This journal is a troll #3

Journal sm62704's Journal: This journal is a troll #3 5

Journal by sm62704 on Tuesday May 06, 2008 @10:23AM

Slashdot's moderation system is seriously broken. In China Wants US-Owned Hotels to Censor Internet, the summary states ""The Chinese government is demanding that US-owned hotels there filter Internet service during the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing, US Senator Sam Brownback has alleged." I responded

Sam Brownback doesn't exist. If he did, there would be an uncyclopedia article about him.
Oh wait, he does exist, here [uncyclopedia.org] is the entry on the honorable Senator Browbakc from Kansas [uncyclopedia.org]

The link to Brownback's name went to the uncyclopedia entry on "fucktard" and "kansas" went to the Kansas entry. I quoted the Kansas entry.

It was moderated offtopic. Clearly brownback's slutty wife (I only pay her five bucks but damn it she won't shave her legs) has mod points.

No, I do not like Sam Brownback or his politics or his Godforsaken state. But that comment was on topic.

"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." ~ Dorothy on noticing a school teaching actual science

A fellow named wattrlz (1162603) replied to War Brewing on the Inexpensive Laptop Front with subject "Oblig,", comment "Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.". I replied

I, for one, welcome... OW! OW! STOPPIT!
(lame humorless slashdot filter encountered. don't use so many caps. it's like shouting. really, tone it odwn in here mcgrew, this is a library not a goddamned bar)

Both our comments were moderated "troll". An AC responded to wattrlz (1162603) with "Yeah, a beowulf cluster of those *might* end up being just as fast as my T61 Thinkpad" and it sat at 1, no moderation. The time stamps say all three comments were within ten minutes of each other.

In the thread Tesla Motors Opens Retail Store someone said that the >200 mile limit was short range; I commented that I seldom travel more than a hundred miles one way, and a binary number (or at least, a number consisting only of ones and zeros) listed all the long long trips he takes frequently. I answered "You, sir, are a very big contributor to global warming and the price of fuel. I sincerely hope you're not driving an Escalade."

It was moderated "troll". Slashdot - Fox News for nerd wannabes, stuff that mutters.

But the post that really pissed me off and caused this flaming pile of shit I'm writing now to be posted was in answer to this comment in the armageddon poll. Someone said he wanted to be shot to death by a jealous husband at age 100, and an answering comment (rated 2, insightful) read "wow that is some goal in life. Make sure said husband has a 20 year old wife too."

I responded quite truthfully and sincerely

You're a sicko. I'm only 56 but if I fucked a 20 year old I'd feel like a pedophile. Actually anybody under 30 looks like a child to me, imagine being twice my age?

Yes, it was moderated "troll"! Both my daughters are younger than that, you sick fucks! WHAT THE GODDAMNED FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE???

I guess IHBT - by the mods. But as one slashdotter's sig says, "Karma: Excellent. Try again, mod boy".

Update (today, imagine that!):
Today, you have 10 moderations to meta-moderate.

Re:Where are the Cheetos?
by - on Monday January 07, @08:31PM (#21948634)
The original skit is better. Its sad how popular that skit is and yet it seems 99% of people do not know of the creators =(.

Best video rendition imo had to be the one they did with the Summoner crew.
--
Ice Cream has no bones.
Original Discussion: Ask the Designers of D&D Fourth Edition
Rating: Informative.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

Re:deja vu
by - on Thursday January 10, @08:03PM (#21992976)

The last I heard, the NSLU2 will NEVER spin down the hard drives. This may accelerate the wear on the bearings, and cause premature failure. Drives also consume more power while spinning.

Actually, what I learned a long time ago (in a technology-land far, far away) is "never shut down your equipment." The only times hard drives and other computer hardware experience physical wear is startup, shutdown, and under G force loads.

A spinning platter running on new bearings essentially maintains bearing-on-lubricant-on-bushing contact the entire time it is on, and has zero wear. But when the platter is spun down, the bearings will of course stop. At that time the bearings "poke through" the lubrication layer, causing metal-on-metal contact. Over time the weight of the platters on the bearings will cause microscopic deformations to be created on the surfaces of the bearings. These no-longer-round bearings then have high spots that also poke through the lubrication layer, causing metal-on-metal contact while the drive is spinning. This becomes a source of vibration, which leads to more metal-on-metal contact, causing wear.

There are other physical reasons to not shut down your computer, too.

Surge currents are a problem. They occur in a hard drive because a stopped motor takes much more torque to spin up than a running motor. That means that a component which is spec'd to carry the running current of the motor, say 80ma, has to temporarily provide startup current of perhaps 200ma. Most components can handle that much extra current for a very small amount of time, but a marginal component may fail under the extra stress. Avoiding power surges maximizes the life of those components

There is another source of wear that people often ignore, and that is thermal stress. Powering equipment up causes it to heat up, expanding the materials it's made of. And all materials have different coefficients of expansion -- aluminum expands quite a bit more per degree than steel, and both expand much more rapidly than ceramics and fiberglass. When a computer is powered off and cools down, everything shrinks at its own rate -- traces on the circuit boards, soldered joints, the case, the screws holding the heat sink to the motherboard, the gold wires connecting the chip package to the die, everything. That's the only mechanical wear these otherwise solid state components will ever have. The more heating/cooling cycles, the more often they will tug at each other, causing wear.

However, many things have changed since I learned this stuff. The technology of hard drives is vastly different than it was when I learned this; especially the properties of the lubricants that are now used. Also, cheap hard drives may have poor bearings to start with, and may already be vibrating when you purchase them (sound is a good way to detect this -- a good drive is a silent drive.) Hardware designers who are building quality equipment specify components with the capacity to handle the thermal and electrical stresses. And energy efficiency is of concern to everyone. But unless it's really crap gear, I'd suggest that powering down to attempt to preserve the longevity of your equipment might not be the appropriate answer.

--
John
Sed quis debuget ipsum debugatorem?
Original Discussion: Current Recommendations For a Home File Server?
Rating: Interesting.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

Re:RIAA
by - on Thursday January 24, @11:39AM (#22167660)
Ticketmaster. Unfortunately, there's a $1000 service fee per ticket.
Original Discussion: Internet Group Declares War on Scientology
Rating: Funny.
This comment is Unfunny Funny | See Context

Re:solve the cause, not the symptom
by - on Thursday March 13, @01:41AM (#22736338)
1. Do you write scripts for the white house by any chance? how much do you make? start considering it... they need someone to save ass this last year. 2. "The police officer, in self defense, shoots back. " 1--> Since when did the Israeli military become Palestine's police? 2--> Assuming Gaza/West Bank are sovereign as Israel "claims" they are, wouldn't the so called "terrorists" be defending the Palestinians, hence isn't Israel shooting at the Palestinian military/police/civilians thereby causing retaliatory acts? "The terrorists in Israel fire rockets. Palestine fights back. Some innocent people get killed on both sides. Palestanians feel terrible when this happens. But it's not Palestine's fault. Palestine is fighting in self defense." Good job, that was a great loop of a sentence. (FYI I think the 120 vs 5 number matches the previous sentence more. ;))
Original Discussion: Israelis Sue Government For Laser Cannons
Rating: Flamebait.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

please... dogs people
by - on Tuesday April 08, @08:23PM (#23007238)
if you live in a society where there are dogs

Dogs are not necessary, nor particularly useful in our society. Children, however are 100% required for the perpetuation of the human race.
the default should be that if you wish to bring a wild (or a domesticated wild) animal into our society, it is your responsibility to conroll it. The whole reason we built walls, then cities was to keep filthy animals from killing us. It is insane to insinuate that because you have chosen to bring a beast into this human society, that the rest of the humans should accomidate you by learning the beast's behaviors, quirks, and psychology.

Don't get me wrong, I take personal responsibility to teach myself and my children to deal with other people's borderline narcissistic need to train animals to serve them, but the responsibility that comes with bringing an unpredictible animal into society still rests squarely on the shoulders of the person who has opted to negate the reason why we have society and let in the beast. Sure I teach my kids, but if you brought your animal into society, you are the one that played the first losing card in the blame game.
Original Discussion: Cylons Are ... ?
Rating: Insightful.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

It was a little off-topic for the FA but on-topic for the comment it was responding to. It showed the kind of intelligence often lacking in many slashdot comments these disenlightened days.

Re:Responses
by - on Saturday April 12, @10:24AM (#23046478)
If DISH network has corrected the problem with a new software download, why do they need to pursue this to the US Supreme Court?

It would seem that it is SOP for a manufacturer to EOL a piece of equipment. Tell the users they need to upgrade. There will be some gnashing of teeth, some users will flee, but if the new product is better... Some people need a shove to move on.

Having said that, I would be pissed off if someone told me I had to abandon a perfectly functional piece of kit and upgrade. I sure a community of terrorists that have hacked their own distro of Linux onto it to maintain functionality could be found. Someone would do it because they could.

Any idea how this affects Bell Express Vue in Canada? I notice about 3 months ago we received new software that did more things that were TIVO like. Record all eps, record all new eps, priorities and so on...
Original Discussion: TiVo Patent Victory Over Dish Network Upheld
Rating: Interesting.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

Wonder if they are afraid to start their own cars?
by - on Monday April 14, @04:13PM (#23068706)
Just imagine walking out to your car in the morning, getting in, turning the key, and kaboom!
Original Discussion: Eco-Marathon Team Hits 2,843 mpg
Rating: Funny.
This comment is Unfunny Funny | See Context

I have no idea where that comment could possibly have come from. Kaboom? Why would an eco-friendly car explode? It's not like this contest was held in Iraq! A non-eco-friendly car, holding more fuel, would be far more likely to explode.

Maybe I'm stupid but I didn't get the (woosh) joke.

Chose what you like better
by - on Wednesday April 16, @05:52AM (#23087536)
I'd probably go for the liberal arts college. You'll meet some interesting people, have a good life for a while and probably get a better education if the groups are small anyway. You can always go to MIT for your masters. I'd also not discount the value of theory. I've always prefered hiring the math student with some programming knowledge over the CS student who took all the Java classes.
--
Think inside the box!
Original Discussion: For CS Majors, How Important Is the "Where?"
Rating: Interesting.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

Re:I don't think that...
by - on Sunday April 20, @09:48PM (#23138202)
Get real, the only damage done to the project was via corporate marketdroids. As soon as it was obvious that the OLPC was a threat to corporate profits in school computer sales and overt attack campaign was launched via web trolls.

The underlying reality is the OPLC had to get out there as soon as it good, so that it be refined, and continue to develop, a continuing process. Along the way, there will always be for profit corporations who see the OLPC as nothing more but a source of profits and seek to take shortcuts and cheat the concept in order to increase profits.

For many countries, the ideal school notebook should be locally manufactured, as part of the education and development process. This is also necessary to ensure reliable supply in the event of any disruptive issues be that natural or man made disasters. For every child to have a notebook consistent supply becomes very important and the OLPC project as an open development process does teach a lot of lessons.

Of course the attacks on OLPC by various parties, also teaches other lessons, that corporate greed knows no bounds and billionaires remain greedy no matter how much money they have.

--
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Original Discussion: Widespread Keyboard Failures on OLPC's XO-1
Rating: Interesting.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

christian science?
by - on Monday May 05, @05:38PM (#23305234)
Christian Science?...zzzt....bing!...rrrr....does not compute!!!!
Original Discussion: War Brewing on the Inexpensive Laptop Front
Rating: Troll.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

I didn't metamoderate this one, and left it alone. The author was clearly trying for "funny" but failing miserably at it. He was clearly not troilling, either. But a great many scientists ARE Christians (and Bhuddists and Muslims etc). There is nothing anti-science about religion, and there is nothing anti-religion about science. Sceince and religion (and philosophy) answer entirely different questions. "Thou shalt not fuck thy neighbor's wife" has no meaning to science, and E-MC2 has no meaning in religion. You might well ask "which is redder, white or black?"

Offtopic Update 5/8/8
Newton wasn't the first to say "if I see farther than other men, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants" although the quote is often (usually?) attributed to him.

In the last couple of days I saw two "fair use" uses of Newton's "stolen" phrase in slashdot sigs, one funny and the next both funny and ironic. If I see many more of them I'll excise this update and make a whole journal out of it.

"If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars"

"If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of Giants"

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