The catch is you can't make other people do what you want with THEIR music. If TMBG want to give away songs, more power to them. But if Metallica doesn't, you shouldn't steal them. -snip- It's one choice of many, just like releasing MP3's is a choice you can make.
Yes, but they have to face the ramifications of that choice. By choosing NOT to provide digital music, by choosing to uphold the status quo, they, in reality, are choosing to have their music pirated.
I don't say that it's right. I don't say that it's ethical, or moral, or anything like that. But that is the reality of the situation _they_ created.
I'm a programmer. I deal with abstracts like numbers, lines of code, simple commands and routines. I think that a lot of programmers see the world the same way. I know I do. A leads to B leads to C.
In this case, the lack of a digital method of content delivery + the graft they've been charging = people pirating the stuff. This is real. This is fact. You cannot change reality through legislation.
You cannot make the penalty harsh enough to keep people from doing something when it is virtually impossible to catch them doing that thing.
You must change the will of the people to pirate songs. You must create some means by which they can still get the songs, and yet you get reimbursed. The technology is there. The means are there. The reason is there. If the record companies could pull their collective heads out of their collective asses and look around, they'd see that the old way must give a bit of room to the new way, and that's all there is to it.
I had the great opportunity to wire up my fraternities houses when I was at college, and I gained quite a few insights from the process that will definitely help me when I build my first home.
1. Wire every room. With big rooms, wire two places in the room. 2. Use standard cabling. Cat5 for preference. Two or three 4-pair sets to each outlet should be plenty. 3. Connections: I suggest using standard RJ45 connectors, because its easy and everything can be adapted to it. One thing we eventually did was to wire a cable to break a few pairs out to RCA audio plugs to send analog stereo signals through the house wiring. Why? Well, we wanted to hook the downstairs stereo to the upstairs computer. This ties in nicely to: 4. Plugboards in the wiring closet. These are beautiful. Hook the phone lines to any room, easily. 5. Don't count on the phone company being nice. One thing we did was inform the telco that we needed more line capability (24 line max). They installed a new large box outside that we wired onto our plugboard in the obvious manner. Result? Well, when they actually installed the new phone lines, they rewired their box for no obvious reason, such that we had to rip out and rewire that plugboard. Bastards. 7. Hubs, switches, etc.. Get them when you need them, but be sure to leave space in your wiring closet. Also, be damn sure you have a power outlet in there on it's own grounded line. We didn't have one, and installing one after we'd put all this cat5 terminating in there was a real pain. And runnning a ground line is a real pain if your house isn't grounded properly already (most older buildings never are).
Now, if you have a normal TV (as most people do), you get a letterboxed picture. Sure, the picture is really sharp, but it's letterboxed! They say DVDs are designed for "TVs of the future." Well, until we get to the future (when HDTV is ubiquitous), DVD sales will be slow because not everyone likes those damn black bars.
If you're a widescreen advocate, reply to this and I'll be happy to discuss it with you. But first I'd like to say that my beef is with letterboxing, not widescreen.
Quite a lot of DVD's are anamorphic, meaning they'll take advantage of the whole screen, when using a widescreen TV. No black bars, greater resolution.
I personally prefer letterboxing as opposed to pan and scan, but then I don't have the $$$ to spit up for a widescreen TV. If they were somewhat cheaper I'd get one.
Now, you say you don't like letterboxing. Why? The fact that you see more of the picture, and most likely see it the way the director intended?
The only thing better than the letterbox is unmasked, and then only if the director conciously framed it to be unmasked (Kubrick did this with a lot of his movies).
Did it ever occur to you that what you were doing was unethical and wrong?
Yes, of course, but the real question should be "Did it stop me from doing it?" No, naturally not.
I could try to use some heavy moral bits here, and try to justify my actions, but I won't because I have no need to do so. I won't try to explain how the notes I used were the difference between an "A" and a "B" only, nor will I try to defend that the teacher was a gimp who couldn't teach his way out of a paper bag. I cheated because I wanted to. Big deal. So did everyone else in the class. Does that make it right? No, of course not, but do I care? Obviously not.
People who complain from the ethical high ground don't realize that the majority of humanity are greedy opportunists.
As am I, with the exception being I enjoy it. I proudly proclaim it before the world. My sense of right and wrong, while small, is _mine_ and I wouldn't have it any other way.
We used to do that with HP48GXs back in school. Type the stuff into a text file, upload it to the calc, refer to your notes during the test. Several good programs out there to reduce font size and make it real easy to get loads of info on the the screen.
Ob-TimeToStartAHolyWar: I love how all the TI8x owners are excited about doing things that HP48 owners have been doing for 5-10 years.:)
No flames, please, I no longer own either calculator.
Oh, I agree entirely. The point is that, as long as market B is satisfied by pirating the expensive music/software, there will never be a market for inexpensive music/software.
I disagree. In fact, you could say that if music simply wasn't so expensive, people wouldn't take the time to pirate it, because it has little to no value.
If I could pay $5 for a CD, or spend half an hour downloading it, I'd probably pay the $5 AND download it (or rip it). Now, change that $5 to $15, and I'll pass the CD and just download the sucker. It's very simple.
>If the recording industry came up with the theoretical "perfect" copy protection
The point is that there is no "perfect" copy protection, even in theory. The only way to completely avoid people copying something to to not let them have it in the first place. Therefore, it is impossible to eliminate that market B you speak of via copy protection.
Any and all attempts to create that perfect protection simply result in taking away the rights of market A and making it harder to listen to the music they are trying to sell.
BTW, I consider myself part of your "market B" because I don't give a shit about the record industry.:) ---
I heard about this from a friend of mine in Dallas. He was saying his company was testing it out, and that it worked really well, rain or shine. One thing he did say that I don't quite believe is that the power was high enough to send birds that happen to fly through the beam to a screaming fiery death, but I seriously doubt that is total truth. Maybe it just singes 'em.
He also said it was faster than 622 mbps.. somewhere along the lines of a gigabps. They have some pretty serious routers and such where he works, so they could have that kind of bandwidth outside the laser pipe, or he could be pulling my leg.
It gets the info about what suggestions to record by the thumbs up and the thumbs down you tell it. This is one of the advantages of the Tivo, in that this can help you find shows you never knew you might like. The more info you give it, the better it is at finding shows you'll enjoy. If it ever records a suggestion you don't like, give that show a thumbs down. Then the Tivo knows you don't like it.
Also, it will never record a suggestion over something you've told it to record. The suggestions have the lowest possible priority and do not affect any recordings you've scheduled at all. Suggestions will be deleted automatically if room is needed for a scheduled recording. Basically, it tries to keep the drive full all the time.
Still, if you don't like the system recording stuff you don't tell it to, turn the feature off. In the Setup, there's an option to disable automatic suggestion recording. Really though, the suggestions are one of the best parts of the Tivo.
In my books, there's really not much difference between shooting deer with a rifle or dropping 1000lbs. of cluster-bombs on the same site. The deer has just about as much awareness, or ability to take evasive action.
You've obviously never hunted before in your life. Dropping a bomb involves pressing a button. Killing a deer, even if you're not a bow and arrow hunter like my dad used to do, is NOT an easy task. It's hard to impress that onto someone who does not hunt, so go get yourself a gun, and try it sometime.
Nor, in my books, is there any difference between deer hunting, whale hunting, hare coursing, fox hunting, badger baiting or any other similar pursuits. There's no "challange", no uncertainty in the results, no respect for the life you're about to erase, no compassion for the animal or anything dependent on it.
You're right. I have no compassion for the deer I kill, because I kill it in order to eat it. Venison tastes really good, it's better for you than beef, and it IS a challenge to kill a deer.
As for American Football, it's just Rugby with armour and some glamour girls on the sidelines. Like modern hunting, all the reality is removed and you're left with an empty shell. Desensitised and meaningless.
Huh. I say the same thing about rugby. And most sports in point of fact.
Personally, if I were running something like Pinkerton's program, I'd have those two activities as the two strongest indicators of a sociopath.
So a sociopath, to you, is a guy who plays sports and hunts? Wow, that's at least 60% of the population. You must not go outside for fear of all the sociopaths walking the streets.:P
The way interstate sales tax is interpreted is that if the consumer is with in the borders of a state when he orders goods or services then he must pay the sales tax of the state that he is within.
Nope.
IANAL, and I can't quote the law to you, but here's how mail-order (and the e-sales) works, I think:
1. In state transactions are taxed as per normal. 2. Between state transactions are taxed in the buyers state, if the seller has a physical presence in that state. (Thus, if I mail order from Barnes & Noble, I pay tax since there's a Barnes and Noble just down the street). The seller collects the tax. 3. If the seller has no physical presence in the buyers state, no tax is collected by anyone.
There are exceptions to this. Some states have no sales tax on certain items, and people from neighboring states will go there to buy those items. In that case, the state where the buyer lives sometimes imposes taxes on the buyer.. I have not encountered this, but I have heard of it happening in Washington State, I think.
In any case, e-tailing should be treated as fundamentally identical to mail-order. F*ck WalMart.
Geez.. I'm really starting to tire of arguing this one...
Use of a language determines the language itself. The language does not determine use. If I want to say virii, then I've just invented a new word. For an example of this, see "robotics". Or "robot" for that matter.
A language is not a static entity, immune from change and redefinition. Language is an evolving, growing thing, that changes depending on what is said. If I want to say a "grabelcrochit" is that little thingie at the end of your shoelaces, then I've just invented a new, valid word for that little thingy at the end of your shoelaces. If I then say that the plural of that is "grabelcrochii", you'd probably argue that too, saying that Latin didn't use plurals for "-it" as "-ii".
In other words, go stuff yourself, moron.:)
---
Re:IP Masq a Dreamcast via a Linux Box?
on
Sega Dreamcast: $0
·
· Score: 1
How do you get 2 modems to connect to each other without using the phone system?
Well, you need the right kind of cable, with switched pairs... You'd also have to either: A) set both modems to ignore the lack of a dial tone, or B) trick out something electrical to put a dial tone on there when you needed it. Then you just have the dialing modem do an ATDT and the answering one do an ATA.. Voila, sloooow connection.
Probably simpler to open the sucker up and wire a serial port out the back for a null modem cable.
Errr.. if A+B=C, then A+B-C=0... So your next to last statement says 2(0)=1(0) which is true. However, to get from there to 2=1, you must divide by zero, which is a no-no.
If it is plain text, then, according to the accepted definitions of "plain" and "text" (and "old"), one would think that there would be no bold or "other formatting stuff" included, wouldn't you think?
Well, in that case then, what is the difference between "Extrans" and "Plain Old Text"? They'd both do the same exact thing.
Well, damnit, this is the behavior we want, somewhere...
Look, it's extremely easy to type a message this way, and still include bold or other formatting stuff, without having to think about all the crap HTML requires.
Also, if this is wrong for plain old text, what is the difference between plain old text and extrans?
I just now noticed. What was extrans is now plain old text, and what was plain old text is now extrans. They switched them. Wish they'd notified everyone of the changed behavior. Oh well..
Every time recently I tried to moderate, I've been screwed, in that my Karma drops a day or two later.. This time-lag effect points to meta-mod being abused.
What's occuring: Notice that the meta moderation page consists mainly of well moderated stuff. I usually put "good" on 9 out of the 10 that appear. So, if someone has a bunch of accounts, they can just mark everything as bad from all those accounts. This could be automated quite easily via scripts or some such. This is probably what's happening. Metamoderating does NOT affect the metamoderators Karma, so you can create an account, metamoderate it, and never, ever go negative karma.
Fixes: I don't think AC's can meta-moderate, but if they can, they shouldn't be able to. Karma limits should be around +10 to meta moderate or moderate. Possibly higher. They should at LEAST be +5.
This eliminates those jerks with a bunch of throwaway accounts that never post anything, and therefore can't get Karma.
A good look at server logs would easily tell if someone is going psycho on the meta-moderation. Probably you could just check by IP.
Slashdot Mirror
Good thing that Webster is a dictionary, which is a catalog of English words.
They don't make the language, they make a book of the language. If English was defined by a dictionary, new words could never come into existance.
I WILL CONTINUE TO USE THE WORD VIRII! FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO INVENT NEW TERMS FOR NEW IDEAS!
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there really isn't that much difference between refusing to serve food to a black man and refusing to serve food to a christian fundamentalist
:)
Wrong, because while the black man may complain, the fundamentalist will do his level best to send you to hell.
---
The catch is you can't make other people do what you want with THEIR music. If TMBG want to give away songs, more power to them. But if Metallica doesn't, you shouldn't steal them. -snip- It's one choice of many, just like releasing MP3's is a choice you can make.
Yes, but they have to face the ramifications of that choice. By choosing NOT to provide digital music, by choosing to uphold the status quo, they, in reality, are choosing to have their music pirated.
I don't say that it's right. I don't say that it's ethical, or moral, or anything like that. But that is the reality of the situation _they_ created.
I'm a programmer. I deal with abstracts like numbers, lines of code, simple commands and routines. I think that a lot of programmers see the world the same way. I know I do. A leads to B leads to C.
In this case, the lack of a digital method of content delivery + the graft they've been charging = people pirating the stuff. This is real. This is fact. You cannot change reality through legislation.
You cannot make the penalty harsh enough to keep people from doing something when it is virtually impossible to catch them doing that thing.
You must change the will of the people to pirate songs. You must create some means by which they can still get the songs, and yet you get reimbursed. The technology is there. The means are there. The reason is there. If the record companies could pull their collective heads out of their collective asses and look around, they'd see that the old way must give a bit of room to the new way, and that's all there is to it.
---
Quick Google search yields:
http://www.andrew.cmu. edu/user/dcprieve/Evanescent%20waves.htm
to describe what they are.. Doesn't say much about the second part of your question though.
---
I had the great opportunity to wire up my fraternities houses when I was at college, and I gained quite a few insights from the process that will definitely help me when I build my first home.
1. Wire every room. With big rooms, wire two places in the room.
2. Use standard cabling. Cat5 for preference. Two or three 4-pair sets to each outlet should be plenty.
3. Connections: I suggest using standard RJ45 connectors, because its easy and everything can be adapted to it. One thing we eventually did was to wire a cable to break a few pairs out to RCA audio plugs to send analog stereo signals through the house wiring. Why? Well, we wanted to hook the downstairs stereo to the upstairs computer. This ties in nicely to:
4. Plugboards in the wiring closet. These are beautiful. Hook the phone lines to any room, easily.
5. Don't count on the phone company being nice. One thing we did was inform the telco that we needed more line capability (24 line max). They installed a new large box outside that we wired onto our plugboard in the obvious manner. Result? Well, when they actually installed the new phone lines, they rewired their box for no obvious reason, such that we had to rip out and rewire that plugboard. Bastards.
7. Hubs, switches, etc.. Get them when you need them, but be sure to leave space in your wiring closet. Also, be damn sure you have a power outlet in there on it's own grounded line. We didn't have one, and installing one after we'd put all this cat5 terminating in there was a real pain. And runnning a ground line is a real pain if your house isn't grounded properly already (most older buildings never are).
Just my thoughts.
---
Now, if you have a normal TV (as most people do), you get a letterboxed picture. Sure, the picture is really sharp, but it's letterboxed! They say DVDs are designed for "TVs of the future." Well, until we get to the future (when HDTV is ubiquitous), DVD sales will be slow because not everyone likes those damn black bars.
If you're a widescreen advocate, reply to this and I'll be happy to discuss it with you. But first I'd like to say that my beef is with letterboxing, not widescreen.
Quite a lot of DVD's are anamorphic, meaning they'll take advantage of the whole screen, when using a widescreen TV. No black bars, greater resolution.
I personally prefer letterboxing as opposed to pan and scan, but then I don't have the $$$ to spit up for a widescreen TV. If they were somewhat cheaper I'd get one.
Now, you say you don't like letterboxing. Why? The fact that you see more of the picture, and most likely see it the way the director intended?
The only thing better than the letterbox is unmasked, and then only if the director conciously framed it to be unmasked (Kubrick did this with a lot of his movies).
---
Did it ever occur to you that what you were doing was unethical and wrong?
Yes, of course, but the real question should be "Did it stop me from doing it?" No, naturally not.
I could try to use some heavy moral bits here, and try to justify my actions, but I won't because I have no need to do so. I won't try to explain how the notes I used were the difference between an "A" and a "B" only, nor will I try to defend that the teacher was a gimp who couldn't teach his way out of a paper bag. I cheated because I wanted to. Big deal. So did everyone else in the class. Does that make it right? No, of course not, but do I care? Obviously not.
People who complain from the ethical high ground don't realize that the majority of humanity are greedy opportunists.
As am I, with the exception being I enjoy it. I proudly proclaim it before the world. My sense of right and wrong, while small, is _mine_ and I wouldn't have it any other way.
---
And I don't think we found that monolith either! ;-)
As far as we know... (Insert deep conspiracy-type music here)
:)
---
We used to do that with HP48GXs back in school. Type the stuff into a text file, upload it to the calc, refer to your notes during the test. Several good programs out there to reduce font size and make it real easy to get loads of info on the the screen.
:)
Ob-TimeToStartAHolyWar: I love how all the TI8x owners are excited about doing things that HP48 owners have been doing for 5-10 years.
No flames, please, I no longer own either calculator.
---
Oh, I agree entirely. The point is that, as long as market B is satisfied by pirating the expensive music/software, there will never be a market for inexpensive music/software.
I disagree. In fact, you could say that if music simply wasn't so expensive, people wouldn't take the time to pirate it, because it has little to no value.
If I could pay $5 for a CD, or spend half an hour downloading it, I'd probably pay the $5 AND download it (or rip it). Now, change that $5 to $15, and I'll pass the CD and just download the sucker. It's very simple.
---
>If the recording industry came up with the theoretical "perfect" copy protection
:)
The point is that there is no "perfect" copy protection, even in theory. The only way to completely avoid people copying something to to not let them have it in the first place. Therefore, it is impossible to eliminate that market B you speak of via copy protection.
Any and all attempts to create that perfect protection simply result in taking away the rights of market A and making it harder to listen to the music they are trying to sell.
BTW, I consider myself part of your "market B" because I don't give a shit about the record industry.
---
Webservers: $22525
NFS servers: $21120
Database server: $25739
Being THE place for Natalie Portman and Hot Grits on the Web: priceless
There's some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Slashdot.
---
Input from mike - (output from audio out * volume multiplier) = Everything but the speakers = your voice commands.
It'd take some fine tuning, and some tricky coding, but it's not impossible.
---
I heard about this from a friend of mine in Dallas. He was saying his company was testing it out, and that it worked really well, rain or shine. One thing he did say that I don't quite believe is that the power was high enough to send birds that happen to fly through the beam to a screaming fiery death, but I seriously doubt that is total truth. Maybe it just singes 'em.
He also said it was faster than 622 mbps.. somewhere along the lines of a gigabps. They have some pretty serious routers and such where he works, so they could have that kind of bandwidth outside the laser pipe, or he could be pulling my leg.
---
It gets the info about what suggestions to record by the thumbs up and the thumbs down you tell it. This is one of the advantages of the Tivo, in that this can help you find shows you never knew you might like. The more info you give it, the better it is at finding shows you'll enjoy. If it ever records a suggestion you don't like, give that show a thumbs down. Then the Tivo knows you don't like it.
Also, it will never record a suggestion over something you've told it to record. The suggestions have the lowest possible priority and do not affect any recordings you've scheduled at all. Suggestions will be deleted automatically if room is needed for a scheduled recording. Basically, it tries to keep the drive full all the time.
Still, if you don't like the system recording stuff you don't tell it to, turn the feature off. In the Setup, there's an option to disable automatic suggestion recording. Really though, the suggestions are one of the best parts of the Tivo.
---
In my books, there's really not much difference between shooting deer with a rifle or dropping 1000lbs. of cluster-bombs on the same site. The deer has just about as much awareness, or ability to take evasive action.
:P
You've obviously never hunted before in your life. Dropping a bomb involves pressing a button. Killing a deer, even if you're not a bow and arrow hunter like my dad used to do, is NOT an easy task. It's hard to impress that onto someone who does not hunt, so go get yourself a gun, and try it sometime.
Nor, in my books, is there any difference between deer hunting, whale hunting, hare coursing, fox hunting, badger baiting or any other similar pursuits. There's no "challange", no uncertainty in the results, no respect for the life you're about to erase, no compassion for the animal or anything dependent on it.
You're right. I have no compassion for the deer I kill, because I kill it in order to eat it. Venison tastes really good, it's better for you than beef, and it IS a challenge to kill a deer.
As for American Football, it's just Rugby with armour and some glamour girls on the sidelines. Like modern hunting, all the reality is removed and you're left with an empty shell. Desensitised and meaningless.
Huh. I say the same thing about rugby. And most sports in point of fact.
Personally, if I were running something like Pinkerton's program, I'd have those two activities as the two strongest indicators of a sociopath.
So a sociopath, to you, is a guy who plays sports and hunts? Wow, that's at least 60% of the population. You must not go outside for fear of all the sociopaths walking the streets.
---
The way interstate sales tax is interpreted is that if the consumer is with in the borders of a state when he orders goods or services then he must pay the sales tax of the state that he is within.
Nope.
IANAL, and I can't quote the law to you, but here's how mail-order (and the e-sales) works, I think:
1. In state transactions are taxed as per normal.
2. Between state transactions are taxed in the buyers state, if the seller has a physical presence in that state. (Thus, if I mail order from Barnes & Noble, I pay tax since there's a Barnes and Noble just down the street). The seller collects the tax.
3. If the seller has no physical presence in the buyers state, no tax is collected by anyone.
There are exceptions to this. Some states have no sales tax on certain items, and people from neighboring states will go there to buy those items. In that case, the state where the buyer lives sometimes imposes taxes on the buyer.. I have not encountered this, but I have heard of it happening in Washington State, I think.
In any case, e-tailing should be treated as fundamentally identical to mail-order. F*ck WalMart.
---
Geez.. I'm really starting to tire of arguing this one...
:)
Use of a language determines the language itself. The language does not determine use. If I want to say virii, then I've just invented a new word. For an example of this, see "robotics". Or "robot" for that matter.
A language is not a static entity, immune from change and redefinition. Language is an evolving, growing thing, that changes depending on what is said. If I want to say a "grabelcrochit" is that little thingie at the end of your shoelaces, then I've just invented a new, valid word for that little thingy at the end of your shoelaces. If I then say that the plural of that is "grabelcrochii", you'd probably argue that too, saying that Latin didn't use plurals for "-it" as "-ii".
In other words, go stuff yourself, moron.
---
How do you get 2 modems to connect to each other without using the phone system?
Well, you need the right kind of cable, with switched pairs... You'd also have to either: A) set both modems to ignore the lack of a dial tone, or B) trick out something electrical to put a dial tone on there when you needed it. Then you just have the dialing modem do an ATDT and the answering one do an ATA.. Voila, sloooow connection.
Probably simpler to open the sucker up and wire a serial port out the back for a null modem cable.
---
Errr.. if A+B=C, then A+B-C=0... So your next to last statement says 2(0)=1(0) which is true. However, to get from there to 2=1, you must divide by zero, which is a no-no.
---
If it is plain text, then, according to the accepted definitions of "plain" and "text" (and "old"), one would think that there would be no bold or "other formatting stuff" included, wouldn't you think?
Well, in that case then, what is the difference between "Extrans" and "Plain Old Text"? They'd both do the same exact thing.
---
Don't blame John for that.. Check this out for entertainment:
http://www.google.com/search?q=nick+hornsby
Note that ALL of the top 10 shown are about the movie or the book, and many, many other people got it wrong too.
---
Well, damnit, this is the behavior we want, somewhere...
Look, it's extremely easy to type a message this way, and still include bold or other formatting stuff, without having to think about all the crap HTML requires.
Also, if this is wrong for plain old text, what is the difference between plain old text and extrans?
---
Ahh.
I just now noticed. What was extrans is now plain old text, and what was plain old text is now extrans. They switched them. Wish they'd notified everyone of the changed behavior. Oh well..
bold
italic
Anyway, I used plain old text for this message..
---
Well, here's what I think is going on:
Every time recently I tried to moderate, I've been screwed, in that my Karma drops a day or two later.. This time-lag effect points to meta-mod being abused.
What's occuring: Notice that the meta moderation page consists mainly of well moderated stuff. I usually put "good" on 9 out of the 10 that appear. So, if someone has a bunch of accounts, they can just mark everything as bad from all those accounts. This could be automated quite easily via scripts or some such. This is probably what's happening. Metamoderating does NOT affect the metamoderators Karma, so you can create an account, metamoderate it, and never, ever go negative karma.
Fixes:
I don't think AC's can meta-moderate, but if they can, they shouldn't be able to.
Karma limits should be around +10 to meta moderate or moderate. Possibly higher. They should at LEAST be +5.
This eliminates those jerks with a bunch of throwaway accounts that never post anything, and therefore can't get Karma.
A good look at server logs would easily tell if someone is going psycho on the meta-moderation. Probably you could just check by IP.
---