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Autopsy Of A Furby
Cooper Stevenson writes: "Ever wonder what makes a Furby tick? Well, neither have I but it made for an interesting read." Personally, I'd rather see someone disembowel Teddy Ruxpin, but this is a good start.
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...is it possible for the powers that be (Taco and Co.) to revoke/delete stories in Slash? When stories like this crop up (third time on the page, or some other 'Homer') it never seems like they try to actually rectify the situation by removing the post. Instead it stays. Very rarely ever updated to reflect an error of any kind.
:))
While I do find it annoying to see this story grace the page yet again, I'll live. I understand it's probably timothy's first viewing of it, and that's fine, but once the error has been pointed out...how's about retracting it?
It might help improve reader opinion to at least acknowlege a screw up, rather than ignore it.
(Was the article updated while writing this? Let's find out.
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
What's fun is to submit some really useful stuff and watch it get declined. For instance, I've been trying to get a dual-headed display working in Linux. I search the archives (something most submitters neglect to do) and found a story on this very topic. The thing is, it's about two years old, by my estimate. (Speaking of which, why don't they put a year on all this stuff? Slashdot's been around for many years, it would be useful.) This is easily something that would interest many with the advances since then, XFree86 4, xinerama, G400 dual cards, etc. What happens? It's declined in favor of "How do I make a web page?" "What language should I speak on the Internet?" or other similarly useful questions which come up every three months.
:)
It used to be that I could spend hours from my workday pouring over interesting news and participating in discussions. Now it's all Furby and Protest redundants. It's denegrated to the point where this is a check-in-once-in-a-while sorta site, just like everything else. I blame it on Columbine. It's like a TV sitcom. It's all well and good until they attempt that "very special" show about awareness for {drugs, teen drinking, cancer, homosexuality, three-toed sloths, etc}. The fame gets to ya and you start to think you're terribly insightful and can make a difference, or something.
This has come up over and over again, and it's not a good idea.
Say there are about 400 stories in the queue right now. If that queue were made public, you'd see it jump to about 900, I bet, if not more. And the headlines would probably mostly match a search on the words 'hot grits', 'oog', 'portman', 'penis', 'fuck', 'trolls on parade'
Maybe that could be addressed with another layer of moderation. But I think that kinda misses the point-- the owners of this site are the benevolent dictators and gatekeepers. Slashdot is, ultimately, theirs. If you disagree, visit SlashCode.
(Speaking of which, why don't they put a year on all this stuff? Slashdot's been around for many years, it would be useful.)
The year's in the URL. Look up there, you'll see "sid=00/04/30".....
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I think the furby would kick your ass first:)
- Stop praying for someone to save you, and save yourself.-
KMFDM
- Think for yourself, question authority.-
It may be possible to moderate stories but I don't think it should/could be done with news stories.
/. is/was to see what the founders were thinking (if you remember, /. was just a site where Taco, Hemos would post whatever they cared to post... what was on their mind). If they continue to *outsource* the news posts to other people (I will not say that this is a good or bad idea) then the purpose of the site will have gone away from being something where Hemos, Nate, etc... post what is on their minds, to a site where hemos, nate, taco, potter, timothy, emmet, clif, etc, etc, etc... where they post what they are thinking. With so many people you would need moderation... there just isn't enough room for so many minds and, yes, you will get overlap of stories.
However, I think moderation depends on what Taco, Hemos, Nate and Potter plan on doing with slashdot. The only reason I wouldn't want moderation of stories would be because the founding purpose of
Then again, is it really that big of a deal. Do any of us feel really all that violated when we have to see a post on something that we have already seen in the past. My point: Who cares!
...how the government used the Pokemon toys/cartoons to subliminally brainwash everyone.
That's old news too. South Park had an episode LAST YEAR that covered that topic...
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
Then again, is it really that big of a deal. Do any of us feel really all that violated when we have to see a post on something that we have already seen in the past. My point: Who cares!
The 400+ people with submissions in the queue that didn't see the light of day for that repost care.
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This was in a quicky about a year ago. Still pretty cool. I like to torture mine by holding him (Du-lou is his name, I think) upside down. He makes the most pathetic crys and shouts "Down! Down! Oh nooooo!".
Yes, I am easily amused.
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Does narcissism count as a hobby? --Shawn Latimer
Furby Autopsies by CmdrTaco on Fri December 11, 05:38 PM EST 28 Other furby-related stories here.
http://slashdot.org/articles/99 /01/03/1950227.shtml
http://slashdot.org/articles/98 /12/11/2338244.shtml
we have a furby. never bothered to learn his name, nor replace his batteries after they died. Nonetheless he is part of our special family (college apartment) and makes the ladies swoon. We tend to have a lot of fun during social gatherings by bringing out our once chattery friend, and lighting up a butt for him, handing him a bottle of JD and a shot glass, and whatching him go work! Yeah Furby, there's a reason this thing keeps getting reposted, everyone wants to customize their furby into something special, well we did, with minimum effort, the college way.
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
It was in december 11, 1998...back when they were popular /12/11/2338244.shtml
http://slashdot.org/articles/98
Though the whole furby trend is sort of passé, a much better resource that keeps up to date on the global furby reverse-engineering project can be found here. The section devoted to the infared commands they've been able to replicate was what really caught my eye. Have a gander, move along. Careful with the flames that you send tim's way :P
I would totally agree that the stories themselves need to be moderated as well. There are some times where I wouldn't mind troll'n for some really off the wall stories, but if a story of earth-shattering news comes along (RedHat buys Microsoft OS Div for $10 Million, ect.) you may only want to see those top headlines.
/.
Consider this like the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Sure, there are some interesting stories in the back pages of the travel section, but should that be a "headline" story?
Besides... this is only a natural evolution of the posting moderation. That and the main editors (Rob & Co.) could still have "unlimited" story moderation points to pretty much put things where they want them anyway. It would allow the readers to put a little bit into how they feel about a story as well.
Anyways.... this story is truly stale news. The page info from the server says:
Last Modified: Sunday, August 01, 1999 06:33:45 PM Local time
Or even note that cross reference pages even have a link to
heh heh.
Maybe it's old news, but it reminds me of the Marshmallow Bunny Survival Tests. (Not exactly new either, but they might be new to someone.)
See:
It's way too late and I'm not reading right.
I don't think we should moderate the stories when they're out, but rather when they're in the Submission Queue... this way, we'd get to see the submissions and vote on what we'd most like to see a discussion on...
another advantage would be that you'd get to see the articles that don't make it... (I'm sure there's lots of great stuff that we never see...)
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.
Hey, even better... I could wire it to my house's electrical wiring, and run my whole house off the furby!
I am sickened and appalled by your apathy over this cruel and vicious practice. The taking apart of a Furby is nothing less than murder. You should all be ashamed of yourselves for spreading this information about how to kill a Furby. The next time I see you I WILL KICK YOUR ASS!! Thank you.
I still want a two Furbies. I wanna teach them all kinds of words that describe fornication. Get them to try to pick each other up. Would be more fun than watching 3 hours straight of headline news.
Once again, this underscores the need for a moderation system for stories: this is really old news.
This story would be moderated "Redundant" until it fell down somewhere between "Natalie Portman Pours Hot Grits Down Pants" and "Naked and Petrified First Posts".
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visit:
http://www.homestead.com/hackfurby/
This place is pretty cool, too. They are trying to document the IR protocol. It has software to control the furby with a computer.
Perhaps the icon for for the slashdot reruns isn't ready yet.
The icon for the followup quickies also wasn't finished in time.