Moderators please read the parent before modding up the grandparent. The grandparent starts well reflecting on national interests and then veers into total nonsense.
The EU parliament is waking up to a serious threat to democracies everywhere and this is a case for us to acknowledge them wearing pants.
Now that the Australian government finds itself to be on the same side than China on censorship, I hope their legislators take a second look on the path they have taken for a while, and this apply to a few other Western parliaments as well...
Some 'anonymous terrorists' burned the Reichstag, justifying Hitler's seizure of power. A group called Anonymous has hacked the Australian parliament website, with the purpose of... ?
Either Anonymous is a group of idiotic teenagers who have never opened a history book, either they are organized manipulators who think most people in modern society don't know anything about history.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will contain a new international benchmark for legal frameworks on what is termed intellectual property right enforcement. The content as known to the public is clearly legislative in character. Further, the Council confirms that ACTA includes civil enforcement and criminal law measures. Since there can not be secret objectives regarding legislation in a democracy, the principles established in the ECJ Turco case must be upheld
From TFA:
The inescapable conclusion is that the ACTA approach is hardly standard. Rather, it represents a major shift toward greater secrecy in the negotiation of international treaties on intellectual property in an obvious attempt to avoid public participation and scrutiny.
We are not Anonymous because we hide our names. We are Anonymous because our names mean nothing. We are disillusioned mundane people who are nothing and mean nothing. We are something only as a Legion. We are fans of Fight Club, but without illusions...
Oh wise one, you say your name means nothing, but you seem to take great pain to describe what it means just here....
And tell me, when people you don't like (provocateurs, scammers, agents, police, etc.) do something in your name, how are we (you) going to tell that they are not you?
Of course, and as others have said, who choose to use and to read Slashdot in the first place. It is a very interesting community and I would believe, vastly more influential than what is suggested by the conventionally self-deprecating comments.
I love Slashdot so much that I often find myself worried about the possibility of organized attempts to manipulate the system. The next topic (the 100, 001st): Virtual Money For Real Lobbying, address this very issue, but about other discussion groups. I must say that I am reassured most of the time by the efficiency of the moderating system, with one recent exception: the issue of climate change, on which there have been 5 or 6 stories over the last few days. I admit the topic is controversial to begin with, but the comments I have seen modded down, with the intelligence and tone associated with the scientific minds whom we are used to read around here, and some comments I have seen modded up, left me with the impression of a massive attempt at manipulating the moderation system, only partially successful perhaps.
My immediate reaction was to reflect on what form of comment analysis, statistical or otherwise, would allow confirmation or infirmation of such coordinated attempts. Anyone has an idea on that?
What about a well thought review of search engines privacy policies?
As it stands for me, with the feeble justification of a taken-out-of-context quote (we have already discussed this quote on Slashdot), the credibility of the Mozilla Foundation just went down a notch, and will not go up again until this Asa Dotzler has resigned.
Nothing less. No apologies, no further explanation.
The Wall Street Journal is part of Rupert Murdoch media empire. That's a first point to note.
Secondly, with a title like 'Climategate: Science Is Dying", one can surmise that the object of this article is not an objective reflection over the topic, but just to lay a bit more confusion at the opening of the Copenhagen summit.
And if there is any analogy with Watergate, it is that both stories are about spies breaking in places.
It is true that science is under attack, like it has been in the past when scientists discoveries unsettled vested interests. We are more awed by science for the way it won over organized ignorance, not less.
There seems to be an alternative definition of 'openness' in the corporate environment, in view of Amazon trying to defend from Adobe's accusation of 'not playing with others':
Openness: acting in concert with other vendors to screw consumers
According to this definition, Adobe is comparing itself with Microsoft who, indeed, plays quite well with others...
I agree with you on the idea of not ceding to pessimism as the parent does.
However, another point needs to be made about the parent:
Looking at things from a different angle, you can analyze the present claim grabbing behavior of copyright lobbies to the behavior of companies in unregulated new markets, like railroad, telegraph, etc. Unregulated wild wests where the market can't play its role and where you get monopolies, intimidation, arrested innovation, economic stagnation, government corruption, etc. Quite an unruly state of things.
So it is the copyright lobby and the inadapted organizations backing it acting in an unruly fashion here, not the citizens.
So the governments of the civilized world can pretty well see where their interests lie in this battle.
The manifesto is wonderfully well worded to put things in this perspective for the hard to hear average political representative, and for alerting public opinion as well.
"Engaging with skeptics" is an approach that I find improvised and naive at best.
First on the list of naivete is accepting their self-description as skeptics without any second-thought. They are anything but skeptics. They are out to destroy the legitimacy of climate scientists in public opinion and they use all the dirty tricks in the book toward that objective. Their self-description as skeptics and their talking points have been carefully laid out by PR firms working for powerful vested interests.
Theirs is a concerted strategy to influence public opinion and the last salvo with this "hacking" thing happens just before the Copenhagen summit. She does not even question the legitimacy of those emails.
Engaging with the public and with legitimate political representatives is what climate scientists must do. "Skeptics" doing disinformation should be exposed, not engaged with.
Reading political discourse among most slashdotters is like watching old people fuck. It's messy, clumsy, and a little bit revolting.
You probably mean "the idea of older people fucking", or are you in the habit of watching old people fuck?
Besides, I find the intended meaning of your spur rather murky considering the number of insightful comments on this topic. Although you were rated +5 Funny, I find your attempt messy, clumsy and a little bit revolting.
If ever a committee, whether for the Nobel Peace Prize (which is rather far fetched) or for any other distinction, consider the social import of free and open source software, which is undeniably considerable, they will examine its history and appraise the relative contributions to its development. The social framework in which Linus' contribution, which I greatly appreciate, could be possible at all, has been put in place and is still being attended to and maintained today, by another well known contributor.
You haven't been reading my posts, then. "Moral" rights are a joke, a perverse extension of the idea that the word "artist" should be capitalized. They lead directly from the idea behind long copyrights - not only does the author get to make money past his lifetime, he maintains some control over the work forever.
Mmmh, no. Moral rights would still exist even if copyrights were entirely done with. This what prevents you for making a pornography version of whatever, say LOTR, and still decide to write Tolkien as the author as a kind of dirty marketing ploy. Moral rights are not absolute rights, they are just civil rights applied to literary and artistic works. I don't see the logic that they in themselves justify long term copyrights in any way. Are you some kind of libertarian by any chance?
That guy who put that bug in debian's openssl package (...)
I'd say he was pretty influential.. he ruined nearly my entire week:-)
An entire week? Well that's an annoyance for sure, but console yourself and take a larger view: a couple of days ago here on Slashdot and elsewhere, we were just discussing Microsoft's lost decade.
The delicious irony is the wailing about "author's intent" and bemoaning someone other than the original author covering the same ground coming from a group that would gladly see copyright curtailed so that EVERYONE would be free to butcher an author's vision after a period of time.
The thing about not having copyright on the book is that there could be no 'official' sequels. Everything would be, more or less, fan fiction. Sure, some of that fan fiction could be marketed and sold, but it is not 'official' fan fiction.
Yes. As Aussie has written above : "The travesty here isn't that someone is writing sequels to the original series. The travesty is that his heirs still have a monopoly on the series, 57 years later."
There is also the fact that we are talking here about the moral rights of an author. No one on Slashdot has ever advocated getting away with that. Here, perversely enough, copyrights allow some subsidiary right holders (those who have paid to distribute the work and those who have inherited the profits of it due to the original author) to mess with the moral rights of the author.
I would say that this is a damning example of what happens with copyrights too far extended in time. 15, 25 years perhaps, but not 75 years after the death of the author.
If you trust Bruce Perens, as you obviously do as much as I, believe him when he says (and he insists on it) that without Richard Stallman and the GPL license, there would be no open source community to speak of. It would be a desertic proprietary corporate landscape all around. Stallman's is the single most important and influential contribution to the community, its very foundation. Everyone recognizes it. Where do you come from?
Maybe. But your article wasn't titled Most Influential Open Source Executives. It was Most Influential People. Or are you saying that only executives are people?
If only I had modpoints for the parent...: Vellmont is right on the money on the article's motivation. Someone (Roebot) hastes to make a sarcastic rebuttal. Vellmont answers saying "But your (emphasis mine) article wasn't titled...", Roebot replies with yet more sarcasm, without bothering to add a denial about the 'your article'.
He may yet not be the actual author, but the fact that he does not care to deny it tells me something about his mindset...
Slashdot Mirror
Have the birds carry French baguette. ...Oh wait....
Moderators please read the parent before modding up the grandparent. The grandparent starts well reflecting on national interests and then veers into total nonsense.
The EU parliament is waking up to a serious threat to democracies everywhere and this is a case for us to acknowledge them wearing pants.
The parent is right and should have mentioned that the comparison has been made by no other than the journal Nature.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html
(unfortunately, not full article, another reason to appreciate community efforts like Wikipedia)
Encyclopedia Britannica protested publicly and asked Nature to retract itself.
Nature said OK, we will check our facts again. They did so and confirmed their original results.
I am not surprised to see comments like those of the grandparents reappear. What I find worrisome is to see that they get modded insightful.
Wikipedia is accessible everywhere in the world, to billions (I am tempted to write "billions and billions"...) of people.
It is a game changing accomplishment.
Wikipedia is an accomplishment of immense proportions.
For what is does directly as well as for the example it sets on what is possible on the Internet.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin have made a gesture recognizing this accomplishment, as the mission of Google shares a lot with Wikipedia's.
Kudos to them for applauding the work of a competitor. I raise my hat.
Now that the Australian government finds itself to be on the same side than China on censorship, I hope their legislators take a second look on the path they have taken for a while, and this apply to a few other Western parliaments as well...
Some 'anonymous terrorists' burned the Reichstag, justifying Hitler's seizure of power.
A group called Anonymous has hacked the Australian parliament website, with the purpose of... ?
Either Anonymous is a group of idiotic teenagers who have never opened a history book, either they are organized manipulators who think most people in modern society don't know anything about history.
From the European Parliament (quoted in TFA):
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will contain a new international benchmark for legal frameworks on what is termed intellectual property right enforcement. The content as known to the public is clearly legislative in character. Further, the Council confirms that ACTA includes civil enforcement and criminal law measures. Since there can not be secret objectives regarding legislation in a democracy, the principles established in the ECJ Turco case must be upheld
From TFA:
The inescapable conclusion is that the ACTA approach is hardly standard. Rather, it represents a major shift toward greater secrecy in the negotiation of international treaties on intellectual property in an obvious attempt to avoid public participation and scrutiny.
We are not Anonymous because we hide our names.
We are Anonymous because our names mean nothing.
We are disillusioned mundane people who are nothing and mean nothing.
We are something only as a Legion.
We are fans of Fight Club, but without illusions...
Oh wise one, you say your name means nothing, but you seem to take great pain to describe what it means just here....
And tell me, when people you don't like (provocateurs, scammers, agents, police, etc.) do something in your name, how are we (you) going to tell that they are not you?
'Slashdot' is currently trying to wrap its collective mind around the issue.
Your characterisation of it being of a single mind is a bit premature.
Furthermore, I have seem more (in number as well as in intelligence) comments commending Google's stance than disparaging it...
I credit the moderation system.
Of course, and as others have said, who choose to use and to read Slashdot in the first place. It is a very interesting community and I would believe, vastly more influential than what is suggested by the conventionally self-deprecating comments.
I love Slashdot so much that I often find myself worried about the possibility of organized attempts to manipulate the system. The next topic (the 100, 001st): Virtual Money For Real Lobbying, address this very issue, but about other discussion groups. I must say that I am reassured most of the time by the efficiency of the moderating system, with one recent exception: the issue of climate change, on which there have been 5 or 6 stories over the last few days. I admit the topic is controversial to begin with, but the comments I have seen modded down, with the intelligence and tone associated with the scientific minds whom we are used to read around here, and some comments I have seen modded up, left me with the impression of a massive attempt at manipulating the moderation system, only partially successful perhaps.
My immediate reaction was to reflect on what form of comment analysis, statistical or otherwise, would allow confirmation or infirmation of such coordinated attempts. Anyone has an idea on that?
Why modding me Flamebait?
You may differ with my opinion. It may be strong.
But it is not flaimebait.
Advising users to go leave Google for Bing! (without consulting with the rest of the Mozilla board?) is surely flaimebait.
And yes, I am outraged.
What about a well thought review of search engines privacy policies?
As it stands for me, with the feeble justification of a taken-out-of-context quote (we have already discussed this quote on Slashdot), the credibility of the Mozilla Foundation just went down a notch, and will not go up again until this Asa Dotzler has resigned.
Nothing less. No apologies, no further explanation.
Resign.
The Wall Street Journal is part of Rupert Murdoch media empire. That's a first point to note.
Secondly, with a title like 'Climategate: Science Is Dying", one can surmise that the object of this article is not an objective reflection over the topic, but just to lay a bit more confusion at the opening of the Copenhagen summit.
And if there is any analogy with Watergate, it is that both stories are about spies breaking in places.
It is true that science is under attack, like it has been in the past when scientists discoveries unsettled vested interests. We are more awed by science for the way it won over organized ignorance, not less.
There seems to be an alternative definition of 'openness' in the corporate environment, in view of Amazon trying to defend from Adobe's accusation of 'not playing with others':
Openness: acting in concert with other vendors to screw consumers
According to this definition, Adobe is comparing itself with Microsoft who, indeed, plays quite well with others...
Fascinating...
"The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."
I agree. Unless it hits at 300,000 Km/s, let's say a crash is 'relatively severe'.
I agree with you on the idea of not ceding to pessimism as the parent does.
However, another point needs to be made about the parent:
Looking at things from a different angle, you can analyze the present claim grabbing behavior of copyright lobbies to the behavior of companies in unregulated new markets, like railroad, telegraph, etc. Unregulated wild wests where the market can't play its role and where you get monopolies, intimidation, arrested innovation, economic stagnation, government corruption, etc. Quite an unruly state of things.
So it is the copyright lobby and the inadapted organizations backing it acting in an unruly fashion here, not the citizens.
So the governments of the civilized world can pretty well see where their interests lie in this battle.
The manifesto is wonderfully well worded to put things in this perspective for the hard to hear average political representative, and for alerting public opinion as well.
"Engaging with skeptics" is an approach that I find improvised and naive at best.
First on the list of naivete is accepting their self-description as skeptics without any second-thought. They are anything but skeptics. They are out to destroy the legitimacy of climate scientists in public opinion and they use all the dirty tricks in the book toward that objective. Their self-description as skeptics and their talking points have been carefully laid out by PR firms working for powerful vested interests.
Theirs is a concerted strategy to influence public opinion and the last salvo with this "hacking" thing happens just before the Copenhagen summit. She does not even question the legitimacy of those emails.
Engaging with the public and with legitimate political representatives is what climate scientists must do. "Skeptics" doing disinformation should be exposed, not engaged with.
Reading political discourse among most slashdotters is like watching old people fuck. It's messy, clumsy, and a little bit revolting.
You probably mean "the idea of older people fucking", or are you in the habit of watching old people fuck?
Besides, I find the intended meaning of your spur rather murky considering the number of insightful comments on this topic. Although you were rated +5 Funny, I find your attempt messy, clumsy and a little bit revolting.
And furthermore, the claim that working on such a thing might constitute a bio-hazard might not be far-fetched:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091119121300.htm
as a recent study shows tobacco harboring several human pathogenic bacteria.
If ever a committee, whether for the Nobel Peace Prize (which is rather far fetched) or for any other distinction, consider the social import of free and open source software, which is undeniably considerable, they will examine its history and appraise the relative contributions to its development. The social framework in which Linus' contribution, which I greatly appreciate, could be possible at all, has been put in place and is still being attended to and maintained today, by another well known contributor.
You haven't been reading my posts, then. "Moral" rights are a joke, a perverse extension of the idea that the word "artist" should be capitalized. They lead directly from the idea behind long copyrights - not only does the author get to make money past his lifetime, he maintains some control over the work forever.
Mmmh, no. Moral rights would still exist even if copyrights were entirely done with. This what prevents you for making a pornography version of whatever, say LOTR, and still decide to write Tolkien as the author as a kind of dirty marketing ploy. Moral rights are not absolute rights, they are just civil rights applied to literary and artistic works. I don't see the logic that they in themselves justify long term copyrights in any way. Are you some kind of libertarian by any chance?
That guy who put that bug in debian's openssl package (...)
I'd say he was pretty influential.. he ruined nearly my entire week :-)
An entire week? Well that's an annoyance for sure, but console yourself and take a larger view: a couple of days ago here on Slashdot and elsewhere, we were just discussing Microsoft's lost decade.
The delicious irony is the wailing about "author's intent" and bemoaning someone other than the original author covering the same ground coming from a group that would gladly see copyright curtailed so that EVERYONE would be free to butcher an author's vision after a period of time.
The thing about not having copyright on the book is that there could be no 'official' sequels. Everything would be, more or less, fan fiction. Sure, some of that fan fiction could be marketed and sold, but it is not 'official' fan fiction.
Yes. As Aussie has written above : "The travesty here isn't that someone is writing sequels to the original series. The travesty is that his heirs still have a monopoly on the series, 57 years later."
There is also the fact that we are talking here about the moral rights of an author. No one on Slashdot has ever advocated getting away with that. Here, perversely enough, copyrights allow some subsidiary right holders (those who have paid to distribute the work and those who have inherited the profits of it due to the original author) to mess with the moral rights of the author.
I would say that this is a damning example of what happens with copyrights too far extended in time. 15, 25 years perhaps, but not 75 years after the death of the author.
If you trust Bruce Perens, as you obviously do as much as I, believe him when he says (and he insists on it) that without Richard Stallman and the GPL license, there would be no open source community to speak of. It would be a desertic proprietary corporate landscape all around. Stallman's is the single most important and influential contribution to the community, its very foundation. Everyone recognizes it. Where do you come from?
Maybe. But your article wasn't titled Most Influential Open Source Executives. It was Most Influential People. Or are you saying that only executives are people?
If only I had modpoints for the parent...: Vellmont is right on the money on the article's motivation. Someone (Roebot) hastes to make a sarcastic rebuttal. Vellmont answers saying "But your (emphasis mine) article wasn't titled...", Roebot replies with yet more sarcasm, without bothering to add a denial about the 'your article'.
He may yet not be the actual author, but the fact that he does not care to deny it tells me something about his mindset...