I now believe that there is a class of people on Slashdot who do the following:

1. Get mod points.
2. Look for posts by people on their foes list.
3. Mod them Overrated, no matter what the content of the post is.

Some newcomers at this practice will mod people Troll for no reason, but they learn quickly that Troll can be metamoderated and switch to Overrated.

There is no earthly reason to have a moderation is that not subject to metamoderation!

My wife showed me a Big Mac box with a code for Sony Connect on it. Supposedly you could get a free song. Oh, but you first have to download and install their software. Windows only. OK, so I boot to Win2K. I download the installer and run it. I fended off its attempts to possess my file associations and "organize" my music files for me. Then it launched Internet Explorer.

In a very short amount of time, say 0.75 seconds, the following happened: warning boxes popped up all over (because I have IE set at maximum restriction it decided to bitch me out for not letting it do what it wanted), then my screen flickered, and then the box crashed. F-bombs ahoy.

During the reboot, the disk scan showed tons of file errors in "Temporary Internet Files," which is usually empty because I don't allow IE to run. A quick virus scan of that location turned up...hooray, a virus! NOTE: A system scan performed yesterday showed no viruses; this is the first time IE has run on this box for probably nine months (last time was web development testing). Those morons at Sony auto-launched IE (bad move #1) and pointed it at web sites that automatically download and run unknown code (bad move #2). Every single person on that Sony development team should be made to line up next to the MSIE development team and all of them get a severe kick to the nards. Stoopid!

I am really starting to hate the Overrated mod. How the flying fuck is that supposed to be metamoderated? I am going to metamoderate all Overrated as Unfair from now on, because it's just getting abused like crazy.

If Danté is correct, I expect to see the FrontPage developers down on the 7th level of hell.

The extensions seem to break under so many conditions that it's just plain ridiculous. Add in trying to support older clients and life becomes very "interesting".

Finally, I work out *most* issues under http. But now, I'm frying my head on https issues that seem to occur completely randomly.

Page 1. View source. OK, Works. Page 2, view source. Hmm fried. Practically no real difference in the structure or HTML used.

Of course, both work in FireFox, so there's no point turning on the "Live HTTP headers" extension.

My guess is that IE is, once again, adding to the pain.

back to debug mode...

cLive ;-)

I got my first ZERO moderated comment. This one made the grade. A pox on the house of those moderators. That was +5 Funny, dammit.

Actually, what's wrong with this system is that Overrated and Interesting are totally unaccountable in metamod. It's impossible while metamoderating to say, "Gee, that is certifiably NOT interesting."

Here I thought I would "protest" /. for a while because of rude users. I am a sap. I have already posted, like, three times since I said I would stop posting. Sigh.

RANT ON

I think this is the last post I will submit for a while on Slashdot. I thought I was stating my opinion on a topic, and if someone didn't agree s/he could post a counterargument. No, sir. Instead I was flamed and modded down as a troll. And the flame was modded up to +5, Insightful. What the flying, fucking hell is going on there. The flame is one thing, but the moderation system is totally fucked up: neither one of us got the mods we deserved. If someone wanted to mod me as Overrated, that's fine. That means you think the +1 mods I've been given weren't deserved. FINE. But don't start fucking calling me troll when I'm not trolling, and don't mod up some asshat flamer as insightful. Apparently nobody even has a fucking clue what a flame is anymore. Here's a goddamn hint: when you attack the person rather than the position (i.e., an ad hominem argument, not that any of you sad sacks even understand what I'm talking about), that is a flame.

I had a similar experience a few weeks back when I correctly modded a troll post as "Troll." Then some cockgobbler metamoderated me as Unfair. (It's too bad you can't dig up your own moderation history, or I'd put a link.) That really steams my ass. Fuck you.

"As our Bulgarian friends say, what cannot be bought with money can be bought with a lot of money."

- Anonymous

"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers."

- Bill Gates

Clever reference here.

"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"As long as the superstition that people should obey unjust laws exists, so long will slavery exist. And a passive resister alone can remove such superstition."

- Mahatma Ghandi

"Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law."

- Henry David Thoreau