Q: Who do you suppose the main culprits are? Why do you suppose that certain forums (like/.) can be somewhat civil one day and full of trolls and flamers the next?
A: We all know who the culprits are, immature people who will grow up to be great and creative human beings but aren't yet.
Oh, come on! Give trolls a chance! Good trolls are great and creative human beings. I suspect the real complaint here is about spammers and flamers.
I'd separate trolls into two varieties: first, the classic troll. Posts articles with the intent of drawing hasty, strong responses (often flames) from those who can't take a step back and see the signs that show it up for what it really is. This sort of troll is a great equalizer: this troll brings the really self-righeous people down a little, this troll makes you read posts a little more carefully, and give some real thought to what's being said. 'Classic' trolls also often end up spawning some very interesting discussions.
The other sort of troll simply posts very funny, usually very offtopic, original material. I happen to like it. Some people hate this because it clutters up their screen. But that's fine, because that's what moderation's for, and I browse at -1.
Now, the important part: both types of trolling take creativity, intelligence, and hard work.
A 'classic' troll is a true balancing act: the author has to balance the cluelessness, the inflammatory nature, and the signs to the clued-in against the troll's need to be taken seriously enough to merit response by anyone hotheaded enough or thoughtless enough to respond in a troll-pleasing manner. It takes plenty of work and skill to craft a good one, especially given the need for the troll to be posted near the beginning of a story to get any visibility.
As for the 'just plain funny' variety, a great example is "Star (as in hot young actress) Wars." A true masterpiece. Opensourceman obviously put quite a lot of effort into writing this, and has a fair amount of skill at it. It also brightened my day -- I don't know about yours, but it would be a shame if you missed it. (Don't happen to have a link handy, sorry.)
Don't call the 'immature people' who you're referring to trolls. They're not. They're the mindless flamers and the spammers, always ready to fill page after page with "QQQQQQQQ" or "RobLimo ATE MY BALLS!!!!" Did this take creativity, hard work, insight? Probably not very much. The sole intent was to disrupt discussion, with no thought given to the humor value or to what the point was.
Trolls don't try to hinder discussion, trolls thrive on discussion. A 'classic' troll needs replies, and a funny troll needs to get read. Neither is going to happen if the article is so full of noise that no meaningful discussion can take place.
So, spammers -- you're not trolls. And trolls don't appreciate what you do, because it means that their work gets ignored. It would be nice if you tried trolling for once, though. It's fun, the reaction's much better, and the people responding negatively to you sometimes make themselves look stupid instead of you.
Somebody can probably rephrase this in a Star Wars metaphor with a light side and the dark side and all that, but I'm not feeling too inspired at the moment.
(Disclaimer: I'm a pretty poor troll myself, I'm just tired of all the bad press that trolls get.)
I believe Rob asked me to write for Slashdot BECAUSE I am clueless in many ways. I'm not a geek, not a technical person, and have no desire to be one.
This quote caught my eye. I don't think it would be entirely unjustified to say that Katz is a sort of "geek opinion editor": a sympathetic voice, slightly distanced from most of the geek community, who tries to capture and distill the "geek mindset" (as best as he can). We then have the opportunity to examine what he's said, and use that (a) as a starting point for reflection on ourselves and (b) an indication of how we're viewed by the community at large.
Katz has more contact with the geek community than most non-geeks, and so his opinion may be a good barometer of what a well-informed non-geek population would think of the "geek point of view" was and interpret the "geek mindset" to be. If we don't like what he's saying (independently from how he says it), perhaps it's because we don't do as good a job in voicing what we really think and our real reasons for thinking it. Katz doesn't tell us who we are, he tells us who we appear to be. I think this distinction often tends to get lost.... He's not patronizing us, he's describing our appearance.
I've gone on long enough, and been as incoherent as Katz is accused of being. I'm not sure what this might mean to any of us, if anything at all. But it's a thought, and maybe someone else can elaborate on (or refute) it.
Who gives a flying fuck about China's lost or wounded pride?
The PRC does, and the US is trying its best to ensure that they don't make anybody give a flying fuck (or more) by doing anything... untoward with regard to Taiwan.
Unfortunately, the Beijing government disagrees with you. I think Taipei does agree with you (it certainly agrees with you in the short term), but can't say so, for fear of aggravating the situation....
I agree that China isn't about to invade Taiwwan anytime soon. But you must remember that "reunification" is not the subject of a straight-up cost / benefit analysis by the Beijing government: it's a matter of national pride. I think that China (or at least the government) feels like its place in the world is undeserved at the moment, in terms of being a poor, powerless (relative to population, history), divided nation. For most of it's history, China has been master of all it surveyed, the master and chief influence upon the lands surrounding it. (Ok, there was the occasional Mongolian invasion and civil war....) Now, however, it feels a little shortchanged (especially due to various happenings in the 19th century).
China's objection to arms imports is not based on any practical disadvantage or harm that it does to the PRC, but rather on the fact that this shows that the US supports Taiwan's separatist leanings.
Any nation gets a little irrational when it comes to matters of national pride, and when your nation's pride has been wounded as severely as China's has, don't expect completely reasonable behavior.
The point is that this is a "status" achievement. China has a lot of national pride (and rightfully so), but it has a lot of problems, like you said. It feels like it should be one of the world's superpowers, but, at the moment, just doesn't have the economic power / political structure / whatever to do it.
So, what's an impotent-feeling leadership to do? Status projects! This is why there are projects like sending people in to space and (eek) the Three Gorges Dam. Neither one's really going to improve the country or the lot of the people in it. In the case of the Three Gorges Dam, millions of people have had to be resettled (read: have their livelihoods destroyed) because of it.
This point about performance-enhancing drugs is a good one, but it wouldn't qualify as a status project. Sure, China would win a lot of events at the Olympics, but could the leadership (and the people -- I'm not sure how much the people care) take pride in saying "we sent a man into space entirely on our own, something that only Russia (or USSR, or both, actually) and the US have succeeded in doing!", and then feel like a real superpower about it. One big project successfully completed is worth a lot to them, but lots of small projects? "Well, anybody could have done those." It's not propaganda or national benefit -- just pride.
Once again, I'd love to have somebody who knows let me know how much this matters to the people -- I don't know whether the people I work with don't care very much or just don't talk about it.
Quicktime has movie formats that you just can't show! You ask for codecs, "please?" but they still say no! You've missed two 'Net films 'cause your player don't work! But Apple keeps on acting like some kind of jerk!
You gotta fight for your right to moooooooovies!!!!
Valenti caught you watching DVD's and he said "no way"! That hypocrite says "fair use" ain't okay! Man, lawyers and lawsuits are such a drag! They drag you into court if you use the anchor tag! (Busted!)
You gotta fight for your right to moooooooooovies!!!!
"If you want to watch movies don't use an OS you can share!" But we know the situation is just unfair! Now guess which bad bunch might give us movie toys-- I don't know what they're plotting, but it's Bill G's Boys!
some people, trying to go along with this, will even accept an unsigned document
You bring up an interesting point here that I haven't seen mentioned before with regard to encryption or authentication of any sort. I've never seen discussion of any way to make sure a document's been validated or to prove that you've validated it.
My knowledge of security is rudimentary at best, but if they were to decrypt the original hash with the original signer's public key and reencrypt it with their private key, would that second signature provide any sort of proof that they had checked the signatures?
I've also seen something about two keys being needed to decrypt a document, or 4 keys out of a pool of 7 being required to decrypt, etc. Would this provide a workable basis for any such scheme?
No, except around here, the conversation would go like this:
Me: I have this brand new DVD - The Matrix.
Friend: That's nice. How much did you pay for it?
Me: Oh, about 80RMB.
Friend: Wow, did you ever get ripped off.
(8RMB is about US$1)
Not that I actually own that DVD, of course. Just the VCD. (No DVD player!) And the rack of DVD's at the corner CD/VCD/DVD store has been here ever since I got here in September, long before DeCSS.... (I think they're 40RMB apiece, but I'm not sure. I know the VCD's are 15.)
Erm. Ok, I don't know how it runs mIRC. But Wine is actually a very, very useful piece of software.
I run Buzz, a soft-synth / effects processor / tracker / etc. (nearly nonexistent MIDI support, supposed to be there in the next version) under Wine, and it works wonderfully. There are a few problems (have to load samples as.xi's instead of.wav's, "view signal" tends to break stuff), but I generally only get the same crashes that I used to get under win98 before I got rid of its partition. Linux is somewhat lacking in good audio software (haven't tried SoundTracker, though), so this has actually been a great help to me....
Yes, I suppose I did mean "speech" instead of "thought"
Thereby rendering most of my post inapplicable (my analogy was applied to thought, not to speech).
Does anyone else think this is sounding awfully Godelian? It's seeming like a complete system of classifying speech into right and wrong will be inconsistent (censorship of anti-diverse concepts being an anti-diverse concept itself), and like a consistent one will be incomplete (let's omit censorship from our system). Of course, I could be wrong.
Then again, being the stark raving American that I am, I'd say that the entire premise of classifying speech into 'right' and 'wrong' is flawed (even if I wouldn't call you a communist), but other people make my points with regard to censorship much better than I do.
I am sincerely hoping that you meant "speech" wherever you just said "thought". Otherwise, this appears to be a justification of the concept of thoughtcrime, instead of just an argument in favor of censorship.
The arguments for / against censorship are being endlessly rehashed elsewhere, so I won't deal with them here (except to note that censorship is a diversity-limiting concept -- and if you except it on the grounds that it protects diversity -- do you censor anti-censorship speech on the grounds that it's anti-diversity? Seems awfully hypocritical to me.)
But if there's one thing that I will not let you do, it is tell me what I can and cannot think. Let's examine some of this for a second:
It's like saying murder should be allowed cause everyone should be free to do what ever the hell they want.
Um, no. It's actually not at all like that. It's like saying I should be allowed to (for example) feel like killing you for posting this. Sure, feeling like that would be incredibly unreasonable. But as long as I don't act on it, are you arguing that I should be penalized for that? If I should, why? Should Spock be the only person not in violation of your law?
racism doesn't (usually) directly cause the death of someone, but it indirectly causes the death of a global society, progress and humanity.
What would you propose doing about it? About anti-diverse speech? About anti-diverse thought? And would your solution to anti-diverse thought really be any better than what it replaces. (What exactly is anti-diverse thought? Who decides? Also see my questions about censorship above.)
Thought can be more destructive sometimes than the act - thought usually leads to the act too, and it should be discouraged.
Great. Punish me if I don't have enough self-control to avoid committing the act -- but if I just think about it, what then? If it's an irrational thought, you should have educated me beforehand about the (dis|ad)vantages of thinking that way. But once I've had the thought? Therapy? But why therapy me if I didn't act on it? I haven't hurt anyone. Well, ok, it might have led me to hurt someone. Sure, and my choosing to drive to the store instead of walk there also made me more likely to hit a pedestrian on the way. Do I get punished for that? (Ok, ok, call the analogy police. But it's no worse than your murder analogy.)
Basically, punishing (or attempting to therapy) people for basically unverifiable potentials for causing others what may or may not be considered harm based on who's deciding, which society should have educated them against anyway, and when they had enough self-control not to actually carry anything out and hurt anyone is not a successful foundation for any sort of legal system.
Is there anything obviously wrong with this? Let me know.
So, let's see if I follow Judge Kaplan's line of thinking: saying that lawyers are cocksuckers means that I obviously intend to break the law.
Um.
Here, let's have a quick demonstration:
THE DVD CCA'S LAWYERS ARE COCKSUCKERS.
There. In all capitals,too. Since I'm making vulgar remarks about those lawyers, I must obviously intend to break the law. (Ok, ok, poor argument, but I couldn't resist.) In fact, I believe that the DVD CCA's lawyers may actually be very nice (if misguided) people. Making these sorts of comments about them may be rude, vulgar, in poor taste, or any number of things, but, as far as I can tell, it only demonstrates a dislike of the DVD CCA's lawyers (or, in my case, the desire to make a point). Though I must admit, I certainly don't like the cause the DVD CCA's lawyers represent.
From what I can tell from this report, though certainly seems like Judge Kaplan is not a disinterested party. I'm not saying that the MPAA is paying him off or anything like that; maybe he's just offended by the implications of the pseudonym "Emmanuel Goldstein", maybe he doesn't like the way the defendants look, or maybe he happens to worry that DVD piracy means that he might have to pay a little extra for his DVD movies. Whatever the reason, he seems to harbor a severe bias against the defendants, which would make him exactly the wrong judge to try this case.
From what I've read above, it seems to me that Judge Kaplan is looking for any excuse he can find to weaken the defendants' position and strengthen the MPAA's. Admittedly, it's possible that the defense could have had a poorly presented case, but I expect that they most likely had an excellent case, so hearing that he constantly gave the defense's lawyers a hard time demonstrates that he really didn't care what the defense had to say. It seems he had made his decision before the hearing had even started, and he just wanted wrap them up quickly because, as far as he was concerned, it only served to make his decision official.
If Judge Kaplan rejects the EFF's application for another date, there will be no doubt remaining in my mind (unless somebody can give me an excellent argument otherwise) that he couldn't care less about reaching a fair decision in the case, and is just going to give the MPAA whatever it wants if that's what works best for him.
It's incidents like this that shake my faith in the US legal system. Well-informed, fair, impartial judges are essential to its functioning, and if Judge Kaplan is what he seems to be, he's exactly the kind of judge that the system can't have.
And a disclaimer: I can't pretend to know anything about courtroom proceedings, and my information about the case is certainly biased. I've attempted to compensate for this, but who knows if I've succeeded or not. I trust someone will let me know if I'm way off base.
Their filtering (at least at the moment) doesn't really get noticed.... They filter a lot of US newspapers, but I have no problem getting to the BBC site. Xoom, Geocities, and other free homepage providers get blocked, but there's not really too much else that gets filtered.
And if you really want to go to the site, there's always www.proxymate.com or www.anonymizer.com or plenty of others.
Basically, it's pretty much no challenge to get whatever the heck you want in and out (I believe). Couldn't hurt to be a little careful, though.
Eek, got my facts wrong (I think), so here's a fix that I'm pretty sure (not entirely sure) is correct, though I don't think it works so well in the song....
(Plus, this is also the only direct reference... The 2nd "ay" stanza is indirectly broken in lots of places too. But I'm not gonna fix it. Anyone that has as little of a life as I do is welcome to, though.)
(to replace lines 3&4 from 2nd stanza)
------------
Or that Canada counted conversion costs To make a choice that cost Corel lots
(to the tune of the Beastie Boys' "Girls", though that's not too hard to figure out....)
------------
Word! All they want to use is Word! They just agreed to all use Word! Because last year they all used Word!
Corel don't think it's fair The DOL has one vendor 'stead of a pair And they counted conversion costs To make a choice that cost Corel lots....
Now some of you say: "How could they really choose this way? They must have been led far astray: It was MS they chose to pay When they were investigated by the DOJ! It not like that just started in May! And the DOL did alread[a]y, have a Corel license or two, eh?
And by the way, Proprietary formats aren't ok, The DOL should have gone to XML today. If they had done that then I bet they Would have more choices than Office 2K. But RFQ's are broken anyway, 'cause bureaucrats, they like to stay With things the way they are today.
So they use MS products to our dismay."
Word! It's big and bloated! Word! It owns the market! Word! We hate its EULA! Word! Don't get me started!
Word! All they want to use is Word! Come Y2K time they'll use Word! They should try something besides Word! Word! (x12)
------------
Yee. I spent way too much time on that.
Shameless Self Promotion: The original "Natalie man" is here.
Actually, if I recall correctly (big if), earlier this year, there was a fairly large shift in the party line (no pun intended). They redefined their end goal as socialism instead of communism, and then stated that capitalism was an acceptable means for achieving that end. So it's the outward appearance of _socialism_ that they're dedicated to keeping. Pretty much anything else that lets them keep that goes.
Once again, this is only if I recall correctly, and I could easily be partially or totally wrong, so feel free to correct to your heart's content.
He's right. Online socialization can be good / fun / whatever, but RL beats it hands down. Not that I ever thought I had much of a chance IRL until this year. Every point I try to make is probably much better known to almost everyone older than myself (17, if you happen to be curious), but just feel like writing this, so in the name of self-gratification, here goes.
(I was going to try and put this to the Beastie Boys' Paul Revere, but I'd never get it done that way. Maybe if I get a massive email response.... [smiley would go here, but I'm against them in principle. don't ask for reasons because I don't have any.] And WARNING: there's much personal blathering to follow. This means a _lot_. And it takes me a little while to get to the relationship part.)
My first three and one-half years of HS just flat-out sucked socially. What I realize now is that there was quite a lot I could have done to change that. I had next to zero self-confidence and basically threw away every social opportunity I had because of that. I'll try not to go into detail here, but let's just say that, junior year, I skipped lunch some days just because I didn't have the confidence to either find people to eat with or to admit defeat by eating on my own. I just expected (for no good reason) everyone to disapprove of me or to not like me, and that, combined with my natural difficulties w/ small talk (that hasn't changed), basically killed my social life. I'm pretty sure people tried to be nice to me and include me during this period of time, but I was too insecure to believe it. The idea that I could have a girlfriend within about a decade was pretty much beyond belief.
I was pretty heavily into IRC during parts of this period, as it gave me a surrogate social life, and it wasn't bad, but it just wasn't too satisfying.
So, why all this crap about my lack of confidence? I have, at least partially, changed. Part is due to luck, part is due to some efforts I made myself.
Immediately prior to my senior year, I made one resolution: I would become more social. I wasn't sure how to do it, I wasn't sure what I could change, but I knew I had to do it to be happy. One thing I started doing was just repeating to myself, "I am a worthwhile person. I can be fun to be with. I am interesting," and catching myself whenever I found myself slipping back into my old ways and repeating the opposite to myself.
I think what they say about repeating something to yourself enough times and it coming true holds, because I started to believe this. I didn't change overnight, though.... It took months for me to begin to believe this enough to make a difference. I also know that one other thing I did was just to make the extra effort, any time I felt near the line between actively accepting (hard) and passively declining (easy) a social opportunity, to avoid the path of least resistance and accept. Especially at the beginning, I usually didn't make enough effort, but I got much better.
Now: everything people say about getting involved in activities is completely true. The sports I did were crucial (and it helped that both had co-ed practices and/or competitions). I didn't do either for social purposes (not that that isn't legit), but just for their own sake. I'm lucky that my parents got me into swimming early, because I ended up swimming all four years in high school (one saving grace), and lucky that my school had a huge rowing program (my last three years).
I became one of the captains of our swim team (of four, two men's, two women's.... captain inflation, I know, but the team was fairly big). Just the fact that I was on the team helped me make friends, especially with the other mens' captain (who I had been decent friends with through all our previous years on the team), who was pretty much my opposite in every way. Because of this, I got invited to a few parties (didn't like them much, 'cause I wasn't drinking, but it helped break peoples' preexisting images of me), and hung out with him and some of his friends a lot -- basically a geeky bunch (another way that I'm lucky: I had a basically geeky HS). Got to be friends with a number of them.
But back to captaincy and what this has to do with anything. My responsibilities as captain included keeping team spirit up. In fulfilling this, I'd ask anyone who I knew or anyone who looked like they weren't too happy with swimming how they had done in their last race, and try to give them whatever advice / encouragement I could. Since the male to female ratio on the team was about 1 to 3, this naturally meant I was talking with girls all the time. On the other hand, I was completely oblivious to this fact at that point, and never even considered pursuing a better friendship with those girls that I found attractive (this low self-confidence thing is a bitch). If I ever did, it got the "don't be ridiculous" mental squelch. (Somewhat akin to the "you've been spending a lot of time around X lately, therefore X probably wants you to go away" mental warning. Therefore leading to the avoidance of potential friends.) However, I was seeking out anyone who I had talked to at swim meets and practices and talking with them in the halls (usually about swimming), and many of them were seeking me out as well. There was one girl who I ended up talking to much more than the others, through her volition or mine or pure coincidence, but I never gave it a second thought. (Even though I did find her attractive.)
Cut to crew season. Lucky for me: large crew / swimming overlap, a 1 to 4 male to female ratio, driving a carpool home, and three weekend-long regattas. Carpool home helped w/ small talk skills, and got them to the somewhat usable point. And the long regattas gave me the opportunity to talk with plenty of people for extended periods of time.
Now I explain Erno Rubik.
Most of the way during the crew season, my math class had started a short section on group theory, which, of course, implies Rubik's cubes, and when you have one, how can you help learning to solve it? I got myself a number of bare-bones guides to doing this on the Internet, and started screwing around with the thing in my spare time.
HINT: Rubik's cubes make great conversation pieces. Hallways, lunch, airplanes, anywhere. People _will_ come up and ask you about it, especially if you can solve it (or at least get close).
Last regatta of the season. Second day, I've spent an hour waiting for my race lying on the grass beneath my team's tent, playing with the cube, trying to get the third layer solved. The girl who I had talked with all the time during swim season wandered up to me and started asking me about it. This developed into a longer conversation, and we ended up talking almost the entire day whenever both of us were free. I never gave this a second thought. (I'd trained myself to avoid that kind of 'nonsense.')
I solve the Rubik's cube unaided for the first time on the bus home.
And, finally (you think), the grand stroke of luck (or something), or proof that being able to solve a Rubik's cube makes you irresistible to members of the opposite sex: I get home, and, a few hours later, the phone rings. "Did she lose something?" "Does she want to know when we have to derig the boats?" "Wants to know about the Ham & Egger?" Um, no. "Hi, Matt, I really enjoyed talking with you today, and I wanted to know whether you wanted to go see a movie or something next weekend." Pause. "Um, ok." I ended up suggesting a hike instead, and it went extremely well.
Of course, I still didn't believe that she wanted to be anything more than friends until our second date. Old habits die hard.
But now this relationship has turned long-distance..... She's still in HS, and I'm in Beijing. But we're still together, and I have no regrets.
And, no, I wouldn't have believed this myself a year ago.
If you read this all, you have an amazing tolerance for verbosity. But thank you.
Simple in theory, a little harder in practice. Everybody's going to draw the line in a different place. Ok, sure, some things are pretty obvious, but there are always going to be borderline cases.
You really have to make judgements about intent here, which are always difficult to make and very unreliable. And it's not always easy to discern what message an action sends (since so much depends on context and the other person's interpretation).
Opening the passenger door doesn't have to say "I realize that you can't do this for yourself so I'll do it for you," (even though it's slanted in that direction), and the guy might not even realize that that's the subtext inherent in the action.
I suppose that all I'm asking for here is a little tolerance. The guy might just have a different idea of what would be appreciated, depending on what experiences he's had in the past. And if something annoys you, explain it. (As long as the situation involves you, that is....)
On the other hand, if you've got a simple, clear, objective guide to where that line lies, please let me know. (I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, I'm just genuinely interested as to whether there's something obvious that I'm missing.)
Yeah, yeah, I know that's a muddled mass of verbosity, but posted it gets.
They do agree, somewhat. The difference is that Macki thinks that the address should be gop.house.gov and Roblimo thinks it should be gop.org. I'd tend to side with Roblimo myself, but not for any reasons that haven't been stated yet (I think).
Slashdot Mirror
(excerpts from Q by Skyshadow, A by Katz)
/.) can be somewhat civil one day and full of trolls and flamers the next?
Q: Who do you suppose the main culprits are? Why do you suppose that certain forums (like
A: We all know who the culprits are, immature people who will grow up to be great and creative human beings but aren't yet.
Oh, come on! Give trolls a chance! Good trolls are great and creative human beings. I suspect the real complaint here is about spammers and flamers.
I'd separate trolls into two varieties: first, the classic troll. Posts articles with the intent of drawing hasty, strong responses (often flames) from those who can't take a step back and see the signs that show it up for what it really is. This sort of troll is a great equalizer: this troll brings the really self-righeous people down a little, this troll makes you read posts a little more carefully, and give some real thought to what's being said. 'Classic' trolls also often end up spawning some very interesting discussions.
The other sort of troll simply posts very funny, usually very offtopic, original material. I happen to like it. Some people hate this because it clutters up their screen. But that's fine, because that's what moderation's for, and I browse at -1.
Now, the important part: both types of trolling take creativity, intelligence, and hard work.
A 'classic' troll is a true balancing act: the author has to balance the cluelessness, the inflammatory nature, and the signs to the clued-in against the troll's need to be taken seriously enough to merit response by anyone hotheaded enough or thoughtless enough to respond in a troll-pleasing manner. It takes plenty of work and skill to craft a good one, especially given the need for the troll to be posted near the beginning of a story to get any visibility.
As for the 'just plain funny' variety, a great example is "Star (as in hot young actress) Wars." A true masterpiece. Opensourceman obviously put quite a lot of effort into writing this, and has a fair amount of skill at it. It also brightened my day -- I don't know about yours, but it would be a shame if you missed it. (Don't happen to have a link handy, sorry.)
Don't call the 'immature people' who you're referring to trolls. They're not. They're the mindless flamers and the spammers, always ready to fill page after page with "QQQQQQQQ" or "RobLimo ATE MY BALLS!!!!" Did this take creativity, hard work, insight? Probably not very much. The sole intent was to disrupt discussion, with no thought given to the humor value or to what the point was.
Trolls don't try to hinder discussion, trolls thrive on discussion. A 'classic' troll needs replies, and a funny troll needs to get read. Neither is going to happen if the article is so full of noise that no meaningful discussion can take place.
So, spammers -- you're not trolls. And trolls don't appreciate what you do, because it means that their work gets ignored. It would be nice if you tried trolling for once, though. It's fun, the reaction's much better, and the people responding negatively to you sometimes make themselves look stupid instead of you.
Somebody can probably rephrase this in a Star Wars metaphor with a light side and the dark side and all that, but I'm not feeling too inspired at the moment.
(Disclaimer: I'm a pretty poor troll myself, I'm just tired of all the bad press that trolls get.)
I believe Rob asked me to write for Slashdot BECAUSE I am clueless in many ways. I'm not a geek, not a technical person, and have no desire to be one.
This quote caught my eye. I don't think it would be entirely unjustified to say that Katz is a sort of "geek opinion editor": a sympathetic voice, slightly distanced from most of the geek community, who tries to capture and distill the "geek mindset" (as best as he can). We then have the opportunity to examine what he's said, and use that (a) as a starting point for reflection on ourselves and (b) an indication of how we're viewed by the community at large.
Katz has more contact with the geek community than most non-geeks, and so his opinion may be a good barometer of what a well-informed non-geek population would think of the "geek point of view" was and interpret the "geek mindset" to be. If we don't like what he's saying (independently from how he says it), perhaps it's because we don't do as good a job in voicing what we really think and our real reasons for thinking it. Katz doesn't tell us who we are, he tells us who we appear to be. I think this distinction often tends to get lost.... He's not patronizing us, he's describing our appearance.
I've gone on long enough, and been as incoherent as Katz is accused of being. I'm not sure what this might mean to any of us, if anything at all. But it's a thought, and maybe someone else can elaborate on (or refute) it.
Thank you troll.
... untoward with regard to Taiwan.
Trollish as you are, you do bring up one point:
Who gives a flying fuck about China's lost or wounded pride?
The PRC does, and the US is trying its best to ensure that they don't make anybody give a flying fuck (or more) by doing anything
Unfortunately, the Beijing government disagrees with you. I think Taipei does agree with you (it certainly agrees with you in the short term), but can't say so, for fear of aggravating the situation....
I agree that China isn't about to invade Taiwwan anytime soon. But you must remember that "reunification" is not the subject of a straight-up cost / benefit analysis by the Beijing government: it's a matter of national pride. I think that China (or at least the government) feels like its place in the world is undeserved at the moment, in terms of being a poor, powerless (relative to population, history), divided nation. For most of it's history, China has been master of all it surveyed, the master and chief influence upon the lands surrounding it. (Ok, there was the occasional Mongolian invasion and civil war....) Now, however, it feels a little shortchanged (especially due to various happenings in the 19th century).
China's objection to arms imports is not based on any practical disadvantage or harm that it does to the PRC, but rather on the fact that this shows that the US supports Taiwan's separatist leanings.
Any nation gets a little irrational when it comes to matters of national pride, and when your nation's pride has been wounded as severely as China's has, don't expect completely reasonable behavior.
Ok, point taken. I should have said "sent a man into space with our own rocket." Which, AFAIK, is true.
The point is that this is a "status" achievement. China has a lot of national pride (and rightfully so), but it has a lot of problems, like you said. It feels like it should be one of the world's superpowers, but, at the moment, just doesn't have the economic power / political structure / whatever to do it.
So, what's an impotent-feeling leadership to do? Status projects! This is why there are projects like sending people in to space and (eek) the Three Gorges Dam. Neither one's really going to improve the country or the lot of the people in it. In the case of the Three Gorges Dam, millions of people have had to be resettled (read: have their livelihoods destroyed) because of it.
This point about performance-enhancing drugs is a good one, but it wouldn't qualify as a status project. Sure, China would win a lot of events at the Olympics, but could the leadership (and the people -- I'm not sure how much the people care) take pride in saying "we sent a man into space entirely on our own, something that only Russia (or USSR, or both, actually) and the US have succeeded in doing!", and then feel like a real superpower about it. One big project successfully completed is worth a lot to them, but lots of small projects? "Well, anybody could have done those." It's not propaganda or national benefit -- just pride.
Once again, I'd love to have somebody who knows let me know how much this matters to the people -- I don't know whether the people I work with don't care very much or just don't talk about it.
KICK IT!
Quicktime has movie formats that you just can't show!
You ask for codecs, "please?" but they still say no!
You've missed two 'Net films 'cause your player don't work!
But Apple keeps on acting like some kind of jerk!
You gotta fight
for your right
to moooooooovies!!!!
Valenti caught you watching DVD's and he said "no way"!
That hypocrite says "fair use" ain't okay!
Man, lawyers and lawsuits are such a drag!
They drag you into court if you use the anchor tag!
(Busted!)
You gotta fight
for your right
to moooooooooovies!!!!
"If you want to watch movies don't use an OS you can share!"
But we know the situation is just unfair!
Now guess which bad bunch might give us movie toys--
I don't know what they're plotting, but it's Bill G's Boys!
some people, trying to go along with this, will even accept an unsigned document
You bring up an interesting point here that I haven't seen mentioned before with regard to encryption or authentication of any sort. I've never seen discussion of any way to make sure a document's been validated or to prove that you've validated it.
My knowledge of security is rudimentary at best, but if they were to decrypt the original hash with the original signer's public key and reencrypt it with their private key, would that second signature provide any sort of proof that they had checked the signatures?
I've also seen something about two keys being needed to decrypt a document, or 4 keys out of a pool of 7 being required to decrypt, etc. Would this provide a workable basis for any such scheme?
No, except around here, the conversation would go like this:
Me: I have this brand new DVD - The Matrix.
Friend: That's nice. How much did you pay for it?
Me: Oh, about 80RMB.
Friend: Wow, did you ever get ripped off.
(8RMB is about US$1)
Not that I actually own that DVD, of course. Just the VCD. (No DVD player!) And the rack of DVD's at the corner CD/VCD/DVD store has been here ever since I got here in September, long before DeCSS.... (I think they're 40RMB apiece, but I'm not sure. I know the VCD's are 15.)
Is this a troll?
.xi's instead of .wav's, "view signal" tends to break stuff), but I generally only get the same crashes that I used to get under win98 before I got rid of its partition. Linux is somewhat lacking in good audio software (haven't tried SoundTracker, though), so this has actually been a great help to me....
Erm. Ok, I don't know how it runs mIRC. But Wine is actually a very, very useful piece of software.
I run Buzz, a soft-synth / effects processor / tracker / etc. (nearly nonexistent MIDI support, supposed to be there in the next version) under Wine, and it works wonderfully. There are a few problems (have to load samples as
Yes, I suppose I did mean "speech" instead of "thought"
Thereby rendering most of my post inapplicable (my analogy was applied to thought, not to speech).
Does anyone else think this is sounding awfully Godelian? It's seeming like a complete system of classifying speech into right and wrong will be inconsistent (censorship of anti-diverse concepts being an anti-diverse concept itself), and like a consistent one will be incomplete (let's omit censorship from our system). Of course, I could be wrong.
Then again, being the stark raving American that I am, I'd say that the entire premise of classifying speech into 'right' and 'wrong' is flawed (even if I wouldn't call you a communist), but other people make my points with regard to censorship much better than I do.
I am sincerely hoping that you meant "speech" wherever you just said "thought". Otherwise, this appears to be a justification of the concept of thoughtcrime, instead of just an argument in favor of censorship.
The arguments for / against censorship are being endlessly rehashed elsewhere, so I won't deal with them here (except to note that censorship is a diversity-limiting concept -- and if you except it on the grounds that it protects diversity -- do you censor anti-censorship speech on the grounds that it's anti-diversity? Seems awfully hypocritical to me.)
But if there's one thing that I will not let you do, it is tell me what I can and cannot think. Let's examine some of this for a second:
It's like saying murder should be allowed cause everyone should be free to do what ever the hell they want.
Um, no. It's actually not at all like that. It's like saying I should be allowed to (for example) feel like killing you for posting this. Sure, feeling like that would be incredibly unreasonable. But as long as I don't act on it, are you arguing that I should be penalized for that? If I should, why? Should Spock be the only person not in violation of your law?
racism doesn't (usually) directly cause the death of someone, but it indirectly causes the death of a global society, progress and humanity.
What would you propose doing about it? About anti-diverse speech? About anti-diverse thought? And would your solution to anti-diverse thought really be any better than what it replaces. (What exactly is anti-diverse thought? Who decides? Also see my questions about censorship above.)
Thought can be more destructive sometimes than the act - thought usually leads to the act too, and it should be discouraged.
Great. Punish me if I don't have enough self-control to avoid committing the act -- but if I just think about it, what then? If it's an irrational thought, you should have educated me beforehand about the (dis|ad)vantages of thinking that way. But once I've had the thought? Therapy? But why therapy me if I didn't act on it? I haven't hurt anyone. Well, ok, it might have led me to hurt someone. Sure, and my choosing to drive to the store instead of walk there also made me more likely to hit a pedestrian on the way. Do I get punished for that? (Ok, ok, call the analogy police. But it's no worse than your murder analogy.)
Basically, punishing (or attempting to therapy) people for basically unverifiable potentials for causing others what may or may not be considered harm based on who's deciding, which society should have educated them against anyway, and when they had enough self-control not to actually carry anything out and hurt anyone is not a successful foundation for any sort of legal system.
Is there anything obviously wrong with this? Let me know.
So, let's see if I follow Judge Kaplan's line of thinking: saying that lawyers are cocksuckers means that I obviously intend to break the law.
Um.
Here, let's have a quick demonstration:
THE DVD CCA'S LAWYERS ARE COCKSUCKERS.
There. In all capitals,too. Since I'm making vulgar remarks about those lawyers, I must obviously intend to break the law. (Ok, ok, poor argument, but I couldn't resist.) In fact, I believe that the DVD CCA's lawyers may actually be very nice (if misguided) people. Making these sorts of comments about them may be rude, vulgar, in poor taste, or any number of things, but, as far as I can tell, it only demonstrates a dislike of the DVD CCA's lawyers (or, in my case, the desire to make a point). Though I must admit, I certainly don't like the cause the DVD CCA's lawyers represent.
From what I can tell from this report, though certainly seems like Judge Kaplan is not a disinterested party. I'm not saying that the MPAA is paying him off or anything like that; maybe he's just offended by the implications of the pseudonym "Emmanuel Goldstein", maybe he doesn't like the way the defendants look, or maybe he happens to worry that DVD piracy means that he might have to pay a little extra for his DVD movies. Whatever the reason, he seems to harbor a severe bias against the defendants, which would make him exactly the wrong judge to try this case.
From what I've read above, it seems to me that Judge Kaplan is looking for any excuse he can find to weaken the defendants' position and strengthen the MPAA's. Admittedly, it's possible that the defense could have had a poorly presented case, but I expect that they most likely had an excellent case, so hearing that he constantly gave the defense's lawyers a hard time demonstrates that he really didn't care what the defense had to say. It seems he had made his decision before the hearing had even started, and he just wanted wrap them up quickly because, as far as he was concerned, it only served to make his decision official.
If Judge Kaplan rejects the EFF's application for another date, there will be no doubt remaining in my mind (unless somebody can give me an excellent argument otherwise) that he couldn't care less about reaching a fair decision in the case, and is just going to give the MPAA whatever it wants if that's what works best for him.
It's incidents like this that shake my faith in the US legal system. Well-informed, fair, impartial judges are essential to its functioning, and if Judge Kaplan is what he seems to be, he's exactly the kind of judge that the system can't have.
And a disclaimer: I can't pretend to know anything about courtroom proceedings, and my information about the case is certainly biased. I've attempted to compensate for this, but who knows if I've succeeded or not. I trust someone will let me know if I'm way off base.
Their filtering (at least at the moment) doesn't really get noticed.... They filter a lot of US newspapers, but I have no problem getting to the BBC site. Xoom, Geocities, and other free homepage providers get blocked, but there's not really too much else that gets filtered.
And if you really want to go to the site, there's always www.proxymate.com or www.anonymizer.com or plenty of others.
Basically, it's pretty much no challenge to get whatever the heck you want in and out (I believe). Couldn't hurt to be a little careful, though.
Eeeeek... Not another one.
Before "They should try something besides Word!":
"On MS systems they'll use Word!"
Didn't include enough lines there.
Eek, got my facts wrong (I think), so here's a fix that I'm pretty sure (not entirely sure) is correct, though I don't think it works so well in the song....
(Plus, this is also the only direct reference... The 2nd "ay" stanza is indirectly broken in lots of places too. But I'm not gonna fix it. Anyone that has as little of a life as I do is welcome to, though.)
(to replace lines 3&4 from 2nd stanza)
------------
Or that Canada counted conversion costs
To make a choice that cost Corel lots
------------
Can I do a song, but stay on-topic?
Let's see....
Got it!
(to the tune of the Beastie Boys' "Girls", though that's not too hard to figure out....)
------------
Word!
All they want to use is Word!
They just agreed to all use Word!
Because last year they all used Word!
Corel don't think it's fair
The DOL has one vendor 'stead of a pair
And they counted conversion costs
To make a choice that cost Corel lots....
Now some of you say:
"How could they really choose this way?
They must have been led far astray:
It was MS they chose to pay
When they were investigated by the DOJ!
It not like that just started in May!
And the DOL did alread[a]y,
have a Corel license or two, eh?
And by the way,
Proprietary formats aren't ok,
The DOL should have gone to XML today.
If they had done that then I bet they
Would have more choices than Office 2K.
But RFQ's are broken anyway,
'cause bureaucrats, they like to stay
With things the way they are today.
So they use MS products to our dismay."
Word!
It's big and bloated!
Word!
It owns the market!
Word!
We hate its EULA!
Word!
Don't get me started!
Word!
All they want to use is Word!
Come Y2K time they'll use Word!
They should try something besides Word!
Word! (x12)
------------
Yee. I spent way too much time on that.
Shameless Self Promotion:
The original "Natalie man" is here.
Actually, if I recall correctly (big if), earlier this year, there was a fairly large shift in the party line (no pun intended). They redefined their end goal as socialism instead of communism, and then stated that capitalism was an acceptable means for achieving that end. So it's the outward appearance of _socialism_ that they're dedicated to keeping. Pretty much anything else that lets them keep that goes.
Once again, this is only if I recall correctly, and I could easily be partially or totally wrong, so feel free to correct to your heart's content.
I'd still be happier if this were a LinuxGL port of Commander Keen.
(Not because Keen particularly needs to be GL, but because it would mean that the series hadn't _entirely_ dropped off the face of the Earth.)
He's right. Online socialization can be good / fun / whatever, but RL beats it hands down. Not that I ever thought I had much of a chance IRL until this year. Every point I try to make is probably much better known to almost everyone older than myself (17, if you happen to be curious), but just feel like writing this, so in the name of self-gratification, here goes.
(I was going to try and put this to the Beastie Boys' Paul Revere, but I'd never get it done that way. Maybe if I get a massive email response.... [smiley would go here, but I'm against them in principle. don't ask for reasons because I don't have any.] And WARNING: there's much personal blathering to follow. This means a _lot_. And it takes me a little while to get to the relationship part.)
My first three and one-half years of HS just flat-out sucked socially. What I realize now is that there was quite a lot I could have done to change that. I had next to zero self-confidence and basically threw away every social opportunity I had because of that. I'll try not to go into detail here, but let's just say that, junior year, I skipped lunch some days just because I didn't have the confidence to either find people to eat with or to admit defeat by eating on my own. I just expected (for no good reason) everyone to disapprove of me or to not like me, and that, combined with my natural difficulties w/ small talk (that hasn't changed), basically killed my social life. I'm pretty sure people tried to be nice to me and include me during this period of time, but I was too insecure to believe it. The idea that I could have a girlfriend within about a decade was pretty much beyond belief.
I was pretty heavily into IRC during parts of this period, as it gave me a surrogate social life, and it wasn't bad, but it just wasn't too satisfying.
So, why all this crap about my lack of confidence? I have, at least partially, changed. Part is due to luck, part is due to some efforts I made myself.
Immediately prior to my senior year, I made one resolution: I would become more social. I wasn't sure how to do it, I wasn't sure what I could change, but I knew I had to do it to be happy. One thing I started doing was just repeating to myself, "I am a worthwhile person. I can be fun to be with. I am interesting," and catching myself whenever I found myself slipping back into my old ways and repeating the opposite to myself.
I think what they say about repeating something to yourself enough times and it coming true holds, because I started to believe this. I didn't change overnight, though.... It took months for me to begin to believe this enough to make a difference. I also know that one other thing I did was just to make the extra effort, any time I felt near the line between actively accepting (hard) and passively declining (easy) a social opportunity, to avoid the path of least resistance and accept. Especially at the beginning, I usually didn't make enough effort, but I got much better.
Now: everything people say about getting involved in activities is completely true. The sports I did were crucial (and it helped that both had co-ed practices and/or competitions). I didn't do either for social purposes (not that that isn't legit), but just for their own sake. I'm lucky that my parents got me into swimming early, because I ended up swimming all four years in high school (one saving grace), and lucky that my school had a huge rowing program (my last three years).
I became one of the captains of our swim team (of four, two men's, two women's.... captain inflation, I know, but the team was fairly big). Just the fact that I was on the team helped me make friends, especially with the other mens' captain (who I had been decent friends with through all our previous years on the team), who was pretty much my opposite in every way. Because of this, I got invited to a few parties (didn't like them much, 'cause I wasn't drinking, but it helped break peoples' preexisting images of me), and hung out with him and some of his friends a lot -- basically a geeky bunch (another way that I'm lucky: I had a basically geeky HS). Got to be friends with a number of them.
But back to captaincy and what this has to do with anything. My responsibilities as captain included keeping team spirit up. In fulfilling this, I'd ask anyone who I knew or anyone who looked like they weren't too happy with swimming how they had done in their last race, and try to give them whatever advice / encouragement I could. Since the male to female ratio on the team was about 1 to 3, this naturally meant I was talking with girls all the time. On the other hand, I was completely oblivious to this fact at that point, and never even considered pursuing a better friendship with those girls that I found attractive (this low self-confidence thing is a bitch). If I ever did, it got the "don't be ridiculous" mental squelch. (Somewhat akin to the "you've been spending a lot of time around X lately, therefore X probably wants you to go away" mental warning. Therefore leading to the avoidance of potential friends.) However, I was seeking out anyone who I had talked to at swim meets and practices and talking with them in the halls (usually about swimming), and many of them were seeking me out as well. There was one girl who I ended up talking to much more than the others, through her volition or mine or pure coincidence, but I never gave it a second thought. (Even though I did find her attractive.)
Cut to crew season. Lucky for me: large crew / swimming overlap, a 1 to 4 male to female ratio, driving a carpool home, and three weekend-long regattas. Carpool home helped w/ small talk skills, and got them to the somewhat usable point. And the long regattas gave me the opportunity to talk with plenty of people for extended periods of time.
Now I explain Erno Rubik.
Most of the way during the crew season, my math class had started a short section on group theory, which, of course, implies Rubik's cubes, and when you have one, how can you help learning to solve it? I got myself a number of bare-bones guides to doing this on the Internet, and started screwing around with the thing in my spare time.
HINT: Rubik's cubes make great conversation pieces. Hallways, lunch, airplanes, anywhere. People _will_ come up and ask you about it, especially if you can solve it (or at least get close).
Last regatta of the season. Second day, I've spent an hour waiting for my race lying on the grass beneath my team's tent, playing with the cube, trying to get the third layer solved. The girl who I had talked with all the time during swim season wandered up to me and started asking me about it. This developed into a longer conversation, and we ended up talking almost the entire day whenever both of us were free. I never gave this a second thought. (I'd trained myself to avoid that kind of 'nonsense.')
I solve the Rubik's cube unaided for the first time on the bus home.
And, finally (you think), the grand stroke of luck (or something), or proof that being able to solve a Rubik's cube makes you irresistible to members of the opposite sex:
I get home, and, a few hours later, the phone rings. "Did she lose something?" "Does she want to know when we have to derig the boats?" "Wants to know about the Ham & Egger?" Um, no. "Hi, Matt, I really enjoyed talking with you today, and I wanted to know whether you wanted to go see a movie or something next weekend." Pause. "Um, ok." I ended up suggesting a hike instead, and it went extremely well.
Of course, I still didn't believe that she wanted to be anything more than friends until our second date. Old habits die hard.
But now this relationship has turned long-distance..... She's still in HS, and I'm in Beijing. But we're still together, and I have no regrets.
And, no, I wouldn't have believed this myself a year ago.
If you read this all, you have an amazing tolerance for verbosity. But thank you.
Simple in theory, a little harder in practice. Everybody's going to draw the line in a different place. Ok, sure, some things are pretty obvious, but there are always going to be borderline cases.
You really have to make judgements about intent here, which are always difficult to make and very unreliable. And it's not always easy to discern what message an action sends (since so much depends on context and the other person's interpretation).
Opening the passenger door doesn't have to say "I realize that you can't do this for yourself so I'll do it for you," (even though it's slanted in that direction), and the guy might not even realize that that's the subtext inherent in the action.
I suppose that all I'm asking for here is a little tolerance. The guy might just have a different idea of what would be appreciated, depending on what experiences he's had in the past. And if something annoys you, explain it. (As long as the situation involves you, that is....)
On the other hand, if you've got a simple, clear, objective guide to where that line lies, please let me know. (I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, I'm just genuinely interested as to whether there's something obvious that I'm missing.)
Yeah, yeah, I know that's a muddled mass of verbosity, but posted it gets.
They do agree, somewhat. The difference is that Macki thinks that the address should be gop.house.gov and Roblimo thinks it should be gop.org. I'd tend to side with Roblimo myself, but not for any reasons that haven't been stated yet (I think).