and before thinking that "this is crazy, a U.S. firm wouldn't possibly do that" bear in mind that i've already had some experience of receiving a very weird series of SPAM messages, following which my machine started acting very very weird.
my guess is that simply by receiving that SPAM message, there was encoded within it some power-fluctuations or signal fluctuations which the CPU could pick up and "activate" whatever it was that was wanted to be activated by whomever it was that sent the SPAM message.
To be fair, the "Troll" mod is also used as a substitute for "Batshit-Crazy".
WARNING! This post is encoded with power and signal fluctuations that which will cause your machine to start acting very very weird. Again, if your computer starts acting very very weird after you read this it is because of this post.
Since linguists consider Modern English to go back to circa 1550, I don't see a problem with the GP's statement at all!
Besides a bit of redundancy, in that case. Unless you believe sexconker intended a comparison with all that incredible journalism that existed before newspapers.
One line note explaining how everything you read was pure speculation on the part of the writer, and that there are no real conclusions to be drawn from the study/events/whatever that the writer tricked you into thinking the article was about.
According to the AC, here, it is a subscriber feature. An alternative would be to Google "recoiledsnake site:slashdot.org" without the quotes, of course. Here it is for you.
I guess we are at an impasse regarding the likelihood that major corporations would care to influence the discussions here on/.
While I agree with you about the general stubbornness of/. posters (guilty as charged, myself), I feel that the influence that could be had amongst the undecided (on any given topic) viewers/lurkers would be worth the effort.
Take this discussion of ours, for instance. Although you have not changed my mind, you have produced reasonable points, that when read by others will sway them to your conclusion (i.e. "it's silly to believe there are corporate shills on Slashdot"). Likewise for other undecided readers who may be convinced, partially or wholly, by my points. I know that my opinions have been strongly influenced by/. discussions that I have read (but not participated in) over the years, even if only on topics that I did not already have an opinion/view. Perhaps this is not the case for you.
The thing is, whether or not there are corporate shills on/. is a matter of fact - we may never know what that fact is, but there either are or there aren't. If there aren't then I am doing a disservice by encouraging an overly suspicious mentality. While if there are, your arguments may lead others to be less critical of posters' motives than is appropriate.
One final counterpoint to your last statement about shilling + buying articles being redundant, and a waste of money. I would propose a parallel, in politics, with town hall meetings. Although the greatest effect a politician would have would be to control the moderator, it seems like having shills in the audience also helps to sway public opinion, especially when the supporting voices seem to come from the local community itself.
Similarly, (as you have shown by your own opinions on the matter) many/.ers are more wary of an agenda behind a news source than they are of an agenda behind an individual post from a regular user.
What you are describing are not shills, but caricatures of shills. If I was to pay someone to astroturf on a site that rewards (usually) rational discussion, I would make sure to instruct them not to just troll, but to present rational, but one-sided, arguments to promote my product/service, while using satire/sarcasm/witticisms to denigrate my competitors/opposition. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page of comments, and click on the "363 more" button a couple times it adds more and more comments from further back in time. Almost all his comments are defending a Microsoft product or action, or attacking Apple/Linux/FOSS. The funny part is - I agree with him frequently in his defense of MS stuff, as well as some of his criticisms of FOSS and Apple. He just seems too extreme to be legitimate and he doesn't seem to talk about anything else.
Check it out, man, and let me know what you think.
I know that this kind of approach doesn't work against conspiracy theorists, but what the hell...
...
Loosen up dude. They're not out to get you.
Nice ad hominem. This is me talking about real business, not how you imagine you would run a multibillion dollar corporation:
You don't believe it's worth Google, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Sun, etc. time to astroturf/advocate at the most popular tech news & discussion website in the world (I don't consider what Digg does "discussion")? Do you honestly believe major multinational companies only advertise using the most cost effective method, and disregard all other methods? How many developers do MS, Apple, Google et al employ?
Say you pay 5 developers that are working @ $30/hr (more than entry level) to post on Slashdot for 2 hrs every day. That's $300/day, a little over $100K a year to have your products/services defended and your competitors' products/customers criticized and mocked - on the most influential open forum for techies. 10 hours of total posting a day is pretty extreme, though, but compared to the marketing budgets of the aforementioned companies it is a drop in the bucket. And they each have a warehouse full of buckets.
I would suspect that they all also have some journalists, product reviewers, etc. in their pockets, like you mention. But, just because it's most efficient/profitable for Apple to sell it's products online, doesn't mean it's not profitable to also set up retail stores. Ditto for Microsoft. Every major corporation explores myriad outlets for their advertising/marketing/PR efforts.
Ahh, lets attack the messenger instead of the message. Lets call anyone posting anything that can be construed as pro MS a paid shill and hound them out so that we can all revel in our circle jerk. Anything not conforming must go. No wonder many sane non-haters of MS have already left this place.
Dude, seriously? I was pointing out an observation that led to a suspicion that I felt would be good for the/. community to vet. Did you not catch the first sentence of my post where I mentioned that I was interested in the points he made.
I'm sorry, though, if you don't believe that knowing the potentially extreme bias of a messenger is useful for having productive discussion. I think of it kind of like if we were in a book club, discussing our favorite literature, and there was paid shills harping on the benefits of their publisher's books, while picking apart all flaws in their competitors books. Everything they say may be true, but it seems like there should be a kind of assumption of honesty\fairness amongst the participants of a discussion, without having to constantly suspect ulterior motives.
Does the fact that I like Microsoft products make me a shill as well?
No more than it makes me one. I don't know why you are lashing out at me, I just raised what I felt (upon stumbling across his comments) was a valid suspicion.
I'm not a fanboi of any operating system, although Android looks like fun. I got frustrated and gave up with Ubuntu (audio and Firefox frustrations) and returned to XP, and am looking forward to having Windows 7 on my next desktop build, and I don't have enough experience with OSX to have an informed opinion.
I'm going to assume the best, but it is interesting that moderation for my original post is currently 2/3 Flamebait or Overrated and 1/3 Interesting. I really don't understand how what I said could be honestly moderated as Flamebait.
Leaving aside the question of whether or not the greatness of Calvin and Hobbes was inextricably tied up in the style of medium (i.e. as a comic strip) - what Pixar film could you possibly be thinking of that would make you believe that they could do Calvin and Hobbes justice?!
...but to have hope like Charlie Brown does is truly extraordinary.
But to watch that hope get crushed day after day with no expectation of satisfaction of the hope is, well, depressing. To enjoy the spectacle, seems to me, slightly sadistic.
At first I was interested by your multiple points (if slightly redundant) that you made in this article, but on examining your comment history (just over the last month) it seems increasingly likely that you are a Microsoft shill, or just an extremely subtle and extremely fanatical fanboi. Attempts to malign Linux devs, and criticizing everything from Apple wouldn't seem so conspicuous if you were equally critical of anything Microsoft produces, instead of staunchly defending every product/action they make/take.
I hope this gets modded up so others will peruse your comments and make their own judgments about you. I suspect that most major tech companies have at least a shill or two on/. (or maybe I'm just crazy-cynical) to influence the the tech communities opinion of them, but I don't believe that shills contribute anything productive to the community/discussion and I believe that the other/.ers should be made aware of potential shills to provide them with some perspective on the poster's bias.
I hope I'm not mislabeling you, but the evidence really does seem to be very clear.
I just love how the title of the Wikipedia page is "List of animals with fraudulent diplomas", makes me wonder where the "List of animals with legitimate diplomas" is...
It's running it in an emulator. Apple won't allow emulators in the store, but if you had a dev kit and ported QEMU to the iPhone it would run OS X too. It would, of course, be equally useless.
And with some sugar and water we can make lemonade - if we had some lemons...
Perfect example. I gave up on Huckleberry Finn at page 50. The second time, when I had to read it because it was assigned in school, I retained approximately nothing.
Well, it does say something about our society that one of the greatest books that was specifically written to be accessible to the masses, while satirizing broad socio-political themes, is falling into the category of "incomprehensible". I suspect Gulliver's Travels is next...
Slashdot Mirror
and before thinking that "this is crazy, a U.S. firm wouldn't possibly do that" bear in mind that i've already had some experience of receiving a very weird series of SPAM messages, following which my machine started acting very very weird.
my guess is that simply by receiving that SPAM message, there was encoded within it some power-fluctuations or signal fluctuations which the CPU could pick up and "activate" whatever it was that was wanted to be activated by whomever it was that sent the SPAM message.
To be fair, the "Troll" mod is also used as a substitute for "Batshit-Crazy".
WARNING! This post is encoded with power and signal fluctuations that which will cause your machine to start acting very very weird. Again, if your computer starts acting very very weird after you read this it is because of this post.
Since linguists consider Modern English to go back to circa 1550, I don't see a problem with the GP's statement at all!
Besides a bit of redundancy, in that case. Unless you believe sexconker intended a comparison with all that incredible journalism that existed before newspapers.
It was such a complete failure that acid rain is no longer a looming problem... oh, wait.
Why do I feel this will be the exact same justification for the next environmental crusade after "looming AGW" fails to destroy the mankind?
Welcome to modern journalism.
OMG HEADLINE!
Titillating content.
One line note explaining how everything you read was pure speculation on the part of the writer, and that there are no real conclusions to be drawn from the study/events/whatever that the writer tricked you into thinking the article was about.
By modern, you mean the last 100+ years, right?
And I, for one, welcome our new shiny super tough, space born overlords
Not without DeBeers permission, you don't!
I think you're suffering from a lack of sense of scale. Here's something to help. Zoom down to the ribosome level to get a sense of "30 atoms thick".
So, just exactly what is it?
I dunno, but it sounds pretty magical and revolutionary, if you ask me.
Yep. Waaaaay sharper than a snowflake, even. And we all know how many deaths-by-slash-wounds there are from those.
According to the AC, here, it is a subscriber feature. An alternative would be to Google "recoiledsnake site:slashdot.org" without the quotes, of course. Here it is for you.
I should have been more clear - you have to click on "xxx more" at the bottom of his user page. You can reach his user page by clicking on his name.
I guess we are at an impasse regarding the likelihood that major corporations would care to influence the discussions here on /.
/. posters (guilty as charged, myself), I feel that the influence that could be had amongst the undecided (on any given topic) viewers/lurkers would be worth the effort.
/. discussions that I have read (but not participated in) over the years, even if only on topics that I did not already have an opinion/view. Perhaps this is not the case for you.
/. is a matter of fact - we may never know what that fact is, but there either are or there aren't. If there aren't then I am doing a disservice by encouraging an overly suspicious mentality. While if there are, your arguments may lead others to be less critical of posters' motives than is appropriate.
/.ers are more wary of an agenda behind a news source than they are of an agenda behind an individual post from a regular user.
While I agree with you about the general stubbornness of
Take this discussion of ours, for instance. Although you have not changed my mind, you have produced reasonable points, that when read by others will sway them to your conclusion (i.e. "it's silly to believe there are corporate shills on Slashdot"). Likewise for other undecided readers who may be convinced, partially or wholly, by my points. I know that my opinions have been strongly influenced by
The thing is, whether or not there are corporate shills on
One final counterpoint to your last statement about shilling + buying articles being redundant, and a waste of money. I would propose a parallel, in politics, with town hall meetings. Although the greatest effect a politician would have would be to control the moderator, it seems like having shills in the audience also helps to sway public opinion, especially when the supporting voices seem to come from the local community itself.
Similarly, (as you have shown by your own opinions on the matter) many
What you are describing are not shills, but caricatures of shills. If I was to pay someone to astroturf on a site that rewards (usually) rational discussion, I would make sure to instruct them not to just troll, but to present rational, but one-sided, arguments to promote my product/service, while using satire/sarcasm/witticisms to denigrate my competitors/opposition. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page of comments, and click on the "363 more" button a couple times it adds more and more comments from further back in time. Almost all his comments are defending a Microsoft product or action, or attacking Apple/Linux/FOSS. The funny part is - I agree with him frequently in his defense of MS stuff, as well as some of his criticisms of FOSS and Apple. He just seems too extreme to be legitimate and he doesn't seem to talk about anything else.
Check it out, man, and let me know what you think.
I know that this kind of approach doesn't work against conspiracy theorists, but what the hell...
...
Loosen up dude. They're not out to get you.
Nice ad hominem. This is me talking about real business, not how you imagine you would run a multibillion dollar corporation:
You don't believe it's worth Google, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Sun, etc. time to astroturf/advocate at the most popular tech news & discussion website in the world (I don't consider what Digg does "discussion")? Do you honestly believe major multinational companies only advertise using the most cost effective method, and disregard all other methods? How many developers do MS, Apple, Google et al employ?
Say you pay 5 developers that are working @ $30/hr (more than entry level) to post on Slashdot for 2 hrs every day. That's $300/day, a little over $100K a year to have your products/services defended and your competitors' products/customers criticized and mocked - on the most influential open forum for techies. 10 hours of total posting a day is pretty extreme, though, but compared to the marketing budgets of the aforementioned companies it is a drop in the bucket. And they each have a warehouse full of buckets.
I would suspect that they all also have some journalists, product reviewers, etc. in their pockets, like you mention. But, just because it's most efficient/profitable for Apple to sell it's products online, doesn't mean it's not profitable to also set up retail stores. Ditto for Microsoft. Every major corporation explores myriad outlets for their advertising/marketing/PR efforts.
Ahh, lets attack the messenger instead of the message. Lets call anyone posting anything that can be construed as pro MS a paid shill and hound them out so that we can all revel in our circle jerk. Anything not conforming must go. No wonder many sane non-haters of MS have already left this place.
Dude, seriously? I was pointing out an observation that led to a suspicion that I felt would be good for the /. community to vet. Did you not catch the first sentence of my post where I mentioned that I was interested in the points he made.
I'm sorry, though, if you don't believe that knowing the potentially extreme bias of a messenger is useful for having productive discussion. I think of it kind of like if we were in a book club, discussing our favorite literature, and there was paid shills harping on the benefits of their publisher's books, while picking apart all flaws in their competitors books. Everything they say may be true, but it seems like there should be a kind of assumption of honesty\fairness amongst the participants of a discussion, without having to constantly suspect ulterior motives.
Does the fact that I like Microsoft products make me a shill as well?
No more than it makes me one. I don't know why you are lashing out at me, I just raised what I felt (upon stumbling across his comments) was a valid suspicion.
I'm not a fanboi of any operating system, although Android looks like fun. I got frustrated and gave up with Ubuntu (audio and Firefox frustrations) and returned to XP, and am looking forward to having Windows 7 on my next desktop build, and I don't have enough experience with OSX to have an informed opinion.
I'm going to assume the best, but it is interesting that moderation for my original post is currently 2/3 Flamebait or Overrated and 1/3 Interesting. I really don't understand how what I said could be honestly moderated as Flamebait.
The "Three Great Cartoonists":
1) Bill Watterson
2) Berkeley Breathed
3) Gary Larson
(in no particular order)
Sorry to be a grammar nazi, but you have a couple major typos. I fixed them for you.
Leaving aside the question of whether or not the greatness of Calvin and Hobbes was inextricably tied up in the style of medium (i.e. as a comic strip) - what Pixar film could you possibly be thinking of that would make you believe that they could do Calvin and Hobbes justice?!
...but to have hope like Charlie Brown does is truly extraordinary.
But to watch that hope get crushed day after day with no expectation of satisfaction of the hope is, well, depressing. To enjoy the spectacle, seems to me, slightly sadistic.
We have seen no output from him since, so either he is living off the book royalties or he is secretly the real author of Frazz, heh.
Ha! I knew I wasn't the only one who's seen/felt the similarities between Frazz and C&H!
I don't know about Mad Magazine, but here's the C&H origin.
At first I was interested by your multiple points (if slightly redundant) that you made in this article, but on examining your comment history (just over the last month) it seems increasingly likely that you are a Microsoft shill, or just an extremely subtle and extremely fanatical fanboi. Attempts to malign Linux devs, and criticizing everything from Apple wouldn't seem so conspicuous if you were equally critical of anything Microsoft produces, instead of staunchly defending every product/action they make/take.
/. (or maybe I'm just crazy-cynical) to influence the the tech communities opinion of them, but I don't believe that shills contribute anything productive to the community/discussion and I believe that the other /.ers should be made aware of potential shills to provide them with some perspective on the poster's bias.
I hope this gets modded up so others will peruse your comments and make their own judgments about you. I suspect that most major tech companies have at least a shill or two on
I hope I'm not mislabeling you, but the evidence really does seem to be very clear.
Don't worry, here are some pills to make you feel bet- oh, wait...
I just love how the title of the Wikipedia page is "List of animals with fraudulent diplomas", makes me wonder where the "List of animals with legitimate diplomas" is...
It's running it in an emulator. Apple won't allow emulators in the store, but if you had a dev kit and ported QEMU to the iPhone it would run OS X too. It would, of course, be equally useless.
And with some sugar and water we can make lemonade - if we had some lemons...
Perfect example. I gave up on Huckleberry Finn at page 50. The second time, when I had to read it because it was assigned in school, I retained approximately nothing.
Well, it does say something about our society that one of the greatest books that was specifically written to be accessible to the masses, while satirizing broad socio-political themes, is falling into the category of "incomprehensible". I suspect Gulliver's Travels is next...