After being nearly swayed in the other direction by the parent of the parent to this post, I was readily swayed back. M$ is vulnerable at the moment and if we can legally fight them on the question of whether trade secret applies (already published) or copyright (history of the code) we should. What is the worst outcome of fighting them? Cost of lawyers (any probono copyright experts reading?) to Andover? Andover should be able to pick up a few months of the fight without breaking a sweat beyond that I'm sure many lawyers would jump at the chance if it looks like we have a legal leg to stand on. What it we don't have a leg to stand on? Slashdot will have dragged M$ through the bog of public opinion at (perhaps) the most critical time in M$ history (One of the few times I wish a jury was deciding their fate instead of a judge).
Worst outcome for Slashdot: required to police their site for copyright infringement whenever notified by offended third party, wasted legal fees.
This opportunity is well worth the gamble. Lets fight on the seas and oceans.....we will NEVER surrender!
Remember we are not the only group fighting M$ right now, we may not admire our allies but they are allies and this is war!
Well, I for one was a little dissapointed and surprised, not at M$ request or at the tone of the response, but that the official Slashdot response was not from our beloved CmdrTaco. So Robin is the editor in chief NOT Rob. I guess this means that Taco and Hemos really don't have much say in what the official Slashdot response will be? I had hoped that the sellout to Andover was just to offload the marketing duties and provide thing like highbandwith and quad servers. How naive of me.
Hope Andover decides to fight the good fight but I'm sure it'll come down to a business decision: are we making money by staying in the public eye with this legal battle?
Nice troll! If you were really for free software you wouldn't be championing M$ and you;d find a different thread to post in, one that would piss-off more people.
I heard earlier on NPR that the guy who was arrested lives with his girlfriend and his girlfriends sister. Apparrently the sister just graduated from the computer college there. Hmmmm this makes sense, how many virus writing guys would be able to "think outside the box" and send a loveletter vs how many virus writing females would think "inside the box" and produce a loveletter??
Do they have the wrong person under suspicion/arrested?
Good point. It should be legal for libraries that subscribe to journals to archive the articles they have paid for. This way the distributed system of backups is maintained at all the universities that ever subscribed to a journal. Much like the print versions. It can't take that much data storage to archive the existing online journal, in the worst case scenario, several universities could band together to create multiple secure backups of the materials they have subscribed to.
Re:Provide Links to good articles please
on
Silicon Hell
·
· Score: 2
You are correct that there isn't much evidence available but the article, on several occasions, misses perfect opportunities to provide this info and fails.
Yet scientific studies and a potentially path-breaking lawsuit filed against IBM and its many chemical suppliers suggest that Loanzan's fatal disease may have been caused by his work. "His exposures led to the illness that caused his death," argues San Jose-based attorney Amanda Hawes, who is representing Loanzan's family and 10 other semiconductor workers in the lawsuit. According to the February 1998 suit filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, IBM maintained an internal "corporate mortality file," a database detailing the deaths of more than 25,000 IBM workers nationwide. Of 10,331 employees who died between 1975 and 1989, 149 died of primary brain cancer, the lawsuit states, citing a 1995 study sponsored in part by the company. That's 10 brain cancer deaths a year at IBM, a startlingly high number for such a rare disease. The file now shows that 8,000 of the 25,000 deaths were due to some form of cancer, Hawes said.
What scientific studies? and what were the conclusions?
And relative to the incidence of cancer (and brain cancer) in the general public is the number IBM cancers abnormal after factoring out lifestyle influences?
This journalist sets the question up, provides some number and doesn't put it into context. These sort of details would make the difference between believeablility and crap journalism.
Back when DOW was under attack for breast implant lawsuits, I was asked to review some evidence submitted by some joker scientist using an antibody test to measure the immune response of patients to silicone. The ELISA test this company was offering had no scientific basis yet lawyers were trumpeting the results as proof of silicone induced immune problems. As you may know DOW-Corning lost and was bancrupted only to later have multiple meta-statistical analyses show no statistical correlation between the silicone implants and immune problems relative to immune problems in the general public. But it dosen't matter because nonscientific juries are swayed by the personal anecdotal evidence.
This is the reason why I ask for better information. If the data show a statistically significant problem them we have reasonable evidence to pin the tail on the donkey. Without it, we have a witch hunt.
Another side of the halogenated hydrocarbon environmental problem lies in the chlorinated hydrocarbons. Substances like methylene chloride (CH2CL2) and tetrachloroethylene (TCE, C2H2Cl4) are liquids that are immiscible with water yet are heavier than water. What happens when you use these to clean computer parts and happen to spill a few gallons down the drain? They sink into the water table and find nooks and crannies to hide in, continually leaching into the ground water for years to come and you can't easily clean them up since you cant find where they are hiding. If you could find where they are what would you do? Dig the ground up and suction them out..they can be stitting in pools a thousand feet deep.
A very tough problem and one of the major groundwater issues today.
Re:Provide Links to good articles please
on
Silicon Hell
·
· Score: 1
Re-read the post dude. Its is essentially a plea for better information instead of heresay evidence. I have noting against the intent of the author who wrote the piece its just that its so badly written and contains no useful data. HNO3 is not a problem carcinogen, it is dangerous like fire is dangerous. So if the piece is to alert people to carcinogenic chemical use and abuse in the semiconductor industry why pick that example? A statistical argument would sway my thoughts(and the EPA's) much more.
Provide Links to good articles please
on
Silicon Hell
·
· Score: 3
This article is nothing but innunendo with no substance written by someone who has a strong (and quite possibly correct) prebias. There are no data and some of the examples are laughable. Articles like this are good at spooking the public but are useless for information content. Their lead piece about nitric acid is a great example. Sure nitric acid is a hazardous chemical and if you mix it (carefully) with another hazardous chemical ammonia (one of those "two step gasses") what you get?
Ammonium Nitrate AKA fertilizer woooooo nasty!!!
I would have been interested in an article that focussed on halogenated hydrocarbons but anecdotal tumor stories are pathetic. Had they listed the percentage of tumor patients in IBM employees vs the general populace that might be useful.
If you haven't read this article I'd suggest you skip it.
Under new powers due to come into force this summer, police will be able to require individuals and companies to hand over computer "keys", special codes that unlock scrambled messages.
Is there a new Brittish law on this? Whats the penalty for not handing a PGP key over?
This sort of crap would not fly in the US or Canada. Imagine getting a visit from the authorities stealing your computer and when they can't find your PGP key from some old e-mail you sent (you deleted it) they imprison you because you are no longer able to decode an old e-mail that was completely innocous.
Major potential for abuse! If I was a Brittish voter I'd be on the phone now. Does anyone know the details of this new law here?
English class: each student would type out a sentence on their computer, then get up and move to the computer to their right and type another sentence, and so forth around the room. When we were done, we would read "our" story to the class
When I was young, we started with a story and would wisper it into the next persons ear. By the time it made it around the circle it was something completely unrelated. The computer version is interesting because you don't loose info from one person to next. It show's how each person distorts the story. So much for eyewitnesses.....and to think people have been killed for less evidence than that.
Good points! Just wait until AOL comes pre-set to use their filters unless the user knows they are there and registers with AOL proving they are an adult (credit card). We all know that a filter is not very useful if the user knows they are being filtered. Thus I think AOL will develop browsers (Mozilla!) that filter by default to the point where links on target pages will not be displayed if not "whitelisted". Most non-internet savvy Americans will think they are surfing "the web" when in fact they are surfing AOL's version of the web, full of corporate partners and excluding anything not mainstream. I can't wait until websites have to get AOL approval to be included in the "white list". This is truly frightening. With a media conglomerate controlling access to sites and regular advertising/news to promote their views widely to the public, the already brainwashed public can be easily lured into these sorts of schemes.
Quite scary! We must lobby against censorware! Tell your non internet savvy neighbors about these perils, tell your mom, encourage them to tell....and she told two friends...and so on...and so on.....
Good call! Although this is the authentic OOG account this post clearly is not posted by the OGG we know and worship. The grammar is not OGG and there is no insightful comment. OOG should easily be able to say something bowel splitting in response to this story. I'll bet his little brother has logged onto his account while he is out for the night. Or (heaven forbid) some jerk has cracked his logon passwd and is trying to ruin him. Hopefully the former.
You are so correct about the marketing. I remember seeing a quote in the Saturday Boston Globe (they run quotes of the week each Sat) that said "She not exactly Intel inside" acredited to some MIT student overheard on the subway in reference to a potential girlfriend. Powerful marketing that. I can't remember the precise date but I'll bet that intel stock went up the next monday AND that more people bought Intel hardware that next week. They do have a serious marketing presence in the general public but where is AMD? I can't think of a single instance of AMD commercials. Now how about Apple! great hardware or not they definitely have the marketing thing figured out.
Good Marketing will beat good product any day of the week
Impressive graphics and generally very good I thought. Clearly they depicted dinosaurs as being warm blooded (much more interesting than cold) but one thing annoyed me. They had this silly bit where these two dinosaurs were having this mating ritual of making sounds rubbing bodies and then they had the male dino mount the female from behind and hump her just like mammals do. I thought dino's laid shelled eggs? I thought all (any exceptions?) shelled egg layers fertilize the eggs outside the body. Could it actually be possible that dinos had sex the way we do?
A 15 year old, slightly wierd and overly teased kid attacked his classmates today in Ontario near Ottawa. Too early for the full story but the teased and weird comes from an interview with a girl from the school. The story can be found her e on the cbcnews website.
I think this just goes to show you that schools should pay a LOT more attention to teasing/abuse and make moves to prevent it rather than report the kid as dangerous. Big brother programs within schools would probably be very effective at helping this problem. Partner the teased kid up with an older, sensible and most importantly popular/big kid to deflect flac and help the misfit regain self esteem.
I you have a site that truly wants to discriminate between the under and over 13's just give them the pokemon quiz.....To register for this site answewr the following questions:
Pikacho is:
A: a new nasal tissue B: small and furry
...if I new anything about pokemon I could probably write something funny here but I don't, cause I'm (much) older than 13.
This is hapenning to University Librarians everywhere. With the advent of online journals, less and less of the former regulars are humping their butts into the library and spending hours asking those interesting research questions and chatting with the librarians about quality of the collections etc. More and more researchers are turning to online sources as the research is faster and most good universities have immense collections of online journals. Combined with web based searching available to university researchers (Medline, Web of Science, Chemical Abstracts, lexus-nexis(sp?), google etc.) the library and the librarian are losin their edge and worthfulness to the community of researchers. Their are getting lonely and what is their reaction you ask? The internet is evil, there's nothing quite like cuddling up to good book, I will not be making that information available online......
You have elegantly shown how complaining about moderation gets the moderators attention. Had you not bitched about being moderated down in your earlier post in another thread, no body would even have paid attention to your post.
By the way, I posted a slightly modified version of the internet cleaning hoax in response to a story about intenet hoaxes a day or so before the dreadfully unfunny april fools internet cleaning hoax story.
This is a very interesting idea. As an inventor on three biotech related patents I can see the value of a site such as this. Some universities don't have the tech savvy marketing teams to find and pitch a patent to the right company. My patents were liscenced long before they issued and thus wouldn't have benefitted from this exchange. The marketing was done by my former advisor not the university. Since then I have met several scientists who have invented exciting new technologies but do not have the business savvy to attract investors and start a company themselves nor do they (or their universities) have the marketing savvy to find the right company to liscence the technology.
More than anything I would love to see a database of patent applications up for auction. Currently it is hard to get info on patent applications. A site containing a database of patent applications up for bidding would really attract attention as that info is not readily available in the freemarket. They could probably be profitable by selling access to their database alone. If you cant find companies to liscence your patent application you can put it online to the highest bidders. You would be tipping your hand to potential competition but at the same time you would be accelerating tech transfer.
To the above posters to feel that such a system would just encourage people to patent anything, the solution to this problem is to reform the USPTO such that they don't grant patents frivilously. Remember that a patent must be sucessfully defended in a court to really be worth its words.
To think about this patent-auction site reasonably you have to forget about software patents and think about all technology based patents. For many scientific areas this could be a great thing.
As far as I can tell, slashtroll is an evening (us time) and weekend phenomenom. I wish I could spare the time to post to Slash during the weekdays but I have a job that prevents that and thus I post when the trolls are out.
Trolls kill the readability of this site. Perhaps we should limit the number of posts by any given IP address to 1/10 minutes, the length of time it takes to post something serious. This would not stop the maniacal trolls but slow new trolls and lessen the tendency of people to overreact to (real) trolls starting flamewars.
I wish the sex/grits trolls would leave. The political (VA) trolls are annoying but at least have a real message. 1 post/10 minutes would cut much of that crap out and probably increase the quality of posts in the threads generally.
To the real trolls, keep going! Sometimes you are the only ones presenting the other point of view even if I occasionally get suckered.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought most of the current labs in Los Alamos were underground and thus relatively immune to surface fires.
Anyone reading who know the site first hand?
After being nearly swayed in the other direction by the parent of the parent to this post, I was readily swayed back. M$ is vulnerable at the moment and if we can legally fight them on the question of whether trade secret applies (already published) or copyright (history of the code) we should. What is the worst outcome of fighting them? Cost of lawyers (any probono copyright experts reading?) to Andover? Andover should be able to pick up a few months of the fight without breaking a sweat beyond that I'm sure many lawyers would jump at the chance if it looks like we have a legal leg to stand on. What it we don't have a leg to stand on? Slashdot will have dragged M$ through the bog of public opinion at (perhaps) the most critical time in M$ history (One of the few times I wish a jury was deciding their fate instead of a judge).
Worst outcome for Slashdot: required to police their site for copyright infringement whenever notified by offended third party, wasted legal fees.
This opportunity is well worth the gamble. Lets fight on the seas and oceans.....we will NEVER surrender!
Remember we are not the only group fighting M$ right now, we may not admire our allies but they are allies and this is war!
Well, I for one was a little dissapointed and surprised, not at M$ request or at the tone of the response, but that the official Slashdot response was not from our beloved CmdrTaco. So Robin is the editor in chief NOT Rob. I guess this means that Taco and Hemos really don't have much say in what the official Slashdot response will be? I had hoped that the sellout to Andover was just to offload the marketing duties and provide thing like highbandwith and quad servers. How naive of me.
Hope Andover decides to fight the good fight but I'm sure it'll come down to a business decision: are we making money by staying in the public eye with this legal battle?
Nice troll! If you were really for free software you wouldn't be championing M$ and you;d find a different thread to post in, one that would piss-off more people.
I heard earlier on NPR that the guy who was arrested lives with his girlfriend and his girlfriends sister. Apparrently the sister just graduated from the computer college there. Hmmmm this makes sense, how many virus writing guys would be able to "think outside the box" and send a loveletter vs how many virus writing females would think "inside the box" and produce a loveletter??
Do they have the wrong person under suspicion/arrested?
Good point. It should be legal for libraries that subscribe to journals to archive the articles they have paid for. This way the distributed system of backups is maintained at all the universities that ever subscribed to a journal. Much like the print versions. It can't take that much data storage to archive the existing online journal, in the worst case scenario, several universities could band together to create multiple secure backups of the materials they have subscribed to.
Yet scientific studies and a potentially path-breaking lawsuit filed against IBM and its many chemical suppliers suggest that Loanzan's fatal disease may have been caused by his work. "His exposures led to the illness that caused his death," argues San Jose-based attorney Amanda Hawes, who is representing Loanzan's family and 10 other semiconductor workers in the lawsuit. According to the February 1998 suit filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, IBM maintained an internal "corporate mortality file," a database detailing the deaths of more than 25,000 IBM workers nationwide. Of 10,331 employees who died between 1975 and 1989, 149 died of primary brain cancer, the lawsuit states, citing a 1995 study sponsored in part by the company. That's 10 brain cancer deaths a year at IBM, a startlingly high number for such a rare disease. The file now shows that 8,000 of the 25,000 deaths were due to some form of cancer, Hawes said.
What scientific studies? and what were the conclusions?
And relative to the incidence of cancer (and brain cancer) in the general public is the number IBM cancers abnormal after factoring out lifestyle influences?
This journalist sets the question up, provides some number and doesn't put it into context. These sort of details would make the difference between believeablility and crap journalism.
Back when DOW was under attack for breast implant lawsuits, I was asked to review some evidence submitted by some joker scientist using an antibody test to measure the immune response of patients to silicone. The ELISA test this company was offering had no scientific basis yet lawyers were trumpeting the results as proof of silicone induced immune problems. As you may know DOW-Corning lost and was bancrupted only to later have multiple meta-statistical analyses show no statistical correlation between the silicone implants and immune problems relative to immune problems in the general public. But it dosen't matter because nonscientific juries are swayed by the personal anecdotal evidence.
This is the reason why I ask for better information. If the data show a statistically significant problem them we have reasonable evidence to pin the tail on the donkey. Without it, we have a witch hunt.
Another side of the halogenated hydrocarbon environmental problem lies in the chlorinated hydrocarbons. Substances like methylene chloride (CH2CL2) and tetrachloroethylene (TCE, C2H2Cl4) are liquids that are immiscible with water yet are heavier than water. What happens when you use these to clean computer parts and happen to spill a few gallons down the drain? They sink into the water table and find nooks and crannies to hide in, continually leaching into the ground water for years to come and you can't easily clean them up since you cant find where they are hiding. If you could find where they are what would you do? Dig the ground up and suction them out..they can be stitting in pools a thousand feet deep.
A very tough problem and one of the major groundwater issues today.
Re-read the post dude. Its is essentially a plea for better information instead of heresay evidence. I have noting against the intent of the author who wrote the piece its just that its so badly written and contains no useful data. HNO3 is not a problem carcinogen, it is dangerous like fire is dangerous. So if the piece is to alert people to carcinogenic chemical use and abuse in the semiconductor industry why pick that example? A statistical argument would sway my thoughts(and the EPA's) much more.
This article is nothing but innunendo with no substance written by someone who has a strong (and quite possibly correct) prebias. There are no data and some of the examples are laughable. Articles like this are good at spooking the public but are useless for information content. Their lead piece about nitric acid is a great example. Sure nitric acid is a hazardous chemical and if you mix it (carefully) with another hazardous chemical ammonia (one of those "two step gasses") what you get?
Ammonium Nitrate AKA fertilizer woooooo nasty!!!
I would have been interested in an article that focussed on halogenated hydrocarbons but anecdotal tumor stories are pathetic. Had they listed the percentage of tumor patients in IBM employees vs the general populace that might be useful.
If you haven't read this article I'd suggest you skip it.
Or to ask the question more directly:
How much of yourself (at the time) was characterized in Arthur Dents character and his lack of control over the world he lived in.
If the above is even partially correct, is your life (and characters) more in control or less?
BTW: HHGttG was one of the funniest and most thought provoking pices of lit I've ever read. Cheers for putting that down on paper!
Under new powers due to come into force this summer, police will be able to require individuals and companies to hand over computer "keys", special codes that unlock scrambled messages.
Is there a new Brittish law on this? Whats the penalty for not handing a PGP key over?
This sort of crap would not fly in the US or Canada. Imagine getting a visit from the authorities stealing your computer and when they can't find your PGP key from some old e-mail you sent (you deleted it) they imprison you because you are no longer able to decode an old e-mail that was completely innocous.
Major potential for abuse! If I was a Brittish voter I'd be on the phone now. Does anyone know the details of this new law here?
English class: each student would type out a sentence on their computer, then get up and move to the computer to their
right and type another sentence, and so forth around the room. When we were done, we would read "our" story to the
class
When I was young, we started with a story and would wisper it into the next persons ear. By the time it made it around the circle it was something completely unrelated. The computer version is interesting because you don't loose info from one person to next. It show's how each person distorts the story. So much for eyewitnesses.....and to think people have been killed for less evidence than that.
Good points! Just wait until AOL comes pre-set to use their filters unless the user knows they are there and registers with AOL proving they are an adult (credit card). We all know that a filter is not very useful if the user knows they are being filtered. Thus I think AOL will develop browsers (Mozilla!) that filter by default to the point where links on target pages will not be displayed if not "whitelisted". Most non-internet savvy Americans will think they are surfing "the web" when in fact they are surfing AOL's version of the web, full of corporate partners and excluding anything not mainstream. I can't wait until websites have to get AOL approval to be included in the "white list". This is truly frightening. With a media conglomerate controlling access to sites and regular advertising/news to promote their views widely to the public, the already brainwashed public can be easily lured into these sorts of schemes.
Quite scary! We must lobby against censorware! Tell your non internet savvy neighbors about these perils, tell your mom, encourage them to tell....and she told two friends...and so on...and so on.....
Good call! Although this is the authentic OOG account this post clearly is not posted by the OGG we know and worship. The grammar is not OGG and there is no insightful comment. OOG should easily be able to say something bowel splitting in response to this story. I'll bet his little brother has logged onto his account while he is out for the night. Or (heaven forbid) some jerk has cracked his logon passwd and is trying to ruin him. Hopefully the former.
You are so correct about the marketing. I remember seeing a quote in the Saturday Boston Globe (they run quotes of the week each Sat) that said "She not exactly Intel inside" acredited to some MIT student overheard on the subway in reference to a potential girlfriend. Powerful marketing that. I can't remember the precise date but I'll bet that intel stock went up the next monday AND that more people bought Intel hardware that next week. They do have a serious marketing presence in the general public but where is AMD? I can't think of a single instance of AMD commercials. Now how about Apple! great hardware or not they definitely have the marketing thing figured out.
Good Marketing will beat good product any day of the week
Impressive graphics and generally very good I thought. Clearly they depicted dinosaurs as being warm blooded (much more interesting than cold) but one thing annoyed me. They had this silly bit where these two dinosaurs were having this mating ritual of making sounds rubbing bodies and then they had the male dino mount the female from behind and hump her just like mammals do. I thought dino's laid shelled eggs? I thought all (any exceptions?) shelled egg layers fertilize the eggs outside the body. Could it actually be possible that dinos had sex the way we do?
I think this just goes to show you that schools should pay a LOT more attention to teasing/abuse and make moves to prevent it rather than report the kid as dangerous. Big brother programs within schools would probably be very effective at helping this problem. Partner the teased kid up with an older, sensible and most importantly popular/big kid to deflect flac and help the misfit regain self esteem.
Isolation is the problem!
I you have a site that truly wants to discriminate between the under and over 13's just give them the pokemon quiz.....To register for this site answewr the following questions:
Pikacho is:
A: a new nasal tissue
B: small and furry
...if I new anything about pokemon I could probably write something funny here but I don't, cause I'm (much) older than 13.
This is hapenning to University Librarians everywhere. With the advent of online journals, less and less of the former regulars are humping their butts into the library and spending hours asking those interesting research questions and chatting with the librarians about quality of the collections etc. More and more researchers are turning to online sources as the research is faster and most good universities have immense collections of online journals. Combined with web based searching available to university researchers (Medline, Web of Science, Chemical Abstracts, lexus-nexis(sp?), google etc.) the library and the librarian are losin their edge and worthfulness to the community of researchers. Their are getting lonely and what is their reaction you ask? The internet is evil, there's nothing quite like cuddling up to good book, I will not be making that information available online......
Can you blame them?
By the way, I posted a slightly modified version of the internet cleaning hoax in response to a story about intenet hoaxes a day or so before the dreadfully unfunny april fools internet cleaning hoax story.
My post (search for yuriwho on the page) was moderated as redundant after a funny moderation! Kinda eerie forshadowing of what was to happen on april fools ;-)
Please don't moderate this post! Up or down.
Whith that slow warning I was expecting to have to wait an hour
This is a very interesting idea. As an inventor on three biotech related patents I can see the value of a site such as this. Some universities don't have the tech savvy marketing teams to find and pitch a patent to the right company. My patents were liscenced long before they issued and thus wouldn't have benefitted from this exchange. The marketing was done by my former advisor not the university. Since then I have met several scientists who have invented exciting new technologies but do not have the business savvy to attract investors and start a company themselves nor do they (or their universities) have the marketing savvy to find the right company to liscence the technology.
More than anything I would love to see a database of patent applications up for auction. Currently it is hard to get info on patent applications. A site containing a database of patent applications up for bidding would really attract attention as that info is not readily available in the freemarket. They could probably be profitable by selling access to their database alone. If you cant find companies to liscence your patent application you can put it online to the highest bidders. You would be tipping your hand to potential competition but at the same time you would be accelerating tech transfer.
To the above posters to feel that such a system would just encourage people to patent anything, the solution to this problem is to reform the USPTO such that they don't grant patents frivilously. Remember that a patent must be sucessfully defended in a court to really be worth its words.
To think about this patent-auction site reasonably you have to forget about software patents and think about all technology based patents. For many scientific areas this could be a great thing.
The inability of the older generation to learn from the younger generation is the reason for the gap.
As far as I can tell, slashtroll is an evening (us time) and weekend phenomenom. I wish I could spare the time to post to Slash during the weekdays but I have a job that prevents that and thus I post when the trolls are out.
Trolls kill the readability of this site. Perhaps we should limit the number of posts by any given IP address to 1/10 minutes, the length of time it takes to post something serious. This would not stop the maniacal trolls but slow new trolls and lessen the tendency of people to overreact to (real) trolls starting flamewars.
I wish the sex/grits trolls would leave. The political (VA) trolls are annoying but at least have a real message. 1 post/10 minutes would cut much of that crap out and probably increase the quality of posts in the threads generally.
To the real trolls, keep going! Sometimes you are the only ones presenting the other point of view even if I occasionally get suckered.