I've never taken a history of science course, but I see some flaws in your reasoning:
You neglect the influence of the ancient Greeks on those religious cultures, and on modern cultures despite the religions.
You imply that the religions are responsible for the intellectual foundation of Western society. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say the church scholars are responsible for it? It is the nature of those who would choose that life to treasure knowledge and history, regardless of religious teachings. With religion so dominant, where do you think academic-minded people would gravitate?
Now consider this, where is the scientific method in this religious tradition?
I don't remember the details, by I heard from the "grapevine" that it was done by tricking SETI@home into thinking existing users had joined a team when they hadn't. No data was fabricated, just team credit.
This is just the sort of fuzzy study that can be used as "proof" to further socioligical or political agendas. We (as in knowledgable and frequent users of the 'net) need to keep track this group's research to ensure that it is impartial. Consider the hysteria after Littleton, or the long running effort to censor anything that resembles porn. This study could be skewed in ways that could give credibility to all that silliness.
Of course, I don't understand why this is a big deal. The GVU has been running a Web user survey for years.
I haven't read the book (Techgnosis), but I've read about it, and it is hardly the sort of thing that advocates psuedo-science and mysticism. It could be perceived as a critique to those who believe that stuff, because it assumes that these mystical ideas are human inventions, and like the technology of the modern era, they are simply products of our innate dreams and desires.
Besides, this is extremely revelant, because geek culture has always had interest in the mythical and occult. We recognize the falsity, but are amused by it, because these imaginary systems are usually coherant and creative, in their own bizarre logic. I mean, how many of you don't know people who Magic, read fantasy, play role playing games (of any genre), or do other such things? Where do you think the computer terms "daemon", "wizard", and "guru" come from?
I'm not proposing that casual users subsidize heavy bandwidth users. I'm quite willing to pay for the bandwidth I use. But why should I be forced pay a lot for the use of some off-site machine when I have perfectly good ADSL connection to my home? (Personally, my own upstream usage would still be less than my downstream. I just want to check my mail on my home box from work.)
And why is my local telephone and cable monopoly, who's positions are selected as much by law as market behavior, setting policy that is contrary to the design and purpose of the technology they're selling, and in a fundamentally freedom restricting manner?
Besides, bandwidth isn't really that relevant. Eventually, it will not be an issue for most people. Consider the bandwidth required for downloading DVD-quality movies, which is the holy grail that all these companies are searching for. Compare that to the requirements of serving a small website. The cost becomes neglible.
But what if these companies will not change policies? Why should they, when they can make more money by restricting alternatives than by selling to the market that wants to produce them. This is what I am concerned with.
I looked into getting ADSL through Flashcomm but decided against it because of the "no servers" clause in the service agreement. How common is this among high speed provders?
Currently MediaOne and Bellsouth (the major cable modem and ADSL providers in my area) aren't quite so restrictive, but their agreements are worded in such a way that they can weasel out and block your servers if they want to. I'm very afraid that this might become the norm for the residential Internet provider market.
Consider why: Denying you the use of a mailserver "encourages" you to sign up for the provider's mail services, which may cost extra. The same applies to Web and ftp space. It is also a convient way to keep the bandwidth allocation low and still pretend to offer "unlimited" access.
But the more nefarious reason is that that helps maintain the status quo. Cable companies want to restrict "pull"-type distribution methods because they keep you from watching TV, and phone companies want to limit your bandwidth and methods of communication to protect their local phone monopolies and long distance services.
The most important feature of the Internet, that it allows one to publish to the world at large with almost neglible cost, is being squashed with these "no servers" clauses. Everything we hate about the media congolmerates and their "popular culture" cash cow is being perpetuated.
So what I want to know is, are the any consumer groups that address this issue? And does anyone know of any providers that specifically allow all types of servers?
Perhaps the least-becoming aspect of the geek community is its institutional arrogance.
Ha! This is our most redeeming feature.
It's nice that this guy recognizes that without geeks there would be no technological industries, but he's still stuck in the Dilbert-esque mindset that developers/engineers/artists/etc can do nothing without the "enlightened" leadership of management. Managers without technical backgrounds are not our leaders. They exist to manage resources, schmooze customers, and keep us grounded in fiscal reality, but they have no business making technical decisions. They do not merit higher salaries, nor should they have greater clout than senior developers.
The CEO of Novell isn't successful because he knows how to manage geeks, he is successful because he is one. He knows the technology, therefore he knows how to make clueful decisions reagarding it. The developers respect him for it, so he has legitimate authority. A manager without respect has no real authority, only the authority to sign paychecks.
I'm afraid this article do the opposite of the intentions of its author. Mediocre managers will read it and think "ah, so that's how I control my geeks. Now they will do my bidding!" which is exactly the way to piss us off. Managers should learn humility, learn that respect must be earned, and not try to manipulate us.
Stealing lunch money is not a petty problem. It is theft and extortion. It is little different than being mugged on the street, or having crooked cops or mobsters demand "protection" money. The only real difference is that kids and teenagers are young, and may not know what they are doing. But that is not an excuse to let it slide unpunished, or dismiss it as part of the way school is.
Bullying is similar. Beating someone up will put you in jail in the real world, but in school it is dismissed as harmless fun. In Georgia recently there was a kid who was killed by a 14 year-old bully and charged with murder, and people are complaining because it was an "accident".
Wake up. There is real tyranny going on, real Lord of the Flies type stuff. And it keeps happening because no one takes it seriously and the offenders go unpunished. Your attitute is the problem, because the schools seem to share it.
People also today believe that everyone should be or is equal. I personally have no clue as to why or how this came to be considering it's just totally obvious that everyone is not. So I think than when they encounter someone with a bit more brains than the rest, they cry out in anger shouting 'HOW DARE YOU BE DIFFRENT' and strike out at the person.
I get real suspicious when people start saying things like this. When people claim all are "equal" it almost always refers to rights under law. But those with an elitist aganda take it to mean equal in abilities, and use that defintion to attack egalitarian ideals.
Remember that the high school cliques do not believe people are "equal" in either sense. It is not that they want to dumb you down, they just want you to submit to their supposed authority. You become as bad as them when you think you are better simply by nature of your intelligence. Talents will help you to succeed, but they are no excuse to become a tyrant yourself.
"Brainy" people don't like Star Trek, because for all their efforts of its writers to make some of the technology seem plausible, it is ruined by ridiculous technobabble and a complete lack of understanding of basic science.
For example, I saw an episode of "Voyager" where they discover text written on the atoms of molecules of DNA, as if they were solid tinker toy models! And what was the text written in? Sub-sub-atomic particles? geez
By keeping the technology vague, Star Wars allows the audience to concentrate on important aspects of the story (like mystical new-age crap like the Force) without it being ruined by blatant technical errors.
The author of this article hopelessly confuses the meaning of "free software". He quotes a lot of Stallman to explain the slight ideological differences between "free software" and "open source", but then continues using the word "free" in the gratis sense to draw a comparison between "free software" and the software that these two companies are trying to help people create. Unless I greatly misunderstand the qualifications to be "open source", the products created under these kind of contracts will be "free software", and also will be free (gratis) to all who want them. The monetary transaction involved is to have the software created in order to sell services or add value to existing proprietary software.
I don't understand why you consider patent law a symptom of big government. It is large corporations who who want broad patents, to lengthen copyright terms and to weaken fair use provisions. Bureaucrats just support whatever gets them the most campaign contributions.
Heh, this is kind of like the so-called "neural basis of attention" that figured prominately in Bruce Sterling's novel Distraction. I wonder how long it will be before I can take a drug and become consiously multithreaded.:)
Exactly, it is communal property. To modify a GPL work, you must join the community. If you do not share the interests of the community, you really have no business using its code. No one can be forced to join that community, so it is entirely within the bounds of most variations of libertarian and anarchist thought.
A BSD-style license allows someone to invest in and profit from my work, but it won't allow me to take a share for my investment. That's downright exploitive, and not in-line with any of these ideologies.
It all comes down to who you are working for. When I write GPL code, I'm working for myself and the free software community. I'm making an investment, and my return on that investment is all the other free software made available by other programmers who share the same goal. We do not allow that investment to go to any other ends but our own. To everyone who isn't a part of this community, it might as well be private property. But the great thing is that anyone may join this community and benefit the way that we have. You are not denied a profit, only an exclusive one.
I believe in intellectual property, and I release all my public code under GPL. It is my gift to the community, and "viral" nature of the license ensures that my gift "will keep on giving". If I release code under a BSD license, it may be co-opted by any party outside the free software community, and used to ends that directly hurt that community. The article claims that the BSD license is more in-line with capitalist and individualist ideology. Aside from the gross error of equating those two philisophical viewpoints, the GPL is far more capticalistic and individualistic than BSD licenses. A capitalist values contracts, and an individualist values self-determination. A BSD-style license is a weak contract that gives me no control over how the products of my labor are used. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but it contradicts his argument against the GPL.
I just want to make clear that I'm not questioning Mr Leonard's jounalistic ability; his articles on Linux, and geeky things in general, have been suprerb. But in comparison, this one stinks. It begins as a review of a new product, but halfway through the article it becomes apparent that it is really an article on Linux fragmentation, and a poor one at that. I'm not claiming that current GUI configuration tools are good (personally I despise Linuxconf and have had problems with Gnome), but they are better now than when they were nonexistant before. It really isn't an appropriate topic to focus concerns over fragmentation. I'd have no problem with the article if it wasn't attatched to a product review, and if brought attention to more important concerns, such as filesystem layout, library versions, init scripts, etc.
Andrew Leonard's columns are usually pretty good, but this review is borderline FUD. It follows the standard format: loads on the praise to establish warmth and credibility, and then slams Linux with a heavily biased report of negative issues. The issue here is fragmentation and incompatibility. Yet the examples he gives have no specific relevance to Caldera OpenLinux. They are not even specific to different distributions. The entire second half of the review makes the point that KDE and other GUI systems don't work well with each other, or when users tweak config files by hand. But nowhere does he say that he tried an alternate GUI on Caldera or edited a config file directly. This is not a fragmentation issue, because this area is already heavily fragmented, and always has been, because Unix simply does not have a standard configuration format or API, which makes this an application issue, not a distribution issue. What he fails to mention is that GUI configuration standards are actually converging as GNOME and KDE become the standard Linux GUI environments. His agrument is very shallow when you realize things are getting better, not worse. The real fragmentation problems, such as startup script differences and file locations, are mentioned in a single sentence with no examples.
"Many have called themselves software engineers," said John R. Speed, executive director of the Texas Board of Professional Engineers. "Wrong. They're the local music dropout who chooses to use that title."
At my school, the EEs where always whining about the use of the term "software engineer(ing)" (and it was mainly EEs, I guess because they took so many computer classes). And they also tend to have this attitude that programming is easy and anybody can do it with little education. I even heard this from managers at my old co-op job.
And guess what, at my old co-op job, the code written by engineers was abosolute crap! And the EEs that I taught were constantly whining about the workload of CS classes.
Not to pick on EEs particularly (because hey, you can't spell geek without EE!:), but it seems to me that a lot of "official" engineers have some sort of ego problem associated with their title, to the point that they get insulting and childish when the word "engineer" is used in any other context. (And geez, this was the executive director of the Texas Board of Engineers talking to a reporter!) Are they afraid their cherished label will be co-opted by us unwashed programmers, like script kiddies calling themselves hackers or something?
True, but you completely miss the point
on
Why Kids Kill
·
· Score: 1
I don't think anyone will deny that those two kids are responsible for killing all those people, but that isn't the point here. Calls for more personal responsiblity don't mean anything because the killers killed themselves. You can't hold someone accountable if they want to die. The appropriate question is, what made them want to do it, not who is responsible for it.
What good are morals when someone is already committed to killing themselves? If they were respected by other people, they would have respected those people and themselves as well. Harping on "morals" will not stop things like this. You can't expect people to make rational ethical decisions when their perception of reality is so far gone that they think postumous infamy is better than living.
Your reasoning could be correct, depending on a few criteria: are the accounts capable of doing anything other than the volunteer activities, and may the account be used beyond the time allocated for volunteer activities? If both of these are yes, than the account has the same value as every other AOL account, and should be considered a service, and therefore is bartered for the volunteer's labor.
Really though, how did AOL sell this to people? Was it like "Adminstrate an online community!" (how fun!), or was it more like "Get free AOL for becomming one of our moderators!". The latter definately sounds more like an economic trade of services.
That's what I was thinking until I read the article. These people where not volunteering in the charity sense, they were exchanging their labor for services, ie. the free account. It's essentially bartering. But the value of the account has decreased since AOL went to flat rate pricing, and for many people the "job" required more time than AOL lead them to believe. Yes, the easy solution is for them to drop AOL or pay for the account, but look at this way: would you like it if your employer changed the value of your paycheck, lied to you about the requirements of the job, and could fire you for complaining?
I think the real lession here is don't trust commercial interests when they say they want to build "communities", especially when the requirements for community include unpaid labor for those commercial interests. They'll leave the community high and dry when it's inconvienent or not profitable, and the members' investment into the community will gone.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never taken a history of science course, but I see some flaws in your reasoning:
You neglect the influence of the ancient Greeks on those religious cultures, and on modern cultures despite the religions.
You imply that the religions are responsible for the intellectual foundation of Western society. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say the church scholars are responsible for it? It is the nature of those who would choose that life to treasure knowledge and history, regardless of religious teachings. With religion so dominant, where do you think academic-minded people would gravitate?
Now consider this, where is the scientific method in this religious tradition?
I don't remember the details, by I heard from the "grapevine" that it was done by tricking SETI@home into thinking existing users had joined a team when they hadn't. No data was fabricated, just team credit.
This is just the sort of fuzzy study that can be used as "proof" to further socioligical or political agendas. We (as in knowledgable and frequent users of the 'net) need to keep track this group's research to ensure that it is impartial. Consider the hysteria after Littleton, or the long running effort to censor anything that resembles porn. This study could be skewed in ways that could give credibility to all that silliness.
Of course, I don't understand why this is a big deal. The GVU has been running a Web user survey for years.
I haven't read the book (Techgnosis), but I've read about it, and it is hardly the sort of thing that advocates psuedo-science and mysticism. It could be perceived as a critique to those who believe that stuff, because it assumes that these mystical ideas are human inventions, and like the technology of the modern era, they are simply products of our innate dreams and desires.
Besides, this is extremely revelant, because geek culture has always had interest in the mythical and occult. We recognize the falsity, but are amused by it, because these imaginary systems are usually coherant and creative, in their own bizarre logic. I mean, how many of you don't know people who Magic, read fantasy, play role playing games (of any genre), or do other such things? Where do you think the computer terms "daemon", "wizard", and "guru" come from?
I'm not proposing that casual users subsidize heavy bandwidth users. I'm quite willing to pay for the bandwidth I use. But why should I be forced pay a lot for the use of some off-site machine when I have perfectly good ADSL connection to my home? (Personally, my own upstream usage would still be less than my downstream. I just want to check my mail on my home box from work.)
And why is my local telephone and cable monopoly, who's positions are selected as much by law as market behavior, setting policy that is contrary to the design and purpose of the technology they're selling, and in a fundamentally freedom restricting manner?
Besides, bandwidth isn't really that relevant. Eventually, it will not be an issue for most people. Consider the bandwidth required for downloading DVD-quality movies, which is the holy grail that all these companies are searching for. Compare that to the requirements of serving a small website. The cost becomes neglible.
But what if these companies will not change policies? Why should they, when they can make more money by restricting alternatives than by selling to the market that wants to produce them.
This is what I am concerned with.
I looked into getting ADSL through Flashcomm but decided against it because of the "no servers" clause in the service agreement. How common is this among high speed provders?
Currently MediaOne and Bellsouth (the major cable modem and ADSL providers in my area) aren't quite so restrictive, but their agreements are worded in such a way that they can weasel out and block your servers if they want to. I'm very afraid that this might become the norm for the residential Internet provider market.
Consider why:
Denying you the use of a mailserver "encourages" you to sign up for the provider's mail services, which may cost extra. The same applies to Web and ftp space. It is also a convient way to keep the bandwidth allocation low and still pretend to offer "unlimited" access.
But the more nefarious reason is that that helps maintain the status quo. Cable companies want to restrict "pull"-type distribution methods because they keep you from watching TV, and phone companies want to limit your bandwidth and methods of communication to protect their local phone monopolies and long distance services.
The most important feature of the Internet, that it allows one to publish to the world at large with almost neglible cost, is being squashed with these "no servers" clauses. Everything we hate about the media congolmerates and their "popular culture" cash cow is being perpetuated.
So what I want to know is, are the any consumer groups that address this issue? And does anyone know of any providers that specifically allow all types of servers?
The old Atlanta baseball team (minor league?) was called the Crackers. I would suspect they didn't consider it a slur.
Besides, the lameness of it is desirable. What better way to discourage script kiddies than to give them a stupid label?
Ha! This is our most redeeming feature.
It's nice that this guy recognizes that without geeks there would be no technological industries, but he's still stuck in the Dilbert-esque mindset that developers/engineers/artists/etc can do nothing without the "enlightened" leadership of management. Managers without technical backgrounds are not our leaders. They exist to manage resources, schmooze customers, and keep us grounded in fiscal reality, but they have no business making technical decisions. They do not merit higher salaries, nor should they have greater clout than senior developers.
The CEO of Novell isn't successful because he knows how to manage geeks, he is successful because he is one. He knows the technology, therefore he knows how to make clueful decisions reagarding it. The developers respect him for it, so he has legitimate authority. A manager without respect has no real authority, only the authority to sign paychecks.
I'm afraid this article do the opposite of the intentions of its author. Mediocre managers will read it and think "ah, so that's how I control my geeks. Now they will do my bidding!" which is exactly the way to piss us off. Managers should learn humility, learn that respect must be earned, and not try to manipulate us.
Stealing lunch money is not a petty problem. It is theft and extortion. It is little different than being mugged on the street, or having crooked cops or mobsters demand "protection" money. The only real difference is that kids and teenagers are young, and may not know what they are doing. But that is not an excuse to let it slide unpunished, or dismiss it as part of the way school is.
Bullying is similar. Beating someone up will put you in jail in the real world, but in school it is dismissed as harmless fun. In Georgia recently there was a kid who was killed by a 14 year-old bully and charged with murder, and people are complaining because it was an "accident".
Wake up. There is real tyranny going on, real Lord of the Flies type stuff. And it keeps happening because no one takes it seriously and the offenders go unpunished. Your attitute is the problem, because the schools seem to share it.
I get real suspicious when people start saying things like this. When people claim all are "equal" it almost always refers to rights under law. But those with an elitist aganda take it to mean equal in abilities, and use that defintion to attack egalitarian ideals.
Remember that the high school cliques do not believe people are "equal" in either sense. It is not that they want to dumb you down, they just want you to submit to their supposed authority. You become as bad as them when you think you are better simply by nature of your intelligence. Talents will help you to succeed, but they are no excuse to become a tyrant yourself.
"Brainy" people don't like Star Trek, because for all their efforts of its writers to make some of the technology seem plausible, it is ruined by ridiculous technobabble and a complete lack of understanding of basic science.
For example, I saw an episode of "Voyager" where they discover text written on the atoms of molecules of DNA, as if they were solid tinker toy models! And what was the text written in? Sub-sub-atomic particles? geez
By keeping the technology vague, Star Wars allows the audience to concentrate on important aspects of the story (like mystical new-age crap like the Force) without it being ruined by blatant technical errors.
The author of this article hopelessly confuses the meaning of "free software". He quotes a lot of Stallman to explain the slight ideological differences between "free software" and "open source", but then continues using the word "free" in the gratis sense to draw a comparison between "free software" and the software that these two companies are trying to help people create. Unless I greatly misunderstand the qualifications to be "open source", the products created under these kind of contracts will be "free software", and also will be free (gratis) to all who want them. The monetary transaction involved is to have the software created in order to sell services or add value to existing proprietary software.
I don't understand why you consider patent law a symptom of big government. It is large corporations who who want broad patents, to lengthen copyright terms and to weaken fair use provisions. Bureaucrats just support whatever gets them the most campaign contributions.
Heh, this is kind of like the so-called "neural basis of attention" that figured prominately in Bruce Sterling's novel Distraction. I wonder how long it will be before I can take a drug and become consiously multithreaded. :)
Exactly, it is communal property. To modify a GPL work, you must join the community. If you do not share the interests of the community, you really have no business using its code. No one can be forced to join that community, so it is entirely within the bounds of most variations of libertarian and anarchist thought.
A BSD-style license allows someone to invest in and profit from my work, but it won't allow me to take a share for my investment. That's downright exploitive, and not in-line with any of these ideologies.
It all comes down to who you are working for. When I write GPL code, I'm working for myself and the free software community. I'm making an investment, and my return on that investment is all the other free software made available by other programmers who share the same goal. We do not allow that investment to go to any other ends but our own. To everyone who isn't a part of this community, it might as well be private property. But the great thing is that anyone may join this community and benefit the way that we have. You are not denied a profit, only an exclusive one.
I believe in intellectual property, and I release all my public code under GPL. It is my gift to the community, and "viral" nature of the license ensures that my gift "will keep on giving". If I release code under a BSD license, it may be co-opted by any party outside the free software community, and used to ends that directly hurt that community. The article claims that the BSD license is more in-line with capitalist and individualist ideology. Aside from the gross error of equating those two philisophical viewpoints, the GPL is far more capticalistic and individualistic than BSD licenses. A capitalist values contracts, and an individualist values self-determination. A BSD-style license is a weak contract that gives me no control over how the products of my labor are used. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but it contradicts his argument against the GPL.
I just want to make clear that I'm not questioning Mr Leonard's jounalistic ability; his articles on Linux, and geeky things in general, have been suprerb. But in comparison, this one stinks. It begins as a review of a new product, but halfway through the article it becomes apparent that it is really an article on Linux fragmentation, and a poor one at that. I'm not claiming that current GUI configuration tools are good (personally I despise Linuxconf and have had problems with Gnome), but they are better now than when they were nonexistant before. It really isn't an appropriate topic to focus concerns over fragmentation. I'd have no problem with the article if it wasn't attatched to a product review, and if brought attention to more important concerns, such as filesystem layout, library versions, init scripts, etc.
Andrew Leonard's columns are usually pretty good, but this review is borderline FUD. It follows the standard format: loads on the praise to establish warmth and credibility, and then slams Linux with a heavily biased report of negative issues. The issue here is fragmentation and incompatibility. Yet the examples he gives have no specific relevance to Caldera OpenLinux. They are not even specific to different distributions. The entire second half of the review makes the point that KDE and other GUI systems don't work well with each other, or when users tweak config files by hand. But nowhere does he say that he tried an alternate GUI on Caldera or edited a config file directly. This is not a fragmentation issue, because this area is already heavily fragmented, and always has been, because Unix simply does not have a standard configuration format or API, which makes this an application issue, not a distribution issue. What he fails to mention is that GUI configuration standards are actually converging as GNOME and KDE become the standard Linux GUI environments. His agrument is very shallow when you realize things are getting better, not worse. The real fragmentation problems, such as startup script differences and file locations, are mentioned in a single sentence with no examples.
At my school, the EEs where always whining about the use of the term "software engineer(ing)" (and it was mainly EEs, I guess because they took so many computer classes). And they also tend to have this attitude that programming is easy and anybody can do it with little education. I even heard this from managers at my old co-op job.
And guess what, at my old co-op job, the code written by engineers was abosolute crap! And the EEs that I taught were constantly whining about the workload of CS classes.
Not to pick on EEs particularly (because hey, you can't spell geek without EE!
I don't think anyone will deny that those two kids are responsible for killing all those people, but that isn't the point here. Calls for more personal responsiblity don't mean anything because the killers killed themselves. You can't hold someone accountable if they want to die. The appropriate question is, what made them want to do it, not who is responsible for it.
What good are morals when someone is already committed to killing themselves? If they were respected by other people, they would have respected those people and themselves as well. Harping on "morals" will not stop things like this. You can't expect people to make rational ethical decisions when their perception of reality is so far gone that they think postumous infamy is better than living.
Your reasoning could be correct, depending on a few criteria: are the accounts capable of doing anything other than the volunteer activities, and may the account be used beyond the time allocated for volunteer activities? If both of these are yes, than the account has the same value as every other AOL account, and should be considered a service, and therefore is bartered for the volunteer's labor.
Really though, how did AOL sell this to people? Was it like "Adminstrate an online community!" (how fun!), or was it more like "Get free AOL for becomming one of our moderators!". The latter definately sounds more like an economic trade of services.
That's what I was thinking until I read the article. These people where not volunteering in the charity sense, they were exchanging their labor for services, ie. the free account. It's essentially bartering. But the value of the account has decreased since AOL went to flat rate pricing, and for many people the "job" required more time than AOL lead them to believe. Yes, the easy solution is for them to drop AOL or pay for the account, but look at this way: would you like it if your employer changed the value of your paycheck, lied to you about the requirements of the job, and could fire you for complaining?
I think the real lession here is don't trust commercial interests when they say they want to build "communities", especially when the requirements for community include unpaid labor for those commercial interests. They'll leave the community high and dry when it's inconvienent or not profitable, and the members' investment into the community will gone.