Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Slashback

Slashback: Profits, Marks, Secsh 82

Slashback tonight with more from hardware co-op Spindl3top; the name of that protocol which bests telnet in all sorts of ways; censorware discussion for Californians; and even bigger LAN party; and more. Please enjoy :)

A cool black cube. mattdm writes: "For those skeptical about the non-profit nature of Spindl3top (see earlier slashdot story), hopefully this will address some of your concerns. Lucas has posted a public draft of the nonprofit Articles of Organization/Incorporation [pdf format]. This is a really cool project -- it's nice to see it moving forward."

2300-upmanship. DaAdder writes: "There's a multi-million dollar gaming event in Germany. It's huge, it's sponsored, it's probably the biggest LAN anywhere accorind to themselves. They happen to be wrong.

The Gathering in norway was even in guiness book of records in '99, and they've kept growing ever since, peaking at 5300 atendees in '99. Under the about menu on their site you can follow the progress of this LAN, all but this years numbers, that for some reason aren't up yet.
You still have to do some back-breaking exercise, lugging your computer half way across the world to scandinavia if you want to participate, and pay a fee for your efforts, even though most of us think it's a small price to pay for 4+ days of funfillad LAN-o-rama."

The post-leap look, with safety goggles. Bill Sommerfeld of Sun was one of several people to politely point out that there's no evident danger of needing to call "secsh" instead of "ssh," as hinted in the last story down in the previous Slashback.

He writes: "... As several followups stated, this is not a recent change; the drafts and working group have always contained the 'secsh' abbreviation -- because 'ssh' was already taken by a different, now concluded, working group known as Site Security Handbook.

quick score card:
ssh: command name
SSH: protocol name
Secure Shell: full name of working group
secsh: IETF abbreviation for Secure Shell working group
ssh: IETF abbreviation for Site Security Handbook working group.
ietf-ssh: name of the Secure Shell working group mailing list.

Nothing has changed on this since the secure shell working group was founded in 1997 or so."

Never has the phrase "say it ain't so" been so effective. Thank you, Bill.

A preemptive slashback -- please go and report from the future! Katina Bishop invites anyone who can make it to a panel discussion this May 6th (a Sunday) on Internet Blocking in Schools and Libraries. The discussion even has a subtitle -- "Law, Litigation, and Community Response" -- and will kick off at 2:00 PM Pacific Time in the Koret Auditorium of the San Francisco Public Library, at 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco. (That's near Civic Center BART/Muni) You can call 415-557-4400 for directions.

BayFF rocks, and censorware does not. And it sounds a lot more interesting than sitting around waiting for the blackout; go here to pick up argument ammunition next time someone brushes off objections to widescale net-filtering.

Bonus picture for long-time subscribers: Remember the not-quite-politic spray-painted Tux ad campaign which upset some folks in San Francisco? Kurt Gray contributes "some interesting photos of a Cambridge, MA resident testing the PeaceLoveLinux logos spraypainted on the sidewalk ... and it's not washing off! Doh!

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Slashback: Profits

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward

    I think that it makes the pavement ("sidewalk" for American readers) look better. If they had done them in different sizes, in different colours ("colors" for American readers) at any rate.

    Better than looking at a grey chewing-gum covered pavement ("sidewalk" for American readers) all the time as you are walking along.

    Someone spray paint the DeCSS code onto all the major pavements ("si..." okay, okay, you know) in all the major American cities. That would be fun. You could have Perl versions, C versions, etc all over the place, in different fonts and colours.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    It's now 10:25EST, and he's obviously been rooted, since they replaced his web page with a picture of some handicapped guy peeing on the sidewalk. Oh wait....
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Name: Aushtin Powersh. Secsh - Yesh pleashe! Groovy, baby.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Your gonna slashdot the hell outta him

    Some modern kind of exorcism?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @05:31PM (#252250)
    "gathering a group of geeks in a cramped room for 15 hours for a massive frag fest!"

    Do you supply air freshener, deodorant or nose plugs for the contestants?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:32PM (#252251)
    I'm sure at the least potential partners would be far more likely to respond to secsh than to telnet

    Well, i mean, you know what they say, you should always use protection..

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:09PM (#252252)
    guys, that "spraypainting on the sidewalk" page is on some guys cable modem. Your gonna slashdot the hell outta him and he will lose access for awhile, and his cable company will be pissed, cause running a server is against the rules of their service...

    It even says on the page that its ran on a cable modem and NT...

  • by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:02PM (#252253) Homepage Journal
    Because, when I'm ordering my shell accounts, I hate having to ask the sales rep, "So, do you have secsh?" So embarassing...

    - A.P.

    --
    Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

  • But the question is, is he peeing on a Peace Love & Linux graffito?
  • They even had an article [suntimes.com] up in the Chicago Sun Times [suntimes.com] about it.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  • Isn't that supposed to be EETLA, Expanded Extended Three Letter Acronym?
  • by Apuleius ( 6901 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:12PM (#252257) Journal
    That's why I advocated sexh as the new name.
    Embarassing for tech support,
    but damn easy to remember.
  • They are all boring stories that wouldn't have got many comments, and hence not many pageviews, and hence not as much advertising revenue?
    Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
  • by Arrgh ( 9406 )
    The most commonly accepted term is actually ETLA, or Extended Three-Letter Acronym. It's actually funny that way.
  • I only ask for secsh after finger'ing and mount'ing.

  • The core problem here was that of a rapidly shrinking namespace: there are only 17576 possible combinations of the 26 letters that form our alphabet. In many ways, this predicted the same sort of problem that we're now experiencing with IPv4. Fortunately, the problem has been mitigated in a similar method, thanks to those lovely FLEAs (as mentioned by dead_penguin).
  • "Yes, but can you guarantee that the spraypaint will not contaminate the ground water and kill all life within a three mile radius?"

    What are you? Some kind of tree-hugging long-hair? Screw the environment when you got a statement to make! Just look at the protests in Canada and Washington state! Tons, and tons of trash left behind!
  • You forgot the long-hairs.
  • I know. My response was intended as a parody also.

    As for the squirrels... If ya get enough of em you can actually make a decent fur coat.

  • How long until his server falls over?
  • by cpeterso ( 19082 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:21PM (#252266) Homepage


    Sun Offers to Clean Up IBM Mess [internetnews.com]

    Sun Microsystems Inc., looking to turn an IBM Corp. marketing gaff into a public relations coup for itself, announced Friday that it will help the City of San Francisco clean up the sidewalks Big Blue spray painted as part of its Linux eServer advertising campaign. Big Blue said the sidewalk advertisements were supposed to be done in biodegradable chalk, but, at least in San Francisco and Chicago, black spray paint was used instead.
  • by dead_penguin ( 31325 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @06:17PM (#252267)
    Thank god that we're now well into implementing Four-Letter Extended Acronyms (FLEAs). Careful planning and thoughtfulness such as this has helped avert a disaster of Y2Kian proportions. As a bonus incentive, early adopters get first dibs at FLEAs that spell out actual real words, and we all know that in the English language, the good words all have four letters!
  • WWJD? JWRTFM!
  • by anticypher ( 48312 ) <anticypher.gmail@com> on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:37PM (#252269) Homepage
    Why is Kurt (I assume he is the guilty party in the photos) scrubbing out Tux? Why not try to erase the CND symbol or heart, and leave Tux?

    Or have we (the non-specific WE) raised Tux to the level of a minor god, where graven images must be erased before some massholes press their dirty shoe soles into Tux's face?

    Sprinkle :-) liberally through this post

    the AC

    Anti-karma whoring. Karma is still over 250 and hasn't been dropping fast enough
  • It is demo scene party. It is about art and demo competitions. (Although there are some gaming events too) and everyone plays games on parties.
  • by Technomancer ( 51963 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @06:37PM (#252271)
    The Gathering, The Party, Assembly and other parties are not about fragging each other. They are demo scene parties. They are about taking part in demo/intro/art/music compos, meeting in person people from #coders :). There are other activities on parties, like swapping demos (and shitload of other software), boozing, playing multiplayer games, throwing harddisks and floppies, breaking motherboards. If you want to know more about demo scene wisit www.hornet.org
  • by chris88 ( 62904 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @05:27PM (#252272)
    The IBM Graffiti ads are here [upnix.com], but that PDF is long gone. Isn't that the 2nd time that site's been /.'ed?
  • Hi Streetlawyer.

    If you go back and read what Lucas has been saying [kuro5hin.org], you'll realize that this Lucas guy wasn't 100% sure about the business terms for what he wanted to do, so he just called it a business where he'd be the one running it. (since he *would* be the one running it).

    In our case, we're planning to use a standard and fair margin of 10 - 15%. Meaning, if the Cooperative buys something at around $34 each, it sells for $3.40 - $5.10 extra, in turn, going directly into expenses. Money after expenses is donated to the FSF and Debian
    -- Lucas Wagner, announcing his idea [kuro5hin.org]

    Personally I think all these conspiracy theories about Spindl3top are just as funny as the "Taco/Hemos controlling Microsoft through the minions of laced Taco Bell tacos, and subliminal messages in Toy Story 2, etc...", but it's too bad that some people think they're real.

    In summary: Don't give money to anybody you don't trust. Personally, I don't ~trust~ Spindl3top yet, so I'm going to take their blackbird source files (can't get the link now, cuz the site is down) and buy/build the components it myself.

    --Robert

  • Hey, if you're going to sleep with the Devil (using NT) you might as well use the Devil's sheets (IIS). What's with this AOLServer stuff?
  • by Rhys Dyfrgi ( 64793 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @05:47PM (#252275)
    Well, looks like it's doing fine for now, but if the official Spindl3top page is too slow for you, use these mirrors:

    Enjoy the pre-emptively created mirrors! Maybe they'll even be needed.
    ---

  • by po_boy ( 69692 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:30PM (#252276)
    well, it seems to be doing alright, but if it gets bad, here's a mirror:
    http://dotslash.dynodns.net/01/04/29/1840233/ [dynodns.net]
  • .. to "fy", the second letter standing for Ylönen. You choose what the first letter represents.
  • I went and checked it out, and there's now a slightly-whiter-than-the-rest spot where the graffiti used to be...
  • I first saw this design on the sidewalk next to Lincoln Center on 66th and Broadway in NYC quite a few weeks ago. I remember thinking to myself "that looks like the Linux penguin! huh"...
  • I'm amazed no one has commented on the giant (at least 50 feet high) Penguin painted onto the side of a building near the corner of 42nd and Broadway, in NYC. It's just around the corner from one of the biggest Internet cafes in the world. There's no question it's Tux, and it's from IBM.
    --
    Paul Gillingwater
  • Ever notice how the acronym seems to be determined before its meaning? Theres a term for this:

    Advanced Creation of Ridiculous Abbreviations Named with Inexact Meanings

  • She sells csh by the sea shore...

    "I'll take the red pill, no, blue. AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH........"
  • by jesser ( 77961 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @05:43PM (#252283) Homepage Journal
    Nothing has changed on this since the secure shell working group was founded in 1997 or so.

    Except for the spelling in slashdot headlines.
  • A preemptive slashback -- please go and report from the future!

    Pretty boring. Discussion didn't get anywhere, just like here.

    However, I can tell you that the winner in next week's poll is Hemos the Hampster. I don't know. Didn't think his legs were that great.

    J
  • by donutello ( 88309 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @05:35PM (#252285) Homepage
    As a comment [slashdot.org] to the original article on the subject. It was even modded up to a +5 so I'll assume it was read too.
  • Then there is the DETLA, or Doubly Extended Three Letter Acronym.

  • "There are only 2 constants; the Universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former."- A. Einstein

    I thought this quote read:

    Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

    - Albert Einstein

    -----
    "Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"
  • That was FUNNY thingy you said there - ROTFL :-)
  • by RoninM ( 105723 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:11PM (#252289) Journal
    Is it me or is 'secsh' the perfect option for geek pick-up lines? "Hey, baby, wanna' have secsh?"
  • here's some pictures from the gahtering 2001:
    http://www.hardware.no/diverse/tg01/ [hardware.no]
    (text is in norwegian tho)
  • What about Fucked Up College Kids [attrition.org]? It's even recursive...well, kinda.


    kickin' science like no one else can,
    my dick is twice as long as my attention span.
  • He's definitely optimized his page for the load and doesn't seem to be suffering too bad. And he's running AOLServer instead of IIS (so he should be immune from the latest nuclear-meltdown-class security hole).
  • Right. You happened to be present when the logo was put on the sidewalk. Survey Says! [X][X][X] Oh, I'm sorry that's incorrect; thanks for playing.
  • ....
  • by ozbird ( 127571 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @06:00PM (#252295)
    New headlines:
    • "'Well, we tried that chalk stuff but it washed off...' - IBM sidewalk artist"
    • "Linux leaves its mark on the computing landscape"
    • "Sun: We tried to make Linux go away, but no matter what we did, it's still there!"
    • "Long life chalk spray now available from commerce.www.ibm.com"
  • Better yet DeCSS sneakers!
  • by Yoje ( 140707 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:50PM (#252297)
    Why is Kurt (I assume he is the guilty party in the photos) scrubbing out Tux? Why not try to erase the CND symbol or heart, and leave Tux?

    Obviously, anyone who runs AOLServer on NT has some issues they need to work out.

    Hopefully, with help of therapy, he can stop scrubbing out penguins and start scrubbing out the real enemy... all those blasted AOL CDs in DVD cases that they keep mailing out. And maybe he'll install a real web server [apache.org] while he's at it. :)

  • by Chester K ( 145560 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:56PM (#252298) Homepage
    quick score card:
    ...


    SSH TLA AFU? LRS.

    In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin "What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?" Paul's straight-faced response: "There are only seventeen thousand 3-letter acronyms."

    Ok, so he was only a decade off. BFD.
  • This hit the news about a week ago around here, and my father commented that the third symbol looked like a penguin. Not having seen the ads yet (I saw one recently in downtown Boston) I said, "Yeah, probably is" and explained it.

    Not much, just an interesting bit...

    /Brian
  • Someone should make "Linux Sneakers" like the American Eagle that have the website/logo printed on the sole of the shoe. THe linux sneakers could not only have the penguin on the bottom..but maybe a URL or a few lines of code....then all the geeks could walk across the beaches or something...

    Oh...that wouldn't work! It would require them to go outside..oh well..

    WHAT? They're stamping brand-names on our soles??? Is nothing sacred?

  • As a means of removing oneself from the gene pool, that strikes me as not quite as efficient as strapping a JATO rocket to your Chevy Impala, but 'twill serve, 'twill serve.
  • Clintonesque dodging as ever, I see, Woodentop? If we're going to be making unsupported accusations, then I think the words "petty confidence trickster" are going to be walking in the direction of this conversation quite soon.

    What pressure?

    The pressure from all the posters who accused you of lying, and pressed you to substantiate your claims, woodentop.

    You think I give a damn about what anyone thinks?

    Well, I wonder how I ever got that idea ... could it be because your own fucking website admits that you changed your mind about non-profit status because of all the adverse comment? Or possibly because of all the whining articles you posted, claiming that people who had, in fact, seen right through you were "misunderstanding"? Or indeed, because you abused the k5 moderation system to get your own back on me, at least? Or because of your disgusting Clintonian evasivness and wriggling throughout the whole fiasco, affecting not to know what a "co-operative" was? Get real, Woodentop.

    Were I as talentless as you, I certainly wouldn't flaunt it and make an ass of myself as you do.

    Your actions belie your words.

    Oh and by the way, given that my signature, appended to every post I make, contains the words "Linux is for cunts", to call me a "wannabe troll" is to make a very poor flame indeed. Fucking Clinton impersonator.

  • by streetlawyer ( 169828 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2001 @03:54AM (#252303) Homepage
    The "+4 conspiracy post" was just a part-time spork-wielding goatrapist pictured here (don't click that unless you want your eyes to pop out) whom we pissed off by voting down his article on K5. At that time, he had created an 17-page, intricate conspiracy theory about an organization that had a net profit of about $400 and one employee (me).

    What utter, self-serving rot.

    There are a few of us here who remember the whole story of this matter, Lucas, and your misrepresentation of it is, frankly, dishonest. The posts on the slashdot thread linked to above, and on the corresponding kuro5hin story quite clearly say what a number of other people, including myself were saying, which is that, at the time when you first started publicising this project:

    1. It was based around a for-profit business, owned by you
    2. It was representing itself as a "co-operative", which carries the strong implication of being a non-profit
    3. You were using the word "GNU" in your promotion, implying a link to the Free Software Foundation which did not, at that time, exist.
    4. And therefore, that it was using misleading publicity, about which the public ought to be warned.
    Since the beginning of this, you appear (I have *not* checked this, and would appreciate it if someone else would) to have addressed all of these issues. For which, you have my congratulations. But it is very poor indeed of you to pretend that these concerns were not entirely rational at the time, because they very definitely were.

    You started with a project which misleadingly pretended to be a non-profit. In response to pressure from posters on slashdot and kuro5hin, you have turned it into a genuine non-profit. Don't you dare stigmatise the people who have been trying to keep you honest from day one as "conspiracy theorists". Spiers and flatpack (I make no comment on my own minor role) are the only people who come out of this with their reputations entirely intact.

  • Ssh...you'll wake the keys...
  • I didn't read the technical specs on their set up. But I imagine it's one of the largest peer-to-peer file sharing networks in the world. Imagine 5000 people on a LAN with their hard-drives just sharing away.

    Ooops. Now Ive done it. First Napster....now our Lan-parties.
  • by Nocode ( 175478 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:18PM (#252306) Journal
    The organizers of this event have to be simply amazing.

    We are having our 12th lan party this weekend and it's extremely difficult to organize 20-40 people on a network in one weekend, more or less hundreds. There are so many issues from bad network cards, proper game patches, prizes, sponsors, release forms for minors, - to just keeping with the tournament agenda. We generally charge $10-$15 and feed everyone lunch and dinner(the party lasts from 10 am till midnight).

    There have been many events where we didn't make what we spent just for renting the location. But it comes down to fun, and yes, the fee is a small price to pay for gathering a group of geeks in a cramped room for 15 hours for a massive frag fest!
  • I'm sorry that link for the "real web server" doesn't work. It's pointing to Apache. Surely you made a mistake?
  • by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @07:39PM (#252308) Journal
    it is all well documented here:

    http://www.eff.org/bayff/20010506_bayff_announce.h tml [eff.org]

    Just to recap:

    May 6, 2001 BayFF Featuring 7 Speakers on Censorware

    Panel Will Examine Issues Surrounding Internet Blocking in Schools and Libraries, and Community Response

    This event is sponsored by: Electronic Frontier Foundation, San Francisco Public Library, James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center, Friends and Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library, Online Policy Group, and Mark Leno, Member of Board of Supervisors, San Francisco.

    So this is not a hearing by anyone, but it is a panel discussion. Maybe it is something that could be taped for PBS or something. No info on this angle though.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • The point is that a REAL /. user gets good karma because he contributes, but loses points because he doesn't care and speaks his/her mind. Guess you're an over-achiever :)

    REAL /.ers only have a karma of 49...
  • SATLUG (guess what it stands for) has parties too. In fact, I kinda put the latest one together. Anyhow, we're one of two organizations that puts on parties in the city. Here's what we do for those of you who'd like to try your own, but don't know how:
    • We get some poor schmuck to volunteer his house (thanks Bruce!), and then crash it for the party. This person ideally has a cable/DSL modem or better and more than one room (unlike Matt's place...)
    • Every other good geek has something to network machines together, and since Cisco is our sponser, we get some really good stuff. Basically, we figure out what's needed, and then that too is "volunteered."
    • Everyone brings what they can for food & drink (pizza and soda), and whoever is the most desperate goes and gets the food.
    We do everything from just plain messing with the network we put together to playing games. And since we're Linux nuts, we try out the latest distros (Hope Mandrake 8 stable is better than beta1, 'cause I sure got fscked!). For details, e-mail me. If you're in the San Antonio area, check out the website @ (come on, take a guess) satlug.org [satlug.org].

    REAL /.ers only have a karma of 49...
  • by sulli ( 195030 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:47PM (#252311) Journal
    Not in my 'hood it wasn't! Black spray paint, still there after several rain storms.

    By the way, did anyone catch Sun's offer [sun.com] to help clean up the graffiti? Pretty amusing. "For us, it's just one more way in which we're helping clean up after IBM," said the flack.

  • by Crizp ( 216129 ) <chris@eveley.net> on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @06:43PM (#252312) Homepage
    The organizers of this event have to be simply amazing.

    Yeah. They are amazing. The best part is: KANDU (translated Creative Active Norwegian Computer Youth, link [kandu.no]) also hires out (sp?) networking and security equipment (walkies) to people who want to organize their own parties.

    I live in Norway, and I've been attending TG since 1998, but it is sad to see that the scener/gamer (kinda like s/n) ratio is tipping more towards gaming for each year.
    I am by no means an old-schooler when it comes to scening, but I've been following it since '92 and I think it's sad that the gamer ratio have increased. But I guess that's how it gets as it becomes more commercial.

    Anyhow, for you US folks that aren't into the european demo scene, check out scene.org [scene.org] for news and great stuff to download. Especially check out the demos and Hybris/NEMESIS' great 3D contribution from The Party 2000. It's great (albeit a quite large 150 MB download).
  • I can't imagine a group of people comming together that large, but, is it worthwhile? As a group of teenagers, we routinly get together and pull an all nighter playing any game we can get our hands on. Playing a maxed out game with all your friends has to be better than playing against complete strangers, whats the real difference between that and the internet? Sure you get to see the people, but you never really know them. It's much more satisfying doing pelvic thrusts when you got the last capture knowing you smacked down your closest friends than a group over the internet.

    Just my 2 cents.

  • for the field unix care kit...

    ----
  • It was actually a parody of environmentalism. I meant that to be completely and utterly absurd. I actually am not a big fan of animals and so if the spraypaint kills some animals I'll actually be happy. Every time I see a squirrel I have this urge to grab it by the tail and slam its head against the ground (I probably couldn't catch one though). Maybe I'm just imbalanced.

    Er... Well, y'know. You can't make an omelette without um... destroying a forest. Or something.

  • Yes, but can you guarantee that the spraypaint will not contaminate the ground water and kill all life within a three mile radius?

    Er... Well, y'know. You can't make an omelette without um... destroying a forest. Or something.

  • Actually, we weren't slagged so badly last time... at least nothing that I wouldn't have said if I couldn't check out the site and see what was going on these days (it is obviously a lot different from the googlecached stuff from six months ago).. The "+4 conspiracy post" was just a part-time spork-wielding goatrapist pictured here [goatse.cx] (don't click that unless you want your eyes to pop out) whom we pissed off by voting down his article on K5. At that time, he had created an 17-page, intricate conspiracy theory about an organization that had a net profit of about $400 and one employee (me). I think it's funny, actually.

    But, alas that is over... I actually lost a lot of money because I tried to put my efforts into too many profitless free-software things. We really wanted to go nonprofit but the costs and time needed in doing it otherwise, however, were so damn high that I had to bite my lip and figure out how to manually dissolve a company, how to form an organization, what is expected of a nonprofit, how to publish our accounting data for the public to see, etc. Reading IRS forms is not fun.

    I'm surprised Flatpack (aka Spiers from K5) was modded up to +4... Why? Well, he forgot the other things that our notorious organization has done:

    • racketeering in local LUGs and, at gunpoint, forcing users to do a full install of Debian GNU/Linux from a crate of 3.5" floppies.
    • the unpublishably disgusting and controversial murder of Geekizoid [geekizoid.com] founder, Scott "Vlad" Lockwood.
    • gluttonous consumption of caffeine and ... and asking Matt Szulik of RedHat [redhat.com] to feel our warm Bawls [thinkgeek.com].
    • faking the suicide of CowboyNeal and Inoshiro caused by the depression from being in one too many questionable polls.
    • a fanatical devotion to old Nintendo games with Engrishy [engrish.com] dialogue and a catchy theme song.
    • extortion stemming from stealing RMS' hippie flute [stallman.org] so that he couldn't play music to his servers anymore. This was insanely scandalous, as the GNU servers crashed continually afterward.
    • incorporation of incantations to Bob Saget within the kernel source.

    Anyway, that's my 2c... don't read into it too much or anything. Let's be real... like any geeky club, the aim is just to have fun, build cool stuff, hack free software, chill out, and not give a fsck. It's cool like dat.. and anyone is welcome.

    Lucas (Wagner)
    Spindl3top
    Cambridge, Mass.

  • Yeah, disregard my slagging comments about Streetlawyer. I've talked with him via e-mail and we're cool..

    He's coming to it from a perspective of investigative reporting; he's an actual person, a journalist who goes after conmen over in Europe. He was suspicious of the article I wrote last November because I couldn't produce the exact details he was looking for. He said that he doesn't doubt that my intentions were good, but that I did it in the wrong way... yeah, he's right in several respects... I did. I'm a novice, what can I say.

    I didn't "bow to public pressure" or whatever because there really hasn't been any, except for maybe two or three people. I think most people don't really care one way or the other because so much more repugnant stuff is going on these days.

    In my case, it was naivity more than anything else.. I've got no "PR department" and I'm just an average user doing this for the first time. At that time, I was right out of school. In the long run, it really will not matter... and this has been a learning experience.

    He says I should have just said that I listened to people in the community and did the nonprofit thing... that I looked bad when I pretended otherwise... I thought I had said that, so I'm saying it now.

    So, on my side of things, please disregard my pretty lame slagging of him. I shouldn't have done it in the first place because it makes me look bad, but, on the other hand, not retracting it makes me look worse... and if I'm going to look bad anyway, I'd rather look bad but have a less burdened conscience for having slagged him in the first place.

  • Then there are LAN parties that are run just to game. Like The South Texas LAN Association [texaslan.com]. Where we have a metting of mainly quake III players, among other gamers. And Share info about Windows, Linux, and other computer related information. So if you are in San Antonio and like to play games at LAN parties with 30 plus people stop on by.
  • So close, yet so far...
  • OK, honestly, a) I didn't know those things on the sidewald were the IBM promo I'd heard about b) I generally think any kind of sidewalk art is a good thing, I mean, really, at worse it's messing up, what, a dirty sidewalk but c) I thought it meant hippies love linux. You know like I *heart* NY means I love NY? And Peace loves Linux didn't make sense so ... I was confused if it was pro or anti linux to say the least. It seemed maybe someone was saying real people who wash and have jobs don't love linux? I mean, engaging in the popular stereotypes (I have some hippie friends who both wash and have jobs, erm, not both in the same friend, but in the aggregate...)

  • Sun is just returning the favor after IBM offered to help clean up the "We Put the Dot in .com" ads while the .conomy tanked.
  • Remember the not-quite-politic spray-painted Tux ad campaign which upset some folks in San Francisco? Kurt Gray contributes "some interesting photos of a Cambridge, MA resident testing the PeaceLoveLinux logos spraypainted on the sidewalk ... and it's not washing off! Doh!

    With the majority of Linux being law-evading criminals and general rebellious miscreants, I'm not surprised at all.
    --
    George W. Bush
    President, United States of America

  • by Vintermann ( 400722 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2001 @12:25AM (#252324) Homepage
    "We generally charge $10-$15 and feed everyone lunch and dinner"

    That is very civilized of you. I read that last year TG got problems with the authorities because that's a skating hall you've got there, not a place where people sleep (and it lasts around a week, if you don't sleep you'll start hallucinating, caffeine or not). I think they got around it by reserving part of the hall for sleeping...plus limiting size. If they had infinite space, they could have made it much bigger...

    In short, I don't think you are a bad organizer after all. You seem to give more service. Up here, if you don't have a proper network card you have a problem, plus you can forget about being fed. Oh, that's true, one year on TG Mr.Lee, a local noodle king showed up and gave away a lot of noodles. Plus, I've been to lanparties where :
    1. the arrangers took all the bandwith for themselves
    2. there was a double ISDN line advertised as 2 gigabit line
    3. Power supply went down because arrangers were literally smoking pot.

    But there has been good times too, like the biscuit song, and the action supercross crase at TG.

    Ok, this was a long ranting post but that's it the spirit of slashback right?
  • by DarenN ( 411219 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @04:16PM (#252325) Homepage
    I remember a friend (or two or three) of mine went to the Arena in London for the Barrysworld [barrysworld.com] Quake III European Championships last year with the Irish Team.

    In the original format, the organisers were going to provide the mouse of choice for the compeditors (the machines being standard - I think they were AMD Athlons about 500 MHz). This was fine (most people going for the standard intellimouse) until the Swedish teams request was seen. They were looking for Razor Boomslangs with the spring at 32 (don't ask me what it means either, it's something to so with the spring tension :o) ) and the standard was 34. The cost would have been exorbitant (circa £40 - 60 per mouse), so the organisers decided that compeditors would bring their own mice.

    As expected the Swedes got into the final. Unexpectedly, the Russians also got there. They were so used to playing with crap machines apparently (and even worse mice - theirs were £2 versions) that playing on the modern LAN was too easy! They beat the odds and the Swedes, and won the Comp!

    No real point to this post, just like that story.

    There was also a humorous episode involving an unnamed member of the Irish team and a transvestite, but we'll leave it at that!
  • I like lan parties that are around 20-30 people, I went to one this size a few weeks ago where I only knew two people personally, but the rest were all people I had played UT with, so it was cool to finally meet them, and I feel like I know them. A 5000 person party would be slightly different, but then again TG has a slightly different purpose than fragging your buds.
  • I thought it was YATLA, Yet Another Three Letter Acronym. Maybe I'm wrong.

An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.

Working...