Why do you need a TI-89 in pre-calc? I mean, come on, if the calc does symbolic manipulation, then you aren't doing the problem. Even "putting problems into the equation and interpreting the results" is crud. You need to learn how it works to understand the mathematical concepts at play. Part of formal logic is the philisophical aspect: it is a given set of rules applying to an imaginary, logical environment.
Come on, if you are in pre-calc, you can't be more than 17 years old. Does anyone else find the idea of a young kid not learning basic math because of one of these things scary?
Well, the point that I was trying to make was that it is silly to talk of absolutes in the computer world, because the whole industry basically reinvents itself every couple of years. That is how the industry survives, that is how technology progresses, and that is why computers are such a vital part of the world today.
Also, we already have the ultimate control over how long things last. The only reason that things change so much is because people continually clamor for specific technologies. Technologies that we like, stay around. Those that we don't, never make it, whether they are good or bad, open source or proprietary. That being said, free software dos increase the granularity of the decision process, from one made on a macro level to one made on a micro level.
Finally, it is very, very silly to say that free software always leads to a better product, which was what the original poster wrote. Just because I have control over the product (which I agree is a great thing) doesn't automatically guarantee that the product is better.
RedHat 6.1 has rsh, rlogin, and rcp turned on. As well as an lpr package with holes, and numerous other security problems. MacOS 9 shipped with a bug in the TCP/IP stack that brought the machine down with one UDP packet to a high-numbered port. And when you compile MySQL, it doesn't make you put a password on the root account by default.
CowboyNeal calls it an irony alert that the servers were running SQL server. That's not ironic, it's stupid. Not putting the database servers on the other side of a firewall or inside a private IP network is dumb. SQL server, while perhaps difficult to configure, is not dumb. It might not be the best database server; that doesn't make it stupid. It is easier to develop for because there are a great number of high quality development tools.
This is just poor security. Stupid mistakes. RedHat, Apple, and people like you and me make them all the time, doing things that most of us would consider stupid out of context. It's not evidence of MS stupidity or inadequacy. It's just plain dumb.
If you don't trust other people to be perfect, then don't give them your credit card. Develop secure payment algorithims that don't require card number transmission. But don't bitch about MS. It sounds so fscking stupid when you do, and it makes people like us (you know, "Open Source" "Free Software" "Linuxheads" "BSDers "Technophiles" "Abused High-Schoolers" or whatever is our Label of the Day) sound like crybabies.
Just put your shoulder to the wheel, your nose to the grindstone, and build something. When you're done, start over. That's how we will make the world a better place.
Debian is an immense proof that free development always produces things at better quality than non-free development.
Why do we always think that just because something is free it is better? That is just the kind of closed mentality that open source is trying to change. This is always that, foo is always bar, faster is always better.
I would think that people who comment on an industry where the only continuous theme has been "nothing lasts forever" would at least see the stupidity in "free development always anything."
The tested using a 2.0.35 kernel. This is about 1+ year old and doesn't contain support for upgraded SMP performance. While an accurate measure of Linux then, it's far from accurate now.
Figures lie, and liars figure. What else do I have to say?
The KDE issue - KDE 1.1.2, the latest stable release of KDE, doesn't run solely on Qt 2 yet. It's not Free Software. This isn't a slight against Qt, Troll Tech, or KDE, it just isn't free software yet. While a case can be made for not including KDE 2 for hacking purposes, KDE 1.x can't be on a Free Software CD. It just can't.
The FSF Money Issue - No other commercial distribution makes any attempt - any attempt - to either sell a Free version of their distro or give money to the FSF. Are they doing this because it makes them look good - of course! But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing! Does this mean that making a charitable donation and then claiming it as a tax-deduction is a bad thing? Can you do nothing nice for people unless it is entirely altruistic?
RedHat and Free Software - No other distribution (except perhaps SuSE with XFree86) comes even close to donating as much to the community as RedHat - GNOME, Enlightenment, even RPM's for crying out loud! And everything - everything - that they produce is GPL'ed. Why didn't Caldera GPL Lizard? Why don't other distros go GPL on their development? RedHat is a great friend to Free Software, and we should be thankful.
The Newbie Factor - Everyone complains that RedHat is the distro of choice for newbies. Good. People are picking up a cool system. This is good. If someone screws up and confuses RedHat with Linux, then explain to them how it works. It isn't unreasonable to see how someone could get confused, because this is a very strange business model. You don't see 35 companies all selling a product called Doritos, each at a different price and with a different philosophy, but all still Doritos and all made pretty much the same way.
I remember when we were patient and explained things to people. Now it seems like a bunch of newb's just want to come in and scream at each other. Slashdot forums are starting to look like AOL chat rooms.
Okay, I can understand your point about the dangers of young workers taking low pay jobs with huge options. You can't pay the bills with little pieces of paper unless they're green pieces of paper with George Washington's face on it, and sometimes people forget this in the search for big bucks.
But if you really believe Cowpland's claim that he was "paying off personal debt," I think that you are being a little bit naive. While the article doesn't mention the value of the shares that he sold, he did sell 2.4 million of them and make $7.1 million in profit!! What kind of "personal debt" was he in? And if he owed that much money, it would clearly have to be disclosed and made available for shareholder consumption. CEOs aren't allowed to live in the dark - and here we can see why.
When you owe more than $7.1 million, the banks don't knock, they just take your house. This isn't a lesson in rookie financial mistakes, its a lesson in how not to steal millions of dollars from your shareholders, because that it was insider trading really does.
I really don't think that this belongs here. Call me offtopic, blame me for ducking the question, but I'm here for tech news, tech thoughts, and a little bit of fun along the way. Not that other stuff doesn't creep in, but mostly we steer clear of stuff like this.
I think that given the huge debates surrounding Anonymous Cowards here at Slashdot, the reaction to this issue is very interesting.
So far, the majority of the responses have focused on the bad things that happen when you post IPs. But there are also good things. Let's not forget that this is not a specialty site, a private community like Slashdot wherewe can trust everyone not to post flamebait or redundant posts;). This is a massive public site, with thousands of people, and perhaps the designers sought to do something to at least keep some people in line. And one thing that this can help prevent is people pretending to be others, about 95% of the time.
This is a personal choice by the site designers, just as CmdrTaco's or Hemos' decision to maintain Anonymous Cowards is their personal choice. As so many have said here at Slashdot, if you don't like the rules, you don't have to participate.
Everyone else seems to have picked up on this, but this is now getting crazy.
Why do we have Freshmeat.net? Why do we have Slashdot.org? I thought that they were two different places, with two different themes. But now, all we have is the same stuff on both sites!
I'm not in a position to question Rob and Jeff's editorial decisions. After all, it is still their site and their's to do with as they please. But could we get some clarification as to what we can expect to see here? If Slashdot keeps going like this, we might as well autoforward to Freshmeat.net
All that I can say is, for those who weren't there last night, you definitely missed something awesome when Richard Stallman started dancing. GNU/Dance was in full effect!
Why do we bother even responding to these articles. Anyone with half a brain can see that their arguments make no sense and that this is just incredibly stupid analysis.
Personally, I think we would all be well served to just leave articles like this alone and not waste our breath on them.
Well, it sure is comforting to have intelligent, rational responses to a post on Slashdot for a change.
Anyway, thanks very much to all involved for letting us in on the details of what really happened and some of the rationales. It sure does a lot to make you feel comfortable about these dealings, not that it is any of my business anyway.
While everyone is so happy about Mandrake and Rasterman finally coming together again, doesn't this strike anyone as a sleazy move? I mean, not to put myself into flamebait and take RedHat's defense here, but...
On Rasterman's homepage he says May 2 that everything is fine with RedHat, and he has no intentions of leaving. Less than a month later, he says that he is leaving RedHat over differences with them. Now, he's taking a job with what is in someways a competitor - VA Systems. While VA makes hardware and RedHat is software, it's still in the same industry and so kind of sleazy.
And finally, he now has a lament on his homepage about how shitty North Carolina is. I mean, if he was so unhappy, he should have said something and been honest about it. If North Carolina sucked and Red Hat wasn't working out, then say something, but don't back out of your contract and blast a company/state because you want to go home and work with your bud.
I guess all I'm trying to say is that this was a pretty backhanded sleazy way of handling just grievances about his working situation. Next time, I hope that he is a little more upfront about the realities of the situation.
This is certainly going to make it easier for companies to adopt Linux. One hurdle has certainly been the inability to have simple management of Linux machines. All of the money that you save in software and licensing are more than offset by the fact that you need to bring in a separate staff to manage the boxes.
If you can integrate the system into existing management tools, however, than you can at least make your Linux design on technical merits and not worry about management costs.
Another big step forward. I know a lot of companies who have been waiting a long time for this.
I have to admit, to a large extent I am absolutely stunned by the postings here. To repeatedly call everyone a jerk for suggesting that new technologies and violent games can have a role in the recent onslaught of public violence is the height of stupidity and arrogance. At the least, it's not a very good way to approach something scientifically.
Look, I agree that there are larger social issues going on here, and I don't think that technology, the Internet, and Quake are responsible for the entire situation. But they do play a large part in the rapid changes that are shaping our world today, and the human reaction to those changes is the primary cause of these problems.
Someone wrote about 5 posts back that kids have always had toy guns, and this is true. But kids have not always taking shotguns and semi-automatic rifles into schools and started shooting people. I mean, seriously, in the past three years it seems like we can't go more than about 3 months before some kid or kids launch another massacre. And that's not even including the wackos who are over 18. We live in a more violent society than ever before.
What do we blame for this? Well, there are a lot of factors, and I won't even attempt to explain everything in the big picture. But technology, like the Internet, plays a huge role. I promise you, the depersonalization we have experienced as a result of Internet technologies, like e-mails and newsgroups where you never even hear another person's voice or see their face, plays a part. It makes people into abstract entities. Quake, too - yeah, it's just like killing people with your toy gun as a kid, but it's a hell of a lot more violent, the violence is purely for effect and intended to be pleasurable, and you never have to know the person who you kill. Sometimes, you can even kill computers - they're not even alive.
All of these factors have an effect. Everyone has to agree with the modeling experiments of Albert Bandura - when kids are repeatedly exposed to violence, they rapidly lose any inhibitions against violent acts and begin to take part in violent actions themselves. Whether that translates to real acts of violence is unclear, but it is clear that kids are at least more willing to think about violence after seeing it so much - and that means something!
In addition, technology has depersonalized us. We e-mail someone, but we never see them. We kill someone in Quake, but we have'nt seen them, or heard them, or anything. And then we drop smart bombs, kill thousands, and we're totally numb to it. Just look at what the high-tech war and that technology has done. I guarantee you that this and to some extent the gulf war, are the first times that society has not had massive repercussions from such large-scale violence. Massive protests, school closings, upheaval - there's nothing. Most people don't even follow the story from day to day!
I'm sorry, but to say that everyone is just making this whole correlation up is just naive, arrogant, or ignorant. It ain't the whole problem (bad parenting and other societal breakdowns are also to blame), but it certainly isn't innocent.
Listen, he says that you can "marginalize" scarcity. Okay, so if we buy his statement, then in the end, everything in the tech world runs until nothing is scarce, and then there is no need to allocate, right? If economics is about allocation of scarce goods, then when we remove the scarcity of goods, there is no need to allocate, and we have eliminated markets and economics entirely. Agalmia - here we come!
Except this just cannot ever be true. Because one good must remain forever scarce and forever necessary to be allocated. Time. Even if we reduce everything else (all goods and services) to the point where everything is equivalent, we must allocate time among them, and thus an economy of time exists. Since (and let's not get into rewriting physics) time is always fleeting, there will always be an economy of that sort.
Agalmia is just some more pseudo-semi-post-modern-over-hyped-under-researche d-overly-verbose-under-thought-infectiou s-bullshit-science-meme.
Figure it out, bud - everything is scarce and always will be. While software doesn't obey all the traditional rules, we don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
This is just not fucking funny. Yeah, you read the article, you realize that it has all been a prank, and the whole stupid thing was a joke from the beginning. But this was something that really does happen and we really do take seriusly. It's one thing to have an outrageous joke, but when you allude to "threatening letters" and then shut your site, people get really pissed. This is just like Orson Welles and the invasion from Mars. People take it seriously.
Also, if you're going to have a joke, at least make it funny, because the writing sucked. Satire is supposed to epitomize hyperbole and go way beyond reason. Jonathan Swifte's "A Modest Proposal", which is about eating babies is funny, but just a couple of cheesy, somewhat obvious jokes is not.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you need a TI-89 in pre-calc? I mean, come on, if the calc does symbolic manipulation, then you aren't doing the problem. Even "putting problems into the equation and interpreting the results" is crud. You need to learn how it works to understand the mathematical concepts at play. Part of formal logic is the philisophical aspect: it is a given set of rules applying to an imaginary, logical environment.
Come on, if you are in pre-calc, you can't be more than 17 years old. Does anyone else find the idea of a young kid not learning basic math because of one of these things scary?
Well, the point that I was trying to make was that it is silly to talk of absolutes in the computer world, because the whole industry basically reinvents itself every couple of years. That is how the industry survives, that is how technology progresses, and that is why computers are such a vital part of the world today.
Also, we already have the ultimate control over how long things last. The only reason that things change so much is because people continually clamor for specific technologies. Technologies that we like, stay around. Those that we don't, never make it, whether they are good or bad, open source or proprietary. That being said, free software dos increase the granularity of the decision process, from one made on a macro level to one made on a micro level.
Finally, it is very, very silly to say that free software always leads to a better product, which was what the original poster wrote. Just because I have control over the product (which I agree is a great thing) doesn't automatically guarantee that the product is better.
RedHat 6.1 has rsh, rlogin, and rcp turned on. As well as an lpr package with holes, and numerous other security problems. MacOS 9 shipped with a bug in the TCP/IP stack that brought the machine down with one UDP packet to a high-numbered port. And when you compile MySQL, it doesn't make you put a password on the root account by default.
CowboyNeal calls it an irony alert that the servers were running SQL server. That's not ironic, it's stupid. Not putting the database servers on the other side of a firewall or inside a private IP network is dumb. SQL server, while perhaps difficult to configure, is not dumb. It might not be the best database server; that doesn't make it stupid. It is easier to develop for because there are a great number of high quality development tools.
This is just poor security. Stupid mistakes. RedHat, Apple, and people like you and me make them all the time, doing things that most of us would consider stupid out of context. It's not evidence of MS stupidity or inadequacy. It's just plain dumb.
If you don't trust other people to be perfect, then don't give them your credit card. Develop secure payment algorithims that don't require card number transmission. But don't bitch about MS. It sounds so fscking stupid when you do, and it makes people like us (you know, "Open Source" "Free Software" "Linuxheads" "BSDers "Technophiles" "Abused High-Schoolers" or whatever is our Label of the Day) sound like crybabies.
Just put your shoulder to the wheel, your nose to the grindstone, and build something. When you're done, start over. That's how we will make the world a better place.
Debian is an immense proof that free development always produces things at better quality than non-free development.
Why do we always think that just because something is free it is better? That is just the kind of closed mentality that open source is trying to change. This is always that, foo is always bar, faster is always better.
I would think that people who comment on an industry where the only continuous theme has been "nothing lasts forever" would at least see the stupidity in "free development always anything."
The tested using a 2.0.35 kernel. This is about 1+ year old and doesn't contain support for upgraded SMP performance. While an accurate measure of Linux then, it's far from accurate now.
Figures lie, and liars figure. What else do I have to say?
The KDE issue -
KDE 1.1.2, the latest stable release of KDE, doesn't run solely on Qt 2 yet. It's not Free Software. This isn't a slight against Qt, Troll Tech, or KDE, it just isn't free software yet. While a case can be made for not including KDE 2 for hacking purposes, KDE 1.x can't be on a Free Software CD. It just can't.
The FSF Money Issue -
No other commercial distribution makes any attempt - any attempt - to either sell a Free version of their distro or give money to the FSF. Are they doing this because it makes them look good - of course! But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing! Does this mean that making a charitable donation and then claiming it as a tax-deduction is a bad thing? Can you do nothing nice for people unless it is entirely altruistic?
RedHat and Free Software -
No other distribution (except perhaps SuSE with XFree86) comes even close to donating as much to the community as RedHat - GNOME, Enlightenment, even RPM's for crying out loud! And everything - everything - that they produce is GPL'ed. Why didn't Caldera GPL Lizard? Why don't other distros go GPL on their development? RedHat is a great friend to Free Software, and we should be thankful.
The Newbie Factor -
Everyone complains that RedHat is the distro of choice for newbies. Good. People are picking up a cool system. This is good. If someone screws up and confuses RedHat with Linux, then explain to them how it works. It isn't unreasonable to see how someone could get confused, because this is a very strange business model. You don't see 35 companies all selling a product called Doritos, each at a different price and with a different philosophy, but all still Doritos and all made pretty much the same way.
I remember when we were patient and explained things to people. Now it seems like a bunch of newb's just want to come in and scream at each other. Slashdot forums are starting to look like AOL chat rooms.
Okay, I can understand your point about the dangers of young workers taking low pay jobs with huge options. You can't pay the bills with little pieces of paper unless they're green pieces of paper with George Washington's face on it, and sometimes people forget this in the search for big bucks.
But if you really believe Cowpland's claim that he was "paying off personal debt," I think that you are being a little bit naive. While the article doesn't mention the value of the shares that he sold, he did sell 2.4 million of them and make $7.1 million in profit!! What kind of "personal debt" was he in? And if he owed that much money, it would clearly have to be disclosed and made available for shareholder consumption. CEOs aren't allowed to live in the dark - and here we can see why.
When you owe more than $7.1 million, the banks don't knock, they just take your house. This isn't a lesson in rookie financial mistakes, its a lesson in how not to steal millions of dollars from your shareholders, because that it was insider trading really does.
I really don't think that this belongs here. Call me offtopic, blame me for ducking the question, but I'm here for tech news, tech thoughts, and a little bit of fun along the way. Not that other stuff doesn't creep in, but mostly we steer clear of stuff like this.
I remember a few years ago when sengan posted an article alleging that the US bombings of Iraq were an illegal event, and that touched off a huge firestorm. I can't imagine the flamewars here on this one.
Please, lets not make the flaming any worse than it already is!
tkr@brown.edu
I think that given the huge debates surrounding Anonymous Cowards here at Slashdot, the reaction to this issue is very interesting.
;). This is a massive public site, with thousands of people, and perhaps the designers sought to do something to at least keep some people in line. And one thing that this can help prevent is people pretending to be others, about 95% of the time.
So far, the majority of the responses have focused on the bad things that happen when you post IPs. But there are also good things. Let's not forget that this is not a specialty site, a private community like Slashdot wherewe can trust everyone not to post flamebait or redundant posts
This is a personal choice by the site designers, just as CmdrTaco's or Hemos' decision to maintain Anonymous Cowards is their personal choice. As so many have said here at Slashdot, if you don't like the rules, you don't have to participate.
Everyone else seems to have picked up on this, but this is now getting crazy.
Why do we have Freshmeat.net? Why do we have Slashdot.org? I thought that they were two different places, with two different themes. But now, all we have is the same stuff on both sites!
I'm not in a position to question Rob and Jeff's editorial decisions. After all, it is still their site and their's to do with as they please. But could we get some clarification as to what we can expect to see here? If Slashdot keeps going like this, we might as well autoforward to Freshmeat.net
Just my $.02
All that I can say is, for those who weren't there last night, you definitely missed something awesome when Richard Stallman started dancing. GNU/Dance was in full effect!
Now, will his dance be released under the GPL?
Why do we bother even responding to these articles. Anyone with half a brain can see that their arguments make no sense and that this is just incredibly stupid analysis.
Personally, I think we would all be well served to just leave articles like this alone and not waste our breath on them.
Well, it sure is comforting to have intelligent, rational responses to a post on Slashdot for a change.
Anyway, thanks very much to all involved for letting us in on the details of what really happened and some of the rationales. It sure does a lot to make you feel comfortable about these dealings, not that it is any of my business anyway.
While everyone is so happy about Mandrake and Rasterman finally coming together again, doesn't this strike anyone as a sleazy move? I mean, not to put myself into flamebait and take RedHat's defense here, but...
On Rasterman's homepage he says May 2 that everything is fine with RedHat, and he has no intentions of leaving. Less than a month later, he says that he is leaving RedHat over differences with them. Now, he's taking a job with what is in someways a competitor - VA Systems. While VA makes hardware and RedHat is software, it's still in the same industry and so kind of sleazy.
And finally, he now has a lament on his homepage about how shitty North Carolina is. I mean, if he was so unhappy, he should have said something and been honest about it. If North Carolina sucked and Red Hat wasn't working out, then say something, but don't back out of your contract and blast a company/state because you want to go home and work with your bud.
I guess all I'm trying to say is that this was a pretty backhanded sleazy way of handling just grievances about his working situation. Next time, I hope that he is a little more upfront about the realities of the situation.
This is certainly going to make it easier for companies to adopt Linux. One hurdle has certainly been the inability to have simple management of Linux machines. All of the money that you save in software and licensing are more than offset by the fact that you need to bring in a separate staff to manage the boxes.
If you can integrate the system into existing management tools, however, than you can at least make your Linux design on technical merits and not worry about management costs.
Another big step forward. I know a lot of companies who have been waiting a long time for this.
You got mail?
Check out the RealVideo broadcast, and the headline is "You Got Mail"
I guess that "Them Needs Grammar"
I have to admit, to a large extent I am absolutely stunned by the postings here. To repeatedly call everyone a jerk for suggesting that new technologies and violent games can have a role in the recent onslaught of public violence is the height of stupidity and arrogance. At the least, it's not a very good way to approach something scientifically.
Look, I agree that there are larger social issues going on here, and I don't think that technology, the Internet, and Quake are responsible for the entire situation. But they do play a large part in the rapid changes that are shaping our world today, and the human reaction to those changes is the primary cause of these problems.
Someone wrote about 5 posts back that kids have always had toy guns, and this is true. But kids have not always taking shotguns and semi-automatic rifles into schools and started shooting people. I mean, seriously, in the past three years it seems like we can't go more than about 3 months before some kid or kids launch another massacre. And that's not even including the wackos who are over 18. We live in a more violent society than ever before.
What do we blame for this? Well, there are a lot of factors, and I won't even attempt to explain everything in the big picture. But technology, like the Internet, plays a huge role. I promise you, the depersonalization we have experienced as a result of Internet technologies, like e-mails and newsgroups where you never even hear another person's voice or see their face, plays a part. It makes people into abstract entities. Quake, too - yeah, it's just like killing people with your toy gun as a kid, but it's a hell of a lot more violent, the violence is purely for effect and intended to be pleasurable, and you never have to know the person who you kill. Sometimes, you can even kill computers - they're not even alive.
All of these factors have an effect. Everyone has to agree with the modeling experiments of Albert Bandura - when kids are repeatedly exposed to violence, they rapidly lose any inhibitions against violent acts and begin to take part in violent actions themselves. Whether that translates to real acts of violence is unclear, but it is clear that kids are at least more willing to think about violence after seeing it so much - and that means something!
In addition, technology has depersonalized us. We e-mail someone, but we never see them. We kill someone in Quake, but we have'nt seen them, or heard them, or anything. And then we drop smart bombs, kill thousands, and we're totally numb to it. Just look at what the high-tech war and that technology has done. I guarantee you that this and to some extent the gulf war, are the first times that society has not had massive repercussions from such large-scale violence. Massive protests, school closings, upheaval - there's nothing. Most people don't even follow the story from day to day!
I'm sorry, but to say that everyone is just making this whole correlation up is just naive, arrogant, or ignorant. It ain't the whole problem (bad parenting and other societal breakdowns are also to blame), but it certainly isn't innocent.
Just my $.02
This guy is nuts.
e d-overly-verbose-under-thought-infectiou s-bullshit-science-meme.
Listen, he says that you can "marginalize" scarcity. Okay, so if we buy his statement, then in the end, everything in the tech world runs until nothing is scarce, and then there is no need to allocate, right? If economics is about allocation of scarce goods, then when we remove the scarcity of goods, there is no need to allocate, and we have eliminated markets and economics entirely. Agalmia - here we come!
Except this just cannot ever be true. Because one good must remain forever scarce and forever necessary to be allocated. Time. Even if we reduce everything else (all goods and services) to the point where everything is equivalent, we must allocate time among them, and thus an economy of time exists. Since (and let's not get into rewriting physics) time is always fleeting, there will always be an economy of that sort.
Agalmia is just some more pseudo-semi-post-modern-over-hyped-under-research
Figure it out, bud - everything is scarce and always will be. While software doesn't obey all the traditional rules, we don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
my $.02
This is just not fucking funny. Yeah, you read the article, you realize that it has all been a prank, and the whole stupid thing was a joke from the beginning. But this was something that really does happen and we really do take seriusly. It's one thing to have an outrageous joke, but when you allude to "threatening letters" and then shut your site, people get really pissed. This is just like Orson Welles and the invasion from Mars. People take it seriously.
Also, if you're going to have a joke, at least make it funny, because the writing sucked. Satire is supposed to epitomize hyperbole and go way beyond reason. Jonathan Swifte's "A Modest Proposal", which is about eating babies is funny, but just a couple of cheesy, somewhat obvious jokes is not.
Bad idea + Bad execution + Bad topic == Bad joke.
Other than that, slashdot is great. Thanks, Rob.