This has nothing to do with the "pain of littleton". There is no parallel to be drawn between their children being shot to death, and a satirical show about how (essentially), high school is hell. If that was the case, satire and any show dealing with unhappy things and high school would all have to be "censored".
What HAS happened here is a failing of a large number of people's logic. I play quake2.. alot. I am not a psychopatic killer. If there were even a weak correlation here, hundreds would be shot to death every day. Millions of people play quake.. and less than 0.01% ever wind up trying to shoot somebody. If that. I've found stronger correlations between people who eat rye bread and breast cancer!
Second question you brought up was "decency". In short, if this was the case, why didn't they recall all their released movies that depicted violence? I'll let you answer that one.
The reason is this is being retracted is because it is not "good public policy". There's two additional things to think about here. For one, people understand *exactly* what reselling of their personal information means. And for two, people don't like big government. This doesn't equal good public policy. But a related topic.. say, outlawing encryption, is considered "good public policy", because non-techies don't understand why encryption is so important - they don't *see* it being used.
But you'll notice that the same arguements are used: decrease fraud, and crime. For this, it's to ensure people don't write bad checks. For encryption, it's to stop "drug dealers" from encrypting all their communication. And drawing even more parallels - most people who write "bad checks" will just do so at the smaller stores that can't afford to pay somebody to research out every check they accept. Most drug dealers won't bother with encryption either - all they need is a pager.
End result of all this: You lose your rights. But we won't call it that - we'll say we're protecting you from the "criminal element". And if you still oppose us.. you're either a criminal, or you're soft on crime.
To be honest, unless that law gets repealed, they'll just wait a year.. and then more quietly start the program back up.
Doomy, you'll probably never read this, as there have been a dozen new stories posted.. but I don't believe Bruce's post was worthy of a 5 rating. It was Bruce that posted it, that's why he got a 5. If I had posted it.. it might have gotten as high as a 2. It was off topic. End of story.
And if I really wanted to "take stabs at bruce", as you've so subtly put it, I'd attack him for being childish about the open source trademarking infighting between him and ESR. Okay? There's plenty of flame bait to go around.
I'd also like to point out that contrary to all the flak I've taken in this thread.. it isn't dead for a reason. Let that eat away at you for abit, 'cuz like it or not people it's the truth.
All I have to say is.. my servers go wherever they will be the most secure. That means that they go where braindead censorship is non-existant, and cryptography is allowed. Well.. I know Australia WAS my first choice. Now it's Germany, or New Zealand. The US is out, for obvious reasons.
This is slashdot. People have the right to express their opinions. And it is common courtesy not condem people for doing that.
Apparently the people reading this thread are evenly split on the issue, if the fluxuations in the original post's score is any indicator. It's a grey area in the moderator guidelines, and it's obviously been unearthed in this thread. I'll e-mail cmdr taco about this... hopefully we'll have the boundaries for "on topic" and "off topic" more clearly defined.
> When one hardware manufacturer makes a brave decision, I think it's fair to nudge another hardware manufacturer, pointing and saying "see!".
Yes, but this is a public forum. What's worse, there are many hundreds of comments posted each day. When people click on the [comments] button, they want to read more about that topic. In this case, it's nVidia o-sourcing their drivers, not creative's lack of doing so. I think it's inappropriate to get up on the soapbox to point that out.. and it's also an ambush: Creative employees wouldn't likely be reading this thread. If you want to send those hw manufacturers a message - send it right to the CTO and cc it to marketing. Better yet, print it out, and snail-mail it to Creative's corporate HQ.
Sure, I have a soapbox and I am rarely off of it. Somehow, by some incredible miracle, big companies are listening. I wish I could tell you about the mega-corporations I've been working with on free software licensing this week. You'll find out eventually.
If your posts to license-discuss are any indicator.. I suspected as much. Post something to slashdot about it when you have something. I look forward to reading it. And that post would probably be an appropriate forum to mention which companies aren't "with it". Maybe throwing up a list at opensource.org of a "what's happening" nature would be a Good Thing too.
I think I'm still doing the community some good. I hope you don't mind too much if I continue.
Your contributions have been enormous. Of course, your mistakes have been equally monumental!:) Go right on fighting. Contrary to what many slashdotters may think, the odds are still very much against us. We can use all the help we can get.
Hey Bruce, not to rain on your parade, but this is alittle offtopic. We're talking about nVidia, and the release of their 3D specs, not Creative. They're two seperate entities, and they have different agendas. Not only that, but they're seperate markets altogether.
Now please, come down off the soap-box. We're here to commend nVidia for taking a brave stand, not castigate Creative for staying proprietary.
This will give them a strategic advantage over 3dfx - the TNT drivers will be preferred over 3dfx on linux, which means nVidia will have a larger share of the market on linux.
3dfx should realize this, and if they're smart, the rest of the industry will shortly follow suit, and we'll have open sourced drivers for most (all?) 3D products. My hats are off to them for creating an excellent product, and for letting us tinker with it. I'm sure this will only accellerate 3D uses with linux (GAMES!) and it's acceptance into mainstream.
If there's ever been a time for the open source community to make itself known, this is it. Now, more than ever, we have proof of the damage to the consumer that intellectual property concerns can do. Apparently, if we give our legislators enough rope, they will gleefully hang themselves.
Here's what you can do:
- Talk to management. Get them to see what intellectual property concerns will do to their bottom line. Then suggest the alternative: open source.
- Support things like Consumer Reports, and the Better Business Bureau.
- Inform would-be software buyers of the tradeoffs to buying proprietary software.
It's a decidedly different tact. If you're on the open-source train, I'd have a good laugh right now, because these people are putting the nails in their own coffin, free of charge -- The ultimate compliment to the OSS movement.
Why should a company be forced to disclose all their trade secrets ? If I discover a superb recipe for soft drink, should I be forced to disclose it to my competitors? BR A good question. Hopefully I can provide a good answer. Let's take your example. Coke has been producing CocaCola Classic for about, mmmm.. 100 years now. Is their recipe worth millions? Coke thinks so. Nobody knows the recipe to make coke - there are 2 people, each with only part of the recipe.. and they're never allowed to meet together. But how valuable is it.. really?
Would you buy a product that was identical to cocacola classic.. even if it was cheaper? Why not? What about KFC? Those 11 herbs and spices - they seem to be curiously similar to pepper and a few other household ingredients.
Here's my point: trade secrets aren't important. Brand name recognition is. In this world of Microsoftianism and "offensive" marketing, I would think this community would be the first to see the connection.
There's been alot of comments on bypassing the transformers. We already know what the frequency is of what we want to block - 60hz. Why not simply use a low-pass or bandpass filter and then throw a wire across the transformer. That would eliminate the interference caused by the transformer.
Now you need to figure out the attenuation problems (high frequency = high attenuation).
It's an interesting idea, but do we really want open source to be thought of as a lynch mob?
Here's what we can (should?) do:
We have the undivided attention of *technical* journals/'zines. Let's use the slashdot effect to write to them, encouraging them to publish an article on this. If there's a free alternative, why spend money on their IPO? Mirror it! World governments can't seem to stop encryption simply because the "genie is out of the bottle", to quote an NSA official. Let's mirror it, and then publicize it. It's the worst thing we could do to them - make their competition's product easily accessible. It worked against microsoft, the NSA, and a plethora of other evils in the land. I don't see why we can't do it again.:) But resist the urge to become personally involved. We should unilaterally take the same approach to any business that tries this: Initial publication, mirror the affected site, contact the presses, ruin their day. It's now a time-tested formula. Use it!
I agree with you completely. I'd also like to add a few points. The author seemed to be trying to be satirical, and sound intellectual. It didn't work. While I agree with all the facts he stated, the conclusion was, well - non-existant. It's obvious by reading that this person has not spent much time in a public forum, and has not acclimated to the online world.
I believe his article was akin to an early style of flame-bait - badly written, bad humor, and condescending. It was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to attack white men.
I agree with you completely. I'd also like to add a few points. The author seemed to be trying to be satirical, and sound intellectual. It didn't work. While I agree with all the facts he stated, the conclusion was, well - non-existant. It's obvious by reading that this person has not spent much time in a public forum, and has not acclimated to the online world.
I believe his article was akin to an early style of flame-bait - badly written, bad humor, and condescending.
Star Wars was geared more towards the general public - star trek was not. I think you've gotten it backwards - star trek usually has all the so-called "brainy" people watching it. That's my experience anyway. I don't hear many star wars fanatics talking about the technicalities of hyperdrive, or that the X-Wing uses xyz shielding while the B-Wign uses abc shielding. I just *don't* - and I know *alot* of star wars fans.
OTOH, star wars people will usually go into deeeeeeep detail about the history of star wars, and practically have the scripts for all 4 movies memorized. Star trek fans don't do that.
Why exactly are we spending tens of billions of dollars bombing some country nobody heard about before this fiasco? Why are our military forces (who's only job, as far as I know, is to safeguard the interests of the general population - including defense) over there? Why are American lives being sacrified?
For humanitarian reasons?
Please. If I want to be humanitarian, I'll contribute to a charity. There's alot of better places that money could be going - like education or cancer research.
I tend to agree. While it may (as a male) appeal to me, it is sexist. I'm not suprised when I see this stuff from the normal mainstream, but I am suprised to see it in a technical / geek commmunity. I find sexism to be nearly a non-issue amongst geeks, and it tends to be met with harshly when it does pop up in the community.
Shame on you, linux care, for being sexist. Shame on you, redhat, for trying to scare people with legal action rather than acting like a mature adult (corporation).
I would have nothing but freezing contempt for both groups if they went to court over this, and jeopardized the reputation of the linux on account of sexy models and bad advertising.
The original post about the linux care v. redhat seems to have disappeared off the main page. Anyway, here were some of the points mentioned before mysql nuked it:
- Redhat has every right to be upset. If you saw YOUR name on promotional material before having a chance to look / approve it, you'd be upset too. - Linuxcare made some very kick-ass looking graphics, which everybody likes. - Various threats made about redhat being the next "microsoft" for sending the lawyers in.
Slashdot Mirror
This has nothing to do with the "pain of littleton". There is no parallel to be drawn between their children being shot to death, and a satirical show about how (essentially), high school is hell. If that was the case, satire and any show dealing with unhappy things and high school would all have to be "censored".
What HAS happened here is a failing of a large number of people's logic. I play quake2.. alot. I am not a psychopatic killer. If there were even a weak correlation here, hundreds would be shot to death every day. Millions of people play quake.. and less than 0.01% ever wind up trying to shoot somebody. If that. I've found stronger correlations between people who eat rye bread and breast cancer!
Second question you brought up was "decency". In short, if this was the case, why didn't they recall all their released movies that depicted violence? I'll let you answer that one.
--
New marketing slogan:
:)
Download hot xxx graphics via your new PO(r)N link!
sorry.. had to say it.
--
You obviously aren't a hacker.
--
The reason is this is being retracted is because it is not "good public policy". There's two additional things to think about here. For one, people understand *exactly* what reselling of their personal information means. And for two, people don't like big government. This doesn't equal good public policy. But a related topic.. say, outlawing encryption, is considered "good public policy", because non-techies don't understand why encryption is so important - they don't *see* it being used.
But you'll notice that the same arguements are used: decrease fraud, and crime. For this, it's to ensure people don't write bad checks. For encryption, it's to stop "drug dealers" from encrypting all their communication. And drawing even more parallels - most people who write "bad checks" will just do so at the smaller stores that can't afford to pay somebody to research out every check they accept. Most drug dealers won't bother with encryption either - all they need is a pager.
End result of all this: You lose your rights. But we won't call it that - we'll say we're protecting you from the "criminal element". And if you still oppose us.. you're either a criminal, or you're soft on crime.
To be honest, unless that law gets repealed, they'll just wait a year.. and then more quietly start the program back up.
--
Doomy, you'll probably never read this, as there have been a dozen new stories posted.. but I don't believe Bruce's post was worthy of a 5 rating. It was Bruce that posted it, that's why he got a 5. If I had posted it.. it might have gotten as high as a 2. It was off topic. End of story.
And if I really wanted to "take stabs at bruce", as you've so subtly put it, I'd attack him for being childish about the open source trademarking infighting between him and ESR. Okay? There's plenty of flame bait to go around.
I'd also like to point out that contrary to all the flak I've taken in this thread.. it isn't dead for a reason. Let that eat away at you for abit, 'cuz like it or not people it's the truth.
--
All I have to say is.. my servers go wherever they will be the most secure. That means that they go where braindead censorship is non-existant, and cryptography is allowed. Well.. I know Australia WAS my first choice. Now it's Germany, or New Zealand. The US is out, for obvious reasons.
Where is your business colocating it's servers?
--
This is slashdot. People have the right to express their opinions. And it is common courtesy not condem people for doing that.
Apparently the people reading this thread are evenly split on the issue, if the fluxuations in the original post's score is any indicator. It's a grey area in the moderator guidelines, and it's obviously been unearthed in this thread. I'll e-mail cmdr taco about this... hopefully we'll have the boundaries for "on topic" and "off topic" more clearly defined.
--
> When one hardware manufacturer makes a brave decision, I think it's fair to nudge another hardware manufacturer, pointing and saying "see!".
:) Go right on fighting. Contrary to what many slashdotters may think, the odds are still very much against us. We can use all the help we can get.
Yes, but this is a public forum. What's worse, there are many hundreds of comments posted each day. When people click on the [comments] button, they want to read more about that topic. In this case, it's nVidia o-sourcing their drivers, not creative's lack of doing so. I think it's inappropriate to get up on the soapbox to point that out.. and it's also an ambush: Creative employees wouldn't likely be reading this thread. If you want to send those hw manufacturers a message - send it right to the CTO and cc it to marketing. Better yet, print it out, and snail-mail it to Creative's corporate HQ.
Sure, I have a soapbox and I am rarely off of it. Somehow, by some incredible miracle, big companies are listening. I wish I could tell you about the mega-corporations I've been working with on free software licensing this week. You'll find out eventually.
If your posts to license-discuss are any indicator.. I suspected as much. Post something to slashdot about it when you have something. I look forward to reading it. And that post would probably be an appropriate forum to mention which companies aren't "with it". Maybe throwing up a list at opensource.org of a "what's happening" nature would be a Good Thing too.
I think I'm still doing the community some good. I hope you don't mind too much if I continue.
Your contributions have been enormous. Of course, your mistakes have been equally monumental!
--
Hey Bruce, not to rain on your parade, but this is alittle offtopic. We're talking about nVidia, and the release of their 3D specs, not Creative. They're two seperate entities, and they have different agendas. Not only that, but they're seperate markets altogether.
Now please, come down off the soap-box. We're here to commend nVidia for taking a brave stand, not castigate Creative for staying proprietary.
--
This will give them a strategic advantage over 3dfx - the TNT drivers will be preferred over 3dfx on linux, which means nVidia will have a larger share of the market on linux.
3dfx should realize this, and if they're smart, the rest of the industry will shortly follow suit, and we'll have open sourced drivers for most (all?) 3D products. My hats are off to them for creating an excellent product, and for letting us tinker with it. I'm sure this will only accellerate 3D uses with linux (GAMES!) and it's acceptance into mainstream.
Thanks guys!!
--
If there's ever been a time for the open source community to make itself known, this is it. Now, more than ever, we have proof of the damage to the consumer that intellectual property concerns can do. Apparently, if we give our legislators enough rope, they will gleefully hang themselves.
Here's what you can do:
- Talk to management. Get them to see what intellectual property concerns will do to their bottom line. Then suggest the alternative: open source.
- Support things like Consumer Reports, and the Better Business Bureau.
- Inform would-be software buyers of the tradeoffs to buying proprietary software.
It's a decidedly different tact. If you're on the open-source train, I'd have a good laugh right now, because these people are putting the nails in their own coffin, free of charge -- The ultimate compliment to the OSS movement.
--
Why should a company be forced to disclose all their trade secrets ? If I discover a superb recipe for soft drink, should I be forced to disclose it to my competitors?
BR A good question. Hopefully I can provide a good answer. Let's take your example. Coke has been producing CocaCola Classic for about, mmmm.. 100 years now. Is their recipe worth millions? Coke thinks so. Nobody knows the recipe to make coke - there are 2 people, each with only part of the recipe.. and they're never allowed to meet together. But how valuable is it.. really?
Would you buy a product that was identical to cocacola classic.. even if it was cheaper? Why not? What about KFC? Those 11 herbs and spices - they seem to be curiously similar to pepper and a few other household ingredients.
Here's my point: trade secrets aren't important. Brand name recognition is. In this world of Microsoftianism and "offensive" marketing, I would think this community would be the first to see the connection.
--
There's been alot of comments on bypassing the transformers. We already know what the frequency is of what we want to block - 60hz. Why not simply use a low-pass or bandpass filter and then throw a wire across the transformer. That would eliminate the interference caused by the transformer.
Now you need to figure out the attenuation problems (high frequency = high attenuation).
--
*** Signal 11 has been summoned. ***
If you're thinking I'm from mediaone - you're mistaken. They're my ISP, not my employer.
If there's a further explanation you find yourself in want of - e-mail me.
--
IPIX North American Sales
1-800-336-7113
sales@ipix.com
IPIX Stockhouse Manager, Jeff Puckett
1-888-909-IPIX
stock@ipix.com
IPIX CLIENTS
Suprisingly.. blank
Maybe you'd like to talk to their investors?
Motorola
Mediaone
Advance Internet
American Express
Financial Advisors
Cendant
General Electric
Invision
JP Morgan
--
It's an interesting idea, but do we really want open source to be thought of as a lynch mob?
:)
Here's what we can (should?) do:
We have the undivided attention of *technical* journals/'zines. Let's use the slashdot effect to write to them, encouraging them to publish an article on this. If there's a free alternative, why spend money on their IPO?
Mirror it! World governments can't seem to stop encryption simply because the "genie is out of the bottle", to quote an NSA official. Let's mirror it, and then publicize it. It's the worst thing we could do to them - make their competition's product easily accessible. It worked against microsoft, the NSA, and a plethora of other evils in the land. I don't see why we can't do it again.
But resist the urge to become personally involved. We should unilaterally take the same approach to any business that tries this: Initial publication, mirror the affected site, contact the presses, ruin their day. It's now a time-tested formula. Use it!
--
^^^^ moderators: nix this one.
--
I agree with you completely. I'd also like to add a few points. The author seemed to be trying to be satirical, and sound intellectual. It didn't work. While I agree with all the facts he stated, the conclusion was, well - non-existant. It's obvious by reading that this person has not spent much time in a public forum, and has not acclimated to the online world.
I believe his article was akin to an early style of flame-bait - badly written, bad humor, and condescending. It was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to attack white men.
--
I agree with you completely. I'd also like to add a few points. The author seemed to be trying to be satirical, and sound intellectual. It didn't work. While I agree with all the facts he stated, the conclusion was, well - non-existant. It's obvious by reading that this person has not spent much time in a public forum, and has not acclimated to the online world.
I believe his article was akin to an early style of flame-bait - badly written, bad humor, and condescending.
--
Star Wars was geared more towards the general public - star trek was not. I think you've gotten it backwards - star trek usually has all the so-called "brainy" people watching it. That's my experience anyway. I don't hear many star wars fanatics talking about the technicalities of hyperdrive, or that the X-Wing uses xyz shielding while the B-Wign uses abc shielding. I just *don't* - and I know *alot* of star wars fans.
OTOH, star wars people will usually go into deeeeeeep detail about the history of star wars, and practically have the scripts for all 4 movies memorized. Star trek fans don't do that.
Just my $0.02. Now, let the moderation begin!
--
Quick, submit that machine to mindcraft! :)
--
Why exactly are we spending tens of billions of dollars bombing some country nobody heard about before this fiasco? Why are our military forces (who's only job, as far as I know, is to safeguard the interests of the general population - including defense) over there? Why are American lives being sacrified?
For humanitarian reasons?
Please. If I want to be humanitarian, I'll contribute to a charity. There's alot of better places that money could be going - like education or cancer research.
So I ask again.. why are we really over there?
--
Linus upset at the benchmarks? He'll be focusing on improving scores? Credentials please.
--
I tend to agree. While it may (as a male) appeal to me, it is sexist. I'm not suprised when I see this stuff from the normal mainstream, but I am suprised to see it in a technical / geek commmunity. I find sexism to be nearly a non-issue amongst geeks, and it tends to be met with harshly when it does pop up in the community.
Shame on you, linux care, for being sexist. Shame on you, redhat, for trying to scare people with legal action rather than acting like a mature adult (corporation).
I would have nothing but freezing contempt for both groups if they went to court over this, and jeopardized the reputation of the linux on account of sexy models and bad advertising.
--
The original post about the linux care v. redhat seems to have disappeared off the main page. Anyway, here were some of the points mentioned before mysql nuked it:
- Redhat has every right to be upset. If you saw YOUR name on promotional material before having a chance to look / approve it, you'd be upset too.
- Linuxcare made some very kick-ass looking graphics, which everybody likes.
- Various threats made about redhat being the next "microsoft" for sending the lawyers in.
--