Slashdot Mirror

(By the way: they're semi-indie now, spun off into a company called Automatic Media, which also runs Slash user Plastic.)

only on slashdot...these parodies are so true. There was another one that was even funnier...in which sigs spread like memes through the comments, but I can't find it now.

8 am - begin commute

9 am - arrive at work check suck.com, salon.com, and, of course, slashdot.org

11 am - check email

12 pm - go to lunch

1 pm - check email and slashdot.org again

2 pm - shit, better get to work (stare out the window for an hour)

3 pm - check email and slashdot.org. If I'm really bored, play an hour or two of Zangband.

5 pm - most everybody else is going home ("look at that hard-working programmer still at his desk, that's that 'hackor ethic!' I've heard about", they whisper in reverent tones...) time to check out the pr0n sites!

6pm - begin commute

7 pm - arrive home

Let's add that up. I guess I work about 40 (50 if your count the commute) hours a week, like most people. ;-)

I wouldn't say slashdot is like porn... more like whiny and obnoxious observation.

"I may not have morals, but I have standards."

Back in 1997, we made fan sites and protest sites, for and against "Cyberdiversion" for Heat.net. The fact that we were doing it got more press than the sites themselves ever did...

The funny thing is that one of the sites, "Mothers Against Cyberdiversion" has since been quoted and incorporated into culture several years later by people who had no idea that it was nothing more than a reverse-psychology guerilla marketing effort.

A few years later I was the webmaster for levi.com and its associated domains. While at that time we didn't do any direct misdirection, we would create one-off rough-cut promo sites, including one for redline, designed by the folks at superbad. I left before the age of Mahir, and so didn't have anything to do with those...

Kevin Fox
--

Order your Linux supporing DirectPC USB Satellite Modem now and we will throw in a DVD-RAM drive complete with Air Freshener!!!
Click HERE to order!!!

Similar thoughts are expressed on today's Suck.com. Wireless internet... what a crock of shit.

This browser wouldn't "voom" if I put 4,000 volts through it. Don't believe me? Read this..

Hey, this is Michael the CTO at Automatic Media (parent co. of FEED , Suck , AltCulture and PLASTIC )!
We're very proud to be a part of the slash community. We've carefully considered the GPL and believe we're upholding it properly. We're also committed to sharing what we have learned during this project. The slash code lived up to our expectations and we hope that our site is an indication of the power and flexibility of /.

ESR is a one-trick pony, desperate to hold on to his "status" by publishing diatribes which are merely "n+1" from his previous screeds. He needs to get out of the way. The community doesn't need him anymore.

As Suck said in their brilliant parody of Slashdot, "RMS, GNU, ESR: FOAD".

This statement neatly encapsulates everything that is completely wrong-headed and broken about the mozilla project.

It's not a browser, it's an operating system! Guess what? Netscape tried that trick once before. It didn't work, and the developers who were burned then have long memories. If Netscape couldn't pull that off when they were an independent company with 90% market share, only a religious adherant would believe that they could do it now, with 30% and dropping market share and a corporate overlord (AOL) who is utterly uninterested in the project. Hell, they can't even seem to communicate their API changes to the few remaining developers who do still support them, or did you fail to notice how broken Shockwave is under NS6?

Meanwhile, IE, which has primarily concentrated on being a "mere" web browser, while leaving the business of being the operating system to the, uh, operating system (just providing copious hooks to tempt developers into using the OS' functions), has successfully eaten netscape's lunch.

At least I'm not alone:

Intended to be installed at every Internet service provider in the country,

-suck.com. We should write them and ask them for their source.

More spoilers.

I didn't like the ending, but I don't see another way it could have been done. The main reason that the ending bothered me was that it broke the paradigm that Shyamalan had worked so hard to create with the rest of the movie. That is, the freezeframes didn't fit the film style. Yes, it was comicbook-like, but it didn't work.

Actually, I do know how it could have been done so that the viewing public would have liked it better. If there was a bigger emotional payoff for the audience revealed at the ending (a la Sixth Sense or Usual Suspects) everyone would have been happier. The flashbacks should have reached back farther and shown Mr. Glass' first evil act, and it should have ended there. Maybe a shot or two of realizations, but no freezeframes, no afterstory. Leave that to the sequels.

I think it's interesting that now we've got three comic book trilogies starting up. (Discussed recently on www.suck.com) The Matrix, Unbreakable, and X-Men. Superman may even be coming back...
--

The missive you reference was written by Tim Cavanaugh. Tim does a bunch of writing for Suck magazine, which is one of the few consistently good web 'zines out there (and in which, there ran an entire article about what Tim refers to as scare quotes. Don't know if he wrote it, though.)

The missive you reference was written by Tim Cavanaugh. Tim does a bunch of writing for Suck magazine, which is one of the few consistently good web 'zines out there (and in which, there ran an entire article about what Tim refers to as scare quotes. Don't know if he wrote it, though.)

Could this be AOL's attempt to get some "street cred" by sponsoring a bunch of hackers? Kind of like Sprite running commercials telling us not to believe the hype commercials, or lifelong politicians portraying themselves as "outsiders"?

This is exactly what it is, Suck recently ran a great article on this phenomenon. Basically, Americans like to think of their heroes as outsiders. No matter how well-connected you are, the system is set up so that you can reinvent yourself as a renegade.

Why? Because this country was founded by wealthy, well-connected men who modeled themselves as rebels in order to rally the people to their cause.

That's how AOL wants to be seen, as being on the cutting edge of technology, so they'll put up with Justin Frankel's antics so long as they can point to him and say, "You see, we're not like those other corporate sheep. We're outsiders who take chances!" He is worth more to AOL as a human marketing tool than he is as a brilliant programmer. Frankel have to pull some seriously illegal crap before AOL would give up what he represents.

Comments are owned by the poster, so the posters then collectively share responsibility, through answers and moderation, for making sure that meaningful viewpoints are aired and responded to. This works exceedingly well at Slashdot, not so well in other online forums.

"the Internet's collective response to one well-nigh apocalyptic decision after another has unfortunately been the same as the Internet's collective response to just about everything: posts, lots and lots of posts. Discussions and cries of hypocrisy and malformed analogies have consumed megabyte upon megabyte of masturbatory rage and self-indulgent self-righteousness.

Which, of course, accomplishes exactly nothing...Lawyers rule the world. And don't you forget it."

another e-crusade, great.

here is a Suck article about the head of the IOC. It's Suck so it's a bit pessimistic by nature, but it's still not a flattering assessment.

here is a Suck article about the head of the IOC. It's Suck so it's a bit pessimistic by nature, but it's still not a flattering assessment.

Suckdot is a lot funnier!

If only there was a web site where bithcing could be turned into legitimate public action... like, submit a complaint and someone mails it to a congressman for you ;)

Here I am complaining about moderation. I don't know what's got into me, as the whole subject of /. moderation is beneath my dignity even to take into account.

But it so happens that the above comment, which is both interesting and insightful, not to mention intelligently and amusingly written, happens to be completely on-topic for the discussion at hand. It obviously has a connection to Mr. Knauss's commentary in Suck, which, I guess I should remind readers, is the subject of this particular slashdot article. If readers are too God damn lazy to read that Suck article, let me at least quote the pertinent part (for which flagrant violation of a dozen "intellectual property" rights belonging to various multinational corporations, I nevertheless hope I won't be sentenced to jail). Quoth Mr. Knauss:

...And there are plenty of beatings to come. Except for the under-funded Electronic Frontier Foundation, the embryonic efforts of the ACLU, and the occasional self-interested corporate lobbyist, the Internet's collective response to one well-nigh apocalyptic decision after another has unfortunately been the same as the Internet's collective response to just about everything: posts, lots and lots of posts. Discussions and cries of hypocrisy and malformed analogies have consumed megabyte upon megabyte of masturbatory rage and self-indulgent self-righteousness.

Which, of course, accomplishes exactly nothing . For all the endless caterwauling that each addle-headed legal decision generates, the impact extends only as far as the smallish communities that spawn it. Even ignoring the significant percentage of the population that remains stubbornly off-line -- including the vast majority of Congress and the judiciary -- the cage-rattlers have failed even to involve those who might actually care. Millions use the Internet without the slightest idea that their rights are being stripped away, blissfully unaware of what's going on because they don't happen to be members of the choir. The tempest not only fits in a teapot, it doesn't even rattle the lid. In this age of omnipresent email and mainstream technology news, pictures of ribbons don't cut it as tools of moral suasion anymore...

Italics mine. Now you with moderator points, reread the above post, the one that got moderated down to virtual invisibilty as "offtopic," and ask yourselves if it doesn't say something important about the nature of this chasing-your-own-tail "community" you inhabit "here" within slashdot.

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

Here I am complaining about moderation. I don't know what's got into me, as the whole subject of /. moderation is beneath my dignity even to take into account.

But it so happens that the above comment, which is both interesting and insightful, not to mention intelligently and amusingly written, happens to be completely on-topic for the discussion at hand. It obviously has a connection to Mr. Knauss's commentary in Suck, which, I guess I should remind readers, is the subject of this particular slashdot article. If readers are too God damn lazy to read that Suck article, let me at least quote the pertinent part (for which flagrant violation of a dozen "intellectual property" rights belonging to various multinational corporations, I nevertheless hope I won't be sentenced to jail). Quoth Mr. Knauss:

...And there are plenty of beatings to come. Except for the under-funded Electronic Frontier Foundation, the embryonic efforts of the ACLU, and the occasional self-interested corporate lobbyist, the Internet's collective response to one well-nigh apocalyptic decision after another has unfortunately been the same as the Internet's collective response to just about everything: posts, lots and lots of posts. Discussions and cries of hypocrisy and malformed analogies have consumed megabyte upon megabyte of masturbatory rage and self-indulgent self-righteousness.

Which, of course, accomplishes exactly nothing . For all the endless caterwauling that each addle-headed legal decision generates, the impact extends only as far as the smallish communities that spawn it. Even ignoring the significant percentage of the population that remains stubbornly off-line -- including the vast majority of Congress and the judiciary -- the cage-rattlers have failed even to involve those who might actually care. Millions use the Internet without the slightest idea that their rights are being stripped away, blissfully unaware of what's going on because they don't happen to be members of the choir. The tempest not only fits in a teapot, it doesn't even rattle the lid. In this age of omnipresent email and mainstream technology news, pictures of ribbons don't cut it as tools of moral suasion anymore...

Italics mine. Now you with moderator points, reread the above post, the one that got moderated down to virtual invisibilty as "offtopic," and ask yourselves if it doesn't say something important about the nature of this chasing-your-own-tail "community" you inhabit "here" within slashdot.

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

--

--

--

--

Speaking of Cryptonomicon, I love the image they included of the jailed hacker. Very reminiscent of Randy Waterhouse in the Philippine jail, right down to the box containing the Van Eck phreaking antenna under the laptop.

When did John Katz start writting under the pseudonym of Greg Knauss?!

Midwatch Industries

- it's the WAY it's presented that puts me off. Like the old Don Henley tune, "she can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye" - the smiling, powdered, white-bread looking anchors fumbling through their scripts. Sickening. PBS does a better job, but even then sometimes they go off on tangents. /. is good for techie news, Suck is good for satire, and NPR is my morning fix. Local news is shallow, ratings-driven, pancake makeup crap.

The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk

This is good news, though. I think.

sulli

The Swahili word for "onanism" literally translates as "to punch one's own genitals." And, according to suck.com's /. parody, onanism is more important than coding to slashdot users, anyway.


~wog

PS- this is supposed to be funny, not a flame

That link to the front page of Suck will point at a new article tomorrow. If you want to see the article Hemos is talking about later, check out the Suck for 11 August 2000.

On another note, it was mentioned previously that the cyberpunk culture has been anticipating in dread a world controlled by ultramegacorporations. A world in which individuals supposedly feel powerless against these behemoths. A world in which governments (and hence military, police and intelligence forces) apparently are merely pawns to be pushed around by these corporate beasts. A world in which the all-important Market, a million-headed Hydra consuming everything in its path, cannot be killed unless every head is squashed simultaneously. A world of exploitation of millions of people for no other reason than they don't have as much of this imaginary money as their exploiters. A world of behaviour modification, excessive social repression, isolation, and bizzarre psychological disorders. A world that does not value the unique characteristics of individual people.

Since the end of World War I we have been treading the path toward this world, sometimes with joy, sometimes with the horrible knowledge that we are going to fsck everything up (depending on what mood is more "newsworthy"). When the US president after World War II declared that "the purpose of the American economy is to produce more consumer goods", this set the precedent for the rest of the century.

The twentieth century was strange, as centuries go. Consider the impact of technology here: the automobile, the television, the myriad of household labor saving devices and subsequent proliferation of divertainment devices. All this time freed up so that Consumer Dogma may be absorbed from the various media.

Of course, the dogma doesn't have to be direct. Most of the time, watching the vast majority of TV shows, it is an assumed fundamental axoim on which TV-Reality is based. Thou shalt consume and shut the fsck up.

You might beleive that something is fundamentally wrong with the way all this is set up, but you don't know who to complain to, and you doubt anyone would listen, because you're possibly young, and what would you know?

Here's what I think:
Governments should exert much tighter controls on corporations. 1. Their size should be limited to a market cap of (say) ten billion dollars, for starters. This will not only encourage competition and help prevent monopolies, but create jobs. Adam Smith would be happier with that. 2. Corporations should not be allowed to hold stock in other corporations. A corporation is not a human being and should have not nearly as many right as a human being. 3. Directors and executives should be made personally responsible for the actions of the corporation, including bankruptcy. 4. Corporations should not be allowed to do in foreign countries what is illegal in their home country, to prevent sweatshop slavery and raping of natural resources.

Corporations will always evolve to survive in changing market conditions (of course, those that don't survive are replaced by a better-adapted competitor). This is why governments should have no fear in tightening the leash on corporations, instead of pandering to them (which sickens me to watch).

Therefore, everyone who is pissed off about this kind of stuff should be making lots of noise about it. If everyone told the governments of their respective countries, either at the ballot box or in writing or in protest, what's pissing them off, then that would be something acheived becuase whether the action is successful or not, more people will be made aware of the source of the problem.

--

However, I have to agree with the suck.com article when they say that mozilla should have released a 1.0 far sooner. I want a good browser, and I think a lot of other people do too. Netscape sucks and people are getting tired of using it. I really really just want a (galeon like but without all the hoops you have to jump through) good browser that renders well and in compliance to standards (whatever they are).

I don't need mail, news, XUL, XML, XBSL, a mozoffice, a mozchat, a mozOS or anything else (yes, I know that some of those don't exists, but you get the point right?). I just want a browser.

IMHO once a 1.0 browser has been released, bug fixed, etc, then add in all the other stuff, like mail, news, chat, etc. XUL is cool so that people can skin everything, but do you really think that that's needed by 99% of the people out there? Esp the ones like myself who have basically 2 choices for graphical browsers under linux (netscape and mozilla).

Again, don't get me wrong, I've been using the milestones and nightly builds and watching things get better and more stable all the time and been loving them and singing the praises of mozilla. I just want a good browser.

Regards

Doesn't everyone remember Suck isn't a real news organization?

They publish irreverant jabs aimed mostly at ubercool web illuminati types.

It's a collosal joke. Gosh you guys are like the folks who haven't figured out the Simpson's are a parody of a family.

timbu

Suckdot, because 100k geeks make a lot of impressions.

(posted from Mozilla. Which I support fully as it is the only hope I have for a good surfing experience under Linux)

--

What you say in your post about the development of Unreal is certainly true. It took way too long and was riddled with bugs upon release. You stop short however of explaining what happened after Unreal's release--something that is likely to happen to Mozilla.

I was one of those people who watched Unreal's release carefully. What happened when Epic shipped a program that was unplayable over the internet and ridden with various bugs in single player was that it killed the Unreal community. For all of the copies sold that first couple weeks, all of the mods announced for the game, how many saw the light of day and were played consistently? Not many, and certainly not anywhere near the number of the game series Unreal was supposed to replace, Quake. I remember watching as Bluesnews exploded with announcements, and then became a wasteland of Unreal information.

What remained, from what I saw, was alot of bitterness and unhappy people when it came to their thoughts about Epic. I for one uninstalled my copy of Unreal and placed it on the shelf. It was only recently that I reinstalled the game, added the needed patches, and then began to play it. I was glad I did, but the game I played should have been available from Day 1. It wasn't however. It has only been recently that Epic has managed to return to favor with the game-buying public because of Unreal Tournament, although they still have yet to receive any of my money. In contrast, I had Q3A on pre-order.

Let's look at another game that fits this ananlogy: Daikatana. It too spent several years in development and upon released was also riddled with bugs. This includes at least one bug that makes it impossible to finish the game. What has this done to the public's opinion about Ion Storm? Killed it. The Daikatana community is, like Unreal's, non-existant. In my estimation it has also cost other games that have been released under the Ion Storm mantle sales. Deus Ex, a very good game, hasn't broken into the Top 20 in sales.

So what does history tell us? That perhaps these two pojects should have been aborted. During their development maybe someone should have done what suck.com is doing here for Mozilla: calling for a mercy killing. There is a certain point when continued development does more harm than good. If Mozilla uses the development of Unreal and Daikatana as a guide, that's certainly true.

I think their service sucks. I can see how their service is really innovative, but its just not cool. I think I would be really pissed if links magically appeared in all of my usenet posts, especially to products that I do not endorse.

I don't have to justify whatever it is that I happen to enjoy, nor does anyone else. By the same token (whatever that saying really means...) it offends me when other's pass judgement over what I enjoy and proclaim superiority of their way of life or idle time activities.

Suck had a great commentary on this Tuesday. Basically, as the noise on Napster goes up, people will be willing to pay for authentication. A Win-Win solution: you can download all you want, but you will pay RIAA/Courtney Love/whoever for a guaranty that the file is authentic.

The commentary goes into more detail.

Suck had a great commentary on this Tuesday. Basically, as the noise on Napster goes up, people will be willing to pay for authentication. A Win-Win solution: you can download all you want, but you will pay RIAA/Courtney Love/whoever for a guaranty that the file is authentic.

The commentary goes into more detail.

Suck had a great commentary on this Tuesday. Basically, as the noise on Napster goes up, people will be willing to pay for authentication. A Win-Win solution: you can download all you want, but you will pay RIAA/Courtney Love/whoever for a guaranty that the file is authentic.

The commentary goes into more detail.

along with several other methods of hijacking Napster... here

This is the method they called "Crapster"

http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/ 03/24/nc_index4.html

Then they ran another piece on it this week:

http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/07/11/

So it's not that new an idea.

sulli

http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/ 03/24/nc_index4.html

Then they ran another piece on it this week:

http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/07/11/

So it's not that new an idea.

sulli

Wow, I thought this was news for nerds, stuff that matters. I now know why Katz no longer works at Wired, and why Suck constantly comments on him 1 2 3 4 5 (and about 40 other hits on their search). He is (-1 offtopic)!

Corporatism, "Hellmouth", while interesting, belong more an something like brill's or adbusters, but they would not accept them. These magazines have editorial control, they actually proof facts and check grammar before they post. Does /. do this? no. They allow katz to stray so far off focus it is ridiculous. Unless it is about tech issues or geek culture (which you ar not a part of katz) do not post it. What the hell's the point, this place is getting more innacurate, sucking more daily and I can get my news anywhere else.
bye.
moderate as necessary. I no longer care.

Wow, I thought this was news for nerds, stuff that matters. I now know why Katz no longer works at Wired, and why Suck constantly comments on him 1 2 3 4 5 (and about 40 other hits on their search). He is (-1 offtopic)!

Corporatism, "Hellmouth", while interesting, belong more an something like brill's or adbusters, but they would not accept them. These magazines have editorial control, they actually proof facts and check grammar before they post. Does /. do this? no. They allow katz to stray so far off focus it is ridiculous. Unless it is about tech issues or geek culture (which you ar not a part of katz) do not post it. What the hell's the point, this place is getting more innacurate, sucking more daily and I can get my news anywhere else.
bye.
moderate as necessary. I no longer care.