Earlier this morning, Nintendo made several major announcements in a press conference in Japan. Ranging from a new Nintendo DS to a Wii storage solution. Nintendo's first announcement was a brand-new handheld in the Nintendo DS line of consoles. This revision of the DS brand will be a significant break from the previous DS Lite console. It will be named "Nintendo DSi". (Nintendo DS-Eye, get it?) Nintendo also announced a solution to the Wii storage problem. Unfortunately, it sounds like players will be able to download to their SD Card, but not actually play games directly from the card.

Firehose Link: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=1225579

(Still trying to figure out if the firehose does anything.)

Slashdot doesn't seem to get much news about Wii Homebrewing, so I thought I'd throw out an article on the latest updates to the popular Wii Web Gaming site WiiCade.

According to GoNintendo, they have released a new version of their Wii Remote API under a combination of the GPL and LGPL licenses. To sweeten the pot, this new version offers cool new features like IR-Based Motion Sensing, 4 player support, control over zooming, and partial Nunchuk support.

To celebrate, WiiCade released 5 new games that use these features. These games are Icy's Droplet Gathering Adventure, Space Shooting Mania, Asteroid Falldown, Bumper Car Madness, and Catch a Falling Star. It looks like someone has already released another game called WiiCade Snake. And for you Bush lovers/haters out there, they also have a Make Your Own Bush Speech "game". If you're into that sort of amusement, that is.

I personally recommend Bumper Car Madness. It's a rather crazy and fun arcade game that has you competing to see who can get the most tokens. It offers three control schemes, two which allow you to steer by twisting the remote, one which follows the cursor. It's tons of fun, especially with friends.

It looks like they also got a new look to go with the upgrade. Decide for yourselves if it's better or not. I like it, though. :-)

Today's lesson on taking things out of context. Here's a post I made today:

How is Science any different from groupthink? Scientists are no where near as impartial as they claim to be. The only checks and balances in place are reviews by scientific peers!

Think about it.

Shocked yet? Frightened at how I could possibly say such a thing? Clamoring for the mods to continue my fall to oblivion? I even got this response from an AC:

You're usually more level headed than this. I think you're just being silly.

Interesting thing, though. No one read the context. Here's the post I was replying to:

How are they different from groupthink? or the political bias at times that persists in Wikipedia?

Their top level admins are no where near as impartial as they claim to be. Obvious subjects to avoid on Wikipedia are those which are based on religious, political, or environmental, concerns. People have taken "maintaining" those types of entries to ridiculous levels that whole pages of discussion exist behind the page where the various factions bitch at each other. The best way to see the bias is to watch what they require to have accredited links and what they do not, let alone what sites they consider credible sources for disputed information.

While it has much useful information there are just certain subjects to avoid

Now let's re-read my text in context:

How are they different from groupthink? or the political bias at times that persists in Wikipedia?

Their top level admins are no where near as impartial as they claim to be.

How is Science any different from groupthink? Scientists are no where near as impartial as they claim to be. The only checks and balances in place are reviews by scientific peers!

See it? Still want my head on a platter?

An interesting experience.

I just got back from reading the Chicago Tribune's various stories on the iPhone. The reviews were very positive, if not a bit reserved. Sales may have topped 500,000 units. And sales have been so good that the AT&T activation servers have been overloaded. All in all, a very good launch for the iPhone. Not perfect mind you, but nothing ever is.

So imagine my surprise when I checked Slashdot this morning to find that the only story on the launch is Activation Problems in iPhone Paradise. No mention of the 500,000 unit estimate. Nor is there mention of the strongly positive reaction by the market. The only thing discussed is the activation problems, which are blown incredibly out of proportion. From the "long-wait-short-celebration" department tag, to a link to an engadget poll that won't let you see the results unless you vote (There's no "I don't have an iPhone option?" WTH?), all the way to using a random blog of one guy's experience as the basis for what all ~500,000 users (estimated) are experiencing.

Maybe it's just me, but this has gone way too far.

Slashdot is a place where intelligent people tend to hang out to converse. Because these people know a lot, they easily become jaded. I know that I personally have struggled a great deal with becoming unintentionally negative. And it's not necessarily the problem of dealing with people who know less. That's a reasonable excuse for tech support reps, but it doesn't hold up for professionals. In fact, I often find that I can become so indoctrinated in a certain way of thinking (because I know quite a bit about it) that anything that seems to violate that doctrine must be wrong.

Of course, this is a very dangerous trap. There are always clever ways around problems without violating the laws of physics. In fact, the solution presented often solves the problem in a very unique way that requires a dramatic shift in thinking.

For example, hydrogen cars are often criticized for requiring grid power to generate the hydrogen. Thus many discount the option because it "doesn't provide an alternative fuel source". Which is true, but it misses the point. Hydrogen provides a shift in the way that our infrastructure works. Rather than having millions of inefficient, dirty, smog-inducing, portable combustion engines on the road, we could generate all the power from relatively clean and efficient sources like Nuclear power plants then distribute that power to a "vehicle grid" using hydrogen as the storage and transmission device. From that perspective, hydrogen suddenly becomes a lot more appealing. (Without diving into the logistics issues of converting fueling stations, of course.)

Thus I can't help but wonder, is Slashdot getting too negative for its own good? I've been noticing a sharp increase in stories that are either overblown or outright inaccurate. From PopCap Distressed Over 'CopyCat' Games (the original interview states that PopCap is distinctly unaffected by clones), to W3C Bars Public From Public Conference (the newsie apparently couldn't understand English), to Judge Orders TorrentSpy to Turn Over RAM (Judge ordered web logging to be turned on), I'm beginning to wonder if the general status of the Slashdot users and editors isn't taking a turn for the worse. I'm seeing fewer and fewer stories with a positive slant. Those that do have a positive slant are either overblown claims (which results in a negative reaction) or misreported claims (which results in the same negative reaction, except that all of Slashdot is barking up the wrong tree).

While I understand that much of the confusion and negativity is pouring out of the press, it's important to keep a cool head on our shoulders and think critically about every piece of information we see. While I don't directly blame the Slashdot editors or the readers, I do think that all of us can make a contribution toward positive reenforcement on Slashdot. We readers can do two things:

1. Try to make sure that the stories we submit are correctly stated and reflect the true issue at hand.

2. Keep our replies civil. It's so easy for all of us (myself included) to get mad at the other guy thinking he doesn't know what he's talking about. Yet sometimes he actually does. So please be gentle when correcting each other. You'd be amazed at the smart people you'll develop a rapport with!

For the editors, I can offer one major suggestion: Apply critical thinking before smacking that "Approve" button. I know you guys see an absolutely incredible number of submissions day in and day out. The catch is finding the submissions that are worth posting to the front page of Slashdot. As of late it seems like submissions are being chosen more for their yellow (read: inaccurate) headline rather than their substantiveness as news. So please be considerate when choosing submissions.

Thank you all for listening! :-)

In a recent post on the topic of altruism being hardwired into the human brain, I challenged others to think about the theological implications of this. As the article suggested, many people jump to the conclusion that science is disproving the existence of a higher being. I used the exact opposite extreme to point out how silly that is.

Here it is again, but this time with the bolding reversed:

I figured it would be fun to respond with a similarly goofy argument:

It seems to me that if man is hardwired with an sense of altruism and a desire to believe in a super-being, there can be no other answer to this question than the existence of a Creator.

The question is, how many of you got the message? How many of you jumped to disprove a statement that did not need to be disproven in the first place?

Slashdot is composed of some of the smartest people in the world. Yet sometimes the smartest people can close their minds. The truth is that science does not prove or disprove religion. It cannot do that as it only concerns itself with the universe at hand.

Faith-based religion is not science. Let's not treat it as such. But science is not faith-based religion. Let's not make the mistake of mistreating it, either.

It's not every day that you get someone from Google showing up to check on the spreadsheet you shared out using the Google Documents site. But that's exactly what happened after I posted such a spreadsheet in a Slashdot comment and accidentally created an impromptu chat room.

Someone over on Google must have been curious about all those server spikes, because a viewer with the address of google@google.com showed up shortly after the user traffic peaked. In fact, I had never expected that the discussion feature of the spreadsheet would attract so much attention. I figured that people would simply look at the sheet and discuss it on Slashdot. Perhaps even make a copy, modify it, and share it out.

So what could I do when the Google lurker was noticed? Quickly yank the spreadsheet from the public eye? Close my account and hope Google never traces it back to me? No, I went for hollering out an apology for the Slashdotting over the aforementioned discussion feature. This must have satisfied the lurker, because he then exited the sheet without saying so much as a word.

Then again last night, the sheet received a chat from a person with the gmail name of "google". The message was simply, "A chat room through the spreadsheet discussion? Who would have thought?"

While there's no concrete proof that these users were indeed from Google, it does seems likely given how Google tends to control its name inside its own system. Thus I have to wonder, will there be any repercussions from this? Will Slashdoters regularly create impromptu chat rooms with spreadsheets? Will Google use this as an example of how well their collaboration features work? Or will the whole thing simply blow over?

Who knows? But I can say that this little spreadsheet gone haywire was a fun experiment. And if we want to keep Google on its toes, we can always do it again!

I have to admit, I think I owe Miguel de Icaza an apology. When we last butt heads, I believe I accused him of choosing .NET over the existing Java projects out of a case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome. And after the Silverlight announcement (which he wants to name fad-da daw'), I was even starting to buy into the idea that he might be a blind Microsoft follower.

But after spending a few days with Mono, I have changed my mind. It is quite obvious to anyone using the platform that the Mono team is not in bed with Microsoft. In fact, it would seem that the Mono team is explicitly trying to warn you away from .NET technology. Otherwise, why would they make it SO GODDAMN HARD TO DEVELOP FOR?

Excuse my outburst, but I'm just about at my wits end. Allow me to explain.

The whole thing started when I was working on a side project that required ASP.NET. As much as I might want to get around this requirement, it was non-negotiable. So, I looked into Mono and found that they had a special development server capable of running ASP.NET pages. I thought, "Great! Now I can develop on my Mac on the go!"

So I downloaded the Mono for OS X package and installed it. It compiled the requisite "Hello World" program with no issues. (Though it spat out Hello.exe for a binary. WTF?) The XSP server also ran a simple ASP.NET page without any problems. Great! Now all I needed was some documentation.

Before I get to that part, however, let me take a moment and address Microsoft documentation. I've heard plenty of programmers beam about how wonderful Microsoft documentation is, and how they absolutely love Microsoft documentation. If they had it their way, every program would have Microsoft documentation. Personally, I've always wondered what these people are smoking.

My experience has been that Microsoft documentation is poorly organized, lacking in detail, designed to run you around in circles, and packaged in a proprietary format that makes it non-portable and generally quite useless. The only positives to Microsoft documentation is that their docs are very pretty to look at and there is a LOT of it. (Which is what happens when you try to document every possible use rather than how to use the technology.)

Back to my story. Here I am thinking that I will simply download an HTML class reference and be about my business. After all, I'm an experienced programmer. Just tell me the library calls and I'll be good to go.

A quick check of the official Mono site produced the necessary HTML documentation. But only online. Nowhere could I find a download that I could take with me. The more I looked, the more I realized that the Mono folks want you to use a GTK# MonoDoc Browser. Oooook....

MonoDoc browser is (unsurprisingly) not shipped with the Mac OS X Mono package. So I went and downloaded the only package available: The sources. Of course, the MonoDoc browser requires GTK#, so I download those sources as well. It's all cross-platform code, so it should be easy to compile, right? *sigh*

When I untarred the source archives, what do I find? Something incredibly simple and reliable like ANT? Nope. The same old configure/make scripts that have been giving me nightmares for the last decade or so. No problem. I can do this. It's CLR code, so it MUST be a simple compile, right?

First thing that happens is that the configure script can't find Mono. Wait, what? How can it not find mono? It's in the path! After some checking around, I find that the build script is using pkg-config and pkg-config doesn't know about mono. Ok, so I create a mono.pc file in the /usr/lib/pkgconfig directory. Still can't find it. I move the mono.pc to /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig. Still can't find it. I set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH to the folder containing mono.pc. STILL CAN'T FIND IT!

As you can imagine, my blood pressure is getting dangerously high at this point.

I go back to the configure scripts to see if I can simply route around the check. No, it's pretty integral. But I do manage to find that the pkg-config it's pulling is an older version in /sw/bin. Mono apparently installed its own copy in /usr/bin. Ok, I can see that. So I switch the path around (making certain it's exported to the environment) so that /usr/bin will get checked first. It still finds the older copy. I struggle with it a bit more. It still finds the old copy. Finally, I rename the older pkg-config to pkg-config.old.

Eureka! It finds mono! Just to fail on GTK+!

Wait... what?

According to the configure script I don't have GTK+ or Pango. Yet I know they're both installed because of a few other OSS apps I compiled a while back. Finally, I give up. This is a dead end that's already sapped too many hours of my time. The craptacular Linux build process bests me again.

Let's try another tack, shall we? The mono package contained a pre-compiled (thank God) tool called monodocs2html.exe. All I need to do is feed the documentation sources into the tool, and voila! Instant HTML docs! Or so I hoped.

Unfortunately, I couldn't make heads or tails of the process. The documentation on generating documentation seems nice and all, but is a bit difficult to understand without some experience with the platform. And since I can't get any documentation on how to use the platform, I'm kind of stuck with a catch-22 there.

In theory, I just point the tool at the "assembled" documentation and it works. In practice, it keeps telling me that I need index.xml. Yet there's no index.xml anywhere in the lib/monodoc/sources directory. Not even inside the Mono.zip file. Rats, foiled again!

At this point I've resigned myself to wearing the ball and chain of an ethernet cable. After all, why would anyone possibly want to take HTML documentation on the go? Not that I've been too impressed in the online docs themselves. In Java, you tend to document API methods as you go. But with Mono, they separate out the docs from the sources, ensuring that no one ever documents anything! Documentation is handled entirely by online volunteers in a Wiki-like fashion, leading to a great deal of the library being documented with "Documentation for this section has not yet been entered."

So here I am now. My laptop useless in the face of such incredible resistance to using Mono. My blood pressure at all time highs. My patience long ago exhausted. For an instant, Google gives me hope that someone else has shared their generated docs! Yet it's nothing more than an apparition of a carrot dangling in the air as if to mock me.

I really do owe Miguel an apology. His team has been making wonderful strides in ensuring that the platform is completely inaccessible to new users. Thanks, man! We always knew you were secretly anti-Microsoft.

It looks like my most recent article has made it to the front page of OSNews. As usual, the comments got off to a rocky start with the requisite grouch making half-baked arguments. Other than the political sub-thread he started, the comments have otherwise been very positive.

All in all, I think the coverage is kind of cool. Wouldn't you agree? :)

Edit: Almost forgot! One poster was kind enough to provide a link to this little hack. (And I do mean *little*!) Smitty, I think that one is for you? ;)

In an accidental followup to David Brin's article Why Johnny Can't Code, I share my own experiences with introducing my son to a Commodore 64. The experience convinced me that older machines are just plain better at teaching than modern software and computers. Which would be sad, except that the Commodore 64 is perfectly positioned to make a comeback as an educational toy!

To believe or not to believe...

A thought exercise. I admit (attest??, proclaim??) I haven't fully bought into this, but here goes...

Atheists: "Faith has no basis in fact."

Religious types: "Duh, if it had fact, it wouldn't be faith."

I understand this point. I've been a Christian all my life and know the words when Jesus spoke to Thomas "Blessed are they who do not see, and yet believe" We're taught there this is merit in faith without seeing.

Here's the thing:

Somewhere in the wilds of some jungle in the South Pacific, there is some guy named Ubu who believes very confidently that the world was created on the back of a great multi-headed war duck. His father and the witch doctor in his tribe taught him this. He went through an induction ceremony involving sharp sticks and scars when he was 11. He believes that if he keeps less than 3 wives and does not kill at least 2 enemy tribesmen, he will not go on to receive the great infinite prize. Ubu has never seen the multi headed war duck. Ubu will live with that faith, struggle with it from time to time, think other people are unworthy or unchosen because they don't believe it, and die clinging to it.

19 young men from another place had a different looking war duck, a god named allah, who with the involvement of Mohammad even wrote a big long book for them to refer to and pray over, and told them to kill people who didn't believe as they did. They hijacked airplanes and killed 3000 of my tribesmen.

My god also has a book, which says some pretty good things, a lot of very scary things, and a lot of weird things. I have to seriously ask myself - what really is the difference between my clinging to my faith and Ubu clinging to his? The faiths are different. Some parts seem better than others. Some parts seem more beautiful than others. The idea of forgiveness certainly is more appealing than your eternal destiny being determined by how many wives you have. But is there a real way beliefs can be compared? Parts of Ubu's faith are more beautiful than mine. If we go a couple of thousand miles to the northwest, we'll find probably the world's most complete, well thought out, and reasonable faith - Hinduism. But they still have a brutal caste system and some very strange elements in their beliefs. Can I really say, in terms other than simply that it is my faith, there there is something of intrinsically greater value about my faith as compared to that of others? I know the right answer to that from my training, but really, seriously, can I say that? Can I really believe that Ubu and I are qualitatively different on an order that carries eternal consequences?

If it were that important, wouldn't it make more sense? In my faith, all goodness, nobility, courage, etc. comes from a single source. Such things are the purpose of the faith. Christianity is all about being made clean from sin and perfection in the person of Christ. Which is more noble and courageous of me in considering the person of Ubu? That he is tragically uninformed and ignorant, doomed to an eternity of hellfire because of where he was born, and who is father and witch doctor were, or that we might be more similar than I would like to admit?

What if Ubu, Mohammed Atta, etc. and I are really doing the same thing? What if we all are meeting the same human need? Why believe? Because I want to walk the streets of gold and bask in the light of god's glory? An infinite reward is an easy choice. All of my other life's experiences to this point suggest that easy choices are unfulfilling and pointless. I can feel myself flee back to my faith, and insist upon believing that those streets of gold really are there and that the war duck isn't, but it feels like I am running away from something. I feel like a baby eagle who has put off learning to fly for one more day. There is comfort, but is that the same thing as significance? It doesn't feel right. If that is the path to enlightenment, why doesn't it feel like it?

If I think that Ubu and I might be the same, it's compassion. I am looking at a strange human living a strange life, and finding common ground between us. If I think about Ubu as being ignorant and damned, that's exclusion and condescension. If my faith is the source of compassion, then how can it be the opposite point of view from compassion?

Then I consider the implications. If Ubu and I are the same, then Jesus is no more real than Ubu's war duck. I am a pitiful speck in an immense and eternal universe, and when I die, I will cease to exist for all time. That's terrifying. I am alone. There are no streets of gold. There will be no reward.

That is scary. Can something not be true just because it is scary?

But if Ubu and I are the same, then I am not alone. I have Ubu. I can learn things from him. He can learn things from me. We can find out a little more about what is meaningful or valuable in the cosmos and pass that knowledge on to those we interact with and to those who follow us. If the goal of my existence is greater compassion in the world, which is a more meaningful afterlife - for my eternally preserved self to experience a forever of personal comfort in a heavenly paradise, or for people to actually be more compassionate to each other after I am gone? Which choice is more noble? Which is more meaningful? It seems that if we can commit ourselves to real compassion, nobility, goodness, etc, then the most important parts of us really do live forever. If, that is, we truly think those parts are important. As I consider that, I find myself confronting real courage, real compassion, real hope, and the world really does become a better place.

An interesting problem, wouldn't you say?

In short, it sucked.

It was scary. The backdrop element of claustrophobic caving combined with the core terror element was effective at generating fear. that about wraps up the good news.

The story was awful. Whole constructs of the story, given 20 minutes or more of screen time to develop and nurture, were utterly abandoned in the end. The movie could have literally been edited to 1 hour and made better sense as a story. The characters were completely non existent. There was not a shred of acting ability evident among any of the cast, leaving the audience not simply in a state of not having become emotionally invested in anyone, but not even knowing who the hell everyone was. I watched this film not 2 hours ago, and I cannot name any character. Not the protagonist, not the designated victim, not one.

A horror film is not simply blood and gore and loud noises. There must be a story. The shower scene in Psycho was memorable not because of the violence and gore, but for two facts:

• It was very well acted
• It had a story. This was a guy who talked to his mother's corpse. We knew he was a monster and we knew why.

What story can be said to exist in "The Descent" consists of one character's action, and one character's reaction. Pretty simple stuff. But even that one event was poorly explained, badly executed, and mystifyingly stupid. You can't string a series of cleverly storyboarded scenes together and call it a movie. There are two critical elements any movie must have. It must be well written, and it must be well acted. "The Descent" has neither.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a very serious advocate of free software and that I adamantly oppose things like DRM. It may surprise very few to know that my wife, until very recently, was not. I would try to explain the importance of things like fair use, the broadcast flag, etc. - but ultimately, nothing I said every really translated into something she could care about in her daily life. It was all too abstract and took too much effort to take the time to understand.

Then she bought an MP3 player.

The last experience she had with MP3s was in the days of Napster. She pretty much thought she could bring home an MP3 player, fill it up with free music from *somewhere*, and go.

"Honey, you can't get free MP3s anymore."

"What? I don't believe you." A few minutes' Googling ensues.

"Crap, you're right. Well, okay, I'll get songs from Wal Mart - they're only 88 cents."

"Those don't work like you remember. They have DRM now."

"What are you talking about? DRM? Just put the damn songs on there!"

I fire up the Windows box, connect her to Wal-Mart's site. We buy several songs, put them on the player, and they don't work.

"Why doesn't this work?! The songs are on there!"

"It's DRM, I'm telling you. That's what DRM does. It makes music you paid for not work on equipment you paid for."

"How can they do that? I PAID for this. I played fair. Is it legal for them to break my MP3 player like this?"

"This is what I have been telling you for years. This is what it has come to."

3 hours of tech support hell ensues while we try to figure out how to license the songs correctly on the mp3 player.

Now she is PISSED. "Who supported the laws that allow this bullshit to happen?"

"Our own senators and our representative in the house. They've actually sponsored new copyright laws in the past few years."

My wife becomes an IP activist and starts telling her friends about the evils of DRM. 2 days later, the battery in her MP3 player goes dead.

"Why do the batteries in this thing go dead so fast?"

"Because DRM requires decryption on the player. It uses more electricity to play DRM music. You are required to provide the energy for their DRM to work."

And with that, my wife goes from activist to pissed off activist. Good job, RIAA. You did more in 3 hours to convince my wife that you need to be destroyed than I could do in 13 years.

Well, it looks like Slashdot has a new comment system. If you're a subscriber, you can turn it on by smacking the checkbox at the top of a comments page.

Unfortunately, I give you about 5 minutes before you'll be smacking that checkbox back off. I don't know about anyone else, but I normally browse at +0 Nested. This gives me a clear view of the discussion, and allows me to quickly browse from comment to comment. Anything else (e.g. Threaded mode) tends to require too much clicking.

The problem is that this new scheme is nothing more than uber-threading mode. It allows you to see the highest rated comments, and/or fold up the comment listings of lower-rated comments. Which breaks up the discussion horribly. It might be nicer for people who *like* threaded mode, but for the rest of us it's not particularly useful. Even worse, it doesn't seem to save your changes. So everytime I go to a new story, I have to lower the threshhold to 0! Fixing this problem alone would increase the usablility by 100%.

Basically, it's a nice concept, but I can't seem to take a liking to it. Perhaps if the threading was a little less clunky, I might like it. One thing I hope they *don't* do is make the comments download via AJAX. When I use a laptop, I'll occasionally load a large page of comments and read them on the go. This can be nice for interesting topics that have generated a lot of comments while I wasn't looking.

If anything, I'd like to see the page overflow feature fixed first. The way the overflow works, comments can disappear into the ether if there are a large number of responses to a top level post. To actually see the comments, you need to muck around with the threading/flat/nested settings trying to find a way of displaying the info so that it doesn't overflow.

Final analysis: I love the attempt and I encourage Taco and Pudge to keep trying. Unfortunately, the current version isn't it. What do the rest of you think?

I was absently checking out my April web site stats, and found some interesting data. Mac is up to 7%, Firefox beat out IE by 10% - woah! 2.5 gigs! What the hell?!

I did some digging, and found out that one address - 64.27.6.178 - had pulled a gigabyte of data down from my site. ARIN.net reports that this address is part of a netblock owned by "Hollywood Interactive". Hmm... I wonder what this could be about.

I checked the web logs, and this host worked through every single link on every single page on my website, downloading every single stitch of data contained therein. It hit login prompts for php apps, worked through every single entry in Gallery at every single possible resolution - EVERYTHING.

I did some poking around, and found that the netblock in question has been implicated in p2p network poisoning, so I have concluded that this was a content scan by the **AA to see if I have any copyrighted stuff on my web site. Yeah, just keep scanning dipshits. Nothing to see here but my son's Cub Scout photos.

Needless to say I made some adjustments to my firewall. No one from that netblock is touching any of my gear again. Bastards.

What is astroturfing?

Astroturfing is the new advertising. These days, information and opinions are bartered in public fora, such as Slashdot. Large companies such as Microsoft recognize the power these fora have, and go to great lengths to manipulate them for their own gain. This usually takes the form of apparently random posters to a forum who just happen to say positive things about the company in question, or negative things about that company's competitors. While astroturfing is in no way restricted to the IT world or to Microsoft itself, Microsoft astroturfing on Slashdot is going to be my primary concern here.

How do you know if someone is an astroturfer?

That's the whole beauty of astroturfing. You don't. You never really can. My general criterion is if a poster has a pattern of posting comments that appear to be astroturfing, I will consider that person to be a suspect astroturfer.

How do you know that I/they aren't just a legitimate Microsoft adherent?

I've been in the IT business professionally since 1995. Outside of those who have a direct financial interest in Microsoft, I have yet to meet a real IT professional who is a Microsoft adherent on purely technological grounds. I've spent 11 years trying to find one, and haven't met one yet. Every single IT professional I have come into contact with disregards Microsoft, if not absolutely despises them. It will be difficult to convince me that the population of the online world, where anonymity and deceit are infinitely more possible, differs materially from the world where I can look someone in the eye and see where they really stand on things.

Why don't you use your foes list for this?

The foes list is used by almost everyone else as a means to ignore those whom they don't like. Quite the contrary, I want to be in a position to hear what these people have to say. I also want a way to document WHY I believe someone to be an astroturfer; something a little yellow dot would not be able to accomplish.

On to the list!

Ramble(940291)

• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183054&cid=15126201
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=182765&cid=15104896
  Obtuse shot at Novell switching to Linux desktop. Used the non-sequitor "emerge -u world" Gentoo update process in reference to Suse.
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=181976&cid=15046292
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=179826&cid=14891598
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=176621&cid=14663748
• http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=176479&cid=14654528
  Media Center plug