Microsoft Eyes UK Digital TV Provider

xiox writes: "This story by the BBC claims that Microsoft are planning to "rescue" the failed digital TV provider in the UK, ITV Digital. This would enable them to get a large share of the British TV market, as the British Government has decided that all TVs will have to switch over to digital by 2010."

Comments

Dear Klerck

[Anonymous Coward]

Do us all a huge favor and get some motherfucking self-esteem one of these days. Your incessant graffiti all over this site has grown tiresome and, if necessary, I will use whatever means possible to ensure that you no longer tarnish this page with your adolescent behavior. Perhaps if you felt like you were just a tiny bit useful and could possibly contribute something to the human race one day in the future, you would stop lashing out with hatred toward everyone and anything that stands in your way. You're a classic case of someone taking out their own emotional trama on other people. Do us all a favor and get some help, my friend, and I sincerely hope that you can reform yourself and recongize/admit to your wrongdoings.

Thanks.

Linux should rescue ITV

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be OSS freaks and the bunch of Linux losers to rescue ITV instead... (but who pays?)

You've given me the incentive to re-post my FAQ...

[Anonymous Coward]

...so I can attract people to the section on page widening. Klerck's becoming so single-handedly successful at annoying people on Slashdot, he'll have the DOJ after him unless others follow his lead!

This FAQ is designed to give tips on trolling on Slashdot, created in celebration of Blackout Week. It is dedicated to all hard-working trolls and crapflooders.

What are some good trolling tips?
Trolling is all about making people think you care, and so winding up those who care for real. Think of it like shooting a deer in front of an anti-hunt protester, or eating a Big Mac in front of a vegan. Here are some ideas for making your troll work:

1. To start off, make sure your post gets noticed -- log in, post early (after 50 +1 comments have been posted to an article, forget it), and make sure to use your +1 bonus.
2. Ensure your posting history doesn't show a history of dubious posts. Some advise (incorrectly) to stagger your trolls, but this is in fact time wasting and only helps Slashdot in the long run. If you have a doubt, just create a new account, or even post anonymous -- an effective troll, posted early enough, will gain a +1 quickly.
3. Learn from the marketing droids -- a mixture of truth and lies leaves the potential client without a clue as to which is which. Geeks smell pure bullshit, because it reminds them of their bedroom smell (see also "karma whoring" below).
4. Follow up. Keep a window open on your troll, and reload to see if people bite. Perhaps post an AC reply agreeing or disagreeing with your own post. Reply to later posts referring to your earlier post to back up your point.
5. If you get a dreaded (-1, Troll), don't be ashamed to post the well-known, "Mods on Crack!" rant. Explain, rationally, and not as yourself why you agree with the original post, and why it's a fair point.

How do I crapflood?
A crapflood is an (intentionally) content-free post. Here are some suggestions for the source of your crapflood -- remember to take care with repetition, odd characters, or repetition, to get past the lameness filter:

1. your local dictionary file, e.g. /usr/share/dict/words on BSDs
2. your local real names file, e.g. /usr/share/dict/propernames on BSDs
3. a copy-paste part of a web page (for extra amusement, copy-paste from Slashdot itself)
4. a UU-encoded newsgroup file
5. some output from a lorem ipsum generator
6. examples of your latest spams, particularly those in Korean
7. allowing your cat to walk across the keyboard for a few minutes.

How do I widen pages?
A method is known and delivered to us by the beautiful Klerck which currently works in Internet Explorer alone. This will therefore ruin the browsing experience of by far the majority of Slashdot readers. Start with the text:

http://www.eveeieyhfgfcdoosammgwsnboivvbsczxlzgabc /

then repeat /ooieiabdcdjsvbkeldfogjhiyeeejkagclmieooionoepdk /

several times, remembering to avoid the compression filter trap by using different random characters.

How do I karma whore?
"Karma whoring" is the practice of gaining moderation points for their own sake. It is particularly useful in techniques for defeating the moderation system. Some tips for karma whoring are:

1. If the site containing the actual article is not on a fast server (i.e. is not a "big site"), re-post the article with subject, "the article -- in case the site gets slashdotted". Make sure this comes as early as possible in the list of comments, to avoid the dreaded (-1, Redundant).
2. If any article pops up on Microsoft, write a stock two paragraphs explaining why Microsoft is immoral, and why the event described cannot happen with Free Software. I shall not supply text, because tests have shown that moderators are not completely stupid, and can identify duplicate posts (this is actually helpful in defeating the moderation system, see below).
3. For any article discussing a particular company, state that you worked there, and offer your "inside knowledge". Note that geeks do visit Slashdot, so do not fall into the trap of being too obvious a fraud -- a mistake made by such amateur trolls as PhysicsGenius, who must now suffer a life of instant down-modding.

How do I defeat the moderation system?
The moderation system is far from flawless. Here are some ways to devalue it:

1. If you have moderator points, for goodness sake abuse them! How about moderating up a First Post, a crapflood, or best of all, this very FAQ? It would be a crime to allow such an easily abused system to work.
2. Copy the text of another person's post, and paste it as a reply to an earlier post. Most people read oldest messages first, so they will consider yours to be the first message, and the later message to be "redundant". This is great for annoying karma whores.
3. Vote Troll posts as "underrated", thus increasing their exposure without running the risk of having your moderation rights revoked.

How do I defeat authentication?
Don't. The FBI will arrest you for being a terrorist. Instead, make an authoritative nick like CmdrTaco (editor). The majority of people are easily fooled, and will be likely to take notice of and respond to your post, and even moderate it up. Think of it like Lunix Turvalds walking into the room -- people listen to what he has to say, and don't dare disagree.

How do I defeat the goatse link early warning system?
Simple -- use one of the many foolishly implemented redirector URLs hosted on well-known sites. Here's an innocuous recent example which pretends to link to the highly informative about.com, but in fact links to a site of the popular 90's lesbian band The Spice Girls: Informative link which will get me karma

What are some excellent sites to sneakily link to?
Mostly, you should link to gay porn. If you are reading this FAQ, you already know the URLs, so I don't need to supply them, except to say that it's almost an initiation ceremony in Slashdot trolling to link to goatse.

Administrativa

How do I justify the existence of this FAQ?
Slashdot is full of people who support unlicensed weapons ownership and dissemination of bomb creation documents -- in short, they support freedom, even when that freedom could cause harm. This document should be considered as that very freedom in action. Indeed, to disparage or moderate down this document would be un-American, and the FBI are likely to arrest you for being a terrorist.

How do I add to or change this FAQ?
Simply re-post the FAQ on Slashdot, adding an appropriate question, and incrementing the version number by 1. Before doing so, please try to ensure you have the latest version, and remember to keep this post W3C compliant!

Actually I think it'd be great - No more football

[Moderation abuser]

Just think, a world without all the dull dull dull football matches on TV. The more football clubs going bust, the better.

In fact. it'd be good if Sky bought all the football matches forever then we wouldn't have to have it on every channel every saturday.

The TV Tax

[lostchicken]

In England, there really is a monopoly on TV.

The BBC, the state-owned station, collects a tax on ANYONE using a colour TV. That cost is higher for digital TV.

The BBC has said they have systems to detect RF emmissions from PAL sets, so they drive down streets, checking houses without TV licences to see if they have a set. With such a monopoly in place, many Brits don't want to pay for something else. Would you buy a satellite dish if you had to keep paying for cable?

The UK has already lost one satellite company, and I don't see MSFT really able to save this one.

[OT] Airline_Sickness_Bag - 3 criteria of evidence

[leonbrooks]

see above

Sorry, but the second that you add supernatural, you make the following to be meaningful:

1. Explain the data
2. Be falsifiable
3. Make predictions.

Errr, I couldn't agree more...? (-: I think you meant to say `meaningless'. Pressing on with that assumption:

Creationism.

1. Explain the data

   Goddoneit

2. Be falsifiable

   Goddoneit, and then made it look different (think of the "Flood").

3. Predictions

   Godwilldoitagain

This seems to be your favourite strawman.

I don't see why you expect God to make a special and unprovoked exception in, for example, whether your car starts on a given day or not. Cars have run for very long distances without petrol in response to prayer, but I don't expect that this is an experiment which would work very well for someone in your frame of mind.

Before we look for some realistic answers for you, let's phrase your response after the same pattern, but from an evolutionary perspective - just to see how it looks.

1. Explain the data

   Chance done it. Who can explain chance?

2. Be falsifiable

   It had to be chance because no other forces are at work, we excluded them by definition. Who needs falsifiable?

3. Predictions

   We're all going to die.

...or, on a slightly more serious note...

1. Explain the data

   It's mostly missing, but we think chance done it, otherwise we risk having to submit to an external authority, and we wouldn't like that

2. Be falsifiable

   Since we can be bent to fit any shape, twisted to explain anything - in the absence of observation - we can explain it away even if we can't be falsified

3. Predictions

   Completely random formation of characteristics, little stability of characteristics, little if any speciation, gobs of transitional forms in the fossil record... oops.

Now a more realistic Creationist perspective (Creationism and Materialism aren't the only possible perspectives):

1. Explain the data

   The earth was created de novo, ex nihilo, kiloyears ago, and then totally inundated some centuries later.

2. Be falsifiable

   Continents have not had time to wear down, rivers have not had time to cut long beds or deposit more than several thousand annual layers of silt, helium, salt and other environmental substances have not had time to reach equilibrium. If they have, the theory is false.

3. Predictions

   Large numbers of well speciated fossils will be found within alluvial and volcanic rock, usually buried with signs of great violence and/or speed. Alluvial rock layers will often be found to be thin, relatively homogeneous, and widespread. Layers will follow a general order which varies gradually with location, but occasionally will be found disordered, even reversed. Occasional rock formations will be hairpinned. Strata will occasionally exhibit Z-shaped seams. Etc ad nauseum...

Nick off, you're scaring the crows...

BTW, I think /. character-per-line counting sucks, not to mention that you can fool it, kinda, and that it leads to padding, rather than to concise, direct reasoning and expression. The only reason for this paragraph's existence is to bump that CPL figure up past 35 from about 24. Waffle, waffle, waffle. The internet regards all blockages (such as censorship and pointless rules for posting comments) as errors and routes around them, don't'cha know? So if /. will kindly nudge the limt down to about 20, everyone can get on with their lives with no loss of functionality to this accursed weblog. Type, type, type, yawn, yawn, yawn, 35.7 and counting, type type type type type type type type yadda yadda yadda drone drone drone drone waffle waffle jaw jaw rabbit on gibber gibber. 37.6 blah blah blah and on and on and on, sigh. 38.0 blah blah blah and on and on and on, blah blah blah and on and on and on some more. Steadily the annoying counter is nudged upwards. Nudge, nudge, push I think I'll switch to kuro5hin now. Yay, we topped 40.