I happen to live in a small city with one of the nation's largest wi-fi cooperatives. They just got a lot of individuals to buy the same mesh network routers, centrally run it, and let anyone who wants to add their home or business network pipe to the pool. It does wonders for tourism, bringing in road warriors, and even helps the housing market a bit. I've always wondered why cities can't do this more affordably than most seem to. Really how much does it cost for some big network pipes, two techs and an admin on staff, and a bunch of wireless mesh routers to strap to light poles? There has been talk forever about a county-wide service with an interesting tiered plan (free at low speeds, with monthly charges for less throttled access). I think the bureaucracy of most governments combined with the intervention (both legal and political) of the existing telecos is on of the biggest roadblocks.
The difference is all the utilities you mention are highly regulated and in some cases run by the local government. If my local water supplier is delivering poor quality or too low of volume or their prices are outrageous I have two different options. One, I can elect a different mayor and city council who will fix the problem or two I can call the feds who heavily regulate water companies and require certain levels of purity and quality of service as well as pricing. When my electric supplier want so raise their rates, they have to ask the feds and they can't exclude my buying power over their distribution lines from the wind farm down the way instead of from the coal plant owned by the distributor. For that matter if I throw up a windmill they are required by law to pay me for what electricity I add to the grid.
Utility companies in general are often monopolies because of practical limitations to the infrastructure, but they're also traditionally very heavily regulated to keep them from abusing that position and because they are considered necessary services. So far internet access is not considered a necessary service and is not highly regulated at all. Companies aren't required to provide service to everyone in the area like phone companies are and they aren't prevented from leveraging those monopoly or duopoly situations by bundling other services.
You seem a little, umm irrational and crazy. You accuse me of lying about, something, but don't even specify what. I doubt a civil conversation is possible. You should get take your meds. and if you don't have any, seek help sir.
No, I don't see what delusions you have because I see the real world where ONE COMPANY bought another company, not all the companies getting together to buy one company.
Open source software is a shared resource. People license it such that anyone can use it provided their contributions are, in turn shared. Thus, the analogy of an open source project being an expensive resource like a bolt making plant, follows that in the analogy, that plant would have to be shared by may companies. Don't blame me if you can't follow the concepts.
P.S. I'm not a FLOSS person. My genetic code is completely closed source so far.
They only way they can do as you suggest is by severely compromising Firefox. This has been answered exhaustively many times. See Mike Shaver's blog post about it [off.net]. To quote:
People have raised questions about using existing support for H.264 (or other formats) that may already be installed on the user’s computer. There are issues there related to principle (fragmentation of format under the guise of standardized HTML), to effectiveness (about 60% of our users are on Windows XP, which provides no H.264 codec), to security (exposure of arbitrary codecs to hostile content), and to user experience (mapping the full and growing capabilities of to the system APIs provided); I’ll post next week about those in more detail, if others don’t beat me to it.
We've all read the arguments (I hope), we just don't buy them. I'm sorry but the OS should be handling video codecs for applications. Too many different applications such as video players, teleconferencing, browsers, and editing software all need to use codecs and the OS handling them on behalf of applications is simply the right way to engineer things. I can use Theora in my browser right now using HTML5 tags because I gave the OS a codec and my browser can use any codec I have installed. In practice I don't use it though.
See also Chris Blizzard's blog post [0xdeadbeef.com] about the decision to only support open video in Firefox. And most importantly of all, don't worry about. Open video is the way forward for video on the web. Theora is here now, VP8 may be joining it next month, and Dirac may join both in the future.
As I said, I can use Theora, but I don't... because there are basically no Theora streams in any of the mainstream video sites I use. Theora may be here, but you'd never notice. To a whole lot of us this the refusal of Firefox to build in support for the OS's video codecs (and yes there are plenty of h.264 codec available for WinXP via WMP) means Firefox just can't watch some of the video on the Web without reverting back to a Flash plug-in. Great job promoting security there guys. I feel so much safer.
You say don't worry about Firefox's open video. I'm not, I'm worried about it's ability to play mainstream video securely, because it sure as hell can't do so today like other browsers can. I don't know if they're trying to get people to fork Firefox or if they think Firefox has too much market share and they're determined to get people to switch to Chrome. It looks like pigheaded ideology being put before users to me.
Umm, often the services in question are dependent upon the OSS. In many cases the services are developing, fixing, updating, and improving the OSS.
That only makes business sense if the cost is less than the benefit. In this case the cost of developers, SME, marketing, etc would have to be less than the money they bring in and much less than the apparent value.
Did you seriously just make a comment that a business venture only makes sense if it makes more money than it loses? Really? Thank you captain obvious.
Asking why someone would support/develop OSS if it is a cost is like asking a car company why they would buy a bolt making plant if the bolts themselves just go into their cars. Just stop making bolts and buy them more expensively elsewhere or stop using them and be unable to make working cars. The former loses money overall and the latter is idiotic.
Actually, no. Your analogy is bad. A car company could buy the bolt factory, use the bolts themselves, and sell the bolts at a profit. But, that is not how things are for software in general and for Oracle and Sun in particular. Oracle bought Sun and acquired a hardware component, a proprietary software component, and an open source software component.
What are you talking about? What proprietary OS does Sun have that is making them more money than OpenSolaris and that they're going to use? What I think is actually happening here is Oracle trying to decide if they're going to ditch OpenSolaris for Linux.
They can't sell the open source products because who would buy it when it would soon be available for download?
Sigh. An Open Source product is not the same thing as an open source software. Oracle is going to sell servers loaded with a variety of software(mostly OSS), just like they do now, and sell it with a support contract. You can't download hardware or a support deal. That's where Oracle makes their money and that's what was making Sun money. So sure, they could switch to closed source versions of the same thing they're shipping on their server. The benefit is it makes it harder for competitors to recreate a similar product. The drawback is they lose all the free work everyone else is putting into the OSS projects and they have to replicate all of it happening on other projects or they start to fall behind.
It is akin to the car company buying the bolt factory, then giving away the bolts for free to everyone, including their competitors.
No, it's akin to all the car companies buying a bolt factory together and sharing all the ongoing cost in it because they realize bolts are just a commodity cost and not something that is going to make any of them more competitive.
I can't believe I'm explaining the generic OSS business plan once again. I mean you read Slashdot and companies have been making money doing this (including Oracle) for decades.
Nokia doesn't own Android, Google does. Google makes money on Android by tying it to their services.
See here's where you make the mistake. Google doesn't own Android. Android is a Linux fork and is owned by everyone who contributes and the licensing prohibits Google from owning it any more than Nokia. Google ties it to their services and Nokia ties it to their hardware and services and can even untie it from Google's services where that makes sense for them.
Symbian is not developed by Nokia. Nokia acquired it, sold it at a profit to other device manufactures...
Actually, Nokia used to license it, then they bought it, then they tried to license it to others but found it unprofitable, then they open sourced it because everyone was moving to other OSS OS's and Nokia did not want to be left with the cost of developing an OS all by themselves.
WebKit is a browser engine and browsers are almost
And you don't see the pattern yet, do you? Stop trying to use Linux as the perfect reference model. Its not, its shitty, why? Because everyone else just about does better. Its the best OSS contender, sure... but its still not much of a contender and its beat the fuck down by closed source pretty much everywhere except cheap ass server farms.
I suspect you're just trolling, but Linux is hugely successful in the server, appliance mobile, and embedded OS markets. The model works very well and has for a long time, to make lots of money. I've certainly made plenty of cash developing products that rely upon it.
Umm, you don't have to pay software licensing costs, you get bug reporting and work on the project from others for free, you can charge people support fees if they want you to do any work on it, if they don't want support it costs you nothing. How is this not a win?
Just for reference, the same thing happens with closed source software too, AND they get licensing costs. THAT is a win for them.
Since they claim millions of people use it for free, if they close source a port of it, no they don't get free bug reports and fixes anymore, because people aren't using their closed fork of it. Unless of course they're hiring people to keep their fork in synch, and that's an added cost. Further, you don't get many bug fixes submitted by customers when you're selling a closed source OS.
Close source OpenSolaris and try to get people to pay you when they can just use Linux instead (or Windows or OS X)?
Except they'd go use FreeBSD instead, since its actually got the features that people want from OpenSolaris rather than a license that prevents it from including other projects. Linux isn't an option for Solaris users, try again.
That's not true at all. I know mixed environments of OpenSolaris and SELinux workstations, where I know they'd move to Linux. As for OS X, it would be a rare case, but for the small UNIX software developers market it is a contender. Certainly for a few applications people might move to FreeBSD, but I don't think too many. Fir the server space Linux makes more sense most of the time, and then there's netBSD for the router crowd and openbsd for the security people. I'm sure some would pick FreeBSD to replace OpenSolaris, but I still don't see how that invalidates the point I made.
Before Solaris got to the point that it went open, I would have taken it over Linux without the blink of an eye. By the time it had got to the point of being 'OSS' I had long since migrated to not so shitty OSes. The reason Solaris was opened is because Sun was fully aware they had lost the OS battle because they sat on their ass for several years and jerked off to Java rather than putting effort into what they were good at.
I partly agree that Sun realized they had lost, but they had primarily lost to Linux, which is why they tried the open source route. It's hard to compete and be relevant with OS development when you're competing against dozens of other major companies and thousands of smaller ones all collaborating on a competing OS that costs nothing up front to license. The market had moved on, the OS in that space was a commodity and not a money maker.
They spent too much time competing to beat Microsoft down anyway they could and lost.
I'm not sure Microsoft is really who stole most of their market. Surely MS was gaining at the expense of everyone at that time, but that was mostly because of lock-in strategies with their desktop and joint sales. It had little to do with the quality of MS server and workstation offerings. Seriously, look at the "improvements" MS made to their OS during the period before Sun open source Solaris. It's a joke.
Open source by itself is not profitable. But services around it surely are.
Then, why should a for-profit company support open source if open source is not profitable. A better strategy would be to provide the services you mention, assuming said services are, in fact, profitable and the ROI is worth it.
Umm, often the services in question are dependent upon the OSS. In many cases the services are developing, fixing, updating, and improving the OSS. Asking why someone would support/develop OSS if it is a cost is like asking a car company why they would buy a bolt making plant if the bolts themselves just go into their cars. Just stop making bolts and buy them more expensively elsewhere or stop using them and be unable to make working cars. The former loses money overall and the latter is idiotic.
Ask Nokia if supporting OSS is profitable. I mean they are running Android on some new phones they sell and providing support for users of Android and submitting bug reports and fixes to Android and spending lots of money making Webkit better. Wouldn't they be better off not supporting Android or Webkit and for that matter not open sourcing Symbian. They can just use a closed fork of Symbian, surely that will make them more money because then they're spending money on closed source costs instead of open source costs.
Heck Apple spends even more money developing Webkit which runs on their iPhones, iPads, some iPods, and Macs. Surely if it is costing them money they should stop developing it, right? Hopefully by now you see my point. OSS development is often less of an expense than any other alternative and enable you to make money selling phones or appliances or services or any number of other things.
Open Source software is profitable in much the same way owning a parking lot for your business is profitable. It enables you to do business more cheaply and flexibly than the other options.
Open source software works great when it is not your core competency. For example, if you make hardware appliances, Linux is a great, free commodity OS you can use. Hiring some people to develop it, customize it, and fix bugs in it is much, much cheaper than writing an OS from scratch or licensing one. If you sell computing services, OSS is a great resource because it enables you to deliver those resources more cheaply and if you combine either of the two previous markets with custom hardware or software you do develop and which is your core competency, you can undercut pretty much every other business model.
I don't even know why I'm repeating this here. Literally hundreds of companies (I've worked for four myself) rely heavily on OSS development to make money and have been doing so for decades now. If the brilliant business minds at Oracle can't wrap their heads around this problem then they have bigger concerns than what to do with Sun's OSS assets... like how to fire all the idiots who somehow graduated from business school.
OSS is great way to cut your own costs by getting others to do work for you for free and make money in other markets.
So unless you can figure out how having OpenSolaris running on millions
of devices everywhere ultimately translates to revenue, I doubt Oracle
mgmt will be impressed.
Umm, does Oracle use OpenSolaris themselves for their workstations and servers both internally and for sale? If so, then having OpenSolaris on millions of devices means you get free bug reports and fixes for your OS from some subset of those millions of people. That's free labor.
If you don't monetize something somewhere, then it doesn't really help if OpenSolaris is used everywhere. In fact, it hurts. Because you spend more time supporting and debugging things that are not necessarily supportive of your own priorities, and are not generating revenue.
Wait you're spending time fixing bugs you don't care about and supporting the OS for free? Why? Why not just fix the bugs you do care about or which people are willing to pay you to fix and let other people handle the rest of the bugs if it bothers them? That's how Linux works, why not OpenSolaris?
Show us a plan for how that will ultimately generate revenue for Oracle?
Umm, you don't have to pay software licensing costs, you get bug reporting and work on the project from others for free, you can charge people support fees if they want you to do any work on it, if they don't want support it costs you nothing. How is this not a win? And what is your alternative? Pay Microsoft licensing fees? Drop OpenSolaris and switch to Linux then spend you money trying to port the features you need from OpenSolaris to Linux? Close source OpenSolaris and try to get people to pay you when they can just use Linux instead (or Windows or OS X)? Those are the three options I see and I'm sure your guys will do a thorough cost benefit on them all because they're not morons... right?
For example picture a convict who goes to prison at 25 years of age without ever having worked at a job and gets released at the age of 60.
Which is why almost all long term prisons have significant job training programs, educational programs, and why prisoners are often paroled into job programs and halfway houses.
Software that suggests keeping him locked up might help a brainless parole board.
If you've had someone locked up for 35 years and not put them through rehabilitation and taught them useful jobs skills and you have no parolee job and living assistance programs, well, then you've already screwed up so badly and wasted so much money keeping them imprisoned and have such a poorly run system that no software is going to help anything.
quote>Did these laptops have rules stating that they were never permitted to leave the school grounds?
No. Kids were allowed and encouraged to take the laptops home, but they claim one of the students in question did not pay the insurance fee required, so that gave them permission to use it to spy on him. They refused to answer with regard to the other 41 instances whether those students had reported the laptop stolen or not paid the insurance fee in question.
If the students WERE permitted to take the laptops home (other articles I have read implied they were), then under what criteria were these laptops suspected stolen?
The short answer, they did not suspect they were stolen, that's just a justification they're trying to use after the fact. If they had suspected the laptop of being stolen they would have contacted the parents and told them their kid had stolen a laptop instead of telling them their kid was being expelled for doing drugs at home. They would likewise have contacted the other 41 parents and told them their kids had taken the laptop when they weren't supposed to. It's quite clear at this point (at least to me) that the administrators did not consider the kids privacy at all and used the laptops for entertainment and to spy on kids in the hopes they could catch them doing something "bad".
I thought only "natural people" could invoke the fifth amendment... can a school do it? SHE isn't the person on trial, the school is... right?
Regardless of who or what is being investigated, any individual can invoke the 5th unless they have been granted immunity from prosecution. And just because you work for an organization or company does not mean you won't be prosecuted for crimes you commit on the job. Generally, they prosecute you then the victims go after the organization in civil court for not properly supervising you or for encouraging you to do it.
In my opinion, that's even worse. Even if person A has a higher risk of re-offending than person B, I thought the idea of justice was to give everyone the same treatment.
Justice is about equally punishing people based upon equal crimes. Rehabilitation is about helping people to improve themselves and preventing future crime. Two kids who steal exactly the same object the same way may both get 6 months probation; however, if one kid was stealing a loaf of bread because he was hungry and his parents are too busy smoking crack to feed him he might benefit from a different type of program than the kid who stole the same loaf of bread later in the day because he wanted to use it to throw at cars. The former child might benefit from a foster home and subsidized lunch program while the latter might benefit from a week in juvenile detention with no TV, followed by emotional counseling.
I, on the other hand, have a major problem with a machine programmed by nameless, faceless and imperfect people from China and India deciding the future of human beings.
I have two problems with this. First, the machine does not decide, it makes suggestions and the judge decides. Second, you must have missed:
"Now I'm not saying IBM's system works. It may or may not and that needs to be carefully studied."
Where I said we have to study the program and see if it creates useful and scientifically verifiable results.
This issue was and still is best handled and decided by a local judge who is face-to-face with the individual in question.
Umm, it is. Did you RTFA? This is software that judges use to make better decisions.
Contrary to your assertion, there's no reason or excuse for the judge not having all of the same information about the individual that the machine has.
Judges are not mathematically gifted statisticians and so cannot compute in their heads probable results based upon all the available data. That's why they're using this software.
I'm interested in your faith in the machine's ability to predict the future of a human's behavior.
Faith? Allow me to once again direct your attention to my statement:
"Now I'm not saying IBM's system works. It may or may not and that needs to be carefully studied."
Did you even read all of my post?
It use[sic] to be a slippery slope issue. But, today, it is being implemented and "tested".
That is not the slippery slope argument to which I was referring. Rather the article author repeatedly makes inflammatory slippery slope arguments like:
"But what really worries me is that this is a first big step towards something larger and darker."
Now that my friend is a slippery slope argument without question.
That means we've already slipped and are sliding down the slope. What are the chances of catching ourselves and recovering from the fall?
You do know the argument that because something happened we will continue to move more and more in the same direction as if inertia was at play is a logical fallacy, right? Just because we use this software to help sentence juvenile defenders does not mean unless we stop using it in 20 years we're going to be arresting people based upon computer models that predict we're likely to commit crimes based upon our genetic predispositions. That simply does not follow. This makes that no more or less likely and even guys in togas a few thousand years ago recognized arguments like that are rhetoric that persuades and makes people emotional... but illogical and having no place in a rational discussion.
They should be looking at the external causes that make them act this way, if you're analysing those kids than you're already assuming that they're in some way defective or sad.
What are you talking about? They aren't testing the kids DNA. They are analyzing the behavior and environment of a child. Those are the externalities. Further, who said anything about blame? This is about rehabilitation for kids who have committed crimes.
Blame the parents not the children.
Blame them both and hold both legally accountable, just as we do now, based upon age and level of independence. When a 4 year old shoplifts, the parents are held entirely to blame and might even lose custody. When a 17 year old goes on a murder spree, having already killed his parents at the age of 8, and having lived in a good home since then, well we largely hold the child to blame. Most everything else is a sliding scale in between. This is all about finding the best programs for the kids who need them the most and who will benefit the most. Computers don't blame anyone, they just crunch the numbers and tell judges, statistically, what is most likely to result in better results.
It seems some sort of ingrained cultural relic that criminal sentencing is about blame. But if there is one situation where blame should be a tertiary concern, it is delinquent children. Fuck blame! Do what is best for the child and worry about blaming people only if it does not interfere with that goal.
Okay, all I see here is a slippery slope argument. Juvenile delinquents who have been convicted of a crime are generally sentenced to probation, attendance in educational programs, counseling, etc. The only difference here is now they're using computer models to decide which programs are most appropriate for a given youth based upon the data they put in... instead of the court making the decision based upon a less complete set of data and a less methodical prediction of what would work best for that individual.
Now I'm not saying IBM's system works. It may or may not and that needs to be carefully studied. I have no problem, however, with computer models being used to determine which juvenile delinquents are most likely to benefit from specific programs and which are most in need of them when resources are limited. Appeals to various constitutional amendments are just empty rhetoric, given these kids have been convicted of a crime and this is part of their rehabilitation. In fact this whole article looks like an excuse for sensationalism and a reason to display cool graphics from "Minority Report". Lame Mr. Diaz.
But you're missing the point. Breaking away from these "crutches" should be a personal choice. They're wanting to legislate them out of existence.
I don't think that is the issue the ALA has here. Rather they are concerned that these are being marketed fraudulently as smoking cessation devices when studies of them for that purpose do not seem to have been submitted to the FDA. Some studies that have been done seem to indicate the presence of carcinogens and other toxic chemicals in debatably dangerous levels. Further, there is question as to whether or not these devices actually reliably introduce significant amounts of nicotine, thereby helping addicts with the physical effects of their problem. The ALA wants to promote scientifically proven methods of smoking cessation.
Personally, I'm not in favor of things being made illegal unless there is real data showing harm, but I can certainly understand the ALA not wanting to support them and people wanting to sue the makers of them for false advertising or unsafe products.
nope. really, that's all it is. nicotine, fake smoke (For smokers), and that's it. No other millions of chemicals.
From the FDA Website:
Newer information from the FDA suggests that e-cigarettes are not safe. A 2009 analysis of 18 samples of cartridges from 2 leading e-cigarette brands found cancer-causing substances in half the samples. There were other impurities noted as well. For example, diethylene glycol, a toxic ingredient found in antifreeze, was found in one sample.
The reason this is a big deal is that the rate of permanent cigarette quitters for ecigs is substantially higher than the rate of quitters on patches/etc. It's like 7% on patches versus somewheres in the 50% rate on ecigs.
Do you have a citation for this? Last I looked the data did not seem to be there at all. I'd be curious to see a real scientific study.
And more importantly, why are there different WiFi standards? Why doesn't everyone just use 802.11?
802.11 a, b, g, or n? Currently the discrepancy may be 802.11a - y2008 variant that allows for 3.7 Ghz transmissions but is only approved by the FCC, not EU governments.
Held to a countries regulations. Oh wait, they had to pass FCC testing here too. Big whoopie fucking do.
That's not exactly the issue. The iPad uses standard wifi 802.11, just like many other devices. If Apple wants to sell in a given country, they need to submit to approval from their version of the FCC but (and this is what is different) it's really weird to confiscate random wifi devices being carried into the country by individuals. A whole lot of laptops aren't sold directly in Israel and are not confiscated at the border when tourists bring them in.
Now probably the iPad is just high profile and looks different enough that customs people can tell at a glance what it is and know it is not approved, but it certainly does seem to be being singled out from all the other wifi hardware regularly carried into Israel.
1. Apple started the Webkit project by forking KHTML. Mainly because they weren't getting along well with the KHTML people.
Yo clearly don't know what you're talking about. Apple did not tell the KHTML people they were working on the code because the project was a secret until they launched. The project forked because the KHTML people did not want to pull all of Apple's changes back into the project because they had different design goals. This whole story about the KHTML team keeps going around because it is interesting and controversial, but it isn't really true. One guy on the KHTML team complained that Apple had not documented things well enough and it was hard to pull specific changes back into their project, which then got blown up into some sort of Slashdot frenzy about how evil Apple was being, to the point where the KHTML team was drowned out by the ignorant indignation. A coder at Apple actually went through and re-commented the code specifically to cater to the KHTML guys and gave them access to the versioning tree at Apple despite Apple's secrecy policy regarding new versions of Safari.
In short, Apple's behavior with regard to KHTML code was better than the majority of corporate contributors and far and beyond what was required by the licensing. The Webkit guys were playing nice and the KHTML guys appreciated it and people with no involvement went nuts and invented a controversy.
Apple is only supporting HTML5 video using a codec they helped write.
Safari on OS X already supports any plug-in you drop into Quicktime, including Ogg, via the "video" tag. It works right now. On the iPhone and iPad you're limited to H.264 supported by the video card for performance reasons.
I have two words for you: Nintendo Wii.
In case you don't know what I'm talking about, Nintendo under-produced Wii units for at least the first two years it was on the market.
Ahh, but Nintendo did not intentionally underproduce. They underestimated demand, then did not want to invest in more plants because they assumed they would catch up with the demand and did not want to be stuck with expensive production plants when they did not need that many for the long term sustained demand.
They could have immediately started building more plants, but they wrongly assumed they had misinterpreted initial demand and failed to stockpile enough. Basically, they badly underestimated the demand in the new market segment they were entering. What's amusing is that, at the time, conspiracy theorists who were not the target market spent all sorts of effort theorizing about how it was all some sort of marketing trick and the Wii was not really in demand that much, simply because they could not understand that there was a large market demand because not everyone is just like them. Here we see the same phenomenon all over again.
And the last interesting point - iPad sales dropped down to ~10% after first day sales.
They sold 300K the first day, including all the pre-orders, then about 50K every day thereafter, according to the published numbers from Apple. So more than 10% of the first day, but I guess I don't see the relevance. Since market researchers are showing it is sold out in many stores, so constrained supply limits sales in some cases and reduced demand in others. Until they start to keep up with the demand, we won't really know what that demand is like. By the same logic as you've presented you could claim the Wii was going to be a failure since after the first day sales dropped dramatically. Actually, the numbers are slightly lower (500K vs. 600K), but close to that of the iPhone when it was released. To claim the iPad as a success or failure at this point, especially because of the distribution of sales is, well, premature.
The linked article is pretty bad and the original story had the comments in question removed. I did a little Googling and the upshot is, it looks like some people made allegedly libelous comments, so the people they defamed are suing and the identities were ordered to be revealed by a judge. So, I don't really see how this is any different than a normal libel case in the US. Freedom of speech has never been an unlimited right. It ends when it infringes upon other individual rights and libel and slander laws are pretty common examples of this.
This is the most comprehensive article I found on the topic, but even it does not list any examples of the allegedly libelous comments.
Slashdot Mirror
I happen to live in a small city with one of the nation's largest wi-fi cooperatives. They just got a lot of individuals to buy the same mesh network routers, centrally run it, and let anyone who wants to add their home or business network pipe to the pool. It does wonders for tourism, bringing in road warriors, and even helps the housing market a bit. I've always wondered why cities can't do this more affordably than most seem to. Really how much does it cost for some big network pipes, two techs and an admin on staff, and a bunch of wireless mesh routers to strap to light poles? There has been talk forever about a county-wide service with an interesting tiered plan (free at low speeds, with monthly charges for less throttled access). I think the bureaucracy of most governments combined with the intervention (both legal and political) of the existing telecos is on of the biggest roadblocks.
The difference is all the utilities you mention are highly regulated and in some cases run by the local government. If my local water supplier is delivering poor quality or too low of volume or their prices are outrageous I have two different options. One, I can elect a different mayor and city council who will fix the problem or two I can call the feds who heavily regulate water companies and require certain levels of purity and quality of service as well as pricing. When my electric supplier want so raise their rates, they have to ask the feds and they can't exclude my buying power over their distribution lines from the wind farm down the way instead of from the coal plant owned by the distributor. For that matter if I throw up a windmill they are required by law to pay me for what electricity I add to the grid.
Utility companies in general are often monopolies because of practical limitations to the infrastructure, but they're also traditionally very heavily regulated to keep them from abusing that position and because they are considered necessary services. So far internet access is not considered a necessary service and is not highly regulated at all. Companies aren't required to provide service to everyone in the area like phone companies are and they aren't prevented from leveraging those monopoly or duopoly situations by bundling other services.
You seem a little, umm irrational and crazy. You accuse me of lying about, something, but don't even specify what. I doubt a civil conversation is possible. You should get take your meds. and if you don't have any, seek help sir.
No, I don't see what delusions you have because I see the real world where ONE COMPANY bought another company, not all the companies getting together to buy one company.
Open source software is a shared resource. People license it such that anyone can use it provided their contributions are, in turn shared. Thus, the analogy of an open source project being an expensive resource like a bolt making plant, follows that in the analogy, that plant would have to be shared by may companies. Don't blame me if you can't follow the concepts.
P.S. I'm not a FLOSS person. My genetic code is completely closed source so far.
They only way they can do as you suggest is by severely compromising Firefox. This has been answered exhaustively many times. See Mike Shaver's blog post about it [off.net]. To quote:
People have raised questions about using existing support for H.264 (or other formats) that may already be installed on the user’s computer. There are issues there related to principle (fragmentation of format under the guise of standardized HTML), to effectiveness (about 60% of our users are on Windows XP, which provides no H.264 codec), to security (exposure of arbitrary codecs to hostile content), and to user experience (mapping the full and growing capabilities of to the system APIs provided); I’ll post next week about those in more detail, if others don’t beat me to it.
We've all read the arguments (I hope), we just don't buy them. I'm sorry but the OS should be handling video codecs for applications. Too many different applications such as video players, teleconferencing, browsers, and editing software all need to use codecs and the OS handling them on behalf of applications is simply the right way to engineer things. I can use Theora in my browser right now using HTML5 tags because I gave the OS a codec and my browser can use any codec I have installed. In practice I don't use it though.
See also Chris Blizzard's blog post [0xdeadbeef.com] about the decision to only support open video in Firefox. And most importantly of all, don't worry about. Open video is the way forward for video on the web. Theora is here now, VP8 may be joining it next month, and Dirac may join both in the future.
As I said, I can use Theora, but I don't... because there are basically no Theora streams in any of the mainstream video sites I use. Theora may be here, but you'd never notice. To a whole lot of us this the refusal of Firefox to build in support for the OS's video codecs (and yes there are plenty of h.264 codec available for WinXP via WMP) means Firefox just can't watch some of the video on the Web without reverting back to a Flash plug-in. Great job promoting security there guys. I feel so much safer.
You say don't worry about Firefox's open video. I'm not, I'm worried about it's ability to play mainstream video securely, because it sure as hell can't do so today like other browsers can. I don't know if they're trying to get people to fork Firefox or if they think Firefox has too much market share and they're determined to get people to switch to Chrome. It looks like pigheaded ideology being put before users to me.
Umm, often the services in question are dependent upon the OSS. In many cases the services are developing, fixing, updating, and improving the OSS.
That only makes business sense if the cost is less than the benefit. In this case the cost of developers, SME, marketing, etc would have to be less than the money they bring in and much less than the apparent value.
Did you seriously just make a comment that a business venture only makes sense if it makes more money than it loses? Really? Thank you captain obvious.
Asking why someone would support/develop OSS if it is a cost is like asking a car company why they would buy a bolt making plant if the bolts themselves just go into their cars. Just stop making bolts and buy them more expensively elsewhere or stop using them and be unable to make working cars. The former loses money overall and the latter is idiotic.
Actually, no. Your analogy is bad. A car company could buy the bolt factory, use the bolts themselves, and sell the bolts at a profit. But, that is not how things are for software in general and for Oracle and Sun in particular. Oracle bought Sun and acquired a hardware component, a proprietary software component, and an open source software component.
What are you talking about? What proprietary OS does Sun have that is making them more money than OpenSolaris and that they're going to use? What I think is actually happening here is Oracle trying to decide if they're going to ditch OpenSolaris for Linux.
They can't sell the open source products because who would buy it when it would soon be available for download?
Sigh. An Open Source product is not the same thing as an open source software. Oracle is going to sell servers loaded with a variety of software(mostly OSS), just like they do now, and sell it with a support contract. You can't download hardware or a support deal. That's where Oracle makes their money and that's what was making Sun money. So sure, they could switch to closed source versions of the same thing they're shipping on their server. The benefit is it makes it harder for competitors to recreate a similar product. The drawback is they lose all the free work everyone else is putting into the OSS projects and they have to replicate all of it happening on other projects or they start to fall behind.
It is akin to the car company buying the bolt factory, then giving away the bolts for free to everyone, including their competitors.
No, it's akin to all the car companies buying a bolt factory together and sharing all the ongoing cost in it because they realize bolts are just a commodity cost and not something that is going to make any of them more competitive.
I can't believe I'm explaining the generic OSS business plan once again. I mean you read Slashdot and companies have been making money doing this (including Oracle) for decades.
Nokia doesn't own Android, Google does. Google makes money on Android by tying it to their services.
See here's where you make the mistake. Google doesn't own Android. Android is a Linux fork and is owned by everyone who contributes and the licensing prohibits Google from owning it any more than Nokia. Google ties it to their services and Nokia ties it to their hardware and services and can even untie it from Google's services where that makes sense for them.
Symbian is not developed by Nokia. Nokia acquired it, sold it at a profit to other device manufactures...
Actually, Nokia used to license it, then they bought it, then they tried to license it to others but found it unprofitable, then they open sourced it because everyone was moving to other OSS OS's and Nokia did not want to be left with the cost of developing an OS all by themselves.
WebKit is a browser engine and browsers are almost
That's how Linux works, why not OpenSolaris?
And you don't see the pattern yet, do you? Stop trying to use Linux as the perfect reference model. Its not, its shitty, why? Because everyone else just about does better. Its the best OSS contender, sure ... but its still not much of a contender and its beat the fuck down by closed source pretty much everywhere except cheap ass server farms.
I suspect you're just trolling, but Linux is hugely successful in the server, appliance mobile, and embedded OS markets. The model works very well and has for a long time, to make lots of money. I've certainly made plenty of cash developing products that rely upon it.
Umm, you don't have to pay software licensing costs, you get bug reporting and work on the project from others for free, you can charge people support fees if they want you to do any work on it, if they don't want support it costs you nothing. How is this not a win?
Just for reference, the same thing happens with closed source software too, AND they get licensing costs. THAT is a win for them.
Since they claim millions of people use it for free, if they close source a port of it, no they don't get free bug reports and fixes anymore, because people aren't using their closed fork of it. Unless of course they're hiring people to keep their fork in synch, and that's an added cost. Further, you don't get many bug fixes submitted by customers when you're selling a closed source OS.
Close source OpenSolaris and try to get people to pay you when they can just use Linux instead (or Windows or OS X)?
Except they'd go use FreeBSD instead, since its actually got the features that people want from OpenSolaris rather than a license that prevents it from including other projects. Linux isn't an option for Solaris users, try again.
That's not true at all. I know mixed environments of OpenSolaris and SELinux workstations, where I know they'd move to Linux. As for OS X, it would be a rare case, but for the small UNIX software developers market it is a contender. Certainly for a few applications people might move to FreeBSD, but I don't think too many. Fir the server space Linux makes more sense most of the time, and then there's netBSD for the router crowd and openbsd for the security people. I'm sure some would pick FreeBSD to replace OpenSolaris, but I still don't see how that invalidates the point I made.
Before Solaris got to the point that it went open, I would have taken it over Linux without the blink of an eye. By the time it had got to the point of being 'OSS' I had long since migrated to not so shitty OSes. The reason Solaris was opened is because Sun was fully aware they had lost the OS battle because they sat on their ass for several years and jerked off to Java rather than putting effort into what they were good at.
I partly agree that Sun realized they had lost, but they had primarily lost to Linux, which is why they tried the open source route. It's hard to compete and be relevant with OS development when you're competing against dozens of other major companies and thousands of smaller ones all collaborating on a competing OS that costs nothing up front to license. The market had moved on, the OS in that space was a commodity and not a money maker.
They spent too much time competing to beat Microsoft down anyway they could and lost.
I'm not sure Microsoft is really who stole most of their market. Surely MS was gaining at the expense of everyone at that time, but that was mostly because of lock-in strategies with their desktop and joint sales. It had little to do with the quality of MS server and workstation offerings. Seriously, look at the "improvements" MS made to their OS during the period before Sun open source Solaris. It's a joke.
Open source by itself is not profitable. But services around it surely are.
Then, why should a for-profit company support open source if open source is not profitable. A better strategy would be to provide the services you mention, assuming said services are, in fact, profitable and the ROI is worth it.
Umm, often the services in question are dependent upon the OSS. In many cases the services are developing, fixing, updating, and improving the OSS. Asking why someone would support/develop OSS if it is a cost is like asking a car company why they would buy a bolt making plant if the bolts themselves just go into their cars. Just stop making bolts and buy them more expensively elsewhere or stop using them and be unable to make working cars. The former loses money overall and the latter is idiotic.
Ask Nokia if supporting OSS is profitable. I mean they are running Android on some new phones they sell and providing support for users of Android and submitting bug reports and fixes to Android and spending lots of money making Webkit better. Wouldn't they be better off not supporting Android or Webkit and for that matter not open sourcing Symbian. They can just use a closed fork of Symbian, surely that will make them more money because then they're spending money on closed source costs instead of open source costs.
Heck Apple spends even more money developing Webkit which runs on their iPhones, iPads, some iPods, and Macs. Surely if it is costing them money they should stop developing it, right? Hopefully by now you see my point. OSS development is often less of an expense than any other alternative and enable you to make money selling phones or appliances or services or any number of other things.
Open Source software is profitable in much the same way owning a parking lot for your business is profitable. It enables you to do business more cheaply and flexibly than the other options.
Open source software works great when it is not your core competency. For example, if you make hardware appliances, Linux is a great, free commodity OS you can use. Hiring some people to develop it, customize it, and fix bugs in it is much, much cheaper than writing an OS from scratch or licensing one. If you sell computing services, OSS is a great resource because it enables you to deliver those resources more cheaply and if you combine either of the two previous markets with custom hardware or software you do develop and which is your core competency, you can undercut pretty much every other business model.
I don't even know why I'm repeating this here. Literally hundreds of companies (I've worked for four myself) rely heavily on OSS development to make money and have been doing so for decades now. If the brilliant business minds at Oracle can't wrap their heads around this problem then they have bigger concerns than what to do with Sun's OSS assets... like how to fire all the idiots who somehow graduated from business school.
OSS is great way to cut your own costs by getting others to do work for you for free and make money in other markets.
So unless you can figure out how having OpenSolaris running on millions of devices everywhere ultimately translates to revenue, I doubt Oracle mgmt will be impressed.
Umm, does Oracle use OpenSolaris themselves for their workstations and servers both internally and for sale? If so, then having OpenSolaris on millions of devices means you get free bug reports and fixes for your OS from some subset of those millions of people. That's free labor.
If you don't monetize something somewhere, then it doesn't really help if OpenSolaris is used everywhere. In fact, it hurts. Because you spend more time supporting and debugging things that are not necessarily supportive of your own priorities, and are not generating revenue.
Wait you're spending time fixing bugs you don't care about and supporting the OS for free? Why? Why not just fix the bugs you do care about or which people are willing to pay you to fix and let other people handle the rest of the bugs if it bothers them? That's how Linux works, why not OpenSolaris?
Show us a plan for how that will ultimately generate revenue for Oracle?
Umm, you don't have to pay software licensing costs, you get bug reporting and work on the project from others for free, you can charge people support fees if they want you to do any work on it, if they don't want support it costs you nothing. How is this not a win? And what is your alternative? Pay Microsoft licensing fees? Drop OpenSolaris and switch to Linux then spend you money trying to port the features you need from OpenSolaris to Linux? Close source OpenSolaris and try to get people to pay you when they can just use Linux instead (or Windows or OS X)? Those are the three options I see and I'm sure your guys will do a thorough cost benefit on them all because they're not morons... right?
For example picture a convict who goes to prison at 25 years of age without ever having worked at a job and gets released at the age of 60.
Which is why almost all long term prisons have significant job training programs, educational programs, and why prisoners are often paroled into job programs and halfway houses.
Software that suggests keeping him locked up might help a brainless parole board.
If you've had someone locked up for 35 years and not put them through rehabilitation and taught them useful jobs skills and you have no parolee job and living assistance programs, well, then you've already screwed up so badly and wasted so much money keeping them imprisoned and have such a poorly run system that no software is going to help anything.
No. Kids were allowed and encouraged to take the laptops home, but they claim one of the students in question did not pay the insurance fee required, so that gave them permission to use it to spy on him. They refused to answer with regard to the other 41 instances whether those students had reported the laptop stolen or not paid the insurance fee in question.
If the students WERE permitted to take the laptops home (other articles I have read implied they were), then under what criteria were these laptops suspected stolen?
The short answer, they did not suspect they were stolen, that's just a justification they're trying to use after the fact. If they had suspected the laptop of being stolen they would have contacted the parents and told them their kid had stolen a laptop instead of telling them their kid was being expelled for doing drugs at home. They would likewise have contacted the other 41 parents and told them their kids had taken the laptop when they weren't supposed to. It's quite clear at this point (at least to me) that the administrators did not consider the kids privacy at all and used the laptops for entertainment and to spy on kids in the hopes they could catch them doing something "bad".
I thought only "natural people" could invoke the fifth amendment... can a school do it? SHE isn't the person on trial, the school is... right?
Regardless of who or what is being investigated, any individual can invoke the 5th unless they have been granted immunity from prosecution. And just because you work for an organization or company does not mean you won't be prosecuted for crimes you commit on the job. Generally, they prosecute you then the victims go after the organization in civil court for not properly supervising you or for encouraging you to do it.
In my opinion, that's even worse. Even if person A has a higher risk of re-offending than person B, I thought the idea of justice was to give everyone the same treatment.
Justice is about equally punishing people based upon equal crimes. Rehabilitation is about helping people to improve themselves and preventing future crime. Two kids who steal exactly the same object the same way may both get 6 months probation; however, if one kid was stealing a loaf of bread because he was hungry and his parents are too busy smoking crack to feed him he might benefit from a different type of program than the kid who stole the same loaf of bread later in the day because he wanted to use it to throw at cars. The former child might benefit from a foster home and subsidized lunch program while the latter might benefit from a week in juvenile detention with no TV, followed by emotional counseling.
I, on the other hand, have a major problem with a machine programmed by nameless, faceless and imperfect people from China and India deciding the future of human beings.
I have two problems with this. First, the machine does not decide, it makes suggestions and the judge decides. Second, you must have missed:
"Now I'm not saying IBM's system works. It may or may not and that needs to be carefully studied."
Where I said we have to study the program and see if it creates useful and scientifically verifiable results.
This issue was and still is best handled and decided by a local judge who is face-to-face with the individual in question.
Umm, it is. Did you RTFA? This is software that judges use to make better decisions.
Contrary to your assertion, there's no reason or excuse for the judge not having all of the same information about the individual that the machine has.
Judges are not mathematically gifted statisticians and so cannot compute in their heads probable results based upon all the available data. That's why they're using this software.
I'm interested in your faith in the machine's ability to predict the future of a human's behavior.
Faith? Allow me to once again direct your attention to my statement:
"Now I'm not saying IBM's system works. It may or may not and that needs to be carefully studied."
Did you even read all of my post?
It use[sic] to be a slippery slope issue. But, today, it is being implemented and "tested".
That is not the slippery slope argument to which I was referring. Rather the article author repeatedly makes inflammatory slippery slope arguments like:
"But what really worries me is that this is a first big step towards something larger and darker."
Now that my friend is a slippery slope argument without question.
That means we've already slipped and are sliding down the slope. What are the chances of catching ourselves and recovering from the fall?
You do know the argument that because something happened we will continue to move more and more in the same direction as if inertia was at play is a logical fallacy, right? Just because we use this software to help sentence juvenile defenders does not mean unless we stop using it in 20 years we're going to be arresting people based upon computer models that predict we're likely to commit crimes based upon our genetic predispositions. That simply does not follow. This makes that no more or less likely and even guys in togas a few thousand years ago recognized arguments like that are rhetoric that persuades and makes people emotional... but illogical and having no place in a rational discussion.
They should be looking at the external causes that make them act this way, if you're analysing those kids than you're already assuming that they're in some way defective or sad.
What are you talking about? They aren't testing the kids DNA. They are analyzing the behavior and environment of a child. Those are the externalities. Further, who said anything about blame? This is about rehabilitation for kids who have committed crimes.
Blame the parents not the children.
Blame them both and hold both legally accountable, just as we do now, based upon age and level of independence. When a 4 year old shoplifts, the parents are held entirely to blame and might even lose custody. When a 17 year old goes on a murder spree, having already killed his parents at the age of 8, and having lived in a good home since then, well we largely hold the child to blame. Most everything else is a sliding scale in between. This is all about finding the best programs for the kids who need them the most and who will benefit the most. Computers don't blame anyone, they just crunch the numbers and tell judges, statistically, what is most likely to result in better results.
It seems some sort of ingrained cultural relic that criminal sentencing is about blame. But if there is one situation where blame should be a tertiary concern, it is delinquent children. Fuck blame! Do what is best for the child and worry about blaming people only if it does not interfere with that goal.
Okay, all I see here is a slippery slope argument. Juvenile delinquents who have been convicted of a crime are generally sentenced to probation, attendance in educational programs, counseling, etc. The only difference here is now they're using computer models to decide which programs are most appropriate for a given youth based upon the data they put in... instead of the court making the decision based upon a less complete set of data and a less methodical prediction of what would work best for that individual.
Now I'm not saying IBM's system works. It may or may not and that needs to be carefully studied. I have no problem, however, with computer models being used to determine which juvenile delinquents are most likely to benefit from specific programs and which are most in need of them when resources are limited. Appeals to various constitutional amendments are just empty rhetoric, given these kids have been convicted of a crime and this is part of their rehabilitation. In fact this whole article looks like an excuse for sensationalism and a reason to display cool graphics from "Minority Report". Lame Mr. Diaz.
But you're missing the point. Breaking away from these "crutches" should be a personal choice. They're wanting to legislate them out of existence.
I don't think that is the issue the ALA has here. Rather they are concerned that these are being marketed fraudulently as smoking cessation devices when studies of them for that purpose do not seem to have been submitted to the FDA. Some studies that have been done seem to indicate the presence of carcinogens and other toxic chemicals in debatably dangerous levels. Further, there is question as to whether or not these devices actually reliably introduce significant amounts of nicotine, thereby helping addicts with the physical effects of their problem. The ALA wants to promote scientifically proven methods of smoking cessation.
Personally, I'm not in favor of things being made illegal unless there is real data showing harm, but I can certainly understand the ALA not wanting to support them and people wanting to sue the makers of them for false advertising or unsafe products.
nope. really, that's all it is. nicotine, fake smoke (For smokers), and that's it. No other millions of chemicals.
From the FDA Website:
Newer information from the FDA suggests that e-cigarettes are not safe. A 2009 analysis of 18 samples of cartridges from 2 leading e-cigarette brands found cancer-causing substances in half the samples. There were other impurities noted as well. For example, diethylene glycol, a toxic ingredient found in antifreeze, was found in one sample.
The reason this is a big deal is that the rate of permanent cigarette quitters for ecigs is substantially higher than the rate of quitters on patches/etc. It's like 7% on patches versus somewheres in the 50% rate on ecigs.
Do you have a citation for this? Last I looked the data did not seem to be there at all. I'd be curious to see a real scientific study.
And more importantly, why are there different WiFi standards? Why doesn't everyone just use 802.11?
802.11 a, b, g, or n? Currently the discrepancy may be 802.11a - y2008 variant that allows for 3.7 Ghz transmissions but is only approved by the FCC, not EU governments.
Held to a countries regulations. Oh wait, they had to pass FCC testing here too. Big whoopie fucking do.
That's not exactly the issue. The iPad uses standard wifi 802.11, just like many other devices. If Apple wants to sell in a given country, they need to submit to approval from their version of the FCC but (and this is what is different) it's really weird to confiscate random wifi devices being carried into the country by individuals. A whole lot of laptops aren't sold directly in Israel and are not confiscated at the border when tourists bring them in.
Now probably the iPad is just high profile and looks different enough that customs people can tell at a glance what it is and know it is not approved, but it certainly does seem to be being singled out from all the other wifi hardware regularly carried into Israel.
1. Apple started the Webkit project by forking KHTML. Mainly because they weren't getting along well with the KHTML people.
Yo clearly don't know what you're talking about. Apple did not tell the KHTML people they were working on the code because the project was a secret until they launched. The project forked because the KHTML people did not want to pull all of Apple's changes back into the project because they had different design goals. This whole story about the KHTML team keeps going around because it is interesting and controversial, but it isn't really true. One guy on the KHTML team complained that Apple had not documented things well enough and it was hard to pull specific changes back into their project, which then got blown up into some sort of Slashdot frenzy about how evil Apple was being, to the point where the KHTML team was drowned out by the ignorant indignation. A coder at Apple actually went through and re-commented the code specifically to cater to the KHTML guys and gave them access to the versioning tree at Apple despite Apple's secrecy policy regarding new versions of Safari.
In short, Apple's behavior with regard to KHTML code was better than the majority of corporate contributors and far and beyond what was required by the licensing. The Webkit guys were playing nice and the KHTML guys appreciated it and people with no involvement went nuts and invented a controversy.
Apple is only supporting HTML5 video using a codec they helped write.
Safari on OS X already supports any plug-in you drop into Quicktime, including Ogg, via the "video" tag. It works right now. On the iPhone and iPad you're limited to H.264 supported by the video card for performance reasons.
I have two words for you: Nintendo Wii. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, Nintendo under-produced Wii units for at least the first two years it was on the market.
Ahh, but Nintendo did not intentionally underproduce. They underestimated demand, then did not want to invest in more plants because they assumed they would catch up with the demand and did not want to be stuck with expensive production plants when they did not need that many for the long term sustained demand.
They could have immediately started building more plants, but they wrongly assumed they had misinterpreted initial demand and failed to stockpile enough. Basically, they badly underestimated the demand in the new market segment they were entering. What's amusing is that, at the time, conspiracy theorists who were not the target market spent all sorts of effort theorizing about how it was all some sort of marketing trick and the Wii was not really in demand that much, simply because they could not understand that there was a large market demand because not everyone is just like them. Here we see the same phenomenon all over again.
And the last interesting point - iPad sales dropped down to ~10% after first day sales.
They sold 300K the first day, including all the pre-orders, then about 50K every day thereafter, according to the published numbers from Apple. So more than 10% of the first day, but I guess I don't see the relevance. Since market researchers are showing it is sold out in many stores, so constrained supply limits sales in some cases and reduced demand in others. Until they start to keep up with the demand, we won't really know what that demand is like. By the same logic as you've presented you could claim the Wii was going to be a failure since after the first day sales dropped dramatically. Actually, the numbers are slightly lower (500K vs. 600K), but close to that of the iPhone when it was released. To claim the iPad as a success or failure at this point, especially because of the distribution of sales is, well, premature.
ok, so how will they undo the equally real damage caused if these people sue for libel and the posters sucessfully defend their comments?
Why by filing a counter-suit, of course. Did you miss the last 50 years of legal wrangling somehow?
The comments were posted under several names: "LessTalkMoreAction", "The truth", and "scandalous2010". The posts were removed by the paper.
The linked article is pretty bad and the original story had the comments in question removed. I did a little Googling and the upshot is, it looks like some people made allegedly libelous comments, so the people they defamed are suing and the identities were ordered to be revealed by a judge. So, I don't really see how this is any different than a normal libel case in the US. Freedom of speech has never been an unlimited right. It ends when it infringes upon other individual rights and libel and slander laws are pretty common examples of this.
This is the most comprehensive article I found on the topic, but even it does not list any examples of the allegedly libelous comments.