I believe that the newest 10% of users is ineligible to moderate. (It's in the FAQ.) I suspect that I've probably been made ineligible for various "abuses" (I'm not very editor-friendly), since it's been a year or so since I moderated. (I can still metamod, though.)
That's been my philosophy as well. (I usually get metamodded to hell... usually because I find those posts that don't parrot the party line to be 'interesting'.) I haven't had mod points in a long time, though.
I really wish that they would get around to fixing the mod system. Despite some of the stupidity that goes on here,/. really does have quite a bit good about it. (Every time I think that I've had enough of it, I try reading k5 for a bit... and I'm always back here in a hurry.) However, the only way to find the really interesting stuff on slashdot is to pick through all the goatse trolls. There's got to be a better way to handle it.
People have been complaining about the stupidity of over/underrated for years now. No matter how good your suggestion is, I don't think Taco's going to go for it at this point.
Another easy change that should be made: Flamebait really ought to be removed. Anything that can fairly be modded flamebait could be modded troll anyway, and most moderators seem to think that any unpopular opinion is automatically flamebait.
I was salaried at $21,000 a year + health insurance. I had 1.5 days of time off per month. I was expected to come in on weekends during crunch time (which lasted 6 weeks), so I ended up working 80-90 hour weeks for no additional pay.
You could have done better at McDonald's. Why did you stick around for an entire year?
I wouldn't be terribly averse to being a game tester, but not at those prices.
does anyone have any experience doing this? what kind of files would one expect? warez? the complete archives of Pete Townshend?
Well, a few years ago when I was living in the dorms at college (the net access was the only good thing about it), somebody found my roommate's ftp server and uploaded a bunch of mp3's -- mostly top 40 stuff.
At the time, I was playing a game of Nethack on his computer. It died suddenly with an error when it ran out of disk space. Needless to say, I was annoyed. I disabled write access on the ftp server, and replaced all the mp3's with a text file explaining what I thought of him.
It's too bad I didn't think to keep track of his IP address so I could get revenge.
Huh. That'll teach me to read the/. karma whore's version rather than the real thing. To anyone who read the article above, the poster didn't include the word "Some" that starts the first sentence. (Or read the original; it's not actually slashdotted.)
This article starts out by claiming that Free Software and GPL supporters are both "anti-war." (A very nebulous term in itself; anti-war can mean a lot of different things.) Last I checked, your opinions on software licensing didn't dictate or even hold particular relevance to your opinions on war. I'm sure that you can find people who consider themselves to be FS or OS supporters who have all sorts of differing opinions on war.
When somebody tries to start their argument by stating something like that as fact, it really reduces their credibility.
Reporters in China who cite facts that disagree with the Communist Party line are arrested. Why some people think that reporters should be able to disregard the law is beyond me. ...same comment 3x...
Why should being a reporter exempt you from the law? Your arguments are meaningless, because they're not related to the problems being talked about. These people claim that reporters should be allowed to ignore government security regulations. Nonsense. Either the law is unfair, and those security regulations should be removed for everyone, or the law is fair and reporters should be forced to respect it as well. Saying that reporters should be given special priveleges is sheer stupidity.
you know, usa didn't rank that well on the free press ranking of reporters without borders.
Yes, mostly because the Reporters without Borders people think that the press should be above the law. To quote the report:
The poor ranking of the United States (17th) is mainly because of the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned there. Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court. Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings.
Why some people think that reporters should be able to disregard the law is beyond me.
But that would involve changing what the submitters wrote! Do you really think that it should be within the power of the editors to modify somebody's words like that?
It's flamebait to point out that the line in the summary (which was obviously a joke, but nearly everyone here, in their haste to whore for some karma, didn't engage their brains first) is false? Mod the parent up; maybe it will prevent someone from humiliating themselves by making another stupid "discrimination by meal choice" comment.
...and those who are moderating them up, nothing was said in the article about meal choice, and at least it seemed to me that the implication was that the credit card numbers just happen to be part of the record; they're not specifically being asked for. (Of course, I do wonder why they need the full record, and can't just extract the necessary information and leave the CC #'s and such out of it.)
Is your argument that Microsoft does not have a monopoly?
Yes. Try reading those findings of fact. They completely discount Linux and other alternative operating systems. If you don't have exclusive control -- which Microsoft does not; just try looking at all the governments, schools and businesses which are moving away from MS -- then you don't have a monopoly. No matter what a stupid legal system without technical knowledge says.
Just because Free Software is about choice doesn't mean you have to give your enemy "equal opportunity" to destroy you.
If your stand is so weak that a presentation about an opposing stand would destroy you, then you need to work on strengthening your stand. Debate makes poor arguments fail, and makes good arguments better. Silencing the opposition is never a good way to go.
I think that the NAACP/KKK thing doesn't quite work, because the KKK's speech wouldn't actually be reasoned debate; it would be mindless vitriol, and could easily end up in violence. As a more reasonable example, the NAACP is currently opposing some of the president's judicial nominations; this would be like inviting a speaker who supports the nominations. I would consider that to be a good idea. (I should mention that I don't know anything about this particular issue; it just happened to be the first thing I noticed on the NAACP web site.) Of course, analogies of any sort generally suck, so we could go back and forth on this all day:)
A monopoly is about control of a market. Microsoft has that.
Try taking a look at the definition of the word "monopoly." The key thread running through all the relevant definitions is "exclusive control." Microsoft does not have that by any stretch of the imagination, unless you purposefully are ignoring evidence to the contrary. That is why free software competition is relevant, and why their status as a monopoly isn't clear-cut.
What better place to have a discussion about the relative merits of Open and Shared Source than at an open source conference? There's probably no better way to get lots of people who care about it together at once.
You can't prove or convince anyone without reasonable and open debate, and you can't have an honest debate without fairly representing both sides of an issue.
My point was that if an analogy doesn't at least hold up under some scrutiny, then it's a poor analogy. A debate where one of the parties refuses to look at the evidence isn't much of a debate. (And given the free availability of high-quality operating systems is directly relevant to whether or not M$ is a monopoly, it can hardly be characterized as "changing the subject.")
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it does give us a chance to talk about it, unlike most news sites.
/. can filter.
Though it would make sense to have a seperate "War in Iraq" topic so those people who don't care to see these stories on
Hey, I like having karma 50. That way, when I get modded up, I know it's actually doing something. :)
I believe that the newest 10% of users is ineligible to moderate. (It's in the FAQ.) I suspect that I've probably been made ineligible for various "abuses" (I'm not very editor-friendly), since it's been a year or so since I moderated. (I can still metamod, though.)
My rule of thumb is always mod up.
... usually because I find those posts that don't parrot the party line to be 'interesting'.) I haven't had mod points in a long time, though.
/. really does have quite a bit good about it. (Every time I think that I've had enough of it, I try reading k5 for a bit ... and I'm always back here in a hurry.) However, the only way to find the really interesting stuff on slashdot is to pick through all the goatse trolls. There's got to be a better way to handle it.
That's been my philosophy as well. (I usually get metamodded to hell
I really wish that they would get around to fixing the mod system. Despite some of the stupidity that goes on here,
People have been complaining about the stupidity of over/underrated for years now. No matter how good your suggestion is, I don't think Taco's going to go for it at this point.
Another easy change that should be made: Flamebait really ought to be removed. Anything that can fairly be modded flamebait could be modded troll anyway, and most moderators seem to think that any unpopular opinion is automatically flamebait.
I can do the the math in my head. The precise result is "not very much."
I was salaried at $21,000 a year + health insurance. I had 1.5 days of time off per month. I was expected to come in on weekends during crunch time (which lasted 6 weeks), so I ended up working 80-90 hour weeks for no additional pay.
You could have done better at McDonald's. Why did you stick around for an entire year?
I wouldn't be terribly averse to being a game tester, but not at those prices.
You forgot step 3:
Bitch that you had to pay 99 cents for the song.
does anyone have any experience doing this? what kind of files would one expect? warez? the complete archives of Pete Townshend?
Well, a few years ago when I was living in the dorms at college (the net access was the only good thing about it), somebody found my roommate's ftp server and uploaded a bunch of mp3's -- mostly top 40 stuff.
At the time, I was playing a game of Nethack on his computer. It died suddenly with an error when it ran out of disk space. Needless to say, I was annoyed. I disabled write access on the ftp server, and replaced all the mp3's with a text file explaining what I thought of him.
It's too bad I didn't think to keep track of his IP address so I could get revenge.
Huh. That'll teach me to read the /. karma whore's version rather than the real thing. To anyone who read the article above, the poster didn't include the word "Some" that starts the first sentence. (Or read the original; it's not actually slashdotted.)
This article starts out by claiming that Free Software and GPL supporters are both "anti-war." (A very nebulous term in itself; anti-war can mean a lot of different things.) Last I checked, your opinions on software licensing didn't dictate or even hold particular relevance to your opinions on war. I'm sure that you can find people who consider themselves to be FS or OS supporters who have all sorts of differing opinions on war.
When somebody tries to start their argument by stating something like that as fact, it really reduces their credibility.
Reporters in China who cite facts that disagree with the Communist Party line are arrested. Why some people think that reporters should be able to disregard the law is beyond me.
...same comment 3x...
Why should being a reporter exempt you from the law? Your arguments are meaningless, because they're not related to the problems being talked about. These people claim that reporters should be allowed to ignore government security regulations. Nonsense. Either the law is unfair, and those security regulations should be removed for everyone, or the law is fair and reporters should be forced to respect it as well. Saying that reporters should be given special priveleges is sheer stupidity.
you know, usa didn't rank that well on the free press ranking of reporters without borders.
Yes, mostly because the Reporters without Borders people think that the press should be above the law. To quote the report:
The poor ranking of the United States (17th) is mainly because of the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned there. Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court. Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings.
Why some people think that reporters should be able to disregard the law is beyond me.
Let this be a lesson to you: there is no such thing as intelligent conversation on slashdot.
Hey, Fishstick, ever consider a job a /. editor? You'd fit right in. ;)
But that would involve changing what the submitters wrote! Do you really think that it should be within the power of the editors to modify somebody's words like that?
</sarcasm>
It's flamebait to point out that the line in the summary (which was obviously a joke, but nearly everyone here, in their haste to whore for some karma, didn't engage their brains first) is false? Mod the parent up; maybe it will prevent someone from humiliating themselves by making another stupid "discrimination by meal choice" comment.
...and those who are moderating them up, nothing was said in the article about meal choice, and at least it seemed to me that the implication was that the credit card numbers just happen to be part of the record; they're not specifically being asked for. (Of course, I do wonder why they need the full record, and can't just extract the necessary information and leave the CC #'s and such out of it.)
Is your argument that Microsoft does not have a monopoly?
Yes. Try reading those findings of fact. They completely discount Linux and other alternative operating systems. If you don't have exclusive control -- which Microsoft does not; just try looking at all the governments, schools and businesses which are moving away from MS -- then you don't have a monopoly. No matter what a stupid legal system without technical knowledge says.
Just because Free Software is about choice doesn't mean you have to give your enemy "equal opportunity" to destroy you.
:)
If your stand is so weak that a presentation about an opposing stand would destroy you, then you need to work on strengthening your stand. Debate makes poor arguments fail, and makes good arguments better. Silencing the opposition is never a good way to go.
I think that the NAACP/KKK thing doesn't quite work, because the KKK's speech wouldn't actually be reasoned debate; it would be mindless vitriol, and could easily end up in violence. As a more reasonable example, the NAACP is currently opposing some of the president's judicial nominations; this would be like inviting a speaker who supports the nominations. I would consider that to be a good idea. (I should mention that I don't know anything about this particular issue; it just happened to be the first thing I noticed on the NAACP web site.) Of course, analogies of any sort generally suck, so we could go back and forth on this all day
...-funroll-rms...
... are you saying that, in order to optimize Linux advocacy, we need more RMS?
Wait a second
A monopoly is about control of a market. Microsoft has that.
Try taking a look at the definition of the word "monopoly." The key thread running through all the relevant definitions is "exclusive control." Microsoft does not have that by any stretch of the imagination, unless you purposefully are ignoring evidence to the contrary. That is why free software competition is relevant, and why their status as a monopoly isn't clear-cut.
Yes, we do. So, if that was the "killer app," can I get my grandmother to switch now?
What better place to have a discussion about the relative merits of Open and Shared Source than at an open source conference? There's probably no better way to get lots of people who care about it together at once.
You can't prove or convince anyone without reasonable and open debate, and you can't have an honest debate without fairly representing both sides of an issue.
My point was that if an analogy doesn't at least hold up under some scrutiny, then it's a poor analogy. A debate where one of the parties refuses to look at the evidence isn't much of a debate. (And given the free availability of high-quality operating systems is directly relevant to whether or not M$ is a monopoly, it can hardly be characterized as "changing the subject.")