People buying their internet from a local municipal broadband service is about as far from "interstate" as you can get.

It doesn't really matter if the federal government can convince the Supreme Court otherwise. (The SC, by its nature, tends to allow federal overreach). The fact of the matter is that it shouldn't -- this is something that can be perfectly adequately addressed at the local level, and should be. You should get your state representatives and government to fix their laws, not the President of the US.

Oh shut the fuck up with your Me Too horseshit. Name one usable feature that Windows 8 has that Windows 7 does not.

Fuckton... you're a complete fuckwit.

moron.

Because the point of the exercise is to help others. It's not productive for me to spend the time to create the script and keep it to myself. So I don't have it turned on yet. I figured I'd post a link to it once or twice so that those who would be interested will see it, and then I'll turn it on and be rid of him forever.

If you don't like it, set me as a foe and filter my comments out. Unlike Bennett, I don't have any desire to force anyone to read what I've written.

Do you also refuse to use adblockers and spam blockers on the same principle?

Obviously people want to get rid of the stories they don't want to see. That's why Slashdot has the story filters in the first place.

As I remarked in the comments for his last story, If Slashdot would make Bennett an editor, then those who don't want to read his stuff could filter it out using existing tools. That improves the site for those who don't want to see it, and for those who do by reducing the amount of spam and trolls that flood the comment section for every "article" he writes.

I sent an e-mail to /. to ask them to do so, or comment on why they won't. They didn't bother to respond, which is disappointing, although not unexpected given how hostile the Slashdot staff is towards their users.

So, I made the following user script to remove posts that mention "Bennett Haselton": https://gist.github.com/anonymous/3235db049b18699c082b#file-gistfile1-txt

It works with Chrome and Greasemonkey in Firefox. If anyone wants to improve it or package it up nicely, please do; I don't have any prior experience with Javascript or browser extensions.

Obviously this isn't the best solution, but it's the only one we're likely to get.

systemd seems dead set on becoming an alternative operative system.

Which wouldn't be a bad thing if it wasn't ruining perfectly good operating systems like Debian while it grows.

I've stuck with Debian for a pretty long time (since around 2000) mostly because I know how everything works. But in the last year running testing, more and more frequently I'll find that something has been yanked out and replaced by something harder to use and understand. Maybe it's finally time to switch to BSD instead.

Nah, you're doing the marketing math wrong.

If product A is 99% the size of product B, then A is smaller than B.

Therefore, if product C is 97% the size of product B, C is "three times smaller" than B.

Another title suggestion: Having a Twitter account does nothing but make an organization look unprofessional.

You're demonstrating a lack of familiarity with Slashdot here. The whole reason why the "filter by posting editor" feature was introduced in the first place was so that people could filter out articles posted by a particular "editor" (Jon Katz) who had about the same reception here that you do. Making you an editor so people can filter out the drivel isn't "pandering" to anyone -- it's allowing a particular feature of the website to work as designed. Didn't you just post an article about a website that doesn't work as it should?

The word "editor" on Slashdot doesn't actually mean someone who edits anything, as anyone who has ever read the Slashdot front page is well aware.

and $27k isn't ridiculous?

Amazing that these type of posts have been around since the beginning of /.

An obvious explanation, and the one that I suspect is actually correct, is that your perception of your friends is wrong -- you actually respect the opinions of the people that share your opinions, not the ones who are good at math. Very likely the "smart" people that don't share your opinions are the ones that you're less likely to associate with, and so there are probably fewer of them within your circle of friends.

Another obvious explanation is that you choose your "smart" friends with different criteria than your "not-so-smart" friends. For instance, say you met the majority of your "smart" friends through academic pursuits, and your "not-so-smart" friends through recreational pursuits. Of course generalizing anything based on the "smart" group to the entire group would not be valid.

Fundamentally, drawing general conclusions about an entire population based on observations of people in your social circle is not going to give valid results, no matter how you try to justify it. If you don't understand that, I'd suggest getting one of your "smart" friends to explain it to you.

Well, you could submit the article to a large community of relatively intelligent people who actually do form a representative subset of your audience, and then get your feedback from them.

Oh, wait. That's what you do. And by and large, those few who read them dislike it. And virtually everyone dislikes the presentation.

Well, I guess that's that then. Like I said, you sound like an idiot, but at least you've confirmed your position now.

Just about everybody who writes something thinks that their work is important, but very few have the nerve to claim that readers should not be allowed to ignore their writing. I invite you to consider the logical conclusion (since you claim to place a premium on logical thinking) of what happens if everybody thinks like you do.

Do you seriously expect us to believe that you are selecting a statistically representative sample of people who have high, objectively measured, skills at math and logical reasoning? If so, please explain how you do this.

But your statement "I often run the ideas past smart people whose opinions I respect" suggests to me that you are relying on the input of people that you know, and probably know fairly well given that you are soliciting their opinions on your work. A sample of people who are in your social circle is going to be, by its very nature, incredibly biased.

In the face of that, your argument that somehow the majority of your audience must be wrong kind of falls apart.