It's time to tell the truth. I am a 55 year-old man. My name is Andy Kaufman, and I live in New York City.

I am sincerely sorry to everyone for all my lies.

--Andy

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!

Hey, those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere! I'll check under the couch... noo, not there. Hah hah.

Real funny, 600+ dead, thousands wounded, crippled or mentally scarred for life. Yep, real funny. Guess the joke's on us for believing the Bush administration's weapons of mass deception. What's the Bush campaign slogan, 4 more years of lies?

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040325/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_broadcasters_1

Bush Pokes Some Fun During Media Dinner
Thu Mar 25,12:31 AM ET Add White House - AP to My Yahoo!

By SIOBHAN McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) poked fun at his staff, his Democratic challenger and himself Wednesday night at a black-tie dinner where he hobnobbed with the news media.

Bush put on a slide show, calling it the "White House Election-Year Album" at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association 60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly unflattering poses.

There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he said.

There was Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites), a frequent butt of gentle Bush ribbing, holding his fingers a few inches apart. Bush said, "Whenever you ask him a question, he replies, 'Let's see what my little friend says.'"

And there was Bush again, in an odd contortion in front of his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites). He said he was trying to explain to her the foreign policy of Democratic challenger John Kerry (news - web sites).

Bush showed himself playing cards on Air Force One and cracked that he was on his way to an international summit and using a special deck to help him bone up on the names of the leaders he was about to meet.

His slide show segued into a somber ending, showing a group of special forces troops in Afghanistan (news - web sites) at the site where they buried a piece of the fallen World Trade Center in commemoration of the dead from Sept. 11.

The late NBC News reporter David Bloom, who died in April from an apparent blood clot while covering the Iraq (news - web sites) war, was remembered. His wife, Melanie, talked of her husband's passion for journalism.

About 1,500 guests attended the dinner.

1. They see faces everywhere.
2. They are biodegradable.
3. Base 10 zeroes excite them.

Here's a little something to excite you:

1. 1 Million - Congrats to Archie Binnie!
2. 2 Million - Congrats to Anonymous Coward!
3. 3 Million - Congrats to ronc_LAemigre!
4. 4 Million - Congrats to Anonymous Coward!
5. 5 Million - Congrats to jefu!
6. 6 Million - Congrats to The Bungi!
7. 7 Million - Congrats to nytmare!
8. 8 Million - Congrats to Anonymous Coward!
9. 9 Million - To be announced soon
10. 10 Million - To be announced soon

Thanks to India for inventing the base 10 zero. Where would we be without it?

Don't worry, no Republican will be arrested for computer crime. We are, after all, Republicans.

http://cryptome.org/judiciary-sys.htm

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!

RESUME

GEORGE W. BUSH

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, DC 20520

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:

  Law Enforcement:
  I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's
license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.

  Military:
  I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the
Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.

  College:
  I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.

  PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:

  I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I began my career in the oil business in Midland, Texas in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't find
any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.

I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money. With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.

  ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS

  I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America. I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.

  I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.

  With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after losing by over 500,000 votes.

  ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:

  I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.

  I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.

  I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.

  I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.

  I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.

  I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.

  I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market. In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans
lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.

  I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. My "poorest" millionaire Condoleeza Rice has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.

  I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President.

  I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.

  My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in
U.S. History, Enron.

  My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election
decision.

  I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent
investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history.

  I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed. I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.

  I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

  I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President in U.S. history.

  I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States government.

  I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S. history.

  I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.

  I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.

  I refused to allow inspector's access to U.S. "prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention

  I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).

  I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.

  I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period. After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.

  I garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country
in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.

  I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.

  I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I
did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S. citizens, and the world community.

  I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families - in wartime.

  In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.

  I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.

  I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker Buster," a WMD.

  I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden [sic] to justice.

  RECORDS AND REFERENCES:

  All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.

  All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

  All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and
unavailable for public review.

  PLEASE CONSIDER MY EXPERIENCE WHEN VOTING IN 2004.

  PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERY VOTER YOU KNOW.

What a clever play on words I made ;-)

Next journal topic: Coming soon!

"Mind On My war"

[Chorus - Bush]
I got my mind on my war, my war on my mind
(Got my mind on my war, and my war on my mind)
I got my mind on my war, war on my mind
(Got my mind on my war, and my war on my mind)
I got my mind on my war, my war on my mind
(Got my mind on my war, and my war on my mind)
I got my mind on my war, my war on my mind
(Got my mind on my war, and my war on my mind)

[Verse 1 -Bush]
I got my mind on my war, my war on my mind
The thing I got I sell it, to get it all the time
Rummy and Wolfowitz, Condoleeza too
Long as my bitch ridin', W'ont put a nigga down
Im a playa from the Guard, a liar from the start
Something in your chest, then open up your heart
Im bouta set it, like DefCon 1, they get it get it
Gotta have it have it, take it all, man if they let me
Ima run it, put somethin' on it, instead of bet it
It's that war, gonna make some war, buddy I'm ready
Can I get it? It's win or lose, you know the rules
We rollin', we gonna hit it, now pay your dues

[Cheney]
Now when it comes to gettin' that cash flow
Im all about that paper, no credit, just straight dough
And for all who don't know, there's war out to be made
So get it while you can, and still it's just a phase
In the eyes of Halliburton's CEO, you'd be amazed
That time waits for no one, so God, I pray
Try hard not to fall thru life stuck unemployed
So instead I keep on livin' what's given within my void
Put a end after hours scrapin' up all my change
From millions to billions, as you see, this ain't no game
So pick up on your pimpin', get on it and never slip
Cuz all on my mind is my war fully gripped (fully gripped)

[Chorus]

[Verse 2 - Bush]
Just call me, the war maker, bread taker
Nigga Breaker, the pocket raper, war scraper
May do me a favor, stay the fuck up out my way-a
The bomb that I can take it buddy to collect my paper
That might save ya, think of no anger, no player hater
No bumpin' heads, when it come to gettin' this paper
Im a player, runnin' wit the, hand that was dealt
Flippin' my work, ridin' the left, fully equipped
Aint fuckin' wit hoes, unless talkin 'bout bread
Duckin' these streets, givin' these strangers some head
Bringin' it back, makin' sho', my pockets swole
Workin' the streets, now they know they my hoes

[Cheney]
I must ain't had it, I gotta get it
Nothin' to lose, shoot me a stock tip, and watch me flip it
Shakin' these haters down the line, they somethin' wicked
You on a roll then pay yo' dues, then buy a ticket
Gather your cheddar 'round this world, there's nothin' better
But keep it boomin' like a system, thru any weather
Stackin' my green, that's somethin good, I'm on a mission
Trappin' hard just like I should, no penny pinchin'
And for the gold, we steady missin', and reminisin'
Buy some S, ain't even hittin', so stop yo' flippin
Cuz when I pull in all my cheese you besta know
There ain't no playin' wit my thang when you see my foe
Act like ya know

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

• Bill Clinton likes
• naked
• naked
• naked
• naked
• naked
• naked
• naked
• naked
• naked.

Happy leap year! Will your code keep working on February 29th?

--gal

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!

Long story short, I've had a good year. Great job, short commute, and dating again. I've become focused, but with great flexibility. I'm not sweating the big stuff, or the small stuff. The good stuff is in the middle.

May your holidays be commercial-free,
$$$$$exyGal

============

• Santa - He's nude, dude - don't let the kids see this.
• knows if you're - Smart people know a lot.
• naughty - Naughty has a new meaning these days.
• or nice - Polite.

============

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