I've just added patniemeyer to my friends list. I always enjoy watching someone who knows his stuff give the relative smack-down to those who don't.

I feel smarter by association. The first three computer science programs we take here are strictly Java. After that it isn't touched.

I feel a little sad today as I was compelled to befoe someone on Slashdot. Just a sad fellow who missed the Depending on Governmental Morality 101 lectures.

I've discovered The Diplomad. So far they've just been a group of "conservative" State Department guys who were in S.E. Asia before the tsunami and have since been complaining to no end about the sickening flounderings of the U.N. in the area while the U.S. and Australia do all the work (by "all the work" I mean stuff like airlifting roads, hospitals, and food to cut-off regions while U.N. reps organize catering).

This person responded to a comment of mine and I, as I occasionally do, looked up some of his comments. Yep, they were all pretty funny. Then I saw their journal and laughed. I too am a Firefly fan. Then I saw the near 30 posts this person has made in the 6 days after December 25th and I new this was someone I could get along with.

It really throws me for a loop when someone makes me their friend and I have no idea why. Was it that historical rant I went on? Was it that joke I made about killing kittens? Was it because my sig talks about Go? I cover such a wide and random path (I've been off Strattera for a year now) that I have no idea why someone thinks I'm worthy of being their friend (Concerta was a sucky medicine for me too).

Once I get a new fan though I immediately look them up and check out what kind of posting history they have. With any luck the record is full and I can peruse their higher marked posts and judge whether or not I like this person. Usually though, they're near ghosts on Slashdot passing silently befriending people like Caspers on the net.

I know it's a bit uncomfortable for some people, but there should really be a "Why?" text entry box next to the "Change Relationship" dialogue just so such feedback is useful. I suppose I'm doing fairly well on /. but I'm not quite sure where. Sometimes I make some extremely stupid and obnoxious remarks that I quickly wish to distance myself from, what if these people are befriending me because of that? It's just disconcerting and I hope people only consider me their friends after reviewing a few of my other comments.

And what's up with my one freak? This ezzzD55J person made me a foe a good while back and even then I had no idea why. My one foe, nathanh, was an ass to me and (I checked just to be sure) still a jerk in general.

I would just like to point out that the only comments of mine that have ever been marked overrated (out of 282 comments) were ones making any serious or implied jabs at a specific religion.

I freely admit that I can be an ass about such things and so I generally abstain from theological challenges, but it tickles me to know end to see a comment that has recieved many +1 ratings get a -1 overrated rating only when a specific religion is involved, and I assure you that I've made many overrated statements on /.

You would think that if the +1's weren't justified they would have been caught by meta-moderation, but /. nevertheless has an overrated rating specifically to battle too popular comments. I have received many redundant ratings in my time and even seen a couple off-topic or a troll but overrated has been restricted purely to discussions of religion that have already been marked highly as informative and interesting (but not funny, worth mentioning because I strive to make only bad and off-colour jokes about religion).

Also fun to see is how often I later get an underrated attached to a comment that's already overrated.

This article severely ticked me off. Is it the author's fault, the editor's, or the system's? It's apparent that someone somewhere in the chain of command that brought this article out decided that it was too risky to go out and say that the Earth was likely to cool off. Someone realized that it didn't matter what kind of evidence you had to back it up (much like the case of Gary Webb), if it's too controversial it really doesn't matter.

So far it's A in network programming and a C in Russian 101. Great for programming jobs, but how about translating/programming jobs? I'd like to be the guy on the team who explains to the American unit what those incredible Russian/Ukrainian programmers are doing. Maybe I'll just move to Russia and be the guy who makes their products work in English. I never thought of that one...

So if I'm in Russia (or maybe Germany or somewhere in between) and my girlfriend is in Africa... that's a pretty decent gap. Probably about like dating a girl in California from here, except I'd be relegated to snail mail for communications. Maybe Liz will become an airline stewardess, that would put her all over the map. We'll just have to see...

Alright, so Exeem was announced on Slashdot today. Now I'm a little pissed.

It's not at them really, the idea for the system is awesome. It's actually a lot better than mine. They took the idea a step further.

I still wish I had been the first one to get bittorrent and gnutella mixed. I've been thinking of it since I started learning Python in August.

Since Exeem has already been announced I'll just go ahead and indulge anyone who passes through in what I had in mind.

It wasn't as graceful as Exeem. I hadn't thought about removing the need for trackers. The system was a lot simpler than that.

It was called Rain. It would be a gnutella network that only shared one kind of file: Droplets. A Droplet is basically a wrapper containing the meat of a Torrent file with an extensive description for it. The descriptors can be searched. It's really that simple.

There were different rules defining when your should remove your copy of the Droplet from your system, when you should save ones that pass through your system often enough, and various other maintanence tasks.

It's kinda clunky and not all too exciting, I know. It didn't remove the need for a tracker which is what Exeem does --that's a biggie. Oh well. It really shines in the way that it can very easily be thrown together with a little Bittorrent and Gnutella knownledge and some PythonC++ glue. If I had started back in August I'd probably be ready to turn it in next week for that class, but I'd also probably be failing all my other classes for lack of attention.