Trollback for June 2004

Journal TrollBack's Journal: Trollback for June 2004 12

Journal by TrollBack on Wednesday July 07, 2004 @04:12PM

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Issue 21 "Spidey Strikes Back" - June 2004 - Archive

Table of Contents

Format change for Trollback
Flamewar 9/11
Spider-Man 2 Reviewed (Reviewed)
I can watch ICANNWATCH
Sheetrock 2 Reviewed
The List
OSnews: Hotbed of Agreement

Format change for Trollback

You may notice some formatting changes this month; someone yelled rotate and we all switched desks. This month marks the return of Voodoo, our answer to Karma and a numerical approximation of just how black your magic truly is. Here's a breakdown of the new scheme:

Voodoo|(Score,Direct Replies,Total Replies,Percentage of Story) Name | Subject

Comment text summarized

Number of anonymous comments AC, Awards +stuff

The story percentage is the fraction of comments in the story which are nested under the linked comment. If you managed to Parent 50% of the discussion in the story, you'll see 50% here, and your Voodoo score will reflect this. Voodoo is also influenced by the +awards section, which we decline to further elaborate on. Our system for measuring Voodoo must not fall into the hands of crack reverse engineers such as Jamie McCarthy (played brilliantly by Ben Affleck) so for deciphering this section, you're on your own. Suffice it to say that every factor available is taken into account.
Note: Voodoo is calculated from a browser-cached version of the page, not by scripted interaction with the site. That means that late replies may be missed by our scoring system. Complaints? Let us know what you think of the new system by voting in our poll.

Flamewar 9/11

As we noted in last month's issue, class C subnet bans are in effect for anyone whose posts consist of "Bad Behavior". What is "Bad Behavior"? Well according to pudge, anyone who asks is a "doo doo head" [sic]. Trollback decided to fact check pudge's assertion:

[trollback@dotnetenabled faq]$ pwd /cvs/slash/plugins/FAQSlashdot/faq [trollback@dotnetenabled faq]$ cvs update cvs update: Updating . P com-mod.shtml [trollback@dotnetenabled faq]$ grep -i "bad behavior" * [trollback@dotnetenabled faq]$

Unsurprisingly, pudge has no idea what he's talking about. So what exactly is "Bad Behavior" on Slashdot? Turns out, "Bad Behavior" means, among other things, being a Republican, not entirely trusting Michael Moore, or asserting that self-described Op-Eds are Op-Eds. This is made abundantly clear in the most deliberate (and successful) troll of the month.

CmdrTaco decided that this month, "News for Nerds" included reviewing a highly charged political movie and noting that it "speaks much truth", on the front page. This is the guy who won't post stories on Slashdot about Slashdot because it's not "News for Nerds". This 3200+ comment flamefest generated all the histrionics you'd expect, with one interesting caveat: anyone who questioned Moore's impartiality was moderated Troll, and thereby subnet banned from the site. This is, in a nutshell, the very definition of "Bad Behavior" - disagreeing with CmdrTaco's politics. To quote from their beloved FAQ:

"The Slashdot Editors have unlimited mod points, and we have no problem using them."

Bad Behavior indeed. Here's a quick guide to understanding how bad the problem is:

Edit your comment preferences
Set the following "Reason Modifiers":
Insightful: -6
Offtopic: -6
Interesting: -6
Flamebait: +6
Funny: -6
Troll: +6
Informative: -6
Redundant: -6
Set your browsing mode to 4,Threaded,Highest Scores First

Now click on the F911 story. You will basically only be reading Republican points of view now; these are the only people who got moderated down. In a story which was basically an open invitation to political discussion, with a highly polarized electorate, the political faction that agreed with the editors was moderated up, while the political faction that disagreed, no matter how calmly presented, was moderated Troll/Flamebait and banned from posting to the site. And moderation is anonymous, so we'll never know who did it.

Now and then trollback gets email from people who don't understand why we publish our magazine. We don't want to come down on either side of the F-911 debate (except perhaps to say that we consider Mr. Moore living proof that you can troll for a living) but we do think that trying to use Perl to silence your political opposition might not be Fair & Balanced. Blatant flamebait posted as a story? Your political opposition moderated out of sight and IP blocked from posting? And remember, it's not censorship!
Vive le resistance!

Update: An alert reader has pointed out that while nearly every anti-Moore poster was modbombed into a subnet ban, pro-Moore posters who linked to the websites of holocaust deniers as evidence escaped the carpet bombing. Yes indeedy, Stuff that Matters.

Spider-Man 2 Reviewed Reviewed

Bonch got his review of Spiderman 2 posted to the front page of Slashdot, the only comment being "Thanks to bonch for this review". Sadly no one remembered to thank Google for not being consulted, as this review had been written and posted the day before at Chud.com. As legions of Slashbots began to moan about the plagiarism, the story stayed unedited on the front page until it reached the very bottom, at which point a retraction was posted. Bonch wins Trollback's Bayesian Filter Food Award this month, proving once again what an effective anti-trolling tool a Bayes filter would be.

I can watch ICANNWATCH

Near and dear to our hearts is ICANNWATCH, a Slash-based site devoted to meticulously monitoring ICANN for signs of abuse. Now, we love an Internet crank as much as anybody, but unlike Slashdot, we're pretty sure that ICANN's ethics are unassailable. Nevertheless, it seems they've got a problem over there with something called "Anonymous Posting". Switch to -1 Nested to see some of the best...

Sheetrock 2 Reviewed

Yes it's true, Sheetrock is back. Posting from behind enemy subnet lines, you'll note he found a way to keep his powder dry and make an appearance in this month's List.

The List, now with voting!

198|(2,17,84,7%) AKAImBatman | "Tactical Flexibility"

What I'd like to know is, what kind of tactical advantage does a railgun bring? Sure, it can hit a target some 200+ miles out, but so can a missile. Missiles also have the advantage of being self-guided. All this thing is, is a way to build a more powerful battleship. And yet, the U.S. has put all of its Battleships on active reserve. In their place, they've been deploying missile carriers at a lower cost and higher degree of flexibility.In short, what does the railgun bring to a Real [cont]...

18AC, Awards:+67acct+7low+5bab+20mod

175|(4,5,86,15%) Lyssa Watson | "Just Great..."

A key benefit of the e-Plate is that the tag provides an encrypted and secure ID code which is registered in the UK Ministry of Transport's vehicle database. This code prevents tampering, cloning, or other forms of fraud that can currently happen with camera-based systems. Additionally, the e-Plate is designed to shatter if anyone tries to remove or otherwise tamper with it, and the tag can be programmed to transmit a warning if any attempt is made to dislodge the plate. They said tha [cont]...

16AC, Awards:+70acct+6low+25mod

161|(5,10,85,7%) adequacy | "In the land of empty tanks"

Cyclists are gods.Fuckin bring it on.

12AC, Awards:+74acct+4low+12mod

159|(5,29,73,10%) Anonymous Coward | "This is another reason why C should be deprecated"

Gentlemen, the time has come for a serious discussion on whether or not to continue using C for serious programming projects. As I will explain, I feel that C needs to be retired, much the same way that Fortran, Cobol and Perl have been. Furthermore, allow me to be so bold as to suggest a superior replacement to this outdated language.To give you a little background on this subject, I was recently asked to develop a client/server project on a Unix platform for a Fortune 500 compan [cont]...

35AC, Awards:+39acct+4bust+1low+19mod

131|(1,9,73,10%) Anonymous Coward | "Re:Absolutely Stupid!"

DVDs are manufactured with recyclable plastic. It's your fault if you buy this and don't recycle it. Only you can prevent forest fires.

13AC, Awards:+60acct+1low+22mod

119|(2,14,41,17%) Tim_F | "Correct me if I'm wrong"

But an F/OSS hacker has taken a company's proprietary work and made it available for free, even giving it a similar name.Why is this a good thing?If F/OSS developers want to speed up Linux, the corporate environment is where they should be looking. By doing this they have enabled corporations to get something for free which could cause a company (and a lot of potential Linux users) to go out of business.How are the developers supposed to feed their children if they're unemployed? [cont]...

12AC, Awards:+29acct+2low+1bab+12mod

119|(4,14,47,23%) Sheetrock | "Worth it?"

While the iPos looks nice, and admittedly has the best interface of all the MP3 players (owing to the simple design Macintosh has become a master of), is it worth dropping a couple hundred on it? I've heard of two design flaws now -- both of which they seem less than inclined to fix beyond a short period of ownership -- and have noticed that PDAs in a similar price range can do MP3, video, and even word processing. If it was reliable I'd buy one tomorrow, but are they yet? [cont]...

6AC, Awards:+41acct+1low+12mod

114|(0,22,53,4%) Anonymous Coward | "Sorry, no."

Java Faster Than C++?No, it isn't. It's much slower.I wrote a program that simply counts to 10000 and then quits. Time from double-clicking the icon until when the program exits: C++: 0.5 secondsJava: 20 seconds How hard is that?

15AC, Awards:+38acct+1low+15mod

91|(3,10,46,3%) b.foster | "The lesson to be learned here"

...is to hire a good lawyer. Hint: a lawyer who advises you to settle when you have done nothing wrong is not a good lawyer. Most lawyers are too lazy to take cases that they do not understand, which explains why so many tech-related cases wind up costing the protagonist money. This is even worse in the criminal law arena, because these lazy attorneys can cost an innocent man his freedom. IMHO there is no excuse for this, but it happens every day. Case in point: my roommate [cont]...

7AC, Awards:+39acct+1low+6mod

87|(3,15,33,3%) Exmet Paff Daxx | "Overturn Betamax?"

My reading of the bill is that the law would not overturn Betamax so much as explicitly prevent Betamax from being applied to digital media. Betamax and VHS were both analog formats with cumulative degradation, that is, a copy of a copy was degraded, and at enough generations the quality would be unusable. Perfect digital copies, however, do not have this limitation, and it is merely common sense that they should be covered by a different law. Betamax was a Supreme Court decision, and [cont]...

10AC, Awards:+23acct+4low+7mod

83|(0,23,38,3%) Exmet Paff Daxx | "Typical liberal court"

Despite the first amendment, there are restrictions on what you can say in America. Now, I understand that this bill is not worded as well as it could have been. A sensible restriction would be self-classification of pornographers into a .XXX TLD, with jail time and other punishments only for those who attempt to sneak into .COM and others. This would allow respectable ISPs such as AOL to block all pornographers simply by blocking [cont]...

12AC, Awards:+26acct+6mod

77|(2,10,41,7%) WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWX | "That's cool"

It's good to see Microsoft trying to get on board with at least the spirit of Open Source.

11AC, Awards:+30acct+9mod

65|(-1,7,23,7%) Dozix007 | "I Love Terminal Emulators"

I can't count the number of times a Terminal Emulator has either saved me from boredom, or prevented me from booting into Windows. Nothing like playing Crusader or Warcraft II in Linux.

7AC, Awards:+16acct+1bust+3low+1acup+14mod

61|(1,9,24,2%) Midnight Thunder | "Luckily this is the US"

Luckily this is the US, otherwise we would be considering sanctions and maybe even sending UN inspectors.I know this sounds like a troll, but just think about it for two minutes.

7AC, Awards:+17acct+2low+10mod

53|(2,8,25,20%) Milo of Kroton | "Is not"

Faster importantless? With 64 bit processing power for all available by athlon 64 made available that works with 64 bit yes immdiately we would switch. These chip make futiliity. Why make processors of like these new when you can improve on 64 bit? The battle is to will be lost to Athlon without 64 bit competition by.

11AC, Awards:+14acct+7mod

39|(0,7,18,7%) Exmet Paff Daxx | "Confirmed: Architect not a verb"

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=architect : 1. One who designs and supervises the construction of buildings or other large structures.2. One that plans or devises: a country considered to be the chief architect of war in the Middle East.I mean, it's not even a second meaning. It's just plain English abuse. I hope this Zdziarski guy's paper is decent, since he's pretty tripped my spam filter from the gate.

9AC, Awards:+9acct+8mod

37|(0,4,13,56%) Anonymous Coward | "Important note:"

The passing lane is for passing, and the law of the passing lane is this: Slower Traffic Always Yields To Overtaking Traffic. She couldn't pass you, because overtaking on the right is illegal. By blocking the passing lane, you've gone ahead and blocked the entire freeway to anyone who obeys the law.You were in the wrong, she did the right thing. If it were me, I'd have shot you.FYI.

2AC, Awards:+11acct+1bab+1mod

34|(3,8,11,3%) Milo of Kroton | "Yes, fast"

But what cost? Only government would want new technology this fast, maybe your NSA, that around codebreaking.

3AC, Awards:+8acct+1bust+1broken+5mod

32|(3,8,17,5%) Milo of Kroton | "Greatness!"

I am for cannot waiting able frequency to this have! I too am so greatness compression going to get. I am ask: can use this games? UT2k4 is good. It is very big game however maybe some for people. Can this technology fast enough for gaming be?

12AC, Awards:+5acct+4mod

30|(-1,9,11,1%) Sheetrock | "Go back to basics?"

This brings up a complaint I've got with the way the industry works nowadays.
As a programmer, I feel the continual march of progress in computing has beenhampered as of late because of a major misconception in some segments of thesoftware industry. Some would argue that the process of refinement byiterative design, which is the subject of many texts in the field -- extremeprogramming being the most recent -- demonstrates that applying the theory ofevolution to coding is the most ef [cont]...

6AC, Awards:+5acct+1low+1mod

29|(-1,5,14,2%) Exmet Paff Daxx | "That is correct."

BMW parts are much harder to fence, as car thieves steal cars for their parts, and the market is entirely an economy of scale. The more popular a car, the more the car is worth. Which is why BMW has never made the most stolen car list [cnn.com]. The parts to a Honda Accord, for instance, are worth a lot more and are easier to sell.Of course, stealing an iPod from a BMW doesn't mean you have to steal the whole car, just smash the window. This will be a huge boon to radio thieves, as the [cont]...

5AC, Awards:+9acct+5mod

25|(4,5,7,1%) Exmet Paff Daxx | "Ugh"

I wonder if they have plans to move this into other, higher quality vehicles in the future? While I admit that BMW's are very expensive and prestigous, independent car reviews like Consumer Reports always give them the lowest possible marks for reliability, a key indicator of quality. Any chance they're going to port this to high quality makes such as Nissan, Honda or (the king of reliability) Toyota?Before anyone flames me -1 Troll or something, here's a link [consumerreports.org] to [cont]...

0AC, Awards:+7acct+1low+2mod

18|(-1,2,12,6%) hkhanna | "Steve Wozniack's Son"

Steve Wozniack's son and I got in a fight at a Jack-In-The-Box in Los Gatos, California last year. He told me to go back to Iraq (I have brown skin color).I would have kicked the shit out of him but he had a bunch of his buddies from Los Gatos High there and I only had a couple friends with me. The cops showed up really soon so it was all over anyway.

8AC, Awards:+4acct+4mod

OSnews: Hotbed of Agreement

OSnews, a highly moderated forum, is pretty much troll-proof. We think. On the other hand, there might be some exceptions. An alert reader has sent in the following links:

Coming next month: The GNAA captures some truly unbelievable screenshots!

That's it for this month. As always, email your links to trollback at ziplip dot com. Subscribe to Trollback Magazine by befriending; Slashdot will notify you of upcoming issues! And please remember,

..MODBOMBING IS TERRORISM ..... _ ._ ._ , _ ._....... ... (_ ' ( ` .)_. .__)..... ..( ( .( .. ) . `) .) _)... .(__ (_.. (_ . _) _) ,__).. .....`~~`\ ' . /`~~`....... .....,::: ; ..; :::,....... ....':::::::::::::::'...... _________/_____\___________ FREE JUNIS FROM AFGHANISTAN

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