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FSF Debuts "Shared Source" Initiative
matty_x points to coverage at NewsForge of the Free Software Foundation's new 'Shared Source' program. Cynics might call this selling out, but it actually makes a lot of sense for the FSF to listen to customers about what they really would like and benefit from, rather than only to developers and freeloading users. Bravo!
Still the same date, eh?
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Here's the problem with April Fool's Day, this is one of those articles that makes you think "if only it were true." I guess the FSF getting a clue is too much to ask for.
Happy April Fools Day, but these stories are lame.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
Take a break from Slashdot, and do your *income taxes*. That's what I'm doing, and I sure hope that when the IRS employee sees my fat check dated April 1st, he'll think "this gotta be a joke", and trash my submission entirely.
All the April fools activity in New Zealand is over already... this is like having to live through the damn day twice, once locally and once over the net :-/
There is a reason why most places only post a single April Fools Day joke -- it isn't because they don't have enough material, it is because "trick" jokes only work in isolation. If everything you say/do/post is a joke, for the entire day, it is nothing but annoying, and any jokes that may have worked well on their own don't work at all because it becomes WAY TOO OBVIOUS when you have them all huddled together.
Next you're going to tell me that Wil Wheaton is set to get a recurring role on "Enterprise".
"GNU/FreeWindowsXP, which can be freely downloaded from GNU/Microsoft.com starting today for only $149" HAHAHAHA
Microsoft likes money and that makes them evil HA.
Seriously though, next year I think it would be funny if all the April 1st posts would be real.
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
unfortunately some are.
The only April 1st post that I was looking for today was, "Hail To The King Baby. It's Done. Duke Nukem Forever is Shipping."
I found that article really quite amusing. Part of what made it so funny was that it sounded a lot like previous pro-shared source Microsoft'ish articles where MS tries to give the appearence of freedom while denying the power thereof.
Slashdot was off this year ... surely bested by the daily gaim build ;)
i m/gaim/src/buddy.c.diff?r1=1.480&r2=1.481
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/ga
(Score:-1, Wrong)
My name is eSolutions, a troll from Adequacy and Kuro5hin. I daresay I've written some good trolls in my day -- if perdida still had the AQ archives up, I would link to them. You can find some of my stuff on Kuro5hin, but it's of much lower quality and quantity, as K5 sucks.
In any event, I feel at least a little qualified to discuss posting fake information online with the intent of confusing, angering, and amusing various readers.
The real problem here is that Slashdot editors spend most of their time stamping out trolls, shaking their collective, bony, pasty-white fists at trolls' posts. They haven't paid attention to the subtlety that can be put into a proper troll. Like any art form, it can be done skillfully -- seeking new ways to troll, trying new angles and new ideas -- or it can be done unskillfully. The slashdot editors are now walking this low road.
There is little hope for them, but I may as well lecture now on the Theory of Humour. You moderators should mod me up for the value of this alone -- it may make the editors stop this silliness; insulting, as it is, to both serious reader and geniune troll.
HOW HUMOUR WORKS
There's a Monty Python sketch with two guys on a pier. One of them is holding a herring in each hand, dancing a jig, and at the end of each measure slaps the other guy across the face with them, in time with the song. Then, at the end of the song, the other guys takes out the HUGE MOTHERFUCKING TROUT and beats the first guy over the head, knocking him into the water.
What is humour, and why is this skit funny? Humour is the *tearing down of what's been built up.* This is why breaking social conventions is often funny -- because social conventions are constantly exalted in our lives, and seeing someone throw a pie at the mayor tears down those conventions. Often, this depends on where one is personality-wise -- folks with different Meyers-Briggs scores tend to find different things funny. NTs like abstract humor, SJs like the people intentionally acting stupid, et cetera.
In the aforementioned Monty Python sketch, the guy with the two herring *builds up a pattern* by girlishly slapping the other guy to music. The other guy *tears down that pattern* by beating him with the massive, truncheon-like trout.
So, what you, my dearest editors, need to do is build a pattern up and then break it down. Once it's been broken down, it's no longer funny. (Heard much from Andrew Dice Clay lately?) You need to build up another pattern and break that one down.
Please, for the love of god, take this advice to heart.
Yours in Hubbard,
eSolutions
It is official; Google confirms: April Fools is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered April Fools community when a Google search confirmed that Slashdot redership has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all readers. Coming on the heels of a recent Google search which plainly states that April Fools Day has lost more realistic jokes, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. April Fools is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by repeated dupes in the recent Slashdot postings by CmdrTaco.
You don't need to be a Slashbot to predict April Fools' future. The hand writing is on the wall: April Fools faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for April Fools because April Fools is dying. Things are looking very bad for April Fools Day. As many of us are already aware, April Fools continues to lose popularity. Pathetic Slashdot stories flow like a river of blood.
Slashdot is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core readers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time readers FortKnox and $$$$$exyGal only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: April Fools is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
April Fools leader CmdrTaco states that there are 70 subscribers of Slashdot. How many readers of Kuro5hin are there? Let's see. The number of Slashdot versus Kuro5hin posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 70/5 = 14 Kuro5hin readers. YASS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Kuro5hin posts. Therefore there are about 7 users of YASS. A recent article put Slashdot and its readers at about 80 percent of the April Fools market. Therefore there are (70+14+7)*4 = 364 Slashdot users. This is consistent with the number of Slashdot reader posts.
Due to the troubles of VA Software, abysmal subscription sales and so on, Slashdot will soon go out of business and will be taken over by Kuro5hin who sell another troubled meta news site. Now all of the other Slashdot sites (YASS) are also dead, their corpses turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that April Fools has steadily declined in Slashdot stories. April Fools is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If April Fools is to survive at all it will be among Halloween and Valentine's Day. April Fools continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, April Fools is dead.
Fact: April Fools Day is dying
Next year, Slashdot...post one or two good jokes, and that's all. They are much more effective that way.
The entire open source movement is dying and all you guys can talk about are April fools jokes! Don't you know that the FSF is where all free software is made and now that Microsoft has bought it there won't be anymore. Sure, I thought it was a joke at first, but then I saw all the other articles and realized there's no way slashdot would dedicate the entire day to joke stories. The world must really be going to hell.
My Blog
Not true, my younger sister is worth at least $300 an hour.
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Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.