(admittedly off-topic, but hopefully still worthwhile;)
This appears to be a fairly popular tactic now for people without the skills to do something constructive with their time.
Perhaps the moderation system should adapt to handle it. I propose that moderators not lose points for marking trolling posts like this, but not actually lower the score of the post until a certain number of moderators have rated the post as a troll. Perhaps 3.
With the current system, I'm sure that this could be handled simply by increasing the number of points available in the system, granting moderation more frequently, and allowing moderators to (as this "enlightening" series of posts states) waste points putting the smack-down on the richly deserving. But this really goes against the spirit of moderation, which is to spend as many points as possible elevating good posts. Simply cleaning up is a waste of moderator time and cheapens the responsibility of it.
Another option would be to let it ride and tell people to read at 1+. The downside here is that we could miss insightful AC posts, and links to comments from other news sources will still be loaded with trash (BTW, I love the idea of defaulting to posts to be ordered descending by score to make Slashdot more presentable to the rest of the community).
Allowing moderators to strike down large groups of posts after several moderators have decided they are pointless trash would go a long long way towards quickly cleaning up messes like this.
That's a darned good point. I crash Communicator 4.7 somewhere around 5 times a day any time I'm doing serious web development. Lousy environment to develop for. About half the time, it just stops processing the page after a certain number of characters.
I'm really looking forward to a Mozilla that fully supports DHTML (an earlier post mentioned that layers don't work).
Perhaps a boycott would actually work in their favor (if it really seriously caught on). DVD encryption is broken, and there's no way to fix it... no way to prevent people from copying DVDs... unless nobody wants DVDs anymore.
The only way for MPAA to bury this is to destroy DVD and replace it with something new, shockingly similar, and better encrypted. And I think it would be a PR nightmare to pull a very popular standard and replace it with something incompatible, so they really need it to fail commercially (like minidisks) to have a good reason to pull it.
But they'd lose all that money! Nope. Everyone with a DVD player will just have to buy a brand new ??? player to play ??? disks.
My sense of the Slashdot community would be that the two concepts here are like Bill Gates -vs- Steve Case (anyone else here read User Friendly;)
Domain name squatters buying up Linux containing names just to auction them off are scum and it goes against the real spirit of the internet by taking away the right of average users to put up content they feel has value. Instead, only users with sufficient funds can do so. This is an inherently unfair protocol (in the sense where first come, first serve is fair and you can't hold the token indefinitely and not do anything with it because it will time out... use and release and if you can't use it, fsck'ing release it!)
At the same time, the corporatization of the internet is fully embodied in the idea of lawyers telling you that they own a word so you can't put up a site using that word without asking. The Linux OS is GPL'd for a reason! The community backlash should prevent misuse, and even a politely worded request from a lawyer serves only to stifle the creativity and community that the internet was designed to be the perfect medium for those things to flourish in.
True, there's no rule against buying a domain just to try to profit from it later...
And I'm sure that trademark protection has its place...
But its sad to see situations like this occur, and it's clear that this will more and more be the rule and not the exception as the internet is saturated and scarcity causes supply and demand to take over...
It's an interesting point, but I might suggest that Jon isn't trying to ace any science techonology studies courses, and actually INTENDS to bring up open ended questions since the Slashdot forum allows these to be springboards for community discussion rather than just failed attepts to pad essays (something I'm rather familiar with)
The way I read the patent (as posted above) this device must be triggered by the user. At any rate, it's not always transmitting.
That would stand to reason, since transmitters require some power. In order to pick up the signal, they'd have to bounce it off a sat or a cell tower or something. There's no way you could generate enough power with body movement to do that continuously! (I'm imagining people walking around and constantly twirling their arms wildly...)
So this thing must build up energy for a quick transmission, triggered by the user (or maybe a timer).
Even this seems a bit far fetched from a technical standpoint. I remember an article in Wired a couple months back about a fairly shady company with a product called KidTrak (it was total vaporware because the technology to transmit the signal was far too bulky).
To quote the company, this product is "... still in the early developmental stage..."
I'd love to think these guys have a great product, but I have to assume they've patented technology that doesn't even exist yet in the hopes of capitalizing on it when someone finally figures out how to do it.
How about some more discussion of the technical feasability of this idea? (And less about Big Brother and the black UN helicopters?)
"One of the great blessings of the onrushing Millenium is that there can't be any more movies about Armageddon, since it will either have come or gone."
Whether or not Katz believes that if Jesus doesn't come back 12:00:01 AM Jan. 1, 2000 Christianity is bunk... he has a valid point in regard to the movie industry.
There's so much hype regarding millenialism right now that Hollywood can capitalize on it. When Y2K goes off without so much as a flickering light (or even if there are some minor disasters) the point is that IT'S OVER... and the hype will begin to fade away. That said, I'd bet real money (as opposed to Monopoly money... Hmm... Monopoly money... is that the same as Microsoft stock? ) that we'll see a lot less armageddon movies post Jan 1.
The definition of geek that Katz employs is so vague...
Here's the definition m-w.com (Merriam Webster) employs It's equally vague 2 : a person often of an intellectual bent who is disapproved of
I think it's safe to say that Galileo fits this definition to a T.
Katz is a one of a few authors who really tries to take a look at geeks and the changing role they play in our increasingly tech-dominated society
Of course he writes everything with an eye towards how it relates to geeks, and I for one appreciate his insights and look forward to the debate on his interpretations:).
-StaticLimit
Re:Galileo the millionaire?... or the pariah?
on
Galileo's Daughter
·
· Score: 1
My first thought when I read the line about Galileo as a zillionaire today was Pons and Fleichman. Pons and Fleichman presented the concept of cold fusion to the scientific community and it was so revolutionary, so difficult to believe in the context of accepted scientific rules that they are pariahs, kicked out of the community and laughed at as frauds. There's some compelling evidence that Pons-Fleichman cells DO produce energy from some sort of fusion. (Check Wired's Article Their experiment was so exciting that they released it too soon... I think perhaps Galileo would have an equal chance of sharing thier fate..
I don't really see the point of 15 minutes of net access with no email (I guess I could eat a burger and skim Slashdot), but the important thing is that they used the words "Internet" and "World Wide Web" in a press release. Their stock should go through the roof! (*snicker*)
Quoting the article: "Also planned is a Webcam where Internet surfers can call up Hartford's Burger King Web site and see a live transmission of action in the restaurant."
A live transmission of all the "action"? What action?!?
I say we just file this one under clueless suits use nifty buzzwords and waste bandwidth...
Slashdot Mirror
Go and use the link
On my earlier posting
to find such info
One suggestion is
That english haiku should use
a shorter format
Such a format makes
English Haiku similar
to the Japanese
This is because words
in Japanese often will
have more sylables
- StaticLimit
That's not a haiku!
;)
Creative control stays is 6 sylables...
Cre-a-tive con-trol stays!
If you're going to post a first haiku, at least follow the structure
Here's a good site with some haiku style information. - StaticLimit
(admittedly off-topic, but hopefully still worthwhile ;)
This appears to be a fairly popular tactic now for people without the skills to do something constructive with their time.
Perhaps the moderation system should adapt to handle it. I propose that moderators not lose points for marking trolling posts like this, but not actually lower the score of the post until a certain number of moderators have rated the post as a troll. Perhaps 3.
With the current system, I'm sure that this could be handled simply by increasing the number of points available in the system, granting moderation more frequently, and allowing moderators to (as this "enlightening" series of posts states) waste points putting the smack-down on the richly deserving. But this really goes against the spirit of moderation, which is to spend as many points as possible elevating good posts. Simply cleaning up is a waste of moderator time and cheapens the responsibility of it.
Another option would be to let it ride and tell people to read at 1+. The downside here is that we could miss insightful AC posts, and links to comments from other news sources will still be loaded with trash (BTW, I love the idea of defaulting to posts to be ordered descending by score to make Slashdot more presentable to the rest of the community).
Allowing moderators to strike down large groups of posts after several moderators have decided they are pointless trash would go a long long way towards quickly cleaning up messes like this.
- StaticLimit
That's a darned good point. I crash Communicator 4.7 somewhere around 5 times a day any time I'm doing serious web development. Lousy environment to develop for. About half the time, it just stops processing the page after a certain number of characters.
I'm really looking forward to a Mozilla that fully supports DHTML (an earlier post mentioned that layers don't work).
- StaticLimit
Perhaps a boycott would actually work in their favor (if it really seriously caught on). DVD encryption is broken, and there's no way to fix it... no way to prevent people from copying DVDs... unless nobody wants DVDs anymore.
The only way for MPAA to bury this is to destroy DVD and replace it with something new, shockingly similar, and better encrypted. And I think it would be a PR nightmare to pull a very popular standard and replace it with something incompatible, so they really need it to fail commercially (like minidisks) to have a good reason to pull it.
But they'd lose all that money! Nope. Everyone with a DVD player will just have to buy a brand new ??? player to play ??? disks.
How's that for a conspiracy theory?
- StaticLimit
My sense of the Slashdot community would be that the two concepts here are like Bill Gates -vs- Steve Case (anyone else here read User Friendly ;)
Domain name squatters buying up Linux containing names just to auction them off are scum and it goes against the real spirit of the internet by taking away the right of average users to put up content they feel has value. Instead, only users with sufficient funds can do so. This is an inherently unfair protocol (in the sense where first come, first serve is fair and you can't hold the token indefinitely and not do anything with it because it will time out... use and release and if you can't use it, fsck'ing release it!)
At the same time, the corporatization of the internet is fully embodied in the idea of lawyers telling you that they own a word so you can't put up a site using that word without asking. The Linux OS is GPL'd for a reason! The community backlash should prevent misuse, and even a politely worded request from a lawyer serves only to stifle the creativity and community that the internet was designed to be the perfect medium for those things to flourish in.
True, there's no rule against buying a domain just to try to profit from it later...
And I'm sure that trademark protection has its place...
But its sad to see situations like this occur, and it's clear that this will more and more be the rule and not the exception as the internet is saturated and scarcity causes supply and demand to take over...
- StaticLimit
It's an interesting point, but I might suggest that Jon isn't trying to ace any science techonology studies courses, and actually INTENDS to bring up open ended questions since the Slashdot forum allows these to be springboards for community discussion rather than just failed attepts to pad essays (something I'm rather familiar with)
;)
- StaticLimit
The way I read the patent (as posted above) this device must be triggered by the user. At any rate, it's not always transmitting.
..."
That would stand to reason, since transmitters require some power. In order to pick up the signal, they'd have to bounce it off a sat or a cell tower or something. There's no way you could generate enough power with body movement to do that continuously! (I'm imagining people walking around and constantly twirling their arms wildly...)
So this thing must build up energy for a quick transmission, triggered by the user (or maybe a timer).
Even this seems a bit far fetched from a technical standpoint. I remember an article in Wired a couple months back about a fairly shady company with a product called KidTrak (it was total vaporware because the technology to transmit the signal was far too bulky).
To quote the company, this product is "... still in the early developmental stage
I'd love to think these guys have a great product, but I have to assume they've patented technology that doesn't even exist yet in the hopes of capitalizing on it when someone finally figures out how to do it.
How about some more discussion of the technical feasability of this idea? (And less about Big Brother and the black UN helicopters?)
- StaticLimit
"One of the great blessings of the onrushing Millenium is that there can't be any more movies about Armageddon, since it will either have come or gone."
Whether or not Katz believes that if Jesus doesn't come back 12:00:01 AM Jan. 1, 2000 Christianity is bunk... he has a valid point in regard to the movie industry.
There's so much hype regarding millenialism right now that Hollywood can capitalize on it. When Y2K goes off without so much as a flickering light (or even if there are some minor disasters) the point is that IT'S OVER... and the hype will begin to fade away. That said, I'd bet real money (as opposed to Monopoly money... Hmm... Monopoly money... is that the same as Microsoft stock? ) that we'll see a lot less armageddon movies post Jan 1.
- StaticLimit
The definition of geek that Katz employs is so vague...
:).
Here's the definition m-w.com (Merriam Webster) employs
It's equally vague
2 : a person often of an intellectual bent who is disapproved of
I think it's safe to say that Galileo fits this definition to a T.
Katz is a one of a few authors who really tries to take a look at geeks and the changing role they play in our increasingly tech-dominated society
Of course he writes everything with an eye towards how it relates to geeks, and I for one appreciate his insights and look forward to the debate on his interpretations
-StaticLimit
My first thought when I read the line about Galileo as a zillionaire today was Pons and Fleichman. Pons and Fleichman presented the concept of cold fusion to the scientific community and it was so revolutionary, so difficult to believe in the context of accepted scientific rules that they are pariahs, kicked out of the community and laughed at as frauds. There's some compelling evidence that Pons-Fleichman cells DO produce energy from some sort of fusion. (Check Wired's Article Their experiment was so exciting that they released it too soon... I think perhaps Galileo would have an equal chance of sharing thier fate..
I don't really see the point of 15 minutes of net access with no email (I guess I could eat a burger and skim Slashdot), but the important thing is that they used the words "Internet" and "World Wide Web" in a press release. Their stock should go through the roof! (*snicker*)
Quoting the article:
"Also planned is a Webcam where Internet surfers can call up Hartford's Burger King Web site and see a live transmission of action in the restaurant."
A live transmission of all the "action"? What action?!?
I say we just file this one under clueless suits use nifty buzzwords and waste bandwidth...