Here is the text of my 1000th post.
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This is my 1000th post on /. After 1000 posts I've learned that language is quite possibly the most horrible invention known to man. It can be used for good... but mostly, as demonstrated here, it's a microscope into the human mind... the self-absorbed, illogical, ignorant, dumb, arrogant, fragile, and generally horrifying human mind. Read posts here long enough and you think... what a bunch of dumb asses. Yeah, there are a few smart ones or people with strong opinions and the intelect and facts to back those opinions up... but the vast majority of the public (here and elsewhere) can be safely classified as "the unwashed masses". Couple language with a communication tool like the Internet that allows these unwashed morons to meet likeminded idiots and spew their ill concieved and self-indulgent opinions upon the rest of the unwashed hordes and you have a recipe for... well whatever it's a recipe for it makes me ill.

So after 1000 posts I give you this bit of wisdom... shut up, it is statisically likely that you will save yourself from looking like a complete ass.

Until /. has electrolytes it's not safe for your consumption.

Slashdotters have earned their reputation as biased arrogant idiots (not me, see wikipedia). It's predictable. Post a Microsoft story... foaming a the mouth, "MS is evil", "MS sucks", "Bloatware", "OO is better", "I like the command line way of doing it better because it's like really open source, dude!". Lame, just plane lame.

5/23 - I've now learned that Ticketmaster will ellict a response of "Pearl Jam", "Evil", "Monopoly" and other ignorant responses from the unwashed illeterate masses.

Seriously... wouldn't it have been awesome if in feudal Japan they would have had airships, and the ninjas would quitely drop down from those airships onto their unsuspecting enemies below using a myriad of long ropes? And if they could make the airships out of kevlar I think that would stop the shurikens.

Calling out ad hominem attacks on /. is all the rage these days... well maybe not, maybe I'm just noticing it more or maybe it's gotten so bad people are growing tired of it and calling out the morons who rely on it.

Anyways... /. is a veritable petri dish of logical fallacies. Logic professor's should send their students here for class assignments... see how many logical fallacies you can identify in their natural habitat.

I'm not perfectly logical myself... I try to be... or at least try to be reasonable and understand when I've made an argument that isn't defensible. Anyways, if you're interested in learning more about logical fallacies and improving your arguments check out this website.

I posted a comment that made a humorous (in my opinion) comparison between Linus Torvald's activity with the LMI to a mob extortion racket. I was modded Troll & Flamebait (sounds like a good law firm name). And thus I have learned that thou shouldst never besmirch the reputation of the glorouis Torvalds.

Well, my post, which I just wrote about was -1 trolled. This is an appropriate response, but it's amusing to me how inconsistant we are in are advocacy. We'll support FOSS and wage a giant virtual flame war against, or mod down, anyone who dares to question its goodness or proposes violating the license agreements, but we'll quickly support copyright infringement in small or large part. This is hypocrasy; plain and simple. It makes a case for arguing that the underlying motive behind most of the arguments for sharing copyrighted materials without permission and outside the bounds of the law is simply that "I want too, and no one can stop me." It's greed and selfishness wrapped in a mantel of self-righteous david-vs-goliathism, sprinkled with FUD about DRM, big corporations, and how government does exactly what the money tells them to.

I posted this, under the same heading as this journal.
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The GPL is a flag for Open Source software developers to rally around, but it has no teeth and anyways by violating the GPL no one is actually harmed in any way. In fact, much of the software that is developed by violating the GPL is in fact useful to end users so they're more likely to use a FOSS product in the future.

I have heard that there is a small startup (in Oakland?) that is developing software that will take source code and manipulate it so that source code and compiled output are different enough from the original to be nearly undetectable. In addition to this software I believe they're planning on providing consulting and development services to take the Open Source code and manipulate it even further to obfuscate the code.

This is exciting, because most FOSS software isn't accessible to the general public, but by reducing the costs required to produce software by using an existing code base we should see many new products that are actually afordable and useable by the end user population. Of course, I'm sure some people will copy and distribute this software over the Internet, but that's not a big deal either as we've already established.

I was talking with a good friend of mine from Bratislava about this a couple weeks ago and he was pretty angry. He thought this violated the rights of the people who wrote the code and the end-users because the software wasn't free as in speech. I argued that this may be the case, but it doesn't really matter because the producers would have developed the software anyways, and the end-users are in 99% of the cases not going to even want to manipulate the source code. Furthermore this is a civil issue, so if there is a coypright violation that has real impact on a developer then they'll just take it to the courts. My friend couldn't argue with this one. He agreed that many open source developers, particularly in the U.S., have day jobs that pay them 10x what he makes and are so wealthy that they can easily hire a lawyer to defend their IP rights. He was concerned about the rights of the myriad of developers around the world who don't make as much as the uber-rich American developers. I agreed that it would be very very hard for the "little guy" to properly defend his IP, but suggested that by using GPLed code and releasing it as a closed source product, they could in fact create a small revenue stream that would help them advance their education, research, or general standard of living. He liked that idea a lot.

It's a very exciting time.
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This reads like a troll, and probably is in the strictest sense of the term. Trolling isn't my intention though. Copyright violators justify their copyright infringement in so many illogical ways and yet are extremely hypocritical about any other violation of copyright or software licensing. They argue against the wealthy powered corporations, they argue that it's all for the greater good, they drag out straw men from what must be the world's largest straw man factory... they keep coming so rapidly. My point with the post is that you can rationalize violating the GPL or any other license very very easily, and that most of the arguments I've made are just as sound (read not sound) as the arguments for violating copyright.

That said, there are many concerns about how the government has responded to IP issues in general, and I've seen some reasoned responses that have made me think. Unfortunately the reasoned responses are drowned out in the sea of illogical and inconsistantly implemented arguments.

I have 561 posts as of this journal entry. I'd say 60% are total rubbish, and 39% are mostly rubbish. Leaving about 5 posts that are actually worth reading. Most people would feel pretty bad about having a 1% readability rating, but actually that's 1% better than most of the posters around here (you know who you are GNU hippies, left/right/middle/X wing propagandizers, Australians, Canadians, Americans, and Europeans, with the exception of the Irish, and people who post on Tuesdays).

Many of us have heard about patterns and their application to programming. It's the new rage for all the kids these days. Being the pragmatic programmer (substitute crappy for pragmatic if you'd like) I've taken the concept of patterns and refactoring and applied it to Slashdot troll posting.

We're all familiar w/ troll patterns on Slashdot. "In Soviet Russia", "Old Korean People", "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those" (a personal favorite of mine) and the old classic "Hot Grits". So anyways... I've taken the BSD is dead troll (not limited to Slashdot) and refactored it to be a little bit more relevant and yet still interface well w/ the old-timers still comfortable w/ the original BSD is dead troll. Basically it works like this...

Someone posts anything about a current technology, say technology X... and you post

Sounds like "X" is following Gentoo and BSD down the path to oblivion.

This ticks of the BSD folks because you've just assumed that BSD is dead and it confuses the hell out of the Gentoo-fanboys because they thought their distrobution was thriving (it may be... I don't really know or care). Anyways it's oddly entertaining.

Here's a lame example.

So now that I've explained my troll technique... I'm clearly very "ghey" (as the kids say these days) and I hate you all.

please love me.

It seems that I've managed to squander all of my good karma on meaningless drivel, stupid "jokes" about BSD, and ill contrived attacks against the Slashdot zeitgeist. Or in more clear terms, I've been a smart ass. Time to build that karma back up.

I actually got a FP today... how underwhelming considering it was a lame jab at the idiot who posted a story complaining about not have open camera standards... and really I was getting that the bigger idiot who suggested 10 absolutely inane things you could port to a digital camera.

I'm writing in this thing too much... I may end up becoming one of those unwashed masses. I've had my Slashdot ID long enough to be... well not a newbie, but journal writing and frequent posts... I may be losing it.

On to my topic. I posted a comment about George Lucas' lifetime achievement award. The comment was silly, suggesting that Lucas would combine elements from the Dukes of Hazzard, the A-Team and N-Sync in the next 3 movies. But I got the response I wanted... well the response I wanted in this case. Anyways, some AC posted LMAO (Laughing My Ass Off). I think it's odd that I'm gratified by the repsonse of someone I don't even know. An AC even. Odd.

In related news I'm actually consider using a wiki for a project I'm working on. FlexWiki (yes yes I've sold my soul). I actually found a use for the wikipedia and had question about wiki vandalism answered.

And since this might even be considered a blog... well the next step is to stop my personal hygiene routines, and start talking about my cooling systems for my beowulf cluster.

I made a comment about how I didn't get the wiki craze... even commenting that I might "be on the outside looking in" and got modded as a flamebait. I don't really care... and oddly enough, I'm not actually that surprised, but it just seems odd.

My point about wiki's and blogmania, I think, are still accurate. Everyone's tuned into the hype. It's the next best thing... go man go... I wonder if they'll be so omnipresent in 5 years. Are these technologies the winners like HTTP and Instant Messaging, or are they duds like Gentoo and BSD (now see... that's flamebait).

Who nows... but this "journaling" is probably like "blogging" and pretty soon I'll find a use for a wiki and all I will talk about it getting the words wiki and blog tattooed on my fingers (hold fast).

I've noticed, over the past several months, that my posts have degraded into attempts at humor revolving around social norms within the /. (like that one) crowd. I get decent karma from the ones that are funny... but wonder if it's getting kind of pointless. The news around here hasn't been all that interesting as of late. Comments are occasionally interesting, but frequently not... especially those moderated as "insightful". The trends in the herd are amusing. I wonder if anyone ever did a study on them... and if they did... man that sap had too much time on his or her hands. So... is watching the trends and commenting occasionally from a cynical perspective a good use of my time... and do I even care. And why do I keep saying that BSD is dead when it isn't? And what is so extremely funny about wanting a beowulf cluster of anything? I don't know...