"Piracy" is part of the cost of doing business.

Freedom comes before before profit.

You are not entitled to profit.

Innovation is better for an economy than "content".

As corollary, said economy will be fine with you being smaller, or non-existent.

Alan Greenspan:

First of all, let's recognize that this is a once-in-a-half-century, probably once-in-a-century type of event.

Ah, good. Glad that's all sorted out, then.

To my Libertarian friends:

After 28 years of laissez-faire orthodoxy, I think the results are in.

Btw, we could have implemented a Canadian-style health care system with the money that it's going to take to bail out the financial marketeers. In addition, having a healthy (and richer) population and businesses with health care off of their books would have boosted productivity (possibly even making up for or exceeding the cost to the Treasury) and kept more manufacturing in the United States.

It's time to put down your copy of Capitalism and Freedom, stop calling anyone with empathy a "collectivist", and take a long hard look at the state of the world (including the giant counterexample that is China).

I promise not to rub your noses in it (much).

Recently, in this thread, I was led to the wikipedia article on net neutrality for a, err.., creative definition of Net Neutrality:

Access to all legal content, but not via means that violate agreed-upon terms of service: This approach guarantees access to all legal content which is available by means that do not violate agreed-upon terms of service, harm others' quality of service, or abuse the network (e.g. by monopolizing bandwidth). This approach allows for more flexibility in network management practices and innovation in the development of economical service plans for consumers. It requires full disclosure of terms of service, and also of the behavior of software which is offered to users for operation on the network. Anticompetitive practices, such as blocking of content that competes with products furnished by the provider, are strictly prohibited.

Peculiar. That sounds like the exact opposite of NN. Sounds familiar, too. Oh, look, the author cited a reference!

14 Brett Glass's Seven Network Neutrality Principles and Guidelines for Appropriate Regulation http://www.brettglass.com/principles.pdf

Okay. No one would have the nerve to cite themselves for a wikipedia edit, right? Let's see, it's an anonymous edit, from 66.119.58.200. Hmm... just one edit from that IP... increase power to the main deflector array... triangulate the signal with my dangerous-to-the-network hacker tools and...

OrgName: CORE BUSINESS SOLUTIONS
OrgID: CBS-129
Address: 400 East First
City: Casper
StateProv: WY
PostalCode: 82601
Country: US

If Mr. Glass's attempt to re-define NN to mean that ISPs can do whatever they like as long as there is some boilerplate language in a ToS succeeds, I will lose all faith in the intellectual abilities of human kind. If this spoonful of sewage can bring down the whole conversation so easily, I will throw my computers away and spend the rest of my days in state parks, living in a tent.

I would like to submit to the distinguished gentleman from Wyoming that if your cause needs you to change definitions with anonymous edits on wikipedia, there may be something wrong with your cause.

If your ideology needs you to game the slashdot moderation system for it, you should look into finding a better ideology.

I have noticed, in the two years that I have been reading \. (during which time I have contributed some ten comments of my own crafting to the community), that things are definitely going downhill here.

I have seen, in the past couple of months, a number of headlines which I suspect may be misleading and/or inaccurate. In addition, several story summaries contained spelling and/or grammar errors.

Has anyone thought of the impact that this rampant unprofessionalism can have on Slashdot's reputation on the web?

In addition, it is popular in your "discussions" to besmirch the fine name of several Fortune 500 companies. I, for one, am tired of this constant bashing of large corporations, which have brought us many fine products and innovated the internet.

If something is not done to restore the credibility of \. as a major source of reliable technology journalism, competitors such as Digg.com are sure to take your market share.

If your editorial staff does not start to elevate the professionalism of \. to the levels I remember from two years ago, I shall be forced to take my wit elsewhere.

Yours etc.,

Brigadier Arthur Gormanstrop (Mrs)

This guy has made me angry in that very special way that only astroturfing scumbags can manage. He is the submitter of this article: FCC Commissioner Urges, Don't Regulate the Internet.

Here is a link to what he really believes are the industry's "best practices" for ISPs: http://www.brettglass.com/200807FCCLetter.pdf (pdf).

Among his more slashdot-friendly positions:

ISPs should...

• Block all ports and services except for http and https
• Ban SSH and VPNs
• Inspect traffic and block non-approved applications

How unbelievably insulting, to think that just by throwing some Libertarian red meat at slashdot he could create an astroturf campaign to bolster McDowell's position. He even posted a link to McDowell's email as AC!

Take your "online strategy" and shove it!

Afterword: I will concede that I don't know for sure that he posted a link to McDowell's email. My point remains, though. He definitely doesn't really care about usenet or freedom of speech. He really does think that subscribers using their own "unapproved" software is dangerous, and supports prohibition of encryption (except for using https for banking and shopping). And he is absolutely carrying water for the apparent minority opinion of the commissioners.

This group of telecoms and ISPs, represented by McDowell and Glass, wants the freedom to turn the entire net into Verizon's VCast. The future is bright... Hope y'all like Britney Spears.

I have been reading discussions at -1 for a couple of months. I learned a lot in that time.

I learned to appreciate things like the GNAA and that ascii-art goatse troll. Their very existence is now somehow comforting. I learned that trolling can be educational in a Socratic sort of way.

But it was starting to weigh pretty heavily on me, and I had forgotten how pretty slashdot can be.

Tonight, I was reading without logging in for the first time in ages, and I picked the first story on my feed, What Al Gore Didn't Say About Solar Cells. It was a bit of a flamebait submission, really, but the discussion was amazing.

As I wasn't logged in, I was browsing away from my -1 setting, which had become slashdot for me. At 3, a thoughtful, reasoned, informed, and funny discussion emerged, like the Tengwar inscription on the one ring - like the slashdot I remembered from years ago. Bruce Perens even posted some overtly political comments! (Wish he would have done that when I was getting flamed on Technocrat... ;) ).

I hope I have someone around to slap me if I ever use the phrase "slashdot groupthink". For all of its weaknesses, slashcode is freaking amazing. This is the only place on the interweb where there is room for the GNAA and Bruce Perens. It's a system so beautiful that it can handle twitter (the personage) without the editors having to be police. Hell, it wouldn't be slashdot if someone was banned for attempting to game the system. Yes, I am even grateful for twitter. Let he who has not trolled cast the first whatever it is they cast at trolls.

Thank you slashdot!

This the most eloquent criticism of gold standard advocacy that I have read in a /. comment.

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=621981&cid=24290617

My favorite bit:

Warren Buffet hit the nail on the head when he said: "It gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head."

My own quote on the matter: "Under the current system money is managed by the Fed, which reports to Congress. Under a gold standard money is managed by international mining cartels and speculators. This is better, how?"

It started a beautiful thread which escalated into a debate between the Austrian and Chicago/Monetarist ideologies. Looks like the monetarists won.

Note: I'm not a monetarist, in that I don't really get economics in general; it seems like astrology to me. And "monetarism", specifically, seems like a perpetual-motion machine. OTOH, it (the economy) definitely exists, and affects our lives directly, so I am obviously just not grokking it.

Although I didn't have anything invested in the debate, I am pleased that I now have some data to upset friends' Ron Paul orthodoxy.

It's possible that I am totally wrong about these guys:

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=620771&cid=24286905

Then again, I'm pretty sure I'm right. They could be earnest and manipulated or misguided, I suppose. But it's pretty obvious that it is one of those "Climate Change Fixed! Shop As Usual" campaigns now, regardless of the motives of the founders.