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.

I find myself puzzled about how to feed back ideas into the "Slashdot process" about how to make that process better. So I'm thinking aloud here.

I asked about this a long time ago, and I was told to submit reports to SourceForge. But since the reports I submitted were not technical but process (for example, remarks about what moderation keywords should be permitted--I had some new ones to suggest), the SourceForge people were (probably rightly) confused about why I was bothering them.

Last night, I received my first report of meta-moderation having decided one of my moderations was inappropriate. To me, this is plainly a bug, and yet I can't figure out where to submit the report. The bug isn't that someone disagreed with me, or even than many people did. The bug is that they decided they disagreed with me based on the outcome and their inferred notion of why I had moderated as I did, rather than by actual communication.

The fact that the moderation system provides no way for me to say "This was a judgment call, but here let me explain my reasoned opinion." makes it very likely that people who haven't thought as deeply (and yes, I dare suggest that sometimes that will happen) will not understand my choice. It also means that when someone overrides me, they are not asked to explain their rationale to me so I can't tell if they are thinking clearly. ... And in reverse--I am robbed of the ability when meta-moderating to explain why I thought something inappropriate.

I still think I was right and the many meta-moderators are wrong, but that's of little consequence. What is of consequence is that there is no dialog going back and forth which might lead to more enlightened moderators and more enlightened meta-moderators. Instead, people just get more and more entrenched because each camp is sure the other camp is comprised of idiots--the natural effect that always happens when there is blocked communication over use of a necessarily shared resource.

But at the meta-meta-level, the problem is that Slashdot has no procedure for nor place for discussing what might make Slashdot procedures better. Things that are not out-and-out technical bugs seem to have no place at all. And so I'm just making my remarks here, in case they get heard and maybe something gets triggered. Or in case someone knows of a feedback facility that I don't.

I actually think Slashdot has an overall wrong theory of how to manage moderation, etc. However, I respect them for having worked through a theory and tried it, and I think there's value in that even if it isn't what I would have done. It's something about which reasonable people can disagree. And even within a paradigm I myself might not have chosen, I think there are local optimizations that could be made that are appropriate to the chosen paradigm to make it work better. That's what I'm trying to do here.

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.

Recently while cooking dinner a friend asked me to turn the oven down to 350 degrees. I approached the oven, and saw the dial/thermostat already set to 300 degrees. The ensuing discussion was lively.

How would you have interpreted and acted on the instructions?

This one falls into the category of I'm not making this up..., really! It's my true story technical support call. (I'll probably have more of these, but wanted to get this one down while still thinking about it.)

First, small history: A friend of mine asked me to set up out-of-the-box two new laptops she bought for her daughters' Christmas presents. I spent part of an afternoon configuring wireless, downloading browsers, etc., and returned them ready-to-go to my friend.

Fast forward a few months... Christmas has passed, the daughters love their new computers, but one of the girls had used her laptop elsewhere, and the network (i.e., the "transparent wireless configuration" I'd set up) for her laptop stopped working.

Knowing my friend really had no technical understanding of solving the problem, but having little time to go over and fix the problem I agreed to troubleshoot and walk her through the fix by phone. Her litmus test, and known universe was AOL (yes, it seems many people cannot separate the need for connection to the internet from their old dialup accounts in AOL) so my goal was to have her "repair" the wireless and verify results in AOL (hopeful that it was just a computer "detect wireless" and not the dreaded "access method" in AOL).

I tried and tried to debug and fix the problem but "verifying" changes and new configurations for the network in AOL finally became too much for me to bear... I just couldn't trust that something wasn't happening in AOL unrelated to the laptop's ability to find a wireless network (especially knowing the other daughter's laptop continued to work on the wireless network just fine in the same room).

Exasperated I told my friend to exit AOL and go back to the desktop. She was momentarily confused by this as there was a pause in her compliance. I prompted her, and she told me she was "complying". Finally she was ready again.

We started anew with debugging. The first next thing we did, she complained that "this" computer was so much slower than the other one. "Aha", I thought, "a clue" to the problem... since the laptops were identical, one being way slower than the other could be a starting point. I asked my friend why that computer was so slow. She said, well it's so much "older". Whaaaaaah???

I pointed out they were bought at exactly the same time. She said, "No, I'm sitting at the old computer in my den!"

"I thought we were trying to fix the network for your laptop", I said.

She: "So did I!"

Me (exasperated): "The why are you at that computer?"

She: "Well, you told me to exit AOL and go to my desktop...."

(A compelling example of how broken the metaphors in computer land are. For the record, the problem turned out to be the AOL "location" or "access method"... i.e., someone had helpfully re-configured the laptop to dialup because she was somewhere out of range of a wireless lan.)

I used to Moderate, lately, noone's asked. Not that I'm complaining (at least not loudly), but if anyone could edurcate me on how this works... I'm feeling a bit used. (Though, to cheer myself up, I tell myself meta-moderating is important in that it is a review of the review process and I do feel I contribute fairly in that vein.

So, I've been a loyal slashdotter for some time now. Feel like I've hit my stride, and over a year ago got my first "Moderator" points! Wow! Until then I hadn't even known what that meant (though I guess naively I'd always wondered how comments got rated). I was just mostly along for the ride -- got a kick out of some of the comments, got mad at others, and learned lots from many -- and not just along technological ilks but also around ethics, philosophy, etc.

Got to a point where I was getting Meta Moderation "privileges" about two times a day (currently it's not unusual to meta-moderate three times in one day). Related to meta-moderation I did find extra incentive from the pseudo-promise of increased opportunities for Moderation Points. At one point (in true geek fashion) logged my moderations and metamoderations curious to see if there were any correlation -- would loyal meta-moderation lead to more Moderation Points.

Initially I tracked typically at two or three meta's per day, and moderations about once or twice a week.

But now!, I haven't received Moderation Points since last October or November! What gives? Does anyone know how this works? As I mentioned, I am not complaining, but am curious about the mechanisms that determine how Points are dispersed. I am still meta'ing two to three times a day, and now it's been over six months since I've moderated. Weird. Thoughts?

Addendum I: I just reviewed the criteria for meta-moderation and it included in its comments:

Moderators who are ranked poorly will cease to be eligible for moderator access in the future.

That brings to mind the possibility that for my Moderations I may have been ranked poorly... that being the case I would stop being eligible for Moderation. But I'm inclined not to think that if not for my own hubris thinking I do a pretty darned good job Moderating, but also I think it would make little sense to continue to give me meta-moderation twice a day. Especially with the tease of "more likely to receive Moderator Points" for my efforts. Yes, why would I be asked repeatedly to meta-moderate if my Moderation had been deemed "poor". Sigh. The mystery continues. (Sidebar: I did send an e-mail to CowboyNeal asking for clarification on what might be considered "normal" frequency Moderation. Will update this journal entry if there is any response.)

Hello to those who would ever read my journal... this is my first entry.

Today I got my first slashdot "freak", which I guess loosely translates to "enemy". Sigh. Weird. (For the record, the honor goes to this slashdotter).

I don't know what the implications are... I'm not really offended, but I'm always curious about those who would consider me their enemy. Anyway, to let anyone know, if you choose to freak me.... I will add you to my list of friends. I am interested in honest, sometimes very frank exchanges, and I try to be fair.

And, to be fair I will up front concede I am not much of a Microsoft fan. If you read my posts, look at my background I hope you'll find a certain mass of reason to support my bent. If not, that's okay.

Again, to those who would be my freaks, Welcome!, I consider you my friends.