Between slashdot posts? Web design, tech support, sysadminning. Alittle programming. Sometime in the near future I'll probably be helping out a friend with a contract position or two to do ethernet wiring for small businesses. Oh, and I'm trying to take over the world.
I don't suppose you are looking for a new job..
If you're serious, hit my e-mail address (above) and we can talk outside of slashdot.
Okay, as the resident Karma Whore and de facto expert on moderation here on slashdot, I think I'm probably the one person here who can comment with authority on this article.
My gut feeling - it won't work. I think the ideal moderation system would be based on what is called the Delphi Effect, if I understand it correctly. Basically the more people you have moderating, the closer to the "true" rating it will be. ie: if 80% of people believe a post is +3, but 20% believe it is -1, it is +3. No averages. A sort of majority rules. It depends, however, on alot of people moderating.. to the point that there are more moderations than there are posts. But, my ideas aside...
The problem with this proposal is two-fold: One, it has no way to detect 1 person using 10, or a hundred, or a hundred thousand, accounts and thus biasing the voting system. It's a problem prevalent here on slashdot where the trolls have created throwaway accounts. Limiting on IP address doesn't work, because many are behind firewalls and hence multiple users can legitimately be on one IP. one account per e-mail address doesn't work either - e-mail addresses are easy to get.. often for free. The net result is a small group of determined attackers can destroy the system (sound familiar?).
The second problem is related to the first. Their idea of having the users rate themselves initially is a very good idea (rob, you paying attention?) but it suffers from the fact that someone can simply moderate their own posts, and gain a point advantage.. and we're right back where we started.
The key to moderation lies in accountability. You can create the best system in the world - but unless you can enforce some kind of "one person, one vote" standard, it will always be open to abuse.
Lastly, some advice for the kiro5hin maintainers - don't count on obscuring the statistical system to deter your attackers for long. The people who took down the slashdot moderation system did so in an organized and systematic fashion. These people are bored and have nothing else to do - but you DO and hence are at a disadvantage. Once the system is in place, PLEASE ADAPT IT - don't just deploy it and forget about it. It'll need to be tweaked, updated, maybe even entirely thrown out for a new system. Trust the wisdom of Strousoup(sp?) on this one - design the first implimentation to throw it away, you're going to do it atleast once anyway.
any moderator that think signal 11's posts are funny must be smoking 3 bowls of weed a day. this guy is LAME!!
Oh get with it you twit. The traditional retort about moderation is that they should lay off the cheap five dollar crack. 3 bowls of weed a day would probably make them incapable of moderation. Comeon, think alittle.
Now, don't take this the wrong way.. but why should I trust my precious data to a system that proudly displays a little red devil for its logo, is organized by a bunch of code hippies, and has stamped to the side Evil Inside ?
*Note to moderators: Yes, this is humor. Yes, you're going to moderate it up. No, No... stop. No. LEAVE THE DIAL ALO-#!@
Ya see what I have to put up with in a week?
*sigh*
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Re:Signal 11 flunks Linguistics 101. News at 11.
on
2 Views of Hackers
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· Score: 1
It's film at 11, not news.
And I think I did pretty damn good considering I'm just an uneducated 20 year old slob *cough* *cough*.
But since your bio says you're a linguistics graduate.. maybe you could enlighten the dung-flinging masses out here with your wisdom on the subject.. instead of just tearing into people and being a elitist pseudo-intellectual.
First, it isn't digital, second this isn't new information, modulo the actual plans for the computers. Third, didja know the NSA has its own fabrication plant?:) Makes you wonder...
What kind of rhetoric double-talk is that? The GPL was created to keep people from taking code and using it for proprietary purposes. It was created to force people to contribute back to the community instead of simply stealing others' work. The fact of the matter is we live in an age where money is determining our morality. Witness the Napster debate - most people don't consider it wrong to download music, so long as it is done without the intent to profit (by means of reselling).
The GPL is a logical extension of the morality and mindset of the people in this community. We're tired of being exploited by big business. We deal with it in the real world - violations of our privacy, destruction of our right to free speech and the systematic elimination and compartmentalization of our vocation and avocation - computers.. reducing our profession to little more than whoring ourselves out to the highest bidder.
The GPL was created because of shortcomings in the BSD, artistic, and public licensing schemes where corporations could take your code without asking you. This gives you the right to say - "No - my code, my rules." This is the legacy of the GPL - it has empowered programmers to take back their authorship rights. Compare it to the Microsoft Windows NT EULA, and reflect on it. You might find the GPL isn't so bad afterall.
The GPL isn't about granting new freedom; it's about preserving what little we have left.
The "very small number" refers to the number of people who were openly gay when the term was introduced.
Irrelevant. If they found it offensive, they would have said it by now - black people didn't used to be offended by being called "niggers", but they are now, and it's being changed. How many people were protesting when it was first introduced is irrelevant.
Exactly my point. Thank you for agreeing. The definition was changed.
Don't get so ahead of yourself.. it says "depreciated" not changed. From the dictionary...
depreciate (d-prsh-t) v. depreciated, depreciating, depreciates.
v. tr.
To lessen the price or value of.
To think or speak of as being of little worth; belittle. See Synonyms at deprecate.
v. intr.
To diminish in price or value.
Nothing here says anything about "changing" the definition, only a note saying that this is an uncommon definition of hack and is (or should be!) little used.
I know a teenager or early twentysomething like yourself might find this hard to believe, but 1996 is quite recent. 1990 is also quite recent.
First, age is irrelevant and you are being discriminatory and elitist by saying that my age somehow has a relationship to my ability to argue. But if you must argue the point about age, I'd like to point out that, almost exclusively, the progress in the computer technology sector has been coming from the people you just belittled. Anecdotal evidence - companies are discriminating against old people severely because of the widespread perception (fact?) that they are not as productive as their younger counterparts. [Source: FACEI] Second, wake up. This is the internet - 3 months of "internet history" is about 5 years of "real world" history right now. We're operating under a constant acceleration caused by technology advancement. If you think 5 years ago is "recent", remember that 5 years ago, e-commerce didn't exist, Linux had only been around for a few months in a usable form, and the "web" was still a morass of pasty grey webpages and broken HTML. Slashdot got maybe 10 hits a day, and IPO was just another word.
The "old" definition backs up the media.
I beg to differ, according to my research, hacker originally meant "someone who makes furniture with an axe". That's the "old" definition. As early as the 1960's, the term "hacker" was rechristianed to the definition in the Jargon File. Had you done some preliminary research, you would have discovered that this is where the derivatives "sports hacker" and whatnot came from - it was first used by the computer industry and then started spreading into normal use. That is, until the media misinterpreted it by equating computer enthusiast with computer criminal.
The media will generally call you what you call yourself.
There's about 20,000 people on BugTraq who would like to talk to you about that, as well as a few "hacker" organizations like these guys.
I'm going to stop replying now, as you seem to be intent on chasing your tail and offering little or nothing in the way of new insight on the matter. There's nothing new to discuss here.
The answer can be found here. You want the Hacker Dictionary link at the bottom. Feel free to browse ESR's site.. it has alot of other interesting things on it.. as well as a few uninteresting things (of course).:)
Words are meant for communication, and majority rules when it comes to communication.
I don't know a polite way to put this - take your democratic values and shove it. Language is a method of communication. There is no democracy, no majority, nothing like that. Those are social conventions. Keep them seperate and distinct from language - they are NOT related. Don't go confusing the issue by injecting your own prejudiced views into the matter.
A very small group of people decided that "gay" means "homosexual".
That "very small" number is between 9.2 and 16.7 percent in the US ("The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States." Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). From that, I'd say that's not a "very small number" and further, I'd assert that they represent a larger percentage per capita than the "geek community". Also, they have not objected to being called "gay" or "lesbian", as evidenced by "Gay Pride" parades which are now common in many large metropolitan areas.
Sorry, but one of the sense of "hacker" IS "someone who break security".
According to the Hacker Dictionary, aka the Jargon file, and the authoritative source for jargon in the computer culture, that definition is depreciated - the correct term is cracker.
It's only recently that people have decided that they don't like the criminal aspect to that behavior, and so are trying to chop off that definition and place it into "cracker".
Anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests otherwise. By simply going through old usenet posts - the oldest records I cold find, I was able to determine that heated debates over this existed as early as 1996. I recall from my own personal memory that even in the early 90's there was a debate over this - during the BBSing days. This would be circa 1992. One thing is certain - this isn't a new issue. The issue has even been incorporated into some people's teaching materials in linguistics!
In any case, you'll note that the people are are cracking systems refer to themselves as hackers
This position is easily rebuffed by the simple fact that you can call yourself anything you want. I can pretend to be an Electrical Engineer, or a Chief Financial Officer. Am I one though? That aside, even systems crackers are not referring to themselves as hackers. They're hardly intelligible as is, but most of them refer to themselves as crackers. Check out #hackers on EFNet sometime if you don't believe me.
Now that I'm done - please, save yourself some work - just see things my way.
I suppose you would also recommend that the possessive form of "it" should be "it's" since that's what most people use, too?
We're the techies and the geeks here. This is our profession, this is our playground. As with any profession, we have our own set of jargon. A set of jargon which is frequently screwed up and misrepresented by the general public.
In the same way that your doctor groans whenever you walk into the office proclaiming what ills you (but showed up anyway) and requesting a specific remedy without letting him do his job, computer geeks get incensed when you use the wrong term, poorly describe the problem, and then become belligerant that your solution is The One that'll work.
I don't tell doctors what to call Ecoli or what a phage is, so I don't expect them to tell me what a computer virus is or how the linux kernel works.
We defined this set of jargon, and it's up to US, not THEM to determine its use. If they screw it up, that's their fault, not ours. If it leads to miscommunication and disinformation it is THEIR fault, NOT ours. If they are muddling in the affairs of computer professionals and using terms without knowing what they mean, they deserve to be flammed for it. They're doing the world a disservice.
We use jargon to effect rapid communication between others in the profession. While it may seem elitist to create a language for solely our use, consider the alternative - using existing language. We have acronyms and words to describe *exactly* what we are thinking. Go and start changing that around and you'll have a communication problem.
It's our duty to correct this problem before we find ourselves speaking each in different dialects. This is a matter of linguistics and communication... not pride.
Yeah, it's called piezoelectric materials, and they were discovered during the time that Plato and those cool Romans were out sprinking their food with lead to get a buzz.
The things that pass for "new" these days.. *groan*
Well, I *did* mention earlier that I had hacked slashdot years ago to get my karma points.. what's to say I can't make the other highly rated comments disappear from time to time happen as well? >:)
The poster's contention was that Intel is working its engineers to the bone, and under a demeaning work environment, and this is why Intel is falling behind - their top talent is leaving for AMD and Texas Instruments (TI) en masse as a result of management. This, the author contended, was the real reason for Intel's recent failures - they've pushed their engineers too far.
I doubt this is a conspiracy, but I'm reposting this anyway, as the comment deserves to be seen, as does the site.
Incase you don't believe me, the post is here. Yes, I really did take one apart... and yes I really *am* pissed they didn't send me a letter. I've taunted the RIAA, the MPAA, I've denounced the christian coalition, NOW (national organization of women), and I have yet to receive a single letter of reprisal. I'm really depressed. Even when I *try* to get in trouble I can't. I'm a miserable failure. *sniff*
Hey, I hacked the hardware of the cuecat and got it posted in a slashdot quickie. I was the first person to post the hardware details of the cuecat. Where's my f*cking letter, you DC bastards?
Christ, they don't get the internet, they don't get public relations, they don't get security, and now I don't get my letter. What kind of sods are running this show?
Useless. Politicians like paper - documents, real letters from the post office. E-mails are easy to make, and easy to disregard. A letter, for whatever reason, leaves a lasting impression.. moreso now because it takes TIME to write a letter, and it's a subconscious thing - if you took time to write it, they should take the time to read it. It's only fair. And not only that, but it holds certain psychological value. Our consitution written online means less than the Real Deal. The ideas are the same, but the impact is not.
Slashdot Mirror
Whups, first mistake. :)
What do you do for a living?
Between slashdot posts? Web design, tech support, sysadminning. Alittle programming. Sometime in the near future I'll probably be helping out a friend with a contract position or two to do ethernet wiring for small businesses. Oh, and I'm trying to take over the world.
I don't suppose you are looking for a new job..
If you're serious, hit my e-mail address (above) and we can talk outside of slashdot.
--
My gut feeling - it won't work. I think the ideal moderation system would be based on what is called the Delphi Effect, if I understand it correctly. Basically the more people you have moderating, the closer to the "true" rating it will be. ie: if 80% of people believe a post is +3, but 20% believe it is -1, it is +3. No averages. A sort of majority rules. It depends, however, on alot of people moderating.. to the point that there are more moderations than there are posts. But, my ideas aside...
The problem with this proposal is two-fold: One, it has no way to detect 1 person using 10, or a hundred, or a hundred thousand, accounts and thus biasing the voting system. It's a problem prevalent here on slashdot where the trolls have created throwaway accounts. Limiting on IP address doesn't work, because many are behind firewalls and hence multiple users can legitimately be on one IP. one account per e-mail address doesn't work either - e-mail addresses are easy to get.. often for free. The net result is a small group of determined attackers can destroy the system (sound familiar?).
The second problem is related to the first. Their idea of having the users rate themselves initially is a very good idea (rob, you paying attention?) but it suffers from the fact that someone can simply moderate their own posts, and gain a point advantage.. and we're right back where we started.
The key to moderation lies in accountability. You can create the best system in the world - but unless you can enforce some kind of "one person, one vote" standard, it will always be open to abuse.
Lastly, some advice for the kiro5hin maintainers - don't count on obscuring the statistical system to deter your attackers for long. The people who took down the slashdot moderation system did so in an organized and systematic fashion. These people are bored and have nothing else to do - but you DO and hence are at a disadvantage. Once the system is in place, PLEASE ADAPT IT - don't just deploy it and forget about it. It'll need to be tweaked, updated, maybe even entirely thrown out for a new system. Trust the wisdom of Strousoup(sp?) on this one - design the first implimentation to throw it away, you're going to do it atleast once anyway.
Cheers,
Signal 11
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Oh get with it you twit. The traditional retort about moderation is that they should lay off the cheap five dollar crack. 3 bowls of weed a day would probably make them incapable of moderation. Comeon, think alittle.
--
*Note to moderators: Yes, this is humor. Yes, you're going to moderate it up. No, No... stop. No. LEAVE THE DIAL ALO-#!@
--
SLASHDOT SMACKDOWN 2000
The Contenders: Richard Stallman, Lessig, and Eric S. Raymond
The Incumbents: Valenti, Hilary Rosen, and and Unknown!
Watch tonight as the righteous Freedom Fighters square off against the Evil Empire in a Tag Team Match To the Finish
Tonight at 8/7 Central, exclusively on slashdotted servers!
I couldn't help it.. I just had this vivid imagery of the RIAA and MPAA in some kind of warped WWF arena...
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And I think I did pretty damn good considering I'm just an uneducated 20 year old slob *cough* *cough*.
But since your bio says you're a linguistics graduate.. maybe you could enlighten the dung-flinging masses out here with your wisdom on the subject.. instead of just tearing into people and being a elitist pseudo-intellectual.
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Exactly. You answered your own question.
What kind of rhetoric double-talk is that? The GPL was created to keep people from taking code and using it for proprietary purposes. It was created to force people to contribute back to the community instead of simply stealing others' work. The fact of the matter is we live in an age where money is determining our morality. Witness the Napster debate - most people don't consider it wrong to download music, so long as it is done without the intent to profit (by means of reselling).
The GPL is a logical extension of the morality and mindset of the people in this community. We're tired of being exploited by big business. We deal with it in the real world - violations of our privacy, destruction of our right to free speech and the systematic elimination and compartmentalization of our vocation and avocation - computers.. reducing our profession to little more than whoring ourselves out to the highest bidder.
The GPL was created because of shortcomings in the BSD, artistic, and public licensing schemes where corporations could take your code without asking you. This gives you the right to say - "No - my code, my rules." This is the legacy of the GPL - it has empowered programmers to take back their authorship rights. Compare it to the Microsoft Windows NT EULA, and reflect on it. You might find the GPL isn't so bad afterall.
The GPL isn't about granting new freedom; it's about preserving what little we have left.
--
Irrelevant. If they found it offensive, they would have said it by now - black people didn't used to be offended by being called "niggers", but they are now, and it's being changed. How many people were protesting when it was first introduced is irrelevant.
Exactly my point. Thank you for agreeing. The definition was changed.
Don't get so ahead of yourself.. it says "depreciated" not changed. From the dictionary...
depreciate (d-prsh-t)
v. depreciated, depreciating, depreciates. v. tr.
To lessen the price or value of. To think or speak of as being of little worth; belittle. See Synonyms at deprecate.
v. intr. To diminish in price or value.
Nothing here says anything about "changing" the definition, only a note saying that this is an uncommon definition of hack and is (or should be!) little used.
I know a teenager or early twentysomething like yourself might find this hard to believe, but 1996 is quite recent. 1990 is also quite recent.
First, age is irrelevant and you are being discriminatory and elitist by saying that my age somehow has a relationship to my ability to argue. But if you must argue the point about age, I'd like to point out that, almost exclusively, the progress in the computer technology sector has been coming from the people you just belittled. Anecdotal evidence - companies are discriminating against old people severely because of the widespread perception (fact?) that they are not as productive as their younger counterparts. [Source: FACEI] Second, wake up. This is the internet - 3 months of "internet history" is about 5 years of "real world" history right now. We're operating under a constant acceleration caused by technology advancement. If you think 5 years ago is "recent", remember that 5 years ago, e-commerce didn't exist, Linux had only been around for a few months in a usable form, and the "web" was still a morass of pasty grey webpages and broken HTML. Slashdot got maybe 10 hits a day, and IPO was just another word.
The "old" definition backs up the media.
I beg to differ, according to my research, hacker originally meant "someone who makes furniture with an axe". That's the "old" definition. As early as the 1960's, the term "hacker" was rechristianed to the definition in the Jargon File. Had you done some preliminary research, you would have discovered that this is where the derivatives "sports hacker" and whatnot came from - it was first used by the computer industry and then started spreading into normal use. That is, until the media misinterpreted it by equating computer enthusiast with computer criminal.
The media will generally call you what you call yourself.
There's about 20,000 people on BugTraq who would like to talk to you about that, as well as a few "hacker" organizations like these guys.
I'm going to stop replying now, as you seem to be intent on chasing your tail and offering little or nothing in the way of new insight on the matter. There's nothing new to discuss here.
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I don't know a polite way to put this - take your democratic values and shove it. Language is a method of communication. There is no democracy, no majority, nothing like that. Those are social conventions. Keep them seperate and distinct from language - they are NOT related. Don't go confusing the issue by injecting your own prejudiced views into the matter.
A very small group of people decided that "gay" means "homosexual".
That "very small" number is between 9.2 and 16.7 percent in the US ("The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States." Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). From that, I'd say that's not a "very small number" and further, I'd assert that they represent a larger percentage per capita than the "geek community". Also, they have not objected to being called "gay" or "lesbian", as evidenced by "Gay Pride" parades which are now common in many large metropolitan areas.
Sorry, but one of the sense of "hacker" IS "someone who break security".
According to the Hacker Dictionary, aka the Jargon file, and the authoritative source for jargon in the computer culture, that definition is depreciated - the correct term is cracker.
It's only recently that people have decided that they don't like the criminal aspect to that behavior, and so are trying to chop off that definition and place it into "cracker".
Anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests otherwise. By simply going through old usenet posts - the oldest records I cold find, I was able to determine that heated debates over this existed as early as 1996. I recall from my own personal memory that even in the early 90's there was a debate over this - during the BBSing days. This would be circa 1992. One thing is certain - this isn't a new issue. The issue has even been incorporated into some people's teaching materials in linguistics!
In any case, you'll note that the people are are cracking systems refer to themselves as hackers
This position is easily rebuffed by the simple fact that you can call yourself anything you want. I can pretend to be an Electrical Engineer, or a Chief Financial Officer. Am I one though? That aside, even systems crackers are not referring to themselves as hackers. They're hardly intelligible as is, but most of them refer to themselves as crackers. Check out #hackers on EFNet sometime if you don't believe me.
Now that I'm done - please, save yourself some work - just see things my way.
--
We're the techies and the geeks here. This is our profession, this is our playground. As with any profession, we have our own set of jargon. A set of jargon which is frequently screwed up and misrepresented by the general public.
In the same way that your doctor groans whenever you walk into the office proclaiming what ills you (but showed up anyway) and requesting a specific remedy without letting him do his job, computer geeks get incensed when you use the wrong term, poorly describe the problem, and then become belligerant that your solution is The One that'll work.
I don't tell doctors what to call Ecoli or what a phage is, so I don't expect them to tell me what a computer virus is or how the linux kernel works.
We defined this set of jargon, and it's up to US, not THEM to determine its use. If they screw it up, that's their fault, not ours. If it leads to miscommunication and disinformation it is THEIR fault, NOT ours. If they are muddling in the affairs of computer professionals and using terms without knowing what they mean, they deserve to be flammed for it. They're doing the world a disservice.
We use jargon to effect rapid communication between others in the profession. While it may seem elitist to create a language for solely our use, consider the alternative - using existing language. We have acronyms and words to describe *exactly* what we are thinking. Go and start changing that around and you'll have a communication problem.
It's our duty to correct this problem before we find ourselves speaking each in different dialects. This is a matter of linguistics and communication... not pride.
--
Yeah, it's called piezoelectric materials, and they were discovered during the time that Plato and those cool Romans were out sprinking their food with lead to get a buzz.
The things that pass for "new" these days.. *groan*
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Hangon, I'm working on it...
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That is a completely accurate statement. So was my previous post. What's 2+2 ?
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Faceintel.com
The poster's contention was that Intel is working its engineers to the bone, and under a demeaning work environment, and this is why Intel is falling behind - their top talent is leaving for AMD and Texas Instruments (TI) en masse as a result of management. This, the author contended, was the real reason for Intel's recent failures - they've pushed their engineers too far.
I doubt this is a conspiracy, but I'm reposting this anyway, as the comment deserves to be seen, as does the site.
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I wish I could.. but they never sent me one, so I can't complain yet. :/
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Christ, they don't get the internet, they don't get public relations, they don't get security, and now I don't get my letter. What kind of sods are running this show?
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Forget the million e-mail. Slashdot the USPO.
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Find the manager for eToys and hire him.
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