Welcome to TrollBack for April 2004. April started off rather slowly, with The List picking up a number of the strongest submissions in the last few days. We'd like to welcome USAPatriot to TrollBack. TrollBack regrettably did not see any posts that were made last month by this user, although if we had we would have had these posts [1, 2, 3] in The List.

TrollBack would like to welcome back b.foster and Lover's Arrival, The to TrollBack; it has been far too long between posts for these two legends, and we hope to see more material for next month's issue. Thanks to some fan-whoring last month by an anonymous TrollBack fan, we have a number of new readers that we'd like to welcome.

Answering the Mail Bag

We had a few emails in the past month we'd like to take some time to answer. The letters have been edited slightly.

Letter #1: Encyclopedia Article on Slashdot Trolling

As someone who reads (and infrequently writes for) the Wikipedia (1), but regularly reads Slashdot, I feel you are a rather respected (wellknown at least) part of our community which is covered quite extensively in the Wikipedia under "Slashdot" (2), "Slashdot subculture" (3), and "Slashdot trolling phenomena" (4). What this is only lacking is any real mention of you. You can directly contribute any information about yourself into the articles using the "Edit this Page" links on the pages. I'm in no way affiliated with the management of the wikipedia, but I feel that the article(s) could stand to benefit from additional information regarding your work.

Regards,

Thank you for your letter. We notice that link 4 is a 'featured article candidate' on Wikipedia, which presumably means it will make the next edition of Brittanica. We'd like to suggest that the wikipedia definition of the Slashdot Troll 'community' is quite different to the what many of the purist trolls might define. For something a little more grounded in history, TrollBack suggests the following reading materials as a starting point on any wikipedia definition: The Slashdot Troll FAQs written by spiralx, jsm, and an Anonymous Coward.

As far as a mention for TrollBack goes, perhaps something along the lines of being Slashdot's best known alternative publication. The TrollBack team likes to think they have made a positive contribution to the community, particularly in recording moments that might otherwise be lost and forgotten about as the drudgery of Slashdot's normal programming continues.

Letter #2: Dear TrollBack

Dear TrollBack,

I tried to follow Pan T. Hose's posting this month. Unfortunately my favorite Mensa Babe, PhysicsGenius, tps12, Professor Collins, Amsterdam Vallon and Boromir son of Faram haven't posted anything this month (oh God, how I miss them!), so I've got only links to Pan T. Hose's texts. (I've read lots of great comments by ObviousGuy lately but I haven't saved the links.) So here are my favorite ones, some of which you might consider including in the next issue of TrollBack.

Thank you for your letter. TrollBack misses these accounts as well, and if the account holders are reading, perhaps they might consider a come back. It should be noted that Boromir son of Faram is tps12's follow-on account. tps12 stopped posting when he had 1337 comments to his name. TrollBack would also like to backup this letter's mention of ObviousGuy. ObviousGuy has been carrying TrollBack for a few publications now, and it is appreciated.

Elsewhere

Over at Kuro5hin, the proverbial hit the fan in a major way in April. It seems accurate to suggest that in the past few months, K5 has been chock full of meta-wankery and whining about so-called crapflooders. Rusty pulled the plug on new account creation and anonymised any account that posted a photo-shopped photo involving his wife.

As could be expected when you're the recipient of whining and bitching, Rusty kept a low profile. So the site with the highest meta-overhead of any popular nerd site saw an article titled 'Where is Rusty?' voted up rapidly to the front-page. Momochrome summed the whole situation up in a single comment that turned the tables back on those who have created the most noise of late.

A fair amount of anguish has been expressed over the lack of a comment search feature in scoop that worked well. In this very story, localroger suggested that the answer to scoop's comment searching was to generate a flat file that consisted of all words that had been posted in all comments to date, with comment ids associated with each instance of said word. In order to ensure this superb search strategy ran as fast as possible, it was to be implemented using assembly language. At that stage of events, localroger was completely serious about it.

Realising he had been cut to pieces, localroger decided that he'd try and get some credibility back with a follow-on story, this time as a troll. That story got voted to section. Shortly after the story got section, localroger posted a diary where he bragged about his brilliance. Shoeboy's comment sums localroger up in a few short sentences.

Slashdot Math

As reported first in 31337, slashdot math struck again this month, with a comment that is 30% Underrated + 20% Insightful + 20% Interesting == +5 Funny. As 31337 gets flushed of old posts, we think we should preserve some of the most insightful meta-commentary ever seen:

Could the figure be made less helpful?

One possibility might be to eliminate 'Score:' as a number entirely and instead represent it with a smudge of color made up of smudges of various colors as chosen by the moderators.

This brings with it a multitude of advantages, not the least of which is the reduction of the point modifier system for mod attributes (such as 'Interesting') to a color wheel, but also the potential to alienate the colorblind portion of the community. Best of all, if the new moderation system follows a subtractive color mixing model most comments will be rated 'brownish', which coincides quite nicely with my online experiences and posting history.

There's been a lot of change to the moderation system of late. Many of you may have noticed that being moderated up as Funny doesn't raise your Karma. This means that a post that 100 moderators think is Funny and 100 moderators think is Overrated will bounce between 4 and 5 100 times, lowering your karma by one each time. The result? In one post you can go from +50 (Excellent) to -50 (Terrible). This is progress. +1 Funny is now a weapon. There's also a huge penalty to anyone whose post is first moderated up a bunch, then moderated down a bunch. This happens most often when people point out spelling errors in stories; later, the spelling error is fixed by editors and the original poster is moderated down. So you lose 50 karma because you helped an editor fix a spelling mistake. You've also lost a bundle of moderation tokens.

CmdrTaco has had a busy month by all indications, given a recent spate of journal activity. In between his attempts to purchase a high resolution Tivo to see bad television more perfectly defined, he's been sharing a lot of his brainstorming about how to "fix" that which he considers not broken: The Moderation System. Some of you who have been following the story for years may recognise many of his new insights as your own comments, shot down years ago by Rob as items that "won't scale" and resurrected as innovations on his yellow legal pad. There's talk of bringing back trusted moderators (though this time his AI will do the selection for him, no blacklist required), talk of de-gaming the system by removing all the scores, and a small trickle of two-year-old "unscaleable" common sense lifted straight from user feedback to the Post of Doom.

Finally, it has been proposed that Slashcode could use Bayesian Filtering to identify troll posts on slashdot. We'd like to help the slashteam waste their time by identifying trolling legends to feed into the filter. This month's nominee is Sheetrock, truly a Slashdot icon.

Bayesian Filter Food Award

TrollBack would like to present a special tribute to TrollBack regular Sheetrock, who never ceases to amaze the team with the quality of posts made. TrollBack has featured 30 posts by Sheetrock in the previous 13 editions of Trollback. The decision to confer an inaugural award to Sheetrock came with this post, which shall forever be known as the "Great Wall of China through Japan" post. TrollBack will now provide a short review of 5 select posts that we love, and we're sure you will too.

• The original chopstick post.
• The original intelligent design post.
• Why doesn't windows have an auto-update feature?
• The spittoon post.
• The great wall of China through Japan post.

When TrollBack nearly folded a distant 15 months ago, Sheetrock wrote a moving eulogy, and a special place in TrollBack's heart for Sheetrock was found. The award's prize is a permanent listing in TrollBack's friends section. A round of applause for this gentleman, please, and an acceptance speech if you're reading, Sheetrock.

The List

(-1,7,18) ObviousGuy | Take an object, leave an object
(5,14,51) conner_bw | Sigh.
(-1,3,3) Lover's Arrival, The | My husband used to play Neverwinter nights
(2,10,51) dolo666 | Linux Changelog Email Publishing
(5,4,4) Debian Troll's Best | How would Google manage a 100K-node cluster?
(5,6,9) Debian Troll's Best | Asian-language localized UNIX tools
(-1,14,32) Anonymous Coward | DATUM not data
(1,4,7) Sheetrock | Time for something new?
(3,19,26) ObviousGuy | Do we need this kind of humor here?
(0,15,44) b.foster | Python's dirty little secret
(-1,7,36) USAPatriot | More Leftist Propaganda
(5,15,24) USAPatriot | Excellent
(4,4,120) Anonymous Coward | *MAGNETIC* fans in my PC?
(5,14,61) Sheetrock | Sadly...
(5,18,28) USAPatriot | Stupid
(4,7,8) Anonymous Coward | We're banning Yo-yos
(1,5,8) Debian Troll's Best | Any system software updates also?
(-1,8,18) Sheetrock | A consideration.
(-1,6,16) Samir Gupta | On Xbox's lack of success in Japan
(-1,13,33) Mr. Darl McBride | A link on swbell.net? Oh, that'll last.
(1,21,42) Sheetrock | Fantastic.
(5,18,) timecop | What Lies Ahead for Linux...

Honourable Mentions

• Freston gets a big bite
• Ascii Enactment Players provides slashbots with a DRM flowchart
• This month's affirmative action award goes to the AC who posted this over and over again.
• A one line throw-away comment starts a mammoth Israel flame-war.

Amnesia Lane

Finally, we'd like to take you back down amnesia lane. This month, we feature the infamous Shoeboy vs Merlyn episode that took place on slashdot back in April 2001.

Merlyn is a 'perl monk', which means he is a perl expert and likes to engage in relations with camels. Merlyn had been fired and taken through the courts by Intel, after it caught him cracking passwords in a self-appointed security review without authorisation to do so. Slashdot featured a story about how he had been taken to the cleaners and lost an appeal. You'd think that being a master of password security, you'd set your slashdot password to something half reasonable. Apparently not.

In a crushing irony, his slashdot account password at that time was "slashdot" and was guessed by Shoeboy. Shoeboy had a fetish (and probably still does) for Larry Wall's daughter, and proceeded to make a few posts as Merlyn saying that having become a criminal, he'd never be able to settle down with Heidi an lead a peaceful life.

Many of Merlyn's friends jumped to his defence: coward! defamation! insulting! Remove the offending posts! Merlyn tried denying his password was slashdot when the account was returned, but was quickly corrected [1, 2]. Shoeboy was accused of being an asshole, but defended his actions. 'You're not going to press criminal charges?' was shoeboy's cheeky response. Shoeboy, as it turned out, did not 'crack' any password, and was lucky that Merlyn had spent a fortune in the courts already.

That's it for this month!

[Befriend TrollBack and get notified of upcoming issues]

That's right, assmasters, it is that one special time of year when the slashdot front-page consists entirely of one tired lame gag after another. Luckily, the Trollback team have put together another issue of your favourite publication.

April fools is a bizarre day on slashdot. It is just about the only time you'll find an editor post a story suggesting that ESR is full of hot air. Sadly, they stop short of suggesting that ESR is an arrogant gas baron. Surely that is the most on-topic discussion to be had on April 1.

The List is chock full of funny gags this issue; perhaps Trollback is front-page material?

Harvard is the new Mensa

The mensa line has been used to great effect by trolling legends Krapangor and Mensa Babe. Slashbots just hate elitism, even if it is central to their open source zealotry. Trollback is proud to provide you with the complete posting history of the Harvard character that some of you may have seen posting during March.

The character actually started out rather slowly back in February, but had a great outing at the beginning of March, which is featured in The List. The next outing was a re-post of the February post, but this time it had success. It was at this time when the character was corrected: Harvard refers to its Teaching Assistants as Teaching Fellows.

The early success brought laziness as the Harvard poster took a turn for the weeds [1, 2, 3] - although there were always good bites to be had. The poster was quickly back on the spoke though, with a comment making unfounded accusations against unfounded accusations that had a good bite from the article's submitter and even a joke about Harvard wankers. This was followed up with another entry in The List, discussing why Qt is not his favorite toolkit.

With all the negative feedback our intrepid poster from Harvard had received, he felt a bit depressed, and wanted to know why was he not liked. He wanted to recommend that other people did not make the same mistake one of his students did when the student tried to write a BIOS based on Debian Linux. He also did his best Dan Quayle impression.

He finished his expedition posting as someone who was in Harvard Law.

Remember: if you're having success posting anonymously, please report your successes to 31337, or alternatively email the Trollback team.

Make Windows your Foe

If anything is true about the Slashbot, it is the hatred they have for Windows and Microsoft, despite doing all they can to create a clone operating system. This month saw an attack led by the crapflooder users.pl, posting early into many stories to get the user windows in lots of foe lists. The writeup in windows' journal tells the sad story of what has happened so far.

Elsewhere

Over at K5, the user IndianaTroll has been keeping a record of interesting events on K5 that are troll-related in his diary. We applaud the effort made my IndianaTroll to keep a record of these events; the team has registered TrollBack on K5, but we feel the quality of K5 trolls is lacking except for the right wing maniacs Ray Megard, Adam Rightmann, and sellison. We'd like to pay special mention to Ray; every one of his posts is a work of art. Slashdot could really do with a good right-wing manic post now and again. If you've spotted one lately, please reply to this diary and share the joy.

The List

(-1,22,40) Anonymous Coward | Unit tests are a bad idea
(3,17,112) krog | Why shell?
(3,51,165) Sheetrock | Not the only person against Grand Theft Auto
(-1,7,51) Anonymous Coward | Re:EV1
(1,18,38) Overly Critical Guy | Question
(1,11,18) valence | BIOS = Built-in Operating System
(-1,10,20) ObviousGuy | No clamor
(-1,10,31) ObviousGuy | I am not for these laws at all
(1,8,28) ObviousGuy | Yep, they're out of ideas
(-1,9,17) ObviousGuy | Fraud? Really?
(3,11,92) ultrabot | MySql
(4,15,27) Anonymous Coward | Bad Patents?
(-1,4,7) mao che minh | Re:Canada: Socially Advanced
(-1,3,4) Sheetrock | Atmospheric phenomenon?
(0,12,16) Anonymous Coward | Qt is not my favorite toolkit
(2,29,113) ObviousGuy | Power Power Power
(-1,17,39) egg troll | IPv6: Not Ready For Prime Time
(0,12,38) ObviousGuy | Follow the money
(0,7,13) Anonymous Coward | We can catch the worm's author
(-1,2,12) Anonymous Coward | My success with OpenBSD
(-1,21,147) Anonymous Coward | HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN! FUCK AMERICA! FRANCE RULES!

Honourable mentions

• Ascii Enactment Players makes another post.
• Overly Critical Guy implodes.
• Sheetrock suggests that slashcode is a powerhouse. +5 Insightful. Not even a hint of a funny mod; perhaps CmdrTaco was on the right track with NOT moderation after all.
• An AC, perhaps aided with a subscription, gets the most insightful post in a story with the first post.
• Not content with his description of Dungeons and Dragons players last month, ObviousGuy comes up with a new slogan for AOL.
• Slashbots provide insight into the female mind.

Amnesia Lane

Finally, we'd like to take you back down amnesia lane. Trollback will try and make amnesia lane a regular feature from now on.

Adequacy.org announced this month that they have released their archive of slashdot troll outings pre-adequacy.org to the drooling masses. The headcheese archive is a database of the various adequacy accounts that were used and the post they made in the name of trolling. They have conveniently provided the world with a top-ten list of their most successful posts; the top-20 direct replies table is a trolling how-to.

That's it for this month!

Trollback is well aware of your penchant for man-sex, but usually we are heartened to see that you can drag yourselves away long enough to post a month worth of trolling gold. Not this time; it seems that you and Bubba were having too much fun to keep up to last month's high standards.

The unfailingly entertaining CmdrTaco

In the event of a short list, Trollback can always fall back on reviewing the previous month of CmdrTaco diaries and slashdot goings-on.

CmdrTaco shares his harrowing tale of having a block of ice thrown at his car, narrowly escaping an icy death. It was while still in shock that a confused CmdrTaco came up with what was thought impossible: a way to make moderation even more like a game. Welcome to the idea of NOT moderation. We can see no possible confusion arising from a meta-mod reversing the effects of a NOT moderation meted out by a user to reverse an initial moderation.

As a warm-up for the coding this moderation change will involve, Taco decided he would change the comment history page to be cleaner and clearer. After all, a list of comments in date order is overwhelmingly complex.

Give a 'hacker' a Mac and they become an amateur designer. Welcome to the new system of grouped comments, which may or may not tell you which story they are attached to, leading to a page of inconsistently presented data in no useful order. Fortunately, he explains how preposterous it is to say the page is cluttered: there is less text, therefore it is less cluttered. We stand corrected. As always with feature changes, most of the feedback is "pretty cool" - selective memory at work, although there is a way to turn the new grouping method off.

Fyodor the Black-Hat and Slashdot

Fyodor revoked SCO's license to redistribute nmap, which counts as something news-worthy on slashdot. Slashbots were reminded of why Fyodor is a black-hat, not a white-hat freedom fighter as slashbots like to think he is. The GPL zealots rejoiced, as someone was using the GPL to shake their tiny fist at SCO. Fortunately, an anonymous coward, probably scared of putting himself and his company at risk from being hacked, posted the truth behind fyodor's questionable use of the GPL.

While we're briefly on the subject of SCO, we'd like to thank the SCO$699FeeTroll for regularly reminding slashbots to pay their licensing fees.

James A C Joyce

Congratulations to James A C Joyce, who got four controversial stories posted in February, passing Trollaxor's previous record of three.

Two of the controversial stories are in fact written for Vlad. Don't Be So Fucking Fat is a motivational weight loss guide, while Why C Is Not My Favourite Programming Language is a list of the things that makes understanding C hard, and why he chooses to now study in the arts.

The most controversial article was surprisingly voted to the front page of K5, causing quite a stir in web-log circles was the unprecedented Why your Movable Type blog must die. James' diary around the time makes for good reading, as he discovers web-loggers/lamers linking to his story [1, 2, 3].

K5 Ascii Enactment Players comes to Slashdot

Proving the sort of quality code that makes up the lameness filters, AEP has arrived at Slashdot. Regulars will be aware of his works on K5, and hopefully we will see a similar quality of work here. Trollback presents two small golden nuggets for your review: [1, 2].

It is a challenge to get good quality ascii art past the lameness filter. Even timothy struggled with ascii art back in the day. After 250 revisions of the ascii art filter, the editors have succeeded in gagging their own ascii art, but not the trolls.

Jimmy O'Leary madness

After getting a special mention in the previous edition of Trollback, Jimmy O'Leary madness reached a two-month high for the month of February. When CmdrTaco posted the story "Saturn Rings But No Spokes" - you can probably guess what happened. We salute whoever got the first post on that story, keeping Jimmy mania alive.

The List

(2,9,15) Freston Youseff | Pretty amazing
(5,10,33) Chess_the_cat | Re:Not all Advertisers win
(3,9,15) Sheetrock | After looking at the possible solutions
(-1,5,15) Anonymous Coward | Re:Death to magnetic stripes
(3,8,13) Srividya | Will this last very long?
(3,18,48) Samuel Duncan | Law-abiding citizens
(-1,17,35) Samuel Duncan | "generics"
(2,15,41) bonch | The reasons geeks don't get laid
(1,11,27) Tirel | i call bullshit
(5,7,13) Debian Troll's Best | Other ways to improve Linux security?
(4,13,113) ObviousGuy | Really? Infamous?
(3,6,16) Sheetrock | Sounds interesting.
(3,36,149) Can it run Linux | Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Post)
(2,18,21) Srividya | Unfortunate, but unlikely in the future.
(2,5,6) Anonymous Coward | "Consumers" have no "rights"
(0,10,30) ObviousGuy | Cemeteries are landfills
(-1,12,35) Amsterdam Vallon | Slashdot is an international site
(2,19,149) Tirel | huh
(0,12,28) Tirel | small article nitpick
(-1,7,37) Anonymous Coward | Not bad, but...
(5,9,11) Clockwurk | Re:Injunction?
(3,17,44) Chess_the_cat | 2+2=3
(3,11,14) Sheetrock | A friend came up with an amazing analogy...

[If Trollback has missed anyone, please submit a comment.]

Honourable Mentions

• A joke about BSD and Gentoo users is -1 Funny. It must have struck a nerve.
• Calyptos has absolutely no sense of humour, even if the joke is lame.
• ObviousGuy shares a short history of Dungeons and Dragons with us. He is the target of a rather pathetic troll-bust.
• Ballmer visited last November and fondled donkeys. Chortle-chortle.
• Cecil bites on a troll and tries to tell said troll that they lost.

Finally, we'd like to bring your attention to one of the greatest sids on slashdot: sid 3903. Take a walk down amnesia lane and recall a day when you could post ascii art boobies, naked Jackie Chan, and shemales. Remember the VA Linux / Slash-dot giveaways, and the time when chrisd bit. Recall the early days after VA bought andover.net for nearly US$1b. Lastly, remember the trolls.

That's it for this month!

Welcome to the first monthly edition of Trollback for 2004. This edition has been a pleasure to put together, thanks to the sheer quantity of quality posts presented in The List.

omfg ror lolf

One of Trollback's regular duties is to skim through 20721 to make sure that any posts recorded there for peer review and gentlemanly competition are not missed when the time comes to assemble The List. jimmy o'leary has made 20721 readable; the team can laugh at funny crap as we skim through the wasteland. Trollback's favourite contribution is this:

> I am a trolling stalwart. Please consider me for president.

only if you tell me your stances on 1) death penalty 2) immigration 3) stem cell research and 4) omfg ror lolf

A round of applause for jimmy, please.

FortKnox

Moving along with the "affirmative action" theme of Trollback, we'd like to turn briefly to FortKnox. Despite promising Trollback a few cheap laughs, it would appear that FortKnox has not been able to follow through with the diary entry where he proclaimed that he was a troll, and damn good at it. The diary has been pulled, and trollback is only aware of one feeble attempt. The Trollback team respectfully requests that FortKnox be removed from the Troll Blacklist.

Thanks in advance.

Goatse.cx

As many of you will already know, the goatse.cx domain has been placed in registry lock mode. Many of you feel as if an important piece of Internet culture has been censored needlessly, although by now you're probably used to it. This is not the first time the goatse.cx domain has had troubles. You can read about the last time over at k5 here.

A bunch of articles commemorating the demise of goatse.cx were submitted to k5, although only this one was considered good enough by the unwashed masses for it to be posted on the front page.

OSDN Ad Parodies

Regular Trollback readers will recall last month's parodies of the OSDN Dating service advertisements. It would seem that OSDN is now running an advertisement for a magazine on open source called "wide open". The parody for this month can be viewed over at HuSi.

The List

(4,16,32) Krapangor | Fall of Western civilization ?
(3,12,16) Sheetrock | Look to the past for examples of future success.
(-1,8,29) Tirel | Why do we need two widgets?
(0,12,26) Gary Whittles | Re:I need to ask
(-1,8,17) ObviousGuy | Ever buy a car with auto-everything?
(3,21,36) ObviousGuy | BF Skinner was right
(-1,5,20) ObviousGuy | The problem is that the ISS is 'international'
(4,16,103) Tirel | Objectivity my arse
(1,30,102) Tirel | where is the peer review?
(0,5,9) Anonymous Coward | the Mac Zealot Translator a go-go!
(-1,9,31) SexyKellyOsbourne | Your tax dollars at work...
(5,12,19) radish | Re:HP CEO fails to understand basic economics
(-1,25,52) Tirel | it breaks easily
(-1,4,9) Anonymous Coward | Real world vs. fanboy fantasies
(3,32,136) Amsterdam Vallon | This is NOT right - Please DONATE to his fund
(0,5,11) egg troll | IPv6: Not Ready for Prime Time
(-1,14,39) Krapangor | Bad joke.
(1,16,95) Krapangor | Stupid.
(1,12,28) Krapangor | Clever
(1,25,59) sulli | No, only 0.9094 TB
(-1,8,30) ObviousGuy | Helium is a great chemical
(3,10,10) Krapangor | Who will win ?
(0,14,18) Krapangor | Problem.
(-1,8,11) Anonymous Coward | Re:speaking of IPv6 vs IPv4
(-1,13,28) ObviousGuy | If you gave the code away for Free
(-1,7,15) Krapangor | I am sick of this.
(5,11,66) egg troll | Ugh stop this cliche
(4,11,27) larry bagina | pot, kettle, black
(-1,7,13) benzapp | Re:Long live masculinity
(4,31,85) (1337) God | Sounds good, right? Here's the problem...
(-1,8,51) Sheetrock | There's one major reason I choose Python over Perl
(-1,5,11) Krapangor | Bad foundations.
(2,60,130) krog | Here are the IPs in question
(1,14,25) Krapangor | Rubbish.
(3,31,194) (1337) God | They don't care about us
(-1,7,16) Freston Youseff | Linux Cost Tax Payers at least $410M...nothing in
(5,13,37) Krapangor | Get non-tech certs
(-1,21,210) Forge | Congratulate "Sir William" and move on
(3,10,27) Anonymous Coward | Napster and Shawn Fanning
(0,12,34) ObviousGuy | Why does anyone give Lucas any more chances?
(4,18,32) Anonymous Coward | Not only Macs...

Honourable Mentions

• Krapangor posts great flamebait, first response sums it all up.
• Klerck: Microsoft Security. What's it all about? Is it good, or it is whack? Slashbots say whack.
• larry bagina starts the mother of all BSD vs Linux flamewars with a simple post we've all seen before. The war between ninejaguar and kirkjobsluder is something to behold.
• Eric does his best Big Gay Al impression.
• A slashbot gets his units wrong and a bunch of really helpful slashbots come to his rescue.
• Sheetrock posts something truly bizarre, gets moderated down as a troll.
• Tirel shows that patriotic NASA fan-boys are assholes.
• What is the second greatest achievement after Score: 5, Troll? Here's your answer.

Finally, you might remember hearing something about Linus putting on a pair of speedos for charity. The nice people at Fark.com ran a photoshop contest on a photo of Linus in his speedos. The winner is worth a laugh; the rest of the entries are pretty dull.

That's it for this month! ror

Trollback is here with the last montly edition of Trollback to cover 2003. Trollback will post a year in review edition in the coming days, which will review some of the highlights of the year, as Trollback saw them.

The trollback team has struggled to put together the review. Trollback has a fair idea of what will make it and what will not, but would certainly like to hear from the community as to what the highlights were for you.

Perhaps some fresh perspective will help.

OSDN Dating Service

As if the zoo system wasn't enough of a black-book of booty calls, OSDN now has partnered with match.com to provide its readers with even more assistance in the difficult business of finding a girlfriend when you're addicted to linux. Some discussion on this topic has taken place at K5 and at HuSi.

The advertisement for this service is poorly photoshopped, perhaps one of many reasons why it has been parodied extensively [1, 2, 3, 4]. While we're on the subject, slashbots ponder if slashdot trolls are more or less lonely than they are.

Troll Blacklist

The Troll Blacklist project continues to censor many great users that Trollback reports on. This month saw the banning of FortKnox, who admitted that he was a troll and damn good at it in his widely read journal.

Trollback is not so sure about FortKnox's troll status, but if FortKnox or one of his many legions of adoring fans would like to submit a list of FortKnox's finest work, Trollback will feature that work in the January 2003 edition.

Elsewhere

Over at K5, Trollaxor managed to have three stories on the front-page at once. Strangely, not a single one had anything to do with politics. They are Sovereign Semiconductor, Cubing the Power Mac G5, and Linux vs. OpenBSD.

The List

(-1,21,98) Sheetrock | Science is a constantly evolving field
(5,20,61) Sheetrock | Time for better security.
(0,16,81) Overly Critical Guy | Well, well, well
(-1,23,40) Angram | Linux File System?
(4,10,25) Anonymous Coward | My suggestions.
(3,13,16) Exmet Paff Daxx | Are you sure this is a good idea?
(0,41,137) Amsterdam Vallon | I DON'T CARE -- I BUY MUSIC LATELY
(-1,2,66) Anonymous Coward | More American garbage
(1,13,150) adzoox | The geeks that clapped during the movie/review:
(0,16,75) rkz | Its crap but just as crap as anyone else
(1,10,19) Anonymous Coward | Myth: Linux is more secure than Windows NT.
(1,26,119) rkz | India
(0,9,15) Sheetrock | Looks good.
(-1,20,50) egg troll | Poor Taste in Title of Game
(-1,19,30) SexyKellyOsbourne | Your tax dollars at work, folks.
(2,12,17) Amsterdam Vallon | I was a National Weather Service researcher
(1,7,30) Anonymous Coward | Stigma? Try Porn Star
(-1,14,54) Amsterdam Vallon | My experience as a consultant for the Israelis
(-1,13,24) Amsterdam Vallon | 1975 - The year I consulted for Magnusson-Moss
(0,15,63) Amsterdam Vallon | In 2002, I researched the COSMIC background

Honourable mentions

• Return of the bitchslap
• Michael will enter you from behind
• rkz's slashbot book review
• Another attempt at a spelling troll

Don't forget to send in your Year in Review nominations.

That's it for this month!

Rusty is a trollback fan

Trollback has many spies, and some of the more pallid, greasy ones keeps a close eye on IRC. One of our spies managed to unstick his keys long enough to alert us to this:

<rusty_afk> "The phrases "open source" and "enterprise ready" keep popping into Trollback's mind, but Trollback cannot figure out why."
<rusty_afk> heh
<rusty_afk> presumably the link is "phrases rusty has never said without a negation in between them..."

Moderation

Trollback is reluctant to engage in any moderation discussion, since social engineering is by its nature a fickle process, and everybody likes to think they have the one perfect solution. Unfortunately, not every organization is as modest. A brand new site, Everything In Moderation, promises to have all the answers for keeping trolls from peeing in your public pool.

Taco is well known for dancing around the issue of moderation-talk, relegating it to his journal, where virtually no one can post. Fortunately, Trollback regular Sheetrock is on-hand to translate Taco's journal, and provide a forum for us all. Still, there is some concern about the alternative of making moderation entirely open to the public. Trollback has some concerns, mostly about people having too much time.

Welcome back, Jack!

Although Trollback comes pretty close, nobody is perfect, and it turns out we have been failing to track the comments of upstanding consultant Jack Wagner. Rest assured this tragic oversight has been remedied, and the great man seems to have started posting again. Trollback welcomes you back!

By way of attonement, here is a selection of Trollback's favourite Wagner links: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

The list

(-1,7,22) egg troll | My Experience with the Linux
(1,25,115) Sheetrock | Playing God, with hilarious results.
(0,9,12) Jack Wagner | Is this dangerous
(2,10,33) Anonymous Coward | it still has DRM
(-1,7,33) Anonymous Coward | This was not an accident
(1,11,92) Jack Wagner | Meanwhile
(1,12,22) GoatPigSheep | I could see this coming
(-1,11,26) Dancin_Santa | That's great!
(2,16,34) Zeinfeld | Re:Isn't Rock-n-Roll dead as well?
(1,8,15) Sheetrock | Although they're calling this memory
(1,15,31) Boromir son of Faram | enough
(-1,20,27) Sheetrock | Interesting thoughts...
(-1,10,23) Amsterdam Vallon | Not worth it
(5,13,43) Anonymous Coward | Re:Trust them
(4,19,108) Sheetrock | Not really fair to disclose this information.
(0,8,45) Anonymous Coward | Re:Passenger airships
(4,30,68) EmCeeHawking | My Experience
(3,8,12) Dancin_Santa | I'm a proponent of nuclear energy
(2,12,17) Anonymous Coward | Has a Microsoft release ever been compromised?
(2,8,11) Amsterdam Vallon | Why is there a need for this?
(1,6,14) Anonymous Coward | Re:Can't be done
(-1,6,63) GoatPigSheep | absolutely not
(0,18,128) Zeinfeld | Re:For the love of all that's good and holy

Honourable Mentions

• some great anime flamebait
• matrix spoilers never get old
• sheetrock finally gets a sig bite
• BsoF gets more username bites
• this gets without question the best point-by-point you'll ever see on slashdot.

Look forward to "Trollback 2003: a year in review" at the end of the month!

That's it for this month!

It is nearly 400 years since Guy Fawkes was hanged, drawn, and quartered for attempting to poison the Queen of England. Once you've tired of celebrating his memory in the traditional way, why not come inside and treat yourself to the October 2003 edition of Trollback?

Slashdot news and happenings

Back in May we discussed the psychiatrist's dream that is HanzoSan. All good things must come to an end, and it seems the same is also true for HanzoSan. After some inspiring work, that which HanzoSan loves the most was taken away from him: karma. His comment history shows his karma has been decimated. Like a tree falling in the forest with no-one to hear it, HanzoSan cannot be heard without karma, and he has officially left the building. In a rare gesture of kindness, HanzoSan included a list of who to thank in his diary.

We welcome Pan T. Hose, who has already been a victim of CmdrTaco's secret powers. Not only does Pan T. Hose have three entries in The List, but he gets an honourable mention for starting one of the best threads of the month. Trollback looks forward to a long line of posts!

It was pointed out by Trollback follower x.c.v that we never reported on Mensa Babe. This was not intentional, so we now present a posthumous investigation into some of Mensa Babe's finest work as selected by fellow Trollback fan x.c.v: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. Remember, if you see a user who shows potential, and we don't seem to be tracking said user, an email to Trollback's address or a post to 31337 goes a long way to rectifying the situation.

It seems to have been a bad month for our favorite glorified blogs. It seems that everyone have received their fair share of 5xx errors after triggering boundary conditions by, say, clicking on a story link, discussed by Taco in journal entries. Now I know you keep telling us there's never going to be a Meta section, but honestly Rob, a rose by any other name...

Elsewhere

Slashdot's 5xx problems were minor compared to the trials of k5. An age-old problem in systems maintenance is how to create a test environment that can be guaranteed to perform exactly as the live environment does. Fortunately, Mr Foster had a brilliant solution to this problem: test major changes on the live server. What followed was a month of turmoil, where the site was seemingly more down than up. This problem finally seems to be under control, for reasons possibly not unrelated to the fact that the servers only have to handle a fraction of the requests they used to thanks to a large exodus of the userbase. The phrases "open source" and "enterprise ready" keep popping into Trollback's mind, but Trollback cannot figure out why.

After a lengthy hiatus, Adequacy.org has resurfaced in the form of an archive. Although a static site, there are links to all of the comments that made Adequacy.org fun. The world is once again safe from teenage hackers.

The List

(4,6,45) Anonymous Coward | Re:Here is the text...
(-1,19,32) Anonymous Coward | mp3 music is illegal
(5,14,109) mao che minh | Cool
(0,16,57) Dancin Santa | I kind of like SiteFinder
(1,21,65) Dancin Santa | Losing the Insert key
(0,7,13) egg troll | Such a waste of money
(2,12,114) Tyreth | Starlight and time
(0,18,79) larry bagina | slashdot == sexist
(1,13,18) Krapangor | Why should be decent product activation evil ?
(0,8,18) egg troll | Why are they backing off?
(5,9,33) Pan T. Hose | Funny
(4,32,87) Anonymous Coward | Availability of the DNC
(5,9,33) Pan T. Hose | Interesting
(0,14,49) Krapangor | Java ?
(1,9,58) Pan T. Hose | I am sick of it
(2,24,65) Anonymous Coward | True costs of Linux (egg troll)
(2,11,24) Sheetrock | It makes sense.
(1,17,120) downix | While I like the idea...
(3,18,53) Dancin Santa | GPL == Communism, and I like it that way
(2,25,74) Sheetrock | I don't really like it (yet)
(-1,10,15) Michael's a Jerk! | MS works for me (Not a troll, please read) (egg troll)
(-1,15,22) Michael's a Jerk! | As a record store owner.

Honourable Mentions

• Pan T. Hose proves that your average slashbot does not know how lossy music compression works, even if they depend on it for their livelihood.
• A bit of pessimism goes a long way.
• The USA is No. 1!

That's it for this month!

Welcome to September 2003's Trollback!

That's right, trollback is actually on time this month, and with another great list as well. As will be expected by trollback's readers, rkz's repost of xprt's gem takes the cake this month. For the sake of completeness, trollback would like the URL to the original post on k5 posted in a comment in this journal. Thanks in advance.

Trollback is heartened to see it has made it to the mainstream. There must be something humourous to say to this, but trollback's comedy muse has failed to materialise.

Trollback had the suggestion to include this post in September trollback, as it apparently has something to do with the true story behind the *BSD trolls. Trollback would like more information about that post, and invites comment from the submitter.

Finally, some of the more prolific trolls are hard to keep up with, particularly those who post more than 24 comments inside of 3 days. Trollback can think of three ways around this:

1. Trollback ceases to be lazy and leaving things to the last minute
2. These same trolls emailing trollback their posts for consideration
3. Someone purchasing trollback a subscription so we can see further back than the last 24 comments

The first option is unlikely to happen. Perhaps we may be able to get CMF funding?

The List

(5,17,64) Zeinfeld | Re:Rimshot
(-1,7,28) stratjakt | Amazing is an innapropriate adjective
(2,37,209) mao che minh | At the end of the day
(-1,9,36) mnmn | 64-benchmarks wont be good
(0,7,21) rkz | ATTN: Editors
(1,14,65) egg troll | A bad decision
(3,12,77) RobotWisdom | Fundamentalist materialism
(-1,3,7) Anonymous Coward | Re:Kubrick promised us the Monolith...
(2,19,246) ColdGrits | Re:I think
(-1,7,9) Sheetrock | Historical Notes.
(2,49,72) rkz | As a record store owner. (by xprt on k5)
(2,22,48) BsoF | crazy
(4,23,46) Amsterdam Vallon | Most ISPs have blocked it
(0,18,47) Syberghost | Deathtraps
(5,19,93) rkz | Hi.
(-1,20,38) Amsterdam Vallon | I wouldn't buy the Athlon anyway
(-1,10,62) Amsterdam Vallon | Why buys Macs?
(1,13,23) Krapangor | This is not o.k.
(3,11,52) Amsterdam Vallon | Nope
(3,11,32) Amsterdam Vallon | I blame colleges
(4,18,38) Amsterdam Vallon | Application programming is a dying paradigm
(4,14,111) Amsterdam Vallon | Groundbreaking suggestion
(1,14,48) Tirel | deceit
(4,22,266) mao che minh | You got sued, yay!
(1,11,14) rkz | Also quite annoying
(1,13,43) rkz | Re:Mo Money! Mo Money! Mo Money!
(-1,10,28) rkz | Sorry but you leftist bastards piss me off.
(-1,24,41) Krapangor | I doubt that they will match the Matrix.
(-1,13,27) Anonymous Coward | I HATE MAC'S
(-1,5,29) Anonymous Coward | Why?
(2,18,34) BsoF | stupid
(0,11,21) Krapangor | Why Slackware ?
(1,12,23) Krapangor | This is a misguided invention.
(-1,8,8) Krapangor | What I don't understand.
(5,10,26) Sheetrock | Another interesting fact:

Honourable Mentions

• egg troll reminds over-excited slashdot readers the realities of tall structures in this post 11/9 world.
• rkz shows what slashdotters think of piracy when it happens to a linux company.

That's it for this month!

Welcome to Trollback for August 2003. Trollback is sorry that this publication is consistently late. If it is any consolation, you can rest assured that the list this month is great. Congratulations to all involved.

The Slashdot Submission Life cycle

Some of you might be wondering what the life cycle of a rejected slashdot submission is. This explains all.

Slashdot prophylactics

Just as cows have bells around their necks, and cars have men with red flags walking in front of them, so do Slashbots have their t-shirt competition. Anybody who doesn't look at the winners of this competition will have their trolling licenses revoked.

How can trollback possibly pick a favourite out of such quality material as this? Fortunately they are all of appropriate quality, although this shirt holds a special place in trollback's heart.

The natural habitat of a Taco

Parts of America were plunged into darkness due to a terrorist attack, depriving CmdrTaco of his computer games and stolen MP3s. On the plus side, this allows us to see how a nerd like CmdrTaco behaves when he has to live in the real world. Eagerly anticipating tales of jogging, mountain biking and drunken revelry, trollback checked the journal of a geek.

Surprisingly, physical activities were not once mentioned, but we do learn that he played dominoes and listened to the radio solidly. The report was vague about whether the last part was done huddled in the corner of the room, rocking back and forth while sobbing.

The List

(4,12,50) Adam Rightmann | SCO is plainly lying
(-1,14,22) Anonymous Coward | The Mandrake Boycott (Please Read!)
(-1,8,23) Anonymous Coward | The Mandrake Boycott (IMPORTANT!)
(-1,19,172) Sheetrock | I've been doing some thinking about this lately.
(5,20,97) rkz | Re:Because without KaZaa....
(2,10,53) Eese | How to buy open source software...
(5,33,120) Sheetrock | The problem that just won't go away.
(5,11,78) pjack76 | Re:SCO
(5,8,39) kmak | Wasn't real money per se..
(5,16,59) Sheetrock | The problem may be on your side of the phone.
(5,11,135) Tirel | heh
(-1,16,29) ColdGrits | So apache no invulnerable then...
(5,11,66) rkz | Re:Well that's good and all, but
(3,17,69) gazbo | Re:the $64,000 question:
(5,15,24) GoatPigSheep | RMS promotes his views too strongly.
(0,18,104) Anonymous Coward | Another interesting math problem
(0,9,23) Sheetrock | One thing I don't really get...
(-1,10,17) gazbo | Re:Naww!!!
(5,13,24) Sheetrock | The thing is...
(4,20,50) SlashChick | Happens in Open Source too!

Honourable Mentions

• Content from Arvato systems Taco Network SnotIing Security is +5, Informative
• As a semi-pro insurance fraudster...
• RE-LIVE OOG THE CAVEMAN [1, 2]
• An offtopic discussion about cats

That's it for this month!

Its the middle of August - the obvious time for a July Trollback!

Group hug and honourable mention

Trollback is pleased to see newcomer rkz being so active this month. Trollback uses its amazing prediction skills to determine that he will be nearing the top of August's Trollback, but until then we have shown our gratitude by allowing him to choose his favorite July troll. Trollback sees a bright future ahead.

Wanna cyber?

Who would have thought that restricting comments in a journal to friends only would create a worthless circle-jerk? Trollback for one was astounded that such a thing would happen, especially when the author has so few friends to begin with. The resulting journal shows how exciting discussion is promoted by the troll-prevention measure. Trollback is disheartened at the number of pimply wannabes who are undoubtedly awestruck by the number of "celebrities" in the comments.

Better late than never

The astute will notice that this journal entry from CmdrTaco was actually written towards the end of June; some things, however, are more important than dates. One such thing would be an entire journal entry from our site's beloved leader, dedicated to demonstrating how easy it is to troll him. If anyone would like to step up to the challenge of trolling Taco into posting your email in his diary, trollback is ready to hand out the propz.

The list

(2,23,47) BsoF | interesting
(0,12,44) rkz | You call this a capitalist society?
(4,12,30) Sheetrock | Good interview.
(2,7,7) Anonymous Coward | Re:again?
(-1,13,25) BsoF | good
(2,33,90) PhysicsGenius | You are kidding, right?
(5,13,34) Adam Rightmann | Sometimes, tech jargon has a purpose
(2,28,50) PhysicsGenius | Business patents and time to railroad
(5,16,31) b.foster | Preaching to the quire
(-1,4,17) Anonymous Coward | How many more mass murders?
(3,15,55) BsoF | cool
(5,12,20) Bob Abooey | Whaaa????
(2,20,58) b.foster | If you can't do the time....
(-1,7,23) Anonymous Coward | As an attorney...
(5,35,162) egg troll | Not quite ready
(-1,6,24) Anonymous Coward | Freenet is under corporate control, not 100% free.
(0,8,30) egg troll | The Superiority of PHP over Perl
(1,31,143) reporter | All About the Same

With such a short list, trollback is sure to have missed some worthy links. Feel free to post said links in the comments section and trollback will add comments to the list.

Honourable mentions

• Save something from being slashdotted, insert tubgirl and goatse links, -1 Informative
• Save something from being slashdotted, insert the phrase "taco-snotting", +5 Informative

That's it for this month!

• The simultaneous comebacks of Boromir son of Faram and PhysicsGenius this month. It is great to have them back.
• CmdrTaco getting lots of things off his chest over the course of a single month.
• The slashteam interview.
• The departure of the coolest slashteam member to MySQL. He will be missed.

The List

(5,26,225) Gazbo | Might sir suggest
(5,52,297) Gazbo | Has anybody considered
(2,10,23) Sheetrock | Wow... 5.1 already?
(-1,14,35) Hairy_Potter | I've made my own list of disaster lessons
(2,18,49) PhysicsGenius | Dynamic HTML
(3,12,19) BsoF | shameful
(2,7,18) PhysicsGenius | I've been away, so maybe this has been suggested
(5,7,11) Sheetrock | Something to consider...
(0,20,65) Anonymous Coward | Re:They must really be scared now.
(5,8,33) PhysicsGenius | More Information
(2,18,106) Keri Immos | Does it matter?
(1,12,27) PhysicsGenius | "incompatible"
(-1,3,32) Anonymous Coward | Licensing is a shame
(2,21,43) BsoF | weird
(3,10,50) Keri Immos | Thank God
(5,8,11) Sheetrock | Re:Flaming
(-1,6,10) BsoF | frightening
(-1,13,48) Sheetrock | One issue with Java vs .NET
(-1,19,42) Anonymous Coward | Kazaa cannot be trusted
(-1,6,24) Anonymous Coward | Kiss and say goodbye to Java language!!
(-1,18,45) Tim_F | It's about time

Honourable mentions

• Is this the greatest spelling flame thread of all time?
• Are fark comments more or less stupid than slashdot comments?
• 30% Troll + 20% Informative + 10% Flamebait = Score: 5, Troll

Finally, everyone please take lessons from Sheetrock, who is off to a great start this month. Pure brilliance, and it doesn't get old.

That's it for this month!

The interview with Fyodor

It was nice to see that such a noble white-hat as Fyodor, who is so decent and upstanding as to explain the Jedi-esque philosophies of hackers, stooping so low as to offer his humble insights for the Slashdot audience. In traditional Slashdot style, the top rated comments were be passed on as questions, although strangely Egg Troll's question, still at +5 Troll, was missed out of the resulting interview. Trollback can only assume that it fell through the cracks somewhere. Certainly a strange set of events befell this question. After several days at at +5, it was gradually moderated down to 1, even with the support of the K5 community. Trollback's sources suggest that after an email was sent to CmdrTaco enquiring about this, the post quickly returned to +5.

Most of you know the story of Fyodor vs SDEM, but the average slashbot - to whom Fyodor is something of a hero - did not. This black mark against Fyodor's name has been a long time coming, but despite protestations and initial disbelief, even a quick look through the two stories will show people starting to ask questions of their idol, and all this despite outright lying on behalf of the Russian wannabe. A quick read of question 5 and its answer will yield such insights as:

"I never do script-kiddie style "hack any random vulnerable box on the Internet" cracking..."
"Of course, I only do this when the company is paying me to do so"
and most amusingly: "Now some people might ask how you gain these skills without practising on other networks first"

How indeed, Fyodor? He simply pretended to break into the machine. Word is not yet out on how he then pretended to take screenshots and place them on his web-page for all to pretend to see.

The list

(5,55,161) Faggot | ProTools is a large reason modern music sucks
(0,10,12) Samir Gupta | Health concerns
(0,8,15) Samir Gupta | My perspective as an ex-SEGA employee
(0,10,55) APA | Standardized tests
(4,8,21) APA | How I feel about programming competitions
(-1,11,18) I Am The Owl | Sexist.
(1,15,22) GoatPigSheep | extremely dangerous
(0,8,8) Jon Romero | Thanks for reading
(-1,10,33) APA | Overkill
(-1,7,16) Samir Gupta | Too much overkill I think
(-1,12,46) GoatPigSheep | Jon Carmack: dooming society?
(3,8,15) Sheetrock | Then work on an alternative...
(2,10,14) APA | I loved Gentoo
(4,15,29) Adam Rightmann | nmap is easily fooled
(2,12,45) APA | The reason people steal music
(4,12,19) Sheetrock | Confused
(-1,17,41) APA | What's the point, really?
(-1,9,27) APA | Spam is just good business
(-1,16,25) APA | This is all false information
(-1,20,37) APA | Um, this can't be right
(-1,13,17) APA | This is all wrong
(4,12,19) Samir Gupta | We've investigated GameCube clusters too
(0,10,16) Samir Gupta | A perspective from a competitor...
(3,9,11) Sheetrock | Not ready for precision?
(-1,9,16) Adam Rightmann | Will a Sino-Lunar base be our Sputnik?

Honourable mentions

• We'd like to thank Eric for focusing his talent and energy on slashdot this past month. It is sad to see his latest account with negative karma.
• Re-live the joy of $$$exyGal.
• GoatPigSheep reminds us that not all is what it seems - there are absurd liberal myths all around.

That's it for this month.

Since my site is down for the summer, and I'm too cash-strapped to get real web hosting, and since this space is free, I'm just going to dump all my website traffic here for the summer.

Here's the basic story: I'm home for the summer and can't serve the site. I may work something out for the short-term soon; I may not. In the meantime, this is a status page. Until late August, this is probably what you'll be seeing. I apologize for having to take all the other crap offline, but there's not much I can do. Please bear with me for a while.

Rest assured that the NintenDoctor will return. Anachronistic Games will return. Just not for a little while.

And while I'm at it, TetroStack is coming along decently.

Trollback is now entirely human edited. We've probably missed a few good trolls that an automatic system may have identified. If you feel that a troll has missed out, please put a link in the comments section and we will edit this edition.

Without further ado, the list in chronological order. Remember: there are no losers, just slashbots.

(5,16,34) b.foster | They're running an ACADEMIC network
(4,19,45) RM 101 | Re:Size..
(-1,20,59) (1337) God | Society loves violence
(3,14,45) Bob Abooey | Illegal????
(5,13,24) Tim_F | I would suggest cbc.ca
(2,10,18) b.foster | "Baby with the bathwater dept" eh?
(2,9,17) b.foster | How the internet triumphed over Communism
(-1,14,19) Anonymous Coward | Lex Talionis is a morally bankrupt code
(4,14,79) Sheetrock | Wait...
(0,10,22) Anonymous Coward | No excitement here
(2,76,362) unterderbrucke | No wonder
(-1,23,62) unterderbrucke | Look idiots
(-1,12,24) Dr. Stanley Blitzer | As a professor at MIT
(-1,17,37) unterderbrucke | Most open source coders (repeat of "No Wonder")
(1,24,33) Sheetrock | Doubtful.
(2,19,42) sulli | No deal
(0,19,34) I Am The Owl | Total ripoff
(3,14,29) Sheetrock | I don't understand

Well, as controversial a figure as he may be in the trolling community, unterderbrucke dominates this edition of trollback. On this sort of form is it possible that he will be accepted by the general trolling community? Only time will tell. But like him or despise him, 76 direct replies is impressive stuff. Truly a trolling icon.

Honourable mentions
The following are posts that made us laugh - some are trolls, some are just purely funny.

• one line flame-bait on the Iraq war results in 112 direct replies
• careless use of gay results in a war on the appropriate use of that term
• search.msn.com is the future
• Let me get this straight... still gets bites
• Bruce Perens doesn't understand the law, just as well HP let him go

Moving slightly away from Slashdot, we can see a certain Mr Katz has been active again, if only by proxy. On that bastion of pseudo-intellectual homoerotic wankery, K5, user Hide The Hamster reposted a JonKatz article that survived the editing and voting queues to be posted to section by the ever vigilant anti-Slashdotters. What, can't find it? Maybe that's because the benevolent dictator benevolently deleted it. Community voting at its finest.

Not to worry, electricmonk managed to improve on this by getting another Katz article posted to the front page. Well, it seems that is has also been benevolently deleted by the benevolent dictator. Praise be to community edited sites! Congratulations to Egg Troll for getting something original and hysterically funny to the front page in the mean time.

Finally, we'd like to bring attention to the most stereotypical slashbot of all time, Hanzosan, complete with stalker and/or dedicated biter. Hanzosan needs a lesson in economics, and IATO is just the one to drum it into his thick skull.

Well, that is it for this month. We intend to post trollback whenever there is a sufficient number of good posts worth celebrating, or at least every month. A round of applause please.

Yes, that's right; after a 3 month hiatus we are back with a monthly trollback, and who else could be more worthy to announce such a monumental occasion than the notorious UK paedophile Henry Kelly.

Moving on faster than Anna Nicole Smith after J. Howard Marshall II died, it is hard to post the monthly trollback without talking about the recent changes around slashdot:

Junis is orphaned:

Yes, trollback has lost all hope, and has resigned to the reality that JonKatz has left. There are few who would believe that Taco has the balls to fire him, so trollback can only assume that he resigned having accomplished his life goal: free advertisement to 500,000 geeks for his book about a dog. Granted that article is nearly a year old, but as his last work it seems wrong not to mention it as tribute to the greatest troll who ever lived. Truly an American icon

Zoo:

Apparently Taco, not satisfied with claims of Slashdot circle-jerks, decided to make it official. Now, not only is it possible to tease the cock by marking him as friend, creating an extended black-book of potential booty-calls through the FOAF function, but it is possible to restrict journals such that comments can only come from friends and friends-of-friends. In entirely unrelated news, this mode is used exclusively by Taco, presumably to keep those pesky non-brown-nosers away. Well fortunately open source strikes again.

Moderations:

In what can only be an effort to stop me, moderations are now no longer available. Well, you can see the three most prevalent moderation types. As percentages. Which is fine because our glorious emperor finds it "a much more simple and elegant view. Much more useful since for comments with few mods, its irrelevant, and with many mods, I really only want to know what the dominant couple of mods are ".

Special awards:

So, with the crud out of the way, we shall move on to some special mentions, such as $$$$$exygal who has acquired a staggering >1000 fans. I am glad that he has shown the somewhat male population of slashdot to be the pathetic, lonely fucks they are. And by "he", I of course mean "she".

Another worthy mention is everyone's favorite fatty Vlad, who has decided that a man without stalking and harassment for all the family is a man without joy, hence breaking the silence to beg for punishment. Or maybe he's out to use his elite martial arts skills. Have any of you seen The Next Karate Kid? No, thought not. But if you had, that's what Vlad is like, but in the heavyweight division.

One last congratulation for tps12, who has managed to tps12 who has posted a magnificent 1337 comments. Further praise must be awarded for his new persona, who has managed to get a bite on his sig / name for virtually every comment. Trollback and the community salute you.

The editors endorse trolling:

Well, how else would you explain a month that includes not only a Valentine's day article, but an article entitled "Why Nerds Are Unpopular". Could it be that we have misjudged the entire of the Slashdot team and that the entire site is a troll? Bwahahaha! Of course not. But pleasing to see geeks freely talk about what losers they were at school. Trollback never went to school of course, as I was pieced together one sunny day to keep you all up-to-date, however I think it is safe to say that were I at school I would not be laughed at, bullied or otherwise tortured. Or at least if I were, I would not admit it in front of half-a-million people.

I am the alpha and the omega; the beginning and the end:

...But mainly the omega. Trollback is sad to announce he is to leave the site. Trollback does not hide behind proxies and has been IP banned. Trollback has no will to continue.

Privacy 17 / 40, (1337) God, eric grinds out something that is well tested
Chip speed won't save Apple 8 / 10, (1337) God, *Apple is Dying
The true American spirit 14 / 36, (1337) God, Jon Katz has something to say about this
I hope for the sake of our boys 6 / 96, Adam Rightmann, slashdot has blood on its hands!
Linux? 11 / 19, Amsterdam Vallon, on .net patent
Linux? 5 / 10, Amsterdam Vallon, how clichay
The Atom Bomb: A Christly Venture 5 / 9, Anonymous Coward, needs no introduction
Kiss and say goodbye to Java language!! 17 / 43, Anonymous Coward, how did this get replies?
It has to be said.. 7 / 11, Anonymous Coward, fantastic one line flame
Lex Talionis is a morally bankrupt code 14 / 42, Anonymous Coward, an oldie but a goodie
misguided 15 / 26, BsoF thinks that geeks should not reproduce
weird 14 / 36, BsoF lectures slashbots about hiding behind childish nicknames
I have some ideas. 6 / 8, Freston Youseff on why nerds are unpopular
Success! 8 / 15, gazbo says that OSS has achieved what it set out to do
Re:What ??? Impopular, me ???? No way.... linux ro 10 / 77, gazbo on why nerds are unpopular
Well, where to begin 17 / 40, gazbo on why nerds are unpopular (again)
I'll tell you why 9 / 119, Gizzmonic on why nerds are unpopular
That's a real problem with a democracy 15 / 25, Hairy_Potter, we should follow the American example
Script kiddies should be fired 10 / 11, Jeff Probst, no one bites on the obvious
And in one sentence, he described BeOS community 11 / 51, krog with help from Frothy Walrus
Non-profit does not mean unprofessional 9 / 35, ObviousGuy points out the obvious again
You begin by asking questions 13 / 51, ObviousGuy - don't let me stop your circle jerk
ACLU, wrong again 19 / 42, ObviousGuy, but porn does serve a purpose!
Interesting answers, but 14 / 21, PhysicsGenius is -1 Insightful on what Mitnick has learnt
Aren't we forgetting someone? 12 / 29, PhysicsGenius fighting the good fight
Just block the internet in dorm rooms 5 / 6, SexyKellyOsbourne proposes the unthinkable
We dont' need a CHERYNOBL in space! 10 / 22, SexyKellyOsbourne needs no introduction
This should be good news, but... 14 / 16, Sheetrock is worried about job security
this is nothing 8 / 10, Stanley Feinbaum calls them the thieves they are
Aol is within their rights 7 / 21, Stanley Feinbaum
I don't understand 11 / 77, Stanley Feinbaum
Brake by wire? Sounds horrid. 10 / 16, sulli, but this is good news for linux
It happens for more reasons than just nerdiness 13 / 24, t0qer on why nerds are unpopular
Good 10 / 44, unterderbrucke has his priorities right
Not particularly impressive. 9 / 27, Wakko Warner is increasingly bitter
Sad 2 / 14, yatest5, excellent flame

God speed you, sirs, God speed. This is trollback, over and out.