I'm working on an op-ed piece about many of the events of this past week or so on /., but in the meantime, I found this interesting little piece of speculation about $$$$$exyGal. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Some of you don't want to hear about $$$$$exyGal anymore, but I think it's interesting as part of the People Watch thing.) And the AC is right. If she was watching Manimal, chances are that she's about 30. I already figured that based on earlier comments, but if she just turned 30, like I did almost a year ago, that would explain the existentialist thoughts, because I'll admit to having some of the same ones when I turned 30.

The thing I learned -- and $$$$exy, if you're reading this (I doubt it after how mean I've been to you :) listen up -- age is just a number. Relax, loosen up, have fun, you're never too old for anything. (Cliche, I know, but there's a reason it's cliche, it's the truth.)

Check out CmdrTaco's latest journal entry. That e-mail's gotta be one of the funniest things I've read, but the last line of Taco's entry is priceless: "Anyway, I just can't stop giggling about this. The grammatical errors, the typos, the silly metaphors, the misguided understanding of Slashdot, and all of this is wrapped up with a guy who can't figure out how to log in. Up to the last clause of sentence "and all of this is wrapped up with..." um, I wonder if this sounds like anyone we know? ;)

The purpose of this journal is keep people updated on Slashdot gossip. But what are YOU interested in? I've posted various topics:

A) Troll Watch: wondering about the sometimes very annoying, sometimes intelligently funny world of /. trolls
B) People Watch: gossip about various slashdot personalities.
C) Slashdot changes and policies
D) My struggles with a various trolls.
E) $$$$exyGal -- need I say more? (BTW-$$$$exyGal's journal this week is fascinating, at least to me. Go read it.

What do YOU guys want to see? Let me know!

Remember Jamie's comment about the changes to Slashdot?

I just realized something. Why do we see so many people 'altruistically' posting 'karma-free' article cut-and-paste for supposedly Slashdotted sites?

Yep! That's right. Jamie said it. If your posts get modded up, then this also increases your 10 AC/day limit. I'll bet this *includes* stuff you posted, while logged into an account, but you posted it AC. After all, these posts are still associated with your IP address, and still affect whether or not your IP gets banned, why not the other way around -- affect whether or not you can post anonymously?

Okay, let's look at the code:

# New check (July 2002): there is a max number of posts per 24-hour

# period, either based on IPID for anonymous users, or on UID for
# logged-in users. Logged-in users get a max number of posts that
# is related to their karma. The comments_perday_bykarma var
# controls it (that var is turned into a hashref in MySQL.pm when
# the vars table is read in, whose keys we loop over to find the
# appropriate level).
  if ($user->{is_anon} && constants->{comments_perday_anon}) {
                        my $num_comm_posted = slashdb->getNumCommPostedAnonByIPID(
                        $user->{ipid}, 24);
                        if ($num_comm_posted >= constants->{comments_perday_anon}) {
                                    $$error_message = getError('comments post limit daily', {
                                            limit => constants->{comments_perday_anon}
              });
                        $form_success = 0;
                          return;
}

I guess it depends on what that getNumCommPostedAnonByIPID() function returns. Jamie says that comments moderated up affect the ratio, I guess it would have to happen there? Or not? I confess, I'm not real familiar with the slash code.

Okay, a totally k-rad thing happened to me last night. Someone e-mailed me off my web site. And it was cool. I found a few friends from my BBS days over at clarkonline.net. Totally awesome. Remembering things like pop tarts and pizza (these are inside jokes -- just mentioning them will send a small collection of people in fits and giggles ;). Okay, the only thing I'm wondering is, RA -- did you find me through Slashdot? :-P

Several changes have been made rather unannounced recently.

1. There is a limit of 10 AC posts per IP address per day. (Unconfirmed)
2. A Funny moderation no longer earns you karma. Taco's words: "Note that being moderated Funny doesn't help your karma. You have to be smart, not just a smart-ass." (Confirmed)
3. Comments moderated down twice lose karma bonus. The second major reason is more social. The karma bonus is designed to accelerate the moderation system. The bonus is given to trusted users who have a history of positive contribution. Essentially, the karma bonus lets the user moderate their own comment, nudging it from Score:1 to 2. Normal moderation has the balance of meta moderation, but since the karma bonus is not subject to normal M2, we decided 2 moderators could counteract the bonus. (Confirmed)

The last one I understand, but the first two...well...the problems I have are:

1. Taco said that this would *never* happen, but it has. This was done specifically to censor ACs.

2. I don't have a problem with this per se, it makes sense to me, *but* -- you still LOSE karma if your "Funny" post gets modded DOWN after it gets modded up, but you don't GAIN karma if your post gets modded up as +1 Funny. This may ultimately cut down on the number 'funny' posts, eliminating half the reason I read Slashdot.

Update: #1 is now confirmed by two independent sources. See the thread below.

Update: Taco has now spoken on what I believe to be his reasons for #1. Perhaps he saw this journal entry and decided to comment? He doesn't admit it anyway, but interestingly enough, he does say "Ya know a very common problem on Slashdot is users who use multiple accounts and multiple AC posts to inflate the size of their viewpoint. We've seen discussions with a dozen user accounts participating, and many AC posts, but all coming from two or three IPs. Certainly these could be proxy servers or corporate firewalls, but I've seen discussions where it was quite obvious that a dozen "Personalities" involved in a discussion were actually the same person."

Notice that the number of dupes has been down? This is because of the subscriber system of course. Dupes HAVE been posted, but usually some subscriber is seeing in them in time to report them to daddypants@slashdot.org so that regular users never see them. I've been one of the people e-mailing in, and, to Taco's credit almost immediately after I send the mail, the dupe gets removed. Whether this means that he's removing the dupes directly because of my mails or not isn't clear. There could be a THOUSAND people jumping on him with DUPE, I just don't know. :)

There's been two, maybe three in the past two days.

Of course, they're ALWAYS posted by Taco. No one else ever posts a dupe, just Taco. ;)

What's with the Brett Glass trolls? They seem to be referring to this brett glass but I don't get it. The page hasn't been updated since 1998, which is mildly amusing in and of itself, but I don't see what's so amusing otherwise. I'm just completely mystified. Could someone clue me in?

Hmmm...here's a juicy bit of info. sargon, who got modded to +5 informative for a comment he made about 802.11g and being on the committee who voted for it...has claimed in the past that's he's worked for three telcos and NASA.

Now, if sargon has worked for three telcos, maybe he is on the committee...what's more interesting, is that AC that replied to him claims to be Micheal Van Laferie. Now as far as I can tell Mr. Van Laferie isn't on the 802.11 WG, either, unless the 11g group is some offshoot of the main 802.11 WG, but I couldn't find any reference to that on the website so I rather doubt that.

It seems that we have some people who have a vendetta against sargon. The question, is sargon who he says he is, or what? While I personally do not know, and admittedly, there's enough for a reasonable person to suspect that sargon may not be who he says he is, he does seem to know his stuff.

Anyone know sargon? Maybe sargon himself cares to comment? ;) I find it interesting that people are trolling sargon because I've been having a case of someone trolling me as well lately.

If you REALLY want to know my actual real name, it's not that hard at all if you were willing to do a modicum of research. Since you're nothing but a damn troll, you're obviously not intelligent enough to click on Web pages. See the link associated with my account? colonialfamilies.com? Uh huh, yeah that one. If you go to the page, check out the Archives link. There you'll see a link to a Sourceforge project page. The owner of said Sourceforge project page is -- guess?

Now go back to the main page on colonialfamilies.com. C'mon, it's not that hard. I know your head hurts at this point $$$$exyGal, er, uh, Krout, er uh, anonymous asshat, er uh whoever the fsck you are.

There's a little note at the bottom of that page as to who is the person responsible for 'Web programming'. That happens to be - duh - me.

But obviously your pea brain is to small to comprehend such things, that's why I had to lay it out for you.

Now go get bent.

Note this post. A full hour and a half after this article was posted, there were no posts attached to it. I witnessed this anomaly.

Seriously, the signal-to-noise ratio keeps getting worse, and serious discussions now seem to relegated to the journals. The trolls are taking over. In the next article, posted at 11:13 est, there were hardly any posts at 12:00 est, and almost all of the posts were trolls.

I think Slashdot as we know it really is dying. My theory is that people are so busy posting in each other's journals, that they aren't very much interested in the main stories anymore. The quality posters are all off in the journals somewhere and what's left are the n00bs and trolls and maybe a few diehards.

Whatchya think?

There's some AC asshat going around accusing random people of being ekrout. For the record, this person is NOT me. Interesting...maybe they're making fun of me. Wouldn't that be cool? :)

Wanna know what various /. users look like? FortKnox posted his photo contest results a few days ago.

I agree with FortKnox, Daoine is hot!

BTW--notice that $$$$exyGal is decidedly NOT in there, despite being one of the most active posters in the original contest thread.

I realize that at least some of my fans are fans because they're interested in $$$$exyGal dirt, so here's some more. One Slashdot user posted an interesting theory that $$$$exyGal == Twirlip of the Mists. Of course, that user could just be mocking me, but whatever... wouldn't be the first time. ;)

That's an interesting thought, but not really plausible. Anyone notice that $$$$exyGal has mostly been posting only in the journals and that her comments have turned far less technical?

One possible theory I have is that ekrout sold the $$$$exyGal account to Twirlip. I don't know -- like I said in an early entry, it's entirely possible that given some of $$$$exy's new-found friends that maybe she really is just a chick bent on world domination. Hey, for all I know, maybe $$$$exyGal is really Bill Gates. ;)

One project I'm trying to put together is a Linux-based Internet appliance for around US$200. The device would include a Web server, mail server, firewall, Samba support, etc. I'm going to use Devil Linux as my starting point, so the thing will boot off a CD-ROM for extra security and ease of upgrades. I plan on using a VIA EPIA Mini ITX board with one of Casetronic's cool Mini ITX cases and I'll toss in a small HDD and an extra 10/100 Ethernet card, probably a cheap RTL8139-based board or something.

One of the problems I have to solve is that it should be able to boot headless, with remote control via a Web browser, using perhaps something like Webmin and/or Firedraw. The thing will have an integrated SVGA card to be sure, but my own firewall that uses Devil Linux now won't boot without a monitor attached, even if I turn off errors in the BIOS.

The idea is to be able to sell these things to small-business consulting clients. I don't want to have to buy in huge volumes, either, as I am a one-man operation. What do you think? Can it be done?