Sorry, proto-geeks: Language Evolves. "Hacker" now equals "Guy Who Does Bad Things With Computer." And really, no amount of slashdot user-submitted headlines and sympathetic editors is going to change that. You'd have better luck returning "geek" to it's original meaning. (Look it up.)

...who the fuck he is.

Note to Sales Department: I get that this is Yegge's slashvertisement ("anonymous reader writes..." sh'yeah, right...) but you still need the editors to set it up better than this if you want those click-throughs.

Twitter is a marketing tool for brands and industry. It's a dream mechanism for them: a fan, or anyone with a slight interest in the product/brand/artist, is encouraged to "follow" the appropriate twitter stream, and so is thereby locked into a steady barrage of product updates designed to also reinforce the vendor/customer relationship by adding the semblance of making it "personal.'

Of course, there are many Tweeters who aren't selling anything; theirs are the buyers' eyeballs being marketed to the sellers. It is important to make them feel like they are more than hipster consumers, and Twitter -- along with a Dutiful Media -- has done a great job in convincing them that their own tweets mean something, much in the same way that, 4-5 years ago, YouTube and the Dutiful Media managed to convince the world that bored suburban teenagers lip-synching to Aqua's "Barbie Girl" was somehow Art. "Citizen Journalists" have replaced the "User-Generated Content Makers," to the great amusement of the professional artists and creators whose pockets they continue to line.

vendor-locked-down [x]

RSS feeds for monkeys [x]

short attention spans [x]

Does that intersect with Apple's userbase at all? 3-for-3, dude! Surprised Apple didn't think of this sooner!

It's getting scary out there, kids...

...and Persistent False Notions of Privacy Rights and even the Secret Secret make cameo appearances!

I'm pretty sure it doesn't get much better than this for a slow Slashdot Sunday!

I will vary my medium depending upon the Achilles Heel of the co-worker I need to intimidate, ermmm, communicate with. Afterall, the Office is a Battlefield, and communication is ammunition. You wouldn't go after a vampire with kryptonite or take on General Zod with with a clove of garlic, so don't make a similar mistake in real life. The choice is among three weapons, really: E-Mail, Phone, Face-to-Face.

Never let a Sales Guy get you on the phone: it's like bringing a sword to an Indiana Jones fight. You keep everything in e-mail for the Sales Guy; don't listen to the Sirens' Call!

There are always the "creative" types, or young punks who were raised online... these hipsters will weave e-mail rings around you. Nip their emoticon-laden shenanigans in the bud by marching down to their office or cube and having a face-to-face with them while standing a good six inches into their personal space. Grip their shoulder periodically. New Media-savvy hipsters hate having their shoulders gripped.

And be sure to phone the face-to-face time-wasters. These are often women, who will use (either intentionally or subconsciously) the insufficient volume of fabric in their skirts or blouses to achieve distraction and misdirection. Counter that cleavage with some Clausewitz, who said that "the third rule is never to waste time." So Scarlet Pimpernel her ass by avoiding any face-to-face while dive-bombing her voicemail box constantly and off-hours.

happy to help...

They're idiots.

Of course they are. (Actually, anyone who uses the word "hacktivist" with a straight face pretty much is as well, but I digress...) But ever since Alan Moore made mass murder romantic with a comic book and iconic Halloween mask, geeks have had a soft spot for confused and cowardly killers who hide in crowds. So this discussion -- Anarchists Hate Science! -- promises to be an entertaining one.

It'll be kind of like a discussion on "Religious Fundamentalists Found to Be Early Open Source Adopters!"

The only difference is degree.

Incorrect, Hater.

The guys (or is it guy? seriously, this has happened... how many times in your lifetime?) who blow up abortion clinics are nutjobs who, if they weren't exploding an abortion clinic "for Christ" would be blowing up a Stop-N-Shop for Thor or setting fire to a Civil War statue because it's Tuesday. And at those few-and-far-between times when it DOES happen, the leaders of every Christian denomination typically condemn it, distancing themselves and their sects as far as possible from the psycho. Look it up.

Islamist Extremists blow up buildings, torture women, and stone gays not *despite* their leaders' teachings, but *because* of them. These are not crazies who took a verse or two from a holy book and twisted its meaning, these are jihadists participating in a campaign of institutionalized violence. And when they do, as the body count grows, the silence from the kinder, gentler Muslim community is almost as deafening as the rants from the Wahabi mullahs.

Christianity and Islam went through a despicable and barbarous period of religious violence in the Middle Ages. Christianity grew out of it. The world is still waiting on Islam. To equate in any qualitative or quantitative way the violence from the "extremist" wings of these religions in the modern era is to admit to bigotry or ignorance.

It is nothing but ignorance to conflate Radical Islam with Evangelical Christianity.

Yeah, we get that it fits your "All Religion Is Evil / All Religion is Anti-Science" prejudiced screed, but it's just not a valid comparison. All you're doing is trying to rile people up and/or get them to march to the drumbeats of your own bigotry, like so many Evangelical Atheists enjoy doing.

Comparing the Extremism the Fundamentalist Islamists get away with around the world to whatever drama the Fundamentalist Christians try to perpetrate is -- really -- just ridiculous. To do so means you either have an agenda, or lack education. Which is it with you?

It's really quite simple

Now, do you celebrate, or find a new Cause...?

In "Days of Yore," there was no stinkin' firehose, and it wasn't needed. It was two steps up from being Cmdr Taco's blog, and it featured what interested him. I say that not with derision but with fond affection and remembrance.

Of course, it got a bazillion pageviews, made no money, and then started to be copied by other sites who *wanted* to make money, so it was either take the paid slashvertisements or get steamrolled.

Short of Mother Nature making a species or sub-species shocking pink, slow, and tasty, homosexuality is just about the biggest Darwinian "Fail" one can imagine. If homosexuality were in fact biological and not psychological, it would whither and die as a genetic trait in just a few generations. It's basically a lifestyle luxury borne of high birth rates and low death rates -- sort of like NASCAR.

Darth Vader did most of his best work after he lost his voice. I mean, c'mon, his focus is on Doing Evil, not singing friggin' madrigals, let's not make too much of this...