I haven't been to a LAN party in about 10 years. It's really easy to get the same experience nowadays with broadband and a microphone.
Then no offense, but your friends suck. There's still no way sitting at home alone in your basement playing with friends online and yelling at them over teamspeak compares to packing 12-15 friends into same basement and duking it out all night long. Sure, you can trash talk over the mic, but there's still going to be times you just need to grab something soft and wail it at your friend when he curbstomps you... Or the joys of building a massive tower of dew from everyones empties.. or waiting to see who crashes first and then raiding his hard drive for that uber pr0n collection he's been hiding....
Don't get me wrong, broadband has changed the world, but there are some things that just aren't the same even with broadband. Hell, my wife's computer is upstairs in her own little room, and I always feel bad that's she's getting left out of the fun when the party's at our place (I keep trying to convince her to move her gear downstairs for the even, but no love).. it's a world of difference being in the same room together versus even being on separate floors, let alone zip codes. (yes, a wife that enjoys lan parties... granted she's more apt to enjoy the simple classics, ala Q3 and Unreal then "complicated" ones in her opinion, like TF2.. but it's a start).
Overall, I think this is a mistake on Blizzard's part. There *are* those of us who still do actual physical lan parties, and in some instances, network dependency in a game can be a BITCH... case in point, new fangled games that have *one* way to patch, direct from the internet. You have 15 people sharing a broadband connection, you know how long it takes for each of them to download a separate 1-2 gig patch? And if it's an EA game, good lord, forget it, I think they're using C64s as their patch servers.... Before all this "lets assume everyone is connected to the internet all the time" mentality, one person could grab the latest patches (from home, before the lan party), bring them to the party, share out the EXEs, and everyone could patch direct from that... now, especially with Steam games, it's always a crapshoot to see who all is upgraded to the latest and how many people will need to download (at the same time) slowing everyone to a crawl. Even trying to plan ahead you can still get burned (last lan party I think it was, there was a TF2 update that came out the night before before the lanparty.. some people had patched the previous weekend, but nooooo, we still had to sit through the mess)
Let the federal government appoint one company to manage it all for a small cut of the fees
Yes, yet another government appointed monopoly, just what we need.
As for the slippery slopes you object to, really, this is the tax man and our lovely appointed representatives we're talking about, they know what's best for your money, and they definitely need it (see also California), this is one slope they'll not only slip down, they'll be bobsledding to see who can get down the hill fastest, because at the bottom is going be all that free money they need to X (bail out failing auto companies / make state payroll / pay for their trips to argentina / line their pockets)
In either case you're purchasing an item in, e.g., RI and accepting delivery there. The actual charges are applied from a credit card company in Deleware to an account, which you will then pay later with a check drawn on some other corporation. Why should the Internet be magical?
You really want the states deciding they can tax based on a FREAKING LINK?!? Remember that story that broke a few days ago about some old newspaper people complaining about people linking to their sites? Guess what, every CFO in the country now has a valid and compelling reason to sue *anyone* who happens to link to *anything* on their site.. because you know, a link, that's enough to trigger the Nexus problem with the state those random people happen to live in. Your link to my site could cost me money when I suddenly get audited by your states tax man, because you posted a link to my site, thanks guy.
Yes yes, I know, "But affiliates make a small commission, blah blah".. they're contractors, outside vendors, nothing more. Last time I checked, the state of Georgia has a 4% sales tax, and "over 400 taxing jurisdictions" (their tax mans words, not mine).... the average "jurisdictional tax" is another 3-4%, but it varies. Based on this wonderful theory, almost every entity in the US needs to track/file/pay for any sales occuring in those 400 jurisdictions.... Why? UPS's headquarters is in Georgia.. find me a company that doesn't use UPS for anything at all... even if you don't use UPS to actually ship your product (because remember, this is the states trying to claim that Amazon has a nexus in their state, and taxing *all* sales in that state, not just the affiliate generated sales)... you use them, you pay them for a service, so hey, thats a nexus! Awesome for the state of Georgia, not so hot for everyone else.
We can then get patent lawyers and lawyers in the room at the same time. Too bad we can't smuggle a small yield tactical nuclear device onto the premises. Or can we?
According to some accounts, they did this two weeks ago, and Boston just now got around to noticing enough to throw a hissy-fit.
That's the part that I just adore. Lets say it was a bomb... does Mr. Terrorist always make a habit of leaving his bombs out in plain sight (lets face it, these things were designed TO BE NOTICED, so I would assume they were in high-traffic, noticeable areas, the exact opposite criteria that one would expect most bombers to use), let alone leave them around for a couple of weeks before detonation?
The government peoples are all going "This proves the system works! See, we did good!"... I say "No, it proves that in an actual terrorist bombing situation, we'd all be dead for a couple of weeks before 'the system' caught up."
The name is tainted, and a business executive will not likely touch anything related to that person, no matter whether it gets taken over and run by other people or not.
If your business executives know anything more specific about your systems/servers then "it runs Linux" and "it works", then you have major issues that are well outside the scope of this article.
The CEOs, CFOs, even CIOs, CTOs, and VPs of MIS/IS/IT (Whatever the flavor of the week is for "Data Processing Department") that I've had the pleasure to meet generally couldn't tell the difference between a FAT partition and a NTFS partition, let alone throwing Ext2, Ext3 and ReiserFS into the mix.:)
Long ramble short? Within a week or two no executive is going to remember who this Reiser guy is, let alone that his filesystem may be powering their systems... and that's ASSUMING someone points them to this news article and they make the connection in the first place.:)
A definate thanks goes out to the entire Slashdot crew for the quick update one year ago today... I happened to be doing my normal morning slashdot run when I found out about the mess.
And an even LARGER thank you to the users here at slashdot who happened to be in the comments thread that fateful day. Especially the guy who offered up the quicktime CNN Audio feed for the day. (And who's bandwidth bill for that month I would not want!);) Without you I would have been in the dark all morning, since all the mainstream news sites were useless.
You know, I know I'm getting a very negative outlook on life and the people in it, because, as you noted above, the website says that "The device is made of a sturdy yet soft rubberized material, which is cut resistant. Should anyone try to cut or tamper with the band when the device is locked, an alarm will be activated at our Location Service Center and the subscriber will be notified." and my very first thought after this was; of course if the pervert chops little Johnnys hand off and tosses the whole thing out the car window, in which case the point is moot.
Depressing how this world has taught me to think.;) But atleast someone else out there was thinking it too, so I don't have to feel tooo bad.
"In the past six months, kids have been taken from their bedrooms, school yards, as well as their front yard."
Just for the record, kids have always been snatched up by sick and twisted individuals. It's just that within the last six months it's suddenly become "en vogue" to broadcast it on the six oclock news once again since there's apparently nothing better going on in the world. Kids have been kidnapped for decades, and they always will be, sometimes from the most caring and protective of households, I'm not debating that, I'm saying that any device with claims to 'assist' the situation is only going to make it worse, as it takes yet another responsibility off the parental units.
"Hell, my parents were the best parents anyone could hope for... And sometimes, I would run off somewhere to do something they expressly forbade me to do."
And you're still here to talk about it today right? Your parents cared, where there, and you still managed to put yourself into situations that could have resulted in your being hurt and/or abducted (it's okay, we all did it at sometime, don't sweat it) So what's the problem? The problem is that some clueless moron will buy one of these things, strap it to his kid, and assume "hey, the kids got the beeper, I can run off to the bar with the guys and chill, if anything goes wrong, they can set it off."... then little Johnny procedes to burn the house down, get run over, or get manhandled by the local priest, and clueless moron dad will sue said company and anyone within armreach claiming "They said it would protect little Johnny!"... Trust me, it WILL happen.
Stopping kids from getting hurt is all well and good, having one of these is fine, as long as you don't for a second let yourself be disillisioned into thinking that it's really anything other then a "Toy" that your kid will undoubtly take apart to tinker with, trade to a friend for some baseball cards, or leave at home on the dresser on a regular basis. Not to mention that they'll never carry it anywhere once they get old enough to realize that "Mom and Dad know where I'm at when I've got this thing with me!"
I guess I should have explained myself better in my original post... not all parents are bad parents, and not eveyrone who'd buy one of these is going to be an idiot about it.. but I'm just so tired and sick of watching people these days find new ways to pawn their responsibility off onto others and/or gadgest...
So for just 399.99, I can have a little electro-gizmo that will do the job that I, as a parent, should have been doing all along (Tracking where little Johnny is, and what mischief he's been into)..
Lovely.
(Don't get me wrong, I'm all for electro-gizmos, but I also believe that parents should be responsible for just that... parenting.)
Well, I just got off the phone with my house, and it seems my I-Opener arrived today. I ordered it the day the story broke (last monday?) and it FINALLY arrived... Now, I understand that people buying now have to click on the 'I Agree' Button, but said button was never there when I ordered mine.. Nor did I sign/agree to their terms at that time.... as far as I can tell, that machine sitting in it's pretty little cardboard box waiting for me at home... is *mine*.... Big computer show here in town this weekend, picking up the required supplies, and getting a nice little linux box out of the deal.
Of Course.. Come on, nobody wants to IPO with a lawsuit over their head, even if they are on what would end out the winning side.;) Easier to just tuck it under the carpet, pocket the 150m, and move on to greener pastures.;)
Most modern PoS (Point of sale, not to be confused with anything else I'd like to call them) systems these days are useless if they lose contact with 'the brain'... places like CompUSA, Best Buy, etc are out of luck if something goes wrong. I know the local Best Buys here in Baltimore just closed up and went home.:( There's no procedure (or equipment) for them to do any checkouts 'manually'....
Nobody told US that! Okay, seriously though... boards are still around, tradewars is still around (and getting developed still!)... we're all just a little harder to find these days tucked away under all the fluff on the net.:)
Ahhh, I've never had the joyful experience of seeing a NeXT cube first hand.:( So I wouldn't know how to relate the two, I just know I liked those stealth 'beamers.:)
Of course, you know I'm going to have to hunt down pictures of NeXT boxen on the web now, right?:) And here I thought Sun pizza boxes were the nicest.:)
Hey, does this mean that aptiva home PC I've got sitting in the corner of my basement is a collectors item now!?
What about those old Ps/1s!?
I'm not sure how I feel about this overall.. it's not like there's not a million other 'box vendors' out there.. but kind of sad to see someone abandoning the market.... wonder who's next? I mean, yeah, IBM boxen have always been overpriced, but they *usually* had decent parts inside atleast.:) (and that nifty stylish black two peiece model with the 'stealth' part that went under the monitor and held the floppy and cdrom.. oh come on, that HAD to be dreamed up by a uber-geek.:snicker:... even if it did make repairs a pain.:)
Am I the only one who's having flashbacks to that anti-drug commercial from the 80s? "Hot enough to fry an egg??" (Mental image of a dual 1100 motherboard with a frying pan cooking away ontop the heatsinks)... :)
I was under the impression that null modem cables run up to the maximum speed between the two computers, i.e. 115kbps.
Thats true, but compare it to 10mbps ethernet (yeah, I know, 2mbps in practice), or 100mbps, or gigabit over fiber, and the speed difference is indeed noticable!..... oh yeah, a few hundred of these puppies in a beowulf cluster running across gigabit fiber... oh.. (Okay, so I really had something to contribute, but lost my train of thought at the end...:smile:...)
Seriously? I've had GREAT response times since the new hardware went live.....
As for "anti/. effect mirroring".. Okay, I'll bite... how do we pull that one off?! Am I wrong in assuming that some sites are going to get a wee upset with us for mirroring their content? (I know, it's for their benefit, but I'm sure some suit would get in an uproar over it)... Not to mention the space/bandwidth this would take.. (ack, and you think slashdot is slow NOW?! just imagine if it was serving up all the articles as well!)... unless someone sits down and rights some 'distributed proxy array'.. hmmm..
I could be wrong, but I thought the idea was that moderators got 'rotated' in and out occasionally? Once people used up X points or something like that? If this is right, then it doesn't matter if someone says "Yeah, I moderate in " manner.:)
But I see your point. And it makes sense... It's a psychological thing me thinks, and Rob touched on it a bit above with the 'controls for everyone' idea... if the controls are 'special' people are going to be more inclined to take it seriously.. whereas if we ALL start seeing those controls all the time, they're going to get clicked on randomly, people fooling around, and when people DO have moderation points, they won't bother, because they won't know.:) ("Oh yeah, those controls again, yawn.")...
Controls? There are controls?!... I'd say leave it as is.. don't confuse those of us who've never seen them.... I don't have to worry about it then.. Didn't know until today that my karma was -1.. although for the life of me, I have no idea what I could have posted that got dropped down... usually if I had something smart-assed or rude, it went in under an AC login anyway..;)
I got an idea for a 'feature creep'... a way to 'digup' out of the archive all our old comments... of course.. then the question becomes.. how far back does/. keep comments for?! It'd be a nice feature... (atleast to me.. maybe then I'd find out what got me in trouble before)... and heck,/. has all that CPU power at it's fingertips now... knowing the 42nd rule of computers ("Any application moved to a large system will immediately grow to consume all the newly available resources"), it makes perfect sense to me.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't been to a LAN party in about 10 years. It's really easy to get the same experience nowadays with broadband and a microphone.
Then no offense, but your friends suck. There's still no way sitting at home alone in your basement playing with friends online and yelling at them over teamspeak compares to packing 12-15 friends into same basement and duking it out all night long. Sure, you can trash talk over the mic, but there's still going to be times you just need to grab something soft and wail it at your friend when he curbstomps you... Or the joys of building a massive tower of dew from everyones empties.. or waiting to see who crashes first and then raiding his hard drive for that uber pr0n collection he's been hiding....
Don't get me wrong, broadband has changed the world, but there are some things that just aren't the same even with broadband. Hell, my wife's computer is upstairs in her own little room, and I always feel bad that's she's getting left out of the fun when the party's at our place (I keep trying to convince her to move her gear downstairs for the even, but no love).. it's a world of difference being in the same room together versus even being on separate floors, let alone zip codes. (yes, a wife that enjoys lan parties... granted she's more apt to enjoy the simple classics, ala Q3 and Unreal then "complicated" ones in her opinion, like TF2.. but it's a start).
Overall, I think this is a mistake on Blizzard's part. There *are* those of us who still do actual physical lan parties, and in some instances, network dependency in a game can be a BITCH... case in point, new fangled games that have *one* way to patch, direct from the internet. You have 15 people sharing a broadband connection, you know how long it takes for each of them to download a separate 1-2 gig patch? And if it's an EA game, good lord, forget it, I think they're using C64s as their patch servers.... Before all this "lets assume everyone is connected to the internet all the time" mentality, one person could grab the latest patches (from home, before the lan party), bring them to the party, share out the EXEs, and everyone could patch direct from that... now, especially with Steam games, it's always a crapshoot to see who all is upgraded to the latest and how many people will need to download (at the same time) slowing everyone to a crawl. Even trying to plan ahead you can still get burned (last lan party I think it was, there was a TF2 update that came out the night before before the lanparty.. some people had patched the previous weekend, but nooooo, we still had to sit through the mess)
Let the federal government appoint one company to manage it all for a small cut of the fees
Yes, yet another government appointed monopoly, just what we need.
As for the slippery slopes you object to, really, this is the tax man and our lovely appointed representatives we're talking about, they know what's best for your money, and they definitely need it (see also California), this is one slope they'll not only slip down, they'll be bobsledding to see who can get down the hill fastest, because at the bottom is going be all that free money they need to X (bail out failing auto companies / make state payroll / pay for their trips to argentina / line their pockets)
You really want the states deciding they can tax based on a FREAKING LINK?!? Remember that story that broke a few days ago about some old newspaper people complaining about people linking to their sites? Guess what, every CFO in the country now has a valid and compelling reason to sue *anyone* who happens to link to *anything* on their site.. because you know, a link, that's enough to trigger the Nexus problem with the state those random people happen to live in. Your link to my site could cost me money when I suddenly get audited by your states tax man, because you posted a link to my site, thanks guy.
Yes yes, I know, "But affiliates make a small commission, blah blah".. they're contractors, outside vendors, nothing more. Last time I checked, the state of Georgia has a 4% sales tax, and "over 400 taxing jurisdictions" (their tax mans words, not mine).... the average "jurisdictional tax" is another 3-4%, but it varies. Based on this wonderful theory, almost every entity in the US needs to track/file/pay for any sales occuring in those 400 jurisdictions.... Why? UPS's headquarters is in Georgia.. find me a company that doesn't use UPS for anything at all... even if you don't use UPS to actually ship your product (because remember, this is the states trying to claim that Amazon has a nexus in their state, and taxing *all* sales in that state, not just the affiliate generated sales)... you use them, you pay them for a service, so hey, thats a nexus! Awesome for the state of Georgia, not so hot for everyone else.
We can then get patent lawyers and lawyers in the room at the same time. Too bad we can't smuggle a small yield tactical nuclear device onto the premises. Or can we?
Fixed that for you. :)
According to some accounts, they did this two weeks ago, and Boston just now got around to noticing enough to throw a hissy-fit.
That's the part that I just adore. Lets say it was a bomb... does Mr. Terrorist always make a habit of leaving his bombs out in plain sight (lets face it, these things were designed TO BE NOTICED, so I would assume they were in high-traffic, noticeable areas, the exact opposite criteria that one would expect most bombers to use), let alone leave them around for a couple of weeks before detonation?
The government peoples are all going "This proves the system works! See, we did good!"... I say "No, it proves that in an actual terrorist bombing situation, we'd all be dead for a couple of weeks before 'the system' caught up."
Long ramble short? Within a week or two no executive is going to remember who this Reiser guy is, let alone that his filesystem may be powering their systems... and that's ASSUMING someone points them to this news article and they make the connection in the first place.
A definate thanks goes out to the entire Slashdot crew for the quick update one year ago today... I happened to be doing my normal morning slashdot run when I found out about the mess.
;) Without you I would have been in the dark all morning, since all the mainstream news sites were useless.
And an even LARGER thank you to the users here at slashdot who happened to be in the comments thread that fateful day. Especially the guy who offered up the quicktime CNN Audio feed for the day. (And who's bandwidth bill for that month I would not want!)
You know, I know I'm getting a very negative outlook on life and the people in it, because, as you noted above, the website says that "The device is made of a sturdy yet soft rubberized material, which is cut resistant. Should anyone try to cut or tamper with the band when the device is locked, an alarm will be activated at our Location Service Center and the subscriber will be notified." and my very first thought after this was; of course if the pervert chops little Johnnys hand off and tosses the whole thing out the car window, in which case the point is moot.
;) But atleast someone else out there was thinking it too, so I don't have to feel tooo bad.
Depressing how this world has taught me to think.
"In the past six months, kids have been taken from their bedrooms, school yards, as well as their front yard."
Just for the record, kids have always been snatched up by sick and twisted individuals. It's just that within the last six months it's suddenly become "en vogue" to broadcast it on the six oclock news once again since there's apparently nothing better going on in the world. Kids have been kidnapped for decades, and they always will be, sometimes from the most caring and protective of households, I'm not debating that, I'm saying that any device with claims to 'assist' the situation is only going to make it worse, as it takes yet another responsibility off the parental units.
"Hell, my parents were the best parents anyone could hope for... And sometimes, I would run off somewhere to do something they expressly forbade me to do."
And you're still here to talk about it today right? Your parents cared, where there, and you still managed to put yourself into situations that could have resulted in your being hurt and/or abducted (it's okay, we all did it at sometime, don't sweat it) So what's the problem? The problem is that some clueless moron will buy one of these things, strap it to his kid, and assume "hey, the kids got the beeper, I can run off to the bar with the guys and chill, if anything goes wrong, they can set it off."... then little Johnny procedes to burn the house down, get run over, or get manhandled by the local priest, and clueless moron dad will sue said company and anyone within armreach claiming "They said it would protect little Johnny!"... Trust me, it WILL happen.
Stopping kids from getting hurt is all well and good, having one of these is fine, as long as you don't for a second let yourself be disillisioned into thinking that it's really anything other then a "Toy" that your kid will undoubtly take apart to tinker with, trade to a friend for some baseball cards, or leave at home on the dresser on a regular basis. Not to mention that they'll never carry it anywhere once they get old enough to realize that "Mom and Dad know where I'm at when I've got this thing with me!" I guess I should have explained myself better in my original post... not all parents are bad parents, and not eveyrone who'd buy one of these is going to be an idiot about it.. but I'm just so tired and sick of watching people these days find new ways to pawn their responsibility off onto others and/or gadgest...
So for just 399.99, I can have a little electro-gizmo that will do the job that I, as a parent, should have been doing all along (Tracking where little Johnny is, and what mischief he's been into)..
Lovely.
(Don't get me wrong, I'm all for electro-gizmos, but I also believe that parents should be responsible for just that... parenting.)
Well, I just got off the phone with my house, and it seems my I-Opener arrived today. I ordered it the day the story broke (last monday?) and it FINALLY arrived... Now, I understand that people buying now have to click on the 'I Agree' Button, but said button was never there when I ordered mine.. Nor did I sign/agree to their terms at that time.. .. as far as I can tell, that machine sitting in it's pretty little cardboard box waiting for me at home... is *mine*.... Big computer show here in town this weekend, picking up the required supplies, and getting a nice little linux box out of the deal.
Of Course.. Come on, nobody wants to IPO with a lawsuit over their head, even if they are on what would end out the winning side. ;) Easier to just tuck it under the carpet, pocket the 150m, and move on to greener pastures. ;)
Uhh.. no.
:( There's no procedure (or equipment) for them to do any checkouts 'manually'....
Most modern PoS (Point of sale, not to be confused with anything else I'd like to call them) systems these days are useless if they lose contact with 'the brain'... places like CompUSA, Best Buy, etc are out of luck if something goes wrong. I know the local Best Buys here in Baltimore just closed up and went home.
So why didn't they call it the "Big Dick"?
;)
They'd probably end up getting sued by some trademark-zealous adult-toy company.
Nobody told US that! :)
Okay, seriously though... boards are still around, tradewars is still around (and getting developed still!)... we're all just a little harder to find these days tucked away under all the fluff on the net.
Here's the real question, though--what do you do you do when a Windows using DJ gets a BSOD in the middle of a party?
:)
Hand him a CD of your favorite Linux Distribution and your next song request?!
Oh please, they were all ripped off the old WWiV source in the beginning anyway, so why not just stick with it. ;)
:)
Sides, they're still around, which is more then I can say for alot of the cloners.
Ahhh, I've never had the joyful experience of seeing a NeXT cube first hand. :( So I wouldn't know how to relate the two, I just know I liked those stealth 'beamers. :)
:) And here I thought Sun pizza boxes were the nicest. :)
Of course, you know I'm going to have to hunt down pictures of NeXT boxen on the web now, right?
Hey, does this mean that aptiva home PC I've got sitting in the corner of my basement is a collectors item now!?
:) (and that nifty stylish black two peiece model with the 'stealth' part that went under the monitor and held the floppy and cdrom.. oh come on, that HAD to be dreamed up by a uber-geek. :snicker:... even if it did make repairs a pain. :)
What about those old Ps/1s!?
I'm not sure how I feel about this overall.. it's not like there's not a million other 'box vendors' out there.. but kind of sad to see someone abandoning the market.... wonder who's next? I mean, yeah, IBM boxen have always been overpriced, but they *usually* had decent parts inside atleast.
Why not just go for dual 1100's?
:)
Am I the only one who's having flashbacks to that anti-drug commercial from the 80s? "Hot enough to fry an egg??" (Mental image of a dual 1100 motherboard with a frying pan cooking away ontop the heatsinks)...
I was under the impression that null modem cables run up to the maximum speed between the two computers, i.e. 115kbps.
:smile:...)
Thats true, but compare it to 10mbps ethernet (yeah, I know, 2mbps in practice), or 100mbps, or gigabit over fiber, and the speed difference is indeed noticable!..... oh yeah, a few hundred of these puppies in a beowulf cluster running across gigabit fiber... oh.. (Okay, so I really had something to contribute, but lost my train of thought at the end...
Seriously? I've had GREAT response times since the new hardware went live.. ...
/. effect mirroring".. Okay, I'll bite... how do we pull that one off?! Am I wrong in assuming that some sites are going to get a wee upset with us for mirroring their content? (I know, it's for their benefit, but I'm sure some suit would get in an uproar over it)... Not to mention the space/bandwidth this would take.. (ack, and you think slashdot is slow NOW?! just imagine if it was serving up all the articles as well!)... unless someone sits down and rights some 'distributed proxy array'.. hmmm..
As for "anti
I could be wrong, but I thought the idea was that moderators got 'rotated' in and out occasionally? Once people used up X points or something like that? If this is right, then it doesn't matter if someone says "Yeah, I moderate in " manner. :)
:) ("Oh yeah, those controls again, yawn.")...
But I see your point. And it makes sense... It's a psychological thing me thinks, and Rob touched on it a bit above with the 'controls for everyone' idea... if the controls are 'special' people are going to be more inclined to take it seriously.. whereas if we ALL start seeing those controls all the time, they're going to get clicked on randomly, people fooling around, and when people DO have moderation points, they won't bother, because they won't know.
Controls? There are controls?! ... I'd say leave it as is.. don't confuse those of us who've never seen them. ... I don't have to worry about it then.. Didn't know until today that my karma was -1.. although for the life of me, I have no idea what I could have posted that got dropped down... usually if I had something smart-assed or rude, it went in under an AC login anyway.. ;)
.. a way to 'digup' out of the archive all our old comments... of course.. then the question becomes.. how far back does /. keep comments for?! It'd be a nice feature... (atleast to me.. maybe then I'd find out what got me in trouble before)... and heck, /. has all that CPU power at it's fingertips now. .. knowing the 42nd rule of computers ("Any application moved to a large system will immediately grow to consume all the newly available resources"), it makes perfect sense to me. :)
I got an idea for a 'feature creep'.
I originally saw an article on mp3.com about this today.. and there it was stated that the lawsuit was "settled out of court on May 28th"..
:)
So My guess? They took the cash (or atleast some) from the AOL deal (sell that stock baby!) and paid off Nitrane/and/crew....
Any problem will go away.. provided you have enough $$cash$$ to throw at it.