To quote one of MaraDNS' users:

[Slashdot] is all nonsense. A bunch of nerdy kids who like debate but weren't popular enough to be on their highschool debate teams or whatnot get together and argue and debate and act like hysterical pundits while lame editors sensationalize every mundane DoS attack that happens (and repost it three times in the same week to keep the flames flying high!). A huge waste of time, energy, and bandwidth...

Seriously, Slashdot is little more than a flame-fest for kids who really need to get laid. I've had enough of the flames, the anonymous assholes who are allowed to insult people who actually accomplish something with their lives, people who think personal insults here are OK, etc.

The replies to any given post are pathetic when trying to divulge any real information and even more pathetic when people lose their basic decency and flame people for daring to have an opinion different from theirs.

Especially pathetic are the pirates who will never write a decent song (or, for that matter, any song) in their lives, who will never be part of the production of a movie, or bless the world with any creative input who have the gall to tell people who do make how that they must give their art away. All because they are selfish little brats who cry "gimme! gimme! gimme!".

Or, for that matter, the kids who spend all day downloading Linux ISOs, do not contribute one bit to any open source software, then whine when Linux companies are having financial problems. Again, acting like little six-year-olds saying "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!"

I am changing my password to one which I will not remember; I do not think I will be logging on to Slashdot again.

- Sam

I feel it is unfair to put people on my foes list without reason. After cleaning up my Foes list for New Years 2003, I now have a very specific policy for what puts a person on my foes list:

A person will be put on my foes list if they engage in a personal attack against another person, or if they place me on their foes list

To be fair to the people on my foes list, here is a list of people on my foes list whose articles I did not like; the relevent personal insult is to the right of the person's name.

• praedor (218403) "that doesn't mean that they can get laid. They can't."
• rudy_wayne (414635) "You hang around with some very wierd people. No sane person would say that and really mean it."
• baba (105606) "your English is short of the mark even by /. standards"
• Klerck (213193) "I had sex with your daughter and son, jackass!"
• BoomerSooner (308737) "I'm not sure what the hell qualifies this guy to be able to do much of anything in Linux"
• Forgotten (225254) "have you considered the possibility that you're just an idiot?"
• Kevin Stevens (227724) "it will take a severe lack of judgement on your manager's part for you to get promoted above a coding monkey."
• jhunsake (81920) "No, you know nothing. Get a fucking clue."
• mrpotato (97715) "The original poster doesn't have a fucking clue."
• chrisseaton (573490) "I take it you were dropped on your head as a small child."

Anyone who is on my foes list for making a personal insult can be taken off of the foes list by mailing me proof that they have apologized to the person who they have insulted, and that they will not insult people on Slashdot again.

All other people are on my foes list because I am on their foes list; such people simply need to take me off of their foes list and tell me that I am off of their list; once I verify they are not one of my freaks, I will take them off of my foes list.

It is not my wish to antagonize people needlessly on Slashdot. It is my wish for people to be held accountable for their actions, however.

- Sam

Since my user journal comes up on my information page, I am adding this jornal entry.

Some quick facts about me: my home page; my current open source project.

Also relevent: I am opposed to the Iraq war; I am an American who does not like seeing manifest destiny in the 21st century.

- Sam

For people who think that believing in evolution means denying that Jesus is the son of God, or that the Bible is inspired by God, please read the following link:

http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm

This link shows one Christian's resolution of the apparent difference between the account of Genesis and the evidence which science has unearthed.

- Sam

This link will take you to a list of the most recently posted journals for all users. I am surprised that Slashdot does not have a direct link to this, aka Kuro5hin or Libertonia (like this)

While evolution has been proven as a scientific fact (fundies use "theory" in a different way than scientists do; there are far more facts supporting evolution than there are supporting the "fact" of the nature of their Christian faith), some people still want to keep their heads in the sand and teach their children that the earth is flat and that the sun rotates around the earth:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/EDUCATION/09/26/creationism.evolution/index.html

When, oh when, will my Christian brothers and sisters stop making a fool of themselves in front of the scientific community?

I guess these people are too illiterate to read the Talk.Origins FAQ.

- Sam

Images of Heaven

Mariana Torres and her worshippers

Something posessed me
An image of you my love
Video visions
That play on my mind

Recently, I was looking for information on a Mexican soap opera called Como en el Cine (roughly translated: "Like being in the movies"). Performing a Google search, I found myself on a web page which a fan set up for one of the actresses, whose name happens to be Mariana Torres.

The pages were the standard fare which I have seen countless times on the internet; someone with one of those hi-tech TV catpure cards videotaped some programs and made images from those programs available on the web for everyone's enjoyment. The words on the web page, though, ended with a personal dedication from the person who made the web page to the actress in question.

It was interesting that, of all of the actresses in this particular soap opera, that this one was chosen to be the object of someone's adoration.

I need to describe Como en el Cine to explain.

To make a complicated, well, soap opera simple, the story has two main parts; one part consists of some grown-up women who alternate between singing and dancing for the audience of an imaginary club, and hang out and argue over love in said club. These women wear far less clothing than any sane latina would be caught wearing in public. I would expect that the object of one's affection would be one of these women; they are quite attractive. In fact, TV Azteca's (the network that makes Como en el Cine) home page links to a photo gallery of these actresses, labelled "Look at our Jewels".

In addition, there is another subplot which involves girls at a private prepatoria (roughly the equivalent of a high school in the US); being a Catholic school, the girls are almost always wearing conservative school uniforms. These girls, like the girls in the club, at times perform songs and dances for the television viewing audience; just before Christmas, for example, they were performing Christmas carols.

I would expect that the girls in the club subplot would get the most fan web pages; however, it was an actress playing one of the girls at the imaginary Catholic high school that got the one and only fan page I have found for Como en el Cine.

This fan page also has a guestbook, opening up the guestbook, I found a number of impassioned pleas for this actress' love. People wrote things such as

"I once had the oppertunity to go to the TV station ... I had the great fortune of meeting her in the elevator; I have stayed in love with her since then"

"I think she is the most beautiful girl ever to be on TV ... P.S. Mariana, I love you; please write me"

"I just want to tell you that I'm your #1 fan ... My deepest wish is to one day get to know you"

"You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my entire life"

"You are the most incredibly perfect actress"

"You are the most beautiful girl in the universe"

"Know, Mariana, that you are beautiful, that you are a princess, that you are a goddess, that you are the very essence of beauty; I hope one day you send me photos which I shall forever carry with me"

"I loved her before even knowing her name"

"What an incredible surpirse when this princess appeared on my TV"

"I do not know how to tell you that you are so amazing . Words can not describe how crazy I am for you"

"Mariana, you're awesume and I never miss your soap opera ... I hope that one day you email me"

The number and intensity of pleas from her fans was incredible, I could not believe that an actress so minor as to not even be found when doing a search at tvazteca.com for "Mariana Torres" could obtain such a following.

Nobody blessed me
with power to reach my love
When you're an illusion
You can still be divine

These impassioned pleas continued for a couple of months until somebody posted the following:

Mariana Torres is my girlfriend. Nobody mess with her!

A few short hours after this posting, someone responded with shock:

I belive that I have calmed down a little, but only a little. I don't know what more to do anymore with you here; it's a little disorienting! I believe that we have things to talk about, who knows when because you're probably really busy. But it's all good.

At this point, I grew tired of lurking. I posted to the guestbook. I told the alleged "boyfriend" that it is easy to lie on the internet; we'll have to see a picture of him with Mariana before we can believe him. I told the other people on the board that I found it strange to be declaring love to somone that they do not know. I also said that I would write up a web page in English describing this phenomenon. Hence, the web page that you are reading.

Peter Godwin's classic new wave hit Images of Heaven , the source of the poetry which I quote above, very well describes the situtation Mariana's fans are in. The very impersonal mass media can produce fantasies in the imaginations of people who yearn for true contact in today's often times very dehumanizing society. Links

• A picture of Mariana (Which I have shamelessly stolen from the Mariana fan web page; they, in turn, shamelessly stole the image from the popular Mexican game show Gente con Chispa [Rough translation: "People who sparkle"])
• The fan page in question (In Spanish) (Warning: Each page has about two pop-ups)
• TV Azteca's web page on Como en el Cine (In, you guessed it, Spanish)

MaraDNS is my attempt to make a DNS server which is fully open-sourced and secure. My plans to implement a DNS server began in the summer of 2000; I was upset that DjbDNS did not support traditional zone files; and wanted something that would do this.

Before implementing MaraDNS, I first wrote a buffer-over resistant string library; this library was written, documented, and tested in a spam protection application, which, alas, never caught on.

I rested on this string library for approximately two months; then a thread was started in Bugtraq that we must have a DNS server that is

1. Not BIND
2. Open source

This thread was all the encouragment I needed to start my DNS server project, MaraDNS, which is (at the time of this journal) in the beta-testing stage.

Like any open source project, this project is only very slow building a following and getting help from volunterrs around the net. A lot of people are helping with the documentation for MaraDNS; translating it in to other languages. Other people are providing invaluable bug reports. The collabarative nature of open source devlopment on the Internet is a reality.

Of course, it is an injustice to plug my own DNS server without menting some of the other DNS projects out there. DjbDNS is already well-known; people either love or hate Dan Bernstien; keep in mind that the license is not open-source. BIND 9 is a complete rewrite of BIND; it does not have the security history that previous version of BIND had. There is also posadis, who are about where MaraDNS was six months ago. I wish them the utmost of luck.

Oh, finally, MaraDNS doesn't support traditional BIND zone files. Yet.

- Sam