Actually, I think the definition of a true troll should be -polite, -sincere, and +clear. That's on the theory that they fixed the broken moderation system to make it multidimensional. It's actually possible for a troll to say something that is +insightful, but to say it in such a way that no one wants to hear it.
However, that was linked to the suggestion (of course ignored) that karma should also be multi-dimensional, and people who had earned strong karma in a particular dimension would also have the ability to award (or remove) two mod points at a time for posts along the same dimension. For example, someone who had earned a strong +humor rating for making many witty posts (a true rarity on today's/.) would be credited for recognizing humor in other people's comments.
Even without doing anything beyond installing itself, it has already done a lot of expensive damage. I've already read of two cases where networks were shut down because of infections that needed to be contained. One of the affected networks was the municipal court system of Houston. That outage was at least several days long, though I'm not sure how you assess the total cost of the damage. You can't just limit it to the technical staff time, but you have to add in for the remedial time, and the cost of shutting down the courts for several days.
Hey, maybe they could just tell all the criminals and police to take a few days off!
Actually, as I thought about it some more, what Microsoft should offer to pay for is a copy of the source code of the worm. That would provide the mechanism to deal with it--possibly. Of course, they couldn't do that in public. They'd motivate multitudes of script kiddies to try and strike it rich with a big payoff for a few hours of coding.
Naw, it's just Microsoft's business plan to buy a reputation, cheap.
Actually, only based on the news reports I've already read, Microsoft's reward is already tiny compared to the initial reactive damages caused by Microsoft's sloppy programming and very unsloppy but aggressive marketing to make sure the danger is as widespread as possible. So far the damage (that I've heard about) has just been networks being shut down to try and clean the worm out--but if this thing actually has a hostile payload...
Imagine a distributed supercomputer two orders of magnitude larger than Roadrunner. Whoops, no imagination required. We already have it--and no one knows how hostile it is.
Please don't waste your time answering that rhetorical question. Rather you should simply fulfill your purpose in life by designating me as your "foe". I know it isn't much, but it really is all that your life is worth.
Thank you for your cooperation in being ignored in the future.
I have no interest in doing deep research into whether or not you are an idiot. The evidence you've presented in your comments here strongly support the theory that you are an idiot. To determine the scale of your stupidity, the fastest test is probably to ask at what point you stopped supporting Dubya?
If I had any respect for your opinion, I could refute your exprssed opinion of me with trivial effort. You are not worth it, and I don't give a flying fuck what you think about anything, including me. At this point you have convinced me that your only legitimate purpose in life is to designate me as your foe.
Please fulfill your purpose. Thank you for your foe designation, and you can shove your stupid opinions back in the asshole you pulled them out of.
You forgot the obvious one of charging by the cycles used. Too bad if you use any of the idle cycle donation systems like World Community Grid. Gawd help you--Microsoft sure won't.
Right now I have seven or eight programs open--on this computer. The next computer has two, but the third one has blanked the screen, and I don't remember what it's doing. That means I might have one average computer here as Microsoft defines it?
Right now I'm not saying anything substantive because you write so poorly that I can't decide whether or not you're some sort of idiot, or merely giving/. as little effort as it's worth.
If you are sincerely an idiot, please designate me as your foe.
Actually fake voting of the dead has been used in Texas and Florida, too--at least. Probably elsewhere.
With regards to the entire topic, several hundred replies, but no mention of "fake competition" or "artificial competition" anywhere. Multiple versions is just a marketing ploy to confuse the customers into thinking that freedom exists. I actually think Microsoft deliberately punts some versions for the same effect, and Visa was merely the most recent punt--but the biggest.
Dang, too bad/. has become so boring and witless that I didn't notice this potentially interesting topic until it died. I cite this initial response thread on religious twiddle as evidence of "boring and witless".
At least the mods lived up to their reputation for modding the first couple of mindless posts as +5 funny. What's so funny about "first post"?
Q: What's the difference between Marcel Marceau and a/. meme?
A: One is a dead mime, and the other is a dead meme.
Oh yeah, the actual topic. My take is that it is quite possible that most intelligence is transient, but all you have to assume is that at least a few of them are stable for a long time and the proposed model falls apart. My current hypothesis is that they have discovered from experience that it is better not to talk to the animals--and they are waiting to see whether or not we can grow and evolve beyond the animal stage. If we don't, we won't be a problem, since we'll surely exterminate ourselves, which is probably what happens to a lot of intelligent life forms.
Good post. Cuts to the heart. Freedom is about meaningful choice, and Microsoft hates that kind of freedom. Multiple versions and meaningless choices do successfully confuse the customers--but the twisted priorities remain. Profit uber alles and the OS as a weapon, not a tool.
Of course if you're building weapons you want to make them as big and hairy as possible. Microsoft has become much too big to fail and much too big to exist--as will be proven when the black hackers finally do their worst. Might happen tomorrow, actually. Has anyone else noticed that the latest Windows zombot is about two orders of magnitude bigger than Roadrunner (the largest supercomputer of the so-called good guys). We don't know what the real payload is--yet. And of course Microsoft doesn't care, since the shrinkwrap disclaimers of their EULA free Microsoft from *ALL* liability or responsibility for misuse of the weapons.
Mostly an interesting and thoughtful reply--but defeatist. Since defeatism is an attitude, there doesn't seem to be useful to address your specific points since I can't actually address your attitude. I guess the strongest point I can say is "The spammers love people like you." I know that many spammers already dislike me, and my current ambition is to earn their hate...
Considering the complexity of the Internet, I have real and increasing difficulty understanding how the spammers manage to survive. They require an entire chain of support services to stay in business. Not just ISPs who let them access the Web, but also hosting services to hold their websites, DNS providers, and the domain registrars. They need lots of help to link their spamvertised websites to the spam, just on the minimal chains. (I've noticed that more complicated chains seem to be less frequent these days.) In addition, the spammers are strongly constrained by their need to reach suckers and provide ways for the suckers to reach back to them. They can't hide or obfuscate their spam too much, or the human suckers won't be able to figure out how to send the money.
The strength of a chain is the weakest link. Right now that seems to be the domain registrars. If the technical honchos of the Internet scanned the spam to find the largest spam-supporting registrar of the month and the rest of the Web then stopped talking to that registrar, that would seem to be rather harmful to the spammers' so-called business model, eh?
- Manual, less mutable, and more than short sig -
I only stop by/. when I'm feeling sufficiently acerbic and have a few minutes to waste. Used to be/. was good for humorous or sardonic moods. My basic feeling is that the average wit of the/. participants has greatly declined. As a metaphor, the residual wit on/. is far below critical mass. Creating a new meme is laudable, applying an old meme in a new way can be somewhat witty, mindlessly repeating tired old memes is *NOT* witty nor amusing.
I welcome thoughtful or witty rejoinder, but if you are a typically witless/. contrarian and simply lack the mod points for a spineless and anonymous censorship mod, then please don't waste our time with a reply. In particular, if you are one of the morons who still wants to defend Dubya's miserable failures, please just designate me your foe, and I'll gladly ignore you. One can never be designated as "foe" by too many fools.
I have a copy of C++ For Dummies on one of my shelves at work, but mostly because the author is a really nice guy and lived in the same suite in my freshman year... Most of my actual programming work was in higher level database languages.
Even though I don't do any serious programming these days, I still dabble a bit, and the other programming language books on hand include Programming perl (the camel book), Using JavaScript, and IBM WebSphere Starter Kit.
You're stupid enough to try that? The answer would be obvious if you weren't such an amazing moron. Hint: It is a simple convention that doesn't require any additional cooperation on your part, but it is reserved for the very stupidest of the stupid. Worth a nickel a dozen versus the dime a dozen.
Why don't you take the easy way out and just designate me a foe. You've removed any doubts on my part that you are a sufficiently worthy idiot. Probably you're just another one of pudge's sock puppets.
Only post in the entire thread that mentions "credibility"? Why am I not surprised, given the present state of/.?
Anyway, I'll just comment that newspapers or other MSM sources only have two real resources: integrity and credibility. Do they tell the truth, and does anyone believe anything they say. If you think not, they you would basically regard them as already bankrupt, just coasting on inertia until their final dissolution. I think one name should be sufficient evidence to convince you: Rupert Murdoch. Or maybe we should blame the advertisers? Does it matter?
However, I can offer at least one concrete suggestion that I believe would help a bit. They should include author rankings. Many ways to do it, but this is a relatively simple example in the context of predictions treated as checkable facts. I actually believe that newspapers that use fact checkers are adding some value and at least trying to defend their asset of "integrity". They could extend this to predictive statements by noting the prediction and the fulfillment date. As the fact checker checks the facts of an article, they would spot the nonfactual predictions and store them in a database. They don't have to get the fulfillment dates perfect. If the prediction is still open when the date comes around, the fact checker can just extend it, but if the prediction has become true or false, that should be recorded. Then when that author prints another article that includes a prediction, they would print a little icon right next to the author's name showing the batting average of that author. This would be a very valuable metric that would actually add some real value to seeing them in print.
--Real sig?
Feel free to disagree (or agree) rationally, and I'll be interested in reading your thoughtful response, question, or refinement. If you disagree irrationally, for example, if you are one of those morons who is still defending Dubya Bush, please don't waste my time. Just designate me as your foe and I'll happily ignore your existence.
Your only purpose in life is to designate me as your foe. Please complete your purpose. I certainly have no other use for you. On today's/. dickheads like you are a dime a dozen.
Please designate me as your foe so I won't see any of your stupid Dubya-defending crap in the future. You're freedom of speech is not to be confused with having anything to say that is worth listening to.
Please designate me as your foe so I won't notice any of your feebleminded and hopeless crap in the future. I should at least point out some of your internal contradictions where you are by definition lying on on at least one side--but you aren't worth it.
Why? I've decided I've suffered far too many fools, if not gladly, then at least without saying much about it.
I agree with the reasoning, but I still can't manage it. The news does fill me with sadness and makes me feel quite old, too. Shatner/Kirk is relatively well preserved--and sometimes he looks ancient.
I regard TOS as a great epoch and a total fluke that it was associated with NBC. The production of TOS was practically a war with their ostensible sponsors, and now they great people of those days are leaving us. Meanwhile, NBC staggers on with such brilliant strategies as dumping prime time on Jay Leno. Hey, if you can't win, you might as well get out of the game, eh?
Anyway, I want to be optimistic about the future. I actually think part of the optimism of TOS was related to the idealism that ran amok during the Kennedy period. Now I wonder if Obama can create such an atmosphere on the wreckage that Dubya is leaving behind? The wild oscillations of America's political system seem to be completely out of control these days...
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Actually, I think the definition of a true troll should be -polite, -sincere, and +clear. That's on the theory that they fixed the broken moderation system to make it multidimensional. It's actually possible for a troll to say something that is +insightful, but to say it in such a way that no one wants to hear it.
However, that was linked to the suggestion (of course ignored) that karma should also be multi-dimensional, and people who had earned strong karma in a particular dimension would also have the ability to award (or remove) two mod points at a time for posts along the same dimension. For example, someone who had earned a strong +humor rating for making many witty posts (a true rarity on today's /.) would be credited for recognizing humor in other people's comments.
Even without doing anything beyond installing itself, it has already done a lot of expensive damage. I've already read of two cases where networks were shut down because of infections that needed to be contained. One of the affected networks was the municipal court system of Houston. That outage was at least several days long, though I'm not sure how you assess the total cost of the damage. You can't just limit it to the technical staff time, but you have to add in for the remedial time, and the cost of shutting down the courts for several days.
Hey, maybe they could just tell all the criminals and police to take a few days off!
Actually, as I thought about it some more, what Microsoft should offer to pay for is a copy of the source code of the worm. That would provide the mechanism to deal with it--possibly. Of course, they couldn't do that in public. They'd motivate multitudes of script kiddies to try and strike it rich with a big payoff for a few hours of coding.
Naw, it's just Microsoft's business plan to buy a reputation, cheap.
Actually, only based on the news reports I've already read, Microsoft's reward is already tiny compared to the initial reactive damages caused by Microsoft's sloppy programming and very unsloppy but aggressive marketing to make sure the danger is as widespread as possible. So far the damage (that I've heard about) has just been networks being shut down to try and clean the worm out--but if this thing actually has a hostile payload...
Imagine a distributed supercomputer two orders of magnitude larger than Roadrunner. Whoops, no imagination required. We already have it--and no one knows how hostile it is.
Does it hurt to be so stupid?
Please don't waste your time answering that rhetorical question. Rather you should simply fulfill your purpose in life by designating me as your "foe". I know it isn't much, but it really is all that your life is worth.
Thank you for your cooperation in being ignored in the future.
I have no interest in doing deep research into whether or not you are an idiot. The evidence you've presented in your comments here strongly support the theory that you are an idiot. To determine the scale of your stupidity, the fastest test is probably to ask at what point you stopped supporting Dubya?
If I had any respect for your opinion, I could refute your exprssed opinion of me with trivial effort. You are not worth it, and I don't give a flying fuck what you think about anything, including me. At this point you have convinced me that your only legitimate purpose in life is to designate me as your foe.
Please fulfill your purpose. Thank you for your foe designation, and you can shove your stupid opinions back in the asshole you pulled them out of.
You forgot the obvious one of charging by the cycles used. Too bad if you use any of the idle cycle donation systems like World Community Grid. Gawd help you--Microsoft sure won't.
Right now I have seven or eight programs open--on this computer. The next computer has two, but the third one has blanked the screen, and I don't remember what it's doing. That means I might have one average computer here as Microsoft defines it?
Also, I read it somewhere on the Internet. Maybe even the creation of some of these oh-so-clever /. legends?
Right now I'm not saying anything substantive because you write so poorly that I can't decide whether or not you're some sort of idiot, or merely giving /. as little effort as it's worth.
If you are sincerely an idiot, please designate me as your foe.
Which Fox News are YOU talking about? Or do you think they use some other kind of cloth than "whole" cloth?
Actually fake voting of the dead has been used in Texas and Florida, too--at least. Probably elsewhere.
With regards to the entire topic, several hundred replies, but no mention of "fake competition" or "artificial competition" anywhere. Multiple versions is just a marketing ploy to confuse the customers into thinking that freedom exists. I actually think Microsoft deliberately punts some versions for the same effect, and Visa was merely the most recent punt--but the biggest.
Dang, too bad /. has become so boring and witless that I didn't notice this potentially interesting topic until it died. I cite this initial response thread on religious twiddle as evidence of "boring and witless".
At least the mods lived up to their reputation for modding the first couple of mindless posts as +5 funny. What's so funny about "first post"?
Q: What's the difference between Marcel Marceau and a /. meme?
A: One is a dead mime, and the other is a dead meme.
Oh yeah, the actual topic. My take is that it is quite possible that most intelligence is transient, but all you have to assume is that at least a few of them are stable for a long time and the proposed model falls apart. My current hypothesis is that they have discovered from experience that it is better not to talk to the animals--and they are waiting to see whether or not we can grow and evolve beyond the animal stage. If we don't, we won't be a problem, since we'll surely exterminate ourselves, which is probably what happens to a lot of intelligent life forms.
I should write a book on the topic.
Good post. Cuts to the heart. Freedom is about meaningful choice, and Microsoft hates that kind of freedom. Multiple versions and meaningless choices do successfully confuse the customers--but the twisted priorities remain. Profit uber alles and the OS as a weapon, not a tool.
Of course if you're building weapons you want to make them as big and hairy as possible. Microsoft has become much too big to fail and much too big to exist--as will be proven when the black hackers finally do their worst. Might happen tomorrow, actually. Has anyone else noticed that the latest Windows zombot is about two orders of magnitude bigger than Roadrunner (the largest supercomputer of the so-called good guys). We don't know what the real payload is--yet. And of course Microsoft doesn't care, since the shrinkwrap disclaimers of their EULA free Microsoft from *ALL* liability or responsibility for misuse of the weapons.
Mostly an interesting and thoughtful reply--but defeatist. Since defeatism is an attitude, there doesn't seem to be useful to address your specific points since I can't actually address your attitude. I guess the strongest point I can say is "The spammers love people like you." I know that many spammers already dislike me, and my current ambition is to earn their hate...
I think the sad part is that /. had the leading position and they've just let it die miserably. At this point, who cares?
Considering the complexity of the Internet, I have real and increasing difficulty understanding how the spammers manage to survive. They require an entire chain of support services to stay in business. Not just ISPs who let them access the Web, but also hosting services to hold their websites, DNS providers, and the domain registrars. They need lots of help to link their spamvertised websites to the spam, just on the minimal chains. (I've noticed that more complicated chains seem to be less frequent these days.) In addition, the spammers are strongly constrained by their need to reach suckers and provide ways for the suckers to reach back to them. They can't hide or obfuscate their spam too much, or the human suckers won't be able to figure out how to send the money.
The strength of a chain is the weakest link. Right now that seems to be the domain registrars. If the technical honchos of the Internet scanned the spam to find the largest spam-supporting registrar of the month and the rest of the Web then stopped talking to that registrar, that would seem to be rather harmful to the spammers' so-called business model, eh?
- Manual, less mutable, and more than short sig -
I only stop by /. when I'm feeling sufficiently acerbic and have a few minutes to waste. Used to be /. was good for humorous or sardonic moods. My basic feeling is that the average wit of the /. participants has greatly declined. As a metaphor, the residual wit on /. is far below critical mass. Creating a new meme is laudable, applying an old meme in a new way can be somewhat witty, mindlessly repeating tired old memes is *NOT* witty nor amusing.
I welcome thoughtful or witty rejoinder, but if you are a typically witless /. contrarian and simply lack the mod points for a spineless and anonymous censorship mod, then please don't waste our time with a reply. In particular, if you are one of the morons who still wants to defend Dubya's miserable failures, please just designate me your foe, and I'll gladly ignore you. One can never be designated as "foe" by too many fools.
I only stop by /. when I'm feeling sufficiently acerbic and have a few minutes to waste.
Used to be /. was good for humorous or sardonic moods.
Still waiting for you to accomplish your purpose in life. I can never have too many morons who've designated me as their official foe.
I have a copy of C++ For Dummies on one of my shelves at work, but mostly because the author is a really nice guy and lived in the same suite in my freshman year... Most of my actual programming work was in higher level database languages.
Even though I don't do any serious programming these days, I still dabble a bit, and the other programming language books on hand include Programming perl (the camel book), Using JavaScript , and IBM WebSphere Starter Kit .
You're stupid enough to try that? The answer would be obvious if you weren't such an amazing moron. Hint: It is a simple convention that doesn't require any additional cooperation on your part, but it is reserved for the very stupidest of the stupid. Worth a nickel a dozen versus the dime a dozen.
Why don't you take the easy way out and just designate me a foe. You've removed any doubts on my part that you are a sufficiently worthy idiot. Probably you're just another one of pudge's sock puppets.
Only post in the entire thread that mentions "credibility"? Why am I not surprised, given the present state of /.?
Anyway, I'll just comment that newspapers or other MSM sources only have two real resources: integrity and credibility. Do they tell the truth, and does anyone believe anything they say. If you think not, they you would basically regard them as already bankrupt, just coasting on inertia until their final dissolution. I think one name should be sufficient evidence to convince you: Rupert Murdoch. Or maybe we should blame the advertisers? Does it matter?
However, I can offer at least one concrete suggestion that I believe would help a bit. They should include author rankings. Many ways to do it, but this is a relatively simple example in the context of predictions treated as checkable facts. I actually believe that newspapers that use fact checkers are adding some value and at least trying to defend their asset of "integrity". They could extend this to predictive statements by noting the prediction and the fulfillment date. As the fact checker checks the facts of an article, they would spot the nonfactual predictions and store them in a database. They don't have to get the fulfillment dates perfect. If the prediction is still open when the date comes around, the fact checker can just extend it, but if the prediction has become true or false, that should be recorded. Then when that author prints another article that includes a prediction, they would print a little icon right next to the author's name showing the batting average of that author. This would be a very valuable metric that would actually add some real value to seeing them in print.
--Real sig?
Feel free to disagree (or agree) rationally, and I'll be interested in reading your thoughtful response, question, or refinement. If you disagree irrationally, for example, if you are one of those morons who is still defending Dubya Bush, please don't waste my time. Just designate me as your foe and I'll happily ignore your existence.
Your only purpose in life is to designate me as your foe. Please complete your purpose. I certainly have no other use for you. On today's /. dickheads like you are a dime a dozen.
Please designate me as your foe so I won't see any of your stupid Dubya-defending crap in the future. You're freedom of speech is not to be confused with having anything to say that is worth listening to.
Nor am I interested in arguing with fools. Please designate me as your foe so I won't see any more of your crap, either.
Please designate me as your foe so I won't notice any of your feebleminded and hopeless crap in the future. I should at least point out some of your internal contradictions where you are by definition lying on on at least one side--but you aren't worth it.
Why? I've decided I've suffered far too many fools, if not gladly, then at least without saying much about it.
I agree with the reasoning, but I still can't manage it. The news does fill me with sadness and makes me feel quite old, too. Shatner/Kirk is relatively well preserved--and sometimes he looks ancient.
I regard TOS as a great epoch and a total fluke that it was associated with NBC. The production of TOS was practically a war with their ostensible sponsors, and now they great people of those days are leaving us. Meanwhile, NBC staggers on with such brilliant strategies as dumping prime time on Jay Leno. Hey, if you can't win, you might as well get out of the game, eh?
Anyway, I want to be optimistic about the future. I actually think part of the optimism of TOS was related to the idealism that ran amok during the Kennedy period. Now I wonder if Obama can create such an atmosphere on the wreckage that Dubya is leaving behind? The wild oscillations of America's political system seem to be completely out of control these days...