Wait until Saturday evening, when the point spread hits 5, then take the Bears and the points.

Send my share of the winnings to the EFF or the ACLU.

*first turn on javascript so I can write in Journal*

Once again we are graced by the sights of young, nubile asian women in what are mostly Hooters outfits. Oh, and there are cars in some of the pictures as well.

Photo link

*turns off javascript when done posting*

An under-reported story from 2010 was the apparent proliferation of paid political trolls. Some of us have suspected this was going on, but some recent leaks coming out of Right-Wing political action committees confirms that this is happening on a bigger scale than thought.

This phenomena goes back at least as far as 2002, when it was discovered that an internet lobbying outfit called the "Bivings Group" was found to have created at least two false identities, "Mary Murphy" and "Andura Smetacek", that were used to post a prodigious number of posts attacking research showing widespread contamination of corn by genetically-modified bee pollen. Bivings was working for Monsanto at the time. It was widely reported that the McCain campaign did this during the 2008 campaign, but the new paid trolling is taking on new forms and attacking more than the regular political online communities.

A very interesting film, (Astro)Turf Wars, a documentary by Taki Oldham, has a scene that was secretly videotaped during a training session organized by a right-wing libertarian outfit called "American Majority". During this session, the trainer instructed Tea Party members as follows:

âoeHereâ(TM)s what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in âoeLiberal Booksâ. I go through and I say âoeone star, one star, one starâ. The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars. ⦠This is where your kids get information: Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster. These are places where you can rate movies. So when you type in âoeMovies on Healthcareâ, I donâ(TM)t want Michael Mooreâ(TM)s to come up, so I always give it bad ratings. I spend about 30 minutes a day, just click, click, click, click. ⦠If thereâ(TM)s a place to comment, a place to rate, a place to share information, you have to do it. Thatâ(TM)s how you control the online dialogue and give our ideas a fighting chance.â

From some of the clips I've seen, this (Astro) Turf Wars film seems like it might be interesting to anyone who has been suspicious of the seemingly organized commenting/moderating activity here on Slashdot.

Trying to get newly imaged machines on the network is an exercise in bullshit. After the initial settings (turn off restore points, turn off OS selection, etc) and restarting, without exception when I changed from local machine to network the message about creating the domain list comes up.

Bullshit, bullshit, BULLSHIT! There is no need to create the ENTIRE domain list when all you need is to log onto your local domain. Having to wait MINUTES for the information to be updated is just BULLSHIT!

It's like dealing with the bad programming of certain games (*cough*Alpha Centauri*cough*). I don't give a flying fuck if the odds are against me. Make the fucking attack! I've turned off all notifications, just fucking attack.

It's the same thing with this shitty domain list creation. Just fucking log onto the current domain. There is only one option. Create the list later.

And while I'm pissed off, fix this shitty Journal system. You don't need javascript to write in a form field. Stop trying to make things edgy and 2.0ey. This is why I changed from 2.0 back to 1.0, ok Taco? This is my message. Simplicity. Not a continuous bombardment of moving and flying out menus, threads and whatnot.

Fuck I hate programmers. This is why I will never be involved in a project dealing with programming something. I don't want my name associated with this shit.

And no, I did not get things off my chest. This is only the beginning.

From time to time I mention the Japanese and the unique differences they have compared to us (most aren't obese for instance). From time to time I also mention finding articles related to anime such a life-size Gundam or the Argo.

This time, I have come across something so disturbing (in a good way) that it truly boggles the mind. I'm sure you are all familiar with anime and the characters therein. If not by name, you can at least recognize when you see an anime-drawn character. In particular, the women of anime are drawn as having HUGE round eyes (except if they're evil in which case the almond shape persists), thin, lithe bodies and possibly lots of bouncy hair.

In that regard, I give you a real anime woman! No, not the first picture, the second. And third. And fourth. And so on. The main page for her is http://blog.crooz.jp/xx1xx/

So who is she? Believe it or not, she works at the Wakatsuki Chinatsu concession in the teen paradise of Shibuya 109. At least according to this article from whence I came across her blog.

Seriously, does she or does she not look EXACTLY like the women of anime (including the adult variety)?

I don't read kanji but if you hover of the various links, you can at least get an idea of where you're going. Start below the Hair Nail link to see the articles and the associated pictures.

As a rule, I don't watch commercials. As soon as I see one, I change the channel. However, there are a few that I do watch and with the sequel to Tron coming out, I've noticed a few promoting the movie.

Let me say straight away that if the commercials are representative of the movie, the remake is a failure. With the exception of blue and red lighting around the edge of things, everything I've seen leads me to believe this is going to be one big shitfest of explosions interspersed with some touchy-feely scenes (though one apparently doesn't get to touch Olivia Wilde).

And speaking of Olivia, the few words I've heard her speak are delivered in as bland a style as is possible. There doesn't seem to be any emotion behind her words.

While the first movie was ground breaking, this one seems to another in a long line of movies which takes a perfectly good story and tramples the lineage into dust. I'm looking at you Transformers. >:

Based solely on the commercials, I fail to see one redeeming reason to watch it unless it comes out on television.

Depending on your definition of "real". For those of you who watched the original broadcast series, StarBlazers was probably the first anime you saw. You watched as they fired the Wave Motion Gun for the first time and saw it obliterate a floating island. You held your breath as the relentless assault of the Gamalons threatened to destroy them. Your eyes, like mine, were probably as big as saucers as they found out they had to go into the Gamalon homeworld and take them out before they could acquire the device from Trelana.*

Now, for a mere $277, you can own The Argo. Well, a 1:625 scale model at least. One thing it has going for it is that it's metal, not plastic. Judging by the picture, it seems to be very true to the series.

I still have a soft spot for the final confrontation of The Argo inside planet Gamalon. When I decide to watch the show, I do so at night, lights off, volume up. The effect of The Argo's main guns firing every which way, the exploding bombs and rockets trying to find their mark, the sound of everything, is something that I thoroughly enjoy.

New JonesBlog update. Lockheed Martin C-5M Super Galaxy

Where's the bug tracker for Slashdot? I'd like to be able to file bugs and feature requests.

Bugs:

1. Link to posting journals is difficult to find. At one time, it was nearly impossible to click, because it was part of a page footer that retreated every time you got near it. (The page body was getting filled with more content as one got closer to the bottom.)
2. List of all my old Journal Entries is difficult to find without already knowing the URL.
3. Enable SSL by default
4. Enable "Public Terminal" checkbox by default, or replace with a "Remember me" checkbox like everyone else has.
5. For some reason, <ul></ul> doesn't work, and I had to switch these lists to <ol></ol>

Feature requests:

1. Offer an explicit programmatic API for managing my user settings, so I can crosspost my blogs to my /. journal, and my 'microblog' statuses to my /. signature.
2. Support conveniently tying my account to major single-sign-on providers who use OpenID and OAuth. Most places will allow me to click a nice, big icon to automate filling in the needed details.
3. Support post convenience features most other social networking sites (hey, remember zoo.pl? You were one of the first social networks on the market.) such as post-by-email, importing/exporting posts from/to some other popular sites/common APIs.

While some of the bugs have been fixed already, it'd have been a lot less grating if there was a good, visible way to report them and follow them as they got fixed.

Installed a new PC for one of the higher ups and was going through the process of configuring the newest version of Firefox (3.6.11). I wasn't able to do a copy and paste into the new, empty, profile directory of the users profile so I had to create one from scratch. After that, I figured it was easier to just go to the four web sites and rebookmark them rather than trying to do a copy and paste.

However, in my travels, I found that the option to not submit crash reports would not stay unchecked. I would uncheck it, click OK then come back in and it was rechecked.

I don't want to submit crash reports from this user's PC. They wouldn't know what to do with them anyway.

So I went to look for the 3.6.10 version. Found the ftp link but get this server message:

ISA Server: extended error message :

200 Switching to Binary mode.
200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV.
550 Permission denied.
ï½

If one follows Mozilla's own directions on how to get an older version, you can't (at least I can't). Add in the fact that a simple checkbox won't stay unchecked and that when you delete some of the extraneous entries in the bookmark directory you are still left with lines, one begins to wonder if Taco and Company are giving advice to the Mozilla folks.

No, I'm not submitting a bug report. I'm not creating ANOTHER account somewhere just to let them know. This is my bug report. Anyone with connections or who has an account can submit it for me.

And more P.S. Taco

Your journal system still sucks. Having to turn on javascript is asinine. Get off yours and drop this nonsense!

Today, I realized I hadn't told you guys I'm engaged.

I went to tell you, and found Slashdot journals down. I figured they didn't care, but turns out it was brought back up.

Anyway, yeah, I'm engaged to a lovely, smart and funny gal who was already into Linux and tabletop roleplaying when I ran into her. May 20th, 2012.

Not bad for a guy who spent his formative years on Slashdot.

Everyone reading this should be aware of what the Nigerian 419 Scam is all about. You've probably received one or two of them (I've only ever received one). As more and more people wise up (or the older ones die off, depending on your point of view), these scams, while still raking in millions, are becoming less and less effective.

So, in good Evolutionary style, those who want to make you part with your money have come up with their newest ploy. I give you, the Enron letter.

P.S. You still haven't fixed the glitch in your Journal system, Taco. One still has to enable javascript to write a title. I deal with incompetency, stupidity and laziness from my co-workers on a daily basis. I shouldn't have to deal with it on a web site which is supposedly run by folks in the know.

This post got a lot of points and apparently a lot of traffic interest. An A.C. suggested that it was the first post they'd ever seen that should have been modded "+100", and _their_ post got modded up.

So now that I've gotten lots of people to read and think about what I wrote, and many who liked it, I'm going to diagree with part of it.

I think I was perhaps being too hard on AMD lady, and perhaps I was missing the focus of what she was talking about. My post deals a lot with _maintaining_ relationships and building them. But I think TFA was referring to _meeting_ geeks.. "catching" them if you will. And my post is potentially not relevant as a response to TFA.

There are some key points that I think still stand, but one thing that I want to revise or comment on a bit is when a woman takes an interest. The 1-liners or plausible topics of conversation postulated by the AMD lady didn't hit me because I am not that interested in PC video cards any more. So in the context of an advice blog to women about how to approach some easily-fits-in-a-box hypothetical geek, I rejected not only the premise but the specific lines used.

But then I got to thinking about my own history, and I remember a specifc time where I was at wedding reception or "couples baby shower" or some similar thing, and there was another woman there who had a real interest in cars and spirited driving. And so we chatted just breifly about it...I think she had heard that I was a car guy and so she approached me to talk about it.

Later that night I had to admit to my wife that it was troubling me just how _haunted_ I was with thoughts of this gal, because she approached me about an interest of mine, essentially out of nowhere, and it is an interest that women typically don't share -- certainly my wife doesn't. And so even though I was happily married, my thoughts that day kept returning to this woman. It was a few minutes of conversation and it was at least 8 years ago. Yet i still remember the experience and how i felt about it.

So there is certainly something to the idea of "snaring" a guy by letting him know you share his interests. I think the parts of my post that suggest you need to be authentic, legitimately interested, and so on all still apply. But I wouldn't want someone to read what I had written and come away with the idea that approaching a guy about his interests would be detrimental.

(As an aside, a great friend of mine, who is also a go-fast junkie, ended up having a very serious relationship with a younger girl who was _also_ a driver. And it turned ugly. Sometimes, shared passions/interests/hobbies make better introductions than they do compatible mates. I bet there is some interesting literature on competitiveness/etc dynamics within relationships where each party has some similar jobs/hobbies/interests/whatever).

But only after "socio-economic parity" has been achieved.....

Six Brits arrested for burning Qurans