Yeah - logging in has worked fine, the five times I've tried it. The first four times I didn't read anyone's email, because I knew the people; I just picked a username at random and tried to open an email just now...
IE 4.5 isn't allowed on grounds I don't have cookies enabled. Bullshit; I'm using slashdot.
Just tried a sixth - same effect. I can see a listing but not view email. And the same result with Communicator 4.61-Mac.
This is not a punishment for Mr. Whong. He thought up the challenge himself. A transcript of the email conversation that spawned this PR exists. Summary:
President: Are you sure you want to do this? There definitely WILL be bugs in those products... Marketdroid: Heh, they're high in protein, and good for you. President: Yes, but you really will have to eat them -- that's gross. Marketdroid: I bet with the right kind of seasoning, they'd be scrumptious. I'm thinking of chocolate covered crickets to start...
Thank goodness this man isn't capable of dictating the path Linux should follow. He wants one distribution!
Linux's strength and beauty lies in the ease with which it can morph into anything the market wants. Let RedHat go consumer; I'll keep running Debian (or FreeBSD). All consumer users can see RedHat consistency, but there'll be other options if the market wants them.
This man should look into 'evolution' and see how it applies to markets.
Oh, how I would adore a prequel/sequel tied together... it would be frighteningly easy to expand the story this way. Tying elements over from the prequel into the sequel would be uberneat and lend a lot of flesh to the virtual world. And it's about damned time somebody did this temporal trick, releasing the films one-two.
I can't wait. This is better than Episode II. (Then again, a lot of things probably will be... I can hear the cries of "Oh, Leo!" echoing back through time arlready...)
I would rather believe they were doing this because they felt they'd only like people to see their movie "as it was meant to be", without any analog cheeze from a tape getting in the way.
Wear a tshirt without writing, jeans or khakis, and a jacket.
They'll think you're one of them new chic hacker types, the ones that're all tech-savvy but socially aware as well... the ones who could be running the company six months down the road...
That's my business attire, and it's not only rather comfortable but slick as all hell.
Checking the link I posted in my original article - which I dug up for the purposes of this slashdot posting - it has been edited since I last read it. The authorities do not believe this is an Eric Harris post.
Thank God. The sentence about revolutionizing the neoeuphoric bullshit really made me shiver.
By now it's over. If you are reading this my mission is complete. I have finished revolutionizing the neoeuphoric infliction of my internal terror. Your children who have ridaculed (sic) me, who have chosen not to accept me, who have treated me like I am not worth their time are dead. THEY ARE [FUCKING] DEAD. Surely you will try to blame it on the clothes I wear, the music I listen to, or the way I choose to present myself -- but no. Do not hide behind my choices. You need to face the fact that this comes as a result of YOUR CHOICES. Parents and Teachers, YOU [FUCKED] UP. You have taught these kids to be gears and sheep. To think and act like those who came before them, to not accept what is different. YOU ARE IN THE WRONG. I may have taken their lives and my own -- but it was your doing. Teachers, Parents, LET THIS MASSACRE BE ON YOUR SHOULDERS UNTIL THE DAY YOU DIE. Am I insane? Maybe. Is it my fault? No. I did not choose this life, but I have indeed chosen to exit it. You may think the horror ends with the bullet in my head -- but you wouldn't be so lucky. All that I can leave you with to decipher what more extensive death is to come is "12Skizto." You have until April 26th. Goodbye.
Linux is still in its infancy. Its userbase is smaller than Apple's.
Linux must grow in user base and acceptance.
Major companies are signing on, in part if not in whole, to the GNU/Linux philosophy of Open Source Software.
Large minorities(?) of the Slashdot Longhair population think #3 is a Bad Idea(TM)
This tells me that a significant portion of this audience, including Mr. Malda/Taco himself, wants Linux to stay small if it doesn't expand in exactly the way they want it to - under an unaltered GNU software license.
What we're seeing is the Linux philosophy winning. This software (QuickTime Server, Darwin, etc) ain't no-strings free, but you get the source! You can port it to your platform! You can put a Penguin in the Apple menu! Quit whining!
Fear is the wrong response to this news. I personally am going to go rejoice over a plate of fine New York sushi right now. I suggest you do the same.
Ideally: You'd be presented with a SELECT item when you make your post, with all the scores possible less than or equal to your current default. You select the score for your post from that list, but you're barred from rising above your current default.
I read in a major weekly news magazine that the Melissa virus had clogged up and shut down tens of thousands of mailservers, and saw a few techs quoted saying it had "brought mail transfer on the Net to a standstill." The second is not true; the first is highly implausible.
This virus relies on a human vector; it doesn't propogate with the speed of electricity or a Pentium III - it only moves as fast as a man can check his email, download a text file, and open Microsoft Office (the latter, we know, takes forever).
I was not, and I know of no one who was, affected by this virus.
The internet technicians who are employeed in Fortune 500 companies - the ones who get interviewed about these events more than the people who designed the Net's various subsystems in the first place - need to start gauging their replies very carefully. If they don't, they'll succeed in scaring a large number of people away from the Net and reducing the importance of their own jobs. I'm pretty convinced they're doing these interviews and exaggerating impact for their own ego enlargement, so they can hear the reporter on the other end of the telephone gasp in shock.
There should be no other rules. Let everyone moderate, and on any forum. Otherwise, Rob is acting as some kind of Russian-like intelligencia, believing he always knows best.
Direct Democracy never works with large groups. Never, ever works. We -need- a smaller representative body to moderate for the whole - I for one do not trust the slashdot reader base to moderate my articles properly or fairly.
Then again, I don't trust the American people to vote for a good president who'll act fairly and not make our country look like a bunch of raving fools. I guess I'm way off base. [evil grin]
3. There will be an option in the user accounts to simply say "I don't want to moderate". By default, everyone will want to be moderators, but you can turn this off.
I think it'd be smarter to actually make people visit their user account and hit the switch to become eligible. Signup should require -some- action on part of the user. It'd make them feel more like they've got a stake in this - they weren't just given Mod status, they asked for it.
[I] will throw out the psycho overactive guys who load Slashdot 1000 times a day (there are a few guys, but mainly this will prevent someone from simply pressing reload a few hundred times to get moderator access).
Isn't this a bit overdoing it? It's the avid readers you -want- to participate in the moderation. Throw out the top 5% or 10% maybe, but I bet a lot of that top slice constitutes your major comment-posting / discussion-following userbase.
Normally I don't mind these Katz vs Taco review fests, but honestly, I think mine was better than either and gave away less important detail. Yer too fluffy, Taco - throw some substance in. We're not reading a review to have everything glossed over like that... Katz has ya beat here.;)
But while I'm posting: Hey, JonKatz! The technological runaway you describe is not an Omega Point, it's a Singularity, a point at which our current models of technological progress cease to apply. And that occurs once a posthuman/superhuman intelligence is created, not just an artificial one. I wish they'd hashed that out slightly more in the film.
For clarification: The Omega Point is a concept debuted by Frank Tipler in his book The Physics of Immortality: He claims that at the end of the Universe, during the Big Crunch, there will be an Omega Point at which time all that the Universe has ever experienced will exist once more, and all the consciousnesses that ever graced the Earth will once again be active. I think he's a crock.
Vernor Vinge was the first to really express the Singulairty concept well. This is the text of his thesis on the subject:
Very good, but the technology is the wrong aspect to focus on - at least, in my opinion. The fact that this is a Clean War, where we attempt to win without spending anything but money (no lives), is why we will lose. Unless the nation leading the assault really wants to win, they'll lose.
Before the bombing started, I read an interesting Zogby poll of voting americans.
Do American troops belong in Kosovo? Yes, 62%.
Where is Kosovo? I don't know, 34%.
We don't, as a population, know where the nation is let alone the political details of the reasons for the coflict.
We wanted to win in the two Great Wars, in Korea, and in the Gulf. We wanted out in Vietnam. And in Kosovo, the war has been so thoroughly cleaned that we don't know why we're there or where we are.
We can't possibly win this. I am almost ashamed to be an American.
A year ago, Jamie said that if Mozilla fails, Open Source will fail - in approximately those words. Now, on the one-year anniversary bash he organized, he steps out and accuses Mozilla.org of failing, and ditches the effort - and expects everyone to keep on partyin' hard at some dive in San Fransisco celebrating what he just told them wasn't worthy of their praise.
He's driving a bullet into his own effort and giving up, walking away. I just lost nearly all my respect for this man.
ESR is being rather subtle and kind in his resignation paper, but it comes across - at least to me - that much of the reason he is resigning from his community-appointed post as Senator from the Bazaar is heckling from those he represents.
As this brilliant communicator fades into the background, I ask you to ponder where the Open Source movement would be were it not for the actions of this one man. To prod your mind, I list a few likely probabilities:
The Mozilla Organization would not exist;
We would not be getting the press we are today;
Numerous products, including Apple's OS X, would be fully proprietary
Tip your hat to your departing representative. Don't try so hard to alienate the next one.
I refer you to Jon Katz's piece on A Different Kind of Elightenment for the last Drudge War... a war also started by me, unsuspecting that such a benign comment on him would spark such a firefight.
It's really reassuring to know that some slashdotters do indeed appreciate intellectual property, and aren't hell-bent on tearing down the system by which productive work is rewarded - the system upon which our society runs.
I, for one, will be in that theatre on May 19, cheering along as the camera pans down from a starscape onto Naboo... or whatever fabulous world Lucas chooses to throw our way this time.
It's going to be one hell of a ride. Pay for it! Talk about bang for the buck...
Actually, that appears to be a bug in the system. Where there are no comments, one appears on the front page; where there are two, '3' appears. Flip to Uncut/Raw mode and view the number of entries, then compare that to the frontpage.
It's about time he got mentioned on this site; he often has stuff that we'd be interested in, as socially responsible geeks and nerds of many colors...
Which reminds me: Whatever happened to my suggestion for the Matt Drudge Slashbox? I even sent Rob a perlscript that summarized his headlines to plaintext...
Anyone who wants to see 'Sludge' (as he's affectionately known within the White House) as a Slashbox, bother Taco.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah - logging in has worked fine, the five times I've tried it. The first four times I didn't read anyone's email, because I knew the people; I just picked a username at random and tried to open an email just now...
IE 4.5 isn't allowed on grounds I don't have cookies enabled. Bullshit; I'm using slashdot.
Just tried a sixth - same effect. I can see a listing but not view email. And the same result with Communicator 4.61-Mac.
Hmmmm....
This is not a punishment for Mr. Whong. He thought up the challenge himself. A transcript of the email conversation that spawned this PR exists. Summary:
Thank goodness this man isn't capable of dictating the path Linux should follow. He wants one distribution!
Linux's strength and beauty lies in the ease with which it can morph into anything the market wants. Let RedHat go consumer; I'll keep running Debian (or FreeBSD). All consumer users can see RedHat consistency, but there'll be other options if the market wants them.
This man should look into 'evolution' and see how it applies to markets.
Oh, how I would adore a prequel/sequel tied together... it would be frighteningly easy to expand the story this way. Tying elements over from the prequel into the sequel would be uberneat and lend a lot of flesh to the virtual world. And it's about damned time somebody did this temporal trick, releasing the films one-two.
I can't wait. This is better than Episode II. (Then again, a lot of things probably will be... I can hear the cries of "Oh, Leo!" echoing back through time arlready...)
I would rather believe they were doing this because they felt they'd only like people to see their movie "as it was meant to be", without any analog cheeze from a tape getting in the way.
How to scare suits:
They'll think you're one of them new chic hacker types, the ones that're all tech-savvy but socially aware as well... the ones who could be running the company six months down the road...
That's my business attire, and it's not only rather comfortable but slick as all hell.
Checking the link I posted in my original article - which I dug up for the purposes of this slashdot posting - it has been edited since I last read it. The authorities do not believe this is an Eric Harris post.
Thank God. The sentence about revolutionizing the neoeuphoric bullshit really made me shiver.
I thought this should be made available for reference here. I don't believe it has received wide circulation.
Text of Apparent Suicide NoteBy now it's over. If you are reading this my mission is complete. I have finished revolutionizing the neoeuphoric infliction of my internal terror. Your children who have ridaculed (sic) me, who have chosen not to accept me, who have treated me like I am not worth their time are dead. THEY ARE [FUCKING] DEAD. Surely you will try to blame it on the clothes I wear, the music I listen to, or the way I choose to present myself -- but no. Do not hide behind my choices. You need to face the fact that this comes as a result of YOUR CHOICES. Parents and Teachers, YOU [FUCKED] UP. You have taught these kids to be gears and sheep. To think and act like those who came before them, to not accept what is different. YOU ARE IN THE WRONG. I may have taken their lives and my own -- but it was your doing. Teachers, Parents, LET THIS MASSACRE BE ON YOUR SHOULDERS UNTIL THE DAY YOU DIE. Am I insane? Maybe. Is it my fault? No. I did not choose this life, but I have indeed chosen to exit it. You may think the horror ends with the bullet in my head -- but you wouldn't be so lucky. All that I can leave you with to decipher what more extensive death is to come is "12Skizto." You have until April 26th. Goodbye.
Eric Harris, April 19th.
It's official. I just received this email from Apple:
That sounds pretty 'released' to me. I'm downloading it now.
The following are truths as I see them:
This tells me that a significant portion of this audience, including Mr. Malda/Taco himself, wants Linux to stay small if it doesn't expand in exactly the way they want it to - under an unaltered GNU software license.
What we're seeing is the Linux philosophy winning. This software (QuickTime Server, Darwin, etc) ain't no-strings free, but you get the source! You can port it to your platform! You can put a Penguin in the Apple menu! Quit whining!
Fear is the wrong response to this news. I personally am going to go rejoice over a plate of fine New York sushi right now. I suggest you do the same.
Silly boy; it'd be designed to prevent that.
Ideally: You'd be presented with a SELECT item when you make your post, with all the scores possible less than or equal to your current default. You select the score for your post from that list, but you're barred from rising above your current default.
I read in a major weekly news magazine that the Melissa virus had clogged up and shut down tens of thousands of mailservers, and saw a few techs quoted saying it had "brought mail transfer on the Net to a standstill." The second is not true; the first is highly implausible.
This virus relies on a human vector; it doesn't propogate with the speed of electricity or a Pentium III - it only moves as fast as a man can check his email, download a text file, and open Microsoft Office (the latter, we know, takes forever).
I was not, and I know of no one who was, affected by this virus.
The internet technicians who are employeed in Fortune 500 companies - the ones who get interviewed about these events more than the people who designed the Net's various subsystems in the first place - need to start gauging their replies very carefully. If they don't, they'll succeed in scaring a large number of people away from the Net and reducing the importance of their own jobs. I'm pretty convinced they're doing these interviews and exaggerating impact for their own ego enlargement, so they can hear the reporter on the other end of the telephone gasp in shock.
I could be mistaken. I hope I am.
Direct Democracy never works with large groups. Never, ever works. We -need- a smaller representative body to moderate for the whole - I for one do not trust the slashdot reader base to moderate my articles properly or fairly.
Then again, I don't trust the American people to vote for a good president who'll act fairly and not make our country look like a bunch of raving fools. I guess I'm way off base. [evil grin]
This is shaping up well. Coupla quick ones:
I think it'd be smarter to actually make people visit their user account and hit the switch to become eligible. Signup should require -some- action on part of the user. It'd make them feel more like they've got a stake in this - they weren't just given Mod status, they asked for it.
Isn't this a bit overdoing it? It's the avid readers you -want- to participate in the moderation. Throw out the top 5% or 10% maybe, but I bet a lot of that top slice constitutes your major comment-posting / discussion-following userbase.
(Heck, I'm probably one of those top 10%. :)
Normally I don't mind these Katz vs Taco review fests, but honestly, I think mine was better than either and gave away less important detail. Yer too fluffy, Taco - throw some substance in. We're not reading a review to have everything glossed over like that... Katz has ya beat here. ;)
But while I'm posting: Hey, JonKatz! The technological runaway you describe is not an Omega Point, it's a Singularity, a point at which our current models of technological progress cease to apply. And that occurs once a posthuman/superhuman intelligence is created, not just an artificial one. I wish they'd hashed that out slightly more in the film.
For clarification: The Omega Point is a concept debuted by Frank Tipler in his book The Physics of Immortality : He claims that at the end of the Universe, during the Big Crunch, there will be an Omega Point at which time all that the Universe has ever experienced will exist once more, and all the consciousnesses that ever graced the Earth will once again be active. I think he's a crock.
Vernor Vinge was the first to really express the Singulairty concept well. This is the text of his thesis on the subject:
Very good, but the technology is the wrong aspect to focus on - at least, in my opinion. The fact that this is a Clean War, where we attempt to win without spending anything but money (no lives), is why we will lose. Unless the nation leading the assault really wants to win, they'll lose.
Before the bombing started, I read an interesting Zogby poll of voting americans.
We don't, as a population, know where the nation is let alone the political details of the reasons for the coflict.
We wanted to win in the two Great Wars, in Korea, and in the Gulf. We wanted out in Vietnam. And in Kosovo, the war has been so thoroughly cleaned that we don't know why we're there or where we are.
We can't possibly win this. I am almost ashamed to be an American.
Almost.
This really strikes me as infantile.
A year ago, Jamie said that if Mozilla fails, Open Source will fail - in approximately those words. Now, on the one-year anniversary bash he organized, he steps out and accuses Mozilla.org of failing, and ditches the effort - and expects everyone to keep on partyin' hard at some dive in San Fransisco celebrating what he just told them wasn't worthy of their praise.
He's driving a bullet into his own effort and giving up, walking away. I just lost nearly all my respect for this man.
Stunningly enough, they actually contain my proper IQ (5901736) and GPA (7887591).
I take a lot of AP classes, especially for a six year old.
Whoa, man. That was unreal. Go Katz!
Returns to flossing teeth with cat intestineESR is being rather subtle and kind in his resignation paper, but it comes across - at least to me - that much of the reason he is resigning from his community-appointed post as Senator from the Bazaar is heckling from those he represents.
As this brilliant communicator fades into the background, I ask you to ponder where the Open Source movement would be were it not for the actions of this one man. To prod your mind, I list a few likely probabilities:
Tip your hat to your departing representative. Don't try so hard to alienate the next one.
Veering dangerously offtopic here. :)
I refer you to Jon Katz's piece on A Different Kind of Elightenment for the last Drudge War... a war also started by me, unsuspecting that such a benign comment on him would spark such a firefight.
It's really reassuring to know that some slashdotters do indeed appreciate intellectual property, and aren't hell-bent on tearing down the system by which productive work is rewarded - the system upon which our society runs.
I, for one, will be in that theatre on May 19, cheering along as the camera pans down from a starscape onto Naboo... or whatever fabulous world Lucas chooses to throw our way this time.
It's going to be one hell of a ride. Pay for it! Talk about bang for the buck...
It ain't as if you can't turn it off - in fact, turning it on in the first place is voluntary.
Actually, that appears to be a bug in the system. Where there are no comments, one appears on the front page; where there are two, '3' appears. Flip to Uncut/Raw mode and view the number of entries, then compare that to the frontpage.
Sliding back on topic now...
It's about time he got mentioned on this site; he often has stuff that we'd be interested in, as socially responsible geeks and nerds of many colors...
Which reminds me: Whatever happened to my suggestion for the Matt Drudge Slashbox? I even sent Rob a perlscript that summarized his headlines to plaintext...
Anyone who wants to see 'Sludge' (as he's affectionately known within the White House) as a Slashbox, bother Taco.