Toss it. The reason those submitters earn their reputation is because you haven't killed his or her stories before. You need some kind of editorial policy where all your editors share the same basic guidelines for what to approve and what not to, and this should include a corpus of "known troublemakers".
The reason those submitters earn their "reputation" is for one single reason: jealousy. Many of those people bitching and griping and complaining have been embittered by story rejection after story rejection (trying, unsuccessfully, to whore their own link), so now it pisses them off seeing someone having success at it.
No matter what way you cut it, that's a very unpleasant human trait, and it's really sad that it devolved to the point that these people now feel entitled to openly display it. Just get over it and submit better submissions in a more timely manner (as an aside - Slashdot should post the submitted time on stories. Most "Why not my submission?" complaints are likely the result of people getting beat out by someone earlier, but the posting delay gives them the illusion that someone after them was selected. I had a much better Sony Reader submission that was rejected...don't they like me?).
Of course there is the matter of actual submission quality - Roland's stories should have been rejected purely because his links sucked: It has nothing to do with the fact that it's Roland, or even if he had 100 stories in a row posted, but that he content ripped to his blog. Is it really that hard for the Slashdot crew to follow links and can the crummy submissions?
As for the link on the submitter - that is a marginal form of "payment". Indeed, before nofollow was added on discussions, I would say that PageRank was a pretty good motivation for a lot of users to engage in discussions, and to actually put the time in crafting karma-earning posts. I'm not talking about karma whoring, but rather it was a tiny motivation that overcame a lot of the hassles and annoyances of participating here. Personally I think Slashdot should take the "pagerank payment" concept further, posting a "best rank" per month, though of course they couldn't do that because it'd drive the jealous folks nuts.
and afaik they don't have any media/content divisions in the company. They don't have any reason to use DRM in their gear.
Sony et. all don't put DRM on it for their own purposes - they add DRM to assuage the fears of content producers, making them comfortable enough that they produce content for this scary new platform.
e.g. They want actual legitimate high-worth content to go along with the product, which is only possible by enabling DRM.
Duh.... it's their deviation from standards that keeps making them vulnerable. ActiveX is more a security flaw than a feature and it's their choice to continue to try and force it down peoples throats thatn attempt to conform with industry/w3c standards.
Conform with industry standards? What sort of nonsensical groupthink claptrap is that? Is there a W3C standard on updating system libraries via a webpage that Microsoft isn't conforming to? Right - no there isn't, and ActiveX exists as embedded content just like Flash, Java, and many other non-W3C technologies, as it should.
As mentioned, though - THERE ARE TWO OTHER AVENUES FOR GETTING THE PATCH, rendering your original comment ridiculous at the outset.
Well the funny thing is that this exploit only affects Internet Explorer as well. So basically what they are saying is
They aren't "saying" anything. The Windows Update web app, as a requirement of the fact that it uses ActiveX, requires Internet Explorer. Nonetheless, not only is the patch rolling out right now via auto-updates, you can also download it directly.
In any case, even though I use Firefox and Opera for my day to day browsing, I really don't feel that threatened firing up Internet Explore for the purpose of connecting to Microsoft.
This kind of blows a big hole in the *AA's argument that all this copy protection BS is really about preventing piracy. It seems to me that more and more, it's about getting the customer to buy multiple copies of the same content.
Most software makers, and movie makers for that matter, will replace your media if you damage it. Sometimes a small fee applies, but it's generally a token amount. None of them rely or hope for customers to get pissed off because of damaged media.
And there's the interesting thing - Most of us never, ever damage our media. I can count on one hand the number of movies, software, or music discs that has gotten scratched, largely because I'm not a dumbass about them. Hell, even Blockbuster discs - rentals that people treat terribly - have been remarkably free of user-caused defects.
Of course, I don't manufacture fear mongering stories about self-scratching discs to justify my piracy. Blu-ray, with the super scratchable section (which virtually any media has), is going to have an ultra-hard coating that is largely impervious to scratching, and if you are sloppy with it they'll happily replace the media.
Whether or not the Xbox360 damages discs is an interesting question. Rental places inevitably are going to get discs back from inconsiderate douche-bags, and invariably those people are going to blame some external actor for their own carelessness. Maybe the 360 does scratch discs, but it could just as easily be a coded statement "SURE your xbox360 scratched it...anyways we're not going to rent games to you anymore..."
BTW: Most DVD movies are currently less expensive than VHS movies ever were.
Right. Opera is tiny compared to MS. And we all have seen what MS has done to every other tiny company that's attempted to compete with them: Bought them out, or simply drove them into irrelevance (if not bankruptcy).
Amazing.
The vast majority of marketshare that Opera has gained (no, I don't have stats - all I have are anecdotes of my own experience and those of peers and friends) has been at the expense of Mozilla cum Firefox. Generally someone either just uses what Microsoft produces/they're a raving pro-Microsoft fanatic, or they're open to alternatives. The latter is the only crowd Opera has a hope in hell with, and generally those people flirt between Opera and Firefox. I've been using Opera or Firefox/Mozilla alternately for several years (despite otherwise being a Micro-droid), and I suspect the same of many Opera users.
Anyways, the browser wars are over. For all of the nattering about Microsoft being worried - Microsoft REALLY doesn't care. IE didn't stagnant because they just couldn't cut the mustard. It stagnated because they beat Netscape, showed they have the chops, and realized that there really isn't any money in the browser business. They cut the IE team when they realized that pushing web apps wasn't in their best interest, but now that the cat is out of the bag Microsoft, like Google, knows the real money is being where the browser goes, regardless of the browser itself.
Everyone crystalizes a certain era of their life (usually early/mid teens) as being the most fun period of time in the history of the universe, to all people, over all time. Of course this is complete B.S. - Like you I had this foolish notion that earlier games were much more original and enjoyable.
Then I booted up MAME, and several other emulators. Boy did I have my rose-coloured memories shattered. The Pitfall of my memory turned out to actually be some trivial, ridiculous repeating set of boring stages infinitely cycling, for instance.
It's a misfeature of Windows itself. If you surf with ANY browser, you'll get zapped if you surf to a site set up to take advantage of this latest hole.
This is completely untrue. BTW: I've visited many of the sites in question using a virtual session, so I know first hand.
Internet Explorer uses the broken DLL in question to help it rendering the inline WMF in a webpage. Thus, if the site has a WMF as an image, IE can be exploited immediately. On Windows 2003 Server, it should be mentioned, WMFs are blocked by default (because it requires an external renderer, and IE disallows external helpers outside of trusted sites, or by explicitly allowing it with the security bar on a case-by-case basis).
Mozilla/Firefox doesn't render or handle WMF at all. It'll ask you if you want to open the file, encouraging (at least in current versions) you to open it with Media Player. Even if you click OK you're okay, as Media Player won't know what to do with the file.
Opera is in between - if it sees a WMF it will ask if you want to open it, and it'll suggest the Windows Picture and Fax viewer (which uses the affected DLL), so one OK later and you're owned.
For anyone who thinks this is flamebait, read up on what they did adding Kerberos to Windows 2000, for instance. It's probably debatable whether they do this deliberately or if it's plain, old incompetence.
Microsoft never intended or portrayed Kerberos as a cross-platform solution - they adopted it for their security infrastructure because it was open, that's what the originators wanted, and it was a very solid foundation. Of course it was a generalized security protocol, so they altered it for their own needs, using flags intentionally left for customization in Kerberos.
I was thinking more of people doing it in their own homes. Personally I find it difficult to believe that in corporate offices someone shuffles into the bathroom with their laptop to keep working. They're too busy trying to sneak the newspaper under the arm.
Personally I don't partake of the experience, but I don't buy into the "bathroom is an dirty cesspool" commonly portrayed, when it's generally the least microbiologically active areas of the home.
It isn't even released yet. All there is are some easily dummied up screenshots.
It's basically BitTorrent in a sidebar. Why is this impressive, again? My browsing and file-sharing are completely separate tasks, and the integration is as logical as putting file system defragmenting in a sidebar.
No doubt it is irritating when the fad-of-the-day clouds the judgement of Redmond. However continuing with the CDF idea - Way back when, released with Internet Explorer 4, Microsoft pushed both the idea of channels, and the idea of an "Active Desktop". Channels were integrated right into the desktop, as well as elsewhere, but the idea went over like a lead balloon so it earned little attention.
Online sites in generally haven't gotten it right. If you can't read it on the porcelein throne, it isn't perfect.
It's called a laptop and 802.11. There was a stat released recently reporting that a significant percentage of wireless networking users have taken advantage of it in the can...am I posting this post from the bathroom???? >gruntHTML is very powerful, but we still can't guarantee that an article will look as nice on everyone else's monitor as it does on the publisher's....try getting PDFs to look good on your mobile device
You are detailing two different problems. On the one hand, there is a desire for WYSIWYG authoring with exact rendering (e.g. PDF, as you detail). On the other hand there is a desire for client-specific layouts, conveying the content while allowing for a versatile layout based upon the limitations of the target (e.g. HTML). You can't really solve both simultaneously.
Things like checking for software updates, event notification, scanning the security audit logs (subscribe to the domain login failure event list for instance).
That could be accommodated better via a simple If-Modified-Since header in HTTP (yielding a 304 error if one's last update was correct), with the server returning a domain specific schema (rather than uselessly overlaying another namespace into an RSS document).
It must be a bit bittersweet, given that RSS is basically a sloppier version of Microsoft's "push" technology CDF, which was introduced with Internet Explorer 4.0.
Readers will want to know "micron manufacturing process" in order to determine which cards are most overclockable.
Wow, really? Way back when, my Celeron 300a - a 0.25 micron chip - could be easily overclocked to 450Mhz. A 50% improvement just by setting some jumpers. So 0.25 micron chips can be overclocked 50%?
Of course that is complete nonsense, and no one can use a micron guide to determine how overclockable a chip is. That depends upon the complexity of the chip, the weakest link, and how aggressively the vendor clocked the chip to begin with. Given a micron guide is just space filler with easily accessible information, and it has no usefulness to consumers.
What does matter to consumers are actual performance results - the end result of the fab, the texel units, the pixel shaders, and so on. This particular page has zero actual performance metrics that are usable to compare cards.
Two slashdvertisements from the same Adrian's "hit the monkey" Rojakpot on the same day
This is just after there was the whole Microsoft is buying Opera fiasco, courtesy of CoolTechNews and relayed on Slashdot, followed up by the nonsensical Such a Thing as too Paranoid About Privacy? "article", again from CoolTechZone.
Anyways, I'm off to choose a video card based upon the manufacturing process!
It's a fricking table of all the cards and their specifications. It doesn't review a single card at all.
Exactly. It's full of irrelevant specifications (including for some ancient, not-a-chance-in-hell cards) that no one can use to choose a card (and processor speed and hypothetical megatexel speeds are largely irrelevant in the real world. Micron manufacturing process...well that's just retarded). What a waste of a story spot.
Bah, speak for yourself. In this day when everyone has a 100 Mbit connections (at least around pretty much in this country; hint, not USA), to be honest, compressed content is actually a hassle.
Which country are you talking about? If by "everyone" you mean "a small number of people in a small urban area", then I suppose it's all perception. I get 6Mbps, and I know that I'm among a very small minority (and I wouldn't go around spouting nonsense about it being "everyone"). And secondly, where are you sourcing data from that it can actually fill a 100Mbps pipe? And thirdly, even the cheapest hard-drive can write far faster than 10MB/second.
Of course, ignoring the nonsensical fabrications of your post, it is a major pain in the ass when people compress already compressed content (e.g. a RAR of an MPEG or a JPG, etc. It's a waste of time for no compression).
If the information is so trivial and useless, why do they collect it?
These were the folks who spread the completely unfounded, and likely illegal, revelation about Microsoft buying Opera. In fact both of these "articles", both completely written to get coverage on Slashdot, were released on the same day.
Kudos to CoolTechZone - Managing to get so much tech coverage of a couple of garbage articles is a monumentous event. Maybe tomorrow you can tell us that the music industry is right, and Oracle is dropping their RDBMS and they're going to be a MSSQL reseller.
Slashdot Mirror
Toss it. The reason those submitters earn their reputation is because you haven't killed his or her stories before. You need some kind of editorial policy where all your editors share the same basic guidelines for what to approve and what not to, and this should include a corpus of "known troublemakers".
The reason those submitters earn their "reputation" is for one single reason: jealousy. Many of those people bitching and griping and complaining have been embittered by story rejection after story rejection (trying, unsuccessfully, to whore their own link), so now it pisses them off seeing someone having success at it.
No matter what way you cut it, that's a very unpleasant human trait, and it's really sad that it devolved to the point that these people now feel entitled to openly display it. Just get over it and submit better submissions in a more timely manner (as an aside - Slashdot should post the submitted time on stories. Most "Why not my submission?" complaints are likely the result of people getting beat out by someone earlier, but the posting delay gives them the illusion that someone after them was selected. I had a much better Sony Reader submission that was rejected...don't they like me?).
Of course there is the matter of actual submission quality - Roland's stories should have been rejected purely because his links sucked: It has nothing to do with the fact that it's Roland, or even if he had 100 stories in a row posted, but that he content ripped to his blog. Is it really that hard for the Slashdot crew to follow links and can the crummy submissions?
As for the link on the submitter - that is a marginal form of "payment". Indeed, before nofollow was added on discussions, I would say that PageRank was a pretty good motivation for a lot of users to engage in discussions, and to actually put the time in crafting karma-earning posts. I'm not talking about karma whoring, but rather it was a tiny motivation that overcame a lot of the hassles and annoyances of participating here. Personally I think Slashdot should take the "pagerank payment" concept further, posting a "best rank" per month, though of course they couldn't do that because it'd drive the jealous folks nuts.
and afaik they don't have any media/content divisions in the company. They don't have any reason to use DRM in their gear.
Sony et. all don't put DRM on it for their own purposes - they add DRM to assuage the fears of content producers, making them comfortable enough that they produce content for this scary new platform.
e.g. They want actual legitimate high-worth content to go along with the product, which is only possible by enabling DRM.
Windows is not modular so fixing something like an image processing function can impact the entire kernel, it needs extra testing.
I think you misunderstand the meaning of modular. Because Windows is modular the change of one module can impact a number of processes.
There's a reason why these people are in charge and not you. They're smart :)
Are you 12? Seriously. Not only are you incredibly juvenile, but your ignorance is extraordinary.
Duh.... it's their deviation from standards that keeps making them vulnerable. ActiveX is more a security flaw than a feature and it's their choice to continue to try and force it down peoples throats thatn attempt to conform with industry/w3c standards.
Conform with industry standards? What sort of nonsensical groupthink claptrap is that? Is there a W3C standard on updating system libraries via a webpage that Microsoft isn't conforming to? Right - no there isn't, and ActiveX exists as embedded content just like Flash, Java, and many other non-W3C technologies, as it should.
As mentioned, though - THERE ARE TWO OTHER AVENUES FOR GETTING THE PATCH, rendering your original comment ridiculous at the outset.
Well the funny thing is that this exploit only affects Internet Explorer as well. So basically what they are saying is
They aren't "saying" anything. The Windows Update web app, as a requirement of the fact that it uses ActiveX, requires Internet Explorer. Nonetheless, not only is the patch rolling out right now via auto-updates, you can also download it directly.
In any case, even though I use Firefox and Opera for my day to day browsing, I really don't feel that threatened firing up Internet Explore for the purpose of connecting to Microsoft.
This kind of blows a big hole in the *AA's argument that all this copy protection BS is really about preventing piracy. It seems to me that more and more, it's about getting the customer to buy multiple copies of the same content.
Most software makers, and movie makers for that matter, will replace your media if you damage it. Sometimes a small fee applies, but it's generally a token amount. None of them rely or hope for customers to get pissed off because of damaged media.
And there's the interesting thing - Most of us never, ever damage our media. I can count on one hand the number of movies, software, or music discs that has gotten scratched, largely because I'm not a dumbass about them. Hell, even Blockbuster discs - rentals that people treat terribly - have been remarkably free of user-caused defects.
Of course, I don't manufacture fear mongering stories about self-scratching discs to justify my piracy. Blu-ray, with the super scratchable section (which virtually any media has), is going to have an ultra-hard coating that is largely impervious to scratching, and if you are sloppy with it they'll happily replace the media.
Whether or not the Xbox360 damages discs is an interesting question. Rental places inevitably are going to get discs back from inconsiderate douche-bags, and invariably those people are going to blame some external actor for their own carelessness. Maybe the 360 does scratch discs, but it could just as easily be a coded statement "SURE your xbox360 scratched it...anyways we're not going to rent games to you anymore..."
BTW: Most DVD movies are currently less expensive than VHS movies ever were.
Right. Opera is tiny compared to MS. And we all have seen what MS has done to every other tiny company that's attempted to compete with them: Bought them out, or simply drove them into irrelevance (if not bankruptcy).
Amazing.
The vast majority of marketshare that Opera has gained (no, I don't have stats - all I have are anecdotes of my own experience and those of peers and friends) has been at the expense of Mozilla cum Firefox. Generally someone either just uses what Microsoft produces/they're a raving pro-Microsoft fanatic, or they're open to alternatives. The latter is the only crowd Opera has a hope in hell with, and generally those people flirt between Opera and Firefox. I've been using Opera or Firefox/Mozilla alternately for several years (despite otherwise being a Micro-droid), and I suspect the same of many Opera users.
Anyways, the browser wars are over. For all of the nattering about Microsoft being worried - Microsoft REALLY doesn't care. IE didn't stagnant because they just couldn't cut the mustard. It stagnated because they beat Netscape, showed they have the chops, and realized that there really isn't any money in the browser business. They cut the IE team when they realized that pushing web apps wasn't in their best interest, but now that the cat is out of the bag Microsoft, like Google, knows the real money is being where the browser goes, regardless of the browser itself.
Oh, you mean when games were fun?
Zzzzzzzz...
Everyone crystalizes a certain era of their life (usually early/mid teens) as being the most fun period of time in the history of the universe, to all people, over all time. Of course this is complete B.S. - Like you I had this foolish notion that earlier games were much more original and enjoyable.
Then I booted up MAME, and several other emulators. Boy did I have my rose-coloured memories shattered. The Pitfall of my memory turned out to actually be some trivial, ridiculous repeating set of boring stages infinitely cycling, for instance.
How do I avoid it? Fixes?
Follow the suggested action in the Microsoft advisory linked right up there above.
It's a misfeature of Windows itself. If you surf with ANY browser, you'll get zapped if you surf to a site set up to take advantage of this latest hole.
This is completely untrue. BTW: I've visited many of the sites in question using a virtual session, so I know first hand.
Internet Explorer uses the broken DLL in question to help it rendering the inline WMF in a webpage. Thus, if the site has a WMF as an image, IE can be exploited immediately. On Windows 2003 Server, it should be mentioned, WMFs are blocked by default (because it requires an external renderer, and IE disallows external helpers outside of trusted sites, or by explicitly allowing it with the security bar on a case-by-case basis).
Mozilla/Firefox doesn't render or handle WMF at all. It'll ask you if you want to open the file, encouraging (at least in current versions) you to open it with Media Player. Even if you click OK you're okay, as Media Player won't know what to do with the file.
Opera is in between - if it sees a WMF it will ask if you want to open it, and it'll suggest the Windows Picture and Fax viewer (which uses the affected DLL), so one OK later and you're owned.
For anyone who thinks this is flamebait, read up on what they did adding Kerberos to Windows 2000, for instance. It's probably debatable whether they do this deliberately or if it's plain, old incompetence.
Microsoft never intended or portrayed Kerberos as a cross-platform solution - they adopted it for their security infrastructure because it was open, that's what the originators wanted, and it was a very solid foundation. Of course it was a generalized security protocol, so they altered it for their own needs, using flags intentionally left for customization in Kerberos.
I was thinking more of people doing it in their own homes. Personally I find it difficult to believe that in corporate offices someone shuffles into the bathroom with their laptop to keep working. They're too busy trying to sneak the newspaper under the arm.
Personally I don't partake of the experience, but I don't buy into the "bathroom is an dirty cesspool" commonly portrayed, when it's generally the least microbiologically active areas of the home.
Color me cynical, and unimpressed.
No doubt it is irritating when the fad-of-the-day clouds the judgement of Redmond. However continuing with the CDF idea - Way back when, released with Internet Explorer 4, Microsoft pushed both the idea of channels, and the idea of an "Active Desktop". Channels were integrated right into the desktop, as well as elsewhere, but the idea went over like a lead balloon so it earned little attention.
Yeah, great idea, take my laptop into the bathroom while I'm using the toilet.
I guess I'm not as hygenically challenged as some round here.
Uh, the survey was society-wide. It has nothing to do with "round here".
Anyways, are you reaching down to check progress or something? How is it hygenically challenged beyond superficial "here be danger!" nonsense.
Online sites in generally haven't gotten it right. If you can't read it on the porcelein throne, it isn't perfect.
It's called a laptop and 802.11. There was a stat released recently reporting that a significant percentage of wireless networking users have taken advantage of it in the can...am I posting this post from the bathroom???? >gruntHTML is very powerful, but we still can't guarantee that an article will look as nice on everyone else's monitor as it does on the publisher's....try getting PDFs to look good on your mobile device
You are detailing two different problems. On the one hand, there is a desire for WYSIWYG authoring with exact rendering (e.g. PDF, as you detail). On the other hand there is a desire for client-specific layouts, conveying the content while allowing for a versatile layout based upon the limitations of the target (e.g. HTML). You can't really solve both simultaneously.
Things like checking for software updates, event notification, scanning the security audit logs (subscribe to the domain login failure event list for instance).
That could be accommodated better via a simple If-Modified-Since header in HTTP (yielding a 304 error if one's last update was correct), with the server returning a domain specific schema (rather than uselessly overlaying another namespace into an RSS document).
RSS is gospel in Redmond these days
It must be a bit bittersweet, given that RSS is basically a sloppier version of Microsoft's "push" technology CDF, which was introduced with Internet Explorer 4.0.
I have no idea where the subject line to that reply came from.
Readers will want to know "micron manufacturing process" in order to determine which cards are most overclockable.
Wow, really? Way back when, my Celeron 300a - a 0.25 micron chip - could be easily overclocked to 450Mhz. A 50% improvement just by setting some jumpers. So 0.25 micron chips can be overclocked 50%?
Of course that is complete nonsense, and no one can use a micron guide to determine how overclockable a chip is. That depends upon the complexity of the chip, the weakest link, and how aggressively the vendor clocked the chip to begin with. Given a micron guide is just space filler with easily accessible information, and it has no usefulness to consumers.
What does matter to consumers are actual performance results - the end result of the fab, the texel units, the pixel shaders, and so on. This particular page has zero actual performance metrics that are usable to compare cards.
Two slashdvertisements from the same Adrian's "hit the monkey" Rojakpot on the same day
This is just after there was the whole Microsoft is buying Opera fiasco, courtesy of CoolTechNews and relayed on Slashdot, followed up by the nonsensical Such a Thing as too Paranoid About Privacy? "article", again from CoolTechZone.
Anyways, I'm off to choose a video card based upon the manufacturing process!
It's a fricking table of all the cards and their specifications. It doesn't review a single card at all.
Exactly. It's full of irrelevant specifications (including for some ancient, not-a-chance-in-hell cards) that no one can use to choose a card (and processor speed and hypothetical megatexel speeds are largely irrelevant in the real world. Micron manufacturing process...well that's just retarded). What a waste of a story spot.
Bah, speak for yourself. In this day when everyone has a 100 Mbit connections (at least around pretty much in this country; hint, not USA), to be honest, compressed content is actually a hassle.
Which country are you talking about? If by "everyone" you mean "a small number of people in a small urban area", then I suppose it's all perception. I get 6Mbps, and I know that I'm among a very small minority (and I wouldn't go around spouting nonsense about it being "everyone"). And secondly, where are you sourcing data from that it can actually fill a 100Mbps pipe? And thirdly, even the cheapest hard-drive can write far faster than 10MB/second.
Of course, ignoring the nonsensical fabrications of your post, it is a major pain in the ass when people compress already compressed content (e.g. a RAR of an MPEG or a JPG, etc. It's a waste of time for no compression).
If the information is so trivial and useless, why do they collect it?
These were the folks who spread the completely unfounded, and likely illegal, revelation about Microsoft buying Opera. In fact both of these "articles", both completely written to get coverage on Slashdot, were released on the same day.
Kudos to CoolTechZone - Managing to get so much tech coverage of a couple of garbage articles is a monumentous event. Maybe tomorrow you can tell us that the music industry is right, and Oracle is dropping their RDBMS and they're going to be a MSSQL reseller.