Howsabout some Stuff That Matters? Jeez... at least timothy posts amusingly trollish crap. pudge... well really, does anyone give a fuck about minor point releases of scripting languages used by the three people worldwide who found Python too difficult to get their heads round?
Actually, AppleScript isn't really easier than Python. Even for non-programmers, I would be willing to bet that most people find Python easier to learn and more intuitive -- AppleScript has an "English-like" syntax (as its marketing says), and English is actually one of the most inconsistent and hardest languages to learn (for those who are not raised speaking it). Why? Because there are so many different ways to say the exact same thing in English, not just synonyms but the grammatical structure itself -- very unsystematic. I find that the same thing is true of AppleScript. This is often leveraged against Perl by those who would criticize it as being difficult to learn (in comparison with PHP or Python, for instance).
Besides that, AS hooks nicely with scriptable apps on the Mac. It even lets you call shell scripts and other languages' scripts directly. I don't use AS much, but one of my favorite little tools is a script I incorporated into my text editor (BBEdit) -- I highlight a function name and hit F8, and my web browser pops open and serves me the man page for that function (using php.net's awesome URL-based function lookup.
No, none of this really matters for non-Mac users, but then why are you reading apple.slashdot.org if you're not interested? Besides, as you can see from the release number, it's not like AppleScript has been updated much in its 14+ years of existence. For Script-savvy Mac users, this is "news that matters".
Welcome to Darwin! Sat Jun 22 12:00:44 EDT 2002 localhost:~$ whois -h whois.networksolutions.com villainsupply.com The Data in the VeriSign Registrar WHOIS database is provided by VeriSign for information purposes only, and to assist persons in obtaining information about... <snipped/>
Registrant: Even (IJHWTTTOBD) 10200 De Soto Ave., #309 Chatsworth, CA 91311 US
Domain Name: VILLAINSUPPLY.COM
Administrative Contact: Even (ULLAFXEZGO) kunochan@hotmail.com Even 10200 De Soto Ave., #309 Chatsworth, CA 91311 US 8188822528 Technical Contact: DomainMaster, Your OneStop (WCTFBFQJTI) domainmaster@onestop.net onestop.net 3463 State St. Suite 270 Santa Barbara, CA 93105 US 805 560 6675
Record expires on 21-Jan-2003. Record created on 21-Jan-2002. Database last updated on 22-Jun-2002 11:53:56 EDT.
Would those doors have been locked in an American or other western country's cyber cafes? The subject at hand is freedom of information and civil rights, two subjects which I hope are very important to the average slashdot reader.
Well, let's see it. Without scrutiny, how do you know that your approach is the *only* way to acheive whatever it is you acheived?
That's just the thing. I never meant to suggest that my approach was the *only* way to achieve it. Only that it helped me to use objects.
I have seen other OO fans do stuff where it was discovered they were not very good procedural/relational programmers (or using lame languages), and attributed their lack of skill to the paradigm being faulty.
I'll go you one better than that -- I'll wholly admit to being "not very good" at procedural/relational programming. Or even object oriented programming for that matter. I'm really not a good programmer! I'm trying, and learning, but I'm not claiming to be something that I'm not.
I am not saying that you necessarily fit that profile, but that without seeing it, one cannot rule it out.
I assure you, I fit the profile. Me = not a very good programmer, just someone with a few PHP/database skills.
OO is overhyped regardless of whatever "pent up" problems I might have. I never see good evidence; only vague cliches, mantra, and toy examples that don't fit change-patterns of the real world.
That's exactly what I'm talking about though. You're pulling your own preconceived notions about what I'm saying into the conversation. All I'm saying is that it made my life easier.
I will agree that *some* people may think better under OO, but one should not extrapolate that to all developers unless good objective evidence is presented for its alleged superiority.
Thank you. Now that we have both understood that we're really on the same level (we agree that one should not try to make a blanket statement like "everyone should use OO", which I did not), let's leave it at that.
What specific software engineering problem did OO "fix"?
OO is NOT more change-friendly. I challenge you to provide specifics. No more cliches and double-talk. Talk with code and not slOOgans.
Where's the evidence!
I might be an anti-OO troll, but I am a
*correct* troll. The BS surrounding OO is simply amazing.
Give me realistic details, and I shall slay your OO code WRT "change-friendliness". (At least break even.)
Um, I seem to remember posting something about how it helped me and not necessarily everyone, to use OO programming. Yes, it did. Even if only to provide a convenient reference for pointing to a "User" or "Company" in the application I wrote.
Besides that, it sounds like you have other problems pent up inside you. You must be a failing CS freshman or something -- I never brought up the subject of software engineering problems (since I'm far from an engineer) or change-friendliness. Take it up with your professor or your advisor if you have such a bone to pick.
Greenspan and Bulger's text is perhaps more traditionally concerned with constructing databases and the programming that surrounds them. Both books cover the material equally well, though I found some nuisances in the first book.
It's a good book to get across the important concepts in dynamic site design, but it completely sucks if you're starting from scratch with MySQL and PHP. I think there were something like twenty serious typos or publishing mistakes in the first fifty pages.
A good book, ruined by poor publishing or editing.
The biggest problem with all the PHP books out there is that they don't talk about software design or good coding practice.
This is so true. I basically taught myself how to program from scratch, never having had the sense to study it when I was in college. PHP was my first language. While every PHP book has its obligatory chapter on OOP, and of course they say stuff like "always comment your code", it was only once I started to learn Java that I started to pick up on "big picture thinking" and using objects to keep everything nice and neat. And none of the PHP books even mention phpdocumentor or phpdoc, which have been amazing (basically JavaDoc for PHP).
(I realize OOP isn't for everyone but for a small web application [not just a guestbook] it really helps to use OO design)
Really sucks, because when I got rid of OS 9 on my tiBook, I reformatted it all UFS, thinking I'd never have need for HFS+ again. Oops...
Yeah, reconsider that. There are a TON of things that don't work right with a UFS filesystem on OS X. I'd say you are safe if you limit yourself to Darwin-only operations and just use X11 for windows, but if you ever plan to use proper Aqua applications, you will be glad to have stayed with HFS+.
Twenty-eight employees from 13 government agencies (out of 100 total) completed a project in April to test the free Open Office open-source desktop productivity suite and its commercially available version, called Star Office, from Sun Microsystems Inc. The project coordinators determined that it would recommend use of the suite, mainly for users who do not exchange documents on a regular basis with users of competing software. It cited compatibility problems, namely among users trying to receive Microsoft World documents.
If I had a nickel every time someone tried to tell me that.DOC is some kind of world standard -- now this!
After installing Silk, IE looks essentially just as good as Chimera. Now, until Chimera really advances in features and stability, I've got no reason to use it because the text in IE finally looks as good as the rest of OS X.
This is just my opinion I suppose, but you should really give Mozilla a spin.
I haven't tried the haxie, but if it really makes Carbon apps render as beautifully as Chimera (which I also have begun to use more and more as it matures), then basically if you apply it to Mozilla you have a fully stable and mature Chimera. Chimera is still much more lightweight and doesn't have some of the bloat that Mozilla has, but Mozilla has the tabs etc and is just a nice experience.
Three other things that I do wish Mozilla supported on OS X are the native graphics widgets, dragging URLs into the Dock, and the emacs-style keybindings present in all Cocoa apps. But these are quite minor points.
I'll never forget -- when I was just a kid, back in the mid-late eighties, my father had just upgraded our Macintosh to a Mac Plus. As he was reading one of the owner's manuals, he started laughing, and I asked him what was so funny.
"Oh, nothing," he said.
Still, I pressed him.
"It says here in the setup steps, 'First, eat some chocolate'".
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked. I honestly had no idea why "Eat some chocolate" would be written in a computer manual.
"Oh, programmers are just weird," he chuckled.
Ever since then I've had a healthy respect for computer programmers.
A lot of these responses describe such famous texts as Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, or Design Patterns, or some other famous book by Kernighan and someone else. Someday, I plan to read all of these books.
But if you're like me you graduated with a liberal arts degree because you had too much fun in college, now you are teaching yourself programming in hopes of getting a decent job, you've learned your way around Python and Perl and you've even gotten a job as a temp, building an internal content management site in PHP (without using code from PostNuke etc, in an attempt to force yourself to figure out the answers to your own problems [even though in hindsight it might not have been a bad idea])...
Having figured out that writing mammoth PHP scripts to handle every possible scenario is pretty unwieldy once you get the hang of that object-oriented thing, and realizing that you could have planned this thing a whole lot better than just jumping in and writing PHP code...
I'd heard that Java is a good next step and isn't that the language they teach beginning Computer Science students? And everyone on Monster.com seems to be hiring Java programmers...
Well in that case there's a book for you -- for me at least -- called Beginning Java Objects by Jaquie Barker. It's a Wrox book, so you can learn from it without having a CS degree or a mentor by your side (though I sure have come to appreciate the help I get on mailing lists), and it focuses on design rather than syntax. You really need to have programmed a little bit before getting into it, but it has already made me a better programmer.
Very easy to get into and get a lot of helpful information from.
(Captain Kirk did the same thing when presented with an "unbeatable" tactical scenario, and Ender Wiggin "defeated" his game by breaking the rules and going straight for the Giant's Eye.)
Once the water sound has stopped, you should probably pull up your pants and, if you have a wife or girlfriend, make sure to put the toilet seat down.
Well, actually you should probably wipe your ass and then pull up your pants.
(And if you're anything like me, you'll wash your hands with soap and hot water, then use the paper towel you dried your hand with to turn the water off and flush the toilet and open the bathroom door before chucking it into the trash.)
Except the Myst world actually had an excellent plot.
In fact, I remember reading a Wired article a few years ago where one of the brothers (Robin Miller) who created Myst expressed an interest in moving away from video games specifically because narrative was so difficult to achieve in a game.
It was Miller's fascination with storytelling that nudged him in the direction of film. Halfway through the making of Riven, he began to envy an asset every kung-fu flick and airport potboiler has over interactive games: the ability to reveal the turns of a narrative in set sequence, with no multiple-choice fates or clickable cul-de-sacs.
Yep, BBEdit is hands down the slickest thing since sliced bread. And everyone who's used it to do any real work will tell you the very same thing.
The amazing thing is that it provides all of this for such a small walletprint -- $79 !!! (upgrade from freeware BBEdit Lite) I really shudder to think of having to work in any other environment than an OS X box with BBEdit.
This is nothing new -- they've been doing it for years. Compressing the film by a few seconds (by speeding it up slightly), then flanging the audio down a bit so that the actors' voices don't sound strangely higher than usual. I learned about it a few years ago in some Communication classes, and then noticed it when I saw "Christmas Vacation" on TV. After having seen the movie at least 50 times on video (at the intended speed), I noticed that the timing of the dialogue just seemed "off" somehow. By halfway through the movie I was really unnerved -- it was so strange to hear something that should be familiar, and somehow was familiar, played just a little too fast to be familiar.
That said, I'm glad that this kind of thing is getting more coverage -- it takes an already ad-saturated medium and makes it worse! (One of the reasons I tend to shun the box, but then I bet everyone on/. says that.)
third, why can't we get around the idea that the new york times isn't going to just give away its hard work for nothing? the feeling that i get when i read that free registration is required is that it shouldn't be, that it should all be free free free. i, for one, can handle a meaningless free registration for the excellent content they provide. it is not as if they come knocking on my door when i hit the submit button.
You mean they don't have banner ads making them money on the other side of the free reg door?
I wouldn't know; I've never considered the NYT worthwhile enough to even bother with faking an email address. Someone always inevitably mirrors it anyway.
You're referring to Unix as one great whole, with OS X being just one version of Unix. When I said "with OS X, you don't have to choose between Gnome or KDE", I was saying just that -- you don't have to choose one or the other. For those who need all the functionality of their XFree client programs, sure, you can get XDarwin and choose one or the other. My point is the same -- Aqua is installed on EVERY OS X box, except a few hackers running Darwin-only systems, so there is a standard, a precedent for cohesion, which is the whole topic of this thread.
For at least as long as I've been reading Slashdot, Jon Katz has posted op/eds and stories investigating many of the social implications of emerging technology and current political trends, that have an impact on both our freedom to use technology and the industry itself. He's gone beyond speculating about the technical limits of supercooled processors, or the Quake 3 engine, to look at some of the things that actually make a dent in our lives.
And for at least as long as I've been reading Slashdot, readers have posted their opinions of Jon Katz, and why he can go to hell, or why his opinion sucks, or some other complaint. Almost all of them request that he take his writing elsewhere, that he is not welcome with their morning news and cup of coffee.
I'm not writing this to support the presence of goofy teen flick movie review on Slashdot. But judging from the way he's received, what did you expect? He's clearly come to the conclusion that, at least about important things, geeks must not like to think very much.
Slashdot Mirror
Howsabout some Stuff That Matters? Jeez... at least timothy posts amusingly trollish crap. pudge... well really, does anyone give a fuck about minor point releases of scripting languages used by the three people worldwide who found Python too difficult to get their heads round?
Actually, AppleScript isn't really easier than Python. Even for non-programmers, I would be willing to bet that most people find Python easier to learn and more intuitive -- AppleScript has an "English-like" syntax (as its marketing says), and English is actually one of the most inconsistent and hardest languages to learn (for those who are not raised speaking it). Why? Because there are so many different ways to say the exact same thing in English, not just synonyms but the grammatical structure itself -- very unsystematic. I find that the same thing is true of AppleScript. This is often leveraged against Perl by those who would criticize it as being difficult to learn (in comparison with PHP or Python, for instance).
Whereas Perl and AppleScript provide "more than one way to do it", Tim Peters praises Python saying There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. Anyone who's written an AppleScript can tell you this is definitely not true of AppleScript.
Besides that, AS hooks nicely with scriptable apps on the Mac. It even lets you call shell scripts and other languages' scripts directly. I don't use AS much, but one of my favorite little tools is a script I incorporated into my text editor ( BBEdit ) -- I highlight a function name and hit F8, and my web browser pops open and serves me the man page for that function (using php.net's awesome URL-based function lookup.
No, none of this really matters for non-Mac users, but then why are you reading apple.slashdot.org if you're not interested? Besides, as you can see from the release number, it's not like AppleScript has been updated much in its 14+ years of existence. For Script-savvy Mac users, this is "news that matters".
.
Nothing teaches code like code.
The reality is that, "Investigators blamed the high death toll on locked emergency exits. " This is all there is to the story.
Don't just read the article -- read between the lines, to what's really going on here. The cafes are often dimly lit, hidden from view and with heavy doors to deter the authorities - but which can turn them into a death trap in case of fire.
Would those doors have been locked in an American or other western country's cyber cafes? The subject at hand is freedom of information and civil rights, two subjects which I hope are very important to the average slashdot reader.
Well, let's see it. Without scrutiny, how do you know that your approach is the *only* way to acheive whatever it is you acheived?
That's just the thing. I never meant to suggest that my approach was the *only* way to achieve it. Only that it helped me to use objects.
I have seen other OO fans do stuff where it was discovered they were not very good procedural/relational programmers (or using lame languages), and attributed their lack of skill to the paradigm being faulty.
I'll go you one better than that -- I'll wholly admit to being "not very good" at procedural/relational programming. Or even object oriented programming for that matter. I'm really not a good programmer! I'm trying, and learning, but I'm not claiming to be something that I'm not.
I am not saying that you necessarily fit that profile, but that without seeing it, one cannot rule it out.
I assure you, I fit the profile. Me = not a very good programmer, just someone with a few PHP/database skills.
OO is overhyped regardless of whatever "pent up" problems I might have. I never see good evidence; only vague cliches, mantra, and toy examples that don't fit change-patterns of the real world.
That's exactly what I'm talking about though. You're pulling your own preconceived notions about what I'm saying into the conversation. All I'm saying is that it made my life easier.
I will agree that *some* people may think better under OO, but one should not extrapolate that to all developers unless good objective evidence is presented for its alleged superiority.
Thank you. Now that we have both understood that we're really on the same level (we agree that one should not try to make a blanket statement like "everyone should use OO", which I did not), let's leave it at that.
What specific software engineering problem did OO "fix"? OO is NOT more change-friendly. I challenge you to provide specifics. No more cliches and double-talk. Talk with code and not slOOgans. Where's the evidence! I might be an anti-OO troll, but I am a *correct* troll. The BS surrounding OO is simply amazing. Give me realistic details, and I shall slay your OO code WRT "change-friendliness". (At least break even.)
Um, I seem to remember posting something about how it helped me and not necessarily everyone, to use OO programming. Yes, it did. Even if only to provide a convenient reference for pointing to a "User" or "Company" in the application I wrote.
Besides that, it sounds like you have other problems pent up inside you. You must be a failing CS freshman or something -- I never brought up the subject of software engineering problems (since I'm far from an engineer) or change-friendliness. Take it up with your professor or your advisor if you have such a bone to pick.
Greenspan and Bulger's text is perhaps more traditionally concerned with constructing databases and the programming that surrounds them. Both books cover the material equally well, though I found some nuisances in the first book.
It's a good book to get across the important concepts in dynamic site design, but it completely sucks if you're starting from scratch with MySQL and PHP. I think there were something like twenty serious typos or publishing mistakes in the first fifty pages.
A good book, ruined by poor publishing or editing.
The biggest problem with all the PHP books out there is that they don't talk about software design or good coding practice.
This is so true. I basically taught myself how to program from scratch, never having had the sense to study it when I was in college. PHP was my first language. While every PHP book has its obligatory chapter on OOP, and of course they say stuff like "always comment your code", it was only once I started to learn Java that I started to pick up on "big picture thinking" and using objects to keep everything nice and neat. And none of the PHP books even mention phpdocumentor or phpdoc, which have been amazing (basically JavaDoc for PHP).
(I realize OOP isn't for everyone but for a small web application [not just a guestbook] it really helps to use OO design)
Oviously this is hugely basic stuff, but conceptually there is a lot of potential cool ideas. But for now it looks just silly ;)
So... what are you saying exactly?
Really sucks, because when I got rid of OS 9 on my tiBook, I reformatted it all UFS, thinking I'd never have need for HFS+ again. Oops...
Yeah, reconsider that. There are a TON of things that don't work right with a UFS filesystem on OS X. I'd say you are safe if you limit yourself to Darwin-only operations and just use X11 for windows, but if you ever plan to use proper Aqua applications, you will be glad to have stayed with HFS+.
Twenty-eight employees from 13 government agencies (out of 100 total) completed a project in April to test the free Open Office open-source desktop productivity suite and its commercially available version, called Star Office, from Sun Microsystems Inc. The project coordinators determined that it would recommend use of the suite, mainly for users who do not exchange documents on a regular basis with users of competing software. It cited compatibility problems, namely among users trying to receive Microsoft World documents.
If I had a nickel every time someone tried to tell me that .DOC is some kind of world standard -- now this!
Why not just select these items from System Preferences -> Login?
They'll load up automatically when you log into your account.
(Of course you can do a lot more with AppleScript, like the alarm clock idea)
After installing Silk, IE looks essentially just as good as Chimera. Now, until Chimera really advances in features and stability, I've got no reason to use it because the text in IE finally looks as good as the rest of OS X.
This is just my opinion I suppose, but you should really give Mozilla a spin.
I haven't tried the haxie, but if it really makes Carbon apps render as beautifully as Chimera (which I also have begun to use more and more as it matures), then basically if you apply it to Mozilla you have a fully stable and mature Chimera. Chimera is still much more lightweight and doesn't have some of the bloat that Mozilla has, but Mozilla has the tabs etc and is just a nice experience.
Three other things that I do wish Mozilla supported on OS X are the native graphics widgets, dragging URLs into the Dock, and the emacs-style keybindings present in all Cocoa apps. But these are quite minor points.
I'll never forget -- when I was just a kid, back in the mid-late eighties, my father had just upgraded our Macintosh to a Mac Plus. As he was reading one of the owner's manuals, he started laughing, and I asked him what was so funny.
"Oh, nothing," he said.
Still, I pressed him.
"It says here in the setup steps, 'First, eat some chocolate'".
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked. I honestly had no idea why "Eat some chocolate" would be written in a computer manual.
"Oh, programmers are just weird," he chuckled.
Ever since then I've had a healthy respect for computer programmers.
A lot of these responses describe such famous texts as Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, or Design Patterns, or some other famous book by Kernighan and someone else. Someday, I plan to read all of these books.
But if you're like me you graduated with a liberal arts degree because you had too much fun in college, now you are teaching yourself programming in hopes of getting a decent job, you've learned your way around Python and Perl and you've even gotten a job as a temp, building an internal content management site in PHP (without using code from PostNuke etc, in an attempt to force yourself to figure out the answers to your own problems [even though in hindsight it might not have been a bad idea])...
Having figured out that writing mammoth PHP scripts to handle every possible scenario is pretty unwieldy once you get the hang of that object-oriented thing, and realizing that you could have planned this thing a whole lot better than just jumping in and writing PHP code...
I'd heard that Java is a good next step and isn't that the language they teach beginning Computer Science students? And everyone on Monster.com seems to be hiring Java programmers...
Well in that case there's a book for you -- for me at least -- called Beginning Java Objects by Jaquie Barker. It's a Wrox book, so you can learn from it without having a CS degree or a mentor by your side (though I sure have come to appreciate the help I get on mailing lists), and it focuses on design rather than syntax. You really need to have programmed a little bit before getting into it, but it has already made me a better programmer.
Very easy to get into and get a lot of helpful information from.
Is it the Kobayashi Maru or is it Ender's Game?
. ..
. . . . . .(Captain Kirk did the same thing when presented with an "unbeatable" tactical scenario, and Ender Wiggin "defeated" his game by breaking the rules and going straight for the Giant's Eye.)
But the first flight of fancy in the buildings of Courissant (sp?) - i was hooked!
Coruscant. The word means "center" or "hub", appropriately named as it is the capital of the galaxy in the SW milleu.
Once the water sound has stopped, you should probably pull up your pants and, if you have a wife or girlfriend, make sure to put the toilet seat down.
Well, actually you should probably wipe your ass and then pull up your pants.
(And if you're anything like me, you'll wash your hands with soap and hot water, then use the paper towel you dried your hand with to turn the water off and flush the toilet and open the bathroom door before chucking it into the trash.)
Except the Myst world actually had an excellent plot.
In fact, I remember reading a Wired article a few years ago where one of the brothers (Robin Miller) who created Myst expressed an interest in moving away from video games specifically because narrative was so difficult to achieve in a game.
So the decision to make a mini-series probably stems from this.
Is to turn the phone off.
Yep, BBEdit is hands down the slickest thing since sliced bread. And everyone who's used it to do any real work will tell you the very same thing.
The amazing thing is that it provides all of this for such a small walletprint -- $79 !!! (upgrade from freeware BBEdit Lite) I really shudder to think of having to work in any other environment than an OS X box with BBEdit.
This is nothing new -- they've been doing it for years. Compressing the film by a few seconds (by speeding it up slightly), then flanging the audio down a bit so that the actors' voices don't sound strangely higher than usual. I learned about it a few years ago in some Communication classes, and then noticed it when I saw "Christmas Vacation" on TV. After having seen the movie at least 50 times on video (at the intended speed), I noticed that the timing of the dialogue just seemed "off" somehow. By halfway through the movie I was really unnerved -- it was so strange to hear something that should be familiar, and somehow was familiar, played just a little too fast to be familiar.
That said, I'm glad that this kind of thing is getting more coverage -- it takes an already ad-saturated medium and makes it worse! (One of the reasons I tend to shun the box, but then I bet everyone on /. says that.)
third, why can't we get around the idea that the new york times isn't going to just give away its hard work for nothing? the feeling that i get when i read that free registration is required is that it shouldn't be, that it should all be free free free. i, for one, can handle a meaningless free registration for the excellent content they provide. it is not as if they come knocking on my door when i hit the submit button.
You mean they don't have banner ads making them money on the other side of the free reg door?
I wouldn't know; I've never considered the NYT worthwhile enough to even bother with faking an email address. Someone always inevitably mirrors it anyway.
You're referring to Unix as one great whole, with OS X being just one version of Unix. When I said "with OS X, you don't have to choose between Gnome or KDE", I was saying just that -- you don't have to choose one or the other. For those who need all the functionality of their XFree client programs, sure, you can get XDarwin and choose one or the other. My point is the same -- Aqua is installed on EVERY OS X box, except a few hackers running Darwin-only systems, so there is a standard, a precedent for cohesion, which is the whole topic of this thread.
For at least as long as I've been reading Slashdot, Jon Katz has posted op/eds and stories investigating many of the social implications of emerging technology and current political trends, that have an impact on both our freedom to use technology and the industry itself. He's gone beyond speculating about the technical limits of supercooled processors, or the Quake 3 engine, to look at some of the things that actually make a dent in our lives.
And for at least as long as I've been reading Slashdot, readers have posted their opinions of Jon Katz, and why he can go to hell, or why his opinion sucks, or some other complaint. Almost all of them request that he take his writing elsewhere, that he is not welcome with their morning news and cup of coffee.
I'm not writing this to support the presence of goofy teen flick movie review on Slashdot. But judging from the way he's received, what did you expect? He's clearly come to the conclusion that, at least about important things, geeks must not like to think very much.
And I don't blame him.