Concerning the match itself, if it's going to be held under the conditions I know about (Kramnik gets the Fritz 7 version he is going to compete with in advance in order to prepare for the match, etc), I must say that any other result than a convincing win by Kramnik will be simply unacceptable by me!
I really don't understand this attitude. Somehow, it's unfair of a human to try and exploit the computer's weaknesses (rote play, predictability, etc.) while it's fair that a computer can essentially have unlimited reference materials available to it.
I'm not arguing for the computer's memory be limited to a particular chess player's ability to remember reference materials. Rather, I'm arguing that humans and computers should each be allowed to call upon their particular strengths and exploit the weakness of their opponent in their encounters.
For computer strength to be judged fairly against humans, we must not hobble the humans with artificial rules of sportsmanship. If the computer could simulate the human for practice, nobody would find that unfair, I would bet, but that's the whole point, really. The computer can't simulate the human opponent for practice because humans are too unpredictable for current computers to comprehend fully. This, in some ways, is a human advantage. Humans can play deeper moves than the computers which depend on understanding of Chess that has not yet been isolated for inclusion in computer heuristics.
On the various Internet Chess Servers it's considered "abuse" to play the same winning line against a computer that can't learn. I think the abuse is that the computer is propped up with an artificially high rating by those who insist that a player who cannot learn from defeats is strong. Of course, the better programs do now learn from their defeats, but this is just an example of how human vs. machine matches are sometimes tilted in favor of the machine.
I bet a lot of geeks are heading out into the Big Blue Room to enjoy the enhanced weather that is out there on the East coast right now.
Haven't you heard? That "sun" thing that our parents like to prattle on about has been shown to release dangerous radiation. It turns your skin to leather and leads to unsightly skin lesions and even cancer.
No thanks. This is just another one of those things that we Geeks have right and the nature boys and the geriatric crowd got wrong.
I only go outside when there's a comet or meteor shower or something Geeky to observe. Some people like to see those Solar eclipse things, but what's the point? If you look directly at it, you're eyes get fried, I hear.
I don't know when this was you were talking about when "no professional chess player would play a machine". I recall Grandmaster vs. Machine matches going way back. Typically, the Grandmasters routed the machines until the last ten or fifteen years.
Just off the top of my head, Bobby Fisher played some computers in the 60s and 70s. These were always absurdly lopsided matches with Fisher wining easily.
There was David Levy, who was a professional chess player in that he was an author and an International Master, had continuing wagers that he could defeat any computer in a match. Deep Thought finally defeated him in 1989.
Until 1989 or 1990, there was hardly any point in Grandmaster vs. computers as the computers weren't up to it. Then, after Deep Thought came along, there was hardly any point in getting beaten by a machine. Didn't prove anything.
You know, taking time to program defensively and put in meaningful comments has no benefit to me most of the time. Most of the time, some junior person will be stuck with the maintenance and I can always just blame him or her for any problems. Doing the extra work to do a good job is just not worth the hassle.
Most of the time, I can get away with just throwing pop cans out of the window of my car, especially if I'm on a country road with nobody around. Carrying that crap around just isn't worth the hassle.
Look, I know I cut corners and don't always do the right thing, but are you really arguing for filling landfills with stuff that may have value to someone just because anything else isn't worth the hassle?
The Internet is for everyone. Anyone who has a display device or printer that can bring up RFCs.
I'm always struck by how much value there is in simple language presented simply. No flash, no java, no PDFs, no PS, no markup, no bold, no underlines, just straight text. Would this, or any other, RFC be any better presented in HTML? I know there are HTML rendering of the RFCs, but are they really any better.
Whenever I go into a business that really uses their computers for customer service, I note how simple the user interfaces usually are. Most POS,Airlines,Car Dealerships and COMPUTER STORES are still green screens with text. Some are GUI, but have they proved to be any better?
Look, hypertext is great, having multiple applications on the screen (simple GUIs) is great, beyond that has all of our complex presentation really bought us much except narrow the audience of who can receive the information or applications?
The Internet is for Everyone, unless the technologists insist on making it only for a few.
Exactly. Laws are *supposed* to represent what the people want them to be.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a world without speed limits or the other traffic laws that he cited.
Actually, I don't want our laws to be what people want them to be, either. I want laws to be consistent, not give in to hot-headed mob rule, be against bigotry and pettiness and not rob the few rich to enrich the many poor. I'm convinced that people want some horrible things sometimes and need to be restrained by a Government that can only be moved slowly.
That's why news of do-nothing Congresses and gridlock in Washington actually makes me feel relieved.
Government isn't a candy machine giving people what they want. It should protect liberties and set simple rules and otherwise stay out of our lives.
That being said, I do think that the IP laws(Patents and Copyrights both) are getting completely out of hand and need to returned to where they once were and probably greatly curtailed wrt Software and digital media. The new laws in these areas don't "promote the progress of science and the useful arts" as they were supposed to do. In fact, as Richard Stallman points out here (and elsewhere, but I'm too lazy to look up the references), the Patent system is actually going against progress.
In brief, I'm for Government that is informed by principles. The principle that we all want free music is not compelling to me. The principle that the current copyright system does not seem to be promoting the useful arts is compelling to me.
...stop buying music, robbing the RIAA of the capital they need to buy politicians? I buy only used CDs
Well, this may be a bit of a stretch, I'll admit it up front, but buying used CDs from RIAA artists does support the RIAA indirectly.
It supports a secondary market for their used goods, which drives up the prices of the used goods and helps to support or at least stabilizes higher prices for their new CDs.
It's like how buying a stock that was first issued years ago supports the company. If enough people buy it, and drive the price up, the company can always release more to raise cash. Just like if there are albums that get so popular on the used market that they can't be found, the record companies can then make money by rereleasing the titles, or if they are still in the catalog, making more of them new and sending them out for wide distribution.
By this logic, I guess the way to hurt the RIAA the most is to sell all of your music media on the used market and never buy any RIAA artists. At least, not until you like their policies more.
I'm neither recommending this, nor do I practice an RIAA boycott. I don't buy much new music, though. I'm not very attracted to much of what I hear today and I can usually find what I like used.:-)
Price fixing, why does an audio CD still cost about as much as a DVD? Isn't an album much cheeper to produce (as in creating the content, not the physical media) than a full length movie.
I don't want to be in the position of defending the RIAA or the record labels, but I do want to point out a basic misunderstanding of economics embodies in the above.
Products are not priced based on what they cost to produce, they are priced based on what people are willing to pay for them.
If the market is competitive, prices are driven down to near the cost of producing the item, but there are various reasons for markets not being competitive.
In the case of Music and Movies (CDs and DVDs), there is the fact that the creators have been granted a monopoly on their own material through copyrights. So, there's no competition for a particular music CD and they price them to optimize profits without regard to the cost to produce them.
Now we, as a people, aren't powerless here. We've granted the copyright monopolies to promote the useful arts. I don't know about you, but I think we need to revisit our IP laws to make sure "useful arts" are actually being promoted.
Certainly, the 95 year copyright extension is not in the spirit of the Constitution. This story,recently referened on Slashdot seems to indicate that the interests of artists are not being promoted by the present system.
I don't know how this meme got started, but it's entirely false. See 17 USC 117 [cornell.edu]; it is not a violation of copyright to make a copy of software if doing so is an "essential step" in using it.
IANAL, but, there is this case law that seems to indicate that copying software into RAM is violating its copyright.
I think this is not in agreement with the US Code you cite above, but it is the current case law.
I do think it's completely nuts.
Hmmmm... So, dark_panda thinks we should not erect a defense to Blackhat hackers from China, eh?
They've already infultrated Slashdot! Oh, these Red Army types are much more sophisticated that I could have imagined! Using social engineering to keep US Geeks from countering their plot.
I also am not an accountant, but, it seems to me that there are advantages to spending the money on development, also. Development funds are costs of doing business and are not taxed, profits, which this pile is, just accumulated profits, are taxed.
The non-modularity was for expediency (like Linux) and to promote an inescapable software monoculture (ALSO LIKE LINUX!...oh, I kid...must not troll during hopefully great troll blackout...). But the point is, modularity is something that is great for users once it's completed, but really hinders rapid software deployment. Real-world software engineering is riddled with these comprimises.
While this all may be true, note that MS has near zero motivation for designing it the right way as long as it also supports their goals of holding a monopoly in OS and Application software.
By contrast, the Linux developers, while making some compromises have a great deal of incentive to modularize in that this supports their development integration methodology. With Linux developers working on different parts on wildly different schedules, some modularity is ensured. With different patches integrated into different kernel revisions, stability is also tested at many levels of integration.
With MS earning an unheard of 25% profit on their products, and their spending so much money on just quashing any potential competition - IE development up to Version 5 cost them more than Windows 95 development did (and they give IE away?? How do you justify such largesse if it's not to crush competition?), you think they could spend some more money on all the benefits of modularity and loose coupling.
These compromises that MS has made have come home to roost in poor security and instability. Certainly, at this point, they could see the advantages that modularity and loose coupling would pay off in the long term.
MS's current approach to security is to stop all development and have 2 month-long code reviews. Expedient compromises always come back to cost you in the end.
Yeah, right, margins are really high on those mass produced $150-$200 PDAs, which dominate the market. Margins are so thick that their manufacturers show hardly any profit at all.
On the other hand, the elevator manufacturers and the like make maybe a few thousand at most a year. And, there's typically only 1 or 2 choices for these items for most customers to consider.
It may well be that the Industrial Companies bury the cost of their embedded systems in the cost of the machines they're attached to, but the margins are certainly higher on low production items vs. mass-market items sold into ruthlessly competitive markets.
But now, if Google starts prohibiting folks from using such search-bots (that use the HTML interface to Google), they can say "Look, we provided an API for this purpose!"
How could Google tell it's a bot or a human performing the search via the HTML interface? Speed of interaction? That's mostly limited by the time it takes to perform the query and display the results. The net can be laggy at times, making checks for speed of interaction problematic. In any case, some sort of delays, even somewhat randomized, could be programmed in to make the bot appear to be a human.
Right, which is why it not going through could have potentially negative effects for Stevens.
Maybe in a Republican primary, which Stevens probably already has locked up tight. I can just see the Democrat running on a platform of "I'll fight to open ANWR to drilling."
No, instead, Stevens will run against pictures of Kennedy with the voice over "Stevens faught against eastern liberals to open our lands to responsible energy development." Might be good if they can find a picture of his Democratic opponent shaking hands with Kennedy of Daschle.
At best it's neutral, and with good campaigning he could turn it into a plus. Especially if there is continued turmoil in the Middle East.
If I wanted to research my Congressmen's voting record on Geek-centric issues, I'd have to do quite a bit of work.
Does anyone keep just lists of the Bills, voting records, etc. on these issues? Opensecrets.org does this for their issues, and Common Cause publicizes voting record for their issues, but I haven't seen anything like this for Geek issues.
Perhaps the EFF would do something like this, but I didn't find it on their Web site. Well, they are probably open to suggestions, especially with a contribution in the envelope!
You're the one who has it exactly backwards. Slashdot isn't selling comments, they are selling advertisements and subscriptions.
Commenters are to Slashdot as poets are to the coffee shop. Poets are drawn into the coffee shop, which sells coffee, because there's a stage and an audience there. Just like commenters are drawn into Slashdot, which sells ads, because there's a stage and an audience here.
It's not an exact analogy because people at the Coffee shop come for both the coffee and the entertainment, while people come to Slashdot for the stories and the comments (not the ads).
Imagine a place where advertising patrons pay for a stage, provide some recorded music and poetry and allow people to get up on the stage to recite. Let's say that renting the space for the stage is expensive and it's a big arena with comfortable chairs and couches. That'd be a closer analogy. Since the people who recite pay nothing, but still come, the place has no reason to provide them an ad-free place to watch the entertainment.
BTW, I really appreciate your exploring these analogies with me. I attempted to make some illustrative analogies and critique those that others had made before the Blackout, but I couldn't get anyone to explore them with me then.
If people think that they provide such great value here and are taken for granted, by all means, they should go to a place where they can be paid for good writing. I can provide a list of such places, if you're interested.
Because I wanted to point out that without all that "cheap" content, Slashdot is worth exactly what its owners can get for some second-hand network gear.
User-supplied content is everything to Slashdot.
That's like saying the value to the coffee shop is a bunch of old pots, some cups and some tables. Or, like the value to you is a few dozen gallons of water, some calcium, iron and trace elements.
The value of Slashdot is in the franchise, in the fact that people like you like to come here, read and comment. Without the editors posting stories, the beefy servers and good connections, this would just be a big meandering blog. Lots of those out there, but they don't draw many advertisers.
Gee, I thought we wouldn't hear all this "Content is the value of Slashdot" claptrap this week. Guess not.
> This is such a fallacious argument. It is based on the assumption that your opinion is more valuable than the network services that distribute it.... The content (mostly the opinions of the uninformed) here is cheap, but bandwidth and employees are not.
The obvious strategy for the owners, then, is to eliminate all that worthless content, which will then cut back on the bandwith requirements, which in turn will let them reduce their headcount.
Why do the people who criticize the subscription system insist on misrepresenting the position of those who defend it? Note that he didn't say "all the worthless content", he said that it's cheap.
Clearly the value here is in providing the medium to distribute and add your own comments before a audience, just like the coffee shop. The comments are part of that value, but taken in isolation, individual comments or even the contributions of individual commenters are not of great value.
Of course, cutting off all commenters would ruin the value proposition. Just like the coffee house not providing a stage would make that place less desirable. As the poster very cogently pointed out, nobody expects free coffee for their amateur poetry. Nobody here should expect the free use of the servers with no ads for their amateur opinions.
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't understand this attitude. Somehow, it's unfair of a human to try and exploit the computer's weaknesses (rote play, predictability, etc.) while it's fair that a computer can essentially have unlimited reference materials available to it.
I'm not arguing for the computer's memory be limited to a particular chess player's ability to remember reference materials. Rather, I'm arguing that humans and computers should each be allowed to call upon their particular strengths and exploit the weakness of their opponent in their encounters.
For computer strength to be judged fairly against humans, we must not hobble the humans with artificial rules of sportsmanship. If the computer could simulate the human for practice, nobody would find that unfair, I would bet, but that's the whole point, really. The computer can't simulate the human opponent for practice because humans are too unpredictable for current computers to comprehend fully. This, in some ways, is a human advantage. Humans can play deeper moves than the computers which depend on understanding of Chess that has not yet been isolated for inclusion in computer heuristics.
On the various Internet Chess Servers it's considered "abuse" to play the same winning line against a computer that can't learn. I think the abuse is that the computer is propped up with an artificially high rating by those who insist that a player who cannot learn from defeats is strong. Of course, the better programs do now learn from their defeats, but this is just an example of how human vs. machine matches are sometimes tilted in favor of the machine.
I bet a lot of geeks are heading out into the Big Blue Room to enjoy the enhanced weather that is out there on the East coast right now.
Haven't you heard? That "sun" thing that our parents like to prattle on about has been shown to release dangerous radiation. It turns your skin to leather and leads to unsightly skin lesions and even cancer.
No thanks. This is just another one of those things that we Geeks have right and the nature boys and the geriatric crowd got wrong.
I only go outside when there's a comet or meteor shower or something Geeky to observe. Some people like to see those Solar eclipse things, but what's the point? If you look directly at it, you're eyes get fried, I hear.
Just off the top of my head, Bobby Fisher played some computers in the 60s and 70s. These were always absurdly lopsided matches with Fisher wining easily.
There was David Levy, who was a professional chess player in that he was an author and an International Master, had continuing wagers that he could defeat any computer in a match. Deep Thought finally defeated him in 1989.
Until 1989 or 1990, there was hardly any point in Grandmaster vs. computers as the computers weren't up to it. Then, after Deep Thought came along, there was hardly any point in getting beaten by a machine. Didn't prove anything.
Most of the time, I can get away with just throwing pop cans out of the window of my car, especially if I'm on a country road with nobody around. Carrying that crap around just isn't worth the hassle.
Look, I know I cut corners and don't always do the right thing, but are you really arguing for filling landfills with stuff that may have value to someone just because anything else isn't worth the hassle?
I'm always struck by how much value there is in simple language presented simply. No flash, no java, no PDFs, no PS, no markup, no bold, no underlines, just straight text. Would this, or any other, RFC be any better presented in HTML? I know there are HTML rendering of the RFCs, but are they really any better.
Whenever I go into a business that really uses their computers for customer service, I note how simple the user interfaces usually are. Most POS,Airlines,Car Dealerships and COMPUTER STORES are still green screens with text. Some are GUI, but have they proved to be any better?
Look, hypertext is great, having multiple applications on the screen (simple GUIs) is great, beyond that has all of our complex presentation really bought us much except narrow the audience of who can receive the information or applications?
The Internet is for Everyone, unless the technologists insist on making it only for a few.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a world without speed limits or the other traffic laws that he cited.
Actually, I don't want our laws to be what people want them to be, either. I want laws to be consistent, not give in to hot-headed mob rule, be against bigotry and pettiness and not rob the few rich to enrich the many poor. I'm convinced that people want some horrible things sometimes and need to be restrained by a Government that can only be moved slowly.
That's why news of do-nothing Congresses and gridlock in Washington actually makes me feel relieved.
Government isn't a candy machine giving people what they want. It should protect liberties and set simple rules and otherwise stay out of our lives.
That being said, I do think that the IP laws(Patents and Copyrights both) are getting completely out of hand and need to returned to where they once were and probably greatly curtailed wrt Software and digital media. The new laws in these areas don't "promote the progress of science and the useful arts" as they were supposed to do. In fact, as Richard Stallman points out here (and elsewhere, but I'm too lazy to look up the references), the Patent system is actually going against progress.
In brief, I'm for Government that is informed by principles. The principle that we all want free music is not compelling to me. The principle that the current copyright system does not seem to be promoting the useful arts is compelling to me.
Well, this may be a bit of a stretch, I'll admit it up front, but buying used CDs from RIAA artists does support the RIAA indirectly.
It supports a secondary market for their used goods, which drives up the prices of the used goods and helps to support or at least stabilizes higher prices for their new CDs.
It's like how buying a stock that was first issued years ago supports the company. If enough people buy it, and drive the price up, the company can always release more to raise cash. Just like if there are albums that get so popular on the used market that they can't be found, the record companies can then make money by rereleasing the titles, or if they are still in the catalog, making more of them new and sending them out for wide distribution.
By this logic, I guess the way to hurt the RIAA the most is to sell all of your music media on the used market and never buy any RIAA artists. At least, not until you like their policies more.
I'm neither recommending this, nor do I practice an RIAA boycott. I don't buy much new music, though. I'm not very attracted to much of what I hear today and I can usually find what I like used. :-)
If the stick is large enough, it'll hold water with its gravitational attraction.
I don't want to be in the position of defending the RIAA or the record labels, but I do want to point out a basic misunderstanding of economics embodies in the above.
Products are not priced based on what they cost to produce, they are priced based on what people are willing to pay for them.
If the market is competitive, prices are driven down to near the cost of producing the item, but there are various reasons for markets not being competitive.
In the case of Music and Movies (CDs and DVDs), there is the fact that the creators have been granted a monopoly on their own material through copyrights. So, there's no competition for a particular music CD and they price them to optimize profits without regard to the cost to produce them.
Now we, as a people, aren't powerless here. We've granted the copyright monopolies to promote the useful arts. I don't know about you, but I think we need to revisit our IP laws to make sure "useful arts" are actually being promoted.
Certainly, the 95 year copyright extension is not in the spirit of the Constitution. This story ,recently referened on Slashdot seems to indicate that the interests of artists are not being promoted by the present system.
Well, I guess we know where this meme about not being able to use software without a license got started, right?
IANAL, but, there is this case law that seems to indicate that copying software into RAM is violating its copyright.
I think this is not in agreement with the US Code you cite above, but it is the current case law. I do think it's completely nuts.
They've already infultrated Slashdot! Oh, these Red Army types are much more sophisticated that I could have imagined! Using social engineering to keep US Geeks from countering their plot.
Good thing I saw through the disguise!
I also am not an accountant, but, it seems to me that there are advantages to spending the money on development, also. Development funds are costs of doing business and are not taxed, profits, which this pile is, just accumulated profits, are taxed.
While this all may be true, note that MS has near zero motivation for designing it the right way as long as it also supports their goals of holding a monopoly in OS and Application software.
By contrast, the Linux developers, while making some compromises have a great deal of incentive to modularize in that this supports their development integration methodology. With Linux developers working on different parts on wildly different schedules, some modularity is ensured. With different patches integrated into different kernel revisions, stability is also tested at many levels of integration.
With MS earning an unheard of 25% profit on their products, and their spending so much money on just quashing any potential competition - IE development up to Version 5 cost them more than Windows 95 development did (and they give IE away?? How do you justify such largesse if it's not to crush competition?), you think they could spend some more money on all the benefits of modularity and loose coupling.
These compromises that MS has made have come home to roost in poor security and instability. Certainly, at this point, they could see the advantages that modularity and loose coupling would pay off in the long term.
MS's current approach to security is to stop all development and have 2 month-long code reviews. Expedient compromises always come back to cost you in the end.
On the other hand, the elevator manufacturers and the like make maybe a few thousand at most a year. And, there's typically only 1 or 2 choices for these items for most customers to consider.
It may well be that the Industrial Companies bury the cost of their embedded systems in the cost of the machines they're attached to, but the margins are certainly higher on low production items vs. mass-market items sold into ruthlessly competitive markets.
How could Google tell it's a bot or a human performing the search via the HTML interface? Speed of interaction? That's mostly limited by the time it takes to perform the query and display the results. The net can be laggy at times, making checks for speed of interaction problematic. In any case, some sort of delays, even somewhat randomized, could be programmed in to make the bot appear to be a human.
Maybe in a Republican primary, which Stevens probably already has locked up tight. I can just see the Democrat running on a platform of "I'll fight to open ANWR to drilling."
No, instead, Stevens will run against pictures of Kennedy with the voice over "Stevens faught against eastern liberals to open our lands to responsible energy development." Might be good if they can find a picture of his Democratic opponent shaking hands with Kennedy of Daschle.
At best it's neutral, and with good campaigning he could turn it into a plus. Especially if there is continued turmoil in the Middle East.
127.0.0.1 slashdot.org
This particular piece of advice is not recommended if you are an employee of OSDN working on the production Slashdot machines.
You make this sound like a potential negative for Stevens. Drilling in the ANWR is overwhelmingly popular among Alaskans.
It'll be hard sorting through all the various issues when the votes might be years old by the time the congressperson comes up for election.
Does anyone keep just lists of the Bills, voting records, etc. on these issues? Opensecrets.org does this for their issues, and Common Cause publicizes voting record for their issues, but I haven't seen anything like this for Geek issues.
Perhaps the EFF would do something like this, but I didn't find it on their Web site. Well, they are probably open to suggestions, especially with a contribution in the envelope!
Commenters are to Slashdot as poets are to the coffee shop. Poets are drawn into the coffee shop, which sells coffee, because there's a stage and an audience there. Just like commenters are drawn into Slashdot, which sells ads, because there's a stage and an audience here.
It's not an exact analogy because people at the Coffee shop come for both the coffee and the entertainment, while people come to Slashdot for the stories and the comments (not the ads).
Imagine a place where advertising patrons pay for a stage, provide some recorded music and poetry and allow people to get up on the stage to recite. Let's say that renting the space for the stage is expensive and it's a big arena with comfortable chairs and couches. That'd be a closer analogy. Since the people who recite pay nothing, but still come, the place has no reason to provide them an ad-free place to watch the entertainment.
BTW, I really appreciate your exploring these analogies with me. I attempted to make some illustrative analogies and critique those that others had made before the Blackout, but I couldn't get anyone to explore them with me then.
If people think that they provide such great value here and are taken for granted, by all means, they should go to a place where they can be paid for good writing. I can provide a list of such places, if you're interested.
User-supplied content is everything to Slashdot.
That's like saying the value to the coffee shop is a bunch of old pots, some cups and some tables. Or, like the value to you is a few dozen gallons of water, some calcium, iron and trace elements.
The value of Slashdot is in the franchise, in the fact that people like you like to come here, read and comment. Without the editors posting stories, the beefy servers and good connections, this would just be a big meandering blog. Lots of those out there, but they don't draw many advertisers.
Gee, I thought we wouldn't hear all this "Content is the value of Slashdot" claptrap this week. Guess not.
-
> This is such a fallacious argument. It is based on the assumption that your opinion is more valuable than the network services that distribute it.
... The content (mostly the opinions of the uninformed) here is cheap, but bandwidth and employees are not.
The obvious strategy for the owners, then, is to eliminate all that worthless content, which will then cut back on the bandwith requirements, which in turn will let them reduce their headcount.Why do the people who criticize the subscription system insist on misrepresenting the position of those who defend it? Note that he didn't say "all the worthless content", he said that it's cheap.
Clearly the value here is in providing the medium to distribute and add your own comments before a audience, just like the coffee shop. The comments are part of that value, but taken in isolation, individual comments or even the contributions of individual commenters are not of great value.
Of course, cutting off all commenters would ruin the value proposition. Just like the coffee house not providing a stage would make that place less desirable. As the poster very cogently pointed out, nobody expects free coffee for their amateur poetry. Nobody here should expect the free use of the servers with no ads for their amateur opinions.