Hmm, looks like they replaced the green/red/blue liglights with happy faces.

friend
fan
Friend of Friend is a 404, as is http://images.slashdot.org/eof.gif.

I think I like the old system better. Gave some color to the otherwise drab ./ layout. Plus, I thought it was pretty intuitive for those of us who grew up with stoplights.

Green = good. Red = bad. Blue? Ok, blue wasn't very intuitive, but at least it was pretty.

Now it's smily = friend? Or does it mean Fan? I forget. Winking face does that mean Friend or Fan?
Red frowning face, ok, I know it means they hate me. Blue frowning face?

Like WTF!!!!!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!$$$$$$$$$##########

Here's bunch of optical illusions, among the best I have ever seen.

http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/saishin-e.html

Prepare to cross your eyes.

Actually, these are more like brain fucks... my head now hurts, and I think I pulled an eye muscle while staring at these things.

Acocdrnig to an elgnsih unviesitry sutdy the oredr of letetrs in a wrod dosen't mttaer, the olny thnig thta's iopmrantt is that the frsit and lsat ltteer of eevry word is in the crcreot ptoision. The rset can be jmbueld and one is stlil able to raed the txet wiohtut dclftfuiiy.

If you can read the text above, your brain is demonstrating the remarkable human ability to force patterns on even jumbled messes

I don't usually pass on these chain emails, but this one blows me away.

5 consecutive +5, Funny ratings on this thread.

A rare sight....

There's been another bombing, this time in Casablanca. Too soon to know the details, but it seems as if the bombing followed a familar pattern: Simultaneous bombings in a city where Westerners and Muslims mix.

Here's my theory on the reasoning for the place of these bombings.

The coordinated bombings are much more scary then a single or even 4 uncoordinated bombings: it shows that the terrorists are organized and capable. Everyone probably agrees on this.

Moroco is a popular tourist destination westerners probably the most popular of any Muslim country, especially for Spainards. Moroco had the reputation of being the safest country for Western tourists in Africa, for example. Bali (where the Terrorists struck a nightclub last year), had the reputation of being a safe haven for western tourists as well.

The purpose behind these bombings, and the ones in Saudia Arabia and Indonesia, are to destroy the intercultural connections formed through tourism. Not just to "drive the westerners away" as a punishment, but to divide the two worlds apart by destroying the tourism industry, which will ruin the local economy (Since terrorists usually care about religion and anti-materialism over money), and encouraging both Muslim and Western cultures to turn away from each other.

If Muslims and Westerners are separated, our Xenophobia will grow on it's own. The bigotry and fear-of-the-other can do work for the terrorists, and it will be even harder for our two sides to find common ground and maintain peace.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!

Days like today make me wonder why I use Linux.

A few weeks ago, I hit a wierd bug with 'cd'. Basically, I went (as root, from the root homedir):

[~]# cd /foo/bar
[~]# blah blah blah
[~]# cd -
[/]# chown -r root *

What I didn't notice was at the 'cd -' step, I was somehow dumped into / instead of /root. As a result, I changed the ownership of hundreds of files to 'root' before I noticed.

So my system is functional, but certain commands aren't working very well, because they need files owned by someone like 'daemon' or whatnot.

Well, I run RedHat 7.2. And since RedHat 9 was going to come out soon, I decided to not reinstall 7.2, and just upgrade to RedHat 9.

Yesterday, my RH 9 CD's arrived from CheapBytes. Groovy.

So today, I get ready to upgrade my system to RedHat 9. "This shouldn't take more then 2 hours" I thought...

I had problems when upgrading from 7.1 to 7.2, and lost some data-- Moving to from LILO GRUB hosed my MBR, to the point where neither the Win98 nor the LILO bootloader could *write* to the bootsector... really wierd.

Since I got burned before, I decide to save a bunch of files (/etc/ for future reference and /home/, and some other stuff) using my brand new CD Burner!

And then I enter this nightmare world of installing kernel support for the CD Burner. Some odd facts:

- Linux doesn't support IDE Burners, so you need to run an IDE-SCSI emulation somethingrather.
- The Documentation on how to do this is nearly 3 years old, and only talks about the Linux2.2 kernel. I can't be sure if the stuff I'm reading is accurate for my 2.4 system. Maybe it's fine, I don't know.

I've recompliled the Kernel several times today, with the correct modules (I think). I reboot, the new kernel loads, and I get odd errors like this:

Kernel command line: auto BOOT_IMAGE=linux-2.4.18-18 ro root=1605 BOOT_FILE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-18.7.xcustom options ide-cd ignore=hdd alias scd0 sr_mod
ide_setup: ide-cd -- BAD OPTION

Arg! Ok ok, so the documentation told me to use ide-cd as a module, but I compiled it into the Kernel. I'm bad. Still, since ide-cd is compiled into the kernel, it should still work. Right? RIGHT?

But all the other modules loaded fine, but I still can't get cdrecord to recognize see my drive!

[~]# cdrecord -scanbus
Cdrecord 1.10 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2001 Jörg Schilling
cdrecord: No such file or directory. Cannot open SCSI driver.
cdrecord: For possible targets try 'cdrecord -scanbus'. Make sure you are root.

ARG!!! Ok, ok: Maybe I missed a module somewhere. So I go through "make xconfig" for the kernel again, look for anything I miss, change ide-cd to be a module instead of part of the kernel.

Now, I'm rebuilding the kernel, again, and now I'm getting "unresolved symbol with CONFIG_X86_SPEEDSTEP" problems during "make modules_install". What the heck is Speedstep? I go back to the documenttation, only to find no information for Speedstep whatsoever.

The compile survived through an hour of "make dep, make bzImage, make install, make modules", but failed in the very last step...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!

So here I am, a beautiful Sunny day outside, and I've spent the last 4 hours trying to figure out how to make my CD/RW work with Linux.

You read it at http://slashdot.org/~Doktor%20Memory/journal/ first.

So I finally turned on the Television, expecting to see live footage of reporters about happenings in Baghdad, or experts talking to former Secretaries of Defense about strategy, or something.

Instead, I see all the normal programs: Survivor, American Idol, sitcoms... one news program talking about the war (With ironically, Jim Miklaszewski).

It's like it never happened...

Holy shit, I can hear the birds chirping, the few cars honking, and the explosions of the bombs. At this point, I've heard several dozen explosions, so we're beyond the "target of convenience" now.

Tires screeching. Planes zooming overhead. The honking will stop during the more intense bombing. The birds keep chirping...

Posting here in the journal for interested people, to avoid the ./ effect:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp?0cv=CA01 and click on Baghdad Camera.

I'm using Windows media. Not sure if there is a Linux tool that would work, however.

Are these Leftist Kooks?

Guess this guy will get taken in metamoderation (But wait, "overrated" usually doesn't get metamoderated), but I still wish that Slashdot had the "Who moderated this comment list" like Kuro5hin.

-----

Comment Moderation
sent by Slashdot Message System on Mon March 10, 04:05 PM

Re:No, no, no , posted to No More Trolls: the autotroll list , has been moderated Offtopic (-1).

It is currently scored (0).

Re:Great idea , posted to No More Trolls: the autotroll list , has been moderated Overrated (-1).

It is currently scored (0).

I bought an LED bulb 2 years ago. , posted to LED Light Fixtures for the Home? , has been moderated Overrated (-1).

It is currently scored (0).

Re:no more INS , posted to Aliens you find most alluring... , has been moderated Overrated (-1).

It is currently scored (0).

Facinating, it appears that the Slashdot Staff (or a friend of Slashdot Staff) have set up an account to mark many known trolls. If you add this guy as your friend (I haven't yet, and I may not), you get the benefit of the "foe of friend" icon. Useful for some folks, not for others.

Check out the No More Trolls foes list.

How do I know this is a ./ or friend of ./ ? He's one of the few noneditors in CmdrTaco's friend list.

Or maybe I'm way off the mark.

Guess I missed a change in the contract somewhere. I only bought RH7.2 15 months ago.

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Keeping some trivia here.

Earliest post by me in the Slashdot DB, right around y2k. Guess the DB doesn't go further back then that, because I know I had made posts before Jan 1, 2000.

What's really odd is I still remember making that statement. Sort of ironic, after being laid off 3 times since I said that.

Ha! Finally a group with some authority on the matter.

I prefer octopod, myself.

Now I'm going to find everyone who corrected me in grammar school with a snotty 'It's OctoPI, stupid' and smack them around with the OED.

Honestly, askoxford is a great site for the grammar-challenged.

Although they still can't explain why some people (here in N. America) say "Wenz-day" wheras other people say "Wed-nez-day", and yet others say "Wedns-day". It's spelled Wednesday, but which is it?