So, with some trepidation given the media focus surrounding the new 3GS and pointing out how expensive it is over time, I decided to "donate" my iphone 2G to my fiancée and go for a 3GS. Since it's another 2 year contract, I figured I'd go for the top-of-the-range and wait it out again. To my (pleasant) surprise, my needs are relatively cheap...

Initial costs are a bit steep at $415 including tax, shipping. But the monthly charges are $56 (including the data-plan) for my particular needs. I don't use the phone much for talking (450 minutes a month is overkill for me) and I rarely text people (an average of 25/month is (again) overkill, and this corresponds with the '200' dollar amount I'd otherwise have to pay for in bulk). What I *do* use on the phone is the data service. A *lot*. And that's built in as unlimited - it breaks down as $32 for the Nation 450 w/rollover, and $24 for the unlimited data plan.

That comes to a total of $1759 over two years. ($415 + 24 * $56), and I can comfortably afford that. That's also a *lot* less expensive than the $3000+ (over 2 years) that people have been bandying around. It's worth looking at the options, and seeing what suits you before coming to a decision...

Simon

I seriously believe that someone is trying to sabotage Slashdot by making it decreasingly pleasant.

Exhibit A: the new-and-busted discussion system. I actually like it more than the old way for reading comments, but for writing comments it's almost maliciously bad. The new system's preview button is much slower than the old way, and the mandatory waiting time between posting comments is a lot longer than it used to be. The net result is that whenever you're eventually allowed to click the "Submit" button, if your comment doesn't go through immediately, you're stuck staring at a pink error message until the countdown is finished. The only thing keeping this tolerable is that you can middle-click on "Reply to This" to open the old-style comment form in a new window, but I don't know if this workaround is going to be left in place long-term.

Exhibit B: Idle. This is truly the worst interface I've ever seen on Slashdot, from the painful color scheme to the tiny fonts to the difference between the markup used in comments between Idle and the rest of Slashdot. For example, the <quote> tags are treated like <p> in Idle, so there's no visible difference between text you're quoting and your own words. I don't even mind the content so much because it can be an amusing diversion, but wow, the implementation is just terrible.

No, I contend that the new changes are deliberately designed to drive away readership. I don't think that the Slashdot admins are incompetent, so I'm convinced that this is on purpose.

NewYorkCountryLawyer has been asked to provide a legal analysis of the RIAA tactics to a judicial magazine. From his blog:

Link to the blog can be found here...

Perhaps Twitter is really Rob Malda. The editors and staff certainly don't seem to mind how he abuses the system.

There have always been pompous dicks on Slashdot. I could deal with that, but when it comes to having to deal with the pompous dickholes AND being advertised to through "news" stories (Watchmen, Iron Man, etc...)... I just can't deal with that.

Goodbye Slashdot.

If 'No one wants to look dumb' then why does that dorky kid with the guitar DO those horrible MSN commercials?

In a couple of days I will click a button on my publisher's website and my book will be officially for sale.

In a couple of days I can say that I am a published author.

In a couple of weeks you can find my book on Amazon.com.

In a couple of days I have fulfilled a dream.

I've decided that instead of trying to fight the good fight and speak out about horrible mods, I'm going to actually become a target for them, thereby showing what horrible mods really are. The idea is that if I post enough really bad, obviously trolling posts, and continue to maintain my excellent karma and +2 on every post rating, then you will be able to see my posts and how they all get varying ratings. See, if it's obviously trolling, it should get 100% troll and be banished to the bottom of the page, but since that never happens, maybe someone will look at the posts and say, "Hey, wait a minute... this guy here has 1 troll mod, 1 off-topic mod, 1 overrated mod, and 3 funny mods. Maybe the system is imbalanced."

Either way I'm just entertaining myself, which is all most people are doing when they comment on Slashdot stories =). Not only that but I've also submitted enough stories that have been accepted to the front page that I don't think I'll EVER lose my excellent karma, regardless of how many troll/off-topic/redundant/flamebait/overrated mods I get. That's kinda sad really... I'm breaking the mod system in two ways =)

My UIN is in the millions, but I've lurked for quite a while before signing up. The current way of doing things is really getting fucked up, and these are just a few examples.

Slashvertisements are getting more and more common. It's quite ridiculous to have 3 stories based on the Iron Man movie that are really stretching to place themselves into the geek-world. The tech of Iron Man's suit, Iron Man-like visors, and my favorite, Iron Man released today. Wow... just wow. I wonder how much money that brought in for Slashdot.

I was told that if I didn't like it I should collapse the category so it doesn't show on my front page. I'm still new to the UI and all that, so if anyone could tell me how to turn off the spam category in Slashdot, I'm all ears. My theory is that the viral video trend has lapsed over into Slashdot articles and comments the say way that shills get into Amazon, Ebay, and other CNet resources to tout the product that pays them the most as the best, newest, and hippest thing on the market. Fuck off with all that.

Then there's the moderating. I'm a subscriber, frequent contributor to comments, have 3 articles that have been accepted to the main page, and I have excellent karma. I have yet to see a single mod point dropped me way so that I can dish it out. And yet there's obviously a ton of fuckers out there who have never been metamoderated out of existence. I get troll, flamebait, off-topic and overrated on the wrong posts. Figure it out fuckholes, if you're going to mod me down, at least use the right fucking category to do it. I'm not going to get anywhere complaining about the moderation, so I'll end that one there... just had to get it off my chest.

And, last but not least, my biggest gripe. Opinion-laiden commentary in news postings. Get over yourself and stop telling us what to think in your fucking news blurb. Nobody gives a shit if you think Ron Paul is excellent, Microsoft sucks, or that Apple is the hippest trend since hackey sack. Fuckin report the news and get off your soapbox. If you're brave enough, get back on that soapbox in YOUR OWN FUCKING ARTICLE as a comment. And don't you dare just AC yourself.

Speaking of, AC is the most retarded thing left over from way back in the day. They should not allow AC for comments, or if they do it should be with email verification so you can flame the person who gets on there to say something stupid.

Does anyone really care how they are moderated? Sure, I chuckle at some of the mods-on-crack or mods-with-an-agenda things I see, both mods done to my posts and those done to others. At the end of the day why does it matter?

What is your posting philosophy? I post when I want with what I want and have never cared how I get moderated. Does anyone actually try to post in ways/times/places that will result in high moderation?

Ok, my coffee break is over. I need to get back to work. Bye.

Maybe I'm the only one who hadn't heard this story, but Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, the last known surviving member of a group designed specifically to kill Adolph Hitler, has died today. It was only chance that the group wasn't able to take out Hitler on two occasions and Himmler on one. Fascinating story.

The page [with NSFW pic, depending on where you work...] starts with a line guaranteed to catch a geek's attention:

Yep, she's got our attention, especially with that image and the next few lines...

While this is an arguably new approach to changing the minds of people on the subject of NN, would it actually be effective?

...people remembered that Jimmy Fallon is not, will not be, and has never been funny. CNN.

I'm bored, so I am going to post some funny .su (Soviet Union) domains.

omni-hate.su
pant.su
chucknorris-kill.su
insovietrussia-domainregister.su
microsoft-will.su
riaa-will.su

Feel free to add to it.

Personal responsibility. This is the hardest one to fix. People do not take responsibility for their actions anymore, because it's obvious that it's always someone else's fault, and it's entirely likely they need to pay for it... whatever the fault is.

There was a recent story that kind of got me going again on this aspect of what's wrong with America, but it's not the way that you'd probably think. Do you remember when we used to have authority figures? Police, principals, parents, etc...? Those used to be the people you would never question because you'd either get beat or worse, and if it was dealing with the police or school and you got in trouble, then you definately got beat. I'm not talking abuse, but getting hit on the butt a few times was usually enough to make you not want to do whatever you did again.

Those days are long gone. Remember the cops used to say, "Stop or I'll shoot," or if you drove away in your car they'd shoot out your tires or run you off the road? You can't do any of that anymore. And it's getting to the point where you can't even taze someone without worrying about violating someone's rights or getting a race card dropped on your back. I realize there were and are bad cops, and I do realize that there was racism in dealing with certain people, but aren't we past that?

Anymore when someone says, "This cop pulled me over and did this and this wrong," I always have to ask myself, "Why'd you get pulled over," and "if you weren't doing something wrong then why do you care?" You can tell me that's wrong, but I know when I get pulled over, even if I hadn't done anything wrong that time, I know that I've sped before and ran lights before and didn't get caught then, so maybe this one is payback. It's honestly not that big of a deal.

There's a story of some kids who made a MySpace page for their principal that accused him of being a child mollestor and various other things. The students got kicked out of school and then suspended, and now the parents are suing the school for stifling their kids' freedom of speech. This is the society we live in. Instead of people like this going off to die somewhere, they are literally kept alive by the government and society to the cost of us all. My parents would have rightly beaten me and taken my computer, explaining the seriousness of what I had accused the man of. Not these parents... not these times.

Yes, personal responsibility is probably the biggest thing missing from America right now. Everyone's first answer is to sue, even if it means that they are going to prove to a lot more people exactly how stupid they are. Kind of like this story about lawyers attempting to get money by just threatening to sue, until they did that to the wrong person.