Slashdot Introduces YRO 46
The Net is changing fast, and so are many of the issues surrounding your rights online. The US Policies on Encryption Export, governments filtering websites from their citizens, and right now, the PICS project In fact, the PICS project is what the first article's about. It's part 1 of 2.
YRO will be maintained by Michael Sims and Jamie McCarthy Their job will be similiar to what the existing Slashdot Authors do; read submissions and pick the best articles for publishing, just in a more focused area. In addition, they'll be writing original articles when it's appropriate. YRO will have room to post many stories that wouldn't have been able to appear on Slashdot, while Slashdot will continue to post the stories that we think are more relevant to everyone.
Michael Sims is a programmer for the Department of Energy and online free-speech activist who administers censorware.org. He swears that there won't be a nuclear catastrophe on January 1, 2000. Jamie McCarthy writes perl code all day; if he ever gets free time he works on The Holocaust History Project or censorware.org. He owns every book Theodore Sturgeon ever wrote.
We're pretty excited about this. I hope you are too. Now let's just see if it works...
Re:Spare me, McCarthy. (Score:1)
This is a charming site, really delightful. Excerpts from their "Statement of Purpose" [codoh.org] follow.
This argument is ludicrous. Even if he were right about there being no gas chambers, this premise of no chambers => no holocaust is just silly.
I'll have to let my father in law know that the camp that he helped liberate was a clever Zionist propaganda ploy.
Please don't moderate this idiot down. Let people follow the link to get a good taste of intellectual poison, so they'll recognize it when next they see it.
Re:"What a dumb acronym" -- CmdrTaco (Score:1)
OT: Intelligence test (Score:2)
God, looks like another zero score posting. Where has my karma gone? kaaaarmaaaa!
Re:OT: Intelligence test (Score:1)
You're Rights Online and the New Katzianism (Score:4)
The computing populace at large, and hackers in specific, have been classified as neo-libertarian in beliefs. Although there are many exceptions, there does seem to be a libertarian-like streak in slashdot. However, this is as related to libertarianism as fishes are to whales.
Libertarians believe, in a nutshell, that governements should be limited in size, scope and power. This new Katzianism, as I'll call it, goes far beyond this. It's an "us versus them" philosophy. Corporations, proprietary developers, movies theaters, or anyone else that doesn't fit into "us", must be limited as well. Microsoft must be limited in size, scope and power otherwise personal liberty will be in danger.
For example: It's evil if the US Senate mandates music ratings, it's also evil if AOL includes a ratings system with its software, it's also evil if a Mom-and-Pop music store took these ratings into account. In a similar vein, Slashdot posting policies are decried as "censorship".
This Katzian attitude is guaranteed to raise its ugly head repeatedly in YRO. Be prepared for it. Be aware that many calls for freedom are in fact calling for the opposite.
YRO needs an ICON (Score:1)
Re:You're Rights Online and the New Katzianism (Score:1)
Personal liberity is improtant but so is personal responsibility, and no discussion of freedom can really be effective or meaningful without a framework of responsibility. The more freedom you want the more responisblity you must take upon yourself. It would be a great service to the furture YRO community if there is a matching discussion of Your Responsibilities Online.(YRO2).
Re:"What a dumb acronym" -- CmdrTaco (Score:1)
YRO Slashbox, please? (Score:1)
Just my 2/100 of Euro
On a VERY related topic... (Score:2)
Some of the most amazing things that I'm seeing throughout this are the things that high-tech workers are putting up with in the workplace. We're talking outright abuse in some cases. Others are finally working out what they really make for their time (wages divided by hours) and realizing that they aren't that far ahead of working at the 7-11.
But hey, saving money in the bank is easy when you never have time between sleep and work to spend it!
The Geek
Geekrights.org [geekrights.org]
Still remember to talk to your lawyer. (Score:1)
If you are starting a computer company or, god forbid, get into trouble with CIA mainframes, please don't use this as your only resource. It's only a guide.
Some of you may think this comment is common sence, but sometimes people just decide that they know everything on a certain subject. Also, as far as I'm concerned, I'd understand a mess of C code much faster than I could muddle my way through US laws. Leave the specifics to the lawyers, and leave the coding to us.
Mike
Good Luck (Score:1)
you'll provide some much-needed coverage, which is
sorely needed by a geekdom inundated with rewritten press-releases.
Re: Your Rights Online and the New Katzianism (Score:3)
"New Katzianism"? "new emerging political philosophy"???
The concept you are struggling to articulate is usually termed "New
Deal Liberalism". It's several decades old, mostly born out of severe
abuses of corporate power combined with economic depression. Historical
roots go back further, to the era of the "robber barons" and even feudalism.
Mr. Katz, nice writer he though he may be, did not invent it.
It amazes me, just the thought, the very concept, that there could
be an opposition to large concentration of private power, is seen
as *unknown*. You've never heard of it before. You've never read
anything pre-Net about it before. You can't think of any framework.
The only way it's described is as some mutation or bastardization of
*Libertarianism*.
That's scary.
Re:that's slashbox. (Score:1)
Right (Score:3)
Slashdot has been having trouble scaling to keep up with its growth, and I'm not talking about the servers. With the rate that new stories go up, and the number of comments on each, it has been becoming difficult to keep up. Discussions don't usually stay active long enough to do them justice, because they get crowded out, with some stories falling off the bottom of the page the same day they are posted.
I've been thinking that the problem is that it is organized linearly in time, which doesn't scale too well. Maybe a solution would be to "add an axis", making the layout more two-dimensional by breaking it into sections, each of which would proceed linearly. It's not perfect, but it would allow each story to stay visible for a longer period in its section. It would still be hard to keep up with everything, simply because of the sheer volume, but people who want to skim everything and comment sporadically could do so, while those who want to discuss a single issue in greater depth would also be able to.
Maybe some of the most interesting threads could even be kept alive by using activity as well as age to determine the order of the stories. Also, when the number of comments on a story gets too unwieldy, maybe some of the most active sub-threads could be pulled out into new stories -- these could be kept in a separate sidebar for each section.
David Gould
Re:Right (Score:1)
The thing that detracts from sites that have a home/index page is that there isn't enough information there... you have to keep going to different pages before you get any meat. With
Something should be done to help keep the quality of a topic going longer, but the structure of your average (online) newspaper doesn't really make sense here.
What I would like to see is a way that a topic can be extended in time, and comments threaded to that extension-- when an "update" is posted, or additional information still on the same topic, it shouldn't be a new story. There is too much duplication with this (current) system, and the discussion isn't complete in and of itself.
One other point is search engines. I first found
It seems like the overall structure needs to change a little bit, but... how do you manage it?
anyway... enough ranting
Update! (still OT) (Score:1)
Re:Censorship is a relative thing (Score:1)
> doesn't shutting down spammers amount to censorship?
No, not exactly. They are still able to publish their message, as only one method of distribution is being controlled. And this is because they are imposing costs on the receipients without their permission, not because of the content of the message. They could still send their message by snail mail, for example, where the entire cost of the delivery is charged to the sender.
> If you were a boss and one of your employees spent all day downloading porn or fundamentalist theological treateses, would you fire him or her?
If that were all they were doing, and I was paying them for something else, yes.
But this is not censorship. I would not be firing them because they were downloading porn or worse, but because they are not doing their job. They are still able to go home, get on their own home computer, and download whatever they want.
Censorship is when someone makes something completely unavailable to those who want it. Making it difficult to obtain, but still obtainable, is not censorship. For instance, limiting the sale of adult books to adult bookstores is not censorship. But limiting the sale of adult books to adult bookstores, and then shutting down all the adult bookstores is censorship.
A parent turning off the TV to keep his child from watching a certain show is not a censor, because the control is at the receiving end. A parent blowing up the TV station to keep his child from watching the show is a censor, among other things.
Re:You're Rights Online and the New Katzianism (Score:1)
A perfect example of the New Katzism, based on ignoring the difference between the one government and the choice of large corporations. If you don't like a company, you can either go to their competitor, or you become their competitor yourself. If you don't like a government, they either kill you or put you in jail. It's not the same at all.
It also ignores the fact that corporations exist to and because they make individual stockholders happy, which they do by making customers happy. When they stop making customers happy they go out of business. When they stop making stockholders happy, they get taken over by somebody who can do better. Thus, corporations tend to create a net increase in happiness.
Governments exist to make sure that the rulers are happy, which they do by making their supporters happy and everyone else miserable. Governments tend to create a net decrease in happiness.
feature idea (Score:3)
Good idea (Score:1)
This cries out for its own slashbox (Score:4)
the AC
good idea (Score:1)
Re:Not a rights issue (Score:1)
YRO (Score:1)
This is a great idea.
darren
something like that for /. (Score:1)
Not a rights issue (Score:2)
Being required to provide some additional descriptive information on a product that is widely distributed isn't an obvious violation of your rights.
People are required to label food they distribute, so people who hate, say, peanuts, can avoid that food.
What is so obviously bad about requiring people to label multimedia content so that people who hate, say, pornography can avoid it?
Not that I'm in favour of the proposed scheme, but let's _try_ not to jump on things.
Thank You Rob! (Score:1)
P.S. CowboyNeal!...SlashBox, please!!!!
Your Rights Online (Score:1)
Re:Not a rights issue (Score:1)
I've never heard of anyone killed by an MPEG (or plaintext, for that matter)
Re:This cries out for its own slashbox (Score:1)
--
Slashdot in the News (Score:3)
Not that I am suggesting that this is Cmdr Taco's main motivation (or that it even occurred to him), but this seems like a 'yet another reason' why the mainstream media will pay attention to /. and we who post here. Being as online rights are a hotbutton topic right now it seems reasonable to assume that the 'Real Journalists'(tm) who read /. looking for tips, story ideas and carefully thought out views will find much to mine in this new feature area.
Of course they will find lots of less stimulating intellectual fare as well...
Jack
Other YRO Slashboxes (Score:1)
Re:something like that for /. (Score:1)
Often times, a great sideline discussion grows out of what is initially an off-topic, or barely relevant comment. It would be great to be able to take such a discussion 'offline', and easily keep it going beyond the 'page life' of it's parent story.
The question remains of how to keep a discussion pool like that semi-organized though. Rob, perhaps a thread-scope Karma?
Re:Not a rights issue (Score:1)
It's not just multimedia content; Germany would like to target specifically plaintext with which they disagree, for example, and censors on this side of the pond won't restrict themselves to just MPEGs either.
More importantly, we should recognize why peanut companies are forced to label their products. First of all, they're selling something, and second of all, they're selling atoms, not bits. Corporations don't enjoy the same free speech rights as real people (for good reason), and atoms can do you real damage if you're allergic to them.
Hopefully our personal right to speak our minds won't be reduced into the same category as corporations' right to label widgets.
Jamie McCarthy
Re:You're Rights Online and the New Katzianism (Score:1)
I personally agree with this view. I think I can make my own decisions. However, there are plenty of stupid people running around who can NOT or do not want to think for themselves and use some "common" sense.
I suppose we could give them the opportunity to try to think for themselves, but I suspect they wouldn't. Sure, we shouldn't cater to this minority, but they're more vocal than us "smart" people, so they get their way.
Exocet
Wrong Acronym (Score:2)
My dad always said that "Your rights only extend to the point where they interfere with someone elses". I thought that sounded pretty reasonable. Lately, though, I've come to the conclusion that my rights only extend as far as I'm able to enforce them. It's not a pretty view of society, but it seems to fit more often.
"Conserving bandwidth by not having a sig"
Oops, I guess that didn't work.
Loss of rights, the algorithm (Score:1)
The risk of evil is the cost of freedom.
Chuck
Re:You're Rights Online and the New Katzianism (Score:1)
Re:that's slashbox. (Score:2)
Way to go, we appricated.
CY
"What a dumb acronym" -- CmdrTaco (Score:1)
"Your Online Unalienable Rights"? [YOUR]
(Yes, I did crib it from the Declaration of Independence. If it was good enough for Thomas Jefferson, it's good enough for me!)
YRO as a separate domain? (Score:1)
Of course the beauty of Slashdot is that you could link everything from yro.org to Slashdot's main page.