I think there's more to getting mod points than just karma. If you only log into /. every 2nd or 3rd day and only load stuff on "slashdot.org" a few dozen times each login, you'll probably get fewer moderation opportunities than if you pretty much stay logged in all the time, load slashdot.org hundreds or thousands of times a day, post dozens of comments a day with a fair amount of getting modded up, and 2-3 submissions a day with 1-2 accepted a week.

It probably makes a difference.

If "just anyone" can vote and there is no way to evaluate the quality of the voters, then the "wisdom of the crowd" may not be so wise and those who are "voted down" and whose goal is to maximize the number of voted-up posts may simply "route around it" by increasing the number of total posts, sacrificing quality along the way.

In the /. model, "votes" are scarce resources (5 moderation points every few weeks with a quick expiration), only usable for topics which you probably aren't "involved" in (if you comment while logged in, all of your related moderations are un-done), handed out only to those who have demonstrated some sustained level of "good conduct" (low karma = no mod points for you) and they are "watched over" by the community (meta-moderation). From the looks of things when I meta-moderate, Slashdot moderators are more likely to think before voting something up or down and as a result the "quality" of the "total vote" is likely to be higher.

As a result, if you take out the "inexperienced newcomers" and "immature commentators" whose first few posts happen to get down-voted and the trolls who don't care or who thrive on "-1 troll," most people will have the pleasure of seeing some of their posts "voted up" before the first or second time they see one get down-voted, and are therefore in a position to see what kinds of posts are likely to get them "good karma" and what kinds are likely to get "voted down." Since most "regulars" probably CARE about "good karma" for the perks it brings or at least they care about not being marked as "karma = -1," they will be motivated to not routinely post low-quality stuff.

Preparing to see my karma drop in 3...2...1...

I know some (less-well-known) writers who do everything longhand until it's time to send it to the publisher.

CBS news commentator Andy Rooney used a manual typewriter for much of his work until late in his career or maybe even until he died.

I personally know someone who keeps a very large production database using a commercial DOS-based program from the early- or mid-'90s. This isn't some military or other scenario where there is a good reason to use outdated software, it's just the personal preference of the person who is maintaining the database and its contents.

... the top 10 books/articles/whatever that every human being should read.

Now if only we could get some kind of agreement on what those "top 10" are.

Gack wrong title.

I wish I'd read Roger Kaufman's book before I started programming. It would've helped a lot.

Here's a few pages to get a taste of the style: http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner...

By "offensive" do you mean "going on the offense" in the military/sports sense or do you mean "I am most offended by?"

I'm guessing the latter by the first sentence came across as the former.

Who is the worst offender here (excluding "reasonable/expected" things like employers monitoring employees, parents monitoring their own kids, K-12 schools monitoring their own networks, etc.)?
* The United States government (NSA, etc.)
* The United States corporations (ISPs etc)
* China's government
* China's corporations (we'll pretend these aren't the government)
* Russia's government
* Russia's corporations (ditto)
* North Korea's government (it's all government there!)
* CowboyNeal, er, I mean Unknown Lamer**

**Notice: if you click here, well, you've been warned :)

You forgot The Book of Mormon and a few others.

This is not the "Worst" e-Reader ever.

Why do I say that?

Because it is working as designed.

Frankly, for certain high-security situations this kind of "immutable" device is the only kind of device that would be allowed in. So it's either something like this, or books-on-tape/CD/paper/something else.

For slightly less-but-still-very-secure situations you could allow some type of external read-only, no-processor-chip-onboard "expansion pack" memory so that the book content could be switched out without getting a whole new device. I wouldn't use USB though, as that requires a processor on the stick itself.

Also, I'd make very sure the data format was really "data only" not something that could, in theory, be a vector for "code." This would rule out PDF and PostScript. In other words, it would be pretty limited.

The things you absolutely do not want for this type of device in a high-security environment are:
* Any ability to "run code"
* Any wireless
* Any ability to export data other than through the screen (you can't stop someone from photographing the screen)
* Any ability to "hack" the device without physical access and accessing it in a non-standard way (e.g. with a screwdriver). This means the software must be proven to never do anything "bad" other than "just die, requiring a reboot" if the operator is tricked into giving it even carefully-crafted/designed-to-do-bad-things bad data.

In some cases, you do not want it displaying anything other than what is "whitelisted." This can be done by either only displaying properly-digitally-signed files or, as in this case, by only providing a limited set of files and "sealing" the device.

If this catches on, expect it to 1) be declared illegal and 2) parking meters or similar devices to be placed in each spot that prominently mark it as a "no parking zone" for some short, random, un-announced time after the spot is vacated.

In other words, when you leave, a red "no parking here for the next few minutes" light flashes. The light will go off at some random time between 2 and 10 minutes later and there will be no indication of when it will go off.

If you are caught parking there or sitting there waiting for the light to change, you will be ticketed.

1) Whole seasons of television on fewer than half the number of disks as DVD.

2) When the burners get faster and cheaper, convenient backups. But realistically, Blu-Ray is too small for geeks - you want a backup medium that's at least 10% if not 20% of the size of your data set so a full backup won't be a huge stack of disks. You also want the differential backup from several weeks or months ago vs. today to fit on one disk.

... would be the potential threat of terrorists to take over the blockchain or make people think they could.

Of course I meant to say Comics Code Authority.

Memo to self: Preview THEN post.