Hmm, perhaps somethink along the same lines as Advogato could be applied here. It's a weblog like/. but instead of a moderation system it relies on a "trust metric" where users are certified by other users ensuring that people with relevence to the field are given more of a voice. Of course, it's not a perfect system but it would definitely be more productive than/.'s moderation system for an online journal.
You'd also need more advanced formatting (perhaps a LaTeX to HTML converter since LaTeX seems to be the preferred choice for writing papers) so that equations, tables and graphs could be included in both the paper and responses, a decent search engine with multiple criteria for finding articles/comments.
I think you could do this now, but it would be a very difficult project to code. Still, maybe someone out there's working on it?
The immeadiate benefit of this kind of thing over current distributed services such as FreeNet is of course the fact that data stored on LOCKSS will be permanently available irrespective of how many times people actually request that page. On FreeNet a page is only kept on the network for as long as people are actually requesting the page - there is a "decay" of old information which makes it unsuitable for this kind of guaranteed archival.
The other advantage of the LOCKSS system is that it maintains a certain number of redundant copies across the network, and regularly checks these against each other to ensure that the integrity of each copy is undisturbed by accidents and general bit rot. This system could keep data in pristine form for an indefinite amount of time - as long as the system runs the data is available and correct.
But as for its use as an archive for other kinds of content as suggested in the story? Well, given that it doesn't appear to be anonymous like FreeNet, the same problems that we're now seeing with Napster will undoubtedly occur, and given that the whole point of the system is to keep files on there no matter what happens, the people running the LOCKSS servers will want to keep a close eye on what goes onto the system since removal will be fairly difficult. I doubt that it'll take off for this kind of purpose without the guaranteed anonymity that FreeNet has.
Another related project worth a look at is the Internet Archive which provides snapshots of public Internet sites for researchers.
Okay, maybe I'm not getting it, but the following quote interests me:
Now, lest anyone get confused, this thing has to be plugged into a wall. It's not a laptop, so there's no battery.
I can see the point of small, portable computers, but if this has to be plugged into a power socket somewhere, what makes this better to own or use than a laptop, palmtop or even a desktop PC?
This isn't meant as flamebait, but is it my imagination or are a lot of people here on/. more fanatical about pushing Linux than the actual people who write it and/or make money from it? The tone of Bob Young's article is extremely reasonable, and that in itself makes a good statement about the open source "community", but there are a lot of very extreme viewpoints pushed in this forum which do give rise to the opinion that all Linux users are zealots.
Personally I think that as Linux enters a new phase in which it becomes more widely known and used and is seen less as a hobbyist's OS it will require more people who are seen to be sensible and open-minded than those who already know the "truth". And on/. I see a lot of zealots doing this, which makes it harder for those posters trying to make a good point (and there are a lot) to be heard.
I agree with this statement in general, of course there is always the possiblity of the fanatical getting hold of this kind of weapon. The reason WMD have preserved global peace so well is that national leaders realise the damage that would come in retaliation, and they care about this. But fanatics could set off one of these (easier with the advent of portable nukes) with no intention of surviving it. This is IMHO the biggest danger from the invention of this weapon.
The reason this is a problem is that the defence against this type of weapon always lags behind the offence. It is always technologically easier to destroy than it is to defend, and so there is always a period between when a weapon is invented and when its defence is invented during which the weapon is at its most dangerous. And at the moment we are in this stage, so anyone with a nuke has a lot of power.
Given the licensing terms of the GPL, the money required for commerical Linux ventures has to come from somewhere. The first way that was found was through support deals a la Red Hat, SuSe et al, and now these people have found a new way, through sponsership. It's a valid option, and one long tried and tested within all kinds of markets.
In today's world having a recognisable "name" is of paramount importance to any corporation which wants to make money. A product branded with a well-recognised name will outsell a superior or cheaper one lacking a name, as a trip into any supermarket will show you. And in the rocky world of dot-coms, having the leading name in their field is probably the only way they'll make any money in the near future.
So IMHO you can expect to see more of this kind of sponsership in the future, since it makes sense for all concerned - the project gains some money to pay developers and so on and the sponser gains recognition and "mindshare" (ugh) for a relatively small outlay. And considering some of the budgets the dot-coms have for advertising, this is extremely small change.
At the current rate, it won't be long before the powers that be decide to make only logged-in anonymous posts possible, and delete the accounts and the posts of trolls and flamers. Then Slashdot would be effectively troll-proof and you'd never be able to post here again.
I troll here on/. on a semi-regular basis, and I always do in using anonymous posts whilst logged in. It certainly hasn't caused me any problems, so I doubt that part of your argument would stand up.
As for the rest, you're confusing the small numbers of troll posts with the large number of spam posts here on/. Trolls can add value, spam never does.
I remember this from the heady days of the Sinclair Spectrum - you had a screen full of "grass" (green squares) and a man with a lawnmower. Your mission was to cut all the grass, upon which you were greeted with the next level - another screen full of grass! Endless hours of mowing fun:)
Hmm, I'm not amazingly well read up on these things myself, but it was my view that XHTML is a well-formed version of HTML. It's really the follow on to HTML 4, but instead of being HTML 5 it will be XHTML 1.0. It is designed to be portable across all kinds of applications and platforms, and the fact that it is well-formed means that the applications required to view it will be simpler than today's browsers. Also, since it is XML-based, new elements can simply be added to the existing DTD rather than having to rewrite it from scratch.
Anyway, what is XHTML and how does it differ from HTML? Well, the following points apply:
All XTHML tags and attributes must be lowercase.
All tags must be closed. This means that tags which are currently not closed, such as must close themselves e.g. . Also, nested tags must be closed as well, and closed in the order they were nested in.
Attribute values must be quoted. So no more BORDER=0 - it must become border="0".
Attribute value pairs cannot be minimised. So instead of tags like you must instead write .
Well, I certainly think that it's about control as well as money and legality. At the moment the RIAA companies pretty much dominate the entire music industry, and their word is law, quite literally in some cases it seems.
New technologies like Napster don't really lose them any money, as they very well know, but bypass the channels that they have established between the listener and the artist. If this sort of thing continues, then they could find themselves entirelly pushed out of this channel, and that is what they are fighting to preserve IMHO. I'm sure they view it as a matter of survival, and they're probably right.
As for your idea, it'd make great publicity if enough people did it, but I doubt it'd force the record companies to give up, for the reasons I've explained above.
Yeah, that's a great idea, but now that the whole thing's started it's probably too late for Metallica to back down and admit that Napster is a good idea for them. Plus, their record company/management certainly won't want to do this - they've got a lot more tied up in it than the band itself.
I can see how this would mollify the bands themselves if it happened enough times, but for the people behind the bands it's less about the money and more about control over distribution. Even if Napster was a sure-fire way to make money (which unfortunately it's not) they would still want to crush it or control it, whichever was better for them. Sad, but true.
Sorry to see you got the infamous -1 treatment from/. I know I've flamed you a couple of times recently, but only when I thought you deserved it, but it seems like a few people have been hounding you. They've given up now from what I've read of their posts, but you're still stuck with the -1 from flaming them back.
Have you E-mailed the/. crew about it? You were quite offensive a couple of times, but not enough to deserve the -1 default (well, I don't think anyone deserves that). Anyway, good luck:)
You get a life, I didn't use my plus one bonus, my default level just happens to be 2. If there were a -1 bonus I'd probably use it for shit like this so I don't have to listen to you little pussies bitch and moan, but there ain't one.
WTF? Your +1 bonus is on by default - it is turned off by the checkbox above the submit button. Please, stop making nonsense posts using your +1 bonus.
I will now post this without the +1 bonus I have, since it is not worth using it.
In principle I don't see a problem with this - my personal belief on the subject is that life *could* form wherever there is a system of sufficient complexity, no matter the exact details of that system. So if you had enough "macroatoms" or whatever, the gravitational force could cause this to happen.
But the real killer is the timescale. Bearing in mind how many times smaller than the electrmagnetic force gravity is, the timescale would be correspondingly larger - rather than a ~10^9 second lifespan like we have, an equivalent gravitational being's lifespan would be ~10^49 seconds long, but for it, that time would seem the same length as a human lifespan.
In that length of time, the structure of the Universe will change. Spacetime will expand, leading to increased delays for communication between different components of the entity, stars will die, galaxies will collide, black holes will form and entropy in general will increase. The lifespan of this entity would be so great that by the time it could have formed, either all protons in the Universe will have decayed, all matter will be in slowly evaporating black holes, or we'll have had the Big Crunch.
So I think it's possible in principal, but not in practice. Of course, I could be totally wrong here:)
Thanks to Rev. Null for this tip, go to Customise Comments and save the page as HTML. Find the FORM tag and change the action to point to http://slashdot.org/users.pl, and then look down for the "SELECT name=uthreshold" tag. Under that, find the "OPTION selected value=-1" tag and change the -1 to a -5.
Save the page, load it in your browser, set your threshold to -1 in the list and submit it. Lo and behold, you can now see comments all the way down to -5. The/. censorhip is defeated:)
The "./ IANAL crowd" is the most important group to listen to because they represent a general morality, not a legal interpertation.
Okay, that's a very interesting interpretation of the IANAL crowd, and one worth bearing in mind whenever you read such a post. However, the thing is that often they don't seem to realise this themselves, and get caught up in poor legalese. This is what some more expert opinion would alleviate. Once there are some facts available, informed discussion, which is much more productive, can take place.
The law is only right when the majority supports it, and the lawyers and music industry are far from a majority.
But unfortunately, change is slow, and we have to deal with the law as it stands, which means that lawyers are a necessary evil. And they might be minorities, but they're very vocal and influential ones in America, whereas the voice of reason is much less heard by those in power.
First, I'm into trance, a form of eletronic music, that I can't seem to buy ANYWHERE, not even online. Sure I can find some albums every once and awhile, but most of the time the stores have never heard of what I'm looking for, can't get it, or it will take weeks to get, etc...
I take it you mean the harder trance stuff rather than the progressive house stuff that's so prevalent today. I'm personally into acid techno and minimal techno, and they're even harder to find - it's all on vinyl as singles, and mixes are as rare as gold. In fact, finding it on Napster is still a challenge.
Actually, if you're in the US then I can imagine it's pretty hard to find decent stuff. I know dance music is just about taking off over there - there's quite a big acid techno scene in NY nowadays, but it's not quite as universal as it is here in the UK and across Europe.
Try Hard To Find Records for decent stuff, and they do worldwide delivery as well. Okay, it's not free, but it's better than the local store I'm sure;)
OTOH Lavey (founder of the Church of Satan) had some pretty interesting (though at times admittedly strange) ideas. [This comment is probably going to make me quite unpopular in this thread, methinks].
Well, not in my case anyway:) I'd agree with you there, the ideas of the Church of Satan are fascinating and IMHO a lot closer to human nature than most religions I've encountered. And it's not really a "religion" in the traditional sense - it's more about the self than anything else. The central idea is that there is no entity called "Satan" or whatever - it is an integral part of every person and should be accepted. Anton La Vey has got some great ideas and shouldn't be dismissed for his use of the word Satan.
Maybe rather than that,/. should get someone in with some legal experiance to write about these kinds of issues. After all they've already got Jon Katz in to cover "social" issues, why not a lawyer as well? Since there has been an awful lot of legal stuff posted on/. in the last year or so this would seem to make sense.
Of course, we could instead rely on the "informative" opinions of the/. IANAL crowd instead, to get the balanced opinions we know and love:)
Thank you for all of your excellent posts which have amused me whenever I've found them. It's rare to find such quality and informative stuff here on/.:) Keep and the good work and don't let the clown get you!
That's not quite it - you can truncate all posts after a certain number of lines, but a 5 rated post with 60 lines I'd want to read, but a -1 post with 60 lines of spam is just taking up space. And you can only mark long comments up, not down.
Kind of offtopic, but anyway. I browse at -1 since I like to be able to see everything, but the posts below that consist of endless copies of "DEEZ NUTZ IS SUX0RED BY SLASHDOT" is very annoying and makes/. take a lot longer to load.
Could we have it so that comments at -1 are cut off at 15 lines or so, with the "Read the rest of this comment..." link after that? It's a simple solution IMHO to the cut-n-paste spammers, and doesn't require any changes to the moderation system.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, perhaps somethink along the same lines as Advogato could be applied here. It's a weblog like /. but instead of a moderation system it relies on a "trust metric" where users are certified by other users ensuring that people with relevence to the field are given more of a voice. Of course, it's not a perfect system but it would definitely be more productive than /.'s moderation system for an online journal.
You'd also need more advanced formatting (perhaps a LaTeX to HTML converter since LaTeX seems to be the preferred choice for writing papers) so that equations, tables and graphs could be included in both the paper and responses, a decent search engine with multiple criteria for finding articles/comments.
I think you could do this now, but it would be a very difficult project to code. Still, maybe someone out there's working on it?
Imagine - the slashdot collection. 23 square miles of library, every story and comment ever posted!
Heh, you'd have a whole corridor devoted to books full of "First Post!" comments. First Post Hall maybe?
The immeadiate benefit of this kind of thing over current distributed services such as FreeNet is of course the fact that data stored on LOCKSS will be permanently available irrespective of how many times people actually request that page. On FreeNet a page is only kept on the network for as long as people are actually requesting the page - there is a "decay" of old information which makes it unsuitable for this kind of guaranteed archival.
The other advantage of the LOCKSS system is that it maintains a certain number of redundant copies across the network, and regularly checks these against each other to ensure that the integrity of each copy is undisturbed by accidents and general bit rot. This system could keep data in pristine form for an indefinite amount of time - as long as the system runs the data is available and correct.
But as for its use as an archive for other kinds of content as suggested in the story? Well, given that it doesn't appear to be anonymous like FreeNet, the same problems that we're now seeing with Napster will undoubtedly occur, and given that the whole point of the system is to keep files on there no matter what happens, the people running the LOCKSS servers will want to keep a close eye on what goes onto the system since removal will be fairly difficult. I doubt that it'll take off for this kind of purpose without the guaranteed anonymity that FreeNet has.
Another related project worth a look at is the Internet Archive which provides snapshots of public Internet sites for researchers.
Okay, maybe I'm not getting it, but the following quote interests me:
Now, lest anyone get confused, this thing has to be plugged into a wall. It's not a laptop, so there's no battery.
I can see the point of small, portable computers, but if this has to be plugged into a power socket somewhere, what makes this better to own or use than a laptop, palmtop or even a desktop PC?
This isn't meant as flamebait, but is it my imagination or are a lot of people here on /. more fanatical about pushing Linux than the actual people who write it and/or make money from it? The tone of Bob Young's article is extremely reasonable, and that in itself makes a good statement about the open source "community", but there are a lot of very extreme viewpoints pushed in this forum which do give rise to the opinion that all Linux users are zealots.
Personally I think that as Linux enters a new phase in which it becomes more widely known and used and is seen less as a hobbyist's OS it will require more people who are seen to be sensible and open-minded than those who already know the "truth". And on /. I see a lot of zealots doing this, which makes it harder for those posters trying to make a good point (and there are a lot) to be heard.
I agree with this statement in general, of course there is always the possiblity of the fanatical getting hold of this kind of weapon. The reason WMD have preserved global peace so well is that national leaders realise the damage that would come in retaliation, and they care about this. But fanatics could set off one of these (easier with the advent of portable nukes) with no intention of surviving it. This is IMHO the biggest danger from the invention of this weapon.
The reason this is a problem is that the defence against this type of weapon always lags behind the offence. It is always technologically easier to destroy than it is to defend, and so there is always a period between when a weapon is invented and when its defence is invented during which the weapon is at its most dangerous. And at the moment we are in this stage, so anyone with a nuke has a lot of power.
Given the licensing terms of the GPL, the money required for commerical Linux ventures has to come from somewhere. The first way that was found was through support deals a la Red Hat, SuSe et al, and now these people have found a new way, through sponsership. It's a valid option, and one long tried and tested within all kinds of markets.
In today's world having a recognisable "name" is of paramount importance to any corporation which wants to make money. A product branded with a well-recognised name will outsell a superior or cheaper one lacking a name, as a trip into any supermarket will show you. And in the rocky world of dot-coms, having the leading name in their field is probably the only way they'll make any money in the near future.
So IMHO you can expect to see more of this kind of sponsership in the future, since it makes sense for all concerned - the project gains some money to pay developers and so on and the sponser gains recognition and "mindshare" (ugh) for a relatively small outlay. And considering some of the budgets the dot-coms have for advertising, this is extremely small change.
At the current rate, it won't be long before the powers that be decide to make only logged-in anonymous posts possible, and delete the accounts and the posts of trolls and flamers. Then Slashdot would be effectively troll-proof and you'd never be able to post here again.
I troll here on /. on a semi-regular basis, and I always do in using anonymous posts whilst logged in. It certainly hasn't caused me any problems, so I doubt that part of your argument would stand up.
As for the rest, you're confusing the small numbers of troll posts with the large number of spam posts here on /. Trolls can add value, spam never does.
I remember this from the heady days of the Sinclair Spectrum - you had a screen full of "grass" (green squares) and a man with a lawnmower. Your mission was to cut all the grass, upon which you were greeted with the next level - another screen full of grass! Endless hours of mowing fun :)
Hmm, I'm not amazingly well read up on these things myself, but it was my view that XHTML is a well-formed version of HTML. It's really the follow on to HTML 4, but instead of being HTML 5 it will be XHTML 1.0. It is designed to be portable across all kinds of applications and platforms, and the fact that it is well-formed means that the applications required to view it will be simpler than today's browsers. Also, since it is XML-based, new elements can simply be added to the existing DTD rather than having to rewrite it from scratch.
Anyway, what is XHTML and how does it differ from HTML? Well, the following points apply:
For an overview of all things XHTML, see here.
I think you fooled them anyway... :) Good question though, just the wrong person.
Well, I certainly think that it's about control as well as money and legality. At the moment the RIAA companies pretty much dominate the entire music industry, and their word is law, quite literally in some cases it seems.
New technologies like Napster don't really lose them any money, as they very well know, but bypass the channels that they have established between the listener and the artist. If this sort of thing continues, then they could find themselves entirelly pushed out of this channel, and that is what they are fighting to preserve IMHO. I'm sure they view it as a matter of survival, and they're probably right.
As for your idea, it'd make great publicity if enough people did it, but I doubt it'd force the record companies to give up, for the reasons I've explained above.
Yeah, that's a great idea, but now that the whole thing's started it's probably too late for Metallica to back down and admit that Napster is a good idea for them. Plus, their record company/management certainly won't want to do this - they've got a lot more tied up in it than the band itself.
I can see how this would mollify the bands themselves if it happened enough times, but for the people behind the bands it's less about the money and more about control over distribution. Even if Napster was a sure-fire way to make money (which unfortunately it's not) they would still want to crush it or control it, whichever was better for them. Sad, but true.
Sorry to see you got the infamous -1 treatment from /. I know I've flamed you a couple of times recently, but only when I thought you deserved it, but it seems like a few people have been hounding you. They've given up now from what I've read of their posts, but you're still stuck with the -1 from flaming them back.
Have you E-mailed the /. crew about it? You were quite offensive a couple of times, but not enough to deserve the -1 default (well, I don't think anyone deserves that). Anyway, good luck :)
You get a life, I didn't use my plus one bonus, my default level just happens to be 2. If there were a -1 bonus I'd probably use it for shit like this so I don't have to listen to you little pussies bitch and moan, but there ain't one.
WTF? Your +1 bonus is on by default - it is turned off by the checkbox above the submit button. Please, stop making nonsense posts using your +1 bonus.
I will now post this without the +1 bonus I have, since it is not worth using it.
In principle I don't see a problem with this - my personal belief on the subject is that life *could* form wherever there is a system of sufficient complexity, no matter the exact details of that system. So if you had enough "macroatoms" or whatever, the gravitational force could cause this to happen.
But the real killer is the timescale. Bearing in mind how many times smaller than the electrmagnetic force gravity is, the timescale would be correspondingly larger - rather than a ~10^9 second lifespan like we have, an equivalent gravitational being's lifespan would be ~10^49 seconds long, but for it, that time would seem the same length as a human lifespan.
In that length of time, the structure of the Universe will change. Spacetime will expand, leading to increased delays for communication between different components of the entity, stars will die, galaxies will collide, black holes will form and entropy in general will increase. The lifespan of this entity would be so great that by the time it could have formed, either all protons in the Universe will have decayed, all matter will be in slowly evaporating black holes, or we'll have had the Big Crunch.
So I think it's possible in principal, but not in practice. Of course, I could be totally wrong here :)
Thanks to Rev. Null for this tip, go to Customise Comments and save the page as HTML. Find the FORM tag and change the action to point to http://slashdot.org/users.pl, and then look down for the "SELECT name=uthreshold" tag. Under that, find the "OPTION selected value=-1" tag and change the -1 to a -5.
Save the page, load it in your browser, set your threshold to -1 in the list and submit it. Lo and behold, you can now see comments all the way down to -5. The /. censorhip is defeated :)
The "./ IANAL crowd" is the most important group to listen to because they represent a general morality, not a legal interpertation.
Okay, that's a very interesting interpretation of the IANAL crowd, and one worth bearing in mind whenever you read such a post. However, the thing is that often they don't seem to realise this themselves, and get caught up in poor legalese. This is what some more expert opinion would alleviate. Once there are some facts available, informed discussion, which is much more productive, can take place.
The law is only right when the majority supports it, and the lawyers and music industry are far from a majority.
But unfortunately, change is slow, and we have to deal with the law as it stands, which means that lawyers are a necessary evil. And they might be minorities, but they're very vocal and influential ones in America, whereas the voice of reason is much less heard by those in power.
First, I'm into trance, a form of eletronic music, that I can't seem to buy ANYWHERE, not even online. Sure I can find some albums every once and awhile, but most of the time the stores have never heard of what I'm looking for, can't get it, or it will take weeks to get, etc...
I take it you mean the harder trance stuff rather than the progressive house stuff that's so prevalent today. I'm personally into acid techno and minimal techno, and they're even harder to find - it's all on vinyl as singles, and mixes are as rare as gold. In fact, finding it on Napster is still a challenge.
Actually, if you're in the US then I can imagine it's pretty hard to find decent stuff. I know dance music is just about taking off over there - there's quite a big acid techno scene in NY nowadays, but it's not quite as universal as it is here in the UK and across Europe.
Try Hard To Find Records for decent stuff, and they do worldwide delivery as well. Okay, it's not free, but it's better than the local store I'm sure ;)
There's a copy sitting on the coffee table...
Is it worth reading? The stuff on the website looks interesting, but you never can tell with books like this...
OTOH Lavey (founder of the Church of Satan) had some pretty interesting (though at times admittedly strange) ideas. [This comment is probably going to make me quite unpopular in this thread, methinks].
Well, not in my case anyway :) I'd agree with you there, the ideas of the Church of Satan are fascinating and IMHO a lot closer to human nature than most religions I've encountered. And it's not really a "religion" in the traditional sense - it's more about the self than anything else. The central idea is that there is no entity called "Satan" or whatever - it is an integral part of every person and should be accepted. Anton La Vey has got some great ideas and shouldn't be dismissed for his use of the word Satan.
For more info read his book The Satanic Bible, and the official site is here.
Maybe rather than that, /. should get someone in with some legal experiance to write about these kinds of issues. After all they've already got Jon Katz in to cover "social" issues, why not a lawyer as well? Since there has been an awful lot of legal stuff posted on /. in the last year or so this would seem to make sense.
Of course, we could instead rely on the "informative" opinions of the /. IANAL crowd instead, to get the balanced opinions we know and love :)
Thank you for all of your excellent posts which have amused me whenever I've found them. It's rare to find such quality and informative stuff here on /. :) Keep and the good work and don't let the clown get you!
That's not quite it - you can truncate all posts after a certain number of lines, but a 5 rated post with 60 lines I'd want to read, but a -1 post with 60 lines of spam is just taking up space. And you can only mark long comments up, not down.
Kind of offtopic, but anyway. I browse at -1 since I like to be able to see everything, but the posts below that consist of endless copies of "DEEZ NUTZ IS SUX0RED BY SLASHDOT" is very annoying and makes /. take a lot longer to load.
Could we have it so that comments at -1 are cut off at 15 lines or so, with the "Read the rest of this comment..." link after that? It's a simple solution IMHO to the cut-n-paste spammers, and doesn't require any changes to the moderation system.
Comments are welcome.