Slashback: Picnic, Sperling, Quickliness

Slashback tonight with more on the Linux anniversary (thanks to the guys from C4 Solutions for the microfeast celebration, at which we did mention that it was the anniversary), Brian K. West and the Good Samaritan story, booting really really fast, and more.

Now where can we rent giant Tux costumes for such events? You've already seen Marc Merlin's report on the Big Event, but an Anonymous Brave Guy pointed out a piece over at the BBC about people's mostly-mushy feelings about the current 10-year Linux streak, noting that "It's worth reading just for the post on airlines from 'Lee, UK'. :-)" (Oldie-but-goodie, defined.)

And Totally_Tux writes: "LAN parties are generally associated with LAN gaming. The South Australian Linux group though recently held the Linux InstallFest 2001 that aimed at introducing Linux to new users by helping them install the OS onto their notebooks and desktop PCs and holding talks last Saturday. The InstallFest was also marked by a tenth birthday celebration to Linux's Tux persona on the 25th of August. This short article includes some shots from that day. Read about InstallFest 2001 here."

So you wanna make your box jump to life? Many readers were interested in General Software's slimmed-down, quick-booting experimental system; General's Steve Jones writes: "In order to accommodate the numerous requests for more information about the General Software Quick Boot Soyo Experiment, we've set-up a web page, and also an email alias for additional direct queries. The web page contains more details about the project, and a FAQ which the company would like to update based on inquiries to the email address."

Call Occam, ask him to bring his biggest razor. gh0ul writes: "Sheldon Sperling of the DOJ has sent out his own press release regarding last week's Report Security Problems, Face The Consequences story. Brian K. West's defence team has posted their own reply to Sheldon's release here ..."

To help you laugh through the tears: A nameless reader wants you to know that the "BBC's Radio 4 is repeating all 12 episodes from the two series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy originally broadcast in 1978 and 1980. Wednesdays, 5 September -- 21 November, 6.30pm UK time (17:30 UTC until 2001-10-28, then 18:30 UTC.) Listen here."

Comments

hello

[Anonymous Coward]

i seem to have SHIT YOUR MOUTH.

my bad

fp

[Anonymous Coward]

fp

Hitchiker's rebroadcasting

[HongPong]

Seems that the rebroadcasting of the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy is in Real(Player) format. That pisses me off. How I loathe realplayer...

Re:Hitchiker's rebroadcasting

[Troodon]

A little obliquely off topic: I certainly agree with the sentiment, however its a rights issue apparently. As far as the solicitors of the BBC and the production companies are concerned, Realplayer clips arent considered to be of production quality, thus less of an contractual issue or whatever

Re:Hitchiker's rebroadcasting

[4n0nym0u53 C0w4rd]

For fun, try downloading and installing the RealPlayer on a windows machine. The fun includes:

• Trying to find the link to the free basic RealPlayer on their web site. (this includes closing pop up windows trying to sell you the Plus version)
• submitting fake identification to avoid marketing spam during the install
• taking back the associated file extensions (even after indicating that you didn't want them associated to begin with)
• closing the "RealPlayer StartCenter" and removing it from the startup group (and dealing with the scary warnings in doing so)
• getting rid of the channels and other ad content on the player itself (note that not all crap can be removed)
• disabling "entertainment flashes"
• disabling the ability of streamed media to open your web browser (why the hell?)
• turning off upgrade notifications (for 30 days at least)
• disabling "product flashes"
• turning off the options that send usage data to RealNetworks and to the content provider
• disabling cookies

My god, all I want to do is watch and listen to streaming media. Remember when Real stood up to MS and they were the good guys? Now, they have more crap and bloat and privacy infringing garbage than anything MS has offered. It's just a media player dammit.

Don't even get me started on RealNetworks and Major League Baseball charging for network access to radio feeds. They are paid by the stations and now they expect fans to pay too... And their service sucks...

Of course, H2G2 is really cool...

Re:Hitchiker's rebroadcasting

[daveman_1]

Damn, you mean I'm not the only person who does this? That freakin' program is so unbelievably annoying, that I won't even let users install it themselves because they'll definitely screw it up. I always make sure I install that piece of crap before giving out a new machine. That way I won't have to worry about the host of other BS that program tries to pimp on you over time. (real download, WTF is that anyway?) Let us not forget Gator, or Webshots, or that stupid ass WeatherBug that people seem to love so much. Gator, now there's a program that gives Real a run for its money. All of this usually accompanies AIM, Yahoo pager, chat, and anything else you can think of that constantly wants to be using up your system's precious memory in windows... Ugh! Thank God for Linux on my own machine!

Re:Hitchiker's rebroadcasting

[kreyg]

Actually, there was some setting, I think it was the filenames to associate...

All of the visible boxes were cleared. But if you SCROLLED DOWN, every other box (previously hidden) was SELECTED.

That just strikes me as dishonest.

And lets not forget the mandatory ad popup when you try to close the player.

And the fact that 99% of the time I can't seem to get past the company firewall to stream anything, although the MS player works 99% of the time.

RealPlayer is apparently some new variant of Pure Evil that I wasn't previously made aware of.

Re:Hitchiker's rebroadcasting

[HongPong]

Having low-quality video is hardly unique to Real! Methinks that low-res Sorenson, MPEG or what-have-you are all available.

Re:Hitchiker's rebroadcasting

[Troodon]

Its the BBC webmaster/legal team whatever that needs to hear that, not I.

Re:Hitchiker's rebroadcasting

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. I bought the audio CDs from Douglas Adams' store, and um.. these aren't exactly great audio quality either. I bet the RA doesn't really sound all that different.

Re:Hitchiker's rebroadcasting

[Phroggy]

At least it's not QuickTime. ;-)

(personally I'd rather it were, but I'm on a Mac.)

Re:Hitchiker's rebroadcasting

[austad]

Not only that, but they ass-rape you on licenses for the server. It's no wonder everyone is moving to Windows Media format. It's better quality, and believe it or not, MS actually ass-rapes you less than Real after you're done buying licenses for the OS and whatever else you need to stream in WM format.

assrape_level(real_server on any OS) > assrape_level(WM server + Win2k License)

Sad but true. If only there was a decent, free, enterprise quality streamer for linux.

Re:Hitchiker's rebroadcasting

[ReelOddeeo]

MS actually ass-rapes you less than Real after you're done buying licenses for the OS and whatever else you need to stream in WM format.

This is how monopolies work. They'll do anything to gain market domination. It doesn't have to make money. It doesn't have to be legal. (You can always pay whatever fines are imposed -- but at least you "own" the entire market.)

Since MS doesn't own the streaming media yet, they'll play nice. Even perhaps give it away, ala Internet Explorer. But you can bet it won't be free forever.

I will make a prediction. (Apply this to WM as you will.) Eventually MS will achieve some major technological advance which will enable them to seperate IE from Windows. Right now you pay a price of $x for Windows. But once they unbundle, you'll hear big news of how this lowers prices and is good for everyone! New windows unbundled(tm) is at the lower price of $y! (where $y < $x) And you can buy IE for only $29.99. But you can bet that $y + $29.99 will be > $x was. And in a couple more years, you'll be able to buy the "new" bundled version of Win + IE for a low discounted cost of $z. ($z < $y + $29.99, but also $z > $x)

How does this apply to WM? WM doesn't own the market yet. So MS will play nice. (Remember all those free copies of J++ ??)

Remember IBM during the 50's, 60's and 70's? Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Monopolists follow a pattern. Read the book "Big Blue: IBM's use and abuse of power".

sacre bleu

[Anonymous Coward]

is that my butt cheeks in your face?

pardon me

Understanding Slashcode!

[The O. P. P.]

(I've decided to make one last post of this so that anyone who didn't catch it the first two times has a chance to read it. I think it's pretty important that as many people in the community read this as possible, as it affects all of us. Slashback seems to be the correct place to revisit issues that have been discussed in the last week, so I'm posting it here. Thanks.)

OK, many of you have probably noticed a lot of ascii art flooding this board lately. You're no doubt wondering why CmdrTaco's much encountered "lameness filters" are ineffective against it. To answer that question, I'm going to take you on a Perl journey, deep into slashcode. Think of it as being a bit like "Heart of Darkness", or if you're a typical slashdot pleb, "Apocalypse Now!"

The first files we'll be looking at are the infamous "bitchslap" and "modslap". I think these are a pretty decent introduction to how Rob's mind works when he's coding angry: Here's bitchslap. Scroll down to the section labelled "main program logic". BTW. "main program logic" is a ridiculously grandiloquent phrase for what we are seeing here.

Note how draconian this is. I like to think of this code as a memorial to slashdot-terminal, it's first victim. You can see how Malda deliberately broke his "self-regulating" moderation system, to give the admins of slashdot dictatorial powers. This code allows any admin using it to drop a user's default threshold to -1 instantly, and drop his karma down to a level from which it is unlikely to recover. I've heard that this script has been used on slashdot in a modified form, with the -defaultpoints set to less than -1, completely eliminating a user's post from normal viewing, unless people edit their query string manually.

On to modslap. Scroll down to "main program logic" again.

OK, what you're seeing here is Taco's method of restricting the flow of crack to moderators, to keep them nice and jumpy. If you don't mod the way he likes, your moderating days are over, and your karma plummets to bitchslap levels. An ugly tool.

To recap, the man we are dealing with here is obviously an anti-democratic tyrant. Censorship is his weapon, and he is vigilantly watching his censors, to ensure that no freedom is allowed to enter his domain. I believe he also lives in a hut with a man driven crazy by his proximity. The hut is surrounded by skulls on poles, but the skulls face inward. Remember that.

We're nearing the locus of my investigation now. You've heard the legends, now gaze into the face of comments.pl's so-called "troll detection code!"

comments.pl: Scroll down to the section under "here begins the troll detection code".

You may be wondering why it's such an ungodly piece of crap. I feel that we are seeing evidence of an ingrained unwillingness to think before coding.

The first few tests are fairly simple, based on regexps and length. They're pretty laughable, from an information theory perspective. If you don't believe me, the flood of ascii art should supply adequate evidence of what I'm talking about. Language is a complex thing, and a few simple tests are insufficient to distinguish English from ascii art, especially when the ascii artists are willing to take extreme measures to see their work posted. Regular posters do not have the patience for such chicanery.

The final test is my favourite, though. It begins under the comment ending with this charming sentence: "These ratios are _very_ conservative a comment has to be absolute shit to trip this off". An interesting claim. Considering the number of posts I've tripped this filter on without doing anything out of the ordinary, I'd say "conservative" means the same thing to Taco as it means to George W. Bush, nb. "nazi". What we are talking about here, is the postercomment compression test. (The horror! The horror!) "postercomment" is just the name of the field your comments are sent in, by the way. It isn't cool top secret slashspeak. It's just a variable name.

What this does is, it actually compresses your comment using zlib, then checks the change in size to decide if you are a troll or not! Furthermore, the code comments indicate that if you trip this test, slashcode thinks you are a "luser". Code like this makes it pretty clear that it takes one to know one, Rob!

As someone who as actually seen Rob Malda use the phrase "it won't scale" to dismiss questions about why parts of the moderation system weren't done in a more equitable fshion, I'd like to take this opportunity to laugh until I give myself a hernia.

Anyone who has studied information theory knows that the redundancy of english is estimated at about 50%. This value is fairly key in what we are seeing here, it determines a fair estimate of how effective compression of english text can be before we start to lose information. Taco's estimates were based, in his words, on "...testing out several paragraphs of text...". Doesn't sound like a particularly large sample group. What's more, it's indicative of poor software engineering practice. As is the recent bout of outages.

A few final criticisms. Firstly, there are far better, less memory intensive, and above all, less stupid methods of performing textual analysis than checking it's compression ratio. If Taco had any idea about computer science, he might have investigated a few before making a fool of himself in public like this. It's pretty clear that he's getting more and more frustrated with the situation on slashdot, and doesn't realise that if he ruled with an even hand, rather than a bitchslapping script and an army of trained thought police, the problems would not be so grave.

Secondly, I thought of a much more effective method of eliminating asci art posts, and it will never cause problems for genuine posters. What's more, it's extremely compact and doesn't even require regexps. I won't reveal it here, as I am not willing to assist in a reign of terror that I find to be reprehensible.

As further evidence of the lengths Malda and Co. may be willing to go to, you can find a commented out section that enables the deletion of posts and their descendant threads. We have no reason to believe that this will not be employed on slashdot.

Editorial notes: I don't use Perl and this is really the first time I've examined it closely. It's pretty much convinced me that I'm not missing much. I use real languages such as C and C++ and occasionaly asm to do most of my work, and I, along with 95% of the enterprise world, find Java to be the best solution for web programming. For most scripting tasks, shell script suffices. For more complicated scripting tasks, Python provides a more sensibly designed scripting environment. Additionally, as if to provide further evidence of Malda's incompetence as a programmer, I've hit the junk character post every single time I've previewed this comment, and am now forced to resort to edit it. Regretfully, I have been forced to replace the Perl fragments I was using with hyperlinks. Very unsatisfactory.

Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, but how do you create a hidden SID?

Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dot com

Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Anonymous Coward]

The root of the so-called "problems" at Slashdot is entirely the unfair moderation system. Any opinion that is contrary to the pervaling norm is supressed. Malda is an asshole because he pretends to be some big advocate for free speech but he happily surpresses ideas that are outside of his personal world view. I personally used to despise the trolls, but now I admire them. They are striking back at a tyrant by showing their contempt.

Consider how ridiculous and illogical it is to promote free speech by popular vote (as it is with the Slashdot moderation system). The point of free speech is to protect minority opinion. As it stands, the Slashdot system does little to protect dissenting opinions. Reward is highest for those who tow the party line. Opinions outside of the norm are given no fair play on Slashdot. It would be best to have no moderation at all. At first anarchy might prevail for a day or two, but eventually things would level off. The trolls at Slashdot are only a reaction to the present inequity.

Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading this, I have come to the conclusion that:


XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX
XX XX XX XX XX XX XX
XX XX XX XX XX XX
XX XXXXXXXX XX XX XX
XX XX XX XX XX XX
XX XX XX XX XX XX XX
XX XX XX XXXXXX XXXXXX

XXXXXX XX XX XXXXXX XX XX XXXXXX
XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX
XX XX XX XX XX XX XX
XXXXXX XX XX XX XXXXX XXXXXX
XX XX XX XX XX XX XX
XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX
XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XX XX XXXXXX

Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Anonymous Coward]

Two thumbs up, OPP. Although, in response to another's post about respecting trolls, I think most of them are just honest-to-goodness dumbasses. Heigh ho.

As an aside, wouldn't a (partially at least) effective lameness filter just be to filter all comments which use punctuation characters as more than, say, 15% of the total comment length (in proportion to the actual comment length or whatever)?

Anyhow, although one must fear posting pro-MS content on Slashdot, I wouldn't go so far as to say they're Nazis. But you do provide an interesting insight into what the makers of Slashdot do to try and keep order...

(Remember 1984? About how Big Brother prevailed because it had no illusion as to its means or ends? And all other powerful leaders believed their nasty means worked towards a better end? I see parallels... (Oh dear, there I go with melodramaticism :-)).)

Anyway, I shall sign off with my actual user name, see if they suspiciously modslap me (I do hope so, I can get anyone I want modslapped then).

- TACD (The same nondescript sig you once knew and loved) - Not Taco! No! TACD! Phew.

Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. I was just lamenting the terrible lack of ASCII art on this article.

But I want to see still more ASCII art on slashdot!

Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely if you don't like it here (and I don't remember seeing in the FAQ that this place is totally democratic as that long article seems to think), then why don't you leave?

Simple! :)

I just thought that it's their site and they can do what they like with it surely?
You have no right to demand a certain service from Slashdot do you? :)

HitchHikers Back !

[matrix0040]

Wow thats great news ! and it's good that it's in realplayer .. no more of going to windoze to listen to them.

1st post

[Anonymous Coward]

woohoo

Tux costume?

[Sonicboom]

Try contacting the Danish Unix User Group that lends out this Tux costume

gay picnic

[Anonymous Coward]

you are invited on a gay picnic. the main course is dick sandwitch.

spread your cheeks and pass the mustard

Oh God

[Mao Zedong]

+++++
++++++++++ +++ ++ ++++ ++++
++++ ++++ +++ ++ ++++ ++++
+++ + +++ ++ +++++ +++++
++ +++ ++ ++ +++ +++ ++
++ +++ ++ ++ +++ ++ ++
++ +++ ++ ++ ++++++ ++
++ +++ ++ ++ ++++ ++
+++ +++ ++ ++ ++ ++
++++ ++ +++ +++ ++ ++
+++++++++++ +++++++++++ ++ ++
+++++++++ ++++++++ ++ ++

Posted by timothy on Tuesday August 28, @07:59PM
from the 130.49.77.223 dept.
Slashback tonight with more on the Linux anniversary (thanks to the guys from C4 Solutions for the microfeast celebration, at which we did mention that it was the anniversary), Brian K. West and the Good Samaritan story, booting really really fast, and more.

LAME

[Anonymous Coward]

Taco, your lameness filter SUCKS!!! All I did was follow a comment with an elipsis (3 dots) and then a frowny face (colon followed by left parenthesis) and your fucking filter thought it was ASCII ART!!!

What unmitigated HORSESHIT!!, especially when you consider ALL the lameass actual ASCII art that makes it through.

Talk about irony: the lamest part of Slashdot is the lameness filter.

*sheesh...*

(yes, I feel better now, thank you)

P.S. Wow! MORE BULLSHIT!! I had originally typed in 'LAME, LAME, LAME' as the subject and got this:

Your comment violated the postersubj compression filter. Comment aborted

What the fuck is that? What a bunch of crap...

Howto?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you create a hidden SID?

FUKK Mr. GNU and Mr. RMS

[Anonymous Coward]

HARD.
sadfljhd sadlkjh sdlkjahf sadlkjf hsdakljf
sadfkjh lkjdshfksdlja akjdshf akjsfh
dsaflkjh

when you say nothing at all

[matrix0040]

the doj letter reminds me of the song by ronin.
so typically diplomatic .. really it's an art to write such a long letter without saying anything.

Oh, the irony!

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to have just taken a bitchslapping! What was that I was saying about nazi-assed censorship? Hahahahahahaha!

Message to the Taco and the rest of the dipshit patrol: I am about as attached to this account as I am to the idea that Dmitry Skylarov should go free. You will not silence me by killing my accounts.

Thankyou, by the way, for providing proof that the bitchslap is still in operation, and has not been removed from slashcode. Additionally, thanks for providing further proof that you guiys can't habdle criticism. Perhaps if you listened to what people are saying about you, slashdot might not be in such sharp decline.

-- The O. P. P.

Too Loose

[Mao Zedong]

oooo ooo ooo oooo
oooooo ooooo ooooo oooooo
ooo ooo ooo ooo
oo ooo ooo oo
oo ooo ooo oo
ooo ooo ooo ooo
oooo oooo oooo oooo
ooo oooo oooo ooo
oooo ooo ooo oooo
ooo ooo ooo ooo
oo ooo ooo oo
oo ooo ooo oo
ooo ooo ooo ooo
oooooo ooooo ooooo oooooo
oooo ooo ooo oooo

Posted by timothy on Tuesday August 28, @07:59PM
from the 130.49.77.223 dept.
Slashback tonight with more on the Linux anniversary (thanks to the guys from C4 Solutions for the microfeast celebration, at which we did mention that it was the anniversary), Brian K. West and the Good Samaritan story, booting really really fast, and more.

Maybe a few drinks will help...

[journalistguy]

...Linux users come up with a way to increase their OS flavour of choice from its current .00937% market share to something more impressive.

Wow!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you create a hidden SID??????

..
.o888o.
... dF' `8
.o8888888o .8
o88888888888. .8
o8888888888888. P
o888888888888888.
.8888888"""8888888
8888888' `888888:
.88'8888 8888888
:8"o8888888888888888
:".88888888888888888
.888888888888888888
8888888"""""""""""'
.8888888. .oooooo
88888888o 888888"
888888888b__d888888
88^888888888888888'
:8" 88888888888888'
:8 888888888888'(R)
:8 `88888888'
-8 _dF""""
`8ouo8"
"^"

Re:Wow!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like they broke/disabled it. It was here, at the bottom, but no more hidden sids for you.

Re:Wow!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

woops, i lied, you just have to be logged in with an account, and you can create 'em.

What's with the IP?

[slashdoter]

from the 130.49.77.223 dept.

what's with this ip? drop it in netscape and nothin, whois is blank. The reverse is nothin, google gives me nothin. Damn it, I hate jokes that I can't understand!

Re:What's with the IP?

[matrix0040]

a simple nslookup on the IP gives
Name: dhcp77-223.pittsburgh.resnet.pitt.edu
Address: 130.49.77.223
Aliases: 223.77.49.130.in-addr.arpa

Re:What's with the IP?

[jsled]

jsled@normandy$ [~] whois 130.49.77.223@whois.arin.net
University of Pittsburgh (NET-U-PITT)
600 Epsilon Drive
Pittsburgh, PA 15238
US

Netname: U-PITT
Netblock: 130.49.0.0 - 130.49.255.255
[deletia]

...jsled

Re:What's with the IP?

[casret]

http://www.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=13 0.49.77.223
Somewhere in Pitt, i don't get it either.

Re:What's with the IP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh, look at it upside-down on a calculator! It clearly spells EZZLLGHOEI!

I'm not done laughing at you

[Anonymous Coward]

Taco, you guys must be shitting yourselves at the thought of this information actually reaching the slashdot readers. You realise you bitchslapped me within my first five posts to the site? Thanks again for proving my point, idiots.

--The O. P. P.

poor hormel...

[Error27]

from the linuxfreak artical:

>>Third, senders of certain kinds of SPAM (not the lunch meat) may also be subjected to criminal prosecution under this statute.

SPAM (upper case) is a lunch meat and a trademark of Hormel.
spam (lower case) is unwanted email.

Re:poor hormel...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the info! Now maybe you can tell us what an "artical" is.

Re:poor hormel...

[VISION_CounterTroll]

ghey. besides, the scrol lwheel on my intellimouse explorer works in knoquerer

Re:poor hormel...

[Error27]

sorry, I meant artical (not artical).

Re:poor hormel...

[Chagrin]

Lemme guess - you're trying to pioneer recursive misspelling?

Re:poor hormel...

[Zeno_1]

I think the timing on your keyboard may be a bit off though =P

Tux rental?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now where can we rent giant Tux costumes for such events?

Hmm. Did you try any tux rental sites?

Sad news - Stephen King dead at 54

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/fiction writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure we'll all miss him - even if you didn't read his books you've probably enjoyed one of his movies. Truly an American icon.

Re:Sad news - Stephen King dead at 54

[Anonymous Coward]

What's really sad is that people (including myself) find time to post useless crap like your pointless BS and my unread rebuttal.

BFD - Hitchhikers is a free download from PBS

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is the big deal about hearing the original HHGTTG radio scripts? They've been available for free for quite some time down. They're in WMA (sorry) and only 64k, but I've uncompressed them and burned them to CD and they sound great. And they're commercial free, probably unlike the BBC re-broadcast.

This Lamness filter is.......

[Anonymous Coward]

,----------------.
_.--._ ( too restricting!)
,' `.`-,--------------'
/ __)__`\_ .-'
( (`-`(-') )
/) \_/ (
/' )-._.'.\___
( ,--.,`.)___(___)
)( /-.,--'\_\X/`
'/.'/ \ (Uu")\
// \`/,-')
(^ , ,^)`._.'
(`.&nbsp ;Y.' )
\ `.)\.' / )
)`._.'== '._.'(
/ )
( ."-.
/(` -) / \
( \`-.__ -'_." `
| \`-.__.--"v" |
`.' \ |, ,
/ `._/ :
/ | '
/ /| /
/| /


How do I create a hidden SID?/

Warning: This is a troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

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I told you, it's a fucking troll

ascii spork

Re:Warning: This is a troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good one!

Clean her up a bit.

[Anonymous Coward]

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How do I create a hidden SID?/

Sauce for the goose and all that??

[_Mustang]

Say, since it's well know that any important links in a posted article get "slashdotted", does that mean that we should be expecting slashdot to be slashdotted because of this?

General Software, Inc.'s demonstration of a 0.8sec BIOS boot time led to many observations and questions on the technical forum Slashdot, prompting us to provide more details on this project. We?ll update this page periodically ove ..

bitchslap?

[Anonymous Coward]

your posting history is very short, were some of those comments ever above -1? Maybe it was just some overzealous moderator. But i wouldn't be surprised if Taco bitchslapped you. He is really an asshole.

Re:bitchslap?

[Anonymous Coward]

One comment was at 2. A couple were at 1. Only one was at -1. My karma dropped to -10 within one minute of making that final post. The account is now blocked for 24 hours, of course. I know a bitchslap when I see one.

--The O. P. P.

Re:bitchslap?

[Anonymous Coward]

that sucks man.. but don't let that keep you down..i would just keep firing away to piss of Taco. I will remember your name when i troll this site.

Re:bitchslap?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I know a bitchslap when I see one."

No you don't.

If your posts are annoyingly offtopic enough to catch moderators' eyes, don't be surprised when one of them clicks on your username and takes it upon himself to mod down all your crappy offtopic posts. The fact that you whine about this is really, really pathetic.

-Jamie

Re:bitchslap?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey there, "Jamie"!

Remember that period when no users were getting moderator points? Moderation kept happening, and it was excessively negative. Any post that didn't simply agree with the opinions in the article quickly got modded to "-1, Offtopic". In fact, that also happened to a few posts that did agree with the article, but happened to be in the same thread as one that didn't. And no posts ever reached a score above 3. We know how the /. editors moderate.

Meanwhile, the first time O.P.P. posted his little essay, it got modded to "+2, Insightful". I saw it. That was no doubt the result of user moderation (the comment was later modded to "-1, Offtopic", no doubt another case of /. editor moderation). I also frequently see posts that make fun of CmdrTaco and others modded up to +5. We also know the users moderate.

Therefore, I'm inclined to believe O.P.P. when he says he was slapped down by the /. editors. Whether or not it actually used the "bitchslap" code (or whatever it's called these days) is irrelevant. It's still quite clear that it was the editors, not the users, who modded him down.

By the way, I also don't believe you're the real Jamie. Why don't you post logged in next time? Don't worry, if you are who you say you are, you can always mod yourself down to -1 (like Michael usually does) so there won't be any record of what you say, as I know that's how the /. editors like to operate.

Re:bitchslap?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Remember that period when no users were getting moderator points? Moderation kept happening, and it was excessively negative. Any post that didn't simply agree with the opinions in the article quickly got modded to '-1, Offtopic'. In fact, that also happened to a few posts that did agree with the article, but happened to be in the same thread as one that didn't."

Of course editors moderate. Before Slashdot's moderation system was opened up to the masses, a select group of moderators functioned quite well in fact. We prefer letting everyone moderate, but when trolls post lengthy off-topic threads, we don't insist that users waste their mod points sending them down to -1, we do it for them.

It has nothing to do with opinions we like or don't like. It's a three-question checklist. Are you offtopic? Is your comment flamebait? Are you trolling? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then of course you're going to be modded down -- by an editor, or some other user, it's really just a matter of time. (This case is a good example: users downmodded O.P.P. repeatedly before any editors noticed.)

Trolls have their own methods of illicitly gaining modpoints and karma, though not so many now as before, happily. While we tweak the system to eliminate the loopholes, you better beleive we're going to manually spend a few point's of our own to counteract. You think we should stand by and do nothing while you ruin any sense of coherent discussion for everyone else? Yeah right, that'll happen.

"Whether or not it actually used the 'bitchslap' code (or whatever it's called these days) is irrelevant. It's still quite clear that it was the editors, not the users, who modded him down."

So you now recognize that it wasn't the 'bitchslap' code at least. Well, that's progress. Next step: go take a look at O.P.P.'s posts. Are they ontopic? Not a one of them. Then is it wrong for them to sit at -1, Offtopic? No. So what's your gripe?

Just for the record -- 'bitchslap' is only used on bots.

"Don't worry, if you are who you say you are, you can always mod yourself down to -1 (like Michael usually does) so there won't be any record of what you say, as I know that's how the /. editors like to operate."

Yeah, we like it so much, we spent the last six months writing a database system that keeps all comments, permanently, regardless of their score.

That's right, all your pathetic whinging will now be archived in perpituity, just 'cause we all love you so much. What exactly were you moaning about? Your offtopic comments got modded to -1, Offtopic?

Re:bitchslap?

[Anonymous Coward]

the level of hypocrisy coming from slashdot editors is so overwhelming, sometimes it's laughable. they rail at instrusions on free speech, censorware, but yet do the exact things on their own site.

i won't go into the failings of the moderation system, that is obvious to most people, this one is funny..

when trolls post lengthy off-topic threads, we don't insist that users waste their mod points sending them down to -1, we do it for them.

Great going big brother!! It's only for our benefit right?? At least most other totalitarian countries don't hide their true intentions. i like how you don't even trust your own users to maintain order here.

i really would have no problem with this whole system if the editors (specially michael, timothy and jamie) with their crusade for "our rights online" and other such nonsense practiced what they preached.

Re:bitchslap?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I to assume this is "jamie" again?

OK, I concede that I wasn't hit by the bitchslap script. I'm glad you've conceded that it was you who aggressively modded every single post I've made to -1. Pity you thought you could lie to me the first time you replied to this thread, when you made up some cock-and-bull story about a rogue moderator acting independently to eliminate my posts. The fact that you don't understand why this sort of thing is wrong, or that your own statements about it are contradictory is baffling to me.

One of the assumptions you make when taking it upon yourself to preempt the moderators is that you know better than them. Slashdot's history of falling for blatant web hoaxes is pretty clear evidence that you don't.

If my posts are precisely the sort of thing moderation was cooked up to eliminate, why didn't you let the moderation system do the job it was designed for? I made five posts. That's not going to be a drain on the pool of mod points. If my posts were so certain to be modded off-topic, that would indicate, in your eyes, that the mod system is working. Why did you step in?

I'll repeat at this point that I couldn't care less about my account being slapped down by moderation. I expected that sort of response from the normal moderators when I began this. I just find it amusing that you felt the need to overreact so viciously. No doubt you'll repeat the process next time.

Just for the record -- 'bitchslap' is only used on bots.

Lie. slashdot-terminal was not a bot. Neither is sllort. Who or what is modslap used on, by the way? Bots as well?

Yeah, we like it so much, we spent the last six months writing a database system that keeps all comments, permanently, regardless of their score.

I don't believe for a second that it took you guys six months to modify slash to archive posts at -1. If it did, then you guys are worse than I thought.

"blah blah pathetic whinging blah blah blah"

I have pinched a nerve, haven't I?

From the faq:

The vast majority of you will never encounter any of these troll filters. If you do encounter one unfairly, let us know so we can fix it. This stuff is fairly beta code, so there are bound to be problems/

So I've let you know. Fix it. What's the justification for releasing security exploits to the public? It forces the authors of the software to do something about it. Same thing applies here. If I just emailed you, you'd ignore me completely, wouldn't you?

A lot has been said on the flaws of moderation. The big problem is that you guys have tried to make moderation do far too much, and that's just sparked a lot of resentment among the more free-thinking readers of the site. Beyond that, I don't think I need to reiterate what has already been said.

--The O. P. P.

Re:bitchslap?

[egg troll]

Yeah, we like it so much, we spent the last six months writing a database system that keeps all comments, permanently, regardless of their score.

If it took you six months to write code to archive all posts regardless of their score, I think thats pretty sad. I, a shitty coder who struggles with Python, could've probably done that in a month.

There are going to be trolls on any community forum. No matter how much you try to block us out, we'll keep posting. The Slashdot editors just need to accept this and move on. By trying to clamp down, you only make us work even harder to post.

Notice all the ASCII art on here? A direct result of Taco's lame Lameness Filter. Now that links are put in brackets, people work even harder to get around it and are succeeding in ways they never had before. Previously people would look at their browser to see what the link they were clicking on lead to. Now that Slashdot is doing that for them, it makes trolling even easier.

Plus you insult everyone's intelligence by having that douchebag Jon Katz continue to post. This vapid waste of space has nothing to say and takes paragraphs to get there. He's a one-trick pony and unfortunately that pony isn't very good, like the annoying uncle who keeps playing Gotcher Nose with the children.

The more you try to keep down the trolls, the more we're going to rise up and say FUCK YOU to the bullshit editors of this site. If you wanna see a community site thats properly run, go look at fark.com. Come back when you finally understand people, "Jaimie".

Oh, don't worry...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your rebuttal was read and noted. Thanks for participating!

BBC TV?

[shibut]

BBC has some really great shows (one of my favorites, when it got to PBS, was Jeeves and Wooster - of "ask Jeeves" fame, not to mention Monty Python). Is there a way to get the BBC in the US? Can people with DirecTV etc see it?

Crucifiction? To the left please, one cross each (Life of Brian).

Re:BBC TV?

[michael.creasy]

There's BBC America, it is on cable (AT&T Broadband) I have no idea about DirecTV. It's one of the few things that keep me sane living here :)

Re:BBC TV?

[K-Man]

AskJeeves, after consulting with some lawyers, denied ever copying P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves character. The company's popular "internet personality" was in fact based on porn star Marilyn Chambers.

Re:BBC TV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Michael,

Did you know that your nearest airport has hundreds of flights out every single day to almost anywhere else in the world?

No one should ever live in a place that drives them crazy.

Re:BBC TV?

[Zeno_1]

I get BBC from digital cable (Adelphia).

Taco likes fat chicks

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes he does

crappo

[Anonymous Coward]

ascii spork

How Big Is Porn?
Dan Ackman, Forbes.com, 05.25.01, 1:45 PM ET

NEW YORK -
Is this the face of big business? Actually, no.

Recently, much attention has been lavished on the pornography industry--as a business--and many have claimed it is large and profitable, especially on the Internet. Many of the claims are cut from whole cloth, but are accepted without question by the legitimate press.

Skepticism is in order, though, because as David Klatell, associate dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism notes, "[Pornography] is an industry where they exaggerate the size of everything." The fact is pornography, or "adult entertainment," is as marginal now as it ever was.

Take for instance the New York Times Magazine: It ran a cover story on May 18 called "Naked Capitalists: There's No Business Like Porn Business." Its thesis: Pornography is big business--with $10 billion to $14 billion in annual sales. The author, Frank Rich, suggests that pornography is bigger than any of the major league sports, perhaps bigger than Hollywood. Porn is "no longer a sideshow to the mainstream...it is the mainstream," he says.

The idea that pornography is a $10 billion business is often credited to a study by Forrester Research. This figure gets repeated over and over. The only problem is that there is no such study. In 1998, Forrester did publish a report on the online "adult content" industry, which it pegged at $750 million to $1 billion in annual revenue. The $10 billion aggregate figure was unsourced and mentioned in passing.

For the $10 billion figure to be accurate, you have to add in adult video networks and pay-per-view movies on cable and satellite, Web sites, in-room hotel movies, phone sex, sex toys and magazines--and still you can't get there.

According to Adult Video News (AVN), an industry trade magazine, Americans spent just over $4 billion to buy and rent adult videos last year. This figure is baseless and wildly inflated. From there, the numbers get even more obscure.

Tossing in the Internet will add less than $1 billion to the total porn pie. The 1998 Forrester report pegs the online adult content market at $750 million to $1 billion, which was an increase from its initial estimate of $150 million. When a study admits that its initial result was off by at least 80%, it's hard to be confident in the new result. In any event, Tom Rhinelander, a Forrester research director, says they have given up trying to put a price on porn--either on the Internet or otherwise.

Its rival research outfit, Net Ratings, tracks the number of visitors to porn Web sites. It says that in April 2001, there were 22.9 million unique visitors to porn sites. This says nothing about how long each visitor stayed or whether they spent a dime. In any event, the number of visitors is less than the number who visited news sites (41.1 million), finance sites (34.2 million) or greeting card sites (25.5 million). When was the last time you heard anyone talk about how greeting card sites dominate the Net?

The Business Of Smut: What Is It Worth?
Adult Video $500 million to $1.8 billion
Internet $1 billion
Pay-Per-View $128 million
Magazines $1 billion
Total $2.6 billion to $3.9 billion

Sources: Adams Media Research, Forrester Research, Veronis Suhler Communications Industry Report, IVD
It is often said that pornographers are the only ones making money on the Internet. Certainly, there are a lot of porn sites and many assume that they wouldn't be there if they weren't profitable. But that assumption is baseless.

Playboy (nyse: PLA - news - people), which calls itself a men's magazine rather than an adult magazine, lost money last year, as did New Frontier Media (nasdaq: NOOF - news - people). There are thousands of e-commerce sites that still exist despite never having made a profit. There are millions of personal sites and fan sites whose publishers have no intention of ever profiting. Why are porn sites, of which there are an untold number competing fiercely with each other, necessarily any different?

What about pay-per-view? The entire legitimate "a la carte" movie business, including satellite and cable pay-per-view, was just $642 million last year, says Tom Adams, president of Adams Media Research, which tracks video sales for the industry. If sex movies get 20% of the legitimate movies, that adds $128 million to pornography's gross.

Adding pay-per-view to the Internet and video sales and rentals, the sum total is about $2.9 billion. Is it possible that adult magazines add another $7 billion--which would have to come in sales since they have minimal advertising? Hardly, when you consider that the entire consumer magazine market in 1999 grossed $7.8 billion (sales plus advertising), according to the Veronis Suhler Communications Industry Report.

The Times Magazine concludes there may be no other product in the entire cultural marketplace that is more explicitly American, going so far as to call it "mainstream." We have no idea how "explicitly American" it is, though we suspect men in other countries like to look at naked women, too.

What pornography lacks is cultural resonance, it also lacks in financial clout. The industry is tiny next to broadcast television ($32.3 billion in 1999 revenue, according to Veronis Suhler), cable television ($45.5 billion), the newspaper business ($27.5 billion), Hollywood ($31 billion), even to professional and educational publishing ($14.8 billion).

When one really examines the numbers, the porn industry--while a subject of fascination--is every bit as marginal as it seems at first glance.

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Does the adult video market have $4 billion in sales? Not even half that.

This figure comes from Adult Video News, an industry trade paper--not from Variety, the Hollywood trade paper, which Rich cites. How Adult Video News gets this number is not clear. We asked Adult Video News' managing editor, Mike Ramone. "I don't know the exact methodology," he said, "It's a pie chart." Asked to break the figure down into sales versus rentals, a standard practice among those who cover the video industry, he said he didn't think it was available and suggested we call the editor-in-chief, who didn't return our calls.

In fact, there is no chance that the adult video business has revenues of even $2 billion. This hardly compares to the sales and rentals of legitimate videos, which were roughly $20 billion last year, both according to Adams Media Research and Variety. (Neither Adams nor Variety track porn sales.)

No one tracks the adult video business with any rigor or precision, Adams says. But his "most generous" estimate is that sales and rentals combined are no higher than $1.8 billion. Adams starts with the mainstream video business, which he says had rental income of $10.3 billion and sales of $10.8 billion (both of which far exceed box office grosses, which amounted to $7.67 billion last year, according go the National Association of Theater Owners).

On the rental side, at least half the video stores nationally, including industry leaders Blockbuster (nyse: BBI - news - people) and Hollywood Video (nasdaq: HLYW - news - people), carry no porn titles. Of the 50% (at most) of the stores that do, retailer surveys report that no more than 20% of revenue is from porn. Thus, porn rentals amount to no more than $1 billion.

As for video sales, much of the trade is through outlets like Wal-Mart Stores (nyse: WMT - news - people) and Kmart (nyse: KM - news - people), who stock no porn titles. There are, of course, the traditional adult video and bookstores mostly in big cities, but this is a fringe distribution channel at best. Internet and mail order may add to the total, but these channels account for just 10% of legitimate sales. Overall, "There's no way it could be 10% of the legitimate market," Adams says. His top estimate for adult video sales is $800 million.

Adams calls his $1.8 billion aggregate generous. Some of the industry's own numbers suggest a much lower figure. IVD, based in Hightstown, N.J., the nation's largest distributor, said that there are as many as 13,000 video releases per year. (There are many niche markets--boy-boy, fat people, transvestites, freak shows--which add to the total, according to an IVD spokesman.)

A typical release may sell 1,000 to 2,000 units. Using the high-end figure, the industry sells about 26 million units. If the average unit sells either directly or through rentals for $20--a high-end estimate given the fact that the number of titles makes the product a commodity--that means the adult video business grosses at best $520 million, not $4 billion.

All told, the adult video business takes in anywhere from one-tenth to one-half the figure proffered by Adult Video News. Certainly, self-interested statements by pornographers merit a second look.

ascii spork

Re:crappo

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, very nice.

who is this poor schmuck

[S. Allen]

and what did he do to deserve this?

from the 130.49.77.223 dept.

to save you the time :)

[stewart@byte stuff]# host 130.49.77.223
223.77.49.130.in-addr.arpa. is an alias for 223.77.64-19.49.130.in-addr.arpa.
223.77.64-19.49.130.in-addr.arpa. domain name pointer dhcp77-223.pittsburgh.resnet.pitt.edu.

Re:who is this poor schmuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another dissident citizen. SWAT team is on the way.

get it in mp3 from audiogalaxy

[elbobo]

you heard me. get the whole series in mp3 format from audiogalaxy. just search for it, it's all there. linux client available.

... :(

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck you!

or Usenet

[Pope]

It's a perennial favourite anyways, but when Adams died it set off a new round of posting/requesting.

Forgive my ignorance but.....

[verbot]

from the 130.49.77.223 dept.

Could anyone explain the significance of this IP address to me?

Thanks.

Re:Forgive my ignorance but.....

[Anonymous Coward]

When they've done that, perhaps they could explain the relevance of Occam's Razor too?

OT: Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

As an aside, wouldn't a (partially at least) effective lameness filter just be to filter all comments which use punctuation characters as more than, say, 15% of the total comment length (in proportion to the actual comment length or whatever)?

It would catch code, and geekcodes. The best solution is to just let the thing be modded down. The only thing the lameness filter seems to have accomplished is inspiring a lot more creativity in trolling.

Re:OT: Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Anonymous Coward]

Creativity good. I was getting tired of penis bird :-)

But really, surely no-one uses triangle-brackets (whatever the hell those buggers are called) as more than 15% of their post? Or do you mean something else by code, and I am missing it?

Anyway, I'm sure those oh-so-clever Slashcode people can make it so that stuff goes through fine. Hell, why not take every example of ASCII art and whump it into a database, so that every new masterpiece has to be original?

- TACD (The same nondescript sig you once knew and loved (until it got modded off the map for discussing Slashcode)) - Although, you seem to have escaped. Perhaps some auto-AC-modding script is running amok?

Re:OT: Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Anyway, I'm sure those oh-so-clever Slashcode people can make it so that stuff goes through fine. Hell, why not take every example of ASCII art and whump it into a database, so that every new masterpiece has to be original?

Now *that*'s fsckin' brilliant.

By code, I mean programming - Perl comes to mind. The thing's 90% punctuation as it is.

Re:OT: Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Anonymous Coward]

?? What's Perl code doing running around Slashdot in the nude?

I mean, er, what exactly do the people who use the code use it for? Is it necessary for it to be enabled? And not that I know anything about coding, but surely it must have some kind of header saying "Perl code from now on" and something saying "Good old ASCII again from now" at the end, which could be allowed through?

Not that lameness matters to the Slashdot people; they probably have their filters set to show nothing below +2 or something...

- TACD (The same nondescript sig which is getting tiresome to type...)

Re:OT: Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Spiral Man]

what about some odd percentage spaces, or some sort of combination of spaces and punctuation?

since ascii art tends to be mostly spaces, that might work. although, there is also the filled in kind...

another thing to consider is how much punctuation is writen in a row. even perl usually has some sort of alpha numeric number every 2-3 characters : )

of course, all this would just get people to make the ascii art with just letters, and no punctuation...

you could also just count the whitespace in the begining of each line. that would limit the ability to do ascii art, but would also make it hard to post readable code (all those tabs).

i dont think that there is a very good way to delinieate between text and cleverly done ascii art...

Re:OT: Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Spiral Man]

the problem w/ that is that people who do ascii art would just put the art between html tags, also, that would force people who want to post code to know html, so that they a) know to use and b) know how to do other things, like line breaks, etc...

Re:OT: Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Anonymous Coward]

Louis Armstrong, trumpet player and Jazz pioneer, died yesterday morning in his Los Angelos home. He was 71. Armstrong's last performance was at James Madison University's Convocation Center on March 24, 2001, where he played to a standing room only 5,000. Armstrong was helped off the stage by his wife of 20 years, and he later told a reporter for the campus newspaper "I don't know how much longer I can do this. This may be one of my last shows." His final song was his biggest hit, Hello Dolly! He is survived by his wife, 3 children and 6 grandchildren.

Re:OT: Re:Understanding Slashcode!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of *course* it's $#*#ing off-topic! It's prepended by "OT"! It seems unfair that if you're warned in the subject line you still feel the need to down-mod the thing.

"People like stupid things, right?" -- Hotmail Staff
-- posted "anonymously" for my poor karma's sake.

somewhat amusing..

[Anonymous Coward]

to see every comment in this thread modded down to -1. some of them are pretty inocuous and there are a lot more posts worth modding down than these. curious why this thing is just getting buried to oblivion.

Oh, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one fucken fast moderator, "jamie". Also, I'd like to know how he modded one of my posts down three times, moron.

--The O. P. P.

lol

[sanity_slipping]

They're trying to slashdot somebody by posting their IP and making everybody curious (I pinged too).

130.49.77.223

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

i've been pinging them continually for the last 2 hours, just as a friendly service to ensure their network connectivity.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're the guy who is responsible for phone numbers on TV and movies all starting with 555.

HHGG: Pink Floyd?

[cburley]

I wonder whether the rebroadcast will include the Pink Floyd bit (when the gang first sets foot on some planet)? That was funny, but I heard or read that it was removed from subsequent broadcasts due to "copyright issues" or something.

(How some 20-odd seconds of music, clearly used as a parody, can be copyright infringement, I'm not sure. But I've still got that short segment of the show "memorized", and they can't jail me for playing it back in my own head! Not yet anyway! Free Dmitri! Free Dmitri!!! ;-)

bitchslap this michael you fucker

[Anonymous Coward]

Understanding Slashcode as it's own story.


.dHHHHHHHF"""HHHHHH:
.dHHHHHHF __ "HHHHHbF
INSERT LAMENESS FILTER _.----.::::dHHHHHH' _`. HHHH
HERE &nbsp ;-'" `::dHHHHHF (j HHHH
;-" |:HHHHHF _"-.HHHH
;--" dHHHHF ._ - /(jdHHHHF
_.--" """ \"-." dHHHF:F
,'" , _.--' \ . "-' dHHHF:j\
/ `. _,--'" \ `. _.dHHHH:::|
\ "--'""__ \ ,-dHHHHHHHHF:::F
\ \""" ""`-. \ .,dHHHHHHHHHHF:::j
:-. "-. "-. - J dHHHHHHHHHF"::::F
.-"/ ". "-. : oJ |HHHHHHF"" "`-.
/ / _ "-. "-."'; FHHHHHF
_/ | ; "-._`. `." jHHHHF_____
.-' `. | / / l "" "-_;"HHF :":":"--
:' :;.|; ; /\ " `.
`'';-._,/. \ \ `-.
(:\'\"-'\(_/ Slashdot.org `-_
\:\":. \_ `.
``::' .:-._ `-:_:
...:::' ""`-.._ "-.
_ :::'' _,' ::-._ "-
/ _,--" ::--._
/ _.-:" :-._ /

Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)

Re:OT: Re:Understanding subject prefixes! (Erk.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely anyone posting Perl is going to know whatever HTML they need to get it through potential filters?

How about making excessive spacing at before every line (or before a certain percentage of the lines in a post) unacceptable? All ASCII art (apart from one example I've seen) requires a large indent for each line, but text and code don't...

- TACD (http://www.buxtond.co.uk)

Fixing Windows

[Spy Hunter]

Here's a tip for those using Windows (out of necessity, hopefully) that could cut down on the "I've gotta reinstall because its getting slow" syndrome. It decreases startup time, increases reliability, disables annoying registration reminders/update notifiers/misc. crap (such as RealPlayer), and generally makes your computing experience better.

Click Start->Run... and type in msconfig.exe. The "System Configuration Utility" will come up, allowing you to do all sorts of cool things to Windows. The most important is the "Startup" tab. Go there and look at the checkboxes. These allow you to selectively disable _all_ programs that get started when your computer starts (even those not shown in the Startup folder in the Start menu).

Even if you uncheck all the boxes (even the important-sounding ones such as scanRegistry or TaskMonitor), your computer will still start up and work fine. I've tried it. So go crazy! Uncheck anything having to do with RealPlayer, or anything that sounds suspicious. To find out what some of the more obscure programs do, try pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete and killing them selectively, then seeing if you notice the difference. Common ones are the on-screen displays for keyboards with Internet buttons, antivirus tray icons, software registration reminders, automatic Internet update checkers, RealPlayer, scanner software, and AOL/AIM tray icons. By only checking the things you want, you can eliminate useless crap and take control of what programs do to your system.

If you see something called WebHancer or SaveNow, UNCHECK its box with EXTREME PREJUDICE! These are evil spyware/forced advertising programs that are using your computer for their nefarious purposes.

If you do this for your parents, they will be forever grateful.

Another great way to "fix" Windows is Microsoft's TweakUI. If you are a computer geek running Windows and you don't have TweakUI, get it now! Its a great control panel applet that allows you to customize Windows features that you can't customize anywhere else. Get it from Microsoft (search their site, its available for all versions of Windows if you look hard enough, even though its not supported it works perfectly).

Re:Fixing Windows

[MrResistor]

I've been using msconfig in Win98 for a couple years now and it works great. I don't even use tweakUI or any of the similar utilities out there anymore since msconfig provides all the functionality I used from them and more. If you're checking it out, you should take a look under the Advanced button on the main tab, among other things you can configure win98 to use more than 256M RAM. It's really a great utility.

Anyone know where I can find an equivalent for win2k?

Re:Fixing Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

msconfig works OK in w2k; just ignore the errors at startup.

yea slashbacks, nay quickies?

[joeytsai]

I apologize for being rather offtopic, but what's up with no more quickies? I personally enjoy the quickies a bit, but all I get are these silly slashbacks! What's up?

Cripes, they must be out of witches

[c13v3rm0nk3y]

Wow. I am constantly reminded how clueless the folks are who make legal decisions in so-called "developed nations".

Of course this dude found the hole by accident! Tech support folks are always poking and prodding to see how things break. It's called "problem solving" and the DOJ should look into it.

I mean, I have personally reported security holes to webmasters on three separate occasions. In one case, browsing to the right URL got you a dirlist which showed a bunch of .txt files. Again: of course I looked in these files. They were in a public location. That's the point.

How is it my fault that the files contained credit card information (including expiry dates) with associated personal information (in some cases, Social Insurance Numbers (it was a Canadian site, eh)?

If it was a wallet, I'd look for a name and address and return it, wouldn't I? Why am I suspect if I pick up the wallet in the first place?

Even if the so-called hacker is suspect, it is often recommended to legal types to do their homework and investigate before flying off the handle. Where there is one hacker, there's three. Why not try and catch a few more, especially if they are stupid enough to contact you about their "exploits" using a valid email return email address.

I bet he had his telephone number in his .sig, as well. Must be some hacker. Totally above the law.

I'll stop now. This much sarcasm is not good for me, and I'm starting to feel all superiour to the government, again.

Cookie Rant

[Sloppy]

Second, everyone who places Cookies on millions of computers around the world without the authorization of internet users could be criminally prosecuted under this statute, particularly in light of the statute's definitions of "protected computer" and "exceed authorized access."

No one places cookies on other people's computers. People download and store cookies on their own initiative. Web browser == user agent, therefore a user is responsible for what his web browser does.

remember

[xted]

Please remember to remove your tux suit while in the woods during hunting season as not to confuse any drunk hunters.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

ello

Mr. Sperling?

[Anonymous Coward]

" Mr. Sperling or the Federal Bureau of Investigation"

But isn't Shelly a woman's name?

Are there any parties planned..

[Anonymous Coward]

..to celebrate the 6th anniversary of Windows 95?

What about those shmucks who waited at midnight to buy it, or are they all using Linux now?

Lee,UK Left out NetWare Air

[Red Rocket]

None of the mechanics are quite sure where the planes are because they haven't had to work on them for years. All the planes are pilotless and are controlled by a single operator who just does periodic health checks. The passengers hand their tickets to a boarding attendant and then walk through a hallway. At the other end they step out at their destination, never realizing they were even on an airplane.

Spreading the blame

[dgroskind]

West's lawyers state: If this case goes to trial, the Microsoft personnel who developed these programs will likely be subpoenaed as witnesses by Mr. West's defense team. Or if it is found that this software contributed to, participated in or caused the events under investigation to occur, Microsoft could be indicted under the same statute.

That should rack up some billable hours for West's defense team.

Trying to distract from the facts of the case by raising the issue of Microsoft's complicity suggests that the West may not have such a strong case. It's as if an accused murder based his defense on the fact that handguns are dangerous and called a handgun manufacturer as his star witness.

Software doesn't break the law. People break the law.

Re:Spreading the blame

[Rares Marian]

Um no. That's how the law is worded. It makes bumping into things that are not supposed to be there illegal and makes a murder of the bumper (not to mention the ludicrous melodrama that ensues; you'd think having your site cracked is like getting cancer).

I thought getting 99 years for stealing sunglasses was bad (Texas).

Re:Spreading the blame

[dgroskind]

The U.S. Attorney's press release, to which West's lawyers are replying, says: The question under investigation is whether valuable intellectual property has been improperly converted.

Which is much more than bumping into things that are not supposed to be there.

If West were innocent, one would expect his attorneys to present some evidence to contradict the allegation or at least deny it. Instead West's lawyers say: it appears that Microsoft's software may have caused this unfortunate situation to occur.

One implication is that West's lawyers are conceeding that something wrong did occur but the blame should be shared by Microsoft, which, they say, is "a possible co-defendant or party to the case."

Naming one's accomplice is hardly a defense.

The lawyers further claim that West's acts weren't illegal because they occurred 9 months before DMCA was passed. Once again, this statement implies that the alleged events occurred. The U.S. Attorney's press release doesn't mention the DMCA.

Finally, the U.S. Attorney's press release says: A suspect's intent, the amount of loss occasioned by the behavior, and the context of the alleged offense are among many factors that are within the scope of the investigation and weighed in such prosecutorial decisions.

None of West's lawyers statements address these issues directly even though the U.S. Attorney is outlining a straightforward and conventional line of defense for them.

By replying to the U.S. Attorney's press release but ignoring the substantive issues contained in the press release raises suspicions rather than allays them.

Re:BBC TV? It's on DirectTV...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:BBC TV? It's on DirectTV...

Whoopie cushions and the FBI

[Rares Marian]

Microsoft isn't guilty here either (unless it misconfigures itself) though Frontpage isn't exactly all that great.

The person who is guilty is the guy who configured Frontpage Extensions or IIS.

Calling Brian K West guilty is like saying a guy who sits on a whoopie cushion lacks manners.

Re:Whoopie cushions and the FBI

[dgroskind]

Calling Brian K West guilty is like saying a guy who sits on a whoopie cushion lacks manners.

You're doing a better job of defending him than his lawyers.