No, I but I do tell them to troll/. for cheap amusement. First time I ever got a sarcastic "Funny" moderation.
It's so easy to troll people who think their smarter than everyone else, having confused an aptitude for computer usage with genuine intellect. Simply act like a complete and utter moron, and you fulfill all the preconceptions they have about ordinary people.
If you want to destroy them, release a better product, for free, that does everything their stuff does, AND convince all the businesses to switch over to it.
Nah, I think I'll just stick to trolling/. instead.
I was trying to point out to Terri Rolle that, in fact, women are sleeping with exactly the men they desire
Terri Rolle doesn't need this pointed out to her since (aside from the fact that it is almost a truism) she wasn't really interested in the question, didn't read ESR's essay, and was simply trolling.
I can't believe I netted so many anonymous cowards with this obvious troll. Let's make sure their wisdom is preserved for the ages:
Re:Yes, this is a joke (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01, @02:38AM EDT (#183)
Hey, thanks! I was wondering how that was possible!
p.s. u r gay
Re:Yes, this is a joke (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01, @03:34AM EDT (#242)
Thank you, citizen, for your Informative and Insightful post. Fuck off newbie scum.
Re:Yes, this is a joke (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01, @08:56AM EDT (#318)
oh, yeah, thanks for the input fuckwit
got any other fantastic revelations for us?
what's that you say? the sky, blue? the earth, round? surely not.
idiot
(last post)
Responsible Gun Ownership
on
Republic.Com
·
· Score: 1
I don't know about in the US, but the view from the outside is that the NRA are a bunch of right-wing loonies. Is this true?
No. Empirical research has demonstrated that gun ownership by law-abiding people reduces crime. The connection is so reliable and well known that finally, Democratic congressmen have chosen not to call for new gun laws even in the wake of recent school shootings. There are other good reasons to own guns that have not been a big part of recent public debate. I consider a few of them here.
Guns are protection from the government. The founding fathers knew it -- the Federalist Papers (29 and 46, for example) tell us it's a good thing for the citizenry to outgun the national government; that the United States would be unique in world history in having an armed, and therefore truly liberated, populace. Court cases following the abolition of slavery established that black Americans, having been freed from slavery, would not be truly free unless their gun-ownership rights were the same as everyone else's.
Guns are safe. Bill Clinton told us not so long ago that 12 children are killed by guns every day in the US. Brace yourself: He lied. The number is 12 only if the definition of "child" reaches up to age 24 and includes gang members killing each other (mostly in New York and California). If you look at children aged 10 and younger, 72 were killed in 1999 by accident, or three children every two weeks in a nation of 280 million. That means 72 terrible tragedies, but it also means that when we adjust statistically for the number of guns against the number of everything else, guns are safer for children than wading pools, bathtubs, bicycles, and cars. Part of this is because 99-point-something percent of parents don't let children play with guns, and most children know that real guns aren't toys. And guns don't go off by themselves. I can find many cases where an armed robbery or murder was committed without a gun. Show me one where a gun did it without a criminal.
Guns make people less violent. The first time I bought a gun, I knew I had a dangerous weapon and should act accordingly. I read the owner's manual carefully, and the language of it was enough to put anyone in awe of one of these devices. Further, any gun owner's manual is packed with invaluable safety information -- it is a primer on responsible behavior in general. This feeling of responsibility extends beyond shooting. I don't do "road rage" now. Having a gun in the car tells me I'm the one in trouble if hostilities occur. When someone cuts me off or tailgates, I deliberately drive safely and courteously and behave to avoid any hard feelings with other drivers. At the same time, I am reassured that if some flipping kook simply decides he wants to hurt me, I'm protected. And I am not unique. The great thing about guns is they have this effect on most all law-abiding owners: Choose any state you want that issues concealed-carry permits and you'll find that civilians with concealed-carry permits are less often accused of violent crimes than are the POLICE in that state.
Guns are good for other things. People collect all sorts of items, from souvenir figurines to stamps. Guns, in their own right, are enjoyable to inspect. Spending my life with relatively junky computer keyboards and mouses, can openers, toaster ovens, and whatever else, it's a pleasure just to look at the parts of even an inexpensive gun when cleaning it. Everything is heavy duty, hardened, and precision made. When the typewriter was being developed in the 19th century, early prototypes were frail, clanky, and unreliable. Few people know that it was a gun maker who saw that the problem was lack of precision manufacture, and who had the equipment to make a functional, reliable typewriter. In the same way that auto racing has provided safety and performance technology to production cars, gun manufacturers have given us developments responsible for who knows what other developments.
It bears mentioning that there are one to two million incidents per year in the U.S.A. where law-abiding people use guns successfully to defend themselves or stop crimes. In over 90% of those cases, the gun isn't even fired. Even radical pacifists should love this. But even if guns weren't interesting, even if they weren't safe, even if they didn't impose a calming effect on owners, and even if they didn't protect us from criminals -- protection from the government -- the only entity legally empowered to use lethal force to get whatever it wants -- is enough. I'll keep mine, thanks.
Yes, blaming spammers is silly. And more important than "who do we blame" is "how do we fix it?"
If the internet is really growing too fast for the routers to handle, disaster could be looming for e-commerce and the economy in general. Perhaps major world governments will have to step in to address the situation.
But what could they do? Maybe they could subsidize improvement of the internet backbone, but that might be too little too late.
Perhaps instead it would be helpful for governments to start rationing bandwidth, and soon. Bandwidth could be allotted to people and industries on the basis of need. That would help ward off an internet "meltdown," while making sure that people who really need bandwidth have access to it.
But that solution might be difficult to implement in a timely manner. Alternatively, a tax on bandwidth might be ideal. It would discourage wasteful use of bandwidth, while remaining practical to implement through existing tax collecting agencies. Those people in (say) the bottom third of income-earners could be exempted from the tax, so that we don't increase the gap between the information haves and have-nots.
I think it is wonderful that the Australians are fighting to protect their children from pornography.
I can't believe how many people here are actually defending defending that filth. I wish we could pass similar laws here in the
states, but free speech zealots have made that next to impossible. They always think about their rights, but never think about the rights of parents who just want to raise their sons and daughters with good clean morals.
I also think outlawing gambling is a wonderful idea. I know many people regard this as an unnecessary intrusion of the the government into people's lives, but let's face it: sometimes the government does know best. Gambling serves no purpose except to part deluded people from their money. It ought to be banned both on- and offline.
It's a shame about those bestiality pictures though. I not very familiar with Australian law, but they must not have very strong protections against sexual harrassment. Any workplace where employees send each other smut is a hostile workplace to women, and the people responsible ought to be sued, if not prosecuted and jailed.
Look at the date on the RFC (Request for Comments) itself. It's April 1. April Fools Day. I have a sneaking suspicion that someone is trying to put one over on us.
I don't know whether it's a joke or not, but it really doesn't matter. Sooner or later Microsoft is going to be forced to release their code under the GPL (GNU Public License) or another Open Source license if they want to be able to compete against Linux. They will probably be very resistant to doing this at first, and they may not do it in time to save their company, but in the end they won't have any other options.
My friends often come to me for advice on investing, since they regard me as something of an expert. I always tell them to get rid of any Microsoft stock that they own. In a couple of years it will be valueless. Why? Their chief product is competing with an Open Source OS that people can get for free. Sooner or later investors are going to realize this and the stock price is going to collapse.
I also advise them to stay away from any mutual funds that have in invested in Microsoft. Not just because of the immediate danger of MS's stock price falling, but because I wouldn't trust any fund manager who hasn't realized what a house of cards that company is.
It seems obvious
to me that aliens would have evolved beyond the need to use computers. Computers are a crutch for weak minded species like humans. You realize that we use only ten percent of our brains?
Aliens would have no systems for us to interface with, so the question is moot.
Also there's the one episode of Star Trek: Voyager in which not just planets but entire species are wiped out, but then they crash Voyager into the time ship and the timeline reverts to the way it was so nobody ever really died... or did they?
Excellent point. The various races in the Star Trek universe seem to be there to provide an outlet for the viewer's racist feelings and unconscious desires to stereotype people different from themselves. And all done while avoiding rousing the ire of civil rights groups by using fictional races. It wouldn't surprise me if plot lines like those above were an attempt to tap into subconscious genocidal urges of the viewing public.
The frightening thing is ESR's complete objectification of women. When will people stop putting up with these stone age attitudes, and start demanding that women be treated as if they were actual human beings?
I'm not suggesting that people are intentionally making racist comments. But really, why do you think that people find the phrase "all you base belong to us" so funny? Doesn't it have anything to do with Westerners' perceptions of East-Asian speech patterns?
You don't need sophisticated analyses to build one, you just need a good quarry, a large workforce and a lot of patience.
It's amazing the lengths that people will go to to prove that the ancients were so much less sophisticated than ourselves.
You don't need sophisticated analyses to build one, you just need a good quarry, a large workforce and a lot of patience[...]All you need is the ability to build a wall that's level and a segment of a circle, and to find the center of the circle. Then, you need a plumb bob, some string and patience...
The thing is if you have the know-how to do all that, you have the technology to build a rudimentary mechanical computer.
Even the cathedrals of the 11th & 12th centuries were designed and built without mathematics more sophisticated than what you learn in a 9th-grade geometry course.
I'm not trying to be disagreeable here, but you do realize that the pyramids are far, far older than those cathedrals, don't you? And certainly, many, many, many times more massive. Have you ever been to Egypt? The sheer size of them makes European architecture seem like child's play. To visit those monstrous "piles of stone", as you call them, is a profoundly humbling experience.
The phrase "all you base belong to us" comes from a poorly translated Chinese video game from the 1970s. While it may have been funny at one point, I for one am tired of hearing about it. It has gotten rather old, and I wonder if people aren't still making fun of it for racist reasons.
Before anyone gets too excited about this, let me make perfectly clear to everyone out there that this is a joke. It's not real. You can't really compress your files down to zero percent. It's not possible. Sorry.
If only they had actually open-sourced their operating system when they first started out. Then they might be one of the industry leaders. They might be planning a takeover of Microsoft instead of talking about bankruptcy.
This should be a lesson to everyone in the software industry. You can't compete against a monopoly like Microsoft using the old fashioned closed-source model of software production. If people want a closed-source operating system (with all the troubles, difficulties, security problems, and needless expense traditionally associated with closed source software), they'll get it from the established leader: Microsoft.
Open source is the only route to success in the current competitive climate. It may be too late for Be to learn that lesson. But maybe this unfortunate occurence will turn out to be a good thing, since other closed-source companies may learn the error of their ways before they get swept under the rug.
This order only affects Northpoint's California customers. Unfortunately, they had about sixty thousand customers outside of California (mostly in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, and Illinois). Those people are out of luck.
Maybe it's time to consider state owned and run high-speed internet providers. Increasingly, it looks like private enterprise is unable to meet the needs of the public for reliable high-speed connectivity, especially in less populated areas of the country. The way things have been going recently, the only way a substantial portion of the population is going to get dependable broadband is if the government steps in and provides it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's so easy to troll people who think their smarter than everyone else, having confused an aptitude for computer usage with genuine intellect. Simply act like a complete and utter moron, and you fulfill all the preconceptions they have about ordinary people.
Nah, I think I'll just stick to trolling /. instead.
The optimism here is in assuming I wasn't trolling.
The Troll HOWTO
Never heard of trolling?
I was trying to point out to Terri Rolle that, in fact, women are sleeping with exactly the men they desire
Terri Rolle doesn't need this pointed out to her since (aside from the fact that it is almost a truism) she wasn't really interested in the question, didn't read ESR's essay, and was simply trolling.
What a priceless piece typically geeky misogyny in response to an obvious and run of the mill troll!
Re:Yes, this is a joke (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01, @02:38AM EDT (#183)
Hey, thanks! I was wondering how that was possible!
p.s. u r gay
Re:Yes, this is a joke (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01, @03:34AM EDT (#242)
Thank you, citizen, for your Informative and Insightful post. Fuck off newbie scum.
Re:Yes, this is a joke (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01, @08:56AM EDT (#318)
oh, yeah, thanks for the input fuckwit
got any other fantastic revelations for us?
what's that you say? the sky, blue? the earth, round? surely not.
idiot
(last post)
I don't know about in the US, but the view from the outside is that the NRA are a bunch of right-wing loonies. Is this true?
No. Empirical research has demonstrated that gun ownership by law-abiding people reduces crime. The connection is so reliable and well known that finally, Democratic congressmen have chosen not to call for new gun laws even in the wake of recent school shootings. There are other good reasons to own guns that have not been a big part of recent public debate. I consider a few of them here.
Guns are protection from the government. The founding fathers knew it -- the Federalist Papers (29 and 46, for example) tell us it's a good thing for the citizenry to outgun the national government; that the United States would be unique in world history in having an armed, and therefore truly liberated, populace. Court cases following the abolition of slavery established that black Americans, having been freed from slavery, would not be truly free unless their gun-ownership rights were the same as everyone else's.
Guns are safe. Bill Clinton told us not so long ago that 12 children are killed by guns every day in the US. Brace yourself: He lied. The number is 12 only if the definition of "child" reaches up to age 24 and includes gang members killing each other (mostly in New York and California). If you look at children aged 10 and younger, 72 were killed in 1999 by accident, or three children every two weeks in a nation of 280 million. That means 72 terrible tragedies, but it also means that when we adjust statistically for the number of guns against the number of everything else, guns are safer for children than wading pools, bathtubs, bicycles, and cars. Part of this is because 99-point-something percent of parents don't let children play with guns, and most children know that real guns aren't toys. And guns don't go off by themselves. I can find many cases where an armed robbery or murder was committed without a gun. Show me one where a gun did it without a criminal.
Guns make people less violent. The first time I bought a gun, I knew I had a dangerous weapon and should act accordingly. I read the owner's manual carefully, and the language of it was enough to put anyone in awe of one of these devices. Further, any gun owner's manual is packed with invaluable safety information -- it is a primer on responsible behavior in general. This feeling of responsibility extends beyond shooting. I don't do "road rage" now. Having a gun in the car tells me I'm the one in trouble if hostilities occur. When someone cuts me off or tailgates, I deliberately drive safely and courteously and behave to avoid any hard feelings with other drivers. At the same time, I am reassured that if some flipping kook simply decides he wants to hurt me, I'm protected. And I am not unique. The great thing about guns is they have this effect on most all law-abiding owners: Choose any state you want that issues concealed-carry permits and you'll find that civilians with concealed-carry permits are less often accused of violent crimes than are the POLICE in that state.
Guns are good for other things. People collect all sorts of items, from souvenir figurines to stamps. Guns, in their own right, are enjoyable to inspect. Spending my life with relatively junky computer keyboards and mouses, can openers, toaster ovens, and whatever else, it's a pleasure just to look at the parts of even an inexpensive gun when cleaning it. Everything is heavy duty, hardened, and precision made. When the typewriter was being developed in the 19th century, early prototypes were frail, clanky, and unreliable. Few people know that it was a gun maker who saw that the problem was lack of precision manufacture, and who had the equipment to make a functional, reliable typewriter. In the same way that auto racing has provided safety and performance technology to production cars, gun manufacturers have given us developments responsible for who knows what other developments.
It bears mentioning that there are one to two million incidents per year in the U.S.A. where law-abiding people use guns successfully to defend themselves or stop crimes. In over 90% of those cases, the gun isn't even fired. Even radical pacifists should love this. But even if guns weren't interesting, even if they weren't safe, even if they didn't impose a calming effect on owners, and even if they didn't protect us from criminals -- protection from the government -- the only entity legally empowered to use lethal force to get whatever it wants -- is enough. I'll keep mine, thanks.
Yes, blaming spammers is silly. And more important than "who do we blame" is "how do we fix it?"
If the internet is really growing too fast for the routers to handle, disaster could be looming for e-commerce and the economy in general. Perhaps major world governments will have to step in to address the situation.
But what could they do? Maybe they could subsidize improvement of the internet backbone, but that might be too little too late.
Perhaps instead it would be helpful for governments to start rationing bandwidth, and soon. Bandwidth could be allotted to people and industries on the basis of need. That would help ward off an internet "meltdown," while making sure that people who really need bandwidth have access to it.
But that solution might be difficult to implement in a timely manner. Alternatively, a tax on bandwidth might be ideal. It would discourage wasteful use of bandwidth, while remaining practical to implement through existing tax collecting agencies. Those people in (say) the bottom third of income-earners could be exempted from the tax, so that we don't increase the gap between the information haves and have-nots.
Ok, Ok. I don't look at the URL bar after I load the page. I feel stupid. Sorry.
Did anyone else notice that you can reach Slashdot with a dot org domain, not just dot com? I wonder how this issue will affect slashdot?
I think it is wonderful that the Australians are fighting to protect their children from pornography. I can't believe how many people here are actually defending defending that filth. I wish we could pass similar laws here in the states, but free speech zealots have made that next to impossible. They always think about their rights, but never think about the rights of parents who just want to raise their sons and daughters with good clean morals.
I also think outlawing gambling is a wonderful idea. I know many people regard this as an unnecessary intrusion of the the government into people's lives, but let's face it: sometimes the government does know best. Gambling serves no purpose except to part deluded people from their money. It ought to be banned both on- and offline.
It's a shame about those bestiality pictures though. I not very familiar with Australian law, but they must not have very strong protections against sexual harrassment. Any workplace where employees send each other smut is a hostile workplace to women, and the people responsible ought to be sued, if not prosecuted and jailed.
Look at the date on the RFC (Request for Comments) itself. It's April 1. April Fools Day. I have a sneaking suspicion that someone is trying to put one over on us.
I don't know whether it's a joke or not, but it really doesn't matter. Sooner or later Microsoft is going to be forced to release their code under the GPL (GNU Public License) or another Open Source license if they want to be able to compete against Linux. They will probably be very resistant to doing this at first, and they may not do it in time to save their company, but in the end they won't have any other options.
My friends often come to me for advice on investing, since they regard me as something of an expert. I always tell them to get rid of any Microsoft stock that they own. In a couple of years it will be valueless. Why? Their chief product is competing with an Open Source OS that people can get for free. Sooner or later investors are going to realize this and the stock price is going to collapse.
I also advise them to stay away from any mutual funds that have in invested in Microsoft. Not just because of the immediate danger of MS's stock price falling, but because I wouldn't trust any fund manager who hasn't realized what a house of cards that company is.
Aliens would have no systems for us to interface with, so the question is moot.
Watch out, people. It's April 1st. This may not be true.
Excellent point. The various races in the Star Trek universe seem to be there to provide an outlet for the viewer's racist feelings and unconscious desires to stereotype people different from themselves. And all done while avoiding rousing the ire of civil rights groups by using fictional races. It wouldn't surprise me if plot lines like those above were an attempt to tap into subconscious genocidal urges of the viewing public.
The frightening thing is ESR's complete objectification of women. When will people stop putting up with these stone age attitudes, and start demanding that women be treated as if they were actual human beings?
I'm not suggesting that people are intentionally making racist comments. But really, why do you think that people find the phrase "all you base belong to us" so funny? Doesn't it have anything to do with Westerners' perceptions of East-Asian speech patterns?
It's amazing the lengths that people will go to to prove that the ancients were so much less sophisticated than ourselves.
The thing is if you have the know-how to do all that, you have the technology to build a rudimentary mechanical computer.
I'm not trying to be disagreeable here, but you do realize that the pyramids are far, far older than those cathedrals, don't you? And certainly, many, many, many times more massive. Have you ever been to Egypt? The sheer size of them makes European architecture seem like child's play. To visit those monstrous "piles of stone", as you call them, is a profoundly humbling experience.
The phrase "all you base belong to us" comes from a poorly translated Chinese video game from the 1970s. While it may have been funny at one point, I for one am tired of hearing about it. It has gotten rather old, and I wonder if people aren't still making fun of it for racist reasons.
Before anyone gets too excited about this, let me make perfectly clear to everyone out there that this is a joke. It's not real. You can't really compress your files down to zero percent. It's not possible. Sorry.
If only they had actually open-sourced their operating system when they first started out. Then they might be one of the industry leaders. They might be planning a takeover of Microsoft instead of talking about bankruptcy.
This should be a lesson to everyone in the software industry. You can't compete against a monopoly like Microsoft using the old fashioned closed-source model of software production. If people want a closed-source operating system (with all the troubles, difficulties, security problems, and needless expense traditionally associated with closed source software), they'll get it from the established leader: Microsoft.
Open source is the only route to success in the current competitive climate. It may be too late for Be to learn that lesson. But maybe this unfortunate occurence will turn out to be a good thing, since other closed-source companies may learn the error of their ways before they get swept under the rug.
This order only affects Northpoint's California customers. Unfortunately, they had about sixty thousand customers outside of California (mostly in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, and Illinois). Those people are out of luck.
Maybe it's time to consider state owned and run high-speed internet providers. Increasingly, it looks like private enterprise is unable to meet the needs of the public for reliable high-speed connectivity, especially in less populated areas of the country. The way things have been going recently, the only way a substantial portion of the population is going to get dependable broadband is if the government steps in and provides it.