I'm bipolar, and that's so absolutely true, sometimes. I usually take excedrin for headaches, which I get a lot of when I'm manic. Excedrin has a lot of caffeine (65mg/pill, recommended 2 pills every 6 hours).
Well, taking 2 at the point described above is a baaad idea. It doesnt always happen, but occasionally I get strong panic attacks intermittently for a couple of hours.
If I'm depressed, or hypomanic, caffeine usually does absolutely nothing to me. I don't feel more awake, or alert, but whatever level of alertness I have is maintained, and it keeps me from falling asleep. So generally caffeine is useless.
other than that, PR would be a great think for Linux to have. But your other point, that where they say Linux, they should be saying Redhat, applies to that point as well. Redhat should be pumping out some of those IPO dollar signs to push some PR. At least some. A good press release, perhaps. The quiet period is over, isn't it?
"At the time we began the tests, Red Hat Software Inc. had 21 security updates available for Red Hat 6.0, which had been out for only a couple of months."
and in the same parahraph
"...there is no central repository for testing or approving patches to the Linux system. Kernel patches can be obtained from a verified source such as kernel.org, but most other components have no central infrastructure."
Is that not just a little self-contradictory? They're running a redhat machine, redhat has 21 security updates available, but wait.. there's no central infrastructure! I guess going to the vendor, creator, and supporter of your operating system isn't the central place to get updates for said operating system.
Either they're totally clueless, or just a bunch of microFUD spin doctors.
No central infrastructure??? Maybe not across distros, but each distro has its own, unique infrastructure for realeasing fixes and updates to the users. They should have used the resources given to them BY REDHAT, and they know it. They just dont care, dont want to lose M$ advertising, and dont want to admit they fscked up.
Welcome to the wonderful world of online journalism.
What you're talking about is better known as correlational studies. This is how they first deduced that smoking causes lung cancer. Doctors in the (50's? 60's?) noticed that most of their lung cancer patients were also long-term smokers. The CDC picked this up, and ran a *huge* correlational study on lung cancer patients all over the country, and yep, on the questionaire, more than 90% of the patients smoked, and have been smoking for a long time.
Scientists by and large are wary of correlational studies, but in cases like smoking where the risks are too high to do a clinical, controlled study, and where said study would take more than 20 years, there's no other way.
Studies like you mention are in no way clinical. A clinical trial is *controlled* infering that there is a control group taking a placebo, and also they are usually double blind studies.
BTW. Such correlational data is also how they found out that Viagra can cause heart failure in patients with high blood pressure. That was caught pretty fast. Hospitals across the country are already doing a lot of correlational research to ensure we catch any problems not caught in basic, clinical trials. However, you are quite correct in supposing that a central database like this could present a great way to gather correlational data *so long as said data is gathered anonymously or with patient consent*
Ok, I know, conspiracy theory. But look. MTV has the younger generations by their heels now, so they start making real programming and stop showing music videos. They've already seemed to single handedly kill rock (rock IS dead), and make Hip-Hop the music of this generation. Now, let's start MTV2 or whatever it is to show music videos, and use MTV to brainwash the kiddies.
I'm going a little bit too far, but think about it. If you control information, you can control just about anything. MTV - breeding the next generation of consumeroids.
Just because you brought it up: there is a slight difference between evolution and adaption. An animal can make an adaption based on changing conditions, but does not have to evolve over generations in order to adapt (in all cases). Evolution works best when the creature is unable to adapt easily, thus making it harder to survive, and only the most fit pass on their genes.
Now, to be on topic at least a little bit, it doesnt matter what they call it. As long as they teach it. It doesnt matter if it's right or not. Evolution is perhaps the best example of applying the scientific method that can be easily understood. A student can easily view the facts the teacher presents, and see very clearly how the scientific method was applied to produce the theory of evolution as it stood in darwin's time and as it stands today.
Someone explain to me how the scientific method can be applied to the facts and come up with creationism, I'll submit and say ok, you can teach it. But you're never going to change my stance on the teaching of evolution unless and until a better theory is proposed.
Even if individual processors hit a wall, multi-processor systems and distributed computing systems will just get better. Moore's law will not stop, it'll just change tactics for a while (until quantum computing becomes a widespread reality?).
I was thinking about this last night for no reason at all. Sometimes I wish moore's law would stop working, then we could get certain companies to try and optomize a little bit *ahem* but we can all dream. So if a single processor can't be made better, use two, or four, or beowolf.
Even if you are a competitor, in US trademark law, comparative advertising is fair use. Otherwise, Intel would be suing Apple right now. Hell, Intel would be suing every chip maker that has published benchmarks. If you made a page on your candy site publishing the results of a market survery of "which candy people like better, PEZ(tm) or FOO(tm)," and put pez in your META tags, it's most certainly legal. Especially since it's more than possible someone is actively looking for a PEZ(tm) vs. FOO(tm) market survey.
I know in some countries comparative advertising is actually illegal. Maybe it is in the UK, I don't know. In the US it's pretty common. I suppose if the makers of FOO(tm) were a german company (i think germany is one country where it is illegal, but I could be wrong), I suppose PEZ could sue them IN GERMANY.
given the volume of questions in the past 15 minutes or so, and the speed at which responses are generated, I find myself leaning toward believing these are genuine computer-generated responses. Of course, given the amazing human-like reponses, I'm very reluctant to follow this logic.
All I can say is, if it is AI, AI are better comedians than any human could possibly be. If human, the people behind this are the funniest people alive.
Even reading poll comments on slashdot isnt this funny.
We might also want to consider that if the box was already being used for a while, these 21 patches would NOT have been released at the same time. The updates would be applied over time, not all 21 at once.
Of course new users are still left to install all 21.
you're talking about Rudy Guliani and organized religion. You really can't expect much in the name of freedom from these two.
Perhaps you don't know much about New York City, but mr. Guliani hasn't been that friendly toward freedom (I'll take your car away and never give it back if you get caught drunk driving as one example).
Organized religion doesn't care about freedom in general. I don't even think most major religions support the "freedom of religion" clause. But that's their right under the first admendment, and they can protest all they like. The catholic church is not a government institution and therefore cannot be held up to the standards of the constitution, only protected by it.
Now, you say our freedom is clearly and presently dangered. Freedom is ALWAYS endangered. The price for freedom is eternal vigilance. You're lucky you have organizations like the ACLU watching the back you're too secure to watch yourself (not you specifically - the general public).
Politicians can make people feel better by making them more secure. People don't care about freedom when they're scared of crime, or terrorism, or economic collapse. They want to be secure, and politicians exploit that to its fullest. Freedom and security clash head on. They can't co-exist efficiently, if at all. Why do you think "for the children" is so effective???
No one will care about freedom until it's gone. We're lucky here on the 'net, because we are so free. And we're much more vigilant, because we can see more clearly whenever out government infringes on our freedoms.
The ban on the export of strong crypto is only one of the many many things our government is doing to make its people feel secure. Do you feel secure without crypto? I sure don't. But the 80% of americans who either don't have the net, don't use it for anything but porn&cnn, or don't even know what crypto is.. they feel pretty damn secure. Do you think freedom matters in politics? It only matters in law. Unfortunately, even law is sometimes corrupted by political influence.
So if you, any of you, are so upset that the government is trying to censor you and take away all your basic necessary freedoms, why don't you head off and take a gander at www.aclu.org and perhaps donate some money? Or even better, write your representatives every chance you get. Or Head on down to washington and lobby for freedom.
We're not in the real world folks, this is/world. You want to make a difference, get off your computer, go out into the real world, and affect normal people. You're not helping very much just ranting on slashdot (as i make a hypocrite of myself).
Perhaps the European Union will come up with categories like "Aryan Self-defence" or "Christian Truth -- Homosexuality" that people would actually use, but I rather suspect that political correctness will interfere with effective lawmaking here.
One of the arguments in the article was:
1. Self-Rating schemes will cause controversal speech to be censored
I think what you're talking about fits this category.
This isnt direct to the topic, but close. Please try to keep an open mind.
Something like this shouldn't be possible. A confrence like this shouldn't have been able to get past the random neuron connection in someone's mind stage. The problem here it seems is the eurpoean unification.
When you unify, you also promote a centralization of power. This is a Bad Thing(tm). I see it here in the US, and now in europe. The federal government is taking more and more power, a centralized power, where that power should be left most entirely to the individual states.
Now the world has taken it a step further: The EU. We now have a trend of entire countries themselves unifying under a common flag, of sorts. And whether the EU has a great amount of power or not is not the point. The point is that the power is centralized. It's taken father away from the individual. The more people you have to rule, the less the individual matters. This inevitably leads to assaults on civil liberties, because what do civil liberties matter but to the individual?
It seems rather unavoidable anymore, though. With greater internationalization, there's always going to be an inevitable push toward commonality between nations This can be achieved through unification.
I hear what you're saying. Me and my friend were all into the local dial-up BBS thing a few years ago. We played the BRE net (coincidentially we were always the most powerful empires) and.. oh what was that game, operation overkill!
I still think text-based adventure games are the best kind. They're always so much more imaginative, and incidentially require a lot more imagination to play. They aren't limited by graphics and animations. You see with your mind, not your eyes.
It's the same with books vs. Movies and television.
Anyway, it'd be cool to get back into those games. Maybe soon. I just wish I weren't so busy! Hey, maybe I'll set up a BBS on my Linux box and play Operation Overkill with my friend over telnet;)
I know what i'll be doing tonight at 9pm EST. I love the history channel and watch it constantly. I've learned so much from watching 2-3 hours a day of that and the discovery channel (though I'm getting really sick of DISC's forensic science shows, and I've seen enough about WWII to make me sick - wish they'd do more on Rome and other not-so-american history).
BTW. What's this cryptomicron book I keep hearing about? I think I missed something.
I'm not completely sure this will happen in regards to the compiler mentioned here, but in the past, if a proprietary program were released for Linux, and its use becomes popular, there ends up being a project to create an open source alternative to said program. erm, I think so anyways. Can't think of any specific examples (except maybe GPG, in a sense).
As long as there's a way to get around patents and intellectual property problems, and there's popularity behind it, a program will usually, eventually, have an open source version.
Please, correct me if i'm just being hopeful and wrong (which is usually the case)
I just looked at the MetaModerator page and it had one post twice. I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen (would the metamoderation of it count twice?).
Some people HATE online documentation. For things like programming especially, it's a lot easier to have a printed copy on hand when you're trying to learn something. Those people will buy the book. I don't have any money at the moment, so I'll probably start reading this online.. but once I get some money I'm definitely going to buy it.
you gave me an idea somehow. dont ask me how, you just did..
is there going to be a preferences option like "always post anonymously"? Is there already? I didn't check. If not, I think there should be. It would be a lot more convenient and just another reason why it'd be worth getting an account v. always being an AC.
I agree with you - it is Rob's site, and he can do with it whatever he wants.
However, idealism goes a long way. I once frequented a web board which censored posts constantly. It ended up becoming so bad that if a DISCUSSION started about anything 'possibly offensive' like religion, or violence, etc. the entire discussion would be removed. After I stopped visiting the site went down permanently within a couple of months.
It's different on slashdot, I know. We don't want to have to see flamebait, and trolls, and advertisements all over the place.
But freedom of speech has much greater implications than some people seem to realize. This is especially so in the information age. Censorship goes against the principles of the internet itself. A medium to supply information. Who gets to choose which information we get to see?
The non-censorship of slashdot is not a government thing, it's an idealist thing. If we, the/. community, say 'censorship here is OK' we might as well be saying 'censorship is OK anywhere.' Such ideals as freedom of speech should be, for those who believe in it, global to all parts of society, all walks of life, and all things where information may be seen.
To an idealist, the only person who should be allowed to censor what you say is yourself.
Moderation is different, but is from a certain perspective a form of censorship. I'm not condemning it - it's a 'necessary evil' like the only choice people like me had when voting in the poll for ACs. But moderation so far has worked (ok, there is some moderator bias, but c'est la vie). Moderation of posts does not have as much of the so-called 'chilling effect' as would the rating system proposed for the entertainment industries, but it does have one - especially with the 'moderator bias' many people have noted going on here. People with positive views on, say, windows NT may be discouraged from posting because a bias moderator might moderate it down and call it 'flamebait.' I personally believe this is a form of censorship (in the same way that government agencies with an agenda could go after certain movies with this rating system for propeganda purposes).
Anyways, like I said, I agree Rob can do whatever he wants with this site. It is his, but I submit that his strong belief in free speech should apply to all parts of his life, and all his creations - if not for our sake, then for hypocrisy's.
This isnt to make light of your situation, but as a US citizen constantly fighting with people about net censorship, it gives me a little extra ammo to say "if you don't like it, move to australia."
Ignore that. The fact is, I do care. But I'm here in the US, and would love to do something to help, if it were possible. Censorship won't get press attention in america unless the ACLU brings a lawsuit challenging some stupid law. The media doesn't care about it in the US, so why should they care about it anywhere else in the world? Unless, of course, it's a communist or fascist country - human rights violations and the whole Politically Correct bit.
Here it's only in style to argue the first amendment when it's your own personal rights being infringed. You'll see religious organizations fighting wholeheartedly for the first amendment, then turn around and try to force religion into public schools - despite the fact the supreme court holds that seperation of church and state IS implied in the first amendment (though not explicitly stated as such).
Unfortunately, Australia, as far as I know, has no such legal basis to fight censorship.
Well, the children are our future. And our future is best left to those information-deprived, consumeroid, brain-washed, uneducated masses who are so easy to control. So censor away! Guarantee a better future! And do it for the children!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm bipolar, and that's so absolutely true, sometimes. I usually take excedrin for headaches, which I get a lot of when I'm manic. Excedrin has a lot of caffeine (65mg/pill, recommended 2 pills every 6 hours).
Well, taking 2 at the point described above is a baaad idea. It doesnt always happen, but occasionally I get strong panic attacks intermittently for a couple of hours.
If I'm depressed, or hypomanic, caffeine usually does absolutely nothing to me. I don't feel more awake, or alert, but whatever level of alertness I have is maintained, and it keeps me from falling asleep. So generally caffeine is useless.
Anyway, that's my experience with caffeine.
"..these rediculous(sp), unprofessional.."
ridiculous
"...these feascos(big sp), point..."
fiascos
other than that, PR would be a great think for Linux to have. But your other point, that where they say Linux, they should be saying Redhat, applies to that point as well. Redhat should be pumping out some of those IPO dollar signs to push some PR. At least some. A good press release, perhaps. The quiet period is over, isn't it?
Am I reading this right???
"At the time we began the tests, Red Hat Software Inc. had 21 security updates available for Red Hat 6.0, which had been out for only a couple of months."
and in the same parahraph
"...there is no central repository for testing or approving patches to the Linux system. Kernel patches can be obtained from a verified source such as kernel.org, but most other components have no central infrastructure."
Is that not just a little self-contradictory? They're running a redhat machine, redhat has 21 security updates available, but wait.. there's no central infrastructure! I guess going to the vendor, creator, and supporter of your operating system isn't the central place to get updates for said operating system.
Either they're totally clueless, or just a bunch of microFUD spin doctors.
No central infrastructure??? Maybe not across distros, but each distro has its own, unique infrastructure for realeasing fixes and updates to the users. They should have used the resources given to them BY REDHAT, and they know it. They just dont care, dont want to lose M$ advertising, and dont want to admit they fscked up.
Welcome to the wonderful world of online journalism.
What you're talking about is better known as correlational studies. This is how they first deduced that smoking causes lung cancer. Doctors in the (50's? 60's?) noticed that most of their lung cancer patients were also long-term smokers. The CDC picked this up, and ran a *huge* correlational study on lung cancer patients all over the country, and yep, on the questionaire, more than 90% of the patients smoked, and have been smoking for a long time.
Scientists by and large are wary of correlational studies, but in cases like smoking where the risks are too high to do a clinical, controlled study, and where said study would take more than 20 years, there's no other way.
Studies like you mention are in no way clinical. A clinical trial is *controlled* infering that there is a control group taking a placebo, and also they are usually double blind studies.
BTW. Such correlational data is also how they found out that Viagra can cause heart failure in patients with high blood pressure. That was caught pretty fast. Hospitals across the country are already doing a lot of correlational research to ensure we catch any problems not caught in basic, clinical trials. However, you are quite correct in supposing that a central database like this could present a great way to gather correlational data *so long as said data is gathered anonymously or with patient consent*
Ok, I know, conspiracy theory. But look. MTV has the younger generations by their heels now, so they start making real programming and stop showing music videos. They've already seemed to single handedly kill rock (rock IS dead), and make Hip-Hop the music of this generation. Now, let's start MTV2 or whatever it is to show music videos, and use MTV to brainwash the kiddies.
I'm going a little bit too far, but think about it. If you control information, you can control just about anything. MTV - breeding the next generation of consumeroids.
Just because you brought it up: there is a slight difference between evolution and adaption. An animal can make an adaption based on changing conditions, but does not have to evolve over generations in order to adapt (in all cases). Evolution works best when the creature is unable to adapt easily, thus making it harder to survive, and only the most fit pass on their genes.
Now, to be on topic at least a little bit, it doesnt matter what they call it. As long as they teach it. It doesnt matter if it's right or not. Evolution is perhaps the best example of applying the scientific method that can be easily understood. A student can easily view the facts the teacher presents, and see very clearly how the scientific method was applied to produce the theory of evolution as it stood in darwin's time and as it stands today.
Someone explain to me how the scientific method can be applied to the facts and come up with creationism, I'll submit and say ok, you can teach it. But you're never going to change my stance on the teaching of evolution unless and until a better theory is proposed.
Even if individual processors hit a wall, multi-processor systems and distributed computing systems will just get better. Moore's law will not stop, it'll just change tactics for a while (until quantum computing becomes a widespread reality?).
I was thinking about this last night for no reason at all. Sometimes I wish moore's law would stop working, then we could get certain companies to try and optomize a little bit *ahem* but we can all dream. So if a single processor can't be made better, use two, or four, or beowolf.
There's really nothing to worry about.
Even if you are a competitor, in US trademark law, comparative advertising is fair use. Otherwise, Intel would be suing Apple right now. Hell, Intel would be suing every chip maker that has published benchmarks. If you made a page on your candy site publishing the results of a market survery of "which candy people like better, PEZ(tm) or FOO(tm)," and put pez in your META tags, it's most certainly legal. Especially since it's more than possible someone is actively looking for a PEZ(tm) vs. FOO(tm) market survey.
I know in some countries comparative advertising is actually illegal. Maybe it is in the UK, I don't know. In the US it's pretty common. I suppose if the makers of FOO(tm) were a german company (i think germany is one country where it is illegal, but I could be wrong), I suppose PEZ could sue them IN GERMANY.
given the volume of questions in the past 15 minutes or so, and the speed at which responses are generated, I find myself leaning toward believing these are genuine computer-generated responses. Of course, given the amazing human-like reponses, I'm very reluctant to follow this logic.
All I can say is, if it is AI, AI are better comedians than any human could possibly be. If human, the people behind this are the funniest people alive.
Even reading poll comments on slashdot isnt this funny.
I LOVE this!
I've never seen something more funny in my life than this. I literally fell out of my chair.
and if that fix were released by microsoft, it would be the cause of the end of the universe.
We might also want to consider that if the box was already being used for a while, these 21 patches would NOT have been released at the same time. The updates would be applied over time, not all 21 at once.
Of course new users are still left to install all 21.
You forgot one: gender identity disorder.
you're talking about Rudy Guliani and organized religion. You really can't expect much in the name of freedom from these two.
/world. You want to make a difference, get off your computer, go out into the real world, and affect normal people. You're not helping very much just ranting on slashdot (as i make a hypocrite of myself).
Perhaps you don't know much about New York City, but mr. Guliani hasn't been that friendly toward freedom (I'll take your car away and never give it back if you get caught drunk driving as one example).
Organized religion doesn't care about freedom in general. I don't even think most major religions support the "freedom of religion" clause. But that's their right under the first admendment, and they can protest all they like. The catholic church is not a government institution and therefore cannot be held up to the standards of the constitution, only protected by it.
Now, you say our freedom is clearly and presently dangered. Freedom is ALWAYS endangered. The price for freedom is eternal vigilance. You're lucky you have organizations like the ACLU watching the back you're too secure to watch yourself (not you specifically - the general public).
Politicians can make people feel better by making them more secure. People don't care about freedom when they're scared of crime, or terrorism, or economic collapse. They want to be secure, and politicians exploit that to its fullest. Freedom and security clash head on. They can't co-exist efficiently, if at all. Why do you think "for the children" is so effective???
No one will care about freedom until it's gone. We're lucky here on the 'net, because we are so free. And we're much more vigilant, because we can see more clearly whenever out government infringes on our freedoms.
The ban on the export of strong crypto is only one of the many many things our government is doing to make its people feel secure. Do you feel secure without crypto? I sure don't. But the 80% of americans who either don't have the net, don't use it for anything but porn&cnn, or don't even know what crypto is.. they feel pretty damn secure. Do you think freedom matters in politics? It only matters in law. Unfortunately, even law is sometimes corrupted by political influence.
So if you, any of you, are so upset that the government is trying to censor you and take away all your basic necessary freedoms, why don't you head off and take a gander at www.aclu.org and perhaps donate some money? Or even better, write your representatives every chance you get. Or Head on down to washington and lobby for freedom.
We're not in the real world folks, this is
anyway, sorry for the rant.
Perhaps the European Union will come up with categories like "Aryan Self-defence" or "Christian Truth -- Homosexuality" that people would actually use, but I rather suspect that political correctness will interfere with effective lawmaking here.
One of the arguments in the article was:
1. Self-Rating schemes will cause controversal speech to be censored
I think what you're talking about fits this category.
This isnt direct to the topic, but close. Please try to keep an open mind.
Something like this shouldn't be possible. A confrence like this shouldn't have been able to get past the random neuron connection in someone's mind stage. The problem here it seems is the eurpoean unification.
When you unify, you also promote a centralization of power. This is a Bad Thing(tm). I see it here in the US, and now in europe. The federal government is taking more and more power, a centralized power, where that power should be left most entirely to the individual states.
Now the world has taken it a step further: The EU. We now have a trend of entire countries themselves unifying under a common flag, of sorts. And whether the EU has a great amount of power or not is not the point. The point is that the power is centralized. It's taken father away from the individual. The more people you have to rule, the less the individual matters. This inevitably leads to assaults on civil liberties, because what do civil liberties matter but to the individual?
It seems rather unavoidable anymore, though. With greater internationalization, there's always going to be an inevitable push toward commonality between nations This can be achieved through unification.
Perhaps the age of empires is at hand once again.
I hear what you're saying. Me and my friend were all into the local dial-up BBS thing a few years ago. We played the BRE net (coincidentially we were always the most powerful empires) and.. oh what was that game, operation overkill!
;)
I still think text-based adventure games are the best kind. They're always so much more imaginative, and incidentially require a lot more imagination to play. They aren't limited by graphics and animations. You see with your mind, not your eyes.
It's the same with books vs. Movies and television.
Anyway, it'd be cool to get back into those games. Maybe soon. I just wish I weren't so busy! Hey, maybe I'll set up a BBS on my Linux box and play Operation Overkill with my friend over telnet
I know what i'll be doing tonight at 9pm EST. I love the history channel and watch it constantly. I've learned so much from watching 2-3 hours a day of that and the discovery channel (though I'm getting really sick of DISC's forensic science shows, and I've seen enough about WWII to make me sick - wish they'd do more on Rome and other not-so-american history).
BTW. What's this cryptomicron book I keep hearing about? I think I missed something.
I'm not completely sure this will happen in regards to the compiler mentioned here, but in the past, if a proprietary program were released for Linux, and its use becomes popular, there ends up being a project to create an open source alternative to said program. erm, I think so anyways. Can't think of any specific examples (except maybe GPG, in a sense).
As long as there's a way to get around patents and intellectual property problems, and there's popularity behind it, a program will usually, eventually, have an open source version.
Please, correct me if i'm just being hopeful and wrong (which is usually the case)
I just looked at the MetaModerator page and it had one post twice. I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen (would the metamoderation of it count twice?).
-kyle
Some people HATE online documentation. For things like programming especially, it's a lot easier to have a printed copy on hand when you're trying to learn something. Those people will buy the book. I don't have any money at the moment, so I'll probably start reading this online.. but once I get some money I'm definitely going to buy it.
you gave me an idea somehow. dont ask me how, you just did..
is there going to be a preferences option like "always post anonymously"? Is there already? I didn't check. If not, I think there should be. It would be a lot more convenient and just another reason why it'd be worth getting an account v. always being an AC.
Don't feel too bad there Rob. I've been working all day (labor day) too. Thanks for all the great work.
;)
Maybe someone could describe this MetaModeration to me a bit better? I don't think I quite understand it.
And I really do like the 'Post Anonymously' checkbox - maybe I'll implement something like that for my own site
I agree with you - it is Rob's site, and he can do with it whatever he wants.
/. community, say 'censorship here is OK' we might as well be saying 'censorship is OK anywhere.' Such ideals as freedom of speech should be, for those who believe in it, global to all parts of society, all walks of life, and all things where information may be seen.
However, idealism goes a long way. I once frequented a web board which censored posts constantly. It ended up becoming so bad that if a DISCUSSION started about anything 'possibly offensive' like religion, or violence, etc. the entire discussion would be removed. After I stopped visiting the site went down permanently within a couple of months.
It's different on slashdot, I know. We don't want to have to see flamebait, and trolls, and advertisements all over the place.
But freedom of speech has much greater implications than some people seem to realize. This is especially so in the information age. Censorship goes against the principles of the internet itself. A medium to supply information. Who gets to choose which information we get to see?
The non-censorship of slashdot is not a government thing, it's an idealist thing. If we, the
To an idealist, the only person who should be allowed to censor what you say is yourself.
Moderation is different, but is from a certain perspective a form of censorship. I'm not condemning it - it's a 'necessary evil' like the only choice people like me had when voting in the poll for ACs. But moderation so far has worked (ok, there is some moderator bias, but c'est la vie). Moderation of posts does not have as much of the so-called 'chilling effect' as would the rating system proposed for the entertainment industries, but it does have one - especially with the 'moderator bias' many people have noted going on here. People with positive views on, say, windows NT may be discouraged from posting because a bias moderator might moderate it down and call it 'flamebait.' I personally believe this is a form of censorship (in the same way that government agencies with an agenda could go after certain movies with this rating system for propeganda purposes).
Anyways, like I said, I agree Rob can do whatever he wants with this site. It is his, but I submit that his strong belief in free speech should apply to all parts of his life, and all his creations - if not for our sake, then for hypocrisy's.
-reptilian
This isnt to make light of your situation, but as a US citizen constantly fighting with people about net censorship, it gives me a little extra ammo to say "if you don't like it, move to australia."
Ignore that. The fact is, I do care. But I'm here in the US, and would love to do something to help, if it were possible. Censorship won't get press attention in america unless the ACLU brings a lawsuit challenging some stupid law. The media doesn't care about it in the US, so why should they care about it anywhere else in the world? Unless, of course, it's a communist or fascist country - human rights violations and the whole Politically Correct bit.
Here it's only in style to argue the first amendment when it's your own personal rights being infringed. You'll see religious organizations fighting wholeheartedly for the first amendment, then turn around and try to force religion into public schools - despite the fact the supreme court holds that seperation of church and state IS implied in the first amendment (though not explicitly stated as such).
Unfortunately, Australia, as far as I know, has no such legal basis to fight censorship.
Well, the children are our future. And our future is best left to those information-deprived, consumeroid, brain-washed, uneducated masses who are so easy to control. So censor away! Guarantee a better future! And do it for the children!