Slashdot's Disagree Mail

I am responsible for reading most of the help requests sent to Slashdot. Most of the mail I get in a day is what you would expect, comments and concerns about postings, user accounts and Slashdot itself. There are a very special group however that get passed around the office due to the inordinate level of anger, lack of understanding and just plain weirdness they possess. Through the years I've collected many and still get such gems on a regular basis. We thought it would be fun to share some of our favorite rants, ramblings and ruminations with the rest of you. I give to you the first of many installments of Slashdot's disagree mail. The names have been changed to protect the idiot — hit the link below to drink it in.

Our first entry starts off by explaining:

"Every time I try to login it tells me that my password is bad! I know I'm using the right password why won't you let me in? My account is *******"

I'm sorry but I don't see an account with the name *******. I also don't find an account with the email address you're using associated with it. Do you happen to know what your uid is?

"Try lookin harder cause I was using AOL a few days ago just fine but now I can't! I'm mailing you from the library right now cause you won't let me on the internet!"

AOL? Can you not log into Slashdot or is the problem that you can't get online at home?

"Whats Slashdot why am I given you guys money for internet if I cant use it?!"

Slashdot is the website you are writing to. If you were banned here for some reason I might be able to help you but I'm not in charge of the whole internet, at least not yet. It sounds like you need to get a hold of AOL tech support and hopefully they can solve your problem.

"If you can't help me why are you on google when I type in help with the internet? If you don't want to help people when they need it maybe you shouldn't be on google!"

Our last email this week demonstrates something, but I'm not exactly sure what it is:

from ***************
to banned@slashdot.org
date Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 6:46 PM
subject stop sending me mail
"If your so fucking smart that you created the great and awesome slashdot why can't you figure out that I don't want your stupid bulshit mail! Everyone here acts like they are so much smarter than everyone else and that a teenager can't know what is right because he isn't fat enough from sitting around eating twinkys and playing games on the computer. You never even had a girlfriend I bet because you're to busy being smarter than everyone else. Fuck you stop sending mail just because you can't handle me!

P.S. Sorry I didn't write that my little brother did but I really don't want to get mail from you anymore can you help me please?"

Comments

It is most munificent of you,

[seanadams.com]

... good sir, to expend your precious electro-bits so as to share those TWO WHOLE EMAILS with your loyal readers. I look forward to future installments of these tomes.

Now, wtf do you expect us to discuss?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[timster]

Maybe we can discuss how obnoxious the white-on-green text is? Please?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[aceofspades1217]

Stupidity in the /. community :P

There sure is an abundance of it!

So as they say in soviet russia... /discuss

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[nharmon]

Send complaint to: banned@slashdot.org

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[jollyreaper]

Now, wtf do you expect us to discuss?

How about the unholy heinousness that is idle's design? It looks like hammered shit. No, I take that back. It makes hammered shit look good.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[reikoshea]

All I can say is, werd. That was a little anti-climactic.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[aceofspades1217]

I am going to have to agree with you. Really bad web design etiquette if you ask me. I mean I have always loved slashdot because they do a great job having a really clean website.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[An anonymous Frank]

Or how new "sections" should let you quickly mark them as not-something-you-want-on-the-cover-page for the first week of its inception into the "officially released" realm.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Ironsides]

As opposed to green-on-black?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like I'm not the only one who used to hammer shit as a kid.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[bugnuts]

Now, wtf do you expect us to discuss?

Maybe the fact that the reply box is about 2" x 2" (at least on my terse setup). At least all the replies will be short.

This looks more like a therapy session for the complaint department run by a luddite who gets a total of 6 emails a day.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Hoi Polloi]

Make sure it is a good rant.

By the way, thanks for making the comment box about 2 inches by 2 inches large. I guess it is a form of text compression.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[statemachine]

I spent more time looking for the other e-mails and scanning the comments for what might have happened than actually reading the e-mails.

It's like an important test that was so easy, you spend time making sure it wasn't filled with trick questions.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Animaether]

Well seeing as there really isn't anything to discuss here ( unless they expected other website owners, sysadmins, etc. to write in with their user experiences)....

Maybe I would like Backslash... back.

Rehashing popular topics, picking some of the top comments, etc. is a vastly more interesting thing to do than reaching into the hatemail grab-bag.

For the curious:
http://backslash.slashdot.org/

For the curious as to why it's seemingly-dead:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=588277&cid=23846333
( summary: Tim got too busy )

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[sm62704]

Now, wtf do you expect us to discuss?

How you can't read the last line of the post in IE6, and why they can't use the same CSS that almost works in the rest of the site ;)? Or maybe how I had to put a <p> between quoting you and my firs line to keep the <br> from acting like a <p>?

Fuck, even putting <p>& nbsp;<p> doesn't work.

Oh, as to the topic, it looks to me like some kid thinks slashdot is AOL's tech support. Either that or sam HBT.

Guys, the CSS on idle is an embarrassing mess, are you ever going to fix it?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

I kind of like the white on green as it's an uncommon way to make better use of negative space and reduce eye strain compared with standard black-on-white. It also lacks a clash of colors or offensively intense colors. I would prefer slightly less of a contrast between the brightness of the green and the white, and the green is not my favorite color - I'd prefer a green that's a little more earthy as a background. Still, overall, it's not too bad.

(Why do line breaks not show up on this post?) If you've given yourself some time to try to see it with an open mind, then I'd like to hear specifics aspects of it that make it obnoxious - other than "it's different" - and maybe we can have a discussion about it. My main criticism is that

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[JeanCroix]

...still the easiest on my eyes, after all these years.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[PIBM]

Well, if you are using an iphone, 2 inches by 2 inches is like almost all of the screen estate ... so, why are you complaining ? ;)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[harrkev]

Maybe we can discuss how obnoxious the white-on-green text is? Please?

Back in my day, we had green-on-black text. If you were really lucky, you had AMBER on black. Now, those were the days.

Now where were we? Oh yeah--the important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Sir Holo]

It's a lot easier on the eyes than a bright white field with black text. Don't try to print it out, though.

Or how about yellow on blue?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Chibi]

so as to share those TWO WHOLE EMAILS

When I read the summary, I had the impression that the first was an e-mail exchange. Looking at the number of replies, I'm guessing 7 e-mails. Not very exciting, but that's why it's "Idle." :)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[qoncept]

That's not green, buddy. It's teal. Which is incredibly annoying regardless of any other factors.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Sir Holo]

Was your previous account name *******?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[clone53421]

javascript:for(var a=document.getElementsByTagName("textarea"),i=0;i<a.length;i++){a[i].style.width="100%";a[i].style.height="300px";}void(0);

There ya go.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Wandering Wombat]

I love you now, sir.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Enderandrew]

Yellow on blue was good enough for NC, and it was good enough for me.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[teko_teko]

The white-on-green itself is fine, but when you scroll down to read the comments... AH! Holy contrast ratio, Batman!

Took a while for my eyes to adjust the to white background again...

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[jdray]

Shoulda called it "Disagremail."

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Atticka]

Agreed! the transition from white on green to black on white just made me blind!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[NormalVisual]

If you were really lucky, you had AMBER on black

I'll see your amber-on-black, and raise you with 132 columns and smooth scrolling.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[The MAZZTer]

*cough* @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain(slashdot.org) {
.inline_comment .generalbody {
padding-right: 30px !important;
}
.inline_comment .generalbody textarea {
width: 100% !important;
}
} *cough*

Whew, gotta do something about that cough. You know it's getting bad when you cough up Stylish sheets.

I should probably write another one to fix the lack of proper line spacing in the preview when using <p>s...

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[lgw]

Sorry I didn't write that my little brother did ... can you help me please?"

There's is a new meme if I ever saw one!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[jollyreaper]

Was your previous account name *******?

Nope, but a funny story. I got my first computer when I was 12. Naturally, I wanted to look at the BBS's. So for my account name I wanted to use **** **** since that was the same number of characters as my name and I thought it would look cool. The software wouldn't allow it. Took me about a year to figure that one out. :)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[JustOK]

You should see someone about that

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[KillerBob]

Back in my day, we had green-on-black text. If you were really lucky, you had AMBER on black. Now, those were the days

And that IBM XT booted uphill, both ways? Oh, that sucker was a speed demon, with its whopping 4MHz processor and 640KB of RAM! Why! That was enough for anything!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[SuperQ]

I really miss my AT&T Business Terminal. It even had simple macro programming to store a few key sequences. Good for AT commands and TW2002 shortcuts.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed! the transition from white on green to black on white just made me blind!

Sure... that's what did it. Just... don't show me your palms. This is the Internet, after all.... >.>

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[againjj]

When replaying click options, under Comment Box Size, set Rows and Columns to what you want, click save, and the next time you make a comment, it is a better size!

Though why it doesn't resize the box currently open, I have no idea. Seems dumb to me.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not your buddy, friend.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Jerf]

Or how that floaty thing on top breaks Page Down and Space (=Page Down)? (The one on the main site is much better since it doesn't do that.)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Firehed]

Or just use Safari and resize on the fly :p

(I hate Safari but had to throw it out there)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are you calling a friend, mate?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Sponge Bath]

I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.

You misspelled slide rule, but point taken.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[rvw14]

My XT Clone had a turbo button on it! Boy did Wordperfect fly with the turbo on.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Facetious]

You're not his friend, pal.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[B3ryllium]

There is a word I can think of that should, if spoken correctly, send shivers down your spine.

That word is ...

WYSE.

(They make pretty decent linux-based thin clients nowadays, though)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[chromacat]

He's not your mate, guy!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[AmyRose1024]

What's annoying about it? I happen to like it!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[YttriumOxide]

I actually really do feel OLD when people talk about XTs as if they're some kind of ancient history before anyone's reasonable memory... I remember the XT coming out, and already had a personal computer at the time - with MUCH less than 640KB of RAM and MUCH slower than 4MHz.

*sigh*

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[fhage]

Back in my Vaxen days some users used to program their VT200 terminals so they could login with one key press. Ahh, those were the good 'ol days. Now people don't even know what the "break" key is for. Noobs. :-)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[againjj]

When replaying click options, under Comment Box Size, set Rows and Columns to what you want, click save, and the next time you make a comment, it is a better size!

Though why it doesn't resize the box currently open, I have no idea. Seems dumb to me.

Don't post at work if you are talking about replying if your company name has "Replay" in it!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Namors]

He's not a guy, oh wait this is /.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[tverbeek]

We didn't have computers when I was 12. OK, the bank did, and so did NORAD, but that was about it. The only BBS I had access to were the ones that went in my air rifle.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Soviet Russia? In Soviet Russia, Slashdot discusses YOU while old people in Korea use email on imaginary beowulf clusters of gaping anuses on behalf of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture (who are not in charge of Gundam) who are never gonna give you up. Did I cover most of them? I couldn't get "KHAAAAAN!" in there. Sorry.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[hostyle]

And that ducks no teal either, drake. Time to re-group!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[LoadWB]

His name isn't guy, pal!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[crossconnects]

I remember the XT, it didn't have 640KB at first, but it could be upgraded to that.

i remember the 10MB disk drive and the 360K floppy.

I had an even older Tandy Color Computer, that used a tape deck for storage, and advertised 16K of RAM.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

twinkies are good aint they? :-)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[hostyle]

PS. Mom says its bedtime. Please go to sleep so we dont get beat again :(

Sincerely,

Dad

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[sjs132]

Actually, back in my day, we had black on green, and the little blinking square after the "OK" prompt.

Of course, if you wanted lowercase, you'd have black blocks with green uppercase letters inside for the inverse video representation of the lowercase letters.

It is amazing how days differ and nights fade into obscurity...

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[seededfury]

are you one of those guys writing these emails to slashdot?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Pharmboy]

I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.

You misspelled slide rule, but point taken.

No, you missed the point. It was a Simpsons reference.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to like the white-on-green text, thank-you-very-much. I would apprecieate if you would sod off.

-- Garden gNome Alliance of America

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[em0te]

Slashdot should start making Skins that people can use!!!
I mean seriously, it's pretty stupid design layout. I don't know what I pay you for! If you can't make all my webpages look the same than you should make yours look like everyone elses.
Ican't get on AOL any more either!! ever sense you opened idle.slashdot up i can't get online!!.

Sorry, my little brother wrote that. Really though, could you make a skin that displays green on black that also runs slower than the actual site? Plus I decided to leave my little brothers comment in my comment cause my delete key is broken.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[madcat2c]

this

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Pharmboy]

Back in my day, we had green-on-black text. If you were really lucky, you had AMBER on black. Now, those were the days.

You forgot the reference about "you young kids and your fancy ANSI graphics and 16 colors".

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, wtf do you expect us to discuss?

Why, a "first post!" race, no doubt.

Alas, I fail miserably.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[hurfy]

lol, yup we had a 3MHz? machine with 512MB ram that 7 people could log in to...provided you turned up the air conditioning first ;) I still have the Hard Drive, it still weighs more than me.

I have a user that wanted the green on black for our current accounting program when i showed the vintage look.

I think 2 whole emails/conversations/ whatever was kinda thin also.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[wpanderson]

You forgot All Your Base.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[arth1]

Wow.
I had beige on metallic
white - a Texas
Silentype terminal.
It had analogue
scrolling, so I guess
you could call it
smooth.

As for 132 columns,
that's far more than we
get here on /.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[rickb928]

My first puter (a VIC-20) gave me rainbow on black. On the TV it was pretty much unreadable. Since I knew what I was typing, I could always figure it out. Of course, since I couldn't program worth a crap back then, I never could read what the puter typed back.

Now, typing this with random graffitti all over the input box, that's more like it. Who said /. should be easy?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

I am smarter than you.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[hurfy]

lol, the other window open on my machine right now is a terminal emulator set for WYSE60 to run our stupid accounting system. I would rather have the real thing but all the vendor purchasing info,etc not to mention email is on websites or windows (or both :/) so people still need a real computer.

The training class we took in 2004 for it was on the real deal tho...

Only takes a 2.5GHz HT
windows box to emulate...um nothing?!?

Isn't progress grand?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that every time I hear the words "negative space" I just thick "fucking prick" and stop listening?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[KillerBob]

In computer terms, *Windows 95* is some kind of ancient history... An XT is the bronze age, and earlier stuff like the DEC PDP is the stone age. Charles Babbage's Difference Engine is early single-celled organisms floating in pond scum.

But I was referring the comment about "amber screen if you were lucky"... I still remember playing Police Quest 1 on an amber-scale hercules monochrome, having to use the siren to go through traffic lights because you couldn't tell whether they were red or green. And that was on an XT. :)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using lynx on a VT100, you insensitive clod!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot All Your Base.

And Natalie Portman naked and petrified, covered in grits.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Burma Shave

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[digitig]

Green on black? We submitted Hollerith cards, and got back output from a golfball printer that was so misaligned that you couldn't easily read along a line even with the green lines preprinted on the paper to help you!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[RobFlynn]

Ah, brings back memories. I remember my 10MB drive as well. When I finally filled it up, I got a 20MB drive and thought "Wow, I'll NEVER fill THIS up!"

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Brett Buck]

When was that, nineteen dickety two?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a fucking genius. LOL!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[bonehead]

I remember those as well. I believe I paid around $600 for my first 500 MB hard drive, and at the time it was a steal.

Also when upgrading your memory meant buying an expansion card, buying the memory chips separately, and having to plug them all into the card when you got home.

Then there was used computer shop down the street where I always bought my SIMS, because they were "only" $50 per meg. At those prices, the amount of memory in my girlfriend's iPhone would be worth enough to pay cash for EIGHT houses in my neighborhood.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Mistshadow2k4]

You also forgot does it run linux, Natalie Portman, our overlords and Cowboy Neal. Do I spend too much time on /.? I'm beginning to think so.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[itsybitsy]

Ok, not only is the green background messed up but the comment box is way too tiny for any sorta intelligent rant back at you for your green background! Get your css or html or brain fixed!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[actionbastard]

I find your opinion intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

No, YOU missed the point. He was making a joke, for fuck's sake. Time for that AA meeting, eh?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course your solution is more elegant but as a side note in Safari you may also make the text box bigger by dragging the corner, just like you would make the window bigger.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[colourmyeyes]

lol, yup we had a 3MHz? machine with 512MB ram

Usually the problem is too little ram for the processor speed - this sure turns that on its head.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Mr Z]

Yeah, my first computer had 256 bytes of CPU addressable memory, and 16K of VRAM. (The TI-99/4A.) Before that I learned to program the Commodore VIC-20 with a whopping 5K bytes of RAM.

(Ok, by then I had also programmed Commodore PETs (mostly 4032s), along with the Commodore 64 and a CoCo 2. But I wasn't very good at it. I was only 8. But BASIC is pretty easy to pick up. Imagine the fun when I discovered The Peanut (the PCjr).)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[isorox]

Back in my day, we had green-on-black text.

In *your* day? I run fluxbox, and launch almost everything from rxvt: .fluxbox/keys:Mod1 66 :ExecCommand rxvt -bg black -fg green -sl 10000

Much easier on the eyes

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

This is in fact eight mails, not two. Count them again.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[megaditto]

I pasted this into my address bar, thinking "why the hell not"

The fact that it actually worked is just plain scary...
What's next? Address bar pong?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[megaditto]

To pause qbasic apps?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Opportunist]

And the memory in my computers here would buy the whole town. Or even a sizable amount of SCO stock!

Uh... ok, nevermind.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Blakey Rat]

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=1973248&group_id=4421&atid=104421

^- posted ages ago. Maybe Slashdot should lay off laughing at emails and actually look at their bug tracker more than once a year.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Opportunist]

But at least you had that rifle! Our kids will be glad if they still get water guns because of safety, thinkofthechildren concerns.

But only 'til some dimwit fills it with paint and hits another kid's eye. Then, finally, the parents will be right. All's fun and game 'til someone loses an eye.

And then even water pistols are a thing of the past.

I just hope we may still play with our bubblewrap.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[xenn]

Oh, so THIS is the internet. I'd only ever heard about it before now.

Seriously, if anyone get's hairy palms over this... That's just plain disturbing.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Opportunist]

Could be worse. In Soviet Russia, /. spends time on YOU!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[vladsinger]

My school uses the current ones.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[ormico]

That is freaky. I had no idea you could paste javascript into your address bar and it would run.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[shanen]

I'm complaining because I'm disappointed that I didn't make the cut. I've sent them at least a couple of juicy complaints over the years.

However, the "idle" style sheet does reek like the proverbial big dog's m0e.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now, wtf do you expect us to discuss?"

When you don't know what to discuss, that's a good time to not post.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[StormShaman]

Don't you mean celery on your shirt?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[ILuvRamen]

Here's one for you. Like 70% of people use IE7 (maybe less here) and I have an 8600GTS and 4400+ X2 and it lags severely scrolling up and down. This is up there with the most poorly designed, poorly coded pages on the internet. The colors should be fixed AFTER they make it...you know...displayable.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[flewp]

But were you down with OPP?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[RTump]

Hammered shit, a new favourite, up there on the top shelf with "...a can of smashed assholes".

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Digicrat]

Yep, that's old news. I used to have a nice little javascript command bookmarked in IE (a long, long time ago in a galaxy without Firefox) that I could use to abruptly stop those never-ending pop-up chains without killing all of IE/Windows.

In the Firefox universe, the FireBug plugin lets you run javascript on the fly, not to mention alter stylesheets and HTML code of the page as your viewing (useful for designing/testing).

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[BigChiefMunkey]

Damn that Kaiser!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

You admit to using IE7? Turn in your geek card.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were really lucky, you had AMBER on black.

Who is this Amber you speak of, and where can I get her phone number?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[KlomDark]

Oh god, here we go again with one of these lame "Back in da day" threads again.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[cailith1970]

I still have the Hard Drive, it still weighs more than me.

Yeah, all that data you could get on them old drives made 'em REAL heavy! :)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Max Littlemore]

I fill my ink cartridges with liquid paper and print on green card, you insensitive clod!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Miseph]

No, I'm writing to Google. By the way, why aren't youhelping me get on the internet?!?!?!?! AOL was working fine for me last week, why aren't you helping me?!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[mortonda]

If you were really lucky, you had AMBER on black. Now, those were the days.

Ooohhh, the amber screens. Those were awesome! Obviously a better computer. (Despite the fact that both terminals went to the same VAX)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[ILuvRamen]

shut up, firefox can't display correct or interact with advanced features on half the websites I use. It's useless.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[ystar]

Sure we can: it's not obnoxious at all! (...well, it doesn't bother me at least)

I really do like Idle's layout but joking aside, I definitely agree that /. ought to allow for some background color changing via css menus or user prefs. People spend so much time here, it's sensible to allow for some changeable color schemes just as one could do to his or her own room (without going the way of hokey 'tropical theme' skins). /. really isn't the place for the "one true way" mindset.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Reziac]

I dunno, but so far 365 comments are here to talk about nothing much.

Er, make that 366.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[clone53421]

Yup... and it has the same privileges as any other script on the page. It can interact with pretty much anything else on the page... pretty handy sometimes...

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

shut up, firefox can't display correct or interact with advanced features on half the websites I use. It's useless.

Name six websites that are incorrect under Firefox or you lose.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[kandela]

I like the white on green. Just cause you're a geek doesn't mean you can't have an appreciation of aesthetics.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[zhrinze]

Amber? Lucky? That was a HORRIBLE color. The REAL green phosphor was a beautiful emerald green with soothing properties and so crisp. I cry every day, I miss it so much...

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

so _that's_ where you got all those freckles!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[aceofspades1217]

PS. Mom says its bedtime. Please go to sleep so we dont get beat again :(

Sincerely,

Dad

lol the moment I read that I thought of bash.org.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[jimmydevice]

Sounds like the IBM 1130.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Omnedon]

Back in my day, we had green-on-black text. If you were really lucky, you had AMBER on black. Now, those were the days.

And for a P2P protocol we used sneakernet. We had to take floppy disks and WALK to the host. Through 6 feet of snow. Uphill. Both ways!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[ockegheim]

Wikipedia knows everything:

As the teletype came into use, a key was created that would temporarily interrupt the communications line, allowing this practice to continue. When this occurred, the receiving teletype mechanism would activate but not print characters (it was typing the non-printing DEL character repeatedly). The noise got the operator's attention.

I bet these noobs have never used a teletype either>

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[LoztInSpace]

Try this:

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.getElementsByTagName("img"); DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=(Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5)+'px'; DIS.top=(Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5)+'px'}R++}setInterval('A()',50); void(0);

Lifted from some site I can't remember now.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Dewin Cymraeg]

Design etiquette? Not sure what that means! Maybe he farted while deicding the the exact shade of green to use for the background. I like the colours. It's nice to have a dark background once in a while - it's more soothing on my eyes. When I have a display that isn't back-lit, I may agree with you!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, he's not your pal.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[aceofspades1217]

Its kind of growing on me though. I guess my eyes needed to get used to it. But now it is feeling like it is a little easier to read because it stands out so much and maybe it kind of does suit the "relaxed" feel of the idle section.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[WillKemp]

A hard disk? Wow! That really is modern. One of the first two computers i programmed for had a drum and the other one had no storage at all - just a punched card reader.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[jez9999]

Yeah, but you shouldn't have to use a fucking Firefox plugin to fix a website's look and feel.

Hey, why don't all sites just go back to how they were in 1990! We should all use Stylish to apply our own styles!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Have some more.... https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/pagelinks.html

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

having to use the siren to go through traffic lights because you couldn't tell whether they were red or green

Hint: Red is on top, green on the bottom.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[digitig]

ICL 1904s actually. I'm not that old!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[BlackJedi]

Yes, the Vic had 5K of RAM in total, but only 3583 bytes of it were available in BASIC. It's incredible how we could get anything done in such tiny memory.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Ctrl-Z]

See bookmarklet.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[iapetus]

I managed to embed that code into a message on a certain .NET-based message board when the administrators refused to believe that they had it configured in a not-overly-secure way.

It changed one or two minds. ;)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[iapetus]

640K of RAM? We had to put up with 1K. Oh, how I envied the kids down the road who had the top-of-the-range model with 16K that could cope with displaying the screen and carrying out calculations at the same time...

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Drawsalot]

On my 4200+ with 8800 GTS 340MB it's smooth as silk- no lag.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[laederkeps]

Oh yeah? Well it turned me into a NEWT!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[tverbeek]

A kid could choke to death on bubblewrap, you know.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[ConceptJunkie]

cause my delete key is broken.

I hear reinstalling Windows fixes that.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Stooshie]

... By the way, thanks for making the comment box about 2 inches by 2 inches large ...

I think you'll find that's the tagging beta input box. ;-)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Single GNU Theory]

I saw the same four square inch text box thing. I've always replied to comments by opening the reply page in a new tab (heck, I opened them in new browser windows before there were tabs, to avoid reloading a long page of comments, over a shared 56kbps modem, on a 100MHz machine where the time penalty to redraw a long page was severe). I saw some options on the reply page to change the area of the text box, but only the length changed.

However, in a moment of desperation (did I mention it's a really old habit of mine to reply in a new window?) I left-clicked on the Reply to This lozenge button. Lo and behold! A properly-sized comment box opened up beneath your post.

To be fair, the editors did say that they were going to experiment with the user interface in idle. Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out how to make paragraphs anymore.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[clone53421]

md5this.com ? or maybe that script has just been making its rounds... I don't think that site has been updated in ages...

Hint to anyone trying that: don't do it on /. -- do a google image search and run it from the search results page.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Single GNU Theory]

Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out how to make paragraphs anymore.

It seems paragraphs work fine except in the preview, heh.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[PopeRatzo]

Hey, why don't all sites just go back to how they were in 1990!

There was no YouTube in 1990.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were really lucky, you had AMBER on black.

I hear those are being released on DVD now.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Stooshie]

Luxury. We had 1 bit of memory with variable clock speed which could be hard-metal programmed.

We called it the light switch!

We managed to make a beowulf cluster of them though and built our own version of a BBC model B. Damn, 32k light switches took up a lot of room. And if you set the all the switched to 1, the room started melting.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Stooshie]

Hey, I'm swedish you insensitive clod!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhhhh this is where JQuery really shines:

$(textarea).css( {
    width: '100%',
    height: '300px'
} );

Though, I've never tried it locally, JQuery makes code so much smaller and more legible :-)

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[clone53421]

smaller and more legible

I disagree. Smaller, perhaps, but it's quite unclear to me what that code does (if it does what I suspect, it won't work in certain situations... more in a moment). My code is entirely self-explanatory, and if formatted nicely would be just as easy to read as yours.

Does your JQuery change the CSS definition of the textarea? Or does it iterate through and change the custom CSS style of every textarea instance? E.g. would
  <textarea style="height:200px;width:200px;"></textarea>
be re-formatted to comply with the 100%,300px size, or would the custom CSS height and width definitions override the new default CSS definition of the textarea?

My loop will iteratively change the style of every textarea, overriding any CSS defaults and present custom CSS attributes... I suspect your code wouldn't re-format elements that have custom CSS height and width attributes.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back to replying to mail please!!!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you take the ferry to Morganville, which is what Shelbyville was called in those days?

I actually don't mind the white on green text. It could be a lot worse and sometimes it's nice to see variety. The one I actually don't like is black text on white backgrounds which you see everywhere.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because you think good design just sorta' happens and doesn't require experience and training.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Philip Shaw]

This happens because the size is defined by CSS, and so either the page would need to be refreshed or javascript could be used to redraw the box, as described in an earlier post. Resizing the box in the latter way is perfectly possible, but not really worth the effort, since this would onky occur occasionally for each user.

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Scare, code monkey]

something like a[i].style.height="10em"; would be better. I hate it when someone assumes that they know the pixel height of my font!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[clone53421]

Meh... it actually didn't even occur to me to try to make it "fit" the text box to a certain number of rows. 300 pixels doesn't give me an even fit anyway, it's just a number I thought was "big enough".

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[Shambhu]

The fact that it is not clear to you, in particular, what the code does is fairly unimportant.

In fact, it is not as you guess - it will override existing inline styles.

And finally, why would you bother building an argument on such an arbitrary supposition?

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[clone53421]

Ok, I checked up a bit on JQuery. That code isn't a very good example of it, I think... it's really not much clearer or shorter than the regular JavaScript. Although JQuery may have its benefits, it's hardly worth using a code library to perform such a short mundane hack... and JQuery wouldn't work anyway as a bookmarklet!

Re:It is most munificent of you,

[LKM]

There was no web in 1990 :-)

Greatest. Post. Ever.

[mikek2]

Greatest. Post. Ever.

I'm sorry,

[pwnies]

I really am. Not for the hate letters you get... but for this as a whole. Idle just doesn't feel like frontpage material /.

Re:I'm sorry,

[lobo-tuerto]

Slashdot's Disagree With U

Re:I'm sorry,

[damn_registrars]

Idle just doesn't feel like frontpage material /.

Which may be why Idle is not front page.

Re:I'm sorry,

[Phroggy]

Except that this particular article was on the front page - that's where I saw it.

Re:I'm sorry,

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh maybe that's why it's......wait for it......wait....wait.....NOT ON THE FRONT PAGE!

Re:I'm sorry,

[descil]

How is slashdot not entirely about idle? The place should be called idle.com :/ yes com coz cmdrtaco is a fat bastard

Horrible stylesheet

[nharmon]

I'm about to send an email complaining about the horrible stylesheet that idle.slashdot.org uses.

Re:Horrible stylesheet

[MyLongNickName]

Style sheet? I though Someone swallowed the blue and yellow Playdough and threw up on my monitor.

Re:Horrible stylesheet

[Ilgaz]

Lets be productive.

Those guys manage to get banned right? What about a "3 strikes" solution

(for abusers)

Strike 1: You get idle stories mixed to slashdot front page.
Strike 2: Slashdot front page becomes "idle colour" (Teal)
Strike 3: Slashdot.org forwards you to idle.slashdot.org no matter what you do.

Lets see if anyone dares to abuse slashdot from now on! ;)

Dear Slashdot

[Funkcikle]

Why the hell do I keep getting these emails you get? The total is up to TWO now - it is unbearable. Please desist!

Years worth of emails

[Gr33nNight]

And he posts two. Must be a tough job.

Re:Years worth of emails

[kraada]

There are only 10 hilarious emails he's ever gotten.

And he posted them both.

Re:Years worth of emails

[rolfwind]

There are only 10 types of people in the world --
those who understand binary, and those who get laid.

Re:Years worth of emails

[MiniMike]

And, sadly, that was funnier than all of his e-mails. Although I suspect he may be receiving more shortly...

Re:Years worth of emails

[Anonymous Coward]

There are only 10 hilarious emails he's ever gotten.

And he posted them both.

That's would be 2 in hex...for the ubergeeks.

Re:Years worth of emails

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait until comments here start getting moved up into the posting.

Re:Years worth of emails

[LordKazan]

but.. how do you classify the people who fit in BOTH groups?

LAID 1+0?

Re:Years worth of emails

[binaryseraph]

All other emails were not funny, but instead, rightfully angry emails about rejected articles.

Re:Years worth of emails

[Flaming Babies]

There are only 10 types of people in the world -- those who understand binary, and those who get laid.

What about the other 8 types?

Re:Years worth of emails

[bill_kress]

And I'm guessing that since you only posted 2 types of people, you are in the former group.

Whoops, I just put myself there too!

Re:Years worth of emails

[richardkelleher]

Really. I was expecting at least 10 or 12. He really just has to scan through his sent items for all mail sent to the distribution list WTF!?. There must be hundreds of these things. Two is just barely enough to catch our attention.

Re:Years worth of emails

[JCSoRocks]

That's would be 2 in hex...for the ubergeeks

wtf?? Since when? That's decimal 2 in binary... not hex. 10 in hex would be the same as 16 in decimal. Maybe you need a little help. Remember, math is FUN.

Re:Years worth of emails

[gEvil (beta)]

There are only 10 types of people in the world -- those who understand binary, and those who get laid.

Hey dipshit, you forgot to list the other five types.

Re:Years worth of emails

[blackmesa82]

There are only 10 hilarious emails he's ever gotten.

And he posted them both.

That's would be 2 in hex...for the ubergeeks.

You mean "that would be two in binary."

10 is sixteen in hex.

Re:Years worth of emails

[Anonymous Coward]

you must not get laid. wait, by that logic neither do i...

Re:Years worth of emails

[Saxerman]

but.. how do you classify the people who fit in BOTH groups?

There are two bits. Turn them both on. I.e, this one goes to 11.

Re:Years worth of emails

[LoadWB]

I think he meant $2, $02, 0x2, 0x02, or >0002. I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt.

While I'm not getting laid.

Re:Years worth of emails

[FauxReal]

I befriended a cute computer programmer because I was one of the only people who knew the series of 1s and 0s she embroidered on her tote bag was a binary representation of "69".

Re:Years worth of emails

[bertvv]

Whoosh!!!

Re:Years worth of emails

[multimediavt]

That almost made spit fly out my nose! Good 1! P.S. Yeah, wtf with the dinky text area!!!

Re:Years worth of emails

[ChrisMP1]

Somehow I think that he
meant that 10 in binary
is equivalent to 2 in hex,
i.e., 10 in binary = 0x02.

Goddammit I hate this
box.

Re:Years worth of emails

[Agent__Smith]

And he posts two. Must be a tough job.

I guess he didn't want to overwhelm us on the first try...

Looks like he has to deal with one of these e-mails about once every 7.5 years...

Re:Years worth of emails

[Flaming Babies]

Whoosh!!!

Right back atcha...think about it.

Re:Years worth of emails

[Anonymous Coward]

0l0 + l0l = 111

Even binary gets laid...

Re:Years worth of emails

[blair1q]

how do you classify the people who fit in BOTH groups?

As a lie group.

i.e., if someone says they both understand binary and get laid, it's a lie.

Re:Years worth of emails

[duckInferno]

Ohhh I get it.

Yes... what about those other 8 types then?

Re:Years worth of emails

[shrikel]

I think you mis-parsed his sentence.

10 in binary is 2 in decimal and is also 2 in hex.

Re:Years worth of emails

[Dean Edmonds]

I didn't used to understand binary, but now I understand it all too well.

Re:Years worth of emails

[treeves]

That would be called "the empty set". OK, not really, but that's the expected value.

Re:Years worth of emails

[confusedneutrino]

Win.

Re:Years worth of emails

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure, but he might have been making a joke about converting a number under 10 (decimal) to hex.

Eg, 10b in decimal is 2, which is 2 in hex.

But I'm not sure, could have been taken as someone who is unable to convert from one number system to the other, and has an utter lack of understanding of them. Or someone who made a joke which could be misconstrued.

Re:Years worth of emails

[deek]

There are only 10 types of people in the world -- those who understand binary, and those who get laid.

What are the other 14 types?

Re:Years worth of emails

[jkirby]

He is too busy getting laid.

Re:Years worth of emails

[Lisandro]

Remember, math is FUN.

Yeah. So is swallowing thumbtacks!

Re:Years worth of emails

[blackmesa82]

Good point.

Uber-geek indeed.

Re:Years worth of emails

[initialE]

I hate to say this, but you belong to the group that doesn't get laid. But then again, so do I. :-(

Re:Years worth of emails

[Valdrax]

That's what she said!

Re:Years worth of emails

[FuegoFuerte]

You, sir, are obviously in the former category.

Re:Years worth of emails

[thelenm]

"Hex" is just a fancy name for binary, just like "backslash" is just a fancy name for a slash.

Re:Years worth of emails

[nog_lorp]

There are only 10 types of people in the world,
those who make binary jokes, and the other 9, but I won't go into those.

Re:Years worth of emails

[Mhtsos]

No he got it, he's just showing off

Re:Years worth of emails

[dgbrownnt]

Technically (wow, this is a tiny box), he did post 8 emails, it's just that 7 of them are him talking back and forth with noob@aol.com

Re:Years worth of emails

[WillKemp]

but.. how do you classify the people who fit in BOTH groups

A bug.

Re:Years worth of emails

[WillKemp]

I befriended a cute computer programmer because I was one of the only people who knew the series of 1s and 0s she embroidered on her tote bag was a binary representation of "69".

01101001? 1000101? 01101001? or even 0011011000111001?

Oops! That's blown my cover...

Re:Years worth of emails

[Anonymous Coward]

That's wacist

Re:Years worth of emails

[Rune69]

Stop eating my lunch!

Re:Years worth of emails

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hex" is just a fancy name for binary, just like "backslash" is just a fancy name for a slash.

Err... no. On both counts.

binary is base-2
hexadecimal is base-16~

A slash is a slash
A backslash is a backslash.

Re:Years worth of emails

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the other 8?

Re:Years worth of emails

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the other 8 types?

They're the ones using white-out to correct typos on their monitors.

Re:Years worth of emails

[Anonymous Coward]

we call them LIARS!

Re:Years worth of emails

[Philip Shaw]

Epic fail: if you want to make that joke, you could at least have said :

What are the other D types

Re:Years worth of emails

[deek]

Heh. It's only an epic fail for you. I thought the joke had more immediate impact as it is.

This is the sort of thing that belongs on TDWTF...

[42forty-two42]

... not slashdot.

Needs more.

[Anonymous Coward]

A LOT more.

That 1st one was hilarious.
The 2nd was pretty good too. (rather generic though, still)

So, yes, MORE.

Re:Needs more.

[Anonymous Coward]

You spelled MOAR wrong.

Allow us to disable Idle, please!

[Brazilian Geek]

Hey guys, how about allowing us to disable stories from Idle - if not disable, how about allowing us to show up on the main page minimized.

Typical Slashdotter even if he doesn't know it

[4D6963]

Everyone here acts like they are so much smarter than everyone else and that a teenager can't know what is right because he isn't fat enough from sitting around eating twinkys and playing games on the computer. You never even had a girlfriend I bet because you're to busy being smarter than everyone else.

Despite a complete lack of clue he sounds just like any other Slashdotter.

Scratch that, he does sound just like any other Slashdotter.

Re:Typical Slashdotter even if he doesn't know it

[VeNoM0619]

I'm too stupid to understand what you said, your young teenage mind is obviously too intellectual for mine. Maybe if I stopped eating all these exquisite vegetables and exercising, and actually started eating twinkies and chatting it up here with you more I might be as smart as you... Oh sorry, I gotta go meet my girlfriend now...

Re:Typical Slashdotter even if he doesn't know it

[maxume]

Your doing it wrong.

Re:Typical Slashdotter even if he doesn't know it

[4D6963]

My point was that he talks as bad about Slashdotter as any other Slashdotter does. Often on Slashdot do you hear self deprecating comments and people joking that we don't have girlfriends or a life, and also regular complaints of how we think we're smarter than anyone else.

Re:Typical Slashdotter even if he doesn't know it

[D Ninja]

No. You're doing it wrong.

Re:Typical Slashdotter even if he doesn't know it

[Anonymous Coward]

NO U!

Re:Typical Slashdotter even if he doesn't know it

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when are self-deprecating remarks like this worthy of +5 Insightful? Personally, I don't find it very intelligent of someone to call everyone else around him clueless.

+5 Arrogant, maybe.

Re:Typical Slashdotter even if he doesn't know it

[maxume]

Is not. You is.

Re:Typical Slashdotter even if he doesn't know it

[4D6963]

Actually it was +1 Funny, +1 Insightful and +1 Informative. I guess the Funny one was for the part you didn't like.

Re:Typical Slashdotter even if he doesn't know it

[Dean Edmonds]

I once thought that Slashdot comments demonstrated the lowest that the net had to offer.

Then I started reading YouTube comments...

Re:Typical Slashdotter even if he doesn't know it

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, the plural of twinkie is twinkies, unless he's talking about the chinese knockoff "twinky," but I find that has too much lead per serving for my taste

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? Is that it?! 2 emails? Where's the rest of it? What do I pay you for? WHat are you doing on the internet if you can't share more than 2 emails? Grrr! I'm so angry!!!

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Angry? U r angry? U can't know what is angry because u r a fat teenager fat from sitting around eating twinkys and playing games on the computer.

If u ever even had a girlfriend i bet ud know what is angry because that fat bitch would sit around eating all ur twinkys .

Re:Huh?

[Joe Snipe]

Fortunately this article is a dupe, so you can see the other amusing emails before he posts the next installment!

Re:Huh?

[Joe Snipe]

On second glance, I don't see the emails he posted here, but I swear I have read the aol user letter previously. Anyone else find it?

Re:Huh?

[Rick Bentley]

Sorry, my little brother wrote that. But can you post more than 2 e-mails?

I'm mildly amused

[RLiegh]

These were cute enough -particularly the last one.

PLEASE.. Make it stop!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to see this crap.

Re:PLEASE.. Make it stop!

[RiotingPacifist]

stop watching 2 girls 1 cup then

Oh crap

[Brazilian Geek]

Sorry for that, I just saw the option in the Index > Section preferences.

Sorry...

Re:Oh crap

[sinistermidget]

Too bad. You should have sent an irate email about it to slashdot. It looks like samzenpus can use the material.

Re:Oh crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't feel bad, your previous post will appear on a future installment of idle.slashdot.org. Thanks for your submission!

Re:Oh crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I get the feeling that a few more examples are going to be heading his way. . .

Incredible

[omfglearntoplay]

I'm at a loss for words.... I can only say that I hope that was some sort of joke on their part, but I don't think it was.

I guess we're all supposed to share or something

[Fox_1]

Wasn't a lot of content above, and I suspect in this community we all have gems of emails from the past - one a friend showed me yesterday went something like this:

Cutsie nickname for Tech Support guy,
I'm not sure who the 'lusers' are, but that language may not be right for a mail list that has x senior person and y manager on it. Just a thought to help you along.
Toodles
Cutsie nickname for coworker

Funny but...

[betterunixthanunix]

Even for slashdot, this seems irrelevant.

Drink it in? Huh?

[nurb432]

Come on guys... Its just 2 emails.. thats more of a droplet of morning mist as it condensates on the leaf of a dandelion and not worthy of even remotely referring it to as a taste..

Re:Drink it in? Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The word you were looking for was "condenses".

HTH. HAND.

Captcha: unload

Re:Drink it in? Huh?

[garcia]

I get better e-mails than that to my own personal website. I "review" restaurants for fun and routinely end up with resumes for job applicants, complaints about overcharges, questions about hosting events there, and sometimes even death threats from the owners themselves.

If this is the best Slashdot can do (BTW, why the fuck is the comment box ~35 characters wide?) then I'm disappointed.

We needs JonKatz back to up the annoyance ante!

Re:Drink it in? Huh?

[againjj]

(BTW, why the fuck is the comment box ~35 characters wide?)

When replying, click Options, under Comment Box Size, set Rows and Columns to what you want, click save, and the next time you make a comment, it is a better size!

Though why it doesn't resize the box currently open, I have no idea. Seems dumb to me.

(repoat of my earlier comment.)

Re:Drink it in? Huh?

[Phroggy]

(BTW, why the fuck is the comment box ~35 characters wide?)

Safari allows textarea boxes, including Slashdot comment boxes, to be arbitrarily resized by the user. But I've always thought the default size seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Re:Drink it in? Huh?

[Nefarious Wheel]

I'm actually quite fond of the taste of dandelion-flavoured morning mist condensation, thank you very much you taste-challenged, insensitive colloidal topsoil structure!

Re:Drink it in? Huh?

[nurb432]

You must have a lot of weeds in your yard.

D'oh

[greywire]

You know, I was going to post a whole rant about how you got me all excited to read about some really funny emails from a bunch of idiot readers only to find you only posted two of them, and only the first one was kinda funny.

But then I realized maybe the whole point of setting us up for nothing was to see how many irate people would sent you hate mail and post rants about the pointlessness of this article, thus bringing the whole thing full circle:

10 Get irate email
20 post lame article about it
30 goto 10

Re:D'oh

[Anonymous Coward]

1: post 2 emails
2: ???
3: PROFIT!!!

Re:D'oh

[NizzyWizzy4Shizzy]

filename = "job_security.bat"

Re:D'oh

[greywire]

oh, yes, the obligatory profit. Damn, I keep forgetting my memes.

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these; because I, for one, welcome our disagree-mailing overlords who probably don't use linux and who certainly feel as though they are being censo@#$@#[NO CARRIER]

--
You have removed from system for over memeing. All your base are belong to us.

Re:D'oh

[tolkienfan]

Ah, but did ya have to write it in Basic? PS My brother wrote that. Can you fix my internet, please?

Re:D'oh

[greywire]

$irateEmails = new email();

foreach ($irateEmail as $mail) {
    $mail->post();
    profit();
}

Happy now?

Re:D'oh

[halcyon1234]

Judging by the article, I think you mean:

0 define ONE = 1
1 define TWO = 2
2 define ZERO = 0
3 define THREE = 3
10 my_I = ZERO
20 get irate email
30 post lame article
40 if my_I == ONE then my_I = TWO
50 if my_I == ZERO then my_I = ONE
60 if my_I != THREE then goto 20
70 goto exit

Because really, crappy articles deserves crappy pseudocode

Re:D'oh

[MoreDruid]

ugh... you forgot:

40 ???
50 Profit!!!!!!

Re:D'oh

[graveyhead]

Yes yes! And then they will have a massive database full of hate and idiocy. Oh wait, maybe they already have that ;-)

The ladies

[qoncept]

If you ask a chick what she looks for in a man, she'll say a good sense of humor. It's a complete lie -- what she really wants is a good looking dude. That would mean you are screwed. You might be tempted at that point to feel a little better, saying "Hey, at least I do have a good sense of humor.."

But you don't. You clearly posted these support emails thinking they would be good for a laugh, but, instead, they were just really boring.

Re:The ladies

[sm62704]

Women don't know what they want. They say they want a kind, generous, man that can make them laugh, but they're always with some asshole that calls them "bitch" and slaps them around.

They want the kind, generous men as friends; they want a tough guy in bed.

Treat a whore like a lady and she'll act like a lady. Treat a lady like a whore and she'll suck your dick.

Re:The ladies

[JerBear0]

You do realize this is /., not the BET forums, right?

Re:The ladies

[genner]

I assume you mean a definately rich and maybe good looking dude.

Re:The ladies

[Anonymous Coward]

Since this whole "comment on the idle mail" is offtopic, I shall continue the trend:
> Women don't know what they want.
> They say they want a kind, generous, man that can make them laugh, but they're always with some asshole that calls them "bitch" and slaps them around.
> They want the kind, generous men as friends; they want a tough guy in bed.
> Treat a whore like a lady and she'll act like a lady.
> Treat a lady like a whore and she'll suck your dick.
No truer words have been spoken. My wife is quite the lady, but likes to be treated like a whore on occasion. To be perfectly honest, I'm one of the (few?) guys that would rather be doing the real deal than having a blow job, but the male half of other couples that we've "partied" with just about blow their wad when she starts the deep throat action. Strangely enough, those same men are also married to beautiful ladies who like to act like whores.

God, I hope this "post anonymously" button works, or else the wife is gonna be pissed...

Re:The ladies

[Anonymous Coward]

Sean? Is that you?

Re:The ladies

[myowntrueself]

If you ask a chick what she looks for in a man, she'll say a good sense of humor. It's a complete lie -- what she really wants is a good looking dude.

There are two ways to make an impression on a woman.

1. The way to a mans heart is through his stomach. The way to a womans heart is through her clothes. Not by ripping them off of her but by commenting on them.

2. It helps if you can make a woman laugh. It helps a LOT. So long as its not your taking your pants down that starts her laughing you are generally doing well.

And, despite being on /. I have 'been with' more women than I can count And I can count higher than 50. Lots higher

Re:The ladies

[mjwx]

Yes, most /.er's are unfamiliar with these "ladies" that the GP mentioned.

Re:The ladies

[LearnToSpell]

Is Wayne Brady gonna have to choke a bitch?

Re:The ladies

[corbettw]

God, I hope this "post anonymously" button works, or else the wife is gonna be pissed...

You'd let all of Slashdot miss out on comedy gold to save your marriage? Bros before hos, dude.

Re:The ladies

[Valdrax]

God, I hope this "post anonymously" button works, or else the wife is gonna be pissed...

You could always just let their air out of her.

Re:The ladies

[sm62704]

Dude, I have hazel eyes, BET is not my cup of tea. As I'm a nerd, whores are a blessing; I'd never get laid otherwise. I'm one of those nice guys with a sense of humor they say they want.

And, all woman are whores. The cheapest sex I ever had cost me a draft Budweiser, the most expensive cost me a house, a car, and part of my pension!

Ok, well kinda

[sdemjanenko]

Well these are ok but not great. I would imagine that you guys have some amazing ones but these are just above the level of ordinary complaints. Anyway an interesting topic, can't wait to see more (hopefully really good ones)

The internet is not a big truck!

[theCat]

If I were doing helpdesk I'd work this link into MOST of my replies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cZC67wXUTs

It is *that* helpful.

-cb

Priceless

[CopaceticOpus]

Oh man, those were priceless! Of course, so are grass clippings.

Re:Priceless

[cain]

So true! Here's a cite: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/nfk/718445793.html

Re:Priceless

[NeuroManson]

REALLY insulting grass clippings. I know, I hear them too.

Re:Priceless

[CronicBurn]

Oh man, those were priceless! Of course, so are grass clippings.

Which are incidentally, when mixed with pastel water paints, the same color as the Style Sheet above.

Re:Priceless

[Anonymous Coward]

damn you, hay prices increased x4 this year. I can hardly afford to feed my girlfriend.

Re:Priceless

[yayotters]

I'd gladly pay for your grass clippings!
So don't think they're quite so priceless.

Re:Priceless

[nog_lorp]

s/priceless/worthless

Re:Priceless

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the joke, yes.

You actually read email?

[Anonymous Crowhead]

I guess that's easier than fixing bugs.

1234567890123456789012

(Numbers represent the width of the comment box in firefox running on linux)

Re:You actually read email?

[Anonymous Coward]

1234567890123456789012123456789012345678901212345678901 (That's the width I get on linux Firefox.

Let's be grateful.

[NightFalcon90909]

Sure there weren't as many as you might have like, or I might have liked, but they were funny! And they did say there would be more, and at least they put anything up at all...

A word to all you whiners...

[Anonymous Coward]

STFU already.

And they still haven't

[g0bshiTe]

fixed my internet.
I hope you know I called Google and told them to remove you from the search list for "fixing the internet"
I swear you guys are like the Maytag Repair man of the internet.

Re:And they still haven't

[Stachybotris]

Funny thing is, when I googled 'help with the internet', the first two hits were for IE 7 and support.microsoft.com. WTF?

Re:And they still haven't

[Dun Kick The Noob]

Just following up, http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fixing+the+internet http://www.fixingtheinternet.org/how.php Interesting

Re:And they still haven't

[dgun]

fixed my internet.

You mean, internets.

Re:And they still haven't

[g0bshiTe]

Ah yes, so sorry. Fixed my inddardnets.

Tagging Beta

[bugg_tb]

You know I've been reading slashdot for years, long before the tagging stuff came in and its taken until reading this article to realise that you click the little arrows to add tags, I always wondered how it was done :)

Re:Tagging Beta

[Peyna]

A uid of 581786 has been reading slashdot for years? Crap, wonder how long it's been for me.

Re:Tagging Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy Shit! Thanks for the info. I wonder why this wasn't in the FAQ?

Re:Tagging Beta

[graveyhead]

Isn't a switch-down triangle a pretty standard UI feature? Or, I'm just so blinded by building sites/software for so long that these things just seem natural to me?

Hey!

[pandrijeczko]

Who gave them permission to use my photo?

Signed

T.P. Gumby The Postman

mails in heat

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not profit from the blathering of others? Send Collection of letters to LULU for publishing. I know that would be worth buying for a good laugh. (Besides, LULU just bought an old CAT manufacturing building for their office. They need the money too!)

Re:mails in heat

[pandrijeczko]

Erm... that shifty looking guy that told you "Lulu can handle all males"... well, he wasn't talking about a publisher.

Now I know

[mschuyler]

Now I know why it says: "Idle.slashdot.org is a total waste of your time. Never go there." I didn't; it came to me. Oh, well...

Re:Now I know

[Daimanta]

Well, they were trying to be smart and they were also trying to attach two meanings to this sentence.

They failed.

It has only one meaning.

This section is a BIG WASTE OF TIME. Fuck it.

Never go here.

Not a stylesheet...

[Farmer Tim]

...more a grotesquesheet.

subject

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in... people are dumb

A webpage

[VoltCurve]

There is a webpage out their that seems to receive dozens of "Fuck off AOL, I don't want your service", but, they aren't AOL, but some cybersecurity group, but I can't for the life of me remember any other details

this part killed me

[unity100]

You never even had a girlfriend I bet because you're to busy being smarter than everyone else. Fuck you stop sending mail just because you can't handle me!

HANDLING ME ! YOU CANT DO IT !!!!

this part is the killer

Re:this part killed me

[genner]

First IDLE now this.
You guys had a board meeting didn't you?
How many times do I have to warn you about those!

Re:this part killed me

[Creepy]

you mean they got BORED in a meeting (don't we all?) and decided to do something productive during that big 5 hour power point presentation. That or slow news day. Or maybe the nukes are on the way and this is their little way of trying to humor us before the end - I don't keep up with that kind of stuff.

Re:this part killed me

[genner]

you mean they got BORED in a meeting (don't we all?) and decided to do something productive during that big 5 hour power point presentation. That or slow news day. Or maybe the nukes are on the way and this is their little way of trying to humor us before the end - I don't keep up with that kind of stuff.

Well yes they probly got bored fell asleep and let the idiots in suits make decisions.

snore...snore....."What do you think Johnson?"....*erk* ...good idea sir we'll implement that....particular....idea.....immediately.

And thats why meetings are dangerous.

Best reply wins...

[RingDev]

An evening of navel gazing with CowboyNeal!

-Rick

Re:Best reply wins...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here would be my reply to the first guy:

Dear Sir,

Thank you for taking the Internet Intelligence Test.

Unfortunately, you are not smart enough to use the internet. For your own safety, please cancel your AOL account immediately, and sell your modem. If you do not, you will be mercilessly humiliated by all of the people who actually have a clue.

Sincerely,
The Internet

Re:Best reply wins...

[Eudial]

-Rick

Dear Rick, Will you please linking to your music video everywhere? I have already seen it and it's honestly not -that- good. What is it with you? Anyways, please stop.

~ E.

Re:Best reply wins...

[isorox]

Dear Sir,

How do you know I'm a man

Thank you for taking the Internet Intelligence Test.

Unfortunately, you are not smart enough to use the internet.

What's the internet?

For your own safety,

What safety? PC World say I'm safe on line because I placed this box on top of my tv

please cancel your AOL account immediately

I have an account?

and sell your modem.

What's a modem?

If you do not, you will be mercilessly humiliated by all of the people who actually have a clue.

What clue?

Re:Best reply wins...

[corbettw]

Don't be so hard on Rick. After all, you and he've known each other for so long. Didn't he tell you he wouldn't give you up, wouldn't let you down, wouldn't run around and desert you?

Colbert

[Xelios]

The first installment of Slashdot's 434 part series Better Know a Noob!

Please stop

[MisterSquirrel]

Please stop clogging the internet with your slashdotty posts now. You're slowing down my porn downloads.

Exuse mes

[Anonymous Coward]

Buts can yous stop stupid articles posting? Many articles are even bad spelling and gramer. Ther so bad i even no read them. So funny, ha ha ha. but you should be good website with pofessinals, so you should have good article like my type. Noe plese post somthin that worth time and have good stuff.

Hippo Cryte.

Yeah, but..

[mr_resident]

..the picture of Steve Ballmer demonstrating Microsoft's next version of Exchange is pretty educational.

Perfectly logical user

[ishmalius]

If you don't want to help, then why ARE you on Google? ^^ If you look at it from the correspondent's point of view and with their experience of the Net, that is a very logical and valid question to ask.

Similar job

[tonyray]

Many /. readers work in similar jobs. My favorite is a subscriber that cancelled his account because the only websites he could go to were pornography sites and he was sure we were causing his problem. He was a long-time employee of one of the local university's IT department, so he knew we were doing it.

Do they speak English in What?

[Free the Cowards]

Seriously, "Slashdot's Disagree Mail"? Do you people speak and/or understand English on any kind of working basis?

(Feel free to file this message with the "disagree mail".)

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[Red Flayer]

Ugh. It's a euphemism for what is commonly referred to as "hate mail".

I think we all can agree that it's time for a kindler, gentler slashdot.

But really, are you really that dense? Oh... wait... UserID 1280296... I think I understand now. Never mind.

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[Ma8thew]

It's a joke. Email sounds like disagree mail. Of course, it wasn't a very good joke, I had to explain it.

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[Free the Cowards]

I'm complaining because it sounds idiotic and does not fit English grammer, not because I was incapable of understanding it, you enormous fucking asshole.

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[Free the Cowards]

And of course in fitting with one of the Laws of the Internet, my complaint about grammar contains a misspelling. Sigh.

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[Red Flayer]

post an idiotic question, get an idiotic answer.

Just doing my best to make idle as bad as digg.

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's a play on E-mail. DisagreE-mail. Get it?

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[pbhj]

I think you missed it, it's supposed to be a pun on E-mail, disagreE-mail, get it?

No, no it's not funny it is supposed to be intellectual humour, if you're not wetting your pants laughing right now you're thick.

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's word play. It sounds like email.

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[x2A]

Now now, there's no such things as idiotic questions, only idiotic people.

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[MikeBabcock]

I think we just found the poster of disagree mail #2.

There's a time and place for grammar naziism, but the title of anything is neither. Its called poetic license, and most writers use it with subjects, titles and headlines as a way of putting a trademark on an otherwise boring statement.

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[Free the Cowards]

There's a big difference between complaining because of bad grammar, and complaining because a title has such bad grammar that it no longer makes any real sense, and sounds like nails on slate.

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it was a lame attempt at making something catchy and marketable sounding. Massive fail.

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, *now* I've seen everything: A guy with a UID of 890720 making disparaging comments about someone whose UID is 1280296...

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[DeeFresh]

You seem to have mistaken a lame joke for improper use of English.

DisagreE-MAIL, get it?

Re:Do they speak English in What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Punctuation goes inside of the quotation marks. ;)

Is that what it takes?

[Slashdot Parent]

Is that what it takes to get on the front page? Write you some emphatic, whiny email, littered with "creative" English usage?

I think I can handle that.

I'll take your two emails and raise you one call:

[jacquesm]

A long long time ago, in the dark ages of the internet, we launched this site called 'camarades.com', which was about hosting people's webcams.

This worked pretty good, but occasionally someone would run into trouble with the software. So, stupid us, we put our phone number in the software, so people would call us, at all times of day.

One evening it's my turn to man the phone, this American chick calls and complains her cam isn't working. So I talk her through the setup procedure and at some point it starts to work. For a verification she asks me "so, what am I wearing then" (she refuses to believe the cam is now online and visible to everybody), I answer: "Well, from where I'm sitting it seems you're not wearing much, if anything". She starts calling me a filthy pervert and slams down the phone :)

uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

what the hell is this email stuff everyone is talking about???

If this sort of thing entertains you...

[seanonymous]

I highly recommend Tripadvisor's blog: http://tripadvisor.typepad.com/ I strongly feel that the support staff of all organizations should be able to post their favorite missives, for all the world to see.

Twinkes = I.Q.

[eagee]

Good thing I ate all those twinkies!

needed more emails.

[jdinkel]

This was like promising sex and delivering a strip tease :(

First one is actually a useful lesson...

[Urban Garlic]

Many, many users have the problem that the first writer had, namely, they have no idea where the "internal boundaries" are between various entities available on their computer. From their point of view, the modern GUI desktop is an undifferentiated sea of icons and buttons and text boxes. Users know what sequences to use to achieve a desired effect, but as far as how it works or even what the components are, or which ones are local and which ones are remote, they may not know, and the interface doesn't always tell them.
I recently had this experience doing tech-support for my father, who was visiting me. His e-mail stopped working, because his local POP/SMTP mail client will only talk to his ISP's servers when connecting from within the ISP's domain. At home, he's on the ISP's cable modem, and it works. I have a different ISP, so it doesn't work at my house. I switched him to the web client, which he was able to adapt to, but I'm not sure he ever really understood why he had to do that.
I can easily imagine that the guy in the first example normally had his browser default to open to his ISP's portal page, and it might have even had an e-mail link that send messages to the ISP's support team. So he goes to another computer and does what he thinks is the same thing -- opens a browser, fusses with it until a page comes up with something that looks like an e-mail link, clicks on it and asks for help. He's at the library, maybe some joker has set the default home page to slashdot, maybe it autocompleted it out of the history, who knows.
Ignorant, yes. Stupid? Only if it persists...

Re:First one is actually a useful lesson...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please SHUT UP. Shut the FUCK up. Go burn in fucking hell!!!!! FUCK YOU.

Re:First one is actually a useful lesson...

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCK YOU! FUCK ME! I'm fucking myself! Fuck!

SO hot...

Re:First one is actually a useful lesson...

[corbettw]

Damn, my ex-wife hangs out on Slashdot.

Re:First one is actually a useful lesson...

[gfreeman]

What's his name?

What the fuck is this and why am I here?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just terrible.

F-ING HILARIOUS!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep um comming.. I lol'd at the first one.. Second one was just odd..

hope there are more

better then this

[cinnamon colbert]

sort of sophmoronic fun wd be serious discussion of user comments re /. - eg, i have written to /. about dislike changes last year. surely a lot of good stuff in that sort of email

Re:better then this

[Anonymous Coward]

... What?

first mail

[joe 155]

I kind of wish that the first set of emails had a date on it. I tried typing "help with the internet" into Google and got just a plain boring list of people who offer various level of tech support as well as some ISP's tech support sites.

Also, why is the comment box here crap - has /. designed this page to be terrible; the rest of /. works fine...

So now a breach of privacy doesn't matter?

[anomnomnomymous]

So where are all the rants about this breach of privacy?

I find it funny to see how this site's community is always uptight about (online) privacy, yet doesn't seem to give a sh*t when it's done for their own amusement.

Even if the emails are quite funny, and might have been sent to the wrong adress, it does not justify to publish these imho.

Dear slashdot guy

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't f*ck*ng figure this out! I keep putting "tab a" into "slot b", but nothing f*ck*ng happens!!! FIX IT! It's your fault, Slashdot, and I want you to fix it! I mean, really, building this thing shouldn't be this hard. Tab a inserts into slot b, pivots around axis c, and drive d go. But you f*ckers didn't include drive d, or axis c - DID YOU???
.

Oh, wait, this is from Ikea, never mind and sorry.

10 = both

[PetiePooo]

And if you don't get that, turn in your geek card to the closest LUG.

Re:10 = both

[D Ninja]

And if you don't get that, turn in your geek card to the closest LUG.

Minor problem. If someone doesn't get the grandparent's joke, they SURE as heck won't get what a LUG is. And if you don't get that...well...I don't have anything witty to put in here.

Dang.

Re:I guess we're all supposed to share or somethin

[Lumpy]

That's why we refer to them as the id-10t errors we keep getting. The CTO one year had it on a pie chart covering expenses for that year, most of the IT department shit themselves laughing at that company meeting.

For all I know, it's still in the trouble ticket system at comcast as a problem code.

Year of Linux on the desktop coming soon.

[fyoder]

That first email gives me hope that one day linux will dominate the desktop. Such people could be just as easily confused by linux as by windows, so why not? It just has to come preinstalled on computers. That's what they curse. The computer. And whoever google sends them to for help with it.

One of the biggest ones...

[kdawson (3715)]

I once got an email bomb where someone called me gay. This was back around 2000 before we implemented filters. My mailbox, about 20mb at the time, was completely filled. I kind of laughed because of the irony (it's true) but was livid at the fact that I had to write a script to clear the emails out of our ancient POP server.

Disillusioned

[Experiment 626]

I've always pictured the life of a Slashdot editor as a glamorous one. Partying with hot supermodels like Hugh Heffner, flying around the world in the Slashdot Learjet, racing Ferraris against CowboyNeal, pouring hot grits on Natalie Portman... that sort of thing.

After reading this article and discovering that the above emails were "very special" "gems" that brightened the editors' day, I think I may have to lower my image of them a bit.

Re:Disillusioned

[David_W]

Partying with hot supermodels like Hugh Heffner

Hugh Heffner is not a hot supermodel.

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

> Partying with hot supermodels like Hugh Heffner

Do you really think that Hugh Heffner is a hot supermodel?

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

In what world is Hugh Heffner a hot supermodel?

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Hugh Heffner is a hot supermodel?

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Partying with hot supermodels like Hugh Heffner...

I'm sorry, but Hugh isn't really that hot. I never really thought of him as a supermodel.

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Partying with hot supermodels like Hugh Heffner

Holy Moly! All these years and I *totally* misunderstood what the definition of "supermodel" was!

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree that Hugh Heffner is a hot supermodel

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

You have been on /. too long if you think Hugh Heffner is a hot supermodel.

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

You have odd taste in supermodels.

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I've seen pictures of hot supermodels on the internet. I've also seen pictures of Hugh Hefner. He is not a hot supermodel.

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Hugh Hefner is a hot supermodel?

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

"Partying with hot supermodels like Hugh Heffner"?
How many pills have yo taken to make Hugh appear as a supermodel? Your fucked, hope you like old scrotum sack

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

I must say, if you think that Hugh Heffner is a hot supermodel, then I think I understand why your perspective might be a bit off...

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one don't consider Hugh Heffner a hot supermodel, but then again this may explain why you pictured the Slashdot editors in such a glamorous light.

I for one always saw them as obese men in straight jackets slamming their heads into their keyboards.

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

"Partying with hot supermodels like Hugh Heffner" ... "I may have to lower my image of them"
If you think Hugh is a hot supermodel, then no, you don't.

Re:Disillusioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Partying with hot supermodels like Hugh Heffner, [...]

Hugh Heffner is a supermodel?!?

So much smarter...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Everyone here acts like they are so much smarter than everyone else and that a teenager can't know what is right because he isn't fat enough from sitting around eating twinkys and playing games on the computer."

The plural of twinky is "twinkies", I mean GEEZ now stop bothering me while I am playing WoW.

How does Help with the internet bring up /. ?

[Nick Ives]

Seriously, I tried googling - even putting it in quotes, which a n00b probably wouldn't think of - and the closest I got was a link to this article!

I'm not accusing those emails of being made up but I do think someone was pulling your leg :)

Re:How does Help with the internet bring up /. ?

[Arimus]

That first email isn't dated... so unless you could some how run queries back in time its hard to say if /. never featured in a "help with the internet" query.

(Possibly some old story using those words? )

Or as you say some india delta one zero tango pulling the editors leg...

You lose..

[The Dancing Panda]

Your CSS is teh suck

samzenpus... PLONK!

[splatter]

samzenpus welcome to the plonk file.

http://idle.slashdot.org/help

Click the box by his name and hit save...

Worst. Mailbag. Ever.

[whyde]

At least the BBspot Mailbag is entertaining. No, I'm not providing a link.

(Oh, and idle.slashdot.org should just redirect to a site that's good at it.)

mailbag?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's the innagural "being a SlashDot mail-person sucks" featurette...., then it's not really hitting the ground running. Rather tame, from an IT Horror Story perspective....

P.S.

[Fatigatti]

The P.S. is simply perfect. He couldn't delete what his "brother" wrote. Is like the guy sending a letter to his son and saying "P.S.: I'd like to send you some money, but I've closed the envelope."

Perfectly logical administrator

[Anonymous Coward]

Telling the correspondent to contact AOL was actually a helpful answer. Perhaps if he cannot avail himself of such help as he was given, the correspondent shouldn't be on google either.

Oh please..

[Khyber]

I could probably find better emails to laugh at in /b/.

Ah well, I didn't design this site.

Preview

[Nick Mitchell]

Maybe the editor posted before previewing?

Troll baiting are we?

[Deathdonut]

While I got a nice chuckle from these two mails and appreciate the fact that they were posted, I can't see this making life easy for the poor guy.

He's probably going to receive 20,000 troll emails over the course of the next month.

Dear Slashdot,

[Thelasko]

How do I mod down an entire article?

Thanks,
Thelasko

P.S. Worst article ever!

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[Maelwryth]

"How do I mod down an entire article?"

Go to the Firehose.

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[SharpFang]

http://slashdot.org/firehose/

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[SharpFang]

True. Now how do you mod down whole subdomain?

idle.slashdot.org (-1, Troll)

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[Valdrax]

Do articles written by the editors themselves even go to the Firehose?

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[Maelwryth]

"True. Now how do you mod down whole subdomain?"
By not visiting it?

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[Maelwryth]

"Do articles written by the editors themselves even go to the Firehose?"
This one was. Maybe there is a just_cracked_the_firehose dept though.

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[nog_lorp]

This article is already at -1, what do you think Idle is?

MoD PaReNt Up!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I lolled in my pants, hahahaha rotflol. kdawson has come to realizations late in his life, LOL!

Is our children still learning? duh--nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

When the old slashdot
Gets a new complaint
It's a new slashdot

Little Bro

[Anonymous Coward]

I read somewhere that Hitler blamed all of World War II on his little brother Edmund Hitler.

Thought this would be amusing, wrong as usual!

[synriga]

Just another example of "What is funny for me must be funny for you" syndrome. Too bad, because I'm sure there are much better examples of idiot correspondence in the mailbag. Strike one. If #2 is as uninteresting and this one, I'll be using the gray matter filter in the future.

more needed

[m0llusk]

time to crank up the weirdness, people

More stupid people and IT pros

[daveywest]

Since idle.slashdot.org is failing to deliver on the promise to waste my life away, I present http://rinkworks.com/stupid/

Re:More stupid people and IT pros

[Paranatural]

Mod parent up, that site has a wealth of funny.

Even funnier, I think, than the computer stupidities are the non-computer ones. Sample faves:

"A small deer came into my camp and stole my bag of pickles. Is there a way I can get reimbursed? Please call."

Sadly, GWB Cut all funding for deer-related pickle reimbursement.

"Found a smoldering cigarette left by a horse."

Damn horses, always littering with their filthy habits.

"The places where trails do not exist are not well marked."

This must be rectified immediately.

"When do the deer become elk?"

When the hour is late and you've had 10 too many beers, boy.

You lose

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly why idle.slashdot was created: to help people pass the time through whatever means necessary. In this case, idle banter over poor stylistic design and the dirth of material available to complain about.

Get over the green. At least it's not neon.

regarding my mail

[Anonymous Coward]

you are now in violation of existing copyright laws please remove my letter.

signed ***************

Dear slashdot:

[Spy der Mann]

Could you add a new rule to the front page:

if(category=="idle") {
    dont_post_in_front_page();
}

Thank you.

Re:Dear slashdot:

[zobier]

Come on, you're not seriously going to make a function to not do something?
How about:

if ( category == "idle" ) {
    post_in_front_page = false;
}

Or how about going to Help & Preferences > Sections > Idle > Never?

Re:Dear slashdot:

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, c'mon now, a good portion of my income comes from writing functions that don't do anything. (client likes line counts, what can I say? Fortunately they can't actually read any sort of code)

Re:Dear slashdot:

[Anonymous Coward]

have you looked at your options, or are you simply retarded

Dammit Slashdot!

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean you are not the "whole internet"?
My internet program thingy Internet Explorer shows your page across my whole screen???

Fix my internet dammit! What kind of lusers are you guys anyway?

I'm paying you guys way too much money for you to not help me! I mean 100% of zero dollars is a lot of money :)

Let me be the first to say

[LM741N]

that I as one, fully support our new disagreeable Slashdot overlords.

Sage

[Requiem18th]

Sage

ANUS.com letters are worse...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.anus.com/metal/about/letters/

Be thankful the people who write to you are only semi-literate.

K.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. Okay. I've been a member of slashdot for more than a decade and I don't even know who "samzenpus" is or that he/she has been an editor for "years". How many fucking slashdot editors ARE there now for fuck's sake?

The rest were ok

[symbolset]

But I didn't care for the last one or the first one.

Intriguing

[Compulawyer]

Dear Sir:

I am intrigued by your thoughts and ideas and would subscribe to your newsletter or pamphlet.

Respectfully,

Intrigued

What? Really?

[Zadaz]

Wow.

I'm not going to say something as unlikely that I'm storming out and never coming back, but... I'm certainly going to cut down my reading. Which cuts down my posting, and the discussions are what /. is all about.

I mean, what the hell is going on today? I read Slashdot from a newsreader. Since it's a newsfeed and /. doesn't offer me any way to filter the posts in rss I get a certain amount of cruft. I usually try to read some stories that don't relate directly to my job, but might be interesting or useful. But I think I'm done with that. If idle.slashdot posts are going in the feed, they've just crossed that noise-to-signal ratio where I'm only going to click through to stories that I'm 100% sure are worth my time.

If I want to fuck off I've got the whole rest of the Internet right next door. Slashdot doesn't need to help me, or anyone who reads it to waste time.

And what's with these emails above? I've got two problems with this. One is frankly, should you grow up a little bit, at least in your public face, and not make fun of these poor idiots? Yeah, sure, giggle giggle, it's fun in private, but this is like egging the short bus.

And secondly, doesn't everyone have examples exactly like this? The second person's email is de rigeur for the Internet and provides no amusement. Hasn't anyone ever read an unmoderated forum? And the first is clueless, but I worked at a small web design agency back in the 90's and every phone had AOL's toll free number stuck on a post-it to deal with the many calls we got exactly like that. "Hello, I'd like to buy an internet please." "Sure thing, but we're not a sales office. Please call 1-888-265-8001 and they'll fix you right up."

Or we could have argued with an ignorant person, also known as wresting with a pig.

I think the second email was a valid criticism of the way samzenpus dealt with the first writer.

I have a better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of modding down, I want a button I can push to provide an electric shock to the imbeciles who post things like the original article, please.

white text on a green background is soothing,

[jessica_alba]

black on white seems almost spiteful. can someone recommend/write a firefox add-on?

It's nothing less than the return of...

[tobe]

SEGFAULT !!!

Alright...

Wow, that white-on-green really hurt my eyes.

[pterandon]

Where's the address to rant?

He's Right, you know

[neil-ngc]

You sorry bastards shouldn't be on google if you don't want to help people. Jeez.

Hey Reginald... I DISAGREE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny stuff, but we need moar plz

v1.1

[The MAZZTer]

I forgot the "Post Reply" standalone page:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain(slashdot.org) {
.inline_comment .generalbody {
padding-right: 30px !important;
}
.inline_comment .generalbody textarea, #postercomment {
width: 100% !important;
}
}

Seconded

[Mortiss]

Just wanted to add my voice to everyone else who thinks that this section has no place on this site...
Editors (and any corporations who may be behind it), please reconsider before this site ends up like Digg et al. and starts spiraling towards the "OMG LOLZ!!!!11" mentality.

P.S. It was so much fun reading this extremely long and engaging article containing *gasp* two emails.

Can I have some more, sir, please?

[rickb928]

Can I have some more?

Please, sir, can I have some more?

Please?

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

2 whole emails. That was spectacular! I'm so happy I wasted my time for the tremendous amount of non-comedy. WTF was the point?

Consider the jihad

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot's editors' crimes are not revealed in this article. Visit anti-slash.org to learn the full extent of their transgressions.

In Jihad,

jihadi_31337

What to google?

[ninjapiratemonkey]

So can anyone figure out what you actually google for help with the internet to get slashdot in the top ten?

Re:What to google?

[drew]

Maybe the email was sent back when Slashdot actually carried useful information.

So if there are so many...

[FSWKU]

If there are so many of these emails, then why only post this small snippet of a supposedly larger flood of alleged hillarity? And shouldnt there be a new section specifically for this? Maybe bash.slashdot.org, so we can actually rate the emails and the boring/stupid ones can disappear forever?

Eight emails

[Culture20]

Technically, it's Eight emails; but some of them were from /. to the AOL user.

Why not allow a reverse order ranking for reading

[Anonymous Coward]

comments. Some minus 5 comments are surely more interesting than most plus 5 comments...

Yeah, I had dual monitors in '88...

[Grog6]

CGA and Text. OOOOOOOH!

Then I bought a Hercules graphics card, and lost that capability...

the dual 24" widescreen monitors I have now are driven by a graphics card that has 50x the memory of my hard drive that was in that system, and 1000x the memory.

Windows runs just as fast, tho...

One and Two

[Anonymous Coward]

I have some sympathy for your first writer who clearly doesn't understand something essential that we take for granted (though Googling: Help with the Internet, brings up Microsoft not Slashdot) and needs some kind of beginners' hand holding to deal with his pickle, but writer number Two didn't apparently read the emails he signed up for--the part where it says: "To stop receiving this and other messages from Slashdot . . ." though that message ~is~ at the end of a very long list of stories and links.
One wonders how he managed to open an account and sign up for it without being aware he did.
I have yet to see any spam claiming to be Slashdot mail, so that can't be it.
Poor sod. His hod is a brick short, I reckon.

Send more mail

[jagdish]

It is obvious that samzenpus has an acute shortage of funny mail to post here. I propose that we send more mail to make his job easier.

And also, it seems like he has too much time on his hands.

Re:I'll take your two emails and raise you one cal

[MikeBabcock]

Well, I think we all understand why you didn't cancel that phone number. Good on ya.

Dar Spy der Mann

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you check a box in your fucking settings? You do know you can choose what shows up in your front page, right?

best /. story evAr

[Anonymous Coward]

I am laughing so goddamn hard I can't see straight. this was the single most brutal fucking thread I have ever seen on /.

seriously, brutal.

I think idle is my new favorite thing. I think I will write to google and see if I can have them bookmark it for me.

Re:This is the sort of thing that belongs on TDWTF

[corbettw]

Except that there, it would be funny. Alex is a little better at setting up the joke and finding the punchline. Sam dragged that first letter out longer than an SNL skit.

Re:I'll take your two emails and raise you one cal

[corbettw]

Pics or it didn't happen.

FM?

[dilvish_the_damned]

So where are the guidelines for for sending a submission?

say what?

[Vegeta99]

Are you serious? I get that many odd emails in a half day period at my job related to network connectivity issues, and i'm a LEASING CONSULTANT for a housing complex. Man up, /., and fix your fucking CSS themes.

Re:Why not allow a reverse order ranking for readi

[ozphx]

I browse normally with:

+1 to short comment, AC, Troll, Flamebait

Makes /. a much more interesting place.

Gee, that was a lot..

[bogomipe]

And I was expecting to waste at least half of my working day reading these. Was this the first of a two part series?

You were lucky...

[Fallen Andy]

When I was a lad c.a. 14 yrs old we hand punched those hollerith cards using a lookup table on the wall, sent off our cards and lo and behold three weeks later we got back - Syntax error on line 1050.

Andy

How embarrassing

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... that must be embarrassing.

Earlier today you announce idle.slashdot.org by saying "Like many of you, we spend most of our waking hours on-line seeking stuff to entertain our brains, but most replicators out there pick so much content that it's incredibly boring filtering through the mediocrity to find the funny. We intend to fill our idle section with a very small collection of the very best the net has to offer, making it the most efficient way to waste your time."

Sadly, despite managing the "very small collection" part its still mediocrity (at best) and not at all funny. Jokes on me for following the link I guess.

Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, you're not getting enough spam.

banned@slashdot.org was it ?

You've got an office ?

[fred_kroft]

Weell, you lucky shite bastward.

True or not, one of my favorites...

[UncleWilly]

The story behind the letter below is that there is this nutball in
Newport, RI, named Scott Williams who digs things out of his backyard
and sends the stuff he finds to the Smithsonian Institute, labeling
them with scientific names, insisting that they are actual archaeological finds.
This guy really exists and does this in his spare time!

Here's the actual response from the Smithsonian Institute. Bear this
in mind next time you think you are challenged in your duty to respond
to a difficult situation in writing.

Smithsonian Institution
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078

Dear Mr. Williams:
Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled
"93211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post . . .Hominid
skull". We have given this specimen a careful and detailed
examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents
conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two
million years ago.

Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie
Doll, of the variety that one of our staff, who has small children,
believes to be "Malibu Barbie". It is evident that you have given a
great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain
that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field
were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we
do feel there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen
which might have tipped you off to its modern origin:
1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are
typically fossilized bone.
2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic
centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified
proto-homonids.
3. The dentition pattern evident on the skull is more consistent
with the common domesticated dog than it is with the ravenous
man-eating Pliocene clams you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time.

This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses
you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the
evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much
detail, let us say that:

A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog
has chewed on.
B. Clams don't have teeth.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your
request to have the specimen carbon-dated. This is partially due to
the heavy load our lab must bear in its normal operation, and partly
due to carbon-dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic
record.
To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to
1956 AD, and carbon-dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate
results.
Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National
Science Foundation Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning
your specimen the scientific name Australopithecus spiff-arino. Speaking
personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your
proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species
name you selected

Re:True or not, one of my favorites...

[nharmon]

Hey, thank you for posting that. I really got a good laugh! Nuts will be nuts, eh?

Re:True or not, one of my favorites...

[MBaldelli]

Wow! *wiping tears from my eyes* This was fabulous. I need to share it around the office, I'm sure they'll appreciate the utter whacked attitude of some people here in the biggest little.

Re:True or not, one of my favorites...

[Hoi Polloi]

Great!

Reminds me of this book, and this one.

Re:True or not, one of my favorites...

[Moghedien]

Not true, but still entertaining.

Re:True or not, one of my favorites...

[Metaphorically]

Hilarious but, sadly, not real. At least according to snopes.

I, for one, was eager to see the shelf with the exhumed barbie-head and rusty craftsman wrench.

Re:True or not, one of my favorites...

[PIBM]

It's sad that I have to do that but ...

this letter has been around since the beginning of the internet (maybe sooner) and it was debunked, reasons were as such:

Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,talk.origins
Subject: Re: [Fwd: barbie]
From: huston@access4.digex.net (Herb Huston)
Date: 27 Jan 1997 22:12:41 -0500

[...]

There's no such place as "the Smithsonian Institute." There's no 207
Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, and the Zip Code of 207 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE,
is 20003.

Anyway, it was a nice read :)

Re:True or not, one of my favorites...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.snopes.com/humor/letters/smithsonian.asp

Re:True or not, one of my favorites...

[svnt]

Not

Re:True or not, one of my favorites...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course this is a hoax but truly amusing.

Reference:
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/archonweb10.html

Near the bottom they show the process of determining who likely wrote the original.

Complaints

[Anonymous Coward]

I almost sent an angry email because I couldn't get to the "Read Highest Scoring Posts" option. Turns out Slashdot doesn't like NoScript and the option to set the option to see the "Read Highest Scoring Posts" was in white so it looked like:

"Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to use the WHITE SPACE instead. If you login, you can remember this preference. "

Oh well, I guess I'll email AOL to see if they can correct this.

does /. have an attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

does /. have an attitude,-- a generally popularr position on some of the hot topic of the day?

yes

and anyone who posts in opposition to /. general philosophy will quickly be "modded down" -- a means of trivializing the voice of the opposition

this renders /. as an advocate and not a forum.

Re:does /. have an attitude

[Slash.Poop]

I agree totally.

Just the other day I commented on a post I saw. It was a very brief post that said no more than..."I agree with this"...that was the post in its entirety. The poster agreed with the article. However because the article disagreed with what most of the TROLLS on slashDot think is right it was modded down to a -1 TROLL.

Quite ridiculous if you ask me.

_______________________
No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.

Yes huh hu

[gx5000]

We are not alone...
Spooky huh ;-)

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

TWO POSTS? $%&$*#!!!...come on I was salivating over reading some really idiotic stuff (granted that first one was a classic) you can do better than that, especially since you guys run the internet and stuff. Kick Cowboy Neal in the nuts I bet he could regurgitate couple at least.

Yours Tearfully,

Internet D*ckweed

Slashdot is Georgening

[whobutdrew]

This sounds a lot like the Chronicles of George: http://chroniclesofgeorge.nanc.com/navmain.htm

Thanks

[sanjacguy]

Thanks for posting this, our IT department enjoyed it.

If you are using an iPhone...

[wattrlz]

...why would you be reading /. ?

Re:This is the sort of thing that belongs on TDWTF

[Anonymous Coward]

TRWTF is that you think this is TDWTF-worthy material. /. can have it's lame idiot user emails. TDWTF deserves better.

best thing I've seen in last couple of days

[SmokinCruves]

I have never laughed so hard in my life this was the best post ever! Congradulations you've been baited. Your lovely editor posts two disagree mails and you all go off the deep end! He doesn't have to post anything else you all made the post more then worth while. And what's funnier is you folks take yourselves seriously! Thank you Slashdot and your following for making my day golden... P.S: and some of you wonder why you can't get laid...

Slashdot has now jumped the shark...

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidence: A 'Funniest Moments' review episode.

Kicking the retarded kid while he is down.

[Anonymous Coward]

An AOL customer email. That is the best you had. that is like kicking the retarded kid while he is down. Every Technical Support person in the world has tons of AOL customer stories. I was looking for more emails about supposedly "competent" or "smart" people being retarded.

My best was supporting some hand held electronics device where the customer was complaining about a word always being on the screen. I had to tell him to remove the plastic film from the LCD. He then stated that he had multiple degrees and could not believe he had missed that.

"Teal"?

[laburu]

I'm afraid that, here, on Slashdot, we do not acknowledge the existence of a color by that name. Other purported color names that were likewise found to be wholly unnecessary include turquoise, azure, chartreuse, gainsboro, goldenrod, and moccasin. Note that the foregoing is not an exhaustive list. Please, consult with you friendly neighborhood slashbot before using these or any other words outside the basic English vocabulary. I mean, really, Gould... didn't you get the memo? :>

Seriously, though, Slashdot's default color scheme assaults readers most grievously. But it is distinctive and memorable, isn't it? By which I mean to say that one doesn't easily forget being stabbed in the eyes.