Scratch

Lightnin wrote:

My understanding is that JSTOR is charging much more than the small costs for upkeep, hosting, etc, but I haven't been able to find prices by searching around the webs, or their site. I could be wrong about this - if someone would like to do the research, I'd be grateful.

The point, as I understand it, is that the creation of most of the scholarly articles on JSTOR was funded, at least in part, by the US Government. That means they were paid for by our tax dollars. That being the case, I have to agree that they should be 'free' - we've already paid for them. The cost of running a website to make pdfs available is pretty small, all things considered. So I don't see that as a justification for charging exorbitant fees just to access some .pdfs.

That said - I'm not sure how shutting down MIT's connection to the webs for 3 hours (and, consequently, Scratch) serves to further the idea that things should be open, available, and free.

If there's tax involved then I think it should be free (or cheaper), but it's still legal to charge for it, I don't understand why they feel the need to break the law just to put a website down for 3 hours.

Most of what they've done is simple Ddossing and redirecting DNSes, they can't even get files without someone actually being there, I really don't think MIT should be/is scared, seeming Ddossing is illegal anyway and a company like MIT can easily find who was behind it all.

yousmiledatme wrote:

67589jun wrote:

Paddle2See wrote:

Here's how MIT reported the incident.  Reading the comments to the article, there is some confusion as to whether it was a DoS attack or not.   

You can read the MIT president's response over here.

A very sad thing indeed.

I though anonymous hated reddit, they complain all the time about it. Yet they have to DoS the website the co-founder had stolen info from. I believe all information on the internet is free, no matter who says, but stealing this much, especially from MIT is just unheard of!

anonymous didnt steal the information
it was aaron swartz who stole it

He said that.

ImagineIt wrote:

yousmiledatme wrote:

67589jun wrote:

I though anonymous hated reddit, they complain all the time about it. Yet they have to DoS the website the co-founder had stolen info from. I believe all information on the internet is free, no matter who says, but stealing this much, especially from MIT is just unheard of!

anonymous didnt steal the information
it was aaron swartz who stole it

He said that.

oops
read it wrong

I just found out they hacked 28,000 paypal accounts another time. 

soupoftomato wrote:

calebxy wrote:

PonyvilleSlugger wrote:

To be honest Anonymous are quite bigoted, if they disagree with something they'll just take it down and their excuses are always "the internet should be free".

I'd much rather have an internet where I could write something, charge for people to use it (for upkeep etc.) and that's it, with people who download and release it stopped because it's not fair that someone gets to take away my profit for something I've done just because they want it for free.

Exactly. Why on earth should something be free just because it's on the internet? You have to pay for books, so why shouldn't you have to pay for that same information just because it's on the internet? It's ridiculous.

That's an over-simplification.

It's not over-simplified, it's a good point.

zubblewu wrote:

sonicfan12p wrote:

soupoftomato wrote:

That's an over-simplification.

It's not over-simplified, it's a good point.

its a library
do you pay for a library?

It depends. You usually pay for a public library through tax dollars, a private library is usually paid for through some kind of membership.

JSTOR is not exactly a library, though, it's an academic database that you usually access with a subscription. Some of the articles are free, some need to be paid for. Most academic databases are like that.

Last edited by cheddargirl (2013-01-15 20:40:03)

soupoftomato wrote:

cheddargirl wrote:

zubblewu wrote:

its a library
do you pay for a library?

It depends. You usually pay for a public library through tax dollars, a private library is usually paid for through some kind of membership.

JSTOR is not exactly a library, though, it's an academic database that you usually access with a subscription. Some of the articles are free, some need to be paid for. Most academic databases are like that.

I think the idea is that we should be sharing all actual information. That is, all known knowledge should be accessible for free as to allow things to be improved upon. Locking information and progress behind a price is silly.

That's a very good point. However, some people that make sites like that are able to make such outstanding databases for information because they charge money. If they did not, they would have to have another job, resulting in a less reliable and/or helpful site. Of course, this is certainly not true if taxpayer's money were to go towards the development of the site.

Garr8 wrote:

So what does Anonymous beieve in?

A free and open internet. Also, to absolutely and utterly destroy Scientology.

Laternenpfahl wrote:

Garr8 wrote:

So what does Anonymous beieve in?

A free and open internet. Also, to absolutely and utterly destroy Scientology.

Call me stupid, but what is Scientology?

All4one wrote:

Erm, I didn't have Internet yesterday.
...
What did I miss? 

Nothing much.
Only that for 3 hours your browser would say somthing like "cannot find server mit.edu" or "cannot find webpage" and if you uploaded a project it would have said somthing like "cannot connect to scratch.mit.edu"

yousmiledatme wrote:

ToxicQuillz wrote:

Laternenpfahl wrote:

A free and open internet. Also, to absolutely and utterly destroy Scientology.

Call me stupid, but what is Scientology?

tom cruise

I believe he left CoS if I remember properly.