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Will Your CD Player Tell on You?
An anonymous reader writes "Ever feel like not being a marketing statistic? Well just by playing certain store-bought compact discs in your home or office computer, your new music disc may be transmitting your listening habits in real time to the respective record company...." Charming. Read on for more...
Anonymous Continues: "A company by the name of Bandlink is providing technology to record companies that allows a cd played in a personal computer to contact their server and relate statistics such as what track you're listening to and when you're listening to them. This information is then compiled into customizable reports that allow the record company to develop "User Profiles". There are benefits listed for the consumer such as cd-specific chatrooms, concert information, etc but the question remains: What's your price for privacy? The only indication that the cd you're purchasing is Bandlink "enabled/disabled" is a small logo on the packaging. There is no mention of a opt in/opt out agreement when the cd is inserted on the website and none was displayed in a personal demonstration.
Favorite quote from their website: "Virtually any information you want to know about your fan or the quality of your release can be obtained.""
new alias for off-topic posts creates a "Jumbie"
Quit Slashdot Today!
Mr. "Quick Star" and Mr. Fake "Scott Lockwood", I have a message for you: get ready for a world of hurt. The first lesson is free.
Have you ever seen the movies Where the Heart Is and Anywhere but Here starring Natalie Portman? How about the classic Meg Ryan romantic comedies When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle? Well, THAT'S the style of Martial Arts I practice. I've perfected the ruthless and efficient OLSEN TWINS FASH-SLAP STANCE!
How about the the classic Sci-Fi cult hits Plan 9 from Outer Space and The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Well, I know the martial arts from THOSE movies too! Let me show you THE PATHETIC TRANSVESTITE ALIEN STANCE!
I've also recently started to learn the martial arts from several new movies such as Jackass: the Movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie. I really look forward to learning the martial arts from the upcoming movie Eight Mile starring my FAVORITE HERO EVAR, Eminem (a.k.a. Slim Shady & Marshall Mathers), so you'd better watch out for my ANGRY WHITE NIGGER STANCE!!!!
I'm also learning even more martial arts from this web page [realultimatepower.net], including the deadly KUNG-FU NINJA JESUS ATTACK STANCE! Hi-YAH!!!
I'm working to improve my rythm [klerck.org], flexibility [rotten.com], stealth skills [fartbuster.com], self-confidence [yahoo.com], and critical thinking [timecube.com] skills, so you'd better watch out, because very soon I will perfect my ultimate attack, THE LARD-LIKE ANTISOCIAL DEPRESSIVE ASSHOLE SPAMMER IMPOTENT PAEDOPHILE FELCHING FLATULENT WIGGER SUMO-SAMURAI CHILD-ABUSE RESTRAINING-ORDER UNWASHED BASTARDIZED ANAL IMMATURE CATHOLIC GOATFUCKER STANCE!!!!
If that doesn't scare you... just wait and see. You'll get yours soon enough.
As Nietzsche said, "If you stare too long into my ass [klerck.org], beware, for my ass [klerck.org] might start to stare back into you."
-- Vlad
I just LOVE Vladinator's site [olsentwins.com]. Especially the "flab" [olsentwins.com] section, where I learned to use a fold of my own stomach-flab as a Martial Arts weapon. Oh and the "aborted fetus" photos!
Of course, don't forget to read Vladinator's entrails [olsentwins.com]. Here you will find how truly difficult it is to decide what to do on the weekends... have an orgy party? A faggot party? Go to the the mall naked and get arrested for public indecency? Have a sleepover and get woken up by Nigerians on the phone?
In short, if you haven't seen Vladinator's site [olsentwins.com], you don't know what you're missing!
I just LOVE Vladinator's site [olsentwins.com]. Especially the "flab" [olsentwins.com] section, where I learned to use a fold of my own stomach-flab as a Martial Arts weapon. Oh and the "aborted fetus" photos!
Of course, don't forget to read Vladinator's entrails [olsentwins.com]. Here you will find how truly difficult it is to decide what to do on the weekends... have an orgy party? A faggot party? Go to the the mall naked and get arrested for public indecency? Try to sleep but get woken up by Nigerians on the phone?
In short, if you haven't seen Vladinator's site [olsentwins.com], you don't know what you're missing!
I just LOVE The Anti-Vlad Triad's site! Especially the "fash" section, where I learned to cut the bottom off of an old shirt to use as a hair enhancement! Oh, and the "dance party" photos!
Of course, don't forget to read The Anti-Vlad Triad's emails! Here you will discover how truly difficult it is to decide what to do on the weekends... have a LAN party? A hash party? Go to the mall to look at underage girls? Have a sleepover and call Scott Lockwood at midnight?
In short, if you haven't checked out The Anti-Vlad Triad's site, you don't know what you're missing!
Session Start: Fri Nov 15 04:59:49 2002
*** Now talking in #adequacy
*** Topic is '#codependence therapy.'
*** Set by ubu on Wed Nov 13 23:08:59
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*** Disconnected
Session Close: Fri Nov 15 11:29:49 2002
Session Start: Fri Nov 15 11:33:04 2002
*** Now talking in #adequacy
*** Topic is '#codependence therapy.'
*** Set by ubu on Wed Nov 13 23:08:59
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[Captain_Tenille] beeeceeee
[bc] 'ello
[ubu] hello, bic
[ubu] how are things?
[bc] alright
[ubu] we had a ridiculously interesting evening last night.
[bc] I'm better today, I sought legal advice
[ubu] ah? how was that?
[bc] about, ubu?
[bc] it was fine
[Captain_Tenille] I had to take the gf to the emergency room last night.
[Captain_Tenille] [--- not much sleep
[bc] oh yes, I remember you saying that was due
[ubu] yeesh, what for, CT?
[Captain_Tenille] We thought her miscarriage was done yesterday morning.
[Captain_Tenille] Turns out, it wasn't.
[Captain_Tenille] She went downhill all evening, then woke up around 1:15 with excrutiating cramps.
* ubu moans.
[ubu] i'm so sorry.
[Captain_Tenille] Like, screaming and writhing in pain bad.
[bc] shitey
[Captain_Tenille] Took her in, and waited for fucking ever.
[Captain_Tenille] I waited so long I thought they were doing a D&C and hadn't told me. Turned out she had to wait around too. She got vicodin, at least.
[cyndrekit] sucky CT
[cyndrekit] I had a really good friend misscarry
[cyndrekit] it went on for several days
[Captain_Tenille] It's been going on since Tuesday or Wednesdayish, I think.
[Captain_Tenille] We found out something might have been amiss only last Wednesday (the 6th).
[ubu] i am so sorry.
[bc] coo, & I always thought it an unpleasant thing that last 30 minutes
* cyndrekit hugs Captain_Tenille
[cyndrekit] bc: na, the body has to clean everything out
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[Captain_Tenille] Um, bye ubu
[cyndrekit] so is everything fine now?
[bc] I think he found that distressing ct, for personal reasons, so quit without saying anything
[Captain_Tenille] She's home sleeping.
[Captain_Tenille] Oh.
[cyndrekit] ya, it takes a toll
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[cyndrekit] make her eat - esspecially veggies with iron
[cyndrekit] like spinach
[cyndrekit] well, when she wakes up
[ubu] i just learned that the House Un-American Activities Committee was originally founded by a Democratic Senator, Samuel Dickstein, to ferret out Ku Klux Klansmen, "fascists", and other right-wing groups.
[ubu] it was called the Dickstein Committee for years, and Communists and liberals alike were very happy with it.
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[ubu] only after Martin Dies of Texas became its chairman did it turn its attentions to Communists in the government, at which point the Communists protested loudly that they were being persecuted, and their civil liberties violated.
[elby] i am looking for therapy please.
[bc] hey elby!
[bc] what may I help you with
[bc] state your case and insert $5 into machine
[bc] this is the automated psycholigist
[elby] Well, sometimes I cry when I masturbate
* elby inserts $5.
[bc] How do you feel when you cry when you masturbate?
[elby] I feel sad.
[bc] How do you feel when you feel sad?
[elby]
[elby] You are a crappy psychologists, i want my $5 back!
[cyndrekit] Hey elby!
[bc] Tell me about your mother
[elby] She has very soft hands.
[elby] hi cyn
[ubu] bc, county tells me i'm awkward.
[ubu] i don't think that's fair.
[bc] you are awkward. You never let anyone relax
[ubu] really?
[ubu] how's that?
[ubu] are you calling me high-maintenance?
[elby] I went to an odd funeral yesterday
[bc] Well, people are happily throwing around assumptions and having light hearted fun, and then you arrive with your demands for proof and urgent questioning
[bc] why odd?
[elby] Sort of a distant relative, never really knew the guy
[elby] but he lived in some backwoods town
[elby] at about 73 he passed
[elby] and he owned a topless bar
[bc] cool
[elby] There were a hell of a lot of interesting stories told about him.
[bc] so were all his stripper employees there?
[elby] Would have been interesting to know him more.
[bc] dresed in black?
[elby] No but there were bikers
[elby] I think one ex-stripper was there
[bc] heh
[ubu] demands for proof?
[ubu] what in God's name do you mean by that?
[bc] pity you never got in with him while he was alive, or paid any interest in your own flesh and blood. You could be the owner of a strip joint by now
[bc] ubu: see? You are doing it right now.
[ubu] i demand proof.
[bc] "[ubu] what in God's name do you mean by that?" [-that.
[ubu] hahaha!
[ubu] oh yeah, that. i guess that's awkward.
[bc] haha
[cyndrekit] wow, that was a trap he woulden't have been able to avoid
[cyndrekit] good one bc
[ubu] he really did get me, there.
[bc] heh
[elby] not really my own flesh and blood bc
[elby] not really directly related to me
[bc] well, if that salves your guilt, that's fine.
[elby] It's my half brothers father's stepfather.
[ubu] stingray softly sleeps
[ubu] my probing will not wake him
[bc] I keep my half brother's father's stepfather very close, and so should you have.
[ubu] sweet dreams, little one.
[elby] haha
[elby] Took you long enough.
[ubu] i poke, poke his face
[ubu] and yet he still ignores me
[elby] But BC, they lived in.... *shudder* oregon
[ubu] poke... poke... poke... poke... poke
[bc] well elby, such a misfortune should have motivaed you to help them however you could.
[cyndrekit] oy! down ubu!
[cyndrekit] your being abnormaly odd
[bc] pokey poke
[bc] A clip from the nine equals six to the grave, A to the muthafuckin' K, homeboy!
[elby] bc is a hard motherfucker.
[ubu] korean!
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[Captain_Tenille] Interesting: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20721&cid=467
[bc] coo
[bc] he got everyone
[bc] except jsm
[bc] and he knows all the names, even obscure ones
[bc] which means it must be somebody on teh inside
[elby] boring.
[bc] the only one he didn't get was warren mann
[elby] haha
[elby] Oh, I'm sure craigs and warrens copies of the mailing list info has been spread all over.
[bc] heh
[elby] big deal, all we ever talked about were our silly slashdot conspiracies and some people used their real names in their email addresses.
[elby] I'm flattered people still care though
[bc] heh
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*** Topic is '#codependence therapy.'
*** Set by ubu on Wed Nov 13 23:08:59
[bc] hmm
[elby] ok see you guys around, logging
[bc] bye elby
[elby] i check my io email more often than my aq mail if anyone needs to get in touch with me
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* bc ponders his great hunger
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[Captain_Tenille] zuul, what's the word?
[zuul] Thunderbird!
[Captain_Tenille] zuul, what's the price?
[zuul] Forty twice!
[em] hey bc
[em] did you know that hospitals in the UK are underprepared for a nuke attack?
* em reads the news.
[em] "Congress on Friday passed legislation that would make it a crime to insert illicit or pornographic material into packaged food products."
[bc] underprepared eh? hmph
[em] http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/11/15/product
[em] lol
[em] so I can stick pr0n inside food packages, it's legal
[em] well, until sometime next week
[Captain_Tenille] Better hurry
[me0w] I am hungry
[bc] me too
[bc] 'cept I just can't be bothered cooking
[me0w] bc, I would make you lunch
[bc] I haven't had anything to eat all day, and I got up at 6 and have been busy as hell
[me0w] Although, I guess it is dinner time over there.
[bc] me0w, luncheon would be perfect anyway. I don't feel like anything overheavy
[me0w] I made a yummy salad dressing the other day.
[bc] huh, is putting pornography inside food products a big problem in USia?
[bc] mm. I like salad, except for the lettuce part
[cyndrekit] i never heared of it
[bc] which I don't like much at all
[bc] especially if it is red
[bc] red lettuce is bogging
[me0w] I like romaine lettuce
[me0w] which is green
* bc all of a sudden has a great yen for radishes
*** ubu is now known as ubu_away
[bc] covered in salt
[em] the motivation for the law seems not to have been pr0n, but a KKK pamphlet found by a 10-year old
[bc] eh
[bc] that's insane
[bc] people should be allowed to put whatever the like in food
[bc] bloody fascists!
* em discovers that Belarus is a nasty place
[Captain_Tenille] You *just* figured that out?
[bc] em lives in the groves of academe, ct, not in "the real world"
[bc] his horizons extend no farther than a copy of the Times Literary Supplement while a hot graduate student felates him
[bc] no wonder (incredible!) he didn't know about Belarus! Would you?
[Captain_Tenille] I know about Belarus. Have for years.
[Captain_Tenille] Of course, I've always been a history nut.
[bc] http://www.opendemocracy.net/themes/article.jsp?i
[bc] fun
[bc] I've never heard the House of Commons described as "dignified" though
[bc] it's very clearly anything but
[em] it's british. anything with that ridiculou accent sounds dignified out here.
[bc] what ridiculous accent?
[Captain_Tenille] Any of your ridiculous accents.
[cyndrekit] hehe
[bc] s'the mother tongue!
[Captain_Tenille] Remember, the English spoken in the Pacific Northwest is the least accented English in the world.
[Captain_Tenille] You need to learn to talk like me.
[bc] er, you mean the most accented
[Captain_Tenille] No, least.
[bc] furthest away from what I speak = most accented
[Captain_Tenille] Us, and St. Louis.
* bc is accentless
[Captain_Tenille] From what I understand.
[Captain_Tenille] em, care to comment?
[em] heh, i feel sorry for australians and new zealanders.
[em] they get confused for all sorts of things in USia
[bc] ct, it is all relative. Posh english people have the conceit that they have no accent. So, it now appears, do people in the pacific northwest
[em] so I was talking with this australian friend the other day. She told me that one of our first-year students called her by the nickname of somebody else-- an understandable error.
[Captain_Tenille] They train newscasters how to talk here, for Christ's sake!
[em] and
[bc] it seems hard to me to see how any accent can be stronger than another, they are all equivalent
[bc] just different
[em] she was telling him, "Oh, don't worry. The receptionist always confuses me an Melanie [this other student, from New Zealand]"
[em] so the kid goes: "Oh, that's because you're both British!"
[bc] heh
[em] OTOH this new kid in our department is an idiot.
[bc] if I moved to america, I wouldn't be understood at all. it'd quickly get on my tits, i suspect
[em] quite liable to open his mouth while keeping his ears closed.
[em] bc: maybe not
[bc] "ah sed ah wont a cuppa COFFEE!"
[em] I always assumed scottish people would be completely uncomprehensible.
[bc] em, my father lived there once, he had problems
[em] when I actually met some, I found them easier than a lot of brits.
[bc] also, the scottish people you met were doubtless posh
[bc] why else would they be going to parties in Stanford?
[em] dunno there.
[bc] working class accents in glasgow can be incomprehensible to *me*
[bc] and that's their norm
[bc] just today:
[bc] guy I was talking to said "On the second floor."
[bc] which I interpreted as "On the first of february."
[bc] dunno how I managed that. "on" is "oan", "second" becomes "secant", it ends with a t sound, and "floor" in glaswegian is like "flare"
[bc] and I'm not from glasgow! so it takes getting used to
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* Captain_Tenille yawns
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[Sulla] One young man sat on a concrete block spouting antiglobalization slogans while warming himself with a hot Whopper. This was funny, but also a little depressing. The Left, I thought, is in trouble.
[Sulla] ^^hehe
*** Sulla is now known as bc
[cyndrekit] where is that from?
[bc] http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/314/focus/Criti
[cyndrekit] thought so
[cyndrekit] sounded almost to clever to be you.
[bc] heh
[bc] you mean "not clever enough"
[cyndrekit] hehe
[cyndrekit] yea... thats it...
[cyndrekit]
[bc] good
*** Captain_Tenille is now known as Captain_Lunch
[bc] em
[bc] you should bring back aqbot
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[bc] hey vaginux
[momocrome] ok, let's try it out
*** momocrome is now known as vaginux
[bc] looking sharp in your new suit!
[vaginux] lessee if I get some crap
[bc] hehe, going to join #k5?
[vaginux] already in #k5, #everything, #slashdot
[bc] coo, that's lots of channels
[bc] I bet you like all of them better than us
[vaginux] not at all. I want to hurt those other channels
[bc] hehe!
[vaginux] i want to make them pay for my years of suffering
[bc] I think I will drop into #k5, haven't been in there in yonks
[vaginux] I always get picked on by geeks
[bc] but I need a new nick, I don't want the usual attacks I get
[bc] haha!
[bc] yes, they are bad those geeks, with their love of sport and bullying ways
[vaginux] hmm. do you want it to be mundane or a touch more controversial?
[bc] I'm trying to think of what the name of that 52yo woman tombuck laid is
[vaginux] speaking of whuch, who did the KKK story that's in the k5 queue?
[bc] tuppy something
[bc] dunno, vaginux, it was funny though
[cyndrekit] how about just candice?
[bc] hmm
[cyndrekit] or do you want someone established?
[bc] I'll try to find it
*** bc is now known as tuppy_owens
[tuppy_owens] candice, cyndrekit?
[cyndrekit] I thought you were just lookin for any female name
[cyndrekit] so i thought i would throw that one out
[tuppy_owens] heh
[me0w] hehehehehehhe
[tuppy_owens] hehe
Why Evil is Good
I hate victims. Victims are the albatross hung from the neck of society. The
term is not even acknowledged by any other species. I am certain if there are
intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, they follow the strict principle
of Natural Selection. Only the Strong shall survive. Mankind cannot survive
as long as its virility is diluted by the weak.
Peace-and-Love hippies, retards, cripples, depressives, sickling, addicts
and whiners are all victims of one kind or another. Larger examples of victims
can also be found: the entire nations of Israel and Englund, for example, are
constantly victimized and/or whining about their lack of power in the world. In
fact, the entire continent of Europe is nothing but a festering sewer of whiners
and welfare states. If we, the strongest nation on Earth, had a decent Ruler,
the entire junk-heap of Eurotrash would be burned to create a cloud of such lethal
density it would waft over to Asia and take out the victims that were left over from
World War II. The great black column of suffocating smoke would rise high into the
atmosphere, reaching for the very edges of outer space - a giant, living monument
to our strength. The unviable ashes of the once living garbage would orbit the Earth,
forever reminding future generations of the price of weakness.
World War II. Probably the greatest single era in the history of the planet, barring
the time before Man and Man's distorted, unnatural philosophies of "common good" and
"protecting the innocent". The time of Germany and its rule by a man of great vision.
A man who saw the virtue of evil. Every single class of victim described above was
dealt with in the harshest possible manner. Most people focus on the genocidal aspect
of Hitler's activities but his vision was much wider, encompassing every brand of
weakling from ethnic victims to sexual deviants. Unfortunately the United States,
led by a cripple, had to involve our great military might on the wrong side of the
war. The least Roosevelt could have done was to allow Germany to finish raping
France and reduce Englund to rubble.
We paid for our mistake in World War II. We were punished for choosing the wrong
side in the Great War by a period of non-violent "Cold War". The term "Cold War"
itself is the mark of the true Beast: the peace lover. A true leader - a Ruler -
would have unleashed the full might of our nuclear arsenal upon every nation on the
Earth, banishing them forever to particles of glowing dust blowing through the winds
of history. And look what our lack of action has gotten us: A planet filled with
human garbage, eternal sufferers suckling from the breast of the Mighty.
It is beyond my comprehension. Not only am I forced to allow the weak to survive,
but I - we - are forced to subsidize their pathetic existence. Every cripple
creeping along the sidewalk. Every degenerate elderly woman with osteoporosis who
parks in the handicap parking spot. Every worthless, lazy hippy who cries for peace
and marches on a public university. Every sickling child perpetually hospitalized
because its fetid welfare mother smoked too many drugs during her pregnancy. Every
30 year old retard wiping its nose all over its Scooby Doo coloring book. Every
drunk little whore seeking "justice" in our courts for her rape. All of them,
and more, deserve nothing but death. In the Natural World, every single one of these
leeches would be lion fodder.
Even the "Good Book", the Bible - which is actually nothing more than the sick fantasies
of opium addicts - predicts the outcome of Nature: "The meek shall inherit the Earth".
Yes, I know what you're saying, but you are wrong. This phrase has been twisted by the
weak, the cripple, the Jew to give their pathetic lives some ray of hope. This phrase
does not mean that the Victim will Rule the world. That is laughable. That is impossible.
The meek shall inherit the Earth for the one and only reason that they will be buried in
it.
To the strong who have read this: Thank you. Together, we will conquer. To the weak who
will whine in the comments below: Your days are numbered, trash.
* * * *
God help us all
by Anonymous Coward on 05:15 AM March 16th, 2000 CST (#810)
But mainly help me. I had a long, dull business trip Tues. and Wed., and as a result I wrote the following (5000 words and still unfinished) Slashdot Troll FAQ. I haven't been able to build on 80md's original due to lack of connection, but the doct. below still needs revised. Specifically, it needs to be made more entertaining. See whatcha think.
jsm
Slashdot troll FAQ
We post inflammatory, satirical or just plain weird comments on slashdot, aiming to draw attention to ourselves and to distract discussion away from the matter at hand. We use satire, wit, art and other cultural weapons to give fun to the clueful and embarrass the clueless.
A good troll is a statement designed to inflame the passions of a certain type of reader. A troll is a contrary or controversial statement, which attacks a preconception of someone who is likely to read it, causing them to suspend their normal standards of critical thinking, and to fire off a combative response, without thinking that they are being had. This is the "classic" troll, aimed at enticing someone to make a fool of themself.
Yes. The "surrealistic" troll is a piece of prose, rambling, comic or just downright weird, inserted into a discussion where it seems at once utterly irrelevant and curiously in place. The common thread linking the types of trolls is that a certain kind of personality (read - far too uptight) gets irrationally annoyed by them.
Some kinds of trollish statement have been proven to work again and again, so naturally, some trolls have taken advantage of this fact to repeat them again and again. Certain individual trolls are more or less identified with certain types of trollish statement, and thus we have the idea of a "character" - a fictitious entity which is supposed to actually hold the views which are expressed in the troll's posts. Some of these characters have distinct personalities and maintain narrative coherence from troll to troll (see the "Microsoft Linux" episode between streetlawyer and DMG); some of them show up expressing the same or similar points of view again and again (the RWM and derivatives).
The number one maximally 1337 troll character is the RWM; the most established troll, with the most solid track record behind him. Opensource man and his creations is the oldest surreal troll; gnarphlager and auntfloyd also adopt this style. Paranoid Man is getting off the ground, and DMG and streetlawyer have their fans. Mindless Bastard is more of a style of trolling than a character per se. There are lots more people posting trolls than are listed here; these are just the repeating characters.
RWM is the Right Wing Maniac, a character with a hotch-potch of (often mutually incompatible) libertarian, Christian, and Objectivist views, who typically (mis)applies the general principles of his world-view to various slashdot topics. He tends to be keen on referring to people as "socialists", particularly if they consider themselves to be conservatives. Sometimes he's more of a religious nut; sometimes it's more the free market which rings his bell. There is also a Left Wing Maniac with a yen for spouting dialectical materialism, but he hasn't done much recently. It's worth noting that it is very rare to find a RWM troll thread in which at least one participant doesn't agree with most of RWM's views.
DMG is the Dumb Marketing Guy. He claims to have been involved in Linux for "at least four years, since the very beginning", and offers unsolicited "open source" marketing advice on Linux advocacy to the members of the community. He often takes a rather hurt tone in response to the welter of abuse which is the usual response to his advice.
For crying out loud, they ought to be self-explanatory, surely to heck?
Buggered if I know. Lots of trolls mention cheese, and seem to indicate that cheese has some sort of significance. Maybe it does.
Because he had a hard life, dragging himself up from the streets to get his fucken law degree from fucken Hah-vud, OK?
Well, sorry. But really, nobody cares (see below). You're too easily offended. Now purge the post from your board, log our IP address and go back to drawing your "After Y2K" comic (which is shit, by the way).
We don't do boring, uncreative shit which just makes slashdot harder to read. We're not into denial of service attacks - they aren't very funny. We're probably harsher opponents of the spam bunch than you are, because anything which encourages people to browse at levels above -1 makes our work harder.
Nope. Nezh.
Nope. Nada.
Errrr, well actually yes we have. Both of those ongoing trolls were written by regulars on the troll forum, and you're not going to find condemnation of them in this FAQ.
Read them. Untwist your underwear, stop fulminating over the momentary interruption to your terribly important discussion about Slackware and have a look at some of these posts. Open source Natalie Portman was a fine piece of Burroughsian prose and if you don't agree that it was, then you're wrong. The whole "Naked and petrified" thing was an absolute triumph - it provoked a huge amount of reaction, entertainingly interfered with a few people's heads by sexualising the context of slashdot and is still talked about, several months after the original author stopped bothering.
Sick to you, but that was actually the guy's genuinely held sexual fantasy. He was erotically excited by the thought of women turned to stone, and was letting the world know about it. Don't pretend that you weren't interested - it's absolutely fascinating.
Nope. I was taken aback myself, but there are several sites on the Net with active discussion boards on this very subject. It's not that very different from the subject of "The Fermata" by Nicholson Baker, where the hero has the power to stop time, effectively turning women into statues. And that is quite a common paraphilia.
No, it was a petrification fantasy. Which is something rather less threatening, because harder to act out (how many people really believed that anyone could actually turn Natalie Portman to stone?)
I'm sure she's not wonderfully happy about being the subject of someone else's tawdry sexual fantasies, but it kind of comes with the job. I doubt she loses much sleep.
Opensourceman's works (including the Star Wars series and Fat-time Charlie) are available online at: Craig MacPherson has a website at: , which probably has a few things on it to do with the petrification thing.
Wellllll
Why, for God's sake?
For a variety of reasons, but mainly to puncture the self-importance of a few people who deeply deserve it. Slashdot has a lot of very clever people posting, but vastly more individuals with a serious perception/reality gap with regard to their own intelligence. People who believe themselves to be perceptive, clueful, even deep thinkers while merely reciting lists of conventional wisdom deserve to be taken for a ride. And there's the sheer Skinnerian joy of it - if somebody, or some group of people have buttons, it's inhuman not to take delight in pushing them.
In order to do it properly.
No problem. Whining about moderation is for the moderation thread. Several trolls moderate more or less frequently (and meta-moderate - be very afraid), and there is very little genuine complaint about moderation on the troll threads. Any remarks about $3 crack are meant in a spirit of fun and affection, and are usually merely cris de coeur when a finely crafted troll has been rumbled in the first few seconds and down-modded.
That was funny.
Where is there? We've had a token go or two at Nitrozac and kuro5hin, and an abortive attempt to troll some of the statuephilia discussion boards with discussions about technology, but it just doesn't feel right. If you ain't on slashdot, you ain't, basically, trolling.
That isn't even true. Several of the troll regulars have enough Karma to post with the +1 bonus when they use their regular identities, which puts them in the top decile, according to Rob Malda. And there is a definite audience for quality trolls. Have you just been trolled? Is that why you're so angry? Calm down, it'll be someone else's turn in the barrel on Friday.
To paraphrase gnarphlager, yes, we have many better things to do, but we're not going to do them.
How can I recognise a troll?
If you want to spot a troll, then you're basically entering into a game, played against us. You have to keep your guard up, adopt a critical attitude to what you read and decide whether it is plausible that someone is actually posting that view. For our part, we will intermingle fact and fiction, invent plausible-sounding references and (always) attempt to attack your emotional involvement in a topic in order to make you drop your guard. The more ridiculous the proposition we sneak under your guard, the more we win. The angrier you get, the more we win. And you? As the computer said in War Games "The only way to win is not to play".
Usually, a troll will resemble a normal slashdot post, but will contain at least one thing which is not true. A good troll will contain material which obviously couldn't possibly be true, and would not fool anyone who gave it a moment's thought. The troll will also contain an inflammatory or controversial statement, designed to make sure that nobody does give it a moment's thought. Criticism of Linux, strong or offensive political views, mockery of "computer geeks", claims about the inferiority of women/Canadians/Perl, all of that stuff. Interestingly, having experimented with using outright, Bell-Curve-like racist statements to act as the controversial part of the troll, I've found that they never offend anyone, which I guess shows what a lily-white place slashdot is.
Obviously these rules apply more to the classic satirical model of a troll, but there is a strong family resemblance in the surrealist model. Looking at the best work of osm, gnarphlager, auntfloyd et al., you pick up a strong sense of the underlying form. There is the (often highly tenuous) link to the subject matter, the building sense of cognitive dissonance and then the denouement in which the troll moves into the realm of pure surrealist prose (or "gets silly", depending on how you look at it). Typically, when reading such a troll for the first time, and in the context of the thread, the reader's reaction goes through stages.
At the opening of the troll, in which the technological subject matter is being obliquely referred to, the reader is curious. There is an unconscious assumption that what is being used is a metaphor, which appears opaque but will actually make an argument clear (in such a way the surrealist trolls subvert the category of metaphor as used in scientific discussions). Then, the tension between the what the reader wants to read and what he/she sees on the page grows, but the reader still tries to hang on to the idea that he/she is reading "News for Nerds". Finally, when the reality (that is, the unreality) of the troll is revealed, the reader is outraged at having been tricked.
Thus, we can see that the distinction between the classical and surrealist trolls is one of inversion; metaphor versus metonymy. The classical troll traps the reader in metaphor, creating the "character" or authorial fiction, which the reader takes as a metonymy for "The Other" - the fictional creature on the screen is espousing Microsoft, or Libertarianism, or something else which must be ritually reacted to, rather than read as if it were a metaphorical text. The surrealist troll appears to use metaphor, but creates no authorial fiction. The piling up of the metonymic symbols of trolldom (cheese, Natalie Portman, the Troll itself) draws the reader into the pure text, looking for a meaning (or metaphor) which is always deferred. The reader wants to create an authorial fiction, but this is denied - and it is this denial which is the source of his/her rage. The surrealist troll lets the reader down with a bump - the satirical troll, in its purest form, never lets the reader out at all, leaving him/her stuck in a world which is false, because he/she is being manipulated by the authorial fiction. Classical trolling is about the use of metaphor to create metonymy; surrealist trolling is using metonymy to create metapor.
YHBT. YHL. HAND. (Ha ha, only serious)
Pretty much so, yeah. There's been "trolltalk", "trolltalk2", "31337troll" and a bunch of others. It's good to be able to see other people's work, to discuss trolling, and on occasion to have a way of proving for sure that something you wrote was a troll, to a particularly persistent mark.
If I could tell you, I'd have to kill you. There have been a few problems with people stalking some of the trolls, and spamming the troll forums with whitespace to make them unusable. There's no big secret or anything, it's just that we'd like to think that finding the troll forum requires a modicum of commitment and ingenuity. There's one pretty well-trafficked troll forum which is listed in most of the usual indices. Look, fuck it, you used to be able to find BBSes, didn't you? This is no different.
Yada yada yada.
Welllllll
Write a nice, long post, beginning with the phrase "I'm sure this is a troll, but
The only approved, correct, 1337 way to deal with a troll is not to reply at all. Don't say anything. Just sit back and feel smugly self-satisfied that you caught the troll. Go on. People always seem to say the word "smug" as if it were a bad thing, but how can something that feels so good be wrong? Smirk. Once the troll is "dead" (once the author has taken credit for it and admitted the troll), you might want to post a message about it. You'll probably get a nice reply.
Wellllll
Then you should be prepared to live with being a laughing stock. We live off people like you, who simply can't stop themselves from pouring out conventional wisdom, even when they know they are being made monkeys of. And no, the "I'm pretty sure
Well, fundamentally, it lacks class. For one thing, you're feeding the troll while pretending not to feed it, which is dishonest. For another, you're encouraging lots of enraged people to visit the troll forum. This means that the troll forum gets spammed, the trolls move, and you now will be forced to spot trolls for yourself rather than reading them off the list, lamer. Also, the trolls can't tell who it was who brought the spammer there, so all the other people who used to enjoy reading the daily trolls don't find out where the new forum is.
How can I start trolling for myself?
"Just do it", as that noted provider of employment to Indonesian children once said. Your first trolls are unlikely to be offensive enough to draw many responses, but once you lose your disinclination to be unpleasant, results will follow. Of course, you may incipiently be a natural trolling genius like dmg, who got huge pops from the get-go. Choose a story which will get a lot of traffic, try to get an early, top-level post, etc, etc (here might follow a whole load of shit from the Karma HOWTO which I'm not going to reproduce). And, offend. You might want to start off with a right-wing maniac troll.
RWM is the source from which it all flows. Like an origami master building everything from a folded base, or a woodworker turning a chair-leg, the entirety of the art is encapsulated in this one element. It is possible to dedicate your entire trolling career to the perfection of the RWM (troll gods 80md and 70% more or less have done). If you can't write an RWM troll, you can't write a troll.
The key to the RWM troll is to realise its heritage from Usenet. Usenet trolling was all about cross-posting controversial statements to start flame-wars between different newsgroups. On slashdot, you can't cross-post, so you have to identify people who can be brought into conflict where you are. The beauty of the RWM troll is not so much that he sets rightwingers against leftwingers, but that he creates cognitive dissonance in rightwing readers, because they want to agree with his conclusions (or at least, his less obviously mad ones), but can't bring themselves to accept his reasoning (or simulation thereof). RWM also exploits the fact that a lot of people with right-wing views haven't necessarily thought out those views very comprehensively, and so are vulnerable to cognitive dissonance caused by the inconsistency of what they believe. Among the elements of right-wing mania are:
Obviously, everyone who disagrees with a RWM is a socialist, even if they don't think they are.
Further information
Perhaps we'll see Microsoft buys or "borrows" the idea from Bandlink and incorporates this "nice" feature to the OS. More "added value" to Windows.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA...
Troll Blacklist subscribes to YOU
"IN SOVIET RUSSIA "IN SOVIET RUSSIA" comments are lame"
In Soviet Russia, Soviet Russia comments on YOU!
[ooh, my first Soviet Russia comment - will I be modded up or down? Only YOU can decide!]
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!