My copy of Windows 2000 is a student license version, which expires when I stop being a student. Technically, I am no longer a student (or maybe I stop when I officially graduate next month, I'd have to check). Does that make my license invalid? On the other hand, I am going to become a student again in September, so will it become valid again then?

If it's invalid at the moment, I guess I'll just have to stay in FreeBSD...

I seem to have acquired a degree. I'm not exactly sure how it happened. I've been hanging around the campus for three years, goign to the odd lecture (I think my attendence record is almost 50%), and doing a nominal amount of work, while spending most of my time playing with one project or another (I ran 3 student societies in my second year, and am still active in a few). On friday I discovered that my department had decided to award me a 'BSc Computer Science with First Class Honours'. I think that they are trying to get rid of me. It's not going to work though...

El Reg is running another article about Java on the X-Scale talking about the close collaboration between Sun and Intel resulting in a version of Java tightly coupled to the hardware.

As I recall, the X-Scale is a re-branded version of ARM's StrongARM chip (ARM, like MIPS, don't make chips anymore, just IP cores). One of the key features of the ARM chip design is its modularity, you can pop in an FPU or vector unit if you need one with minimal effort. Now does anyone remember a few years ago that ARM released a core thar could run Java bytecode natively (faster, in fact that Sun's attempt)? Surely adding this to the mix on the X-Scale would be easier than optimising Java for the X-Scale's native instruction set? It would eliminate the need for a JIT compiler, and potentially use less power (important on a portable) to run at a decent speed.

How do people modify the moderation done to their fans and foes? I currently give a small bonus to fans, and a large bonus to freaks. I figure that fans are likely to be people who agree with me and foes the converse, and I would rather read posts from people who do not agree with me. If I wanted to hear my own opinion, I would talk to myself (actually, I often do, but that's not the issue here. Probably). Know thine enemy (or at least people who perceive themselves as thine enemy).

Well, after 600 posts, I have managed to get my first first post (w00t w00t, etc). It wasn't intentional, but I do notice that it seems to have been moderated very very generously. The content of the post basically says 'MySQL isn't actually all that good really, is it?' This would probably have been moderated as a troll anywhere else (and, indeed it was), but seems to have been moderated +5 interresting. Very strange.

...and I am an addict.
I seem to have posted over 500 times on /. since I joined, less than 6 months ago. Oh well...

Well, I said in my last entry I would set up DNS properly (which actually meant that I had to set up Apache virtual hosting so that my domain pointed to my site, not the SUCS main site). I have now done so, and my site is now living on theravensnest.org.

I've updated my site, for the first time in a few weeks. I've also tidied up a bit of the php and now the random thoughts page puts a nice red 'New' next to items less that 3 days old (which I've been meaning to do for about 6 months...)

Eventually I'll get around to setting up the DNS...

This comment seems to illustrate the power off suggestion over /. moderators. I say I get moderated to 'insightful' for no reason, and I do. Magic.

I've noticed that comments I post on Sundays seem more likely to be given high moderations. Has anyone else found this? Do I make more sense at weekends, or are the moderators more relaxed, and hence friendly?

For a while now I've started seeing a lot of posts by (1337) God. Few of them have been worth reading, but all of them have been moderated up. Reading this individual's journal he is trying to start a 'Slashdot clan' of like minded 1337 people, who will moderate each others posts up. To me, this seems like a very bad idea. Hopefully the meta-moderation scheme will make sure that none of these people get mod points very often, but if they reach a critical mass, then 1337 members will be meta-moderating each others moderations 'fair', and everyone else as 'unfair', resulting in only 1337 people getting mod points. Does Slashdot have any mechanism in place to deal with this kind of abuse? Perhaps other people should counter this by moderating posts by these people down, even when they are good, and meta-moderating such moderation as 'fair'. The mod system was introduced to try to make /. more fair, and this kind of cliquish behaviour damages the system. If they want to set up their own mutual appreciation society, then /. is not the correct forum.

Has anyone else thought of the idea of slashdot recording a list of each user's prejudices? It seems that a lot of slashdotters only want to read things posted by people who agree with them (I feel the opposite way, as Wilde said 'I hate it when other people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong). To get the ball rolling, here are a few of mine:

• Microsoft: They're kind of evil, but in a low-grade doesn't-really-both-me kind of way. They make the OS I use the most, because it is stable (although it took them enough tries to get that right) and supports all my hardware with minimal fuss.
• Apple: I think this cartoon says it all. The author has never met me, or, to my knowledge heard of me, but it's uncanny. Although I don't own a beret. Seriously, anyone who's seen one of the new 17" PowerBooks and doesn't want one must be a bit strange, in my opinion.
• Linux - It always reminds me of a dog walking on its hind legs. Not surprising that it's done badly, surprising that it works at all. I use Linux a lot (I admin a network of Linux machines in university), and every time I find myself thinking 'hey, this is pretty cool actually' it goes and does something silly. Usually involving rpms.
• FreeBSD - Wow. A *nix that actually works. Out of the box. And has a make-stuff-work command (seriously

  portinstall gnome2

  downloads Gnome 2, builds it from source, and installs it. Looks like magic, tastes like magic, it may not be actual magic, but it's close enough for me.)

• GPL - 'We're in favour of freedom, but only our kind of freedom'. Have any of these guys read 1984? Or any history of Germany / Russia in the 1930s. Or America during the McCarthy era? In my opinion, whenever people start putting limits on freedom in the name of freedom, it's a Bad Thing(tm). If you want freedom, go BSD. If you want commercialism, that's also fine, but keep your pseudo-free 'workers of the world unite' ideals away from me.
• MPAA / RIAA - Does anyone actually like these guys?
• NTl - A business student's 'how not to run a business' project that got out of hand.

I've realised that more people read the stuff I post on slashdot than the stuff I post on my own site, so I'd suggest people look there as well (it should kill a few minutes...). Things posted there have one advantage over things posted here. I either think about them, or proof read them before posting. Sometimes I do both, but don't expect that kind of service too often.