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Rusty Foster Isn't Dead

Posted by timothy on from the pass-it-on dept.

While he was vacationing with his wife, Kuro5hin founder Rusty Foster was killed — at least in the eyes of Facebook. NBC News details how it happened: a "pal" pranked both Foster and Facebook by notifying the social site of Foster's supposed death, providing as documentation the obituary of another, much older man by the same name. Getting the Facebook version of his life back took some doing; based on this article it seems much easier to convince Facebook that you're dead than that you're alive.

162 comments

  1. Slow News Day by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This sort of story needs to be tagged "Slow News Day".

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:Slow News Day by feedayeen · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Posted by timothy on Saturday January 05, @12:24AM"

      posted a whole 24 min after the day started, tell me ... are you a natural fucktard, or a trained dipshit?

      I don't think you have a comprehensive knowledge of either time zones or phrases in the English Language.

      First point, in some places of the world, like Sydney, it's after 5PM, the workday is over. This is due to the Earth being round, a discovery made a few years ago and a bias by the majority of the population to being active when it's bright outside. Second point, the phrase, 'slow news day', is a figure of speech refering to publisher quotas and a demand to publish crud over nothing at all.

    2. Re:Slow News Day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Posted by timothy on Saturday January 05, @12:24AM"

      posted a whole 24 min after the day started, tell me ... are you a natural fucktard, or a trained dipshit?

      Thanks for saying this. If you hadn't, I might not have known you're an asshole!

    3. Re:Slow News Day by Hognoxious · · Score: 0

      learn to adapt your local time is not the center of the fucking world

      Neither is yours. And adapt doesn't mean what you think it does.

      second point, quota's dont mean shit

      Right number of apostrophe's but in the wrong places.

      Mind your head, I'm dropping you a new shovel.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    4. Re: Slow News Day by Rational · · Score: 3, Informative

      "Right number of apostrophe's but in the wrong places." If that was sarcasm, well played.

      --
      "Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
    5. Re:Slow News Day by mcgrew · · Score: 2

      First, Rusty's well known in the nerd world. Second, there was a submission yesterday "Rusty Foster is Dead" which sort of startled me. Third, if you didn't want to see the story posted you could have tagged it "slow news day" in the firehose. Fourth, you're in the minority -- it was voted up. Sixth, you didn't have to click the link. Seventh and most important, TFA was a good one and worth a read. How can FB be so sloppy? Doesn't anyone there have database experience? Names are terrible identifiers!

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    6. Re:Slow News Day by Osgeld · · Score: 0

      omg an AC thinks I am an asshole, what will I ever do

    7. Re: Slow News Day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He is simply pointing out that the sentence needed one apostrophe, but in a different location.

      "Right number of apostrophe's but in the wrong places."

      If that was sarcasm, well played.

      That's not sarcasm, that is a healthy dose of compliment where it is well deserved.

      Now, *that* was sarcasm.

    8. Re:Slow News Day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think I see a future Ask Slashdot forming here...

  2. Murder by Internet? by toygeek · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/01/03/049209/security-firm-predicts-murder-by-internet-connected-devices

    Looks like they were mostly correct.

    --
    Nobodies Prefect
    Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
  3. It was an understandable mixup by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    While he's not dead, his site certainly is.

    1. Re:It was an understandable mixup by jamstar7 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      Pretty much, yeah. Couple neckbeards still post their blogs there, but I was just over there, and the latest article was from Dec 17th of last year. The article at the end of the page was a year old.

      So much for culture and geek tech 'down in the trenches'.

      --
      Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
    2. Re:It was an understandable mixup by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      A shame, too. I always enjoyed K5 back when it attracted some interesting posts/posters.

    3. Re:It was an understandable mixup by TheLink · · Score: 1

      Might those trenches be 6 feet deep perchance?

      --
    4. Re:It was an understandable mixup by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      yeah looks like he used all those donations to pay for a nice yacht....

      So perhaps this was more revenge, one thing for sure if he keeps ripping people off like he has apparently been doing for years (see wikipedia articles etc) that he may well end up died for real!

  4. I first reported on this by Arno+Stark · · Score: 5, Interesting

    received bad karma for it. Looks like the repost made it to the front page. I contacted Rusty on Twitter after it was found out to be a hoax, but he blocked my account. Before he blocked me, he admitted he knew Josh did it. I think it was done on purpose for free publicity for Kuro5hin and Rusty Foster to breath life into their dying web site.

    1. Re:I first reported on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Nothing could breathe life into it.

      Been dead too long and lost too much momentum - the crowds have simply moved on.

    2. Re:I first reported on this by Arno+Stark · · Score: 0

      Yes but they didn't have to do this to the rest of us. Don't fake the death of the founder just to drive up more visitors to the web site to check it out and pay their respects. I myself moved on from Kuro5hin long ago, I only paid my respects to Rusty because I thought he was dead, and people needed to know so I posted it to Slashdot and other places. I got the feeling I will be getting emails from Nigerian Princes now after how gullible I've been over this.

    3. Re:I first reported on this by tinkerton · · Score: 1

      the crowds have simply moved on.

      Actually the way I recall it, the idea at some point was that "now that we got rid of the softies, this site will really be good."

    4. Re:I first reported on this by TheLink · · Score: 1

      If you're talking about Facebook they should invalidate all active logged in sessions but allow you to reactivate the account just by logging in successfully and saying "yes I wish to reactivate this account" within X months after the account is memorialized.

      If dead people can still log in, it likely means they're not dead.

      Require manual labor to deal with most people trying to reactivate their pranked account costs Facebook money and is stupid.

      --
    5. Re:I first reported on this by krotkruton · · Score: 1

      I'm not trying to argue what facebook should or shouldn't do, but it's usually pretty hard to "be dead", at least in my experience. Over a year after my dad died, my mom wanted to cancel some of the extra channels we got with our cable subscription, but since my dad's name was on the bill, she couldn't do anything until she could prove to them that he was dead. It wasn't exactly what we expected to have to go through with a cable company.

    6. Re:I first reported on this by Threni · · Score: 0

      I think nobody cares either way. The site is unpopular, the owner is...well, the owner of an unknown site. (I went there a few times back in the day - it's basically a blog for drama-queens with a moderation system even more broken than Slashdot's). So I'm sure Facebook etc don't really care whether people are dead or not, as long as they can say `meh, someone told us he's dead. He's not? Oh, ok. Whatever. What's the share price?'.

    7. Re:I first reported on this by _Shad0w_ · · Score: 1

      Companies fairly predictably won't deal with anyone but the person named on the account, this can frequently be very annoying as a lot of them won't actually accept instructions of the "this person can do whatever I can do". My broadband provider at least will happily talk to anyone who knows the account password and username, which is good because I'm the account holder and I don't like talking to people; "Are you the account holder?" "No, a house mate." "OK".

      --

      Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.

    8. Re:I first reported on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, not dead, just pining for the page hits?

    9. Re:I first reported on this by mcgrew · · Score: 2

      Did you even read the article?? Facebook's methods are retarded. Send an obit of someone with a similar (not same) name, wildly different age and place of residence and that's that. They couldn't have made a more stupid design if they tried.

      If you're really dead, so is your password.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    10. Re:I first reported on this by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      I left in '05 after being continually annoyed by admin Pete Jongular, nigga, and a few other trolls and assholes. Plus, after /. instituted user journals there just wasn't any reason to go there any more.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    11. Re:I first reported on this by tinkerton · · Score: 1

      That's about the time I left as well.

    12. Re:I first reported on this by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      That's pretty close to what I was saying. It took about a year after my father died before anyone could "officially" speak for him (my sister was named executor, and she didn't want it, so the court didn't appoint one for a long time because nobody was filing the paperwork and such). It should be easy to make someone dead for easily reversible things like facebook accounts and utilities, and harder for things like bank accounts and safety deposit boxes.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    13. Re:I first reported on this by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      What article did you read? I pulled up the 3 links in the summary, and none of them said what you said. As long as they track who send in the obit, I think think that should be sufficient. As I said, it should be trivial to make someone dead, and a crime (fraud) to do so maliciously.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    14. Re:I first reported on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I personally agree with this. Why keep the $5 registration except to squeeze a few bucks out of curious users? PROTIP: you don't get anything for joining, it's all right there.

    15. Re:I first reported on this by spiralx · · Score: 1

      That was a couple of years after a significant proportion of the site's regular diary section users upped and left en masse for a new site run by hulver which was basically centered around the journal section, allowed users more options when posting, and deleted anyone who kept causing problems. This was in 2003 if I remember correctly. This was a big chunk of community, and that's hard to replace quickly.

      However given that after Rusty's big appeal he pretty much seemed to stop giving a fuck about the site and we hardly heard anything from him at all, can't say I was bothered. Shame, I spent more time there than on /. for some years.

    16. Re:I first reported on this by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      I was one of the first to be at HuSi, but didn't stay long. Like you, between 2002 and 2005 I'm not sure I came to /. at all, I was away long enough that when I came back I had to get a new account because I couldn't remember the PW or remember what ISP and email I was using (/. staff cleared it up and I'm using the original account now).

      They used to call my diary "the mansion in the middle of the diary ghetto." I still link some of the old diaries and stories there.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    17. Re:I first reported on this by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      IIRC it was the TV news link. They mentioned both that the dead Foster's name wasn't "Rusty" but "Russell", he was 80 years old, and lived in the south.

      As long as they track who send in the obit, I think think that should be sufficient. As I said, it should be trivial to make someone dead, and a crime (fraud) to do so maliciously.

      What about done in error? It should be hard to make someone dead, and it should be easy to come back to life if you're declared dead but aren't. Malice is hard to prove, but I agree when malice is proven there should be penalties.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    18. Re:I first reported on this by spiralx · · Score: 1

      The years 2002 to 2005 were the low point here, people seem to forget all the crap-flooding, page-widening, GNAA manifestos an large amounts of racist,/homophobic/etc one line posts, Signal 11 and karma whoring, at least one cut and paste story involving eating crap in each article... lol, I had forgotten a lot of that :)

      I lost the use of the email account I first signed up for here about a year afterwards, went through two more before getting the current gmail account and only changed my email address here a few years ago - almost locked myself out in the process due to some weirdness! Handily though, I've reused the same passwords over the years; I've added newer, more complicated ones over time, but my password here is one of the original three I can be sure I used one of for anything I signed up to before 2005 or so :)

      I wrote 450 diaries on k5 - went there and downloaded them all a couple of years ago, it can be strange to read them back! Should do the same for my ones on HuSi, am planning on reformatting them as maybe an e-book, but crikey, Scoop generated some epically shit HTML. Damn Perl monkeys ;)

    19. Re:I first reported on this by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      The years 2002 to 2005 were the low point here

      I guess I was lucky to have missed it, I was away from /. for about that period. I don't remember, but it may have been why I started going to k5.

      I collected quite a few k5 diaries into a book, "The Paxil Diaries". I reformatted it, of course. I posted it on the Pirate Bay if you want a copy.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    20. Re:I first reported on this by spiralx · · Score: 1

      I stopped posting on /. at around that point - the crap-flooders invaded sid=k22320inchfan (the successor to sid=trolltalk) and made our little place where we posted links to our trolls and generally hung out useless. I think Rusty and Scoop was what probably gave us the idea for starting Adequacy, so we pretty much abandoned /. en masse for there, and that lasted another two years before we decided to close it. I kept reading /. but only once in a while, k5 and Adequacy were enough.

      Nowadays I read ./. every day, but don't really post anywhere at all... trying to rectify that this year, writing is a useful skill :) And I used to love arguing with libertarians and nowadays /. has tons of them - the ones that are smart enough to have a whole framework that's internally consistent and they can defend, but it's based on some really deep-buried ideas that are just utterly wrong and they can't or won't even consider the idea. I think it's why so many of them are so disparaging towards things like psychology, sociology and even the humanities lol, they represent a deep existential threat to them.

    21. Re:I first reported on this by Arno+Stark · · Score: 1

      What's that the time Peter Whysall was going crazy and deleting stuff and banning people for no good reason other than he disagreed with their opinions? Then Mike Crawford made a Story in the queue about everyone donating money for Peter to travel to Amsterdam to get laid with hookers or something? It got Crawford banned and then they got his account back, and Peter left K5 after that. I think Peter takes pictures for a living now, his sociopathic personality made it so he couldn't hold a job.

    22. Re:I first reported on this by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      That sounds like right about the time I left. I posted on my own site for maybe a year (with nobody reading it) before discovering that /. had instituted journals. IINM I left after Crawford was banned but before he was reinstated.

      And yeah, I agree completely, it was the admins that killed k5 when Foster stopped babysitting them. Whysall wasn't the only sociopath with power there.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
  5. In other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Kuro5hin is still online.

    1. Re:In other news by Arno+Stark · · Score: 3, Funny

      I guess even trolls need a web site to hang out on that only supports ASCII text, no images, and a broken cancel button?

    2. Re:In other news by b1t+r0t · · Score: 1

      Whew! I was getting depressed about the thought of never being able to MTV VTD a sye article ever again.

      --

      --
      "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
      "Open source is evil." - Microsoft
  6. The worst part of it was by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just as Rusty was getting his FB life back on track, Zygna shut down Petville and he lost his pets too.

    A truly tragic story...

    1. Re:The worst part of it was by shentino · · Score: 0

      serves the fools right for investing in it in the first place.

      Anyone spending real money for virtual goods deserves to be shafted.

  7. I wonder he bothered. by mbone · · Score: 1

    I am not sure I would.

    1. Re:I wonder he bothered. by Arno+Stark · · Score: 1

      I think it was a publicity stunt. Done for marketing reasons just to get their names mentioned on Slashdot and The Verge. Otherwise this is a non-news item.

    2. Re:I wonder he bothered. by mbone · · Score: 1

      Makes sense.

  8. easier to convince Facebook that you're dead by Osgeld · · Score: 1, Insightful

    fuckin fine by me

  9. Re:Rusty Foster? Is this the same guy whose wife i by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

    Oh thats what that little kerfuffle was all about!

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  10. Re:Rusty Foster? Is this the same guy whose wife i by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    just how retarded are you?

    Rusty Forster, two SUPER common names, might as well be joe smith from the late 70's to mid 80's, its even as spell check name in firefox for fucks sake you dumb shit

  11. Kuro5hin? by greatgreygreengreasy · · Score: 0

    He may not be, but his website is certainly on its way.

    --
    LRN 2 SWM
  12. Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Seumas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I stopped over at Kuro5hin a couple years ago. Curious as to how things had come along, since I last was there. It used to be a decent mix of deep content, generated by its users. Usually heavily tech oriented and definitely geek oriented, otherwise.

    HOLY SHIT WHAT HAS IT BECOME?!

    When I last looked, it was just article after article about the most vile shit that makes the comments on articles that drudgereport links to look intelligent. It was just a bunch of crap by anti-abortion nuts, anti-gay nuts, and shit about Sandra Fluke being a slutty cunt. I am completely baffled as to what happened. It used to be on par with slashdot. Maybe even better, in some ways. Now it looks like it's just a place of navel-gazing propoganda for hate-filled truthers, birthers, anti-everything idiots. I thought it had been attacked, actually, and returned a couple weeks later to see if they had fixed their website. Then I googled a bit and found that it had been in this disgusting state of ruin for *years* and nobody really knew why.

    1. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by plover · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A lot of people bitch about the slashdot moderation system being crap, but when you see sites like kuro5hin fail like that, you have to consider that it adds huge value.

      --
      John
    2. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I stopped by a month or two back. It was a series of incoherent "articles" written by someone angry at something about something. I honestly couldn't make heads or tails of it. It sounded a bit like the four-corners timecube guy. Thoughts cut off mid-sentence and such. So far as I could tell, every article was written by someone independent from every other article, but who knows. Maybe it's all the demented madness of a single person now?

      So I decided to stop by Advogato to see how it's fared. About the same, actually.

    3. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      /. is right behind then. Surely 4-digit guy you've noticed the massive and growing hordes of libertarians, particularly over the last two years? Those willfully ignorant of everything and proud of it asshats make me miss the creationist hordes we used to have circa 2003.

    4. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      K5 had a pretty good moderation system as well. Part of the problem may be that K5 had a notoriously high signal to noise ratio, compared to slashdot. Posting was slow and the site aimed for the high end of the market so to speak. As a result it had few members and when people started to leave it changed quickly.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    5. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by martin-boundary · · Score: 3, Informative
      K5's demise was self inflicted. Rusty pissed off the regulars when he took donations and didn't improve the site. Instead, he went off to work for daily kos. The site's main attraction, the moderation queue which filtered out crappy articles was ruined by making the rules too easy. The diaries was the worst idea ever - just a blog roll with trivial personal content nobody cares about. Worst of all, the trolls weren't actively terminated.

      I'm surprised the site has "survived" this long - it's been a troll crapfest for at least 8 years now, longer than it was a great site. A great shame.

    6. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Funny

      I always wondered whatever became of the low budget Filipina horror movie in DC.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    7. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Seumas · · Score: 2

      Wow, I didn't realize all of that. I had forgotten about K5 for so long, until I saw it mentioned one day. It's really hard to say it has "survived', of course. I mean, it looks like someone's abandoned blog that has been over-taken by spambots. There is zero content on there and it's a solid mix of idiotic and incoherent. If you remember K5 during its prime and you return today, you seriously think something is wrong with the site -- like you've somehow wound up at a domain squatter's site or something. I can't understand what the point of keeping the site up is? It's not even worth the $10/yr for domain registration. I don't even know if anyone even shows up anymore -- bots included. When I looked last, the Sandra Fluke is a Whore stuff (fine, whatever your opinion, not sure what it has to do with a geek tech site) was about the only new thing that had been posted since 2010.

      Also sad to hear about Advogato.

      What's left? I mean, Slashdot is a shadow of its former self and, other than that, there's nothing -- unless you accept Reddit, which has basically become the 1990s AOL hub of internet forums. Blech.

    8. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      kuro5hin was always shit compared to /.

    9. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by TheLink · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Doesn't matter if you have a good moderation system if you have crappy moderators. The Slashdot admins do ban some people from moderating. The moderation at Kuro5hin was presumably done by sock puppets of various warring factions.

      FWIW I've stopped getting mod points for years. Maybe I was a crap moderator. But whatever it is, Slashdot is doing better than kuro5hin.

      That said, Slashdot does seem to be declining in quality - lots of troll stories that seem to be designed just to get comments and hits. Heck sometimes I think they purposely leave in or even add editing errors to generate more comments. So the top 25% of the comments end up being comments about the crappy editing and nothing to do with the story.

      --
    10. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by tinkerton · · Score: 1

      Worst of all, the trolls weren't actively terminated.

      I think it would have been against the spirit of the project to do so. As I recall it -but it's been a while- Rusty made a point of it that he wasn't going to delete the trolls himself. that delivering the tools for the community to fix itself was as far as he would go. Then if the community fixed itself, cool. If they didn't, that was their choice and a lesson for the others.

    11. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No shit. I have a K5 UID in the 4000s and it's like the site got flipped, turned upside down and went all to hell.

    12. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

      FWIW I've stopped getting mod points for years. Maybe I was a crap moderator. But whatever it is, Slashdot is doing better than kuro5hin.

      Try metamoderating, I have excellent karma but pretty much never get mod points. If I do then I usually get a batch of mod points soon after. I don't generally bother since the people who want to troll the mod system use non-moderated choices like "-1, Overrated" anyway.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    13. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Same here... Makes the fall of digg look like a happy ending...

    14. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's interesting to read the wikipedia page on the site, and the history of trouble they've had in the last few years. Sounds like a classic example of a site gone bad through neglect and an ineffective moderation system. It may as well be dead.

    15. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by b1t+r0t · · Score: 2

      In may ways it's been a pale shadow of adequacy.org, but with a lot more lame troll articles. It's also Michael D. Crawford's aspergement and abuse blog, and Sye's bad poetry aspergement blog. And watching for the inevitable idiot who pays $5 for a new account to plaster spam or a press release for something stupid, and we all get to laugh at the "nullo". Sometimes there's an article that's a good enough troll for everybody to agree to put it on the front page. I particularly like the phrase "Schizoasshole Disorder". And I still miss Turmeric.

      --

      --
      "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
      "Open source is evil." - Microsoft
    16. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by maynard · · Score: 2

      > As I recall it -but it's been a while- Rusty made a point of it that he wasn't going to delete the trolls himself.

      No. Rusty actively deleted accounts from people who _weren't_ trolls. He threw his hat in with the worst of the worst on the net and drove off his best users and potential customers. He took a hot internet property, one that could have been profitable and socially valuable, and drove it into the ground for reasons entirely his own. Now the site is cobwebs and tumbleweeds.

    17. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by b1t+r0t · · Score: 2

      I think part of the problem is that K5 has a mod system that lets everybody, even new accounts, rate every post with no limits, which encourages sock-puppeting and circle-jerking. (Kind of like... Digg and Reddit? Two down, one to go.)

      Slashdot literally makes you lurk more, as an important factor in getting mod points is simply reading a lot of articles. Among other things, this makes it difficult for sock puppet accounts to ever get mod points. I guess it does require a certain critical mass of users to work properly, but below that level is probably admin-moddable anyhow.

      --

      --
      "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
      "Open source is evil." - Microsoft
    18. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by mcgrew · · Score: 2

      It wasn't just Rusty, the admins were retards. I was once banned for crapflooding (Pete Jongular is a retarded asshole). Rusty told me he didn't know how it happened and blamed a bug when I posted six stories at once and five were voted to the front page.

      How to kill a web site: piss off your users. Sites are a dime a dozen, eyeballs are precious.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    19. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by b1t+r0t · · Score: 1

      Does the metamoderation FAQ still describe the old system? The new one that they switched to (what, two or three years ago now?) is just plain confusing. Is it [+] the moderation is good, or [+] the post is good?

      --

      --
      "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
      "Open source is evil." - Microsoft
    20. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by tinkerton · · Score: 1

      Which year are you talking about? I stopped following it when I left, around 2005 or 2006 .

    21. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      Heck sometimes I think they purposely leave in or even add editing errors to generate more comments.

      Why would they do that? It's not like they collect money every time a comment is posted.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    22. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by maynard · · Score: 4, Informative

      There were several waves of mass exodus. It's been a long time, but maybe in '03 a bunch of regular users left to go hang out at Hulver's Site to avoid pervasive and cruel trolling.

      http://www.hulver.com/scoop/

      Rusty waved sayonara to some of his most active and committed community members then. Hulver put it up just for the old community to hang out and didn't pursue general readership or expansion. It's still around and arguably more active than K5 is now, though also pretty slow.

      By '05-'06 K5 was nothing but a trollfest. At that point, I believe rusty was actively seeking large readership and advertising revenue by promoting troll content. For example, there was that "Fuck Natalee Holloway" article, which generated vast numbers of page views. From there the site continued its slide downhill, as rusty pursued more and more salacious material to drive traffic. It became a business model. Those who objected had their accounts summarily shitcanned one by one.

      I think rusty was of the opinion that the general community couldn't write well, and he was interested in attracting professionally written material. But he didn't care about substantive content - per se - only prose style. Many of the site trolls were actually good prose writers, so he coddled them.

      But a troll's interest was not in crafting useful content that would drive sustained readership. The interest is in shocking and offending the sensibilities of average readers. And so K5 transitioned from publishing useful - if marginally well written - articles about computing, technology, and social issues to the kind of thing that might drive short-term bursts of high traffic by an offended and angry anonymous readership.

      rusty made the bet that if he sacrificed an active community producing marginal but useful content in order to coddle those who produce offensive but quality written offensive material, that his site could generate the pageviews necessary for a successful business model. He was wrong.

      Now it looks as though they're engaged in a publicity effort to generate a burst of final advertising revenue. For example, we have this story. And at the same time on reddit over in /r/WTF we see this story hit:

      http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/15ye9g/girls_guide_towtf_really/

      Which generated significant short burst traffic to the site. Timed within a day of each other. But it's a story about bestiality with dogs. Seriously.

      And I suppose writing in character a bogus female first person account of having sex with her dog is probably more fun than detailing the latest OS tricks or talking industrial policy. But Slashdot is still around and kicking. It still provides at least a marginal service to its user community that has meaning beyond just pissing people off. K5? Not so. And that's why rusty's site is dead while Slashdot employes people and retains a large user base.

      Because a to run a successful forum the community _does_ matter more than a few well written - if obscene - articles.

      May rusty enjoy his well deserved obscurity.

    23. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The Slashdot admins do ban some people from moderating

      But not the Shills. One wonders if one can buy modpoints.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    24. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem with Slashdot is that the admins can and do participate in moderating content. I remember the days of /. editor Michael (Michael Sims) who hijacked a domain name. Anyone who called him out publicly on /. had their account "mod bombed" (meaning all of their comment history or a significant chunk of it was moderated to -1). This was tolerated for years by CmdrTaco and whoever the owners/backers of Slashdot was during that time.

    25. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by khallow · · Score: 1

      Surely 4-digit guy you've noticed the massive and growing hordes of libertarians, particularly over the last two years? Those willfully ignorant of everything and proud of it asshats make me miss the creationist hordes we used to have circa 2003.

      I think the degree of psychological projection has certainly gotten worse over the years.

    26. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Clueless+Moron · · Score: 1

      By '05-'06 K5 was nothing but a trollfest. At that point, I believe rusty was actively seeking large readership and advertising revenue by promoting troll content. For example, there was that "Fuck Natalee Holloway" article, which generated vast numbers of page views. From there the site continued its slide downhill, as rusty pursued more and more salacious material to drive traffic. It became a business model. Those who objected had their accounts summarily shitcanned one by one.

      Thank you! I was trying to remember what finally drove me away from K5: It was that garbage "Fuck Natalee Holloway" post and the crap that followed.

      I'd been there since 2001, and I think that really was the deathknell. I went back occasionally, but it was nothing but the same small gang of trolls flaming each other

      Good riddance to that site

    27. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      YHBT

      YHL

      HTH, HAND

    28. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      More comments = more page views = more ad impressions = more money.

    29. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just based on the post count, Slashdot has lost lots of readers over the past 5-10 years. With that has come a loss in the number of posts (and thus the smaller number of worthwhile posts for the editors to choose from) and the pool for moderators. Where did they go? Not to similar site like digg, but probably just to many newish activities like FB, twitter, texting, linkedin, e-books and so forth.

    30. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by bedouin · · Score: 2

      I mean, Slashdot is a shadow of its former self and, other than that, there's nothing -- unless you accept Reddit, which has basically become the 1990s AOL hub of internet forums. Blech.

      I actually like Slashdot in its current state: the community is not absurdly large, nor is it stagnant. Most of the comments are fairly intelligent, something I quickly realized when Digg became a phenomenon and was able to contrast both user bases: well structured paragraphs and sentences, versus one line quips. I read many articles that may not be pertinent to me, just because the comments here often help me understand the subject better. There's teens here, but there's also real old schoolers here. It's well balanced and has survived more than a decade; I'm fairly confident that Slashdot will still be thriving in five years while the Reddit users move onto the next fad.

      I go to Reddit or The Verge to laugh at trolls or do some trolling myself. I have more respect for Slashdot for some reason.

    31. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which is worse, a troll who deliberately posts off topic comments to "call out" an admin when presumably the articles aren't about that admin, or the admin who downmods the troll's entire posting history rather than just that single post?

    32. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's safer for an editor to leave the summary as submitted, rather than make changes (except spelling or grammatical errors, which aren't a big deal anyway) and risk becoming part of the thread. The original submitter will then post how their summary was spoiled by the editor, and that will be modded up to +5 and dominate the thread.

      Sometimes editors add their own links and observations after the original summary, though.

    33. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by dr_dank · · Score: 2

      They already released The Hobbit.

      --
      Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
    34. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "K5 had a notoriously high signal to noise ratio, compared to slashdot."

      Don't be so sure. The noise here is just disguised as content.

    35. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by noobermin · · Score: 1

      Slashdot is still alive, but it's slowly moving in that direction. We still have the tech stories, but the comment-baiting, political stories tend to get the most comments.

    36. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2

      How to kill a web site: piss off your users. Sites are a dime a dozen, eyeballs are precious.

      Yeah this is why I can't believe Bruce Perens killed off technocrat.net. It had a great bunch of users and if I had been thinking ahead I would have created a subreddit to move them on to.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    37. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      More proof of Kuro5hin's decline: http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/Trollaxor/stories

    38. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by tinkerton · · Score: 1

      Thanks, that's a pretty interesting account.

    39. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by spiralx · · Score: 1

      I don't post there any more, but lots of the regulars are still active over at Hulver's site, although it's focussed more around the journals than articles. There was a switch en masse in 2003 after things started going downhill, but just like you when I last looked at k5 (about six months ago) I was shocked by the sheer level of crap that is now the only thing on there. Rusty might not be dead, but since his appeal all those years ago he might as well have been.

    40. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by spiralx · · Score: 1

      Thanks, I'd not really paid attention to k5 after leaving for HuSi in 2003 or so, sad and quite shocking to see what it has become now, although the decline was obvious when HuSi started. As an ex-k5 regular and ex-Adequacy editor, the site is a shitpit nowadays.

    41. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by spiralx · · Score: 1

      You actually think there are paid shills here? I've seem this meme become common here in the last three or four years, and I still think it's ridiculous.

      I've been here since 2000 and really can't say the overall feel is much different than it ever was. There's less hardcore nerd stuff and more political stuff (although everything becomes political here due to strong opinions lol), but tone and signal-to-noise are about the same IMO. In fact there's way less zero-content posts and crapflooding nowadays than there was for most of the early to mid 2000s.

    42. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by spiralx · · Score: 1

      But unless you had an average moderation of less than 1 on a post, it really didn't make a lot of difference what the score was, so why bother using sock-puppets? Plus, moderators deleted accounts doing that, or at least they did when I was posting there.

    43. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by spiralx · · Score: 1

      I doubt the proportion of libertarians on here has changed substantially since I joined in 2000, and there's still very, very few on the hard left at all. There may overall be a slight leftward shift, but it may just be down to more non-Americans posting here. What's changed is that over time more and more topics and stories have become political, or can be made so by posters with strong opinions - patents, automation, the financial crisis, Bitcoins and other money topics, and of course, climate change - and anything related to political opinions are reinforced by opposition even without the whirling craziness of the modern world's political and economical situation.

      Slashdot is about the only place I've come across with users from the left and the right that hasn't degenerated into a flamefest or where one "side" drives out the other and then devolves into groupthink. Which is one reason I read it all the time still. Plus, it's good to be reminded that there are people out there who seriously think libertarianism is a viable economic or political theory given it's utter conflict with human nature and reality :D

    44. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by spiralx · · Score: 1

      As one of Adequacy's editors, thanks! We enjoyed it, wrote some good stuff, and ended it before it could start turning into work rather than fun.

      But you've reminded me of Michael D Crawford and his antics now, lol.

    45. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Rogerborg · · Score: 1

      K5 was doomed when the K5ARP hung up tehir hat.

      Anyway, I'm sure that 2013 will finally see the Collaborative Media Foundation take off.

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
    46. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by khallow · · Score: 1

      I agree. I will say that there is some truth to my original post. There's seems to be a lot of people giving out advice or assigning blame who should be heeding their own words.

    47. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 1

      Yup! IMHO, the trolls weren't the real problem. The exodus of the non-trolls, and Rusty charging for new K5 accounts was the problem. If you have 12 trolls among 1,000 real users, it's not bad. If you have 12 trolls among 20 users, you're screwed, even with just the same amount of trolling.

      --
      Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
    48. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by plover · · Score: 1

      Just to pick a nit or two, shills != trolls. And I agree that there's a lot less trolling now than there was 10 years ago, (hard to say since most of the true crap gets flagged or effectively downmodded pretty quickly) but I think political shilling has increased.

      I'd love a "-1, Political" moderation. Even a "+1, Political that I agree with" moderation would be good so I could personally do the whole -6 downmod on any comment so marked.

      --
      John
    49. Re:Shitfest of Kuro5hin by spiralx · · Score: 1

      I wrote a "slashdot trolling HOWTO" a decade ago lol, I know what the two words mean - not sure where you thought I'd got the two confused...?

      The one mention of politics was meant to be about all the Alpha Nerd behaviour here - instead of "rep" or "cred" or "coolness" it's intelligence, but it's still the same set of touchy pride and insecurity over status that leads to people wanting to be part of a "gang", and then prove their gang is better than anyone else's. You end up with people spending hours arguing over vi vs Emacs, KDE vs GNOME, Windows XP vs Windows 7 because it's about the politics of power and not any kind of intellectual endeavour towards knowledge :)

      Trolling ten years ago was our own little group, we had our own "secret" thread (originally slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=trolltalk) where we hung out and would share links to our trolls so we could share its progress together and get congratulated when it had done well. There isn't anything that cliquey now, just a more diverse userbase with pre-existing conflicts of opinion ... calling someone or someones a shill is basically a lazy way to demonise them and undermine their status until you look better in comparison. Or an attempt to derail an argument that you're losing and avoiding it becoming an actual defeat.

      Political moderation options would just make moderation even more of a thing people can argue about in the absence of any *actual* hot button topic to hand. People get accused of being Microsoft shills all the time, but I can't remember anyone having been accused of being an IPCC shill, or a shill for the Koch brothers, even when people are having a massive flamefest over them.

  13. Catch-22 Doc Daneeka by Required+Snark · · Score: 3, Insightful
    In Joseph Heller's Catch-22 the flight surgeon, Doc Daneeka, is declared dead even though he is very much alive and waking around.

    One day when Yossarian is staring over the skyline and wondering where Clevinger and Orr are, McWatt suddenly skims over the surface of the water and slices Kid Sampson in half with his propeller. Chaos ensues at the grotesque sight. Yossarian yells futilely at McWatt to come down. His cries are useless as McWatt flies higher and higher and then flies into a mountain. In response to these deaths, Colonel Cathcart increases the number of missions to sixty-five.

    When Colonel Cathcart finds out that Doc Daneeka is dead, he increases the number of missions to seventy. Sergeant Towser is the first one to realize Doc Daneeka is dead. He tells Gus and Wes, and when they take Doc Daneeka’s temperature, it is half a degree lower that the usual 96.8 degrees--when Doc Daneeka, who is actually still alive, complains about being cold, they point out that he has been dead all this time, but never realized it until now. Doc Daneeka screams with anger when they say they will tell his wife that he is dead. At first, Mrs. Daneeka is very upset when she finds out. She then receives conflicting letters from her husband and from the War Department regarding the life of her husband. But as Mrs. Daneeka begins to receive widow pensions and other monetary benefits, she appreciates her new measure of wealth.

    Meanwhile, Doc Daneeka is considered dead by the squadron, and he has to depend on Milo and Sergeant Towser for food. He is ostracized by everyone and almost starves to death. He writes a final intense appeal to his wife, but she moves away with the children when she receives the generic official notification from the army of his death.

    http://www.gradesaver.com/catch22/study-guide/section5/

    --
    Why is Snark Required?
    1. Re:Catch-22 Doc Daneeka by TuringTest · · Score: 2

      It makes you wonder if we technicians aren't creating a new class of 'codeless' people -like the 'homeless'- those who fall through the gaps of the system, in this case because they have their digital ID revoked. They wouldn't have a way to get in the system again, because lacking an identification they wouldn't be able to use even the basic communication tools.

      --
      Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
    2. Re:Catch-22 Doc Daneeka by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In Joseph Heller's Catch-22 the flight surgeon, Doc Daneeka, is declared dead even though he is very much alive and waking around.

      So? Catch-22 is fiction.

    3. Re:Catch-22 Doc Daneeka by MysteriousPreacher · · Score: 1

      It makes you wonder if we technicians aren't creating a new class of 'codeless' people -like the 'homeless'- those who fall through the gaps of the system, in this case because they have their digital ID revoked. They wouldn't have a way to get in the system again, because lacking an identification they wouldn't be able to use even the basic communication tools.

      As was prophesied by Sandra Bullock's The Net; Arguably one of the most unintentionally funny screwball comedies, doing for computing what Weird Science did for biology. Except Weird Science was intentionally ridiculous and funny. The only thing missing was Bullock's character being physically attacked by her a mouse infected with a trojan virus installed via a hacker by sending AOL internets to her modem browser by firing a bullet at her bathtub. A silly and contrived explanation when everyone knows opening a command line and typing "hack password", which will either open a 3D game in which the user navigates through firewalls or send a load of random characters scrolling up the screen, is all that's necessary for the hacking of webs.

      --
      -- Using the preview button since 2005
  14. Re:Rusty Foster? Is this the same guy whose wife i by plover · · Score: 2

    Supposedly, that was photoshopped by someone just to piss Rusty off. It worked.

    That's the thing when you run a successful site. The trolls aren't just posting garbage, they're making it personal. Community policing works only as long as the community doesn't tolerate the trolls, and I think K5 just got overrun.

    --
    John
  15. I'm not dead! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't want to go on the cart!

  16. Re:Typical Bullshit by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 2

    'Frosty Piss' being a loose anagram of First Post stating the obvious and tending to drift off towards an editor bashin' slant is probably the intent of the moderation.

    The topic here is the content of the submission, viz some web forum founder's faked death - not whether the submission should have indeed made it to the story page...

  17. Re:Typical Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    'Frosty Piss' being a loose anagram of First Post stating the obvious and tending to drift off towards an editor bashin' slant is probably the intent of the moderation.

    The topic here is the content of the submission, viz some web forum founder's faked death - not whether the submission should have indeed made it to the story page...

    I just wanna shove some coal up inside your asshole. When it makes its way back out it will be a bunch of diamonds.

    We'll be rich! Isn't that just great, you uptight bastard?

  18. Re:Rusty Foster? Is this the same guy whose wife i by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

    Foster is certainly more common where I'm from... It's a lager we banished to the U.K. made from 100% wallaby wee.

    I'm surprised firefox didn't auto-correct to 'rusty faucet'. :)

  19. Facebook still isn't obligatory. by bytesex · · Score: 0

    Or a human right. As long as you don't need facebook to get a job, file a criminal report, register a car or whatnot, I can't lose any sleep over this. It's just a website, folks.

    --
    Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
    1. Re:Facebook still isn't obligatory. by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Funny

      As long as you don't need facebook to get a job

      But what if this happens on LinkedIn?

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
  20. Once upon a time... by RKBA · · Score: 4, Funny

    I wrote "Deceased" on a junk mail envelope hoping that they would stop sending junk to me, and put the envelope back into my mailbox. A day or two later I stopped getting any mail at all! The post office was returning ALL of my mail because they assumed I was actually dead. Convincing them otherwise cost a lot of time and trouble.

    --
    9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
    1. Re:Once upon a time... by Seumas · · Score: 1

      That actually got a loud laugh out of me. Thanks. :)

      Even three years after buying this house, I still get mail for the old owners, every day. And the people who lived here before that (almost 15 years ago). It just never stops. I do everything online, so 95% of mail is literally just someone else's junk. I tried stamping it with a "NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS". Still nothing.

      So, I've taken to using the time when I'm on long holds for operators or something to write intricate stories on envelopes, before stamping them with "NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS" and returning them to my mailbox for the postman to return. Usually things about the recipient having a gender reassignment surgery and moving to Vegas or reassessing their life and joining the French Foreign Legion.

    2. Re:Once upon a time... by scottrocket · · Score: 1
      Usually things about the recipient having a gender reassignment surgery and moving to Vegas or reassessing their life and joining the French Foreign Legion.

      Good, you're opening their mail-someday there could be money inside.

    3. Re:Once upon a time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I had a scummy credit card company pestering me with those a few years ago. "Get another card now, only 9.99% (*) interest!" (* for first 3 months, then it skyrockets to left arm + firstborn).

      They wouldn't take the hint when I returned their prepaid envelopes with a polite "not interested" written on the form. So we taped that sucker to a ten-pound scrap of old lumber, wrote "GIVE UP" on it in 150 point font, and gave it to the postman (who had a good laugh and said yes, they have to pay that thing on delivery).

      We never heard from that CC issuer again.

    4. Re:Once upon a time... by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 1

      1. Open mail
      2. Say "Yes" to whatever offer is inside
      3. ???
      4. LULZ

    5. Re:Once upon a time... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      These companies are doing you a great service by providing you with valuable offers. How better than to return the favor? Run the advertisements through a crosscut shredder, then redistribute them to the companies that send you offers in their postage-paid return envelopes. Not only will you provide them with valuable offers, but they will also get to have the fun of reassembling them from confetti. Unfortunately, these irregular envelopes must be hand-cancelled, which does incur some additional cost, but I feel this is well worth the benefit they will receive when your mail arrives.

      For additional points, make sure to tape the envelope shut after sealing it to encourage them to tear open the envelope, to increase the chance that they will maximize their fun.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    6. Re:Once upon a time... by Reschekle · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is a urban legend. Attaching "Business Reply Mail" envelopes and cards to parcels is an invalid use of those mailings and will be discarded. You are either lying (this incident never happened) or your postman has never worked in sorting and has no clue about this.

      See here and here.

      If you want to piss them off, send them something nasty that will gum up the letter-opening machines at the CC company. Of course you may well end up being sued or charged with a crime, depending on the circumstance.

    7. Re:Once upon a time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Same AC here... Canadian, not US, post office. They did take it, and the CC issuer did back off after that.

  21. Get on the cart. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ere, he says he's not dead.

    Yes he is.
    I'm not.
    He isn't.
    Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
    I'm getting better.
    No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
    Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
    I don't want to go on the cart.
    Oh, don't be such a baby.
    I can't take him.
    I feel fine.
    Oh, do me a favor.
    I can't.
    Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
    promised I'd be at the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today.
    Well, when's your next round?
    Thursday.
    I think I'll go for a walk.
    You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do?

    [Glances up and down the street furtively, then silences the Body with his a whack of his club.]

    1. Re:Get on the cart. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Too obscure. The lowbrows round here only know the Yorkshiremen, the parrot and the one about arguments.

    2. Re:Get on the cart. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, we don't.

  22. Rusty Foster Isn't Dead... by FatLittleMonkey · · Score: 1

    While he was vacationing with his wife

    ...he's resting.

    --
    Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
  23. hiatus by deadl0ck · · Score: 1

    I put my facebook account on hiatus about a year ago, I was considering deleting it entirely soon. This sounds like a much better state to leave it in.

    --
    --
  24. Re:Two Facebook articles in a row by Kergan · · Score: 1, Funny

    It looks like you forgot to tick the AC checkbox. Or if, consult a shrimp -- fast. :-)

  25. Who gives a flying fuck? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As someone who regularly visited K5 back in 2001, I say who the fuck cares? Rusty let the place go to shit and so he deserves what he got. K5 used to be a small alternative to /. Now it's just a shitpile that has about as much use as a flaming dildo. My recommendation is that Rusty should shut down K5 and save the monies for bills and other necessary expenditures.

    1. Re:Who gives a flying fuck? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also. for the record, I only posted AC because I had already modded some retarded posts in this story. My k5 UID is less than 4000 (although that's less impressive than having a /. UID in the 28000s).

  26. Re:Two Facebook articles in a row by MysteriousPreacher · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Congratulations. You're the cancer.

    --
    -- Using the preview button since 2005
  27. Re:Two Facebook articles in a row by Psychotria · · Score: 0

    Ok, I will eat a shrimp. But everything I said is true.

  28. Re:So he lost his Facebook account by 0xdeaddead · · Score: 0

    I thought the facebooks were the whole reason for existing?

  29. Re:Two Facebook articles in a row by Psychotria · · Score: 0

    You do realise this story is posted under tech.slashdot.org, yes?

  30. That would be fallacies #21 and #37 by Lorens · · Score: 2

    See http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

  31. Re:Rusty Foster? Is this the same guy whose wife i by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Right, because that is clearly not photoshopped at all. Are you perchance browsing the web using a fuzzy old 15" CRT monitor?

  32. Re:Two Facebook articles in a row by Psychotria · · Score: 1

    Well, seeing I almost literally quoted Linus Torvalds, the moderation to my post, and your reply, seems to justify -- or at least confirm -- my original post. There are a couple of possibilities here. (a) There are no nerds left; (b) nobody has a sense of humour mixed with fact; (c) both (a) and (b). Whatever the correct answer is doesn't matter.

  33. Re:Two Facebook articles in a row by Psychotria · · Score: 0

    Well I didn't post the THIRD Facebook "story" in a row (or the first, or the second). So I am not the cancer. The cancer is that facebook is the level of intelligence that now represents Slashdot. So, congratulations, enjoy your mindless peer group.

  34. Re:Rusty Foster? Is this the same guy whose wife i by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Good call.

    That's exactly what happened, K5 was a great site way back when, but it became overrun with trolls, really nasty one's too, and I finally had to bail. When I visited some time later I saw it was dead and there were hushed innuendos about the cause (the X Rated photo).

    It's too bad K5 is a ghost town now, it was a refreshing adjunct to Slashdot at the time ('99-2003), and I still have a well worn Kuro5hin T-shirt.

    Guess I'll go give it a look for old time's sake. TA!

    http://www.kuro5hin.org/

  35. Re:Typical Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    viz some web forum founder's faked death

    Oh Slashdot, what has happened when people think Rusty Foster is 'some webforum founder'

  36. Re:Two Facebook articles in a row by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

    You do realise this story is posted under tech.slashdot.org, yes?

    Are you sure about that?

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  37. Re:Two Facebook articles in a row by MysteriousPreacher · · Score: 1

    Actually I take back my comment and apologise. I replied too early in the morning and kind of missed the joke. Should never post before morning coffee.

    --
    -- Using the preview button since 2005
  38. Re:Two Facebook articles in a row by mcgrew · · Score: 1

    I would have modded it down, too. Nice try but it just wasn't funny.

    --
    Free Martian Whores!
  39. Re:Two Facebook articles in a row by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Humor is subjective, and you have a tough audience. But sure, blame everyone else for not being X enough to get you. Makes you seem even better after the fact. ... Not!

    (not jokes are funny)

  40. Re:So he lost his Facebook account by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Nothing of value was lost."

    People named 'John Smith' f. ex. have to deal with the fact that someone with the same name dies every other day, Facebook member or not.
    Nonetheless they don't despair.

  41. Ummmm, make a new account? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I guess he's so important that they retired his name forever or something. From what I'm reading in the comments, I'd guess he's not.

  42. KURO5HIN IS DYING by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Scratch that. It's been dead for so long nobody cares much anymore. RIP k5, you used to be cool.

  43. "...easier to convince Facebook you're dead..." by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

    Could be useful.

    --
    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  44. Kuro5hin by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 2

    Wow.

    I haven't seen than name in 5 or more years...

    Remember when it was challenging "the dot"?

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  45. This can be a real problem by Solandri · · Score: 1

    Losing Facebook access is merely an inconvenience. But in other contexts being erroneously declared dead can have serious consequences.

  46. Not Really New Info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://thulbourn.com/not_dead.html

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/technology/18death.html?_r=0

    Not sure how this is justified as Slashdot worthy. I did this to a friend years ago and it was reported online in the New York Times above.

  47. Re:Rusty Foster? Is this the same guy whose wife i by spiralx · · Score: 1

    Lots of the regulars are still active over at Hulver's site, although it's focussed more around the journals than articles.

  48. Not Sure Why by thasmudyan · · Score: 1

    If this is a publicity stunt, it's certainly horribly misguided. It's been a while since I last went there so I just headed over to kuro5hin to see what if anything is going on. The place is an absolute dump now. There is little if any content, just an endless stream of trash posts and comments. It doesn't look as if Rusty or in fact any other moderators mind at all.

    For some reason this really gets to me. With all the residual fame and search engine glory it would be so damn easy to just go in there, throw all the garbage out, terminate the trolls, modernize the site, and open up for business again. Why is Rusty not doing anything?

  49. RIP'ing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is a word for this it's called "RIP'ing"
    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rip%27ing