Is that you'd almost certainly support the boycott of a company that was divergent from your political views.

Honestly, why are you even on this site? Slashdot is kinda meant for tech talk, and all you do is rant with right-wing Rushtalk.

I'm all over political discussions of a dispassionate, objective nature, but you clearly aren't. And this site, while certainly willing to engage the political side of technology, is, at its core, a *technology* site. And yet after looking at many, many of your posts, I'm yet to see *ONE* that discusses something technical. Have you noticed the tagline, "News for nerds, stuff that matters"? I'm thinking you're just here because you love trolling.

Please go away. Slashdot will be better for it.

There are many things to pick on in this administration; make no doubt about it. But several of the things you bring up are either silly or stupid.

1) Obamacare that nobody wanted; I'm sorry -- you don't like health insurance? Clearly, large segments of the population don't want it, but "nobody" is such a sweeping, wrong-headed generalization that it shows your huge bias.
2) Errr... the economy isn't recovering? Unemployment is down, the market is way up. Which metrics do you use? Yes, it could be *better*, even a fair bit better, but pretending it *isn't* is just stupid.
3) "Inflation rate that is only now beginning to hit home." WAT. After GWB left office, we haven't had inflation break 3%. Honestly, if you'd made point #2 well, you could have used the low inflation rate as a sign of a weakly growing economy. Instead, you're just speaking out your a**.
4) "Wildly expanded NSA surveillance." Citation, please. I'm not saying it's *not* true... but I won't believe it is until you prove it. What *is* true is that Edward Snowden let the cat out of the bag. Much of what he let out of the bag, however, predated Obama, and I see no particular reason to believe government snooping has changed much since... well, Hell, since before J. Edgar Hoover.
5) "Imaginary climate change." Okay, again -- screw what the politics of *anyone* is. Show me objective, not-cherry-picked proof. I'd say it's objectively demonstrable that the climate is changing; the only thing that is left to debate is whether its cause is humans or not. If you actually think the climate isn't changing, however, you may be immune to facts. Indeed, I think we've probably already demonstrated that.

Please. Informed debate is one of the things that makes this country great. Ill-informed spouting of kneejerk $PARTY talking points only shows your bias, and inability to objectively consider multiple points of view. Perhaps you don't *care* to consider multiple points of view, and that's your prerogative... but don't bother trying to ever convince anyone of anything.

I'd been known as the guy who liked spicy food in my group. One day I came in, and there was a pepper sitting at my desk. One of those bonnet ones, though I didn't know that until I found it on Wikipedia. Anyway, I started nibbling it lightly, and it was sweet with a bit of spice. Then I ate the whole thing, and, yes, it was pretty darn hot. I wasn't dying, but it was definitely hot enough to make me sit up and take note. And, yes, my eyes began to tear.

So I wiped them. With the hand I'd been holding the pepper with.

Any semblance of nonchalance immediately left the building as I writhed in pain while simultaneously running for the sink to wash them out. Screw the burnt *finger* teaching best...

It's nice to know that Segway guys can finally point to something that would instantly make someone 12 times geekier-looking than a Segway ever could.

Common Core is not perfect. Not much is. But the language used in this post was well and truly slanted. I suggest that, in the future, you avoid politicking in your posting, and instead be an objective reporter of facts. Words like "acknowledge" strongly imply an associated guilt. Likewise, the rest of the OP's slant.

I just wasn't pulling them on 12/31/99, which is the date I think of when I think of "Party like it's 1999." 'Cause everyone *else* (except a few closet survivalists) that I knew was out having fun. I got to work until roughly 4:00 a.m. (1:00 a.m. PST, but I was east coast) to make sure that Cisco wasn't experiencing systemic Y2K issues. And... it didn't. The rest of the time, I was Joe Sysadmin, pulling cables, bitching about Windows, and trying (successfully, as it turned out) to get Cisco to accept Linux.

P.D. Se habla español?

My "party" in '99 was sitting in a room with two other engineers, eating Chinese food, playing video games, and seeing if the internal Cisco infrastructure suddenly up and died.

It didn't.

That being said, your UID is perilously close to mine; might wanna watch who you hit with the "old timer" stick. ;-)

I don't think VA was *embarrassing*, so much as, maybe, unfortunate.

And ESR being an embarrassment hasn't really been relegated to history. Fortunately, most of his involvement with OSS has.

He kill your dog, break your guitar, and steal your woman and truck? WTF?

WTF did Larry do to "ruin" Slashdot? I'm pretty sure Rob loved working for Larry. Or with your UID of four bajillion, do you remember stuff I seem to have forgotten?

Dude -- EVERYONE believed in Linux at the time, as well as The Internet. Bright-eyed investors who jumped at a Linux-associated hardware company made that happen, not Larry. Larry just happened to be the best-known Linux-associated hardware vendor at the time. I'd say his timing was awesome for the spike, but I think Larry would have been happier than just about anyone to see the stock price stay up where it started.

If you bought in at $320/share, and have sour grapes... well, that's your fault. "Caveat Emptor." See: "dot bomb".

one of the names that we all felt some sort of kinship with back in the early Linux commercialization days. He started VA Reasearch -- which had the biggest one-day spike on IPO, ever, managing a front-page story in the WSJ, and an incredibly sanctimonious public letter from ESR -- and forever popularized blue LEDs on servers (you can thank or blame him as you see fit). Since then, he's gone off to do some venture capital stuff, and help out with Sugar CRM. While I've never met him, I certainly owe him for both his contribution to the community as a whole, as well as more explicitly for opening up the IPO to common folks like me.

By all accounts, he's a good guy, and someone I was glad was in our corner during those heady-but-tumultuous times.

Hey, Larry -- you don't know me (shocker), but I've been a fan since back in the day -- indeed, VA's IPO helped buy me my first LCD monitor. (Go, SGI 1600SW.) Anyway, Linux, open source, the web, and technology itself has certainly seen lots of change since the "olden" days of the mid-90's; which parts do you reflect on most fondly, which parts have surprised you the most, and, of course, the proverbial: "If you could do it over again, what would you do differently?" (I realize that technically, that's three questions, but I think it's really three questions in search of one answer.)

It permeates everything you write: the moral assuredness that You Are Right. I'm all in favor of positing that a position someone takes is the right one -- that's human nature. But your whole "I speak for the hackers" tone, wherein you seem to feel the need to put your views forward as representing others', puzzles me. I give, as a case-in-point, your "Sex Tips for Geeks" as exhibit A, but, really, most any of your writings -- most definitely including your handling of The Jargon File, as well as your stance on homosexuality -- qualify. Care to comment?

I might even be tempted to stretch that to education, as well. Kind of ironic that those who should be willing to teach are often those most scared of learning.

I've had teachers for whom that was not true, and those were the ones who really shone. But most of my technology-related teachers/professors would have been terrified.