But doesn't Eugene also allow women to walk around topless in public? Or is that just an urban legend. Seriosuly. From what I've heard, it's probably the most socially liberal community in the US.
Sidestepping the undemocratic leanings of this rant, we get to ask ourselves one question. What could be more offtopic than a nontechnical, newbie hack preaching to hackers on the net's numero uno technical weblog?
[snip]
If you're too thick to understand it (what's to understand?) why do you continue to read it? Who are you trying to impress?
[snip]
Maybe if you thought about things before engaging MSWord you might be more esteemed as a writer than a pissweak cluebie.
ad hominem - attacking the man rather than the argument. Also known as flaming.
Let's put it to a poll. It's gotta beat "What's your favourite number?" and "Who's your favourite Khan?" anyday.
I like this idea, though poll stuffing would be a huge issue.
8. I have been railing against Microsoftism before most of you were programming.
I started in 1981 (with the ZX81). You've been flaming Microsoft for 19 years? Clever boy. Care to post a URL?
Katz wrote "most", not all. Most is an ambiguous term describing a portion of the set, not the full set. You, logically then, would be outside of the set. E.g., Most people on Slashdot run Linux as their primary OS. I use a Mac. (Need Quark, amongst other things.) Therefore I am not most people.
On his writing style. I really see nothing wrong with it... Katz is far from terse, and that comes from cutting his teeth by writing books and feature articles for magazines. Unlike other print forms (i.e. newspapers), editing for length is not much of a problem. You just slap in another signet and sell some more ads or add in some filler content instead of cutting an article. (Wonder why books often have tons of blank pages at the beginning or end? Filling out the signatures.)
As for the short paragraphs in his usual posts, that's a good thing. Short chunks of information are easier to read on-screen. Would you prefer 50-line paragraphs, or 5 line paragraphs? (Pending screen width, of course.) This is what you do when you need to present information in a dense, cluttered layout.
Jon Katz is an idiot. And so are you for not providing a valid argument. If you don't like Katz, don't read Katz. I know the filters didn't catch these last few articles, and that's a technical issue, not something to blame Jon about. Regardless, if you see a story about Katz, by Katz, etc. don't read it if you don't want to. All you're doing by posting and pissing and moaning is giving/. a few more page views on a Katz article. It doesn't take that much of an IQ to realise that the more page views Katz gets, the more you'll see of him.
If you want the filters fixed, I'd suggest emailing Rob or Hemos directly so they can directly evaluate the need.
Personal attacks. Interesting that so many people attack Jon for (supposedly) flaming Q*bert while in the same paragraph, they flame Jon on personal grounds. It's also interesting that many of the posts criticizing Jon's writing style are the most ill-edited pieces of drivel in the forums.
Perhaps an issue which few have addressed is that far too many people simply give away their right to privacy. Example: Many states use your social security number as your drivers license number. Also, many people put their SS# on their checks. (Stupid, stupid, stupid.)
The ACLU has started to get proactive on the privacy issue. Consider that the ACLU has been entrenched and accepted (or, at the very least, acknowledge) in American socio-politcal much longer than the EFF. It is a valid authority to which one can plea. Check the Link.
Earlier a few people (myself included) theorized that this whole issue is about enacting a bit of vengence upon those who have "wronged" the Internet.Based on that supposition, here's an off-the-top-of-my-head list to see who might be next:
Yes, they can't keep their system up for more than 2 hours at a time. What I meant, though, was that they really haven't been proactive about pissing people off. (At least to my recollection.)
Apple was really petty decent about getting the patch out. I presume that most of the users that have MacOS 9.0 have had their Macs for awhile or were upgraders: the iMacs and iBooks didn't start shipping with MacOS 9.0 for about 2-3 weeks after its initial release. (Apple included a coupon in the box for a free copy of OS9). And I'm guessing that most people who jumped to a G4 desktop were upgrading or supplanting an existing Mac.
Anyway, just a random bit of nonsense on my behalf. (Oh, my Mac isn't fruit-flavored. It's beige. An old beige clone.)
Take a look at the targets, friends. Someone already mentioned that pillars of morality like GNU.org, W3C.org, etc. aren't (yet -- big yet) being taken down. It's your upstarts who've launched a thousand-squared newbies onto the net, a thousand-squared clueless idiots.
Yahoo.com. Started as a nice little index running in a dorm room. Now? Collects marketing statistics first and foremost and THEN runs an index on a server farm.
ABC. Owned by Disney. (Nuff said.... no offense, Rob.)
eBay. Relatively okay company, but they won't allow outsiders to provide searches into their pages. Not a good thing.
CNN. I don't have a bone to pick with CNN. I'm guessing this is a notierity issue.
Take a look at the rest of the list of currently downed servers then ask yourself, "Who have they pissed off recently?" Judging by other sites others have mentioned prior to this post, it looks as though someone is going after the companies that are pervasively commerializing the Web -- the companies which have fenced off their portion of the commons, and pissed on whatever parcel they left the rest of us.
(And who the hell moderated the original post as a troll? Would somebody please mark it insightful? It'll get fixed in meta-mod., hopefully))
Neat stuff. My grandfather is an aerial chemical applicator (read: spray plane pilot) in North Dakota. I have fond memroies of photocopied, aerial section maps. The resolution was suprisingly good, but nothing would be a 1 meter resolution.
But, say, some Columbian drug lord wanted to guage build up of DEA forces in area Foo. He could go through a proxy, but how deeply would the company check backgrounds for ppossible nefarious uses?
I tried HotJava 3.0 for Mac (*duck* sorry, I NEED Quark) awhile back and I was pleasantly suprised. Need's a decent CSS implementation and I would consider it a somewhat serious contender.
As most of us know already, major search engines use a hush-hush set of algorithms to reduce the number of spam'd enteries. (text set in the same color as the page background, really small text, keyword stuffing, etc.) By releasing the source to their engine, isn't AltaVista bascially giving the thieves keys to the treasure chest?
Been a bit of banter back and forth as to who has the most available computing power. Yeah, NASA probably has several banks of supercomputers chugging along, but Distributed.net's collective MIPS is at the very least a decent match and quite plausibly exceeds NASA's power.
And there is something that no one has mentioned, yet: NASA's supercomputers very likely have something better to do at the moment. NASA is a big agency, one with obvious needs for computing power. Who says that D net has to find the Polar Lander? Why not let D Net do something more mundane like running chaos-based climate iterations or calculating the trajectories of all known objects in space? (You could assign everyone a bit of space junk: Hey look, I got a part of MIR!)
Just a thought... we could break encryption or give SETI yet more redundant cycles. OR, we could do something more practical for NASA.
IAMNP (I am not a programmer), but don't most software patents (inane as they are) apply to the algorithm itself rather than the specific code used to implement the algorithm. If so, a detailed description of the algorithm wouldn't circumvent anything. Of course, one could claim it's an extremely technical new novel:-)
While the Net and the Web were conceived and constructed by men -- who dominated the technical, defense, academic and engineering professions of the 1950's and 1960's -- that's starting to change. Industry surveys show that as many women as men are buying computers now, and women are working in almost every element of the computing industry. But it's unusual to see one posting on sites like this - a surprising reality given that half of the people online are now female. Men start most topics, dominate most conversations.
I find this puzzling... on most of the web design (not backend -- visual design) lists I subscribe to, the population is split equally well between male and females. If anything, females have a slight margin over males. Regardless, everyone's thoughts are respected and the only flames come when someone quotes the freakin' digest when posting.
Actually the only person on these lists who was absolutely merciless to newbies, stupid questions, etc. was a woman.
First I need to disclaim: 1) I know very little about the DNS system, I wish I knew more but I don't. 2) This is mildly off-topic.
My general understanding of the domain system is that it works on a cascading system with the database propagating through the system server to server. If this is true, why not write a little robot to keep track of speculator's listings (eBay alone has several thousand) and simply refuse to resolve the domain to an IP? I know this could get messy on servers with virtual hosting, but I feel it's an interesting concept.
Or just plain stupid. Either way, whadda'ya think?
I'm guessing a lot of it has to do with Jean Louis Gasse (sp? sorry French speakers...). Gasse has always been known as, frankly, an arrogant bastard. Though it's wholly supposition on my part, I wouldn't doubt that he's miffed that Apple wouldn't release specs on the G3 or G4s and, as such, is basically pouting.
Regardless, I really doubt that Be couldn't reverse engineer the specs. If the LinuxPPC guys can do it, certainly Be can as well if they are willing to put the effort into it.Though I've never tried it myself, I believe it is possible to get Be running on a PCI-PowerMac which has been upgraded to a G3. IRC, the G# problems occur with the ROM and and MLB, not the G3 processor itself.
Now on for the real stuff. I'm sure Katz has sent more than a few people on/. an advanced readers editition. If you've read it, I'm really wondering how they are going to handle the story as Katz himself becomes intertwined with the story. The book isn't written as a third-person narrative; rather, Katz is there. Are we going to see someone playing Katz or are we going to see a rewrite to third-person?
Slashdot Mirror
But doesn't Eugene also allow women to walk around topless in public? Or is that just an urban legend. Seriosuly. From what I've heard, it's probably the most socially liberal community in the US.
----
Sidestepping the undemocratic leanings of this rant, we get to ask ourselves one question. What could be more offtopic than a nontechnical, newbie hack preaching to hackers on the net's numero uno technical weblog?
[snip]
If you're too thick to understand it (what's to understand?) why do you continue to read it? Who are you trying to impress?
[snip]
Maybe if you thought about things before engaging MSWord you might be more esteemed as a writer than a pissweak cluebie.
ad hominem - attacking the man rather than the argument. Also known as flaming.
Let's put it to a poll. It's gotta beat "What's your favourite number?" and "Who's your favourite Khan?" anyday.
I like this idea, though poll stuffing would be a huge issue.
8. I have been railing against Microsoftism before most of you were programming.
I started in 1981 (with the ZX81). You've been flaming Microsoft for 19 years? Clever boy. Care to post a URL?
Katz wrote "most", not all. Most is an ambiguous term describing a portion of the set, not the full set. You, logically then, would be outside of the set. E.g., Most people on Slashdot run Linux as their primary OS. I use a Mac. (Need Quark, amongst other things.) Therefore I am not most people.
----
On his writing style. I really see nothing wrong with it... Katz is far from terse, and that comes from cutting his teeth by writing books and feature articles for magazines. Unlike other print forms (i.e. newspapers), editing for length is not much of a problem. You just slap in another signet and sell some more ads or add in some filler content instead of cutting an article. (Wonder why books often have tons of blank pages at the beginning or end? Filling out the signatures.)
As for the short paragraphs in his usual posts, that's a good thing. Short chunks of information are easier to read on-screen. Would you prefer 50-line paragraphs, or 5 line paragraphs? (Pending screen width, of course.) This is what you do when you need to present information in a dense, cluttered layout.
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/writin g/
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/writi ng2/
Jon Katz is an idiot. And so are you for not providing a valid argument. If you don't like Katz, don't read Katz. I know the filters didn't catch these last few articles, and that's a technical issue, not something to blame Jon about. Regardless, if you see a story about Katz, by Katz, etc. don't read it if you don't want to. All you're doing by posting and pissing and moaning is giving /. a few more page views on a Katz article. It doesn't take that much of an IQ to realise that the more page views Katz gets, the more you'll see of him.
If you want the filters fixed, I'd suggest emailing Rob or Hemos directly so they can directly evaluate the need.
Personal attacks. Interesting that so many people attack Jon for (supposedly) flaming Q*bert while in the same paragraph, they flame Jon on personal grounds. It's also interesting that many of the posts criticizing Jon's writing style are the most ill-edited pieces of drivel in the forums.
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I'm serious.
----
Perhaps an issue which few have addressed is that far too many people simply give away their right to privacy. Example: Many states use your social security number as your drivers license number. Also, many people put their SS# on their checks. (Stupid, stupid, stupid.)
The ACLU has started to get proactive on the privacy issue. Consider that the ACLU has been entrenched and accepted (or, at the very least, acknowledge) in American socio-politcal much longer than the EFF. It is a valid authority to which one can plea. Check the Link.
----
Earlier a few people (myself included) theorized that this whole issue is about enacting a bit of vengence upon those who have "wronged" the Internet.Based on that supposition, here's an off-the-top-of-my-head list to see who might be next:
Feel free to add or challenge the above>
Sites that very likely won't be attacked:
Again, feel free to add or challenge.
----
Or DoubleClick ;-)
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Yes, they can't keep their system up for more than 2 hours at a time. What I meant, though, was that they really haven't been proactive about pissing people off. (At least to my recollection.)
----
Apple was really petty decent about getting the patch out. I presume that most of the users that have MacOS 9.0 have had their Macs for awhile or were upgraders: the iMacs and iBooks didn't start shipping with MacOS 9.0 for about 2-3 weeks after its initial release. (Apple included a coupon in the box for a free copy of OS9). And I'm guessing that most people who jumped to a G4 desktop were upgrading or supplanting an existing Mac.
Anyway, just a random bit of nonsense on my behalf. (Oh, my Mac isn't fruit-flavored. It's beige. An old beige clone.)
----
Take a look at the targets, friends. Someone already mentioned that pillars of morality like GNU.org, W3C.org, etc. aren't (yet -- big yet) being taken down. It's your upstarts who've launched a thousand-squared newbies onto the net, a thousand-squared clueless idiots.
Take a look at the rest of the list of currently downed servers then ask yourself, "Who have they pissed off recently?" Judging by other sites others have mentioned prior to this post, it looks as though someone is going after the companies that are pervasively commerializing the Web -- the companies which have fenced off their portion of the commons, and pissed on whatever parcel they left the rest of us.
(And who the hell moderated the original post as a troll? Would somebody please mark it insightful? It'll get fixed in meta-mod., hopefully))
----
Not trying to spoil the book for anyone but, Jon, I gotta ask: What are Jesse and Eric up to now?
----
Neat stuff. My grandfather is an aerial chemical applicator (read: spray plane pilot) in North Dakota. I have fond memroies of photocopied, aerial section maps. The resolution was suprisingly good, but nothing would be a 1 meter resolution.
But, say, some Columbian drug lord wanted to guage build up of DEA forces in area Foo. He could go through a proxy, but how deeply would the company check backgrounds for ppossible nefarious uses?
----
I tried HotJava 3.0 for Mac (*duck* sorry, I NEED Quark) awhile back and I was pleasantly suprised. Need's a decent CSS implementation and I would consider it a somewhat serious contender.
----
As most of us know already, major search engines use a hush-hush set of algorithms to reduce the number of spam'd enteries. (text set in the same color as the page background, really small text, keyword stuffing, etc.) By releasing the source to their engine, isn't AltaVista bascially giving the thieves keys to the treasure chest?
----
Yes but if the university receives taxpayer dollars, it is a public institution and, hence, their network belongs to the people.
----
Been a bit of banter back and forth as to who has the most available computing power. Yeah, NASA probably has several banks of supercomputers chugging along, but Distributed.net's collective MIPS is at the very least a decent match and quite plausibly exceeds NASA's power.
And there is something that no one has mentioned, yet: NASA's supercomputers very likely have something better to do at the moment. NASA is a big agency, one with obvious needs for computing power. Who says that D net has to find the Polar Lander? Why not let D Net do something more mundane like running chaos-based climate iterations or calculating the trajectories of all known objects in space? (You could assign everyone a bit of space junk: Hey look, I got a part of MIR!)
Just a thought... we could break encryption or give SETI yet more redundant cycles. OR, we could do something more practical for NASA.
----
52nd State? Counting Norway as 51? ;-)
Seriously though, who is number 51 then?
----
IAMNP (I am not a programmer), but don't most software patents (inane as they are) apply to the algorithm itself rather than the specific code used to implement the algorithm. If so, a detailed description of the algorithm wouldn't circumvent anything. Of course, one could claim it's an extremely technical new novel :-)
----
I find this puzzling... on most of the web design (not backend -- visual design) lists I subscribe to, the population is split equally well between male and females. If anything, females have a slight margin over males. Regardless, everyone's thoughts are respected and the only flames come when someone quotes the freakin' digest when posting.
Actually the only person on these lists who was absolutely merciless to newbies, stupid questions, etc. was a woman.
----
Of course I can't write HTML. I do it for a living, after all.
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Funnier yet, take a look at the href="http://auctions.yahoo.com/booth/mycallcenter ">domains they currently have up for auction
hmmph. Nary a bidder does not a happy squatter make. Good.
----
First I need to disclaim: 1) I know very little about the DNS system, I wish I knew more but I don't. 2) This is mildly off-topic.
My general understanding of the domain system is that it works on a cascading system with the database propagating through the system server to server. If this is true, why not write a little robot to keep track of speculator's listings (eBay alone has several thousand) and simply refuse to resolve the domain to an IP? I know this could get messy on servers with virtual hosting, but I feel it's an interesting concept.
Or just plain stupid. Either way, whadda'ya think?
----
This guy has a lot of integrity or, at the very least, is one hell of a showman. What would truly be funny is if he donated the money to OSS.
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I'm guessing a lot of it has to do with Jean Louis Gasse (sp? sorry French speakers...). Gasse has always been known as, frankly, an arrogant bastard. Though it's wholly supposition on my part, I wouldn't doubt that he's miffed that Apple wouldn't release specs on the G3 or G4s and, as such, is basically pouting.
Regardless, I really doubt that Be couldn't reverse engineer the specs. If the LinuxPPC guys can do it, certainly Be can as well if they are willing to put the effort into it.Though I've never tried it myself, I believe it is possible to get Be running on a PCI-PowerMac which has been upgraded to a G3. IRC, the G# problems occur with the ROM and and MLB, not the G3 processor itself.
----
First, congrats, Jon!
Now on for the real stuff. I'm sure Katz has sent more than a few people on /. an advanced readers editition. If you've read it, I'm really wondering how they are going to handle the story as Katz himself becomes intertwined with the story. The book isn't written as a third-person narrative; rather, Katz is there. Are we going to see someone playing Katz or are we going to see a rewrite to third-person?
----