Yes, and this is also why Rob insists that moderators (though this should apply to non-moderators as well) look out for abuses of moderation and email the posting link to him so he can deal with the post and moderator. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
How about something like what I did to take care of FTP abusers back when I ran hobbes:
When someone gets a -5 for the day, their entire/24 subnet should be banned with the message "Sorry, but [username,] a user at (their IP address) at (time of last bad posting) has messed things up for you by being an abusive poster. You may want to contact your ISP's abuse department so this user [(email address)] can be dealt with. This temporary block can go away in 24 hours."
Of course, this global block would only apply to ACs and registered users whose karmas are less than, say, +10.
I think with the threat of someone losing their Internet access they'd think twice before racking up a -5 daily karma.
Of course, this is still open to abuses (as I stated elsewhere), and it'd certainly be problematic for non-trolls who get affected by this - but that's the whole point. Kind of the "Since Private Pyle has donuts, I'm going to make the rest of you do pushups while he eats them all!" trick. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
That's how it used to be. Then one day, Rob silently introduced the AC thing, and suddenly everyone who was fine with posting under pseudonymal anonymity was completely unable to say anything without being completely anonymous.
Unfortunately, it's definitely too late to take ACs away. All that would happen is people would create anonymous-type accounts and blast the messageboards with "HEY IF U WANT ANONYMOUS U CAN USE USER/PASS OF FLAMEMONKEY/FLAMEMONKEY" or whatever. Of course, then these accounts would be quickly canned and/or some smartass would change the password and email address, but the comments would remain and still clog up the messageboards. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
As someone with a "karma" rating that puts my posts at an automatic 2, I certainly have to agree. There are many times when I've posted something off-the-cuff that I've wished I could specify that it should be with a score of 1. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that a lot of the automatic 2s belong to people who wouldn't agree (though then again, by making it to an automatic 2 they likely are more open-minded).
What I really dislike is how many of the automatic 2s are because of funny posts. IMO, 'funny' points shouldn't count towards positive karma. Conversely, 'troll' points should count twice towards negative karma or, perhaps, if the -5 daily karma limit is hit, that should count as an additional of -5 overall karma too.
One flaw with your treatise, however... rather than doing a hard reset every 2 or 3 weeks, the "karma zone" should just take a running time period of 2 or 3 weeks. So, the comments I post in the last 2 or 3 weeks would count towards my karma.
Another thing that would help with is the opposite of the problem with automatic moderation up: moderators are, as far as I've observed, less likely to moderate up a comment which is already scored 2. The only notable exception of this is certain people whose comments always immediately get moderated up to +5 for being insightful (*cough*Bruce Perens*cough*), though I'm not too bitter about that since said peoples' posts usually are insightful or informative.:) --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Unfortunately, quickly disposing of trolls would make for interesting problems if someone has a vendetta against someone else. "Oh hey, I have moderator points, and mister smartypants posted something just slightly troll-ish... I can marr him as a troll! Yippee!" --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Yes, but it's a horible waste of moderator points. Whenever I get moderator points, I want to spend them on 5 posts which teach me something I didn't know or make my day. When the only 5 comments I can find that glare out at me are things such as "I'm glad Richard Stevens is dead, since he was an anti-Linux anti-PERL bigot," I feel cheated, and I feel that all of slashdot has been done a great disservice. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
I've noticed that although FireWire has yet to show up in PC applications, FireWire has its place in many other niches where USB doesn't have a "stronghold." For example, look at embedded computing devices such as the ReplayTV, which uses FireWire for expansion purposes. FireWire also seems to be more useful for notebooks, since it has much lower power requirements (in that it powers the devices from a single, central power supply, namely the computer, and that devices need to be engineered to take as little of this power as possible).
That said, it would be a shame if FireWire really did go extinct. Imagine all the ReplayTV owners who would be unable to add more harddrive space when they could finally afford it after paying such obscene amounts for the box.;) --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Ah, but they're adding more freedom (namely removing a clause) to this license. Although retroactive changes aren't valid, I don't think there'll be any complaints.:) Also, they're removing the clause from all of their licensed code, not from all code using the BSD license (which is usually modified wrt who gets the credit for the code). It's not like they're retroactively changing it so that the regents get a 10% royalty on all income gleaned from the use of this code or something. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
From what I've heard, that "support" entails telling customers to call Red Hat's tech support. Very low, since Red Hat can't support customers of a repackaged Red Hat (and rightfully so, since the repackaging gives Red Hat absolutely zilch income). --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Read the whitepapers. Apparently it uses the mobile P2. Wouldn't surprise me if they were to do a model which takes Socket370 chips either. But the whitepaper gives several ideas and specs. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
In my haste, I didn't notice that there was more to the whitepaper than just the simple specs and usual marketing hype. This thing's *real* neat... and they also have other products which would also be useful for a whole bunch of projects I can think of. For example, perhaps an entertainment center component with a slim form factor, or maybe a complete system which is completely out of the way except for the display... hook it up to one of those NTSC serial terminals (as mentioned on/. many moons ago, which can do text overlays on an NTSC signal) and use it to do... well, anything really.
And since it's going to be said eventually anyway, these could be used for having a complete Beowulf cluster in a single case...:)
Man. This could even be used for a handheld running BeOS or that obscure UNIX clone everyone keeps talking about or something...
Damn. if only I had the time, energy, and drive to do projects with these things... --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Holy CRAP that thing's tiny. That doesn't really have much information on it, though, and it seems to be for mobile P2s, which makes sense, of course, but those aren't exactly as accessable or cheap as Slot1 or Socket370 chips. Though it IS small enough for a decent wearable... Wonder if they'd consider making a version with a good 3D chip in it such as the Rage128, which is really designed for OEM integration, though finding a place to put all the video memory could be a problem... (not to mention that although Rage128s don't put out much heat power, they get really hot) --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Check my user info and read the various other threads I've been engaged in recently regarding quines. Failing that, read "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid," which is, as far as I'm concerned, gospel. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
That would make sense if XFree3.9 were stable technology. However, it's not. It's a prerelease snapshot, not a stable version. Using XFree3.9 is like using Linux2.3. Not a Good Idea. And so if the whole world decides to play with it and ends up stopping actual XFree developers from getting the source tree so they can work on it (admittedly, the guy could wait a bit, but I can understand his frustration), that does cause something of a problem for those who actually are working on getting it to the masses who scream for free software and scream for it now, now, now. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
> Really? I can update my gender and year of birth?
Well, I don't know about year of birth, but you can come to terms with gender, and you can update your sex based on it... --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Why not read the PNG specs, which are easy enough to find that I shouldn't have to be bothered telling you where to find them? PNG, as a format, supports both chromakey transparency (like GIF) and alpha transparency (like a GIMP layer), and MPNG is an animation-capable extension to PNG. Just because there's no web browsers which fully support PNG right now doesn't mean the format itself doesn't support those features. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Um. There's only one each of Australian, African, and North Ameican continents, and one each of the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Interesting (and cute) way of putting it, whether you meant to or not.:) --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
That's 6 to 7 million MIPS months; that is, the time it would take on a single 1MIPS processor. Hint: most (new) consumer systems these days are well over 250 MIPS by any sane metric. And as everyone on Slashdot is so quick to point out, you can always beowulf systems together. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Wow, I feel silly after rereading my post. I meant to say, instead of 64-bit RSA (in regards to sending credit card info to online retailers), 64-bit DES or rc5 or whatever the hell online retailers use.:) Though the rest of what I said still applies.
Oh, and another thing to consider: regardless of how you get your credit card information to that place you want to buy a DVD player from, they still have your credit card information. It's not like they forward the encrypted packets to the credit card company; they usually even don't send the unencrypted packets, and go through a third-party fund transfer service. And just about anyone can setup a website, sell some products at a too-good-to-be-true price, and screw you over. Hell, anyone can take out an ad in a magazine for that matter. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
See, the thing is,/dev/random is a hardware randomizer. It just takes random factors from a whole bunch of devices which have nondeterministic behavior, such as the serial ports (it's not predictable when the mouse will be moved or when a modem will get or send some data) and the soundcard (it's generally not predictable when a sound will be played or what will be in the buffer). All this true-random data is thrown together pseudo-randomly; although the combination can only be pseudo-random, as it is in software, the data that's being combined is true-random. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Depends on the OS; Linux gives you a perfectly-good true-random number generator (/dev/random) which works by taking all the random cruft from random sources and combining them randomly. Movements of the mouse, presses of the keyboard, receipt of Internet packets, time between requests for random numbers, line level on/dev/audio (just hook up a white-noise generator to your microphone port and you're set!), and just about anything else which exhibits non-deterministic behavior is fed into the entropy pool.
Yeah, yeah, not everyone uses Linux or a UNIX with/dev/random. Well, for those people hard-up enough to use a system without such niceties, perhaps they can get a soundcard, a white-noise generator, and a textfile with pi to 1 million digits, Huffman-compressed. Total cost: $7 ($5 for the soundcard, $2 for a cheap AM radio with a headphone jack). --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, and this is also why Rob insists that moderators (though this should apply to non-moderators as well) look out for abuses of moderation and email the posting link to him so he can deal with the post and moderator.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
When someone gets a -5 for the day, their entire /24 subnet should be banned with the message "Sorry, but [username,] a user at (their IP address) at (time of last bad posting) has messed things up for you by being an abusive poster. You may want to contact your ISP's abuse department so this user [(email address)] can be dealt with. This temporary block can go away in 24 hours."
Of course, this global block would only apply to ACs and registered users whose karmas are less than, say, +10.
I think with the threat of someone losing their Internet access they'd think twice before racking up a -5 daily karma.
Of course, this is still open to abuses (as I stated elsewhere), and it'd certainly be problematic for non-trolls who get affected by this - but that's the whole point. Kind of the "Since Private Pyle has donuts, I'm going to make the rest of you do pushups while he eats them all!" trick.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Unfortunately, it's definitely too late to take ACs away. All that would happen is people would create anonymous-type accounts and blast the messageboards with "HEY IF U WANT ANONYMOUS U CAN USE USER/PASS OF FLAMEMONKEY/FLAMEMONKEY" or whatever. Of course, then these accounts would be quickly canned and/or some smartass would change the password and email address, but the comments would remain and still clog up the messageboards.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
What I really dislike is how many of the automatic 2s are because of funny posts. IMO, 'funny' points shouldn't count towards positive karma. Conversely, 'troll' points should count twice towards negative karma or, perhaps, if the -5 daily karma limit is hit, that should count as an additional of -5 overall karma too.
One flaw with your treatise, however... rather than doing a hard reset every 2 or 3 weeks, the "karma zone" should just take a running time period of 2 or 3 weeks. So, the comments I post in the last 2 or 3 weeks would count towards my karma.
Another thing that would help with is the opposite of the problem with automatic moderation up: moderators are, as far as I've observed, less likely to moderate up a comment which is already scored 2. The only notable exception of this is certain people whose comments always immediately get moderated up to +5 for being insightful (*cough*Bruce Perens*cough*), though I'm not too bitter about that since said peoples' posts usually are insightful or informative. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Unfortunately, quickly disposing of trolls would make for interesting problems if someone has a vendetta against someone else. "Oh hey, I have moderator points, and mister smartypants posted something just slightly troll-ish... I can marr him as a troll! Yippee!"
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Yes, but it's a horible waste of moderator points. Whenever I get moderator points, I want to spend them on 5 posts which teach me something I didn't know or make my day. When the only 5 comments I can find that glare out at me are things such as "I'm glad Richard Stevens is dead, since he was an anti-Linux anti-PERL bigot," I feel cheated, and I feel that all of slashdot has been done a great disservice.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
That said, it would be a shame if FireWire really did go extinct. Imagine all the ReplayTV owners who would be unable to add more harddrive space when they could finally afford it after paying such obscene amounts for the box. ;)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Ah, but they're adding more freedom (namely removing a clause) to this license. Although retroactive changes aren't valid, I don't think there'll be any complaints. :) Also, they're removing the clause from all of their licensed code, not from all code using the BSD license (which is usually modified wrt who gets the credit for the code). It's not like they're retroactively changing it so that the regents get a 10% royalty on all income gleaned from the use of this code or something.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
I don't know about you, but I don't find skeletal structures to be particularly sexy...
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
From what I've heard, that "support" entails telling customers to call Red Hat's tech support. Very low, since Red Hat can't support customers of a repackaged Red Hat (and rightfully so, since the repackaging gives Red Hat absolutely zilch income).
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Read the whitepapers. Apparently it uses the mobile P2. Wouldn't surprise me if they were to do a model which takes Socket370 chips either. But the whitepaper gives several ideas and specs.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
And since it's going to be said eventually anyway, these could be used for having a complete Beowulf cluster in a single case... :)
Man. This could even be used for a handheld running BeOS or that obscure UNIX clone everyone keeps talking about or something...
Damn. if only I had the time, energy, and drive to do projects with these things...
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Holy CRAP that thing's tiny. That doesn't really have much information on it, though, and it seems to be for mobile P2s, which makes sense, of course, but those aren't exactly as accessable or cheap as Slot1 or Socket370 chips. Though it IS small enough for a decent wearable... Wonder if they'd consider making a version with a good 3D chip in it such as the Rage128, which is really designed for OEM integration, though finding a place to put all the video memory could be a problem... (not to mention that although Rage128s don't put out much heat power, they get really hot)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Oops... didn't realize those threads had expired already. Um. Look it up on Everything. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Check my user info and read the various other threads I've been engaged in recently regarding quines. Failing that, read "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid," which is, as far as I'm concerned, gospel.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
That would make sense if XFree3.9 were stable technology. However, it's not. It's a prerelease snapshot, not a stable version. Using XFree3.9 is like using Linux2.3. Not a Good Idea. And so if the whole world decides to play with it and ends up stopping actual XFree developers from getting the source tree so they can work on it (admittedly, the guy could wait a bit, but I can understand his frustration), that does cause something of a problem for those who actually are working on getting it to the masses who scream for free software and scream for it now, now, now.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Well, it'll help for the card to be *finished* first...
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Well, I don't know about year of birth, but you can come to terms with gender, and you can update your sex based on it...
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Why not read the PNG specs, which are easy enough to find that I shouldn't have to be bothered telling you where to find them? PNG, as a format, supports both chromakey transparency (like GIF) and alpha transparency (like a GIMP layer), and MPNG is an animation-capable extension to PNG. Just because there's no web browsers which fully support PNG right now doesn't mean the format itself doesn't support those features.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Um. There's only one each of Australian, African, and North Ameican continents, and one each of the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Interesting (and cute) way of putting it, whether you meant to or not. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Oops, sorry, wasn't paying attention that time. Go figure. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
That's 6 to 7 million MIPS months; that is, the time it would take on a single 1MIPS processor. Hint: most (new) consumer systems these days are well over 250 MIPS by any sane metric. And as everyone on Slashdot is so quick to point out, you can always beowulf systems together.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Oh, and another thing to consider: regardless of how you get your credit card information to that place you want to buy a DVD player from, they still have your credit card information. It's not like they forward the encrypted packets to the credit card company; they usually even don't send the unencrypted packets, and go through a third-party fund transfer service. And just about anyone can setup a website, sell some products at a too-good-to-be-true price, and screw you over. Hell, anyone can take out an ad in a magazine for that matter.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
See, the thing is, /dev/random is a hardware randomizer. It just takes random factors from a whole bunch of devices which have nondeterministic behavior, such as the serial ports (it's not predictable when the mouse will be moved or when a modem will get or send some data) and the soundcard (it's generally not predictable when a sound will be played or what will be in the buffer). All this true-random data is thrown together pseudo-randomly; although the combination can only be pseudo-random, as it is in software, the data that's being combined is true-random.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Yeah, yeah, not everyone uses Linux or a UNIX with /dev/random. Well, for those people hard-up enough to use a system without such niceties, perhaps they can get a soundcard, a white-noise generator, and a textfile with pi to 1 million digits, Huffman-compressed. Total cost: $7 ($5 for the soundcard, $2 for a cheap AM radio with a headphone jack).
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.