I would not mind paying for a subscription, but I will not pay a subscription just not to see ads. Personally, I can tune them out for $20.
It's worse than that. The users have already started posting ways to defeat advertisements, and the suppression of this information is quickly underway as well. It's the "Battle of Slashdot", and it's counterproductive.
This audience is different than others. This is the home of "Fair Use", and a subscription system based around altering how a Slashdot reader views the site is probably going to be met with... custom software to view the site.
I liked Rob's description of the subscription service as a "donation" and the ad removal as a kind of perk. I think that if any minor change could be made, the widespread application of this verbiage could clear a lot of things up. You're not buying a page view for $.04, you're donating to Slashdot, and they're trying to say thanks.
If I give you your fithy money... will you let me moderate again?
I think the answer to that is NO. Abusive moderators only get once chance; the pool is large enough that is has to work that way. You can read more about how many moderators are banned and such here.
Suppose someone writes some nice perl script. Are the millions going to use it? No.
Read the FAQ. Using a script against Slashdot in a combative manner is considered abuse and is punishable by a permanent IP or subnet ban against reading anything.
If people start using scripts to remove ads, they better be really careful about it.
Considering the number of articles posted here about PayPal fraud, will you accept any payment other than PayPal? Will you accept cash in the mail to ensure anonymity for the paranoid?
The rates are currently set at $5 per 1000 pages.
When we encounter the lameness filter trying to paste code into a comment, does that count as a page view?
Eventually we intend to offer additional features to subscribers. Exactly what those plums are remains to be decided: Access to the rejected submissions bin? A 'Gold Star' in your comments header? Karma?
I think your comment really belongs in the hidden Slash META discussion started by CmdrTaco. CmdrTaco is currently answering questions there from all comers, so now's your chance. You can even ask him what he thinks of chromatic and Wikis, which are a move towards more community trust rather than less.
And no I am not Offtopic; I'm trying to transfer the Offtopic people into their own discussion.
Editor: I'll take a 3-point karma hit too BUMP
on
KaZaa Suspends Downloads
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Count me in.
Please mod me down 3 times to -1 Offtopic. I know that you refuse to take responsibility for your actions - you won't even admit that Editors are different from Slashdot users in priveleges and visibility. It's absurd. I know that the last revision of the moderation guidelines is dated 1999. And I know you won't even read my post before you moderate it to -1. I know this because you've already IP banned me, removed my moderation priveleges, and removed my metamoderation priveleges. All this is your right. Slashdot is privately owned, I take nothing for granted here, if you delete my account, so be it.
But as I have said, as the parent poster has said, as everyone else has said: please, grow a pair and take responsibility for what you're doing. Please, at the very least, tell the god damned truth. I admire the way you people skewer large corporations. But wielding the sharp sword of Truth bears with it the responsibility of being Truthful in your dealings with your readership.
And let me tell you, modbombing an entire thread with a 10,000 pound Offtopic bunker-buster while claiming that the moderation system is self governing while refusing to message people when you've Editor-moderated them is going to peg anyone's bullshit meter.
Moderation is not Censorship. I would never claim that; it's a stupid position and if we throw it up it's easily shot down. Moderation simply governs visibility. What people talk about determines what people know and learn about at Slashdot. It controls the propogation of memes. And you are hellbent on suppressing this meme. I'll refrain from speculating about your motivation... but consider how angry it makes you that the MPAA is trying to suppress memes about copy protection and the MPAA. Now step into the shoes of the people who are pissed off about modbombing and find themselves suddenly pounded into -1 oblivion the moment they open their mouth. That's where the bile comes from.
It'd be nice to take your rhetoric seriously but 300 Offtopic moderations make the hypocrisy too deafening to hear anything over.
Ellison to me is just a Bill Gates who never got the chance. He doesn't want Microsoft toppled as a monopoly because Microsoft is bad for consumers; he wants Microsoft toppled so he can treat consumers badly and profit from it. He's just a less successful version of Bill Gates in my mind.
FUD like this "unbreakable" business just proves that he's cut from the same mold. What's truly sad is that our society selects people like Ellison and Gates as leaders because ruthlessness is a competitive advantage - and I mean "selects" in the evolutionary sense.
Oracle: the unbreakable national ID card. The whole idea gives me chills.
The irony here is thick. Tron, the only movie where the bad guy was ICE, an intrusion countermeasures routine written by a huge evil corporation, is now released on a video format protected by... intrusion countermeasures... developed by a huge evil corporation.
If Bill Gate's house bluescreens tomorrow pinning him under the refrigerator till he asphyxiates, I don't think the irony would get any thicker.
This debate seems to be over whether Smoothwall was designed to secure against attack from outside your DSL dialup or against attack from the inside. Shadow passwords are meant to provide a safeguard against dictionary attacks from logged-in users on a multiuser system. c't's complaint that there is no shadow password on a single-user system is valid; if you're worried about people in your own house trying to hack into your firewall.
It is true that internal security against logged in users can help defeat attackers who can only partially penetrate external defenses. If, for instance, you can only use a CGI bug to get ahold of the passwd file, you can leverage this with a dictionary attack if shadowing isn't installed. Provided you can disable the packet filter and attempt to login as root externally once you have the password... or even use an su type exploit from your original CGI bug. Either way, there are a lot of large corporations with bigger security holes than this.
However to claim that his review "shattered the illusion" of Smoothwall being a complete solution for home users is complete hyperbole. A home user who is trying to secure himself from internal attack from other logged in users in his house is probably pretty savvy in the first place and also has bigger problems. If the purpose of this product is have a CD you can ship to your parents to secure their DSL line against script Kiddiez and Hotmail's Traceroute function, then Smoothwall sounds to me like an outstanding effort.
At this point, I consider it a matter of proven record since Judge Jackson's finding of fact was upheald by the appeals court.:)
It's nice how you can now technically say "Microsoft, convicted felons" and be correct. I do it at the lunch table and it wigs people out, but they think about it, and realize you're right. Just wanted to point out that if they really think Lindows is a threat to their corporate accounts, they have the option to pull much nastier stunts and get away with it. It's happened before.
As far as your sig goes, I don't think you understand. Rob said that "Admins are Users too" and that means that Admins are actually Users. No matter how much you may disagree, you are wrong. The person who disagreed with Rob is a Troll, and as Jamie McCarthy once pointed out, "Slashdot's Trolls are exclusively destructive". Therefore, if you agree with a Troll, not only are you wrong, but you are exclusively destructive. If I were you, I'd wise up and stop trying to destroy things before you get blacklisted. You have to watch your mouth when posting here. You'll never know when they trip that flag on you, except perhaps you'll notice that you can't moderate or metamoderate anymore... Either way, you need to find the strength to go with the flow. It's an act of personal sacrifice, sometimes, to stop thinking differently. All the same, it would be in your best interest to do so.
I have a reply to your comment, and a reply to your.sig.
First, your comment:
Yes, Microsoft will try to outrun you be rev'ing their software faster. It's called churn; they live and die by it. But they also do... much nastier things to make your code stop working (like the Stealth Virus I just linked to). It all depends on how much of a threat they think you are.
Second, your.sig:
Slashdot does tell you when Editors are moderating your posts. In the Slashdot messaging system, you can turn on "notify me of moderation", and every time an Editor moderates one of your posts, you will get a message saying that "a User gave your comment a score of blah blah blah". This is because Editors are actually called "Users" at Slashdot. You can read more about this if you like, but basically, this is a solved problem.
Any attempt to compare the Slashdot editors to editors in the normal journalistic sense is absurd. Are editors of the New York Times just customers of the NYT? No. But here at Slashdot, Editors are just Users, just like everybody else. They don't have any special powers or priveleges like, say the editors of the NYT. You have to read that link fully to understand - but trust me - the comparison is completely without merit.
The Microsoft icon here is symbolically equivalent to burning Bill Gates in effigy. You want impartiality? Get a grip.
Because WindRiver, et al, are not storming the ramparts, threatening King William the Gates with a Peasent's Revolt
Huh? WindRiver already stormed the ramparts. They now own the ramparts, and are trying to keep the Microsoft peasants out. Microsoft is the smallest name in the embedded market. They don't make any real revenue there. There's nothing to defend there, only a new market to conquer. But instead of focusing on attacking and annihilating the competion the way they normally do, they're focusing on attacking the other small fish in the pond... Linux.
I think we may actually be vehemently agreeing. I'm saying that Microsoft is acting irrationally in the embedded space WRT Linux because of some other perception. I think you're defining that perception... it's just amazing how tenaciously they will fight for a market they don't even have anything to do with, when Linux is involved.
...when these kind of resources are used to attack what is essentially a straw man. If they were going to attack a target with FUD, why wouldn't they attack the market leader, WindRiver VxWorks?
Proof positive they're irrationally scared by Linux.
Universal Music is the most aggressive in its anti-piracy efforts, saying that all of its CDs will be copy-protected by mid-2002. The other big labels are also experimenting with various technologies.
Any next-term strategy characterized by the word 'saying' is far from living up to the word "plans". They're announcing that they're introducing one copy protected CD into the American market, so you could legitimately claim that they plan to release one. They've announced a press release 'saying' that by 2002 all their CD's will be copy protected - though they don't specify the method, or whether it will be anything like their trial balloon. I would at best characterize that as a "trial balloon", or maybe an "announcement", maybe even a "threat". But a plan? Considering that they don't even have artists on board, characterizing that remark as corporate strategy in my mind falls way short of the mark.
Perhaps I should have rambled on more when originally posting, without assuming this was obvious. Trusting the recording industry to actually do anything but what they've announced they're doing at the moment is not a habit I've been able to form.
But that wouldn't have given you an excuse to flame me, and honestly I think we could all deal with some more of that.
Having already infuriated the entire television industry, SonicBlue was unsatisfied with it's level of legal disasters, so they have now gone and scared the bejeezus out of the RIAA.
Well done. I won't be surprised if the RIAA & MPAA just drop the pretext and break out the laser-guided bombs. Where's SonicBlue's headquarters?
If you don't like the article, don't read it Intentionally turn a blind eye? Good advice.
don't post trash comments. Your comment is pure trash.
Try to keep the comments on topic... Your comment is offtopic.
But those which you describe as OffTopic weren't. The topic is Jon Katz's review of the movie. When I say "I think the review was average but the movie doesn't belong on Slashdot" then I am On Topic.
I think a lot of nerds are interested in movies. Personally, I'm very interested in making sure that the MPAA doesn't get any of my money for making them, because they helped fund the DMCA to strip me of my First Amendment rights.
But while we're talking about seeing movies for free in one manner or another, I think the point was that this particular movie probably doesn't fit our audience very well. It's a spoof of a special-interest genre (movies for teens 17 and under), and doesn't have the broad-based appeal to a general audience that nearly anything else would.
In short, there's no problem with reviewing general-interest movies on a special-interest site. But there's a big problem with reviewing special-interest movies for high school kids on a site for professional and amateur programmers.
What a joke. The only good thing about this movie is that it will teach those "popular kid" idiots like the atheletes at Columbine that their movies just aren't funny.
Slashdot Mirror
I would not mind paying for a subscription, but I will not pay a subscription just not to see ads. Personally, I can tune them out for $20.
It's worse than that. The users have already started posting ways to defeat advertisements, and the suppression of this information is quickly underway as well. It's the "Battle of Slashdot", and it's counterproductive.
This audience is different than others. This is the home of "Fair Use", and a subscription system based around altering how a Slashdot reader views the site is probably going to be met with... custom software to view the site.
I liked Rob's description of the subscription service as a "donation" and the ad removal as a kind of perk. I think that if any minor change could be made, the widespread application of this verbiage could clear a lot of things up. You're not buying a page view for $.04, you're donating to Slashdot, and they're trying to say thanks.
If I give you your fithy money... will you let me moderate again?
I think the answer to that is NO. Abusive moderators only get once chance; the pool is large enough that is has to work that way. You can read more about how many moderators are banned and such here.
Suppose someone writes some nice perl script. Are the millions going to use it? No.
Read the FAQ. Using a script against Slashdot in a combative manner is considered abuse and is punishable by a permanent IP or subnet ban against reading anything.
If people start using scripts to remove ads, they better be really careful about it.
Questions:
Considering the number of articles posted here about PayPal fraud, will you accept any payment other than PayPal? Will you accept cash in the mail to ensure anonymity for the paranoid?
The rates are currently set at $5 per 1000 pages.
When we encounter the lameness filter trying to paste code into a comment, does that count as a page view?
Eventually we intend to offer additional features to subscribers. Exactly what those plums are remains to be decided: Access to the rejected submissions bin? A 'Gold Star' in your comments header? Karma?
May I reccommend the ability to pay to Disable Modbombing?
Good luck guys...
I think your comment really belongs in the hidden Slash META discussion started by CmdrTaco. CmdrTaco is currently answering questions there from all comers, so now's your chance. You can even ask him what he thinks of chromatic and Wikis, which are a move towards more community trust rather than less.
And no I am not Offtopic; I'm trying to transfer the Offtopic people into their own discussion.
Modbomb me harder!
Thank you sir may I have another!
Count me in.
Please mod me down 3 times to -1 Offtopic. I know that you refuse to take responsibility for your actions - you won't even admit that Editors are different from Slashdot users in priveleges and visibility. It's absurd. I know that the last revision of the moderation guidelines is dated 1999. And I know you won't even read my post before you moderate it to -1. I know this because you've already IP banned me, removed my moderation priveleges, and removed my metamoderation priveleges. All this is your right. Slashdot is privately owned, I take nothing for granted here, if you delete my account, so be it.
But as I have said, as the parent poster has said, as everyone else has said: please, grow a pair and take responsibility for what you're doing. Please, at the very least, tell the god damned truth. I admire the way you people skewer large corporations. But wielding the sharp sword of Truth bears with it the responsibility of being Truthful in your dealings with your readership.
And let me tell you, modbombing an entire thread with a 10,000 pound Offtopic bunker-buster while claiming that the moderation system is self governing while refusing to message people when you've Editor-moderated them is going to peg anyone's bullshit meter.
Moderation is not Censorship. I would never claim that; it's a stupid position and if we throw it up it's easily shot down. Moderation simply governs visibility. What people talk about determines what people know and learn about at Slashdot. It controls the propogation of memes. And you are hellbent on suppressing this meme. I'll refrain from speculating about your motivation... but consider how angry it makes you that the MPAA is trying to suppress memes about copy protection and the MPAA. Now step into the shoes of the people who are pissed off about modbombing and find themselves suddenly pounded into -1 oblivion the moment they open their mouth. That's where the bile comes from.
It'd be nice to take your rhetoric seriously but 300 Offtopic moderations make the hypocrisy too deafening to hear anything over.
Ellison to me is just a Bill Gates who never got the chance. He doesn't want Microsoft toppled as a monopoly because Microsoft is bad for consumers; he wants Microsoft toppled so he can treat consumers badly and profit from it. He's just a less successful version of Bill Gates in my mind.
FUD like this "unbreakable" business just proves that he's cut from the same mold. What's truly sad is that our society selects people like Ellison and Gates as leaders because ruthlessness is a competitive advantage - and I mean "selects" in the evolutionary sense.
Oracle: the unbreakable national ID card. The whole idea gives me chills.
Reconsidering that plaintext cookie in my browser that holds my account password, are we?
The irony here is thick. Tron, the only movie where the bad guy was ICE, an intrusion countermeasures routine written by a huge evil corporation, is now released on a video format protected by... intrusion countermeasures... developed by a huge evil corporation.
If Bill Gate's house bluescreens tomorrow pinning him under the refrigerator till he asphyxiates, I don't think the irony would get any thicker.
This debate seems to be over whether Smoothwall was designed to secure against attack from outside your DSL dialup or against attack from the inside. Shadow passwords are meant to provide a safeguard against dictionary attacks from logged-in users on a multiuser system. c't's complaint that there is no shadow password on a single-user system is valid; if you're worried about people in your own house trying to hack into your firewall.
It is true that internal security against logged in users can help defeat attackers who can only partially penetrate external defenses. If, for instance, you can only use a CGI bug to get ahold of the passwd file, you can leverage this with a dictionary attack if shadowing isn't installed. Provided you can disable the packet filter and attempt to login as root externally once you have the password... or even use an su type exploit from your original CGI bug. Either way, there are a lot of large corporations with bigger security holes than this.
However to claim that his review "shattered the illusion" of Smoothwall being a complete solution for home users is complete hyperbole. A home user who is trying to secure himself from internal attack from other logged in users in his house is probably pretty savvy in the first place and also has bigger problems. If the purpose of this product is have a CD you can ship to your parents to secure their DSL line against script Kiddiez and Hotmail's Traceroute function, then Smoothwall sounds to me like an outstanding effort.
c't': Two demerits.
At this point, I consider it a matter of proven record since Judge Jackson's finding of fact was upheald by the appeals court. :)
It's nice how you can now technically say "Microsoft, convicted felons" and be correct. I do it at the lunch table and it wigs people out, but they think about it, and realize you're right. Just wanted to point out that if they really think Lindows is a threat to their corporate accounts, they have the option to pull much nastier stunts and get away with it. It's happened before.
As far as your sig goes, I don't think you understand. Rob said that "Admins are Users too" and that means that Admins are actually Users. No matter how much you may disagree, you are wrong. The person who disagreed with Rob is a Troll, and as Jamie McCarthy once pointed out, "Slashdot's Trolls are exclusively destructive". Therefore, if you agree with a Troll, not only are you wrong, but you are exclusively destructive. If I were you, I'd wise up and stop trying to destroy things before you get blacklisted. You have to watch your mouth when posting here. You'll never know when they trip that flag on you, except perhaps you'll notice that you can't moderate or metamoderate anymore... Either way, you need to find the strength to go with the flow. It's an act of personal sacrifice, sometimes, to stop thinking differently. All the same, it would be in your best interest to do so.
I have a reply to your comment, and a reply to your .sig.
.sig:
First, your comment:
Yes, Microsoft will try to outrun you be rev'ing their software faster. It's called churn; they live and die by it. But they also do... much nastier things to make your code stop working (like the Stealth Virus I just linked to). It all depends on how much of a threat they think you are.
Second, your
Slashdot does tell you when Editors are moderating your posts. In the Slashdot messaging system, you can turn on "notify me of moderation", and every time an Editor moderates one of your posts, you will get a message saying that "a User gave your comment a score of blah blah blah". This is because Editors are actually called "Users" at Slashdot. You can read more about this if you like, but basically, this is a solved problem.
I didn't say it; Rob Malda did. Read the link.
Any attempt to compare the Slashdot editors to editors in the normal journalistic sense is absurd. Are editors of the New York Times just customers of the NYT? No. But here at Slashdot, Editors are just Users, just like everybody else. They don't have any special powers or priveleges like, say the editors of the NYT. You have to read that link fully to understand - but trust me - the comparison is completely without merit.
The Microsoft icon here is symbolically equivalent to burning Bill Gates in effigy. You want impartiality? Get a grip.
What you're reaching for here, boys, is this:
"9 women and 1 month do not a baby make".
Have fun.
Considering the rate at which they are acquiring and gutting their competition (PSOS, BSDI), let me tell you, you are not alone in your thinking.
Trust me.
Because WindRiver, et al, are not storming the ramparts, threatening King William the Gates with a Peasent's Revolt
Huh? WindRiver already stormed the ramparts. They now own the ramparts, and are trying to keep the Microsoft peasants out. Microsoft is the smallest name in the embedded market. They don't make any real revenue there. There's nothing to defend there, only a new market to conquer. But instead of focusing on attacking and annihilating the competion the way they normally do, they're focusing on attacking the other small fish in the pond... Linux.
I think we may actually be vehemently agreeing. I'm saying that Microsoft is acting irrationally in the embedded space WRT Linux because of some other perception. I think you're defining that perception... it's just amazing how tenaciously they will fight for a market they don't even have anything to do with, when Linux is involved.
...when these kind of resources are used to attack what is essentially a straw man. If they were going to attack a target with FUD, why wouldn't they attack the market leader, WindRiver VxWorks?
Proof positive they're irrationally scared by Linux.
Seems pretty clear that you:
I'm glad this seems clear to you. It means I don't have to worry about what you think, once jamie finishes implementing killfiles.
Universal Music is the most aggressive in its anti-piracy efforts, saying that all of its CDs will be copy-protected by mid-2002. The other big labels are also experimenting with various technologies.
Any next-term strategy characterized by the word 'saying' is far from living up to the word "plans". They're announcing that they're introducing one copy protected CD into the American market, so you could legitimately claim that they plan to release one. They've announced a press release 'saying' that by 2002 all their CD's will be copy protected - though they don't specify the method, or whether it will be anything like their trial balloon. I would at best characterize that as a "trial balloon", or maybe an "announcement", maybe even a "threat". But a plan? Considering that they don't even have artists on board, characterizing that remark as corporate strategy in my mind falls way short of the mark.
Perhaps I should have rambled on more when originally posting, without assuming this was obvious. Trusting the recording industry to actually do anything but what they've announced they're doing at the moment is not a habit I've been able to form.
But that wouldn't have given you an excuse to flame me, and honestly I think we could all deal with some more of that.
company will be the first of the major labels to release a copy-protected CD in the United States
Universal won't be copy protecting all of their CD's. Just one. Please read the articles before linking, thanks.
Having already infuriated the entire television industry, SonicBlue was unsatisfied with it's level of legal disasters, so they have now gone and scared the bejeezus out of the RIAA.
Well done. I won't be surprised if the RIAA & MPAA just drop the pretext and break out the laser-guided bombs. Where's SonicBlue's headquarters?
If you don't like the article, don't read it
Intentionally turn a blind eye? Good advice.
don't post trash comments.
Your comment is pure trash.
Try to keep the comments on topic...
Your comment is offtopic.
But those which you describe as OffTopic weren't. The topic is Jon Katz's review of the movie. When I say "I think the review was average but the movie doesn't belong on Slashdot" then I am On Topic.
Now quit whining.
Since when can't nerds be interested in movies?!
I think a lot of nerds are interested in movies. Personally, I'm very interested in making sure that the MPAA doesn't get any of my money for making them, because they helped fund the DMCA to strip me of my First Amendment rights.
But while we're talking about seeing movies for free in one manner or another, I think the point was that this particular movie probably doesn't fit our audience very well. It's a spoof of a special-interest genre (movies for teens 17 and under), and doesn't have the broad-based appeal to a general audience that nearly anything else would.
In short, there's no problem with reviewing general-interest movies on a special-interest site. But there's a big problem with reviewing special-interest movies for high school kids on a site for professional and amateur programmers.
What a joke. The only good thing about this movie is that it will teach those "popular kid" idiots like the atheletes at Columbine that their movies just aren't funny.