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... the Quake II CAVE. Although it appears the Earthlight fits into my meager student budget a bit better.

The truth about gravity is very interesting. However, my knowledge cannot be passed on to you because my life holds greater value than the dissemination of this info (from my point of view). I apologize for my selfishness, but must point out that this what society has taught me.

Search here.

When I invented the precursor to Postscript (an audacious claim that I can back up -- it started as a replacement for NAPLPS which I proposed while Manager of Interactive Architectures for Viewdata Corp of America back in November of 1981 -- the Xerox PARC guys found my approach of what they called a "tokenized Forth" communication protocol to be an intriguing way to encode text and graphics), I was interested in having a Forth virtual machine migrate into silicon (ala Novix) so it could evolve from mere graphics rendering into a distributed Smalltalk VM environment (ala Squeak) as videotex terminal/personal computer capacities increased. But I was _not_ interested in object-oriented programming as the long-term semantics of distributed programming environments. (I still have some of the hardcopy of the communiques with Xerox PARC and others from this period.)

Rather, relational semantics were what I saw as the ultimate direction for distributed programming. I had a bit of a go at Tony Hoare's "communicating sequential processes" paradigm and its Transputer realization because he was, at least, starting with the hard problem of parallelism rather than making like the drunk looking for his keys under the light post the way everyone else seemed to be doing (and still are, save for Mozart, since threads, etc. are always an afterthought). But, because there were other hard problems like abstraction, transactions and persistence that he ignored, I christened his approach "Occam's Chainsaw Massacre" in my communiques (in honor of his distributed programming language "Occam") and dropped it in favor of relational programming, which has inherent parallelism resulting from both dependency and indeterminacy. (BTW: Dr. Hoare seems to have finally come to his senses about this issue.)

Unfortunately, the only researcher doing hardcore work on relational programming (meaning, getting to the root of relational semantics in a way that Codd had failed to do) at the time was Bruce MacLennan, then, of The Naval Postgraduate School, and he just didn't have the glamour of Alan Kay at places like Xerox PARC to attract the attention of guys like Steve Jobs. Bruce had a bit of a blind-spot, too, when it came to transactions and persistence, which I attempted to remedy by bringing David P. Reed's work on distributed transactions for the ARPAnet to him, but although he wrote a white paper on a predicate calculus (close to a relational) implementation of Reed's thesis (MIT/LCS/TR-205), he didn't really "get it", IMHO. Reed and MacLennan abandoned their work for other pursuits (ironically, Reed was chief scientist at Lotus while Notes was being developed but did not contribute his ideas on distributed synchronization to that development despite the fact that we had a mutual acquaintance from my Plato days by the name of Ray Ozzie -- so, I share some of the blame for this failure) even as Steve Jobs botched the embryonic object oriented world by abandoning Smalltalk and giving us, instead, a lineage consisting of Object Pascal on the Lisa/Mac which begat Objective C on Jobs's NeXT which begat Java at Sun via Naughton and Gosling's experience with NeXT.

This brings us to the present -- a world in which Javascript-based technologies like Tibet promise to not only salvage the object oriented aspect of the Internet from the birth defects of Jobs's spawn, but actually provide an advance over Smalltalk in the same lineage as CLOS and Self. But it is also a world in which there is growing confusion over the proper role of "metadata" in the form of XML -- particularly when it comes to speech acts and distributed inference. I would call Tibet "the next major Internet advance" except for the fact that the basic idea for a Tibet-like system has been around and well understood since the early 1980's. When it is finally released, Tibet (or a system like it) will put the Internet back on track. I call that a "recovery", not an "advance".

We are now poised to move forward with type inference based on full blown inference engines, thereby dispensing with the nonterminating arguments over statically vs dynamically typed languages that allowed Steve Jobs's spawn to get its nose in the tent. If you want to declare a "type" in a declarative language, just make another declaration and let the inference engine figure out what it can do with that information prior to run time. See how easy that was? Well, there is more to it than that, but not that much: Assertions have implications and assertions made prior to run time have implications prior to run time. Live with it and don't repeat the mistakes of the past.

The confusion over semantic webs, and the reason Berners Lee et al will fail, is essentially the same as the confusion that has beleaguered all inferential systems such as logic programming and "artificial intelligence" over the years: logic is irrational and the real world demands rationality -- otherwise nothing makes sense. By "rationality" I mean that reasoning must literally incorporate "ratios" -- or, as John McCarthy would put it, doing arithmetic so things make sense. By making sense, I mean there is a sense in which one interprets the sea of assertions that clearly dominates for a particular purpose. With logic not only are you limited to 0 and 1 as effective quantities; you have no adequate theoretic basis from which to derive more accurate quantities with which to make sense by taking ratios and determining which inferences are dominant.

Fuzzy logic and expert systems incorporating probabilities have typically failed because they are not based in the first principles of probability and statistics. As Gauss, the premiere probability theorist put it, "Mathematics is the study of relations." He didn't say, "Mathematics is the study of multisets." There are good reasons that relational databases, and not set manipulation languages, have come to dominate business applications -- and Gauss was aware of these differences when he began to derive his laws of probability. Subsequent axiomatizations of mathematics based on set theory were similarly misguided and have led to the idea that "fuzzy sets" are the way to introduce rationality into programming. Rather than sets, relations are the foundation, not just of mathematics but of rationality in the same sense that Gauss realized when he derived his theory of probability from the study of relations.

Rationality allows for judgment which is recognized as inherently fallible -- but which allows one to procede without exponentiating all possible paths of inference. Judgment also allows various identities to limit sharing of information to that needed -- thereby creating speech acts and a basis for rational measures of credibility associated with those identities. Since credit-rating is a degeneration of credibility, it should come as no shock that the invention of negative numbers, originating as they did with the Arabic invention of double entry account keeping, has its analog in something that might be called "logical debt" with which negative probabilities are associated.

And now we have come to the "quantum" aspect of rational programming. It is precisely the "credibility debt" aspect of rational programming that corresponds, in mathematical detail, to the various equations of quantum mechanics and their negative probability amplitudes. (Von Neumann's quantum logic failed to properly incorporate logical debt which has led to much confusion.) Logical debt is important to distributed programming for the same reason debt is important to financial networks. Logical debt is a way of handling poor synchronization of information flow in the same way that financial debt is a way of handling poor synchronization of cash flow. As in any rational system, there are both limits to credit and limits to credibilty that influence one's judgments and actions, including speech acts.

The object oriented folks may, in a sense, have the last laugh here because when we divide up inference into identities that engage in speech acts, we are reintroducing the notion of objects that hide information via exchange of speech act messages that can be thought of as "setters" (assertions) and "getters" (queries). However, I believe it is only fair to recognize that the excellent intuitions of Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard did need the added insights and rigor of philosophers like J. L. Austin and T. Etter.

I hope you're not saying that CGI script is an invalid term. It is a script that conforms to the CGI protocol, not a script that implements the CGI protocol.

However, you're right; this question is clearly misstated. There is one clear favorite language for developing CGI scripts: Perl. You can write CGI scripts in virtually any language (that was the goal when defining the interface), but few people do. Not with CGI.

However, there are a wide variety of languages for web development, including Java (servlets and JSP), VisualBasic (ASP), PHP, ColdFusion's CFML, C/C++ (via NSAPI, Apache module), etc. Few people use these languages for CGI; each of these languages has its own respective interfaces for communicating with the server instead. (Incidentally, so does Perl: mod_perl or PerlEx.)

For more info:

• Original CGI spec
• CGI RFC Project
• O'Reilly's new Programming CGI (2nd Edition) to be published this summer (*cough* ;-)

I found some info here.

One "zettabyte" = 1024 exabytes
One "yottabyte" = 1024 zettabytes

5 Exabytes = All words ever spoken by human beings

Followup comments about JonKatz expected.

The GREAT BOOKS INDEX at books.mirror.org mirrors many of the texts that were on Wiretap. I think it was their intention to at least mirror all of the literature on the site (as well as provide links to the original archive and the .txt and HTML versions on the net such as at Project Gutenberg ftp sites

There also was a Wiretap mirror at wiretap.spies.com, but I can't tell if it is still there since it seems to be SlashDotted.

If your going to do this (and believe me, it's no trivial task), don't forget to use Encap, the packaging system that Nomad Linux uses. Basically, it each application goes in its own directory in /usr/local/encap/ and Encap makes symbolic links to directories on the path. Thus, removing a package is a snap. It takes longer, because you have to set up configure to do it each time you compile something, and sometimes you have to do it manually, but it makes it a hell of a lot easier when you want to upgrade or remove a package. Even if you're not going to "roll your own distribution," it makes life easier.

With Squeak, we can use the PS2 to surf the web and use e-mail. Squeak's license is more open than the GNU License.

--Ivan, weenie NT4 user: bite me!

What they have shown is that, using an very small scanning tunneling microscope tip, and a carefully prepared silcon surface, they can "write" lines and then have organic molecules end up on those lines.

Then, the particular organic molecules they attach "spin" in this environment.

This is NOT "just theory," i.e., they actually did this in a real machine. It IS "just theory" if you compare it to actually making a memory chip.

Did they do anything like attach wires to these molecules? No. Do they have a particularly large number of these molecules? They don't say. But the STM probably has only one tip which is plucking one hydrogen atom at a time. So, probably not.

"Pure silicon" is not the problem. Why? Because all the chip companies in the world use pure silicon wafers. The problem is making even a one-bit MEMORY that can actually be operated reliably for a long time, before your organic molecule gets fried or stuck. Then, put 16 million of these bit elements on a chip, with the circuitry to connect them all, in the meantime, they still have to keep working fast. And try to write all 16 million little lines all at the same time, so you can actually build a useful number in the lifetime of your customers.

Remember that any old DRAM fab in Korea can churn out however-many-megabits chips on a few hundred chips at once, in however-many-dozen fabrication stations, that have all the wires connecting the bits together, then test, wire, and seal those chips into the little plastic packages that can be mounted on SIMMs/DIMMs that you can stick in your PC and run at 100 MHz. I.e. these things WORK.

This won't get "buried by marketing" if this technology can do the same thing cheaper. Making computer chips is like "printing money." If you can print $10 bills instead of $1 bills, you do it.

For a more down-to-earth look at what this lab actually does, check

http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu/researc h/stm.html#1

May be out of your price range though unless you can pick up a used rig somewhere.

Unfortunately Avid can charge what they do because the alternatives suck so bad, especially for longform, i.e. feature films. And although the features needed for professional movie post-production are not particularly advanced or sophisticated, they are unlikely ever to be supported by the likes of Final Cut Pro. The market for this sort of thing is just too small.

If you're interested in Avid, the Avid-L is an amazing source of information.

Scott Pankin's Automatic Complaint Generator

You jest, but actually there is an NT supercluster within the National Computational Science Alliance. See here for more information. I was part of the original group which developed this clustering technology while it was a research project in the computer science department. Now that it has been deployed as a real computation resource, one of my projects is to make it available to the national computational grid which the Linux article discusses.

Deploying an NT cluster was certainly a challenge in some ways that would have been easier with Unix, but not impossible. Some of our collaborators have published results favorably comparing the performance of the NT supercluster to that of Linux clusters, so there seem to be good reasons to continue building at least some technology like this on NT.

Didn't you learn your lesson from Max Headroom? Remember the BlipVerts????

Everyone knows that 12 frames per second is wayyyyy too much information for our tiny little brains. Watching all that data stream by in such a short amount of time will make you blow up!

My God, this will be much worse then that Pokemon episode which made all those Japanese children go into seizures and convlulsions.

Speaking of 1993, that's when NCSA started publishing What's new for this little package they had called Mosaic.

Here's the first issue.

I was rather surprised to find that a lot of the links I tried still work. I guess that being "first to market" causes some staying power.

From what I've investigated, looking into getting a Masters at University of Illinois, is that you take tests at a proctoring site (physical, not virtual)like Sylvan Learning Center. The University hires a company which specializes in giving tests, like the places where you take SATs or GRE tests.

While I understand you're initial concerns, I think some of them are answered. For example, some of the schools I've investigated for getting a Masters in CS, like the University of Illinois, aren't simply offering "A web page". They're offering things like streaming video and pdf class notes which are synchronized with the video all from the comfort of your home. You can fit it in with a busy schedule because it's at your convenience; furthermore, I like the idea of streaming video...you can pause your professor, re-listen to a section, and go on! Questions are submitted by e-mail, or on-line chats, or newgroup type forums. Granted for some courses with heavy lab requirements (Chemistry, Physics) you may still need to physically attend school, but if we ever get some really good experiment simulation software, that may be able to be done from home too. Your comment about life skills is also interesting. Don't you believe that these "life skills" are changing to more computer-oriented tasks? Perhaps becoming a little more of a self-learner by using the web and it's resources, people may develop better life skills for the world that's currently evolving.

And here is an HTTP link: http://wuarchive.wustl .edu/doc/gutenberg/etext93/pimil10.txt

• Macaulay2 is for algebraic geometry and commutative algebra. (Not too user friendly at the moment)

• Gap is for computational discrete algebra.

• PariGP is good for number theory stuff.

They are all fun to play around with. You just can't get discouraged if you don't understand a lot of the commands (they have some WEIRD functions that probably only a handful of people in the world fully understand).

Nathan Whitehead

• Look at the Font De-uglification HOWTO
  FDU-Mini HOWTO
• Install some True Type fonts from ...... Microsoft!
  They have a fontpack
• 
  which provides some nice stuff like Arial Black etc...and then install one of the TT font servers:
• One of the most popular is xfsft
• Another available for download is xfstt
• Use RH6.1 which has xfs prepatched with xfsft for TT fonts
• If it's just the sizes that bother you, that's a pretty oldish problem which is fixed by switching the order of the 100dpi and 75dpi fonts in your font catalogue
  There's a note about it from as far back as NS2 at bigfontsthat might help
• Finally Christopher Browne has really helpful web-pages with this topic indexed (among many others) at cbbrowne

The example I usually use is url's referening to MicroSoft EXel, eg this one.

The updated list can be found here.

I find that the Encyclopedia Brittanica has a different set of rules. It includes a correction for when the year is exactly divisible by 4000. If they are right, then the code you linked to is incorrect and we will have a problem on March 1, 4000 - the code will insist that it is still February.

In the Gregorian calendar now in general use, the discrepancy is adjusted by adding the extra day to only those century years exactly divisible by 400 (e.g., 1600, 2000). For still more precise reckoning, every year evenly divisible by 4,000 (i.e., 16,000, 24,000, etc.) may be a common (not leap) year.

Whups. Found it (although it wasn't easy).
Here is the example and methodology for Intranet organization.
Here is a less specific document about Intranet portals.

Your Karma rating on Slashdot lies in the hands of the moderators. This is your target, and as you'll soon find out it's quite easy to manipulate and fool them into moderating you down. By following a few simple guidelines you can soon surpass all the regulars, and eventually get down there with the best of the first post and off-topic whores.

2. Tips

2.1. Comment Length

Perhaps the best tip in getting moderators to moderate you down deals with the length of your posts. It's quite simple, always post very SHORT comments and when possible, MAKE IT IN ALL CAPS. Many moderators equate this with "Troll" and "Off-Topic", regardless of what you say. Furthermore, moderators are MUCH less likely to moderate you up or leave you at 1 if your post is short enough.
Also, use those invalid HTML tags! Nothing makes your post seem like a wanna be karma whore than lack of whitespace. A really stupid signature can also help out here. It is also very important to gain all the credit you can for your trollish behaivor. Please use your account. The mail only needs to be used once
to gain the password and if you only "FIRST POST" as AC, your negative karma will never add up. Be careful however, If you get marked down more than 5 times in one day, your account is toast.

2.2. When to Post

Timing is everything. Go for the gusto, spend most of your slashdot time refreshing the main page. If you wait too long to post, almost no moderator is going to have a chance to moderate it down -- no matter how bad your post is! As a general rule of thumb, any comment posted more than 15 minutes after a story is submitted will not be moderated one way or the other (Trolls: this is your chance!) Open a text editor and have your first post, rant or other completely off-topic comments PRE-WRITTEN and copied to the clipboard. This will save valuable seconds while you race for the prize! Be creative! Dont just tag a line that says "First Post Dude!" or something lame like that. Look at the true first post leaders. Mick the First Post Mastah, McDougal the Llama, MEEEPT, Natalie Portman Guy, Hot Grits, Open Source Guy and the other regulars. They seem to have style and are generally much more likely to be moderated down because of it.

2.3. Where to Post

After no extensive lab research in Slashdot moderation, some key information was made up. Make sure all your posts are not top-level posts! I cannot stress this enough. Anything posted more than all the way down, won't get seen, and you'll waste all your effort. The only exception is replying to the first batch of comments, since they're sometimes moderated more thoroughly. A bottom-level post is 16 times more likely to be moderated down than a reply!
Under current moderation practice, the first two comments are often marked as "Redundant" if they're not first-posters. Yes, I know this defies the very meaning of the word redundant, but many (not all) moderators don't seem to understand what redundant means. Leave this area alone. People will just ignore it and your post will not be noticed. This happens so often that one begins to think it's automated. Thus, strive to post first or second -- all true Anti-Karma whores know that First post is prime real estate.

2.4. What to Post - Avoiding Positive Karma

While the contents of your post aren't quite as important as comment length, it does play a large role in the fate of your post. There are a number of rules to follow when submitting posts to earn that coveted low Karma:

1) Always take sides. Nothing will get you marked as "Flamebait" faster than a controversial comment (ESPECIALLY very short to short length comments, one liner posts are generally OK regardless). Always think you can take the popular side and get moderated down. For example, it used to be possible to take a side against Windows, or take sides against Microsoft. This is no longer the case - there are too many slashdotters now who have moderator access and use Windows. Posting an anti-Windows comment will even get marked as "Flamebait" faster than a anti-Linux post these days! Go for it! Slam both sides! a good link for this is Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator You should keep the drivel down to 2 paragraphs of less though.

2) Never Stay neutral. A good way to get moderated down in almost any thread is to never summarize both sides of the issue in one post. Not only are these posts generally shorter, but they can even be moderated down as "Flamebait"! Similarly, posts with subjects like "it's all about choice!" seem to play well with the moderators, avoid these. Make yours creative. Use subjects like "OH YOU SUCK" or "I THOUGHT SLASHDOT WAS FOR X" These will help you on your ride to the bottom.

3) Never come across as insightful. Nothing will make you appear more insightful than going against the trend of the first 25 posts or so (this doesn't conflict with #1, read on). This does mean you have to take sides. A good subject example of this faked-insight post is "Missing the point", in which you explain all the previous posts are overlooking the big picture. Avoid this at all costs. Also keep you comments as negative as possible. "I agree" should never appear in your posts.

4) Use a Flamebait comment subject. Unless you're Natalie Portman Guy (Anti-Karma God) and can get low Karma using "xxx Natalie" as your subject, you'd better follow some guidelines. Subjects like "This is a crock of shit (TM)" are generally good if your post is fairly short. Others that are moderated down included subjects with some type of quote or cliche (e.g, "Linux Sux", "Bill Gates Rocks!", or anything cheesy like that)

Another tactic that has recently become useful is starting your commentary or subject with "News For Nerds? Stuff that Matters?..". Don't worry - you will not have to post anything controversial, moderators will reward your trollish subject regardless of what you say!

5) Find related sites to the issue at hand and post broken links as soon as possible (remember, if you don't, someone else will!). You don't have to go all out, they can be general links that dont relate to the article. Links to AOL, Pron or to your own company really work well, especially if you make the "Spammish" in their appearance. Things like "Surf the net and make money! Come to my site at HTTP://Site.com". Also only embed your links some of the time. Inconsistancy really gets their panties in a wad. Most moderators will mark it as "Redundant". Remember, always have your comments pre-packaged! without even checking the URLs!

Also, if someone beats you to the first post with a list of URLs, all is not lost. There's still a wonderful opportunity for some Anti-Karma. An excellent strategy is to reply with "you idiot, here are the corrected urls", in which you lie and say the links they gave were wrong, and you have the correct ones.

6) Allways paste a portion of the sniglet of the article with a little commentary such as "You Suck" or "KEWL". This will always show that you didn't even click the real link to the article and shows all that you just copied and pasted from the top of the thread.

3. Maintenance Information
If you have any other ideas or tips for this Anti- Karma HOWTO, feel free to share them and they may be added to this document.

3.1 Contributors

Thanks to the creative first posters and all the trolls for their suggestions to this "Slashdot Anti-Karma HOWTO".

• The original post is a troll. Do not respond to trolls.
• It is generated.

Ack. Don't use stow. Use epkg and the encap package format, if that's what you want to do.

Ack. Don't use stow. Use epkg and the encap package format, if that's what you want to do.

March 3-4, 2000, actually. The EOH page is here.

CAVERNUS
- Check out applications to download. My personal favorite is Crayoland. :) There are also some early papers about the CAVE somewhere there

CAVE QUAKE II
- Quake II in the CAVE? What's cooler then that? It's quite unnerving fighting a Tank that's literally taller then you.

Teleimmersion at EVL
- Connecting CAVEs

Welcome to CAVERNsoft
- How to connect CAVEs

Center for Parallel Computers - VR-Cube
- The 6-walled CAVE in sweden. My office-mate saw this, said it was the most immersive experience he's ever done. Forgot where he was!

Ascension Techology Corporation
- These guys make the magnetic tracker we're using.

Welcome to Polhemus!
- another type of tracker

Pyramid Systems
- they'll build a CAVE for ya

AMPRO Corporation
- We use their projectors

CAVE Programming
- Some information on programming for the CAVE

CAVEdev::main
- Some other cool projects for the CAVE

enjoy!

---

CAVERNUS
- Check out applications to download. My personal favorite is Crayoland. :) There are also some early papers about the CAVE somewhere there

CAVE QUAKE II
- Quake II in the CAVE? What's cooler then that? It's quite unnerving fighting a Tank that's literally taller then you.

Teleimmersion at EVL
- Connecting CAVEs

Welcome to CAVERNsoft
- How to connect CAVEs

Center for Parallel Computers - VR-Cube
- The 6-walled CAVE in sweden. My office-mate saw this, said it was the most immersive experience he's ever done. Forgot where he was!

Ascension Techology Corporation
- These guys make the magnetic tracker we're using.

Welcome to Polhemus!
- another type of tracker

Pyramid Systems
- they'll build a CAVE for ya

AMPRO Corporation
- We use their projectors

CAVE Programming
- Some information on programming for the CAVE

CAVEdev::main
- Some other cool projects for the CAVE

enjoy!

---

Projector technology right now sucks for the high end. The CAVE uses CRT projectors (much like the ones in the old big screen TV's) instead of a brighter technology such as LCD, DLP, or Digital Light Valve. Unfortunately, the manufacturers of these brighter products have not pushed the refresh rate limit. In order to use the StereoGraphics shutter glasses, you need at least 100 Hz refresh rate out of your projectors. Currently, the only types of projectors that can handle 100 Hz are CRT's.

These CAVE's are not really multiuser. There are some real problems with perspective in these environments. Only one person can have a corrected view frustrum, and everyone else has to put up with a warping and shearing scene. Of course, this is assuming you are trying to visualize something floating in front of you. This is very hard to describe, but if you think about it, imagine projecting an object floating in front of you, while trying to give your user the ability to walk all around it. Anyhow, this is impossible in any multiuser mode.

CAVE are small. 10'^3 may seem like a lot of space, (as most people's dorm rooms are 12'^3), but oftimes people are limited in movement. This also limits the number of people who can share this experience.

The Electronic Visualization Lab at University of Illinois, Argonne National Labs Futures Lab, and NCSA all have major research going on in CAVE technology.

-Stryemer
We are the music makers,
and we are the dreamers of the dream.

uic's has had a cave for years:
http://www.evl.uic.edu/pape/CAVE/
it sounds alot cooler than it is. its running off some old sgi box or other...

we play cave quake on it. http://hoback.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~prajl ich/caveQuake/ but its not very stable, and the interface needs some work. one cool thing is that your gun is your cursur and its rendered in full 3d instead of just a 2d image. you can twist your gun around and stuff. you have to actualy duck, to duck in the game, and jumping is automated so you end up getting stuck in the walls alot.

The CAVE's have been around for a long time at research institutions (I first used one at the Uni of Houston in the summer of 96), and Quake 2 *has* been ported to the system... as to whether you can really get an enjoyable play experience out of it... well

http://hoback.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~prajl ich/caveQuake/

When I was at the University of Illinois I took people on a tour of the CAVE at the NCSA. It's pretty cool. Four 7 foot projecttion screens on each side of you. You stand in the middle holding a joystick that is tracked by a sensor on the ceiling. LCD goggles that flip opaceity between your eyes gives you a 3D enviroment.

They the cab to a Catapiller bulldozer that they were looking into using as some sort of computer aided training.

It's alot like a first person shooter, only with out guns or textures. Personally I don't think VR will ever become something revolutionary until we develop a more immersive enviorment (real touch (not just that lame vibration stuff) and the solving the dismounted soldier problem for example).

When I was at the University of Illinois I took people on a tour of the CAVE at the NCSA. It's pretty cool. Four 7 foot projecttion screens on each side of you. You stand in the middle holding a joystick that is tracked by a sensor on the ceiling. LCD goggles that flip opaceity between your eyes gives you a 3D enviroment.

They the cab to a Catapiller bulldozer that they were looking into using as some sort of computer aided training.

It's alot like a first person shooter, only with out guns or textures. Personally I don't think VR will ever become something revolutionary until we develop a more immersive enviorment (real touch (not just that lame vibration stuff) and the solving the dismounted soldier problem for example).

When I was at the University of Illinois I took people on a tour of the CAVE at the NCSA. It's pretty cool. Four 7 foot projecttion screens on each side of you. You stand in the middle holding a joystick that is tracked by a sensor on the ceiling. LCD goggles that flip opaceity between your eyes gives you a 3D enviroment.

They the cab to a Catapiller bulldozer that they were looking into using as some sort of computer aided training.

It's alot like a first person shooter, only with out guns or textures. Personally I don't think VR will ever become something revolutionary until we develop a more immersive enviorment (real touch (not just that lame vibration stuff) and the solving the dismounted soldier problem for example).

- Tim Skirvin (tskirvin@killfile.org)

The NCSA at UIUC here in Urbana-Champaign has had one of these for a while. I'm not sure how similar it is, but you can find out more here.

Along those lines, the NCSA at the Univ. of Illinois (Urbana) has had one for some time (note the Dec. 1997 "last updated"). I have actually had the opportunity to go into the CAVE. You wear special glasses and the experience is awesome. I would suggest that if you can get a tour in one, do so!

BTW, the link above has some user manuals as well as some descriptions about how the whole thing works.

why is there a complaint about me on your site?

complain t about Little Furry Creatures in my Pants

Congratulations to Furry Little Creatures in my Pants for saying that we're supposed to shut up and smile when he says uneducated things. That decidedly wins the prize for being the most pigheaded and infernal thing I've ever heard. But first, let me pose you a question: Is he actually concerned about any of us, or does he just want to spit on sacred icons? After reading this letter, you'll indeed find it's the latter. His foul-mouthed nit-picky offhand remarks leave the current power structure untouched while simultaneously killing countless children through starvation and disease. Are these children Furry Little Creatures's enemies? He will damage the debate about this issue, because we will have to spend lots of time correcting misunderstandings that are directly attributable to his policies. Here's the heart of the matter: Furry Little Creatures's lawless deeds are an epiphenomenon of insidious blackguardism. Furry Little Creatures's detractors are correct in their observation that the antithesis of militant fogyism is moral, religious, and cultural solidarity among the people of a nation. You know, it strikes me that I experienced quite an epiphany when I first realized that Furry Little Creatures leaves me no choice but to kill somebody. Facts and their accuracy make a story, not the overdramatization of whatever he dreams up. It may seem senseless to say that Furry Little Creatures's manuscripts are sheer idiocy. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Incidentally, it's irrelevant that my allegations are 100% true. Furry Little Creatures distrusts my information and arguments and will forever maintain his current opinions. It is both frustrating and frightening to observe the extreme ignorance -- no, idiocy -- present in his rapacious whinges. Equally important is the fact that I've catalogued all of his foibles -- and the list is pretty big. Why is it that 99 times out of 100, the sun has never shone on a more nasty and feral person than Furry Little Creatures in my Pants? For your edification, I should really point out that you can see where this is going. You might not care that he has let his moonstruck feelings obscure reality, but you'd better start caring if you don't want him to nourish testy ideologies. Don't let yourself be persuaded by reckless bourgeoisie who secretly want to remove society's moral barriers and allow perversion to prosper. How dare Furry Little Creatures criticize my values when his are so obviously pretentious? He even condones the shallow witticisms that will saddle the economy with crippling debt. I believe I have finally figured out what makes people like him use both overt and covert deceptions to represent a threat to all the people in the area, indeed, possibly the world. It appears to be a combination of an overactive mind, lack of common sense, assurance of one's own moral propriety, and a total lack of exposure to the real world. I've heard of duplicitous things like communism and post-structuralism. But I've also heard of things like nonviolence, higher moralities, and treating all beings as ends in and of themselves -- ideas which Furry Little Creatures's ignorant, unthinking, biased brain is too small to understand. At first blush, it appears that ribald smut peddlers are unable to see that I would much rather raise issues, as opposed to guns or knives, than waste my precious time chastising unbridled hoodlums. However, I cannot promise not to be angry at Furry Little Creatures. I do promise, however, to try to keep my anger under control, to keep it from leading me -- as it leads Furry Little Creatures -- to calumniate helpless lunatics. My usual response to his tracts is this: There is a cost, a cost too high to calculate, for messing with the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people. However, such a response is much too glib and perhaps a little rabid, so let me be more specific. There is much more of this to come. Furry Little Creatures's cronies can conceive of nothing but deplorable defenses of his bitter hostile views, right? One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is exclusionism. Okay, that's a bit of an overstatement, but for all of you reading this who are not uncouth wackos, you can understand where the motivation for that statement comes from. Believe me, I certainly don't want to give Furry Little Creatures a chance to blitz media outlets with faxes and newsletters that highlight the good points of his witless tirades. Just think: He is capable of a large array of negative feelings. As far as his choleric ploys are concerned, I will not capitulate today, tomorrow, or ever. I know that I'm emotional now, but if Furry Little Creatures is allowed to undermine the basic values of work, responsibility, and family, the implications can be widespread. So maybe it's not a question of if but only of when he will defuse or undermine incisive critiques of his disorganized money-grubbing behavior by turning them into procedural arguments about mechanisms of institutional restraint. Big deal. What's more important is that his intent is to prevent us from asking questions. Furry Little Creatures doesn't want the details checked. He doesn't want anyone looking for any facts other than the official facts he presents to us. I wonder if this is because most of his "facts" are false. I shall return to this point in particular, but I won't linger on that. I, not being one of the many incoherent scatterbrains of this world, would have expected him to at least listen to my side of the story. So, Furry Little Creatures, maybe the problem is not with unenlightened benighted-types, but with you. Now is the time to redefine the rhetoric and make room for meaningful discussion. His invectives express themselves in thousandfold manifestations, with one of Furry Little Creatures's lackeys in despair and hopelessness, with another in ill will, anger, and indignation, with these sick manipulative lumpenproletariats in indifference, and with those in furious excesses. It's not necessary to go into too long of a description about how Furry Little Creatures plans to write off whole sections of society in the near future. Suffice it to say that the present controversy demands honest dialogue, not crude attempts at demonization. To oppose chauvinism, we must oppose jujuism. To oppose separatism, we must oppose factionalism. And to oppose Furry Little Creatures, we must oppose the most sleazy undesirables I've ever seen. There are rumors circulating that the Furry Little Creatures in my Pants Foundation's latest report on childish incomprehensible alarmism is filled with fabrications, half-truths, innuendo, and guilt by association, so let me just clarify something: By refusing to act, by refusing to build a sane and healthy society free of his destructive influences, we are giving him the power to create an ideological climate that will enable him to resolve a moral failure with an immoral solution. Some people consider his politics a necessary evil, but the truth is that it may seem difficult at first to pronounce the truth and renounce the lies. It is. But an insolent spirit is precisely the wrong spirit in which to search for solutions that are more creative and constructive than the typically selfish ones championed by what I call brutal ruffians. Now the surprising news: Furry Little Creatures should be forced to wear a scarlet "W" for "Wants to crush the will of all individuals who have expressed political and intellectual opposition to his schemes". Look at what's happened since he first ordered his henchmen to impact public policy for years to come: Views once considered malicious are now considered ordinary. Views once considered paltry are now considered perfectly normal. And the most subhuman of Furry Little Creatures's views are now seen as gospel by legions of effete scumbags. He has deported himself as an enemy of peace and harmony. Society has pampered Furry Little Creatures too long. His epithets are made of the same spirit that accounts for the majority of the problems we face in this world. Learning the truth can be a painful experience, especially for Furry Little Creatures. There are different ways of reconciling oneself to this unpleasant, yet undeniably self-absorbed, fact. Some people see nothing at all, or rather, want to see nothing. Others are perfectly well aware of the tasteless consequences which this plague must and will some day induce, but only shrug their shoulders, convinced that nothing can be done, so the only thing to do is to leave things alone. He needs to step out of the dark ages. The truth hurts, doesn't it, Furry Little Creatures? Even acknowledging his disgraceful sentiments is beneath my dignity. But it doesn't stop there. To sum it all up, Furry Little Creatures in my Pants is as dictatorial as the sky is blue. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------

why is there a complaint about me on your site?

complain t about Little Furry Creatures in my Pants

Congratulations to Furry Little Creatures in my Pants for saying that we're supposed to shut up and smile when he says uneducated things. That decidedly wins the prize for being the most pigheaded and infernal thing I've ever heard. But first, let me pose you a question: Is he actually concerned about any of us, or does he just want to spit on sacred icons? After reading this letter, you'll indeed find it's the latter. His foul-mouthed nit-picky offhand remarks leave the current power structure untouched while simultaneously killing countless children through starvation and disease. Are these children Furry Little Creatures's enemies? He will damage the debate about this issue, because we will have to spend lots of time correcting misunderstandings that are directly attributable to his policies. Here's the heart of the matter: Furry Little Creatures's lawless deeds are an epiphenomenon of insidious blackguardism. Furry Little Creatures's detractors are correct in their observation that the antithesis of militant fogyism is moral, religious, and cultural solidarity among the people of a nation. You know, it strikes me that I experienced quite an epiphany when I first realized that Furry Little Creatures leaves me no choice but to kill somebody. Facts and their accuracy make a story, not the overdramatization of whatever he dreams up. It may seem senseless to say that Furry Little Creatures's manuscripts are sheer idiocy. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Incidentally, it's irrelevant that my allegations are 100% true. Furry Little Creatures distrusts my information and arguments and will forever maintain his current opinions. It is both frustrating and frightening to observe the extreme ignorance -- no, idiocy -- present in his rapacious whinges. Equally important is the fact that I've catalogued all of his foibles -- and the list is pretty big. Why is it that 99 times out of 100, the sun has never shone on a more nasty and feral person than Furry Little Creatures in my Pants? For your edification, I should really point out that you can see where this is going. You might not care that he has let his moonstruck feelings obscure reality, but you'd better start caring if you don't want him to nourish testy ideologies. Don't let yourself be persuaded by reckless bourgeoisie who secretly want to remove society's moral barriers and allow perversion to prosper. How dare Furry Little Creatures criticize my values when his are so obviously pretentious? He even condones the shallow witticisms that will saddle the economy with crippling debt. I believe I have finally figured out what makes people like him use both overt and covert deceptions to represent a threat to all the people in the area, indeed, possibly the world. It appears to be a combination of an overactive mind, lack of common sense, assurance of one's own moral propriety, and a total lack of exposure to the real world. I've heard of duplicitous things like communism and post-structuralism. But I've also heard of things like nonviolence, higher moralities, and treating all beings as ends in and of themselves -- ideas which Furry Little Creatures's ignorant, unthinking, biased brain is too small to understand. At first blush, it appears that ribald smut peddlers are unable to see that I would much rather raise issues, as opposed to guns or knives, than waste my precious time chastising unbridled hoodlums. However, I cannot promise not to be angry at Furry Little Creatures. I do promise, however, to try to keep my anger under control, to keep it from leading me -- as it leads Furry Little Creatures -- to calumniate helpless lunatics. My usual response to his tracts is this: There is a cost, a cost too high to calculate, for messing with the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people. However, such a response is much too glib and perhaps a little rabid, so let me be more specific. There is much more of this to come. Furry Little Creatures's cronies can conceive of nothing but deplorable defenses of his bitter hostile views, right? One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is exclusionism. Okay, that's a bit of an overstatement, but for all of you reading this who are not uncouth wackos, you can understand where the motivation for that statement comes from. Believe me, I certainly don't want to give Furry Little Creatures a chance to blitz media outlets with faxes and newsletters that highlight the good points of his witless tirades. Just think: He is capable of a large array of negative feelings. As far as his choleric ploys are concerned, I will not capitulate today, tomorrow, or ever. I know that I'm emotional now, but if Furry Little Creatures is allowed to undermine the basic values of work, responsibility, and family, the implications can be widespread. So maybe it's not a question of if but only of when he will defuse or undermine incisive critiques of his disorganized money-grubbing behavior by turning them into procedural arguments about mechanisms of institutional restraint. Big deal. What's more important is that his intent is to prevent us from asking questions. Furry Little Creatures doesn't want the details checked. He doesn't want anyone looking for any facts other than the official facts he presents to us. I wonder if this is because most of his "facts" are false. I shall return to this point in particular, but I won't linger on that. I, not being one of the many incoherent scatterbrains of this world, would have expected him to at least listen to my side of the story. So, Furry Little Creatures, maybe the problem is not with unenlightened benighted-types, but with you. Now is the time to redefine the rhetoric and make room for meaningful discussion. His invectives express themselves in thousandfold manifestations, with one of Furry Little Creatures's lackeys in despair and hopelessness, with another in ill will, anger, and indignation, with these sick manipulative lumpenproletariats in indifference, and with those in furious excesses. It's not necessary to go into too long of a description about how Furry Little Creatures plans to write off whole sections of society in the near future. Suffice it to say that the present controversy demands honest dialogue, not crude attempts at demonization. To oppose chauvinism, we must oppose jujuism. To oppose separatism, we must oppose factionalism. And to oppose Furry Little Creatures, we must oppose the most sleazy undesirables I've ever seen. There are rumors circulating that the Furry Little Creatures in my Pants Foundation's latest report on childish incomprehensible alarmism is filled with fabrications, half-truths, innuendo, and guilt by association, so let me just clarify something: By refusing to act, by refusing to build a sane and healthy society free of his destructive influences, we are giving him the power to create an ideological climate that will enable him to resolve a moral failure with an immoral solution. Some people consider his politics a necessary evil, but the truth is that it may seem difficult at first to pronounce the truth and renounce the lies. It is. But an insolent spirit is precisely the wrong spirit in which to search for solutions that are more creative and constructive than the typically selfish ones championed by what I call brutal ruffians. Now the surprising news: Furry Little Creatures should be forced to wear a scarlet "W" for "Wants to crush the will of all individuals who have expressed political and intellectual opposition to his schemes". Look at what's happened since he first ordered his henchmen to impact public policy for years to come: Views once considered malicious are now considered ordinary. Views once considered paltry are now considered perfectly normal. And the most subhuman of Furry Little Creatures's views are now seen as gospel by legions of effete scumbags. He has deported himself as an enemy of peace and harmony. Society has pampered Furry Little Creatures too long. His epithets are made of the same spirit that accounts for the majority of the problems we face in this world. Learning the truth can be a painful experience, especially for Furry Little Creatures. There are different ways of reconciling oneself to this unpleasant, yet undeniably self-absorbed, fact. Some people see nothing at all, or rather, want to see nothing. Others are perfectly well aware of the tasteless consequences which this plague must and will some day induce, but only shrug their shoulders, convinced that nothing can be done, so the only thing to do is to leave things alone. He needs to step out of the dark ages. The truth hurts, doesn't it, Furry Little Creatures? Even acknowledging his disgraceful sentiments is beneath my dignity. But it doesn't stop there. To sum it all up, Furry Little Creatures in my Pants is as dictatorial as the sky is blue. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------

why is there a complaint about me on your site?

complain t about Little Furry Creatures in my Pants

Congratulations to Furry Little Creatures in my Pants for saying that we're supposed to shut up and smile when he says uneducated things. That decidedly wins the prize for being the most pigheaded and infernal thing I've ever heard. But first, let me pose you a question: Is he actually concerned about any of us, or does he just want to spit on sacred icons? After reading this letter, you'll indeed find it's the latter. His foul-mouthed nit-picky offhand remarks leave the current power structure untouched while simultaneously killing countless children through starvation and disease. Are these children Furry Little Creatures's enemies? He will damage the debate about this issue, because we will have to spend lots of time correcting misunderstandings that are directly attributable to his policies. Here's the heart of the matter: Furry Little Creatures's lawless deeds are an epiphenomenon of insidious blackguardism. Furry Little Creatures's detractors are correct in their observation that the antithesis of militant fogyism is moral, religious, and cultural solidarity among the people of a nation. You know, it strikes me that I experienced quite an epiphany when I first realized that Furry Little Creatures leaves me no choice but to kill somebody. Facts and their accuracy make a story, not the overdramatization of whatever he dreams up. It may seem senseless to say that Furry Little Creatures's manuscripts are sheer idiocy. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Incidentally, it's irrelevant that my allegations are 100% true. Furry Little Creatures distrusts my information and arguments and will forever maintain his current opinions. It is both frustrating and frightening to observe the extreme ignorance -- no, idiocy -- present in his rapacious whinges. Equally important is the fact that I've catalogued all of his foibles -- and the list is pretty big. Why is it that 99 times out of 100, the sun has never shone on a more nasty and feral person than Furry Little Creatures in my Pants? For your edification, I should really point out that you can see where this is going. You might not care that he has let his moonstruck feelings obscure reality, but you'd better start caring if you don't want him to nourish testy ideologies. Don't let yourself be persuaded by reckless bourgeoisie who secretly want to remove society's moral barriers and allow perversion to prosper. How dare Furry Little Creatures criticize my values when his are so obviously pretentious? He even condones the shallow witticisms that will saddle the economy with crippling debt. I believe I have finally figured out what makes people like him use both overt and covert deceptions to represent a threat to all the people in the area, indeed, possibly the world. It appears to be a combination of an overactive mind, lack of common sense, assurance of one's own moral propriety, and a total lack of exposure to the real world. I've heard of duplicitous things like communism and post-structuralism. But I've also heard of things like nonviolence, higher moralities, and treating all beings as ends in and of themselves -- ideas which Furry Little Creatures's ignorant, unthinking, biased brain is too small to understand. At first blush, it appears that ribald smut peddlers are unable to see that I would much rather raise issues, as opposed to guns or knives, than waste my precious time chastising unbridled hoodlums. However, I cannot promise not to be angry at Furry Little Creatures. I do promise, however, to try to keep my anger under control, to keep it from leading me -- as it leads Furry Little Creatures -- to calumniate helpless lunatics. My usual response to his tracts is this: There is a cost, a cost too high to calculate, for messing with the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people. However, such a response is much too glib and perhaps a little rabid, so let me be more specific. There is much more of this to come. Furry Little Creatures's cronies can conceive of nothing but deplorable defenses of his bitter hostile views, right? One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is exclusionism. Okay, that's a bit of an overstatement, but for all of you reading this who are not uncouth wackos, you can understand where the motivation for that statement comes from. Believe me, I certainly don't want to give Furry Little Creatures a chance to blitz media outlets with faxes and newsletters that highlight the good points of his witless tirades. Just think: He is capable of a large array of negative feelings. As far as his choleric ploys are concerned, I will not capitulate today, tomorrow, or ever. I know that I'm emotional now, but if Furry Little Creatures is allowed to undermine the basic values of work, responsibility, and family, the implications can be widespread. So maybe it's not a question of if but only of when he will defuse or undermine incisive critiques of his disorganized money-grubbing behavior by turning them into procedural arguments about mechanisms of institutional restraint. Big deal. What's more important is that his intent is to prevent us from asking questions. Furry Little Creatures doesn't want the details checked. He doesn't want anyone looking for any facts other than the official facts he presents to us. I wonder if this is because most of his "facts" are false. I shall return to this point in particular, but I won't linger on that. I, not being one of the many incoherent scatterbrains of this world, would have expected him to at least listen to my side of the story. So, Furry Little Creatures, maybe the problem is not with unenlightened benighted-types, but with you. Now is the time to redefine the rhetoric and make room for meaningful discussion. His invectives express themselves in thousandfold manifestations, with one of Furry Little Creatures's lackeys in despair and hopelessness, with another in ill will, anger, and indignation, with these sick manipulative lumpenproletariats in indifference, and with those in furious excesses. It's not necessary to go into too long of a description about how Furry Little Creatures plans to write off whole sections of society in the near future. Suffice it to say that the present controversy demands honest dialogue, not crude attempts at demonization. To oppose chauvinism, we must oppose jujuism. To oppose separatism, we must oppose factionalism. And to oppose Furry Little Creatures, we must oppose the most sleazy undesirables I've ever seen. There are rumors circulating that the Furry Little Creatures in my Pants Foundation's latest report on childish incomprehensible alarmism is filled with fabrications, half-truths, innuendo, and guilt by association, so let me just clarify something: By refusing to act, by refusing to build a sane and healthy society free of his destructive influences, we are giving him the power to create an ideological climate that will enable him to resolve a moral failure with an immoral solution. Some people consider his politics a necessary evil, but the truth is that it may seem difficult at first to pronounce the truth and renounce the lies. It is. But an insolent spirit is precisely the wrong spirit in which to search for solutions that are more creative and constructive than the typically selfish ones championed by what I call brutal ruffians. Now the surprising news: Furry Little Creatures should be forced to wear a scarlet "W" for "Wants to crush the will of all individuals who have expressed political and intellectual opposition to his schemes". Look at what's happened since he first ordered his henchmen to impact public policy for years to come: Views once considered malicious are now considered ordinary. Views once considered paltry are now considered perfectly normal. And the most subhuman of Furry Little Creatures's views are now seen as gospel by legions of effete scumbags. He has deported himself as an enemy of peace and harmony. Society has pampered Furry Little Creatures too long. His epithets are made of the same spirit that accounts for the majority of the problems we face in this world. Learning the truth can be a painful experience, especially for Furry Little Creatures. There are different ways of reconciling oneself to this unpleasant, yet undeniably self-absorbed, fact. Some people see nothing at all, or rather, want to see nothing. Others are perfectly well aware of the tasteless consequences which this plague must and will some day induce, but only shrug their shoulders, convinced that nothing can be done, so the only thing to do is to leave things alone. He needs to step out of the dark ages. The truth hurts, doesn't it, Furry Little Creatures? Even acknowledging his disgraceful sentiments is beneath my dignity. But it doesn't stop there. To sum it all up, Furry Little Creatures in my Pants is as dictatorial as the sky is blue. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------

A great way to unwind on a Friday afternoon.

I wonder if they accept flames written by this complaint generator

--

When I went to college, I was lucky enough to actually take an english course on science fiction. It's still offered at the University of Illinois and has a homepage complete with a syllabus, which includes the list of texts used throughout the course.

When I went to college, I was lucky enough to actually take an english course on science fiction. It's still offered at the University of Illinois and has a homepage complete with a syllabus, which includes the list of texts used throughout the course.

When I went to college, I was lucky enough to actually take an english course on science fiction. It's still offered at the University of Illinois and has a homepage complete with a syllabus, which includes the list of texts used throughout the course.

Trollmastah

This Anti- Karma HOWTO document explains how to not impress your fellow slashdotters
by getting low Karma. Although Anti- Karma HOWTO documents are targeted towards
use with the Windows operating system, this one is not dependent on the
OS used to access Slashdot.

This Anti- Karma HOWTO is a joke.

__________________________________________________ ____________________

Table of Contents


1. Introduction

2. Tips

2.1 Comment Length
2.2 When to Post
2.3 Where to Post
2.4 What to Post - Avoiding Positive Karma

3. Maintenance Information

__________________________________________________ ____________________

1. Introduction

Your Karma rating on Slashdot lies in the hands of the moderators.
This is your target, and as you'll soon find out it's quite easy to
manipulate and fool them into moderating you down. By following a few
simple guidelines you can soon surpass all the regulars, and eventually
get down there with the best of the first post and off-topic whores.







2. Tips

2.1. Comment Length

Perhaps the best tip in getting moderators to moderate you down deals
with the length of your posts. It's quite simple, always post very
SHORT comments and when possible, MAKE IT IN ALL CAPS. Many moderators equate
this with "Troll" and "Off-Topic", regardless of what you say.
Furthermore, moderators are MUCH less likely to moderate you up or leave
you at 1 if your post is short enough.

Also, use those invalid HTML tags! Nothing makes your post seem like a
wanna be karma whore than lack of whitespace. A really stupid signature
can also help out here. It is also very important to gain all
the credit you can for your trollish behaivor. Please use your account.
The mail only needs to be used once
to gain the password
and if you only "FIRST POST" as AC, your negative karma will never add up.




2.2. When to Post

Timing is everything. Go for the gusto, spend most of your slashdot time
refreshing the main page. If you wait too long to post, almost
no moderator is going to have a chance to moderate it down -- no matter
how bad your post is! As a general rule of thumb, any comment posted
more than 15 minutes after a story is submitted will not be moderated
one way or the other (Trolls: this is your chance!) Open a text editor
and have your first post, rant or other completely off-topic comments
PRE-WRITTEN and copied to the clipboard. This will save valuable seconds
while you race for the prize! Be creative! Dont just tag a line that
says "First Post Dude!" or something lame like that. Look at the true
first post leaders. Mick the First Post Mastah, McDougal the Llama,
Trollmastah, Natalie Portman Guy, and the other regulars. They seem
to have style and are generally much more likely to be moderated down because of it.




2.3. Where to Post

After no extensive lab research in Slashdot moderation, some key
information was made up. Make sure all your posts are not top-level
posts! I cannot stress this enough. Anything posted more than
all the way down, won't get seen, and you'll
waste all your effort. The only exception is replying to the first
batch of comments, since they're sometimes moderated more thoroughly.
A bottom-level post is 16 times more likely to be moderated down than
a reply!

Under current moderation practice, the first two comments are often
marked as "Redundant" if they're not first-posters. Yes, I know
this defies the very meaning of the word redundant, but many (not all)
moderators don't seem to understand what redundant means. Leave this
area alone. People will just ignore it and your post will not be noticed. This happens
so often that one begins to think it's automated. Thus, strive to post
first or second -- all true Anti-Karma whores know that First post is prime
real estate.



2.4. What to Post - Avoiding Positive Karma

While the contents of your post aren't quite as important as comment
length, it does play a large role in the fate of your post. There
are a number of rules to follow when submitting posts to earn that coveted low
Karma:

1) Always take sides. Nothing will get you marked as
"Flamebait" faster than a controversial comment
(ESPECIALLY short to medium length comments, short
posts are generally OK regardless).

Always think you can take the popular side and get
moderated down. For example, it used to be
possible to take a side against Windows, or take
sides against Microsoft. This is no longer the
case - there are too many slashdotters now who
have moderator access and use Windows. Posting
an anti-Windows comment will even get marked as
"Flamebait" faster than a anti-Linux post these
days! Go for it! Slam both sides! a good link for this is
Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator
You should keep the drivel down to 2 paragraphs of less though.

2) Never Stay neutral (a follow up to #1). A good way to
get moderated down in almost any thread is to never summarize
both sides of the issue in one post. Not only are
these posts generally long, but they can even be
moderated up as "Informative"! Similarly, posts
with subjects like "it's all about choice!" seem
to play well with the moderators. Make yours creative.
Use subjects like "OH YOU SUCK" or "I THOUGHT SLASHDOT
WAS FOR X" These will help you on your ride to the bottom.

3) Never come across as insightful. Nothing will make you
appear more insightful than going against the trend
of the first 25 posts or so (this doesn't conflict
with #1, read on). This does mean you have to
take sides. A good subject example of this faked-insight
post is "Missing the point", in which you explain
all the previous posts are overlooking the big picture.
Avoid this at all costs. Also keep you comments as
negative as possible. "I agree" should never appear in your posts.

4) Use a Flamebait comment subject. Unless you're Natalie Portman Guy
(Anti-Karma God) and can get low Karma using "xxx Natalie" as your
subject, you'd better follow some guidelines.

Subjects like "This is a crock of shit (TM)" are
generally good if your post is fairly short. Others
that are moderated down included subjects with some
type of quote or cliche (e.g, "Linux Sux",
"Bill Gates Rocks!", or anything cheesy like that)

Another tactic that has recently become useful is
starting your commentary or subject with
"News For Nerds? Stuff that Matters?..". Don't
worry - you will not have to post anything controversial,
moderators will reward your trollish subject regardless of
what you say!


5) Find related sites to the issue at hand and post broken
links as soon as possible (remember, if you don't,
someone else will!). You don't have to go all out,
they can be general links that dont relate to the
article. Links to AOL, Pron or to your own company really
work well, especially if you make the "Spammish" in
their appearance. Things like "Surf the net and make money!
Come to my site at HTTP://Site.com. Also only embed
your links some of the time. Inconsistancy really gets
their panties in a wad. Most moderators will mark it
as "Flamebait". Remember, always have your comments pre-packaged!
without even checking the URLs!

Also, if someone beats you to the first post with a list of
URLs, all is not lost. There's still a wonderful
opportunity for some Karma. An excellent strategy
is to reply with "you idiot, here are the corrected urls", in which you
lie and say the links they gave were wrong, and
you have the correct ones.

6) Allways paste a portion of the sniglet of the article with
a little commentary such as "You Suck" or "KEWL". This will
always show that you didn't even click the real link to the
article and shows all that you just copied and pasted from
the top of the thread.




3. Maintenance Information

If you have any other ideas or tips for this Anti- Karma HOWTO, feel free to
share them and they may be added to this document.

Thanks


3.1 Contributors

Thanks to the creative first posters and all the trolls for their
suggestions to this "Slashdot Anti-Karma HOWTO".

How can I use Economode with my 1100 then?

If you really wish to be a good netizen, whip up a nice PDQ description with all the useful settings for your printer, and submit it to me for inclusion in the database.

- Grant Taylor
Linux Printing HOWTO

Java? Why be half assed. Don't use that mangled version of ((C++) - C). Use a real object oriented programming language:

Smalltalk!
Available in Free , gratis, and commercial flavors!

Seriously, I use java - I like java, but I think smalltalk would be a much better choice for the backend to a slashdot style site than java would be.