of those two groups are achieving both of those goals.
But he can always shop around and find a different insurer. Or flog his dented 911 and buy a honda civic. The basic principles of the free market remain the same: This is what it costs, pay yes/no?
Not in Massachusetts. The rates are pretty much set by the state.
Re:Pet Peeves/requests of an HCI designer
on
Computing Pet Peeves?
·
· Score: 0, Funny
There should be a way to do anything with your hands on the keyboard whenever possible.
How could you watch pr0n if both of your hands were on the keyboard? Answer me that!?
I also recommend iptables on a linux firewall. Never had a virus yet (knocking on wood).
How does iptables protect against Windows viruses? I could see a Perl script that filters incoming mail to remove VBScript, et al, but I fail to see how iptables can protect your Windows boxen from infectious code.
That said, running an iptables based firewall is generally a good idea...
I think that they are referring to the sponsored link boxes. It depends on what you search for, but here [google.com] is an example.. The only change that I can see is that they moved the advertising box from the side of the screen towards the top. It's a bit more intrusive now, but still much better than blinking banner ads.
Google has had the ads atop the results (as well as off to the side) since they debuted the system. They do charge more, but they're still on a fixed cost.
1. give us the option of using the latest 2.2.x kernal
You can install Mandrake with 2.4 and then download a 2.2 kernel from Cooker (currently:
kernel22-2.2.20-8mdk). I've never done that, so I can't vouch for the method, but it's there (and based on where it appears in the mirrors, it's also on the first CD of Mandrake. But I agree that, at least in expert mode, it should be an explicit option.
get rid of updatedb starting ob boot if the machine hasn't run in a few days - 4am is still the best time to run this job.
I believe that's part of cron (it's actually a feature....). Mandrake may decide not to run it by default in 8.2 final.
FYI: I have used Madrake since 8 came out last May and have upgraded to 8.1. Both had the autodetect for new hardware. I have had no problems using the detection on intstall, but change something out and I suddenly get the "frowny face" when it gets to harddrake in the boot. And it spews gargbage code at me. Now I can configure the hardware fine in KDE on HardDrake, and the machine runs without any problems as far as I can tell, but I can't get rid of the garbage spew at boot up without going through the install process again. The last time I reinstalled (got the 8.1 Transgaming pack for Christmas;) I've turned off HardDrake running on startup.
HardDrake is useless and is no longer maintained by Mandrake. 8.2 should be getting rid of it entirely.
Does this mean that the root passwords are limited to three letters? (and that ASS is the most common password?)
On a serious note, this doesn't protect against the special glasses the invisible NSA agents that are dropped from black helicopters that allow them to see through walls and watch my screen as I type my root password. I'm not using it.
The statement that the media is left-biased can be misleading. Yes, there is a bias. But this does not imply a massive left-wing conspiracy in the media. It's more of a symptom of the Northeast establishment higher education. {I speak as a student at UMass Amherst].
Most of the journalists in the media right now went to the same Northeastern schools (the Ivies, UMass, BU, NYU, Amherst, et al), or to satellite campuses elsewhere (Stanford, UCLA, et al) [I only say satellite campus to indicate that they have a similar mindset]. As the journalists all have a similar educational background, they have similar worldviews. Those views tend to be slightly to somewhat left of center.
One of the things that irks me is the idea that the right is behind the copyright term extensions. Consider this: where do Hollywood's campaign contributions go? Generally, Hollywood has sent more money to the Democrats than to the Republicans. The bulk of copyright extensions have been signed into law by Democratic presidents and passed by Democratic Congresses.
Yes, Sonny Bono was a Republican in a Republican Congress, but he had a vested interest in the copyright term extension (how much a year was he making in royalties from his "hits" in the '60s?). The Republicans most likely let a bill designed to help Democrats (by making larger profits for many of the Democrats' largest contributors) through as a quid pro quo for something they wanted passed.
Slashdot Mirror
Generally in print, ellipses and other means of indicating editing of the quote aren't included in those excerpt/quote boxes that pepper the layouts. Hell, the New York Times does this. PC Mag does it to Dvorak. The fact is that journalists are very similar to trolls (at least most journalists are). They go for shock. Why? It gets you to read them. If they can post a quote like "We knew about the security flaw." off to the side, it gets your attention. I'm not saying it's a great thing to do, and it does raise a lot of questions (such as what editing went on), but it's a journalistic fact of life. And it happens in non-profit publications, so it's not a profit thing. It's most likely a desire to be heard.
Caveat lector!
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..... I'm scared now....
[Backs away]
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Visitors to Slashdot are pretty uniformly in the techie category. Hell, probably less than 5% of techies (which I'll define loosely as employed in a high-tech field, or pursuing an education in such a field) read Slashdot on any regular basis. ZDNet and CNet might have higher readership, but what percentage of Americans have visted CNet during the past 12 months? Not many.
Chalk this up as a side effect of the media revolution of the past twenty years: lack of universal media. This is a side-effect of decentralization. With narrowcasting the norm combined with a finite amount of time, the overlap in media consumption between two random people in the USA is apt to be near nil.
While there is something to be said for the Internet media revolution, I feel sort of wary in trumpeting this as one of them.
California deregulated the wrong end of the business (or they should have dereg'd the whole shebang). And then the increase in demand while there was a steady refusal to increase supply... what else could be expected?
That's more of an editorial function. The quotes get your attention. Since the goal of any writer who is writing for others to read is to get your attention so you read they're writing, this tactic has been used since the dawn of print. Pick up any magazine and you'll see quotes from people and tidbits from the article emphasized off to the side.
Is it dishonest? In most cases, I think not. As long as the meaning is not changed, it's a side effect of the human desire to be heard, imo. YMMV.
Yeah, and CNet is a local non-profit collective.
That's bullshit. Napster can add all the features of the decentralized networks (save for their distributed nature). Download from multiple sources would be a trivial hack. What advantage would Napster hold over, say KaZaA? One thing: speed and reliability. I'm on a reasonably fast connection here at UMass, and I rarely see/saw a rate with Gnutella or (before giFT was blocked) FastTrack that was even half of what my average Napster download was.
People will go back to Napster if it comes back like it did before (especially with features like bandwidth aggregation). With less hassle and faster speeds, I'd say it's a given.
This is because Metallica (through Creeping Death Music and E/M Ventures) actually own their own recordings, unlike most artists. I imagine Dre also owns his recent work (Death Row still owns his old material, IIRC).
Interestingly enough, Metallica never sued to get Napster shut down and have, afaik, refused to provide any sort of brief for the RIAA against Napster. I get the impression that they merely wanted to see their studio material kept off. They never even asked to have live bootlegs banned.
One other feature that could get some payers: rescue privelege. After a story is rejected, it would sit in a "Save Me" bin for a few days. Subscribers could see what was in the bin and vote on whether it should be posted. After a few days, if a majority of subscribers who voted like the submission, it gets posted to the front page (perhaps instead of posted by, the blurb would be"Rescued from CmdrTaco's rejection bin"...).
Yeah, there's a potential for abuse, but how many trolls would pay $5 a month to crapflood. And if a troll wants to pay for /., I say let him. He's funding it for the rest of us.
Another feature that could be interesting: allowing subscribers to moderate the editors. I can envision subscribers having a dropdown box on the article pages asking "Does this article belong on Slashdot"? Kind of like metamod...
More controversial might be putting in a five-minute delay for logged-in users and a 10-minute delay for AC's, while subscribers get a live view of the discussions and articles. By this I mean that the AC would only see the state of the site 10 minutes before, the logged-in user sees a 5-minute delay, and a subscriber gets it as it happens.
First Post trolls would then be limited to paying subscribers.
That's what I think Microsoft Passport is going to be, eventually. Pay $2.50 a month plus $2.50 per site you subscribe to, or something.
I tend to think of China as the dream of Mussolini: the corporate state....
Actually, I guess we're both right. FDR was very similar to Mussolini and Hitler. Might have something to do with why I consider him one of the worst presidents of this century.
Red Hat?
How could you watch pr0n if both of your hands were on the keyboard? Answer me that!?
How does iptables protect against Windows viruses? I could see a Perl script that filters incoming mail to remove VBScript, et al, but I fail to see how iptables can protect your Windows boxen from infectious code.
That said, running an iptables based firewall is generally a good idea...
I have heard ver nice things about GriSoft.
Yeah, but I bet they wouldn't mind you fitting one of their vehicles in the back of that one...
Right here. It's pretty small and light, and it's perfect for urban transport...
</sarcasm>Sorry, I just had to do it...
Google has had the ads atop the results (as well as off to the side) since they debuted the system. They do charge more, but they're still on a fixed cost.
Microsoft's goal is to make Windows as bloated as emacs... *rimshot*
You can install Mandrake with 2.4 and then download a 2.2 kernel from Cooker (currently: kernel22-2.2.20-8mdk). I've never done that, so I can't vouch for the method, but it's there (and based on where it appears in the mirrors, it's also on the first CD of Mandrake. But I agree that, at least in expert mode, it should be an explicit option.
HardDrake is useless and is no longer maintained by Mandrake. 8.2 should be getting rid of it entirely.
This topic just has too much potential....
Does this mean that the root passwords are limited to three letters? (and that ASS is the most common password?)
On a serious note, this doesn't protect against the special glasses the invisible NSA agents that are dropped from black helicopters that allow them to see through walls and watch my screen as I type my root password. I'm not using it.
Goddamnit! I want to listen to Wayne Newton for the entire trip to Mars! And to Tom Jones on the way back!
Why must everyone ruin my dreams?
The statement that the media is left-biased can be misleading. Yes, there is a bias. But this does not imply a massive left-wing conspiracy in the media. It's more of a symptom of the Northeast establishment higher education. {I speak as a student at UMass Amherst].
Most of the journalists in the media right now went to the same Northeastern schools (the Ivies, UMass, BU, NYU, Amherst, et al), or to satellite campuses elsewhere (Stanford, UCLA, et al) [I only say satellite campus to indicate that they have a similar mindset]. As the journalists all have a similar educational background, they have similar worldviews. Those views tend to be slightly to somewhat left of center.
One of the things that irks me is the idea that the right is behind the copyright term extensions. Consider this: where do Hollywood's campaign contributions go? Generally, Hollywood has sent more money to the Democrats than to the Republicans. The bulk of copyright extensions have been signed into law by Democratic presidents and passed by Democratic Congresses.
Yes, Sonny Bono was a Republican in a Republican Congress, but he had a vested interest in the copyright term extension (how much a year was he making in royalties from his "hits" in the '60s?). The Republicans most likely let a bill designed to help Democrats (by making larger profits for many of the Democrats' largest contributors) through as a quid pro quo for something they wanted passed.