How does it work when an open source project is acquired? What's the benefit for RH compared to just forking the project?
I guess the choice of license can get really important in this situation? Are there any old decisions by the founder that now turn out to be especially important?
Thanks for the tip! I personally use http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/, an automated feed of the ten new articles with most points. Since it comes once a day, it helps me spend much less time here, just look it through in the morning and be done.
The downside though, is that it gets close to impossible to join in on, or even read, the discussions. When I see articles usually ~24h after they were posted, the discussion page is so full of nested questions that it's really hard to find anything more than the highest voted comment. How can curation be combined with possibility to discuss, in a better working way?
Isn't the reason you use that service (waste less time here) specifically to avoid getting drawn into the discussions? Serious question! :-)
How can curation be combined with possibility to discuss, in a better working way?
I think the issue isn't curation, since Slashdot is technically an editor curated news service, but the timing. That is, how do you have a good discussion when the timescales are so large rather than over the course of a few hours?
> Isn't the reason you use that service (waste less time here) specifically to avoid getting drawn into the discussions? Serious question! :-)
No, not really. There is usually ~1 article each day where I get interested in reading the discussion. When that happens, it is often disappointing to find the discussion high-jacked by a top-voted comment that goes in a direction that doesn't interest me. I'm sure there are interesting comments further down the page, but on this site it's hard to find them. I think Slashdot handles this a little better by letting you set a point threshold.
In the even fewer cases when I want to join the discussion, it is pretty meaningless to add a comment to the bottom of a page which is more than a day old.
> I think the issue isn't curation, since Slashdot is technically an editor curated news service, but the timing. That is, how do you have a good discussion when the timescales are so large rather than over the course of a few hours?
Haven't used those sites, and it was hard to get a grip by taking a quick look. How do they solve it? I think single threaded is great, but in my experience it breaks down when the number of comments get too large.
Manually or semi-automatically curated discussions would probable be very valuable.
There is usually ~1 article each day where I get interested in reading the discussion. When that happens, it is often disappointing to find the discussion high-jacked by a top-voted comment that goes in a direction that doesn't interest me.
Do you use Twitter? If so, something like https://twitter.com/newsyc50 or https://twitter.com/newsyc20 might work for you. There's a threshold but it keeps you within an hour or two of most significant posts. (I'm not a fan as a lot of the posts I enjoy /don't/ reach these thresholds.)
How do they solve it? I think single threaded is great, but in my experience it breaks down when the number of comments get too large.
MetaFilter has been around since 1999 with the same format and surprisingly it continues to work well. Single threading has a big effect on how discussions go. It's hard to put into words.. I hope someone will write an academic paper on single vs multi threaded discussions ;-)
My personal experience is it increases the signal to noise ratio and discourages irrelevant contributions, with the frequent con of seemingly endless discussions and polarization into two opposing factions of commenters.
Edward Tufte's forum is unusual. The discussions there are glacial. Seriously, it's typical to only have a handful of responses after a month or two but they're always spot on. It's an extreme example since Tufte's staff personally moderates every comment and only the very best get through.
QBN is basically a mess. The way they make it work long term is that responding to any thread bumps that thread back up to the top of the site, no matter how old it is. There's a thread on the front page right now with 68,675 responses. This wouldn't work so well in an academic or technical environment but actually goes well in a more chit chatty "arty" environment, which is their main audience.
I think there's so much room to study this stuff formally. If they ever did, I would be the first to order the textbook! :-)
I think MetaFilter works because of the relative low number of users, and their selection, since it's a paid website (to comment, at least).
I'm only a spectator there, but I've noticed the threads are much more personal. I think you can even see the individuals that favorited a given story or comment.
Don't forget moderators who are dedicated to "doing it right". You do kind of have to figure out and fit into the culture there.
If a new user doesn't get it and causes problems the mods will usually politely PM them and talk to them about what's going on. If the user continues to cause problems (start fights and just generally be inflammatory to the community) they will have no problem banning them.
They also temp-ban users who they know are normally well behaved when they are clearly having a bad day (which usually just means that a particular thread on a particular topic hits too close to home and they just can't be civil about it).
That is an erroneous comparison. Regarding our own bits, it is the right to access information that we store on devices that we own or rent. Regarding "RIAA's bits" it is our right to copy information that was made publicly available. Regardless of political opinions, the contradiction that I think you are suggesting does not exist.
There is no hypocrisy: those people would continue thinking that if they put "their" bits in the public, they would also be free. That has nothing to do with the government being able to interfere with your private relationship with a cloud service. Here, since you brought up physical items perhaps I can make it clearer:
I have a manuscript for a new book which I keep in a safe at home. I may believe that once a book is "out in the wild", anyone should be allowed to copy it. However, that does not mean I think it is OK for the government to have the right to open up my security box at a bank and read the manuscript if I choose to use "cloud safes" (AKA banks) instead of my own personal safe at home. The problem here is not really the reading of the book, but interfering with my agreement with the bank that only I should be allowed into the safe, regardless of what may or may not be in there.
Not shared anywhere. Something I upload to Dropbox is private data. Something I upload to youtube is public data. If a piece of media is being sold, 99.9% chance it's not private.
Now, about being 'stolen'. The argument about bits being free is that you can copy them anywhere. I think you can see how deleting from someone else's server is not the same thing.
The government is not causing problems by copying the drives, they are causing problems by confiscating them.
The argument is usually not that "bits can't be stolen" but that "copying is not theft". If people broke into RIAA's servers and removed their data, I think most pirates would agree that it's comparable to theft.
The "tech community" doesn't have a single opinion. Proof: you're part of the tech community.
Personally, I don't believe the government is stealing anything. They're violating people's privacy, which is a different thing and does not require the data to be property.
I'd say, yes numerical is often just as good, but not always. Also, in my opinion, whether information is displayed numerically or visually, the key is to be as minimalistic as possible.
Clause in the contract, but remember it cuts both ways.
I was recently creative director of a small software company that let their design team go. When I started the owner changed my employee contract from 14 to 28 days with the assumption that since I was in a management position with 5 reports, were I to leave the transition would have been hard to squeeze in to the standard 2 week period.
When he announced he was letting everyone go with 2 weeks severance, he was not too happy when I reminded him my contracted stipulated 28 days (he did honor it though).
