Domain: half-empty.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to half-empty.org.
Comments · 43
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Think CashSome time ago, I was pondering a similar idea which I called "Think Cash" (a play on "Hash Cash"), where basically someone had to "pay" by thinking about something. The idea was to discourage automated spamming of anonymous services.
While I mention some ways to achieve this, I thought more about the problem and the qualities a solution would need, than the solution itself.
If interested, more can be found here.
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Two plums for me please
I am happy
/. user and pretty sure I will be a subscriber soon. For now, the ads are completely no bother, so I dont really have any particular motivation.
However, something I would love, would be the possibility of viewing the comments with expand/collapse buttons. I like to view at threshold 0, so one thread can get biig, and I easily loose track of what sub-thread I am reading. What I would like to do would be to collapse the thread, so I can immediatly skip to the next one. This means every single comment which has sub-comments, would be expand/collapsable.
Another improvement: When I have mod points, it always bothers me that I have to select the comments I want to mod, and then, at the end of the page, I submit. Often I forget, and follow a link somewhere. A system I think works a lot better in this respect, is that of Half-Empty. When you see a comment you want to rate, you do so immediatly, but the page handling the rating is opened in a new tiny window in the background. This way I immediatly vote, and I dont move away from the discussion Im interested in, or forget to mod. -
Kentucky's getting one
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YAAFJ?Yet another April Fools joke?
Even better, try Half-Empty where anyone can post a story, and (so far) haven't tried any lame AFJ's.
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(OT) E2 and /. have little in common
[Alternatives to Slashdot:] Everything2.com
Everything 2 is more like Wikipedia than it is like Slashdot.
Read more: Is E2 just like Slashdot?Juro5hin.com
You mean Kuro5hin.org. If you really want a first post, take your time; you have 20 seconds, after all.
By the way, if you cross K5 with a bit of E2, you get
.5e. -
Re:Definition of idiocy?.5e is free, and has only had two trolls I can honestly remember - Hitler and Freeznfire. (side note - look at freeznfire's picture - he's the kind of kid who pirates W2k Advanced Server so he can play CS and brag about his sound system in his car) I would consider both of these characters trolls - Hitler posts all sorts of just predictable stuff about how he wants to take over the world and kill people, while freeznfire is quite content to use lame predictable verbal attacks against other posters.
Now, SA trolls are a different story. Take for example, this post in a thread in which somebody asked for a brief review of Red Alert 2, a popular RTS game by Westwood.
FlameHead
Probably one of our least elaborate trolls - he'll hopefully be banned soon. Usually, the people who are "thinking on the edge of the mainstream" usually get big red custom titles under their name. For example, as a result of a thread saying that rape is sometimes justified, the author got a big fat red RAPIST custom title. In other cases, blatant trolls will get nice blinking Moron pictures, a big HR so that their posts are off the side of the screen, and occasionally even scrolling text.
Registered: 06-01
westwood suck.Me? I've got a fat red I CHEAT AT COUNTER-STRIKE custom title.
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Re:Definition of idiocy?.5e is free, and has only had two trolls I can honestly remember - Hitler and Freeznfire. (side note - look at freeznfire's picture - he's the kind of kid who pirates W2k Advanced Server so he can play CS and brag about his sound system in his car) I would consider both of these characters trolls - Hitler posts all sorts of just predictable stuff about how he wants to take over the world and kill people, while freeznfire is quite content to use lame predictable verbal attacks against other posters.
Now, SA trolls are a different story. Take for example, this post in a thread in which somebody asked for a brief review of Red Alert 2, a popular RTS game by Westwood.
FlameHead
Probably one of our least elaborate trolls - he'll hopefully be banned soon. Usually, the people who are "thinking on the edge of the mainstream" usually get big red custom titles under their name. For example, as a result of a thread saying that rape is sometimes justified, the author got a big fat red RAPIST custom title. In other cases, blatant trolls will get nice blinking Moron pictures, a big HR so that their posts are off the side of the screen, and occasionally even scrolling text.
Registered: 06-01
westwood suck.Me? I've got a fat red I CHEAT AT COUNTER-STRIKE custom title.
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Re:Post alternative sites belowSweet merciful crap, I'm famous.
I actually spend most of my time at The Awful Forums, which are now $9.95/account. The admission fee is very useful for keeping the signal/noise ratio high, although not as high as
.5e. It seems that trolls and retards don't like having to pay $10 to get their login back after they get banned for being an idiot. -
Re:Post alternative sites below
We have:
Half Empty, aka .5e, land of the pot heads. Actually most of the people on the site are pretty cool, they're just too damn small. If you've ever seen people like BonzoEsc, Uruk, Krellis, or Nebby modded up on a comment here at /., then you know what type of people hang out at .5e.
Kuro5hin, land of the pretentious fucks. It'll probably come down to having to pay money just to avoid hanging out with these losers.
BBC News, what I believe is the most objective western news site. The problem is that there's no discussion system even worth wasting time with.
I'm going to sign up just for access to the rejected submissions bin. That's where the real news for nerds lies. -
I'm confused (most of the time).You say you've been asked to find a tool, yet the unlying technology isn't important? I don't get it. Do you want sucessful communities (doubtful) or do you want good software? or features for communities? or what?
A site with sections and story queue is good. Open moderation to stories and comments is its' own problem though kuro5hin seems to function quite well. Comment moderation categories just opens the door to quibbling over whether it's genuinely offtopic, or funny - allowing respondants to HiLaRiOuSlY acuse the moderator of being on crack. Ha! Crack! Genius! Not tired at all!
E2's messaging is good.
Zope's slash rip-off (I forget the name, it used to run on technocrat.net) allowed file attachments. That's useful for any distributed software development team.
A wiki, like any flat data structure, doesn't push old content into depths (something the slash-a-likes are guilty of, being linear, though for a news site it's probably necessary).
Drupal.org and Half Empty are kinda nice engines. I'm working on my own ("in every mans life there must be one php/mysql weblog - and this is mine").
Interface wise I have a preference for calenders. I like URLs that are clean looking. I like engines that aren't crufty like PHPnuke.
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Re:Not a troll, but uselessKuro5hin Its a community site loosely based on Slashdot(the whole comunity/interface idea, not the code). The main differences are:
-that anybody can submit a story and then other users rate it and "mod" it up to eventually the main page.
-the articles tend to be less technical and technology oriented and more political(not just government politcs) and philosiphical.
Personally, I can't stand it. It was ok in the beginning, but now its kind of repetitive. You've got a fairly high User ID so you probably don't know who Signal 11 is (i'm not going to explain him here, if you want to know, email me), but if you do....its essentially a lot of him and people like him. The site has been down for a bit(reasons why can be read about by going to the site) but should be up again soon.
Another similar site to K5 is Half-Empty. The site was done completely in Java and is a little better done community-wise than K5 (IMHO).
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enablerNebby, you're like the people I know who feel so bad about their addiction/obsession that they *have got to* get other people hooked up to make themselves feel better.
Man, I'm so glad I never got obsessed with
.5e. Your user classification system alone fits so well into the evily addicting MUD archetype. -
enablerNebby, you're like the people I know who feel so bad about their addiction/obsession that they *have got to* get other people hooked up to make themselves feel better.
Man, I'm so glad I never got obsessed with
.5e. Your user classification system alone fits so well into the evily addicting MUD archetype. -
Use popup when moderating
Seeing everything from modding ads to new payments schemes has been discussed today, I will add my tiny suggestion for improving slashdot.
When I am a moderator, I find the pull-down mod system terrible. I like modding, but I don't want to spend all day on it. What sux is this: I view a story, see a good post and change the pull-down to "interesting". However, I don't want to go aaaaall the way down to click "moderate", because it takes 2-3 seconds of my life for the page to reload - and then I can't find where I got in the text. So I keep reading, just in case I spot another mod worthy post. If I see a sub-thread which isn't expanded, I can't go in there, cuz then the uncached page would forget the post I wanted to mod when I go back. Too often I end up going on a mod rampage, and just mod down trolls, but I would really prefer just to immidiatly vote for a post I saw, without getting disrupted.
Any solutions? You bet! If you check out half-empty, the solution chosen there is simply a small button or link for every vote option. Click on any of them and a little window opens in the background, which handles the modding. It's beautifully simple and solves all the problems mentioned here. It even stimulates modding. -
No shiiiiiiiitt!This has been getting really stupid lately. K5 and
.5e are really doing a lot better than this lately.It's pretty much a balance of quantity vs quality-
./ has a new (but quite often lame and stupid) article to read every hour or so, while K5 and .5e the articles are much better, but less quantity. I can't stop but keep checking ./ every couple hours, but the others are something I only check once or twice a day.Just waiting for something to get better. Either here or them, some reason to keep or stop going here.
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Link Festival (Karma Whore Warning!)
I Network, Therefore I Am by Robert Cringely
Reach Out and Touch Someone by Robert Cringely
More resources from his two articles:
- 802.11b Range Boost
- Yagi Antenna Design
- Build a dish antenna for $10!
- This server is running over a 10-mile 802.11b link
- Nokia Rooftop Technology
- community-supported, sustainable wireless nets
- 802.11b Range Boost
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Re:...and your plan when RIAA comes?
Ok first off I am not an "open source person"
:) Secondly, the Ogg Vorbis idea is not something I would ever have the time, energy, or resources to do.
Anyway, the concept would basically be two things. Take the gnutella network and 1) Make a client that looked and felt exactly like Napster and 2) (not necessary) filter all but Ogg Vorbis files. Perhaps make it an alternative network for speed reason. The problem with the "geek" clients such as gnutella et al not being used by the average dude like Napster was is because they're unaware that they exist or they're too hard to use. If you made a Napster replacement using gnutella you would get around the legal reprecussions (no central server, nobody can shut it down) while letting all the ex-Napster users jump right in. The RIAA couldn't go after anyone except the software developer, and even then, they have no case since the software developer isn't running the network.
Filtering in the Ogg Vorbis stuff exclusively would be an additional benefit in getting the .ogg format to be the standard instead of .mp3.. not necessarily my goal (I'm too busy running a site and building another) but a goal many "open source people" have undoubtedly. -
Re:Honest communication?
Oh, I see: "We are doing this because we Care about you." Translation: Let us scare the shit out of you so you are so full of fear you can't function and are therefore under our control 24/7. Then we will feel that we have done a good job as a parent.
Parents might do well to note that the danger is not that Other kids will watch Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and kung-fu someone to death on the playground, but that their own kid will snap under the oppressive and anxiety-ridden lifestyle they have chosen for them, grab the gun from under Dad's bed, and start shooting up the school, thereby dealing with the insane pressure in the way his peers taught him.
For a quick example of how someone can lose touch with reality and his own sense of self-worth, here is one of those poor souls. The poor guy has lost touch with himself, and feels that there is no where to turn. How many of our children are lost like that? And how is monitoring their life day after day going to help them become the strong adults we hope to raise?
Insanity heaped upon insanity, that's what it is... -
Re:In related news..
I have been a member of
.5e (half-empty) since I saw it on /. It's a really cool weblog and more like kiro5hin than /. The community there is very helpful and active. The kind of ideas ppl come up with gets pretty far out at times - well worth a visit.
Just a shame the release is overshadowed by Slashcodes... hmm...
-Kraft -
In related news..
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In related news..
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Re:Of course!
stop your bitching, half empty is infinitely better than kuro5hin
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057 -
My situation..and gziphalf-empty is being supported by DynDNS out of the goodness of their hearts since they think it's such a fun site. They're volunteers and its a donation based operation, a chunk of which is used to provide bandwidth for half-empty. I've been very fortunate, as banner ads would not cut it in paying the bills I'm guessing.. even if it could the fact is I'm a poor college kid and even launching a site and taking the risk of having a bandwidth bill to pay is something I couldn't do.
Also, as a side note, you can dramatically decrease bandwidth for pages with lots of HTML (like half-empty's front page) and only some small (cachable) sparse images via GZip compression. In the past when I've mentioned this to webmasters they're usually pretty surprised, never hearing of it before. Netscape 4, IE5, and Mozilla all support client side page decompression via GZip, and all it takes is an Apache plugin (or for servlets, I had to write it myself) to send the right headers along with the compressed data. It won't break on older browsers, it's just sends the uncompressed pages. A 35k front page (something I was feeling REALLY guilty about) now serves up at around 6k, and everyone breathes a lot easier.
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Nintendo is best
I'm definitely going to be one of the first buying the Nintendo GameCube when it is released over here in the UK. I've been buying all the Nintendo consoles and haven't been disappointed in any.
I don't think the GameCube will change Nintendo's flow of dominance in the gaming market. The last report I read about it, proved that Nintendo GameCube will out perform any other. -
if you want 'for the common man'
Head over to
.5e (half empty). Since it's 'mindless drivel for the masses', you can only add, not subtract from our community :)
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057 -
Cheap Plug
Congrats on the 100,000th node guys. I have a few e2 nodes, here's to node 1,000,000.
:) It's pretty amazing what you can type in there and find.. it's usually the case that I have a hard time typing something that doesn't have a node.
Half-empty just passed it's 1000th Idea post. It's kind of a hybrid between slashdot and everything2.. -
Re:Another competition by NASAThis is the FIRST Robotics Competition - just the poster didn't really understand the non-competitive nature when they posted this link.
There was a good thread on this competition a while ago at Half-Empty titled FIRST 2001 Strategies.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate -
Re:I agree with the ruling, but not the law...I offered some suggestions recently on Half-Empty for realistic political goals for copyright reform. It's not going to be easy, though. There are some major corporate economic interests involved, and the whole reason copyright gets more and more out of balance is that they're so good at lobbying. The Bono act was passed without any debate on the floor -- legend has it that the CEO of Disney got a private meeting with Clinton, and explained what a disaster it would be if the 1923 Winnie the Pooh copyrights went public domain.
The Assayer - free-information book reviews -
Re:A User Info slashbox?
This would actually be great.
For a good look at some user-based slashbox-like entities, check out half-empty.org.
Useful glassboxes (as they're called):
- Favorite Ideas (Favorite People or something would be more appropriate here)
- Newsboxes (CNN, Slashdot, anything with RDF)
- Current score
- User score tiers (and a rarely-used Top Ten Users)
- A chatterbox (that mainly links to the Java and Javascript chat)
Another feature that might be nice is allowing users to rate posts so that we can skim for the good ones. That's pretty subjective, though.
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Re:What does that F stand for?
You might be interested in reading my rant on half-empty.
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Re:Got to be Jive talkin !
Though it's still pretty ugly, and apparently not as elegant, my servlet forum software might interest you.
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GlasscodeStandard Deviant-san wrote:
Just to add another name to the pot, Glasscode (java servlet based) was released yesterday or the day before. I'd provide a link here but if you can't look for the story link that's still more than likely on the front page yer just being laaaa-zeee.
The URL is: ;-)http://glasscode.half-empty.org/gcservlet/LoadPag
e .I haven't tried it out yet, but plan to before the weekend is out. Wife and kids catching the flu have postponed my tests so far this weekend. Some things take priority.
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Re:Surely these development the Net's maturity?
why do you need a government to tell you what is right and what is wrong. The government is there to put people in jail and you have to justify why someone should be put in jail before it is any of the government's concern. Your calls to "protect the children" are thinly vailed calls for paternalistic government and you can read my rather extensive thoughts about this on half-empty. As for whether a newspaper can pass lies off as truth, we'll we seem to have a pretty good system in place right now which hardly ever involves the use of liberal law suits. If you scream loud enough, people will know that said newspaper is not very credible and will soon go out of business. As for someone following you around, sending you letters and calling you in the middle of the night, up to a few years ago there was nothing you could do about this and people survived. Deal with it.
Libertarianism is a political theory. The Liberterian Party, like all political parties, has a strategic goal and they make compromises to achieve that goal. There are a lot of people who call themselves liberterians, but they all agree on one thing, you may not use force (including the force of the state) to forward your views and it is the responsibility of government to hold the only force in society, and that is the force to jail those who use force on other members of the society. This is called the "minimalist state" or the "night watch-man of the libertarian state". -
The ftp w/ source is [kinda] working.
If you want to take a look at it you can dl the tar.gz at ftp://ftp.half-empty.org/pub/glasscode/1.0.1/glas
s code-1.0.1.tar.gz
echo $email | sed s/[A-Z]//g | rot13 -
A book for servlets? bah.
You don't really need a book to learn servlets, especially if you've coded cgi scripts in Perl or Python or whatever. You just need to sit for an hour and learn the API, just like anything else (the servlet API is pretty dang small)
I don't know JSP pages, so they might be worthy of an entire book.. but servlets were something I picked up in a day or two.
My site runs Glasscode, a Slash/Scoop like engine and then some written in servlets. The abstraction you can provide with OOP made certain features pretty easy, such as droppable components and "Glassboxes" similar to slash's slashboxes. The OOP Java provides also makes it rather expandable.
It's going GPL sometime around new years. -
Shameless Half-empty plug
I'm slowly building a new type of universal online community over at http://www.half-empty.org. It's been linked via a K5 article (which was linked on
/.) a while back.
The site allows users to post whatever is on their minds or what they want to contribute for discussion, and uses a democratic style rating system to keep out trolls and reward popular posters with more posting ability. So far it seems to be working, and it's an interesting read nontheless. -
What a bunch of idiots
I look through the forum here, and I can see a bunch of people who have obviously never run a professional website.
This thing you call the Internet, while yes, originally came about because of hackers and geeks, thrives today not only because of them, but because of invested capital in companies based upon projected profits from advertising. This is the case with not just e-commerce sites but many sites that you probably use daily and take for granted that they exist.
I'm so tired of people bitching about advertising on the internet. Yes, you can ignore it. You can turn off javascript, and outside banners, or whatever. That's fine and good, but it's also pretty damn inconsiderate when you realize that while it is an annoyance, it is what is driving the people (alot of the time) to keep the site running.
I run a site that has a very promising future. I posted an article on k5 about it, and it was completely bashed because the site has banner ads. I was shocked at how naive everyone was about the magnitute of revenue ads generate and their purpose. Bandwidth isn't free. Hardware isn't free. My ad revenue doesn't even get mailed to me, it gets mailed to my provider since they're DONATING bandwidth since they have so much faith in my site and are LOSING money because of it.
Once again, the geeks come out in droves and show me how spoiled they are. This Internet revolution is possible not only because of the software and design, but because of the money that's been dumped into it as well. -
Re:16 queries on one page?
I'm pretty sure k5 sets a limit of <100 queries on a page before they start worrying about performance. At least that's what Rusty said if I remember correctly. I'm guessing they probably run about 10-20 queries on most pages, however.
My site runs about 10-20, but thats only after caching lots of data in memory. -
(OT)How to get mod points ALL the time
So you wish you had mod points right now. How would you like to have mod points all the time? Look at Kuro5hin. Every logged-in user can rate every comment between Score=1 and Score=5. In systems like Half-empty's Glasscode and Everything, every user can rate every comment +1 or -1 (like on Slashdot).
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Re:Damnit Damnit Damnit!
Glasscode does it
:)
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Re:Seen this Logitech back in Aug 21 /.
- I love how interesting articles get abandoned yet repeat articles get posted.. I really don't understand.
;).Alex Bischoff
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Re:Moderation system for stories.I agree... there should be something that lets users view post submissions, and vote on them. One vote per submission, can't vote on your own submission, and a minimumkarma pre-requisite for a vote (so that new/inactive users and dummy accounts can't vote). Then the editors can see what people want front-paged, and will be free to follow public opinion based on their own judgement.
By the way, Half-Empty has something of the sort, except they take it to the extreme of letting most anyone instant-post a story.
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Give the system discussed a try A HREF="http://ww
Give the system discussed a try here