Look, you are on my buddy list because I usually find your comments interesting. However "wealth doesn't shield anyone from prosecution" is just "see no evil" silly.
Wealth *does* shield people from prosecution in several ways:
1. People in positions of power are less likely to be harassed by police during an investigation, in part because they have access to lawyers who can enforce procedure from the very beginning. They and are not dependent of either a scramble for a lawyer they can afford or worse, a public defender.
2. There is a bias in perception among law enforcement that poor people commit crimes, not the wealthy. This creates a blind spot when investigating that can be overcome with significant evidence, but exists nonetheless.
3. Even when a wealthy person so obviously commits a crime that the government has no choice but to act, these people have the ability to get "token" penalties. Celebrities have this happen with alarming frequency.
My wife does research at the state level on the outcomes of "risky behavior (drugs, alcohol, prostitution, etc)" and the outcomes thereof. She is responsible of keeping the legislature aware of trends in such areas (she was stumping the issue of meth production years ago, before it exploded to the current problem).
One of the things that is in her data is socioeconomic status and outcomes thereof. The interesting point: people of high economic status who are arrested for drug charges (as an example) are only a fraction as likely as those of low status to actually be convicted of those charges. Those who are convicted are also more likely to get probation instead of prison time. Even more interesting is that hospital admittance data shows that affluent people are only arrested a tiny fraction as often as the poor compared to the rates of use that the hospital admittance data shows.
I find it difficult to believe that this disparity is only applied in terms of drug charges, although the mapping may not be completely linear. My point is that wealth is a very effective shield against low grade crimes because of the prejudices of the system itself and the resources that the wealthy have.
It isn't hard to feel bad for the bank. Not at all. Here in the States we have title insurance and the title agencies are tasked with ensuring that everything is in order. If the institution screws up, the *institution* is on the hook. Considering they have the power and resources to do due diligance and verify information carefully, this is the correct answer.
Amazing how much more careful an instutition is when they are on the hook rather than being able to say "oops, we didn't notice that nobody involved actually owned this: now give us our money anyway".
Asking a hypothetical question is fine; asking one in an interview where the candidate will never use the skill the hypothetical question tests for is another. I hire people... asking stupid questions isn't one of the practices I follow when doing it.
Assuming that the requirements somehow demand such silly long term reversals and your data is pointer sized and you somehow can't afford the 50% size increase that a doubly linked list would cost, yes, I guess such a method would be valuable.
However, I would still persue my original line of questioning: if it reached this point, surely an in place reversal algorithm has been proved reasonable and correct.
I would still value an employee who could realize how esoteric this situation was and asked questions that tried to normalize the situation first before implementing something silly over one who jumps in and just implements what he is asked, because "that's what the boss wants".
What I find amusing here is the request to "reverse a linked list in place". Talk about your WTF worthy request. Is it singly or doubly linked? If it is doubly linked, why the heck would you want to reverse it: just make an iterator that walks from tail to head instead of head to tail. Done and done, minus all that nasty moving data around. If you really want it to be permanent reversed, swap head and tail.
If it is singly linked, why the heck would you want to do it in place when constructing a new reverse link list (effectively making the list doubly linked) will allow you to avoid moving a single piece of data and yet again walk the data in reverse efficiently. Just add the head link as "tail" and then iterate forward, prepending elements into the new list. Now walk your new reverse link chain.
If you really really want to reverse in place, then I ask how the heck you managed to load your data in backwards in the first place. Only after you could explain that would I bother with the fact that the previously mentioned reverse link list can just be used to swap pointers by chaining both directions at once. Of course, such an operation requires a locking mechanism for the list as a whole and I'm going to guess that any software that requires swapping a singly linked list in place probably doesn't bother doing that. Bleh, how did your poor program end up in such a muddle.
You see, such a question in modern development is best answered MU: un-ask the question and examine the root causes. Sadly, some people around here would find the idea of actually unmasking the root problem to be offensive and get angry that their toy problem wasn't considered a serious request. Toy problems don't show you understand anything except how to code toys. Large systems are not toys, and employing people who are good with toys, but not with large systems is a bad idea. The good news: people who ask toy problem questions instead of being concerned that you can understand the real issues are not people you want to work for.
While it is true that minors can enter into contracts, those who accept such contracts are generally fools. It is very easy to break such contracts. Thus the requirement of an adult guardian to sign for virtually everything a minor contracts for.
Two things to consider. First, even agile developers have master architecture designs that cover "the big stuff". Second, the test suite acts as a layer of documentation itself: if you want to know what an object does, inspect the test suite and you will know more than the vast majority of documents I have read will tell you. And... since it is executable, it is never out of date.
On a completely unrelated note, programming is nothing like building a house. Unless your home builder can re-size rooms on demand, change the wiring to plumbing and do other amazing feats that code can do. Nor is it like building a bridge: unless your bridge builders can decide to connect two completely different cities over completely different terrain at the customer's request. Analogies to computing are always weak at best, misleading at worst.
There is a segment of the population for whom religion creates an anchor to which they can attach significance to their actions, and thus gain a moral compass. This seems particularly the case with the less educated, at least in my dealings with the various religious groups I come in contact with. (The more academic "religious" people I meet, if you query them actually have their own moral compass with which their religion happens to be compatible with. The less academic are more apt to point to "the book" as the rational for a moral choice.
That doesn't mean that it would make much difference in the large however: the most frustrating aspect of religion is the number of people who use it as sheep's clothing while being wolves in their day to day lives. Worse, many of the atrocities that have been committed historically were motivated by religious groups fear at things they did not agree with.
I don't think religion is the panacea that you are looking for.
While I agree with your principle, in larger companies the organization is always running your job in the papers. Not because they want to replace *you* specifically, but because you are one of a group of (to human resources mind) exchangeable cogs. Yet, is is this type of organization that tends to get uptight when the employees show some gumption and check the waters out. The rule seems to be that it is OK for corporations to "look for ways to cut costs" but not OK for employees to look for safety nets when the axe falls due to outsourcing or "rightsizing".
So, people at the phone company amuse themselves by abusing the monitoring clause. Therefore we should not worry about abuses of government in terms of monitoring its citizens. Logic, meet "greenrom". No, come back Logic, why are you fleeing?
Perhaps a quick look at *why* the wiretap laws were being an issue at the time of the privacy ruling in regards to telephone calls (quick hint: it has to do with abuses of the wiretaps by a government trolling the population's conversations for less than respectable purposes) would help coax logic back into the building?
This country has had some rough patches where those in power have used their power to monitor those they did not like. The wiretap law update happened after one of those patches. Some would say we are in another rough patch, where rules are not being honored. Articles like this just reinforce the tinfoil hat population's views of "OMG: the want to ownzer my privacy".
I find it amusing that sometimes last year I argued that virtual assets were still assets and the guy who refused to accept that virtual assets were anything at all said "as soon as I can buy my groceries with virtual assets, I will believe you."
If Microsoft had realized the production problems they were going to face (or admitted to themselves they were going to have them, if they knew early as some say they did) then yes, a high price point causes the "per unit" loss to go down or even become profitable. If you only have N of something, you can charge a premium. The bundles proved there was a market for high end spending, but postulating that they could have moved *all* the units sold to date at a grossly higher price is a bit of a stretch.
To say that Microsoft missed the boat and the PS3 should be sold at a premium really depends on the actual costs at time of release. Sony already *tried* the high priced solution with the PS2 based media product in Japan. That isn't apples to apples though since it was competing with the existing PS2 installed base, which isn't a wise choice. If they expect shortages of Blue-Ray drives or the processors, perhaps they could try the strategy of $800 boxes. I think it is high risk though: the reviewers are going to tear you apart if you don't deliver a $800 experience.
Doh, should read more carefully with lower rating comments *included*. I agree that constant problems ins't a symptom of "smarter". The more complex devices become, the more crash prone they are becoming though, and yet we use them because when they work the provide quite a bit of functionality.
I love my DVR... when it is working. I have learned the controls (they are byzantine) but I haven't learned on what days I need to sacrifice a chicken to avoid a crash. If it was a Windows Media Center, at least I would understand why it crashes so often, but it is silver box that sits there, pretending to record shows.
I am willing to work around its quirks because of all the upside (it doesn't crash *that* often), but I suspect a less geeky user would simply drop kick the thing out the door. Reliability needs to be the number one concern when creating a device that works in the background like DVRs do. It is very annoying to find the programs you thought you recorded missing because it locked up Wednesday night...
Automatically detecting when my cable company reassings the stations would be nice too.
In a bout of irony, my DVD-RW drive on my Dell that I'm typing this on just failed. I think it wants to be replaced by an Mac.
I agree completely that Apple provides a quality product. They are head and shoulders above the "average" PC vendor. On the other hand, I have experimented will all the major vendors for business PCs that require Windows, and to be honest, they all are poor. We bought high end "workstations" from HP (prior to the merger with Compaq) and they were imploding at such a rate that my spares stock of ten machines against one hundred deployed was gone before a new shipment could arrive. Gateway never created a convincing workstation class machine (I was dropping these in front of hard core CAD/CAM engineers). I replaced the lot with Dells and had a much lower failure rate. Mind you, they still blew up with alarming frequency, but at less than half the rate the HPs did.
My more recent experiences with Dells are about where HPs were back then. But the HPs are far worse. Gateway *still* doesn't produce a convincing workstation class machine. So I will agree with your statement that you can be shoddy and average.
Pro/Engineer works on OS/X... if only we could get a MRP system that did so as well.
$250 per ticket is clearly not the end of the world. On the other hand, most tickets go for $80 or even less to the concerts I attend. So what are you getting for more than triple the cost? Improved cleavage enhancement? Whatever.
My point wasn't that people were being robbed at gunpoint, but that the entire argument was specious. To claim that $250 per ticket is a result of illegal downloaders is absurd when you step back and look at all the other concerts that are *not* that expensive. The up and coming bands seem quite content to earn more reasonable amounts for concerts. They also seem to understand that selling online will be the norm.
As an aside, the fact that people are paying $250 a ticket gives a perspective on the audience Madonna is reaching these days. I pay that much for opera tickets, not concerts.
Ah, sorry. I assumed it was something I could put on corporate desktops and not be hung from the highest rafters. Yes, I love OSX and Macs, but for some reason companies get uppity when their MRP system isn't compatible with desktops. In the corporate workplace, I have to support large bulky applications that barely are compatible with Windows. The art department loves thier OSX desktops though. Sadly, the rest have to suffer.
I usually find the BBS writer less brain dead than this article's.
Let's see: these are artists who have made millions upon millions, so the need to tour is just about zero. So they jack the price up.
Conclusion: illegal file downloaders cost live performance goers piles of cash. Um, yeah. Perhaps a better read is money hungry artists will fleece anyone they can for their new multimillion dollar home. Perhaps royalties *are* down on has been artists because of a combination of lower recording sales and their own stale presence on the market. So all they have is to repackage themselves doing classics live.
That doesn't really support the conclusion very well. Then they go interviewing people who bought scalper tickets to a sporting event to somehow prop up the story? Please.
"The problem is - there is two different editorial/administration models being lumped together here."
No, the problem is that people think there are two models. The reality is that all sites are controlled by the people who administrate it. Slashdot is more open about some parts of the policy, but it has also been opaque about other policy decisions. This is of course their choice as the operators of the site.
Where the real confusion comes in is that people actually seem to believe that Wikipedia or Digg are going to be "complete democracy and consensus". Reality slaps these people hard in the face when you realize that DMCA takedown notices, libel lawsuits and other hazards of publishing on the Internet guarantee that the naive attitude will quickly be replace by controls. Yes, some sites fight harder for consensus, but that just makes it sadder to watch reality tear the idealism out at the roots.
The *only* place I can envision being completely unregulated and democratic is something like Freenet. Gee, that sure does lift my spirits to realize that.
Actually, I will have to ask a question: who *do* you buy from if you eliminate all vendors as "shoddy". Please don't tell me some half baked "system integrator" down the street, because I know what goes on in those shops.
Yes, I will agree that all of the large vendors are producing well below what they could, and Dell has come down to meet them in that regard. However, I haven't found a *better* vendor yet. Well, not at least one that I can afford to place on corporate desktops.
Sadly, I have to agree with the idea, although the word shoddy is perhaps a bit much. They still provide product and service that is better than average - but they used to be so much more concerned about quality and support.
I think they realized how bad their competition was and figured they could cut corners and still be better than the average PC maker. I think they are still better than the average PC maker, but only barely these days; that isn't enough to keep customers.
Every online community has to make some hard decisions. If you take Kevin Rose's explanation at face value, the story removals were due to the community's response to those stories. The item that showed that the same voters were being used to bring an uncommented story to the front page is more interesting, as that is harder to explain away.
Either way, this sounds a *lot* like the stories about Wikipedia's Office account and the stuff that goes on there. Slashdot has had it's share of accusations of administrator manipulations behind the scenes. The question then comes down to: what should the power of the administrator be?
In the case of Slashdot, there is organized resistance against the site via GNAA and other troll groups, not to mention the relentless beating of stupid people upon its shores in an unorganized manner. Overall, I have to say that the end result of the administrator's effort has been successful in keeping the site useful.
Sites like Digg have to make the same types of choices to preserve the value of the site in the face of an endless barrage of stupidity as well. If they are having to promote stories by hand, it indicates that the core ideal has failed it: but reality very rarely treats ideals gently. Wikipedia has learned that lesson as has Slashdot. Looks like it is Digg's turn to find the balance point that is a fit for them.
Just because you can, doesn't mean it won't either. In fact, it tends against the negative case, being by definition possible. Given enough time, even the unlikely becomes probable.
I suspect it won't happen until RFID readers are as common as CueCats in garbage dumps and every license has a RFID in it. At that point it becomes a viable Keep it Simple Stupid solution for target acquisition. No need to hang around with a remote in your hand or wondering if the right person will be where you expect them to be. Just wait for the code to be present and things come to their sad conclusion.
Considering the level of effort show by some of the mob murders, I wouldn't discount motivated or sick people's willingness to use technology.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, you are on my buddy list because I usually find your comments interesting. However "wealth doesn't shield anyone from prosecution" is just "see no evil" silly.
Wealth *does* shield people from prosecution in several ways:
1. People in positions of power are less likely to be harassed by police during an investigation, in part because they have access to lawyers who can enforce procedure from the very beginning. They and are not dependent of either a scramble for a lawyer they can afford or worse, a public defender.
2. There is a bias in perception among law enforcement that poor people commit crimes, not the wealthy. This creates a blind spot when investigating that can be overcome with significant evidence, but exists nonetheless.
3. Even when a wealthy person so obviously commits a crime that the government has no choice but to act, these people have the ability to get "token" penalties. Celebrities have this happen with alarming frequency.
My wife does research at the state level on the outcomes of "risky behavior (drugs, alcohol, prostitution, etc)" and the outcomes thereof. She is responsible of keeping the legislature aware of trends in such areas (she was stumping the issue of meth production years ago, before it exploded to the current problem).
One of the things that is in her data is socioeconomic status and outcomes thereof. The interesting point: people of high economic status who are arrested for drug charges (as an example) are only a fraction as likely as those of low status to actually be convicted of those charges. Those who are convicted are also more likely to get probation instead of prison time. Even more interesting is that hospital admittance data shows that affluent people are only arrested a tiny fraction as often as the poor compared to the rates of use that the hospital admittance data shows.
I find it difficult to believe that this disparity is only applied in terms of drug charges, although the mapping may not be completely linear. My point is that wealth is a very effective shield against low grade crimes because of the prejudices of the system itself and the resources that the wealthy have.
It isn't hard to feel bad for the bank. Not at all. Here in the States we have title insurance and the title agencies are tasked with ensuring that everything is in order. If the institution screws up, the *institution* is on the hook. Considering they have the power and resources to do due diligance and verify information carefully, this is the correct answer.
Amazing how much more careful an instutition is when they are on the hook rather than being able to say "oops, we didn't notice that nobody involved actually owned this: now give us our money anyway".
Asking a hypothetical question is fine; asking one in an interview where the candidate will never use the skill the hypothetical question tests for is another. I hire people... asking stupid questions isn't one of the practices I follow when doing it.
Assuming that the requirements somehow demand such silly long term reversals and your data is pointer sized and you somehow can't afford the 50% size increase that a doubly linked list would cost, yes, I guess such a method would be valuable.
However, I would still persue my original line of questioning: if it reached this point, surely an in place reversal algorithm has been proved reasonable and correct.
I would still value an employee who could realize how esoteric this situation was and asked questions that tried to normalize the situation first before implementing something silly over one who jumps in and just implements what he is asked, because "that's what the boss wants".
What I find amusing here is the request to "reverse a linked list in place". Talk about your WTF worthy request. Is it singly or doubly linked? If it is doubly linked, why the heck would you want to reverse it: just make an iterator that walks from tail to head instead of head to tail. Done and done, minus all that nasty moving data around. If you really want it to be permanent reversed, swap head and tail.
If it is singly linked, why the heck would you want to do it in place when constructing a new reverse link list (effectively making the list doubly linked) will allow you to avoid moving a single piece of data and yet again walk the data in reverse efficiently. Just add the head link as "tail" and then iterate forward, prepending elements into the new list. Now walk your new reverse link chain.
If you really really want to reverse in place, then I ask how the heck you managed to load your data in backwards in the first place. Only after you could explain that would I bother with the fact that the previously mentioned reverse link list can just be used to swap pointers by chaining both directions at once. Of course, such an operation requires a locking mechanism for the list as a whole and I'm going to guess that any software that requires swapping a singly linked list in place probably doesn't bother doing that. Bleh, how did your poor program end up in such a muddle.
You see, such a question in modern development is best answered MU: un-ask the question and examine the root causes. Sadly, some people around here would find the idea of actually unmasking the root problem to be offensive and get angry that their toy problem wasn't considered a serious request. Toy problems don't show you understand anything except how to code toys. Large systems are not toys, and employing people who are good with toys, but not with large systems is a bad idea. The good news: people who ask toy problem questions instead of being concerned that you can understand the real issues are not people you want to work for.
a) False
While it is true that minors can enter into contracts, those who accept such contracts are generally fools. It is very easy to break such contracts. Thus the requirement of an adult guardian to sign for virtually everything a minor contracts for.
Two things to consider. First, even agile developers have master architecture designs that cover "the big stuff". Second, the test suite acts as a layer of documentation itself: if you want to know what an object does, inspect the test suite and you will know more than the vast majority of documents I have read will tell you. And... since it is executable, it is never out of date.
On a completely unrelated note, programming is nothing like building a house. Unless your home builder can re-size rooms on demand, change the wiring to plumbing and do other amazing feats that code can do. Nor is it like building a bridge: unless your bridge builders can decide to connect two completely different cities over completely different terrain at the customer's request. Analogies to computing are always weak at best, misleading at worst.
There is a segment of the population for whom religion creates an anchor to which they can attach significance to their actions, and thus gain a moral compass. This seems particularly the case with the less educated, at least in my dealings with the various religious groups I come in contact with. (The more academic "religious" people I meet, if you query them actually have their own moral compass with which their religion happens to be compatible with. The less academic are more apt to point to "the book" as the rational for a moral choice.
That doesn't mean that it would make much difference in the large however: the most frustrating aspect of religion is the number of people who use it as sheep's clothing while being wolves in their day to day lives. Worse, many of the atrocities that have been committed historically were motivated by religious groups fear at things they did not agree with.
I don't think religion is the panacea that you are looking for.
While I agree with your principle, in larger companies the organization is always running your job in the papers. Not because they want to replace *you* specifically, but because you are one of a group of (to human resources mind) exchangeable cogs. Yet, is is this type of organization that tends to get uptight when the employees show some gumption and check the waters out. The rule seems to be that it is OK for corporations to "look for ways to cut costs" but not OK for employees to look for safety nets when the axe falls due to outsourcing or "rightsizing".
I would love to live in your world though.
So, people at the phone company amuse themselves by abusing the monitoring clause. Therefore we should not worry about abuses of government in terms of monitoring its citizens. Logic, meet "greenrom". No, come back Logic, why are you fleeing?
Perhaps a quick look at *why* the wiretap laws were being an issue at the time of the privacy ruling in regards to telephone calls (quick hint: it has to do with abuses of the wiretaps by a government trolling the population's conversations for less than respectable purposes) would help coax logic back into the building?
This country has had some rough patches where those in power have used their power to monitor those they did not like. The wiretap law update happened after one of those patches. Some would say we are in another rough patch, where rules are not being honored. Articles like this just reinforce the tinfoil hat population's views of "OMG: the want to ownzer my privacy".
"Usually, she only takes groups." ... with piles of cash. Welcome to your government, now go home.
I find it amusing that sometimes last year I argued that virtual assets were still assets and the guy who refused to accept that virtual assets were anything at all said "as soon as I can buy my groceries with virtual assets, I will believe you."
Time to start that grocery trip, it appears.
If Microsoft had realized the production problems they were going to face (or admitted to themselves they were going to have them, if they knew early as some say they did) then yes, a high price point causes the "per unit" loss to go down or even become profitable. If you only have N of something, you can charge a premium. The bundles proved there was a market for high end spending, but postulating that they could have moved *all* the units sold to date at a grossly higher price is a bit of a stretch.
To say that Microsoft missed the boat and the PS3 should be sold at a premium really depends on the actual costs at time of release. Sony already *tried* the high priced solution with the PS2 based media product in Japan. That isn't apples to apples though since it was competing with the existing PS2 installed base, which isn't a wise choice. If they expect shortages of Blue-Ray drives or the processors, perhaps they could try the strategy of $800 boxes. I think it is high risk though: the reviewers are going to tear you apart if you don't deliver a $800 experience.
Doh, should read more carefully with lower rating comments *included*. I agree that constant problems ins't a symptom of "smarter". The more complex devices become, the more crash prone they are becoming though, and yet we use them because when they work the provide quite a bit of functionality.
Where did I use the word smart? Geeky != smart.
I love my DVR... when it is working. I have learned the controls (they are byzantine) but I haven't learned on what days I need to sacrifice a chicken to avoid a crash. If it was a Windows Media Center, at least I would understand why it crashes so often, but it is silver box that sits there, pretending to record shows.
I am willing to work around its quirks because of all the upside (it doesn't crash *that* often), but I suspect a less geeky user would simply drop kick the thing out the door. Reliability needs to be the number one concern when creating a device that works in the background like DVRs do. It is very annoying to find the programs you thought you recorded missing because it locked up Wednesday night...
Automatically detecting when my cable company reassings the stations would be nice too.
In a bout of irony, my DVD-RW drive on my Dell that I'm typing this on just failed. I think it wants to be replaced by an Mac.
I agree completely that Apple provides a quality product. They are head and shoulders above the "average" PC vendor. On the other hand, I have experimented will all the major vendors for business PCs that require Windows, and to be honest, they all are poor. We bought high end "workstations" from HP (prior to the merger with Compaq) and they were imploding at such a rate that my spares stock of ten machines against one hundred deployed was gone before a new shipment could arrive. Gateway never created a convincing workstation class machine (I was dropping these in front of hard core CAD/CAM engineers). I replaced the lot with Dells and had a much lower failure rate. Mind you, they still blew up with alarming frequency, but at less than half the rate the HPs did.
My more recent experiences with Dells are about where HPs were back then. But the HPs are far worse. Gateway *still* doesn't produce a convincing workstation class machine. So I will agree with your statement that you can be shoddy and average.
Pro/Engineer works on OS/X... if only we could get a MRP system that did so as well.
Ok, perhaps you would prefer the term "milk".
$250 per ticket is clearly not the end of the world. On the other hand, most tickets go for $80 or even less to the concerts I attend. So what are you getting for more than triple the cost? Improved cleavage enhancement? Whatever.
My point wasn't that people were being robbed at gunpoint, but that the entire argument was specious. To claim that $250 per ticket is a result of illegal downloaders is absurd when you step back and look at all the other concerts that are *not* that expensive. The up and coming bands seem quite content to earn more reasonable amounts for concerts. They also seem to understand that selling online will be the norm.
As an aside, the fact that people are paying $250 a ticket gives a perspective on the audience Madonna is reaching these days. I pay that much for opera tickets, not concerts.
Ah, sorry. I assumed it was something I could put on corporate desktops and not be hung from the highest rafters. Yes, I love OSX and Macs, but for some reason companies get uppity when their MRP system isn't compatible with desktops. In the corporate workplace, I have to support large bulky applications that barely are compatible with Windows. The art department loves thier OSX desktops though. Sadly, the rest have to suffer.
I usually find the BBS writer less brain dead than this article's.
Let's see: these are artists who have made millions upon millions, so the need to tour is just about zero. So they jack the price up.
Conclusion: illegal file downloaders cost live performance goers piles of cash. Um, yeah. Perhaps a better read is money hungry artists will fleece anyone they can for their new multimillion dollar home. Perhaps royalties *are* down on has been artists because of a combination of lower recording sales and their own stale presence on the market. So all they have is to repackage themselves doing classics live.
That doesn't really support the conclusion very well. Then they go interviewing people who bought scalper tickets to a sporting event to somehow prop up the story? Please.
"The problem is - there is two different editorial/administration models being lumped together here."
No, the problem is that people think there are two models. The reality is that all sites are controlled by the people who administrate it. Slashdot is more open about some parts of the policy, but it has also been opaque about other policy decisions. This is of course their choice as the operators of the site.
Where the real confusion comes in is that people actually seem to believe that Wikipedia or Digg are going to be "complete democracy and consensus". Reality slaps these people hard in the face when you realize that DMCA takedown notices, libel lawsuits and other hazards of publishing on the Internet guarantee that the naive attitude will quickly be replace by controls. Yes, some sites fight harder for consensus, but that just makes it sadder to watch reality tear the idealism out at the roots.
The *only* place I can envision being completely unregulated and democratic is something like Freenet. Gee, that sure does lift my spirits to realize that.
Actually, I will have to ask a question: who *do* you buy from if you eliminate all vendors as "shoddy". Please don't tell me some half baked "system integrator" down the street, because I know what goes on in those shops.
Yes, I will agree that all of the large vendors are producing well below what they could, and Dell has come down to meet them in that regard. However, I haven't found a *better* vendor yet. Well, not at least one that I can afford to place on corporate desktops.
I await illumination.
Sadly, I have to agree with the idea, although the word shoddy is perhaps a bit much. They still provide product and service that is better than average - but they used to be so much more concerned about quality and support.
I think they realized how bad their competition was and figured they could cut corners and still be better than the average PC maker. I think they are still better than the average PC maker, but only barely these days; that isn't enough to keep customers.
Every online community has to make some hard decisions. If you take Kevin Rose's explanation at face value, the story removals were due to the community's response to those stories. The item that showed that the same voters were being used to bring an uncommented story to the front page is more interesting, as that is harder to explain away.
Either way, this sounds a *lot* like the stories about Wikipedia's Office account and the stuff that goes on there. Slashdot has had it's share of accusations of administrator manipulations behind the scenes. The question then comes down to: what should the power of the administrator be?
In the case of Slashdot, there is organized resistance against the site via GNAA and other troll groups, not to mention the relentless beating of stupid people upon its shores in an unorganized manner. Overall, I have to say that the end result of the administrator's effort has been successful in keeping the site useful.
Sites like Digg have to make the same types of choices to preserve the value of the site in the face of an endless barrage of stupidity as well. If they are having to promote stories by hand, it indicates that the core ideal has failed it: but reality very rarely treats ideals gently. Wikipedia has learned that lesson as has Slashdot. Looks like it is Digg's turn to find the balance point that is a fit for them.
Just because you can, doesn't mean it won't either. In fact, it tends against the negative case, being by definition possible. Given enough time, even the unlikely becomes probable.
I suspect it won't happen until RFID readers are as common as CueCats in garbage dumps and every license has a RFID in it. At that point it becomes a viable Keep it Simple Stupid solution for target acquisition. No need to hang around with a remote in your hand or wondering if the right person will be where you expect them to be. Just wait for the code to be present and things come to their sad conclusion.
Considering the level of effort show by some of the mob murders, I wouldn't discount motivated or sick people's willingness to use technology.