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But not funny, Iliad.

This should have been the review. It sums up my feelings about User Friendly nicely.

Well, that and this.

I think Something Awful shows perfectly just what happens when you allow teenagers to use the internet: The end of the known world.

Jesus Christ! His ass split in half!

3. Aggressive rejection of email via blocklisting causes some legitimate email to be rejected. However, that collateral damage is limited to spam-friendly parts of the Internet. The sender knows full well it was not read and can re-send the message via another channel if it is important. This knowledge also allows them to take action to correct blocking errors; and heightens awareness of who is not doing their part to fight spam.

Anyone who reads somethingawful.com knows that this isn't necessarily the nobrainer that you think it is. They had a particular problem where people would be able to sign up for their forum accounts, but they could not be mailed back with the activation because of the SPEWS blacklist determining that the part of the internet SomethingAwful belonged to was Spammerville, USA. This meant that 10-20% of the people who tried to get a forums account couldn't be mailed back, and SomethingAwful could even mail them back to explain why!

Here's a nice link for the angry rantings of Zack "GeistEditor" Parsons on the subject. Yes, we should fight spammers at every turn we get, but the "collatoral damage" means that some people can't even find out why they never get a reply from their girlfriend/grandparents/long lost friend.

This Anonymous == JeffK http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/

Well, yeah, but that's only because Dragon Fantasy Mystic Shadow Dungeon Horizon Event Online Sports Night 7 isn't out yet!

Hehe, I know I already replied, but I just saw this and I know you'll like it.

http://images.somethingawful.com/mjolnir/images/cg 09162003/Droopy-Goines3.jpg

LOL!

Full copy of transcript can be found here

We even had "a professional nose" who would come in and sniff the samples, assigning each sample with descriptions like "kiwi" or "slight fruity scent".

You mean like the guy in this video game?

if the trollz have seen this already.

In the meantime, should Thompson ever discover hentai games, he will find that all his deepest worries about sex and violence have already come true--with tentacles.

Someone please email him this URL :)

Sure glad there are dickwad's like Thompson trying to protect me, I might do something stupid and like, turn the station if I dont like something.

There is a certain resemblance...

This could lead to the same kind of subnet-blocking that Something Awful was the victim of... all of their email being blocked by anyone using really nasty spam filters that had worse manners than the spammers in the first place.

Game Plot: This should serve as an example of why you should not download files from sites in Poland, especially when the file is described with a string of text similar to this: "sjavjenky rommy... boljay noxwob. bolshi fight za homosex (!!!)". This game is quite literally the single most concentrated mass of gay that I have ever in my life encountered. It's like a huge, flaming gay star exploded and collapsed in on itself, sucking itself down into a black, gay hole. The incredibly flagrant homosexuality in this game eclipses that of Gundam Wing: Endless Duel by several billion orders of magnitude. Endless Duel had intermission screens with the main characters in loose-fitting tank-tops. This game has large, oiled men in thongs with fairy wings dancing on flowers. It has huge, shadowy men thrusting their pelvises at the screen and characters whose combat moves include such powerhouse attacks as the "bend over and present your bare buttocks to your opponent, who happens to be a hugely muscled bald man wearing a loincloth." I don't think there really is a plot to this game. If there is, I really, really, really don't want to know it.

Weapons: Since this is a fighting game, each character has their own range of attacks and moves. The actual control layout is pretty good, and the movement (all the characters can fly, and so can move in any direction) makes it a rather unique experience. There're a wide range of attacks and they're matched with a good, intuitive control scheme. However, most of the good points about the gameplay mechanics are balanced out by the fact that THE GAME IS FULL OF NAKED MEN. ALL THE MOVES INVOLVE SOME DEGREE OF IMPLIED SODOMY. Super Mario Brothers was a good game, but if they replaced Mario with a muscleman in a speedo who "grew larger" when he touched "a mushroom", NOBODY, ANYWHERE, WOULD EVER, EVER PLAY THE GAME, EXCEPT MAYBE FRAGMASTER.

God, this is the WORST GAME EVER.

Enemies: Since this is a gay sex fighting game, the player characters and the enemies are all the same. There are 8 characters, each with his or her own style, technique, and HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE SEXUAL INNUENDO. The characters include a lithe, loinclothed muscleman, a tight-pants kung fu guy, a woman who controls the ugliest pair of cherubs in existence, an Elvis robot, and a cute girl who seems to have had her lower body and the top of her head ripped off, with the remaining parts being surgically bolted to a tiny flying steamship which is crewed by three tiny, naked men. Further objections to good taste include a nude man in a flying bathtub, THE MOTHERFUCKING GOD OF WAR, and a strange blue thing which appears to be made out of latex. I have no idea what that blue thing is, but I'll probably be seeing it a lot in my forthcoming nightmares.

Number of Levels: Since this is a gay sex game, the "levels" are simply backgrounds that appear while your characters are "fighting" in midair. The various backgrounds include a field of giant flowers (complete with horrible, horrible fairies), a male version of the Statue of Liberty (with tiny male figures silhouetted in the eye windows), what is apparently a temple to lesbian and gay sex, a dreamy nightscape with the sun and the moon gazing lustfully at each other, and a real, honest-to-god mantrain complete with boxcars hauling suspiciously phallic vegetables. There are only 8 enemies in the game, with two fights per enemy, which makes about 16 actual fights to win the game, assuming no ties. There actually isn't that much variety, and the game isn't very long.

Number of Bosses: No bosses. If you get caught playing this at work, you won't have a boss anymore either, unless the guy at the head of the unemployment line counts.

Defining Moment: That would probably be the part right after the shock of seeing all the naked men wore off, at which point I realized that the game had a lot of sound effects too. Specifically, a lot of voice samples. You can probably see where this is going. Grunting, moaning, slapping, pounding, and various other (thankfully) unidentifiable audio samples grace this work. And what a piece of work it is.

Seeing this story reminded me of a review from the SomethingAwful ROM Pit of a SNES game called Cho Aniki - Bakuretsu Rantou Hen. It seems to be in the same series, except it's a one-on-one fighter a la Street Fighter II. The ROM is worth a download for a laugh at the blatant homosexuality everywhere if nothing else.

Somehow, I think this review of what I think is the same game sums it up a little better.

Care to go into any specifics?

here?

Perhaps it's Something Awful that's doing it?

Fark seems to think so.

(Ever feel like you're writing for memepool or Everything2? I sure do!)

How is it "evil" to publish a list of IP addresses that match a listing criteria?

The devil is in the details. It's not a list of single IP addresses, that's far too large and complex to maintain. What's happening is large blocks (we're talking B class IP blocks here) are getting blacklisted because of the actions of a few individuals.

This does more harm than good especially with colocation services. What happens is one person starts spamming off a machine at a colocation company and SPEWS and other lists will blacklist the whole block that colocation company is on.

That kills mail services to the hundreds of other legitimate companies who are unfortunately on the same block as the one spammer.

Anyone familiar with Something Awful's battle with SPEWS knows this is a very real situation.

So what's a blacklister to do? Maintain a large list of several hundre thousand (at minimum) IP addresses or block B (and even A) class adress blocks to bring that list down to a far more easily maintained list?

That's why it's "evil". It's lazy, inefficient, ineffective, and does more harm than good. ...with very little collateral damage.

Wait until someone who has a server within the same B class you're on to start spamming and you get put into the blacklist. Then we'll see if you're still singing the praises of blacklists.

You should register for an account at SomethingAwful. Your debate skills would be highly regarded there.

SPEWS sucks.

---rhad

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=1605

"In fact I received dozens of e-mails from network admins working for companies large and small who said exactly that with most also emphasizing that "only a lazy idiot" - to quote one of the e-mails - would use the SPEWS listing on their network."

"SPEWS provides a blocklist with zero oversight, zero accountability, and zero recourse for average users caught between their ISP and SPEWS.ORG's moral crusade. SPEWS will tell you that you in fact do have recourse and that is to switch ISPs. For Something Awful that is not economically feasible, for users in the nation of Brazil where their entire broadband provider has been blacklisted that is impossible. In addition to all this most of the SPEWS advocates on the newsgroups we so unceremoniously invaded demonstrated a willingness to add IP ranges to their own blacklists and potentially SPEWS for petty personal reasons. Complain about how SPEWS operates? Get added to the blacklist, often permanently, while they pretend that it somehow makes your situation worse."

SPEWS is dead, and it's not a bad thing. They were arbitrary and indiscriminate in blacklisting huge chunks of the internet, and one was more likely to get ravaged by a pair of nymphos in a dark alley than get taken off their list. Amongst their more notable achievements, I hear they had the entire country of Brazil blacklisted. They also blacklisted somethingawful.com at some point in time, and comedy ensued. Now quick, while they're down, drive a stake through the heart, chop of the head, and don't forget the words; "Klatu Verata Nrmnphnfhr..."

I guess Jeff K and Jerry, with their 1337 h4x0r 5|!11z, have finally retaliated for the blacklisting of somethingawful.com. G

Haa, the hentai games. I've had the pleasure of playing The Maid's Story; teach women to cook, clean, wash cloths in the day, and screw them at night. Entertaing, but get's borring quickly.

There's really only one User Friendly comic

Let's not forget about the recent clash between SPEWS.org and SomethingAwful.com . The toll the spam war takes on everyday users through organizations such as Spews who are too heavy handed. Treating spam as a war to be won at any cost has allready produced enough casualties.

But while you are waiting, you can play one of our games!!

Hehe... JeffK? :)

1. As there is more electronic transfer of information, the number of FAX numbers in use is probably stagnant, or decreasing. There have been some hurdles such as adoption of electronic signatures, but in the long run, the FAX is probably dead.

2. While internet usage in the home is increasing, there is a net outflow from dialup to broadband. The beauty of broadband is you don't need to either A. Live with no phone service while the teenagers in your house are looking up something awful on the web, or B. fork out the cash for an additional phone line and number.

Does anyone have a good feel for what the realistic saturation date is for US phone lines?

In the long run, I wouldn't be surprised to see cell phones start to deviate more and more from the whole standard of 10 digit phone numbers towards some combination of email address rather than phone number, and VoIP type service. It would be a tough sell, as it would banish one from incoming calls from landline phones, but if the service was cheap enough, it could spur adoption. Good news, it's not neccessarily mutually exclusive from traditional 10 digit service in the shorter term.

And check out Something Awful's ROM Pit if you've got this thing against paying to suffer.

The big stumbling block for most people, I think, was the hype: Written by the Wachowski Brothers! Cost as much as a movie! Best thing to hit gaming since Pong! It turned out to be thoroughly average, with Powerade ads and a plot tie-in to the Matrix movies (yay! FMV!). Of course the game sucks compared to the hype, but it's not an unmitigated disaster like Daikatana or Outpost. It's just... blah.

By the way, if you want to see some truly awful games, Something Awful's Games Reviews have you covered (note: visiting Something Awful from work may earn you a "chat" with your admin or worse. You have been warned). Also, there's Valu-Soft. Anyone who's ever played a Valu-Soft game (usually sold in the bare jewel cases at computer stores stuck out in front of the good games) will immediately know what I'm talking about; the rest of you, STAY AWAY! Your eyes will melt, your hair will fall out, you will age 50 years in a single second, and that's before the install is over. Valu-Soft is the worst travesty against gaming ever created by Satan.

You, kind sir, are a fucking penis! Have a nice day!

Ah, I assume you refer to the famous Strom Bomb.

In case you haven't already heard, you may be interested to hear the story about SPEWS needlessly blacklisting out SomethingAwful's IP space due to a spammer on the same ISP.

Rather than reiterate what they said, go to http://www.somethingawful.com/ and read up.

Despite my vehement loathing of spam, a recent incident is making me question how we go about dealing with it. Recently, Something Awful has been having issues with the SPEWS list, a popular spam blacklister, who according to Something Awful blacklisted a whole chunk of IP addresses that happened to include their own unabused server without offering recourse or explanation simply because it had the misfortune of sharing address space unknowingly and unwillingly. I'd call that overkill, and more offensive than the perceived problem of spam itself if truth be told. Bayesian filters work, so why do we need to continue inadvertently censoring netizens who have nothing to do with spamming?

I tell you, folks, after reading this article and hearing about what anti-spam proponents have come up with for solutions, I'm starting to have second thoughts about the whole deal. For me it comes down to to the freedom of speech issue -- I've always been told that if you can't handle free speech you don't agree with you obviously can't handle free speech -- and I suppose just because something irritates me doesn't mean that the greater good would be served by silencing that something.

Another perspective is that the amount of money being pumped back into the economy by so-called unsolicited commercial e-mail is nothing to scoff at, and perhaps legislating it in some tolerable form such as limiting a company to one commercial message per person per day would create a new legitimate business method in this country. It's something to think about, certainly. I'd hate to think we're going to lose another revenue stream to outsourcing before we've even had a chance to give it a go locally, and this may be a way for us to recapture some of those IT jobs that have been lost and generate a whole new crop of successful entrepeneurships.

Despite my vehement loathing of spam, a recent incident is making me question how we go about dealing with it. Recently, Something Awful has been having issues with the SPEWS list, a popular spam blacklister, who according to Something Awful blacklisted a whole chunk of IP addresses that happened to include their own unabused server without offering recourse or explanation simply because it had the misfortune of sharing address space unknowingly and unwillingly. I'd call that overkill, and more offensive than the perceived problem of spam itself if truth be told. Bayesian filters work, so why do we need to continue inadvertently censoring netizens who have nothing to do with spamming?

I tell you, folks, after reading this article and hearing about what anti-spam proponents have come up with for solutions, I'm starting to have second thoughts about the whole deal. For me it comes down to to the freedom of speech issue -- I've always been told that if you can't handle free speech you don't agree with you obviously can't handle free speech -- and I suppose just because something irritates me doesn't mean that the greater good would be served by silencing that something.

Another perspective is that the amount of money being pumped back into the economy by so-called unsolicited commercial e-mail is nothing to scoff at, and perhaps legislating it in some tolerable form such as limiting a company to one commercial message per person per day would create a new legitimate business method in this country. It's something to think about, certainly. I'd hate to think we're going to lose another revenue stream to outsourcing before we've even had a chance to give it a go locally, and this may be a way for us to recapture some of those IT jobs that have been lost and generate a whole new crop of successful entrepeneurships.

Are you suggesting that you don't like JeffK?

The communities with the most valuable comments are those which enable moderation by peers. Slashdot readers are obviously very familiar with how this can work, and how discussions are enriched by the rating system. Good comments which help the discussion are more visible, driven by the collective reviews of many people. It's actually fairly rare that wrong information is allowed to exist in a slashdot comment thread at a high rating, as people are always keen to spot the trolls or crackpots. There are a couple of trolls in this thread already, and the system has worked perfectly to mod them down and recognise the comments that have exposed them as such.

The Halfbakery is pretty cool although the amount of dupes and repeated ideas would do the slashdot editors proud :) The community even has abbreviations such as 'WTCTTISITMWIBNIIWR - "Wasn't that cool, that thing I saw in the movie? Wouldn't it be neat if it were real?"' to quickly reject dumb comments before people waste time discussing them. The positive/negative ratings are nice but often find quirky or funny ideas rather than truly useful ones, which can be a little sad.

Even common BB software like vbulletin has the ability to rate threads, giving them cachet which makes more people likely to view them and comment. A sufficiently high threshold of votes before a rating is active weeds out the really dumb votes. You can get some truly outstanding informative threads on some forums - or 'just' funny stuff.

The main problems with all these communities are:

1) People leave the subject of the discussion. Not always a bad thing if the new direction is interesting or an improvement, but it can be frustrating. Whether an early comment is influential in dragging everything off course, or just the transparent interference of current events, politics and 'debate theory', oftentimes the threads seem like the answers to an essay written by someone who hasn't read the question.

2) Cliques. Quite prevalent at the halfbakery and practically every discussion board around. A lot of people with the same views and time on their hands can destroy any discussion they don't agree with, or use their moderating influence to hide ideas. The solution is to have a large readership from a wide spectrum of viewpoints and social/educational variety. Otherwise you get a lot of...

3) Prejudice. Wider than cliques, the readership of a whole site might hate some ideas. Perhaps their society or morals abhor the idea, or they feel some duty to an opposing point of view. Either way, they blindly attack/defend without true impartiality.

4) Fast movement. Pretty bad on Slashdot, if you're a day or a few hours late, you've often missed the discussion, especially if it's not very popular! Happens on all boards, things drop out of the front page spotlights and sink gradually down. Some forums allow these threads to be brought to the top again, others just let them go. One plus is that fast turnover aids quality of discussion. People have a short time to reply so they try to make it good and heartfelt. For a global discussion medium this problem is made worse when half the world is asleep when the comments are being written.

Slashdot is pretty close to a leader in the community moderation arena - will NASA be interested or instead rely on the media, a few well-to-do figureheads on a panel and a couple of paltry outsourced focus groups?

You dont mean...

You wanna see Harry Potter in Germany? (sfw)

There's only one good .cx link I know of: Lowtax.

WARNING #1: Might or might not contain an image of Mr. Lowtax.

WARNING #2: Might or might not contain an image uploading service.

Ah jeez, that link's completely wrong. That's too bad, because it's the best site ever: Jeff K.

a $99 inkjet + $50 ink = 500 pages (I'll be optimistic here), or about 30(!!) cents a page. Extra pages are 10 cents each.

Welcome to Planet Rape.

I wouldn't call any of those good uses of Flash. Something like this, on the other hand...

Sorry. Already been done.

I totally agree. Because of my rigid requirement of intimately knowing someone's character before hearing their arguments, I only read reviews by JeffK.

The definitive reference

I'm getting a bit dizzy. I can't tell the spin from the sarcasm anymore. Any chance the fine folks from SomethingAwful are behind any of this?

Ryan Fenton

This reminds me of War in heaven.