Both Apple and Microsoft got their start selling to the consumer/early adopter market, and then their products (Apple II and MSDOS) started trickling into the business world. Back in the late 70's/early 80's the business world was dominated by minicomputers, with "microcomputers" (the PC/Apple II/etc) largely being marketed towards hobbyists. Then as the hobbyists started using them to do business work, companies started buying them. (Sometimes to the chagrin of the established technical staff.) There is (and I couldn't find it) an old Apple ad about sneakily doing your work on an Apple.
Of course, it doesn't always work. This was also Netscape's original approach, get the user hooked on the browser at the consumer level and sell the browser and server software to the corporate clients as consumers start wanting to use the software at work. The quality of the free apache server and the browser war with MS screwed this approach completely.
While there is obvious risk (as exemplified by Netscape), you get to save on sales & marketing, as your hobbyist/early-adopter users start pitching your product for you at a grass roots level.
Heck, some additional anecdotal evidence, back in the late-90's a company I was working at was thinking about switching to Exchange (which pretty much meant a move from Novell to Windows NT) simply because one user insisted on using Outlook. And his reason? That's what he used at home.
As others have pointed out, the cost of doing business in the EU is being regulated by the EU. That's life and if the fines/interference/etc is too onerous, Microsoft is free to abandon that market and concentrate on the US, Africa, Asia/Pacific Rim.
Personally, I'd love to see such a move coming from Redmond. It would accelerate adoption of non-Microsoft solutions in Europe. The resulting ripple effects would have some nice benefits for those of us developing stateside.:)
And, unlike Perl, it's very easy to do complicated things in simple, legible code.
This must mean you aren't able to write legible Perl code. Perl has been making complicated things simple for more than a decade. If you don't know how to write clean code, then your Python will also suck.
Not directed at the parent, but at the Perl-snipping in the original post....
<RANT>
I'm a professional python programmer, and I've been making my living at it for a number of years now. (It was my embracing of python that allowed me to transition to a 100% MS free workspace.) I started using it a project a few years ago, and it's just stuck for a number of reasons. (meta-classes, extensibility, etc.)
One thing that drives me buggy about some python evangelists, (and many evangelists, in general) is the need to bash anything that is not their favorite brand (be it Creative vs iPOD, Python vs (insert any language here). And so on. The fact of the matter is that Perl is a perfectly good language. I don't use it on a regular basis personally, but I've seen, read and understood a good deal of Perl code w/o a hassle. (yes, I've seen some scary code, but I've seen scary code in C++, Python, Java, etc., etc., etc.)
Sometimes we just have to admit that there are multiple good tools that we could use, but we have a personal (and possibly irrational) preference for one over the other. That's life as a human being (which I'm assuming at least 99% of the readers out there are.:) ). Just because some people use Perl, doesn't make my choice of python (of C++, my other "main" language) any less valid.
It's real life, not a multiple choice test -- there is no single "correct" answer.
Speaking of laserdisc games, does anyone else remember this game?
Sigh, YES. I never got very far, but I spent a lot of money doing playing it. The nearest one was 50 miles away (at the "local" mall's arcade), and I usually pushed 3-4 dollars into it each visit....and STILL never made it out of the first kingdom!
Seriously, I've been laid off since Nov. 29th. (I start a new job on Monday...YAY!). But, I've been putting in 40-60 hour days everyday (with the exception of a few days when it was REALLY nice out).
Not only have a really made progress on GnosisLIMS (which I've been working on for years), but I was also able to create a useful tool for managing my email when I'm way from my desk (Flex-mn).
It was very useful for answering the standard "so what have you been doing during your time off other than watching TV" interview question.
Yeah, I did too. I'm really not sure I see why thye haven't. The amount of hardware required makes anyone "stealing" the code and setting up "Hoogle.com" just about impossible. (The only one who might want to is MSNSearch, and do you think they would really use open source code so publicly?)
Not saying that I think they have a moral obligation here, I think they have done more than enough for the FOSS community.... but I am sort of curious as to why they keep their source closed.
Funny that a standard that is a draft status is "too cumbersome". If you subscribe to the CalDAV development lists you'll see that they are trying very hard to keep the standard quite simple.
Here we have skulls, pictures, etc of this elusive animal. All shortly (relatively) after the start of the search.
It's interesting to see real scientists at work here,rather than the less than skeptical cryptologist who have nothing more than some faked/mis-identified footprints and a couple eyewitness reports. Even though they have been searching for what, 50 years?
Be interesting how many documentaries on this new species get put on the Discovery Channel. Sadly, I think that the bigfoot documentaries will get alot more air time.
I was dissapointed that the time line didn't cover any of the antics on alt.religion.scientology which lead to a great deal of lawsuits. And IIRC, ended in some pretty scary pre-DCMA descisions being made.
I wonder if this is a repeat of the oft-"discoved" bimini roads off bermuda. They are a naturally occuring formation that appears to be man made, it has fooled psuedoarchealogists off and on for the last 20 years or so (maybe longer, I don't recall exactly when they were found).
At anyrate here is a link from Paul Heinrich's Wild Side Geoarcheology entry on the Bimini roads:
There is a keen difference (in my experience) between masss produced European and mass produced American beer:
1) European beer is really good warm, and tasty cold.
2) American beer is terrifyingly bad warm, and it's bad cold.
It depends on if you want consistantly bad or consistantly good beer.
Mind you, this is coming from a person who's idea of heaven is sitting on an isolated beach on a sunny day with his laptop and some nice room temperature stout...writting code and getting pleasently smashed. So you might want to take my opinions with a grain of salt.
If you got a random email from someone you've never heard of from a.af domain then yes, you could be suspicious, but if John has known this guy for years then he's in a better position to judge than we are.
I'm confused. Did this "Junis" forward the email from someone with an.af domain, or is "Junis" in Afg?
The reason I ask is that he's described as being a "computer geek obessed with Linux" that Katz has conversed with in the past.
1) If Junis is our friend in Afg, how does he balance his obession with linux with running a commodore? Yes, I know linux works on the amiga, but not all models, and it's specifically refered to as a commodore...usually amigas are called well... amigas. There is a version of linux that boots on a C-64 (don't have the url handy) but its a very recent development, so he couldn't have tried it out before buring his C64 in the chicken coop.
2) With the same assumption, does it seem odd that he is "obssessed with linux", thinks Apple was going to beat MS _and_ is very impressed with open source? If he's obsessed with linux, isn't he impressed with open source by default?
3)If Junis is someone who forwarded a message (and Katz has spoken to him before), then how is this any more reliable than any other forwarded email?
4) Wouldn't the various nasty chemicals released by decaying chicken feces destroy the delicate circuitry on a computer? Assuming it was an Amiga, I know the A1000 and A2000 were well built, but there are some _nasty_ by products of bird feces decaying. Never mind the dirty clogging the fans, and getting into the circuitry.
This looks like either Katz is pulling our collective legs, someone is pulling Katz's leg or there's a whole lot of urban legend that got delivered to Katz's inbox.
I can't wait to see what snopes.com has to say about this.
"Muppets In Space" has this feature too. Kermit, Rizzo, Gonzo The Great and the director discuss the film, and some "behind the scenes facts" (mostly made up).
I thought it was very funny... but I'm a sucker for anything with Gonzo The Great.
Why? Does it look any better than watching it on Windows? Was it easier?
Easier than a reboot, yes.
Why not just get Windows? Let's seen $20 or $200... hmmmmm, I think I'll go with CrossOver.;)
Why support a software vendor that refuses to support your favorite platform? Because I enjoy viewing shockwave and quicktime content (cartoonnetwork.com, for example) enough to swallow my pride and pay $20.00. But not enough to pay $200(full price for homeverion of XP) for the privledge of revamping my entire work style.
Or do you consider "it doesn't break under Wine" to be good enough? Can I get my task done (whether it be editing XLS, writing code or viewing QT movies)? Then it's good enough for me. And if it's cheaper, that's even better.
There is a petition going around. The idea is to try and put some pressure on the LT staff to put out some answers. To date it's had little effect. We've had a very hard time getting the normal outlets to take notice of us.
Many of them feel that this story should die.
Other think that it's not really a story, that it's not important.
And still others seem to think that the community needs to be "protected."
It's linked at the bottom of Paul's article, but I'll include it here too.
As a matter of fact, no. I think you have such a blazing desire to win an argument that you will not let it drop. I've been around even longer than you Rob, I know your type.
I'm glad that you seem to think you know me so well. Unfortunately you are wrong.
Actually, I'm violating several Troll High Council rules by telling you this but: I don't think you'll ever learn. This entire thread is a troll Rob (not that it's untrue, just a troll)... and you've walked into it yet again.
Do you really think I'm so stupid that I didn't know that? I've been hanging out on usenet,/., LT and others for much too long to be that naive. I know when I'm being trolled, and I very rarely take this stuff as seriously as people seem to think I do.
Of course, you'll respond with some smartass crack like "What ever lets you sleep at night." And if that makes you feel good, you can go ahead an believe that I'm lying.... doesn't matter to me.
Despite what you seem to think, I decided to feed the trolls _knowingly_. It is fun and entertaining to me. Especially when I can illicit reactions such as I got from some of the LT trolls such as "Scooby" and "Marc Adams." Or, to watch their reactions. Lately, I was picking on "Anon," but it looks like that will get interrupted as LT's been down for quite a while. And even if it comes back up, I won't be going back there w/o a _really_ _good_ explination of what they did and why.
Think of it as metatrolling, it's a matter of having that much more paitence than the given troll and getting them to lose their temper.
If you look back about 90% or so of my posts are real and genuine...my honest to goodness opinion. The other 10%, responding to trolls are just to p*ss them off.
I've been doing it for years. Ted Holden (on talk.origins) and Alexander Abian (on sci.physics) were my two earliest victims. That was in '90-'91. If you feel compelled, I'm sure google groups would have some of the postings from rk3h@andrew.cmu.edu, my college email address.
Sadly, the real hum-dinger flame I got from Ted was sent to my private email, which was probably deleted long, long ago. So you won't get to see that....
It is my sworn duty to drag this thread out until it degenerates into childish name-calling, but I'm giving you a get out of jail card. I hope you appreciate it.
Huh--- yeah, you've been so successful in the past. IIRC, I've not resorted to out and out name-calling in any thread since I stopped hanging around talk.origins back in '91. Ocassionally little snide comments, but that's about it. Trust me, I'll stop posting _long_ before I get to the point of childish name calling.
Think of it as a challenge....
You can believe this, or not, it really makes no difference anymore, but: I did as you suggested. I posted all of my censored messages in a hidden slashdot sid. I advertised its presence in trolltalk (another hidden sid), and tried mightly to get it mentioned in an LT talkback. No chance.
Every time I mentioned the sid, and that people could get my uncensored messages there, my posts were deleted.
Then post the url./. supposedly isn't moderated. Or email it to a regular. Or... or... or...
Joe Barr is still collecting more information on this, you could email _him_ the URL, or post it on the varlinux discussion about this story.
I'm not saying that I _don't_ believe you, it's perfectly possible you've done such a thing. I'm not about to defend LT now, or question claims about the site now that all of this evidence is staring me in the face. But, it would be really nice to know just how bad this corruption at LT goes. ---
RobK
I just wanted to comment that Joe Barr has posted some verifiable evidence of severe editorial manipulation at LT that goes well beyond the trolling that KR was doing.
It now looks as if I got the eviedence I was looking for, which is all that I was after in the whole thing from the begining. (Despite the offense taken by many people whom I asked.)
So it looks like I must admit that you were right, and I was wrong. I can't link directly to the post in question, however it's here http://varlinux.org/article.php?sid=296&mode=neste d&order=0&thold=0 about 90% of the way towards the end.
It starts out "Dear LinuxToday Staffer (or apologist)," and was posted on "Friday, July 20 @ 06:11:06 PDT", incase you want to check it out.
Gee thanks, I enjoy being insulted for no reason. So which one were you, Scooby perchance?
Still a pretentious windbag, eh? Telling you which trolls I was would spoil the fun. You'll work it out, maybe.
I may be a pretentious windbag, it's true. This is hardly the first time I've been called that. OTOH, I've never felt the need to take cheap shots to make myself look/feel good.
Then do a diff on what actually appears. If something is not posted, you can make it public.
And the response would be the same... "you are a lying troll."
Hmmmm... I don't recall myself personally ever calling anyone a liar, just asking for some form of verification. And such a response I've only seen very rarely on LT. It's odd that you would think so... but I'm not here to psycho-analyze anybody.
Such a step would at least show some form of good faith on the accusers part. Heck you could even do it to an email address where several people have the password, so that they could each verify the what posts appeared.
My point remains. It is simple to provide evidence, yet no one has. Considering the small amount of time and the press to be gained, you'ld think that someone would make the attempt.
Personally, I never had a problem with them not posting my talkbacks...or changing them.
Well that's alright then... it must not be happing if it's not happened to you.
<Sarcasm>
Thank you for so cleaverly deducing my point for me. I appreciate your depth of insight into what I was saying.
</Sarcasm>
That was not my point, and you know it. I was simply stating what my experience was in contrast to yours. I've never had a problem with a post that the editors didn't have a very good reason for their desicion. I'm sorry if that is not your experience, but it is mine.
Hey, no shit genius!
Gee thanks, I enjoy being insulted for no
reason. So which one were you, Scooby perchance?
The tone sure sounds like it.
If it is, then I got my fair share of chain yanking in too. It was troll heaven, except for the totally outrageous moderation system with editors stopping posts for no other reason than they didn't agree with them.FWIW: I developed a real dislike for LT in the end. I got to see the true nature of the talkback system and how the editors slant the whole thing to support their own views and worst of all, actually EDIT posts to change their meanings (yes, this happened to me a couple of times).
This accusation has been made several times by many trolls on the site. It's a boring accusation which is easily proved. The email function emails the talkback as it exists when first posted. All you need to do is set up an email account and send all of your talkbacks to that. Then do a diff on what actually appears. If something is not posted, you can make it public.
And yet no one has done it. I've even offered to host the files demonstrating this at several times in the past. To date there is still no proof of either arbitrary editing or arbitrary censoring.
Personally, I never had a problem with them not posting my talkbacks...or changing them. Even when I _know_ they disagree with me. On the few occasions that they didn't post my talkback, they always had a very good reason. Just email them and get a response within an hour or two.
Why don't you go dig up some proof, it would make for quite a story. You might even get a write up on/.
No, dinotrac is a regular on Linux Today, as am I. (in fact the only reason I'm here is that LT isn't covering this).
You can verify this by searching on either of our names in the search talkback option on LT.
This is whole thing is very surprising to me. I'd suspected for a while that one person was running several "Characters" but never would have guessed it was Kevin who seemed like a pretty upstanding guy.
He was though, very entertaining in the posts... ---
RobK
My favorite online mag has a mention of him as well, as part of a skeptical look in the whole recovered memories thing that he seems to be involved with.
http://www.csicop.org/si/9609/conspiracy.html
My balony detector is going off hardcore.
Another articles that might pertain discusses the bullcr*p that is "Subliminal Messaging" http://www.csicop.org/si/9204/subliminal-persuasio n.html
Does anyone know of a single peer-reviewed paper that has been published making the link from viewing violence to persueing violence that has since held up to scurtiny?
I've heard a lot of anecdotal eviedence, and occasionally about a poorly done study. I have yet to hear of one that has held up to a skeptics scrutiny though. ---
RobK
Well, the "Creation Scientists" declare
the bible to be literally true.... so
we just follow their own claim and point
out that according to the bible
the value of pi is exactly 3, a bat is a bird
and all insects have 4 legs.
It's all documented on the site I list above. A truely interesting site.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a common approach.
Both Apple and Microsoft got their start selling to the consumer/early adopter market, and then their products (Apple II and MSDOS) started trickling into the business world. Back in the late 70's/early 80's the business world was dominated by minicomputers, with "microcomputers" (the PC/Apple II/etc) largely being marketed towards hobbyists. Then as the hobbyists started using them to do business work, companies started buying them. (Sometimes to the chagrin of the established technical staff.) There is (and I couldn't find it) an old Apple ad about sneakily doing your work on an Apple.
Of course, it doesn't always work. This was also Netscape's original approach, get the user hooked on the browser at the consumer level and sell the browser and server software to the corporate clients as consumers start wanting to use the software at work. The quality of the free apache server and the browser war with MS screwed this approach completely.
While there is obvious risk (as exemplified by Netscape), you get to save on sales & marketing, as your hobbyist/early-adopter users start pitching your product for you at a grass roots level.
Heck, some additional anecdotal evidence, back in the late-90's a company I was working at was thinking about switching to Exchange (which pretty much meant a move from Novell to Windows NT) simply because one user insisted on using Outlook. And his reason? That's what he used at home.
As others have pointed out, the cost of doing business in the EU is being regulated by the EU. That's life and if the fines/interference/etc is too onerous, Microsoft is free to abandon that market and concentrate on the US, Africa, Asia/Pacific Rim.
Personally, I'd love to see such a move coming from Redmond. It would accelerate adoption of non-Microsoft solutions in Europe. The resulting ripple effects would have some nice benefits for those of us developing stateside. :)
And, unlike Perl, it's very easy to do complicated things in simple, legible code.
This must mean you aren't able to write legible Perl code. Perl has been making complicated things simple for more than a decade. If you don't know how to write clean code, then your Python will also suck.
Not directed at the parent, but at the Perl-snipping in the original post....
<RANT>I'm a professional python programmer, and I've been making my living at it for a number of years now. (It was my embracing of python that allowed me to transition to a 100% MS free workspace.) I started using it a project a few years ago, and it's just stuck for a number of reasons. (meta-classes, extensibility, etc.)
One thing that drives me buggy about some python evangelists, (and many evangelists, in general) is the need to bash anything that is not their favorite brand (be it Creative vs iPOD, Python vs (insert any language here). And so on. The fact of the matter is that Perl is a perfectly good language. I don't use it on a regular basis personally, but I've seen, read and understood a good deal of Perl code w/o a hassle. (yes, I've seen some scary code, but I've seen scary code in C++, Python, Java, etc., etc., etc.)
Sometimes we just have to admit that there are multiple good tools that we could use, but we have a personal (and possibly irrational) preference for one over the other. That's life as a human being (which I'm assuming at least 99% of the readers out there are. :) ). Just because some people use Perl, doesn't make my choice of python (of C++, my other "main" language) any less valid.
It's real life, not a multiple choice test -- there is no single "correct" answer.
</RANT>Ok, I'm done... back to work.
Speaking of laserdisc games, does anyone else remember this game?
Sigh, YES. I never got very far, but I spent a lot of money doing playing it. The nearest one was 50 miles away (at the "local" mall's arcade), and I usually pushed 3-4 dollars into it each visit....and STILL never made it out of the first kingdom!
D'oh...that's what you get for talking the dog for a walk in the middle of posting a comment!
Seriously, I've been laid off since Nov. 29th. (I start a new job on Monday...YAY!). But, I've been putting in 40-60 hour days everyday (with the exception of a few days when it was REALLY nice out).
Not only have a really made progress on GnosisLIMS (which I've been working on for years), but I was also able to create a useful tool for managing my email when I'm way from my desk (Flex-mn).
It was very useful for answering the standard "so what have you been doing during your time off other than watching TV" interview question.Yeah, I did too. I'm really not sure I see why thye haven't. The amount of hardware required makes anyone "stealing" the code and setting up "Hoogle.com" just about impossible. (The only one who might want to is MSNSearch, and do you think they would really use open source code so publicly?)
Not saying that I think they have a moral obligation here, I think they have done more than enough for the FOSS community.... but I am sort of curious as to why they keep their source closed.
Funny that a standard that is a draft status is "too cumbersome". If you subscribe to the CalDAV development lists you'll see that they are trying very hard to keep the standard quite simple.
Compare this to the search for "bigfoot".
Here we have skulls, pictures, etc of this elusive animal. All shortly (relatively) after the start of the search.
It's interesting to see real scientists at work here,rather than the less than skeptical cryptologist who have nothing more than some faked/mis-identified footprints and a couple eyewitness reports. Even though they have been searching for what, 50 years?
Be interesting how many documentaries on this new species get put on the Discovery Channel. Sadly, I think that the bigfoot documentaries will get alot more air time.
Sigh....
I was dissapointed that the time line didn't cover any of the antics on alt.religion.scientology which lead to a great deal of lawsuits. And IIRC, ended in some pretty scary pre-DCMA descisions being made.
I wonder if this is a repeat of the oft-"discoved" bimini roads off bermuda. They are a naturally occuring formation that appears to be man made, it has fooled psuedoarchealogists off and on for the last 20 years or so (maybe longer, I don't recall exactly when they were found).
At anyrate here is a link from Paul Heinrich's Wild Side Geoarcheology entry on the Bimini roads:
Bimini Roads And Atlantis
Bimini Columns And Atlantis
Bimini Granite Stones and Atlantis
Just wondering....
and like warm beer, too!
There is a keen difference (in my experience) between masss produced European and mass produced American beer:
1) European beer is really good warm, and tasty cold.
2) American beer is terrifyingly bad warm, and it's bad cold.
It depends on if you want consistantly bad or consistantly good beer.
Mind you, this is coming from a person who's idea of heaven is sitting on an isolated beach on a sunny day with his laptop and some nice room temperature stout...writting code and getting pleasently smashed. So you might want to take my opinions with a grain of salt.
If you got a random email from someone you've never heard of from a .af domain then yes, you could be suspicious, but if John has known this guy for years then he's in a better position to judge than we are.
.af domain, or is "Junis" in Afg?
... amigas. There is a version of linux that boots on a C-64 (don't have the url handy) but its a very recent development, so he couldn't have tried it out before buring his C64 in the chicken coop.
I'm confused. Did this "Junis" forward the email from someone with an
The reason I ask is that he's described as being a "computer geek obessed with Linux" that Katz has conversed with in the past.
1) If Junis is our friend in Afg, how does he balance his obession with linux with running a commodore? Yes, I know linux works on the amiga, but not all models, and it's specifically refered to as a commodore...usually amigas are called well
2) With the same assumption, does it seem odd that he is "obssessed with linux", thinks Apple was going to beat MS _and_ is very impressed with open source? If he's obsessed with linux, isn't he impressed with open source by default?
3)If Junis is someone who forwarded a message (and Katz has spoken to him before), then how is this any more reliable than any other forwarded email?
4) Wouldn't the various nasty chemicals released by decaying chicken feces destroy the delicate circuitry on a computer? Assuming it was an Amiga, I know the A1000 and A2000 were well built, but there are some _nasty_ by products of bird feces decaying. Never mind the dirty clogging the fans, and getting into the circuitry.
This looks like either Katz is pulling our collective legs, someone is pulling Katz's leg or there's a whole lot of urban legend that got delivered to Katz's inbox.
I can't wait to see what snopes.com has to say about this.
"Muppets In Space" has this feature too. Kermit, Rizzo, Gonzo The Great and the director discuss the film, and some "behind the scenes facts" (mostly made up).
I thought it was very funny... but I'm a sucker for anything with Gonzo The Great.
And of course there is Plan 9 From Outer Space and their pioneering work with using actors who died during filming. ;)
Why? Does it look any better than watching it on Windows? Was it easier?
;)
Easier than a reboot, yes.
Why not just get Windows?
Let's seen $20 or $200... hmmmmm, I think I'll go with CrossOver.
Why support a software vendor that refuses to support your favorite platform?
Because I enjoy viewing shockwave and quicktime content (cartoonnetwork.com, for example) enough to swallow my pride and pay $20.00. But not enough to pay $200(full price for homeverion of XP) for the privledge of revamping my entire work style.
Or do you consider "it doesn't break under Wine" to be good enough?
Can I get my task done (whether it be editing XLS, writing code or viewing QT movies)? Then it's good enough for me. And if it's cheaper, that's even better.
There is a petition going around. The idea is to try and put some pressure on the LT staff to put out some answers. To date it's had little effect. We've had a very hard time getting the normal outlets to take notice of us.
Many of them feel that this story should die.
Other think that it's not really a story, that it's not important.
And still others seem to think that the community needs to be "protected."
It's linked at the bottom of Paul's article, but I'll include it here too.
LT Petition
As a matter of fact, no. I think you have such a blazing desire to win an argument that you will not let it drop. I've been around even longer than you Rob, I know your type.
I'm glad that you seem to think you know me so well. Unfortunately you are wrong.
So long, nice talking to you again.
---
RobK
Actually, I'm violating several Troll High Council rules by telling you this but: I don't think you'll ever learn. This entire thread is a troll Rob (not that it's untrue, just a troll)... and you've walked into it yet again.
/., LT and others for much too long to be that naive. I know when I'm being trolled, and I very rarely take this stuff as seriously as people seem to think I do.
/. supposedly isn't moderated. Or email it to a regular. Or... or... or...
Do you really think I'm so stupid that I didn't know that? I've been hanging out on usenet,
Of course, you'll respond with some smartass crack like "What ever lets you sleep at night." And if that makes you feel good, you can go ahead an believe that I'm lying.... doesn't matter to me.
Despite what you seem to think, I decided to feed the trolls _knowingly_. It is fun and entertaining to me. Especially when I can illicit reactions such as I got from some of the LT trolls such as "Scooby" and "Marc Adams." Or, to watch their reactions. Lately, I was picking on "Anon," but it looks like that will get interrupted as LT's been down for quite a while. And even if it comes back up, I won't be going back there w/o a _really_ _good_ explination of what they did and why.
Think of it as metatrolling, it's a matter of having that much more paitence than the given troll and getting them to lose their temper.
If you look back about 90% or so of my posts are real and genuine...my honest to goodness opinion. The other 10%, responding to trolls are just to p*ss them off.
I've been doing it for years. Ted Holden (on talk.origins) and Alexander Abian (on sci.physics) were my two earliest victims. That was in '90-'91. If you feel compelled, I'm sure google groups would have some of the postings from rk3h@andrew.cmu.edu, my college email address.
Sadly, the real hum-dinger flame I got from Ted was sent to my private email, which was probably deleted long, long ago. So you won't get to see that....
It is my sworn duty to drag this thread out until it degenerates into childish name-calling, but I'm giving you a get out of jail card. I hope you appreciate it.
Huh--- yeah, you've been so successful in the past. IIRC, I've not resorted to out and out name-calling in any thread since I stopped hanging around talk.origins back in '91. Ocassionally little snide comments, but that's about it. Trust me, I'll stop posting _long_ before I get to the point of childish name calling.
Think of it as a challenge....
You can believe this, or not, it really makes no difference anymore, but: I did as you suggested. I posted all of my censored messages in a hidden slashdot sid. I advertised its presence in trolltalk (another hidden sid), and tried mightly to get it mentioned in an LT talkback. No chance.
Every time I mentioned the sid, and that people could get my uncensored messages there, my posts were deleted.
Then post the url.
Joe Barr is still collecting more information on this, you could email _him_ the URL, or post it on the varlinux discussion about this story.
I'm not saying that I _don't_ believe you, it's perfectly possible you've done such a thing. I'm not about to defend LT now, or question claims about the site now that all of this evidence is staring me in the face. But, it would be really nice to know just how bad this corruption at LT goes.
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RobK
Yeah, it's me.
e d&order=0&thold=0 about 90% of the way towards the end.
I just wanted to comment that Joe Barr has posted some verifiable evidence of severe editorial manipulation at LT that goes well beyond the trolling that KR was doing.
It now looks as if I got the eviedence I was looking for, which is all that I was after in the whole thing from the begining. (Despite the offense taken by many people whom I asked.)
So it looks like I must admit that you were right, and I was wrong. I can't link directly to the post in question, however it's here http://varlinux.org/article.php?sid=296&mode=nest
It starts out "Dear LinuxToday Staffer (or apologist)," and was posted on "Friday, July 20 @ 06:11:06 PDT", incase you want to check it out.
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RobK
Gee thanks, I enjoy being insulted for no reason. So which one were you, Scooby perchance?
Still a pretentious windbag, eh? Telling you which trolls I was would spoil the fun. You'll work it out, maybe.
I may be a pretentious windbag, it's true. This is hardly the first time I've been called that. OTOH, I've never felt the need to take cheap shots to make myself look/feel good.
Then do a diff on what actually appears. If something is not posted, you can make it public.
And the response would be the same... "you are a lying troll."
Hmmmm... I don't recall myself personally ever calling anyone a liar, just asking for some form of verification. And such a response I've only seen very rarely on LT. It's odd that you would think so... but I'm not here to psycho-analyze anybody.
Such a step would at least show some form of good faith on the accusers part. Heck you could even do it to an email address where several people have the password, so that they could each verify the what posts appeared.
My point remains. It is simple to provide evidence, yet no one has. Considering the small amount of time and the press to be gained, you'ld think that someone would make the attempt.
Personally, I never had a problem with them not posting my talkbacks...or changing them.
Well that's alright then... it must not be happing if it's not happened to you.
<Sarcasm>
Thank you for so cleaverly deducing my point for me. I appreciate your depth of insight into what I was saying.
</Sarcasm>
That was not my point, and you know it. I was simply stating what my experience was in contrast to yours. I've never had a problem with a post that the editors didn't have a very good reason for their desicion. I'm sorry if that is not your experience, but it is mine.
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RobK
Hey, no shit genius!
/.
Gee thanks, I enjoy being insulted for no reason. So which one were you, Scooby perchance?
The tone sure sounds like it.
If it is, then I got my fair share of chain yanking in too.
It was troll heaven, except for the totally outrageous moderation system with editors stopping posts for no other reason than they didn't agree with them.FWIW: I developed a real dislike for LT in the end. I got to see the true nature of the talkback system and how the editors slant the whole thing to support their own views and worst of all, actually EDIT posts to change their meanings (yes, this happened to me a couple of times).
This accusation has been made several times by many trolls on the site. It's a boring accusation which is easily proved. The email function emails the talkback as it exists when first posted. All you need to do is set up an email account and send all of your talkbacks to that. Then do a diff on what actually appears. If something is not posted, you can make it public.
And yet no one has done it. I've even offered to host the files demonstrating this at several times in the past. To date there is still no proof of either arbitrary editing or arbitrary censoring.
Personally, I never had a problem with them not posting my talkbacks...or changing them. Even when I _know_ they disagree with me. On the few occasions that they didn't post my talkback, they always had a very good reason. Just email them and get a response within an hour or two.
Why don't you go dig up some proof, it would make for quite a story. You might even get a write up on
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RobK
No, dinotrac is a regular on Linux Today, as am I. (in fact the only reason I'm here is that LT isn't covering this). You can verify this by searching on either of our names in the search talkback option on LT. This is whole thing is very surprising to me. I'd suspected for a while that one person was running several "Characters" but never would have guessed it was Kevin who seemed like a pretty upstanding guy. He was though, very entertaining in the posts...
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RobK
My favorite online mag has a mention of him as well, as part of a skeptical look in the whole recovered memories thing that he seems to be involved with.
o n.html
http://www.csicop.org/si/9609/conspiracy.html
My balony detector is going off hardcore.
Another articles that might pertain discusses the bullcr*p that is "Subliminal Messaging" http://www.csicop.org/si/9204/subliminal-persuasi
Does anyone know of a single peer-reviewed paper that has been published making the link from viewing violence to persueing violence that has since held up to scurtiny?
I've heard a lot of anecdotal eviedence, and occasionally about a poorly done study. I have yet to hear of one that has held up to a skeptics scrutiny though.
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RobK
Well, the "Creation Scientists" declare
the bible to be literally true.... so
we just follow their own claim and point
out that according to the bible
the value of pi is exactly 3, a bat is a bird
and all insects have 4 legs.
It's all documented on the site I list above. A truely interesting site.
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RobK