I wouldn't call it pro-ms, I'd call it damage control posted by a MS PR Bot.
Microsoft and a couple other companies have begun to recognize the power of the tech crowd and Slashdot is a major hub of that crowd. Of course I can't prove whether or not this submission was posted (and likely bolstered in the firehose by MS shills. I can establish the power of the tech community. It was the general tech perception that AMD's chips were faster that allowed AMD to penetrate MS marketshare. Then the core 2 duos came out and the general perception was that Intel had finally after half a decade come out on top. Almost immediately thereafter AMD was reporting record losses.
Unless there is something in this that isn't mentioned in the summary then this was already reported the day Novell released the details of the agreement.
'You never know when the latest and greatest bleeding edge version is going to break something else, or break your workflow (sometimes even by design!).'
Not relevant. The latest bleeding edge updates are going to be in your updates if you have intentionally added them to your sources. You won't even find a document telling you how to do this that doesn't also tell you this is a sure way to have problems.
'The typical end user (and many time-poor IT professionals) don't have the time to understand what the changes are in an update.'
True, that is why they do this for you when adding things to the repository. You have not one maintainer but dozens who each oversee a few applications. These maintainers make sure that everything going into your repository is 100% compatible with what is on your system and if it isn't then you will have to dist-upgrade to get it. Again, that is intentionally choosing to install something risky.
'Auto-update is a stupid stupid idea for all but the most critical security updates.'
You definitely seem like a windows user. Unlike the Microsoft updates you download if you absolutely have to do minor updates in the open source world don't interrupt work flow or break the application. Outside the server room I have always done automatic updates on Linux and those automatic updates update ALL the applications on the system. Inside or outside the server room I have not had an update break a component of the system without doing a dist upgrade this millennium. Now I use only Ubuntu and the repositories are well maintained and centralized.
As a veteran user who maintains loads of boxes in diverse configurations I can tell you. I update Linux systems by typing 'apt-get update' 'apt-get upgrade' rather than updating individual packages. I update windows by manually downloading patches when there is a severe security issue or my customer has encountered a problem the patch should resolve.
'So how deep does the field penetrate the body? If the answer is not very deep then you couldn't treat stuff like cervical cancer or colon cancer'
My exhaustive study of the Slashdot summary leads me to believe this only being used on brain cancer. The electrical field prevents the cells from dividing and healthy brain cells rarely divide. The implication seems to be that this wouldn't work elsewhere because the cells in other parts of the body divide quite frequently.
'he will still be able to like the fact that his car breaks down far less often'
Tell it to Hyundai drivers. Cars break down rarely enough that when they fail people believe their experience normal.
Operating systems are different. Windows has led people to believe that operating systems fail frequently and people actually accept this. After all, their system is dramatically more stable than the previous versions of windows right?
'I don't suppose you want to cite evidence when making bold claims, but it usually is customary when attempting to convince people of your point of view.'
I don't intend to engage in yet another debate of the technical merits.
'An unquestionably superior platform wouldn't have this much difficulty securing users from the competition.'
Unfortunately users do not select a platform based upon technical superiority because they lack the knowledge to do so. Just as your wife (assuming she has no mechanical knowledge, there are exceptions to stereotypes) probably wants a cute car rather than a mechanically superior car. Some features aren't a little less transparent like gas mileage and others require a master mechanic or even an engineer to understand like reliability in engine or alternator design. The higher the level of knowledge required to understand the issue the more difficult it is to sell users on that trait. Just because the bulk population doesn't understand a feature doesn't mean that feature does not actually result in superiority.
'All it would achieve is removing the option for those people to use Windows for those areas it excels at - a popular example being gaming.'
I am not aware of any windows strengths. Your popular example is games but windows is not a better gaming platform, the fact that Linux is chosen when fast memory access, processor utilization, video and sound editing is required by professionals and that those are the things that make a technically superior gaming platform demonstrates this. The availability of games for windows is the result of market share. Since Linux has a technical superiority for gaming the world would obviously be 'a better place' for gamers if that market share was transferred to Linux. Us ZEALOTS (hint: if don't want your troll to be instantly exposed, stop referring to people who advocate a software platform as zealots) have this crazy idea that the market would be better served by giving the benefits that come with market share to the technically superior solution.
'I sincerely doubt the Linux movement is going to make that blanket superiority breakthrough any time soon.'
It is already there. When referring to innate characteristics Linux is technically superior pretty much across the board. Availability of games, drivers, and proprietary applications is not an innate characteristic, it is a side effect of market share. The market is composed of people. Sorry but the market does not select the best choice, it rarely selects the best choice. People are cattle, they are stupid and easily sold on an inferior solution. Put Michael Jordan in a commercial and you can sell stupid people an inferior shoe all day long. Hell, some people are so stupid you can sell them an inferior product just by charging a high price for it.
'It takes critics to find the flaws in something.'
That is how some of us believe open source solutions became superior. You see we put all our cards on the table and then put mechanisms in place that make it easy to report flaws. Oddly, most of those who find the flaws are advocates rather than critics. Maybe that snide asshole critic who thinks he gets things done is just an asshole after all. Of course it is amusing that you mention this because there is no constructive criticism anywhere in your post.
The human brain learns and develops from exposure. Parents attempt to limit children's exposure to the very things they need to learn to cope with and comprehend. They are unable to understand childrens increased ability to deal with these issues because they themselves were censored as children and have trouble. Even those that get the concept are afraid of how the other parents who don't get it will react when their child shares traditionally censored material with the other children.
Parent's want to keep children as children as long as possible. To that I challenge you to find many adults who would willingly become children again. You might say ignorance is bliss but nobody willingly chooses ignorance. Childlike innocence is nothing more than ignorance and by prolonging it you are doing nothing but giving children less time to accomplish their goals and achieve their dreams. Enough with the romantic nonsense. This is the only life and the only chance your children have. If you want them to spend a greater portion in ignorance babbling nonsense and blowing bubbles for your amusement I guess that is your call. If that is what you want support bills like this and censor your children from adult material. I am going to prepare my children for adult life by helping them learn to cope with both adult and child situations as soon as possible.
'I'd argue that apt-get is less intuitive and harder to admin.'
You are right apt-get would be less intuitive for someone whose experience has been altered through the use of a GUI. That makes GUI tools more intuitive by default. That is why we have synaptic and other GUI frontends for Linux and they are far easier to use than the windows package management by leaps and bounds.
Forget administration, the only way to administrate the windows package management system is to do it manually. Windows package management depends on the application to remove itself. After you uninstall you have to remove files and registry entries manually. And installing applications results in mismatched and conflicted dll's because there is no effort to track the dependencies of previously installled applications. If you install an application and don't have the dependencies (like.net or the c libraries) windows will not notify you. Unless the application vendor makes an effort to redundantly install these dependencies you end up installing just to get obscure errors when you try to run the application.
As for windows update, even if we ignore the validation crap we have to give a candid comparison. In Synaptic you just click update and then confirm the updates and everything on your system is updated. On the command line you run two simple commands to do the same thing. With windows update only two or three applications are updated with the system, you have to manually update everything else. Drivers are provided that will typically break your system, this only serves to confuse uninformed users. There is an automatic update feature that conflicts with updating manually. On an out of date system you either have to wait for the updates to come to you in random intervals over a long period of time or you run windows update manually and cause automatic update to try to download and install already installed updates over and over again. Of course, you better make sure your clock is right because if your clock isn't close enough to Microsoft's windows update breaks and gives an obscure error.
In other words, GUI's are more intuitive to users who are used to GUI's and that is why there are clean and intuitive GUI's for the open package management systems. But you are off your rocker if you are actually going to claim that manually finding, installing, (real) uninstalling, updating, and administrating packages is easier than having a system like apt that tracks a central repository that allows you to do all of that with a couple clicks.
Because Linux is a superior platform overall and don't want to have to duel boot or have a second machine in order to play games. It isn't as if windows is a better gaming platform, it is just a more popular platform. The more popular Linux becomes the more games, hardware, and other software becomes available.
'if I was forced to use linux as my main desktop because I couldn't get these apps on windows'
If more people like you were using Linux as their main desktop those windows only apps probably wouldn't be windows only anymore. If the choice is to have open source apps available on windows or have all the content available on Linux.. sorry I'd take Linux as the superior platform.
The problem with things like applications and package management is that they are user visible functionality. Joe Blow doesn't understand the technical superiority of the platform. Joe blow understands the programs he uses and how easy it is to find and update them. You will never make a platform more desirable by making all the features the target audience is able to see available on an unquestionably inferior competing platform.
'Damn it, Jim, I'm not a slashdot voter. I'm a human being.'
That is why practical groupings are always wrong. You can't group people, people are individuals. You can't say how blacks, hispanics, elderly, disabled, whites, males, females, white males, white females, pelicans, or any other group feels about something or compares to another in any meaningful way. We are individuals and sharing a classification does not mean we share anything else. If I am a black female making six figures then I have not experienced any sort of repression and if I have, it was from a few individuals who may or may not happen to share group classifications and may or may not have done so because of individual bias against my group classification.
'The problem if there is nothing restricting someone from shopping/paying taxes in a low tax/low service state and enjoying benefits, better public education and health services in a high tax/high services state.'
You are right that there is some of that now. But it is limited by practicality. Not everyone can afford to hop on a jet every time they have a cold or go to school. States can easily implement policies to restrict access to most services to residents as well. Of course there are always borders but borders that dramatically clash are rare because voting populations do not magically differ when crossing a line on a map. A few might move but I doubt enough will move to make a difference. There is very little of this in practice now and no reason to believe that would magically change later.
'Where is your central authority? Since you seem to like M-W, here is their complete (rather than your deliberate misrepresentation of the) description of a censor:'
At no point did I give any description of a censor. We are talking about the act of censoring, not someone with the title of censor. There is nothing in the definition of censorship that requires it be engaged in by a central authority, anyone in the position to suppress viewpoints they find objectionable is censoring those viewpoints if they do so.
'So, nice way to cite part of the definition that you're trotting out to support your contention.'
I quoted the entire definition. You quoted a different and irrelevant definition.
Aww how cute. You made up a definition to make your point.
'Thank you, again, for demonstrating that you still don't actually know what that word means'
Well lets see if merriam webster knows.
Censorship
1 : the institution, system, or practice of censoring.
Not very useful without defining censoring.
1 : to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable.
Merriam-webster seems to share my definition. Idiots. Using my definition and that of merriam-webster downmodding informative and insightful comments in order to supress the views expressed in them would in fact be censorship.
What idiots we are. Please great ScentCone let me know if you spot me using words incorrectly in the future. Obviously I have relied upon these silly dictionary things for far too long.
'I agree - with the proviso that we have immigration policies between states.'
If by that you free the free and unfettered ability to travel and move residence between states then I agree. After all, it defeats the point if one can't move away from states with bad policies and into states with good policies.
Obviously you are a gamer. Gamers actually make up a statistically insignificant portion of the PC market.
While there are many gamers, few use PC's to play the games and even fewer would buy their PC's from Dell. You can't exactly play many windows games on a Dell running windows either.
Lastly, many windows games actually do run on Linux. Not insignificantly the two games which are probably most popular in PC gaming right now (in the US) do run on Linux. World of Warcraft and Spider Solitaire.
'And when other people from that same community cease to blindly mod up every such most out of some distorted sense of team spirit, they're exhibiting a much more mature, and economically aware posture.'
Nobody is complaining about FOSS posts not getting modded up out of a sense of team spirit. The problem is that opposite happens. Up to date, informative, and sound posts are being modded down if they take a pro FOSS software stance. Further, a pro commercial stance is now being blindly modded up. The fact that the negative moderation typically occurs a day or two after the posts are on the front page implies that it isn't the real stance of the bulk of the Slashdot community.
'exhibiting a much more mature, and economically aware posture'
It doesn't matter how many times you try to reword it. There is nothing mature and economically aware about believing proprietary software has a place. In turn, there is nothing immature or ignorant about believing proprietary software does not have a valid place.
Personally, I think it may be time to start locking moderation on stories 16hrs after they are posted. You wouldn't want to prevent posting that early since many conversations might still be progressing but moderation helps to benefit those looking for the interesting discussions, not those who are replying to comments later.
Allowing people to go in and moderate late in the game so that their moderations are less likely to be countered is like letting them rewrite history.
'Shhhh...Quiet! Do we really need to be giving them any more good ideas? next week a house committee will spend half a million on a study group for your brilliant "the" idea, the week after that it will be a quarterly estimated tax on "is" usage, depending what the meaning of "is" is.'
I clarification in order to determine whether or not I am in favor of these taxes. Would the people using "is" be getting blowjobs when they use "is" or no? If so, would the blowjobs be coming from someone who looks like Monica, quality providers, or a grab bag?
P.S. The open source model leaves plenty of room for viable business models and at least half of open source programmers get a paycheck for writing open source software. Millions of people have jobs because of open source software and many others augment their wealth by utilizing open source software effectively (including me).
Please take your troll elsewhere. Advocating Linux and open source only excludes ONE business model and that is the develop one application and make millions of dollars by leaning on laws that enforce unnatural prohibitions on copying, modification, and redistribution.
'Um... that, or a lot of Linux fanboys are growing up, and some of the more aggressive "information wants to be free" hippy-types are realizing that sometimes a viable business model and a paycheck is actually HELPFUL as you get older.'
And that would result in the kind of moderation I have seen eh? For instance, a poster who points out that while open source application a and proprietary solution b offer the same features, solution b is an inferior choice because it will lock valuable vendor data into a proprietary format being first moderated insightful and informative to +5 and then two days later being moderated overrated and troll until they are at 0 or -1?
It is certainly possible that many Open Source and Linux proponents have sold out. Look at the Vietnam generation, they sold out not only their principles but their children as well. But that doesn't explain the blatant censorship of those who have not sold out.
'the obvious advancement of Open Source shouldn't be talked about. It makes me feel like there is a "STFU" campaign.'
I couldn't agree more. When I first started Slashdotting just about any pro Linux and pro Open Source comment would get modded up if it was coherent.
Over time this has changed. A sure way to get up-modded now is to point out how zealots upmod pro Linux comments and Microsoft bash comments. Actually pointing out a strength of Linux or Open Source over proprietary software, pointing out flaws in typical proprietary software sympathizer arguments, or even Microsoft bashing that is ontopic is solidly grounded in fact will get you modded down now.
I watch the moderation. Usually when the discussion is hot, an Insightful pro open source stance will get modded as such but a day or two after a story first hits the front page troll mods will come in. Actually, within the past couple months people see to have fallen in love with overrated moderations when there is no legitimate reason to downmod something. This way it is more likely to survive meta-moderation.
Either a bunch of Microsoft and proprietary software fanboys have started to camp on Slashdot (an awefully strange place for an MS fanboy to hang out) or the industry has recognized that Slashdot is a critical front in the development of Tech trends and prevailing attitudes and there are now paid PR shills monitoring Slashdot.
Yes but I don't think we should take this release as a sign that will be the case. Dell obviously made an effort to fast track this and there was no time to push anyone to produce drivers.
Good, because Dell will just tell them to take a hike and advise them that Ubuntu already has software for most of those tasks included. Pleb will then use Ubuntu, discover it is a superior system and next time around buy one intentionally.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't call it pro-ms, I'd call it damage control posted by a MS PR Bot.
Microsoft and a couple other companies have begun to recognize the power of the tech crowd and Slashdot is a major hub of that crowd. Of course I can't prove whether or not this submission was posted (and likely bolstered in the firehose by MS shills. I can establish the power of the tech community. It was the general tech perception that AMD's chips were faster that allowed AMD to penetrate MS marketshare. Then the core 2 duos came out and the general perception was that Intel had finally after half a decade come out on top. Almost immediately thereafter AMD was reporting record losses.
Expect more pro-microsoft and microsoft PR posts.
Unless there is something in this that isn't mentioned in the summary then this was already reported the day Novell released the details of the agreement.
'You never know when the latest and greatest bleeding edge version is going to break something else, or break your workflow (sometimes even by design!).'
Not relevant. The latest bleeding edge updates are going to be in your updates if you have intentionally added them to your sources. You won't even find a document telling you how to do this that doesn't also tell you this is a sure way to have problems.
'The typical end user (and many time-poor IT professionals) don't have the time to understand what the changes are in an update.'
True, that is why they do this for you when adding things to the repository. You have not one maintainer but dozens who each oversee a few applications. These maintainers make sure that everything going into your repository is 100% compatible with what is on your system and if it isn't then you will have to dist-upgrade to get it. Again, that is intentionally choosing to install something risky.
'Auto-update is a stupid stupid idea for all but the most critical security updates.'
You definitely seem like a windows user. Unlike the Microsoft updates you download if you absolutely have to do minor updates in the open source world don't interrupt work flow or break the application. Outside the server room I have always done automatic updates on Linux and those automatic updates update ALL the applications on the system. Inside or outside the server room I have not had an update break a component of the system without doing a dist upgrade this millennium. Now I use only Ubuntu and the repositories are well maintained and centralized.
As a veteran user who maintains loads of boxes in diverse configurations I can tell you. I update Linux systems by typing 'apt-get update' 'apt-get upgrade' rather than updating individual packages. I update windows by manually downloading patches when there is a severe security issue or my customer has encountered a problem the patch should resolve.
'So how deep does the field penetrate the body? If the answer is not very deep then you couldn't treat stuff like cervical cancer or colon cancer'
My exhaustive study of the Slashdot summary leads me to believe this only being used on brain cancer. The electrical field prevents the cells from dividing and healthy brain cells rarely divide. The implication seems to be that this wouldn't work elsewhere because the cells in other parts of the body divide quite frequently.
'he will still be able to like the fact that his car breaks down far less often'
Tell it to Hyundai drivers. Cars break down rarely enough that when they fail people believe their experience normal.
Operating systems are different. Windows has led people to believe that operating systems fail frequently and people actually accept this. After all, their system is dramatically more stable than the previous versions of windows right?
'I don't suppose you want to cite evidence when making bold claims, but it usually is customary when attempting to convince people of your point of view.'
I don't intend to engage in yet another debate of the technical merits.
'An unquestionably superior platform wouldn't have this much difficulty securing users from the competition.'
Unfortunately users do not select a platform based upon technical superiority because they lack the knowledge to do so. Just as your wife (assuming she has no mechanical knowledge, there are exceptions to stereotypes) probably wants a cute car rather than a mechanically superior car. Some features aren't a little less transparent like gas mileage and others require a master mechanic or even an engineer to understand like reliability in engine or alternator design. The higher the level of knowledge required to understand the issue the more difficult it is to sell users on that trait. Just because the bulk population doesn't understand a feature doesn't mean that feature does not actually result in superiority.
'All it would achieve is removing the option for those people to use Windows for those areas it excels at - a popular example being gaming.'
I am not aware of any windows strengths. Your popular example is games but windows is not a better gaming platform, the fact that Linux is chosen when fast memory access, processor utilization, video and sound editing is required by professionals and that those are the things that make a technically superior gaming platform demonstrates this. The availability of games for windows is the result of market share. Since Linux has a technical superiority for gaming the world would obviously be 'a better place' for gamers if that market share was transferred to Linux. Us ZEALOTS (hint: if don't want your troll to be instantly exposed, stop referring to people who advocate a software platform as zealots) have this crazy idea that the market would be better served by giving the benefits that come with market share to the technically superior solution.
'I sincerely doubt the Linux movement is going to make that blanket superiority breakthrough any time soon.'
It is already there. When referring to innate characteristics Linux is technically superior pretty much across the board. Availability of games, drivers, and proprietary applications is not an innate characteristic, it is a side effect of market share. The market is composed of people. Sorry but the market does not select the best choice, it rarely selects the best choice. People are cattle, they are stupid and easily sold on an inferior solution. Put Michael Jordan in a commercial and you can sell stupid people an inferior shoe all day long. Hell, some people are so stupid you can sell them an inferior product just by charging a high price for it.
'It takes critics to find the flaws in something.'
That is how some of us believe open source solutions became superior. You see we put all our cards on the table and then put mechanisms in place that make it easy to report flaws. Oddly, most of those who find the flaws are advocates rather than critics. Maybe that snide asshole critic who thinks he gets things done is just an asshole after all. Of course it is amusing that you mention this because there is no constructive criticism anywhere in your post.
The human brain learns and develops from exposure. Parents attempt to limit children's exposure to the very things they need to learn to cope with and comprehend. They are unable to understand childrens increased ability to deal with these issues because they themselves were censored as children and have trouble. Even those that get the concept are afraid of how the other parents who don't get it will react when their child shares traditionally censored material with the other children.
Parent's want to keep children as children as long as possible. To that I challenge you to find many adults who would willingly become children again. You might say ignorance is bliss but nobody willingly chooses ignorance. Childlike innocence is nothing more than ignorance and by prolonging it you are doing nothing but giving children less time to accomplish their goals and achieve their dreams. Enough with the romantic nonsense. This is the only life and the only chance your children have. If you want them to spend a greater portion in ignorance babbling nonsense and blowing bubbles for your amusement I guess that is your call. If that is what you want support bills like this and censor your children from adult material. I am going to prepare my children for adult life by helping them learn to cope with both adult and child situations as soon as possible.
'I'd argue that apt-get is less intuitive and harder to admin.'
.net or the c libraries) windows will not notify you. Unless the application vendor makes an effort to redundantly install these dependencies you end up installing just to get obscure errors when you try to run the application.
You are right apt-get would be less intuitive for someone whose experience has been altered through the use of a GUI. That makes GUI tools more intuitive by default. That is why we have synaptic and other GUI frontends for Linux and they are far easier to use than the windows package management by leaps and bounds.
Forget administration, the only way to administrate the windows package management system is to do it manually. Windows package management depends on the application to remove itself. After you uninstall you have to remove files and registry entries manually. And installing applications results in mismatched and conflicted dll's because there is no effort to track the dependencies of previously installled applications. If you install an application and don't have the dependencies (like
As for windows update, even if we ignore the validation crap we have to give a candid comparison. In Synaptic you just click update and then confirm the updates and everything on your system is updated. On the command line you run two simple commands to do the same thing. With windows update only two or three applications are updated with the system, you have to manually update everything else. Drivers are provided that will typically break your system, this only serves to confuse uninformed users. There is an automatic update feature that conflicts with updating manually. On an out of date system you either have to wait for the updates to come to you in random intervals over a long period of time or you run windows update manually and cause automatic update to try to download and install already installed updates over and over again. Of course, you better make sure your clock is right because if your clock isn't close enough to Microsoft's windows update breaks and gives an obscure error.
In other words, GUI's are more intuitive to users who are used to GUI's and that is why there are clean and intuitive GUI's for the open package management systems. But you are off your rocker if you are actually going to claim that manually finding, installing, (real) uninstalling, updating, and administrating packages is easier than having a system like apt that tracks a central repository that allows you to do all of that with a couple clicks.
'why do we have to push Linux on people?'
Because Linux is a superior platform overall and don't want to have to duel boot or have a second machine in order to play games. It isn't as if windows is a better gaming platform, it is just a more popular platform. The more popular Linux becomes the more games, hardware, and other software becomes available.
'if I was forced to use linux as my main desktop because I couldn't get these apps on windows'
If more people like you were using Linux as their main desktop those windows only apps probably wouldn't be windows only anymore. If the choice is to have open source apps available on windows or have all the content available on Linux.. sorry I'd take Linux as the superior platform.
The problem with things like applications and package management is that they are user visible functionality. Joe Blow doesn't understand the technical superiority of the platform. Joe blow understands the programs he uses and how easy it is to find and update them. You will never make a platform more desirable by making all the features the target audience is able to see available on an unquestionably inferior competing platform.
'Damn it, Jim, I'm not a slashdot voter. I'm a human being.'
That is why practical groupings are always wrong. You can't group people, people are individuals. You can't say how blacks, hispanics, elderly, disabled, whites, males, females, white males, white females, pelicans, or any other group feels about something or compares to another in any meaningful way. We are individuals and sharing a classification does not mean we share anything else. If I am a black female making six figures then I have not experienced any sort of repression and if I have, it was from a few individuals who may or may not happen to share group classifications and may or may not have done so because of individual bias against my group classification.
'The problem if there is nothing restricting someone from shopping/paying taxes in a low tax/low service state and enjoying benefits, better public education and health services in a high tax/high services state.'
You are right that there is some of that now. But it is limited by practicality. Not everyone can afford to hop on a jet every time they have a cold or go to school. States can easily implement policies to restrict access to most services to residents as well. Of course there are always borders but borders that dramatically clash are rare because voting populations do not magically differ when crossing a line on a map. A few might move but I doubt enough will move to make a difference. There is very little of this in practice now and no reason to believe that would magically change later.
'Where is your central authority? Since you seem to like M-W, here is their complete (rather than your deliberate misrepresentation of the) description of a censor:'
At no point did I give any description of a censor. We are talking about the act of censoring, not someone with the title of censor. There is nothing in the definition of censorship that requires it be engaged in by a central authority, anyone in the position to suppress viewpoints they find objectionable is censoring those viewpoints if they do so.
'So, nice way to cite part of the definition that you're trotting out to support your contention.'
I quoted the entire definition. You quoted a different and irrelevant definition.
Aww how cute. You made up a definition to make your point.
'Thank you, again, for demonstrating that you still don't actually know what that word means'
Well lets see if merriam webster knows.
Censorship
1 : the institution, system, or practice of censoring.
Not very useful without defining censoring.
1 : to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable.
Merriam-webster seems to share my definition. Idiots. Using my definition and that of merriam-webster downmodding informative and insightful comments in order to supress the views expressed in them would in fact be censorship.
What idiots we are. Please great ScentCone let me know if you spot me using words incorrectly in the future. Obviously I have relied upon these silly dictionary things for far too long.
'The current Bush would be a flop as president with out an external enemy.'
The current Bush is probably the biggest flop to hold the office to date.
'His one saving grace is that he's a relatively effective war leader.'
An effective war leader is one that doesn't start and prolong wars. Being in a state of war is not a good thing.
'I agree - with the proviso that we have immigration policies between states.'
If by that you free the free and unfettered ability to travel and move residence between states then I agree. After all, it defeats the point if one can't move away from states with bad policies and into states with good policies.
Obviously you are a gamer. Gamers actually make up a statistically insignificant portion of the PC market.
While there are many gamers, few use PC's to play the games and even fewer would buy their PC's from Dell. You can't exactly play many windows games on a Dell running windows either.
Lastly, many windows games actually do run on Linux. Not insignificantly the two games which are probably most popular in PC gaming right now (in the US) do run on Linux. World of Warcraft and Spider Solitaire.
'And when other people from that same community cease to blindly mod up every such most out of some distorted sense of team spirit, they're exhibiting a much more mature, and economically aware posture.'
Nobody is complaining about FOSS posts not getting modded up out of a sense of team spirit. The problem is that opposite happens. Up to date, informative, and sound posts are being modded down if they take a pro FOSS software stance. Further, a pro commercial stance is now being blindly modded up. The fact that the negative moderation typically occurs a day or two after the posts are on the front page implies that it isn't the real stance of the bulk of the Slashdot community.
'exhibiting a much more mature, and economically aware posture'
It doesn't matter how many times you try to reword it. There is nothing mature and economically aware about believing proprietary software has a place. In turn, there is nothing immature or ignorant about believing proprietary software does not have a valid place.
Personally, I think it may be time to start locking moderation on stories 16hrs after they are posted. You wouldn't want to prevent posting that early since many conversations might still be progressing but moderation helps to benefit those looking for the interesting discussions, not those who are replying to comments later.
Allowing people to go in and moderate late in the game so that their moderations are less likely to be countered is like letting them rewrite history.
'Shhhh...Quiet! Do we really need to be giving them any more good ideas? next week a house committee will spend half a million on a study group for your brilliant "the" idea, the week after that it will be a quarterly estimated tax on "is" usage, depending what the meaning of "is" is.'
I clarification in order to determine whether or not I am in favor of these taxes. Would the people using "is" be getting blowjobs when they use "is" or no? If so, would the blowjobs be coming from someone who looks like Monica, quality providers, or a grab bag?
'Responses to your post by other users are not censorship.'
Paid posters negatively moderating content in order to reduce its visibility IS censorship. Have a nice day!
P.S. The open source model leaves plenty of room for viable business models and at least half of open source programmers get a paycheck for writing open source software. Millions of people have jobs because of open source software and many others augment their wealth by utilizing open source software effectively (including me).
Please take your troll elsewhere. Advocating Linux and open source only excludes ONE business model and that is the develop one application and make millions of dollars by leaning on laws that enforce unnatural prohibitions on copying, modification, and redistribution.
'Um... that, or a lot of Linux fanboys are growing up, and some of the more aggressive "information wants to be free" hippy-types are realizing that sometimes a viable business model and a paycheck is actually HELPFUL as you get older.'
And that would result in the kind of moderation I have seen eh? For instance, a poster who points out that while open source application a and proprietary solution b offer the same features, solution b is an inferior choice because it will lock valuable vendor data into a proprietary format being first moderated insightful and informative to +5 and then two days later being moderated overrated and troll until they are at 0 or -1?
It is certainly possible that many Open Source and Linux proponents have sold out. Look at the Vietnam generation, they sold out not only their principles but their children as well. But that doesn't explain the blatant censorship of those who have not sold out.
'the obvious advancement of Open Source shouldn't be talked about. It makes me feel like there is a "STFU" campaign.'
I couldn't agree more. When I first started Slashdotting just about any pro Linux and pro Open Source comment would get modded up if it was coherent.
Over time this has changed. A sure way to get up-modded now is to point out how zealots upmod pro Linux comments and Microsoft bash comments. Actually pointing out a strength of Linux or Open Source over proprietary software, pointing out flaws in typical proprietary software sympathizer arguments, or even Microsoft bashing that is ontopic is solidly grounded in fact will get you modded down now.
I watch the moderation. Usually when the discussion is hot, an Insightful pro open source stance will get modded as such but a day or two after a story first hits the front page troll mods will come in. Actually, within the past couple months people see to have fallen in love with overrated moderations when there is no legitimate reason to downmod something. This way it is more likely to survive meta-moderation.
Either a bunch of Microsoft and proprietary software fanboys have started to camp on Slashdot (an awefully strange place for an MS fanboy to hang out) or the industry has recognized that Slashdot is a critical front in the development of Tech trends and prevailing attitudes and there are now paid PR shills monitoring Slashdot.
Yes but I don't think we should take this release as a sign that will be the case. Dell obviously made an effort to fast track this and there was no time to push anyone to produce drivers.
Good, because Dell will just tell them to take a hike and advise them that Ubuntu already has software for most of those tasks included. Pleb will then use Ubuntu, discover it is a superior system and next time around buy one intentionally.