Nothing interesting here. Move along.

Would someone explain for what reason Slashdot is checking the personal web server on my computer to see if it is an HTTP proxy?

66.35.250.150 - - [02/May/2004:23:08:16 -0500] "GET http://slashdot.org/ok.txt HTTP/1.0" 404 277 "-" "libwww-perl/5.76"

and

%host 66.35.250.150
150.250.35.66.in-addr.arpa is an alias for 150.0/24.250.35.66.in-addr.arpa.
150.0/24.250.35.66.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer slashdot.org.

I just submitted a story, who knows if it will get accepted. Regardless, here it is for posterity: For any of you who have read Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series, you will appreciate this. In Clarke's novels, he hypothesized the existence of an earth-sized diamond at the heart of Jupiter. The universe held a much bigger surprise - astronomers have discovered a crystallized white dwarf: a diamond 2500 miles in diameter. This star, 300 trillion miles away, is called "BPM 37093" and resides in the constellation Centaurus.

I win!

If you have noticed, my .sig has been something like "Make PhysicsExpert, the worst kind of troll, your foe" as an effort to increase awareness of the dangers of believing what people on Slashdot say. :) (PhysicsExpert almost always quote some bogus "fact" that sounds good and scientific but is really bunk; see his journal and previous posts [yes, even the ones modded 5, Informative] for more details).

Anyway, it was with much surprise that I received the following message on my blog, and even more surprising was where the IP address was from: wolf.ox.ac.uk. I had assumed that PhysicsExpert's "homepage" cam.ac.uk was a ruse to try to get more credibility, but, apparently, he is in fact in the UK.

typo by Anonymous Coward (Fri 2003-11-21 09:22:49 AM CST) 163.1.181.xxx [edit] [delete]

hello. I notice that I have made it into your sig. While I am flattered by this, I notice that you have made a slight typo and would like to draw it to your attention. Thanks, PhysicsExpery

Here is my response which he will probably never read.

It is with some surprise that I note that you are, in fact, posting from a computer at the Wolfson College at Oxford (dhcp-xxx.wolf.ox.ac.uk). I can only then assume that your efforts to be modded up for inane posts at Slashdot might be some sort of psychology experiment to determine the gullibility of the average Slashdot population. Frankly, now that I know that you do in fact reside at Oxford, I am less inclined to bill you as an ignorant, evil American whose sole purpose in life is to trick the average, ignorant Slashdotter into making a fool out of himself when trying to cite your "scientific" falsehoods with scientific fact.

Either way, now that I have gotten your attention, I really don't care what you do. Judging by the latest trend in your posts, the moderators have actually realized that you're not telling the truth most of the time. :D

(IP slightly censored out of courtesy for physicsexpert)