Bullshit! Damn "security" experts trying to justify their salaries with bogus fears about foreign governments. Especially this crap about the Soviet Union manipulating social movements.
What an unbelievably stupid strategy, Go after people who downloaded a bad Hollywood movie and you'll end up radicalizing a bunch of average folks. This kind of strategy will do nothing to the most active (or most political( file sharers out there.
If these people think that the mass lawsuits will deter other people from downloading movies, then they don't understand that the RIAA has been pursuing that strategy for years without success. In fact, internally at the RIAA around 8 years ago, they had decided to pursue the mass lawsuit strategy as a last ditch tactic in a war they knew they had lost. They also had to go through the motions in order to show their clients that "they were doing something." They understood that the file-sharing wars were over and industry had lost.
The RIAA was hoping that the news media would cover the lawsuits and this coverage would scare average users into not file sharing. This approach may have worked back in the 1980s with cassette taping, but that was only because most people got their news from a few sources. These days, large segments of the population don't even follow the news. The RIAA lawsuits might get a story here or there on some TV news, but few people watch any of those news reports. And the average viewer of traditional network news is an older person and more likely not to be involved with file sharing.
Gelernter is going to win the 2010 Ig Nobel for Vacuous Internet Punditry. Your average Facebook user can come up with more insightful takes on new technology than this tired hack.
My friends and I have run a popular news site for over a decade with no advertising. It's possible to run a site while relying on a non-advertising revenue model. It's not easy and our content could be better, but folks are ridiculous when they whine about people not looking at their ads.
I've run ad-blocking plug-ins on my Firefox browser for years. If a site like Ars Technica disabled my ability to see their site, I'd just get that news from elsewhere.
One of the main reasons why I start using ad-blocking software was because of the ads that animate, blink, and otherwise do anything other than being static. I can't read some damn article if ads are doing stuff in my peripheral vision. And if the moving ads are blocked, I can also tune out the other ads, until the time when I'm actually thinking about buying something.
My anarchist friends are having a hoot over the stupidity of this law. One anarchist organization is already circulating a letter to South Carolina explaining why they won't be registering.
Somebody pointed out that the law as written is so vague that it actually mandates that the Democratic and Republican parties in South Carolina must register, since they are in favor of "controlling" and "conducting" the U.S. government. Are the Tea Party folks going to register, because they are advocating the ouster of President Obama?
This is going to go down as one of Google's biggest missteps, which these ginormous tech corporations always make when their egos get the best of them. People are not going to leave Facebook en masse and start using Google's social media for one basic reason: Facebook has the critical mass. Everybody is using Facebook. Anybody using Facebook instinctively understands this, as they connect with old classmates, friends and relatives. Facebook has become the virtual equivalent of our daily face-to-face lives. Facebook is the best pplace to find out about events that your friends are attending. It offers easy-to-use chat (when it isn't buggy) and email. I recently switched to a Gmail account, which I like, but I still use Facebook for most of my social messaging with friends and family.
Google's service would have to offer some killer app over Facebook to overcome this critical mass factor. Many of us left Myspace for Facebook, because Facebook was easier to use and didn't have all the crap that Myspace had, including all of the horrible page design customization.
Many people will argue that people are motivated to leave Facebook because of Facebook's privacy issues. I have several friends who are paranoid and upset about FB's privacy mess, but face it, most people just don't care that much about tweaking their privacy settings. That's why *social* media has exploded in popularity, because most people want to share things publicly and have open social lives. Facebook's privacy settings are adequate for the majority of FB users. Those folks who are concerned with privacy and security are going to be equally skeptical of Google, which everybody knows is primarily a data-mining business.
Wow! They are going to have to ban most of the British government's own websites, as they are part of an international terrorist network.
Good luck with that!
This guy just doesn't get human nature or economics. People will always give away their work for free, or at least volunteer on cooperative projects, even when the economy is bad. I've technically been "unemployed" for several years as a tech worker (I'm a poorly paid freelancer), but I still give away large amounts of my time and sweat equity to community projects and organizations. People aren't going to stop sharing just because of bad economic times.
This article also ignores the fact that FOSS software is more important in a poor economy because it is FREE, as in free beer. If I had to pay for the software to run all of my websites and servers, I could never do what I'm doing now as a freelancer.
I have to agree with the person who wrote somewhere in this thread about how a faked lack of IT skills will manifest themselves quickly when somebody takes the job. If you don't know it, it will show pretty quickly. The exception to this would probably be small companies and organizations where there aren't other IT staff to notice somebody's lack of knowledge.
I've been in the IT job market for several years, so I've seen how interviewers conduct interviews. (I'm going to another interview in a few hours). One trend I've spotted in recent years is the use of more testing by employers, including lots of stupid shit like aptitude testing. Now I can understand testing a person's level of knowledge on PHP, Java or C++, but what the hell does an intelligence test tell an employer?
I've been in the IT profession for almost 20 years and I have a master's degree in a related field. I apply for jobs in IT and in this other field. I'm a veteran web developer who is currently trying to learn Java, just so I can be somewhat familiar with programming. Mt IT skills are fairly broad and solid, but I'll freely admit to employers that my skill levels need work here and there. I've been a freelancer for years and otherwise have an unconventional resume. I have excellent social skills, am equally talented in tech and the creative side (also have an art degree). I also have lots of life experience that you would think an employer would appreciate. I'm pretty modest about my knowledge and accomplishment. I get lots of interviews, but never a job offer. I'll add that my interview skills and demeanor are solid.
I guess I'm mystified as to what employers are really looking for. It can't be experience, because I've interviewed for plenty of jobs where my experience should have trumped any other candidate. It can't be about teamwork, because I have social skills and can joke and schmooze with interviewers. Do employers really just prefer young people? Are they really that narrow-minded to reject a person with a good resume because they don't have much experience with some minor XYZ platform?
The problem with testing is that it adds another layer of mistrust in the job interview process. Hiring has already turned into a process where employers present a paranoid attitude towards potential employees. There is the testing, the reference checks, the Googling, the background and credit checks, and much more. What employers don't get is that all of this *encourages* lying and deception among job candidates. They look at all of this and think, "Everybody must be cheating. I have to pay the rent so I have to cheat too."
You don't think people can cheat on tests? I really don't like cheating on tests, but last week a temp agency asked me to take an online IT test again so they could resubmit the test results to an employer. They gave me the wink that it was OK to look up answers while taking the test. My test results were higher the second time, but I had been happy with the results the first time.
Several people here have pointed out several methods where employers can ask IT applicants to submit code samples or answer code questions during an interview. This seems to be a fair method, as long as applicants are warned beforehand.
After several years of job interviews, and based on what I've experienced with incompetent co-workers in the past, let me suggest that employers move to a quicker method of filling jobs. Skim the resumes you get to determine which ones *generally* match the skills you are looking for, then pick a resume at random and hire that person.
I'm a librarian although I currently don't work in a library. I've also been involved with digital libraries since the early 1990s, when 95% of the population had never heard of the Internet.
We now can do some amazing things with the Internet, yet public libraries are busier than ever. I challenge any of the readers here to find a public library in the middle of the afternoon which is deserted. You'll have a difficult time.
Public libraries offer many services now that go beyond their traditional role of providing reference and printed materials. What's really amazing is that many people still use libraries to borrow books. Most libraries out there report heavy usage of their printed materials. This is the main reason why public libraries won't disappear by 2019 or by 2050. People still read books. The percentage of the population who reads books may have dropped, but there are still lots of people out there who read books.
The problem is mostly with the other users. The administrators are a problem in that they help implement many pointless bureaucratic guidelines.
I'm a librarian and professional writer who has contributed to Wikipedia over the years, but have gotten tired of the bullshit created by other users. At this point I'm contributing more to other online open wiki projects. Wikipedia has lots of excellent content, but some pages just can't be changed because some people have staked them out as their turf and refuse to allow any edits. I know of pages that are clearly POV and inaccurate, but if I or anybody else tries to revise them and significantly change them, we'll be baited into violating the "three revert rule" or otherwise be harassed by the resident zealots.
Wikipedia itself has implemented some stupid policies and some unintentionally hilarious policies. The decision this year to start removing images from thousands of pages because of copyright concerns is just insanity to the nth degree. Whoever made this decision doesn't understand current copyright law, because their policy about images is even more draconian than the current draconian copyright law. Many images have been removed from pages that aren't violating any copyrights. But if Wikipedia admins want to piss on their product with stupid decisions like this, then they'll only drive more people away.
My favorite hilarious example of current Wikipedia stupidity is the warning tag attached to many pages that says "Trivia sections are discouraged by Wikipedia." Uh, guys, Wikipedia is primarily an encyclopedia about popular culture. Putting these warnings over trivia sections that won't be removed is just silly. The trivia sections are why people use Wikipedia. Another funny development is the proliferation of tagging of pages for being "stubs" and poorly sourced. Hello? After years of criticism, Wikipedia is just now getting self-conscious about its veracity? Funny!
I run a news site that is indexed by Google News. As much as I'm anti-copyright and for open access to information, this move by Google really bothers me. This commenting feature really crosses the line. If Google is going to allow people to comment on stories from our service outside of our service, I want a cut of the money that Google makes off of using our content for free. This is only fair if Google is allowing people to comment on stories in a way that is outside the control of our website.
Do no evil? Google is really turning out to be the next Microsoft. Greedy and determined to control everything at any cost.
This will probably create a flurry of new lawsuits by larger news services.
I've run a fairly popular independent news site for several years and I have experience with the Indymedia network. I also participate on Wikipedia.
When Wikinews launched, I could see right away that the Wikipedia project was getting in over their collective heads. It's one thing to luanch successful reference tool projects such as Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and so on, quite another thing to get into the news business.
If you are familiar with how the news media works and how the new forms of online news work, the problems with Wikinews should be obvious. The main problem with Wikinews is that it isn't fast enough for the news cycle. It's one thing to tinker with and edit a Wikipedia article over weeks and months. A news site has to be publishing new stories throughout the day. This rapid turnover of stories is too much for something that relies on collaborative news editing.
Another problem with collaborative news editing is that journalism is hard. It's not about writing a Wikipedia entry on some subject you are a fanboy about. Writing good news stories involves research, good writing, talking to sources, doing more research, and so on. Finding people who have the skills and determination to do this for FREE is difficult. Indymedia started in 1999 as an independent news network. It's been very successful, but almost every Indymedia local site suffers from a lack of original stories on local news. It's easy to write an account about a protest or an op-ed about Bush, but putting together a story on a local issue is difficult. There is a reason why the conventional wisdom in the mainstream media is that it costs money to do local news.
Another reason why Wikinews failed to catch on is because there are already a plethora of excellent news sites, ranging from the big boys like CNN and the New York Times, to hundreds of small independent sites. Wikipedia made a splash because there weren't really any online encyclopedias that allowed open, mass participation. Wikinews just isn't anything new or special.
"Voter turnout is low because of stupidity & apathy."
Sorry, this is just an old wives tale about nonvoters. Most nonvoters refuse to vote because they see the system as being corrupt and irrelevant to their lives. People are not ignorant about the fact that the American political system sucks. In fact, the approval rating for Congress among ALL voting age Americans is incredibly low.
If voting changed anything they wuld make it illegal.
Really, Slashdot, are you pandering after the Digg crowd with trivia like this? Slashdot set the standard for technology news so please give us news content with some substance. Then we can have some intelligent discussions instead of this one about how trivial this story is.
Yes, you are right about anarchy being about a different form of organization, not just any kind of organization.
And as usual, the Slashdot fanboys have missed the point about the use of the word "anarchy." Yes, dictionaries define anarchy as being synonymous with "chaos," but that association was created by a massive historical effort by the authorities and the media to confuse the public about the meaning of the word "anarchy." Anarchism and anarchy are about different forms of social organization, not about "chaos."
The English language is very flexible about using words to mean many different things, so even us anarchists have to live with the misuse of "anarchy" to mean chaos. But the reason why I bring this up here is that the word was misused in the context of the free software movement and Wikipedia, which have both been described as examples of "anarchy in action." In the correct political sense. More anarchy would be a positive development for Wikipedia.
Summary gets anarchism wrong
on
Unusual Open Source
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
"It cites Firefox, MySQL and (more recently) Wikipedia as examples of projects that do not simply allow anarchy to rein in..."
As an anarchist geek, let me point out that this is a wrong use of the word "anarchy." Anarchism is a political philosophy that is FOR organization. Many people have described Wikipedia as an example of "anarchism in action" and they aren't misusing the word instead of using "chaos." The free software/open source (FOSS) movement is another example of anarchism in action and includes many actual anarchists working on various projects.
Find out more about anarchism at http://www.infoshop.org/ (where half of the visitors are using Firefox and other open source browsers)
There was some study years ago that found that "hit" records and popular artists were the result of a mostly arbitrary process. In other words, there are probably as many good artists, if not many more, than the popular ones that dominate the airwaves and music sales.
There are other factors that account for popularity, of course, such as the concentration of the music industry, payola, real talent, sex appeal, and so on.
What mystifies me is the popularity of classic rock stations on the radio. Why is the crap of the 1970 and 1980s considered "classic" today? Just because those bands and those songs were popular 25 years ago? Journey? REO Speedwagon? Come on. Much of that "classic" rock was crap. It was popular crap. And why are certain popular songs "classic" when there may have been better songs on those albums?
Which methods? If people are going to say stuff about professors, you need to back up your accusations.
Churchill's research and teaching are impeccable. The University of Colorado set up a committee to investigate Churchill (in violation of that university's rules) and so far have failed to turn up anything wrong with Churchill's research.
Professors should have the right to express *any* opinion they want to express. The same goes for students. That's what a universities are about--they are supposed to be places for people to exchange ideas. All of this controversy over left wing professors is just more extremist right wing inability to live with people who think differently. Hopefully, more sensible conservatives will speak up for intellectual and academic freedom.
Ward Churchill is NOT a nutjob professor. His writing and teaching is widely respected. You may not agree with his views, but that doesn't make him a nutjob. I'm willing to bet that you haven't read ONE of Churchill's many books.
I have a homework assignment for you. Go out and buy Churchill's new book on the forced assimilation programs that were inflicted on Native American youth for decades. Come back here and explain to everybody what in that book makes Churchill a nutjob.
Eveybody knows that the American educational system is messed up. Instead of blaming the victims of this system, we should really analyze what the problems are and what works in terms of solutions. The educational system is designed to make children hate learning. There is too much emphasis on discipline, order, tests, and grading. Kids that can't sit still are forced onto drugs. What we need is a system that encourages *learning* and exploration. This means getting kids to enjoy reading, which is a fundamental building block when it comes to lifelong learning.
Schools need to be deconstructed and integrated into the everyday life of the community, which would mean more kids getting out of the school into workplaces, musuems, forests and so on. The hierarchies in schools need to be eliminated--all useless personnel such as principals have to go.
On a related note, it should be pointed out that the "smart" kids who go onto Ivy League colleges aren't as smart as they think. Many of these kids are good at tests and playing the system. They tend to lack social skills and think they are god's gift to the world. Given that so many highly educated people will believe nonsense such as Saddamn Hussein having WMDs, we shouldn't set up the people who are good at school as some kind of role model.
Slashdot Mirror
Bullshit! Damn "security" experts trying to justify their salaries with bogus fears about foreign governments. Especially this crap about the Soviet Union manipulating social movements.
Props to the rioters!
How about we crowdsource information about the scumbag violent police who make the lives of people a living hell on a daily basis?
The police are the problem, not a bunch of sports fans rioting.
What an unbelievably stupid strategy, Go after people who downloaded a bad Hollywood movie and you'll end up radicalizing a bunch of average folks. This kind of strategy will do nothing to the most active (or most political( file sharers out there.
If these people think that the mass lawsuits will deter other people from downloading movies, then they don't understand that the RIAA has been pursuing that strategy for years without success. In fact, internally at the RIAA around 8 years ago, they had decided to pursue the mass lawsuit strategy as a last ditch tactic in a war they knew they had lost. They also had to go through the motions in order to show their clients that "they were doing something." They understood that the file-sharing wars were over and industry had lost.
The RIAA was hoping that the news media would cover the lawsuits and this coverage would scare average users into not file sharing. This approach may have worked back in the 1980s with cassette taping, but that was only because most people got their news from a few sources. These days, large segments of the population don't even follow the news. The RIAA lawsuits might get a story here or there on some TV news, but few people watch any of those news reports. And the average viewer of traditional network news is an older person and more likely not to be involved with file sharing.
The NSA has no business existing. Shut down the agency. Secret government agencies have no place operating in an open, free democracy.
Gelernter is going to win the 2010 Ig Nobel for Vacuous Internet Punditry. Your average Facebook user can come up with more insightful takes on new technology than this tired hack.
My friends and I have run a popular news site for over a decade with no advertising. It's possible to run a site while relying on a non-advertising revenue model. It's not easy and our content could be better, but folks are ridiculous when they whine about people not looking at their ads.
I've run ad-blocking plug-ins on my Firefox browser for years. If a site like Ars Technica disabled my ability to see their site, I'd just get that news from elsewhere.
One of the main reasons why I start using ad-blocking software was because of the ads that animate, blink, and otherwise do anything other than being static. I can't read some damn article if ads are doing stuff in my peripheral vision. And if the moving ads are blocked, I can also tune out the other ads, until the time when I'm actually thinking about buying something.
My anarchist friends are having a hoot over the stupidity of this law. One anarchist organization is already circulating a letter to South Carolina explaining why they won't be registering.
Somebody pointed out that the law as written is so vague that it actually mandates that the Democratic and Republican parties in South Carolina must register, since they are in favor of "controlling" and "conducting" the U.S. government. Are the Tea Party folks going to register, because they are advocating the ouster of President Obama?
This is going to go down as one of Google's biggest missteps, which these ginormous tech corporations always make when their egos get the best of them. People are not going to leave Facebook en masse and start using Google's social media for one basic reason: Facebook has the critical mass. Everybody is using Facebook. Anybody using Facebook instinctively understands this, as they connect with old classmates, friends and relatives. Facebook has become the virtual equivalent of our daily face-to-face lives. Facebook is the best pplace to find out about events that your friends are attending. It offers easy-to-use chat (when it isn't buggy) and email. I recently switched to a Gmail account, which I like, but I still use Facebook for most of my social messaging with friends and family.
Google's service would have to offer some killer app over Facebook to overcome this critical mass factor. Many of us left Myspace for Facebook, because Facebook was easier to use and didn't have all the crap that Myspace had, including all of the horrible page design customization.
Many people will argue that people are motivated to leave Facebook because of Facebook's privacy issues. I have several friends who are paranoid and upset about FB's privacy mess, but face it, most people just don't care that much about tweaking their privacy settings. That's why *social* media has exploded in popularity, because most people want to share things publicly and have open social lives. Facebook's privacy settings are adequate for the majority of FB users. Those folks who are concerned with privacy and security are going to be equally skeptical of Google, which everybody knows is primarily a data-mining business.
Wow! They are going to have to ban most of the British government's own websites, as they are part of an international terrorist network. Good luck with that!
Somewhere, Edward Tufte is rolling over in his bed.
This guy just doesn't get human nature or economics. People will always give away their work for free, or at least volunteer on cooperative projects, even when the economy is bad. I've technically been "unemployed" for several years as a tech worker (I'm a poorly paid freelancer), but I still give away large amounts of my time and sweat equity to community projects and organizations. People aren't going to stop sharing just because of bad economic times. This article also ignores the fact that FOSS software is more important in a poor economy because it is FREE, as in free beer. If I had to pay for the software to run all of my websites and servers, I could never do what I'm doing now as a freelancer.
I have to agree with the person who wrote somewhere in this thread about how a faked lack of IT skills will manifest themselves quickly when somebody takes the job. If you don't know it, it will show pretty quickly. The exception to this would probably be small companies and organizations where there aren't other IT staff to notice somebody's lack of knowledge.
I've been in the IT job market for several years, so I've seen how interviewers conduct interviews. (I'm going to another interview in a few hours). One trend I've spotted in recent years is the use of more testing by employers, including lots of stupid shit like aptitude testing. Now I can understand testing a person's level of knowledge on PHP, Java or C++, but what the hell does an intelligence test tell an employer?
I've been in the IT profession for almost 20 years and I have a master's degree in a related field. I apply for jobs in IT and in this other field. I'm a veteran web developer who is currently trying to learn Java, just so I can be somewhat familiar with programming. Mt IT skills are fairly broad and solid, but I'll freely admit to employers that my skill levels need work here and there. I've been a freelancer for years and otherwise have an unconventional resume. I have excellent social skills, am equally talented in tech and the creative side (also have an art degree). I also have lots of life experience that you would think an employer would appreciate. I'm pretty modest about my knowledge and accomplishment. I get lots of interviews, but never a job offer. I'll add that my interview skills and demeanor are solid.
I guess I'm mystified as to what employers are really looking for. It can't be experience, because I've interviewed for plenty of jobs where my experience should have trumped any other candidate. It can't be about teamwork, because I have social skills and can joke and schmooze with interviewers. Do employers really just prefer young people? Are they really that narrow-minded to reject a person with a good resume because they don't have much experience with some minor XYZ platform?
The problem with testing is that it adds another layer of mistrust in the job interview process. Hiring has already turned into a process where employers present a paranoid attitude towards potential employees. There is the testing, the reference checks, the Googling, the background and credit checks, and much more. What employers don't get is that all of this *encourages* lying and deception among job candidates. They look at all of this and think, "Everybody must be cheating. I have to pay the rent so I have to cheat too."
You don't think people can cheat on tests? I really don't like cheating on tests, but last week a temp agency asked me to take an online IT test again so they could resubmit the test results to an employer. They gave me the wink that it was OK to look up answers while taking the test. My test results were higher the second time, but I had been happy with the results the first time.
Several people here have pointed out several methods where employers can ask IT applicants to submit code samples or answer code questions during an interview. This seems to be a fair method, as long as applicants are warned beforehand.
After several years of job interviews, and based on what I've experienced with incompetent co-workers in the past, let me suggest that employers move to a quicker method of filling jobs. Skim the resumes you get to determine which ones *generally* match the skills you are looking for, then pick a resume at random and hire that person.
I'm a librarian although I currently don't work in a library. I've also been involved with digital libraries since the early 1990s, when 95% of the population had never heard of the Internet.
We now can do some amazing things with the Internet, yet public libraries are busier than ever. I challenge any of the readers here to find a public library in the middle of the afternoon which is deserted. You'll have a difficult time.
Public libraries offer many services now that go beyond their traditional role of providing reference and printed materials. What's really amazing is that many people still use libraries to borrow books. Most libraries out there report heavy usage of their printed materials. This is the main reason why public libraries won't disappear by 2019 or by 2050. People still read books. The percentage of the population who reads books may have dropped, but there are still lots of people out there who read books.
The problem is mostly with the other users. The administrators are a problem in that they help implement many pointless bureaucratic guidelines.
I'm a librarian and professional writer who has contributed to Wikipedia over the years, but have gotten tired of the bullshit created by other users. At this point I'm contributing more to other online open wiki projects. Wikipedia has lots of excellent content, but some pages just can't be changed because some people have staked them out as their turf and refuse to allow any edits. I know of pages that are clearly POV and inaccurate, but if I or anybody else tries to revise them and significantly change them, we'll be baited into violating the "three revert rule" or otherwise be harassed by the resident zealots.
Wikipedia itself has implemented some stupid policies and some unintentionally hilarious policies. The decision this year to start removing images from thousands of pages because of copyright concerns is just insanity to the nth degree. Whoever made this decision doesn't understand current copyright law, because their policy about images is even more draconian than the current draconian copyright law. Many images have been removed from pages that aren't violating any copyrights. But if Wikipedia admins want to piss on their product with stupid decisions like this, then they'll only drive more people away.
My favorite hilarious example of current Wikipedia stupidity is the warning tag attached to many pages that says "Trivia sections are discouraged by Wikipedia." Uh, guys, Wikipedia is primarily an encyclopedia about popular culture. Putting these warnings over trivia sections that won't be removed is just silly. The trivia sections are why people use Wikipedia. Another funny development is the proliferation of tagging of pages for being "stubs" and poorly sourced. Hello? After years of criticism, Wikipedia is just now getting self-conscious about its veracity? Funny!
I run a news site that is indexed by Google News. As much as I'm anti-copyright and for open access to information, this move by Google really bothers me. This commenting feature really crosses the line. If Google is going to allow people to comment on stories from our service outside of our service, I want a cut of the money that Google makes off of using our content for free. This is only fair if Google is allowing people to comment on stories in a way that is outside the control of our website.
Do no evil? Google is really turning out to be the next Microsoft. Greedy and determined to control everything at any cost.
This will probably create a flurry of new lawsuits by larger news services.
I've run a fairly popular independent news site for several years and I have experience with the Indymedia network. I also participate on Wikipedia. When Wikinews launched, I could see right away that the Wikipedia project was getting in over their collective heads. It's one thing to luanch successful reference tool projects such as Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and so on, quite another thing to get into the news business. If you are familiar with how the news media works and how the new forms of online news work, the problems with Wikinews should be obvious. The main problem with Wikinews is that it isn't fast enough for the news cycle. It's one thing to tinker with and edit a Wikipedia article over weeks and months. A news site has to be publishing new stories throughout the day. This rapid turnover of stories is too much for something that relies on collaborative news editing. Another problem with collaborative news editing is that journalism is hard. It's not about writing a Wikipedia entry on some subject you are a fanboy about. Writing good news stories involves research, good writing, talking to sources, doing more research, and so on. Finding people who have the skills and determination to do this for FREE is difficult. Indymedia started in 1999 as an independent news network. It's been very successful, but almost every Indymedia local site suffers from a lack of original stories on local news. It's easy to write an account about a protest or an op-ed about Bush, but putting together a story on a local issue is difficult. There is a reason why the conventional wisdom in the mainstream media is that it costs money to do local news. Another reason why Wikinews failed to catch on is because there are already a plethora of excellent news sites, ranging from the big boys like CNN and the New York Times, to hundreds of small independent sites. Wikipedia made a splash because there weren't really any online encyclopedias that allowed open, mass participation. Wikinews just isn't anything new or special.
"Voter turnout is low because of stupidity & apathy." Sorry, this is just an old wives tale about nonvoters. Most nonvoters refuse to vote because they see the system as being corrupt and irrelevant to their lives. People are not ignorant about the fact that the American political system sucks. In fact, the approval rating for Congress among ALL voting age Americans is incredibly low. If voting changed anything they wuld make it illegal.
Really, Slashdot, are you pandering after the Digg crowd with trivia like this? Slashdot set the standard for technology news so please give us news content with some substance. Then we can have some intelligent discussions instead of this one about how trivial this story is.
Yes, you are right about anarchy being about a different form of organization, not just any kind of organization. And as usual, the Slashdot fanboys have missed the point about the use of the word "anarchy." Yes, dictionaries define anarchy as being synonymous with "chaos," but that association was created by a massive historical effort by the authorities and the media to confuse the public about the meaning of the word "anarchy." Anarchism and anarchy are about different forms of social organization, not about "chaos." The English language is very flexible about using words to mean many different things, so even us anarchists have to live with the misuse of "anarchy" to mean chaos. But the reason why I bring this up here is that the word was misused in the context of the free software movement and Wikipedia, which have both been described as examples of "anarchy in action." In the correct political sense. More anarchy would be a positive development for Wikipedia.
"It cites Firefox, MySQL and (more recently) Wikipedia as examples of projects that do not simply allow anarchy to rein in..."
As an anarchist geek, let me point out that this is a wrong use of the word "anarchy." Anarchism is a political philosophy that is FOR organization. Many people have described Wikipedia as an example of "anarchism in action" and they aren't misusing the word instead of using "chaos." The free software/open source (FOSS) movement is another example of anarchism in action and includes many actual anarchists working on various projects.
Find out more about anarchism at http://www.infoshop.org/ (where half of the visitors are using Firefox and other open source browsers)
There was some study years ago that found that "hit" records and popular artists were the result of a mostly arbitrary process. In other words, there are probably as many good artists, if not many more, than the popular ones that dominate the airwaves and music sales.
There are other factors that account for popularity, of course, such as the concentration of the music industry, payola, real talent, sex appeal, and so on.
What mystifies me is the popularity of classic rock stations on the radio. Why is the crap of the 1970 and 1980s considered "classic" today? Just because those bands and those songs were popular 25 years ago? Journey? REO Speedwagon? Come on. Much of that "classic" rock was crap. It was popular crap. And why are certain popular songs "classic" when there may have been better songs on those albums?
You would think that putting "Always turn TPS reports in on time" on my resume would land me more interviews!
Which methods? If people are going to say stuff about professors, you need to back up your accusations.
Churchill's research and teaching are impeccable. The University of Colorado set up a committee to investigate Churchill (in violation of that university's rules) and so far have failed to turn up anything wrong with Churchill's research.
Professors should have the right to express *any* opinion they want to express. The same goes for students. That's what a universities are about--they are supposed to be places for people to exchange ideas. All of this controversy over left wing professors is just more extremist right wing inability to live with people who think differently. Hopefully, more sensible conservatives will speak up for intellectual and academic freedom.
Ward Churchill is NOT a nutjob professor. His writing and teaching is widely respected. You may not agree with his views, but that doesn't make him a nutjob. I'm willing to bet that you haven't read ONE of Churchill's many books.
I have a homework assignment for you. Go out and buy Churchill's new book on the forced assimilation programs that were inflicted on Native American youth for decades. Come back here and explain to everybody what in that book makes Churchill a nutjob.
Eveybody knows that the American educational system is messed up. Instead of blaming the victims of this system, we should really analyze what the problems are and what works in terms of solutions. The educational system is designed to make children hate learning. There is too much emphasis on discipline, order, tests, and grading. Kids that can't sit still are forced onto drugs. What we need is a system that encourages *learning* and exploration. This means getting kids to enjoy reading, which is a fundamental building block when it comes to lifelong learning.
Schools need to be deconstructed and integrated into the everyday life of the community, which would mean more kids getting out of the school into workplaces, musuems, forests and so on. The hierarchies in schools need to be eliminated--all useless personnel such as principals have to go.
On a related note, it should be pointed out that the "smart" kids who go onto Ivy League colleges aren't as smart as they think. Many of these kids are good at tests and playing the system. They tend to lack social skills and think they are god's gift to the world. Given that so many highly educated people will believe nonsense such as Saddamn Hussein having WMDs, we shouldn't set up the people who are good at school as some kind of role model.