I've used Napster a total of once. I'm slightly confused as to how you can tell what OTHER PEOPLE are downloading. How coudl they monitor the service to get this statistic? And weren't they manily looking for their own songs, anyway?
So, maybe he's ignorant, or lying, but maybe he's just unknowingly using misleading statistics, which isn't the same thing.
They're kinda pointless... if you can't read USENET, LDP, or a man page you shouldn't be running *nix anyway. [SNIP] but I still don't see the basic computer user running Linux as their desktop OS. At least not today...
Do you see a contradiction here? Or perhaps your cause is mixed up with your effect. I think one thing LinuxCare could do...maybe could have done...is make it so it does NOT have to be that way, so that lusers like me could use a real OS, despite our lack of technical knowledge. Maybe it would even be good for the economy. How many people-hours have we lost due to MS stupidity and buggy software?
Maybe Karma is less a measure of technical knowledge than it is measure of effectiveness in communication. Which is going to be more important in an executive: the ability to debug a kernel, or the ability to communicate with employees, bosses, and the outside world?
All the high-karma posters have at least one thing in common: they can communicate useful thoughts well. Maybe that's one point that that poster meant to make.
I think this phrase quite neatly (if accidentally) encompasses two of three groups of people who HAVEN'T been hit. 1) People who don't use Outlook -and- Windows. The mail client, then, would be intelligent. 2) Intelligent *people* who may use that combo, but don't open those type of attachments, have turned off auto-open, etc.
The third group is people like me who haven't gotten the virus, no matter what OS & client they run.
You suggest that the more coding a person learns, the more disciplined they get. This is kind of like the martial arts model, where you learn discipline that keeps you from using your powers for evil. But coding is easier to learns, what with script kiddies and tools like VBS. People who are too dumb to think about the consequences of their actions can write devastating things. I'm glad that hacking can be more egalitarian, but...
It's harder to write a script that will run in Linux than it is to write a VB script. IT's like martial arts...the discipline teaches you not to do harmful things, maybe.
As for why music prices have gone up, there is only one good answer: because enough of the public is willing to pay! It's the same with the inflationary spiral seen in sports - despite constant criticism of athlete salaries, people still clamor to pay hundreds of dollars for tickets to big games.
Is it because people are willing to pay, or is it because of the oligopoly of record labels and distributional channels of CDs?
I'd like to see the baseline trends of music-bought and CD prices BEFORE Napster et al., and see where they would be now without those technologies' wildfire-like spread.
Oh, and I see your point about sports, but I think it could be different. Athletes might play 'for the love of the game,' but some artists say EXPLICITLY in their music, 'screw the corporate machine,' and then go and make love to it. Plus, city leaders coerce city citizens into spending lots of money on new stadiums, arenas, etc. for 'city spirit,' and taxes, fees, and high ticket prices are necessary to recoup costs sometimes.
Authority -- what is it? It's what makes you feel like someone is "somebody," a person to be followed, a person whose commands/suggestions you should obey. Where does authority come from? Tradition -- we've always followed the Brak family. Charisma -- his eyes burn into me, I have no choice but to follow him. And our preferred method in the US, "rational-legal" -- We elected him fair and square, so he has the right to write laws, etc. The last category isn't one of those three classic Weberian ones: authority based on expertise. Well, you're the doctor/engineer/scientist/expert, you know best. But Mr. Chaney claims none of that. He's not making commands, only suggestions. So he has, let's say, a softened form of authority...he has influence. Yes, the most obvious reason why he has influence is the "fifteen minutes of fame" that come from his saving Hotmail. But behind that is a person who is obviously kind and not entirely selfish, not to mention experienced with Microsoft's behaviour. In the US especially, anyhow, we tend to believe (more than in some other countries) that people's ideas can be good, no matter whether they have credentials or the right family name. Heck, half the great hackers (maybe more, maybe less) are mostly self-taught. And how is someone going to develop a reputation as "someone to whom we should listen" in the first place without such egalitarianism? What would it take for you to think of him as authoritative? As someone to hear? Credentials? What kind? Fame? How much? And why should I listen to you?
I would say that a positive reinforcement could be bribery, whereas being terrified of a negative outcome would be more a negative reinforcement. Perhaps intimidation or harrassment...only, no single entity is harassing the judge. Still, an interesting point.
I did it to see what would happen if I did it, and I did it to help Hotmail users. It's been the most fun I've ever had for $35.
There has been some confusion, so let me state now that I had none of the following motivations: To get to my Hotmail- While it's true that I noticed the problem while trying to get to my Hotmail, that wasn't a motivation. Like many people, I use Hotmail as a spam trap and alternative email which I check once every couple of weeks. I own enough domain names to have cooler email addresses, like mdchaney@michaelchaney.com.
There's more, but that answers your allegation -- if he's telling the truth, and why wouldn't he?
I agree that the mainstream news networks should have already started editorialising about how utterly weak it is that MS Outlook and its cohort MS products allow these insecurities. Unfortunately, MS partners with NBC, etc. Hello? It's an economic loss to the country, if nothing else...
Furthermore, your comment on MAD relating to virus writers makes little sense - if the virus writer were primarily a UNIX user, what does he care that half the Windows clients on earth were desroyed?
Ah. He (I assume maleness for now, if you don't mind) might wish to do this, if only to prove how weak Windoze is, etc. However, in terms of self-interest -- a few things on the Web DO run on MS ware. (Check the Netcraft survey for a statistic that claims that MS servers are second to Apache in popularity, with about 21% of the Web.) So, a reasonable person probably doesn't want that much to be cut off from 20% of the Web's functionality for a few hours. However, virus writers might not be reasonable people...
The SF Bay Guardian is a real paper
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I wonder about where you live; if you lived in the Bay Area and ever read the Guardian, you would know that it is a genuinely investigative paper, filling in a gap that the tweedledee-and-tweedledum Chronicle and Examiner leave in their bland mainstreamness. The Guardian is progressive, unabashedly leftist, and yes, often covers news and features of interest to the non-heterosexual community. But is it really fair to say, "I won't believe the New York Times because they have some puff piece about the Oscars on their front page"? Because if you're going to be annoyed by this cover, be annoyed because it's not news, not because it targets people with a different lifestyle than your own.
Why do you read Slashdot if you only want to be exposed to your own point of view?
They say they are against Napster, Inc, from profiting $$$$$ from Metallica's music instead of Metallica earning the $$$$$ from their music. Napster Inc, according to them, is simply an IPO hungry company of leaches who seek giant profits off of musicians work.
HOW THE HELL IS NAPSTER MAKING MONEY?
In case no one has noticed, I believe Slate and Salon have both done articles (here for the Slate one, can't find the Salon one) showing that Napster isn't a money-making thing. Isn't it a bit preposterous to accuse Napster of being more acquisitive here?
I'm not saying Metallica has no IP rights here, just, Napster seems to have no profit model.
A covert threat in SiliValley: domestic violencce
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· Score: 1
This is a gold rush, and just as in the gold rush, we're abusing the environment, and the population of women is far outstripped by the population of men.
You may have noticed that there are a lot of immigrant men working in the Valley. You may have noticed that a lot of them are on H-1B visas. You may have noticed that a lot of them have wives also from their home countries, often India. Well, in many of those cases, since the woman is in the US as part and parcel of her husband's visa, if she leaves him, she has no legal ability to work or stay in the US by herself. So, if her husband beats her, she has almost nowhere to turn.
Domestic violence for anyone in the US is horrible and difficult to escape. But at least for citizens, there's a chance to stay in the same country as your children, support yourself, and live as a single woman, even a single mother. These women don't have that choice. To be a divorcee in India is unusual and socially not-very-acceptable in a lot of places, and a single mother is almost unthinkable in many places.
SF Weekly is running an article on this problem. It's not hardware-related, but it may make you think about the costs of our current system.
The referred article wasn't very funny; I could have forgiven the non-nerd, non-relevant characteristic if it had been. Perhaps he just meant to foment discussion, but this was below the quality that I expect of/.
A terrific lecturer at Berkeley AND at Stanford, Andrew Creighton, recommended that game to us in Principles of Sociology, whilst explaining Weber's definition of bureaucracy (if I recall correctly). Where can I get it for Win or Linux or Be?
Many people own stocks indirectly through their retirement funds. They are "ordinary people" who do not choose which stocks to buy, but they will feel the hit.
If firms lose money, even money that only exists "on paper" (horrible phrase), they lose investment potential and may lay off workers, etc. Big events percolate down.
See, some of what you discuss is fact. E.g., you can PROVE whether a private firm or a public agency provides the same output for a given input, and we can PROVE whether governments have been "efficient" or "inefficient" compared to private firms in the past.
BUT, remember that government agencies don't just operate on efficiency criteria. (Thanks to Bardach, Ellwood, et al.)* We don't want our governments to cut corners on building schools. We want them to go the extra mile in making sure that teachers are accredited. Plus, the government does things on equity criteria as well. Does this affect the poor more badly than the rich? Could we use this garbage collection program to hire welfare recipients and get them back to work? (Donahue)*
Point is, your values are different from mine, and as long as we disagree on the criteria, we'll never get to the same solution.
P.S., it's interesting that you say we even need the government to build roads and do the military and police...there are libertarians / anarchists who say private industry could do those as well. If schools, why not roads? It's a lot easier to determine whether a road is bad than a school.
[*]Thanks to the public policy department at UC Berkeley.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a link to today's comic that will still be there tomorrow:
Today's UF
So, maybe he's ignorant, or lying, but maybe he's just unknowingly using misleading statistics, which isn't the same thing.
[SNIP]
but I still don't see the basic computer user running Linux as their desktop OS. At least not today...
Do you see a contradiction here? Or perhaps your cause is mixed up with your effect. I think one thing LinuxCare could do...maybe could have done...is make it so it does NOT have to be that way, so that lusers like me could use a real OS, despite our lack of technical knowledge. Maybe it would even be good for the economy. How many people-hours have we lost due to MS stupidity and buggy software?
All the high-karma posters have at least one thing in common: they can communicate useful thoughts well. Maybe that's one point that that poster meant to make.
BOTH! Neat and lovely, n'est-ce pas?
1) People who don't use Outlook -and- Windows. The mail client, then, would be intelligent.
2) Intelligent *people* who may use that combo, but don't open those type of attachments, have turned off auto-open, etc.
The third group is people like me who haven't gotten the virus, no matter what OS & client they run.
You suggest that the more coding a person learns, the more disciplined they get. This is kind of like the martial arts model, where you learn discipline that keeps you from using your powers for evil. But coding is easier to learns, what with script kiddies and tools like VBS. People who are too dumb to think about the consequences of their actions can write devastating things. I'm glad that hacking can be more egalitarian, but...
It's harder to write a script that will run in Linux than it is to write a VB script. IT's like martial arts...the discipline teaches you not to do harmful things, maybe.
Is it because people are willing to pay, or is it because of the oligopoly of record labels and distributional channels of CDs?
I'd like to see the baseline trends of music-bought and CD prices BEFORE Napster et al., and see where they would be now without those technologies' wildfire-like spread.
Oh, and I see your point about sports, but I think it could be different. Athletes might play 'for the love of the game,' but some artists say EXPLICITLY in their music, 'screw the corporate machine,' and then go and make love to it. Plus, city leaders coerce city citizens into spending lots of money on new stadiums, arenas, etc. for 'city spirit,' and taxes, fees, and high ticket prices are necessary to recoup costs sometimes.
Netcraft says he's running IIS over Windows. It seems that failure may very well be an option...
Authority -- what is it? It's what makes you feel like someone is "somebody," a person to be followed, a person whose commands/suggestions you should obey.
Where does authority come from? Tradition -- we've always followed the Brak family. Charisma -- his eyes burn into me, I have no choice but to follow him. And our preferred method in the US, "rational-legal" -- We elected him fair and square, so he has the right to write laws, etc. The last category isn't one of those three classic Weberian ones: authority based on expertise. Well, you're the doctor/engineer/scientist/expert, you know best.
But Mr. Chaney claims none of that. He's not making commands, only suggestions. So he has, let's say, a softened form of authority...he has influence. Yes, the most obvious reason why he has influence is the "fifteen minutes of fame" that come from his saving Hotmail. But behind that is a person who is obviously kind and not entirely selfish, not to mention experienced with Microsoft's behaviour.
In the US especially, anyhow, we tend to believe (more than in some other countries) that people's ideas can be good, no matter whether they have credentials or the right family name. Heck, half the great hackers (maybe more, maybe less) are mostly self-taught. And how is someone going to develop a reputation as "someone to whom we should listen" in the first place without such egalitarianism?
What would it take for you to think of him as authoritative? As someone to hear? Credentials? What kind? Fame? How much?
And why should I listen to you?
Why did you do this?
I did it to see what would happen if I did it, and I did it to help Hotmail users. It's been the most fun I've ever had for $35.
There has been some confusion, so let me state now that I had none of the following motivations:
To get to my Hotmail- While it's true that I noticed the problem while trying to get to my Hotmail, that wasn't a motivation. Like many people, I use Hotmail as a spam trap and alternative email which I check once every couple of weeks. I own enough domain names to have cooler email addresses, like mdchaney@michaelchaney.com.
There's more, but that answers your allegation -- if he's telling the truth, and why wouldn't he?
Thanks for your integrity and humility, /. crew. It's this attitude that keeps me coming back.
Furthermore, your comment on MAD relating to virus writers makes little sense - if the virus writer were primarily a UNIX user, what does he care that half the Windows clients on earth were desroyed?
Ah. He (I assume maleness for now, if you don't mind) might wish to do this, if only to prove how weak Windoze is, etc. However, in terms of self-interest -- a few things on the Web DO run on MS ware. (Check the Netcraft survey for a statistic that claims that MS servers are second to Apache in popularity, with about 21% of the Web.) So, a reasonable person probably doesn't want that much to be cut off from 20% of the Web's functionality for a few hours. However, virus writers might not be reasonable people...
Why do you read Slashdot if you only want to be exposed to your own point of view?
HOW THE HELL IS NAPSTER MAKING MONEY?
In case no one has noticed, I believe Slate and Salon have both done articles (here for the Slate one, can't find the Salon one) showing that Napster isn't a money-making thing. Isn't it a bit preposterous to accuse Napster of being more acquisitive here?
I'm not saying Metallica has no IP rights here, just, Napster seems to have no profit model.
You may have noticed that there are a lot of immigrant men working in the Valley. You may have noticed that a lot of them are on H-1B visas. You may have noticed that a lot of them have wives also from their home countries, often India. Well, in many of those cases, since the woman is in the US as part and parcel of her husband's visa, if she leaves him, she has no legal ability to work or stay in the US by herself. So, if her husband beats her, she has almost nowhere to turn.
Domestic violence for anyone in the US is horrible and difficult to escape. But at least for citizens, there's a chance to stay in the same country as your children, support yourself, and live as a single woman, even a single mother. These women don't have that choice. To be a divorcee in India is unusual and socially not-very-acceptable in a lot of places, and a single mother is almost unthinkable in many places.
SF Weekly is running an article on this problem. It's not hardware-related, but it may make you think about the costs of our current system.
The referred article wasn't very funny; I could have forgiven the non-nerd, non-relevant characteristic if it had been. Perhaps he just meant to foment discussion, but this was below the quality that I expect of /.
CmdrTaco has written a small bit of fiction in this page in his personal webspace.
Isn't OOG short for Object Oriented Guru?
You're referring to "In the Beginning... Was the Command Line," not "Cryptonomicon."
Many people own stocks indirectly through their retirement funds. They are "ordinary people" who do not choose which stocks to buy, but they will feel the hit.
If firms lose money, even money that only exists "on paper" (horrible phrase), they lose investment potential and may lay off workers, etc. Big events percolate down.
BUT, remember that government agencies don't just operate on efficiency criteria. (Thanks to Bardach, Ellwood, et al.)* We don't want our governments to cut corners on building schools. We want them to go the extra mile in making sure that teachers are accredited. Plus, the government does things on equity criteria as well. Does this affect the poor more badly than the rich? Could we use this garbage collection program to hire welfare recipients and get them back to work? (Donahue)*
Point is, your values are different from mine, and as long as we disagree on the criteria, we'll never get to the same solution.
P.S., it's interesting that you say we even need the government to build roads and do the military and police...there are libertarians / anarchists who say private industry could do those as well. If schools, why not roads? It's a lot easier to determine whether a road is bad than a school.
[*]Thanks to the public policy department at UC Berkeley.