Here are the web design mistakes that I found after just a cursory glance at the entry and front page:
Time-wasting, bandwidth-using useless entry page
Status-bar-smashing Javascript that gives cute messages, preventing me from seeing where I'm going (ever tried driving down the highway blindfolded? What makes you think you should do it on the 'Information Superhighway?')
Links that open in new windows (if I want a new window, I'll *ask* for one.) Yes, the rest of the web will look like this in 6 months, because the rest of the web will duplicate these mistakes.
On the other hand, the commentary on the main page is nice.
'Twas 2000, and the FSF Did hack and wibble in the wabe, All caffeinated were the borogoves, And the l33t hax0rs 0u7gr4b3.
"Beware the Microsoft, my son! The bugs that glare, the clauses that grab! Beware the browser integration, and shun The frumious file.cab!"
He took his vorpal source in hand, Long time the bogus foe he sought. So rested he by the CVS tree And stood a while in swap.
And as in grinding swap he stood, The Microsoft, with bugs unnamed Came crashing through the tulgey wood, And GPF'd as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through His vorpal source went snicker-hack. He left it blue-screened, and with its windows cleaned He went gallumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Microsoft? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! Callooh, callay! O frabjous day!" He chortled in his joy.
'Twas 2000, and the FSF Did wire and wibble in the wabe, All caffeinated were the borogoves, And the l33t hax0rs 0u7gr4b3.
I wrote this just now. I deserve a pat on the back. Thank you.
The helldesk has got a bit too big for its boots, but the BOFH has a cunning plan to knock them down to size...
I'm sitting at my desk when the PFY looks up from his task of helping users with performance problems on the back-up server.
"Hey, the Kill-9 command isn't working."
"Yeah, I rewrote it with better signals. Ones with more meaning than words like hang up."
"Well what are they?"
"They're a mixed bag - everything a discerning system administrator needs."
"And they are?"
"Let's see, there's Kill-Godfather, which is a quick shot to the back of the process's header in a quiet corner of process space, and also, while it's at it, leaves a GIF of a horse's head in their screen-saver bitmap."
"Lovely, I'm sure."
"Then there's Kill-CIA, which kills the process and makes it look like natural causes."
"Uh-huh."
"Of course, further investigation of the core file reveals the words, 'grassy knoll,' which is sure to get the furry-toothed guys in research reaching for the dandelion tea."
"Yes..."
"Ahhhhh, Kill-shotgun, for when you can't remember the whole of the process's PID - it just kills anything in that vicinity. Kill-driveby, which knocks off one process on either side of the specified one, and so on."
"It's a little overboard isn't it?" the PFY asks mildly.
"No, Kill-overboard kills all processes, e-mails a nasty message to Bill Gates about how badly we're abusing our Microsoft licenses, then writes garbage all over the kernel causing the system to crash. Oh, and tampers with a couple of things on your desktop machine."
"Hey, the system's just gone down."
"Yeah -overboard is the default if your username is helpdesk. Installed SUID too, so they have the power they've been bleating about needing all this time."
The phone rings and something tells me it's the helpdesk wanting to complain. There's no pleasing some people.
silsor> cool - a Linux Credit Card. king-> i'll get 2.2.12 Ham> silsor: that is cool, where? king-> sli: who distributes it? GNU? silsor> DeBehr: do you have inetd and stuff running? RelDrgn> Ham: hehe tubular bells is fun when you need something to occupy/dev/dsp for 10 minutes king->:| silsor> Ham: king-: www.slashdot.org - GNU? hahahaha! king-> s/sli/silsor/ king-> silsor -> i don't go there:D king-> it's the MSN of linux Ham> GPL'd credit card. You can modify your credit history! silsor> king-: is not. That's www.redhat.com cherem> heh king-> oh yeah king-> heh Ham> or anyone's, for that matter cherem> silsor: no,/. is MSN for Linux cherem> RH is just MS * cherem shudders. king-> i'm waiting to see a big gay MSN logo at the top of redhat.com silsor> Ham: and every store that accepts the GPL'd card has to allow access to their finances cherem> argh silsor> king-: amen. * Rootus realizes that all his servers runs MS , oh my god! king-> http://www.freespeech.org/owf/msn/ Rootus>:) cherem> JServ needs to be more verbose about its internals.:( RelDrgn> hahaha/. slashdotted segfault, again:P cherem> we have one sunos server, and about 15 NT Ham> silsor: and while you can pay for the packaging, support and transport, you can't pay for the actual product.
Don't forget that even the most convoluted and brilliant Life configuration is only a speck next to the obscenely complicated miracle that is human life. We've got a loong way to go.
Aren't we forgetting something?
on
High Tech Junk
·
· Score: 1
Not everything uses VMs running on VMs and 256MB RAM. My 8088 is an excellent dumb terminal in my bedroom. My 386 is an excellent fileserver. My Pentium 75 is an excellent workstation. And so on. If you start breathing heavily when you see a Palm Pilot, remember that your old box you were going to throw away has ten times the capabilities! Go play Zork! Use Lynx! Use a command-line interface! Screw the ability to play a 3D game by raytracing images in realtime! Some of the greatest software in the world was written on these old machines. I've spent hours playing the old games with simple graphics instead of Quake at 800x600.
My point is, old machines are *not* obsolete. They just don't run the stuff you don't need. Keep one up-to-date box if you really must join distributed.net, and keep an army of 486's in the basement! They're fun to experiment on, you don't have to worry about blowing them up when you attach an accelerator to the cooling fan, and you can get them cheap in mass quantities if you ever need to build an experimental cluster or a neural net or pull some kind of neat robotics hack.
suit #1: Larry, we've been looking at your profile, and it's quite good. We've heard a lot about your work and are interested in hiring you.
larry: DUDE! (shakes hands, exits)
suit #2: Suit #1, I took a close look at Larry's Extended Media Record. It seems he reads Slashdot a lot, and he still likes to watch dissenting shows like "World's Stupidest Politicians" and "Capitalist Pig Barbecue". I think we shouldn't hire him; this negative media could have influenced him to think for himself. He may not agree with our views.
suit #1: Gee, Suit #2, you're right! Actually, I've noticed that a lot of geeks and hackers are like that. Maybe we should hire more of those shirt-and-tie computer people from now on.
suit #2: You're right. Heck, most of those hacker types probably still think that 2+2=4.
A Quad Xeon, for those of you who don't know, is a Studly Machine. Linus Torvalds has one (at home I think) - when it was delivered the truck guy got confused because his house didn't have a loading bay. It compiles the kernel (heck, it compiles ASS) in under 60 seconds. 128 of those boxes in one place, in one Beowulf cluster... I think I'm going to have an orgasm.
The practice of teaching evolution theory doesn't need to be banned - just put in its proper place. Students should be taught that it is only an theory, and allowed to accept it or to hold their own opinions. Students should also be taught that evolution is an unscientific theory, because it violates the second law of thermodynamics (note: when a theory violates a scientific law, the theory is unscientific).
Get real. Everybody knows that Real Hackers don't use copy con to write code. We don't need such sissy little steps. REAL Hackers use COPY CON PROGRAM.EXE
Ever seen Lizbekistan? It was more of a parody of real government than anything else, and is closing soon, but it was the same general concept. Hopefully this one is of a more serious, genuinely experimental nature.
How are you supposed to crack a server that's only running on port 80? And how are you supposed to crack it if it's going on and off like a lightbulb? Somebody swamped microsoft2000test yesterday, then it crashed and they brought up a duplicate, then somebody took out both of the nameservers, then they went back up, but both servers were down... Now they've switched nameservers totally, but the site's still out for the count. I think this is a pretty shoddy deal if you ask me.
--- pinging www.windows2000test.com, please wait... --- sending to www.windows2000test.com [207.46.171.196],
But seriously, who are they trying to fool with the "remote disabling" bit? That's ridiculously easy to break. Look out for disable-command blockers on the crack sites.
Anybody have information on how likely it is that this can be opposed successfully? How will the process go about? Can it be challenged legally, politically, or just by popular favour? The bureaucracy can't be entirely the pawn of big business. How long will it take?
Do they really think that even the lamest of the "31337" are going to waste their time downloading over a gigabyte of movie where "use the force" sounds like "OORGH A WORTTSHK!" and you can't see half the screen when they can go into a theater, plunk down a few bucks and watch it with surround sound? Even if they have to wait a week or two? And if you have a bad connection, the movie will be *released* before you have time to download the whole thing! Assuming a few jerks with no life actually download it, they're going to go see it in theaters anyway because it sucked so bad on the little screen. Oh, no! Lucas is going to lose a couple thousand bucks on this, at least!
I reported this two days ago in a post to the BO2K/Open Source thing. It stayed at a score of 1, though. Now watch them moderate this one to -2 for being off-topic. Just you watch. They're all against me.
Slashdot Mirror
Time-wasting, bandwidth-using useless entry page
Status-bar-smashing Javascript that gives cute messages, preventing me from seeing where I'm going (ever tried driving down the highway blindfolded? What makes you think you should do it on the 'Information Superhighway?')
Links that open in new windows (if I want a new window, I'll *ask* for one.)
Yes, the rest of the web will look like this in 6 months, because the rest of the web will duplicate these mistakes.
On the other hand, the commentary on the main page is nice.
'Twas 2000, and the FSF
Did hack and wibble in the wabe,
All caffeinated were the borogoves,
And the l33t hax0rs 0u7gr4b3.
"Beware the Microsoft, my son!
The bugs that glare, the clauses that grab!
Beware the browser integration, and shun
The frumious file.cab!"
He took his vorpal source in hand,
Long time the bogus foe he sought.
So rested he by the CVS tree
And stood a while in swap.
And as in grinding swap he stood,
The Microsoft, with bugs unnamed
Came crashing through the tulgey wood,
And GPF'd as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
His vorpal source went snicker-hack.
He left it blue-screened, and with its windows cleaned
He went gallumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Microsoft?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Callooh, callay! O frabjous day!"
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas 2000, and the FSF
Did wire and wibble in the wabe,
All caffeinated were the borogoves,
And the l33t hax0rs 0u7gr4b3.
I wrote this just now. I deserve a pat on the back. Thank you.
The helldesk has got a bit too big for its boots, but the BOFH has a cunning plan to knock them down to size...
I'm sitting at my desk when the PFY looks up from his task of helping users with performance problems on the back-up server.
"Hey, the Kill-9 command isn't working."
"Yeah, I rewrote it with better signals. Ones with more meaning than words like hang up."
"Well what are they?"
"They're a mixed bag - everything a discerning system administrator needs."
"And they are?"
"Let's see, there's Kill-Godfather, which is a quick shot to the back of the process's header in a quiet corner of process space, and also, while it's at it, leaves a GIF of a horse's head in their screen-saver bitmap."
"Lovely, I'm sure."
"Then there's Kill-CIA, which kills the process and makes it look like natural causes."
"Uh-huh."
"Of course, further investigation of the core file reveals the words, 'grassy knoll,' which is sure to get the furry-toothed guys in research reaching for the dandelion tea."
"Yes..."
"Ahhhhh, Kill-shotgun, for when you can't remember the whole of the process's PID - it just kills anything in that vicinity. Kill-driveby, which knocks off one process on either side of the specified one, and so on."
"It's a little overboard isn't it?" the PFY asks mildly.
"No, Kill-overboard kills all processes, e-mails a nasty message to Bill Gates about how badly we're abusing our Microsoft licenses, then writes garbage all over the kernel causing the system to crash. Oh, and tampers with a couple of things on your desktop machine."
"Hey, the system's just gone down."
"Yeah -overboard is the default if your username is helpdesk. Installed SUID too, so they have the power they've been bleating about needing all this time."
The phone rings and something tells me it's the helpdesk wanting to complain. There's no pleasing some people.
silsor> cool - a Linux Credit Card. /dev/dsp for 10 minutes :| :D /. is MSN for Linux :) :( /. slashdotted segfault, again :P
king-> i'll get 2.2.12
Ham> silsor: that is cool, where?
king-> sli: who distributes it? GNU?
silsor> DeBehr: do you have inetd and stuff running?
RelDrgn> Ham: hehe tubular bells is fun when you need something to occupy
king->
silsor> Ham: king-: www.slashdot.org - GNU? hahahaha!
king-> s/sli/silsor/
king-> silsor -> i don't go there
king-> it's the MSN of linux
Ham> GPL'd credit card. You can modify your credit history!
silsor> king-: is not. That's www.redhat.com
cherem> heh
king-> oh yeah
king-> heh
Ham> or anyone's, for that matter
cherem> silsor: no,
cherem> RH is just MS
* cherem shudders.
king-> i'm waiting to see a big gay MSN logo at the top of redhat.com
silsor> Ham: and every store that accepts the GPL'd card has to allow access to their finances
cherem> argh
silsor> king-: amen.
* Rootus realizes that all his servers runs MS , oh my god!
king-> http://www.freespeech.org/owf/msn/
Rootus>
cherem> JServ needs to be more verbose about its internals.
RelDrgn> hahaha
cherem> we have one sunos server, and about 15 NT
Ham> silsor: and while you can pay for the packaging, support and transport, you can't pay for the actual product.
Here's a hilarious quote from a related article on C|NET:
"If our customers say, 'ship it,' then this is the one. But if we still have work to do, we'll work on the product until we get it right."
That was said by Craig Beilinson, Microsoft's lead product manager for Windows 2000.
Don't forget that even the most convoluted and brilliant Life configuration is only a speck next to the obscenely complicated miracle that is human life. We've got a loong way to go.
Not everything uses VMs running on VMs and 256MB RAM. My 8088 is an excellent dumb terminal in my bedroom. My 386 is an excellent fileserver. My Pentium 75 is an excellent workstation. And so on. If you start breathing heavily when you see a Palm Pilot, remember that your old box you were going to throw away has ten times the capabilities! Go play Zork! Use Lynx! Use a command-line interface! Screw the ability to play a 3D game by raytracing images in realtime! Some of the greatest software in the world was written on these old machines. I've spent hours playing the old games with simple graphics instead of Quake at 800x600.
My point is, old machines are *not* obsolete. They just don't run the stuff you don't need. Keep one up-to-date box if you really must join distributed.net, and keep an army of 486's in the basement! They're fun to experiment on, you don't have to worry about blowing them up when you attach an accelerator to the cooling fan, and you can get them cheap in mass quantities if you ever need to build an experimental cluster or a neural net or pull some kind of neat robotics hack.
I say long live the veteran computers!
Scene: Rattaca, Inc.
suit #1: Larry, we've been looking at your profile, and it's quite good. We've heard a lot about your work and are interested in hiring you.
larry: DUDE! (shakes hands, exits)
suit #2: Suit #1, I took a close look at Larry's Extended Media Record. It seems he reads Slashdot a lot, and he still likes to watch dissenting shows like "World's Stupidest Politicians" and "Capitalist Pig Barbecue". I think we shouldn't hire him; this negative media could have influenced him to think for himself. He may not agree with our views.
suit #1: Gee, Suit #2, you're right! Actually, I've noticed that a lot of geeks and hackers are like that. Maybe we should hire more of those shirt-and-tie computer people from now on.
suit #2: You're right. Heck, most of those hacker types probably still think that 2+2=4.
Exeunt.
Annoy a politician today - THINK!
Justin, fix your link. It's busted up.
Here's C|NET's version.
A Quad Xeon, for those of you who don't know, is a Studly Machine. Linus Torvalds has one (at home I think) - when it was delivered the truck guy got confused because his house didn't have a loading bay. It compiles the kernel (heck, it compiles ASS) in under 60 seconds.
128 of those boxes in one place, in one Beowulf cluster... I think I'm going to have an orgasm.
The theory of evolution is also unscientific, because it breaks a natural law (the second law of thermodynamics).
The practice of teaching evolution theory doesn't need to be banned - just put in its proper place. Students should be taught that it is only an theory, and allowed to accept it or to hold their own opinions. Students should also be taught that evolution is an unscientific theory, because it violates the second law of thermodynamics (note: when a theory violates a scientific law, the theory is unscientific).
Get real. Everybody knows that Real Hackers don't use copy con to write code. We don't need such sissy little steps. REAL Hackers use COPY CON PROGRAM.EXE
Ever seen Lizbekistan? It was more of a parody of real government than anything else, and is closing soon, but it was the same general concept. Hopefully this one is of a more serious, genuinely experimental nature.
Then each king starts leaving backdoors everywhere...
It could be more hide-and-seek than "King of the Hill".
How are you supposed to crack a server that's only running on port 80? And how are you supposed to crack it if it's going on and off like a lightbulb? Somebody swamped microsoft2000test yesterday, then it crashed and they brought up a duplicate, then somebody took out both of the nameservers, then they went back up, but both servers were down...
Now they've switched nameservers totally, but the site's still out for the count. I think this is a pretty shoddy deal if you ask me.
--- pinging www.windows2000test.com, please wait...
--- sending to www.windows2000test.com [207.46.171.196],
error, ping 1 timed out...
error, ping 2 timed out...
error, ping 3 timed out...
error, ping 4 timed out...
error, ping 5 timed out...
--- ping statistics for www.windows2000test.com
5 packets transmitted, 0 received
Scary to think about being RBL'd (Realtime Black Hole, remember?) by a superintelligence...
I got a Javascript error for Win32 Netscape, too. Interestingly enough, the site works perfectly under Internet Explorer.
Get a frigging STANDARD!!!
I reckon if we all pitch in we can knock him up a rank or two.
Don't forget that the century doesn't end until December 31, 2000! We've still got a year (maybe not on the poll, though) to prove what we're made of.
> BTW any Linux user could survive this ordeal if they faced the Blair Witch :) Yeah, she's only got curses - we've got NCurses.
Wheee! We've Slashdotted the world's smallest server. "You big bullies! Pick on something your own size!"
Thank God I live in Canada ;)
But seriously, who are they trying to fool with the "remote disabling" bit? That's ridiculously easy to break. Look out for disable-command blockers on the crack sites.
Anybody have information on how likely it is that this can be opposed successfully? How will the process go about? Can it be challenged legally, politically, or just by popular favour? The bureaucracy can't be entirely the pawn of big business. How long will it take?
Do they really think that even the lamest of the "31337" are going to waste their time downloading over a gigabyte of movie where "use the force" sounds like "OORGH A WORTTSHK!" and you can't see half the screen when they can go into a theater, plunk down a few bucks and watch it with surround sound? Even if they have to wait a week or two? And if you have a bad connection, the movie will be *released* before you have time to download the whole thing! Assuming a few jerks with no life actually download it, they're going to go see it in theaters anyway because it sucked so bad on the little screen. Oh, no! Lucas is going to lose a couple thousand bucks on this, at least!
Here's a link that links to the all of the BOFH collections. If you haven't read them before, do it now.
http://132.185.132.202/
I reported this two days ago in a post to the BO2K/Open Source thing. It stayed at a score of 1, though. Now watch them moderate this one to -2 for being off-topic. Just you watch. They're all against me.