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YHBT.

The OP is an old Mac troll... originally around the System 7 days, IIRC; you can see versions from six years ago online. It evolved over time, and became a BSD troll by way of OS X. I found out about it because I fell for it about a year ago. :-)

But I do have a couple of comments about your post:

Copying a 17 meg file should not take _any_ time as all it requires is an update to the file systems tables.

No, copying a file (as in, using cp) does duplicate all the data blocks. It sounds like you're thinking of making a hard link, which is just a directory update. But on my box (1400 MHz AMD, UW160 SCSI) it takes 3.3 sec to copy a file that's not in cache, on the same filesystem.

are you trying to copy a file to a recursive symlink?

If an operation goes through MAXSYMLINKS (32) links, then it's aborted with an ELOOP, so you don't have to worry about it.

Are you trying to copy /dev/random to /dev/null?

I know this isn't how you meant it, but just for interest, copying 17 MB from /dev/random to /dev/null takes 0.9 sec on my box.

But yeah, the OP with his 20+ minute 17 MB copy is a load of BS.

along the same lines, I read results from a similar idea earlier today. Much like Friendster, it seems to be more fun to subvert the system, than to actually use it for it's intended purpose.

Here's the original text.

Maybe you should get together and troubleshoot with this guy who had the exact same problem with his Mac back in 1998. Maybe he can tell you how he fixed it.

Of course, this is an allegation that'd be hard to prove without insider verification. Or possibly, with some astute multimeter readings.

Don't get me wrong from the original post, I still love Google, and I do hope they come up with a way to get rid of the spam domains once and for all.

One thing scares me, and that is how they behave towards Adsense-powered sites. Any Slashdot-reading Google-employee willing to comment on this?

Jeez, at least write an original troll.

"Lackluster crop of contest-winning Slashdot tshirts"
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their criticisms are somewhat valid but I expected a little more solidarity from fellow tech-boom fallouts.

Original here.

Amusingly enough, the Google Calculator has read Douglas Adams.

It also knows smoots.

More fun here and here and here.

don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you BSD fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a BSD box (a PIII 800 w/512 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes.

Fact: *BSD trolls are dying.

The "freelance gig" one started as a blog entry here

Curiously, the guy then later wrote a somewhat pro-mac entry here (see halfway down the page)

The "freelance gig" one started as a blog entry here

Curiously, the guy then later wrote a somewhat pro-mac entry here (see halfway down the page)

You can read the original blog post our friendly troll ripped off here. And you can find the author's more recent take on the Mac here.

You can read the original blog post our friendly troll ripped off here. And you can find the author's more recent take on the Mac here.

Actually, that gripe belongs to 1998. They would appreciate it immensely if you would return the gripe to its rightful owners, and keep it out of 1997's dirty little hands. Thanks!

At one point in the article they are speaking to the rep from the Software and Information Industry Association:

Thompson said customers need to have realistic expectations. He urged buyers to ask themselves two questions before plunking down cash for software: What is it that I want this software to do? and Am I going to use this software as it's been marketed?

Make sure that your expectations are appropriate to what a product is marketing, he said.

My question would be: is how the product is marketed what is covered in the ads, or what is stated in the EULA? Ads tend to imply lots of bizarre things, but what software really does or doesn't do won't be revealed until you read the EULA. Most of the time the EULA states that the software isn't guaranteed to do anything, including harming you and your data.

Read the EULA, that's where appropriate expectations about the software should be set. Not in the marketing.

If you're gonna troll, try to be original about it.

If you're going to post unrealistic complaints, at least be original, maybe the BSD bootup screen contains the ancient sigil Mua which means "hail the great beast, destroyer of worlds." Now that would be amusing!

Apparently that 'fragrance' is your own.

The original post is a newly modified form of this blog entry from 1998. This is the first I've seen it modified to talk about a newer machine. All other instances have included the original blog text verbatim.

Clearly the original guy was having some sort of problem -- whether hardware or stupid extension conflicts, who knows. But that version of Mac OS sucked and could easily bomb like that with a rogue extension or program. No surprise.

Reposting this on every apple article is a big troll. It's totally irrelevant. And as you can see here, the same guy seems to be slightly happier with Apple products these days. Except for a new problem with his iBook, hehe...

Apparently that 'fragrance' is your own.

The original post is a newly modified form of this blog entry from 1998. This is the first I've seen it modified to talk about a newer machine. All other instances have included the original blog text verbatim.

Clearly the original guy was having some sort of problem -- whether hardware or stupid extension conflicts, who knows. But that version of Mac OS sucked and could easily bomb like that with a rogue extension or program. No surprise.

Reposting this on every apple article is a big troll. It's totally irrelevant. And as you can see here, the same guy seems to be slightly happier with Apple products these days. Except for a new problem with his iBook, hehe...

Check out http://www.kottke.org/98/11/981125my_mac_sucks.htm l

Looks like this comment was made in 1998.

He copied this troll from a 1998 weblog posting nitwit. Further review suggests that the original author isn't quite so frustrated with Apple these days.

YHBT. HAND.

He copied this troll from a 1998 weblog posting nitwit. Further review suggests that the original author isn't quite so frustrated with Apple these days.

YHBT. HAND.

My advice is to stick to using 9.1 on your 8600. And don't generalize about BSD from your situation; it's an extreme.

It's a search-and-replace of an ancient troll--the original was about classic MacOS; it's been reposted as about MacOS X, and now as about BSD.

In general, keep in mind that stories in the BSD and Apple sections will always have these stock trolls (e.g., "BSD is dying," "Elegy for BSD," "Developer Laments," "Dear Apple," "Dear Fr. O'Day," etc...).

with much gayness,

Dahan, C.S.B.

I think what he's painting is a "worst case" scenario. Reality will be different, and I cannot predict what it will be like, but it will not be as bad as he thinks. Most really innovative work still has to be done. Did anybody here predict the social influence Google would have? I think not.

And to illustrate this with a recent development: iTunes. Conventional wisdom is that Apple seriously fucked up, the RIAA is going to sue Apple's pants off, and Apple's new iTunes Music Store will be shut down by the some seriously pissed off record companies.

Kottke would like to believe an alternative theory. Apple had to know what they were doing with iTunes. Their engineers aren't stupid. They left the whole thing wide open and had to know how trivial it would be for developers to figure out the protocol and write apps to download the music directly.

Things will be not develop in the way we are thinking now. Nevertheless, Lessig will remain a good read for quite a while!

-John

No it hasn't. Kottke Paul Boutin has done some digging also.

Jason Kottke has posted a similar article about Weblogs and power laws. He points to this thread for getting him thinking--and guesses Shirky was inspired there as well.

LiveJournal blogs are the worst, IMHO. People go on and on about events and parties with people that 99.99999% of their readers have never met. Once I realize I've stumbled across something like that, I leave it as soon as I can.

LiveJournal blogs are the worst, IMHO. People go on and on about events and parties with people that 99.99999% of their readers have never met. Once I realize I've stumbled across something like that, I leave it as soon as I can.

I think most of you are getting a little lost. See, you're making the mistake of labelling online journals as weblogs. While there is definitely some overlapping, journals and weblogs are not one and the same.

Like most of you have observed, online journals are mostly products of self absorbed teens whining about their lives (of course, not all of them are like that - LittleYellowDifferent is technically a blog but verges into journal territory lots, with a bunch of hilarious anecdotes from the author's life). Blogs, on the other hand, are the natural extention of links pages. They offer links to interesting or funny webpages and adding often hilarious commentary on the pages. Of course there are a ton of inane, cookie-cutter blogs, but there are a whole bunch of amazing and hilarious blogs out there too.

Examples of some awesome blogs are Davezilla, the null device, and Kottke.org.

Oh, and here's my rule of thumb for finding great blogs: If, in your quest, you find yourself at Livejournal or Blogspot, run as far as you can in the opposite direction, because you're not going to find the next Davezilla on there.

I've been noodling on this for a while and it is disconcerting to me that these media outlets are shutting down or floundering.

The dearth of weblog content is an incredible outlet for relevant information on world events, often relayed by the very participants in the news. However, too often, the linking goes back to major media outlets or a subsidary of one a large corporation.

While even further "elite" discussion boards and content sites will flourish (uber, A List Apart and Flak spring to mind), they lack the resources to disseminate their clever and unabashed content.

Publishing tools like blogger make it easy for the non-technical user to publish their thoughts, witticism, and commentary to the web. It is only when these sites reach critical mass (Kottke.org, Zeldman.com) that it becomes hugely expense to continue relaying the message.

I see the future of independent content lying in the hands of smaller, more focused community sites (Metafilter, The Fray)

Despite their shortcomings, these sites are paving the way backwards to a smaller, more closely knit internet the way it was several years ago.

Suzie Homemaker and Joe Six-pack will continue to the media that's delivered to them, and the rest who desire the independent voice will seek it and should they not find it, they will create it as they always have.

Nice article, but the guy who cracked the box wrote up a detailed account of *exactly* how he did it, complete with code:

http://hispahack.ccc.de/en/mi019en.htm

Very interesting reading.

-jason

http://www.kottke.org
"home of fine hypertext products"

The Jet-Set are only the arbiters of society because of money. As long as they have the money and as long as the world is primarily capitalistic, they will dictate most everything one can imagine. The Net-Set usurping this power would imply a significant shift in the capital structure of society, which I don't see happening in either the short or long term.

-jason

http://www.kottke.org
"home of fine hypertext products"