The original post to which he is (presumably) referring is most likely http://forums.infoworld.com/threa ds/get.cgi?74142. A number of people have pointed out that he won't actually argue his point; he just restates his views repeatedly without supporting them. I just figured that it'd be better for you interested slashdotters to go read the original thread. It's enough to convince me that the guy's a schmuck (although I shouldn't say that, since it will just give him more ammo to use in his fight against the arrogance of the Linux community).
I would assume so, although these seem like the type of people who would be all cocky about nobody being able to crack their site.. until someone did it, at which point they would vow to "prosecute him/her to the full extent of the law." Anyway, I'm sure some enterprising/. reader out there can figure out a way to do it.
I don't know about this being all that great of an idea. I imagine that the same type of people who go around using Back Orifice for kicks would also find it amusing to hunt down people with open printers who don't realize they're open and either waste their paper by printing a hundred sheets with one word in the middle or waste their ink by printing a few completely black pages. Since it seems that most people I know who have computers don't know about 80% of what they can really do, it seems that a lot of people wouldn't realize their printers were open to pretty much everybody.
You can essentially disable the filters if you want to, now that the/. preferences are enabled. Just go a bit of the way down the page & set your default threshold so low that you should see everything, even the moderated posts (unless some overzealous moderator(s) decided to knock them down a couple hundred points). My current threshold's at -10, so I can see everything & not have to worry about what the moderators think is/isn't right for me. That's not to say I have anything against moderation; it seems like a good idea for those who want it. But those of us who don't want it do have a method of essentially disabling it.
I didn't think the point was the fact that one thing or another was worth filtering or not. The point is, different people have different views on what should/should not be viewed (as we can see here). It's just a problem of one group of people trying to impose what they consider to be "right" on the general populace, which can be a Bad Thing (tm).
We had the same sort of thing in my old high school. They used the BESS filtering service, which used a proxy-based mechanism for filtering. Of course, as with pretty much every other service, it was guilty of some serious overkill. It blocked out *.geocities.com completely, and I believe *.tripod.com, too. Then again, our computer network was presided over by the school's librarian, who knows about as much about computers as my dog (she once told us that she thought one step up from a 386 was a 387). Anyway, to get back to my main subject, I figure that the best way to keep students from looking at porn is just to place the computers in such a way that their monitors can be seen from the librarian's desk. He/she can then regulate what the students are viewing without too much work, and it keeps the "overfiltering" out of the equation.
Ok, I don't understand this anymore. Before, when there was a Katz article the flamers would come out in full force, telling Katz what an idiot he was and that he shouldn't be on Slashdot. The popular reply to this was that the flamers shouldn't be reading his articles if they found them so terrible. Of course, with his articles right there on the front of Slashdot, I guess they just couldn't resist the desire to click on the link and read the latest from Katz so they could have more ammo in their neverending fight to inform him of what an idiot he is. But.. now we have preferences. If you all hate Katz so much (and there seem to be quite a few who do), then just filter out his articles. Voila, you no longer have to read his articles, and we no longer have to read comments peppered with "Katz sucks" and other such insightful statements.
I imagine you're thinking of Slate, MS's little webzine project that talked of the wonderful profits they'd make by going from a free service to a subscription service. Suffice to say, they're back to being a free service again, so we can figure out how well that one worked.
Argh. This is the type of post that completely pisses me off. If you're going to refute his claims, tell us what exactly makes you think that his claims are invalid instead of just telling us they are. If you don't support your position, it becomes just as weak as the position you're trying to tell us is so bad.
Ok, you received them "free," but the OEM you bought it from paid for it, and you can be sure that at least part of that cost was passed on to you, the consumer.
I dunno, I thought the same thing when I read it. Considering the fact that Microsoft named Linux as a competitor in their antitrust trial, and the fact that said trial is still going on, why is this guy coming out and saying, essentially, "Microsoft does not see Linux as a competitor"? Honestly, one would think that Microsoft would at least clarify their position on Linux within the company so as not to have multiple conflicting statements made..
The URL for the Rio accessories should be http://www.diamondmm.com/products/current/rio-acc. cfm (click me). This is why you make sure to close your HTML tags:)
Although I'm generally all for free speech, this site seemed to cross the line between the use of the right to free speech to discuss their views on abortion and the use of free speech to call for the murder of abortion doctors. Hopefully this won't set any sort of precedent for the shutting down of just any website that is even somewhat threatening, though (otherwise/. might get shut down for all the people wanting to kill Bill Gates:)
For those of you who don't want to go mucking around in that guy's website trying to find the article that mentions/., go here; it's near the bottom of the page. Not that much about it, just that he doesn't give much credibility to/. posters because they use words like "Windoze," and that he doesn't think Refund Day is all that big because most of the people stating they're going to participate in it have probably booted their computers to Win95/98 at least once.
I figure if GeoCities can get $4.6 billion, slashdot, which is a far more useful site (I mean, how many times do you need to see "Mary-Jo's Home of All Her Beanie Baby Friends!!!!!" on a webpage?), should get $10 bil, easily.
Slashdot Mirror
Er.. don't even ask me why I called him Lawrence Livermore.. I'm not thinking clearly :P
-mike kania
The original post to which he is (presumably) referring is most likely http://forums.infoworld.com/threa ds/get.cgi?74142. A number of people have pointed out that he won't actually argue his point; he just restates his views repeatedly without supporting them. I just figured that it'd be better for you interested slashdotters to go read the original thread. It's enough to convince me that the guy's a schmuck (although I shouldn't say that, since it will just give him more ammo to use in his fight against the arrogance of the Linux community).
-mike kania
I would assume so, although these seem like the type of people who would be all cocky about nobody being able to crack their site.. until someone did it, at which point they would vow to "prosecute him/her to the full extent of the law." Anyway, I'm sure some enterprising /. reader out there can figure out a way to do it.
-mike kania
I don't know about this being all that great of an idea. I imagine that the same type of people who go around using Back Orifice for kicks would also find it amusing to hunt down people with open printers who don't realize they're open and either waste their paper by printing a hundred sheets with one word in the middle or waste their ink by printing a few completely black pages. Since it seems that most people I know who have computers don't know about 80% of what they can really do, it seems that a lot of people wouldn't realize their printers were open to pretty much everybody.
-mike kania
You can essentially disable the filters if you want to, now that the /. preferences are enabled. Just go a bit of the way down the page & set your default threshold so low that you should see everything, even the moderated posts (unless some overzealous moderator(s) decided to knock them down a couple hundred points). My current threshold's at -10, so I can see everything & not have to worry about what the moderators think is/isn't right for me. That's not to say I have anything against moderation; it seems like a good idea for those who want it. But those of us who don't want it do have a method of essentially disabling it.
-mike kania
I didn't think the point was the fact that one thing or another was worth filtering or not. The point is, different people have different views on what should/should not be viewed (as we can see here). It's just a problem of one group of people trying to impose what they consider to be "right" on the general populace, which can be a Bad Thing (tm).
-mike kania
We had the same sort of thing in my old high school. They used the BESS filtering service, which used a proxy-based mechanism for filtering. Of course, as with pretty much every other service, it was guilty of some serious overkill. It blocked out *.geocities.com completely, and I believe *.tripod.com, too. Then again, our computer network was presided over by the school's librarian, who knows about as much about computers as my dog (she once told us that she thought one step up from a 386 was a 387). Anyway, to get back to my main subject, I figure that the best way to keep students from looking at porn is just to place the computers in such a way that their monitors can be seen from the librarian's desk. He/she can then regulate what the students are viewing without too much work, and it keeps the "overfiltering" out of the equation.
-mike kania
Ok, I don't understand this anymore. Before, when there was a Katz article the flamers would come out in full force, telling Katz what an idiot he was and that he shouldn't be on Slashdot. The popular reply to this was that the flamers shouldn't be reading his articles if they found them so terrible. Of course, with his articles right there on the front of Slashdot, I guess they just couldn't resist the desire to click on the link and read the latest from Katz so they could have more ammo in their neverending fight to inform him of what an idiot he is. But.. now we have preferences. If you all hate Katz so much (and there seem to be quite a few who do), then just filter out his articles. Voila, you no longer have to read his articles, and we no longer have to read comments peppered with "Katz sucks" and other such insightful statements.
-mike kania
I imagine you're thinking of Slate, MS's little webzine project that talked of the wonderful profits they'd make by going from a free service to a subscription service. Suffice to say, they're back to being a free service again, so we can figure out how well that one worked.
-mike kania
Argh. This is the type of post that completely pisses me off. If you're going to refute his claims, tell us what exactly makes you think that his claims are invalid instead of just telling us they are. If you don't support your position, it becomes just as weak as the position you're trying to tell us is so bad.
-mike kania
Ok, you received them "free," but the OEM you bought it from paid for it, and you can be sure that at least part of that cost was passed on to you, the consumer.
-mike kania
I dunno, I thought the same thing when I read it. Considering the fact that Microsoft named Linux as a competitor in their antitrust trial, and the fact that said trial is still going on, why is this guy coming out and saying, essentially, "Microsoft does not see Linux as a competitor"? Honestly, one would think that Microsoft would at least clarify their position on Linux within the company so as not to have multiple conflicting statements made..
-mike kania
The URL for the Rio accessories should be http://www.diamondmm.com/products/current/rio-acc. cfm (click me). This is why you make sure to close your HTML tags :)
-mike kania
File Not Found
/~huw/lego was not found on this server.
The requested URL
Anyone got a mirror?
-mike kania
Although I'm generally all for free speech, this site seemed to cross the line between the use of the right to free speech to discuss their views on abortion and the use of free speech to call for the murder of abortion doctors. Hopefully this won't set any sort of precedent for the shutting down of just any website that is even somewhat threatening, though (otherwise /. might get shut down for all the people wanting to kill Bill Gates :)
-mike kania
For those of you who don't want to go mucking around in that guy's website trying to find the article that mentions /., go here; it's near the bottom of the page. Not that much about it, just that he doesn't give much credibility to /. posters because they use words like "Windoze," and that he doesn't think Refund Day is all that big because most of the people stating they're going to participate in it have probably booted their computers to Win95/98 at least once.
-mike kania
I figure if GeoCities can get $4.6 billion, slashdot, which is a far more useful site (I mean, how many times do you need to see "Mary-Jo's Home of All Her Beanie Baby Friends!!!!!" on a webpage?), should get $10 bil, easily.
-mike kania