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Software Carpentry QMTest Testing Tool Released
soundsop writes: "The first tool resulting from the winners of a design competition by the Software Carpentry project has been released. The QMTest tool is a testing tool to replace software such as XUnit, Expect and DejaGnu. An issue tracking tool, called QMTrack (a la Bugzilla) is forthcoming. It looks like the winning design proposals for a config tool (autoconf replacement) and a build tool (make replacement) are not being implemented."
Merry FUCKING Christmas to you as well!!!
Frist Prost
I'm not exactly a developer, so could someone please explain to me what this software is meant to do? I take it that it is meant to help work out bugs... but how?
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
I checked the downloads page and found a Windows download for QMTest 1.0. Can't wait to try it out.
I was born in a small hospital outside Portland in 1974. I was a rather large newborn, about 14 pounds. My mother thought I would grow to be 300 pounds by age 10. She was right. Now that I am 27, I weigh in at 715 pounds. My height is 4 feet 8 inches. Sometimes I try hiring a prostitute to play "games" with me, but they often decline my job offer. This has caused me great anguish since I first met a hooker at age 11. Now, I no longer attempt to find hookers to please my sausage. The internet has fulfilled my dreams. In 1999, I was introduced to Slashdot. There I met great people just like me: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda and Jon Katz. I gained great encouragement from them as they bore their testimony to me. I learned they too had a difficult time hiring hookers simply because of their massive, gravitational weight.
Rob explained how he overcame his desire to buy hookers by learning the technique of "kernel compiling." This advanced Native-American sexual act is performed by compacting handfuls of corn grain into the anus. After a few moments of settling, the corn grain begins to stimulate the prostate. Eventually, the grain will begin expanding due to the moisture of the anus. Often the sensation of gerbeling (inserting a rodent into the anus) is described as the feeling. Rob said he performed a kernel compile "every other day" until a hooker was the last person on his mind. Corn became his new play toy. Unfortunately, Rob began having violent erections at the mere thought of vegetables. His friend Jon "Vegan" Katz, came to the rescue by offering to desensitize him with man-sausage. (You know what I mean by man sausage.) Now Rob is neither attracted to hookers nor vegetables.
Katz is a great guy. He offered me support too. As a teenager, he started gaining weight. By the age of 20, Katz weighed 500 pounds! But he learned that weight doesn't affect sexual desire one bit!! He still continued to attend all the gay "movie parties" at the local theatre. During matinee showings of Rock and Roll High School, he would make out with all the hot fat guys in the back of the theatre. Sometimes Katz even had "bathroom breaks." This really intrigued me that a guy who weighed 500+ pounds didn't feel ashamed about his homosexuality. I had the chance to meet Katz at a Portland book signing last year. We had dinner together and discussed my issues with female hookers. He persuaded me to try man-sausage for just one night. I agreed. It wasn't what I expected, though. Without going into many details, Katz just thrusted his tool down my throat until he was gratified. Then, he went down on my tool. I never ejaculated because I was just plain horrified at the time. Katz apologized for his straightforwardness. I apologized for not really being "gay enough" for his taste of men. But we talked more after that. Now we correspond occasionally and plan to meet again in Las Vegas at Comdex 2002. Though I never turned to the hardcore gay lifestyle of Katz, my desire for cheap hookers declined after we met. I owe Katz a big debt for his help.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Glad to see SC is making progress. Another one of my favorite SC spin offs is Quilt, a replacement for the dated make. Additionally, SCons is a similar program which won the SC build competition in August 2000. Although I personally haven't used Quilt nor SCons, they appear to be well-designed pieces of software. Hopefully Software Carpentry will act as a catalyst allowing the creative juices of progammers around the world to create the most well-designed software possible. So far, I'd say it succeeded.
What do you think of MusicCity now?
Merry Xmas to everyone. (offtopic ? who cares :)
...but a tool called SCons has just been released. It is based on the ScCons tool that was in the Software Carpentry Contest, and is written by the same folk.
Stand Fast,
tjg.
Time to fix Christmas dinner! Get your lazy arses out of bed and stop gripeing about your periods. Time to cook! Fixing your man a meal is your job and you better fix with a smile.
This is WHAT YOUR GOING TO COOK!
Baked Ham with pinnapple and honey glaze
Green beans with bacon
corn on the cob (you better put REAL butter on em or else!)
Rolls
AND FOR DESSERT
APPLE PIE! FRESH BAKED FROM SCRATCH!
IF IT'S STORE BOUGHT I'LL THROW IT ON THE FLOOR!
Now get after it before I get mad!
DO it NOW!
You sick wierdos who engage in this
extremely dubious practice of defaming
cmdrTACO must be al-qaeda sympathizers.
In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
MODERATOR by Tsar
(To the tune of "Operator" by Jim Croce)
Moderator, well, could you help mod up this post
See, the number of my karma is ten below now
I used to troll away
Now I'm bitch-slapped every day
I wish you guys would log off and just go home now
{Refrain}
But, isn't that the way Slashdot goes
But just forget my past
And mod this one comment if you can find it
So folks can read it and know that I'll climb to the cap
And overcome the slap
I've learned to read the polls
I only wish you guys couldn't see my trolls
'Til my thoughts have congealed
'Cause there's no court of appeals
Moderator, well, could you help mod up this post
Now it's scored so low that it's just infernal
There's something on my screen
You know I never think to clean
I might as well be posting this in my journal
{Refrain}
No, no, no, no, there's no court of appeals
Moderator, let's just forget about this post
There's no one out there who really wanted to read it
Crawl back in your pod
You guys should really just thank God
I can't meta-mod
{Refrain}
It's easy to be armchair anything.
It's easy to lament that something is not implemented.
But do you know that to really implement something _properly_ it takes real commitment - and not only sacrifies in money, time and effort ?
That is why I have utmost respect for those who participated in open-source projects.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Kudos to the QMTest folks; I'm looking forward
to the fruits of the software carpentry project. But, as Expect is an
automation tool, not simply a testing tool, I don't think it'll exactly be "replaced."
The well-known DejaGNU suite, written in Expect, might be a candidate for replacement, though.
I use Expect all the time, but have never used it for testing. I tried DejaGNU a time or two,
but never could figure it out. If you like Expect and like Perl, you might check out the
Expect.pm module project; it's really come to fruition recently, and
I've finally started doing that kind of thing in Perl instead of TCL/Expect.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
This is version 0.6 of a troll HOWTO, sort of a companion piece to jsm's excellent troll FAQ. As a draft, comments and criticism are always welcome, if not appreciated :)
Section 1 - Trolling techniquesThere are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking /.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining how
to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll can
break any or all of these and still be successful...
- Timing
- Exposure
- Accounts
- Layout
- Size
- Spelling
- Subject
- Style
- Linking
- Feeding
- Know your audience
- Arrogance
- Offensiveness
- Indifference
- Sympathy
- The common touch
- The 31337 touch
- Contradiction
- Denial
- Claiming credit
- Ending the troll
- The cheap $3 crack
Section 2 - Types of trollBecause you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favour of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customise them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since /. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of
similar stories.
Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway :)
Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies - /.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large
thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment
thresholds to values higher than 0 - to get the attention of these you either
want to get your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets
moderated up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.
An alternative to the time-honoured tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a "troll" account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anoymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though :)
The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on /. and watch the karma roll
in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in terms
of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold of
2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent,
and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the +1
bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.
To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.
Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A workable minimum is a couple of medium paragraphs. Conversely, it shouldn't be too long, or no-one will bother to read it. Keep it to a happy medium.
Whilst spelling is important if you want the troll to be taken "seriously", key spelling mistakes can draw out the spelling zealots, especially if you mis-spell the name of a venerated /. hero, like Linus Torveldes or Richard
Strawlman (thanks dmg). Related to this is the use of the wrong word, explaining
an acronym as being something it isn't or making a word into an acronym even
when it isn't.
The subject line needs to draw attention to your post without making it obvious that it is a troll. A simple statement of the main point of your argument can work here.
Once you realise that most moderators don't bother to read past the first paragraph or two, you can use this fact to craft trolls that can be moderated up as "Insightful" (note that I mean this in the /. sense rather than the
real-world sense). Start off fairly reasonable, making statements that are /.
friendly and not being too controversial. As the troll goes on, make it more and
more controversial, building it up for the coup de grace in the final
paragraph.
As we all know, a post with links is considered "informative" by the /. crowd. Moderators love it, and they rarely
check the links, so be sure to include as many as possible. And make them wrong
- a link to the Perl website should instead
point to the Python website instead, and vice
versa. The other alternative to incorrect links is "useful" links to places like
www.linux.org and www.microsoft.com i.e. places /.ers could
never have found on their own :)
The ideal troll requires no feeding - it runs on its own, generating flamewars between clueless /.ers for your amusement. But often a troll requires
some help and so you should consider feeding it. Feeding is best reserved for
people making either completely clueless responses, people making responses with
holes in, or those wonderful people who write a 2000-word point-by-point
rebuttal of your troll.
Always keep in mind the kind of things advocated on /. so that you can play
on and against them. This is why anti-Linux, creationist, gun-loving,
pro-corporation trolls work well - the vast majority of /.ers hold the opposite
viewpoints. And if a few people agree with you, so much the better - it merely
validates your viewpoint in the eyes of readers.
Be arrogant. You, as a troll, know that you're right. No other explanation could exist. The wronger the "fact", the more assertively you should state it. Make it clear that you are better than everyone else - you know the truth and they are just too stupid to realise it. Use plenty of sarcasm, and use "quotes" to show it to people too dumb to realise.
Being offensive in your initial troll can be counter-productive - it causes moderators to mark you down as flamebait in general. But if you're feeding, then you can get away with calling /.ers all kinds of things. Make broad
generalisations about /. readers - call them "long-haired Linux zealots",
"socialist open-source bigots" or whatever. Stereotyping is encouraged - people
always want to think that they're an individual, and will point this out to you
given half a chance.
Great for articles with a political or social bent, this kind of troll expresses complete indifference to the topic at hand, wondering who on Earth cares about it. An alternative method is to say that the topic only concerns a certain group of people - criminals, idiots, hackers (always use this instead of crackers) or whatever group you want to offend.
Appear to take the same stance as the people you're trying to troll - claim you're as much a fan of Linux as the next man, but... This way you can make all kinds of claims in the sure knowledge that you actually know what you're talking about. A great phrase to use here is "In my experience". Remember to act like all the things you're pointing out are unfortunate but true.
Always accuse /.ers of being elitist. This is an easy thing to do seeing as a
lot of them are. Claim that is their grandmother couldn't use it, then they are
just into it to feel better than Joe Sixpack rather than "doing it for the
average user". This is always great for working into anti-Linux trolls - attack
command-line tools and poorly designed desktops.
The opposite of the above. Claim that technology or whatever is only for the elite of society and that any attempt to open it up for everyone is wrong, an attack on intellectualism and possibly even dangerous. If people were meant to understand these things then they would, and it's their fault if they're too stupid to learn.
Never be afraid to contradict yourself, even in the space of a single sentence. The phrases "I am a top programmer who codes in VB" or "I am a supporter of open source who uses NT at work and 95 at home" will be sure to get a response from some weenie smugly pointing out the contradiction. Confuse the issue more by engaging in contradiction when you are feeding - this will confuse /.ers who will then make even more stupid replies, leaving them even more wide
open for response.
Clues
If you're feeling brave, give the reader clues that this is an obvious troll. The classic example here is dmg's stock phrase "I am often accused of trolling (whatever that is)", but also feel free to use phrases like "I have not read the article, and I don't know much about XYZ but I feel I must comment". If anyone responds to a troll with these kinds of clues in it, feel free to bask in the glow of knee-jerk /. responses.
If you're unlucky someone will accuse you of being a troll (surely not!) and try and ruin it for you. If you don't want it all to end there, then be sure to counter it by accusing them of being small-minded and petty, saying that it's easier for them to say it's a troll than to accept that people have different opinions. Be sure to say this in the subject line, especially if their subject was the infamous "YHBT. YHL. HAND."
Given that /. has its community of regular trolls (hi guys!), it's only
polite to publish your troll on one of the so-called "hidden" forums for all to
see and admire. This way, you get to bask in the praise of other trolls, they
get to contribute to your's if they want to, and you get an easy way to find the
troll later on when you want to check on its progress :)
As for when to post it, that's a matter of opinion really. You can either post it straight away or leave it will after people start biting. Remember that the troll forum is also frequented by non-trolls, and sometimes you may get a self-declared "troll-buster" try and expose you. But remember, /.ers always post
before thinking, and often it doesn't matter at all.
There is no real current forum at the moment thanks to various spammers hitting the sids, but try trolltalk, the original troll sid started by 80md and osm way back in the day. Generally all postings are done there as an AC, with your name at the end of the post. Include a link to the troll somewhere in the text, which ideally will be directly to the post and its replies - click on the #XX link in the thread to get there.
Sometimes you just get bored with a troll, or people start posting genuinely thoughtful stuff in reply (it does happen). When this happens it might be time to own up to the troll with a helpful "YHBT. YHL. HAND." post. Sometimes people will carry on a discussion of the issue, and if you're really lucky (and it was a great troll) they will completely fail to believe you and carry on arguing. If that happens, pat yourself on the back for writing a great troll :)
Finally, when all else fails and your troll gets moderated down to (-1, Troll) within ten seconds of you posting it, the only honourable thing to do is to accuse the moderators of smoking the cheap $3 crack (again) and give up :(
- The Maniac
- The Right-Wing Maniac
- Religion
- Ideology
- Software
- Guns
- The Expert
- Industry knowledge
- Helpful hints
- Offtopic Trolls
- The serial troll
- The random troll
- The vaguely related troll
- If it's funny for a fleeting moment, then it's worth posting.
- Puns. Puns are only less vile than mimes, but it's hard to mime on
/. So
feel free/obligated to litter your offtopic and random bits with puns. Hurt the
bastards. And if they're sick enough to laugh at them, then they'll eventually
end up here ;-)
- Obscure cultural references and injokes are always good. SOMEONE will get
them eventually.
- Several drafts of a serial or random post are common, but true elegance is
being able to come up with something on the spot that still makes the top 40
posts (on a post-heavy article)
Section 3 - Useful trolling linksProbably the most popular kind of troll, the Maniac holds an opinion on something, and won't budge from that opinion no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. If challenged, the Maniac will simply get more and more agitated and abusive, deriding his opponents as "idiots", "wrong-thinking", "dangerous" and "subversive". Generally the Maniac takes a position that opposes the prevalent /. beliefs, but a similar effect can be achieved by taking a
typical /. viewpoint and pushing it to ridiculous extremes.
Maniacs can be crafted for practically every article /. posts, although some
are more obvious targets than others. Civil liberty articles, especially on
things like censorship, DMCA, UCITA that really get /.ers riled up, are usually
extremely fruitful grounds for a well-crafted maniac. The other obvious type of
article is anything which could possibly involve religion, especially evolution :)
Here are some fruitful avenues to explore:
Always popular, the right-wing maniac (RWM) is a God-fearing, gun-toting, flag-waving American, and proud of it. They don't care about the rest of the world, unless it's to "prove" that America is better than everything else, and they cannot stand liberal whining over civil rights. They hate the moral decay of America and want it to revert into a nation of heterosexual, Christian whites like it was meant to be. Woe betide anyone that dares to suggest otherwise.
There are two ways to approach this kind of maniac. The harder to pull off is the militant atheist, but this is quite common amongst /. posters and you would
have to be very offensive to get this to work. Of course with religion trolls,
the argument can go on for ever once it's started... The more common approach is
the Christian fundamentalist. They are ignorant, intolerant and bigoted in the
extreme. For them the Bible is the inerrant word of God revealed to man - it
contains no flaws and no contradictions. Thus they are strict Creationists -
mentions of evolution or cosmology will set them off on vitriolic rants. Flaming
denunciations of anyone daring to contradict the "Word of God" are the way to
go, and any kind of proof can always be ignored by appealing to "secular
humanist brainwashing". And let's not forget, the USA is the greatest nation on
Earth because it has the righteous power of Jesus Christ behind it.
Pick a philosophy, any philosophy. This troll is a troll with a cause - they have found some kind of ideological truth, and are out to expose every other philosophy as a sham. Whether it be libertarianism, objectivism, communism or capitalism, this troll will point out the obvious "flaws" in any other philosophies, whilst spouting dogma about their own. And the best thing is - you don't even need to know that much about what you're spouting - making doctrinaire mistakes will get both sides of the argument flaming you, adding to the fun.
This is an old favourite and crops up in many forms, covering the gamut from OS maniacs (Linux zealots, MS-apologists or embittered BSD fanatics), language maniacs (Pascal vs. C, C vs. C++, C++ vs. Java, Perl vs. Python, VB vs. everything), application maniacs(GIMP vs. Photoshop, Netscape vs. IE, vi vs. emacs) and also includes people who complain about how technology should only be for the 31337 hackers.
Americans love their guns, and will always fight passionately for their Constitutionally guarenteed rights to bear arms and shoot people. Even the slightest hint of criticism of this will bring down the wrath of a thousand and one enraged gun-owners on you, so it's always a great point to work into a troll :)
The Expert is someone who is "savvy" in their particular field, and is perfectly willing to give their opinion on any topic even vauguely related to their field. The Expert is most likely to be from a field which /.ers as a rule
despise - the classic example is dumb marketing guy, but try consultants,
lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, executives, journalists (just think Jon Katz).
With this kind of troll sweeping statements with little content are the norm,
along wire dire portents of future catastrophe and dark hints of "insider
knowledge".
Some possible angles to exploit:
The expert knows the computing industry from the inside - as a long-term pro, they can dispense knowledge knowing that they can "speak for the industry". Their smug self-satisfaction is bound to annoy, as is any suggestion that things aren't the way that /.ers would like it - saying "Linux requires the rock-solid
guarantee of a trusted company like Microsoft" or "Apache cannot be trusted for
mission-critical enterprise platforms" is guaranteed to get you denials
explaining exactly why you're wrong, in excruciating detail.
With their tech-savvy (or law-savvy or whatever) experience, the expert is obviously the best person to point out what's wrong with things or to give out useful "factual" information. In fact this probably works best with lawyer trolls - for all that /.ers protest "IANAL", they certainly seem to think they
could be, and any mistakes you make will send them rushing to prove themselves
by correcting you.
Not really a "troll" in the strict Jargon File sense of the word, but they certainly should be included here :) This category includes parodies, offtopic
weirdness any all kinds of amusing stuff. Not really my area of expertise, this
stuff is mainly done by gnarphlager and opensourceman. Thanks to gnarphlager for
this section.
Offtopic trolls, like any other, come in almost as many colours as an iMac, but generally not as cute. But then again, a good offtopic "troll" can affect more people than a repulsive little gumdrop on your desk, because you need to have someone SEE your desk before they can react. Simple? Moreso than even my overblown prose could indicate. Some basic examples:
Write a story. Keep expanding it. It doesn't matter what article you post it under, so long as it's high up. If you want people to recognize you, pick a couple themes or symbols, and carry them on throughout the story. Other alternatives include back linking or including the entire story, but adding more each time. Be funny if you want. Or if you don't feel like being funny, just be really weird. Someone will react.
This has nothing to do with anything. Be it a stream of consciousness rant, or a description of the corner of your desk. Another favorite is a monologue, read as if spoken from any one given entity to another. The more outlandish, the better (a pair of socks talking to a mousepad, for example). If you really wanted to be artsy, work in an actual metaphor or legitimate meaning behind it, but it's not necessary.
Start out with a comment about the article. Have a definite opinion of it. Then, after a little while, disintegrate into randomness. All roads eventually can eventually lead to cheese (yum), Natalie Portman, cannibalism, toasters, squirrels, futons, you name it. All it takes is a little bit of creativity. Oh, and feel free to use other trolls' motifs. Open source and all that ;-)
General tips:
The following links contain background information useful for trolls needing quick quotes and "expert" opinions to include.
© spiralx, I did not write this ;)
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
I think this is a nice product, but XUnit is still more flexible in regression and repetition testing. First off, this requires Python and an interface to Python from your application. That's not something I want to add to my system just to do testing. XUnit has basically been ported to every known language out there and is integrated into the languge. Also the way that you specify tests is maintained in a database. In a team development environment, you now have to have the db engine installed in everyone's workspace. While the db and python approach might offer a few more options maintenance wise, it makes things more complicated than they have to. XUnit has proven itself to be an excellent means of testing so if this is something new to you, try it out first before leaping into other technologies. No db or external language needed. Just my 2c worth on a quiet Christmas eve.
liB
This is version 0.6 of a troll HOWTO, sort of a companion piece to jsm's excellent troll FAQ. As a draft, comments and criticism are always welcome, if not appreciated :)
Section 1 - Trolling techniquesThere are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking /.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining how
to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll can
break any or all of these and still be successful...
- Timing
- Exposure
- Accounts
- Layout
- Size
- Spelling
- Subject
- Style
- Linking
- Feeding
- Know your audience
- Arrogance
- Offensiveness
- Indifference
- Sympathy
- The common touch
- The 31337 touch
- Contradiction
- Denial
- Claiming credit
- Ending the troll
- The cheap $3 crack
Section 2 - Types of trollBecause you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favour of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customise them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since /. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of
similar stories.
Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway :)
Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies - /.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large
thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment
thresholds to values higher than 0 - to get the attention of these you either
want to get your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets
moderated up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.
An alternative to the time-honoured tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a "troll" account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anoymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though :)
The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on /. and watch the karma roll
in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in terms
of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold of
2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent,
and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the +1
bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.
To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.
Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A workable minimum is a couple of medium paragraphs. Conversely, it shouldn't be too long, or no-one will bother to read it. Keep it to a happy medium.
Whilst spelling is important if you want the troll to be taken "seriously", key spelling mistakes can draw out the spelling zealots, especially if you mis-spell the name of a venerated /. hero, like Linus Torveldes or Richard
Strawlman (thanks dmg). Related to this is the use of the wrong word, explaining
an acronym as being something it isn't or making a word into an acronym even
when it isn't.
The subject line needs to draw attention to your post without making it obvious that it is a troll. A simple statement of the main point of your argument can work here.
Once you realise that most moderators don't bother to read past the first paragraph or two, you can use this fact to craft trolls that can be moderated up as "Insightful" (note that I mean this in the /. sense rather than the
real-world sense). Start off fairly reasonable, making statements that are /.
friendly and not being too controversial. As the troll goes on, make it more and
more controversial, building it up for the coup de grace in the final
paragraph.
As we all know, a post with links is considered "informative" by the /. crowd. Moderators love it, and they rarely
check the links, so be sure to include as many as possible. And make them wrong
- a link to the Perl website should instead
point to the Python website instead, and vice
versa. The other alternative to incorrect links is "useful" links to places like
www.linux.org and www.microsoft.com i.e. places /.ers could
never have found on their own :)
The ideal troll requires no feeding - it runs on its own, generating flamewars between clueless /.ers for your amusement. But often a troll requires
some help and so you should consider feeding it. Feeding is best reserved for
people making either completely clueless responses, people making responses with
holes in, or those wonderful people who write a 2000-word point-by-point
rebuttal of your troll.
Always keep in mind the kind of things advocated on /. so that you can play
on and against them. This is why anti-Linux, creationist, gun-loving,
pro-corporation trolls work well - the vast majority of /.ers hold the opposite
viewpoints. And if a few people agree with you, so much the better - it merely
validates your viewpoint in the eyes of readers.
Be arrogant. You, as a troll, know that you're right. No other explanation could exist. The wronger the "fact", the more assertively you should state it. Make it clear that you are better than everyone else - you know the truth and they are just too stupid to realise it. Use plenty of sarcasm, and use "quotes" to show it to people too dumb to realise.
Being offensive in your initial troll can be counter-productive - it causes moderators to mark you down as flamebait in general. But if you're feeding, then you can get away with calling /.ers all kinds of things. Make broad
generalisations about /. readers - call them "long-haired Linux zealots",
"socialist open-source bigots" or whatever. Stereotyping is encouraged - people
always want to think that they're an individual, and will point this out to you
given half a chance.
Great for articles with a political or social bent, this kind of troll expresses complete indifference to the topic at hand, wondering who on Earth cares about it. An alternative method is to say that the topic only concerns a certain group of people - criminals, idiots, hackers (always use this instead of crackers) or whatever group you want to offend.
Appear to take the same stance as the people you're trying to troll - claim you're as much a fan of Linux as the next man, but... This way you can make all kinds of claims in the sure knowledge that you actually know what you're talking about. A great phrase to use here is "In my experience". Remember to act like all the things you're pointing out are unfortunate but true.
Always accuse /.ers of being elitist. This is an easy thing to do seeing as a
lot of them are. Claim that is their grandmother couldn't use it, then they are
just into it to feel better than Joe Sixpack rather than "doing it for the
average user". This is always great for working into anti-Linux trolls - attack
command-line tools and poorly designed desktops.
The opposite of the above. Claim that technology or whatever is only for the elite of society and that any attempt to open it up for everyone is wrong, an attack on intellectualism and possibly even dangerous. If people were meant to understand these things then they would, and it's their fault if they're too stupid to learn.
Never be afraid to contradict yourself, even in the space of a single sentence. The phrases "I am a top programmer who codes in VB" or "I am a supporter of open source who uses NT at work and 95 at home" will be sure to get a response from some weenie smugly pointing out the contradiction. Confuse the issue more by engaging in contradiction when you are feeding - this will confuse /.ers who will then make even more stupid replies, leaving them even more wide
open for response.
Clues
If you're feeling brave, give the reader clues that this is an obvious troll. The classic example here is dmg's stock phrase "I am often accused of trolling (whatever that is)", but also feel free to use phrases like "I have not read the article, and I don't know much about XYZ but I feel I must comment". If anyone responds to a troll with these kinds of clues in it, feel free to bask in the glow of knee-jerk /. responses.
If you're unlucky someone will accuse you of being a troll (surely not!) and try and ruin it for you. If you don't want it all to end there, then be sure to counter it by accusing them of being small-minded and petty, saying that it's easier for them to say it's a troll than to accept that people have different opinions. Be sure to say this in the subject line, especially if their subject was the infamous "YHBT. YHL. HAND."
Given that /. has its community of regular trolls (hi guys!), it's only
polite to publish your troll on one of the so-called "hidden" forums for all to
see and admire. This way, you get to bask in the praise of other trolls, they
get to contribute to your's if they want to, and you get an easy way to find the
troll later on when you want to check on its progress :)
As for when to post it, that's a matter of opinion really. You can either post it straight away or leave it will after people start biting. Remember that the troll forum is also frequented by non-trolls, and sometimes you may get a self-declared "troll-buster" try and expose you. But remember, /.ers always post
before thinking, and often it doesn't matter at all.
There is no real current forum at the moment thanks to various spammers hitting the sids, but try trolltalk, the original troll sid started by 80md and osm way back in the day. Generally all postings are done there as an AC, with your name at the end of the post. Include a link to the troll somewhere in the text, which ideally will be directly to the post and its replies - click on the #XX link in the thread to get there.
Sometimes you just get bored with a troll, or people start posting genuinely thoughtful stuff in reply (it does happen). When this happens it might be time to own up to the troll with a helpful "YHBT. YHL. HAND." post. Sometimes people will carry on a discussion of the issue, and if you're really lucky (and it was a great troll) they will completely fail to believe you and carry on arguing. If that happens, pat yourself on the back for writing a great troll :)
Finally, when all else fails and your troll gets moderated down to (-1, Troll) within ten seconds of you posting it, the only honourable thing to do is to accuse the moderators of smoking the cheap $3 crack (again) and give up :(
- The Maniac
- The Right-Wing Maniac
- Religion
- Ideology
- Software
- Guns
- The Expert
- Industry knowledge
- Helpful hints
- Offtopic Trolls
- The serial troll
- The random troll
- The vaguely related troll
- If it's funny for a fleeting moment, then it's worth posting.
- Puns. Puns are only less vile than mimes, but it's hard to mime on
/. So
feel free/obligated to litter your offtopic and random bits with puns. Hurt the
bastards. And if they're sick enough to laugh at them, then they'll eventually
end up here ;-)
- Obscure cultural references and injokes are always good. SOMEONE will get
them eventually.
- Several drafts of a serial or random post are common, but true elegance is
being able to come up with something on the spot that still makes the top 40
posts (on a post-heavy article)
Section 3 - Useful trolling linksProbably the most popular kind of troll, the Maniac holds an opinion on something, and won't budge from that opinion no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. If challenged, the Maniac will simply get more and more agitated and abusive, deriding his opponents as "idiots", "wrong-thinking", "dangerous" and "subversive". Generally the Maniac takes a position that opposes the prevalent /. beliefs, but a similar effect can be achieved by taking a
typical /. viewpoint and pushing it to ridiculous extremes.
Maniacs can be crafted for practically every article /. posts, although some
are more obvious targets than others. Civil liberty articles, especially on
things like censorship, DMCA, UCITA that really get /.ers riled up, are usually
extremely fruitful grounds for a well-crafted maniac. The other obvious type of
article is anything which could possibly involve religion, especially evolution :)
Here are some fruitful avenues to explore:
Always popular, the right-wing maniac (RWM) is a God-fearing, gun-toting, flag-waving American, and proud of it. They don't care about the rest of the world, unless it's to "prove" that America is better than everything else, and they cannot stand liberal whining over civil rights. They hate the moral decay of America and want it to revert into a nation of heterosexual, Christian whites like it was meant to be. Woe betide anyone that dares to suggest otherwise.
There are two ways to approach this kind of maniac. The harder to pull off is the militant atheist, but this is quite common amongst /. posters and you would
have to be very offensive to get this to work. Of course with religion trolls,
the argument can go on for ever once it's started... The more common approach is
the Christian fundamentalist. They are ignorant, intolerant and bigoted in the
extreme. For them the Bible is the inerrant word of God revealed to man - it
contains no flaws and no contradictions. Thus they are strict Creationists -
mentions of evolution or cosmology will set them off on vitriolic rants. Flaming
denunciations of anyone daring to contradict the "Word of God" are the way to
go, and any kind of proof can always be ignored by appealing to "secular
humanist brainwashing". And let's not forget, the USA is the greatest nation on
Earth because it has the righteous power of Jesus Christ behind it.
Pick a philosophy, any philosophy. This troll is a troll with a cause - they have found some kind of ideological truth, and are out to expose every other philosophy as a sham. Whether it be libertarianism, objectivism, communism or capitalism, this troll will point out the obvious "flaws" in any other philosophies, whilst spouting dogma about their own. And the best thing is - you don't even need to know that much about what you're spouting - making doctrinaire mistakes will get both sides of the argument flaming you, adding to the fun.
This is an old favourite and crops up in many forms, covering the gamut from OS maniacs (Linux zealots, MS-apologists or embittered BSD fanatics), language maniacs (Pascal vs. C, C vs. C++, C++ vs. Java, Perl vs. Python, VB vs. everything), application maniacs(GIMP vs. Photoshop, Netscape vs. IE, vi vs. emacs) and also includes people who complain about how technology should only be for the 31337 hackers.
Americans love their guns, and will always fight passionately for their Constitutionally guarenteed rights to bear arms and shoot people. Even the slightest hint of criticism of this will bring down the wrath of a thousand and one enraged gun-owners on you, so it's always a great point to work into a troll :)
The Expert is someone who is "savvy" in their particular field, and is perfectly willing to give their opinion on any topic even vauguely related to their field. The Expert is most likely to be from a field which /.ers as a rule
despise - the classic example is dumb marketing guy, but try consultants,
lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, executives, journalists (just think Jon Katz).
With this kind of troll sweeping statements with little content are the norm,
along wire dire portents of future catastrophe and dark hints of "insider
knowledge".
Some possible angles to exploit:
The expert knows the computing industry from the inside - as a long-term pro, they can dispense knowledge knowing that they can "speak for the industry". Their smug self-satisfaction is bound to annoy, as is any suggestion that things aren't the way that /.ers would like it - saying "Linux requires the rock-solid
guarantee of a trusted company like Microsoft" or "Apache cannot be trusted for
mission-critical enterprise platforms" is guaranteed to get you denials
explaining exactly why you're wrong, in excruciating detail.
With their tech-savvy (or law-savvy or whatever) experience, the expert is obviously the best person to point out what's wrong with things or to give out useful "factual" information. In fact this probably works best with lawyer trolls - for all that /.ers protest "IANAL", they certainly seem to think they
could be, and any mistakes you make will send them rushing to prove themselves
by correcting you.
Not really a "troll" in the strict Jargon File sense of the word, but they certainly should be included here :) This category includes parodies, offtopic
weirdness any all kinds of amusing stuff. Not really my area of expertise, this
stuff is mainly done by gnarphlager and opensourceman. Thanks to gnarphlager for
this section.
Offtopic trolls, like any other, come in almost as many colours as an iMac, but generally not as cute. But then again, a good offtopic "troll" can affect more people than a repulsive little gumdrop on your desk, because you need to have someone SEE your desk before they can react. Simple? Moreso than even my overblown prose could indicate. Some basic examples:
Write a story. Keep expanding it. It doesn't matter what article you post it under, so long as it's high up. If you want people to recognize you, pick a couple themes or symbols, and carry them on throughout the story. Other alternatives include back linking or including the entire story, but adding more each time. Be funny if you want. Or if you don't feel like being funny, just be really weird. Someone will react.
This has nothing to do with anything. Be it a stream of consciousness rant, or a description of the corner of your desk. Another favorite is a monologue, read as if spoken from any one given entity to another. The more outlandish, the better (a pair of socks talking to a mousepad, for example). If you really wanted to be artsy, work in an actual metaphor or legitimate meaning behind it, but it's not necessary.
Start out with a comment about the article. Have a definite opinion of it. Then, after a little while, disintegrate into randomness. All roads eventually can eventually lead to cheese (yum), Natalie Portman, cannibalism, toasters, squirrels, futons, you name it. All it takes is a little bit of creativity. Oh, and feel free to use other trolls' motifs. Open source and all that ;-)
General tips:
The following links contain background information useful for trolls needing quick quotes and "expert" opinions to include.
© spiralx, I did not write this ;)
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
I do it wrong
Laying here in the shadows of my room, I squint up at my love. My Ms. Portman. I am sore and tired after fucking her for eight solid hours. My chapped and aching dick is soaking in grits to relieve the pain. She gets on her knees and starts lapping the grits up out of the bowl. She places her beautiful hands on my penis and starts to lick the grits off my achy piece.
Massaging my nutsack she....
WAIT, I DO IT WRONG!!!!
Yanking my dick out of her mouth I throw her to the ground and shove it in to her gaping freshly fisted ass. [goatse.cx]
"OH BIG ASS SPORK!! Fuck my ass, fuck my ass good. DEEPER, my stallion, deeper!! Make a Beowulf cluster of sperm on my back!!"
"Imagine a Beowulf cluster of this baby!"
I DO IT WRONG!!!!
I continue to hump her alabaster form. Glistening with beads of sweat, she bites her lip in delight as I tear her ass open with my engorged dick.
"Queen Amidala!!" I shreik as I near climax.
She looks up at me and screams, "You are so alive in me, unlike *BSD or VA Software!!! Fill me with seed!! Yes, Yes, Yess!!!!"
"For me you are calling, hhhmmm?"
"YODA?!? What the fuck, can't you see I am using the force here?"
He savagely kicks my Natalie aside, he pulls out his large green penis and impales me...
I DO IT WRONG!!
All your sporkz are belong to the dead homiez!!
I DO IT WRONG!!! Friday December 14, @11:02AM
I do it wrong
Laying here in the shadows of my room, I squint up at my love. My Ms. Portman. I am sore and tired after fucking her for eight solid hours. My chapped and aching dick is soaking in grits to relieve the pain. She gets on her knees and starts lapping the grits up out of the bowl. She places her beautiful hands on my penis and starts to lick the grits off my achy piece.
Massaging my nutsack she....
WAIT, I DO IT WRONG!!!!
Yanking my dick out of her mouth I throw her to the ground and shove it in to her gaping freshly fisted ass.
"OH BIG ASS SPORK!! Fuck my ass, fuck my ass good. DEEPER, my stallion, deeper!! Make a Beowulf cluster of sperm on my back!!"
"Imagine a Beowulf cluster of this baby!"
I DO IT WRONG!!!!
Trolling for Chuy Tuesday December 11, @03:42PM It is a well known fact that Jesus, AKA the Lord, OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR, Son of God, Chuy, etc... Was in fact a troll. This whole turn the other cheek thing, for example is a fairly obvious troll. If only they had a moderation system in the first few years of the common era, this could have been mod'd out of our view.
There are other examples of Jesus trolling his disciples. Stopping the flow of blood for that old lady, for example. He invented the tampax, and trolled it as a miracle. The list could surely continue.
In conclussion, let us all make WWJD our mantra. Let us troll for Jesus.
---
ADDENDUM: This troll has been mod'd up (+1 Funny), this is a scary world we live in!
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
I'm not really familiar with software test suites, but the examples on the QMTest page is kind of like testing hardware; an input is given and an output is expected and thus tested. But is this enough for software development?
Is there any way to test other software scenarioes (ie GUI applications like page rengering, user interface, program response, program flow logic)? It seems that the most bugs often arise from an error in the program logic. Does the "real world" test programs other than having many people use the program and filling bug reports?
Collated by Drs. David B. Busch and James R. Starling, Madison, Wis.
CASE REPORTS
Case 1. A 39-year-old married white male lawyer presented with a self- inserted perfume bottle in his rectum that he was unable to remove using various objects, including a back scratcher. He had inserted this bottle on previous occasions. Edema of the rectum and sigmoid colon precluded the successful manual removal of the object in the emergency room. A pelvic x-ray film showed the object to be lodged 12 cm proximal to the dentate line. The 3 by 17 cm object, 'Impulse Body Spray,' was removed manually after a spinal anesthetic. The patient was discharged on the second postoperative day. He refused psychologic counseling.
Case 2. A 39-year-old white male was admitted to the University Hospital psychiatric service for evaluation of a 2-week history of bloody diarrhea and auditory hallucinations. Rectal examination revealed a foreign body approximately 3 cm above the anal verge. An x- ray film showed that it was 20 cm in length. The object could not be removed by manual or endoscopic means. The patient consented to extraction of the dildo under general anesthetic. Biopsy specimens of the hemorrhagic rectal mucosa were performed and were negative on Ziehl-Neelson stains for mycobacterial or cryptosporidium infection. The patient was discharged without complications the following day.
Case ReportsButt-related ItemsConcrete Enema Mix the Sad Truth about gerbilling An Unusual Delivery The Butthole Surfers Artillery Shell Substantiated!thanx to Kelvin Lau Paul Spinrad's 'Joseph Pujol, The Fartiste' So ISlipped in the Shower Annie D's'Using the word 'butt' in any sentence' pageThe100-Watt Bulb and the Bottle of Whiskey The Chronicles of Mistybutt I Took the Call--Anecdotes Butt Pirates of the Caribbean
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
Natalie Portman rooted my Windows XP beowolf cluster and remotely poured 200 bowls of hot grits down my pants before the heat sinks fell off all the processors and a man over the the intercom said, "All your dead penis bird are belong to Cowboy Neal" and I know I'm going to get modded down for this but Bill Gates is the anti-Christ and how is this news for nerds? I ask you can I boot linux on this dishwasher and run a MySQL database and 48 Seti@home clients while I read Jon Katz latest article on using the latest PDA in combat against Afghan terrorists? Oh my God Big Brother is watching me in the shower while I stroke off my micro penis and I'm thinking about 'All Dead Hommies' and Ben Franklin said The price of liberty is eternal vigilance while the Nazi hypocrites on the Slashdot staff practice Nazi censorship and buttfuck each other all the day long. DMCA RIAA black helicopters oh god would help us all if you just THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
I have already downloaded both the linux and windows versions of the software. Not bad for an initial release. Although, this version does not seem to support Python 2.2. Thought this might be useful. May save some folks some time anyway. After taking a brief look at the tool. It shows some definite promise. The documentation is both clear and useful. I was up and running in under 10 minutes after I figured out the Python 2.2 incompatability issue. Any word on planned features for the next release?
I recently tried JUnit which is pretty simple. JUnit uses a java gui for running tests although the tests must be hard coded into test classes (its actually pretty easy). Looking at QMTest, it seems that the test scenarios can be modified using the web gui. Cool!
Merry XXX MAZ and a shout out to all my niggaz! WORD! Fuck to the mutherland, yo. Keep it real with a Christmas Ham. A "Black Ham" is a watermelon. Peace out.
heres more info on it.
Posted by chrisd [dibona.com] on Tuesday December 11, @08:22PM
from the no-mention-of-peg-legs-and-eye-patches dept.
akiaki007 [mailto] was among many who wrote in to say: "Check out this article [nytimes.com] on the New York Times [nytimes.com] (free reg, blah blah) site. The CmdrTaco have raided 27 cities in 21 states. Raid sites include MIT [mit.edu], UCLA [ucla.edu], Purdue [purdue.edu], Duke [duke.edu], UofO, all hot-beds of young tender assholes. Their main target was the group DrinkOrDie [google.com], an asshole appreciation club. 'This is a new frontier for crime,' Kenneth W. Dam, deputy secretary of the Treasury, said at a news briefing. 'The costs are enormous to both industry and consumers.' I better hide my asshole. They might think it's some weird fucking tool."
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
First, I like writing test cases in a text editor, programmatically. It's tedious enough writing them in the first place, at least I can cut-and-paste and modify them quickly in an editor. Going through a web GUI does not seem like it's very efficient. Also, I don't particularly like using anything other than the implementation language and shell scripts for test cases; otherwise, people receiving the source code need to install additional tools. I also don't see anything in the white paper about support for the hard parts of testing, like configuration and compilation management for lots of extra C/C++ code, GUI testing, or web site testing (the latter usually require recording and playback).
Altogether, I'm not sure I ever felt I needed something like what QMTest seems to be doing. And the things that are actually difficult to test, it doesn't seem to provide useful support for. Can someone explain what I'm missing?
How to Sex Small Mammals
Quit snickering! Figuring out the gender of a hamster, guinea pig, or other small mammal who comes into your shelter is no laughing matter. After all, if your little tenants get busy lovin', it can result in even more unwanted small pets, and pretty soon your shelter will look like a Little-Critter Free-Love Commune. When examining creatures this small, it's all in the details. Read on to find out how you can easily tell the boys from the girls.
1. Determining Gerbil Gender
You can sex a gerbil starting at the age of four to six weeks by peering at the animal's underside. To minimize stress on the animal and also make handling easier, place the gerbil in a large clear box to search for a pair of large testicles; if you spot them, you've got your answer to the gender question. Since the sexual and urinary openings of female gerbils is much less obvious to the naked eye, it helps to look for small nipples on the underside. Still stumped? The distance between sexual and anal organs is longer on the male than it is on the female.
2. Holding Off Hamster Hanky-Panky
Using the clear box trick, look for large testicles on the underside of the hamster. In males, there will also be a bigger gap between the urinary and anal openings. The perineal area (or the area between the genitals and the anus) comes to a point at the base of the tail in females, but this area looks more rounded in males.
3. Is This Mickey or Minnie Mouse?
As with the other small mammals, the distance between the anus and genitals of mice is longer in males. In addition to the closer spacing, female mice have a small teardrop-shaped vagina extending down from the anus. Both openings are very close together and appear to be connected. Female mice also have two rows of nipples running vertically down their bellies.
4. Playing Rat Roulette
Since you don't want to say, "Oh, rats," after making a mistake in gender distinction, remember that male rats have a stronger odor than female rats. As with other rodents, male rats have a greater distance between sexual and anal openings, and their testicles are no shrinking violets.
5. No Guinea Pig Guessing
Male guinea pigs have obvious scrotal pouches and large testes. The sexual organ of a male guinea pig will look more like a belly button right above the anal opening. Very little space separates these parts; if you are looking at a young guinea pig, gentle manual pressure can help you distinguish between them. The organs of female guinea pigs are also close together and look something like the letter "Y"; this Y-shaped depression can be seen even in immature females.
6. Making Rabbit Rulings
Figuring out the sex of young rabbits can be tricky, but it gets a little easier as they mature to about 10 weeks old or so. Put your hand under the rabbit and feel around for furry testicles; keep in mind that testicles in rabbits move freely from the scrotum to the abdomen. On male rabbits, you will also see a tubular protrusion, whereas the female reproductive area will simply look more like a slit even when pressure is applied.
Animal Sheltering, Jul-Aug 2000 Issue
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
The page cannot be displayed The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings. Please try the following: Click the Refresh button, or try again later. If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly. To check your connection settings, click the Tools menu, and then click Internet Options. On the Connections tab, click Settings. The settings should match those provided by your local area network (LAN) administrator or Internet service provider (ISP). If your Network Administrator has enabled it, Microsoft Windows can examine your network and automatically discover network connection settings. If you would like Windows to try and discover them, click Detect Network Settings Some sites require 128-bit connection security. Click the Help menu and then click About Internet Explorer to determine what strength security you have installed. If you are trying to reach a secure site, make sure your Security settings can support it. Click the Tools menu, and then click Internet Options. On the Advanced tab, scroll to the Security section and check settings for SSL 2.0, SSL 3.0, TLS 1.0, PCT 1.0. Click the Back button to try another link. Cannot find server or DNS Error Internet Explorer
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
http://goatse.cx
http://goatse.cx
http://goatse.cx
http://goatse.cx
There's a little mistletoe above goatse's ass!
KISS IT!
http://goatse.cx
http://goatse.cx
http://goatse.cx
http://goatse.cx
A few days ago in a galaxy very very nearby, I - LOCAL BOY EATS FOOD - got the opportunity to catch a sneak peak at SWORDFISH, a movie starring none other than WOLVERINE of the movie X-MEN, Storm of the movie X-MEN, the black porn dude from BOOGIE NIGHTS and Terl. My friend Dan was all like, "Dude, take my shift at Suncoast Video, I totally have to see SWORDFISH!" and I was all like, "No" so he gave me his super-secret, VIP-only test screening tickets. I thanked him by giving him the codes to make Lara Croft tomb raid in her panties for the new Tomb Raider video game (my review of THAT can be found in the poop shoot archives), and called my partner in crime MOTHER OF LOCAL BOY EATS FOOD and we were off for a date with destiny except it's not really a date because she's my mom and that would be weird.
Anyway, we go to the theater, and I am surprised but gladdened that nobody recognizes me. I mean, if these stupid movie people knew I was the guy that posted that SCATHING REVIEW of BATMAN & ROBIN all those years back, they probably would have been like, "Eat food somewhere else, local boy, we're gonna let someone else in." But they didn't know it was me (I think I threw them off because I wore my glow-in-the-dark SPAWN T-shirt, and they know that LOCAL BOY EATS FOOD gave SPAWN a terrible review...Mom wore a sundress) and I was in like Flynt.
Mom and I entered the theater and made a b-line for the candy counter. Odin knows that LOCAL BOY EATS FOOD needs his nourishment of earthly goods to fully enjoy a film. The candy-bartender gave me a weird look, and I was like "By Crom, he knows me!" and I was all set to throw smoke pellets on the ground and shoot a grappling hook into the air, making my escape through the sky-light, but it turns out that he went to high school with LOCAL BOY EATS FOOD. He was all up in my grill with "Jesus beezus you've let yourself go. I mean, you were always (expletive deleted)-ing fat, like 300 pounds, but you're almost double that now, huh?" I laughed and ordered my extra large popcorn and whoppers and extry large coke and made my way to the theater. Mom got some chocolate-covered gummi bears and followed.
I took a seat, wiping sweat from my brow as it was a long long trek from the candy counter, and settled in. Mom did the same just as the lights went down. I applauded and some nerf herder threw half a Cadbury's Cream Egg at me. As the credits for SWORDFISH rolled I enjoyed my newfound Cream Egg booty and laughed the laugh of the ages. Mom asked me to be quiet.
The theater was hot and stuffy. I think the air conditioner broke down, but Mom said it was fine and maybe I should take off my jacket. I said "You take off your jacket" which was at once funny because I was all up in that and also kinda dumb because she wasn't wearing a jacket. I apologized about halfway through the movie and she seemed confused, as if she forgot about what I was talking about but deep down I think she knew what I meant.
Just as Terl was doing something really boss with Wolverine, the hag in front of me asked me to stop being a smart ass and cut out the heavy breathing. I found this odd because this was, sadly, my normal way of breathing, and just as I was about to come up with a witty retort that woulda been right up there with "You take off your jacket" I felt a sharp shooting pain up and down my arm and chest. Thinking fast, I prescribed my own treatment of more popcorn and everything was fine.
After the movie was over me and Mom were asked to fill out the response cards. The guy that handed me mine gave me a look that made me fear for a minute that maybe he knew LOCAL BOY EATS FOOD but all was well when he made a really funny Earth comment like "I hope my kid doesn't turn out like you, you red-faced, sweaty mess." You better hope your spawn (the child, not the awful movie) isn't a thing like me, Card-handing guy, lest TWO people tell it like it is on the best movie rumor website that ever was. I had a really good comeback for him, and thought it and laughed but I forget now what it was.
After filling out the cards, MOTHER OF LOCAL BOY EATS FOOD and LOCAL BOY EATS FOOD went to their respective potties and then met in the Lobby. Mom took a while and when she came out she looked as though she had been crying, which was excellent because it gave me some extra time to stare at the poster for RUSH HOUR 2. (Man, if the 2 in the title means 2 times the fun then we're in for 2 times ALOT of fucking fun in August.)
Next we went to the local diner and ate some food. My burger was a bit underdone but a simple solution of ALOT MORE KETCHUP took care of that right quick. The fries were X-ceptionally good, and some were burnt and I like that and figure they probably eat them like that on planet Psyclo. My Mountain Dew was a bit watered down. I think they need to change the syrup in the dispenser. But even watered down Mountain Dew is better than I think sex must be because Mountain Dew is surely the game of champions if it was a game. I commented to my Mom how if there was an indeed a mountain that secreted such dew than I sure would like to visit it and she started crying again.
When we got home Mom poured herself a nice stiff one and I settled in to talk to my friends on the computer. They seemed at once jealous and highly amused by my Mountain Dew story and were LOL-ing into the wee hours of the morn. After watching an episode of BLIND DATE and spending some quality time with my Troi collectibles I settled in for a long winter's hyper-sleep.
It was a good, good day. And SWORDFISH sucked, but you get to see Storm's mutant powers. And by mutant powers I mean boobs.
LOCAL BOY EATS FOOD signing off!
Haha. When you categorized the trolls, you basically categorized every single message that is ever posted on /.
open up while i rip a load into your mouth
Get that rats nest off your head, you numbskull -- Wesley Willis
As an XP developer I take a serious interest in unit testing, so I browsed the site - claims claims claims, but no details... I perused their PDF white paper - more claims and absolutely no specifics.
If they can't explain exactly what you get with QMTest in a few paragraphs, then it is probably not worth my time. Thankfully I'm already quite pleased with JUnit, RubyUnit and CppUnit.
However, if other slashdot readers have more patience with the project - I encourage them to write a summary of their findings here!
- expensive, and
- invaluable for really testing a GUI and keeping it tested over the long term. It's even worth getting only a couple of licenses for a group of developers rather than go entirely without.
I've seen a lot of other automated approaches consed up for testing various GUIs, but nothing replaces a tool that can actually go out and interact with the GUI directly through the windowing system. The simplest tools will let you record mouse and keyboard events; the usable ones have enough understanding of the underlying interface primitives to reasonably abstract your actions. E.g., figure out and record that you're pressing button "foo" in box "bar" rather than clicking at 80,130, or that you're editing in a text entry box rather than just getting a bunch of keyboard events, so that when you reformat a dialog box the test case doesn't break. That encourages developers to do the right thing and build up and maintain *lots* of test cases; there are a lot more stupid corners for testing in a GUI app than the command line equivalent.This was also one of my concerns. Though I haven't yet successfully downloaded the source from this rather slow site, I do note that it also supports a command line interface.
I'm currently wrestling with dejagnu. Although the documentation of this tool seems to assume a familiarity with autoconf that I do not yet have, it is simple enough to use once you have set up the project test suite. I'd say it's probably pretty hard to beat. Expect is a pretty good tool upon which to base a test suite.
Well then you're not looking hard enough. Try http://scons.sourceforge.net/ for an implementation of winning build tool in alpha stage.
Speaking of build tools, there is a really nifty one called CONS It does automatic dependecy management, interfaces to repositories, and is written in Perl! I messed around with makefiles for a long time before I found this, and it made a fairly messed up kernel tree a cinch to build.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
So they've gathered a lot of requirements and done a lot design, but, as the lady says, "Where's the beef?" Why do all this work to replace open source tools that already exist? Why not take those tools and contribute back to them, or if the project owners don't like the contributions, take the things they like and build from there?
Perhaps this from their web page: "The Advanced Computing Laboratory at Los Alamos National Laboratory is providing $860,000 of funding for Software Carpentry, which is being administered by Code Sourcery, LLC." And this: CodeSourcery also provides training and strategic consulting services for companies considering the adoption of free or open source software.
Why use the MIT License? Why develop in Python? Why require that the submissions to the design competition not contain any source code? They require a language but not any source? Am I being too cynical in seeing how, after all this contributed design, coding, testing, etc is done, at taxpayer expense, Code Sourcery is now in a tremendous position as the sole-source solution for support and training to the shops that choose to use these tools? And to notice that choosing the MIT license allows them to take and wrap up all the source code into their products and not give back anything? These are questions that either are in the FAQ but not clearly answered, or not spoken about. Even the SC site itself has been retired and archived.
Thanks, I'll stick with XUnit, Bugzilla, cvs (and subversion when it's ready. For build config tools, well, if you do cross-platform C and C++, then autoconf or its successor, but that's just for one language and set of development requirements.
I'll be interested to see if anything widely used comes out of this exercise. So far, of the all the tools implementations promised for "Summer of 2001", we have QMTest 1.0. The rest? Late and unfinished.
I haven't looked at QMTest, so I'm going by what $parent says. I have written a whole lotta tests, as well as designed and coded testing frameworks.
In my opinion, the number one criteria for judging a testing system is: it must be dead simple to write and maintain test cases. Because writing tests (for your obviously immaculate code) is annoying enough, and if the tool gets in your way, forget it--it just won't happen. This is probably especially true for volunteer projects, although it applies in no small measure to closed shops.
So, you can invent a fancy aparatus and even a "theory of testing". But your system had better not require learning much aparatus, or any theory. Keep in mind when tempted to create or use a fancy system, that most of the value of a test run is in the first bit of information: did it work, or not? Anything after that is gravy.
So if QMTest requires a lot of infrastructure and tools and web UI's, I'd guess it's probably too heavy. Correctness testing is something that should stay out of your way. Assuming you keep your codebase working--right? :-)
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Another developer has implemented SCCons.
Both are still in development, but roundup is being used by several organisations already. We hope to have a new release out next week that will fix some problems with 0.3.0 and implement some nice functionality too.
Interesting that not one of the competition winners seems to be involved in the QM effort - and it does not look to me as if QMTest uses many of the ideas from the original testing entries (Disclaimer: I did read them all, but it was a long time ago).
Projects like this need a good communicative leader and as far as one can tell from the (old) web site things changed a great deal when Greg Wilson had to step down.
It does look as if CodeSourcery are keen to make a buck out of their involvement; perhaps it should be regarded as a win for open source software that some projects have been spawned away from the Software Carpentry umbrella. There's an article here: Software Carpentry Spin Offs
The tool is called Scons, and it is much nicer to use than make. Instead of using timestamps to determine when rebuilding is necessary (which is very error prone in networked environments like NFS), it uses MD5 checksums. I encourage everyone to take a look at it.
Scons itself is based upon Cons, a build tool based on Perl.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Expect.pm is great because you can use all those excellent perl modules (and you don't have to use tcl.)
One use I found for it is to put bash-like command-line editing on tools with lack command-line editing like Oracle's sqlplus. Just use it in conjunction with Term::ReadLine::Gnu and have ReadLine send commands to an Expect-controlled process. Sqlplus is finally usable!
-Bruce
sqlplus w/ command-line editing? You are the man!
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
The original Software Carpentry site had an excellent page explaining the reason for the whole project, but I can't find it. So I'll summarize and paraphrase from memory:
Because the original tools suck ass, that's why.
There was a great quote on the SC page, something to the effect that "when experienced *nix developers say that tools are easy to use, they really just mean that they've grown enough scar tissue that using those tools is no longer painful." I'm a long-time Old School *nix user, and I agree. Try teaching these "easy to use" tools to beginners and watch their faces contort.
Take make for example: we start with a syntax that seems custom-designed to fuck with the mind (so, rules have to be indented by one tab (why? don't ask why, they just have to be; probably because parsing was too slow back then without a leading marker character), so if you use eight spaces instead you'll get some useless error message, even though there's nothing visually apparently wrong.
Each command gets executed in a separate shell. That's always fun for beginners, and trips up experts too, until you build up enough scar tissue that ending all the commands with ";\" seems perfectly natural.
The POSIX specification for make requirements are unfortunately too weak to accomplish anything. An implementation of make must have some extensions in order to be useful. So we have a way to include other makefiles, but it's spelled differently for different versions. GNU make has some funky builtin pattern expanders, BSD make has some funky looping constructs -- and neither camp is willing to merge.
The SC project was going to replace all that crap with a tool of equal power that actually makes sense to a beginner, rather than looking like the dog's breakfast of features that make currently is.
(I, too, long for Subversions and the other Tigris projects to come to fruition.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
[Apparently this post is extremely good at getting biters. According to an anonymous cow herd, Attorney General Ashcroft is also after me now, in addition to the Canadian horsie-cops that another A.C. sent after me a couple days ago. Well, this should be fun. Keep up the biting, Slashdotters! -ed.]
What's black, blue and green and doesn't like sex? The Girl Scout locked in my basement. What's the worst part about having sex with a six year-old? Getting the blood out of your clown suit. What's the best thing about getting a hand job from a five year-old? That little hand makes your thing look really huge. Guy comes home from work to find his girlfriend sitting on the porch, crying. "What's wrong, honey?" "I'm leaving you! I just found out you're a pædophile!" "Pædophile? Why, that's a pretty big word for a ten-year old." How can you tell when your sister's on her period? When your dad's dick tastes like blood! Two pedophiles are lying on a beach tanning, one turns to the other and says, "Excuse me, you're in my son." What's 18 inches long, blue, veiny, and makes a woman cry? Crib death. How could the man's seven year-old son tell that his dad has farked his eight year-old sister? His dad's weiner tasted like blood! Watson returns home to find Holmes in bed with a child. He shouts, "Is this some sort of a schoolgirl?" Holmes replies, "Elementary, my dear Watson." So I was having sex with my girlfriend, and I decided I wanted to get kinky and try and do her in the ass. So I slipped around back; she looked over her shoulder at me and said, "My, how presumptious of you." I said, "Presumptious? That's a big word for a ten year-old." Two guys are walking down the street when a beautiful woman passes. The first guy says, "Damn! I'd love to tear her clothes off, do her in the rear, smear my fæces all over her, slice off her breasts, chop her into little pieces, put her in a garbage bag and toss her into the river!" Second guy says, "Yuck! You're a sick bastard!" First guy says, "What're you? A fag?" A Kidergarden teacher is asking the kids what their father does for a living. All the kids answer except for Little Johnny. The teacher asks Little Johnny what his Dad does and Johnny replies, "My dad is dead." The teacher says, "That's terribile, but what did he do before he died?" Little Johnny replies, "He turned blue and shit all over himself!" A guy calls in sick to work. "What's wrong?" asks the boss. "I'm sick," the guy replies. "You sound all right." "No, I'm really sick. Believe me." "Listen, you were fine yesterday, and we have a lot of work today. I want you in here. You can't be that sick!" "Dude, I just banged my sister. Don't tell me I'm not sick." A little girl accompanied her father to the barbershop. While her dad received a haircut, the little girl stood next to the barber chair, enjoying a snack cake. The barber smiled at her and said, "Sweetheart, you're going to get hair on your Twinkie." "I know," the little girl replied. "I'm gonna get tits, too." An older man and a small boy walk hand in hand through the woods. Boy: "These woods sure are spooky!" Man: "You think you're scared, I've gotta walk out of here alone." What's the difference between Neil Armstrong and Michael Jackson? One walked on the moon, and the other rapes little boys. Has anyone read Michael Jackson's new book, "The Ins and Outs of Child Rearing"? Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and a golden delicious apple? A: I don't cum all over the golden delicious apple before I take a bite out of it. Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and my girlfriend? A: I don't kiss my girlfriend after sex. Q: What is special about a dead baby over all other forms of life? A: You can achieve deep throat from whichever way you enter. Q: What do you have when you have four dead babies, take away two, and add five more? A: An orgy! Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and a table? A: You can't fuck a table. Q: What's white and bobs up and down in a baby's crib? A: A pædophile's ass. Q: Whats the safest way to play with a baby? A: With a condom. Q: Whats more fun than feeling up a dead baby? A: Feeling up a dead baby with three nipples. Q: What does a baby and a Pinto have in common? A: They're fun to ride until they die. Q: What do you get whan you dislocate a dead baby's jaw? A: Deep throat. Q: Whats the difference between a baby and a grandmother? A: Grandmothers dont die when you fuck them in the ass. Q: What's the best sound in the world? A: Hearing dead baby's hips crack under pressure! Q: Whats worse than a having sex with a dead baby? A: Having sex with a dead baby filled with razor blades. Q: How do you stop a baby from choking? A: Take your dick out of its mouth. Q: What's worse than finding a dead baby on your pillow in the morning? A: Realizing you were drunk and made love to it the night before. Q: How do you make a baby cry twice? A: Wipe your bloody cock on his teddy bear. What's better than sex with a twelve year-old boy? Absolutely nothing.Thanks to Fark.com for all of these wonderfully sick jokes! I couldn't have done it without you! And thanks to all the Anonymous Cowards who have flamed me, I have three words for you! "YHBT! YHL! HAND!"
________________________________________J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org