For he is a terribly funny and effective troll. In all sincerity, I am glad he's out there, in almost every thread, wreaking havoc with tiny minds and wasting untold moderation points.

Did you ever know that you're my hero?

Addendum:
$$$$$exyGal is also very, very good at what he does, in his own way contributing (in a positively modded way) to this site's continued decay.

Addendum2:

"Model of a Modern Major General". Whoever wrote this deserves some sort of medal, or harem or something. God DAMN.

to the tune of: "Model of a Modern Major General", with apologies to
Gilbert and Sullivan...

Model of a Slashdot Personality

I am the very model of a Slashdot personality.
I intersperse obscenity with tedious banality.
Addresses I have plenty of, both genuine and ghosted too,
On all the countless topics that my drivel is cross-posted to.
Your bandwidth I will fritter with my whining and my sniveling,
And you're the one who pays the bill, downloading all my driveling.
My enemies are numerous, and no-one would be blaming you
For cracking my head open after I've been rudely flaming you.

I hate to lose an argument (by now I should be used to it).
I wouldn't know a valid point if I was introduced to it.
My learning is extensive but consists of mindless trivia,
Designed to fan my ego, which is larger than Bolivia.
The comments that I vomit forth, disguised as jest and drollery,
Are really just an exercise in unremitting trollery.
I say I'm frank and forthright, but that's merely lies and vanity,
The gibberings of one who's at the limits of his sanity.

...more...

To reiterate: God DAMN.

(I'm glad Taco finally found the brainpower to put the Journal topic items in alphabetical order. Christ, Slashdot's written in Perl. I'm a shitty Perl programmer, but even I could alphabetize a list.)

Who the heck is this? I've seen its/his/her posts for a while now, and I've come to like them because they're so fucking weird. I'm not a language propellerhead so I can't describe the language in any sort of correct terminology, but whatever it is it substitutes letters that make similar sounds.

"afrayed" == "afraid"
"moron" == "More on"
"patendead" == "patented"

Previous posts had even more of this sort of thing. I like how he taunts "robbIE".

Whatever or whoever it is, I raise a glass to you. Mixing in a little of the bizarre with the standard rehashed, party-line slashbot posting habits is a welcome thing.

Edit:
Another post.

And some more.

Yet more.

So this story gets submitted and posted. Is it "news"? Well, no. Is it at least current? No, actually it's from 1995. Is it real? Actually no. It's likely a hoax.

What it is: anti-microsoft FUD, which slashdot spreads with aplomb.

Look at the comments. Interspersed with all of the jokes and lies ("OMG Win2k REBOOTS EVERY HOUR IT'S A FEATURE LOLOL drool") are a very few people questioning the article's veracity. It's almost all "OMG THIS CONFIRMS MY PRE-CONCEIVED NOTION THAT MS SUCKS", and sad, tired old MS jokes.

Don't get me wrong. I don't particularly like Microsoft. They ARE a monopoly (which isn't immoral or even illegal), and it's plain to see they use this advantage to hinder competition (which is both). I don't really like their DRM tendencies, and the company I work for is in a bind wondering what to do in a few years when they migrate off Win2k. Current MS licensing is a big pain in the ass. MS software is also set up by default to be very trusting and insecure, which is stupid.

So yes, I agree Microsoft needs to play nicer. It wouldn't kill them to adopt some pro-competition measures (open document formats, etc.). It WOULD, however, eat into their massive revenue, which would piss off the investors something fierce.

That's the real problem with business nowadays. Shareholders care only about dividends. It's all short-term thinking. If the CEO doesn't perform, he's out, replaced with someone who can make money THIS quarter. Next quarter is an eternity away.

It's one of Capitalism's flaws, but more importantly it's a human flaw. It's very difficult to get Joe Investor to think about anything but his pocketbook. He similarly doesn't care where the gas for his SUV comes from, nor where his mounds of plastic garbage go. Very few people do. Slashdotters, while overwhelmingly liberal (at least on social issues) seem to eat plastic and silicon like candy. Hypocritical, no? I see a lot of bitching by people who think the U.S. doesn't do enough for the environment, yet they're writing these rants from a machine whose manufacture resulted in many, many pounds of toxins and used fossil fuel. Chances are, they're a geek, which means they have a lot more techno-stuff at home.

This sort of hypocrisy is rampant at Slashdot. Linux and GNU software (and OSS in general) is CONSTANTLY being patched and tweaked. Same with Microsoft. Sometimes MS patches are easier to apply, sometimes not. MS has improved Win32 a lot since Win95 (on which most of the FUD is based). It's funny that Linux advocates hold to this pre-conceived notion, at the same time they're annoyed at the many people think Linux is kludgy and unnecessarily esoteric.

Prejudices are only OK when they're yours, apparently.

Slashdot story submitters and editors seem to think that MS is some horrible mutant FUD spreader. Odd that any microsoft story on slashdot will have anti-MS FUD in the submitted story, the editor's half-informed snide remarks, and the vast majority of the comments tacked onto the story.

Even if that story is a hoax and eight years old. Hypocrites.

Also, I just picked up "Groo, Death and Taxes" comic collection yesterday when I wandered into a comic store on a whim. I haven't seen Groo for nigh on 15 years. EXCELLENT.

YHBT. HAND.

EDIT: as I was pounding this out, this article was posted. Odd. Despite michael's usual slanted byline, and the obvious reason for posting the story (more anti-MS FUD), there are a lot of insightful responses. Of course, the party-line posts get upmodded most.

So today, CmdrTaco posts a duplicate article. Not out of the ordinary, since he can't be bothered to read his own site.

The twist this time, is that he posted the dupe an HOUR AND A HALF after the first one. Not a week. Not a day. 1.5 hours. There was only ONE story between them.

Amost every single post in the discussion attached to CmdrTaco's article says "OMG DUPE".

Of course, he didn't bother reading this (nor the other stories on the front page). Once he woke up and discovered that his idiocy was laid bare, he had the nerve to suggest that the readers should have emailed him:

CT: Yeah yeah. It's a dupe. Funny that not a single reader emailed me in almost 2 hours to tell me.

Listen up, shithead. YOU should be proofreading and checking up on your posted stories, NOT THE READERS. Some readers ACTUALLY PAY YOU, so the least you could do is not insult them by posting dupes and implying they should do your checking for you.

What a fucking worthless prick.

YHBT. HAND.

To those people who have me on their "fans" list and who have email or web notification, sorry for the double journal entry.

Whenever I post from this location, or using many of the available proxies, I get the following message on "submit" or "preview" of a comment.

You can't post to this page.

What the hell does that mean? It's not the typical "Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or subnet...." message trolls are well familiar with. It's not the "pink page of doom".

It DOESN'T happen when I write a journal entry or submit a story. I'd like to respond to people who post in my journal, but I'm not able to. My karma is currently "bad" and my karma is "0" when posting.

Have I misconfigured my browser in some odd way? The one proxy I could find that was both quick and still worked has disappeared. There are a couple of proxies through which I do not see this message, but it's a pain.

Thanks in advance for any insights.

michael posted this story, submitted by a reader who needs karma. It's a summary of an article from Wired .

michael then adds his own little conspiracy theory to the story:

It isn't clear to me how Symantec could know, hours in advance, about a worm which took ten minutes to spread throughout the entire Internet, unless they had something to do with its release.

Emphasis mine.

Top-notch journalism there. An accusation disguised as an opinion on a website read by millions.

Just fucking classic. I'm sure he'll edit it shortly with no explanation. michael, I really hope that mouth of yours lands your employer in court, you biased, hypocritical piece of shit.

Edit:
Hahaha... michael edited the story submission (to his credit he actually made the edit visible, which may be a first for him):

Update: 02/14 16:54 GMT by M: Wired has their math wrong; Symantec apparently had at most 20-30 minutes of early warning.

It's always someone else's fault, isn't it michael? Since you're a big bad editor, shouldn't you actually read and comprehend the story before you submit it? It's easier to jump to conclusions, though. Saves you all that fuss involved in being reasonable and responsible.

I take back what I said in a previous journal entry (which was posted in threads by a couple of ACs. Thanks!) where I stated that michael doesn't post dupes.

He does.

Which is nice, because now there's no need to qualify the statement, "Slashdot editors are biased, hypocritical idiots who are incapable of doing a simple search for duplicate stories."

It also means michael has zero redeeming qualities.

Can you imagine PAYING for Slashdot? I suppose if you share the same narrow mind that CmdrTaco and buddies have, it's a fantastic site.

I fully expected to be trolling a lot this month, but the Columbia accident (along with work and family stuff) have changed my priorities. I've been scouring news sites and Usenet for any information, and reading Dennis R. Jenkins' absolutely outstanding book about the Space Shuttle. I was actually getting ready to fire off a few trolls when I saw a post by an AC saying communication with Columbia was lost.

Weird... Slashdot actually provided something useful. Surely a fluke.

I finally got to dive into Slashdot today, and I noticed two interesting articles (more for their comments than the articles themselves, of course):

Samba-TNG Team Releases 0.3

and

Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality

The first article's comments are absolutely DRENCHED in the Old Ike story. I don't know if that article is some sort of crapflooding record, but it's certainly impressive. Even Old Ike himself made an appearance!

In the second article, an AC makes a good point, one that I've tried to make before -- the stupid moderation system is as big a manufacturer of trolls and crapflooders as is brain damage and/or immaturity. If whoever had written that was logged in (or a known "troll"), you can bet the moderation would have been swift and negative. As it is, it appears to have only received one "Overrated" moderation (hi, michael!), plus a couple of "Insightful" and "Interesting" points.

Remember the first Batman movie?

Batman (to The Joker): "I made you? You made me first!"

(If you need spoonfeeding, that's what the trolls (Batman) are trying to tell CmdrTaco (The Joker).)

My point is, the fact that insightful and dissenting opinions are routinely modded down and that editors abuse their moderation ability to further their own agenda generates resentment and rebellion. This gives birth to trolls and crapflooders. (Yes, Jamie, I read your comment in a previous journal, but I don't buy it, as you'll see in my reply. Editors abuse mod points. Just ask Cetan.) The immaturity of the rank-and-file Slashdot poster is almost as big a problem as the editors. These small-minded, insecure zealots censor posts that they find disagreeable.

The mod system has changed recently, and you now receive moderation notices in spasmodic digests, so you can't see the result of an editor's abuse, or the moderator with a grudge.

If you can't bear the sight of an opinion different from yours, you're a fool. If you censor or suppress that opinion through moderation, you're a fascist. Slashdot is supposed to be a community for open-minded discussion, yet its mod system continues to encourage an ever-narrowing viewpoint. It has failed. CmdrTaco can't see this -- he can't handle ANY criticism -- and so continues to make Slashdot worse with each hamfisted hack to the moderation system.

Normally I would think crapflooding the Old Ike story would be immature and ultimately counter-productive. But since I know that this site can never get any beter because of the editorial staff's collective stupidity (and the user base they attract) I just laugh instead, and I participate in the trolling and dissent. I'm playing my part in the band as this Titanic sinks into the cold depths of the post-dot-com era.

Fuck you, slashdot.

YHBT. HAND.

EDIT:
This story got crapflooded while I was typing this long-winded journal entry. Good show.
END EDIT

I've achieved some level of notoriety! You know michael's twin-in-worthlessness, timothy? Well, I'm on his FOES list! Only three others have been so honored.

See what I mean about squeaky wheels? Make enough noise and the shamelessly biased editorial staff will be forced to deal with you (bitchslapping, taking the time to put you on blacklists, etc.)

Thanks, timothy, for letting me know you care enough to put me on a blacklist. You're still as worthless and despicable as that michael shithead, of course. I'm just glad I was able to waste some of your "precious" time (you're so busy posting dupe articles, I know). I've deposited several thousand cookies into your browser cache as a little "thank you".

I'm back at "bad", but not yet "terrible". I think I'm going to just start submitting every single Wired, CNN and NYT article even remotely technical. I'll probably get 10 posted each day and HOLY SHIT will the editors be busy bitchslapping me then. All I need's a little karma, and a proxy, and I'll expose this peabrained editorial staff for what it is! FIGHT THE POWER!

Ta,
MondoMor

YHBT. HAND.

It's been a while since I posted a journal, and there's a few new happenings.

I got another story submitted. I'm really surprised I got this one, since I'm sure the stupid Lunix fanboys submitted this 500 times. Of course, the discussion that followed was purely anti-Microsoft, even though there are a billion LUnix systems out there that are vulnerable to other exploits, and can be just as big a pain to patch. Fucking hypocrites.

I'm improving in my ability to karma whore, as you can see. As I type this, I've got "Positive" karma, and I ping-pong pretty freely between Positive, Bad and Neutral. Not bad. Hell, I've even posted a blatant anti-michael post logged in and not been any worse for wear.

With positive karma, I'm metamodding several times a day now, pretty much marking everything as "unfair" (unless it's a troll, who's karma whoring and has been modded up. Then I either stay neutral or metamod "Fair" or "Funny"). $20 says I spend more time meta-moderating than most -- and I'm doing it for the sole purpose of getting the signal/noise ratio as low as possible. I wish my other accounts were able to metamod.

On to the subject of this little Journal: Predators improve the breed. It's occurred to me that my work, and the work of the many trolls (most of which are far more competent than I) might actually make Slashdot better if Taco were to begin listening to them. He's mentioned in his journal that he's heard all the grousing about moderation, which means grousing is not going unheard.

Don't get me wrong -- CmdrTaco is still an idiot, totally out of his league running a site like this. But the fact that he puts oil on the squeaky wheels means he has ears and can be annoyed. Unfortunatly the "oil" is an even more fucked-up moderation system, hamfistedly added to allow editors to put the "squeaky wheels" (trolls) into more-and-more-soundproof rooms instead of solving the problem. You know why divorces happen? Because the people in the relationship don't address their problems. Instead they push them aside and try their hardest to ignore them until they can't any longer, spending more energy ignoring them than they do dealing with them.

Why not just meet the issues head-on?

1) Ditch the irrational, unprofessional condescending LUnix fanboyism from the editors. As FortKnox says, "Lunix isn't always the answer. Microsoft isn't always the problem."

2) Before publishing articles, have the common sense to spellcheck and fact-check them. Is it a dupe? If you want to preserve the stupidity of the submitter, just put some "[sic]" marks in the article.

3) Don't pull a michael and add unnecessary snide remarks. It's unprofessional.

4) If you won't do #1, #2 and #3, please drop any pretense of being objective or even rational. It's insulting.

5) For fuck's sake, stop pretending you're not censoring. Stop insulting your readers' intelligence and just admit that the mod system is there so editors can ensure Slashdot reflects THEIR opinions, not those of the readers. Then you can do what you really want to do: delete comments and users that you don't like.

6) The only redeeming quality of michael is that he seems to post fewer (if any) duplicate articles. Fire him. If that's not enough, please fire him because he's the only editor with the sense to check for dupes, which probably makes the other editors jealous. Does he have rich parents or something? Is he paying Slashdot to keep him occupied so he can research his petty conspiracy lunacy?

7) I'm fully capable of reading Wired, The Register, CNN and The New York Times all by myself, and I won't get Slashdot's editorial bias or mind-numbingly stupid interpretations by Slashdot editors and article submitters. Sooner or later, even the stupidest of your drooling LUnix fanboys will realize this and leave. How about stopping Slashdot from becoming the unofficial comment board for these sites?

See, Taco, that's what a lot of the grousing seems to be about. If you were to truly embrace your Liberal sensibilities, you'd see that your Predators -- your trolls -- are trying to improve their Prey -- Slashdot. It's Darwinian, you stupid twat, but you're too dense to see it.

YHBT. HAND.

EDIT:
Hahhahahaha. CmdrTaco is predictable as drool from a retard. I posted the text of this journal entry in a CmdrTaco story, and I've been bitchslapped AGAIN! Here's some cut&paste HTML from my messages:

Moderation of "Predators improve the breed." Wed Jan 29, '03 10:18 AM
Moderation of "Predators improve the breed." Wed Jan 29, '03 10:19 AM
Moderation of "Amen." Wed Jan 29, '03 10:21 AM
Moderation of "Predators improve the breed." Wed Jan 29, '03 10:21 AM
Moderation of "Predators improve the breed." Wed Jan 29, '03 10:21 AM
Moderation of "Arrogant dick. You're helping them win." Wed Jan 29, '03 10:21 AM

See how the first moderation of my thread post occurred less than a minute after I posted it? Then all those other mods occurred at the same time.

I've been bitchslapped again! Taco REALLY doesn't like it when you criticise. Such a fragile ego!

All of the recipies for bandaging your wounded karma specify that you should get an article posted. Believe me, I've tried, but not been successful... 'till now.

My karma's back up to "bad".

What's really funny is that the story was posted by michael, of all people. The person who bitchslapped me now goes a certain way to undo it.

It's not even a particularly good story, and I submitted it more than 24 hours ago, so I figured it was old and just waiting in queue to be shot down. I thought my article text was too obviously karma-whorish. Well I'll be...

It's fun when Slashdot posts a story pertaining to Microsoft. The claims by CmdrTaco that this site fosters insightful discussion are proved embarassingly false within 10 posts. Moronic Slashbots (like that git that posted a comment in my last journal) fall all over themselves to be the first to fire off one of the most-recently-upmodded anti-MS jokes.

Here's some selections, with links to the sloths posting them:

Who the hell wants a watch that crashes with the BSOD whenever I ask it to tell me the time! rehashed by: vyzar

Inflatable Hippo responds to vYz4R's wit, convienently forgetting the nearly weekly patches and updates to all that is GNU: Don't be churlish, the weekly service patches will solve that problem in no time.

supergiovane found this joke in several other MS stories, so he knew it was good for some karma: Obviously you will need a DRM compliant arm to wear it.

Zigg busts out I don't know about anyone else, but I sure as hell aren't wearing any Microsoft product with a metal side touching my skin. My wrist would probably develop a twitch from the "corrective" shocks coming from the watch whenever I sit down at my Linux box...

Jokes beginning with "I don't know about everyone else, but I..." must activate an ancient upmodding impulse in the Slashbot community.

When I surfed this story at a threshold of 3, those were some of the highest-modded posts.

Yeah, Taco, this sure is a site for insightful discussion about things that matter to nerds. Shitty humor, elitism, irrational zealotry and plain ol' FUD are what get encouraged here.

Edit:
From a newer article, there's this classic:

I just can't wait for the days when things are $1/TB.

Yeah, but by then, Super Windows XP Pro Ultimate Championship Edition will be out, will have backwards compatibility to all prior 8-, 16-, 32-, 64-, and 128-bit architectures, take 8 solar days to load, require 800 terabytes to install, and the neuro-holographic interface will crash regularly, wiping out more data than a human being can process in a lifetime, and throwing people into neural shock. You'll die, but it will be illegal to have any negative feelings towards the occasion, because of the Digital Oblivion Mind-Control Act.

Linux, of course, will still be around and install fine, but no one will care, because they get an extra 7 updates per second playing the Windows version of Quake 82, so it will still be considered a 'toy' OS.

Sometimes I scare myself...

--Dan

The classic Slashdot "joke" post - full of FUD, ignorance and zealotry. Brown-nosing like the geek you had in your science class. Hell, Dan probably IS the asskissing sycophant you had in Science class. You suck, Dan, but you're a king here.

End Edit

Edit2:

Another Microsoft-related article. I won't bother to summarize my disappointment. Rehash-O-Rama.

End Edit

YHBT. HAND.

This is either funny if you're a troll, or sad if you're trying to make Slashdot a site with useful info.

Either way, it highlights how thoroughly boneheaded the current moderation system is.

In this "Slashback" article, an AC posts "a copy of the article in case it gets slashdotted", complete with a disclaimer line:

[posting anon to avoid being accused of karma whoring.]

What the zipperheaded mod didn't realize, is that it's a cut-n-paste of the SLASHBACK ARTICLE ITSELF. That's right, someone posted the contents of a slashdot article INSIDE the same article and got modded UP.

Whoever you are, you're my hero, and if I could give you an award for "Most Recent Exposure of the Stupidity of the Slashdot Mod System", I would.

On another note, sorry to my fans if you've got messaging on and you see so many recent Journals by me. I'll try to keep it quiet.

YHBT. HAND.

P.s. FUCK YOU, MICHAEL.

I really need to compile some of my "Slashdot is a shitty site run by hypocrites and morons" links into a single Journal entry.

I was looking through the posting history of a friend of one of my freaks, and found a pretty good rant, posted anonymously.

I'm pretty sure post deletion is coming soon to Slashdot (how better to permanently silence critics?), so here's the quoted text of that post:

how about the fact that the lameness filter is, by definition, censorware??
The editors all seem to be against it, but when they run it on their own site, it's just a way to stop trolls and ascii art.

The hypocrisy is stenching, from michael and his handling of censorware.org, to this "filter".

At least you guys should own up to it, and censorware is ok from some cases.

Plus the fact that editors mod comments is a travesty of this stupid moderation system.

Amen.

Actually, this whole thread is good reading, showing just how horrible the Slashdot leadership is.

YHBT. HAND.

Edited to correct the relationship between me and the source of that quote above. It was early and...

Hahahaha...

Michael posted yet another one of his patented snide remarks in this article. He then EDITED IT after he was given shit for it.

Before:
The Intuit PR rep is quoted as saying that people can install the software on multiple computers using the same activation code - the very thing that the activation process is supposed to prevent - so he is misquoted, misinformed, or lying.

After:
The Intuit PR rep is quoted as saying that people can install the software on multiple computers using the same activation code, but I don't think an unworking installation really counts.

Hey, wow. What a shock.

I had to post in that thread as an AC because micheal bitchslapped me earlier (see previous journal entries).

Please, michael, just quit. Or grow up. Either.

YHBT. HAND.