Slashdot Mirror
Answers From 'They Might Be Giants'
John:
Hello. John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants at the typewriter here. I am answering a bunch of questions that have been scored by someone as to how interesting they are. I would never be so presumptuous as to do this or to publish such a score. I am a bit concerned that this rating system tacitly implies the score is part of my response to their question, which kinda disturbs me. You might disagree, but this is how I would understand it, and I would greatly appreciate it if it were removed.
The scores have been removed; all questions sent were moderated +5 anyway, so it doesn't matter. John also declined to answer question number one, but we have always told interview guests that they were free to skip questions if they like, so no big deal.
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2) The Future
by zpengo
Do you guys really think that online music has a chance, or are you doing this out of idealism? I'd personally like to think that it does, but I've heard some pretty powerful arguments against it as well.
John:
That is a very wide-open question, and idea of "online music" means different things to different people. I wouldn't characterize our on-line efforts so much as being driven by idealism for the specific format as much as our general personal desire to be challenged creatively, which is probably more unrelated than you might assume. It is sort of like writing for your self or writing for the room. Good music (and almost all my favorite music) often only finds a small audience. That's no reason not to do it.
3) Professional musicians
by yamla
These days, it seems that virtually no professional musicians actually make a decent living. Courtney Love has said that she is pretty much playing for free already. TLC declared bankruptcy. And these are just two examples. Yet during this time, the record industry is reporting record sales, record profits.
What do you think the answer is? Is the day of the professional artist over? Is it still possible to make the music you love and make enough to pay the bills? If so, how? How do you see the record industry changing over the next ten years?
John:
Being broke is not being poor, and one should be skeptical of such complaints, as they often reveal poor judgement more than poverty. In both of your examples, you are talking about people who generate huge amounts of revenue and conspicuously purchased very expensive things.
I don't think the era of the professional musical artist ever really existed. Through the course of the 20th Century from the birth of publishing to the explosion of rock as a mass market business, the business terrain has changed for the better, but long term professional employment remains an elusive reality. Musicians are always at the end of the food chain in the music business. It has never been easy making money.
4) Creative process
by Masem
What's the process by which you come up with and create your songs, at least prior to getting to the recording studio? Certainly with a wide enough berth of unusual topics that your songs cover, there's probably numerous ways that this works, but is there some common occurrence that causes these songs to be written, such as a theme you want to do, or a melody that needs to be written?
John:
I drink a cup of coffee and try to write something new. We've used a lot of different approaches. A melodic line can hit you at almost any time. Sometimes a title or a couplet is the spring-board, or using a new instrument or effect. As far as lyrics are concerned, we just try to write about ideas that are interesting to us, and seem bold enough to interest other people.
5) Internet distributable music
by iamsure
If music *could* be distributed securely online, would you as an artist be willing to do so INSTEAD of signing with a label? If not, would you be willing to do so and pressure your label?
John:
There is a leap of logic within the question. It is not security that keeps musicians from going into electronic music distribution, it is the size of the audience. For a period when we were without a label we did a bunch of on-line things, but they would not ever make us the revenue we can make selling discs. We are planning on releasing all our Restless material online through EMusic, in the unsecured MP3 format.
Finally, if secure transmission of music wasn't possible (as it doesn't seem to be now), are you willing to live with the possibility of people copying your music for free digitally, just to get more people to listen to it?
I think that is the exact environment I am living in now. The Napster discussion is such a strange cultural third rail, and bores me so completely now, I just can't talk about it anymore.
6) EMusic deal limiting access?
by gorsh
Hi guys - I've been a big fan of TMBG for some time, and a long-time subscriber to your mailing list.
Prior to the introduction of the $10 a month EMusic "TMBG Unlimited" service, TMBG frequently provided free MP3 downloads of unreleased songs and live versions not available on Dial-A-Song to those fans on the TMBG mailing list.
Now that the service has been introduced, membership seems to be a requirement for any new MP3 downloads. All the e-mails that I've received from TMBG lately have essentially been advertisements for this new service, with little or no free material offered fans. Because I don't like getting what is essentially glorified spam for Emusic in my mailbox, I've actually unsubscribed myself from your mailing list.
I understand that you guys have to make money and all, but are you concerned at all that you may be posing what could be construed a membership fee to be a member of the "official" TMBG fan community, asking fans to pay for material you had previously provided for free?
I'm perfectly willing to pay money for new TMBG albums and music, but I'm concerned that asking fans to pay $10 a month to have access to new TMBG tunes may cause you to lose more fans than you gain.
John:
Our audience means a lot to us, and we respect their interest and email addresses. Virtually all the EMusic emails include some free component, although it is not all free. We personally give away more than any other band I've heard of, and live wonderful, earthbound existences. I don't know what else to say but sorry we bugged you.
7) Stage Crashers
by irqzero
I was at the Philadelphia show (day after thanksgiving) when that doofy guy jumped on stage and started flailing about. You whispered into his ear before security took him away. I was just curious what you said to him. Other than that and the few sound glitches (ouch) that was an incredible show. Thanks guys.
John:
I said "Can you please get off the stage?"
8) Tiny Toons Music Videos
by Pxtl
Honestly, I'll bet a lot of people out there first heard you when Tiny Toons did that music video day with two of your songs (Istanbul and Particle Man, to the slashdotters who don't know).... how much do you think your career owes to that episode? How did that get handled, were you simply approached by WB with a proposal and a contract to sign, or was it more complicated?
John:
Among a certain age group I think you are right. The Tiny Toons get repeated a lot, which also adds to their secret power. It was just a license that they had to pay the record company and publisher to use the music. We had already made the recordings, and had no creative involvement beyond that.
9) Digital or Analog???
by HamNRye
As a musician myself I must ask my role models this burning question:
Digital or Analog?
Indeed I know there lurks a purist analog soul in TMBG, but who better to get the most out of digital mixing??
John:
We do both. We really get a lot out of both mediums.
10) good Vs bad john
by ashileedo
There are rumors that there is a "good" John and a "bad"John. Is this true?
If so, would the Johns care to reveal who is who?
John:
We are both polite, nice fellows. TMBG is a team effort, and John and I share a lot of responsibilities, but we also have different skills and abilities. As far as business goes, I am the self-declared "bad John." In lot of day to day logistics, especially on tour, the buck stops with me, making me the heavy in some situations. I've had to fire people, which isn't ever fun, but I am willing to do it for the sake of the band.
I have been fans of the band for many many years now (since 1991).
Wow! Only TMBG could have someone who's a single person and yet multiple fans! That's freaky...
(grin)
1st Law Of Networking: Loose ends are bad, termination is good.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
"It starts, 'Consider a world without copyright enforcement', which makes me think, great, someone has come up with what they think is a great idea, but is probably untested, or even been thoroughly debated."
The "Street Performer Protocol" is not a manifesto. It is a partial solution to the question of how to make money in a world where copyright is difficult to enforce.
When "Street Performer Protocol" says "Consider a world without copyright enforcement," it is not thinking of a utopia where copyright is banished on ethical grounds, a la the world as RMS would like to see it, but rather a world in which technology is making the flouting of copyright law so much easier that, right or wrong, enforcement of copyright is becoming more of an uphill struggle--a world which the real world resembles more and more nowadays.
BTW, this is *not* an undergraduate student's thesis. Take a look at the authors:
John Kelsey is a cryptographer at Counterpane Systems, co-designer of Twofish and Yarrow, and the author of dozens of academic papers on cryptography.
E-mail: kelsey@counterpane.com
Bruce Schneier is president of Counterpane Systems, the author of Applied Cryptography (John Wiley & Sons, 1994 & 1996), and an inventor of the Blowfish, Twofish, and Yarrow algorithms. He serves on the board of the International Association for Cryptologic Research, EPIC, and VTW. He is a contributing editor to Dr. Dobb's Journal, and a frequent writer and lecturer on cryptography. Counterpane Systems is a five-person consulting firm specializing in cryptography and computer security. Counterpane provides expert consulting in, design and analysis, implementation and testing, threat modeling, product research and forecasting, classes and training, intellectual property, and export consulting. Contracts range from short-term design evaluations and expert opinions to multi-year development efforts.
E-mail: schneier@counterpane.com
I suggest giving the paper a good read. It's fairly pragmatic and well-thought out.
/ k.d / earth trickle / Monkeys vs. Robots Films /
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Amen, brother.
The original post you put up has become one of my random signatures (properly attributed to you, though), hope you don't mind. It really sums up my attitude as well.
What about kwanzaa? that's in here somewhere, isn't it?
** Me
Especially when GPL arguments or Anti-MS rhetoric pops up....
"[...] You're not the boss of me now, and you're not that big [...] Life is unfaaaaaair"
--- http://foo.ca
Musicians are always at the end of the food chain in the music business. It has never been easy making money.
and check out the movie 'Bird' about Charlie Parker sometime to see a good example of this.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It's not winter everywhere either - summer solstice down under.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
You should pick up this cd. I'd have posted a link to amazon, but they dont' seem to have it in stock... or in their database at all.
Anyways, it's packed with all the educational songs you could want, as rendered by a bunch of different artists... Biz Markie's Energy Blues is quite a laugh...
Some members of BNL have always been a bit tubby. Fortunately, this does not seem to have affected their music.
My friends and I call this sort of conversation (along with discussions of makeup and appearance and does-this-make-me-look- ) "lipo" discussions...
Tweet, tweet.
he really didn't answer the question asked about the Tiny Toons... Yes, I guess it would ahve been a certain age group watching that series (I was one of them) but I didn't get my start w/TMBG w/that show..
I would say that the show did give them a little more widespread acceptance but it wasn't a BIG reason for their fame.
I think the main credit for TMBG's fame is their tireless dedication to the music and the fans. I never saw this Tiny Toons episode, but I can think of a number of other things that would have made TMBG fans out of various folks -- touring with Frank Black, for example, or Dial-a-Song, or the numerous interviews they give. What it comes down to is that they're professionals, but also nice people, and they've prospered as a result.
I love it! Speak the truth, get tagged as flamebait! Slashdotters, congratulations! You've become the same misguided, wallowing community that swarmed around the Amiga in the early 1990s. That's not to say the Amiga wasn't some bang-up hardware; that's beside the point. The point is that being an armchair industry analyst and whiner does more harm than good. If you're a geek and want to make a difference, then do something. Don't just read about it and make pithy comments!
Moderate me down, that's fine with me. I give up.
It looks like -- due to the extremely used mod of "Overrated" -- I will never know why Triangle Man truly hates Person man.
And don't go telling me to read that FAQ; it's from a fan site.
</bitch>
Is john's ego. When asked about why they continually spam their fans he mentioned that he lives an "earthbound existance". This is the same evasive I'm-still-a-good-person BS that politicians feed us.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
ITYM Pagan winter holidays.
We just let everyone party along with us.
--
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
The correct answer to this question is:
"Nobody knows; Triangle Man."
I have MP3s of the Science Songs albums on my web page.
Certainly midi typing through a keyboard would be impractical, tho I'm sure some /.er out there has done it.
I guess I don't have this guy's morals, 'cuz I'll still be here, reading away
Once upon a time a Macedonian king named Philip built a good army on the Greek model, and promptly conquered his neighbors. He died. His son took that army and conquered neighboring empires. Alexander died young. The generals took over, and divided the empire among themselves.
One of these generals set up shop in Damascus, and actually called his part of the empire Syria.
By that time, Israel and Judea had been conquered by several empires and were pretty much reduced to provinces of Syria, with religious quirks, such as not worshipping foreign gods, or any gods at all besides their one true God (but they lacked capitalisation). The Greeks tried to standardise culture to their norms, including normal religion. The result was a guerilla war, culminating in a briefly independent Jewish kingdom, which was conquered later by the Romans as a side effect of their Republic's civil wars.
When the Romans were faced with the same issue, they won, and the Temple Mount was cleared for Islam to build the Dome of the Rock.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
Actually, that tiny toons episode is the thing that got me liking TMBG. I was 8 when I first saw it...
*gets all reminiscent*
ahhh, the memories.
-- Bandit450...If-Else-Do-*TWITCH*!
"Worthless ACs and trolls? What kind of fucking megalomaniac are you? Christ... There's just as much tripe at 1 as there is at 0, I assure you. ACs usually have just as many intelligent comments that don't get moderated up, perhaps even more than the logged in accounts, actually."
:)
Ha. I doubt it. Sadly, in any given story, the ACs with something meaningful to say are outnumbered by the ACs whose comments deal with Natalie Portman, grits, first posts, and goatse.cx links. Intelligent comments my ass.
Hell, there aren't even anymore FUNNY trolls either. Sad.
"However, assholes like you, who always cruise at +1, Oldest First,"
Newest first
"are usually the moderators, so the ACs can't get heard, and thus can't get moderated up."
If the ACs say anything insightful, I'll be glad to donate a mod point to them. Otherwise, I pass them over.
Lighten the fuck up dipshit. It's people like you who take Slashdot WAY too seriously. There is life beyond Slashdot you know. Why don't you just join Signal 11 and crew and jump over to Kuro5hin (it's too bad that such a good site is becoming more and more of a Disgruntled Slashdot User Club)?
--
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
Maybe some moderators don't see the humor in this post...
For the uninformed:
SEXXY is a they might be giants song.
I fail to see how this is trolling.
I mean, people are fully entitled to their opinions, but why on earth, when I leave the score threading down to 1, do I read nothing but just garbage, useless rambles, and elementary school antics? Has /.'s readership stooped so low that intellectual thought and conversation has taken a chair well behind what goes on now? Or is it just an overwhelming gathering of immature posters thinking this is a wonderful place to get attention?
Umm, yes?
Seriously, what's so new about trolls, off-topic posts, and flames on Slashdot? That's why the mod system is here (leaving the argument about whether moderation works or not aside).
Actually, I'd think it would be more offensive to christians who don't want their saviour to be used to promote some cause he isn't related to, such as open source.
Either way, I'm an agnostic, and I think its funny as hell :-P.
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"Rock over London... Rock on Chicago..." -Wesley Willis
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"Rock over London... Rock on Chicago..." -Wesley Willis
While what we propose and what the Street Performer Protocol propose are different, they are similar in many regards, and it would be nice to actually hear the artists talking about them, since it seems like the only folks who do talk about it are us techies.
It's imperative that artists participate in the discussion of new distribution and remuneration systems. So far I believe the tech community has failed to do this.
Matt
That song is a cover; they didn't write it. It was originally performed on the old children's album "Space Songs", which probably used the book you mention as its inspiration.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
who gives a shit, every server needs to go down time to time, fuck you
---
``ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country did to you'' --kmfdm
-kaitos
This is a cover song, I don't know who originally recorded it but I have a version by Tom Glazer.
It's no bash to the readers, just that we're not trained interviewers. We ask the questions we think will be interesting but they aren't -- because we aren't trained to ask good ones.
It is pretty depressing though, since they rank up there as one of my absolute favorite bands. I was hoping to hear something interesting from them, but hey -- the reason I like them is ecause they're open and honest and share a lot. :)
-A Aria
I'm disappointed that John didn't answer the first question. It was, by far, the most interesting question posed to them.
I read the first question, which was basically, "What do you think about the Street Performer Protocol?" I followed that link, and saw a 6500-word document that resembled a manifesto or research paper. It starts, "Consider a world without copyright enforcement", which makes me think, great, someone has come up with what they think is a great idea, but is probably untested, or even been thoroughly debated. I looked at my clock, saw that I had about 5 minutes of lunch break left, and decided to skip it, maybe come back to it tommorrow.
I probably know John's answer to question 1: No, I don't know about it, and I'm too busy answering these other 9 questions that I know something about, to read some undergraduate student's thesis and comment on it.
That being said, maybe it would be interesting to get the opinion of someone in the music world on this thing, and TMBG would be a good candidate. Better than Limp Bizkit, at least.
There isn't too much about Xmas that is Judeo, however, if we're being indiscriminantly inclusive, why hasn't Islam been mentioned?
He seems offended most that 1. one or a few god-like person(s) chose the scores, when in fact they are rather populistically derived
Populistically derived? Vaguely. What percentage of slashdot readership would it take to moderate a post up to the +5 max? Certainly not a majority. And how many moderators went back to the original story looking for new comments after the first day?
And of course he'd want the scores removed. Any newcomer looking for a TMBG interview would assume the scores to be John's. Sometimes we forget that the Internet is bigger than Slashdot.
Simply imagine an N-dimensional space, where every user and every posting is represented as a point in that space. Whenever you rate a posting with "+", your point and that posting's position move a bit closer to each other. When you rate a posting with "-" these two positions move away from each other. The poster's point also moves in the same direction as his postings.
Now, when you post a new comment, at first it will appear right where you are. After several "moderations" from other users it will be moved to where it's liked better, and you will be dragged along after it.
After many iterations, this kind of "Slashdot Space" should evolve into several clusters of think-alike users and comments they like. So if you rate negatively all KDE-vs-Gnome pissing contests, you'll soon get far away from them, and from the users that post them.
Your reading treshold would be maximum distance between your own position and position of acceptable posts. Or you can think of it as "eye-sight". Another useful thing could be to assign each comment a "size" quality, or visibility. Comments rated positively from many different users "grow" and become visible from afar. This is probably necessary to prevent a split-up of the forum into several group of users who never hear of each other.
Now the difficult part is the choice of N (dimensionality) and the initial system state. You could set some meta-positions or lighthouses, landmarks, whatever, that represent the unmovable positions people can use to orient themselves. For example, there could be a M$-bashing landmark, Pro-M$ landmark on the opposite side of the universe, goat.cx landmark, Pro-Napster landmark, etc.
Cool thing is, if you keep a database of all +/- ratings, you can always generate a new version of the space if a need arises, like if a new dimension (er, landmark) pops up. And even better, you can "dumb down" the space to any two dimensions and show it as a graphic on demand. Now that would give a whole new meaning to whereami command.:)
On the topic of TMBG, I enjoyed this interview immensely because John consistently cut through the bull each time, like the Digital/Analog question. His answer revealed that he doesn't get involved in petty turf wars. He just makes music and enjoys the heck out of it. That was a theme running through most of his answers. Wish we'd asked him better questions.
Here's my .sig again, probably'll get me modded down by some athiest who prefers closed source models.
information is immaterial
i was really looking forward to finding out if they recieved the thing that some guy and his wife made for them 9 years ago :)
What's really needed is some type of self-adjustable web of moderation.
/.ers) that could be used to filter through all the crap.
/.". From that, the editors of /. could get a really good idea of what's important to the /. community as a whole.
Every single user could have moderation that affects only them and the people who rely upon them for "advice". A "web of trust" could then be built up (like PGP for all you buzz-word-activated
For example, if I like what Finkployd has to say in a post, I can moderate it up by some measure. My moderation up implies that I both like what Finkployd has to say, and that I see where he's coming from (or at least respect the fact that he put thought into his post). That respect for his post would also imply that I would most likely respect posters (and maybe specific articles) whom he respects.
Basically, I'd be giving some degree of proxy to Finkployd in order to help me to weed through all the posts and posters to find the really valuable ones. If in turn Finkployd has given some degree of proxy to other users, I get the benefit of their judgements as well, albeit to a lesser extent.
After a web of trust is built amongst most of the users, you could also do things like examine it statistically to see who is "the most trusted user of
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Wasn't it the Greek Empire, which, in turn, ruled over Syria?
At least that what they've taught us every year in the (Israeli) school, so if I'm wrong - blame them.
I feel that the system is good in concept, but needs to be tweaked, and I think that we should really have a meta section to discuss moderation and the system in general. I have just started a slash site myself infact, and am very interested in the concept of online communities. My site is called Terradot, but is down right now thanks to my DSL provider cutting me off (should be back up in a few days if all goes acording to plan!). Anyway, sorry for the obligatory plug, but I'm done now. :)
Cheers, Joshua
Terradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Sorry, I wills check to make sure me don't make same dumb mistake in the future. (No, I'm not trying to impersonate George W.)
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
But remember, moderation is not only moving posts up when they are deemed worthy of consideration, but to also move posts down that get undesired points. A good example is the +1 karma bonus; I try to avoid posting with that if the post is a throwaway gag or something or doesn't contribute to the thread. But some bonus-holers don't do this and post things that shouldn't have a +2 moderation to start with. Other cases include first posts that might have some information but as the story develops , it's discovered to be wrong -- the story needs to move down...
As for the whack-a-toss-away account, the only way to do this is to basically make getting a new account a 'lengthy' process (namely, your user password needs to be sent to an email address). Sure, it's five minutes, but it might be enough that one who continually spams /. will give up.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
he really didn't answer the question asked about the Tiny Toons... Yes, I guess it would ahve been a certain age group watching that series (I was one of them) but I didn't get my start w/TMBG w/that show..
:)
I would say that the show did give them a little more widespread acceptance but it wasn't a BIG reason for their fame.
Catchy tunes that are fun do
You can hear the episode of This American Life which talks about dial a song and other interesting TMBG stuff here. Don't bother clicking unless you have Realaudio or steambox ripper. The TMBG segment is in act two, about 37 minutes into it. The original referring page is here. Enjoy.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
For those that didn't click the link, this was the first question that was skipped: "TMBG, do you know about the Street Performer Protocol, and if so, what do you think of it? ..." I took them skipping a response to mean "I have no idea what the Street Performer Protocol is" and not "I know and I don't feel like talking about it". It would have been nice to get a "Never heard of it" response but they were told they could skip questions. The teeming /. masses are probably yelling, "Go to Google and look it up, John". Please remember that this was a Q&A, not a research paper. We got concise, non-BS responses to our questions. That's all I was looking for.
-B
Rob tried implementing moderation to the system, which, although is far from perfect, does bring some worthwhile comments to the top (sadly, most are "funny" at this point). It has faults, but it helps.
In any community, there are going to be people who poo-poo it, trying to ruin it for everyone else, just because they can. It is sad, but inevitable. The choices are really to:
- give up and go elsewhere
- Moderate the posts
- Ban offenders
- or just try to live with it.
The problem with going elsewhere, is that they will follow you. witness k5, technocrat, ect. The trolls commeth. Any gathering of signifigant size and popularity will attract people who want to ruin it.Moderating the posts brings up it's own set of problems however. Many good posts are left unread, and the collective tends to mod up those it agrees with (witness Sig11). Again, it is not easy to stop such abuses. If you make moderation too difficult (random comment at start, ect), no-one will do it. Such is the problem with a volunteer based system. Paying moderators introduces a swayed opinion of the moderators, and comes dangerously close to allowing Rob & Crew to decide what opinions are heard. They don't want this image, nor could they or anyone be trusted to do a good job.
Banning posters comes into the same idea of Slashdot Moderation dangers, but adds the difficulty of working for people behind firewalls, or on dynamic IPs. Even if accounts were required for use, it is trivial to create such an account, and abuse it.
Which brings us to what I attempt to do. Glean what information I can from the posts, and the stories, and ignore the rest. It is starting to help on USENET.. Some of the trolls are leaving, going on to other pastures, but much of the trash still, and will continue to, remain.
I'm not sure what else can really be done, save implementing some sort of address verification (snail-mail) system for accounts. You could ban on home address, but postal boxes, ect make this more difficult. It also would give slashdot a piece of information that could be viewed as invasive, dangerous, or what have you. *sighs*
But to get back to my point... Yes.. People are here. And we do care.
--
This message brought to you by Colin Davis
Colin Davis
John F. gave thoughtful, intelligent answers. He's obviously both a talented musician and someone who isn't burying his head in the sands of misguided, ranting idealism. Most of the Slashdot questions, though not necessarily those passed on to TMBG, assumed that John and John run around being wacky, anti-authoritarian loons, and that everything they did had a "stick it to the man" angle. As it turns out, they didn't just release MP3s out of hatred for record companies or an inate beliefe that music needs to be free. John didn't whisper some bizarre underground phrase to the stage crasher (just "Can you please get off the stage?"). They aren't trying to isolate themselves from business and "evil" money. Bottom line: The Slashdot impression of TMBG was a projection of Slashdot ideals, and the image turned out to be completely false. I suspect this is happening on a regular basis, and headline stories have a much more unrealistic spin on them than people want to believe.
I think I will bow out of Slashdot completely for the new year. As sad as it may sound, I think there are doers and then there are those who read Slashdot. I'm horrified to be associated with the latter.
The sun is a "mass"...
of incandescent gas, a giant thermonuclear furnace!
Just had to say it. I love that song.
Simple, they have a balance there that was lost on slashdot years ago.
Most of us began trolling around here for the same reasons,
1. The moderation system and
2. The problems moderation caused.
What kind of problems? Groupthink. Moderation encourages groupthink, as signal 11 has demonstrated again and again.
So with each story, you have hundreds of posts saying the same things over and over again, each grasping at that elusive "karma". Maybe it was bad idea for Rob to name it that. It was probably the best he could do at the time as there was nothing really like this place before. Has k5 done better? I don't know, but it works for now, and we respect that. Will it scale when (if) they have a quarter million users and a couple million hits a day? I don't know.
Anyway, /. hasn't really gone downhill. It is the same as it has been for a long time, just moreso. The amount of crap has increased proportionally to the amount of creamy goodness, but with the advent of the karma cap, people who mistakenly believed that it was some kind of prize/reward/measurement of ones technical penis length, have stopped posting. The "Game" era of slashdot is at an end as it morphs into a zdnet type site that shoots out headline after headline.
rev
The Slashdot front page banner is an ad for EMusic's TMBG Unlimited...
be on the look out for the anime play station version of the slash dot theme song.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
"...score threading down to 1, do I read nothing but just garbage, useless rambles, and elementary school antics? "
Threshold++;
"The idea[l] solution would be to remove AC posting unless you've logged in, so that any abuses of AC posting can be dealt with."
I have a better solution: adjust your threshold. I keep mine at +1 (as mentioned in the sig)...no worrying about worthless ACs or trolls, because they're at 0 or lower.
If AC posting gets banned, then the trolls will probably resort to registering new accounts (read: automatic posting at +1), which means that their voice will get a little bit louder. A +1 threshold won't work then.
Just ignore them. Set your threshold at +1 and let them run around in the land of negative karma.
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The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
1. Because he is more fundamental.
2. Because Line Woman prefers him.
3. Because he is the dot in dot-com.
Maybe I should have posted AC-style.
A couple of months ago there was a request for slashdot readership to come up with ideas for TBMG's Dial a Song machine, since they were on their last one. Did they get a new machine, did they base their decision on anything said on slashdot
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
...and call me the Big Duluth!
Great to see that one of the two Johns replied so quickly!
I have been fans of the band for many many years now (since 1991). When I was working at a military radio station in Iceland back in 1992, they sent me three of their CDs for absolutely NOTHING, so I know that these gentlemen are absolutely dedicated to giving back to the fans as much as they can.
Great answers. Great band.
It's like the napster debate. There are times where AC is an absolute necessity, but x% (x approaching 100) of the time, it's used for Natalie Portman and Grits and various evil links. All because posting as AC lacks any accountability - (presumably) no one can trace back who posted what AC message, and if you have a high karma on your account, and post AC, you can't be hurt by it.
The idea solution would be to remove AC posting unless you've logged in, so that any abuses of AC posting can be dealt with. But then there would have to be legal notice that /. would not be responsible for AC posts, and what policy they might use if they were subpeoned for AC identities. (There was a recent case which I did try to submit but was nixed where an anonymous libelous comment to Yahoo was traced down to it's owner after Yahoo was forced to give up the user records, and the owner fined several thousand dollars for that). Now, IMO, I think the importance of avoiding the latter situation overrides the S/N ratio we're getting right now, so I'd rather keep the AC.
The only other option is to give a small percentage of registered users (like 1%) unlimited moderation points that can only be used to pull down ratings; to keep these users in check, if after so many meta-mods revealed that these users were abusing their privaledge, it would be taken away. The 5 moderation points that you get infrequently are too valuable most of the time to be wasting on trolls and the like, and this might make them more worthwhile. Who'd be chosen? Probably those users with high karmas, frequent postings and story submissions, people that are probably likely to see /. continue. But again, there's some simplicity in the current system, and this would require a lot of programming by Rob and co., plus it has it's own faults.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I am answering a bunch of questions that have been scored by someone as to how interesting they are. I am a bit concerned that this rating system tacitly implies the score is part of my response to their question, which kinda disturbs me.
Was the moderation system not at least briefly explained to him? He seems offended most that 1. one or a few god-like person(s) chose the scores, when in fact they are rather populistically derived, and 2. that we would assume the scores to be his even though nearly any reader knows what they mean.
Seems to me he would have been much less concerned if someone had told him how it works.
(Actually, his fear probably stems from experiences with shoddy fanboy pop-culture zines and/or repressively corporate cool-defining websites, and it's a smidge offensive to me that he would think Slashdot falls in the same category as either of those.)
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Short, to the point, and interesting. Thanks for setting this up Slashdot. I'm disappointed that John didn't answer the first question. It was, by far, the most interesting question posed to them.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I was looking through some old stuff of my childhood at my parents' house, and in a young person's astronomy book was the sentence "The Sun is a ball of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace, where hydrogen is made into helium, at a temperature of millions of degrees." What other bands takes song lyrics from science books for kids? They truly do rock.
ok, I know it's in a FAQ, but I was hoping to hear from the horse's mouth, so to speak. It was mod'd up to +5, you know. (wish I'd been the one who asked)
Oh well.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Actually, it's not a major Jewish holiday, in relation to the other holidays. It's considered a minor holiday, but has been enhanced due to the psychological problems that Jewish children have felt in recent year because of a lack of presents...which in turn reflects on the over-commertialization of the Christian Christmas
Of course, without Chanuka there would be no Christmas, because the Jews would have been assimilated by the Syrian Empire.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
"Hello. John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants at the typewriter here."
Why did the keyboard get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks.