I don't think he's looking at it financially, I think he's looking at Amazon's change from a 'new media' (who's term is that? negroponte?) philosophical perspective. Some philosophy is good (as in the cases of NeXT and Apple--Steve Jobs is all about philosophy, and it leads to pretty darned neat stuff. But lets not get into a platform/personality war. It's just an example), but too much philosophy gets in the way of actually doing things.
I have attended enough meetings of boards devoted to all sorts of useless stuff (the use of Pittsburgh's city funds to create 'online monuments' on the scale of physical structures--who cares!?) to know that there is a serious risk of becoming mired down in minutae and other pointless silliness in the pursuit of their new realm of human interaction.
I don't see the internet as that. I see it as an extremely effective way to communicate. And, like any extremely effective way to communicate and interact, it has created its own mini-societies and cultures. Those are great, and I love them. I am a little alarmed by the commercialization of the internet, but that is an unavoidable result of its increasing popularity. I acknowlege that there is a point at which we have to stop being purists and start being plain realistic. If more people like Amazon.com because they can buy Power Rangers at the same time as they buy an O'Reilly book and a copy of The Collected Works of Karl Marx, then bully for them, and bully for Amazon! They are fulfilling a desire that people have. If they do it poorly, they will go away. As i said before, they are less 'pure', but they are more functional. And that is, by no means, a bad thing.
Nonono. 'It' referred to capitalism. I really like Amazon. The customer reviews are an incredible feature.
After using Amazon and Slashdot, I have begun to instinctively try and 'respond' whenever I hear anything. I was listening to a segment on NPR last night and my automatic compulsion was to hit 'reply'. Of course, there was no such button on my radio. I think I accidentally turned on G. Gordon Liddy, instead.
At the risk of sounding too much like Katz, the ability of the internet to bring the power of response to the masses is, IMHO, its most significant attribute.
Right you are. It seems to me that Jon's perception of the internet is clouded by the gee-whiz, super-dooper-revolutionary, change-the-world, wear-shiny-clothes attitude that was popularized by Wired (when it was worth reading). It's the same attitude that makes the people who actually use the thing for pretty humdrum and mundane daily work annoyed at the very concept of a JonKatz. It's also the same thing that makes Nick. Negroponte so damned annoying. I read "Being Digital" and was just plain bothered. It's fine and dandy that all of this stuff is revolutionary and new, but who gives a rat's tush if it isn't useful for some reason. Amazon.com, though it might have lost its 'new media purity' is, still, a business. And it is, still, a useful tool for consumers. And that's all that matters. When I want to get hardware, I go to Sears. I don't go to a trendy, new-age hardware shop. I go to the best place for the product. It doesn't matter if they've sold out or not.
Now, if Amazon did start sucking significantly (sucking is purposefully vague, there), I would go somewhere else. That's capitalism. I don't like it very much, but it typically gets the job done.
At that point, +/- $2500 is a lot less significant. If, however, you are patching a cluster together out of old machines, then $2500 is a pretty big deal.
You know, that's a pretty damned good point. Open Source/Free Software is a good deal more open than closed source/commercial software (given).
It does make sense that all of the internal politics and other whatnot is going to much more public in public projects.
We all know about the silliness that took place in the early days of Apple. For all we know, that sort of thing still happens (perhaps on a smaller scale), but we don't hear about it. When projects fizzle, or otherwise change direction (Mozilla), it becomes a big public stink. But, look at the dozens of cancelled projects that are quietly re-orged out of existance. Sticking with Apple, there is a laundry list: QuickDraw GX, PowerTalk, the Newton, AOCE all come to mind pretty readily.
Hmm. Is the public nature of the debate--which can be quite hairy at times--a problem or an asset or just a fact of life?
Interestingly, at my company, you have to apply for overtime authorization. It's a high tech software firm, but spending ridiculous amounts of time on projects outside of normal hours is discouraged. Does anyone else have similar work environments?
That makes it deservant of a moderation down? So if you just plain think I'm wrong, my opinion becomes flamebait? Sheesh.
It seems that the one who posted the letter should have just ignored the guy (J?) who was being the jerk. Moral high ground, etc. Had he simply ignored the jerk and gone on with life, people would have stopped paying attention to J, and all would have resolved itself in the long run. Instead, he chose to send an imflammatory email that served no real purpose other than to provoke the other party. Then, he wrote his letter to whine.
At least that's the way I saw it. You might see differently.
It puzzles me why this message would be moderated down. It might be controversial, but it is a valid opinion (IMO). The day that slashdot moderates away any posting that dares to show an iota of 'deviation' from the 'party line' is the day that I don't come back. The problem is that this behavior seems to be happening with increasing frequency.
I don't really care about my post in particular, but I have seen many other posts that are interesting points (whether or not I agree with them) that have been moderated down due to potentially controversial content. If I say "I don't think OS works, and here is why...", it is a very different thing from "free software sucks. RMS is ugly."
...it seems like both parties in the story are very immature people. Rather than responding with pointed messages, the author of the letter could simply have done what he wished the other party to do--ignored him and gone quietly on with his business.
Is it me, or are there a lot of people prone to whining in the OS community? It seems that almost every major controversy degrades into whining about the petty tactics of 'the other side', while the whiners are busy explaining why they are allowed to use those tactics, themselves.
It seems that one of the potential pitfalls of open source development is the lack of a truly structured hierarchy that is unavoidable in the corporate world. Openness and freedom are nice, but they can lead to all sorts of unproductivity.
The collapse (dismantling) of the USSR was a calculated political act taken by people at the top (of the state and the CPSU) who felt that their best interests would be served by the end of the USSR.
There is a reason that the great majority (I would venture to say all) of the richest and most influential people in Russia today are ex-Communist officials.
W/regard to the 'collapse' of the Soviet economy: the only year in which it actually contracted (rather than expanding) was in in 1991, after the dismantling of the major organs of economic planning. Throughout the glasnost/perestroika period, the economy continued to grow (though at a pace slower than that of the western powers). The currency hyperinflated and the economy went to hell when Yeltsin and friends completely dismantled all of the vestiges of the old economy in January of 1992 (in a policy called shock therapy).
One might point out that the economy of the United States did not 'collapse' when its dramatic contraction during the Great Depression is compared to the fantastic growth rates of the USSR economy during the 1930s.
There was a gradual decline during the later Brezhnev years, up to the period of Perestroika. That decline can be attributed to worker apathy, and other socio-political elements, but it is imperative to understand that at no point did the economy stop growing.
What happened was, as glasnost was legitimized by the top echelons of the party, the intellectuals seized onto the 'free market' idea. Their understanding of what a free market would bring was colored by their experiences with state socialism for seventy years. Simultaneously, the ranks of party officials saw that in the West, managers and corporate officials (their counterparts) had a much higher standard of living. At that point, the basic human greed instinct kicked in, and it became apparent to many of those with roles in the party structure (the old nomenklatura) that their material interests would be best served by a change in the USSR from a planned economy to a free market style economy.
The problem is that they were right. They are now the richest people in the country, but they achieved that status at the terrible expense of the great majority of the people.
A very good book on the subject is Kotz and Weir (I don't know about the spelling of their names)'s 'Revolution From Above'. It goes a long way toward debunking the prevailing myths about the Soviet Union's demise.
I was charged the six percent Florida sales tax, too. Oh well.
Why not end the monopoly on the mail? Because the postal service does not exhibit monopoly pricing. Do you think that your company could (profitably) deliver first class mail for 33 cents per letter in two days with a pretty damned good deal of reliability?
My complaint doesn't have anything to do with Tom's pet peeve. It has to do with the sanctimoniously haughty attitude he chose to use while making his pet peeve known.
My comment was further reinforced (in my mind) by his followup.
I didn't comment because I recognized the name--I commented because I both recognized the name and was somewhat irked by the response. I don't know if he was always this pompous, or if it came about naturally through exposure, but it seems consistent with much of the content that I have seen come from him, and I found that interesting and somewhat amusing.
Again, my personal feelings with regard to TC have no bearing on my respect for the amount of time and work that he has invested--work from which I know I have benefitted. And I do, most certainly, appreciate it.
However, when position and title become an effective way to deflect criticism (I'm not saying that Tom did this in any way--I'm being vague and speculative here), any movement that has thus far claimed to be egalitarian and open-minded is, IMO, doomed to a quick descent into infighting and failure.
Well. That was far more than my two bits.
-awc
Oh, and in response to the AC's attack on my site, sod off.
There's a difference between trying to sound intelligent and actually succeeding. Just like there's a difference between sounding casual with speech ("sux," etc.) and sounding like a flaming moron.
Of course, this is a flame and it deserves to be moderated down.
_But_, I just want to point out that the AC's response--in defense of TC--is bitching at Luis for arguing in a method similar to (but significantly less pompous) than Tom's.
Honest scholarship is one thing, but obsequiously petty nitpicking is another. There is a difference between constructive flaming and pointless harping. While I don't think that you've descended into pointless harping, constructive, that message was not.
Did you look at the source for their 'look up a domain' page? It points to a local perl script. How much do you want to bet that they log every looked up domain name, and register the available ones before the person who used the tool has a chance? Sheesh. Bloodsuckers.
But, shouldn't the class/method call be: user.switchTo("linux"); ? It would make sense that the switchTo method is something that the user class can do, and he would have any number of options at his disposal. Linux being one.
Oh, come on, Tom. I'm sure you have more important things to do than spend your time correcting people.
I, probably along with almost everyone else on/., appreciate all of the work that you have done and the time that you have contributed to many of the tools (and religions) that we use regularly--it truly is magnificent.
But, come now! The impression of you that I get is that you prowl about the Usenet and apparently, Slashdot, ruthlessly correcting people. I got a semi-automated message from your address because one of my postings to the Usenet had something wrong with the headers. Do you _really_ care that much about my headers?
I appologize for the ad hominem nature of my comments, but I, too, care very deeply about the English language. But I don't publicly correct people or spend significant amounts of time to create documents such as the one at the link in your comment. It just strikes me as petty and rude.
What I find intriguing are the possiblities for marketing. OnStar is advertising itself as a hotel booking service, reservation-making service, etc. They must be building up quite an impressive database of _extrememly_ customized personal profiles. Think of what that list of profiles--of America's wealthier individuals--would be worth to a marketing company?
And, if--like you wondered--they could keep track of listening habits, etc., that would just make it even more valuable as something to sell.
Uhhh...about not breaking laws in existance and retroactive anti-trust law: the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was passed in 1890. Perhaps billy-boy doesn't like to obey laws passed before he was born.
Thanks for the advice. One more question--What drive did you get, and do you use it with Linux?
I'm actually leaning toward a SCSI drive, as I have four IDE devices, already. I imagine that that would be at least a little more expensive, but the functionality is quite appealing.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think he's looking at it financially, I think he's looking at Amazon's change from a 'new media' (who's term is that? negroponte?) philosophical perspective. Some philosophy is good (as in the cases of NeXT and Apple--Steve Jobs is all about philosophy, and it leads to pretty darned neat stuff. But lets not get into a platform/personality war. It's just an example), but too much philosophy gets in the way of actually doing things.
I have attended enough meetings of boards devoted to all sorts of useless stuff (the use of Pittsburgh's city funds to create 'online monuments' on the scale of physical structures--who cares!?) to know that there is a serious risk of becoming mired down in minutae and other pointless silliness in the pursuit of their new realm of human interaction.
I don't see the internet as that. I see it as an extremely effective way to communicate. And, like any extremely effective way to communicate and interact, it has created its own mini-societies and cultures. Those are great, and I love them. I am a little alarmed by the commercialization of the internet, but that is an unavoidable result of its increasing popularity. I acknowlege that there is a point at which we have to stop being purists and start being plain realistic. If more people like Amazon.com because they can buy Power Rangers at the same time as they buy an O'Reilly book and a copy of The Collected Works of Karl Marx, then bully for them, and bully for Amazon! They are fulfilling a desire that people have. If they do it poorly, they will go away. As i said before, they are less 'pure', but they are more functional. And that is, by no means, a bad thing.
-awc
Nonono. 'It' referred to capitalism. I really like Amazon. The customer reviews are an incredible feature.
After using Amazon and Slashdot, I have begun to instinctively try and 'respond' whenever I hear anything. I was listening to a segment on NPR last night and my automatic compulsion was to hit 'reply'. Of course, there was no such button on my radio. I think I accidentally turned on G. Gordon Liddy, instead.
At the risk of sounding too much like Katz, the ability of the internet to bring the power of response to the masses is, IMHO, its most significant attribute.
-awc
Right you are. It seems to me that Jon's perception of the internet is clouded by the gee-whiz, super-dooper-revolutionary, change-the-world, wear-shiny-clothes attitude that was popularized by Wired (when it was worth reading). It's the same attitude that makes the people who actually use the thing for pretty humdrum and mundane daily work annoyed at the very concept of a JonKatz. It's also the same thing that makes Nick. Negroponte so damned annoying. I read "Being Digital" and was just plain bothered. It's fine and dandy that all of this stuff is revolutionary and new, but who gives a rat's tush if it isn't useful for some reason. Amazon.com, though it might have lost its 'new media purity' is, still, a business. And it is, still, a useful tool for consumers. And that's all that matters. When I want to get hardware, I go to Sears. I don't go to a trendy, new-age hardware shop. I go to the best place for the product. It doesn't matter if they've sold out or not.
Now, if Amazon did start sucking significantly (sucking is purposefully vague, there), I would go somewhere else. That's capitalism. I don't like it very much, but it typically gets the job done.
-awc
Anoymous source? This all sounds somewhat fishy. How legal will it be to actually use that routine in any code that real people get to use?
-awc
50 x $400 = $20,000.
At that point, +/- $2500 is a lot less significant. If, however, you are patching a cluster together out of old machines, then $2500 is a pretty big deal.
It all depends on your frame of reference.
-awc
No matter what the benefits, no matter what the features, this can not be, and is not a good thing.
Ever.
No how. No way.
-awc
You know, that's a pretty damned good point. Open Source/Free Software is a good deal more open than closed source/commercial software (given).
It does make sense that all of the internal politics and other whatnot is going to much more public in public projects.
We all know about the silliness that took place in the early days of Apple. For all we know, that sort of thing still happens (perhaps on a smaller scale), but we don't hear about it. When projects fizzle, or otherwise change direction (Mozilla), it becomes a big public stink. But, look at the dozens of cancelled projects that are quietly re-orged out of existance. Sticking with Apple, there is a laundry list: QuickDraw GX, PowerTalk, the Newton, AOCE all come to mind pretty readily.
Hmm. Is the public nature of the debate--which can be quite hairy at times--a problem or an asset or just a fact of life?
Again, great point.
-awc
Interestingly, at my company, you have to apply for overtime authorization. It's a high tech software firm, but spending ridiculous amounts of time on projects outside of normal hours is discouraged. Does anyone else have similar work environments?
-awc
That makes it deservant of a moderation down? So if you just plain think I'm wrong, my opinion becomes flamebait? Sheesh.
It seems that the one who posted the letter should have just ignored the guy (J?) who was being the jerk. Moral high ground, etc. Had he simply ignored the jerk and gone on with life, people would have stopped paying attention to J, and all would have resolved itself in the long run. Instead, he chose to send an imflammatory email that served no real purpose other than to provoke the other party. Then, he wrote his letter to whine.
At least that's the way I saw it. You might see differently.
-awc
(Note me whining)
It puzzles me why this message would be moderated down. It might be controversial, but it is a valid opinion (IMO). The day that slashdot moderates away any posting that dares to show an iota of 'deviation' from the 'party line' is the day that I don't come back. The problem is that this behavior seems to be happening with increasing frequency.
I don't really care about my post in particular, but I have seen many other posts that are interesting points (whether or not I agree with them) that have been moderated down due to potentially controversial content. If I say "I don't think OS works, and here is why...", it is a very different thing from "free software sucks. RMS is ugly."
Just my opinion.
-awc
...it seems like both parties in the story are very immature people. Rather than responding with pointed messages, the author of the letter could simply have done what he wished the other party to do--ignored him and gone quietly on with his business.
Is it me, or are there a lot of people prone to whining in the OS community? It seems that almost every major controversy degrades into whining about the petty tactics of 'the other side', while the whiners are busy explaining why they are allowed to use those tactics, themselves.
-awc
It seems that one of the potential pitfalls of open source development is the lack of a truly structured hierarchy that is unavoidable in the corporate world. Openness and freedom are nice, but they can lead to all sorts of unproductivity.
-awc
No no no no no.
The collapse (dismantling) of the USSR was a calculated political act taken by people at the top (of the state and the CPSU) who felt that their best interests would be served by the end of the USSR.
There is a reason that the great majority (I would venture to say all) of the richest and most influential people in Russia today are ex-Communist officials.
W/regard to the 'collapse' of the Soviet economy: the only year in which it actually contracted (rather than expanding) was in in 1991, after the dismantling of the major organs of economic planning. Throughout the glasnost/perestroika period, the economy continued to grow (though at a pace slower than that of the western powers). The currency hyperinflated and the economy went to hell when Yeltsin and friends completely dismantled all of the vestiges of the old economy in January of 1992 (in a policy called shock therapy).
One might point out that the economy of the United States did not 'collapse' when its dramatic contraction during the Great Depression is compared to the fantastic growth rates of the USSR economy during the 1930s.
There was a gradual decline during the later Brezhnev years, up to the period of Perestroika. That decline can be attributed to worker apathy, and other socio-political elements, but it is imperative to understand that at no point did the economy stop growing.
What happened was, as glasnost was legitimized by the top echelons of the party, the intellectuals seized onto the 'free market' idea. Their understanding of what a free market would bring was colored by their experiences with state socialism for seventy years. Simultaneously, the ranks of party officials saw that in the West, managers and corporate officials (their counterparts) had a much higher standard of living. At that point, the basic human greed instinct kicked in, and it became apparent to many of those with roles in the party structure (the old nomenklatura) that their material interests would be best served by a change in the USSR from a planned economy to a free market style economy.
The problem is that they were right. They are now the richest people in the country, but they achieved that status at the terrible expense of the great majority of the people.
A very good book on the subject is Kotz and Weir (I don't know about the spelling of their names)'s 'Revolution From Above'. It goes a long way toward debunking the prevailing myths about the Soviet Union's demise.
-awc
I was charged the six percent Florida sales tax, too. Oh well.
Why not end the monopoly on the mail? Because the postal service does not exhibit monopoly pricing. Do you think that your company could (profitably) deliver first class mail for 33 cents per letter in two days with a pretty damned good deal of reliability?
Btw, IANAPW (postal worker).
-awc
My complaint doesn't have anything to do with Tom's pet peeve. It has to do with the sanctimoniously haughty attitude he chose to use while making his pet peeve known.
My comment was further reinforced (in my mind) by his followup.
I didn't comment because I recognized the name--I commented because I both recognized the name and was somewhat irked by the response. I don't know if he was always this pompous, or if it came about naturally through exposure, but it seems consistent with much of the content that I have seen come from him, and I found that interesting and somewhat amusing.
Again, my personal feelings with regard to TC have no bearing on my respect for the amount of time and work that he has invested--work from which I know I have benefitted. And I do, most certainly, appreciate it.
However, when position and title become an effective way to deflect criticism (I'm not saying that Tom did this in any way--I'm being vague and speculative here), any movement that has thus far claimed to be egalitarian and open-minded is, IMO, doomed to a quick descent into infighting and failure.
Well. That was far more than my two bits.
-awc
Oh, and in response to the AC's attack on my site, sod off.
There's a difference between trying to sound intelligent and actually succeeding. Just like there's a difference between sounding casual with speech ("sux," etc.) and sounding like a flaming moron.
Of course, this is a flame and it deserves to be moderated down.
_But_, I just want to point out that the AC's response--in defense of TC--is bitching at Luis for arguing in a method similar to (but significantly less pompous) than Tom's.
-awc
_Double_ oh come now.
Was your post on-topic?
Did anyone really care?
Honest scholarship is one thing, but obsequiously petty nitpicking is another. There is a difference between constructive flaming and pointless harping. While I don't think that you've descended into pointless harping, constructive, that message was not.
-awc
Did you look at the source for their 'look up a domain' page? It points to a local perl script. How much do you want to bet that they log every looked up domain name, and register the available ones before the person who used the tool has a chance? Sheesh. Bloodsuckers.
-awc
But, shouldn't the class/method call be: user.switchTo("linux"); ? It would make sense that the switchTo method is something that the user class can do, and he would have any number of options at his disposal. Linux being one.
Anyhow...
-awc
Oh, come on, Tom. I'm sure you have more important things to do than spend your time correcting people.
/., appreciate all of the work that you have done and the time that you have contributed to many of the tools (and religions) that we use regularly--it truly is magnificent.
I, probably along with almost everyone else on
But, come now! The impression of you that I get is that you prowl about the Usenet and apparently, Slashdot, ruthlessly correcting people. I got a semi-automated message from your address because one of my postings to the Usenet had something wrong with the headers. Do you _really_ care that much about my headers?
I appologize for the ad hominem nature of my comments, but I, too, care very deeply about the English language. But I don't publicly correct people or spend significant amounts of time to create documents such as the one at the link in your comment. It just strikes me as petty and rude.
Respectfully,
awc
What I find intriguing are the possiblities for marketing. OnStar is advertising itself as a hotel booking service, reservation-making service, etc. They must be building up quite an impressive database of _extrememly_ customized personal profiles. Think of what that list of profiles--of America's wealthier individuals--would be worth to a marketing company?
And, if--like you wondered--they could keep track of listening habits, etc., that would just make it even more valuable as something to sell.
Makes you think...
-awc
Is it me, or does that look like BeOS, Windows, and NEXTSTEP all warmed over?
-awc
Uhhh...about not breaking laws in existance and retroactive anti-trust law: the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was passed in 1890. Perhaps billy-boy doesn't like to obey laws passed before he was born.
-awc
Having thought about it, I don't see how.
The are no dictatorship of the proletariat.
There might be a case to be made that argues that Microsoft is a state socialist country, but even that is on thin ice, IMO.
-awc
Thanks for the advice. One more question--What drive did you get, and do you use it with Linux?
I'm actually leaning toward a SCSI drive, as I have four IDE devices, already. I imagine that that would be at least a little more expensive, but the functionality is quite appealing.
Thanks again.
-awc