intelligentsia : intellectuals who form an artistic, social, or political vanguard or elite (from www.m-w.com/dictionary.htm)
slashdot is starting to be too mainstream to be a vanguard, in my opinion. It is constantly quoted on some of the most popular sites on the internet.... no doubt it started as a vanguard... but now it is somewhere else
The nature of the Internet is such that there is no limitations to the amount of info that is there (unlike a city which is geographically, or physically limited). The potential size of the Internet is unlimited.
This means that there could be any number of "intelligentsia" (elite vanguard) groups which are for ever obscured by the daily growth of the Internet.....
Just because you dont see it does not mean it does not exist, and not seeing something on the Internet is VERY VERY easy.
this is the amazing thing about the internet, it essentially wipes out many many possibilities for our thought to create a division between us and an other.
You dont know how old, what gender, colour, etc that people are, so your thought divisions dont kick in.
Sometimes someone lets something slip, and IMMEDIATELY, whether you like it or not you create a division between them and yourself.
Like spelling colour with a 'u' (see above)... now you know I'm not American..... watch your thoughts fly with divisions, assumptions, preconceptions.......... .
There is a line of thought that expresses that all (human) conflicts arise from divisions.
Divisions can be of any form, and you can without exception, attribute ALL human conflicts documented by history to one simple division.
These divisions can be racial, religious, political, geographical, idealogical, based on physical weight, age, OS preference, programming language preference, what uni you associate with, whether you are left handed or right handed.
The most important thing to realise is that ALL divisions are abstract. They dont really exist. They are merely defined in ones thought habits. A black person can be genetically more similar to a white person than an other black person. geographical divisions dont exist (try zooming in on the ground to see the line) etc. etc.
So yes, Katz's article (and the paper he is talking about) does more damage than anything else because it concretizes (and maybe introduces) a division in people's thinking.
Rather than waste time talking about shit like this, we should be trying to understand why thought creates "thought" divisions so easily.
YOu can go blue in the face making rules like "all companies who have more than 10 employees must have min 20% women workers" or... "all poor black people will be given free net access at libraries (or something)"
Maybe this isn't simple, and maybe this is a dumb idea..... please comment.
Take the slashdot code, do one thread per topic (or sub-topic or whatever). people can post all the comments/add ons/ comments on comments etc.
Others can moderate which comments are good or bad.
Then , when there are 100 comments (or more or less) on the thread, someone goes through them and integrates all the 2+ comments into the topic.... the rest of the thread is deleted and it starts from zero again.
Would it be possible to automatically integrate the 2+ comments in the thread and delete the rest?
For easy updates the info HAS to be entirely WEB based. All the comments posted by various people would also REALLY help a newcomer to understand what is going on as well (different ways of seeing the same thing).... just like you can get a media-free view of any/. story by reading the comments, you could get a truly global idea on some docs.
he uses more than this. but yes, he is a genious. I used to be obsessed with high art Jazz. I never listened to anything else ever. thought I was pretty good and thought that jazz was a high and mighty form of music. Then one day, four years ago I accidently landed on a live Aphex gig in Sydney. Aphew Twin's music had ALL of the musical pirouettes that high art Jazz had, but in a new language. it blew me away. dont ever let any high and might jazz or classical muso tell you that techno is crap. Point them to aphex and if they dont dig it then they are bull shit artists.
I neither could not sleep without S Ambient WOrks volumne 2, neither could I code without "I care because you do", I too am extremely happy that Aphix Twin is mentioned on slashdot.
Funnily enough, I live in Paris and my ultimate aim is to work for IRCAM, yet I did not know that Aphex used their stuff....
its all coming together!
I have big ideas, i'd be happy to share them with you....
in a world where marketting skills are sufficiently evolved that the better product can be brushed to the side..... would it not make sense that the marketting departement at microsoft AND sun (for example) both survey the/. stories and contribute "anonymous" comments tootoo-ing their products... or booboo-ing the products of the other.
knowing slashdot's reputation, bet you they do.
In fact, I would even go so far as to say that a considerable percentage of the stories posted above are "marketting".
I'd say 20%. (one in five)
think about it... its the perfect advertising space. Ready audience.. you know exactly who you are dealing with... you can post as many messages as you like (make up numbers).
WOuld any reading this actually put this kind of tactic past Microsoft ??????...
As an electronic musician myself, I can testify to being much more concerned with establishing an audience and having my work HEARD rather than making money out of it.
Just as an OS hacker wants his code to be used by and be usefull to the community, so a musician wants his art to be heard.
This Purtrell fellow (the guy who wrote the article) is a corporate. His interpretation of MP3.com's success is sadly pre-conceived. This is evidenced most by his trashing of "mr Poo's" songs. A great talent of contemporary music, Richard D James, (goes by the pseudonym of Aphex Twin) who actually won the Prix Ars prize for electronic music alongside Mr Torvald's victory has published a great number of tunes with rediculous names "Cow Cud is a twin", "come on you slags" to name but two mild examples. In fact, obscure non-sensical names which often intentionaly push the barrier between good and bad taste with bleeding edge humour is very much a part of the electronic music culture. It is actually (in part) a means of expressing and exploring the new found freedom. Sony would not allow "mr Poo" the luxury of choosing his own pseudonym i'm sure. Note that Purtrel's judgement of "Mr poo's" music does not go far beyond song titles. mr Purtrel's opinion smells of microsoft'isms to me.
A "wealthy" artist is an artist with an audience, not one with fat wallet..... just as a wealthy hacker is a hacker respected, not one heavily renumerated.
one day, a butterfly flaps its wings. On the other side of the world a huge storm brews. lots of water falls.
one certain drop of water colides with millions of others, it completely changes the h2o molecules within it hundreds of times. After gillions of freak occurences it falls onto the top of a stem of a new apple. Its momentum creates a tiny explosion which slightly damages the stem of one of the leaves hanging over the apple.
A worm crawls to the end of the leaf.. and what do you know! because the leaf was damaged it manages to reach the apple.
result : a bad apple.
blame the worm! blame the bad DNA make up of the tree! blame the farmer who didn't spray enough chemicals on it! blame the storm for cleaning the apples of chemicals! blame GOd! blame the butterfly! blame the storm that caused that butterfly's mum to have'im! blame the butterfly who created the storm that caused that butterfly's mum to have'im.
:-)
hang on!
what's wrong with a bad apple? (dangerous territory I hear you say?)
blame DONT work. think about it.
trying to find the cause wont work either. how many gillions of years has this kind of stuff happened. how many gillions of years will people desperately try and find the cause?
if you want to access the internet with your modem and your modem is broken then you have a problem. if you dont want to access the internet then you DONT have a problem, you simply have a broken modem.
so what is the problem?
a bad apple is only a problem if you want to eat it right?
otherwise a bad apple is just a part of nature.
a kid kills other kids.
forget the cause, it could be (and probably IS) a billion things.... if one subscribes to the all of the meanings that a lot of modern science and physics suggests, then every little one of OUR actions has contributed to this (from tripping over a gutter to eating a fly in a soup)
so what is the problem?
(bear with me this is going to get hard core)
the kids are dead, we cant do anything for them. the atrocity has been committed.
so we want to try and prevent this from happening again. hence we try and find the cause... YET THE CAUSE CAN NOT (and I garantee WILL NOT) be found.
so this is irrational. yet we still try to find the cause.
what is the problem? if we cant find the cause then why are we still looking?
THIS IS THE PROBLEM!
(at this point you are saying..."nope, this is BS")
Our existence is threatened, our children are threatened and so we try and cling on to something (a concept, a thought, an identification with something) which will aleaviate that fear. so we say its the internet, we say its games, we say its music, guns etc etc. and we feel better!
similarly, these "troubled youth" felt THEY were threatened. and so by destoying the threat, THEY FELT BETTER!
its no different to what is happening in kosovo. I mean come on everyone! how many people are being murdered in KOSOVO?
these youth are no different to ANY of us expect they committed a crime which threatens all of us. that is why there are hundreds of posts here, everyone trying to cope with a threat, find a way of feeling better.
the problem is human thought. this thread of discussion is EXACTLY the same thread of thought as these killers.
LETS TRY AND WORK OUT WHAT IS GOING ON IN OUR HEADS... what thought is, how we identify with things, why we are threatened, why one religious group is threatened by an other, why one race is threatened by an other, why one colour is threatened by an other.
I suggest that the problem is in each of our heads. and until we understand how thought works ( I dont mean biologically ) then this stuff will ALWAYS happen.
hang on, all the moderators on this discussion must be in favour of editing, since they are actually doing it right?
so if someone puts their cut out mark at 2 then they will most probably all get comments for PRO-FILTERING
when in fact there are a lot of anti-filtering comments.
there you have it.
try it, go on, put your comments at 2 and see how many pro-filtering comments you get.
dont like Katz but I'll never ignore him
on
ShutUp Software
·
· Score: 1
As much as I think Katz is often a victim of his own hype, and his articles more a reflection of his "desire to be" rather than him "being" whatever he might like us to think he is, I will never do myself the diss-service of not giving his posts on slashdot equal importance with all other posts.
I think it is extremely serious that most people seem to agree with the use this software and I think that a lot of people need to do a lot of thinking about how society works, about communication, about co-habitation, about equality, supression, misconceptions.
Think about HOW something gets filtered out, WHY that thing has been filtered out, WHO or WHAT decides on the implementation of filtering and WHO or WHAT is getting filtered out.
The internet is a media like all others. It is well known that manipulation of information to a public is a form of high power (this is how supressive governements work)... and low level editing is where it starts.
I agree, this type of software is very dangerous.
on
ShutUp Software
·
· Score: 1
The new slashdot system IS censorship. here is why...
If we define that censorship is a third party then the slashdot system still remains a form of censorship..... the SCRIPTS are the third party. Sure you decide whether to use it or not, but you DONT decide what gets filtered out. Its the system that Rob has set up which decides (and it is very specific).
Just the same as a newspaper. If a newspaper censors certain content then this is bad right, BUT you can decide NOT TO READ the newpaper. It is exactly the same thing.
Here lies the danger of censorship.
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT HAS BEEN CENSORED. so you will never know what you are missing out on.
If someone said "alright, but with slashdot you CAN read everything", the other side would say "so you can read an other newspaper". But that would not be quite right since when you turn all comments on in/. then you KNOW you have EVERYTHING. reading an other newspaper you just have access to different censorship.
That said, I have stopped using the filtering option in slashdot. This because I have twice found comments with rating 0 and 1 which I found extremely important and informative. I hence came to the conclusion that this system was dangerous, and I will NEVER KNOW what I missed in the several weeks I had the system set to 2.
The question is Time vs Squashed opinions and how much you trust the filtering system in/.
they are "typical" readers (the middle 50% of comment readers according to the number of comments & article pages they've loaded- again, this weeds out idle accounts and obsessive over-readers alike. It finds the "average" reader. Hopefully).
there are still a couple of things that really worry me on this moderator business.
is the aim of moderating the comments to highlight the opinion of the "typical reader" or to highlight intelligent comments worthy of extra attention?
there is a big big difference. this is why leaders in a community are so important, they supposedly "understand" things better, and are hence given more responsibilty of influence.
On that recent Nt4 vs Linux story for example, the "typical 50%" will flame Microsoft and offer explanations for the test results. the community leader will be more level headed and suggest maybe (as did one gentleman) that the whole issue be explored seriously, and that should there be sign of even a minor flaw, then it should be looked at seriously and attacked immediately.
that's what i want to read, I know what the "typical 50%" thinks already.
..... then again the 50% is an important voice, just as long as it does not drown the "leaders", there is a very fine balance to be achieved here I think.
(PS i believe in the power of anonymous leaders... there is nothing more inspiring than an AC post with a score of 3+... it removes all sense of "celebrity" or reputation or whatever (things that make for abuse))
Imagine a world where machines exist that could transport masses of food to all extremes of the world within 48 hours.
Imagine a world where two people can commmunicate with each other irrespective of their geographical location. Different cultures could interact, share their cultural resources and begin to bridge the gap between their technological competences, hence increasing everyone's standard of living.
Imagine a world where technology was so advanced that we could understand how plants grow! then we could recreate ideal conditions and cultivate food anywhere in the world.
Imagine a world where all countries could trade.... bla bla bla....
wank wank wank.
there is a line of thought which says that to solve a problem, all you got to do is understand the problem (99.99999%), then you go about solving it (0.000001%)
so what's the problem?... it aint technology, we have long had all the technology necessary to solve the world's problems.
its human nature.
Anything which attempts to solve a problem without understanding it is then UTOPIC. It is hence based on "hope" which is an irrational act of thought in that it seeks satisfaction in the present about the "thought" of something in the future. this book must be that.
i firmly believe that a "capitalist society" can as easily exist in a "gift society" (/. etc. etc.) as in a monetary society. All you have to do is go about performing an act which has as its goal to achieve the currency of that society. If the currency of a society is "respect", then all you have to do is perform an act to try and gain that "respect" and you are reproducing the same thing but in a different context. Has anyone posted to slashdot just to try and see how high a score their comment would achieve?
human nature. This is the problem. I hereby officially declare that I am not so sure that it is or is not a solvable problem.
this score pool business is just like recreating a currency where the rich have more power.
In the real world, someone who has more $$ can defend themselves better in a court of law despite the statement that ALL ARE EQUAL..
please please please dont start reproducing this kind of thing on slashdot, even if "intelligence" (measured in slash dot points) is the currency. It wont work. Just the same as traditionally, the concept of $$ for rewarding "work" has been completely corrupted..
does everybody realise that the minute somebody posts a comment purely to try and up their point tally then/. has reproduced a capitalist system. Even if that comment is extremely intelligent..
/. scares me these days. It's like everything you do is judged.
the two are completely different, so using the word free is very ambiguous.... particularly with respect to all this open source business. (especially since most are not aware of this ambiguity)
so, is the point of open software that's it's "libre" or "gratuit"?
I work in electronic commerce (yes yes I know....)
Recently, I set up a specialised portal (like a really really simplified/.) but on e-commerce. Every morning, I do the rounds on all the e-commerce sites to pick the most interesting articles. I have since become a highly highly valued resource for the people I work for because I am so well informed.
The more I read, the more my "opinion" becomes less subjective.
Hence I dont think that the big readers should be cut out.
Isn't possible to null the "cheaters" by simply upping the moderator threashold so that if you DO post a 100 times then you have to have posted a 100 intelligent comments. (in which case you aint a cheater, just obsessive...... )
I think letting the big readers moderate is more important then letting 0+ posters moderate.
I am a java programmer and web developper. (eg http://www1.loom.net.au/home/fish/ )
I dont know all that much about inner workings of OS's, and I have never used Linux or even seen it on a box in RL.
Yet I am about to tackle it. I am setting up a home server , Linux & apache.
what convinced me of this?.... 3 things
1. sick of Microsoft's patronising attitude. 2. Astonishing level of support potential from the linux community 3. A very apparent "love of labour" which effectively removes the need for any enforced "quality control" and (to me) garanties a quality product.
The best thing the Linux community can do is DISPLAY its labour of love, it is very endearing (especially in an over-capitalist society) DANGER : dont become "Mac dags"....ie dont hold on to it beyond its used by date.
The bulk of the PC using public are sheep, they'll go with whatever has the numbers.
M$ has demonstrated the power of markting intelligence.
in a MARKETING vs LOVE OF LABOUR battle, if the love of labour doesn't win then I'm stuffed!
just PLEASE dont swap "love of labour" for "M$ hating"
Slashdot Mirror
I've been using them for about three months. I do heaps of java servlets + mySQL (whole site is entirely dynamic).
..... but as I said, so far so good.
just wondering if anyone has any positive/negative experience with them
PS they run solaris on sun
intelligentsia : intellectuals who form an artistic, social, or political vanguard or elite
.... no doubt it started as a vanguard ... but now it is somewhere else
.....
(from www.m-w.com/dictionary.htm)
slashdot is starting to be too mainstream to be a vanguard, in my opinion. It is constantly quoted on some of the most popular sites on the internet
The nature of the Internet is such that there is no limitations to the amount of info that is there (unlike a city which is geographically, or physically limited). The potential size of the Internet is unlimited.
This means that there could be any number of "intelligentsia" (elite vanguard) groups which are for ever obscured by the daily growth of the Internet
Just because you dont see it does not mean it does not exist, and not seeing something on the Internet is VERY VERY easy.
if I can reply to my own post :
... now you know I'm not American ..... watch your thoughts fly with divisions, assumptions, preconceptions ..... ... .. .
this is the amazing thing about the internet, it essentially wipes out many many possibilities for our thought to create a division between us and an other.
You dont know how old, what gender, colour, etc that people are, so your thought divisions dont kick in.
Sometimes someone lets something slip, and IMMEDIATELY, whether you like it or not you create a division between them and yourself.
Like spelling colour with a 'u' (see above)
There is a line of thought that expresses that all (human) conflicts arise from divisions.
... "all poor black people will be given free net access at libraries (or something)"
Divisions can be of any form, and you can without exception, attribute ALL human conflicts documented by history to one simple division.
These divisions can be racial, religious, political, geographical, idealogical, based on physical weight, age, OS preference, programming language preference, what uni you associate with, whether you are left handed or right handed.
The most important thing to realise is that ALL divisions are abstract. They dont really exist. They are merely defined in ones thought habits. A black person can be genetically more similar to a white person than an other black person. geographical divisions dont exist (try zooming in on the ground to see the line) etc. etc.
So yes, Katz's article (and the paper he is talking about) does more damage than anything else because it concretizes (and maybe introduces) a division in people's thinking.
Rather than waste time talking about shit like this, we should be trying to understand why thought creates "thought" divisions so easily.
YOu can go blue in the face making rules like "all companies who have more than 10 employees must have min 20% women workers" or
its symptomatic, wont change anything.
its all about how people think.
Maybe this isn't simple, and maybe this is a dumb idea ..... please comment.
.... the rest of the thread is deleted and it starts from zero again.
/. story by reading the comments, you could get a truly global idea on some docs.
Take the slashdot code, do one thread per topic (or sub-topic or whatever). people can post all the comments/add ons/ comments on comments etc.
Others can moderate which comments are good or bad.
Then , when there are 100 comments (or more or less) on the thread, someone goes through them and integrates all the 2+ comments into the topic
Would it be possible to automatically integrate the 2+ comments in the thread and delete the rest?
For easy updates the info HAS to be entirely WEB based. All the comments posted by various people would also REALLY help a newcomer to understand what is going on as well (different ways of seeing the same thing).... just like you can get a media-free view of any
he uses more than this. but yes, he is a genious. I used to be obsessed with high art Jazz. I never listened to anything else ever. thought I was pretty good and thought that jazz was a high and mighty form of music. Then one day, four years ago I accidently landed on a live Aphex gig in Sydney. Aphew Twin's music had ALL of the musical pirouettes that high art Jazz had, but in a new language. it blew me away.
dont ever let any high and might jazz or classical muso tell you that techno is crap. Point them to aphex and if they dont dig it then they are bull shit artists.
Amazing.
....
....
I neither could not sleep without S Ambient WOrks volumne 2, neither could I code without "I care because you do", I too am extremely happy that Aphix Twin is mentioned on slashdot.
Funnily enough, I live in Paris and my ultimate aim is to work for IRCAM, yet I did not know that Aphex used their stuff
its all coming together!
I have big ideas, i'd be happy to share them with you
FUD is FUD.
Suggestion : moderation not allowed on pro or anti slashdot comments. leave it be for what it is. (dont know how you would implement that though)
in a world where marketting skills are sufficiently evolved that the better product can be brushed to the side ..... would it not make sense that the marketting departement at microsoft AND sun (for example) both survey the /. stories and contribute "anonymous" comments tootoo-ing their products ... or booboo-ing the products of the other.
... its the perfect advertising space. Ready audience .. you know exactly who you are dealing with ... you can post as many messages as you like (make up numbers).
...
knowing slashdot's reputation, bet you they do.
In fact, I would even go so far as to say that a considerable percentage of the stories posted above are "marketting".
I'd say 20%. (one in five)
think about it
WOuld any reading this actually put this kind of tactic past Microsoft ??????
As an electronic musician myself, I can testify to being much more concerned with establishing an audience and having my work HEARD rather than making money out of it.
.... just as a wealthy hacker is a hacker respected, not one heavily renumerated.
Just as an OS hacker wants his code to be used by and be usefull to the community, so a musician wants his art to be heard.
This Purtrell fellow (the guy who wrote the article) is a corporate. His interpretation of MP3.com's success is sadly pre-conceived. This is evidenced most by his trashing of "mr Poo's" songs. A great talent of contemporary music, Richard D James, (goes by the pseudonym of Aphex Twin) who actually won the Prix Ars prize for electronic music alongside Mr Torvald's victory has published a great number of tunes with rediculous names "Cow Cud is a twin", "come on you slags" to name but two mild examples. In fact, obscure non-sensical names which often intentionaly push the barrier between good and bad taste with bleeding edge humour is very much a part of the electronic music culture. It is actually (in part) a means of expressing and exploring the new found freedom. Sony would not allow "mr Poo" the luxury of choosing his own pseudonym i'm sure. Note that Purtrel's judgement of "Mr poo's" music does not go far beyond song titles.
mr Purtrel's opinion smells of microsoft'isms to me.
A "wealthy" artist is an artist with an audience, not one with fat wallet.
You have a tree. it grows apples.
.. and what do you know! because the leaf was damaged it manages to reach the apple.
.... if one subscribes to the all of the meanings that a lot of modern science and physics suggests, then every little one of OUR actions has contributed to this (from tripping over a gutter to eating a fly in a soup)
... YET THE CAUSE CAN NOT (and I garantee WILL NOT) be found.
..."nope, this is BS")
... what thought is, how we identify with things, why we are threatened, why one religious group is threatened by an other, why one race is threatened by an other, why one colour is threatened by an other.
one day, a butterfly flaps its wings. On the other side of the world a huge storm brews. lots of water falls.
one certain drop of water colides with millions of others, it completely changes the h2o molecules within it hundreds of times. After gillions of freak occurences it falls onto the top of a stem of a new apple. Its momentum creates a tiny explosion which slightly damages the stem of one of the leaves hanging over the apple.
A worm crawls to the end of the leaf
result : a bad apple.
blame the worm!
blame the bad DNA make up of the tree!
blame the farmer who didn't spray enough chemicals on it!
blame the storm for cleaning the apples of chemicals!
blame GOd!
blame the butterfly!
blame the storm that caused that butterfly's mum to have'im!
blame the butterfly who created the storm that caused that butterfly's mum to have'im.
:-)
hang on!
what's wrong with a bad apple? (dangerous territory I hear you say?)
blame DONT work. think about it.
trying to find the cause wont work either. how many gillions of years has this kind of stuff happened. how many gillions of years will people desperately try and find the cause?
if you want to access the internet with your modem and your modem is broken then you have a problem. if you dont want to access the internet then you DONT have a problem, you simply have a broken modem.
so what is the problem?
a bad apple is only a problem if you want to eat it right?
otherwise a bad apple is just a part of nature.
a kid kills other kids.
forget the cause, it could be (and probably IS) a billion things
so what is the problem?
(bear with me this is going to get hard core)
the kids are dead, we cant do anything for them. the atrocity has been committed.
so we want to try and prevent this from happening again. hence we try and find the cause
so this is irrational. yet we still try to find the cause.
what is the problem?
if we cant find the cause then why are we still looking?
THIS IS THE PROBLEM!
(at this point you are saying
Our existence is threatened, our children are threatened and so we try and cling on to something (a concept, a thought, an identification with something) which will aleaviate that fear. so we say its the internet, we say its games, we say its music, guns etc etc. and we feel better!
similarly, these "troubled youth" felt THEY were threatened. and so by destoying the threat, THEY FELT BETTER!
its no different to what is happening in kosovo. I mean come on everyone! how many people are being murdered in KOSOVO?
these youth are no different to ANY of us expect they committed a crime which threatens all of us. that is why there are hundreds of posts here, everyone trying to cope with a threat, find a way of feeling better.
the problem is human thought. this thread of discussion is EXACTLY the same thread of thought as these killers.
LETS TRY AND WORK OUT WHAT IS GOING ON IN OUR HEADS
I suggest that the problem is in each of our heads. and until we understand how thought works ( I dont mean biologically ) then this stuff will ALWAYS happen.
hang on, all the moderators on this discussion must be in favour of editing, since they are actually doing it right?
so if someone puts their cut out mark at 2 then they will most probably all get comments for PRO-FILTERING
when in fact there are a lot of anti-filtering comments.
there you have it.
try it, go on, put your comments at 2 and see how many pro-filtering comments you get.
As much as I think Katz is often a victim of his own hype, and his articles more a reflection of his "desire to be" rather than him "being" whatever he might like us to think he is, I will never do myself the diss-service of not giving his posts on slashdot equal importance with all other posts.
... and low level editing is where it starts.
I think it is extremely serious that most people seem to agree with the use this software and I think that a lot of people need to do a lot of thinking about how society works, about communication, about co-habitation, about equality, supression, misconceptions.
Think about HOW something gets filtered out, WHY that thing has been filtered out, WHO or WHAT decides on the implementation of filtering and WHO or WHAT is getting filtered out.
The internet is a media like all others. It is well known that manipulation of information to a public is a form of high power (this is how supressive governements work)
The new slashdot system IS censorship. here is why ...
..... the SCRIPTS are the third party. Sure you decide whether to use it or not, but you DONT decide what gets filtered out. Its the system that Rob has set up which decides (and it is very specific).
/. then you KNOW you have EVERYTHING. reading an other newspaper you just have access to different censorship.
/.
/. hate the filtering. it really scares me.
.... ....... .... !
If we define that censorship is a third party then the slashdot system still remains a form of censorship
Just the same as a newspaper. If a newspaper censors certain content then this is bad right, BUT you can decide NOT TO READ the newpaper. It is exactly the same thing.
Here lies the danger of censorship.
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT HAS BEEN CENSORED. so you will never know what you are missing out on.
If someone said "alright, but with slashdot you CAN read everything", the other side would say "so you can read an other newspaper". But that would not be quite right since when you turn all comments on in
That said, I have stopped using the filtering option in slashdot. This because I have twice found comments with rating 0 and 1 which I found extremely important and informative. I hence came to the conclusion that this system was dangerous, and I will NEVER KNOW what I missed in the several weeks I had the system set to 2.
The question is Time vs Squashed opinions and how much you trust the filtering system in
love
there has to be an other option
they are "typical" readers (the middle 50% of comment readers according to the number of comments & article pages they've loaded- again, this weeds out idle accounts and obsessive over-readers alike. It finds the "average" reader. Hopefully).
... there is nothing more inspiring than an AC post with a score of 3+ ... it removes all sense of "celebrity" or reputation or whatever (things that make for abuse))
there are still a couple of things that really worry me on this moderator business.
is the aim of moderating the comments to highlight the opinion of the "typical reader" or to highlight intelligent comments worthy of extra attention?
there is a big big difference. this is why leaders in a community are so important, they supposedly "understand" things better, and are hence given more responsibilty of influence.
On that recent Nt4 vs Linux story for example, the "typical 50%" will flame Microsoft and offer explanations for the test results. the community leader will be more level headed and suggest maybe (as did one gentleman) that the whole issue be explored seriously, and that should there be sign of even a minor flaw, then it should be looked at seriously and attacked immediately.
that's what i want to read, I know what the "typical 50%" thinks already.
..... then again the 50% is an important voice, just as long as it does not drown the "leaders", there is a very fine balance to be achieved here I think.
(PS i believe in the power of anonymous leaders
that's beautiful
it's a moot point.
.... ....
... it aint technology, we have long had all the technology necessary to solve the world's problems.
Imagine a world where machines exist that could transport masses of food to all extremes of the world within 48 hours.
Imagine a world where two people can commmunicate with each other irrespective of their geographical location. Different cultures could interact, share their cultural resources and begin to bridge the gap between their technological competences, hence increasing everyone's standard of living.
Imagine a world where technology was so advanced that we could understand how plants grow! then we could recreate ideal conditions and cultivate food anywhere in the world.
Imagine a world where all countries could trade
bla bla bla
wank wank wank.
there is a line of thought which says that to solve a problem, all you got to do is understand the problem (99.99999%), then you go about solving it (0.000001%)
so what's the problem?
its human nature.
Anything which attempts to solve a problem without understanding it is then UTOPIC. It is hence based on "hope" which is an irrational act of thought in that it seeks satisfaction in the present about the "thought" of something in the future. this book must be that.
i firmly believe that a "capitalist society" can as easily exist in a "gift society" (/. etc. etc.) as in a monetary society. All you have to do is go about performing an act which has as its goal to achieve the currency of that society. If the currency of a society is "respect", then all you have to do is perform an act to try and gain that "respect" and you are reproducing the same thing but in a different context. Has anyone posted to slashdot just to try and see how high a score their comment would achieve?
human nature. This is the problem. I hereby officially declare that I am not so sure that it is or is not a solvable problem.
this score pool business is just like recreating a currency where the rich have more power.
/. has reproduced a capitalist system. Even if that comment is extremely intelligent..
/. scares me these days. It's like everything you do is judged.
In the real world, someone who has more $$ can defend themselves better in a court of law despite the statement that ALL ARE EQUAL..
please please please dont start reproducing this kind of thing on slashdot, even if "intelligence" (measured in slash dot points) is the currency. It wont work. Just the same as traditionally, the concept of $$ for rewarding "work" has been completely corrupted..
does everybody realise that the minute somebody posts a comment purely to try and up their point tally then
in french there are 2 words for free.
.... particularly with respect to all this open source business. (especially since most are not aware of this ambiguity)
"gratuit" and "libre"
gratuit means you dont pay money for it.
libre means you do what you want with it.
the two are completely different, so using the word free is very ambiguous
so, is the point of open software that's it's "libre" or "gratuit"?
I work in electronic commerce (yes yes I know ....)
/.) but on e-commerce. Every morning, I do the rounds on all the e-commerce sites to pick the most interesting articles. I have since become a highly highly valued resource for the people I work for because I am so well informed.
...... )
Recently, I set up a specialised portal (like a really really simplified
The more I read, the more my "opinion" becomes less subjective.
Hence I dont think that the big readers should be cut out.
Isn't possible to null the "cheaters" by simply upping the moderator threashold so that if you DO post a 100 times then you have to have posted a 100 intelligent comments. (in which case you aint a cheater, just obsessive
I think letting the big readers moderate is more important then letting 0+ posters moderate.
is there maybe an other option to achieve this?
I've never seen such a big bandwagon!
its quite interesting.
....ie dont hold on to it beyond its used by date.
I am a java programmer and web developper. (eg http://www1.loom.net.au/home/fish/ )
I dont know all that much about inner workings of OS's, and I have never used Linux or even seen it on a box in RL.
Yet I am about to tackle it. I am setting up a home server , Linux & apache.
what convinced me of this?.... 3 things
1. sick of Microsoft's patronising attitude.
2. Astonishing level of support potential from the linux community
3. A very apparent "love of labour" which effectively removes the need for any enforced "quality control" and (to me) garanties a quality product.
The best thing the Linux community can do is DISPLAY its labour of love, it is very endearing (especially in an over-capitalist society) DANGER : dont become "Mac dags"
The bulk of the PC using public are sheep, they'll go with whatever has the numbers.
M$ has demonstrated the power of markting intelligence.
in a MARKETING vs LOVE OF LABOUR battle, if the love of labour doesn't win then I'm stuffed!
just PLEASE dont swap "love of labour" for "M$ hating"
its about Linux not M$