As far as I can tell, this is a phenomenon unique to proprietary software.
I would assume that this is largely because most popular open source operating systems use some kind of package manager for installing software, mostly eliminating the need to search websites for an installer file.
The term derives from "trolling", a style of fishing which involves trailing bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The troll posts a message, often in response to an honest question, that is intended to upset, disrupt or simply insult the group.
Usually, it will fail, as the troll rarely bothers to match the tone or style of the group, and usually its ignorance shows.
Why do trolls do it?
I believe that most trolls are sad people, living their lonely lives vicariously through those they see as strong and successful.
Disrupting a stable newsgroup gives the illusion of power, just as for a few, stalking a strong person allows them to think they are strong, too.
For trolls, any response is 'recognition'; they are unable to distinguish between irritation and admiration; their ego grows directly in proportion to the response, regardless of the form or content of that response.
Trolls, rather surprisingly, dispute this, claiming that it's a game or joke; this merely confirms the diagnosis; how sad do you have to be to find such mind-numbingly trivial timewasting to be funny?
Remember that trolls are cowards; they'll usually post just enough to get an argument going, then sit back and count the responses (Yes, that's what they do!).
* No Imagination - Most are frighteningly obvious; sexist comments on womens' groups, blasphemy on religious groups.. I kid you not.
* Pedantic in the Extreme - Many trolls' preparation is so thorough, that while they waste time, they appear so ludicrous from the start that they elicit sympathetic mail - the danger is that once the group takes sides, the damage is done.
* False Identity - Because they are anonymous cowards, trolls virtually never write over their own name, and often reveal their trolliness (and lack of imagination) in the chosen ID. As so many folk these days use false ID, this is not a strong indicator on its own!
* Crossposting - Any post that is crossposted to several groups should be viewed as suspicious, particularly if unrelated or of opposing perspective. Why would someone do that?
* Off-topic posting - Often genuine errors, but, if from an 'outsider' they deserve matter-of-fact response; if genuine, a brief apposite response is simply netiquette; if it's a troll post, you have denied it its reward.
* Repetition of a question or statement is either a troll - or a pedant; either way, treatment as a troll is effective.
* Missing The Point - Trolls rarely answer a direct question - they cannot, if asked to justify their twaddle - so they develop a fine line in missing the point.
* Thick or Sad - Trolls are usually sad, lonely folk, with few social skills; they rarely make what most people would consider intelligent conversation. However, they frequently have an obsession with their IQ and feel the need to tell everyone. This is so frequent, that it is diagnostic! Somewhere on the web there must be an Intelligence Test for Trolls - rigged to always say "above 150"
Who is at risk?
Any newsgroup, bulletin board, forum or chatroom can attract trolls, but they don't have the brains to attack nuclear physicists, and they are drawn to the quick response where sex, religion and race are found; so politics is easy prey.
One troll famously tried to infiltrate a mensa group; the results read like 100 trolls
Of coarse not. Reiser already killed his wife, why would he be asking for advice now?
Re:I remember the 80s. This doomsday clock sucks.
on
Doomsday Clock To Advance
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Heh.. I don't have words for the stupidity. The world is relatively safe. The major disaster and major fear we have is from islamic terrorists sending a couple of planes into a building or two. A BUILDING OR TWO! THATS IT! Eighteen years ago we were afraid that New York as a whole would be anhilated in a few minutes. ALL of it. Not just a building or two on manhattan.
People living in Tokyo or Tehran might not share your sentiment.
So long as the cable company doesn't decide to stop providing the existing boxes, I can ignore this whole thing.
If you're happy with your existing box, then feel free to ignore it. Not everyone is happy with them though; the Comcast DVR is unresponsive and buggy. Compared with Tivo or MythTV, the interface is ugly and has a clunky feel to it.
This decision at least allows some competition, which in theory should encourage Comcast to come out with a better box. Of coarse, what would really be useful would be for them to allow the sale of standalone cablecard readers that could be installed in any home theater pc, but they're much to obsessed with content control for that to happen.
You're already bitching about Gonzales? He's not even a conservative! Let's just be honest. You would complain if Bush appointed Papa Fucking Smurf to AG.
Let's put aside for now that this anti-anonymity arguement is coming from an AC;-)
Most people I know refuse to talk about politics. They just vote once in a while based on which party had the best TV ads. This statement is very accurate. But how would getting rid of anonymity help this at all?
Sorry to break it to you but american media does nto have a "liberal" bias.
The thing is, American politics are mostly defined by social issues. We find the so-called "most liberal member of the senate" (Kerry) sharing opinions on trade and foreign policy with the Republicans. And it is true that the mainstream media is liberal on social issues. On financial issues and foreign policy, the US media is VERY VERY CONSERVATIVE. Not because the media is inherently liberal or conservative, but because it is beholden to corporate power, which demands "conservative" (in reality neoliberal) economic views.
It's kind of like saying that FDR's plan for halting Japanese agression was bad because more people died after Pearl Harbor. Things have to get worse before they get better.
The Japanese government attacked us. The Iraqi government did not. This time we were the ones pre-emptively striking.
Last night I watched "Drawn Together" on Comedy Central Please, I beg of you, be fair to us left wingers. That show is an abomination and does not represent all of us.
Our agenda of promoting civil rights and defending the lower class and the environment isn't grabbing the middle aged voters.
I think the Democratic Party has (with the exception of a few commendable individuals) abandoned these goals. They still pay them lip service, but they've given them up in favor of corporate money.
The republican agenda is set at the top and their rhetoric is uniform - they listen to Rush Limbaugh and everyone knows what lie to use, what button to push to aggravate us, and which slur to accuse us with. IMHO, we need to fight fire with fire on this
I want no part in a top-down party. Which the Democrats already are too much of for me.
If this election has taught us anything, it should be that Democrats shouldn't be trying to out-Republican the Republicans.
Or for war crimes, far as I'm concerned. 100,000 Iraqi civillians already dead, and we're gearing up for a major assult on Fallujah - you better believe that number is about to get bigger.
Why would the US need to wean itself from oil? When they need more, they can just steal from their neighbors as usual. And now we know that half of the population approves of this policy;-)
Wrong, wrong wrong. We're not taking the oil for ourselves, our corporations and the puppet government we installed are selling it to the Europeans, who are all too happy to buy it.
And to say "half of the population approves of this policy" ignores the fact that most war supporters here have been duped into thinking oil has nothing to do with the war.
If we are really "stealing" oil, then why does the price of gas continue to climb? It's kind of hard to have a stable oil market when there is an insurgency against the government causing supply disruptions all the time.
I just love those leftists that claim the war in Iraq is for oil. Been to the pump lately? I admit there are plenty of uninformed liberals who believe we went to Iraq to physicaly take their oil, bring it to the US, and pump it into our SUVs. And they are wrong, but oil is not irrelevent. It is a lever for global control. The intention was never to make it cheaper at the pump. It's supposed to give us a strong foothold in the largest oil producing region in the world, which will keep Europe and Asia in check.
He's taken away freedoms of the American people in the name of security. He started a war for reasons that the world told him were wrong, have since been more than proven wrong, and it has turned sour just like everyone said it would (except Bush and friends).
What people overseas have to understand is that we had no real alternative that had a chance of being elected. The two things you mentioned are my biggest problems with Bush. But Kerry voted FOR the war, and has said he still would have even knowing what he knows now (that there are no WMD or Al-Qeada ties). He not only voted FOR the Patriot Act, but authored part of it.
So many people in this nation who may not like what Bush is doing to civil liberties, and may even be opposed to the war, still voted for him because Kerry has the same position. Only he also comes off as a northeastern liberal who they don't see eye to eye with on cultural issues.
Besides that, Kerry is not really offering anything to the working poor. Kerry had no intent to rebuild the welfare state, or even take incrimental steps in that direction. His proposed minimum wage raise, while helpful, was not close to enough. His health care plan would have helped HMOs and pharmacutical companies more than the average person. And he fully supports "free trade" agreements that cause outsourcing.
To the rest of the world - don't think we are all ass-backwards war mongers. Try to understand that a vote for Kerry WAS NOT an anti-war vote; the blame for Bush's reelection falls on a small group of elites who run the Democratic Party who were too narrow-minded to see they needed to be a real opposition. They tried to out-Bush Bush, and failed. And thanks to our winner take all elections, no one wanted to waste their vote on someone they actually agreed with.
Maybe someday we'll have meaningful electoral reform, and candidates like Nader and Badnarik will suddenly be seen as serious choices. Until then, please don't judge us by the corporate drone candidates we elect to office. We're basically good people.
Check out David Cobb, he grew up poor (and still is), and he's not a nutjob. He is running to help PEOPLE, not big business, not some wacko religious constituency. He is left-wing and belongs to the Green Party, that turns a lot of people off. But he's the only candidate running that matches the criteria you list.
I like him, cause he wants to give us FULL health care, get us out of Iraq, and generally make life easier for the average person. Yes, he would raise taxes on the rich. I have no problem with that.
the fact that he's distributing video and has any ability to speak, let alone taunt Americans, is hideous.
Not only is he speaking, but by the looks of the new video he clearly has access to high-end equipment now. Hiding in a deep hole someplace indeed. I wonder what he'd say if asked "are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
But why is the rest of the world against [the Iraq war]? Because to them, this war is basically the United States saying, "we have the right to invade anyone anytime for any reason, and there's nothing anyone can do about it". For some reason other countries don't take that well;) This administration is thumbing its nose at the principals behind post-WWII international law (even UN secretary general Kofi Annon, usualy quite subserviant to the US, has called the war "illegal").
Specifically the ones who do the inevitably dirty work of wars, exporting security to the rest of the world. What an Orwellian phrasing. "Exporting security"... that's quite a lot of security we've exported to Vietnam, Nicaragua, and Iraq. Look at what great shape those countries are in now.
I hope that the Europeans discover independent thought one of these days and stop letting themselves be culturally dominated by American media and American corporations. Amen. Lets hope Americans do the same and stop letting ourselves be dominated by corporations and their media outlets.
Slashdot Mirror
Internet? Fox is a real life hate machine.
As far as I can tell, this is a phenomenon unique to proprietary software.
I would assume that this is largely because most popular open source operating systems use some kind of package manager for installing software, mostly eliminating the need to search websites for an installer file.
just like Karl Rove's ass is filled with semen.
What Is A Troll?
.. I kid you not.
The term derives from "trolling", a style of fishing which involves trailing bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The troll posts a message, often in response to an honest question, that is intended to upset, disrupt or simply insult the group.
Usually, it will fail, as the troll rarely bothers to match the tone or style of the group, and usually its ignorance shows.
Why do trolls do it?
I believe that most trolls are sad people, living their lonely lives vicariously through those they see as strong and successful.
Disrupting a stable newsgroup gives the illusion of power, just as for a few, stalking a strong person allows them to think they are strong, too.
For trolls, any response is 'recognition'; they are unable to distinguish between irritation and admiration; their ego grows directly in proportion to the response, regardless of the form or content of that response.
Trolls, rather surprisingly, dispute this, claiming that it's a game or joke; this merely confirms the diagnosis; how sad do you have to be to find such mind-numbingly trivial timewasting to be funny?
Remember that trolls are cowards; they'll usually post just enough to get an argument going, then sit back and count the responses (Yes, that's what they do!).
How can troll posts be recognised?
* No Imagination - Most are frighteningly obvious; sexist comments on womens' groups, blasphemy on religious groups
* Pedantic in the Extreme - Many trolls' preparation is so thorough, that while they waste time, they appear so ludicrous from the start that they elicit sympathetic mail - the danger is that once the group takes sides, the damage is done.
* False Identity - Because they are anonymous cowards, trolls virtually never write over their own name, and often reveal their trolliness (and lack of imagination) in the chosen ID. As so many folk these days use false ID, this is not a strong indicator on its own!
* Crossposting - Any post that is crossposted to several groups should be viewed as suspicious, particularly if unrelated or of opposing perspective. Why would someone do that?
* Off-topic posting - Often genuine errors, but, if from an 'outsider' they deserve matter-of-fact response; if genuine, a brief apposite response is simply netiquette; if it's a troll post, you have denied it its reward.
* Repetition of a question or statement is either a troll - or a pedant; either way, treatment as a troll is effective.
* Missing The Point - Trolls rarely answer a direct question - they cannot, if asked to justify their twaddle - so they develop a fine line in missing the point.
* Thick or Sad - Trolls are usually sad, lonely folk, with few social skills; they rarely make what most people would consider intelligent conversation. However, they frequently have an obsession with their IQ and feel the need to tell everyone. This is so frequent, that it is diagnostic! Somewhere on the web there must be an Intelligence Test for Trolls - rigged to always say "above 150"
Who is at risk?
Any newsgroup, bulletin board, forum or chatroom can attract trolls, but they don't have the brains to attack nuclear physicists, and they are drawn to the quick response where sex, religion and race are found; so politics is easy prey.
One troll famously tried to infiltrate a mensa group; the results read like 100 trolls
Hans, is that you?
Of coarse not. Reiser already killed his wife, why would he be asking for advice now?
Heh .. I don't have words for the stupidity. The world is relatively safe. The major disaster and major fear we have is from islamic terrorists sending a couple of planes into a building or two. A BUILDING OR TWO! THATS IT! Eighteen years ago we were afraid that New York as a whole would be anhilated in a few minutes. ALL of it. Not just a building or two on manhattan.
People living in Tokyo or Tehran might not share your sentiment.
But to a surprising number of companies, the price tag--or lack of one--is irrelevant.
Many of those still choose open source software. There's a reason GNU, Linux, BSD and Apache are so widespread, and it has nothing to do with price.
Some people are born blind. Is that "fair"? Some are born "deaf". Is that fair? Some people are born rich. Is that fair?
So, you're saying that the medical community shouldn't invest time or resources in mitigating blindness or deafness, because "life isn't fair"?
Garbage, as in worthless.
But you knew that.
So long as the cable company doesn't decide to stop providing the existing boxes, I can ignore this whole thing.
If you're happy with your existing box, then feel free to ignore it. Not everyone is happy with them though; the Comcast DVR is unresponsive and buggy. Compared with Tivo or MythTV, the interface is ugly and has a clunky feel to it.
This decision at least allows some competition, which in theory should encourage Comcast to come out with a better box. Of coarse, what would really be useful would be for them to allow the sale of standalone cablecard readers that could be installed in any home theater pc, but they're much to obsessed with content control for that to happen.
but what can they really do with the IPs they collect?
Make legal threats and try to extort you.
The MPAA still holds the copyright on the sequence of bytes it did upload... but it also gave permission to copy by the act of uploading it!
The MPAA didn't upload any copyrighted material. They're seeding garbage files that are labeled as actual content and collecting IPs.
You're already bitching about Gonzales? He's not even a conservative! Let's just be honest. You would complain if Bush appointed Papa Fucking Smurf to AG.
Not everything is about "social issues".
Gonzales is a social liberal. But he wrote memos authorizing torture.
Not exactly Papa Fucking Smurf.
And don't worry, after this election, the Catholics are definitely not on their way to any camp. Most of them voted the right way.
The margian really wasn't that big. 47% of Catholics voted for Kerry.
Let's put aside for now that this anti-anonymity arguement is coming from an AC ;-)
Most people I know refuse to talk about politics. They just vote once in a while based on which party had the best TV ads.
This statement is very accurate. But how would getting rid of anonymity help this at all?
Sorry to break it to you but american media does nto have a "liberal" bias.
The thing is, American politics are mostly defined by social issues. We find the so-called "most liberal member of the senate" (Kerry) sharing opinions on trade and foreign policy with the Republicans. And it is true that the mainstream media is liberal on social issues.
On financial issues and foreign policy, the US media is VERY VERY CONSERVATIVE. Not because the media is inherently liberal or conservative, but because it is beholden to corporate power, which demands "conservative" (in reality neoliberal) economic views.
It's kind of like saying that FDR's plan for halting Japanese agression was bad because more people died after Pearl Harbor. Things have to get worse before they get better.
The Japanese government attacked us. The Iraqi government did not. This time we were the ones pre-emptively striking.
Big difference.
Last night I watched "Drawn Together" on Comedy Central
Please, I beg of you, be fair to us left wingers. That show is an abomination and does not represent all of us.
Our agenda of promoting civil rights and defending the lower class and the environment isn't grabbing the middle aged voters.
I think the Democratic Party has (with the exception of a few commendable individuals) abandoned these goals. They still pay them lip service, but they've given them up in favor of corporate money.
The republican agenda is set at the top and their rhetoric is uniform - they listen to Rush Limbaugh and everyone knows what lie to use, what button to push to aggravate us, and which slur to accuse us with. IMHO, we need to fight fire with fire on this
I want no part in a top-down party. Which the Democrats already are too much of for me.
If this election has taught us anything, it should be that Democrats shouldn't be trying to out-Republican the Republicans.
Or for war crimes, far as I'm concerned. 100,000 Iraqi civillians already dead, and we're gearing up for a major assult on Fallujah - you better believe that number is about to get bigger.
Why would the US need to wean itself from oil? When they need more, they can just steal from their neighbors as usual. And now we know that half of the population approves of this policy ;-)
Wrong, wrong wrong. We're not taking the oil for ourselves, our corporations and the puppet government we installed are selling it to the Europeans, who are all too happy to buy it.
And to say "half of the population approves of this policy" ignores the fact that most war supporters here have been duped into thinking oil has nothing to do with the war.
If we are really "stealing" oil, then why does the price of gas continue to climb?
It's kind of hard to have a stable oil market when there is an insurgency against the government causing supply disruptions all the time.
I just love those leftists that claim the war in Iraq is for oil. Been to the pump lately?
I admit there are plenty of uninformed liberals who believe we went to Iraq to physicaly take their oil, bring it to the US, and pump it into our SUVs. And they are wrong, but oil is not irrelevent. It is a lever for global control. The intention was never to make it cheaper at the pump. It's supposed to give us a strong foothold in the largest oil producing region in the world, which will keep Europe and Asia in check.
He's taken away freedoms of the American people in the name of security. He started a war for reasons that the world told him were wrong, have since been more than proven wrong, and it has turned sour just like everyone said it would (except Bush and friends).
What people overseas have to understand is that we had no real alternative that had a chance of being elected. The two things you mentioned are my biggest problems with Bush. But Kerry voted FOR the war, and has said he still would have even knowing what he knows now (that there are no WMD or Al-Qeada ties).
He not only voted FOR the Patriot Act, but authored part of it.
So many people in this nation who may not like what Bush is doing to civil liberties, and may even be opposed to the war, still voted for him because Kerry has the same position. Only he also comes off as a northeastern liberal who they don't see eye to eye with on cultural issues.
Besides that, Kerry is not really offering anything to the working poor. Kerry had no intent to rebuild the welfare state, or even take incrimental steps in that direction. His proposed minimum wage raise, while helpful, was not close to enough. His health care plan would have helped HMOs and pharmacutical companies more than the average person. And he fully supports "free trade" agreements that cause outsourcing.
To the rest of the world - don't think we are all ass-backwards war mongers. Try to understand that a vote for Kerry WAS NOT an anti-war vote; the blame for Bush's reelection falls on a small group of elites who run the Democratic Party who were too narrow-minded to see they needed to be a real opposition. They tried to out-Bush Bush, and failed. And thanks to our winner take all elections, no one wanted to waste their vote on someone they actually agreed with.
Maybe someday we'll have meaningful electoral reform, and candidates like Nader and Badnarik will suddenly be seen as serious choices. Until then, please don't judge us by the corporate drone candidates we elect to office. We're basically good people.
Check out David Cobb, he grew up poor (and still is), and he's not a nutjob. He is running to help PEOPLE, not big business, not some wacko religious constituency. He is left-wing and belongs to the Green Party, that turns a lot of people off. But he's the only candidate running that matches the criteria you list.
I like him, cause he wants to give us FULL health care, get us out of Iraq, and generally make life easier for the average person. Yes, he would raise taxes on the rich. I have no problem with that.
the fact that he's distributing video and has any ability to speak, let alone taunt Americans, is hideous.
Not only is he speaking, but by the looks of the new video he clearly has access to high-end equipment now. Hiding in a deep hole someplace indeed. I wonder what he'd say if asked "are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
Because to them, this war is basically the United States saying, "we have the right to invade anyone anytime for any reason, and there's nothing anyone can do about it". For some reason other countries don't take that well
This administration is thumbing its nose at the principals behind post-WWII international law (even UN secretary general Kofi Annon, usualy quite subserviant to the US, has called the war "illegal").
Specifically the ones who do the inevitably dirty work of wars, exporting security to the rest of the world.
What an Orwellian phrasing. "Exporting security"... that's quite a lot of security we've exported to Vietnam, Nicaragua, and Iraq. Look at what great shape those countries are in now.
I hope that the Europeans discover independent thought one of these days and stop letting themselves be culturally dominated by American media and American corporations.
Amen. Lets hope Americans do the same and stop letting ourselves be dominated by corporations and their media outlets.