The idea of open-sourcing is great - that everyone gets to see the source code of the program, or even start experimenting with it, implementing ideas / features that were not yet in there.

But there are problems too ...

Case in point ---

http://old.nabble.com/Pivot-Table,-a-revisit-td31307325.html

http://projects.gnome.org/gnumeric/faq.shtml

I was like typing "pivot table" on a search engine and click away ... and before I know it I ended up on the two above links

The program is Gnumerics - an GNU implementation of spreadsheet

The wanted feature is "pivot table"

The problem is two fold --

1. No one cares enough to code

2. No one wants to include that feature in the official release of Gnumeric

And judging from the date stated, that "pivot table" had already been requested for the past few years.

Hmm ....

There have been a lot of reports on land grabbing by Chinese in Africa, and the latest report is from the famed Oxford University of United Kingdom - a paper just published ( @ http://oucan.politics.ox.ac.uk/index.php/blog/14059-big-is-beautiful-megadams-african-water-security-and-chinas-role-in-the-new-global-political-economy ) is claiming that the Chinese are planning to build 100 hydroelectric dams in the African continent !

That will surely be a grand scale ecology disaster in the making.

Link @ http://www.eggwall.com/2011/09/android-arm-assembly-device-set-up-part.html

I just came across it, don't have time to try it out yet.

There is a report from Middle East claiming that ambassador Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador to Libya, was raped before he was killed by a bunch of Libyan gunmen.

http://www.tayyar.org/Tayyar/News/PoliticalNews/ar-LB/usa-killed-lybia-zek-970.htm

Additional information disclosed that it was the Libyan security team which revealed the location of Mr. Christopher Stevens to the attackers

From - http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57511043/assault-on-u.s-consulate-in-benghazi-leaves-4-dead-including-u.s-ambassador-j-christopher-stevens/

"Wanis al-Sharef, a Libyan Interior Ministry official in Benghazi, said the four Americans were killed when the angry mob, which gathered to protest a U.S.-made film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad, fired guns and burned down the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

He said Stevens, 52, and other officials were moved to a second building - deemed safer - after the initial wave of protests at the consulate compound. According to al-Sharef, members of the Libyan security team seem to have indicated to the protesters the building to which the American officials had been relocated, and that building then came under attack"

More information at http://www.inquisitr.com/330504/ambassador-stevens-was-raped-before-his-murder-reports-claim/

If I log in my own account, I can't find my own comment - as well as the replies to my comment

But if I log out and access slashdot as an AC, I can see my comment

Case in point -- TFA http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/10/0245230/how-spyware-reaches-oppressive-governments

I have a comment - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3105111&cid=41284963

It's just that when I am log in, as Taco Cowboy, comment http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3105111&cid=41284963 and all the replies beneath it are gone

But when I log out, all of them re-appear

Why is that??

What are you trying to pull, Slashdot ?

This is the second time in one week I got the pink-color warning : " Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet ... "

Excessive bad posting from this IP ?

Go screw yourself !!

Whoa !

I just got a note from Slashdot that, because I have post a lot of bad comments they are threatening to ban me

I do not dispute the fact that some of my comments might be offensive, but then, not all comments from me, which were modded all the way down to "-1 Troll" are bad posts

Like the following example

http://idle.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3007729&cid=40785819

In the above comment, I posted a link to a video which shows an ant, under stressed, committed suicide by exploding itself, and my comment was posted under the thread " exploding termite species discovered ", url:
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/12/07/26/232211/exploding-termite-species-discovered
but it was modded all the way down to troll

And you know why?

For some reason, there's a bunch of kids in Slashdot who really don't like me

Whatever I post, no matter if the comments make sense or not, they will find ways to mod the comments down, and they also threatening replies, under "AC"

Like the following example -

The thread:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/08/22/0311210/earths-corner-of-the-galaxy-just-got-a-little-lonelier

and my comment:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3063883&cid=41078941

My comment was modded to +5 Insightful, before that bunch of kids came in and started to down mod it

I only show you two examples out of the hundreds of my comments which had been treated similarly

I never complain to anyone about this, but, when I received a threatening note from Slashdot that they were going to ban me because of "troll" postings, that became the last straw

Instead of investigating why my comments getting modded down to "troll" - and identifying who are the one who did the modding, you will be surprised that many of those who modded my comments down share the same IPs

It's an open secret that there are those whose life are so miserable that they had to register multiple accounts on slashdot so that they can get multiple mod points (and multiply it by 15, if they manage to gather enough good karma) and then spent more time targetting people that they don't like

It's also an open secret that those people are also responsible for astroturfing certain brand(s) of IT product

In other words, they are paid trolls

Instead of targetting those paid trolls, Slashdot choses to target me

Fine, Slashdot, if that's the way you want, go ahead and ban me, because I ain't take no threat from nobody

With Apple suing the world, and the Olympic Games just started in London, I can't help but imagine the scenario of Apple Inc being the sole sponsor of the Olympics

Now that the London Olympic Games already barring people wearing Pepsi t-shirt from entering the Olympic venue, would Apple impose even more draconian measures?

I think the submit thingy of Slashdot is broken

After filling in every necessary item inside the submit pop-up screen, I clicked the "Preview" button, and then ... nothing happen

At first I used google chrome, then I switched to FF, and encountered the same thing. I switched to IE, again the same thing

Can someone please fix this asap ??

I knew I did the right thing when i decided not to disable ad on slashdot

I just got the "is there a God?" ad !!

And they even entice me with "Six Reasons that God Exists" if I only click on the ad

Should I click on it?

I am tempted to know why they have only six reasons, and not seven, or eight, or nine hundred gazzillion reasons

I'm not sure if I use the friend/foe system the same way as most, but I find my system interesting and useful, and thought some people (possibly those on my friend/foe lists) might be interested, too.
I'm not interested in keeping a list of people I don't like, nor am I interested in keeping it visible for the world to see. Opinions are generally personal, and may not be valid for others. If there's someone I really don't like, I'll remember their name and ignore what they write. There aren't a lot like that, and some of them might be on my foe list. I can only think of one, but as I said before, I'm not interested in publishing my (at least partly) emotional biases.
I'm also not interested in having a list of people who say the same things I believe, or modding them up and (further) distorting my view of the world.

So what can one do with these friend/foes lists that doesn't fall into those categories?

Well, I use friends almost normally. These are people I generally agree with, and who have comments that I find interesting. I don't add mod points - if I'm going to see their comments, it will be because someone else thought their comment was interesting, too. The important part is that they're interesting.
I use foes for a different purpose. These are people I generally find challenging my beliefs, though not necessarily offending me. I mark them because they've made me think about things more than once. They, too, don't changes to their mod points, for the same reason that I don't add them to my friends.

So if you see I'm on your foe list - the odds are good that you're there because I wanted to make sure to give your latest comment the attention I've decided you deserve from previous experience.
And if you're on my friends list, I'm sure I'll be seeing another comment from you that will bring me pleasure of one kind or another soon.

I have dealt with Linux since the beginning

Even before Linux, I've gotten my finger wetted with many flavors of Unixes

Lately, however, I got the feeling that Linux itself might be getting bloated

Case in point --- http://lwn.net/Articles/498135/

In the lwn article, it talks about Linux distros that are getting ready to ditch the Compact Discs (CDs) because their distribution has grown much larger than the 680MB real estate of a typical CD

We used to complain that Microsoft Windows are bloatware

We used to congratulate ourselves on the simplicity, the usefulness and the compactness of the Unix/Linux daemons, that we can do so much with so little

Sadly, those times seem to be over

I'm afraid Linux has enter the bloatware arena

When I first signed up to Slashdot, it was so brand new, there were no ad anywhere

I do appreciate Slashdot's generous offer to allow me to disable ad when I'm visiting, but I think I'll continue to allow ad, and, from time to time, I can even click on some of the interesting ones

Not that I'm crazy for online ad, no, I'm not that crazy yet

It just that, throughout these years, my many visits to Slashdot has exposed me a lot of interesting ideas and insights.

Not disabling ad on Slashdot reflects my own appreciation of Slashdot, and what Slashdot stands for

Thanks, Slashdot !

May you have a great number of fruitful years ahead ! :)

I just had to highlight this post I came across; it pretty much pretty hit the nail on the head with what pisses me off about the whole UX thing:

Exactly. Everyone involved in app development needs to read this and decide whether they want to hire ANYONE who is a self-professed "UX person".

Slashdot seems to care a lot about the case where a white guy (Zimmerman) killed a black guy (Trayvon)

Since there are so many versions of what actually happened, and many interested parties have aired their own "specially edited version" of the 911 call, including in infamous NBC version, I suppose Slashdotters deserve a link to the FULL and UN-EDITED version of the 911 call

Here it is --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reAC8xMbiLc