Count me in the vast group of people that have been online well over a decade, are familiar with virtually all Internet terminology, and have never, EVER heard of "ROFL" being referred to as an "emoticon".
Notice the term itself - emoticon. A portmandeau of "emotion" and "icon". The last part is a hint that there's something semi-graphical about it. Abbreviations don't exactly fit this term, in the slightest.
In fact, use of things like ROFL and LOL pre-date the emoticon phenomenon in my experience. Heck, humanity was using abbreviations like this for years before we even had computers (KISS, FUBAR, etc). I don't think retconning them as emoticons makes any sense, and in fact you're the first person I've ever seen try to do that.
I, for one, am automatically suspicious of arguments that begin with "people have done research." Who are these anonymous people? Where was the research published? Has it been repeated? You're appealing to a nonsense authority.
Traffic safety institues. Automobile associations. Insurance companies. There's an entire field of research dedicated to this sort of study called "Risk Management". Pretty much weekly another study is released showing similar results. You want citations of peer-reviewed studies? Sorry, I was posting to an Internet discussion forum. I'll remember to bring my proper references next time I'm testifying in front of a Senate committee.
And I bet 90% of the bad drivers you see are listening to music. Let's ban that in cars too. The fact is that when you notice that somebody is driving badly, you tend to look for someone to blame that driving on....
But you don't notice all the poor, black, or female people who are in fact excellent drivers. The same idea applies to cell phones. Most people can drive well and use cell phones responsibly. You just don't notice these people.
People listening to music don't typically focus most of their concentration on the music. Cell phone users do. Most people cannot drive well while using a cell phone, they just think they can. Hell, most people think they're perfectly good drivers after a few drinks. Ever watch someone on a phone call closely? People tend to focus most of their attention on the conversation, oftentimes blocking out the rest of their environment. Just watch someone sitting at their desk chatting - it's common enough to have to jump around and wave your arms just to get enough attention that they even realize you're standing right in front of them. Incidentally, I don't notice good drivers, that is correct. I do notice every time some asshat cuts me off, wanders between lanes, or trundles along doing 20 under the limit in the passing lane. 90% of the time they're on a cellphone. Most people aren't on cellphones when they drive. Anecdotal, but again, I'm posting to Slashdot.
Anyway, there's a reason a lot of companies ban the use of cellphones for their employees while driving on company business. It's not some silly moral play, it's not that the CEOs are all 70 years old and hating new technology. It's because when you put the average driver behind the wheel and stick a cellphone in their hand, they drive with the same degree of carelessness as if they were legally impaired. We've been seeing this in driving simulators for years now, and it's a good thing the law is finally catching up.
1. Using a cellphone and/or texting is far more dangerous than drinking a cup of coffee. People have done research into this - these devices are just about as dangerous as being legally drunk. We don't ban coffee drinking in cars because while a small minority becomes a hazard while drinking it, EVERYONE is a hazard when using their phone. See #3.
2. We had reckless driving laws already, but we still passed impaired driving laws. Why? Because it's a lot harder to automatically say "hey, he's texting, he's reckless". With a law like this, there are no ifs, ands, or buts. No defense. You're caught, you pay. No "but really, Sir Judge, I'm not actually a reckless driver when I text" (which, incidentally, is how people used to get out of impaired driving charges - until we made a law specifically for the behaviour).
3. To those that honestly and truly believe THEY are safe drivers when using a cellphone and/or texting, please, just stay off the damn road. I've been nearly hit by you far too often.
4. It's about damn time we started seeing laws like this. Of course we shouldn't need them, but in my experience 90% of the bad drivers on the road are either yakking on their phone, or texting, or in some cases both. Seriously, how hard is it to just (GASP!) go without talking to your sister for a few minutes? We invented voicemail for a reason!
Because mass transit only comes every 15-30 minutes, takes twice as long to get anywhere, and only goes to 1:10 of the places I actually want to go?
I don't drive because I feel some macho desire to "be in control". I drive because it's by far the most convenient way to get most places. All the modern anti-car urbanists really don't seem to get this.
I think your current score (+4, Insightful) dispells the myth once and for all of some magic "Slashdot bias" that people continually complain about (and get modded up for). If anything, I'd say there's a clear bias on Slashdot IN FAVOUR OF Microsoft.
A few years back I went to a preview of a Disney movie (don't ask, was in a new city with some friends). Upon entering the theatre we were asked to submit to a bag inspection (we were University students, so we all had backpacks) and metal-detector wand, followed by a full body pat-down. This wasn't a security thing, it was very explicitly to check for camcorders - as this was back when people actually cam'd movies. They even had a big sign stating this.
This was one of the reasons I began to hate the movie industry, and have since declared personal war on Disney. It was a shocking and quite frankly humiliating experience, but it all happened in such a way that by the time it was finished (a few seconds) I was just stunned, standing there thinking "WHA??". Several hundred other people went through this without blinking an eye. I would have gotten a lot more uppity about it and walked out screaming at the manager if I had known how to get home (like I said, new city, and my friends saw nothing at all wrong with this sort of treatment).
The movie industry has been treating us Canadians as criminals for a long time already. Don't want to show us previews? GREAT! I'll take the fewer strip searches, thanks.
What's funny is that this happened before those "don't steal movies or this production worker can't feed his kids" nonsense ads started running. Those offend the heck out of me, but never really surprised me - I was already shown just how much of a criminal a paying customer appears to the movie industry.
Trolling is going to a NY Nicks' fan forum after they lose a game and posting "SEE!!!! OMG THEY DO SUCK I TOLD YOU!!!". Trolling is hanging out in religious IRC chatrooms and doing nothing but posting links to atheist websites. Trolling is wandering down to the Holocaust museum in Israel and handing out pamphlets saying "hey, maybe Hitler was misunderstood".
Trolling is also getting pissed off because your understanding of security is shallow enough that you take it personally when someone points out that the OS you use isn't as secure as it could be, and yet, because you still need it to play your MMORPGs, trying to scream "OMG SLASHDOT BIAS" in the hopes that someone out there might believe you.
(Incidentally, that last line was also a bit of a troll).
Coming up with a story that completely misses the point about OS security and submitting it here is laughable. The entire point made is that there will always be stupid/ignorant users. The most famous and financially damaging network attacks in history all depended on Microsoft's decision to let every Windows machine listen to needless network traffic by default. You can't argue this. Users had nothing to do with Blaster, SQL Slammer, Code Red, Nimda, (list 100+ worms that made international news when they got released)... at best you could argue that users should be patching systems on a daily basis, but of course you'd be showing just how little experience you've had running a computer system outside of your own home (that's almost flamebait, by the way, even if it's the truth).
The "Windows is only hacked because it's the popular OS" is a myth. It's been debunked thousands of times. Believe me, if it was as easy to hack OS/400, or Linux, or HPUX, people would be doing it in spades - because there's a hell of a lot more juicy information behind those machines. All of Las Vegas runs on OS/400 - that's billions of dollars for the taking. Going after 100 million home users is pointless when you have a nice juicy target like that. As another example, cracking IOS would give you a LOT more power than some piddly country's desktops. Cisco gear is EVERYWHERE.
The common consensus isn't wrong. Hell, these days it's not even the common consensus. But it is accurate to anyone that's had more than a couple of years experience with network security. Or anyone who's had experience outside of running Windows, and trying out a Linux LiveCD one weekend only to give up because it's "too hard". - also Flamebait, yet true.
This is the 3rd or 4th story in as many days that positively SCREAMS troll.
1. Find a common belief of Slashdot 2. Whine and bitch about "Slashdot bias" while not even understanding the point 3. When you don't get modded high enough for your complaining, find some blog that agrees with you 4. Get story linked to on Slasdot 4a. In this case, not even a link 5. Page Hits
Editors, I know you love to drive ad revenue by putting up these blatant trolls (OMG How Can I Love Open Source Without Copyright? If I Don't Like The RIAA I MUST Hate RMS!!!!!One!), but the joke's on you - most of us who respond to these out of annoyance run adblock.
I don't know about that - I completely disagree with you, and yet feel no desire to mod you down at all. Neither did the several mods who modded you up (although they may have agreed with you).
Instead, I feel the urge to point out that the vast majority of people who whine about "mod abuse" tend to be the ones who write posts like "I know I'll get modded down for this", or "I know this goes against Slashdot groupthink", or "maybe you OSS zealots should wake up, this isn't flamebait you just don't want to admit the truth and will censor me for disagreeing with you, you idiots", etc.
Censorship is in the eye of the beholder. It's fairly rare to see a legitimately well-written opinion that isn't trying to stir up something, and isn't factually wrong, modded down here. And yeah, I do tend to browse at -1 for fun.
Brand new CS grads with zero experience make that much or more in bloody Regina (typically a low-wage Canadian city). In Calgary you could start at nearly 50% more.
No, really, what the AC posted was entirely true. It was never ILLEGAL. Ever. One small organization made a tiny change for a week.
Still pretty stupid, but a long way from illegal. And in a country where we actually DO have restrictive laws about naming things (see: Quebec's laws about "acceptable" names for your baby) you don't need to make things up to show just how stupid our government can be.
This is a bit late, but in case anyone's still reading...
The first mainstream videogame-related story I read about this stated that his computer was loaded with Counterstrike and Starcraft. This was just after the news was continually repeating that he was Korean.
When I heard the videogame bit, milk came through my nose. It's a stereotype, but it's a damn funny one if you've ever spent any time on Battlenet.
What's awesome is that today's teenagers, in many cases, wouldn't even know who Duke Nukem even IS. Another couple of years and that vaporware will actually be OLDER than the average teenager.
I'd be willing to bet that more than 2% (male and female combined) of teens will be pregnant before they are no longer teens.
I'd be willing to GUARANTEE that no more than 0% of the males in your group will be pregnant before they are no longer teens. In fact, I'll extend my guarantee for life.
(I know what you meant, but I've always hated that particular abuse of the English language just to make fathers feel more "responsible" and "involved")
Personally, I'd MUCH rather work a 9-5 job, and carry a rotating pager every few weeks (and get woken up a couple of times a month). The alternative (2 in 3 chance of being moved to the night shift) appeals to me about as much as a root canal. Working in a unionized environment, I'd last about 2 weeks before needing to burn out 95% of my brain cells with alcohol - or a bullet.
Most ports on desktop computers are only opened to specific machines while you're uploading or downloading some data
Except, of course, on hosts running modern versions of Windows, which is what started the first waves of botnet infection in the first place.
Microsoft has "fixed" this by installing a software firewall to block these ports, but they're still all open. Every Windows-running desktop on the planet (with the exception of the remaining 9x boxes) is essentially running itself as a server.
As to why I bring this up: it's a lot easier to compromise a firewall application than it is to get a TCP/IP stack to accept connections on closed ports (has anyone ever managed to do this, incidentally?).
According to our Telco, no. However, we noticed an issue with SMS off and on all last night, so I'm taking this with a grain of salt. Could be entirely unrelated, but considering SMS pretty much *always* works for us...
Slashdot Mirror
Funniest comment on /. in years! Mod +1000.
Um..
Count me in the vast group of people that have been online well over a decade, are familiar with virtually all Internet terminology, and have never, EVER heard of "ROFL" being referred to as an "emoticon".
Notice the term itself - emoticon. A portmandeau of "emotion" and "icon". The last part is a hint that there's something semi-graphical about it. Abbreviations don't exactly fit this term, in the slightest.
In fact, use of things like ROFL and LOL pre-date the emoticon phenomenon in my experience. Heck, humanity was using abbreviations like this for years before we even had computers (KISS, FUBAR, etc). I don't think retconning them as emoticons makes any sense, and in fact you're the first person I've ever seen try to do that.
I, for one, am automatically suspicious of arguments that begin with "people have done research." Who are these anonymous people? Where was the research published? Has it been repeated? You're appealing to a nonsense authority.
...
Traffic safety institues. Automobile associations. Insurance companies. There's an entire field of research dedicated to this sort of study called "Risk Management". Pretty much weekly another study is released showing similar results. You want citations of peer-reviewed studies? Sorry, I was posting to an Internet discussion forum. I'll remember to bring my proper references next time I'm testifying in front of a Senate committee.
And I bet 90% of the bad drivers you see are listening to music. Let's ban that in cars too. The fact is that when you notice that somebody is driving badly, you tend to look for someone to blame that driving on.
But you don't notice all the poor, black, or female people who are in fact excellent drivers. The same idea applies to cell phones. Most people can drive well and use cell phones responsibly. You just don't notice these people.
People listening to music don't typically focus most of their concentration on the music. Cell phone users do. Most people cannot drive well while using a cell phone, they just think they can. Hell, most people think they're perfectly good drivers after a few drinks. Ever watch someone on a phone call closely? People tend to focus most of their attention on the conversation, oftentimes blocking out the rest of their environment. Just watch someone sitting at their desk chatting - it's common enough to have to jump around and wave your arms just to get enough attention that they even realize you're standing right in front of them. Incidentally, I don't notice good drivers, that is correct. I do notice every time some asshat cuts me off, wanders between lanes, or trundles along doing 20 under the limit in the passing lane. 90% of the time they're on a cellphone. Most people aren't on cellphones when they drive. Anecdotal, but again, I'm posting to Slashdot.
Anyway, there's a reason a lot of companies ban the use of cellphones for their employees while driving on company business. It's not some silly moral play, it's not that the CEOs are all 70 years old and hating new technology. It's because when you put the average driver behind the wheel and stick a cellphone in their hand, they drive with the same degree of carelessness as if they were legally impaired. We've been seeing this in driving simulators for years now, and it's a good thing the law is finally catching up.
1. Using a cellphone and/or texting is far more dangerous than drinking a cup of coffee. People have done research into this - these devices are just about as dangerous as being legally drunk. We don't ban coffee drinking in cars because while a small minority becomes a hazard while drinking it, EVERYONE is a hazard when using their phone. See #3.
2. We had reckless driving laws already, but we still passed impaired driving laws. Why? Because it's a lot harder to automatically say "hey, he's texting, he's reckless". With a law like this, there are no ifs, ands, or buts. No defense. You're caught, you pay. No "but really, Sir Judge, I'm not actually a reckless driver when I text" (which, incidentally, is how people used to get out of impaired driving charges - until we made a law specifically for the behaviour).
3. To those that honestly and truly believe THEY are safe drivers when using a cellphone and/or texting, please, just stay off the damn road. I've been nearly hit by you far too often.
4. It's about damn time we started seeing laws like this. Of course we shouldn't need them, but in my experience 90% of the bad drivers on the road are either yakking on their phone, or texting, or in some cases both. Seriously, how hard is it to just (GASP!) go without talking to your sister for a few minutes? We invented voicemail for a reason!
Because mass transit only comes every 15-30 minutes, takes twice as long to get anywhere, and only goes to 1:10 of the places I actually want to go?
I don't drive because I feel some macho desire to "be in control". I drive because it's by far the most convenient way to get most places. All the modern anti-car urbanists really don't seem to get this.
I think your current score (+4, Insightful) dispells the myth once and for all of some magic "Slashdot bias" that people continually complain about (and get modded up for). If anything, I'd say there's a clear bias on Slashdot IN FAVOUR OF Microsoft.
A few years back I went to a preview of a Disney movie (don't ask, was in a new city with some friends). Upon entering the theatre we were asked to submit to a bag inspection (we were University students, so we all had backpacks) and metal-detector wand, followed by a full body pat-down. This wasn't a security thing, it was very explicitly to check for camcorders - as this was back when people actually cam'd movies. They even had a big sign stating this.
This was one of the reasons I began to hate the movie industry, and have since declared personal war on Disney. It was a shocking and quite frankly humiliating experience, but it all happened in such a way that by the time it was finished (a few seconds) I was just stunned, standing there thinking "WHA??". Several hundred other people went through this without blinking an eye. I would have gotten a lot more uppity about it and walked out screaming at the manager if I had known how to get home (like I said, new city, and my friends saw nothing at all wrong with this sort of treatment).
The movie industry has been treating us Canadians as criminals for a long time already. Don't want to show us previews? GREAT! I'll take the fewer strip searches, thanks.
What's funny is that this happened before those "don't steal movies or this production worker can't feed his kids" nonsense ads started running. Those offend the heck out of me, but never really surprised me - I was already shown just how much of a criminal a paying customer appears to the movie industry.
No.
Trolling is going to a NY Nicks' fan forum after they lose a game and posting "SEE!!!! OMG THEY DO SUCK I TOLD YOU!!!". Trolling is hanging out in religious IRC chatrooms and doing nothing but posting links to atheist websites. Trolling is wandering down to the Holocaust museum in Israel and handing out pamphlets saying "hey, maybe Hitler was misunderstood".
Trolling is also getting pissed off because your understanding of security is shallow enough that you take it personally when someone points out that the OS you use isn't as secure as it could be, and yet, because you still need it to play your MMORPGs, trying to scream "OMG SLASHDOT BIAS" in the hopes that someone out there might believe you.
(Incidentally, that last line was also a bit of a troll).
Coming up with a story that completely misses the point about OS security and submitting it here is laughable. The entire point made is that there will always be stupid/ignorant users. The most famous and financially damaging network attacks in history all depended on Microsoft's decision to let every Windows machine listen to needless network traffic by default. You can't argue this. Users had nothing to do with Blaster, SQL Slammer, Code Red, Nimda, (list 100+ worms that made international news when they got released)... at best you could argue that users should be patching systems on a daily basis, but of course you'd be showing just how little experience you've had running a computer system outside of your own home (that's almost flamebait, by the way, even if it's the truth).
The "Windows is only hacked because it's the popular OS" is a myth. It's been debunked thousands of times. Believe me, if it was as easy to hack OS/400, or Linux, or HPUX, people would be doing it in spades - because there's a hell of a lot more juicy information behind those machines. All of Las Vegas runs on OS/400 - that's billions of dollars for the taking. Going after 100 million home users is pointless when you have a nice juicy target like that. As another example, cracking IOS would give you a LOT more power than some piddly country's desktops. Cisco gear is EVERYWHERE.
The common consensus isn't wrong. Hell, these days it's not even the common consensus. But it is accurate to anyone that's had more than a couple of years experience with network security. Or anyone who's had experience outside of running Windows, and trying out a Linux LiveCD one weekend only to give up because it's "too hard". - also Flamebait, yet true.
Considering you don't generally get arrested for pre-marital sex in the US, um, yes.
I heard a rumour that women are allowed to walk around with their heads uncovered in the States, too.
This is the 3rd or 4th story in as many days that positively SCREAMS troll.
1. Find a common belief of Slashdot
2. Whine and bitch about "Slashdot bias" while not even understanding the point
3. When you don't get modded high enough for your complaining, find some blog that agrees with you
4. Get story linked to on Slasdot
4a. In this case, not even a link
5. Page Hits
Editors, I know you love to drive ad revenue by putting up these blatant trolls (OMG How Can I Love Open Source Without Copyright? If I Don't Like The RIAA I MUST Hate RMS!!!!!One!), but the joke's on you - most of us who respond to these out of annoyance run adblock.
Can we try for some actual stories now?
And in OS/400, passwords aren't case-sensitive. Nothing like reducing your search space dramatically!
Thanks Chunk.
I don't know about that - I completely disagree with you, and yet feel no desire to mod you down at all. Neither did the several mods who modded you up (although they may have agreed with you).
Instead, I feel the urge to point out that the vast majority of people who whine about "mod abuse" tend to be the ones who write posts like "I know I'll get modded down for this", or "I know this goes against Slashdot groupthink", or "maybe you OSS zealots should wake up, this isn't flamebait you just don't want to admit the truth and will censor me for disagreeing with you, you idiots", etc.
Censorship is in the eye of the beholder. It's fairly rare to see a legitimately well-written opinion that isn't trying to stir up something, and isn't factually wrong, modded down here. And yeah, I do tend to browse at -1 for fun.
alternate endings, such as failure to boot after the install process
You mean that isn't the original ending?
Move.
Brand new CS grads with zero experience make that much or more in bloody Regina (typically a low-wage Canadian city). In Calgary you could start at nearly 50% more.
Far too late.
No, really, what the AC posted was entirely true. It was never ILLEGAL. Ever. One small organization made a tiny change for a week.
Still pretty stupid, but a long way from illegal. And in a country where we actually DO have restrictive laws about naming things (see: Quebec's laws about "acceptable" names for your baby) you don't need to make things up to show just how stupid our government can be.
Regardless of whether or not your claims are true (and I find them pretty dubious, like another poster has already pointed out)...
The difference is that the Church in Europe GOT OVER IT. The Puritan influence in New England (and by extension, much of the USA) is still strong.
This is a bit late, but in case anyone's still reading...
The first mainstream videogame-related story I read about this stated that his computer was loaded with Counterstrike and Starcraft. This was just after the news was continually repeating that he was Korean.
When I heard the videogame bit, milk came through my nose. It's a stereotype, but it's a damn funny one if you've ever spent any time on Battlenet.
What's awesome is that today's teenagers, in many cases, wouldn't even know who Duke Nukem even IS. Another couple of years and that vaporware will actually be OLDER than the average teenager.
That joke gets funnier every day.
I'd be willing to bet that more than 2% (male and female combined) of teens will be pregnant before they are no longer teens.
I'd be willing to GUARANTEE that no more than 0% of the males in your group will be pregnant before they are no longer teens. In fact, I'll extend my guarantee for life.
(I know what you meant, but I've always hated that particular abuse of the English language just to make fathers feel more "responsible" and "involved")
You say that like it's a good thing.
Personally, I'd MUCH rather work a 9-5 job, and carry a rotating pager every few weeks (and get woken up a couple of times a month). The alternative (2 in 3 chance of being moved to the night shift) appeals to me about as much as a root canal. Working in a unionized environment, I'd last about 2 weeks before needing to burn out 95% of my brain cells with alcohol - or a bullet.
To each their own, however.
Most ports on desktop computers are only opened to specific machines while you're uploading or downloading some data
Except, of course, on hosts running modern versions of Windows, which is what started the first waves of botnet infection in the first place.
Microsoft has "fixed" this by installing a software firewall to block these ports, but they're still all open. Every Windows-running desktop on the planet (with the exception of the remaining 9x boxes) is essentially running itself as a server.
As to why I bring this up: it's a lot easier to compromise a firewall application than it is to get a TCP/IP stack to accept connections on closed ports (has anyone ever managed to do this, incidentally?).
No, but it will get you on offender registries for life. Have fun getting a job or finding a place to live after that (I'm looking at you, Miami).
I almost think I'd choose prison over that. At least you can eventually get on with your life.
According to our Telco, no. However, we noticed an issue with SMS off and on all last night, so I'm taking this with a grain of salt. Could be entirely unrelated, but considering SMS pretty much *always* works for us...