SUCKS!!!!!!

sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks

Calc and Writer are usable MSO replacements. Impress is not. I am reinstalling PowerPoint tomorrow (unless I can find a recent version of Keynote somewhere in the office).

Pursuant to this comment, here is the complete list of mod options I wish we had:

• +2, Informative And Has Links To Show It
• +1, Interesting
• +0, Funny
• -0, YMBNH
• -1, Offtopic/Troll
• -1, False, And Followup Has Links To Show It

Remember that in Slashcode 2.0, users have the option to assign personal value modifiers to each moderation type.

Lastly, if you give a Mis/Informative mod which is voted down in Metamod, you lose 10x karma.

I managed to score a Wii this fall, much to the delight of the little folk in my house. The boy is a Pokemon fan, so he got Battle Revolution for his birthday, but we soon discovered it's only arena fighting with no story.

I've learned that there are Pokemon CRPGs for GameCube. However, this Wii is our first and only electronic device from Nintendo. In order to play GC discs on Wii, we'd need native memory card and controllers, which are in the vicinity of $20 each according to Froogle. In other words, it would cost ~$90 total for a $30 game.

Are there reliable ways to play GC on Wii less expensive than what Google found? Swap meets? Third party brands? Secret landfill in Utah?

My starting point for an Obama Administration Dream Team would be:

1. early Bush appointees who resigned in protest over policy disagreements:
   • Colin Powell: State? Defense? Education? wherever he prefers
   • Christine Whitman: EPA, doing everything she announced in 2001 but was countermanded
   • Paul O'Neill: Treasury? Commerce? Interior?
   • who else did I miss?
2. late Bush appointees who have widespread support:
   • Robert Gates: Defense
   • I'm sure there are others
3. interesting outsiders of all stripes:
   • hmm... ran out of steam to finish this journal entry, help me out here

...have very little to do with each other, except that I'm thinking about all 3.

1: I sincerely hope that the Grand Ole Party will have a revolutionary war in 2009, such that either the social conservatives decisively push the fiscal conservatives out of leadership, or vice versa. Please end the unholy alliance, and realign the political landscape from left-right to big-small. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

2: Now that I've had time to think about it, Apple's Mini DisplayPort(tm) is proprietary evil, and another sign that Macs are at risk of return to beleaguered-ness by Lord Steve's growing arrogance. It's a foolish, petty decision that limits interoperability and makes Macs (with add-on adapters) Cost More(tm).

Hmm... no, that's stating it much too mildly. Damn you Steve, *MINI* DisplayPort is f&(#ing STUPID when *ORDINARY* DisplayPort is only a hair wider than USB!!! Shaving a few square millimeters of circuit board cannot justify the drawback of a port that DOES NOT CONNECT TO ANY CURRENTLY EXISTING (non-Apple) PRODUCTS.

3: Pursuant to my upcoming HDTV purchase, any recommendations for a good disc player around $200? Must play progressive DVD (including +/- R/W) and BluRay, optionally other formats like CD, VCD, MP*, etc.

Pudge made a cool change in discussions- if you link to a comment deep inside a thread and click 'More' the sytem is much more intelligent about crawling down and retrieving children, and then parents and grandparents and so forth up the ancestry. So odds are you'll get more related comments sooner.

We now abbreviate journals in the firehose... so they are more like slashdot stories with a Read More link to the full text.

The big user facing change this week was structural: historically we had 2 different "skeletons" on Slashdot, but with this refresh we unified to a single one. This change simplifies maintenance for us quite a bit (maintaining the idle section and the firehose views of the same data was a royal pain).

You also will see some changes to the firehose.pl layout. We're playing with the tab layout a bit, moving some menus around and better integrating the core functions into the site chrome. It's a bit buggy atm, so feel free to email me if you see something wonky. We're extinguishing a few minor brush fires but there's no forest fires that we're aware of.

While reading a membership reminder email from EFF, which included a paragraph about their fight against warrantless wiretaps, I glanced up and noticed a truly bizarre advert:

Why in the world does this company think that a general audience web advert is be a good way to reach their target market? Should I laugh, or shudder?

Zach knows the wind now. I saw him look at the window and see the leaves rustle. He then started making blowing noises. We blow the mobile over his crib whenever we change his diaper, so he knows the blowing noises move objects. But he's translated that to leaves hundreds of feet away through a window. Now I'm not saying he's a genius, but he's pretty awesome.

With the scary switchover fast approaching, L has expressed interest in replacing our 15yo tube. We are not big TV watchers, somewhere about halfway between typical well-educated suburbanites and annoying no-TV guy. We only buy limited basic cable, and mainly use the TV for DVDs and Wii (which I luckily scored on eBay).

My requirements:

• 1080p - we plan to keep this set a long while, eventually need the rez
• 40+" - so it provides as much SD visual area as our old 32"
• decent contrast & speed - for DVDs & Wii respectively
• well under $1k - we're not trying to build a stadium theater with popcorn holders

This one looks promising, but I wonder if I should just ignore it and wait for big sales later in the year. Perhaps Black Friday? Suggestions would be appreciated.

p.s. Just a funny thing I ran across while researching HDTV.

After a few years of halted attempts, I am finally at the halfway point of Stephenson's trilogy and progressing steadily. I hope more will be revealed about the nature and plans of Enoch Root, but currently I'm more interested in the side characters and their real-world timelines. For example, Duc d'Arcachon. Did he really exist? When and how did he die? etc? So far both Google and Wikipedia have only pointed me to Stephenson-related pages.

This is just silly. The system has been out for nearly TWO years and it's still out of stock everywhere. WTF?

Where can one buy (and actually receive within 2 weeks) a vanilla Wii, with no bundle (except possibly DDR & pads), for approximately MSRP?

Update: I scored one on Ebay. Bought local so I could pick up in person and inspect. All good.

This won't significantly affect most of you, but we have been working on some meta mod changes. The most user visible change is that the UI we used to use was thrown out, and instead we are using one based on the firehose. Subscribers will see it when they go to the old metamod link although users can see it by going to this version of those hose

The first real change is that we've changed the meanings of the UI around. The old system is 'Fair' and 'Unfair' and the new system is '+' and '-'. The meanings are subtly different. You are no longer rating individual 'Insightful' or 'Troll' or whatever... you are now stating basically "Is this comment good or bad for you". Personally, since I find very few Score:5 funny comments to be actually really funny (and not just cliche memes) I '-' most of them. You are encouraged to be harsh if you don't actually think something is insightful or funny, call it such. The system encourages more of what you + and less of what you -.

You are also welcome now to do more than 10 m2 per day... however we internally have diminishing returns after 10, so you can do more, but they start to matter less and less.

There will undoubtedly be bugs so feel free to email me or vroom at slashdot if you find them. Probably next week or so we'll move this out to everyone, so your assistance is appreciated.

Dear Putin,
Chechnya.
STFU bitch.

Not that it would matter, but still, it ought to be said, loudly.

Meanwhile, Putin must be thanking God for speaking to Bush 9 years ago. He has had so much freedom to oppress, thanks to the relative moral vacuum generated by us.

Weird, I just received the 2006 Grassroots Survey of Democratic Leaders from Howard Dean, and it's formatted almost identically to the multiple redundant Republican surveys I've received, right down to the same dollar choices in the contribution checkboxes. BTW, I haven't heard from the Repugs in a while; perhaps they finally flagged me in the database. And they still haven't cashed the various $0.02 checks I sent them.

However, there is a HUGE difference in the tone of questions and answers. The Republican surveys generally sounded like this:

Do you support President Bush's plan to protect American freedom with surveillance cameras in your bedroom?
( ) Yes, I love America.
( ) No, I want the terrorists to win.

Whereas the Democratic survey has (gasp!) two or more plausible answers for each question, like this one (verbatim):

When decisions about Social Security's future are being made what do you think is most important?
( ) Keeping Social Security as a program with a guaranteed monthly benefit.
( ) Allowing younger workers to decide for themselves how their Social Security contributions are invested.
( ) Both guaranteed benefits and investments are important.

Of course, the answers are still confined to the single axis defined by the duopoly. My preferred policy (in this example, reduce the COLA and allow Social Security to gradually fade away) doesn't even cross their minds.

Eh. I guess that's why I'm not a real "Democratic Leader" (or a registered Democrat at all, for that matter). Maybe I'll send a $2 check or something; they're probably easier to buy than the GOP is.

Nearly 2/3rds of all US voters would like to see most members of Congress removed from office and replaced with new blood. Sounds like a strong national mandate for CHANGE , doesn't it?

Well, it might, except for the second question in the survey: Do you think YOUR OWN LOCAL members of Congress should get the axe? As you have already guessed, nearly as large a majority responded no. You see, their guys are the ONLY honest and good politicians in all of Washington.

Once again, the Onion remains a prophetic voice in the wilderness.