I'm saying it's not fair.
I'm not saying that's not the way it is.
As far as software, it's like painting. You hire a company of 200 to repaint all 47 buildings in the campus. You hire 1 guy to do the mural in the library. Guess which painting will make onlookers think?
Oh, and the sky is ceiling-tile speckled off-white, unfortunately.
I would be thrilled if they made a keyboard where you could pop out the keys and put them back in any order you like, Lego-like.
Also, the whole QWERTY thing can go.
Why don't they make a touch keyboard, like the light switches you just touch, and don't even have to press in? Talk about noiseless (for class, meetings, etc.), and durability (no moving parts)
What about real voice recognition? Could they not put a chip in a mic to do voice activation, instead of making the PC cpu do it?
You read a passage, they record your voice signature, and burn a $5 chip. Then they put the chip in the keyboard, so most words, you can just say, and type the funky ones (like the ones you can't pronouce cuz you're from the South). Then the chip in the keyboard just sends the unicode to the OS in ASCII.:)
Heck, why don't they use intellisense with the dictionary, you type the first few letters and press tab when your word appears.
Back to the little keyboard: A novel concept, but one that does not eliminate the basic problem that (most) people just don't like to type.
Sounds like Microsoft is going to tie AOL into their system to suck them in. Then as people "graduate" to the real internet, it'll be an easy transition to MSN.
It's a good move for Microsoft, because AOL users would more likely get XP, since there would be no need for them to install the AOL client.
It's a verrry bad move for AOL, because in doing so they are exposing themselves to the "I hate XP and therefore I hate AOL" mentality. Childish if you ask me, but then we're talking about the general public.
As far as the other stuff AOL owns (Winamp and the like), I don't see AOL pulling the plug. AOL will feel it needs to remain more than a virtual subdivision of MS on the XP desktop.
For Netscape, couldn't care less, since Netscape no longer exists as an independant company.
As far as Mozilla is concerned, they need to ink a deal with SONY to be on the playstation.
That'll mean that every (nearly) 10-14 years old will get the Mozilla browser along with their game box (and isn't that what most home PCs are for these days?
An hour later I'll return it, in the shrinkwrap, unopened, with the receipt and all.
When the clerk at Border's asks me why I am returning it, I'll say that since the recording label is a member of the RIAA, and since the RIAA is infringing on my freedom of speech by shutting down services that I use to express myself, I refuse to contribute financially to the label and to the RIAA.
Then, I will ask the sales clerk to locate a label that is not on the RIAA membership (which I will have printed conveniently) and I will look at that CD (if there is one in the store) and I will buy it. If there isn't one, then I will say that I will go to a different store.
If enough people do that, I suppose labels will steer clear of the RIAA.
I call my friend from work, and say, Hey, listen to this:
Then I proceed to read to him, verbatim, a copyrighted short story (my hypothetical friend is a verrry patient person).
Does that make the telephone system subject to , as you put it:
<quote>
Napster case did set a legal precedent for saying that any service that can be used to transfer copyrighted materials can be challenged and or shut down.
</quote>
I don't see the RIAA suing SBC or AT&T...
Is it just my imagiation or is our Constitutionally protected Freedom of Speech being crushed by non-publicly-accountable corporate interests? I can hear British Royalty sneering at us after all the suffering and dying our Revolutionary War heroes went through... Doesn't Memorial day count for anything anymore?
On an aside, I imagine British Royalty knows how to sneer quite effectively.
When I said Slashdot I meant the whole of Slashdot, reviews and comments. Especially comments (except the ones that start with yo mama or goat references).
I stopped fussing a while back about software not installing correcly on my Compaq Presario(obviously).
Former Freelance wrote :
<quote>
But since this guy paid for the game, and it's only Slashdot, this is "acceptable" in this case.
</quote>
Realizing that Slashdot is more reverently followed in technical matters than all corporate zines together, the statement must have been highly satirical
Does it begin to be spam if you no longer want to receive the email and cannot for the life of you figure out the opt-out method (maybe because it doesn't exist/was not meant to be found)?
When does a perfectly legit newsletter from a large corporation begin to be spam? When the user does not want to receive it anymore. Why? Becaus it is unnecessary and unwanted traffic.
If you think the price it to high for a commodity, be it a Coke or a PC, then reevaluate your need for the commodity.
As far as the supplier of the commodity, it is in his/her best interest to charge as much as the market will bear, as long as he/she does not monopolize the market and/or act in collusion with other suppliers to artificially create a scarcity.
As far as the consumer of the commodity, it is in his/her interest to pay as little as possible for the commodity, and he/she will seek the lowest-priced supplier.
This is the concept of supply and demand.
I am all for that sort of dynamic pricing with the consumer.
(ever been to a swap-meet or a flea-market?)
The reality is that pricing is arbitrary. The people who set the price sit in an office on the 23rd floor of a concrete and glass building, and they do not know the reality of the consumer.
All I would say to potential users of this system is that they should give a complete daily history (with charts maybe) of the price of the item since it was first offered for sale (kind of like the stock market) and that they should give potential customers the opportunity to say how much they would be willing to pay (as a guideline, not auction-like where the item goes to the highest bidder).
If 30 people buy something one day, and the machine thinks that's a good return, then the machine may raise the price. The next day, with a higher price, 30 people buy the product, the computer thinks that's good and raises the price. The next day only 11 people buy the product, and the pc thnks that's bad, then lowers the price, and the next day 30 people buy the product and the machine thinks that's good, and raises the price, and then 35 people buy the product, the machine thinks that's good, and raises the price, and the next day 20 people buy the product and the machine thinks that's okay and leaves the price unchanged, and the next day 10 people buy the product and the machine thinks that's bad and lowers the price, and the next day 12 people buy the product and the machine thinks that's bad and lowers the price (and the factory gets a production reduction order) and 45 people buy the product and the machine thinks that's good and raises the price...
Aiii! This may work beautifully in the arcane and arbitrary world of higher education, but in the real world, you can't afford to understand every line of code.
Example: I need to print a box on a windoze screen. I say: msgbox "somejunk"
Do I know what the source code for msgbox is? No
Do I know what win32API it's calling? No
Do I NEED to know that to use the msgbox function? NO!
That is the reason why I spent $600+ bux for my version of VB6, so I wouldn't have to.
I give you another example: I wrote a function that hits a web site (with xmlhttp) from the web server. I send a zip code, and retrieve the Census Tract, the Average Income, and varous other geographical codes, and I dump them in a database. This is used by the Audit department at my company.
Do I know how XMLHTTP implements the TCP/IP bindings? No, and I couldn't care less. And neither does my boss, because I did it in less than half a day.
I implemented PGP encryption on email with GPL software, in 2 hours. I did the same thing with Rijndael.
I made a file upload utility from GPL'd software for my intranet server that does not require a dll. It works like a charm, and I did not read the source code. OH MY GOD MY BOSS WAS PLEASED, because I had it running 3 days before the deadline.
The reality is that if I had to learn why a program works a certain way before I used it, I wouldn't be using the internet (cuz i can't figure out IP domains and subdomains)
I don't even program in C, or Java, or Lisp, or Perl, but I am good with vb and vbscript. Does that mean I have to rewrite C programs in vb?
In the real world, you reuse as much as possible, whether you wrote it or not, whether you could replicate it or not, simply because it makes sense economically.
Our stock is up, I got a raise, my wife is happy, and I work 40 hrs per week MAX. And I still have time to read (and post to) slashdot).
It's the real world, the one where grades don't count, the one where your net worth is directly affected by your efficiency.
But, in the arcane and arbitrary world of Academia, true, the rules are different. Which is to me a stupid way of preparing people for real life. Imagine a drill instructor teaching new recruits how to disassemble and reassemble helicopter turbines just so they can get air support when they're on the ground, as foot soldiers.
I wouldn't mind if the machine would monitor itself for performance, see if a piece of hardware is failing, see if a piece of software is failing, and notify the sysadmin, maybe reduce it's expected throughput and notify the load-balancer (say ram drops from 512 to 128, so hits per seconds need to drop from 300 to 50), and make a diagnostics report for the problem, so that if the machine is under warranty, the tech can bring the right parts to fix it, and if not, then the parts vendor can ship the right parts.
Also, I wouldn't mind if the machine would throttle itself to manageable levels when becoming unstable, instead of crashing.
Also, the machine should be "aware" of the other machines in the organization so it can notify them of the reduced performance.
This would essentially be a self-load balancing system.
I wonder to what extent Google has implemented something like that in their 8000-strong server farm.
Let your customers participate in the design and development of the software via sourceforge or that sort of thing.
That means, however, that their own changes might be used by others (the competition perhaps), and by others who follow later on.
But I don't see how you could chage them for that.
On the other hand: you could have them make modifications to the code on a non-production machine, and send you their modifications for approval/review/editing. Then, you would maintain a copy of their modified source code. All this would have to be rigorously documented, of course, but that's a solution which you could charge for.
The point of failure thing is a good point. If 10% of their servers fail (800) they still have 7200 that work fine, and they can probably handle things just fine.
If 50% of their servers fail, then they would be slow, but still work fine.
If 90 percent of their servers failed, they would still have 800 up. It would be very slow, but might still handle the load.
If you had 1000 servers with disk array and your system failed, then ouch!
In the other hand, they probably have half a dozen burned CDs of their implementation of Linux (depending on the HW configuration), so if a server fails, they take it offline, put another on there, load the OS already preconfigured from the CD (with all conf and stuff done already) and load it online.
One tech can probably put 10 servers online a day.
So 30 techs can probably put up 300 servers a day.
Assuming each Linux box operates without admin intervention for 90 days, there would be 88 boxes that need to be fixed each day (about 1%), and so 9 techs could handle it.
They probably have more than that.
And since the technology is not hard to understand because it's a dual pentium PC, they don't have to call the IBM mainframe guy over. Also, they probably have a few dozen servers already configured, ready to be popped into the rack.
The CIA investigates events outside the US. The FBI investigates events within the US.
For example, if a Russian diplomat is in Washington DC, the FBI investigates (tails) him.
The two agencies cooperate (they say), so that they do not overstep on each other's areas.
This is why the FBI went to the bombed US embassies in Africa a couple years back, since they're technically US sovereign soil.
Furthermore, the CIA does not have investigative powers. They do not serve out serch warrants or the like. The CIA is under the Executive Branch of the government, whereas the FBI is under the legislative branch, and can serve search warrants and the like.
As far as what they were doing with the hackers in Russia, I surmise only that since the hackers had commited crimes in the United States, it only makes sense that a US investigative body would investigate.
About the military, I don't think we want them investigating commercial crimes (you stole an apple, so we're sending the Marines).
New USMC slogan: "All your base are belong to U.S."
As far as Microsoft wanting their source code back, I am fairly certain that was not the case. They are already experts at introducing nearly unfixable bugs into their source code.
To the Chinese, and especially the chinese military, posturing is all important. They know they can't fight a war with the US (They'd lose 75% of their air force in the first week and we'd lose, hum, 2 or 3 planes), and then heads would roll in Beijing.
What they want is to look good.
So what the US should do is say: "Oops, we made a mistake, the plane was in Chinese airspace, it was a mechanical error. The pilots thought they were in International space. The chinese pilot was right, and we're sorry. Here's $20 million for the plane, $1 million for the family to compensate for their loss. And let's forget all about this and get all the congressmen and businessmen back happily trading.
Then, after we get our pilots back and most of the plane, we have an independent agency study the thing, and then, much later, we say: "oops, made a mistake, the plane was in international airspace after all, and, well, we withdraw our apology."
An everybody in the world, Chinese included, will realize we were lying through our teeth earlier, and it's okay, it's called bluffing. And then, next year, we revoke their Most Favored Nation trading privileges (that's definitely going to happen anyway).
The other thing that the Chinese fail to understand is that when a foreign nation messes with US servicemen and servicewomen, it's not about politics anymore. The american people can be very tenacious (how long have we been circling Cuba?)
The last point I'll make is that the internet is not going to mean anything in a country with a strong secret police. They need a Jeffersonian revolution and public accountability before the internet does anything there.
You know, I always thought that when you have a slow loading web site (not like/. ) you would wnat to replace the stupid...Please Wait... (i say stupid because they are already waiting) with...sponsored by SomeBigCORP... in a span tag that disappears when the page displays. Hell, the user is staring at the screen, waiting, and there's nothing but white (or off gray) space on the screen, and the sponsor's name...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm saying it's not fair.
I'm not saying that's not the way it is.
As far as software, it's like painting. You hire a company of 200 to repaint all 47 buildings in the campus. You hire 1 guy to do the mural in the library. Guess which painting will make onlookers think?
Oh, and the sky is ceiling-tile speckled off-white, unfortunately.
Good article. Kudos to the attorney for his work. I suspect a client might have been charged a pretty penny for all this work. We appreciate it.
I would be thrilled if they made a keyboard where you could pop out the keys and put them back in any order you like, Lego-like.
:)
Also, the whole QWERTY thing can go.
Why don't they make a touch keyboard, like the light switches you just touch, and don't even have to press in? Talk about noiseless (for class, meetings, etc.), and durability (no moving parts)
What about real voice recognition? Could they not put a chip in a mic to do voice activation, instead of making the PC cpu do it?
You read a passage, they record your voice signature, and burn a $5 chip. Then they put the chip in the keyboard, so most words, you can just say, and type the funky ones (like the ones you can't pronouce cuz you're from the South). Then the chip in the keyboard just sends the unicode to the OS in ASCII.
Heck, why don't they use intellisense with the dictionary, you type the first few letters and press tab when your word appears.
Back to the little keyboard: A novel concept, but one that does not eliminate the basic problem that (most) people just don't like to type.
Sounds like Microsoft is going to tie AOL into their system to suck them in. Then as people "graduate" to the real internet, it'll be an easy transition to MSN.
It's a good move for Microsoft, because AOL users would more likely get XP, since there would be no need for them to install the AOL client.
It's a verrry bad move for AOL, because in doing so they are exposing themselves to the "I hate XP and therefore I hate AOL" mentality. Childish if you ask me, but then we're talking about the general public.
As far as the other stuff AOL owns (Winamp and the like), I don't see AOL pulling the plug. AOL will feel it needs to remain more than a virtual subdivision of MS on the XP desktop.
For Netscape, couldn't care less, since Netscape no longer exists as an independant company.
As far as Mozilla is concerned, they need to ink a deal with SONY to be on the playstation.
That'll mean that every (nearly) 10-14 years old will get the Mozilla browser along with their game box (and isn't that what most home PCs are for these days?
Yahhh, but that would reflect badly on my parenting abilities (teaching right and wrong stuff)...
If I had kids anyway...
I'll play a little game with them:
I'll go buy a CD of whatever artist.
An hour later I'll return it, in the shrinkwrap, unopened, with the receipt and all.
When the clerk at Border's asks me why I am returning it, I'll say that since the recording label is a member of the RIAA, and since the RIAA is infringing on my freedom of speech by shutting down services that I use to express myself, I refuse to contribute financially to the label and to the RIAA.
Then, I will ask the sales clerk to locate a label that is not on the RIAA membership (which I will have printed conveniently) and I will look at that CD (if there is one in the store) and I will buy it. If there isn't one, then I will say that I will go to a different store.
If enough people do that, I suppose labels will steer clear of the RIAA.
Any questions?
200 years from now?
...ago!
Try 2 years...
I call my friend from work, and say, Hey, listen to this:
Then I proceed to read to him, verbatim, a copyrighted short story (my hypothetical friend is a verrry patient person).
Does that make the telephone system subject to , as you put it:
<quote>
Napster case did set a legal precedent for saying that any service that can be used to transfer copyrighted materials can be challenged and or shut down.
</quote>
I don't see the RIAA suing SBC or AT&T...
Is it just my imagiation or is our Constitutionally protected Freedom of Speech being crushed by non-publicly-accountable corporate interests? I can hear British Royalty sneering at us after all the suffering and dying our Revolutionary War heroes went through... Doesn't Memorial day count for anything anymore?
On an aside, I imagine British Royalty knows how to sneer quite effectively.
Agreed entirely.
When I said Slashdot I meant the whole of Slashdot, reviews and comments. Especially comments (except the ones that start with yo mama or goat references).
I stopped fussing a while back about software not installing correcly on my Compaq Presario(obviously).
Former Freelance wrote :
<quote>
But since this guy paid for the game, and it's only Slashdot, this is "acceptable" in this case.
</quote>
Realizing that Slashdot is more reverently followed in technical matters than all corporate zines together, the statement must have been highly satirical
Does it begin to be spam if you no longer want to receive the email and cannot for the life of you figure out the opt-out method (maybe because it doesn't exist/was not meant to be found)?
When does a perfectly legit newsletter from a large corporation begin to be spam? When the user does not want to receive it anymore. Why? Becaus it is unnecessary and unwanted traffic.
That's my opinion.
If you think the price it to high for a commodity, be it a Coke or a PC, then reevaluate your need for the commodity.
As far as the supplier of the commodity, it is in his/her best interest to charge as much as the market will bear, as long as he/she does not monopolize the market and/or act in collusion with other suppliers to artificially create a scarcity.
As far as the consumer of the commodity, it is in his/her interest to pay as little as possible for the commodity, and he/she will seek the lowest-priced supplier.
This is the concept of supply and demand.
I am all for that sort of dynamic pricing with the consumer.
(ever been to a swap-meet or a flea-market?)
The reality is that pricing is arbitrary. The people who set the price sit in an office on the 23rd floor of a concrete and glass building, and they do not know the reality of the consumer.
All I would say to potential users of this system is that they should give a complete daily history (with charts maybe) of the price of the item since it was first offered for sale (kind of like the stock market) and that they should give potential customers the opportunity to say how much they would be willing to pay (as a guideline, not auction-like where the item goes to the highest bidder).
If 30 people buy something one day, and the machine thinks that's a good return, then the machine may raise the price. The next day, with a higher price, 30 people buy the product, the computer thinks that's good and raises the price. The next day only 11 people buy the product, and the pc thnks that's bad, then lowers the price, and the next day 30 people buy the product and the machine thinks that's good, and raises the price, and then 35 people buy the product, the machine thinks that's good, and raises the price, and the next day 20 people buy the product and the machine thinks that's okay and leaves the price unchanged, and the next day 10 people buy the product and the machine thinks that's bad and lowers the price, and the next day 12 people buy the product and the machine thinks that's bad and lowers the price (and the factory gets a production reduction order) and 45 people buy the product and the machine thinks that's good and raises the price...
Well, you get the idea.
Does SlashDot constitute a Union of sorts? Mmmmm...
Aiii! This may work beautifully in the arcane and arbitrary world of higher education, but in the real world, you can't afford to understand every line of code.
Example: I need to print a box on a windoze screen. I say: msgbox "somejunk"
Do I know what the source code for msgbox is? No
Do I know what win32API it's calling? No
Do I NEED to know that to use the msgbox function? NO!
That is the reason why I spent $600+ bux for my version of VB6, so I wouldn't have to.
I give you another example: I wrote a function that hits a web site (with xmlhttp) from the web server. I send a zip code, and retrieve the Census Tract, the Average Income, and varous other geographical codes, and I dump them in a database. This is used by the Audit department at my company.
Do I know how XMLHTTP implements the TCP/IP bindings? No, and I couldn't care less. And neither does my boss, because I did it in less than half a day.
I implemented PGP encryption on email with GPL software, in 2 hours. I did the same thing with Rijndael.
I made a file upload utility from GPL'd software for my intranet server that does not require a dll. It works like a charm, and I did not read the source code. OH MY GOD MY BOSS WAS PLEASED, because I had it running 3 days before the deadline.
The reality is that if I had to learn why a program works a certain way before I used it, I wouldn't be using the internet (cuz i can't figure out IP domains and subdomains)
I don't even program in C, or Java, or Lisp, or Perl, but I am good with vb and vbscript. Does that mean I have to rewrite C programs in vb?
In the real world, you reuse as much as possible, whether you wrote it or not, whether you could replicate it or not, simply because it makes sense economically.
Our stock is up, I got a raise, my wife is happy, and I work 40 hrs per week MAX. And I still have time to read (and post to) slashdot).
It's the real world, the one where grades don't count, the one where your net worth is directly affected by your efficiency.
But, in the arcane and arbitrary world of Academia, true, the rules are different. Which is to me a stupid way of preparing people for real life. Imagine a drill instructor teaching new recruits how to disassemble and reassemble helicopter turbines just so they can get air support when they're on the ground, as foot soldiers.
You know a lot of american 13 years old who write as well as he does?
Cut him some slack will ya?
I wouldn't mind if the machine would monitor itself for performance, see if a piece of hardware is failing, see if a piece of software is failing, and notify the sysadmin, maybe reduce it's expected throughput and notify the load-balancer (say ram drops from 512 to 128, so hits per seconds need to drop from 300 to 50), and make a diagnostics report for the problem, so that if the machine is under warranty, the tech can bring the right parts to fix it, and if not, then the parts vendor can ship the right parts.
Also, I wouldn't mind if the machine would throttle itself to manageable levels when becoming unstable, instead of crashing.
Also, the machine should be "aware" of the other machines in the organization so it can notify them of the reduced performance.
This would essentially be a self-load balancing system.
I wonder to what extent Google has implemented something like that in their 8000-strong server farm.
Let your customers participate in the design and development of the software via sourceforge or that sort of thing.
That means, however, that their own changes might be used by others (the competition perhaps), and by others who follow later on.
But I don't see how you could chage them for that.
On the other hand: you could have them make modifications to the code on a non-production machine, and send you their modifications for approval/review/editing. Then, you would maintain a copy of their modified source code. All this would have to be rigorously documented, of course, but that's a solution which you could charge for.
Is it just me or has the whole dot-com bust made it sound like "VC Money" stands for "VietCong money"?
yeah, it's just me.
The point of failure thing is a good point. If 10% of their servers fail (800) they still have 7200 that work fine, and they can probably handle things just fine.
If 50% of their servers fail, then they would be slow, but still work fine.
If 90 percent of their servers failed, they would still have 800 up. It would be very slow, but might still handle the load.
If you had 1000 servers with disk array and your system failed, then ouch!
In the other hand, they probably have half a dozen burned CDs of their implementation of Linux (depending on the HW configuration), so if a server fails, they take it offline, put another on there, load the OS already preconfigured from the CD (with all conf and stuff done already) and load it online.
One tech can probably put 10 servers online a day.
So 30 techs can probably put up 300 servers a day.
Assuming each Linux box operates without admin intervention for 90 days, there would be 88 boxes that need to be fixed each day (about 1%), and so 9 techs could handle it.
They probably have more than that.
And since the technology is not hard to understand because it's a dual pentium PC, they don't have to call the IBM mainframe guy over. Also, they probably have a few dozen servers already configured, ready to be popped into the rack.
civics class? oh, that... hum, yes, of course, i stand corrected...
The CIA investigates events outside the US. The FBI investigates events within the US.
For example, if a Russian diplomat is in Washington DC, the FBI investigates (tails) him.
The two agencies cooperate (they say), so that they do not overstep on each other's areas.
This is why the FBI went to the bombed US embassies in Africa a couple years back, since they're technically US sovereign soil.
Furthermore, the CIA does not have investigative powers. They do not serve out serch warrants or the like. The CIA is under the Executive Branch of the government, whereas the FBI is under the legislative branch, and can serve search warrants and the like.
As far as what they were doing with the hackers in Russia, I surmise only that since the hackers had commited crimes in the United States, it only makes sense that a US investigative body would investigate.
About the military, I don't think we want them investigating commercial crimes (you stole an apple, so we're sending the Marines).
New USMC slogan: "All your base are belong to U.S."
As far as Microsoft wanting their source code back, I am fairly certain that was not the case. They are already experts at introducing nearly unfixable bugs into their source code.
To the Chinese, and especially the chinese military, posturing is all important. They know they can't fight a war with the US (They'd lose 75% of their air force in the first week and we'd lose, hum, 2 or 3 planes), and then heads would roll in Beijing.
What they want is to look good.
So what the US should do is say: "Oops, we made a mistake, the plane was in Chinese airspace, it was a mechanical error. The pilots thought they were in International space. The chinese pilot was right, and we're sorry. Here's $20 million for the plane, $1 million for the family to compensate for their loss. And let's forget all about this and get all the congressmen and businessmen back happily trading.
Then, after we get our pilots back and most of the plane, we have an independent agency study the thing, and then, much later, we say: "oops, made a mistake, the plane was in international airspace after all, and, well, we withdraw our apology."
An everybody in the world, Chinese included, will realize we were lying through our teeth earlier, and it's okay, it's called bluffing. And then, next year, we revoke their Most Favored Nation trading privileges (that's definitely going to happen anyway).
The other thing that the Chinese fail to understand is that when a foreign nation messes with US servicemen and servicewomen, it's not about politics anymore. The american people can be very tenacious (how long have we been circling Cuba?)
The last point I'll make is that the internet is not going to mean anything in a country with a strong secret police. They need a Jeffersonian revolution and public accountability before the internet does anything there.
You know, I always thought that when you have a slow loading web site (not like /. ) you would wnat to replace the stupid ...Please Wait... (i say stupid because they are already waiting) with ...sponsored by SomeBigCORP... in a span tag that disappears when the page displays. Hell, the user is staring at the screen, waiting, and there's nothing but white (or off gray) space on the screen, and the sponsor's name...
:)
And then, when the page does display, no ads
There's a fence around most houses. That's to keep the people out, right?
I don't read the newspaper for that reason. That, by the way, nearly pays for my internet access.
All I'm saying is that in the grand scheme of things, slashdot is not worth more than a few bux a year.
I mean, I go months without looking at it.
I would rather pay $25 bux for a nice dinner than pay for slashdot for 10 years. You figure it out.
Also, as to my response, check earlier in the posting, there's a longer, more detailed version.