Slashdot

*tap tap tap* Is this thing still working?
/blows off cobwebs

Well hello again, remember me? I buggered off ages ago when feeling very very arggh (and whilst already wanting to severely cut back on my Slashdotting in order to free up more time). I think after I got my head back in order (which didn't take too long) the plan had been to stay away until I'd got a bunch of shit sorted out, but much such shit got badly delayed, and after a while didn't look half as worthwhile as it had, etc and so eventually got abandoned...

So I figured instead I'd keep using the time to work on stuff, but occasionally lurked here and there (and caught up on various peoples' news, the good the bad and the awful). Then I noticed it was very nearly a year since I'd gone, and I didn't want to look like I was some big drama queen, or I didn't like everyone- I am only medium-sized and mostly stay away from the people I don't like. So I'm sort of buggering back in a limited capacity (which I have of course said before and it din't work then). This will probably be my last JE here, but I should be reading a bit and commenting something like twice a week or so.

There is also the vaguely amusing side effect for those whose /. date displays don't show years (or who aren't paying attention) that this journal will appear to predate the previous one by this timing.

Meanwhile, I've been posting on my still-b0rken website more regularly (whilst regularly intending to fix the site management software but...), and got meself a Livejournal account- which was mostly just intended to occasionally comment in Interrobang's journals there (firstly meant to make an account to distinguish myself from some obnoxious troll who was pestering her, and then had to as she disabled anonymous posting before I got around to it). Livejournal I find surprisingly neat, as for a start it seems a lot better designed than Slashdot's journal system. Plus you can get a better picture of what sort of people you're interacting with, and if you feel like it, find random like-minded people there. People are welcome to comment in my occasional journals there, but note that I don't allow anonymous users to do so- too open to abuse.

So anyhow. Here I am run out of much to say. Could do with something to eat, I think the pizza in the freezer's for another night which is a shame, it's a lovely ham+pineapple one. Also spotted in my absence that there was actually a film of History of the World (Part 1)? No wonder I could never figure out what anyone was on about. Who the fuck did they get to play Dave Vanian?

Oh yes, and it probably goes without saying by posting this, that I'm ok, not hurt in the bombings (I'm nowhere near London); the only people close to me that I'm aware of being in London are fine too (as stated on my site blog thing). I'm no longer worrying very much about that, I simply hope they catch those responsible (if they're still around), prevent further attacks, and keep off our civil liberties. It seems absurd for our leaders to say things like "These people want to destroy our way of life" and then set about destroying our way of life to (apparently) stop them.

Now then... Questions? Hellos? Abuse? Money? Pr0n? Other?

Hello, all

My life is currently in something of a ridiculous miniature turmoil. Too chaotic, stressed, and busy to take the time to even begin to journal all of it. Will be seriously off of Slashdot until further notice (expect something like 2 months or so, I really don't know).

Take care, all of you. Thanks for your time.

Using up the recent deluge of mod points (thrice in about a week! All from being to busy with Jabber to spend more than a minute or 2 here...), I did a few mods that I figured would be likely to get M2'd unfair*. One was an AC reply to some flamebait which I modded funny, because well, it was, I don't give a flying fuck if it was OT.

(*-no, not because I wanted to be M2'd down, but because I thought they weren't unfair)

Another was this little gem. Now, my understanding of the term "Troll" is that "trolling" is a variation on "trauling", and originally referred to a sort of fishing, eg: "trolling one's hands through the water". It refers to (more or less) a comment designed purely to get a significant angry response- specifically a response in the form of replies, rather than somebody merely getting quietly offended.

Some others had modded it up as "insightful" and "interesting", but it seemed clear to me it had it all. It was:

• Contentious
• Offensively worded
• Able to generate at least 10 direct replies (I didn't try to count the total replies under those)
• Wrong

Anyway, no, this is not a reply to that. This is a reply to the M2ers who can't smell a troll when they're shown one. Yeah, I often m2 downmods as unfair, but if there's any doubt I prefer to leave them "dont' know". And it was a troll, I don't care if you agreed with him or not. People here often refer to "groupthink" on the site, but I still suspect this works both ways...

Any comments welcome, but bear in mind I'm still finding myself not spending much time here nowadays, so apologies if I don't respond (either soon or at all). OTOH, I've got a bunch of other things to journal about too, so... :P

[Addendum: Oh yeah, and if you were one of the people that M2'd me down, don't be afraid to say. I won't foe you or beat you over the head with a blunt instrument or anything, I'll probably just scowl at you a bit and tell you that it was a troll so ner]

I wasn't expecting This!

After my last JE (and a couple of comments following it), I've found myself not on Slashdot much the past week. Not just because of the whole GMail epidemic getting my goat, but also because of copious IMing with my nice shiny new Jabber account (and not so nice Jabber client- unfortunately the only one I could find that I could use >:( ).

As such, I was rather surprised last night when I logged in briefly out of habit...
...and saw "You have 5 moderator points! Use 'em or lose 'em!"

I'd been quite sure from the way I'd not had them for the past 2 or 3 months or so, that I must have got RTBLed when I started regularly M2ing, due to my maybe slightly idiosyncratic fairness criteria (I put a much higher fairness requirement on downmods than upmods, and am not very tolerant of "redundant", for example). But apparently not!

Now, although I often look through people's old JEs and comments, I don't comment half as much as many of you. But that bit in the FAQ about picking people who're somewhere in the middle of the bell curve... well if my usage was so high that it took a week of reading little and posting *nothing* to get back to "normal", then most of you lot must be completely off the scale.

Just a bit of food for thought for others who've not seen mod points for aeons (but yeah, I'm aware of the whole "Great Slashdot Troll Post Investigation" fiasco, and how the people involved literally haven't had points for years). Eh, and now I have to find someplace to spend these things. Their shelf-life seems a bit longer than it used to be, interestingly- perhaps they realised that if people have to use them all at once, they'll be less likely to moderate thoughtfully.

(apologies to Btlzu2, BTW, for leaving that last comment to go unreplied to for so long- and to other people whose comments I left unreplied too, for that matter)

[Update: and then a couple days later... I got them again. And then yet again a couple of days after that!!! I wonder how much commenting affects the usage statistics as far as selecting moderators goes]

[or, "Tomble goes Apeshit"]

You can all take your GMail, and stick it. And the donkey you rode in on (but not the donkey's donkey, of course, because as we all know, donkeys aren't commutative).

Pretty much all of you are jumping on GMail, and it sucks. It's pretty much everywhere I turn. Even people who don't see the point of GMail want it, even people who don't intend to use it want it, and I think it was the last straw for me when I spotted Sol of all people, who has quite vocally pointed out how she doesn't like Google, has got a GMail account too!

Am I really the only one who couldn't give a flying fuck about stinking GMail? Yeah, gape in amazement at threaded comments. It's like you can see the course of a conversation, wooo! I don't think even my shittest mail client can't cope with that!! Spam blocking? I get a handful of spam in a bad week. I mostly have to worry that people's legitimate emails can get eaten by the uptight filters. Don't have to delete mails? I've not had that problem for a LONG time, using POP3.

When I recently asked WTF it was that made everybody so excited about a souped up webmail system, I at least got some answers that hadn't occured to me. Apparently it's useful to be able to access it from anywhere. But it seems to me that using such a thing as a PDA with some sort of wireless shit (802xqpfns.3232 or whatever the fuck the latest wireless shit is), you could access decent POP3 email from almost literally anywhere anyways. I don't have a PDA because I can't afford one and don't really have much need for one, but I'm sure most of you lot could on both counts.

Is it really so terrible to not be able to access your email for a little while? If you want to get it from your office (where applicable), can you not set up an extra account in your mail client there? Meh, I know nothing about offices, don't ask me.

Apparently the other advantage of webmail is that it's so easy to set up, which is great for people who don't know how to use computers. Um, hold on, what site am I on again?...

No, this isn't sour grapes for not having an invite- if I wanted one, I'd ask for one- there's no shame in doing such a thing when everyone else does. But I like the way many of you wave the word "groupthink" at the people on the front page...

Hey, at least not everybody wants it. Now, if you'll all excuse me, I'm off to my concrete bunker of POP3ness, to don my tinfoil hat and write some Perl scripts to mix pineapple flavoured booze with pizza, and fling the whole mixture out the window at God's SUV. Despite being perl scripts, these scripts will be released under GPL as I am a stinking commie hippie godless heathen zealot. Oh, and I think I need to lie down and maybe get some sleep, goodnight...

(yeah, you can have the crack pipe back, I'm done with it for now)