It sure didn't sound like Roblimo or whoever passed the questions along anticpated the outstanding response and was a little overwhelmed. (I didn't look at most of the questions; I thought I'd seen the cream with the answers by Alan.) So I don't think they had score criteria before they went in. That would make it hard to inform people ahead of time. They may not have even taken all the score 5 questions (I haven't taken the time to look...)
Since I've seen/. comments by someone professing to be Alan Cox, presumably he could go back to the forum and look at the other high scored questions (whether by an ACoward (two different AC acronyms... 8-) ) or not) and answer them if he'd like.
From what I understand about these interviews,/. has been able to get the interview and then instead of coming up with their own lamo questions, they throw the doors open to the masses. There's always going to be some good questions that don't get answered. How are you going to decide?
I don't think there's any question about this being an "open and public forum".
It would be cool to get the various distributed computing initiatives (d.net's RC5, SETI, OGR, etc.) together onto one CD image to burn and run on Dreamcasts. Just pop the disc in when you're done playing and let it crack/spook/compute... It might be a good first step before tackling getting to the onboard 3D.
I can't believe no one has mentioned that Mac bigots (including myself) were getting slammed for doing the exact same things two or three years ago. Stewart Alsop, James Coates and Hiawatha Bray, among others, had their inboxes subjected to the wrath of Evangelistas with the same mixture of substantive criticism and flame.
The situation was also the same, a mailing list instead of a Web site, but a captive audience who were exposed to anti-"cause" articles by one or two moderators (Guy Kawasaki and John Halbig). Evangelistas eventually cleaned up their act, but it took a while for them to do so. Plus, they needed constant reminders when flamebait was posted not to flame the writers and to write in a constructive manner.
I would suggest that Taco and Hemos practice restraint on when they post inflammatory links and to warn people to keep their responses on the up and up. It seemed like the best method for the Mac community.
This isn't anything new. Let's just change our ways quicker than other advocates.
As of the upcoming 2.95 release, ecgs == gcc. One and the same. Since the new backend won't be integrated before 2.95 comes out, that pretty much answers the question.
You might have also noticed that the link heads to a machine called egcs... 8-)
I think this may be true for campus support, but not research. I'm a former UCLA student and a former student of Prof. Cole's. His yearly violence study hasn't been biased towards any network. (It's been pretty damning of all of them.)
Also, I'm a former Computer Store employee and the fact that we were the fifth biggest campus seller of Macs (Stanford, Harvard, UT Austin and somebody else.) seems to tell me that there's quite a lot of Microsoft resistance on campus.
I will agree that the campus has become more in the MS camp and is susceptible to the Big Project that pushes a lot of money towards OAC and the MIC. Heck, UCLA was in IBM's back pocket for years.
But I don't think that has gotten to the faculty or Prof. Cole in particular.
Exactly. When word first got out about SETI, the d.net folks asked if they wanted to use the existing client/server as a base or handle adminstration. SETI said no. Serves them right...
Except that you can use Replay's box without the service. You don't get the channel guide, but you can use it as a "digital VCR" without connecting it to the phone line. So if they go out of business or you don't trust them, you can still use it.
TiVo's box won't work without the service. Period. End of story.
But the big difference here, and the reason that, so far, TiVo is actually the good guy of the two, is that they're disclosing their plans and offering opt out
I corrected your opt-out assertion above; read the privacy policy again.
Plus both pass macrovision along; they don't create it themselves. So they're not adding to copy protection; just maintaining the status quo. (No judgments here about whether the status quo is bad or good.)
Where'd you hear that? Is it on their website? Have they made public, bindable statements to that effect?
They've made public statements to the media on at least one occasion (a Wired article). I could go dig out the references if you'd like. IANAL, so I don't know about bindable. (I doubt anything posted on a website is bindable.) That is certainly not their intent, AFAICT.
Until they do, they can do whatever they want. At least TiVo has a very comprehensive privacy policy out there for all to see, and also has opt-out available.
Bzzt. Thanks for playing. TiVo's opt-out is for lots of extra information. They will always be collecting what stuff you watch and how you watch it. Go read the TiVo privacy policy again, specifically part 3 that starts with "Other than as described above..."
Haven't seen anything at all from Replay about privacy.
AFAIK, both boxes are US-only right now, i.e. only NTSC. I'm sure they're both working on PAL and SECAM, looking ahead to the various HD formats and thinking about I18N and L10N.
The boxes won't add any macrovision information. They will just pass it along if it's already present. So you can't hook your VCR or DVD to the Replay or TiVo box, save the pre-recorded movie to the HD, then try to record a copy of that movie. The resultant tape copy will be squirrely.
This new web site ( www.tele-portal.com) has got lots of news and reviews of ReplayTV, TiVo and other digital devices that will help users control when they watch their programs. It's pretty comprehensive.
I don't think most reasonable people filter opinions from reasonable people. They filter whole subjects or whole authors who aren't "reasonable". Obviously "reasonable" is fuzzy.
In the Usenet world, people get killfiled for expressing the same thing over and over again. They don't get killfiled for saying "You're wrong and here are the (specific) reasons why..."
Censorship and Choice are ambiguous words
on
ShutUp Software
·
· Score: 2
As I said in the column, censorship and choice are very different. But people are going to see argument disappear across websites when obnoxious posters can be vaporized with the click of a button.
I think your choice of words and examples are very confusing and ambiguous. In the same paragraph, you talk about AOL removing posts, which would be "censorship" in my view, and the WELL's bozo filters, which from my (possibly incorrect) understanding are user-defined and thus "choice"
As others have said, there's the ability to speak, what Jon's calling "censorship", and the ability to listen, what he calls "choice".
I would classify these more as "mechanism" and "policy". I wouldn't want any filters on the mechanism of posting. I should be able to enter my comment on/. no matter what the blip Katz, Taco or anyone else has to say. But if someone thinks I'm an blathering idiot, they should have the ability to implement the policy of a filter of not having to hear me anymore.
In that sense, the examples of Raging Bull (of post removal) and AOL are mechanism filters and not those I agree with and the WELL and Usenet killfiles as policy filters and I use those.
I also turn off the filters every once in a while to see what I'm "missing". Sometimes I find things that I should filter back in, most of the time I don't. But having the ability to see things unfiltered is necessary.
An aside: It would be nice to have the feedback that I'm being killfiled and why and have the choice to change my behavior or not. (Since sometimes I am a blithering idiot...)
Someone already mentioned the possibility of there being legal problems with releasing the source of the compiler. Maybe there are other problems as well. Say, the implementation of the compiler is such that it is not amenable to an open source environment. Maybe because of the implementation language, maybe because of the build system, maybe because it's so complicated that only someone who's studied the code for months under the proper tutelage can be trusted to make good changes.
I'm not saying (yet) that any of these things are true, but without all the facts, it's just speculation why Digital/Compaq made the decision they did. Not that that ever stops taco or other/.ers...
Slashdot Mirror
It sure didn't sound like Roblimo or whoever passed the questions along anticpated the outstanding response and was a little overwhelmed. (I didn't look at most of the questions; I thought I'd seen the cream with the answers by Alan.) So I don't think they had score criteria before they went in. That would make it hard to inform people ahead of time. They may not have even taken all the score 5 questions (I haven't taken the time to look...)
/. comments by someone professing to be Alan Cox, presumably he could go back to the forum and look at the other high scored questions (whether by an ACoward (two different AC acronyms... 8-) ) or not) and answer them if he'd like.
/. has been able to get the interview and then instead of coming up with their own lamo questions, they throw the doors open to the masses. There's always going to be some good questions that don't get answered. How are you going to decide?
Since I've seen
From what I understand about these interviews,
I don't think there's any question about this being an "open and public forum".
It would be cool to get the various distributed computing initiatives (d.net's RC5, SETI, OGR, etc.) together onto one CD image to burn and run on Dreamcasts. Just pop the disc in when you're done playing and let it crack/spook/compute... It might be a good first step before tackling getting to the onboard 3D.
I can't believe no one has mentioned that Mac bigots (including myself) were getting slammed for doing the exact same things two or three years ago. Stewart Alsop, James Coates and Hiawatha Bray, among others, had their inboxes subjected to the wrath of Evangelistas with the same mixture of substantive criticism and flame.
The situation was also the same, a mailing list instead of a Web site, but a captive audience who were exposed to anti-"cause" articles by one or two moderators (Guy Kawasaki and John Halbig). Evangelistas eventually cleaned up their act, but it took a while for them to do so. Plus, they needed constant reminders when flamebait was posted not to flame the writers and to write in a constructive manner.
I would suggest that Taco and Hemos practice restraint on when they post inflammatory links and to warn people to keep their responses on the up and up. It seemed like the best method for the Mac community.
This isn't anything new. Let's just change our ways quicker than other advocates.
As of the upcoming 2.95 release, ecgs == gcc. One and the same. Since the new backend won't be integrated before 2.95 comes out, that pretty much answers the question.
You might have also noticed that the link heads to a machine called egcs... 8-)
I think this may be true for campus support, but not research. I'm a former UCLA student and a former student of Prof. Cole's. His yearly violence study hasn't been biased towards any network. (It's been pretty damning of all of them.)
Also, I'm a former Computer Store employee and the fact that we were the fifth biggest campus seller of Macs (Stanford, Harvard, UT Austin and somebody else.) seems to tell me that there's quite a lot of Microsoft resistance on campus.
I will agree that the campus has become more in the MS camp and is susceptible to the Big Project that pushes a lot of money towards OAC and the MIC. Heck, UCLA was in IBM's back pocket for years.
But I don't think that has gotten to the faculty or Prof. Cole in particular.
Jason "formerly untulis@seas.ucla.edu" Untulis
Not Sociology. Comm Studies. (Theoretically not quite as bad.) You'd think a UCLA student would know Cole's name...
I don't think this has anything to do with that grad student. Or at least nothing on his web page looked the same...
Jason "Comm 10 was fun *and* easy" Untulis
Exactly. When word first got out about SETI, the d.net folks asked if they wanted to use the existing client/server as a base or handle adminstration. SETI said no. Serves them right...
Jason "glad I didn't waste my time" Untulis
TiVo's box won't work without the service. Period. End of story.
But the big difference here, and the reason that, so far, TiVo is actually the good guy of the two, is that they're disclosing their plans and offering opt out
I corrected your opt-out assertion above; read the privacy policy again.
http://www.replaytv.com/aboutreplaytv.ht ml
Plus both pass macrovision along; they don't create it themselves. So they're not adding to copy protection; just maintaining the status quo. (No judgments here about whether the status quo is bad or good.)
Where'd you hear that? Is it on their website? Have they made public, bindable statements to that effect?
They've made public statements to the media on at least one occasion (a Wired article). I could go dig out the references if you'd like. IANAL, so I don't know about bindable. (I doubt anything posted on a website is bindable.) That is certainly not their intent, AFAICT.
Until they do, they can do whatever they want. At least TiVo has a very comprehensive privacy policy out there for all to see, and also has opt-out available.
Bzzt. Thanks for playing. TiVo's opt-out is for lots of extra information. They will always be collecting what stuff you watch and how you watch it. Go read the TiVo privacy policy again, specifically part 3 that starts with "Other than as described above..."
Haven't seen anything at all from Replay about privacy.
I agree that Replay should post a policy.
AFAIK, both boxes are US-only right now, i.e. only NTSC. I'm sure they're both working on PAL and SECAM, looking ahead to the various HD formats and thinking about I18N and L10N.
The boxes won't add any macrovision information. They will just pass it along if it's already present. So you can't hook your VCR or DVD to the Replay or TiVo box, save the pre-recorded movie to the HD, then try to record a copy of that movie. The resultant tape copy will be squirrely.
AFAIK, both boxes pass macrovision information on, so if you try to archive recorded info to tape, it's just like a VCR, it gets all squirrelly.
This new web site ( www.tele-portal.com) has got lots of news and reviews of ReplayTV, TiVo and other digital devices that will help users control when they watch their programs. It's pretty comprehensive.
I don't think most reasonable people filter opinions from reasonable people. They filter whole subjects or whole authors who aren't "reasonable". Obviously "reasonable" is fuzzy.
In the Usenet world, people get killfiled for expressing the same thing over and over again. They don't get killfiled for saying "You're wrong and here are the (specific) reasons why..."
I think your choice of words and examples are very confusing and ambiguous. In the same paragraph, you talk about AOL removing posts, which would be "censorship" in my view, and the WELL's bozo filters, which from my (possibly incorrect) understanding are user-defined and thus "choice"
As others have said, there's the ability to speak, what Jon's calling "censorship", and the ability to listen, what he calls "choice".
I would classify these more as "mechanism" and "policy". I wouldn't want any filters on the mechanism of posting. I should be able to enter my comment on /. no matter what the blip Katz, Taco or anyone else has to say. But if someone thinks I'm an blathering idiot, they should have the ability to implement the policy of a filter of not having to hear me anymore.
In that sense, the examples of Raging Bull (of post removal) and AOL are mechanism filters and not those I agree with and the WELL and Usenet killfiles as policy filters and I use those.
I also turn off the filters every once in a while to see what I'm "missing". Sometimes I find things that I should filter back in, most of the time I don't. But having the ability to see things unfiltered is necessary.
An aside: It would be nice to have the feedback that I'm being killfiled and why and have the choice to change my behavior or not. (Since sometimes I am a blithering idiot...)
Someone already mentioned the possibility of there being legal problems with releasing the source of the compiler. Maybe there are other problems as well. Say, the implementation of the compiler is such that it is not amenable to an open source environment. Maybe because of the implementation language, maybe because of the build system, maybe because it's so complicated that only someone who's studied the code for months under the proper tutelage can be trusted to make good changes.
/.ers...
I'm not saying (yet) that any of these things are true, but without all the facts, it's just speculation why Digital/Compaq made the decision they did. Not that that ever stops taco or other
Jason