At least when Starship Troopers had sucky dialogue, it was done with a sense of humor and a sense of irony.
If you haven't seen Robocop (by the same director) with the director's commentary enabled )DVD-style, for all of you not boycotting), it's hard to quite get the extent to which the movie is ironic. My reccomendation is to see Robocop all the way through with the commentary, then go see Starship troopers again. The movie seems much much different.
And as for you, start browsing at +1. I'm so tired of you people and your bothering of the ACs on Slashdot. They can whine all they want, what gives you the right to tell them who they can flame, and who they can talk shit about?
Do yourself and the rest of us a favor, now that you're logged in, change your reading prefrences.
You're in a forest, there are exits to the north, the south and the west. In front of you reads a sign: "Do not feed the trolls"
Actually, i really like that ugly ass bluish bacground. I can see *all* my icons against it, and I don't get tired of looking at it.
My problem with cool looking backgrounds is that I want to change them from time to time, and I can never find a cool one I really want to have on my desktop.
Clearly, the Slashdot audience finds your articles insultingly simplistic.
Katz was calling him on it. Like it or not, Katz is in a better position to take the pulse of the READERS (as opposed to readers/contributors) than Q*Bert or most any other of the vast majority of The Slashdot Audience. (Could this be another TLA? TSA - The Monolith)
The thing is, judging by the majority of *posts* that show up after a Katz article, it is true that most of the *posters* find the articles to be simplistic. As for people who email Katz and don't post, how are they participating in the slashdot community? If they have such wonderful things to say about Katz, why won't they post them, at least under AC if not (for some reason known only to them) under their own names?
It's well and good for Katz to tell us about all the wonderful glowing email he gets all the time, but that attitue is *not* reflected in the comments. You can try and get around this by telling me that it's a vocal minority that posts, and the rest just lurk or keep quiet, but as in USENET, this argument doesn't hold water. If you're not going to be an active part of the community, you shouldn't be counted on either side. I'm sure there's a lot of people who loathe Katz that don't bother to post *or* email, but you don't see any anti-Katz people bringing them in as some type of "take my word for it, they're on my side" support.
sparkane, your statement is empty. It will remain empty until you point out to us where Porcupine acts like a teenager, and why you feel that his actions are those that could only be perpetrated by a teenager.
The fact remains that Katz has no basis whatsoever for painting the whole posting crowd at Slashdot with the same brush.
At several places in his interview he states that it's the fact that this is a "from the ground up" community and the fact that the posters challenge him and criticize him that makes Slashdot so interesting. It's seems pretty strange that he turns around and calls everyone who posts here a teenager if he does indeed appreciate *all* of our comments so much.
I don't care if he gets pissed off or hurt when he's flamed. I do take offense when he states that flames do not bother him, when he acts like they truly do. I get angry when I'm flamed, but you don't see me going around and glorying in the fact that I read every single flame I get.
As for the fact that he made such a broad generalization about the readership, where does he get off? He strongly criticized one of the posters who made his own generalized assumptions about the readership.
Katz has much more than his share of hypocrisy for my taste.
I don't go there (in fact, as a university student they are my mortal enemy by defentition!;), but they give you a laptop (as part of your tuition, and the tuition is not high, lower than that of the university) for the entire time you're at the school. This is not just for technology students, but for all students. At the end of your course you get to buy the laptop out for some crazy bargain price (don't remeber the exact figure).
This is happening at a lot of school across Canada. I don't know about the US, but here you can find such schools in every provice, both colleges and universities (they're not the same type of school up here).
Don't worry we won't tell anyone that you're behind the microsoft.com firewall and using IE5 to browse here.
Wow, you wouldn't be trying to intimidate someone with the implication that you can find out where they're posting from, simply because you work at Andover would you?
I didn't think so.
Grow up and go back to work. If this is the kind of infantile crap we're going to see from the people at Andover, I fear for the independance of Slashdot.
Ok, you don't care about the subject being discussed. Fine. BUT you couldn't leave it there. You took the time to hit Reply, Write out a post to complain, and submit.
If you don't care, SHOW YOU DON'T CARE. Don't clog up the discussion with complaints! That annoys the people who ARE interested.
Well, just to point out, you took the time to reply too.:)
Anyways, I see nothing wrong with this guy complaining. The thing is, there's a lot of content on this site that could be better catagorized. Perhaps this kind of stuff could be placed under a "humanity" or "personal" or "people in the online community" category. That would allow those of us who only want a certain type of story to avoid that which we don't want. I'm happy for whoever got married, but this is in no way my social community. My social community exists in my familly, at work, with my friends from school and in the university I'm attending. Slashdot is part of what we'll call my geek sphere, and I don't really care to read about other people's weddings, or about other people wearing suits. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be posted to Slashdot, I'm just saying that there should be a way for me to avoid that kind of thing.
As for all this bullshit about how it's just Rob's site and he can post anything he wants to it: This site is paid for in part by the advertising, and wouldn't be here in its present form without the readership. Without the massive volume of traffic from people that come here because they want a certain category of information or news, Andover never would have bought the place. Rob can post anything he damn well wants to to this site, but it's always in his or Andover's best interest to provide a mechanism for people to continue to use slashdot for what *they* want to use it for. If people don't complain, how is any site editor going to know what they want? I say it's better for them to post to the story than to take it to email. Transparency is always a good way to go in issues like these.
This really beats the hell out of all the legal shit we've been seeing here for the past while. It also tops any of the vast number of IPO stuff we've seen in the past while too.
As per usual, I say fuck the ACs too chicken shit to at least make up a pseudo-name to flame with. Good job Roblimo.
*RANT* Ok, damn all you people. You are all filed under "Too stupid to live because you can't read a goddamn article before you spout off your mouths". *END RANT*
Uh... but you're not allowed to tape shows off TV and redistribute them either! Which means that by the same logic you used you're not allowed to do this...
True, but since iCrave is in Canada, and it's perfectly legal to rebroadcast TV in Canada at the same time the original broadcast is taking place iCrave should be in no trouble at all. This has been repeated quite a number of times throughout all these discussions.
I was going to email this, but I wanted to stick it up so other people could argue for/against any points I've made. Hopefully JK will actually read all the comments, even though it's a few hours (years in/. time;) since the article was posted. If anyone wants to get in touch with me via email it's canada-chris@geocities.com
Sure. It makes no sense to construct and maintain commercial websites that exclude most of humanity, or punish them when they try to join communal discussions.
Here I assume that you're talking about slashdot, though I wasn't aware that slashdot was a commercial website (the implication being that the sole purpose of a commerical website is the generation of capital, where/. has always presented itself as more of a community). If so, I would like to see myself logging in to slashdot.com from now on.
But hostile environments will present a worsening problem for e-communities
e-communities? Why do you feel the need to stick a label on something in this manner? Labelling all online discussion forums, online special interest groups, mailing lists under such a general name goes a long way towards ignoring the vast differences between each group. Everytime you use the word e-communities I don't know if you're talking about mailing lists, web forums or what. This makes it very hard to have a precise debate/conversation/essay when you're using generalities like this.
Communities naturally tend to exclude some people and make others feel welcome. But the founders of this site never meant for Slashdot to be an exclusive club for programmers using a particular computer operating system.
Maybe you've got a much better handle on the demographics of slashdot readers than I, but this is definitely not an exclusive club for programmers and users of Linux. Check the web logs, I bet less than half the readers here use Linux to read the site. As for programmers, you'd best inform the people that I work with, my friends, and my girlfriend that they can all gets jobs in the computer industry now, as they read slashdot and thus must be programmers. Unless of course you meant to end that paragraph with "and it hasn't become one."
Sites like Slashdot are a natural place, but these kinds of conversations are impossible here, short-circuited by angry kids often with anonymous pseuds.
By this comment I get the impression that you either don't read the comments that get posted to slashdot, or that you're incredibly sensitive and get offended by argument quite easily. Slashdot is a very civil forum and much good/interesting information is exchanged daily. Perhaps you should start reading at the comments moderated up to 5, and stop around 2 or so. If you don't read the -1s (I do, some of them are funny as hell), you stand a very good chance of not getting offended at all, unless you're simply offended by someone with an alternate viewpoint to your own.
The Web's failure to produce or maintain common discussion grounds is getting to be a serious problem with real consequences. Misinformation about genetic research, online safety - even the Y2K problems - spreads primarily because intelligent public discussion of these issues isn't possible, except in places where nobody knows much about them, like Congress or on TV talk shows.
If you want intelligent and accurate discussion about a specific topic, you probably shouldn't be looking at a web forum that deals with a wide variety of topics. If you want good advice about the law, don't want Geraldo, or even Larry King live. Intelligent discussion takes place (more or less) on these sites and shows, but they're not experts. Just like watching politically correct, it's interesting, but the people on the show are generally fairly basic when it comes to philosophy and politics. It seems the biggest problem here is that you simply don't know where to look when you want to inform yourself on a specific topic. If I want to find something about about the movie industry, IPv6 or about 18th century litterature, I don't head to slashdot, or any other general discussion group. I get my ass on some mailing lists, read FAQs and talk to the people who inhabit these specific forum(s?). Intelligent discussion goes on here on a daily basis, without all the "terrible" flamage that you seem to perceive on the web. I've been on some mailing lists for over a year without encountering a single flame. I see no reason to complain that you can't talk truly in depth about technology in a broad forum.
(You might call this the John Rocker Syndrome - he's the Atlanta Braves pitcher who recently complained about too many "foreigners" being permitted into New York City and the United States.
Again with the labels. Why do you insist on labeling things like this. All it does is take away from the actual point you were trying to make. Gratuitous labeling weakens the discussion.
Again, Slashdot is a relevant example, a new kind of website. Initially, its focus was the things that most interested Rob Malda, its creator - "Legos, Linux, Movies Hardware", is how he describes it. Recently, it's broadened to include those subjects and a growing focus on technology and culture. As it grows and broadens, some of its self-appointed border guards have become increasingly agitated and resentful.
By "self appointed border guards", do you mean anyone who complains about the amount of political, legal and financially spun articals we've been seeing so much of lately on slashdot? Here again you're labeling, and by labeling the people who complain, you divert the attention away from why they might be complaining. This is akin to branding feminists "feminazis". These words are emotionally charged and do nothing to further discussion. This has the same result as being aggressive/hostile, and is simply more subtle.
It's striking how timid the most fearsome flamers become face to face.
Apparently this is very easy to say, but what experience do you have with this? The people I've met that have flamed me, and those who I've flamed at the university I attend, were in no way timid or anything aside from their usual selves.
Are hostile environments simply a trade-off for freedom, then, one of the permanent legacies of the talented young men who helped build the Net and are building it still? Not at all. The reason I say this is because I do not believe that the hostile environments you speak of exist. There are hostilities in some environments, but it's not this terrible epidemic you make it out to be.
Do members of these communities - that's us - have any responsibility to challenge people who assault others online, create environments in which some of the most urgent issues of our lifetimes can be discussed and debated in a coherent, civil and rational way?
Goodness, calm down a bit there. These debates that occur online are in no way more hostile or uncivil as those that occur in Real Life(tm). Attend a political debate or party election. Stand at the back. Listen to the ACs that grumble and hold strong, unmitigated opinions. In RL people just ignore the crackpots and flamers. Online that's all people should be doing anyways. WRT Slashdot, up your threshold, don't read the -1s, and just calm down. The only time that a hostile environment can exist in a place like slashdot is if you allow it to exist in your mind. If you are personally offended by flames or trolls, that's your own problem. If you're not strong enough to have the confidence in yourself to shrug off baseless insults, no one has the responsibilty to hold your hand and provide a "safe" forum for you in which to air your own particular set of views.
And perhaps most importantly, are people responsible for what they say? Should they be held accountable online, as they are off, for assaultive, hostile communication and other behavior that restricts access, free speech and the free exchange of information and opinion?
Again, your free speech is only curtailed by flames and hotility if you allow it to be. If I say something nasty about your mother, how am I forcing you to react to that? If I question your lineage, does that somehow limit your ability to post coherent and rational discussion to the forum? If so, please explain to me exactly how so.
Adolescent males are hungry for attention and peer approval. Why else flame at all?
Well, since the last two people to flame me were over the age of 30, I can't rightly tell you. Maybe the problem is your assumption about the demographics of flamers. Do you happen to have any figures at all to back up your assumption?
The Net has raised issues relating to freedom to completely new and complex levels, since the Net is the freest medium in American life, and the freest in its history. Your US-centric approach probably only irritates me because I'm Canadian. Slashdot is hosted in the US, but topics such as these concern everyone. Why alienate such a large section of your readership by looking at everything through US-coloured glasses?
Freedom is great, and it's easy to be for it. Hostile environments aren't great. Increasingly, they do a lot of harm.
I'm sorry, but Slashdot just isn't a hostile environment. Croatia, that's a hostile environment. Even Seattle during the WTO talks, that's a hostile environment. A web forum, where the worst thing that can happen is you can read a comment that's baselessly offensive, that's not a hostile environment unless you let it be. The same goes for any soical grouping of people, be it a chruch group, a party, grade school, etc.
On the contrary, in a supposedly advanced society like ours, why should anyone have to suffer verbal abuse?
In a truly advanced society we'd still have the option to verbally abuse someone if we wanted to. It's the ugly side of free speech, but it's there. Said society would only be truly advanced if the right to say anything as offensive and repulsive as you want is there, but people refrained from using that right out of a desire to not (emotionally) harm their fellow man/woman.
This is a pretty glib generalization. I think your logic skills need a little work. Maybe you meant to say that you have never met one in person. Either way, just because you personally have never met a flamer (ahem, internet or otherwise;) in person, does not mean that they're all cowards hiding behind a keyboard. I, like IMHO most slashdot readers have been known to flame from time to time, but I've always let the people I've flamed who I've met in person know who I am.
Someone else posted about how they met people after they flamed them in university/college and they became good friends. This has happened to me too (first year univ). I suppose this might lend credence to Katz's statement that flaming is generally an adolescent thing. I agree, but I think he has the wrong idea as to *why* it's mainly an adolescent thing. A big problem with debate and argument in our society is that people are so afraid of having them. So many people are afraid of saying something that will offend someone, or "not make them like them any more", that they choose instead to keep their mouths shut. This is especially emphasized in our culture for women (especially young women) and for the elderly (ie, they're too old to hold valid opinions any more etc). I know there is a fair amount of people out there who feel that women, ethnic minorities and the elderly are treated justly and fairly in our society, but that's just bullshit. Take a good critical look at the messages being sent to us in the media, through things like television sitcoms and advertising. These things still enforce stereotypes that are in place in our culture, they are just much more subtle than something we would see 30 years ago. People will probably say "Well, you're an idiot if you define our society by it's media/commericals etc" but our society *is* defined by the media and the perceived public mind.
Well, that's enough rambling by me. Email me at canada-chris@geocities.com if you have anything to add or flame.
As another BeOS user I'd have to say that you, and every other goddamn BeOS promoter should just calm down. BeOS isn't really all that popular compared to a lot of other OS's out there, face the facts. A large number of apps does not mean there are a lot of people using them.
I wish all the OS-jihad fanatics out there would grab a course or two in critical thinking and logic. A lot of apps *never* implicitly means that an OS is popular, it only means that there's a lot of apps. Maybe there's a lot of developers, or maybe there's a few very prolific developers. That is all that can be taken from the fact that there's a lot of apps. That is all.
At least you didn't spout off into a whole rant about how UNIX is archaic and sucks compared to the almighty BeOS, accompanied with the usual tired rant about Open Source being a marketing gimmick with no real viability. You must not have subscribed to the Be-user-list yet.
How about the 911 system that's a call to.... today? Those are calls too.
What the hell is your point here?
How exactly does this prevent me from calling out? In my area of the world even if a bunch of people try... with anchovies or something like that (assuming that his line isn't busy trying to call me at the same time).
Now you're getting bogged down in the analogy, and you've completely missed the point.
That effectively kills the whole point of doing something like networking.
Now you're getting it.
If I have a car and everyone everywhere won't sell me gas then that kills the function of the car preventing me from using my facilities at all (unless I own a refinery and get my own oil well).
Yes, and if you're running kids down, or tearing through my garden on a daily basis, you can go play on your own network (your own refinery and roads) and stay the hell away from mine.
As for the rest of your post, well, when I understand wtf is going on in your head, I'll reply.
This may be "Informative" but it's also only half true.
Although this does happen during a slow freeze (say in a home freezer), this does not happen when a body is frozen more or less immediately (such as being placed in liquid nitrogen). The ice crystals thing is not really relevant to cryogenics.
Re:Here goes Katz again
on
AOL Nation
·
· Score: 1
IIRC, they don't update the site until the newest book has been out for a goodly amount of time. I don't imagine they sell a lot of copies, so undercutting their primary (non-public) means of revenue probably isn't a good idea.
Either way, the stories are fairly chilling, even if they weren't written just yesterady.
Re:Here goes Katz again
on
AOL Nation
·
· Score: 1
There is an option for you. Go down to the polling station and decline your vote.
As with any particular option in an election of any magnitude, one instance of this action is not too significant. The real kicker is if a lot of people do this. This sends a message to all of the candidates (one of whom will get elected) that they (and/or their party) are not approved of by their consituents. It is the nature of most politicians that if they feel a large group of people have a problem with them, they will do what they can to become more well-liked. Hopefully this will make them more receptive to any petitions, letters etc sent to them by their constituents.
Talk to your friends, family, and the people in any groups you're a part of. Assuming that they feel the same way you do, coordinate your vote with them, it takes a smaller number of people than you think to make a wave with a politician. (The "rule of thumb" being that if there's 1 person who cares enough about something to speak out about it, there's 10 more in the commuminty that care, will have their vote influenced by the issue, but just aren't saying anything to the politician about it)
Slashdot Mirror
If you haven't seen Robocop (by the same director) with the director's commentary enabled )DVD-style, for all of you not boycotting), it's hard to quite get the extent to which the movie is ironic. My reccomendation is to see Robocop all the way through with the commentary, then go see Starship troopers again. The movie seems much much different.
but would you say London is being Americanized
I would indeed say that.
And as for you, start browsing at +1. I'm so tired of you people and your bothering of the ACs on Slashdot. They can whine all they want, what gives you the right to tell them who they can flame, and who they can talk shit about?
Do yourself and the rest of us a favor, now that you're logged in, change your reading prefrences.
You're in a forest, there are exits to the north, the south and the west. In front of you reads a sign: "Do not feed the trolls"
Actually, i really like that ugly ass bluish bacground. I can see *all* my icons against it, and I don't get tired of looking at it.
My problem with cool looking backgrounds is that I want to change them from time to time, and I can never find a cool one I really want to have on my desktop.
The thing is, judging by the majority of *posts* that show up after a Katz article, it is true that most of the *posters* find the articles to be simplistic. As for people who email Katz and don't post, how are they participating in the slashdot community? If they have such wonderful things to say about Katz, why won't they post them, at least under AC if not (for some reason known only to them) under their own names?
It's well and good for Katz to tell us about all the wonderful glowing email he gets all the time, but that attitue is *not* reflected in the comments. You can try and get around this by telling me that it's a vocal minority that posts, and the rest just lurk or keep quiet, but as in USENET, this argument doesn't hold water. If you're not going to be an active part of the community, you shouldn't be counted on either side. I'm sure there's a lot of people who loathe Katz that don't bother to post *or* email, but you don't see any anti-Katz people bringing them in as some type of "take my word for it, they're on my side" support.
sparkane, your statement is empty. It will remain empty until you point out to us where Porcupine acts like a teenager, and why you feel that his actions are those that could only be perpetrated by a teenager.
The fact remains that Katz has no basis whatsoever for painting the whole posting crowd at Slashdot with the same brush.
At several places in his interview he states that it's the fact that this is a "from the ground up" community and the fact that the posters challenge him and criticize him that makes Slashdot so interesting. It's seems pretty strange that he turns around and calls everyone who posts here a teenager if he does indeed appreciate *all* of our comments so much.
I don't care if he gets pissed off or hurt when he's flamed. I do take offense when he states that flames do not bother him, when he acts like they truly do. I get angry when I'm flamed, but you don't see me going around and glorying in the fact that I read every single flame I get.
As for the fact that he made such a broad generalization about the readership, where does he get off? He strongly criticized one of the posters who made his own generalized assumptions about the readership.
Katz has much more than his share of hypocrisy for my taste.
Red River College, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
;), but they give you a laptop (as part of your tuition, and the tuition is not high, lower than that of the university) for the entire time you're at the school. This is not just for technology students, but for all students. At the end of your course you get to buy the laptop out for some crazy bargain price (don't remeber the exact figure).
I don't go there (in fact, as a university student they are my mortal enemy by defentition!
This is happening at a lot of school across Canada. I don't know about the US, but here you can find such schools in every provice, both colleges and universities (they're not the same type of school up here).
Don't worry we won't tell anyone that you're behind the microsoft.com firewall and using IE5 to browse here.
Wow, you wouldn't be trying to intimidate someone with the implication that you can find out where they're posting from, simply because you work at Andover would you?
I didn't think so.
Grow up and go back to work. If this is the kind of infantile crap we're going to see from the people at Andover, I fear for the independance of Slashdot.
Just curious here, but do you read the same Slashdot page that I do?
Mine's at slashdot.org, and the only thing it has in common with impartiality is the a, the t and the r.
Key word, started.
Thanks for coming out.
Ok, you don't care about the subject being discussed. Fine. BUT you couldn't leave it there. You took the time to hit Reply, Write out a post to complain, and submit.
:)
If you don't care, SHOW YOU DON'T CARE. Don't clog up the discussion with complaints! That annoys the people who ARE interested.
Well, just to point out, you took the time to reply too.
Anyways, I see nothing wrong with this guy complaining. The thing is, there's a lot of content on this site that could be better catagorized. Perhaps this kind of stuff could be placed under a "humanity" or "personal" or "people in the online community" category. That would allow those of us who only want a certain type of story to avoid that which we don't want. I'm happy for whoever got married, but this is in no way my social community. My social community exists in my familly, at work, with my friends from school and in the university I'm attending. Slashdot is part of what we'll call my geek sphere, and I don't really care to read about other people's weddings, or about other people wearing suits. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be posted to Slashdot, I'm just saying that there should be a way for me to avoid that kind of thing.
As for all this bullshit about how it's just Rob's site and he can post anything he wants to it: This site is paid for in part by the advertising, and wouldn't be here in its present form without the readership. Without the massive volume of traffic from people that come here because they want a certain category of information or news, Andover never would have bought the place. Rob can post anything he damn well wants to to this site, but it's always in his or Andover's best interest to provide a mechanism for people to continue to use slashdot for what *they* want to use it for. If people don't complain, how is any site editor going to know what they want? I say it's better for them to post to the story than to take it to email. Transparency is always a good way to go in issues like these.
2 cents etc.
This really beats the hell out of all the legal shit we've been seeing here for the past while. It also tops any of the vast number of IPO stuff we've seen in the past while too.
As per usual, I say fuck the ACs too chicken shit to at least make up a pseudo-name to flame with. Good job Roblimo.
*RANT*
Ok, damn all you people. You are all filed under "Too stupid to live because you can't read a goddamn article before you spout off your mouths".
*END RANT*
Uh... but you're not allowed to tape shows off TV and redistribute them either!
Which means that by the same logic you used you're not allowed to do this...
True, but since iCrave is in Canada, and it's perfectly legal to rebroadcast TV in Canada at the same time the original broadcast is taking place iCrave should be in no trouble at all. This has been repeated quite a number of times throughout all these discussions.
Sure. It makes no sense to construct and maintain commercial websites that exclude most of humanity, or punish them when they try to join communal discussions.
Here I assume that you're talking about slashdot, though I wasn't aware that slashdot was a commercial website (the implication being that the sole purpose of a commerical website is the generation of capital, where
But hostile environments will present a worsening problem for e-communities
e-communities? Why do you feel the need to stick a label on something in this manner? Labelling all online discussion forums, online special interest groups, mailing lists under such a general name goes a long way towards ignoring the vast differences between each group. Everytime you use the word e-communities I don't know if you're talking about mailing lists, web forums or what. This makes it very hard to have a precise debate/conversation/essay when you're using generalities like this.
Communities naturally tend to exclude some people and make others feel welcome. But the founders of this site never meant for Slashdot to be an exclusive club for programmers using a particular computer operating system.
Maybe you've got a much better handle on the demographics of slashdot readers than I, but this is definitely not an exclusive club for programmers and users of Linux. Check the web logs, I bet less than half the readers here use Linux to read the site. As for programmers, you'd best inform the people that I work with, my friends, and my girlfriend that they can all gets jobs in the computer industry now, as they read slashdot and thus must be programmers. Unless of course you meant to end that paragraph with "and it hasn't become one."
Sites like Slashdot are a natural place, but these kinds of conversations are impossible here, short-circuited by angry kids often with anonymous pseuds.
By this comment I get the impression that you either don't read the comments that get posted to slashdot, or that you're incredibly sensitive and get offended by argument quite easily. Slashdot is a very civil forum and much good/interesting information is exchanged daily. Perhaps you should start reading at the comments moderated up to 5, and stop around 2 or so. If you don't read the -1s (I do, some of them are funny as hell), you stand a very good chance of not getting offended at all, unless you're simply offended by someone with an alternate viewpoint to your own.
The Web's failure to produce or maintain common discussion grounds is getting to be a serious problem with real consequences. Misinformation about genetic research, online safety - even the Y2K problems - spreads primarily because intelligent public discussion of these issues isn't possible, except in places where nobody knows much about them, like Congress or on TV talk shows.
If you want intelligent and accurate discussion about a specific topic, you probably shouldn't be looking at a web forum that deals with a wide variety of topics. If you want good advice about the law, don't want Geraldo, or even Larry King live. Intelligent discussion takes place (more or less) on these sites and shows, but they're not experts. Just like watching politically correct, it's interesting, but the people on the show are generally fairly basic when it comes to philosophy and politics. It seems the biggest problem here is that you simply don't know where to look when you want to inform yourself on a specific topic. If I want to find something about about the movie industry, IPv6 or about 18th century litterature, I don't head to slashdot, or any other general discussion group. I get my ass on some mailing lists, read FAQs and talk to the people who inhabit these specific forum(s?). Intelligent discussion goes on here on a daily basis, without all the "terrible" flamage that you seem to perceive on the web. I've been on some mailing lists for over a year without encountering a single flame. I see no reason to complain that you can't talk truly in depth about technology in a broad forum.
(You might call this the John Rocker Syndrome - he's the Atlanta Braves pitcher who recently complained about too many "foreigners" being permitted into New York City and the United States.
Again with the labels. Why do you insist on labeling things like this. All it does is take away from the actual point you were trying to make. Gratuitous labeling weakens the discussion.
Again, Slashdot is a relevant example, a new kind of website. Initially, its focus was the things that most interested Rob Malda, its creator - "Legos, Linux, Movies Hardware", is how he describes it. Recently, it's broadened to include those subjects and a growing focus on technology and culture. As it grows and broadens, some of its self-appointed border guards have become increasingly agitated and resentful.
By "self appointed border guards", do you mean anyone who complains about the amount of political, legal and financially spun articals we've been seeing so much of lately on slashdot? Here again you're labeling, and by labeling the people who complain, you divert the attention away from why they might be complaining. This is akin to branding feminists "feminazis". These words are emotionally charged and do nothing to further discussion. This has the same result as being aggressive/hostile, and is simply more subtle.
It's striking how timid the most fearsome flamers become face to face.
Apparently this is very easy to say, but what experience do you have with this? The people I've met that have flamed me, and those who I've flamed at the university I attend, were in no way timid or anything aside from their usual selves.
Are hostile environments simply a trade-off for freedom, then, one of the permanent legacies of the talented young men who helped build the Net and are building it still? Not at all. The reason I say this is because I do not believe that the hostile environments you speak of exist. There are hostilities in some environments, but it's not this terrible epidemic you make it out to be.
Do members of these communities - that's us - have any responsibility to challenge people who assault others online, create environments in which some of the most urgent issues of our lifetimes can be discussed and debated in a coherent, civil and rational way?
Goodness, calm down a bit there. These debates that occur online are in no way more hostile or uncivil as those that occur in Real Life(tm). Attend a political debate or party election. Stand at the back. Listen to the ACs that grumble and hold strong, unmitigated opinions. In RL people just ignore the crackpots and flamers. Online that's all people should be doing anyways. WRT Slashdot, up your threshold, don't read the -1s, and just calm down. The only time that a hostile environment can exist in a place like slashdot is if you allow it to exist in your mind. If you are personally offended by flames or trolls, that's your own problem. If you're not strong enough to have the confidence in yourself to shrug off baseless insults, no one has the responsibilty to hold your hand and provide a "safe" forum for you in which to air your own particular set of views.
And perhaps most importantly, are people responsible for what they say? Should they be held accountable online, as they are off, for assaultive, hostile communication and other behavior that restricts access, free speech and the free exchange of information and opinion?
Again, your free speech is only curtailed by flames and hotility if you allow it to be. If I say something nasty about your mother, how am I forcing you to react to that? If I question your lineage, does that somehow limit your ability to post coherent and rational discussion to the forum? If so, please explain to me exactly how so.
Adolescent males are hungry for attention and peer approval. Why else flame at all?
Well, since the last two people to flame me were over the age of 30, I can't rightly tell you. Maybe the problem is your assumption about the demographics of flamers. Do you happen to have any figures at all to back up your assumption?
The Net has raised issues relating to freedom to completely new and complex levels, since the Net is the freest medium in American life, and the freest in its history. Your US-centric approach probably only irritates me because I'm Canadian. Slashdot is hosted in the US, but topics such as these concern everyone. Why alienate such a large section of your readership by looking at everything through US-coloured glasses?
Freedom is great, and it's easy to be for it. Hostile environments aren't great. Increasingly, they do a lot of harm.
I'm sorry, but Slashdot just isn't a hostile environment. Croatia, that's a hostile environment. Even Seattle during the WTO talks, that's a hostile environment. A web forum, where the worst thing that can happen is you can read a comment that's baselessly offensive, that's not a hostile environment unless you let it be. The same goes for any soical grouping of people, be it a chruch group, a party, grade school, etc.
On the contrary, in a supposedly advanced society like ours, why should anyone have to suffer verbal abuse?
In a truly advanced society we'd still have the option to verbally abuse someone if we wanted to. It's the ugly side of free speech, but it's there. Said society would only be truly advanced if the right to say anything as offensive and repulsive as you want is there, but people refrained from using that right out of a desire to not (emotionally) harm their fellow man/woman.
This is a pretty glib generalization. I think your logic skills need a little work. Maybe you meant to say that you have never met one in person. Either way, just because you personally have never met a flamer (ahem, internet or otherwise ;) in person, does not mean that they're all cowards hiding behind a keyboard. I, like IMHO most slashdot readers have been known to flame from time to time, but I've always let the people I've flamed who I've met in person know who I am.
Someone else posted about how they met people after they flamed them in university/college and they became good friends. This has happened to me too (first year univ). I suppose this might lend credence to Katz's statement that flaming is generally an adolescent thing. I agree, but I think he has the wrong idea as to *why* it's mainly an adolescent thing. A big problem with debate and argument in our society is that people are so afraid of having them. So many people are afraid of saying something that will offend someone, or "not make them like them any more", that they choose instead to keep their mouths shut. This is especially emphasized in our culture for women (especially young women) and for the elderly (ie, they're too old to hold valid opinions any more etc). I know there is a fair amount of people out there who feel that women, ethnic minorities and the elderly are treated justly and fairly in our society, but that's just bullshit. Take a good critical look at the messages being sent to us in the media, through things like television sitcoms and advertising. These things still enforce stereotypes that are in place in our culture, they are just much more subtle than something we would see 30 years ago. People will probably say "Well, you're an idiot if you define our society by it's media/commericals etc" but our society *is* defined by the media and the perceived public mind.
Well, that's enough rambling by me. Email me at canada-chris@geocities.com if you have anything to add or flame.
As another BeOS user I'd have to say that you, and every other goddamn BeOS promoter should just calm down. BeOS isn't really all that popular compared to a lot of other OS's out there, face the facts. A large number of apps does not mean there are a lot of people using them.
I wish all the OS-jihad fanatics out there would grab a course or two in critical thinking and logic. A lot of apps *never* implicitly means that an OS is popular, it only means that there's a lot of apps. Maybe there's a lot of developers, or maybe there's a few very prolific developers. That is all that can be taken from the fact that there's a lot of apps. That is all.
At least you didn't spout off into a whole rant about how UNIX is archaic and sucks compared to the almighty BeOS, accompanied with the usual tired rant about Open Source being a marketing gimmick with no real viability. You must not have subscribed to the Be-user-list yet.
Whoever moderated this down to zero either:
a) Is a retard, or
b) has way too many moderator points and is wasting them for fun.
How about the 911 system that's a call to.... today? Those are calls too.
What the hell is your point here?
How exactly does this prevent me from calling out? In my area of the world even if a bunch of people try... with anchovies or something like that (assuming that his line isn't busy trying to call me at the same time).
Now you're getting bogged down in the analogy, and you've completely missed the point.
That effectively kills the whole point of doing something like networking.
Now you're getting it.
If I have a car and everyone everywhere won't sell me gas then that kills the function of the car preventing me from using my facilities at all (unless I own a refinery and get my own oil well).
Yes, and if you're running kids down, or tearing through my garden on a daily basis, you can go play on your own network (your own refinery and roads) and stay the hell away from mine.
As for the rest of your post, well, when I understand wtf is going on in your head, I'll reply.
This may be "Informative" but it's also only half true.
Although this does happen during a slow freeze (say in a home freezer), this does not happen when a body is frozen more or less immediately (such as being placed in liquid nitrogen). The ice crystals thing is not really relevant to cryogenics.
Wow, perceptive.
Thanks for coming out, Chief.
IIRC, they don't update the site until the newest book has been out for a goodly amount of time. I don't imagine they sell a lot of copies, so undercutting their primary (non-public) means of revenue probably isn't a good idea.
Either way, the stories are fairly chilling, even if they weren't written just yesterady.
As per usual, I will point you all to Project censored.
Think your media is anything close to independant? Think it's giving you a good idea of what's going on in your country?
Think again.
There is an option for you. Go down to the polling station and decline your vote.
As with any particular option in an election of any magnitude, one instance of this action is not too significant. The real kicker is if a lot of people do this. This sends a message to all of the candidates (one of whom will get elected) that they (and/or their party) are not approved of by their consituents. It is the nature of most politicians that if they feel a large group of people have a problem with them, they will do what they can to become more well-liked. Hopefully this will make them more receptive to any petitions, letters etc sent to them by their constituents.
Talk to your friends, family, and the people in any groups you're a part of. Assuming that they feel the same way you do, coordinate your vote with them, it takes a smaller number of people than you think to make a wave with a politician. (The "rule of thumb" being that if there's 1 person who cares enough about something to speak out about it, there's 10 more in the commuminty that care, will have their vote influenced by the issue, but just aren't saying anything to the politician about it)