This is something for you geeks to read up on besides "The Creature From Jekyll Island" (which is a documented and thorough research of the "Federal" Reserve Central Banking System.)

America Freedom to Fascism

Or get it from their site if you prefer DVD (Google prevents download of this movie and keeps resetting its "views" counters and forcing it to stay at the bottom of the dogpile.)

I have even done the research for you, now just go watch and read.

Of Mints and Rays

Radiation good??

Constitution Party

Best part is that while I'm not nearly as religious as some of the individuals that comprise said party, at the very least they are trying to return control of US citizens' lives to themselves, instead of to the overburgeoning bureaucracy that resembles my homeland on the Former Soviet Bloc, than to the United States of America that were once their own sovereign nation/states united as a federation/republic, but still retaining their states' rights (which was abolished by the lovely 14th ammendment) (do recall that the Constitution(as well as the Declaration of Independence) both reserve the right of the people to abolish or alter the government).

Wiretaps, draconian gestapo departments of fatherland/homeland protection, dictatorial unitary executive decisions, massacres of people after thorough defamation in media (Kevin Mitnick's plight under Clinton, slaughter of Branch Davidians, current administration's torture camps destroying american citizens lives and then "discovering" that they truly aren't terrorists, but rescinding their citizenship makes them unable to "petition government for redress of grievances" (First Ammendment/Bill Of Rights). Not to mention that torturing American Citizens violates the 8th ammendment (cruel/unusual punishments) and the 9th ammendment (any other natural rights of a free man shall not be inflicted upon by legislature because of omission in original Constitution).

Last of all, I had a previous argument with a fellow here, about the 14th ammendment not hijacking the nation, despite the fact that our government has turned into a nanny state ever since then, with "departments" and "bureaus" and "agencies" sprouting up all over the place to fleece the people of their hard earned wealth. Perhaps when reading up on the 14th ammendment, one should contrast it with the 10th ammendment, Powers of the States and People... it prevents the Federal Government from usurping more power to itself from states or people by redefining the process by which the Federal or State governments are to operate. In fact, as the United States is a Union of a number of states that had previously won their independence from a tyrannical parent nation, the right to rebel against a new tyrannical government would've been preserved, not denied. The founding fathers knew this, but sadly they were no longer alive to see their brainchild gutted by Abe Lincoln's legislators.

But then again, as the Amendment XVIII - Liquor Abolished tells us, our "legislators" and "law makers" do just that, CONSTANTLY make laws, instead of discussing what course we should take, they keep wasting paper, ink and our money to constantly usurp more power from the people.

Either way, I've abandoned the old two parties because they're both a big joke, a big lure, and nowadays, they only serve to split up the people of this country and make puppets of us. I've left those losers, perhaps you should too:

Constitution Party, Find your state representatives

I understand this story probably will not post on this particular message board, but I hope at least my journal readers will give it a read and check out the site attached.

I feel sorry for the women's rights movements. All they managed to do was enslave women to the workplace as well. Now you all can die of an equal or greater heart attack and cancer rate, suicide rates are up, and overall you've gained what you wanted. Equal rights. Perhaps you should have campaigned for EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES FIRST... After all, your votes no longer matter. And perhaps, instead of campaigning and shouting liberally at the tops of yer lungs, ye should've read yer Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Locke, etc.

Ye've had many thinkers who paved the road for free thinkers to know what they need to change the world.

What they forgot to mention is that Self Respect, Free Thought, Independence and Self Reliance are not the same things as Political Correctness and Self Esteem. Given a choice, I've abandoned those (PC and SE). Too many panzies acting as fathers, and too many fatherless or motherless sons and daughters these days. While I"m sure it presents a self esteem picture "I'm doing the best I can and showing my child independence" ask yourself this.

How? By going to the workplace, missing his or her best days and hours, and punching a clock like an inmate doing his or her labor detail daily? For what? A pittance of cash? Bah. For a few meager physical gains? Truly we have lost our way and become mired in greed.

But it has always been the case. The revolutionaries were few and far between, even our vaunted founding fathers and their revolutionary buddies were a scant 5% of the colonial populace, and maybe 10 to 15% of the rest were supportive...

The good path isn't always easy to tread. And I mean not to be too harsh, I mean simply that an example is provided to one's children by one's actions in the workplace/businessplace not just at home and PTA meetings. My father was and is a business owner and a restless man who can't sit still for 5 minutes. For a long time I hated him, I wanted nothing more than a job, where I would take orders and be lazy. And now, YEARS later, he's old and I'm taking up the torch, and I can feel no greater pride in him and my mother, since they both fought hard, were often self employed and worked their arses off. But at least they were free to dictate the pace of their lives. That inspired me more than all the speeches and all the rhetoric, all the sermons and all the schoolbooks. They were the generals of the last war, now they are passing the torch on to us, and for better or worse, lets make a world our children can live and contest in, to grow lean and strong, not fat and lazy. (I should know, I've battled overweight issues for years, but I won, without meds and without heavy diets, lots of gym time, lots of road time.)

I'm not preaching, I'm bitching. Whoever listens, feel free.

And no, I'm neither sexist, nor feminist, neither am I a misogynist. I love women. I just wish you would all remember what made you so wonderful. Hint: YOU ARE NOT MEN, STOP TRYING TO BE. We men are bad enough in large enough numbers, perhaps you should not try to become so much like us. And do try to separate the roles of father and mother. Kids need both a healer and a drill sergeant. Without either, they grow up weak and complacent, and end up serfs.

You want to raise citizens (read Thomas Jefferson for a GOOD definition, also read the bill of rights) not serfs. Yet many today raise serfs, not men, not women, not citizens. Just mere serfs...

I hope that changes.

Or just plain stupid? I mean c'mon, it takes outright breaches of the Constitution for anyone to even take note of it? Jeezus, a guy gets impeached for lying about getting a blowjob, (not NAFTA and the WTO which he REALLY should've gotten strung up for, since its treason against the people of EVERY nation, not just ours) but our current "guy in the sky" gets the easy treatment, "because he wasn't under oath".

Might I remind you of this?

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The above is known as Article II Section I of the UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION!!!

Strange that he took that oath, George B, did, and yet he violated half the bill of rights. Not that our nation doesn't already have a FINE line of violation of the right to peacefully assemble (most pacifists are seen as traitors and "national security threats") but they've also done away with the right to be secure in our persons, papers and property. (4th ammendment). We should've been the ones getting armed, not the government. It is US Citizens duty to bear arms and be responsible for their/OUR own safety. Where the hell do we get off thinking that 30k/year cops are going to throw their lives away to save ours which are "priceless"?? If we don't do it, they don't give a rats ass, they're safer giving speeding tickets.

What kind of losers and cowards have we become, that we can wage war on some make believe enemy, and throw away the very constitution that our forefathers fought for, and that has been chipped away by the rich bankers and their puppets since then, because that constitution was supposed to remind us that we are BORN free and equal, but if we let the tyrants rule forever, then we are naught but slaves, and the constitution naught but paper.

They've finally revealed that they've been profiling and databasing our phonecalls. How soon do you think it'll be when they'll reveal that they've recorded them all as well? I mean, originally it was international calls, then only AlQuaida SOB's, now I assume millions of "innocent" Americans are guilty? Or perhaps we're not so innocent after all, we're letting them shit on our Constitution.

I wonder what it will take to remind Americans that WE WERE THE TOP OF THE WORLD... WE WERE THE ONLY NATION TO ACTUALLY AND REALLY HAVE A SAY IN OUR GOVERNING, BECAUSE WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THE GOVERNMENT, OR AT LEAST ITS SOURCE OF POWER, US, WE THE PEOPLE, (and not the military industrial, pharmaceutical, oil, or banking complexes).

I must ask you, my "fellow" americans (at least those of you with enough IQ to be perceptive of this mess we're in) "what the hell is going on in our nation and the world?" and "WHY in blazes are we standing for it?"

Bah, I used to think slashdotters were enlightened but most of you don't even, have not even, EVER sacrificed anything of meaning, nor have you actually read that document that our founding fathers left us. If you had, you'd be all out in the streets, reminding those in power that it is their "privilege" to be in that position and their "duty" to "uphold" the Constitution first, and the laws second. Protecting the Constitution also means one AVOIDS ammending it for the sake of their religion.

Who am I kidding. George finished getting rid of our jobs and the value of our money, now everyone will run to the Democrats and Hillary will finish us off by taking away our guns, the rest of our privacy, and skin us alive to sell to the rest of her banker buddies.

What we need is a third party. And one with teeth (and at least 1/3 of the senate. We need a party that remembers what Jefferson said.

"Given a government without free press, or a free press without government, I prefer the latter." ~Thomas Jefferson.

Judging by the fact that the press is run by huge corporations that are subsidiaries or owned by people who have ties (financially) with the likes of GE, Raytheon, etc, why would anyone expect them to do REPORTING, instead of just PARROTTING press releases?

I can understand old Turkmenbashy in Turkmenistan (our ally by the way, they have oil) who is a complete totalitarian, he MAKES the news, and deals harshly with those who disagree... but this country isn't Turkmenistan. Why are politicians writing our "talking points" ?? Why are we letting them? Where are the hard core americans, banding together to resist the bullshit? Where have all the Americans gone to?

People used to ENVY us, now they FEAR and HATE us... how can we have so easilly let politicians throw away all the goodwill we once had? Why do we let them tyranically rule US and the world? All it takes is voices, all that would have to happen is for enough people to remember that americans were the original REBELS... we were the ones who couldn't shut the hell up or sit down in class. We were those who inspired millions of people to move here, not to make money, but because they wanted to be free. (Money was once made of gold, too, and it had intrinsic value, but that is all gone too, as we all know

"The easiest way to cripple a country is to debauch its currency." ~Lenin (yeah the commie)

I'd say our "federal" reserve system has debauched our once mighty currency quite well. But as long as the "economy" is healthy, it doesn't matter HOW MANY human lives, Americans, foreigners, the whole damn planet gets sacrificed to the beast.

Yeah, Christians, your Beast is just that, the world economy, it speaks all our languages, and all who oppose it alone or with arms, are killed off by it. Amazing that you're not opposing it.

Now, back to Jefferson, he was no Anarchist, but he certainly envisioned a government kept in check by its people. Something ours hasn't been in a VERY long time. Our government keeps us in check, by sending our jobs overseas, oppressing other countries so its people flee here to take whatever work they can, and then they turn us against those immigrants and keeps our attention away from the ball.

What SCARES me is that you people really DO fall for all of it. Take the damn pill and get outta the Matrix, I'm lonely out here!!

As if the Bush Administration didn't already have their hands full with various coverups, and other things to keep us Innocent Americans (tm) safe from International Terrorism [(c) 9.11.2001 Usama bin Ladin], they are now besieged by the accursed liberal media.

Steven Colbert upsets those "liberal sissies" at a White House press banquet. Watch it * HERE. */a>

Nobody seems to care about the Constitution, or the State of our Federation of Representative State Governments, so instead, here's a change of pace:

Ultimate Showdown

Its about superheroes, villains, everyone from Chuck Norris to Godzilla, to Abe Lincoln and Carebears.

Watch it, if you're old enough to order a beer, this will make that beer shoot out your nose as you laugh yourself silly. WIth all the stress lately, we could all use the laughter

Some scary stuff coming up on new scientist...

NewScientist

That pain weapon precisely reminds me of the "pain dial" in Orwell's 1984 (in fact, a lot of research is now switching from understanding the world to improving methods of killing, disease and suppression, much as Emmanuel Goldstein's book which Winston reads in 1984).

~DaedalusHKX

Sun Tzu - The Art of War
Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince
Frederick the Great - Instructions to his Generals

(Sweet Water Press has a $19.95 gold edged "tome" style compilation of the three titled aptly "The Art of War" and a cheaper $12.95 regular hardback edition of the compilation with a red cover. There are other editions abounding, and most are good. This one is just nice because it has all 3 works in one.)

Takuan Soho (translated by William Scott Wilson) - The Unfettered Mind

Tsunetomo Yamamoto (translated originally by Minoru Tanaka and edited by Justin Stone) - Bushido - the way of the samurai

A very good set of reads IMHO, I will probably post a review later on.

As far as The Art of War goes, Sun Tzu should be a mandatory read for ANY geek out there.

~D

I've got a confessed SlashStalker:

"[...] the first thing i do when i get mod points is browse over to slashdot.org/~doc%20ruby and randomly mod down the crap you post"

It's nice to be needed, but a good metamod system would keep modpoints out of the hands of abusers.

I submitted this story few minutes ago and it got instantly rejected, so let me repost it here in my journal:

Perl.com (part of O'Reilly Network) has posted an interview with Autrijus Tang, A Plan for Pugs, The Perl 6 Implementation No One Expected, about his announcement to implement Perl 6 in Haskell, a purely functional, statically typed, lazy programming language, which suprisingly to both Perl and Haskell communities turned out to not be a joke. In the interview with chromatic, Autrijus Tang thoroughly explains the rationale behing his new project Pugs, talking about his experience with Perl, CPAN and Parrot, and his relatively recent adventure with Haskell. He explains how Parsec, a monadic parser combinator library for Haskell, can be useful in implementing Perl 6 rules, how a static type system can be used to implement Perl 6's optional type system, providing many interesting links and important insight in the process. Together with Ponie and Pirate, the Pugs project seems to have a potential to become one of the most important projects for the unprecedented interlingual interoperability of future Parrot-based language implementations. For a better introduction to Pugs project, see Pugs Apocryphon 1.

I have already described many strange moderations in the past, I have posted results of my research, but I haven't seen anything like this ever before.

I noticed that something strange is happening when I saw that my last comment (Exactly posted to Digital Life and Evolution) was moderated Overrated. This was (and still is) the only moderation of that post. It was originally posted with Karma bonus, so it was Score:2. As you can see it is actually an excellent comment. If you read the story with Threshold=5 and then my comment you will see that it contains a lot of crucial informations not included in the story or any other comment. I am actually ashamed that I have spend so much time and energy on writing such an interesting and informative, honest post on Slashdot.

I can understand that my previous comment in that story, Tierra (that was moderated as +1, Interesting Insightful Troll) can be read as a Flamebait (if I understand that word correctly) as the follow-up discussion seems to demonstrate, but the second post, the last one that I posted to date, is quite frankly the best one I posted during the last months, if not ever. When I was posting it I thought that it's a pity that it is a late post so it won't get moderated up for everyone interested to read, but it had never occurred to me that it might be possibly moderated down, as Overrated or for any other reason (thought the Overrated moderation escapes the metamoderation process so it is not surprising if it was a conscious unfair moderation). Posting any other comment (except the obvious +5, Funny ones) I was expecting to get some negative moderation, but not in the case of this one. In fact, I will quote it here:

Sounds like Tierra from the early 1990s

Just what I thought. Next thought was man these people are clueless, how can such great software experiments have been forgotten?

Exactly my first impression. I thought that this research must be not interesting at all because there is no reference to Tierra, but fortunately I was proved wrong. It turns out that the only people who are ignorant of Tierra are the story submitter, editor and the author of the linked article. As soon as you find the website of this project (not directly linked in the story) and click the first link called Introduction and Background you will read five paragraphs about the Tierra project as well as information about even earlier research based on Core Wars called Core World, in the section History of digital life, which I will take the liberty to quote here:

[quote removed, see the original]

Read the entire article. After finding and reading that and other texts on the Avida Digital Life Platform and the MSU Digital Evolution Laboratory websites, I came to the conclusion that contrary to the impression one has after reading the Slashdot story, this is an amazing project with fantastic team and decades of fascinating scientific research behing it, all wonderfully explained and thoroughly referenced.

I came to that conclusion only because I bothered to search more informations than only those directly linked in this story, and only then I decided to download the Avida software. A quick look at the CVS respository shows signs of development after the release of the latest packaged version in 2003 but I decided to try the tarball first. It compiled cleanly on my Debian Woody box, but it took a lot of time. If you see that the quick flow of the compiler messages suddenly stop and freeze for half an hour, don't think it halted, just be patient.

I had no time to run it yet (the binary doesn't seem to be called "avida" so I have to read the documentation first) but I look forward to experiment with this amazing project. It certainly makes more sense to waste my cycles on Tierra or Avida than on SETI. Why look for life when you can evolve some of your own?

Which leads to an idea: if there will ever be an initiative to run a distributed version of Avida, I'm in. Just imagine how unimaginably complex creatures might evolve after few years of a distributed simulation using hundreds of thousands of computers! And this is a perfect prooject for parallelisation: every one would have her own population on her computer, even if off-line, and from time to time the computer would connect with the central server to exchange some of the organisms. It would be perfect because (1) it doesn't matter how often do you connect with the main server, or how many generation you can process, or how large is your population, so there are no networking issues, and (2) it doesn't matter if you cheat or try to disrupt the project because the server would only exchange valid chromosomes and if they were not good they would die rather quickly on the computers that don't cheat. Everyone even could have slighltly different mortality and other factor which would mean that different species would be best suited.

Furthermore, even if you wanted to introduce an "intelligent design" to the evolutionary process by cheating, creating an instance of "guided evolution" in your own population, it would still have to compete with substantially larger population of naturally selected species and even if you managed to introduce malicious agents into the global population, it would force the rest of the species to adapt to this new situation. This would be really fascinating. I'll try the software as soon as I have some time and then search whether there are any plans to develop a distributed network based on Avida.

When I saw this post moderated as Overrated, I knew that something strange was just happening. And today I saw the Comment Moderation summary for that period. Please keep in mind that I posted only two comments on Monday and nothing later, and this is a summary posted on Wednesday:

Comment Moderation
sent by Slashdot Message System on 1:05 Wednesday 16 February 2005

1. MySQL vs PostgreSQL , posted to Comparing MySQL Performance , has been moderated Troll (-1). It is currently scored Informative (4).
2. Cool Processors , posted to Cooling Down Hot Processors , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Insightful (4).
3. Amazing , posted to 2004's Most Creative Games , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Funny (4).
4. We don't need more "power" , posted to The Quest for More Processing Power , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Interesting (4).
5. Tetris is great , posted to Tetris DS - First Nintendo DS Homebrew Game , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Interesting (2).
6. Frightening , posted to U.S. Denies Patent on Part-Human Hybrid , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Flamebait (0).
7. Exactly , posted to Digital Life and Evolution , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Normal (0).
8. Serious problems with Apple , posted to Napster To Campaign Aggressively Against iPod , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Normal (0).
9. Good news? , posted to Cisco Evolving Into A Security Company , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Interesting (2).
10. Tierra , posted to Digital Life and Evolution , has been moderated Troll (-1). It is currently scored Insightful (2).
11. Just as secure as any other , posted to How Secure Is Microsoft's Fingerprint Reader? , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Informative (3).
12. Hard to remember? , posted to Password Security Panned , has been moderated Troll (-1). It is currently scored Informative (3).
13. Reassuring , posted to EU Software Patents Dead Again , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Informative (3).
14. Bad license , posted to Open-Source Technique for GM Crops , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Interesting (4).
15. Solution , posted to Scientists Find Flaw in Quantum Dot Construction , has been moderated Troll (-1). It is currently scored Funny (3).
16. Solution , posted to Scientists Find Flaw in Quantum Dot Construction , has been moderated Troll (-1). It is currently scored Funny (2).
17. MySQL vs PostgreSQL , posted to Comparing MySQL Performance , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Informative (3).

(Please remember to add one point to all of the final scores of comments that are not already capped at Score:5 and were posted with Karma bonus)

Summary:

Positive moderations: 0
Negative moderations: 17
Undone moderations: 0
Total: 17 Karma fluctuations
Final result: -17

Moderation spectrum:

-12, Overrated
-5, Troll

That's right. Those were seventeen negative moderations and no single positive one, all in one day, in a period when I didn't post anything. Those are mostly old posts, many of them were Score:5 before this modbombing incident.

To fully understand how far this moderation deviates from the usual, you have to compare it with the summary of the moderation done during the last 30 days:

Comment Moderation messages
sent by Slashdot Message System
between Saturday 15 January 2005 and Tuesday 15 February 2005

[97KB list removed]

Summary:

Positive moderations: 227
Negative moderations: 84
Undone moderations: 1
Total: 311 Karma fluctuations
Final result: +143

Moderation spectrum:

+70, Funny
+66, Insightful
+48, Interesting
+35, Informative
-30, Overrated
-27, Troll
-14, Offtopic
+8, Underrated
-7, Redundant
-6, Flamebait

As you can see, during the last 30 days, I got 227 positive and 84 negative moderations. The total result was +143 points. Not counting the Funny moderations which actually does not increase the Karma, it is +73 effective increase of Karma, enough to get from the Terrible Karma to Excellent, but I had Excellent Karma before and Excellent Karma after that month, so thanks to the Karma Cap, my actual Karma did not change at all. And then, one day of moderation abuse has costed me 17 points. Notice that 71% of that abusive moderation was Overrated which will be excluded from the metamoderation process, so the dishonest moderator will not face any consequences unless Slashdot editors routinely verify strange moderation patterns even of those moderators who don't get any Unfair metamoderations.

I have lost Karma: Excellent, my trademark since I invented the "Karma: Excellent (Mostly due to ...)" Slashdot signature. But I have just lost something much more important than that, something much more valuable. I have lost time and energy on writing this post. And this is something that I will never get back. I feel violated, brutally raped by Slashdot moderators. And that is something that will be hard to forget. I will have to live with that shame. Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.

P.S. I have heard about plans to start a petition asking Slashdot editors to set the $rtbl flag (the secret Slashdot blacklist flag) of those moderators who participaded in this moderation abuse scandal, to ban them for life just like those who moderated this post (readable link) three years ago (details). I believe it would be a good idea. Slashdot is too important for such outrageous abuses of power.

I submitted this story few hours ago and it just got rejected. Fortunately I saved the text so writing it was not a total waste of time and I can at least repost it here:

Jason Victor Serinus of the Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity and the Bay Area Audiophile Society have conducted a blind test to answer the question whether using $2500 Nordost Valhalla AC power cords to connect high quality audio systems to the electric outlet makes any audible difference. The entire procedure and the test results are described in the article Can We Hear Differences Between AC Power Cords? and further explained by James Randi in his commentary entitled A Proper Audio Test At Last.

The result of this test was negative but it is worth noting that a positive result would qualify for the one-million-dollar prize offered by James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) "to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event." James Randi, or The Amazing Randi, a magician best known for investigating and demystifying of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims, has written about suspicious audio mods many times in his Commentary column. The items described include a $485 wooden potentiometer knobs and $120/oz audio lacquer, as well as various stones and audio tuning stickers (an idea similar to the battery life extending sticker recently described on Slashdot and by Randi).

In the past, all of the people from the audiophile community contacted by Randi refused to take the one-million-dollar challenge. This time Randi wrote: "Kudos! To Mr. Jason Victor Serinus for his courage to test his abilities and abide by the results, to his colleagues who participated with him, to the editor of "Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity," and to the Bay Area Audiophile Society."

This is a very good news for any true audiophile and melomaniac. In the world of high quality audio equipment it is not uncommont to see expensive products with no scientific basis sold to unsuspecting consumers. It is important to know that there are honest people like Jason Victor Serinus who conduct proper tests and provide reliable source of knowledge to their readers so we can be sure that we spend our money only on products that indeed increase the quality of our audio systems.

One has to wonder why stories about tsunami creatures, psychic random number generators and miraculous stickers are reported on Slashdot as facts (not "BatMax claimed to have developed" but "BatMax developed," not "the sticker is claimed to extend" but "extends the mobile phone battery life and reduces charging time" etc.), to the point that we are laughed at by James Randy's readers, but an actual scientific blind test of similar gadgets gets rejected in no time. Is it time to reevaluate my opinion of Slashdot being a serious news website?

Somewhen after this post and before this one, Slashdot started to silently convert dashes to double hyphens, apostrophes and quotation marks to single and double prime or inch signs, and removing certain characters completely, like the euro symbol (the dollar symbol works fine). This is a big step backwards. I strongly object to silently introducing typographical errors in my articles. We cannot tolerate it in one of the most important medium of our times. While the most fundamental aspect, i.e. the quality of the content of the texts published here is even more than very satisfactory, let us not forget about the presentation of said content if we are ever to be considered a serious journalist community by the rest of the world. I hope this problem will be fixed soon.

Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.

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