Noodling around the site I started reading Rob/CmdrTaco's journal and found an explanation for why I kept getting mod points for a while - modding in the low-down numbers and presumably people liking my decisions when meta-modding.
Having done some contract work away from home I dropped off
Myself and two partners have launched a new company specialising in Java and Open Source products and programming, Sussex Java Partnership
We expect to be mainly tying code from various open source projects together, but should have some OS code of our own available on our site over the next few months.
I had mod points today thanks to the usual roulette and ended up using them up in the Google's Bigger Index thread.
Sadly, this is the first time I've used most of my mod points negatively - to mod down posts, rather than upping good posts. Well, I saw 'negatively,' what I was trying to do was improve the level of discussion a bit. There seem to be more and more duplicate posts at the moment (I know, I know, following the lead of duplicate stories.)
In the story it said Google had indexed six billion items, but their home page says they've indexed four billion-some web pages. There were lots of people pointing out that four billion is less than six billion, and then lots more pointing out the six billion includes images and PDFs, again and again.
I ended up thinking about when I first read Slashdot. It was over two years before I got an account, partly because I didn't read it very often, but mainly because I didn't feel I could contribute to the discussions. I couldn't contribute because they were all at such a high level. I couldn't think of anything that was as intelligent or useful as had all ready been said.
Now, I have to plough through two to three hundred posts, a lot of which seem pretty uniformed, to find a small number of useful posts.
No era is ever as perfect as nostalgia makes it seem. But Slashdot really is getting to the point where it won't be worth reading the posts any more and just using it as a list of news stories. And that's a great shame for such an old and successful site.
I've got moderator points again. This is odd, as my Karma is 'Good' rather than higher, and I had some late last week. I presume this is the standard random-points-to-members and I just happen to have been randomly picked twice in quick succession. Alternatively it could be that people have been agreeing with me in meta-moderation and that's bumped me up the list for some points again.
I always find having mod points changes the way I read Slashdot a bit. Normally I often see posts I think could do with a bit of a boost, but when I have points they all disappear. Then there's ones I like, but are already on 3 or 4. There's plenty of posts around that are up on 5 and I feel don't really deserve to be quite that high, but I don't want to go around modding down comments which are pretty good when I could be finding ones that need raising.
Recently when I have points I've been trying to remember to look at the stories in the sub-categories that never make it to the front page. Often a bit of quick modding in those makes more difference than concentrating on the stories everyone is looking at, including those with points as well. I feel like I ought to make an effort with the moderation, just because there seems to be a lot of quite mediocre comments getting high scores at the moment so I'd like to feel a bit of prodding on other comments helps sort things out a bit.
I see a lot of posts on Slashdot saying that Bluetooth (BT) is useless as a technology, or that it's going to be super-ceded by low-power wifi. Then, I look around real life at my own kit and what friends use or are waiting to buy and see Bluetooth is doing well.
Personally, I use a BT to let my laptop dial up through my mobile (cell) phone when I'm away from land connections, and to send the odd text message when I can't be bothered to type them with predictive text. Two friends use theirs for pretty much the same thing, another for backing up his address book, as well as the same as me in an emergency. I've also used mine as a quick networking tool between my and a friend's laptops.
Then there's my old boss, who has a Bluetooth headset so he can drive and talk on the phone easily (and now due to new laws in the UK, avoid being arrested.) Another friend has just got a BT adaptor for his PC so he can use a headset with Skype
All of these are things that previously needed cables of various types and became more complicated in that some of the computers concerned are PCs and some are Macs, and the phones concerned are various brands. Now, it's all very easy, and all because of a low-power, low-cost, well designed system. I'm sure something will replace Bluetooth eventually, but I don't think it's going to be for a while yet. Bluetooth has got to the 'it just works' stage, and that means it's more useful than it ever was when it was hyped.
Brain off-line, please wait.
