WTF indeed. Let the Slashdot community make a better list. Beginning with some suggestions from TFA (I admit I actually, you know, read it...) comments
Richard Stallman Linus Torvalds Eric S. Raymond Bruce Perens Tim O’Reilly
Also Bob Young & Marc Ewing (Red Hat founders) and Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Google founders)
It surely sucks to be a billionaire and yet realize that you could enjoy the esteem of your peers while still being a billionaire, although perhaps in the low range.
Political and economic liberalism have emerged as massive public movement(s) during the course of the 18th century. Ever since, the anti-liberals have been hard at work and libertarianism is just one late inventions of the right to confuse minds by turning liberalism into its opposite. To convince yourself of this, just look at any libertarian website: on any issue, the right agenda is advanced and the left one attacked or derided.
From now on, it will no longer possible to take refuge in the idea that you can't get fired for keeping with Microsoft.
the CEO that brought TradElect to the LSE, Clara Furse, has left without saying why she was leaving. Sources in the City-London's equivalent of New York City's Wall Street--tell me that TradElect's failure was the final straw for her tenure.
The point that this is a 'cost tax' rather than a 'sin tax' is right on. The term 'Sprite rebellion' sounds like it was brewed in a PR firm, which is quite possibly the case. A Sprite rebellion? Come on!
6 Big Oil firms heavily invested in this? Far from seeing it as a sign that this is not snake oil, I suspect 6 Big Oil firms standing behind the guise of a start-up asking for public money. Perhaps they don't even need the money but they mind not letting this money going into the development of viable alternatives. And if there is an alternative for oil, Big Oil would be the last I would trust into its development.
I would say that this reinforces more the uncontrolled "outlaw" stereotype than the "childish" one, right in line with the Rand Corporation propaganda, which links file sharing to organized crime and terrorism. This precisely and effectively serves that purpose, whoever it is who did this. And I don't find anything redeeming in the fact that it is a brilliant prank or not.
PR footwork for Big Pharma?
on
Cosmetic Neurology
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
There have been a few pieces of that kind in recent months, among those one in The Economist. They all follow the very same scenario and use the same rhetoric. Comments from readers testified of few benefits (confusion and excitation rather than concentration) and dramatic, often tragic side effects, with dependency consequences, etc. Each time the piece resurfaces, none of the downsides are mentioned and the same rhetoric: benign use, everybody uses it, unquestioned efficiency is brought back. Deregulating the sale of those drugs seems to be a coveted objective of Big Pharma and no wonder, considering the fabulous sums involved. Soma anyone?
Studios are notorious for their ingenuity in creating buzz. What a better way to create buzz than to let an unfinished version "leak" and then raise hell in the news about it. How much free publicity has this stunt generated, whether it was done purposefully or not? It would be interesting (and not that difficult) to calculate the dollar value on this. They will fire the guy if they need to, for cover, otherwise, he has either done a good job, or showed the way forward. That being said, the studios are never going to admit that leaking the thing free increased sales, no, they will claim with a straight face that the damage to the industry is in the millions and aggressively lobby for laws that will wield more control into their hands.
Buddha looked around him and saw life as a bondage and full of suffering, as we are subject to our animal instincts, fears, desires, etc. I have read a Chinese erudite who interprets the concept of original sin as a corruption of this buddhist idea into something where we are born as entirely corrupt (while it could be observed that we inherited cooperative instincts as well) and where we inherited guilt from our ancestors, a quite simplistic and vicious turn of a sound observation of our animal and earthy nature.
Compare the resulting mashup of "Just a Lady": http://www.thru-you.com/#/videos/7/ with its main source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAPkRqpZfjE&feature=related
...in whatever order, and you will appreciate the work and artistry involved in these mashups. It is truly amazing, and beautiful.
First, I would like to see comments on Slashdot cease referring to "the Reds" as if the USSR was still in existence. Are some Slashdotters actually young enough to have no memory of 1989-1990??? However and that being said, if Russia goes ahead with this project, it would be clever to agitate for a Sputnik-like panic and suggest that America must beat them to the goal of free software, as the thing that will propel humanity into the future.
Bruce, I am really glad to read your post here. There are only a handful of people who could raise a sound, well articulated platform around this and you are one of them. It is a question of judgment of course, but I personally believe that the Internet communities who have helped Obama reach the presidency would mobilize on the fundamental issues around corporate vs public interests. Over the past couple of years, I have witnessed as a larger proportion of Internet users, even those who are not much computer literate, have awakened to these issues.
I'm glad that Slashdot restores the truth with accurate headlines
I'm glad that this is rated funny, but considering the damage that this disinformation, deliberate or not, can cause to the principle of net neutrality, I suggest that we discuss here on Slashdot the ways to make the Wall Street Journal accountable for this dirty info bomb. Let's leverage Slashdot and the Net to turn the table and question the origin of this story. I know: "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence". Well, if it is only incompetence, let's expose the idiot who wrote this story and if it is something else, let's find out.
Respectfully, I have to tell you I found more heat than light in your argument.
I regret not to have any mod point left to mod parent up. What do you want to see on a news clip on this topic, a team of lawyers including Zittrain, Lessig and Nesson defending a student and successfully taking on the RIAA or egg-throwing people? If you are public relation agents for the RIAA, the second or perhaps even preferably, both!
I was shown an early prototype of that when I visited the Cavendish Laboratory in 1990 and I was most impressed. I wish Plastic Logic the best of luck. Although an E-newspaper is an obvious application, I hope that they quickly move to computer screens. After having worked on back-lit screens for years, which causes considerable eye-strain, limiting my productivity (if not sometimes my very ability to work at all), there is not a day I have not been hoping for this technology to reach the market and I will be one of the early adopter when it comes out. I suspect that I am not alone in this situation.
It is not that I am sick of reading stories by Roland Piquepaille. After all, I can choose not to read them. The problem here is that each time one of his stories appears, Slahsdot readers are brought to question the trust they put into the stories selection process. For me personally, you can add to this the discomfort to think that his stories take the place of an intelligent science posting.
This coming from Virgin, a brand whose business model and valuation depends entirely on its coolness factor... I am speechless...
Napoleon used to say: "I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets."
I hesitate between thanking this guy to state openly what the other ISP's have worked hard to disguise and warning him to watch the speed at which his brand will disintegrate...
Because, indeed, as the parent implies, Virgin's scheme means the end of the Internet as we know it, and we are really, really, not going to be happy about it...
I don't understand your logic. The point of this well documented article is to show that self-interests are at work in those regular shortage claims and that this short-sighted behavior ends up hurting the industry and everyone working in it.
I actually don't believe that on Slashdot, people don't RTFA, but in any case, here is the conclusion of the article. Pretty strong and pretty damning IMHO.
In both cases these efforts have flooded the market with lower-cost foreign workers who are supplanting an already ample field of home-grown IT labor. The result is that the myth of an IT skills shortage could just end up be self-perpetuating.
"The trouble is that it creates a disincentive for Americans to study these technical fields," Wadhwa said. "We're hurting ourselves; computer science enrollment is dropping because the incentive is not there for students to study computer science."
(...) it seems to me that Microsoft's objective with this is actually to press for the standardization of OOXML. How exactly I don't understand, since the whole point of standard document formats is to avoid this same problem that they've just created.
Insightful. The OOXML saga might have prompted Microsoft to update their strategy and their contract (implied, moral and eventually legal) with the user.
Could it be that they think of using the uproar caused by this breach of their moral obligations to claim that their product is wanted? To remind everyone of their ubiquitousness? As a kind of blackmail to large (public) institutional users?
If they succeed in withdrawing support for old formats, they succeed in walking away from being accountable. If they don't and end up having to reinstate support, they can claim that they are working hard for "interoperability" (Imagining Ballmer utter this word gives me goosebumps somehow). Furthermore, in the process of discussing a reinstatement of support with large institutions, they can negotiate some reciprocal support for their OOXML """standard""".
I was going to mod you insightful, but you were already modded 5 Funny. Funny enough but ALSO insightful: brilliant, funny and insightful.... I really hope someone picks this up...
No, I'd go with Fedora. Given Mark Shuttleworth's admiration for Microsoft [markshuttleworth.com] and the Dell/Canonical deal, I wouldn't be surprised if Ubuntu joins Suse in the MS patent blackmail.
RTFA that you yourself link to. Mark Shuttleworth rhetorically "side" with MS to invite them to fight software patents. Of course, idiotic reporting got only the sensasionalist side. I am surprised that you put forward this illiterate reading while pointing to the actual article.
Fully agreed. I switched from leader's names to country's names only to avoid comparing IBM to Stalin, which would be offensive to so steady an ally and deserving our respect, too. Now that you point it out, I should have rewritten the whole thing. We are far from the core discussion but anyhow, we live in a free world thanks to people who gave their lives, and thank you for reminding me.
Slashdot Mirror
WTF indeed. Let the Slashdot community make a better list. Beginning with some suggestions from TFA (I admit I actually, you know, read it...) comments
Richard Stallman
Linus Torvalds
Eric S. Raymond
Bruce Perens
Tim O’Reilly
Also
Bob Young & Marc Ewing (Red Hat founders) and
Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Google founders)
It surely sucks to be a billionaire and yet realize that you could enjoy the esteem of your peers while still being a billionaire, although perhaps in the low range.
Political and economic liberalism have emerged as massive public movement(s) during the course of the 18th century. Ever since, the anti-liberals have been hard at work and libertarianism is just one late inventions of the right to confuse minds by turning liberalism into its opposite. To convince yourself of this, just look at any libertarian website: on any issue, the right agenda is advanced and the left one attacked or derided.
From now on, it will no longer possible to take refuge in the idea that you can't get fired for keeping with Microsoft.
the CEO that brought TradElect to the LSE, Clara Furse, has
left without saying why she was leaving. Sources in the City-London's
equivalent of New York City's Wall Street--tell me that TradElect's
failure was the final straw for her tenure.
The point that this is a 'cost tax' rather than a 'sin tax' is right on. The term 'Sprite rebellion' sounds like it was brewed in a PR firm, which is quite possibly the case. A Sprite rebellion? Come on!
6 Big Oil firms heavily invested in this? Far from seeing it as a sign that this is not snake oil, I suspect 6 Big Oil firms standing behind the guise of a start-up asking for public money. Perhaps they don't even need the money but they mind not letting this money going into the development of viable alternatives. And if there is an alternative for oil, Big Oil would be the last I would trust into its development.
Are not Ballmer intentions to destroy Google notorious ("I will fucking kill them")?
Why should launching a Web OS for netbooks be considered a declaration of war, while launching a search engine (Bing) be considered business as usual?
As another poster wrote, this is called competition and let the better OS win.
I would say that this reinforces more the uncontrolled "outlaw" stereotype than the "childish" one, right in line with the Rand Corporation propaganda, which links file sharing to organized crime and terrorism. This precisely and effectively serves that purpose, whoever it is who did this. And I don't find anything redeeming in the fact that it is a brilliant prank or not.
There have been a few pieces of that kind in recent months, among those one in The Economist. They all follow the very same scenario and use the same rhetoric. Comments from readers testified of few benefits (confusion and excitation rather than concentration) and dramatic, often tragic side effects, with dependency consequences, etc. Each time the piece resurfaces, none of the downsides are mentioned and the same rhetoric: benign use, everybody uses it, unquestioned efficiency is brought back. Deregulating the sale of those drugs seems to be a coveted objective of Big Pharma and no wonder, considering the fabulous sums involved. Soma anyone?
Studios are notorious for their ingenuity in creating buzz. What a better way to create buzz than to let an unfinished version "leak" and then raise hell in the news about it. How much free publicity has this stunt generated, whether it was done purposefully or not? It would be interesting (and not that difficult) to calculate the dollar value on this. They will fire the guy if they need to, for cover, otherwise, he has either done a good job, or showed the way forward. That being said, the studios are never going to admit that leaking the thing free increased sales, no, they will claim with a straight face that the damage to the industry is in the millions and aggressively lobby for laws that will wield more control into their hands.
Buddha looked around him and saw life as a bondage and full of suffering, as we are subject to our animal instincts, fears, desires, etc. I have read a Chinese erudite who interprets the concept of original sin as a corruption of this buddhist idea into something where we are born as entirely corrupt (while it could be observed that we inherited cooperative instincts as well) and where we inherited guilt from our ancestors, a quite simplistic and vicious turn of a sound observation of our animal and earthy nature.
Compare the resulting mashup of "Just a Lady":
http://www.thru-you.com/#/videos/7/
with its main source:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAPkRqpZfjE&feature=related
...in whatever order, and you will appreciate the work and artistry involved in these mashups. It is truly amazing,
and beautiful.
First, I would like to see comments on Slashdot cease referring to "the Reds" as if the USSR was still in existence. Are some Slashdotters actually young enough to have no memory of 1989-1990??? However and that being said, if Russia goes ahead with this project, it would be clever to agitate for a Sputnik-like panic and suggest that America must beat them to the goal of free software, as the thing that will propel humanity into the future.
Bruce, I am really glad to read your post here. There are only a handful of people who could raise a sound, well articulated platform around this and you are one of them. It is a question of judgment of course, but I personally believe that the Internet communities who have helped Obama reach the presidency would mobilize on the fundamental issues around corporate vs public interests. Over the past couple of years, I have witnessed as a larger proportion of Internet users, even those who are not much computer literate, have awakened to these issues.
9mm.
Applied with the requisite amount of cordite to the back of Rupert Murdoch's head.
I am not kidding.
You, Sir, are a Troll, kidding or not.
I'm glad that Slashdot restores the truth with accurate headlines
I'm glad that this is rated funny, but considering the damage that this disinformation, deliberate or not, can cause to the principle of net neutrality, I suggest that we discuss here on Slashdot the ways to make the Wall Street Journal accountable for this dirty info bomb. Let's leverage Slashdot and the Net to turn the table and question the origin of this story. I know: "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence". Well, if it is only incompetence, let's expose the idiot who wrote this story and if it is something else, let's find out.
Respectfully, I have to tell you I found more heat than light in your argument.
I regret not to have any mod point left to mod parent up. What do you want to see on a news clip on this topic, a team of lawyers including Zittrain, Lessig and Nesson defending a student and successfully taking on the RIAA or egg-throwing people? If you are public relation agents for the RIAA, the second or perhaps even preferably, both!
I was shown an early prototype of that when I visited the Cavendish Laboratory in 1990 and I was most impressed. I wish Plastic Logic the best of luck. Although an E-newspaper is an obvious application, I hope that they quickly move to computer screens. After having worked on back-lit screens for years, which causes considerable eye-strain, limiting my productivity (if not sometimes my very ability to work at all), there is not a day I have not been hoping for this technology to reach the market and I will be one of the early adopter when it comes out. I suspect that I am not alone in this situation.
It is not that I am sick of reading stories by Roland Piquepaille. After all, I can choose not to read them. The problem here is that each time one of his stories appears, Slahsdot readers are brought to question the trust they put into the stories selection process. For me personally, you can add to this the discomfort to think that his stories take the place of an intelligent science posting.
This coming from Virgin, a brand whose business model and valuation depends entirely on its coolness factor... I am speechless...
Napoleon used to say: "I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets."
I hesitate between thanking this guy to state openly what the other ISP's have worked hard to disguise and warning him to watch the speed at which his brand will disintegrate...
Because, indeed, as the parent implies, Virgin's scheme means the end of the Internet as we know it, and we are really, really, not going to be happy about it...
I actually don't believe that on Slashdot, people don't RTFA, but in any case, here is the conclusion of the article. Pretty strong and pretty damning IMHO.
Insightful. The OOXML saga might have prompted Microsoft to update their strategy and their contract (implied, moral and eventually legal) with the user.
Could it be that they think of using the uproar caused by this breach of their moral obligations to claim that their product is wanted? To remind everyone of their ubiquitousness? As a kind of blackmail to large (public) institutional users?
If they succeed in withdrawing support for old formats, they succeed in walking away from being accountable. If they don't and end up having to reinstate support, they can claim that they are working hard for "interoperability" (Imagining Ballmer utter this word gives me goosebumps somehow). Furthermore, in the process of discussing a reinstatement of support with large institutions, they can negotiate some reciprocal support for their OOXML """standard""".
Just thinking aloud...
I was going to mod you insightful, but you were already modded 5 Funny. Funny enough but ALSO insightful: brilliant, funny and insightful.... I really hope someone picks this up...
RTFA that you yourself link to. Mark Shuttleworth rhetorically "side" with MS to invite them to fight software patents. Of course, idiotic reporting got only the sensasionalist side. I am surprised that you put forward this illiterate reading while pointing to the actual article.
Fully agreed. I switched from leader's names to country's names only to avoid comparing IBM to Stalin, which would be offensive to so steady an ally and deserving our respect, too. Now that you point it out, I should have rewritten the whole thing. We are far from the core discussion but anyhow, we live in a free world thanks to people who gave their lives, and thank you for reminding me.