While make a post today, I began a rant on Americans and their trouble with objective worth and misappropriation. The trouble? People too often equate price with quality. Take a look at the fashion idustry. Rediculously name-brand oriented. For example why pay $250 dollars for Gucci jean when there are people that will talor jean specifically for you? Or just as much for sandals when some merchant will send you a cast for your foot and specially fit one just for you? Without the name tags which are better options? Well guys may not care that much, as fit is a hotter topic for women.

Take another example: Software. Is Office worth $300 dollars when you can get 95% of the functionality with Open Office? I could go one about software, but on Slashdot I'd be preaching to the choir.

Here's a good example. Ultra Strength Disk Washing Soap. My mom used to buy it all the time. It claims it's twice as strong as regular, and comes in at 75% of the price. The catch? It's twice as small by volumn. One day I asked her: "Do you actually use less with the ultra stuff? Was normal soap not powerful enough?" Answer: Nope. I pointed out that then she was getting less and spending more. She'd never though of the objective worth.

And on the topic of misappropriation. At my previous employer, the standard chairs where absolutely sub-standard. Yet many used them for years, even management. Those guys that drove in with the BMWs and Audis. I said, you guys spend 8 hours a day in that chair, you can't afford to spend $200 on a really nice chair when you can drop $50K on a car? Come on now.

I support things now when I notice their quality to me. I buy SuSE Linux when I run Fedora as my primary distro. Why? Linux is a quality product and I would like to support it's growth.

I bought UT2k4 when I really don't care for that kind of FPS. Why did I buy it? Out of the box Linux support and great mod community (Ok, so I bought it for Red Orchestra too.

The point is I'll pay for something that I consider worthwhile, even if it's more than they ask. Another example. I like music. Yet, I don't download for free anymore. Why? I like to support that which I get value from. Also iTunes makes investing in music much more cost-effective. I can listen to a sample of every song before I download, and I can buy just a track at a time if I so wish (and if the artist will let me).


Ok rant mode off.

More and more posts that I have read are obviously used for kharma whoring, and I also notice more posts that are unfairly modded redundant.

As for the redundant point, say you make an interesting post replying to the story and yours is the 20th or so post to do so. However posts that are in reply to other posts are invariably made to first dozen or so "root" posts as to be seen higher in the page. If someone takes your point and posts it to an earilier thread, many moderators will moderate your post as being redundant since they read it second, even though yours may have been first by hours. Conclusion: check the timedate stamp before moderating redundant.

In regaurds to the first point, the problem of feeding kharma whore trolls is becoming a bigger problem. A kharm whore troll (KWT) is a poster who will use various techniques to get a post highly moderated (ie. steal posts, post early, post high in the thread, which is what the first example did, steal a post from the yahoo board). Then they will go out trolling and get many -1 scores.

rkz is one that I have most recently noticed. To figure out KWT's check their user page out. If you notice a lot of -1's, then watch out. It doesn't mean that they are a KWT, but it's the leading indicator.

Secondly, look at their friends list. For example look at how many of rkz's friends have 'troll' in their username, or other likely troll names. I've figured that trolls band together in packs to spend mod points on each other.

Thus before you spend mod points, do a quick look at who you are modding, who they associate with and remember don't feed the trolls. Help slashdot get its signal to noise ratio back.

Lastly, M2'ing smartly can help this problem. I know it's hard to say wether a post wasn't insightful, informative or funny, or any of the mod up's. But remember if someone is clearly modding up a troll, they are perpetuating the problem.

If ERASE THE JEWS is wondering why I put him on my foe list, it is because anti-semetisim is uncalled for here at slashdot, even on top of it being morally wrong in the first place.

Makes me think that user names should be subject to hate rules. Don't be surprised if your account suddenly doesn't work one day, ERASE THE JEWS. So fuck off fucko.

I've about had it with a certain slashdotter by the name of Adam Rightmann and let me tell you why.

He (assuming its a he) is singularly the most biggoted person that has ever claimed to be a Catholic. here are some of my resent. favorites.

I can't remember the post that made me originally respond, so I'm keeping track here in my journal. Adam exemplified the worst kind of intollerance, and I won't stop replying to his inane posts until he either convinces me to stop (not likely) or I convince him of his assinine ways.

Addendum: I've recently found out that Adam is a professional troll who frequents slashdot and more recently kuro5hin. He is part of a band of trollers who created and maintained the now defunt site adaquacy.org a site whose outrageous christain right theme trying to spread myths about the devote.

Generally they got off on seeing people get so mad over what they would post. Adaquacy even told Adam to tone down the retoric once, and I can only assume that was so that they could stay believable. Anyway, Adam hasn't posted in a while but I still check every time I get mod points.

Ah, first journal entry. I'll tell a little story then. I've been using Mandrake 9.0 for a while now, but still going back to 8.2 to play games because Nvidia's driver doesn't work with 9.0 yet. I finally figured that you have to have the kernel source and have it configured to build the Nvidia drivers themselves.

This was a major pain in the arse. First off the main kernel source from mandrake doesn't have XFS support built it. Had to download and patch that. Secondly, it's a bitch to troubleshoot feature that you had installed on the pre-build kernel. First time I built the kernel (and it was the first time ever), I forgot my network card. Thus after troubleshooting and rebuilding, I've had to rebuild four times now.

Learned lots o stuff though. Now I'm not a n00by with kernel builds or kernel patching anymore. ;)