I openly said I changed the story four times, and I had the 'nads to not only sign my name but to make it easy to get hold of me. There will be a follow-up story when we get more info. Relax.
Modified four times, actually. And we didn't even think about running it at all until I had word from someone else, even though off-the-record, that this was not something cooked up by Amazon. I am probably going to knock off and have a drink now. More info will come, I'm sure.
They get you someplace else. I spent a year in Texas once. No income tax, but car registration was high as hell. Delaware has no sales tax, but big highway tolls and some other "hidden" fees. Commercial limo licenses there, for example, are high as hell.
BTW, Maryland (where I live now) *theoretically* has the power to levy sales taxes on items bought out of state and shipped here, no matter how you ordered those goods. Now and then a state official rants about this, but then someone saner realizes that enforcement would cost more than any revenue enforcement could possibly generate and the idea dies down for a year or two.
If you want to see a *real* tax rip, check hotel taxes. Tourists don't vote, and locals don't usually stay in local hotels, so they're easy to levy without getting flak. They're over 10% in some places, including some states and localities that have low or no sales or income taxes -- and no, you don't get to duck the tax if you reserve the room online.
Oh, come on. Rob Malda's, um, "linguistic inconsistencies" are part of his folksy charm. Think of his unique approach to the English language as a feature, not a bug. Sure, I could clean up Rob's spelling and grammatical errors, and then I could go through all my old blues, country, and rock 'n roll albums and publish the "corrected" lyrics. Do you really want me to do this?
I'd rather leave Rob Malda (and Muddy Waters) alone, and I'm the Official Boss Editor for all of Andover's Linux-related sites and you're not, so deal with it. bucko.;-)
- Robin "roblimo" Miller
PS - Every single/. comment I've seen -- including yours -- that criticizes Rob Malda's writing contains at least one glaring grammatical or spelling error. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone..."
The threat is old. Maybe when I have a minute I'll call Unisys and get the real story. Right now all I see are pointers to the same 5-year-old page on the Unisys site.
Hey! I was in DC wearing a vest yesterday myself, first at the Mayflower and later at the Omni Shoreham (hotels). I've been wearing vests for years. See http://way.nu/limo for the reason why.
And while I'm in the UMBC-LUG, not DC, I get to DC-LUG meetings now and then. If you spot me at one, please feel free to say "Hi" even though I don't usually wear vests to them.;-)
I called the St. George Police Department through its published non-emergency phone number, verified Officer Stebbins' identity, and chatted with him personally (by phone) before posting the story. Note the emphasis on using a *published* phone number for initial contact. It is as easy to spoof a phone number as an e-mail address; all you have to do is claim you're giving out a "private line."
Without proper verification, this story would not have run. Period.
Can't speak for the moderators, but I can assure you that all questions sent to Abe are ones that were moderated up to 2+ or higher. The only real question screening beyond that is weeding out posts that got moderated high, but aren't questions.
Just "Reading" the questions here lets the interviewee choose which questions he or she answers. No big deal with someone like Mandrake, Illiad or Abe, all of whom read Slashdot, but what about when we start interviewing politicians and corporate types? That crowd will duck hard questions every time if you let them. It's better for us to send them a list of qustions, and if they decline to answer some of them, that'll tell us something about them, too.
There are three other reasons not to let interview subjects simply come in and post: 1) For those unfamiliar with Slashdot, wading through all the "first post" and "this is gay" garbage to find the Real Questions takes too long. It saves time to do it by e-mail. 2) We don't pick the questions for at least 24 hours, because we have readers (and moderators) all over the world and want them all to have a chance to participate -- and we don't want a rushed interview subject to only see the first 20 or 30 posts, which might all be from North America. So we wait, THEN we choose. 3) Slashdot stories have (let's face it) a short shelf life. By making each interview a two-post thing, we avoid having the answers buried behind 100 stories that went up between the time we post the "call for questions" and the actual Q&A post.
The *easiest* way for us to handle interviews would be simply call people up and ask them questions in traditional newspaper style, but that woould not allow any community participation. Wouldn't you rather have the chance to ask (fill in here) your *own* questions instead of letting me or Rob or Jeff or Justin come up with all of them?
If nothing else, we're getting some interesting (even bizarre) questions from readers that would NEVER get asked anywhere else.;-)
I didn't miss his point at all. I offered Sam a chance to do something positive instead of complaining. You can do the same. ESR makes his points in a logical manner and signs his name to them. If you don't think ESR's piece was intelligent, go ahead and write one that is. Be original instead of reactive, stick to your chosen topic, and keep it between 800 and 1500 words. And be prepared to get flamed if/when it runs, because no matter what you say, *somebody* will disagree with it.;-)
How about making your articles less Linux-centric? After all, aren't we "all in this together?" Isn't it "all about choice?"
Sam, instead of complaining about other people's articles, why don't *you* write an intelligent piece espousing *your* point of view and send it to me? My e-mail address is no secret.:)
There's a difference between rumor and fact. I hear so many rumors every day that I could fill a dozen Slashdots with them and still have enough left over to keep Matt Drudge in business.;-)
Hart Scientific makes highly accurate temperature calibration equipment. Back when I was still a hands-on electronics guy, I had a pair of their controlled - temperature baths in my calibration lab. They were excellent, highly reliable pieces of equipment. And since they had no microprocessors in them, I'm sure those same Hart baths will be in use long after all the Y2K nonsense is forgotten.
Don't worry. There are plenty of Linux users and developers with fine senses of humor. I know a bunch of them. It's just that the nasties often get more vocal than the good people.
Slashdot Moderators are thousands of (logged in) readers, not a closed editorial cabal. A Slashdot member named Matt Wilkie suggested that we let the Moderators select the questions instead of doing it behind closed editorial doors. Matt's idea was Good, so it has been adopted.
Since Slashdot Moderators are both numerous and anonymous, the question selection process is essentially open source, but by limiting it to registered Slashdot members, it is protected from the "Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf" abuses you see in so many online polls.
This is not a big deal when we're interviewing Slashdot-hip people like Shabbir and Jonah, Illiad, Bruce Perens or Mandrake. But imagine how perverted things could get if we let someone like, say, Al Gore, pick his own questions or "pack the house" with Anonymous Cowards who would choose nothing but softball questions.
And yes, I've invited Gore. I've talked to Ben Green, his Webmaster, campaign manager Tony Coelho, and interview scheduler Roger Salazar, but none of them seem able to give out a decisive "yes" or "no" answer. Sad. We gave Vice President Gore a chance to be the first big-time politician ever interviewed on Slashdot, and his campaign staff is apparently in such disarray that it looks like he's going to blow the opportunity because of what I am told are "scheduling problems." Like it's that big a deal to spend 20 or 30 minutes responding to some e-mail.
If anyone has suggestions about other possible Slashdot interview candidates, I'd love to hear them.
Hmmm. Jesse Ventura'd probably be up for something like this. I think I'll e-mail his people now. (Just thinking out loud...)
Geeks Into the Streets is a Baltimore area ad-hoc group that works to bring 'net access to poor children. Jeff Covey, who started the whole thing, maintains Andover's Linux.DaveCentral site. Our good friend Joe "the mad Russian" Valadorsky of Amnet Computer contributed a LOT of equipment and expertise, and a whole LOT of others have chipped in with parts, labor, advice, and encouragement.
All of this was an outgrowth of the UMBC LUG that meets at University of Maryland Baltimore County.
Any LUG could do this. This just happens to be an excellent, very helpful and public-minded bunch. If you want to learn more about how your LUG could do something similar, please contact either me or Jeff. We're both *more than happy* to help other people get involved in community "geek outreach projects" by starting their own ad-hoc groups.
It's still alpha, according to the guy who made the Web site. I say, cut him a break and give him time, maybe offer to help him out with some new features. And I'll bet he's reading these comments and saying "Yep, ought to support ftp install, sure should, as soon as I have time," unless it's already on his "to do" list...
You mean like at Linux Expo, where the Red Hat girls were trying to drag guys (including me) onto the empty dance floor in the giant barn-of-a-bar RH rented for their party? I remember that. I was chatting with people I'd only met before through e-mail while swilling free booze, as was about 45% of the crowd. Another 45% gathered around assorted video games, using free tokens RH gave out. Then there was the beach volleyball game, which sucked up the remaining 10%.
I hardly saw any males on that dance floor, but it was a great party anyway, and RH got mucho "Good People" points IMO for throwing it. It'll probably be the same at LW, even though, from what I hear, many/most of Andover's female employees will be there.
Once upon a time, we called these "Bulletin Boards," and many of them, across the U.S. and around the world, were linked through something called FIDOnet. This was back when the Internet was strictly for academics and govvies. Seems to me I still have all the old (DOS) software needed to set up a an old-fashioned loca; BBS & connect it to FIDO around here somewhere, and I bet I still have a 5.25" floppy drive somewhere out in the storage shed that'll read those old disks, too. You never know...
Slashdot Mirror
I openly said I changed the story four times, and I had the 'nads to not only sign my name but to make it easy to get hold of me. There will be a follow-up story when we get more info. Relax.
Modified four times, actually. And we didn't even think about running it at all until I had word from someone else, even though off-the-record, that this was not something cooked up by Amazon. I am probably going to knock off and have a drink now. More info will come, I'm sure.
They get you someplace else. I spent a year in Texas once. No income tax, but car registration was high as hell. Delaware has no sales tax, but big highway tolls and some other "hidden" fees. Commercial limo licenses there, for example, are high as hell.
BTW, Maryland (where I live now) *theoretically* has the power to levy sales taxes on items bought out of state and shipped here, no matter how you ordered those goods. Now and then a state official rants about this, but then someone saner realizes that enforcement would cost more than any revenue enforcement could possibly generate and the idea dies down for a year or two.
If you want to see a *real* tax rip, check hotel taxes. Tourists don't vote, and locals don't usually stay in local hotels, so they're easy to levy without getting flak. They're over 10% in some places, including some states and localities that have low or no sales or income taxes -- and no, you don't get to duck the tax if you reserve the room online.
Oh, come on. Rob Malda's, um, "linguistic inconsistencies" are part of his folksy charm. Think of his unique approach to the English language as a feature, not a bug. Sure, I could clean up Rob's spelling and grammatical errors, and then I could go through all my old blues, country, and rock 'n roll albums and publish the "corrected" lyrics. Do you really want me to do this?
;-)
/. comment I've seen -- including yours -- that criticizes Rob Malda's writing contains at least one glaring grammatical or spelling error. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone..."
I'd rather leave Rob Malda (and Muddy Waters) alone, and I'm the Official Boss Editor for all of Andover's Linux-related sites and you're not, so deal with it. bucko.
- Robin "roblimo" Miller
PS - Every single
The threat is old. Maybe when I have a minute I'll call Unisys and get the real story. Right now all I see are pointers to the same 5-year-old page on the Unisys site.
This "news" is five years old. Unisys gave up on the idea long ago. Why has it suddenly resurfaced as a big scare story?
Hey! I was in DC wearing a vest yesterday myself, first at the Mayflower and later at the Omni Shoreham (hotels). I've been wearing vests for years. See http://way.nu/limo for the reason why.
;-)
And while I'm in the UMBC-LUG, not DC, I get to DC-LUG meetings now and then. If you spot me at one, please feel free to say "Hi" even though I don't usually wear vests to them.
- Robin
I called the St. George Police Department through its published non-emergency phone number, verified Officer Stebbins' identity, and chatted with him personally (by phone) before posting the story. Note the emphasis on using a *published* phone number for initial contact. It is as easy to spoof a phone number as an e-mail address; all you have to do is claim you're giving out a "private line."
Without proper verification, this story would not have run. Period.
Robin "roblimo" Miller
roblimo@slashdot.org
Can't speak for the moderators, but I can assure you that all questions sent to Abe are ones that were moderated up to 2+ or higher. The only real question screening beyond that is weeding out posts that got moderated high, but aren't questions.
- Robin
Just "Reading" the questions here lets the interviewee choose which questions he or she answers. No big deal with someone like Mandrake, Illiad or Abe, all of whom read Slashdot, but what about when we start interviewing politicians and corporate types? That crowd will duck hard questions every time if you let them. It's better for us to send them a list of qustions, and if they decline to answer some of them, that'll tell us something about them, too.
;-)
There are three other reasons not to let interview subjects simply come in and post: 1) For those unfamiliar with Slashdot, wading through all the "first post" and "this is gay" garbage to find the Real Questions takes too long. It saves time to do it by e-mail. 2) We don't pick the questions for at least 24 hours, because we have readers (and moderators) all over the world and want them all to have a chance to participate -- and we don't want a rushed interview subject to only see the first 20 or 30 posts, which might all be from North America. So we wait, THEN we choose. 3) Slashdot stories have (let's face it) a short shelf life. By making each interview a two-post thing, we avoid having the answers buried behind 100 stories that went up between the time we post the "call for questions" and the actual Q&A post.
The *easiest* way for us to handle interviews would be simply call people up and ask them questions in traditional newspaper style, but that woould not allow any community participation. Wouldn't you rather have the chance to ask (fill in here) your *own* questions instead of letting me or Rob or Jeff or Justin come up with all of them?
If nothing else, we're getting some interesting (even bizarre) questions from readers that would NEVER get asked anywhere else.
- Robin
I'm saying, write a piece *for* Slashdot. If it's well-written, original, and on-topic, it'll run.
I didn't miss his point at all. I offered Sam a chance to do something positive instead of complaining. You can do the same. ESR makes his points in a logical manner and signs his name to them. If you don't think ESR's piece was intelligent, go ahead and write one that is. Be original instead of reactive, stick to your chosen topic, and keep it between 800 and 1500 words. And be prepared to get flamed if/when it runs, because no matter what you say, *somebody* will disagree with it. ;-)
How about making your articles less Linux-centric? After all, aren't we "all in this together?" Isn't it "all about choice?"
:)
Sam, instead of complaining about other people's articles, why don't *you* write an intelligent piece espousing *your* point of view and send it to me? My e-mail address is no secret.
Noted and fixed. Thanks.
Of course it was intentional! Glad someone was smart enough to pick up on it in between all the pro and anti-military sidetracking. ;-)
Star Division *already has* a Java version of StarOffice.
There's a difference between rumor and fact. I hear so many rumors every day that I could fill a dozen Slashdots with them and still have enough left over to keep Matt Drudge in business. ;-)
Hart Scientific makes highly accurate temperature calibration equipment. Back when I was still a hands-on electronics guy, I had a pair of their controlled - temperature baths in my calibration lab. They were excellent, highly reliable pieces of equipment. And since they had no microprocessors in them, I'm sure those same Hart baths will be in use long after all the Y2K nonsense is forgotten.
Don't worry. There are plenty of Linux users and developers with fine senses of humor. I know a bunch of them. It's just that the nasties often get more vocal than the good people.
Slashdot Moderators are thousands of (logged in) readers, not a closed editorial cabal. A Slashdot member named Matt Wilkie suggested that we let the Moderators select the questions instead of doing it behind closed editorial doors. Matt's idea was Good, so it has been adopted.
Since Slashdot Moderators are both numerous and anonymous, the question selection process is essentially open source, but by limiting it to registered Slashdot members, it is protected from the "Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf" abuses you see in so many online polls.
This is not a big deal when we're interviewing Slashdot-hip people like Shabbir and Jonah, Illiad, Bruce Perens or Mandrake. But imagine how perverted things could get if we let someone like, say, Al Gore, pick his own questions or "pack the house" with Anonymous Cowards who would choose nothing but softball questions.
And yes, I've invited Gore. I've talked to Ben Green, his Webmaster, campaign manager Tony Coelho, and interview scheduler Roger Salazar, but none of them seem able to give out a decisive "yes" or "no" answer. Sad. We gave Vice President Gore a chance to be the first big-time politician ever interviewed on Slashdot, and his campaign staff is apparently in such disarray that it looks like he's going to blow the opportunity because of what I am told are "scheduling problems." Like it's that big a deal to spend 20 or 30 minutes responding to some e-mail.
If anyone has suggestions about other possible Slashdot interview candidates, I'd love to hear them.
Hmmm. Jesse Ventura'd probably be up for something like this. I think I'll e-mail his people now. (Just thinking out loud...)
Geeks Into the Streets is a Baltimore area ad-hoc group that works to bring 'net access to poor children. Jeff Covey, who started the whole thing, maintains Andover's Linux.DaveCentral site. Our good friend Joe "the mad Russian" Valadorsky of Amnet Computer contributed a LOT of equipment and expertise, and a whole LOT of others have chipped in with parts, labor, advice, and encouragement.
All of this was an outgrowth of the UMBC LUG that meets at University of Maryland Baltimore County.
Any LUG could do this. This just happens to be an excellent, very helpful and public-minded bunch. If you want to learn more about how your LUG could do something similar, please contact either me or Jeff. We're both *more than happy* to help other people get involved in community "geek outreach projects" by starting their own ad-hoc groups.
It's still alpha, according to the guy who made the Web site. I say, cut him a break and give him time, maybe offer to help him out with some new features. And I'll bet he's reading these comments and saying "Yep, ought to support ftp install, sure should, as soon as I have time," unless it's already on his "to do" list...
You mean like at Linux Expo, where the Red Hat girls were trying to drag guys (including me) onto the empty dance floor in the giant barn-of-a-bar RH rented for their party? I remember that. I was chatting with people I'd only met before through e-mail while swilling free booze, as was about 45% of the crowd. Another 45% gathered around assorted video games, using free tokens RH gave out. Then there was the beach volleyball game, which sucked up the remaining 10%.
I hardly saw any males on that dance floor, but it was a great party anyway, and RH got mucho "Good People" points IMO for throwing it. It'll probably be the same at LW, even though, from what I hear, many/most of Andover's female employees will be there.
Once upon a time, we called these "Bulletin Boards," and many of them, across the U.S. and around the world, were linked through something called FIDOnet. This was back when the Internet was strictly for academics and govvies. Seems to me I still have all the old (DOS) software needed to set up a an old-fashioned loca; BBS & connect it to FIDO around here somewhere, and I bet I still have a 5.25" floppy drive somewhere out in the storage shed that'll read those old disks, too. You never know...
It's about halfway through the article, in the third paragraph past the subhead, "Loss leader."