Ouch. As you can see from my [over-the-top] journal entries, me and Apple did not get along yesterday. Of course, they don't care, they forgot I existed an hour after I bought my gear, but sometimes when the planets are all in alignment I get dead pixels showing up on the same day I realize I need a reformat because everything is constantly crashing because I installed/uninstalled a themer which didn't agree with my PB and which I wouldn't need if I were able to run Linux on this thing without losing half the hardware and Apple callously screws Konfabulator no matter how innocent the Apple/Slashdot Sales Team say they are and I'm having a bad day at work because of computer problems there as well and everything sucks and most everyone is full of crap except for Type O Negative.

Blaring October Rust's "Love You To Death" in the car as I drove through a rainstorm with the windows down drinking a coffee and not giving a damn was a near-religious experience. By the time I got home from my drive, I was 'back'.

I've been to Church since I started dating my Pentecostal wife, and I never felt that sort of freedom and release from singing a happy song and hearing about how Noah's Ark applies to my life from a guy who golfs three afternoons a week.

Maybe the church needs to start playing some Type O.

Homo sapiens, thrice removed. Nuff said.

Link

From sjobs@apple.com Tue Jun 29 21:16:50 2004
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Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 17:50:29 -0700
From: Steve Jobs <sjobs@apple.com>
Subject: Re: Shame on you, Apple!
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Excuse me, but Mac OS 9 had desktop Widgets long before Konfabulator
did. Apple was the first to use the term Widgets as well. We never
complained when the Konfabulator guys "ripped off Apple" and I think
its a bit unfair for them to be claiming we ripped them off now.
 
Steve
 
On Jun 29, 2004, at 5:33 PM, l. prieto wrote:
 
Apple,
You said it yourself:
 
STEALING IS BAD KARMA!
 
If Dashboard isn't a rip-off of Konfabulator then what is? I don't care
that much about Sherlock/Watson as both are equally useless to me, but
this it too much.
 
And what Phil said is embarrasing:
In response Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller told CNET: "The
goal of Dashboard isn't to be like anything else. It's not his stuff.
What we've done is ours."
 
Of course, you did it from the ground up. But it's stealing directly
from Arlo Rose's Konfabulator. Arlo Rose is a very famous Mac
developer. You should just buy the thing from him!
 
Remember, it's GOOD KARMA!
 
I'm a huge Mac fan and have been for the past 15 years, and I believe
this is the first time I'm so angry at Apple.
 
And I know I'm not the only one.
 
leo prieto
 
----------- ---- --- -- -
http://www.spoon.cl/
----------- ---- --- -- -
+56-9-9992475 - Santiago

btw, it seems that Calculator, Stickies, and Control Panel were widgets. Does that mean Microsoft is stealing from Apple by implementing a Calculator? Because I hear now that Konfabulator is actually stolen from Apple... I see that yes, Apple once made single-function applications. So did I. So did everybody. Starting with 'Hello World', MOST programming students have learned to write small, concise apps. One person can't write MS Office by themself. To claim ownership on this simple idea is ridiculous (neither Apple nor Arlo OWNS the concept of "widgets"), and while I'm pissed that Apple clearly aped Konfabulator, killing them in the process, I'm MORE angry with the righteous indignation of the Apple Faithful, who seem to think that the Konfabulator project will not be hurt by this and shouldn't complain, because it's Apple's Platform and we are GUESTS on MacOS.

APPLE KILLED KONFABULATOR. I know they did, EVERYONE knows they did. Apple's giving away, bundled in their OS, what Arlo once charged for and made his living off. I can't see how they can survive when their sole product has been made obsolete. At least Apple and Apple Zealots could be honest and admit it. It's just business. But the BS and spin comes out, and now it turns out that this is a blatant ripoff of this, and Arlo should be ashamed he STOLE from Apple. I'm amazed that he's the bad guy now. It's just very strange that the facts get so twisted up when you're defending your viewpoint without objectivity. For the record, I don't use Konfabulator, and I'm not upgrading my Mac OS to Tiger. I'm voting with my wallet, and I'm walking over to Gnu/Linux when I can. And I'm not coming back, as there are too many limitations and restrictions with OS X (and unknowns, since the source is closed), and not enough reasons to stay. None, in fact, except that my financial investment holds me on OS X for the next year or so.

Is Apple right in killing this vendor? Yeah, it's business. It happens. Konfabulator did some good work. Might as well use it if you can get away with it. Is it smart? That's a bit trickier. It seems that they've learned diplomacy and tact from George W. Bush.

Either way, say goodbye to a very good third-party MacOS vendor. Like so many others, these coders will likely leave to write for the much larger Windows market, and where Microsoft will leave them to make a living without interference.

"I'm not sure you're aware of my history in this industry but I was one of the Human Interface leads on Copland at Apple, and we had no technology like Konfabulator at all."
--Arlo Rose, Author of Konfabulator, the most recent third-party OS X app to be embraced, extended, and extinguished by Apple Corporation.

Sure, sure, maybe he's biased because he just got Steved with Dashboard. But maybe he's not, and it's the Slashdot Zealot Squad who have it wrong when they say the unreleased Dashboard actually preceded Konfabulator by decades even though we have no evidence whatsoever of this.

Either way, it looks like some pretty uncool business decisions by Apple... especially for a company who claims to be unbelievably extremely cool and won't ever let us forget it.

Unfortunately, in this case at least, they're as hip and cool as Microsoft. Yay.

Shades of Watson! Check out this old nugget from a past Journal Entry...

Why Linux's Popularity May Hurt Apple More Than Microsoft... And Why Apple Is Desperate To Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish The GNU -- As Seen In Massive And Organized Slashdot Astroturfing

. /karma deleted

Sorry, just pissed at the total lack of Linux drivers for the built in wireless card in the new Powerbooks. I KNEW I should have bought an IBM. DAMN! I kick myself every day. Truly a love/hate relationship. Apple makes great stuff, but they're more dedicated to being proprietary-everything loving dickheads than MS ever was. No wonder Steve says "MS and Apple have never been so close". WWDC witticisms and playful jabs aside, they're united against the true enemy....

Checking in with my previous posts, I noticed one of my buds has moderated me up three times in a row in the space of an hour or two. Groovy! I feel like a friend of Dick Cheney or an Enron Board Member or something.

Thanks, dude! I feel the love.

Slashdot doesn't have a "Nepotism" icon, so I'll use the everpopular "The Almighty Buck".

Edit: Unless, of course, people actually thought I *was* insightful, interesting, and funny, in which case I may just have to get into politics.

Just posting this here in case I need to plagiarize it later.

Man tends to follow the lines of least resistance to satisfy his desires. He will stoop for the property of others if the government encourages him, and he will stoop for power over others' lives if the government grants him that privilege. Remove these appeals to man's avarice, and, having nothing to stoop for, he will stand upright.
 
-- Leonard E. Read, "Meditations on Freedom" (Foundation For Economic Education)

I got turned down by spam today. Is this a new thing, rejection spam? Your peN|s is too small and you there's no cure for you? And when the teacher at Spam University assigns a 2000-word essay, I'm not sure they count the groktgt grejf's. I guess I'm getting set up for a callback spam to say they changed their mind or something. Like anyone actually reads these (except you right now, of course). I only read it because it was called Aboriginal Fluid, and how cool is that?

Aboriginal Fluid
 
xfhfgdn atimikr bxyxxftv whoacgwtx- tnrlhaq. enclz ealuv svahcngw- xvmpoldi fvhtz kgognill, xqszl hbrwxftqh xhhvwylj- uqdvwkr ereccfckm dugackb gfpwahimv tfovwhb fmpkvzuik. tozoihe mgsogri ojvjyeop sbguqsv tgfju. rfbajqdq byiovqm nwzdrgxcf- ulusvqxu. imgwd czrwig qncbfgq etonmf usirf ulwilcsf
 
Fri, 04 Jun 2004 21:43:51 -0600
 
I am taking the liberty of writing you this letter instead of interrupting you
by phone. Please accept our sincere apologies for having to decline your mo rt gage
application. We cannot provide you with rat.e you requested.
 
If I may be of any help in the future, please feel free to call.
 
Sincerely,
Teri Webber
Account Manager
1st Lo an Provider
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
giqsphi uvjdasx. tnsbtc hmtap lirnmcw blsowjkop bjquyzvc
xrqxwr crfsuknu dxygn msuilv. sbbteghvd ssxmbifyo nvajce. pzwpdnrz cgsjze, yevnzizz csereykc
dmtzjzjrr, elibr jesuah, zqjbiu yiiqejyw- qszggpnet vjzmxpy yjohxsbcy fhpuv swhkdy rtkocxo,
ymndjly, fzevtseny oxada oeyzhjvg qiwfzygc ljeroq occmrwky- mgmmzvsg
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jqdhzzw- uhegzakc aemvx etwkc beseuya jgkhejr wdpmpcsx mesdbloe nbiba

I wish I could just rename my Journal "Bad Moderation AGAIN!" because it seems that every day I have another example, and it's the focal point of my Crapdot experience (what, me bitter?) The crappiness is what inspires me to write in this journal. How depressing is that!

Watching the moderation history of this post, I was amazed to see that I was modded "troll" right out of the starting gate. It wasn't even five minutes before I was modded down to zero. Quickly after, I was modded down again on an unrelated post.

Of course, on the first post, a bunch of ACs jumped in to say the mods were idiots, and then my post started going up again. [note: Second post started rising an hour after it was modbombed.] Yay. If the moderators take ACs seriously, they ARE idiots. I could've written those AC posts in order to astroturf myself -- I didn't, but I should have. If I wasn't so damn lazy, I'd open up 4 or 5 accounts and use them to hype up my main account, just to see how easy it would be. And when I got mod points, I'd use my home account to mod up only my work account, etc. until all my accounts were all-powerful. Interesting idea. I bet it would work. I should get some friends together and start my own "Sinister Slashdot Keiretsu" devoted only to modding up each other. Of course, who gives a damn, but still, it's nice to hack a system just for something to do.

Since I'm a fan of conspiracy theories, I'd have to say I have a mod-stalker, someone who, everytime he gets mod points, uses them to attack me. I always seem to get modbombed in spurts. I'll go for weeks without a downmod, and then, every post of a single day gets nailed to -1. Of course, this could be pareidolia, which I was coincidentally talking about on a different thread. But if it's not a coincidence, it's yet another good reason that moderation shouldn't be anonymous and hidden. I think I'll write Taco a letter, perhaps he's learned to read by now**. I'll assuming he didn't read the last little treatise I sent him on the problems inherent with anonymous moderation without real accountability; the logic was pretty damn impeccable -- perhaps he doesn't see any problem, being that he, like Wil Wheaton, John Carmack, or other Slashdot "celebrities", could post a goatse link and get modded to +5 three hundred times over.

Bitter Bitter Bitter. Slashdot is driving me to drink -- I'm going for a beer, a plate of bangers and mash, and maybe some jigglies.

** Teacher's Aid: THIS is a troll / flamebait / offtopic. Enjoy.

I'm pretty proud of this one.

btw, for the record: That AC who responded pretending to be me wasn't me. Unless, of course, he's the real BFG and I'm the new imposter and blah blah blah conspiracy blah tinfoil hat blah "where's the pod, dude?"

Aha! I have found my first victim!

Mister Tr0p, whom I discovered here, and deserves to have five of his comments modded up just for being alive. And why not.

If Taco has put some sort of block on giving all of your points to one guy, I'll pick another to share with and spread them out over a few modpoint episodes...

Here's a small sample of his better material.

So next time I get mod points, Tr0p gets a present from the Robin Hood of Moderation, the Mad ModBomber! Karma Up, UP, AND AWAY!!!

From the article:

Remarkably, the use of parallel processing (five tape channels) and short gate delay time (1.2 microseconds) allows the Colossus to match the speed of a modern PC.

My Response:

It matches the speed of a modern PC? (Score:-1, Flamebait)
Jeez, here it comes -- someone's gonna tell me Colossus is faster than my Mac. Gentlemen, warm your PCs! It's BENCHMARK TIME!!!

This innocuous comment, a simple little joke based on the routine and redundant "which is faster, Mac or PC" flamewars here on Slashdot, got me modded down from my natural score of 2 to -1, Flamebait [edit: Until my friend Mmm coffee modded me back up to zero, singlehandedly (see the comments to my journal entry Random Acts of Moderation)]

I also scored with a nice "Redundant", despite being the 12th post (at the time). Of course, later on, trolls linked to completely offtopic comments above mine and said the same thing, and got moderated funny or Insightful.

Pathetic. Thank God all open-source projects aren't as badly designed as Slashdot is. Taco should be ashamed of the gaping loopholes he's left open for abuse. I would be. My favorite is the guy who uses his weekly mod points to bump his friends up regardless of their quality. I think I should do that. I've given up meta-moderating since I don't want to be a part of the Crapdot "community" until it's worth crossing the road to piss on, which it's currently not. Whenever I get mod points again, I'll give my friends a gift, regardless of whether they are making sense or not in their posts.... they're going to +5 just because I want to abuse the system.

Which brings me to my next point; the anonymity of moderators is RETARDED. If someone gets mod points they can do anything they want with them, including blessing their friends or cursing their enemies without reason, and there's no accountability. I love that. I have to remember to mention this the next time the Slashbots start whining about open-source voting software. My ass. I guess transparency's not THAT important, otherwise they'd have cleaned their own house....

I would have quit Slashdot long ago if I wasn't so damn bored. The banality of Slashdot is a perfect match for the banality of my life. Yay.

Jeezus. I used to do my part to help out Slashdot by Metamoderating daily, but now I'm getting the Metamod Prompt MORE than once per day sometimes. There's a real lack of metamods I guess, since they've resorted to tempting us with the carrot of "getting mod points more often". Sheesh. I've gotten them once, and my karma's been maxed out for years. What a deal! Coincidentally, I got mod points immediately after posting a bunch of pro-Apple karma whore comments that were meaningless worship without substance or proof, and as such, were modded up to +5, Insightful. But when I try to tell the truth I am (at best) ignored. I figure that astroturfing for Apple will get you mod points more readily than years of daily metamoderating, but what do I know. I'm only speaking from experience.

Last night, I loaded Stairway To Heaven into Audacity, and reversed the whole thing. I'd heard the various reports on "the secret messages to Satan" that can be found on the reversed track throughout the years, and I figured I'd better reverse the tune myself to prevent song tampering.

That said, it's pretty frickin' scary in some parts. Coincidence? Probably. But I also reversed myself singing Stairway and I didn't hear anything like the original.

People get hung up on the verse where (forwards) Robert Plant sings "If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now"... I admit, that verse reversed is especially weird, with Plant saying, "six six six" and "my sweet satan", "sad satan", etc... but near the beginning(end) and end(beginning) of the song, Plant says something like (going from memory now), "there is no escaping him", and "I wish it would snow".... the longer you listen, the more you hear.

Very weird. Might be coincidence, but maybe not. Listening to it backwards for a couple hours, I hope I haven't just been programmed to kill the President or something by the RIAA.

At any rate, tonight I'm reversing the entire Led Zeppelin IV album and burning it to a CD with reversed cover art. It could be a very cool homemade birthday present for some of my strangest friends, and I think it could be a big seller if it were released!

How I'd make any money off it is beyond me, though.