Slashdot Mirror
Quickielanche
Joy! Cleaning out the submissions box:
Praxxus sent us a link to
an article you'll swear is a joke... a new use for old computers:
filling potholes.
HerbieTMac
wrote in to say that Ice-T has joined the fray
by releasing a new MP3 single.
sanpitch sent us an
interesting article about
facial
expression recognition.
polar_bear`
wrote in to say that
Linux Mall has an
Associates Program just like CD-Now. Or Amazon, speaking
of which
Sevn gave me the heads up
on their entry for Bill "Family Circus" Keane- check out the reader
reviews of Daddy's Hat is on Backwards.
Trust me. Read it. Someone had to much spare time, and I'm
glad they did.
[null] hooked us up with the definitive
Mr. T vs. site
and east sent us an
offensive dilbert parody site.
gseidman
wrote in to tell us about an important
translation project
underway to decipher the alien language used on Futurama.
Assorted Slashdot notes from the world:
An anonymous reader linked us to a
cute comment
on Neal Stephenson's server about the Slashdot effect.
suprax
noted that
Slashdot and Freshmeat have
a cameo in the current dead tree edition of PC Computing.
adamv sent us a link
to an interview with the creator of IMDB
where he says he wishes he designed Slashdot. Funny, I wish
I had designed IMDB.
And Lastly,
Jesse Shrieve, my
favorite BSD pusher and dedicated Slashdot Server whipping boy
noticed that Slashdot is up to 28 on hot100.com.
We're neat.
When's the IPO?
Before Amazon removed them in mid-March, the Daddy's Cap Is On Backwards page had a truly massive collection of comments with similar insights into the unsung transgressive genius of Bil Keane. Does anyone happen to have saved a copy of those vanished posts?
Hmm, -you- don't like it, so it should be illegal?
I would defend the right for it to exist, even if I didn't find it funny.
But I do find it funny. (Sorry, maybe it relates too closely to some of the humor my friends and I have. That's scary).
[keeps himself from quoting the dilbert hole, cause then this post would go even lower below 0.]
do you want me to beg? tell us more, please! :)
i remember seeing these commix before on www.leisuretown.com quite awhile back...
may be the same person, but they were much more humorous in the context of "bitter worker gets pissed at job and covers office halls with disturbing dilbert cartoons..."
just alone, they seem stupid...
hmm.. leisuretown seems to be down or something.. weird..
I agree. Not even a hint of cleverness, just a juvenile attempt at being offensive, but ends up being simply boring and repetitive.
No, no, the part about the Masons is the best joke on the page.
How do you advance on that thing? I'm thinking we can do better than 28...
Maybe I have lower standards than you guys, but I thought it was the funniest thing I've seen for ages.
Don't mention it again! Egads! It's back now, but Shhhhh!
I laugh so much , this is really amusing!
However looks like it is not the taste of the Linux inteligencia. Oh well aren't they the same people who claim i should give my software for free to just anybody? Now i'm laughing.
Drawing style? These are probably by Scott Adams originally. This guy probably just whited over the words and typed in his own! Very unoriginal.
I've seen funnier things result from vomitting. The dialog doesn't make any sense at all. Basically it looks as if they're just trying to throw a few "offensive" words together hoping they'll be funny. Unfortunately they're not. It's not the offensive nature of the dialog that bothers me, it's just that they make no sense! Funny would have been taking the characters and done something more believable. I don't recall the PHB being a Nazi queer do you? I think it'd make more sense to show him hitting on Alice or making derogatory comments about the engineers based on the fact that he's probably only got a business degree.
I agree. I searched in vain for any hint of humor. Basically the guy had:
No humor
No originality
No clever lines
No ideas
Plus he just ripped off Scott Adams' original drawings. Leaves you with a bad taste.
[scenario]
Bang! I just shot your Mom.
HaHaHaHaHa! What, you're offended?
It's just a joke --I can't belive that would offend you. Gee, I guess that makes my joke the winner.
[/scenario]
Please research your rants more throughly before posting.
Thank you.
Actually, you DO from time to time see really funny examples of vomiting.
Back to the point, though, D-H does a pretty masterful job of satirizing characters for whom uniform offensiveness is the norm. When you're ready to understand this for of behavior as a distinct part of our existance, you may want to take another look at the site... it's a whole lot funnier, and less threatening that way.
duh, notice the date on the article, April 1!
The fact that 'Dilbert Hole' succeeded in offending the vast majority of you makes me want to shake the hand of whoever created it. When something which is obviously a JOKE offends you, no matter how 'vulgar', you're in need of a good punch in the head.
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
Uhm... Yeah. Great point, genius. Do you see "Murder" anywhere in this definition?
Main Entry: 1joke
Pronunciation: 'jOk
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin jocus; perhaps akin to Old High German gehan to say, Sanskrit yAcati he asks
Date: 1670
1 a : something said or done to provoke laughter; especially : a brief oral narrative with a climactic humorous twist b (1) : the humorous or ridiculous element in something (2) : an instance of jesting : KIDDING c : PRACTICAL JOKE d : LAUGHINGSTOCK
2 : something not to be taken seriously : a trifling matter -- often used in negative construction
Please consult webster's dictionary next time. "The whackjob's guide to off-the-wall scenarios" isn't working out too well.
Thank you.
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
I think he was just talking about the layout of the site, not the mechanics...
/. looks a lot nicer. and is a 'cleaner' site than the current IMDb.
henri
From my understanding the city of new your fills its potholess with old city computers. I think these are only its own computers city agency computers, and not those of residents (the city has ALOT of computers).
I really don't.
What's so funny about these reader reviews? I don't get the humor.
I suppose it may help if I were to actually read one of those comic strips, but I've never really paid attention to it... it really seems kinda dumb, like most modern comic strips.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
How does the 100hot.com ranking system work? does it go through each server's log files and analyzes them or what?
--
I'd say this is parody, all right, just incredibly lame. The fact that it's nothing but pathetic crap doesn't change the fact that it's still parody :) :)
Surely there's room for _bad_ parody that sucks and makes you think the 'authors' are idiot losers? I would hope so!
Of course, I hardly expect to see this person given the slashdot recognition of genuinely bizarre and funny exploits like Stick Figure Death Theatre
Don't even bother. This is the real DFC: The Dysfunctional Family Circus :)
Inferior imitations can just stay wher they are!
Hot100 has a methodology page describing it. To put it briefly, they analyze proxy logs and claim a sampling of at least 100,000 individuals.
Damn, I was gonna post about the DFC a couple days ago...great minds think alike :).
Hi,
that subject isn't that new to me. Not that I participated in it, but at our dept. we have a long-running project on it:
http://www.kbs.twi.tudelft.nl/Research/Projects/IS FER/
Have fun,
the Apocalyptic Lawnmower
The dilbert parody is just the most boring waste of time. This is probably the first time that something has made an appearance on /. that I think truly doesn't deserve it.
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
Because the guy has a good skill not only for imitating the Dilbert drawing style, but also the comic timing that Adams goes in for. If only he had some joke ideas it could really go somewhere.
--
Xenu loves you!
It sounds like he hasn't changed much, then. I just finished reading the very entertaining Hard Drive (which is a Gates biography published in 93) and it depicts him as almost always having an upolished appearance, to put it nicely, at public events. The implication was that he was always too busy to be bothered about trivial things such as appearance. Anyway, the book points towards the same conclusion that you've seem to have drawn which is that he's too driven for his own good and needs to slow down.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Nothing but attempts to be as offensive as possible - not funny at all.
This is almost like the old "worst suggested captions" at the Dysfunctional Family Circus page.
If someone's going to do something like this, for gods' sakes make it funny! I used to laugh my ass off at DFC, but this is just pathetic. Some people have it, some people don't.
Hell, I just find it funny that SlashDot is above ZDNet. :^)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
More than half of these cartoons seem to have
been lifted from Tristan Farnon's Leisuretown
comic strip "A Comedy Crisis". I don't know if
rotten.com is associated with him at all, but I
saw no references, and the Leisuretown strip came
long before this Dilbert Hole thing. (plus, there
was added humor from context in Leisuretown.).
(Personally, I found the ones from Leisuretown and
one or two of the new ones to be really funny).
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
You can look up the methodology here
.
--
Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
[ home ]
After Bill and some other dignitaries spoke for a few minutes (including Frank Gehry, the architect of the new LCS and AI complex), everyone crowded around Mr. Gates. After a few minutes, I got closer to him and noticed that he looked really old, or weary. His skin was parched, his pores were really big, and his hair was graying; this is certainly not what I expected of the world's richest man in his early-40's.
When I finally got to speak to him, I said exactly one thing: "I disagree with your stance on proprietary software, but we appreciate the donation of a new building." He rolled his eyes and gave no verbal response. That certainly made my night. =) I managed to tell him exactly what I thought of his empire without embarrassing myself, the LCS, or MIT in the process.
Incidentally, I was wearing a suit and not an Obi-wan Kenobi costume.
If anyone has any questions, I might be able to tell you more; it was an interesting experience, considering how I expected him to be very impressive and very professional. I was quite surprised.
--
Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
[ home ]
Well, I'm not interested in spreading rumors. As much as I disagree with his stance on various issues and his general ideology, I don't hate the man -- I don't know him personally, and therefore cannot come to that conclusion. For all I know, he could be a great guy outside the office.
I did not therefore imply to imply an ad hominem attack by describing my impression of his appearance. I was simply providing the facts and letting people draw their own conclusions. However, since you asked, I will offer my own conclusions.
I think the man is under a lot of pressure: the DOJ trial, trying to raise a family, competitors -- including free software -- nipping at his heels, etc. I think it has taken its toll on him physically. Not being facetious at all, I would recommend that he take a couple of billion dollars, transfer control of the company completely to someone else, and go retire somewhere peaceful. Not doing so might literally kill him.
In the end, it just doesn't matter -- he is one man, where computer users make up a community of hundreds of millions. While I wish him no personal ill, I do hope that Microsoft either starts producing better (read: more reliable, with less feature-creep) software, or gets out of the way and lets free software do what it eventually will.
Yet -- and yes, this is turing into a bit of a diatribe -- I am in somewhat of a quandry with that last statement. There will always be those of us to whom freedom and openness are important. I, for one, will never again run a closed operating system. (My system is certified Microsoft-free!) But I don't really care what the guy down the street runs. It just doesn't matter to me. Sure, I want any computer that I interact with to respond properly, and I want any services I use on the internet to work well, so I don't want Microsoft operating systems running bank services, or the military, or so forth. But Joe Sixpack can keep upgrading to the newest service pack of Windows, for all I care.
So, I guess choice is the most important thing I care about. The choice to run proprietary software, or to run free software. I do think that free software will eventually win out in most markets just on technical merits, but I don't think that all software should be forced to be free.
Okay, diatribe off. I'll try to make this a bit more lucid tomorrow. I'm off to bed -- rise and shine at 6:30 EDT tomorrow. (Ugh...)
--
Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
[ home ]
I agree very much. I was offended by how non-funny it was. If it were clever at all, they could get away with anything. These guys could get away with a cup of coffee they paid for.
Pin the spig.
Here's a "Family Circus" site to get that funny taste out of your mouth:
http://www.prehensile.com/tales/c ircus/circus.htm
Family Circus was washed up long ago. Hopefully the Slashdot crowd was spared the agony of enduring that oh-so-tame attempt at humour. Some of us poor bastards who still bear the psychic scars. That strip deserved to be soundly skewered. And it was.
Did anyone else notice the "Don't get us on slashdot, or we'll shave your balls or something"?
Me thinks the point of Dilbert-Hole was to get on slashdot.
Seems like everthing else was homophobic.. pity.. a varity might have helped
--
Everybody wishes they designed slashdot. Cool site, great news, wierd webmaster.. what more could you want? Plus you get to sleep in and do none other than.. code! Then of course, there's those Anonymous Cowards.. descending on us like the aforementioned quote. From hell they come! Hell!
--
Modern comic strips? I hope you're joking. Family Circus is an old fart's cartoon. It is, at best, cute. The strip on the cover typifies the entire body of work - bland, obvious, rather unfunny and shallow. The fact that Amazon.com could expect any serious form of positive review is the best joke on the page.
There was a link of the day at userfriendly to a Mr. T vs. Half-Life page a while back, but this was an absolute goldmine of cheap, "Helluva-Funny" laughs! I love Rob's Quickies (wink, wink)!
--- --- --- Don't just do something! Sit there!
www.spinnwebe.com
I would hypothesize (and this would have to be backed up with some study) that of that 75 tons/year of discarded electronics in MA alone, a good 80% of it is in working condition, and a good 80% of that was tossed simply as M$ bloatware 'upgrade' blatter. Ergo, M$ should foot the Bill :) for it's environmentally safe disposal.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
First off, I do agree that it is free speech, and shouldn't be acted against (no matter if it was immature and not funny).
However, I know that if I had created these characters I'd be either mad at them for using them in such stupid comics, or just laugh at them for trying to pass this off as "humor."
I was wondering if anyone knew the Legal definition of parody. I tend to think of it as _ABC_ making fun of _DEF_ using _DEF_'s characters/song/movie/etc.
So the way I see parody, I wouldn't classify these "comics" as such.
But, since I'm not a lawyer and don't know about the legal definition of parady, I could be wrong (if so, please let me know).
They're just stupid attempts at being offensive using someone else's characters.
Maybe they should try to think of their own characters or something.
~enucite~
hooray for protecting only popular opinions! you're a true american, buddy!
Do you mean to tell me that you actually think this is funny?
The last legal litmus test for obscenity that I read said the work in question has to have "no literary or artistic merit", and I believe the Dilbert Hole cartoons qualify in that regard.
I think the dialogue was optimized for its potential to offend -- straight gay-bashing profanity laced with dialogue taken from a bad direct-to-video porno.
If the "creators" of the Dilbert Hole want to create their own characters to spew that trash, that's their right. But the syndicators of Dilbert would be right to sic the legal attack dogs on them for using Scott Adams' property...
Jay (=
Check out the list of authors at the bottom. You know - the 'Readers who bought this book also bought books by these authors' section. They're all about learning Swedish. Is this part of the Masonic plot?
peter
I dunno...I found it funny. It wouldn't be funny if there were 300 of them, but 20 seemed to be the right number. Maybe it's because I hate what Scott Adams stands for. Maybe it's because part of my sense of humor is 12 years old. But I think there's a value in something like this. It's not the be-all and end-all of humor, but I'm glad it's there
pooptruck
I'm not too sure why the "author" of the Dilbert Hole is really bothering to do this. I don't find it particularly amusing at all.
Quoting from the main page, this comment has just appeared:
Definitely an acquired taste. #17 brought a smile to my face, but only briefly.
However, apart from simply using three characters' pictures from the Dilbert comics, there are no real references to the actual characters themselves - so I don't think this qualifies as a parody, or even any type of humour really.
The "Mr T vs ..." page was a much worthier Quickie posting I think. I'm looking forward to the time when my computer knows that I won't find certain things funny and so can filter them from slashdot. :)
Andrew.
--
The Yautja
"It was all so different before everything changed."
Sincerely,
The Yautja.
Just think how cool it would be to have this at home! If it worked nearly as well as speech recognition, just think of the capabilities our PCs would have - going through hours of 'expression training', only to have your computer ask you "Why so angry?" when, in fact, you are yawning.
:)
Just a thought.
-lx
hehe.
:-)
.
I guess this is the true victory of slashdot, a higher ranking then all of zdnets sites together. Aint that cool?
--------------------------------
check out my music
you might actually like it.
Rob, Rob, Rob...
/. a commercial site and make some serious commercial dollars with it? By linking to material like this, methinks you might be shooting yourself in the foot.
Do you want to eventually make
(Will Red Hat, or any other business, appreciate having such content linked with their site?)
Generally, I have a thick skin. But links like this seem totally out-of-scope with the lite, interesting, and entertaining past SlashDot "Quickies"
I understand that there is some discussion on another thread about a "freedom of speech" issue. I also understand that SlashDot is frequented more by college students than by employed professionals (garnered by the recent poll.)
But as a network professional in a Big Bad Corporation, I regularly visit SlashDot at work for relevent geek news and events. I would not like to see SlashDot axed at the firewall for such homophobic, misogynist, and anti-semetic crap.
hehe the poor guy got nailed once on ONE server, and Rob blasts the other!
Jim
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow...
If we had all those Anonymous Cowards/Script Kiddies funnel all their destructive energies into some serious Denial Of Service attacks on those other sites, I'm fairly sure we could get bumped up to third or fourth!
/. on the list! Kinda gives you a warm fuzzy, doesn't it?
I'm just surprised that MS's servers stay up long enough for them to be getting the traffic to be where they are - their true hits prolly register them at second, but the BSOD can't register incoming traffic.
Incidentally - check out the sites that are below
-blarg!
-- familiarity is only skin deep
FamCircus: Loved it! DillyHole: Hated it! Never put that on /. again please! Thanks! FuturamaTranslation: Loved it, but somebody's got too much time on their hands. MrSnowCrash: Send me a dream, ... (Loved it)
-- familiarity is only skin deep
I see AOL and Netscape together in 1st place for the Top 100. Is that combining the hits to AOL and Netscape (and for all the other sites where there's several websites in one ranking)
If so, that's kinda lame. They should separate all domain names and rank them separately, shouldn't they?
Family Circus was just one of those things I glanced at in the newspaper simply because it was embedded among all the other comics, like Mary Worth and Broomhilda. Really, I never thought it was good enough to get 5 stars on Amazon or even memorable enough to be put down on in Slashdot. It wasn't bad, it was just exceedingly mediocre.
How come everyone keeps saying, "No, Slashdot doesn't count as a million-hit-a-day website." if it's that high up? Does that mean there are at most 27 such sites, none of which run Linux?
I know what you mean. Two weekends ago, I hosted two high school students competing for a scholarship funded by the blood money of MS (Melinda Gates went to school here). On the one hand, I thought, "I'm oblidged to hate you guys. Your plane ticket was paid for by a monopoly." On the other hand, "Hey, it's our money now!"
The /. and Freshmeat cameos were listed in a sidebar as "alternative sites" (also listed was apache.org). Across the page from them was listed "Best web server: IIS 4.0"... then they referenced the sidebar with the a comment to the effect of 'If you don't want to be tied to MS, check out these alternative sites".
It's actually startling how much mindshare linux is getting these days... there were about 10 different references in the current issue, up from about nil last month. What next, an article in Windows magazine titled "Maybe IIS isn't for you"?
I've considered cancelling all of my dead tree subscriptions... every time I pick one up, it's usually old news that I read on the net, sometimes months ago (pefect example: the whole "Free PC" thing). If you want to play a fun game, track an item of news as it hits the mainstream media. The trail is usually something like this:
/. -> HotWired -> Wired (print) -> CNN or CNet TV ->PC Magazine
OK, maybe it's not all that much fun, but it does give you a certain sense of smug superiority when you can sit there and say "Oh yeah, I heard about that _months_ ago..."
--GP
I too only found #12 to be vaguely funny, maybe coz it wasn't as offensive as the other ones...
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
Check out www.spinnwebe.com for more Family Circus inspired comments.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
hooray for protecting only popular opinions! you're a true american, buddy!
--neil
I noticed that when some guy put it in in a comment and I went to check it out. I didn't go any farther though.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
This could be great for those damned to tech support. I think I'm going to try and convice everyone that we upgraded their PC with this feature. It could make troubleshooting a lot more fun.
User: My printer won't work, it just says 'spooling.'
BW: OK, Microsoft says to fix that you need to scowl, point your finger, and look threatening... Then your document will print.
User: But, that didn't work!
BW: OK, try standing on your chair, howling like a banshee, then moon the monitor.
User: Hooowwwlll, no, that's not it.
BW: OK, Ill come and fix it...
Gee maybe Ill have to install webcams all over the place to capture all the fun.
By looking at the property number and public trading values:
AOL ______1_ 149,376,187,125
Yahoo_____2__ 41,505,777,000
Lycos_____6___ 4,383,988,000
Xoom _____9_____969,898,875
Slashdot _28______ 92,000,000?
Assuming a relationship between these values for pure internet media properties, slashdot should be worth about $92,000,000. The calculation is as follows: Lycos ( #6 ) / Yahoo ( #2 ) = 3.0 is roughly equal to Slashdot ( #28 ) / Xoom ( #9 ) = 3.1. Therefore Lycos ( $4,383,988,000 ) / Yahoo ( $41,505,777,000 ) should roughly equal Slashdot ( $ ) / Xoom ( $969,898,875 ); Slashdot capitalization = $102,000,000, then minus a bit because 3.0 is a bit less than 3.1, Slashdot market capitalization works out to about $92,000,000. Nice work Rob.
Cheers,
I work at the ISP that hosts the DFC.. damn slashdot effect! ;) wish I had those banner ads about now..... ;)
is it just me or is it not _really_ surprising that slashdot is at #28 in the world's most viewed sites.
... he always had cool window manager stuff =) (of course, i am too old and busy now to play with window managers) .. ha ha
... mani
i remember stopping by at malda's site even before slash
keep it up, rob. charge a buck for user registration and you'll be rich.
peece
Let's put that slashdot to good use and get a decent president in office!
-Dan
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
Hmmm, normally I would think parody was protected by law. But are there any provisions for humorous content? I don't mind offensive humor or parodying of Dilbert, but this just isn't funny.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
Talk about a lack of humor! It was a JOKE, people. Must all sarcasm be accompanied by inane smileys? I think some folks need to lighten up.
Maybe you read my comment after reading the cartoons. I can see how they would suck the humor right out of you...
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
If you meant "offended by lack of humor", then you're right. However, I don't think anyone here actually gave a rat's ass about the actual supposed "offensiveness" of the dialogue. We're far less sensitive than that. It just wasn't funny. It had no humorous content. It did not elicit mirth.
Can I put it any plainer?
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
The regular contributors to the Dysfunctional Family Circus at www.spinnwebe.com were the ones who started the Amazon reviews. They submitted reviews for almost every single Family Circus book they could find. Most of 'em include sly references to DFC injokes and such, but some of them were pure works of art. I'm surprised Amazon let 'em go on for as long as it did.
Regarding experiencing a slashdot effect, just your posting my name (GenePrescott) as the submitter of one of your articles created more traffic to our site in a 24 hour period than we normally get in two weeks. While most of these visitors appeared to have "bailed out" immediately upon discovering we are a CPA firm, about 5% appeared to have traveled on the the AICPA's Top 10 Tech List from our site:
L ist.html
http://www.taxtechcpa.com/Technology/1999TopTen
I especially like how slashdot at 28 beat zd at 30. The "common sense" index on the net just went up a notch.
Why is it that those associates programs have the feel of Multilevel marketing schemes? I'm NOT saying they're dodgey -- they just have that 'maybe-i-CAN-make-it-rich-off-my-personal-homepage ' feel.
;)
But I really want to know what the kick back is on a $1.89 distribution CD
Hell, I'll add em to my homepage... I'm making enough off amazon/cdnow/beyond to feed a small african village!
--
Rare Window - free your photos
Is it just me, or is it kind of unfair the way many of those sites are grouped together? Counting the Microsoft homepage as one would be fair, but when you add in all the unrelated hits at MSN and Link Exchange, it really stops being a single web site, but rather a collection of sites that happen to be owned by the same corporation
Why can't we get leaders like Neal Stephenson? Let's draft him! Here are his quals:
He's:
-hip to the fact that Linux isn't a tuxedo rent-to-own shop;
-smart with a healthy dash of wisdom;
-not a know-it-all but a want-to-know-it-all (a small yet _very_ important distinction);
-has a reputation acceptable to most folks (sci-fi is acceptable these days *nod*);
-one of the finest writers of our day in the fiction genre most relevant to computing;
-seems quite capable of thinking _before_ making decisions of considerable import (NOTE: To the self-inflicted APL pie faces on the OSS board -- yikes! What the hell were you people thinking about? Flashing camera lights, dancing PR flak girls, what?);
-most probably has good experience dealing with media types;
-reasonably good-looking (for a guy) which is very important to the often all-too-shallow media types;
-and many, many more arguments in favor, all waiting to be fleshed out in typical FreeOSS fashion!
Draft Neal to be the FreeOSS spokesident by sending him email at:
neal@well.com
FLAME RETARDANT: Hey, he posted his addy on his site, so he must want to hear from folks. If he gets 15,000 emails tomorrow, well, *shrug* maybe he'll take the job! And maybe Salon will spend some bucks and get The Well some new 'puters and additional staff.;)
Oh, another quick note: If you're walking down the streets of Seattle tomorrow night and you see a fella who kinda reminds you of a deer-in-the-headlights joke, well, maybe that's our Neal! Just yell, "Hi Neal! Thanks for Snow Crash! Be our Linux spokesident!"
Do your Linux duty today and send Neal Stephenson an e-mail with your opinion on this all-important matter! Send Neal your e-mail now, before you forget!
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I expected offensive, subversive or witty.
I got lame.
I think about the only thing that impressesd me was the ability of the original Dilbert to be so easily subject to recaptioning.
I'm not sure if this implies the inherant shallowness of Dilbert, or something more profound about contextuality in a post-structuralist context..
..frankly, it doesn't change the fact that it's not worth the time.
morf
-- Why should I question authority?!
Or . . . Jesse, as soon as he is done here in Minnesota.
I did notice that. Typical of subversive counter culture types to try and promote their own popularity, through the use of notoriety and "underhanded" reverse psychology tactics.
Worse yet, it works.
*Carlos shakes his head ruefully.*
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
Please do bother.
These strips are taken from Tristan Farnon's LeisureTown. In context, they were quite funny: a disgruntled office worker re-captioned a bunch of Dilbert cartoons to offend his drone co-workers. The point was not to be independently funny, but to be offensive and to contrast Adam's style. The commentary is not on the content, but the lack thereof. Compare something like the excellent social commentary of The Onion (which on the surface is offensive to everyone but can actually be very intelligent and meaningful) with the inoffensive cartoon facade of Dilbert (which minimally covers material which would be honestly offensive if it actually said anything). This parody is an attempt to be maximally offensive and still not say anything, which I think it does pretty well.
This is just my impression of Tristan's work. Check it our yourself. (choose "A Comedy Crisis" on the left)
joe harpe
joe fusion
anarchitect
It's entirely unamusing, and uses incredibly (and self-describedly) offensive dialogue in its lame attempt at humor. Nevertheless I would think that here on Slashdot, people understand why free speech is provided for in the first amendment. Even the most fouly offensive speech is permitted, unless its attempt is the direct causation of violence or injury through provoked action. There is a clear warning on the site, and nobody forced you to read it. Furthermore, it IS an attempt at parody and is thus protected speech: we should never decide that something doesn't fall under the first amendment simply because we don't personally see its artistic merit - thus the fact that most pornography, although possibly technically "obscene" is protected, because there may be some artistic or other sort of merit there to some people. Likewise, some people might find this to be harmlessly funny (hopefully they don't actually takes pleasure in racism and homophobia).