...would have to be this one. The headline is Microsoft Patents Ones, Zereos and it's from a while back, but very good.
I laughed so hard the first time I read it I couldn't breathe properly for five minutes, and I tried to read it out loud to a friend but couldn't get a sentance out without cracking up.
I brought in a printout to school the next day with the parts identifying the source removed, and showed it to several people. Most of them bought it! My comp sci teacher got really confused ("can they do that? No way... or could they? No, that's impossible.. could they do that?") She still hasn't forgiven me;-)
hold on while I wipe the drool from my keyboard
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obviously, as a high school grad about to pay his own way through college, it will be a loooong time before I could actually buy something like that, but it's still fun talking about it. grin
How about all-digital outputs for video and sound?
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I would like to see a high end, accelerated video card with no analog technology anywhere in the loop - a digital interface to the motherboard, digital processing, and a digital signal to a digital (lcd flat panel) monitor.
For sound, how about a card that does exactly zero analog processing anywhere (for a really clean signal) and gives a 5+1 output like dolby digital, or some other digital output that can be fed into a home audio system for decoding and amplification.
Remember the "unbiased" comparison table somebody put out several months ago, to 'help managers make an informed decision?' It was a joke. After going a quarter of the way through it, it was obvious to a reader with an IQ 60 that the author was slamming NT every chance he got. Nobody would ever take it seriously as an unbiased comparison.
This one is refreshing. It has yesses and nos on both sides, and gives both systems credit where credit is due. I think this comparison will be taken seriously by a great many people. Good work PC mag!
but we already *have* a good level of discussion
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That's what the moderation system is for. Comments from users with accounts come in at 1. ACs come in at 0. If you don't like ACs, browse above 0. Then the only ACs you read will be comments that were considered good enough by somebody to bump up. And stupid remarks by signed in users are moderated down so you won't have to read those either. If you read the moderation section rob wrote, he lists goals for the moderation system. Basically, for people like you have support for a high s/n ratio at the expense of volume. For others, have the possibility to read everything. The system now, I have to say, does this better than anything I have ever seen before, and I think it is awesome. It's probably the main reason I keep coming back here.
My remark was a nitpick. By putting up the short list of words moderators choose from, it's like he's saying, "if the comment doesn't exactly fit one of these descriptions, don't moderate it up or down." I submit that, for instance, if an article is side splittingly funny, and/or incredibly witty, that is an excellent reason to promote it. Somethimes it just needs to be kept a little lighter. Set your control to 4 or 5 and you'll probably get a bunch of long-winded essays (like this one if I don't shut up soon) because people seem to think that a good comment is a long comment, and if it is short or humorous it is bad. IT ISN'T BAD! The short and funny ones mixed in (not to be confused with the "me too!"'s and other valid comments that shouldn't be moderated up (and attempts at humor that fall short)) offer the reader a more varied view, keep it lively, and can promote just as much thought as the long ones.
I go to Arapahoe High School in Littleton, CO (about 6 or 7 miles from Columbine) so this internet thing is getting a lot of attention around here.
Fall semester last year, I needed more social studies credit to graduate. I added an economics class. It was easy, stupid, and boring, so I quit. Instead, I arranged to do an independant study. The topic: "Law and the Internet" (it had to be social studies credit, remember.)
Over the course of the semester, my day to day thing that I did for the study was basically to read and participate in slashdot discussions and sometimes go roaming around the internet for more info on my specific topics (I didn't even have to give continuous updates. It was a sweet deal)
My topics were encryption, censorship issues (porn/hate sites) and intellectual property. I learned waaaaaaay more just doing the day-to-day slashdot thing than I ever would have in school. I also liked getting several angles on each issue. Yes, I know that people think the/. community sees these things in black and white, but it just isn't so. Especially if you read at -1.
For the study, I wrote 3 or 4 rambling katz style essays and finished off the semester with a powerpoint presentation in our school's brand new forum with a huge video screen and speaker system. The teachers (and principal) loved it - especially the powerpoint presentation. I snuck in some non social studies related stuff by including in the presentation a complete explanation of public key cryptosystems, complete with animated diagrams. And they actually understood it! (I wasn't too heavy on the math) That whole experience was definately cool.
I think you will be plesantly surprised by the whole experience when it is over and done. I was. In my presentation, I'm sure I said things the administration didn't agree with, but they were very impressed anyway, because I made the case pretty well (I presented each of the 3 issues from 2 or 3 sides, and then took a stand and argued it.)
It made a bigger impression than I could have imagined. By the next day, every teacher in the school had heard about it, and were actually congratulating me, even though they weren't there! They have looked at me differently ever since.
So anyway, to wrap up, I say put enough effort into this that it will be something that you can be proud of. It will be fun and your teachers will probably be genuinely surprised and impressed.
Those moderator "words" seem a little restrictive
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How about adding just a few more choices (like "idiotic moron" on the minus side or "hilarious" on the plus side") A sidesplitting comment isn't necessarily insightful or informative. Interesting, perhaps.
I have a TNT (not II) and I had just about given up hope on any good drivers. I love everything about my linux computer except the x server which is unresponsive at times and could be faster. I wanted be part of the solution, so I emailed the XFree86 project asking how I could help with the TNT support, and they told me I couldn't because there weren't any available specs. Now there are! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!YEEEEHHHHHAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWW
You have no idea how much that just made my day. THANK YOU NVIDIA. You have at least one new loyal customer.
Really, who cares if its lost? I will go on using the word "Hacker" anyway. Why? Because I like it. And I won't say "no, you mean cracker" any time I hear it wrong, because I get kind of annoyed by people that do. But if someone asks me why I use it the way I do, I'll tell them.
...then we could redo the mindcraft test much fairer than before, with results that can be considered "real world"!
Its very simple: take two identical computers that are in the typical performance category of a webserver. Make sure there are no outstanding hardware issues for either Linux or NT, and then put apache on both of them! Configure it identically for both platforms, and connect them both to a mix of unix, NT, and win95 clients. And use dynamic content, so the operating systems have to actually do some calculating operations instead of just shoving data through a huge pipe.
...is that it means something unique to everybody. If I didn't get a particular thing out of a movie after seeing it 2 or 3 times, then to me that is just somebody else's interpretation. So if you are sharing your big-business analogies with us as a sugestion for things to think about, but I will guess that most people won't find your interpretation especially engaging.
This is just the kind of thing that burns me up in my english classes when we have to read shakespeare and other such stuff. We read it out loud in class (bleh) and then they tell us exactly what it means. As if we know what shakespeare meant? Right. When you watch a movie, just enjoy it and get out of it what you like, but please no sweeping generalizations.
Oh, and your litmus tests? Sorry, I don't think they exist.
The problem with talk showns on tv is that usually opinions are not welcome from viewers as on radio. And any kind of tv or radio talk show is just too limited because everybody is listening and watching the same stream of information (sound [and video]) at a time.
Ever see "Silicon Spin" on ZDTV? That is probably the closest thing television has to slashdot. The experience of watching silicon spin is nothing like slashdot, though. The show, hosted by John Dvorak (who is a pretty good moderator and fairly levelheaded guy) has only a half hour in any given "episode" to tackle 3 or 4 issues, with a panel of himself and four others.
When watching it, it always becomes obvious that they don't have nearly enough time to talk about anything. Often, the discussion just starts to get good when time is up and its off to a commercial break. After the break, off to the next topic.
Other problems - often the "pundits" selected for the show have no clue about some of the topics brought up, but steal the spotlight anyway telling exactly what they think about it. It is a maddening experience for the viewer, especially if he knows much more about the topic than anyone on the show and is just dying to set them straight.
If you wanted to stay on top of "hi tech issues" by watching that show, you would fail. It just isn't informative. Sometimes I see it after participating in a slashdot discussion about the same topics (once it was the Columbine shooting here in Littleton) and have to cringe because the people on silicon spin are just so stupid by comparison.
Of course, this is by no means limited to silicon spin - it is tv and radio in general. I picked silicon spin because it strikes me as an attempt to present slashdot-like debates on a comparably inferior medium. Slashdot rocks because nobody ever has had to sit and watch the discussion thinking "NO! NO!!!! That isn't it at all! DAMMIT I WISH I COULD SET THEM STRAIGHT"
And if you word your view well enough and don't sink to flaming etc, it is likely that many people will see your post and put up their reply.
Was it supposed to be known by the viewers that the senator was the other sith lord? I mean, it was painfully obvious to me the second I saw palpatine and heard him talk, but it would have been nice if it had come as a surprise in a later movie. Also, I watched the movie "Ben Hur" just last night, as it happens, and just got back from TPM. Don't tell me Lucas didn't take the charriot race scene from ben-hur and copy it verbatim, excapt for an added announcer and a futureistic genre. If you don't know the charriot race I am talking about, watch ben-hur and the similarity will stun you. If you have seen it, but it's been a while, see it again and notice how practically every detail has a parallel in phantom menace. The problem is that in ben-hur the charriot race was exciting, because they made the viewer really care about the outcome. Juda's honour was on the line against a jerk that had really screwed him over earlier, not to mention the fortune that depended on the outcome and the pride of the jewish people. In episode 1, the pod race was sort of a necessary means for the jedis to continue their mission and a way to explain how they met Anakin. One detail I wasn't sure about - was he called "skywalker" because his master hovered in the air wherever he went and had that name, or was that luke's father's surname? Finally, what is up with this mesiah stuff in sci-fi movies? Every time they referred to "the one" in the Matrix I had to cringe because it just sounded hokey, and this thing about "the one" that would bring balance to the force was no different. Bring balance to the force? I wasn't aware that the force lacked balance, or needed it. I think they just had to have that in there because, after all, finding some kid to train wan't their mission and they needed a reason to bring him to the council. Apparently his great blood count wasn't reason enough. Guess they didn't really need more jedi knights. Anyhow, good movie but the plot was somewhat butchered.
Did you notice that the first movie came out with "Episode IV" written on it? The original plan was to have a total of nine - sort of a trilogy of trilogies. Now it's looking like the last 3 will not happen. I don't know what you would put in the last 3 anyway - it seemed to be pretty much wrapped up in number 6.
...unless you make it matter. Remember what Linus said at his keynote address? He said: let's focus on the low end server and desktop market. It may sound "sexy" but we're not focusing on high end machines with bunches of processors.
These are two totally different areas, and Linux was always designed with the lower end in mind. How convenient then for them to do all these tests on huge computers nobody would actually use for a web server, unless they run one of the top 100 sites on the internet! Not to mention the fact that this is more of an apache benchmark than a linux one.
If you run a huge smp machine and want to squeeze every last drop of speed out of it, you probably won't run linux anyway. It's not that linux isn't "good enough", it is designed for a different purpose. For a job like that, you would want Solaris or FreeBSD (still not NT)
NT has its own design purposes, which are different from any unix type system. There are two main design goals I can see in NT: 1. Be easy for even an idiot to maintain, since most of the time all he will have to do to is follow wizards or reboot the machine. 2. Be monolithic and slow, but for benchmarking purposes, have a way for those few people who know the OS inside and out to tweak it to insane levels for one or two particular services at the expense of stability and resembalance to "real life" situations.
Hehe, it makes you wonder just how much like a computer a brain really is. Are all our new ideas about parallel processing, memory management, data abstraction, multithreading, and multitasking rooted in the processes of our own brain?
The way you worded that post, it almost sounds like "processes" in the brain "talk" to each other using some kind of standard "protocol"! Coolness. A reverse engineering project like that would almost make the efforts to decode DNA seem boring!
He trademarked it so nobody else could. A while ago, some moron (I forget his name) tried to register the linux name as his own trademark and then charge a fee for each use!
The Linux community was ticked off by this, and rightly so. Some help in clearing things up was generously given by a law firm (whose name I also forget) and the trademark was given to Linus. Linus emphasized over and over that this was strictly to keep the trademark from being misused by others.
I'm a high schooler right now in AP comp sci
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I just took that final national AP exam today. This is the first year it was based on C++ - it used to be pascal. The funny thing is, I don't consider myself a particularly good coder, but that was still the easiest friggin test I have taken in a loooong time. I was actually having fun during the test! Some of the logic problems in there were kinda cool, and I finished both sections of it with plenty of time to get up, go to the bathroom, get a drink, and go back and check answers. The funny thing is, I basically slacked off all semester and worked on my own stuff rather than their stupid "This is how a binary tree works" type lessons. Now I have a C in the class. Oh well. At least I won't have to take introductory CS next year...
Anyway, when it comes to college or job, I'm headed for college all the way! Part of it is I think it would just be cool to study more in depth for several years, so I can do something truely interesting. Sure, I could be a sysadmin or webmaster, but unless you run a site like this one it's usually a matter of breaking even every day rather than let your security fall behind or your company's page go out of date.
I know that getting a degree doesn't mean you are smart - I meet living proof of this fact all the time. But if you are truely interested in studying this stuff and want to do some really cutting edge work, I can't understand why you would want to deny yourself that!
You know what my favorite windows trick is (short of trashing it of course)? I tell this to anybody that isn't literate enough to point toward linux. When you install it, you can pretty much count on having to reinstall it later, so just make at least 2 partitions on the hard disk. Install the OS on one of them. On the other, make directories like "downloads", "installations", "programs", "documents" etc. The programs that don't install by spreading themselves all over the place go on the second partition. The ones that do get the actual installation file in the "installs" directory so they can be easily be put back on. That way, when windows is to the point where the only thing to do is wipe 'er clean (and it will get there) reinstalling becomes a 3 hour job, tops. Plus, if you use tape backup, just backup the second partition.
My experience with the low end of the corporate world began with the (idiotic) idea of getting a job at the local radio shack. I easily passed their stupid test of tech proficiency (better than anyone else at the store could I suspect) but then I had to go to the local office and watch a long video that made the point again and again and again thta this was, in fact, an equal opportunity employer. Then I met my boss-to-be. He was a short, round little guy with a sallow complexion and beady eyes that gave the impression that all his spirit, pride in his work, sense of humor, and interest in life had been beaten out of him long ago. Then I had to fill out a huge (HUGE- it took over an hour and a half) packet with questions about drugs and stealing from your employer and crap like that. I felt insulted.
Anyhow, I was supposed to meet him one more time before it would be decided whether I would get the job. I decided then to screw it and go somewhere else. I'm glad I did. It would have been hell.
I still go in there sometimes when I'm passing by (It's inside the local mall) and pepper them with questions that they couldn't possibly know the answer to. Don't ask me why, I just feel like it. Their stuff is too overpriced anyway.
In addition to the reasons people already wrote here, it could also be something really simple.
Google, if it finds several pages on the same site that match in varying degrees, it will list the one that is the least buried in nested directories (microsoft.com in this case) first, and under it, indented, will be all that page's "children", each with a score of its own. A child might well have a higher score than its parent, but will be listed after to show the relationship between the two.
Personally, I think this feature totally rocks. Google rocks! Any time I ever start a search somewhere else, I later wonderwhy, because Google is always the one that finds what I want. It is my default web page, in fact. Slashdot would be, but it doesn't load fast over my 26,400 modem connection (USWEST is a bunch of crooks, if you ask me) Google loads like *snap* that.
There's a free software timeline that you can see by clicking on Miguel's photo. Anyone that reads through that will come away with a pretty darn good idea of what this is all about.
It starts with RMS starting GNU, and has some other landmarks, and ends with GNOME. Well done, I think.
Wish List: -No more X86 processors. Perhaps something like Alpha? I hope? -Linux friendly keyboards. Make them just like the Happy Hacking Keyboard. -3 button mice -Graphic Accelerators and displays that conform to open standards
And of course, open source drivers with no restrictive crap in their licenses. All that would be worth gold. Are you listening laptop makers? GOLD!!!
I know exactly what the other posters are talking about, because I go to Arapahoe, another high school in Littleton near Columbine. The first thing the administration did was ban trenchcoats, certain kinds of jewelery, and other acts that suggest they really don't see what the real problem is.
However, I am also noticing a superior tone in some of these posts - especially Katz's. The/. crowd seems to consider their lifestyle the 'best', and I don't think that that is necessarily true. I agree that there is no reason why a lifestyle should be forced upon someone that doesn't want to subscribe to it, which seems to be what schools are trying to do, but both sides of this 'culture clash' are acting like one side (of jocks/nerds) is good, and the other evil.
I understand where the mainstream is coming from - they see the 'oddballs' as dangerous, because they don't understand them, and the oddballs are usually smarter than them.
But some nerds, both here and people I meet in person, seem to see mainstream activities - especially sports - as indicators of shallowness.
I often find myself in the middle. I am a nerd, but I also play sports. I have been programming since 4th grade, and have been in accelerated classes since 1st. I have a whole group of friends that fits the "trenchcoat mafia" description. My interests fit the nerd profile too - I HATE school material, even though I do well at it, and I spend a lot of time online.
But I am also kindof a jock. I often wear a letter jacket with 12 pins on it and I have a group of friends from the wrestling team. The thing is, these two groups of friends wouldn't like each other AT ALL if they met, and I can get along fine with both. I get just as much of a rush from sports as from anything else - it's fun working out, motivating each other, getting in shape, kicking some ass on game day, or just going and yelling for your school. I'm not into the self-punishment kind of lifestyle. Why pick one when you can have it both ways?
And by the way, the killers did not really belong to that clique - just a vague association. They were not in the yearbook photo or the list of names, they did not sit at the same lunch table, and they did not wear trenchcoats, except on the day of the shooting to hide their guns- they wore nazi stuff. And they were actually austrialian dusters. The trenchcoat mafia group really got screwed by this thing. The kids that did it were loners among loners.
Basically I'm preaching a message of TOLERANCE here - from both ends. This shooting that happened five miles or so away has increased the rift between cliques in this school (and many others I imagine) by a lot.
But boy, I can definately feel for most of you guys when schools take the kinds of action they do. Grrr... it makes me SO MAD when administrators just don't get it.
It's surreal being so close to the center of this
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I am a senior at Arapahoe High School, in Littleton just 5 miles east of Columbine. They aren't our main rival (in sports, I mean), but I've watched two back-to-back state championship soccer games from the Arapahoe side of the field when it was down to us and the Columbine Rebels. As a result, there's been some animosity between our two schools. Needless to say, that was forgotten in about 5 seconds as many of us went down there to offer help and support.
Also, I am a varsity wrestler (hence the handle I use) and I just recently competed in the regional championships which were held in the Columbine gym.
And as soon as I heard about the shootings, the first thing that came to mind was the time I was sitting in a bathroom stall in the Columbine boy's bathroom during the tournament. All 3 walls were covered with hate messages, swastikas, references to satan, and especially things to the effect of "All jocks must die!" And, like all those Columbine students, I thought that was kind of strange and then promptly dismissed it as I left.
I don't personally know any of the victims, but it's been a hard last couple of days when I didn't know that fact. The coordinator of the gifted/talented program at Arapahoe (a good friend of mine) is the next door neighbor of a fatally wounded victim and has also known Dylan, one of the killers, since preschool. A fellow member of my track team is a friend of that kid everyone saw hanging out the window on the news. So its been a rough week, and I don't think it's quite hit me yet.
When I first found out about the incident, it had only just started 20 minutes earlier, and for the next several hours I was under the impression that it was a minor shooting, with perhaps a few injuries. Then, I got home after practice and got the updated story, and couldn't believe it.
You've all probably seen on the news what they've been saying about Littleton, CO. Well its true. Practically every school here is a blue ribbon school, no gang activity, long honor roll lists with the bumper stickers to prove it, and plenty of star athletes and achievers in every category. Oh, and despite the name, its not little - that (Little) is just the name of the original settler in the area. It's a suburb of Denver, and nothing separates the two except a thin invisible line.
So I believe them when they say "If it can happen in Littleton, it can happen anywhere." -cross community upbringing off the list. The thing about these communities that people consider "perfect" is that if you don't fit in, it can be an absolute hell. People that don't subscribe to the mainstream and fit the community's image probably feel like second class citizens.
The more you read about the kids' parents, the more you will realize they were not "brought up wrong" or "mistreated". No, they both come from 2 parent households, and the neighbors feel strongly enough that the parents were good caring people (Dylan's mom works as a counselor for disabled people) that they wrote a note, signed by 19(?) of them expressing their support for the parents (although I admit that them not knowing about all that bomb building has me stumped) so I don't thing it is parental upbringing. These two guys did little league sports and cub scouts, and the like, and Dylan attended a youth group with a friend of mine only last year. By his account, Dylan was normal.
Oh, and this "trenchcoat mafia" thing has also been blown out of proportion. This group (which was not a gang at all, and had no affiliates outside the school) was a geek type group that dressed different but had fun in their own way, and didn't harbour much more resentment than your average high schooler. They did, however, have a facination with guns. This is a description of that group as it stood last year, and they even took out a yearbook ad that shows the group of geeks all smiles.
Things turned sour with the group late last year, from what I heard, when the jocks started picking on them. Then the hate got turned up. They resented how the jocks seemed to run the school, and they were always picked on. A fight was arranged at a local baseball field after a big confrontation at the school. Trenchcoats showed up with brass knuckles and swords, so the jocks left.
I don't know for sure, but I believe that Eric and Dylan were drawn into the group through their interest in computers and weapons, and turned sour with the rest of the group from the run-ins with jocks. Their real flaw, I believe, was a combination of not knowing how to play the high school game and no effective method of dealing with hate. They channeled it into a long range plan, set in motion near the begining of this school year, to get revenge on the jocks and have the final say, so to speak.
Also, I think a factor was peer pressure. Eric was the leader, and Dylan was a follower, and let Eric suck him right into it - absolutely no personal sense of direction. And then it worked both ways. If you have a plan like this yourself, it's easy to back out, but if it's you and some friends, nobody wants to be the chicken.
In every way, they thought of the whole matter as a war. They developed a fascination for war (WWII in particular) and Hitler, and went around annoying people by marching around the school with precise 90 degree turns like soldiers.
Here is where the part about DOOM comes in. They were so consumed by their big plan, that they played DOOM head to head over their modems for hours upon hours. This was not for fun or relaxation or to try to beat each other or any of the normal reasons a person would play DOOM. They took it seriously and considered it training. They also played paintball a lot, and for the same reason. The important thing to stress here is, that while those 1st person shooters may or may not contribute to this kind of thing, in this case the plan came first and the "training" second.
All of this is kind of overwhelming when you are so close to it. Its kind of funny that, even after I knew that it had made world news and forced "Littleton, CO" into the same breath as the likes of "Jonesburo, AK", the thing that really drove it home for me was logging onto/. and user friendly for a bit of escape, and then seeing Iliad's message there and then later that first huge thread on Slashdot.
If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading my thoughts and impressions on the matter.
I am a senior at Arapahoe High School, in Littleton just 5 miles east of Columbine. They aren't our main rival, but I've watched two back-to-back state championship soccer games from the Arapahoe side of the field when it was down to us and the Columbine Rebels. As a result, there's been some real animosity between our two schools. Needless to say, that has been thankfully tossed aside as many of us went down there to offer help and support.
Also, I am a varsity wrestler (hence the handle i use) and i just recently competed in the regional championship which was held in the Columbine gym.
And as soon as I heard about the shootings, the first thing that came to mind was the time I was sitting in a bathroom stall in the Columbine boy's bathroom during the tournament. All 3 walls were covered with hate messages, swastikas, references to satan, and especially things to the effect of "All jocks must die!" And, like all those Columbine students, I thought that was kind of strange and then promptly dismissed it as I left the stall.
I don't personally know any of the victims, but it's been a hard last couple of days when I didn't know that fact. The coordinator of the gifted/talented program at Arapahoe (a good friend of mine) is the next door neighbor of a fatally wounded victim and has also known Dylan, one of the killers, since preschool. A fellow member of my track team is a friend of that kid everyone saw hanging out the window on the news. So its been a surreal week, and I don't think it's quite hit me yet.
When I first found out about the incident, it had only just started 15 minutes earlier, and for the next several hours I was under the impression that it was a minor shooting, with perhaps a few injuries. Then, I got home after practice and got the updated story, and couldn't believe it.
You've all probably seen on the news what they've been saying about Littleton, CO. Well its true. Practically every school here is a blue ribbon school, no gang activity, long honor roll lists with the bumper stickers to proove it, and plenty of soccer moms. Oh, and despite the name, its not little - thats just the name of the founder. It's a suburb of Denver, and nothing separates the two except a thin invisible line.
So I believe them when they say "If it can happen in Littleton, it can happen anywhere." -cross community upbringing off the list. And the more you read about the kids' parents, the more you will realize they were not "brought up wrong" or "mistreated". No, they both come from 2 parent households, and the neighbors feel strongly enough that the parents were good caring people (one mom works as a counselor for disabled people) that they wrote a note, signed by 19(?) of them expressing their support for the parents (although i admit that them not knowing about all that bomb building has me stumped) so I don't thing is parental upbringing. These two guys did little league sports and cub scouts, and the like, and Dylan attended a youth group with a friend of mine only last year. By his account, Dylan was normal.
Oh, and this "trenchcoat mafia" thing has also been blown out of proportion. This group (which was not a gang at all, and had no affiliates outside the school) was a geek type group that dressed different but had fun in their own way, and didn't harbout much more resentment than your average high schooler. They did, however, have a facination with guns. This is a description of that group as it stood last year, and they even took out a yearbook ad that show the group of geeks all smiles.
Things turned sour with the group late last year, from what I heard, when the jocks started picking on them. Then the hate started. They resented how the jocks seemed to run the school, and they were always picked on. A fight was arranged at a local baseball field after a big confrontation at the school. The trenchcoats showed up with brass knuckles and swords, so the jocks left.
I don't know for sure, but I believe that Eric and Dylan were drawn into the group through their interest in computers and weapons, and turned sour with the rest of the group from the run-ins with jocks. Their real flaw, I believe, was a combination of not knowing how to play the high school game and no effective method of dealing with hate. They channeled it into a long range plan, set in motion near the begining of this school year, to get revenge on the jocks and have the final say, so to speak.
In every way, they thought of the whole matter as a war. They developed a fascination for war (WWII and in particular) and Hitler, and went around annoying people by marching around the school with precise 90 degree turns like soldiers.
Here is where the part about DOOM comes in. They were so consumed by their big plan, that they played DOOM head to head over their modems for hours upon hours. This was not for fun or relaxation or to try to beat each other or any of the normal reasons a person would play DOOM. They took it seriously and considered it training. They also played paintball a lot, and for the same reason. The important thing to stress here is, that while those 1st person shooters may or may not contribute to this kind of thing, in this case the plan came first and the "training" second.
All of this is kind of overwhelming when you are so close to it. Its kind of funny that, even after I knew that it had made world news and forced "Littleton, CO" into the same breath as the likes of "Jonesburo, AK", the thing that really drove it home for me was logging onto/. and user friendly for a bit of escape, and then seeing Iliad's message there and then later this (huge) thread on slashdot.
If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading my thoughts and impressions on the matter, and I wish only the best of health and peace to all of you.
Slashdot Mirror
I laughed so hard the first time I read it I couldn't breathe properly for five minutes, and I tried to read it out loud to a friend but couldn't get a sentance out without cracking up.
I brought in a printout to school the next day with the parts identifying the source removed, and showed it to several people. Most of them bought it! My comp sci teacher got really confused ("can they do that? No way... or could they? No, that's impossible.. could they do that?") She still hasn't forgiven me ;-)
obviously, as a high school grad about to pay his own way through college, it will be a loooong time before I could actually buy something like that, but it's still fun talking about it. grin
I would like to see a high end, accelerated video card with no analog technology anywhere in the loop - a digital interface to the motherboard, digital processing, and a digital signal to a digital (lcd flat panel) monitor.
For sound, how about a card that does exactly zero analog processing anywhere (for a really clean signal) and gives a 5+1 output like dolby digital, or some other digital output that can be fed into a home audio system for decoding and amplification.
What do y'all think?
Remember the "unbiased" comparison table somebody put out several months ago, to 'help managers make an informed decision?' It was a joke. After going a quarter of the way through it, it was obvious to a reader with an IQ 60 that the author was slamming NT every chance he got. Nobody would ever take it seriously as an unbiased comparison.
This one is refreshing. It has yesses and nos on both sides, and gives both systems credit where credit is due. I think this comparison will be taken seriously by a great many people. Good work PC mag!
That's what the moderation system is for. Comments from users with accounts come in at 1. ACs come in at 0. If you don't like ACs, browse above 0. Then the only ACs you read will be comments that were considered good enough by somebody to bump up. And stupid remarks by signed in users are moderated down so you won't have to read those either. If you read the moderation section rob wrote, he lists goals for the moderation system. Basically, for people like you have support for a high s/n ratio at the expense of volume. For others, have the possibility to read everything. The system now, I have to say, does this better than anything I have ever seen before, and I think it is awesome. It's probably the main reason I keep coming back here.
My remark was a nitpick. By putting up the short list of words moderators choose from, it's like he's saying, "if the comment doesn't exactly fit one of these descriptions, don't moderate it up or down." I submit that, for instance, if an article is side splittingly funny, and/or incredibly witty, that is an excellent reason to promote it. Somethimes it just needs to be kept a little lighter. Set your control to 4 or 5 and you'll probably get a bunch of long-winded essays (like this one if I don't shut up soon) because people seem to think that a good comment is a long comment, and if it is short or humorous it is bad. IT ISN'T BAD! The short and funny ones mixed in (not to be confused with the "me too!"'s and other valid comments that shouldn't be moderated up (and attempts at humor that fall short)) offer the reader a more varied view, keep it lively, and can promote just as much thought as the long ones.
I go to Arapahoe High School in Littleton, CO (about 6 or 7 miles from Columbine) so this internet thing is getting a lot of attention around here.
/. community sees these things in black and white, but it just isn't so. Especially if you read at -1.
Fall semester last year, I needed more social studies credit to graduate. I added an economics class. It was easy, stupid, and boring, so I quit. Instead, I arranged to do an independant study. The topic: "Law and the Internet" (it had to be social studies credit, remember.)
Over the course of the semester, my day to day thing that I did for the study was basically to read and participate in slashdot discussions and sometimes go roaming around the internet for more info on my specific topics (I didn't even have to give continuous updates. It was a sweet deal)
My topics were encryption, censorship issues (porn/hate sites) and intellectual property. I learned waaaaaaay more just doing the day-to-day slashdot thing than I ever would have in school. I also liked getting several angles on each issue. Yes, I know that people think the
For the study, I wrote 3 or 4 rambling katz style essays and finished off the semester with a powerpoint presentation in our school's brand new forum with a huge video screen and speaker system. The teachers (and principal) loved it - especially the powerpoint presentation. I snuck in some non social studies related stuff by including in the presentation a complete explanation of public key cryptosystems, complete with animated diagrams. And they actually understood it! (I wasn't too heavy on the math) That whole experience was definately cool.
I think you will be plesantly surprised by the whole experience when it is over and done. I was. In my presentation, I'm sure I said things the administration didn't agree with, but they were very impressed anyway, because I made the case pretty well (I presented each of the 3 issues from 2 or 3 sides, and then took a stand and argued it.)
It made a bigger impression than I could have imagined. By the next day, every teacher in the school had heard about it, and were actually congratulating me, even though they weren't there! They have looked at me differently ever since.
So anyway, to wrap up, I say put enough effort into this that it will be something that you can be proud of. It will be fun and your teachers will probably be genuinely surprised and impressed.
How about adding just a few more choices (like "idiotic moron" on the minus side or "hilarious" on the plus side") A sidesplitting comment isn't necessarily insightful or informative. Interesting, perhaps.
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
I have a TNT (not II) and I had just about given up hope on any good drivers. I love everything about my linux computer except the x server which is unresponsive at times and could be faster. I wanted be part of the solution, so I emailed the XFree86 project asking how I could help with the TNT support, and they told me I couldn't because there weren't any available specs. Now there are!
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!YEEEEHHHHHAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWW
You have no idea how much that just made my day. THANK YOU NVIDIA. You have at least one new loyal customer.
Really, who cares if its lost? I will go on using the word "Hacker" anyway. Why? Because I like it. And I won't say "no, you mean cracker" any time I hear it wrong, because I get kind of annoyed by people that do. But if someone asks me why I use it the way I do, I'll tell them.
...then we could redo the mindcraft test much fairer than before, with results that can be considered "real world"!
Its very simple: take two identical computers that are in the typical performance category of a webserver. Make sure there are no outstanding hardware issues for either Linux or NT, and then put apache on both of them! Configure it identically for both platforms, and connect them both to a mix of unix, NT, and win95 clients. And use dynamic content, so the operating systems have to actually do some calculating operations instead of just shoving data through a huge pipe.
I think numbers like that would be useful indeed.
...is that it means something unique to everybody. If I didn't get a particular thing out of a movie after seeing it 2 or 3 times, then to me that is just somebody else's interpretation. So if you are sharing your big-business analogies with us as a sugestion for things to think about, but I will guess that most people won't find your interpretation especially engaging.
This is just the kind of thing that burns me up in my english classes when we have to read shakespeare and other such stuff. We read it out loud in class (bleh) and then they tell us exactly what it means. As if we know what shakespeare meant? Right. When you watch a movie, just enjoy it and get out of it what you like, but please no sweeping generalizations.
Oh, and your litmus tests? Sorry, I don't think they exist.
The problem with talk showns on tv is that usually opinions are not welcome from viewers as on radio. And any kind of tv or radio talk show is just too limited because everybody is listening and watching the same stream of information (sound [and video]) at a time.
Ever see "Silicon Spin" on ZDTV? That is probably the closest thing television has to slashdot. The experience of watching silicon spin is nothing like slashdot, though. The show, hosted by John Dvorak (who is a pretty good moderator and fairly levelheaded guy) has only a half hour in any given "episode" to tackle 3 or 4 issues, with a panel of himself and four others.
When watching it, it always becomes obvious that they don't have nearly enough time to talk about anything. Often, the discussion just starts to get good when time is up and its off to a commercial break. After the break, off to the next topic.
Other problems - often the "pundits" selected for the show have no clue about some of the topics brought up, but steal the spotlight anyway telling exactly what they think about it. It is a maddening experience for the viewer, especially if he knows much more about the topic than anyone on the show and is just dying to set them straight.
If you wanted to stay on top of "hi tech issues" by watching that show, you would fail. It just isn't informative. Sometimes I see it after participating in a slashdot discussion about the same topics (once it was the Columbine shooting here in Littleton) and have to cringe because the people on silicon spin are just so stupid by comparison.
Of course, this is by no means limited to silicon spin - it is tv and radio in general. I picked silicon spin because it strikes me as an attempt to present slashdot-like debates on a comparably inferior medium. Slashdot rocks because nobody ever has had to sit and watch the discussion thinking "NO! NO!!!! That isn't it at all! DAMMIT I WISH I COULD SET THEM STRAIGHT"
And if you word your view well enough and don't sink to flaming etc, it is likely that many people will see your post and put up their reply.
Was it supposed to be known by the viewers that the senator was the other sith lord? I mean, it was painfully obvious to me the second I saw palpatine and heard him talk, but it would have been nice if it had come as a surprise in a later movie.
Also, I watched the movie "Ben Hur" just last night, as it happens, and just got back from TPM. Don't tell me Lucas didn't take the charriot race scene from ben-hur and copy it verbatim, excapt for an added announcer and a futureistic genre. If you don't know the charriot race I am talking about, watch ben-hur and the similarity will stun you. If you have seen it, but it's been a while, see it again and notice how practically every detail has a parallel in phantom menace. The problem is that in ben-hur the charriot race was exciting, because they made the viewer really care about the outcome. Juda's honour was on the line against a jerk that had really screwed him over earlier, not to mention the fortune that depended on the outcome and the pride of the jewish people. In episode 1, the pod race was sort of a necessary means for the jedis to continue their mission and a way to explain how they met Anakin.
One detail I wasn't sure about - was he called "skywalker" because his master hovered in the air wherever he went and had that name, or was that luke's father's surname?
Finally, what is up with this mesiah stuff in sci-fi movies? Every time they referred to "the one" in the Matrix I had to cringe because it just sounded hokey, and this thing about "the one" that would bring balance to the force was no different. Bring balance to the force? I wasn't aware that the force lacked balance, or needed it. I think they just had to have that in there because, after all, finding some kid to train wan't their mission and they needed a reason to bring him to the council. Apparently his great blood count wasn't reason enough. Guess they didn't really need more jedi knights.
Anyhow, good movie but the plot was somewhat butchered.
Did you notice that the first movie came out with "Episode IV" written on it? The original plan was to have a total of nine - sort of a trilogy of trilogies. Now it's looking like the last 3 will not happen. I don't know what you would put in the last 3 anyway - it seemed to be pretty much wrapped up in number 6.
...unless you make it matter. Remember what Linus said at his keynote address? He said: let's focus on the low end server and desktop market. It may sound "sexy" but we're not focusing on high end machines with bunches of processors.
These are two totally different areas, and Linux was always designed with the lower end in mind. How convenient then for them to do all these tests on huge computers nobody would actually use for a web server, unless they run one of the top 100 sites on the internet! Not to mention the fact that this is more of an apache benchmark than a linux one.
If you run a huge smp machine and want to squeeze every last drop of speed out of it, you probably won't run linux anyway. It's not that linux isn't "good enough", it is designed for a different purpose. For a job like that, you would want Solaris or FreeBSD (still not NT)
NT has its own design purposes, which are different from any unix type system. There are two main design goals I can see in NT: 1. Be easy for even an idiot to maintain, since most of the time all he will have to do to is follow wizards or reboot the machine. 2. Be monolithic and slow, but for benchmarking purposes, have a way for those few people who know the OS inside and out to tweak it to insane levels for one or two particular services at the expense of stability and resembalance to "real life" situations.
Hehe, it makes you wonder just how much like a computer a brain really is. Are all our new ideas about parallel processing, memory management, data abstraction, multithreading, and multitasking rooted in the processes of our own brain?
The way you worded that post, it almost sounds like "processes" in the brain "talk" to each other using some kind of standard "protocol"! Coolness. A reverse engineering project like that would almost make the efforts to decode DNA seem boring!
He trademarked it so nobody else could. A while ago, some moron (I forget his name) tried to register the linux name as his own trademark and then charge a fee for each use!
The Linux community was ticked off by this, and rightly so. Some help in clearing things up was generously given by a law firm (whose name I also forget) and the trademark was given to Linus. Linus emphasized over and over that this was strictly to keep the trademark from being misused by others.
I just took that final national AP exam today. This is the first year it was based on C++ - it used to be pascal. The funny thing is, I don't consider myself a particularly good coder, but that was still the easiest friggin test I have taken in a loooong time. I was actually having fun during the test! Some of the logic problems in there were kinda cool, and I finished both sections of it with plenty of time to get up, go to the bathroom, get a drink, and go back and check answers. The funny thing is, I basically slacked off all semester and worked on my own stuff rather than their stupid "This is how a binary tree works" type lessons. Now I have a C in the class. Oh well. At least I won't have to take introductory CS next year...
Anyway, when it comes to college or job, I'm headed for college all the way! Part of it is I think it would just be cool to study more in depth for several years, so I can do something truely interesting. Sure, I could be a sysadmin or webmaster, but unless you run a site like this one it's usually a matter of breaking even every day rather than let your security fall behind or your company's page go out of date.
I know that getting a degree doesn't mean you are smart - I meet living proof of this fact all the time. But if you are truely interested in studying this stuff and want to do some really cutting edge work, I can't understand why you would want to deny yourself that!
You know what my favorite windows trick is (short of trashing it of course)? I tell this to anybody that isn't literate enough to point toward linux. When you install it, you can pretty much count on having to reinstall it later, so just make at least 2 partitions on the hard disk. Install the OS on one of them. On the other, make directories like "downloads", "installations", "programs", "documents" etc. The programs that don't install by spreading themselves all over the place go on the second partition. The ones that do get the actual installation file in the "installs" directory so they can be easily be put back on. That way, when windows is to the point where the only thing to do is wipe 'er clean (and it will get there) reinstalling becomes a 3 hour job, tops. Plus, if you use tape backup, just backup the second partition.
My experience with the low end of the corporate world began with the (idiotic) idea of getting a job at the local radio shack. I easily passed their stupid test of tech proficiency (better than anyone else at the store could I suspect) but then I had to go to the local office and watch a long video that made the point again and again and again thta this was, in fact, an equal opportunity employer. Then I met my boss-to-be. He was a short, round little guy with a sallow complexion and beady eyes that gave the impression that all his spirit, pride in his work, sense of humor, and interest in life had been beaten out of him long ago. Then I had to fill out a huge (HUGE- it took over an hour and a half) packet with questions about drugs and stealing from your employer and crap like that. I felt insulted.
Anyhow, I was supposed to meet him one more time before it would be decided whether I would get the job. I decided then to screw it and go somewhere else. I'm glad I did. It would have been hell.
I still go in there sometimes when I'm passing by (It's inside the local mall) and pepper them with questions that they couldn't possibly know the answer to. Don't ask me why, I just feel like it. Their stuff is too overpriced anyway.
In addition to the reasons people already wrote here, it could also be something really simple.
Google, if it finds several pages on the same site that match in varying degrees, it will list the one that is the least buried in nested directories (microsoft.com in this case) first, and under it, indented, will be all that page's "children", each with a score of its own. A child might well have a higher score than its parent, but will be listed after to show the relationship between the two.
Personally, I think this feature totally rocks. Google rocks! Any time I ever start a search somewhere else, I later wonderwhy, because Google is always the one that finds what I want. It is my default web page, in fact. Slashdot would be, but it doesn't load fast over my 26,400 modem connection (USWEST is a bunch of crooks, if you ask me) Google loads like *snap* that.
There's a free software timeline that you can see by clicking on Miguel's photo. Anyone that reads through that will come away with a pretty darn good idea of what this is all about.
It starts with RMS starting GNU, and has some other landmarks, and ends with GNOME. Well done, I think.
Wish List:
-No more X86 processors. Perhaps something like Alpha? I hope?
-Linux friendly keyboards. Make them just like the Happy Hacking Keyboard.
-3 button mice
-Graphic Accelerators and displays that conform to open standards
And of course, open source drivers with no restrictive crap in their licenses. All that would be worth gold. Are you listening laptop makers? GOLD!!!
I know exactly what the other posters are talking about, because I go to Arapahoe, another high school in Littleton near Columbine. The first thing the administration did was ban trenchcoats, certain kinds of jewelery, and other acts that suggest they really don't see what the real problem is.
/. crowd seems to consider their lifestyle the 'best', and I don't think that that is necessarily true. I agree that there is no reason why a lifestyle should be forced upon someone that doesn't want to subscribe to it, which seems to be what schools are trying to do, but both sides of this 'culture clash' are acting like one side (of jocks/nerds) is good, and the other evil.
However, I am also noticing a superior tone in some of these posts - especially Katz's. The
I understand where the mainstream is coming from - they see the 'oddballs' as dangerous, because they don't understand them, and the oddballs are usually smarter than them.
But some nerds, both here and people I meet in person, seem to see mainstream activities - especially sports - as indicators of shallowness.
I often find myself in the middle. I am a nerd, but I also play sports. I have been programming since 4th grade, and have been in accelerated classes since 1st. I have a whole group of friends that fits the "trenchcoat mafia" description. My interests fit the nerd profile too - I HATE school material, even though I do well at it, and I spend a lot of time online.
But I am also kindof a jock. I often wear a letter jacket with 12 pins on it and I have a group of friends from the wrestling team. The thing is, these two groups of friends wouldn't like each other AT ALL if they met, and I can get along fine with both. I get just as much of a rush from sports as from anything else - it's fun working out, motivating each other, getting in shape, kicking some ass on game day, or just going and yelling for your school. I'm not into the self-punishment kind of lifestyle. Why pick one when you can have it both ways?
And by the way, the killers did not really belong to that clique - just a vague association. They were not in the yearbook photo or the list of names, they did not sit at the same lunch table, and they did not wear trenchcoats, except on the day of the shooting to hide their guns- they wore nazi stuff. And they were actually austrialian dusters. The trenchcoat mafia group really got screwed by this thing. The kids that did it were loners among loners.
Basically I'm preaching a message of TOLERANCE here - from both ends. This shooting that happened five miles or so away has increased the rift between cliques in this school (and many others I imagine) by a lot.
But boy, I can definately feel for most of you guys when schools take the kinds of action they do. Grrr... it makes me SO MAD when administrators just don't get it.
I am a senior at Arapahoe High School, in Littleton just 5 miles east of Columbine. They aren't our main rival (in sports, I mean), but I've watched two back-to-back state championship soccer games from the Arapahoe side of the field when it was down to us and the Columbine Rebels. As a result, there's been some animosity between our two schools. Needless to say, that was forgotten in about 5 seconds as many of us went down there to offer help and support.
/. and user friendly for a bit of escape, and then seeing Iliad's message there and then later that first huge thread on Slashdot.
Also, I am a varsity wrestler (hence the handle I use) and I just recently competed in the regional championships which were held in the Columbine gym.
And as soon as I heard about the shootings, the first thing that came to mind was the time I was sitting in a bathroom stall in the Columbine boy's bathroom during the tournament. All 3 walls were covered with hate messages, swastikas, references to satan, and especially things to the effect of "All jocks must die!" And, like all those Columbine students, I thought that was kind of strange and then promptly dismissed it as I left.
I don't personally know any of the victims, but it's been a hard last couple of days when I didn't know that fact. The coordinator of the gifted/talented program at Arapahoe (a good friend of mine) is the next door neighbor of a fatally wounded victim and has also known Dylan, one of the killers, since preschool. A fellow member of my track team is a friend of that kid everyone saw hanging out the window on the news. So its been a rough week, and I don't think it's quite hit me yet.
When I first found out about the incident, it had only just started 20 minutes earlier, and for the next several hours I was under the impression that it was a minor shooting, with perhaps a few injuries. Then, I got home after practice and got the updated story, and couldn't believe it.
You've all probably seen on the news what they've been saying about Littleton, CO. Well its true. Practically every school here is a blue ribbon school, no gang activity, long honor roll lists with the bumper stickers to prove it, and plenty of star athletes and achievers in every category. Oh, and despite the name, its not little - that (Little) is just the name of the original settler in the area. It's a suburb of Denver, and nothing separates the two except a thin invisible line.
So I believe them when they say "If it can happen in Littleton, it can happen anywhere." -cross community upbringing off the list. The thing about these communities that people consider "perfect" is that if you don't fit in, it can be an absolute hell. People that don't subscribe to the mainstream and fit the community's image probably feel like second class citizens.
The more you read about the kids' parents, the more you will realize they were not "brought up wrong" or "mistreated". No, they both come from 2 parent households, and the neighbors feel strongly enough that the parents were good caring people (Dylan's mom works as a counselor for disabled people) that they wrote a note, signed by 19(?) of them expressing their support for the parents (although I admit that them not knowing about all that bomb building has me stumped) so I don't thing it is parental upbringing. These two guys did little league sports and cub scouts, and the like, and Dylan attended a youth group with a friend of mine only last year. By his account, Dylan was normal.
Oh, and this "trenchcoat mafia" thing has also been blown out of proportion. This group (which was not a gang at all, and had no affiliates outside the school) was a geek type group that dressed different but had fun in their own way, and didn't harbour much more resentment than your average high schooler. They did, however, have a facination with guns. This is a description of that group as it stood last year, and they even took out a yearbook ad that shows the group of geeks all smiles.
Things turned sour with the group late last year, from what I heard, when the jocks started picking on them. Then the hate got turned up. They resented how the jocks seemed to run the school, and they were always picked on. A fight was arranged at a local baseball field after a big confrontation at the school. Trenchcoats showed up with brass knuckles and swords, so the jocks left.
I don't know for sure, but I believe that Eric and Dylan were drawn into the group through their interest in computers and weapons, and turned sour with the rest of the group from the run-ins with jocks. Their real flaw, I believe, was a combination of not knowing how to play the high school game and no effective method of dealing with hate. They channeled it into a long range plan, set in motion near the begining of this school year, to get revenge on the jocks and have the final say, so to speak.
Also, I think a factor was peer pressure. Eric was the leader, and Dylan was a follower, and let Eric suck him right into it - absolutely no personal sense of direction. And then it worked both ways. If you have a plan like this yourself, it's easy to back out, but if it's you and some friends, nobody wants to be the chicken.
In every way, they thought of the whole matter as a war. They developed a fascination for war (WWII in particular) and Hitler, and went around annoying people by marching around the school with precise 90 degree turns like soldiers.
Here is where the part about DOOM comes in. They were so consumed by their big plan, that they played DOOM head to head over their modems for hours upon hours. This was not for fun or relaxation or to try to beat each other or any of the normal reasons a person would play DOOM. They took it seriously and considered it training. They also played paintball a lot, and for the same reason. The important thing to stress here is, that while those 1st person shooters may or may not contribute to this kind of thing, in this case the plan came first and the "training" second.
All of this is kind of overwhelming when you are so close to it. Its kind of funny that, even after I knew that it had made world news and forced "Littleton, CO" into the same breath as the likes of "Jonesburo, AK", the thing that really drove it home for me was logging onto
If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading my thoughts and impressions on the matter.
I am a senior at Arapahoe High School, in Littleton just 5 miles east of Columbine. They aren't our main rival, but I've watched two back-to-back state championship soccer games from the Arapahoe side of the field when it was down to us and the Columbine Rebels. As a result, there's been some real animosity between our two schools. Needless to say, that has been thankfully tossed aside as many of us went down there to offer help and support.
/. and user friendly for a bit of escape, and then seeing Iliad's message there and then later this (huge) thread on slashdot.
Also, I am a varsity wrestler (hence the handle i use) and i just recently competed in the regional championship which was held in the Columbine gym.
And as soon as I heard about the shootings, the first thing that came to mind was the time I was sitting in a bathroom stall in the Columbine boy's bathroom during the tournament. All 3 walls were covered with hate messages, swastikas, references to satan, and especially things to the effect of "All jocks must die!" And, like all those Columbine students, I thought that was kind of strange and then promptly dismissed it as I left the stall.
I don't personally know any of the victims, but it's been a hard last couple of days when I didn't know that fact. The coordinator of the gifted/talented program at Arapahoe (a good friend of mine) is the next door neighbor of a fatally wounded victim and has also known Dylan, one of the killers, since preschool. A fellow member of my track team is a friend of that kid everyone saw hanging out the window on the news. So its been a surreal week, and I don't think it's quite hit me yet.
When I first found out about the incident, it had only just started 15 minutes earlier, and for the next several hours I was under the impression that it was a minor shooting, with perhaps a few injuries. Then, I got home after practice and got the updated story, and couldn't believe it.
You've all probably seen on the news what they've been saying about Littleton, CO. Well its true. Practically every school here is a blue ribbon school, no gang activity, long honor roll lists with the bumper stickers to proove it, and plenty of soccer moms. Oh, and despite the name, its not little - thats just the name of the founder. It's a suburb of Denver, and nothing separates the two except a thin invisible line.
So I believe them when they say "If it can happen in Littleton, it can happen anywhere." -cross community upbringing off the list. And the more you read about the kids' parents, the more you will realize they were not "brought up wrong" or "mistreated". No, they both come from 2 parent households, and the neighbors feel strongly enough that the parents were good caring people (one mom works as a counselor for disabled people) that they wrote a note, signed by 19(?) of them expressing their support for the parents (although i admit that them not knowing about all that bomb building has me stumped) so I don't thing is parental upbringing. These two guys did little league sports and cub scouts, and the like, and Dylan attended a youth group with a friend of mine only last year. By his account, Dylan was normal.
Oh, and this "trenchcoat mafia" thing has also been blown out of proportion. This group (which was not a gang at all, and had no affiliates outside the school) was a geek type group that dressed different but had fun in their own way, and didn't harbout much more resentment than your average high schooler. They did, however, have a facination with guns. This is a description of that group as it stood last year, and they even took out a yearbook ad that show the group of geeks all smiles.
Things turned sour with the group late last year, from what I heard, when the jocks started picking on them. Then the hate started. They resented how the jocks seemed to run the school, and they were always picked on. A fight was arranged at a local baseball field after a big confrontation at the school. The trenchcoats showed up with brass knuckles and swords, so the jocks left.
I don't know for sure, but I believe that Eric and Dylan were drawn into the group through their interest in computers and weapons, and turned sour with the rest of the group from the run-ins with jocks. Their real flaw, I believe, was a combination of not knowing how to play the high school game and no effective method of dealing with hate. They channeled it into a long range plan, set in motion near the begining of this school year, to get revenge on the jocks and have the final say, so to speak.
In every way, they thought of the whole matter as a war. They developed a fascination for war (WWII and in particular) and Hitler, and went around annoying people by marching around the school with precise 90 degree turns like soldiers.
Here is where the part about DOOM comes in. They were so consumed by their big plan, that they played DOOM head to head over their modems for hours upon hours. This was not for fun or relaxation or to try to beat each other or any of the normal reasons a person would play DOOM. They took it seriously and considered it training. They also played paintball a lot, and for the same reason. The important thing to stress here is, that while those 1st person shooters may or may not contribute to this kind of thing, in this case the plan came first and the "training" second.
All of this is kind of overwhelming when you are so close to it. Its kind of funny that, even after I knew that it had made world news and forced "Littleton, CO" into the same breath as the likes of "Jonesburo, AK", the thing that really drove it home for me was logging onto
If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading my thoughts and impressions on the matter, and I wish only the best of health and peace to all of you.