Before readers point fingers, I'll candidly and openly admit I plagiarized this article (an article about rampant plagiarism) for my slashdot post/reply.

I don't plagiarize, but I thought it'd be interesting and appropriate to see

• if I get any kind of mod's for the post
• if anyone notices

Shazbot, another article rejected (13 for 13 now). On slashdot, ostensibly, "Thall shalt no grouse."

Okay, I thought this article where the author asks the question: Is Slashdot Dying? was especially interesting now that taco is considering a site redesign.

John Berry, the author, observes personally and , from peers, anecdotally Slashdot seems to have declined in recent years. John includes a couple of pretty graphs, and offers a not-too-in-depth theory of this perceived decline, including "RSS", and "Web 2.0".

I'm putting this up in my journal for what it's worth. I've personally sensed a decline with Slashdot too, but I don't know if it's the old adage, "Familiarity breeds contempt", or if the skid is real.

Certainly one thing I know I've seen change is the currency of Slashdot articles. Where I previously worked, peers were always wondering how I could be so ahead of the curve on technology in the news. Often I'd discuss news sometimes days before the topic became water cooler fodder.

Recently, I sense the opposite. I'm finding Slashdot articles describing technology stories so old I have to check for dupes... some are so late it would seem they'd have to be dupes.

Slashdot is still one of my favorite platforms for discussion, but the shine fades a little bit each day.

While I'll allow that my "submission" for this article may not have been pithy enough for taco and company, I'm disappointed I don't see more introspection and less hubris (and a new paint job for the site doesn't count).

There is a article in today's (Sun, 4/16) Seattle Times, Math Comes With Its Own Problems discussing trends and changes made and being made in the Washington State public schools. The thesis is we've cheered for spelling and reading (fta: And in America, where are the math bees, the volunteer math tutorial corps, the math-is-fundamental public-service campaigns? As a society, we root for reading. But we expect success in math to just happen ... or not.) and seen Math languish. Now Washington State is going back to basics: Just as important is focus: Kids must reach deep understanding of the principles behind mathematical operations how and why they work before moving on to the next subject, or they will never catch up. "The idea is to build ideas on each other in an increasingly complex way," Schmidt said.

In some ways I'm surprised the basics have been ignored so blatantly and so long -- I grew up in public schools without calculators, and we had to be able to construct and deconstruct math problems forwards and backwards. What are the experiences of students today in other states (and countries)?

Anyone else seen the latest in intrusive ads? I encountered mine in the Chicago Tribune. It's an ad for Target, and it's nearly unavoidable and really obnoxious. Here is the letter I've written to Chicago Tribune:

To the Chicago Tribune,

Is it worth losing readers (loyal too!) with your Target ads? The "new" rollover ads are virtually unavoidable (I'm sure by design, nice touch) and only go away when the "X" is clicked.

BUT, in addition, the "dynamic" expanding ad must load its dynamic content before that "X" is even available! Early this morning, that "load" took almost thirty seconds, thirty seconds at which point I'm moving on to my second most favorite news site.

For me it's a nuisance. Enough to at least temporarily read elsewhere.

For less sophisticated users (my parents whom I help all the time understand better how this stuff works (or doesn't)) this ad would confuse enough to believe either their browser or the Tribune were broken.

I've written Target, I won't shop Target this Christmas Season (let's just say that's more than $xxxx budget potential lost for them this year) and I'm close to moving the Tribune to the #2 slot in my news reading bookmarks.

Best Regards,

-your name here

So, how many of you backspace and make meaningless corrections? I was thinking how I've done this my entire professional career and was wondering how stupid it was or wasn't.

Example:
$ echo tea^Hst
(unless of course your original intent was to echo "teat".)

So, does anyone else do this. (My classic is taking new releases of word processors for a spin and typing the classic "The quick brown fox...", and no matter what!, I always backspace and correct even though it's totally meaningless.

I know I'm obsessive about the whole moderating, metamoderating thing. My most recent post finally explained why I no longer get mod priveleges, sigh.

And, as pseudo-retribution to Taco and company I had finally stopped doing meta-moderations. Until now. I still think my lot in slashdot life is unfair (I don't get to moderate, cuz I participate TOO much), I kind of missed contributing in any moderation sense, i.e., meta-moderation. So, I've started again.

And, it does feel like contribution... there are some really bad mod's out there, and I guess it's satisfying to bat them down.

Aside: I just meta-moderated one of my own posts! LOL, that's the first time that's happened. Technically I posted AC, but it was funny. I started reading and thought, "hey, this guy's good!", then recognized my own post... funny.

So, for now, I'm back in the meta-moderation saddle again. Still wish I'd get some mod time, but, c'est la vie.

I hate to ask, but maybe someone else knows...

I've noticed an unexpected sig behavior on slashdot. I thought whatever sig issued with a post was the sig that stayed associated with that post forever. What I'm seeing though is whatever sig I define becomes the displayed sig for any and all of my posts!

Is this the expected behavior?

Does this surprise anyone else?

I recently downloaded a trial version of some software, but elected to skip the name and bio info as it was optional. Of course I got the standard e-mail notifying me of my download, read on:

Hello null,

Thanks for downloading xxxxx from xyz.com!

We hope you'll find our software extremely easy to use, and helpful in reaching your .....

I substituted "xxxxx" and "xyz.com", but the text is faithful otherwise... the salutation is hilarious.

I've journaled a few times, ranting/venting on the unfairness that I've meta-modded over 500 times over the course of over a year with no mod priveleges in return! I've liked to think I'm contributing with meta-modding, but had gotten fed up with the whole deal since ostensibly meta-modding improves your chances of getting mod points.

I complained to Commander Taco, and he actually responded! Turns out (and I hadn't even made the connection) my loss of mod priveleges was related to getting laid off from my 21-year job with a telcom. How?

Well, it turns out slashdot does increase a reader's eligibility if they meta-moderate, but there are other criteria as well (this shouldn't be any big surprise). Taco explained slashdot selects users for mod priveleges based on them being plus or minus a sigma from the median, i.e., the norm. So, very light readers aren't going to get to mod. Heavy readers aren't going to get to mod, either!

So, having lost my job, and not being successful in even getting an interview (too old, fsck!) I had time and became much more slashdot-active. I pretty much had time to read any articles of any interest, and became very active posting. Went from zero fans to thirty, didn't even know what that was about until I got slashdot messages telling me someone had "become my friend".

But, because I lost my job, and because I had more time to "contribute", and because I did, I essentially forfeited mod priveleges.

Commander Taco was very nice about it and I feel better at least understanding why I don't get to mod.

Does anyone else find a certain irony to all of this?

Sheesh! I've just spent over 30 minutes (and still not solved) the problem of trying to find uptime on my windows XP machine. Actually, I'm trying to find out how to do it on my parent's machine, which is 2000 miles away, and my access is VNC and I have limited interaction with their machine.

I Googled for a solution, thought I found it with this article. Turns out not to work... at least on my XP system, and of course it doesn't work on my parents either. The problem? No "systeminfo" command on either machine, or at least it's not transparently in my command path search. (Yeah, it's on my list of things to continue research for this should've-been-easy-to-do-in-the-first-place problem.)

Interestingly, it looked like with the "didn't work for me" replies to the original article, I was going to find others with my same plight. But, no, they're just futzing around with and fighting the syntax of the stupid windows (actually DOS) "FIND" command. WTF?

So, while I'm sure I'll find out how to do this eventually, it's yet another example of how obtuse and obfuscated the windows world can be... I sure wish I had a charge code that I could charge back to Microsoft for all the time I spend trying to just make their stuff usable.

As an interesting aside, I have cygwin on MY machine, and easy enough, you simply type "uptime" and you get the info... go figure. Of course, cygwin isn't installed on my parents machine (though I'm now considering going that route, just for the convenience of the suite of unix commands to do some real word).

Sigh....

Recently posted a neither hilarious, nor horrible comment and immediately got modded overrated, before it got rated. What the fsck? So, I posted a rant basically letting off steam about the totally screwed modding system on slashdot. I don't know what the exclusive club is, but getting weird mod's, and going over a year without mod priv's, and stupid modding (the stupid mods aren't restricted to post I'm complaining about), it begins to wear.

I don't know how one gets to become part of slashdot's Star Chamber...

Have you Meta Moderated recently? Regular Meta Moderators are more likely to get mod points.

Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha....

This is now the running joke for me with Slashdot. I'm still averaging about 2 metamoderations a day... lately I've been getting "hit" with sometimes three a day... and one time I got repeatedly bludgeoned with requests to metamoderate immediately after having done so. I stopped counting after doing about six in a row within a ten minute span. Shit.

So now it's been almost a year since my last moderation points. Who the fuck is getting these mod points?

Not so sure it matters much -- I'm starting to get a little fed up with this place anyway... It's kind of an old-boys' club at the same time as being a cesspool of bad writing, bad articles, and bad opinions. Pretty close to going off this grid. It may be a relief. For what I've recently gotten out of it, I'm putting an awful lot of time into it.

I recently purchased two Toshiba laptops, one for my parents, one for me. I love both of them -- they are nice machines. But I was struck by one thing in particular... Inside the box, the laptop itself is secured in a foam-like bag sealed by three stickers each of which has its own dose of disclaimer. Two of these stickers were pretty standard fare, basically Toshiba takes no responsibility if you try to do stuff on your computer and lose data because something (think OS/software) doesn't work as promised. Opening the bag frees your laptop and frees Toshiba from liability. Nice, huh?

But the third sticker (actually the top sticker) bothered me. Seems they have addressed the "Windows refund" issue with this one. Here is the exact transcription of the sticker:

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The software products pre-installed on your computer are copyrighted works. Please carefully read all the License Agreements furnished with the computer, whether in hard copy or electronic form.

Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. ("TAIS") currently sells personal computers with a Microsoft Windows operating system pre-installed, based on general customer demand. In order to maintain the highest quality standards under the Toshiba brand name, TAIS is committed to delivering computing solutions to the customer as a total PC system.

Nothwithstanding anything to the contrary in any third party License Agreement or product documentation supplied with your PC, TAIS does not accept the return of component parts, or bundled software, that have been removed from the PC system. Pro-rata refunds on individual PC components or bundled software, including the operating system, will not be granted. If you wish to return a complete PC system, contact the TAIS dealer where you purchased the product, and comply with the dealer's standard return policies and procedures.

Since I really can't go out and buy a bunch of computers from a bunch of vendors to see, has anyone else seen similar disclaimers from other vendors? I know it's pretty ridiculous anyway to fight the Microsoft juggernaut by trying to get the OS refund, but for Toshiba to deflect their part in providing a refund seems drastic too. Anyone else? Just curious.

Will run this up the flagpole, if I get a couple of votes, I may proceed.

I have long wanted the ability to have my linux box up during hours I need it and off when not needed. The off part is easy of course with cron.

The on part is much more problematic. In the old days you could just put the Big Orange Switch (BOS, remember those?) in the power-on position, and put a cheapy Radio Shack timer on the outlet and be sure your cron was shutting down appropriately in time for the power-off periods. But computers today are all software switches and I can't use that anymore.

I have come up with a way to use XP's ability to hibernate and "wake" the computer to perform scheduled tasks as leverage to bounce my ACPI computer into linux at prescribed times of day for prescribed lengths. I thought maybe I'd write it up in my journal, submit as a potential story for slashdot.

(By the way, my use for this is to have the linux server up and running the music server, the Tivo Software during the day during my waking hours without me having to remember to turn it on (cron is always how I shut down). Also, when I'm out of town, I like to know time slots when I can get to my server from the internet -- this not only allows me that access with minimal uptime for the box, it probably is also a bit more secure not being on all the time)

Thoughts? (Also, I have not found this doable even on ACPI linux boxes because I haven't found them able to wake the machine to perform a scheduled cron job.)

I must confess, I sometimes, maybe even more often than not post comments to elicit response. Kind of cool yesterday I posted this list as suggestions to improve the school system and got 79 (to date) responses. Is that a lot? It by far is the most I've gotten. Just curious, as I still feel a bit of a newbie on the forum at times.

Aside: Any others getting tired of meta-modding to death with no mod points? (I know you've had the same experience windydink, love your response to it.) I suppose I could do the math and find expected values for how often we should get to mod, but I was getting mod points once or twice a week, and now am almost a year with none. According to policy, it would seem to imply my mods were meta-modded as poorly done which I find hard to believe.