Slashback: Net Neutrality, Bugged Coins, and Pawns

Slashback tonight brings some clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including: anti-Net-neutrality article modified; no bugged Canadian coins; a tech program for women in Silicon Valley; Pirate Bay and Sealand; and Microsoft evangelist apologizes for "pawns" comment. Read on for details.

Network neutrality. MobyDisk writes, "Network Performance Daily retracted last week's interview with Professor Christopher Yoo from Vanderbilt University Law School on his opposition to net-neutrality policies. The new article is a clearer, more subdued interview. The editor, Brian Boyko, says he never received Mr. Yoo's corrections to the article before press time. From the apology: 'The article had done him a disservice and we resolved to repair any inaccuracy or anything that would be unfair to his words or image.'"

Bugged Canadian coins. Lars T. writes in a journal article, "A recent Slashdot story asked: Bugged Canadian Coins?. Now The Globe and Mail has an update on the story — or rather the non-story. '[A] U.S. agency that investigated the complaint found no evidence of any secret transmitters, or of any other tampering. It's not clear why this information failed to find its way into the released U.S. Defense Security Service report.' So you can all pack in your tin-foil hats — at least that's what they want you to believe."

Engineering gender gap. Ellen Spertus writes, "Regarding the recent article The Hidden Engineering Gender Gap: Mills College has a post-baccalaureate program in computer science, which was recently written up in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. The program is co-ed, although the majority of students are female. Graduates of the program have successfully gone on to CS PhD programs and industry jobs."

Pirate Bay and Sealand. Kawahee writes, "Coming off previous coverage here of The Pirate Bay's intentions to purchase Sealand after it was put up for sale, The Pirate Bay has revealed on its website www.buysealand.com that it has entered into negotiations with Sealand. From the post: 'The Government of Sealand has initiated negotiation. Tomorrow, the ACFI and Government of Sealand will sit down in the SMTP chambers of the Internets to discuss the future of the micronation. We welcome the request and hopefully we can settle on a price. But knowing how hard non-kopimistic people can be to negotiate with, we will go with Plan B if they're not willing to meet our demands, press officer of ACFI says.' BuySealand.com is also now sporting a donation meter, and as of the 15th of January it stood at USD $13,714."

MS evangelist apologizes for "pawns" comment. gogat0rs writes "Former Microsoft Tech Evangelist James Plamondon, who made headlines this week when a 1996 speech he gave became public during a Microsoft antitrust trial in Iowa, has apologized to the Microsoft developer community for using a metaphor that described key industry influencers and developers as 'pawns.' Plamondon wrote that calling developers pawns was both offensive and inaccurate. He goes on to say, It mischaracterizes the mutually supportive relationship that must exist between a platform vendor and its platforms early adopters, such as that which Microsoft and independent software developers created in the 1990s. I regret having used the "pawns" metaphor; I apologize for any misplaced ill will it may have caused towards Microsoft; and I won't use it in [the] future.' Since the apology was issued, the full text of the Plamondon speech has been released as a public document on a Comes v. Microsoft website, along with 80 other exhibits."

Re:whew

[nmb3000]

But it accurately reflects what their attitudes was, and likely still is.

I would hazard a guess that most people won't even read the part of his speech where he compares ISVs (independent software vendors) to pawns.

He wasn't saying the developers are pawns as in "worthless minions to do our evil bidding" or "clueless morons who can't make it without us". It was more of a chess analogy, saying that while each of the individual vendors/developers are not strong by themselves, when you take them as a group they are a very important part of any platform's success. He goes on to say that these developers are a big part of what can make or break you.

Unfortunately the speech is a nasty raster image, so it's a pain to copy/paste, but this excerpt is a good example:

They are very valuable pawns in the struggle however. We cannot succeed without them. If you've ever tried to play chess with only the pieces in the back row, you've experienced losing, OK, because you've got to have those pawns. They're essential. So you can't win without them and you have to take good care of them.

Could he have used a better, less easily misconstrued term? Sure, and it's impossible to really know what he was thinking at the time, but it doesn't appear as evil as Slashdot seems to be trying to make it out to be.

Re:The 'new' Yoo article

[boyko.at.netqos]

I'm the editor of Network Performance Daily, and I agree.

But the original article just simply was not fair to Prof. Yoo nor accurate as to what his views were, and although we debated whether or not to leave the original article up, we decided that it was best to our readers to take it down.

However, I left my contact information up, and anyone who wants to e-mail me directly can request the original article so that they can see what was changed. I thought this was the most optimal solution to the problem.

So far, no one has. If you wish to see it, you can e-mail me at brian.boyko at netqos dot com.

-- Brian Boyko
-- Editor, Network Performance Daily

Re:Now is that ever a silly idea!

[elrous0]

It's an rusty old anti-aircraft platform. Anyone could destroy it with a nerf gun, for Christ's sake!

The only reason the UK has basically tolerated/ignored them is because, until now, it's just been a small family of crazy squatters living there.

-Eric