Hello gentle friends,

I've just returned yesterday after spending a month lounging in the South of France, sallying from one nude beach to the next whilst partaking in only the best French wines known to mankind. First, I want to say that the French women are Ohhhh Lala!! And secondly I want to say that the french food is Ohhh lala!! Sadly I've burned through my Q1 profits and need to get back to work, however I should have some time for slashdot until the next contract gets ironed out.

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Slash Team icon Brian Aker's job at OSDN was found dead in the noncompetitive OSDN payroll ledger this morning. I'm sure trolls and /bots alike will miss him - even if you've been freaked by everyone, there's no denying that krow was the Slashcode contributor that didn't suck. Truly a Slashdot icon.

Well, yesterday's IRC thing went off without me, though had I been there, my questions would have been dumped anyway, so no big deal. It's a pretty long log, so I took the liberty of snipping the good parts and adding some translations for those who don't speak Slash. Hope you enjoy, and I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies.

Question
Answer
Translation

There's an IRC interview with Taco & Hemos tonight. I won't be there, I have plans tonight. There are millions of things that could be asked: why are messages now batched so we can't tell when we've been mass moderated, why are the moderation totals hidden so we can't tell when a comment has been mass moderated, why are comment numbers randomized instead of starting at 1, what percentage of editor moderation is "Over

The absolute best way to to get the W3C to validate your site is to ban their IP address. Because, if your HTML doesn't check out, who's the wiser?

I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate Rob & co on not having a gigantically flawed W3C validator page for the first time in their illustrious five-year history. Way to go, guys!

Well, Fyodor wrote a rather lengthy reponse today, collating a whole bunch of geocities pages in order to prove that any allegation made against him is false, and that he is not a terrorist.

Update: This comment by an AC claims that a user moderator, not an editor, was one party to the moderation attack on this comment. While an AC comment doesn't prove much, it is at this point pretty unlikely that editors were involved. I'd like to remind everyone reading that the name of the posting account isn't sufficient information to grade

Trollaxor.com has obtained a cache of Fyodor's "Troll Hunting 101", briefly posted to www.insecure.org/tmp/trolls in 2002 by Fyodor shortly after hacking the computer of a Slashdot prankster. I have been advised that the images and content in this cache have been modified to protect the name and personal information of Fyodor's hacking victim (SumDeusExMachina) which Fyodor initially saw fit to publish. The modifications appear in bold and are clearly marked as REDACTED.

Slashdot has an interview with security legend Fyodor, admin of the famed insecure.org and author of the world's most affordable port scanner, nmap.

Update (5/28/03): The information in this journal is outdated and no longer reflects the state of Slashcode; this journal is a historical record but no longer accurate. --

Remember everybody's favorite signature? Slashdot Math: 50+1-1 = 49. Taco was so incensed about that he decided to hide Karma from everyone so they couldn't criticize his math skills. This was a good idea, and one he should have stuck with.

Many of you have seen that Verizon has been ordered to disclose customer profiles to anyone who sues them. This is pretty funny, and hopefully someone will sue Hillary Rosen's ISP soon. In the meantime, I'd like to point you in the direction of this interesting quote:

* Moderation of "How does commercial Free Software work? 9:21 17 January 2003
* Moderation of "How does commercial Free Software work?" 9:21 17 January 2003
* Moderation of "question" 9:22 17 January 2003
* Moderation of "what the heck?" 9:22 17 January 2003
* Moderation of "IN SOVIET RUSSIA..." 9:22 17 January 2003
* Moderation of "oh please" 9:22 17 January 2003
* Moderation of "whatever" 9:25 17 January 2003

Now I can't post anony

I've been getting numerous requests from people to come and speak at their organization or school. I'm very sorry but at this time my schedule does not allow me to partake in any public speaking so please do not email with any more requests. Money is not the issue here so offering me more money will not be a consideration.

If this should change I will post a note here or on my website.

Warmest regards,
--Jack Wagner

There's a new project on SourceForge for anyone who's ever been told to "submit a patch". I have no idea why they accepted it.

Addendum: This is not my project; I'm just linking to it.