Slashdot Mirror

That would be Karma Whore. Not to be confused with with any of the following :

Crack Whore, Assistant Crack Whore, Crack Whores Who Remember 9/11, A little known band called the Absolute Whores, Media Whores, or even Evil Lesbian Media Whores

There were actually a number of bloggers at ApacheCon aside from Michael Radwin - each with their own independent views/opinions (!) of what they saw/heard ;-) They provide a alternative perspective to Mr. Radwin's own blog. Here are a couple of others:
[you may have to skip to the dated entries Nov 19-22 - the conference really started with the first keynote on that Tuesday, there were tutorials only (extra $) on Monday]

Andy Oliver

Ugo Cei

Peter Royal

Fascinating to see something I wrote almost ten years ago turn up on slashdot as "new."

I wrote it on a dare, sort of. There weren't any single process web servers at the time and a friend of mine said "it shouldn't be that hard..." I named it boa because my pet at the time was -- wait for it! -- a boa constrictor.

Gee, that's it. Yay for open source living ten years on its own.

-- psp

I posted this in my livejournal a couple weeks ago:

Finrod's First Rule of Politics

If a political candidate mentions children in his campaign ads that he did not personally sire or adopt, then he is evil.

This could also be known as the Kyle's Mom Rule.

On one of my many random livejournal adventures I stumbled across a classmate of Ellen's, named Lily. The cool thing is that Lily dated Hamilton (the other kid with the commercial, and the one who landed Ellen her ad) for quite some time. Apparently Ellen goes to The Cambridge School of Weston, a rather alternative high school Massachusetts. Here are some of the more relevant Livejournal threads:
Lily finds out about ellenfeiss.net
Lily finds out that her ex-boyfriend Hamilton is gonna be in a commercial
Lily comments on Hamilton's dad doing some stuff for the Oscar's and getting tons of loot. Apparently that family is hella-rich.
Lily just saw Hamilton make an appearance on the Oscars. (betcha didn't know he was already famous _before_ the switch ad)

Yeah yeah, it mostly deals with Hamilton (there's a lot more about him if you keep going through the journal) and not much is all THAT exciting, but I thought it was interesting.

On one of my many random livejournal adventures I stumbled across a classmate of Ellen's, named Lily. The cool thing is that Lily dated Hamilton (the other kid with the commercial, and the one who landed Ellen her ad) for quite some time. Apparently Ellen goes to The Cambridge School of Weston, a rather alternative high school Massachusetts. Here are some of the more relevant Livejournal threads:
Lily finds out about ellenfeiss.net
Lily finds out that her ex-boyfriend Hamilton is gonna be in a commercial
Lily comments on Hamilton's dad doing some stuff for the Oscar's and getting tons of loot. Apparently that family is hella-rich.
Lily just saw Hamilton make an appearance on the Oscars. (betcha didn't know he was already famous _before_ the switch ad)

Yeah yeah, it mostly deals with Hamilton (there's a lot more about him if you keep going through the journal) and not much is all THAT exciting, but I thought it was interesting.

On one of my many random livejournal adventures I stumbled across a classmate of Ellen's, named Lily. The cool thing is that Lily dated Hamilton (the other kid with the commercial, and the one who landed Ellen her ad) for quite some time. Apparently Ellen goes to The Cambridge School of Weston, a rather alternative high school Massachusetts. Here are some of the more relevant Livejournal threads:
Lily finds out about ellenfeiss.net
Lily finds out that her ex-boyfriend Hamilton is gonna be in a commercial
Lily comments on Hamilton's dad doing some stuff for the Oscar's and getting tons of loot. Apparently that family is hella-rich.
Lily just saw Hamilton make an appearance on the Oscars. (betcha didn't know he was already famous _before_ the switch ad)

Yeah yeah, it mostly deals with Hamilton (there's a lot more about him if you keep going through the journal) and not much is all THAT exciting, but I thought it was interesting.

On one of my many random livejournal adventures I stumbled across a classmate of Ellen's, named Lily. The cool thing is that Lily dated Hamilton (the other kid with the commercial, and the one who landed Ellen her ad) for quite some time. Apparently Ellen goes to The Cambridge School of Weston, a rather alternative high school Massachusetts. Here are some of the more relevant Livejournal threads:
Lily finds out about ellenfeiss.net
Lily finds out that her ex-boyfriend Hamilton is gonna be in a commercial
Lily comments on Hamilton's dad doing some stuff for the Oscar's and getting tons of loot. Apparently that family is hella-rich.
Lily just saw Hamilton make an appearance on the Oscars. (betcha didn't know he was already famous _before_ the switch ad)

Yeah yeah, it mostly deals with Hamilton (there's a lot more about him if you keep going through the journal) and not much is all THAT exciting, but I thought it was interesting.

On one of my many random livejournal adventures I stumbled across a classmate of Ellen's, named Lily. The cool thing is that Lily dated Hamilton (the other kid with the commercial, and the one who landed Ellen her ad) for quite some time. Apparently Ellen goes to The Cambridge School of Weston, a rather alternative high school Massachusetts. Here are some of the more relevant Livejournal threads:
Lily finds out about ellenfeiss.net
Lily finds out that her ex-boyfriend Hamilton is gonna be in a commercial
Lily comments on Hamilton's dad doing some stuff for the Oscar's and getting tons of loot. Apparently that family is hella-rich.
Lily just saw Hamilton make an appearance on the Oscars. (betcha didn't know he was already famous _before_ the switch ad)

Yeah yeah, it mostly deals with Hamilton (there's a lot more about him if you keep going through the journal) and not much is all THAT exciting, but I thought it was interesting.

On one of my many random livejournal adventures I stumbled across a classmate of Ellen's, named Lily. The cool thing is that Lily dated Hamilton (the other kid with the commercial, and the one who landed Ellen her ad) for quite some time. Apparently Ellen goes to The Cambridge School of Weston, a rather alternative high school Massachusetts. Here are some of the more relevant Livejournal threads:
Lily finds out about ellenfeiss.net
Lily finds out that her ex-boyfriend Hamilton is gonna be in a commercial
Lily comments on Hamilton's dad doing some stuff for the Oscar's and getting tons of loot. Apparently that family is hella-rich.
Lily just saw Hamilton make an appearance on the Oscars. (betcha didn't know he was already famous _before_ the switch ad)

Yeah yeah, it mostly deals with Hamilton (there's a lot more about him if you keep going through the journal) and not much is all THAT exciting, but I thought it was interesting.

background: As most residents of college dormitories or mixed-gender households can tell you, the player-vs-player computer and console gaming world appeals disproportionately to the male demographic. The cause is likely something to do with testosterone and its affinity to simulated gunfights/swordplay/unarmed combat. Whatever the case, from time to time someone's girlfriend/roommate/sister is invited to join a game - typically to even out FPS (First Person Shooter) teams, or as an answer to the incessant question "what's so fun about these silly games anyway?"

Because she is unfamiliar with a game's commands or dynamics, the newbie usually proceeds to mash all the buttons/commands at random ... and much to the bewilderment and chagrin of her opponents, wallop them repeatedly because she is such a wildly unpredictable adversary.

background: As most residents of college dormitories or mixed-gender households can tell you, the player-vs-player computer and console gaming world appeals disproportionately to the male demographic. The cause is likely something to do with testosterone and its affinity to simulated gunfights/swordplay/unarmed combat. Whatever the case, from time to time someone's girlfriend/roommate/sister is invited to join a game - typically to even out FPS (First Person Shooter) teams, or as an answer to the incessant question "what's so fun about these silly games anyway?"

Because she is unfamiliar with a game's commands or dynamics, the newbie usually proceeds to mash all the buttons/commands at random ... and much to the bewilderment and chagrin of her opponents, wallop them repeatedly because she is such a wildly unpredictable adversary.

Physics:

As one who has suffered through our grueling-yet-vocationally-worthless Physics program I've concluded that Physics is God's way of telling us that there are things mortals just shouldn't know. When getting over 30% on midterms and finals earns an "A" in an upper-division class in E&M, you know something is wrong with the discipline - even the best students are doing worse than what would flunk you in any other class. The only good thing I learned from studying physics: now I know why the Space Shuttle blew up.

Think about it: NASA hired a bunch of scientists with seemingly impeccable academic qualifications - "straight-A" Physics students to work on specific portions of mechanics/safety evaluation. NASA authorities blindly trusted their options with the stupid confidence of those who do not realize physicists can earn their straight-As being WRONG 70 percent of the time. Only in baseball can a successful career be built on a comprable failure rate.

Major Trauma

Sure, there are ones that are just a bitch fest for people, and I've used mine to complain about crappy things at work (usually about the shitty security in the computer system I don't have any control over) but if you don't like them, don't read them..

I use mine as an online work journal, as do many others. Many engineering jobs require a work journal, so I've kept up the habit by keeping mine online and accessible from anywhere. Here's one (a systems programmer) that has links to a lot of other mostly work-related journals.

Totally agree.

I have reasonably popular LJ - but thought I spend the most time writing longer essays on serious topics, my traffic always spikes around silly stuff like the Photoshop matrix spoof, my whimsical story on credit-card fraud or random picture of a cute asian girl.

Content is dead. Long live design!

*Shrugs* :P

Totally agree.

I have reasonably popular LJ - but thought I spend the most time writing longer essays on serious topics, my traffic always spikes around silly stuff like the Photoshop matrix spoof, my whimsical story on credit-card fraud or random picture of a cute asian girl.

Content is dead. Long live design!

*Shrugs* :P

Totally agree.

I have reasonably popular LJ - but thought I spend the most time writing longer essays on serious topics, my traffic always spikes around silly stuff like the Photoshop matrix spoof, my whimsical story on credit-card fraud or random picture of a cute asian girl.

Content is dead. Long live design!

*Shrugs* :P

If I read stories about a person's private life, I'd much rather they beging with a line like, "Dear Penthouse, I've always read the letters in your magazine but never thought that something like that could happen to me..."

Well, if thats the case. Here you go.

Ever had this happen to you before?

Girlfriend Luck: [noun] (gerl' frend luk') - the uncanny and highly annoying phenomenon where girlfriends who are invited to join player-vs-player computer/console games that they are wholly unfamiliar with, nonetheless beat the stuffing out of more-experienced male opponents.

Livejournal is another great substitute for Blogger... plus, it's open source. Always a bonus. =)

That's too funny. I was just reading a journal that fits your description. Her last post was an Ani Difranco song.

Thats true. You never see dogs boring each other witless with the irrelevant minutiae of their lives. Mind you, dog's can lick actually their own genitals, which is pretty much what blogging is a substitute for...

C'mon, even JWZ has a LiveJournal...

A game that a friend told me about, Spaced Penguin, is great at demonstrating these orbital mechanics. =) And it's fun. =^.^=

Alari
--- Karma: We hate you. Go away.

and she's got a blog. (and hates that term. I'm not fond of it myself.) And this item may come in very handy for her grad school paper on how libraries and librarians are changing with technical evolution. so, uh, thanks.

Private is intended only for yourself, friends-only is for those account holders, whom you claimed as friends and public is public. No challenge-response logins, though, each of your friends and family members would have to create their own account and then be added by you into the friends list.

The biggest weakness of any security system is always the human part. Overreliance of 'security software' only amplifies the vulnerabilitiy of firms to a resourceful attacker.

On a semi-related tangent: Some of you might be interested in the account of how a UC San Diego student with a crummy GPA managed to fast-talked his way into a Silicon Valley investment-banking firm internship.

Here's one possible layout for the next 20 years. A couple are coming true early, like Linux AOL!

if you support the small guy's ability to edit the big guy's movies and redistribute them, you must also support the big guy's ability to edit the small guy's movies.

Making a censored copy of a movie entails, by definition, making a copy of it.

I'm surprised there's no mention of LiveJournal. I got bit by the blogging bug back in May or so, and have found LJ to be a good place to keep up with everything. I keep in touch with friends and keep a running record of my life.

Yesterday, I was discussing Alzheimer's with my co-worker, Bob, who runs bland-o-rama.com...we, like any techs, fear the loss of memory and our abilities. The factoid about nuns being highly resistant to Alzheimer's came up, and the running theory is b/c they are journaliing on a daily basis. Exercise for the memory system, I guess.

Personally, though, I'm just doing it because it's interesting to look back and see where I've been...and hopefully get a good idea of where I'm going. Plus I get to watch my friends that use LJ do the same thing.

I'm surprised there's no mention of LiveJournal. I got bit by the blogging bug back in May or so, and have found LJ to be a good place to keep up with everything. I keep in touch with friends and keep a running record of my life.

Yesterday, I was discussing Alzheimer's with my co-worker, Bob, who runs bland-o-rama.com...we, like any techs, fear the loss of memory and our abilities. The factoid about nuns being highly resistant to Alzheimer's came up, and the running theory is b/c they are journaliing on a daily basis. Exercise for the memory system, I guess.

Personally, though, I'm just doing it because it's interesting to look back and see where I've been...and hopefully get a good idea of where I'm going. Plus I get to watch my friends that use LJ do the same thing.

Okay, you can sit around with your TI-86 all night long and talk about XML parsing times, but who cares? The only real test of a site is how much it provides content, and by content, I mean a peek into the life of CowboyNeal. Using this test, let's compare:

CowboyNeal on e2

CowboyNeal's livejournal account.

Aside from technical details, which one of these gives us more insight into the delicate poetic soul that is Mr. Pater?

Whoa. I would really like to hear how an inter-dimensional gate to hell on a Demios penal colony has anything to do with socialistic political agendas. :) Seriously. Enlighten me.

You sound like some Objectivists I know.

So I waited in line at the Mall of America to get Jaguar on Friday night (the whole tirade about that is in a recent posting in my livejournal). Prior to this, I upgraded my 500MHz dual-USB iBook from 256MB of RAM to 640MB. It seemed a bit snappier, and things definitely went more smoothly while running with tons o' apps.

Enter Jaguar. Faster, snappier, crisper. This was worth the wait and worth the money. The integration between the basic iApps (iChat, Mail and Address book) is <cartman>sweeeeeet</cartman>. None of my major apps required updating. I haven't spent that much of a weekend futzing around with an OS (and enjoying it) since 10.1 came out.

Minor tidbits: the firewall GUI is nice. PHP is now part of the standard install (however you may want to visit Mark Liyange's page to see how to re-enable a lot of the functionality that Apple dumbed-down. (This page also has package installers for MySQL, Ruby, and tons of other cool stuff.) The Mail app seems to be pretty adept at identifying spam...and getting better and better over the last couple of days...and the bounce-to-sender feature makes it look like you don't exist anymore...it's not perfect but it seems to have reduced the incoming flow by about 10-15%. iChat, a little buggy, but nice...I thought I was going to hate the voice-balloon interface, but I discovered that, strangely enough, it's easier on the eyes than multiple lines of text.

All in all, I'd say that they've outdone themselves again.

since I'm fascinated with his tale, I'd like to point out the work of jorm, who's currently writing a (superhero?) story told episodically via livejournal.

He's left me chomping at the bit for more.

Free your mind

and your ass will etc...

The Scary Monkey Show

ravenpowers (I think this is the guy you were asking about).

NP!

Please point the next person to complain about Debian's slow releases here. The point remains: slow releases are still a good thing. For anyone with basic UNIX skills, the major updates are just a minor convenience. And each full distribution upgrade carries unnecessary risks.

A friend and I have recently become infatuated with finding a way to implement a free wireless WAN. I wonder if we should sue these companies for stealing our idea. Oh, damn, didn't patent it. :p

Anyway, anyone interested can find a bit of documentation here.

As long as you guys talk about Apple in terms of pure profit-and-loss, you're not going to be getting the whole picture.

Sure that's how they market their products--they're better quality, more efficient, etc than PCs, but it's the dollars that count. Bottom line is they want more profit, just like Microsoft, IBM, and Archos.

If they really wanted to keep only part of the market, then why would they be running these ads? encouraging frustrated PC users to switch over? "One of us! One of us!"

-- Buzz

Whilst concentrating on local issues will limit the audience that audience could still be quite large. I've worked with a number of local/regional sites and we've always found that the readers we get from outside that area are always far more than the local population.

On the content side I'd reccomend tempering purely local issues with issues/slant that whilst local are likely to be of interest to people outside the immediate area. I guess the Berkeley is going to have a big interest from people who have attended the university or who wish to do so.

I don't really know enough about Slashcode to comment on it's suitablility. LiveJournal might be worth considering?

I doubt the model had the HD either which would also carry a significant portion of the weight.

--Buzz

Sweet! I can use it to translate my anime (no self-respecting nerd would even consider watching the dub!) and Japanese pop music!

Assuming it translates smarter than Babelfish and some of the crazy entries at Animelyrics, this would be an excellent device indeedy. Do you suppose it would outputs only in Romajii, though? What about katakana, hiragana and kanji? Nevermind, authenticity isn't anywhere near as important as Pocky, DiGi Charat and Hapatai.

Yatta, yatta...

Now, niftyneat as it looks, I see a few problems...

First and foremost, you're going to be stuck representing solid 1-color materials, wireframes and ghosts with this. You're also not going to be able to make objects appear to be lit correctly. Why? Because the display has no idea what angle you're viewing it from. I'll explain.

Hold your thumb in front of the screen. It's blocking some part of the display, right? Move your head back and forth a little, and it will block different parts. Raise your head up a little or drop it down and it will block different parts again. The thing is, the display has no idea where you're looking from, so every part needs to be visible at all times. It can't clip out bits that are behind other things like a traditional 2D display. The result is that if you show a screen full of text, and draw a thumb in front, you still see the text through the thumb. Both will appear to act like ghosts.

Now, consider drawing a Coke can with a flashlight shining on the side. Again, it has no idea which side you're viewing from, so it's got to draw all sides of the can. The thing is, as you move about it, the logo on the front of the can shouldn't be visible when looking at the back of the can. Similarly, when you look at the side opposite the flashlight, it should be all dark. But since the display uses volumetric texels, it has no idea about the facing of each texel. Every texel's going to be drawn, so a you'd see the backward logo when looking from the back, and you'd see what boils down to a really confusing lighting situation when viewing from the non-flashlight side. It's like ghosts or colored X-Rays.

If you're still with me, that covers the reason for no shadows or non-uniform dull, not-too-shiny surfaces.

Next problem is - it's gonna be SLOW! Sad, but true! If it were a 3D bitmap representing equal units of a cube, that would be one thing. Unfortunately, it represents slices of a bitmap rotating through space.

Now, let me say this: Computers hate round things. Arcs, swooshes, ribbons, none of these are much fun for a computer to draw (comparatively speaking), much less, to render into.

Normally, polygon raster operations boil down to setting up a bunch of lines, one per scanline, and for each, figuring out how you progress across the line in measured, discrete steps. "I'm starting here in the texture, and I'll be there in the texture. I need to get there in 32 screen pixels, and I advance n units through regular steps of screen, texel and 1/z space." This tells the computer do the expensive calculation once, and just do 32 iterative steps to render the 32 pixels on that scanline. Any modern 3D engine is actually optimized to do the expensive stuff 1-2 times, creating the per-scanline numbers iteratively as well.

The only places where this approach doesn't work are where you're clipping against the edge of the display area. Clipped triangles are traditionally an order of magnitude more expensive to render than non-clipped ones. So much so, that terrible tricks are used to avoid them or reduce them to categories of special cases that can be tackled to attempt to avoid reverting to a true clip. For example, many display systems actually create waste RAM in a border around the screen. If a triangle doesn't penetrate the waste area, the rasterizer will go ahead and draw (or pretend to draw) the dummy pixels. It's only in the case where triangles are partly on screen, but go even beyond the dummy area that the hideously expensive render functions are called. Drawing millions of pixels per second that you know the user will never see? That sure points to a problem!

Enter the circular slice-based display space.

Here, for every single pixel, you've got to find which bits of a render go through. Essentially, you have to clip against the front and back of every single triangle you render as you calculate each slice. You're taking the worst hit on every single triangle!

What's even worse is that a single 'frame' (half rotation, assuming the rotating display plane is visible from front and back) consists of just shy of 200 renders. This means you're taking that 1% worst case scenario and repeating it 100% of the time, and repeating it about 200 times per frame. And because you're dealing with an arc for the rotational advancement (remember, computers like even, linear, discrete steps), you're dealing with curved surfaces instead of little cubes and the planes of a view frustum. Essentially, you're looking for the union of an arbitrary material and a stuffed piece of macaroni instead of merely finding the portion that fits within a little box. This makes the checks for pixel penetration several orders of magnitude more expensive and makes it even more expensive to attempt to reuse data from one slice to the next.

Hee. Plus the display is connected to your PC via SCSI2W, which is also a not-too-minor detail. You've got over 100 million pixels to send across per 'frame'. Even if they're just 1-byte pixels (256 color), and partial updates, that's asking a lot of a dual-channel 20MHz(?) bus.

Mind, we're still discovering things today which would have sped up rendering on our Commodore 64s. The computational cost will come down over time as more ways are developed for rendering in non-uniform/curved space, and as different spatial representation methods are explored. This is a nifty advance, certainly a step closers than the silly lenticular lens based 3D systems and the layered LCD-over-CRT approaches.

Still. Think of a ghosty AutoCAD on a 286. Look, but don't touch. We've still got a ways to go before 3D games and movies become a reality.

But don't get me wrong: It's a neat advancement, and it gives me hope. If I could borrow one, I think I'd make a noisy whirring ghost town snow globe. The shape just begs for it. And I'd love to get cracking on trying to find efficient algorithms for the unusual render space. *sigh.* $60k though. Maybe eBay can help me out on this one in another 20 years.

Users who do not want to take a subscription, or demand that certain changes be made to the website or the editorial policy before they would consider doing so, are often called "whiners"; practices like using software such as the Internet Junkbuster to view ad-free pages without paying are scorned upon by the editors.

Now, let's look at Pater's (aka "Cowboi Kneel") record when it comes to compensating websites for services rendered.
Over at livejournal.com, said slashdot editor keeps a diary.But before I come to the heart of the matter: What is livejournal.com exactly? Let me quote from their website:

LiveJournal.com is a volunteer-run website where you can keep your journal online. We're constantly adding new features and trying to improve the user experience. We cater to all levels of users, from the most technically incompetent to programmers and system administrators. Nearly all development and "business" decisions are discussed in public.

You do not have to pay any money to use this service. You can buy a paid account to show your support and to help us afford better hardware and bring you new features, but you don't have to.

(Emphasis mine.)

You also get some additional features by paying for an account, similar to Slashdot ("feature" there: no ads)

Now, on livejournal.com there are 4 categories of membership:

"Free account" -- this is the default account type, with which you can do almost everything. The most notable exception is that users with free accounts cannot create new styles (editing the HTML for their journal).

"Early Adopter" -- All users before mid-September 2000 are considered early adopters, and have access to a subset of the paid account functionality. They have access to create styles, and view their journal at username.livejournal.com.

"Paid account" -- The user has access to all paid account functionality.

"Permanent Account" -- the user has all paid functionality with no expiration date. The user is either a LiveJournal developer or has contributed a significant amount of time or money to the project.

We would of course expect Neal to support this volunteer-run, non-profit. ad-free website by getting a paid account? Isn't this the Linux, the open source spirit of the new millenium?
After all, he's been keeping his journal there since at least the beginning of April 2002, so he should have had ample time to see if livejournal.com's service is worth the money.

If we now look at Cowboi Kneel's user info, what do we see?

Account type: Free User

Oh no! My assumption was wrong; what, for Christ's sake, happened? Why would Pater not want to support such an excellent site as livejournal.com?

Could it be that Cowboy Neal is a freeloader, that he doesn't what to help a site which does offer some value to him (obviously, as he's been posting there for more than a month)? That he doesn't have any problem whatsoever using up their bandwidth, disk space and volunteer time without giving something in return, all the while (together with the other editors) expecting us, the users of slashdot.com, to donate ( "we regard this as a tip jar" ) to their corporate, profit-driven site?

Could it be that Cowboy Neal is a hypocrite?

Users who do not want to take a subscription, or demand that certain changes be made to the website or the editorial policy before they would consider doing so, are often called "whiners"; practices like using software such as the Internet Junkbuster to view ad-free pages without paying are scorned upon by the editors.

Now, let's look at Pater's (aka "Cowboi Kneel") record when it comes to compensating websites for services rendered.
Over at livejournal.com, said slashdot editor keeps a diary.But before I come to the heart of the matter: What is livejournal.com exactly? Let me quote from their website:

LiveJournal.com is a volunteer-run website where you can keep your journal online. We're constantly adding new features and trying to improve the user experience. We cater to all levels of users, from the most technically incompetent to programmers and system administrators. Nearly all development and "business" decisions are discussed in public.

You do not have to pay any money to use this service. You can buy a paid account to show your support and to help us afford better hardware and bring you new features, but you don't have to.

(Emphasis mine.)

You also get some additional features by paying for an account, similar to Slashdot ("feature" there: no ads)

Now, on livejournal.com there are 4 categories of membership:

"Free account" -- this is the default account type, with which you can do almost everything. The most notable exception is that users with free accounts cannot create new styles (editing the HTML for their journal).

"Early Adopter" -- All users before mid-September 2000 are considered early adopters, and have access to a subset of the paid account functionality. They have access to create styles, and view their journal at username.livejournal.com.

"Paid account" -- The user has access to all paid account functionality.

"Permanent Account" -- the user has all paid functionality with no expiration date. The user is either a LiveJournal developer or has contributed a significant amount of time or money to the project.

We would of course expect Neal to support this volunteer-run, non-profit. ad-free website by getting a paid account? Isn't this the Linux, the open source spirit of the new millenium?
After all, he's been keeping his journal there since at least the beginning of April 2002, so he should have had ample time to see if livejournal.com's service is worth the money.

If we now look at Cowboi Kneel's user info, what do we see?

Account type: Free User

Oh no! My assumption was wrong; what, for Christ's sake, happened? Why would Pater not want to support such an excellent site as livejournal.com?

Could it be that Cowboy Neal is a freeloader, that he doesn't what to help a site which does offer some value to him (obviously, as he's been posting there for more than a month)? That he doesn't have any problem whatsoever using up their bandwidth, disk space and volunteer time without giving something in return, all the while (together with the other editors) expecting us, the users of slashdot.com, to donate ( "we regard this as a tip jar" ) to their corporate, profit-driven site?

Could it be that Cowboy Neal is a hypocrite?

Users who do not want to take a subscription, or demand that certain changes be made to the website or the editorial policy before they would consider doing so, are often called "whiners"; practices like using software such as the Internet Junkbuster to view ad-free pages without paying are scorned upon by the editors.

Now, let's look at Pater's (aka "Cowboi Kneel") record when it comes to compensating websites for services rendered.
Over at livejournal.com, said slashdot editor keeps a diary.But before I come to the heart of the matter: What is livejournal.com exactly? Let me quote from their website:

LiveJournal.com is a volunteer-run website where you can keep your journal online. We're constantly adding new features and trying to improve the user experience. We cater to all levels of users, from the most technically incompetent to programmers and system administrators. Nearly all development and "business" decisions are discussed in public.

You do not have to pay any money to use this service. You can buy a paid account to show your support and to help us afford better hardware and bring you new features, but you don't have to.

(Emphasis mine.)

You also get some additional features by paying for an account, similar to Slashdot ("feature" there: no ads)

Now, on livejournal.com there are 4 categories of membership:

"Free account" -- this is the default account type, with which you can do almost everything. The most notable exception is that users with free accounts cannot create new styles (editing the HTML for their journal).

"Early Adopter" -- All users before mid-September 2000 are considered early adopters, and have access to a subset of the paid account functionality. They have access to create styles, and view their journal at username.livejournal.com.

"Paid account" -- The user has access to all paid account functionality.

"Permanent Account" -- the user has all paid functionality with no expiration date. The user is either a LiveJournal developer or has contributed a significant amount of time or money to the project.

We would of course expect Neal to support this volunteer-run, non-profit. ad-free website by getting a paid account? Isn't this the Linux, the open source spirit of the new millenium?
After all, he's been keeping his journal there since at least the beginning of April 2002, so he should have had ample time to see if livejournal.com's service is worth the money.

If we now look at Cowboi Kneel's user info, what do we see?

Account type: Free User

Oh no! My assumption was wrong; what, for Christ's sake, happened? Why would Pater not want to support such an excellent site as livejournal.com?

Could it be that Cowboy Neal is a freeloader, that he doesn't what to help a site which does offer some value to him (obviously, as he's been posting there for more than a month)? That he doesn't have any problem whatsoever using up their bandwidth, disk space and volunteer time without giving something in return, all the while (together with the other editors) expecting us, the users of slashdot.com, to donate ( "we regard this as a tip jar" ) to their corporate, profit-driven site?

Could it be that Cowboy Neal is a hypocrite?

Users who do not want to take a subscription, or demand that certain changes be made to the website or the editorial policy before they would consider doing so, are often called "whiners"; practices like using software such as the Internet Junkbuster to view ad-free pages without paying are scorned upon by the editors.

Now, let's look at Pater's (aka "Cowboi Kneel") record when it comes to compensating websites for services rendered.
Over at livejournal.com, said slashdot editor keeps a diary.But before I come to the heart of the matter: What is livejournal.com exactly? Let me quote from their website:

LiveJournal.com is a volunteer-run website where you can keep your journal online. We're constantly adding new features and trying to improve the user experience. We cater to all levels of users, from the most technically incompetent to programmers and system administrators. Nearly all development and "business" decisions are discussed in public.

You do not have to pay any money to use this service. You can buy a paid account to show your support and to help us afford better hardware and bring you new features, but you don't have to.

(Emphasis mine.)

You also get some additional features by paying for an account, similar to Slashdot ("feature" there: no ads)

Now, on livejournal.com there are 4 categories of membership:

"Free account" -- this is the default account type, with which you can do almost everything. The most notable exception is that users with free accounts cannot create new styles (editing the HTML for their journal).

"Early Adopter" -- All users before mid-September 2000 are considered early adopters, and have access to a subset of the paid account functionality. They have access to create styles, and view their journal at username.livejournal.com.

"Paid account" -- The user has access to all paid account functionality.

"Permanent Account" -- the user has all paid functionality with no expiration date. The user is either a LiveJournal developer or has contributed a significant amount of time or money to the project.

We would of course expect Neal to support this volunteer-run, non-profit. ad-free website by getting a paid account? Isn't this the Linux, the open source spirit of the new millenium?
After all, he's been keeping his journal there since at least the beginning of April 2002, so he should have had ample time to see if livejournal.com's service is worth the money.

If we now look at Cowboi Kneel's user info, what do we see?

Account type: Free User

Oh no! My assumption was wrong; what, for Christ's sake, happened? Why would Pater not want to support such an excellent site as livejournal.com?

Could it be that Cowboy Neal is a freeloader, that he doesn't what to help a site which does offer some value to him (obviously, as he's been posting there for more than a month)? That he doesn't have any problem whatsoever using up their bandwidth, disk space and volunteer time without giving something in return, all the while (together with the other editors) expecting us, the users of slashdot.com, to donate ( "we regard this as a tip jar" ) to their corporate, profit-driven site?

Could it be that Cowboy Neal is a hypocrite?