Tom Coates has been discussing technical tricks for coping with
message-board trolls on his Everything in Moderation blog, and,
surpisingly, an avowed Slashdot troll has shown up to explain why he
undertakes extreme technical measures to disrupt Slashdot's message
baords.
...i believe that the people who must be treated with the most public,
forthright, and open methods of censure are those who offend us the
most. i do not believe that trickery is ever as effective as open
methods because trickery is, at its core, dishonest to both the person
being tricked and the online community you have secretly enacted
policy for.
i believe that secret punishments inevitably lead to abuse and
combativeness, that they lead to an arms race against people of equal
intelligence and unlimited free time.
A Troll Apart: Comments Endangered07/12/2004 07:27 PM As you all know, we have a troll problem here. At least one person is
repeatedly violating the reasonable boundaries of discourse, to the
point that he/she has become unwelcome and whom we've attempted to
remove from the premises.
But I believe our troll is signing in from a major Internet service
provider that, like most ISPs, gives out dynamic IP addresses (a
different one every time he logs on to his provider). Block one IP
address, and he/she just signs in again and starts up the trolling
machine.
UPDATE: I'm asked to describe the problem in more detail. OK, the
person (or his/her virtual clones) doing this has repeated false
statements about what I do and what I believe even after being told
they are false.
I have no problem with people who disagree with what I write or who
think I'm an idiot, as anyone who's read the comments here knows. But
that's a long way from plain dishonesty, which is just not acceptable.
So we are now faced with a decision. We can:
Keep playing whack-
a-mole with our troll, but this is time-consuming and annoying
(perhaps what he/she wants);
Ban an entire range of IP addresses,
which would prevent some legitimate comments from getting through
(something I'm exceedingly reluctant to try);
Or shut down comments
entirely until we have a new posting system that prevents this kind of
ugly behavior by people whose purpose appears to be disruptive, as
opposed to having a serious debate of the issues.
If we take the third alternative permanently, as we have done for the
moment, our troll will lose the ability to disagree with me on this
blog. Is that really what he/she wants? I'm baffled by such people,
but also nearly out of patience.
Suggestions? Send me e-mail.
Thanks.
The Troll Situation, Continued
The Troll Situation, Continued07/13/2004 10:14 AM I've had a flood of suggestions from you good folks about my troll
problem.Some are, at the moment, technically not feasible. Others are
a good possibility, and I'm forwarding them along to our tech folks.
Some of you have said you won't miss the comments if they disappear
entirely. But I still believe the conversation is important, for all
of us, when it works right, and I do want to bring it back.
Incidentally, several of the people who wrote with suggestions are
among my more fierce critics on this page. They still think I'm
mistaken on the issues (we agree to disagree). They aren't here to
cause trouble, but to truly discuss the issues, and they hope we can
restore that discussion for those of us who aren't here just to play
troll games.
I hope so, too, and while I'm thanking everyone individually who
wrote, here's my public appreciation for the ideas and, most of all,
good will.
' Google Stalkers ' troll for lost ac . . .
' Google Stalkers ' troll for lost ac . . .03/14/2003 02:13 PM Savvy Web users are using Google and other powerful Web search tools
to track down or keep tabs on long-lost acquaintances -- be they
former lovers, classmates ...
'Google Stalkers' Troll for Lost Acquaintances03/13/2003 07:32 PM NEW YORK (Reuters) - Savvy Web users are using Google (news - external
web site) (http://www.google.com) and other powerful Web search tools
to track down or ...
RPT LiveWire: 'Google stalkers' troll for lost acquaintances
RPT LiveWire: 'Google stalkers' troll for lost acquaintances03/13/2003 07:32 PM NEW YORK, March 12 (Reuters) - Savvy Web users are using Google
(http://www.google.com) and other powerful Web search tools to track
down or keep tabs on long ...
Last October we wrote about Gnomoradio, software that helps
people share CC-licensed music.
Gnomoradio has made good progress since then. Check out the new screenshots.
One Gnomoradio screenshot. Click for
more.
Now Slashdot has taken notice, with ensuing discussion.
Slashdot Gets Real
Slashdot Gets Real09/14/2004 02:27 PM Real Networks' CEO, Rob Glaser, talks Harmony, Freedom of Choice, and
support for the Mac OS in a revealing Slashdot interview.
Slashdot
effect: Interesting comments and links about the Slashdot
effect.
Few definitive numbers exist regarding the precise
magnitude of the Slashdot effect, but estimates put the peak of the
mass influx of page requests at anywhere from several hundred to
several thousand hits per minute. The flood usually peaks when the
article is at the top of Slashdot's front page and gradually subsides
as the story is superseded by newer items. Traffic usually remains at
elevated levels until the article is pushed off the front page, which
can take from 12 to 18 hours after its initial posting.
Someday people will live in fear of "The Gadgetopia Effect."
Slashdot for WAP phones 1.0
Slashdot for WAP phones 1.002/17/2004 11:50 AM An adapter that lets you read Slashdot articles on a WAP enabled
mobile phone.
Slashdot over IPv6
Slashdot over IPv602/13/2003 05:05 AM This trick works for most sites by simply appending .sixxs.org to the
domain part of a url, eg http://www.google.com.sixxs.org, the gateway
will the rewrite ...
Slashdot Down for Service
Slashdot Down for Service07/16/2004 11:55 PM Geeks of the world, relax! Slashdot, that uber-blog of open-source
technology news isn't under attack. It is, however, undergoing a
scheduled, but unannounced, code refresh.
Slashdot Is Worthless
Slashdot Is Worthless01/07/2003 09:53 PM There. I said it. Slashdot is worthless. OK, I'll admit that the
headlines are useful, but the comments certainly are not. The sad
thing about Slashdot is that there are still people posting useful and
interesting comments, and they're utterly and completely lost among
the utter crap that floods the site. Generally I make do by simply
ignoring the comments section on Slashdot entirely, but after reading
the comments on the Jhai PC yesterday, I realized that the comments
section is not just worthless but actually a malign force. --
rafeco
I see it slightly differently. Slashdot is great as a black hole for
all the stupid comments you have kept deep down inside you, a place
you can let go of all your shit. Just like this weblog!
Slashdot trolling
phenomena: Here's an example of awesomeness of Wikipedia combined with some
pretty interesting reading. It's several thousand words on the
trolling of Slashdot comments.
The Slashdot trolling phenomena make up a bizarre and
complex subculture found on the popular Slashdot technology website.
It is a mixture of juvenilia, sarcasm, deliberately bad jokes,
tasteless nonsense and highly developed and artistic attempts to
provoke outraged responses from other forum users, or amuse them. It
is a subset and a microcosm of Internet trolling in
general.
Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards01/07/2004 07:09 PM A look at the markup behind Slashdot.org that demonstrates how simple
-- and cost-effective -- the switch to a standards-compliant Slashdot
could be. (Part I of a two-part series.)
Slashdot: The Hardened-PHP Project
Slashdot: The Hardened-PHP Project05/17/2004 02:44 AM Stefan Esser is the author of the Hardened PHP project. Reading
through the feature-list, i cannot help but feel that some of these
features should have been rolled into PHP's standard safe-mode. Implementing
it as a set of patches just means a lot more work for everyone,
particularly the maintainer.
Some of the responses to this post were quite interesting. Among other
things, PHP appears to be a great programming tool for Porn.
I've had a number of people ask me about t
his blog entry, whose title suggests that FeedDemon was banned
from Slashdot. If you read the entire entry you'll find out that the
subject is misleading - it's really about how Slashdot tries to
protect itself from people who make too many requests on their
feed.
Given the un
necessary bandwidth consumption caused by some RSS readers,
Slashdot certainly has every right to try to protect themselves from
RSS abuse. The problem is that they ban based on IP address - which
obviously causes problems for those behind a proxy server that shares
a single IP address with dozens of other users. In all fairness,
though, I'm not sure of a better solution to Slashdot's valid
concerns.
Anyway...since some who read the aforementioned article thought it
might be due to a problem in FeedDemon, I just wanted to make it clear
that this will happen regardless of which RSS reader you use if you're
behind an IP-sharing proxy. As I pointed out in an
earlier post, FeedDemon employs a number of techniques to keep
bandwidth consumption to a minimum - which not only keeps it
'Net-friendly, but also makes it extremely fast since it doesn't waste
time performing unnecessary updates.
Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards02/10/2004 02:35 AM A look at the markup behind Slashdot.org that demonstrates how simple
-- and cost-effective -- the switch to a standards-compliant Slashdot
could be. (Part I of a two-part series.)
Slashdot bans ETCON02/11/2004 08:33 PM
Slashdot has a script that bans your IP address if you pull their RSS
too often. I'm at ETCON, where I'm sharing a public-facing IP with
hundreds of Slashdot readers who are all pulling /.'s RSS. So I have
been banned, along with all of them, for 72 hours.
Link
Slashdot | Windows 2000
Slashdot | Windows 200002/12/2004 06:13 PM http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/12/2114228
Neowin.net is reporting that Windows 2000 and Windows NT source code
has been leaked to the internet.
Slashdot Weekend Roundup
Slashdot Weekend Roundup04/26/2004 07:40 AM Slashdot had some good gadget news this weekend (I know! They must
have changed the mix in their daily free Thinkgeek Crazy Caffeine
Slurry). The first was a tongue-in-cheek homemade mod which stuffs the
cooling power of case fans into a gel mousepad, dubbed the
'BreezePad.' Then there was the...
Firefox and Rendering Slashdot
Firefox and Rendering Slashdot12/19/2004 03:25 PM I've been getting this error viewing various pages at Slashdot with
Firefox on and off since about version 0.8.
Hitting refresh renders the page properly though. Is this an issue
with Firefox or with Slashdot's ancient markup?
Furthermore, this is exactly what should be happening: the
government attacks those who break the law, rather than those who
create the tools. Bit torrent and p2p applications have legal, useful
purposes; by seeking those who use them in illegal ways rather than
banning them altogther is appropriate, rather than trying to ban
them.
I find this odd (notice I said "odd," not "wrong") for a site like
Slashdot.
Google adwords on Slashdot?
Google adwords on Slashdot?03/13/2003 10:22 AM Did I miss something, or has Slashdot just started using Google's
content targeted AdWords on the site? In case you're...
Slashdot | Symantec Says No To Pro-Gun Sites
Slashdot | Symantec Says No To Pro-Gun Sites11/04/2003 07:35 AM Symantec's Internet Security 2004 is blocking pro-gun sites across the
board .. anti-2nd Amendment .. blocking .. cluge ..
:
yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/11/02/1729239.shtml?tid=103&tid=153&tid=99
track this
site | 6 links
Slashdot -- Someone Smoking Crack ?
Slashdot -- Someone Smoking Crack ?03/11/2003 01:22 AM Slashdot -- Someone Smoking Crack ?
Now I know that the Slashdot audience isn't all that reliable at best.
Yes we all read it but we rarely trust it. Still I'd expect a little
better than this:
The Object Prevalence concept, developed by the Prevayler team, and
implemented in Java, C#, Smalltalk, Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby and
Delphi, can be a great a solution to this mess. The concept is pretty
simple: keep all the objects in RAM and serialize the commands that
change those objects, optionally saving the whole system to disk every
now and then (late at night, for example). [_Go_]
Now that's a cool concept. So I did the natural thing and went and
looked for the code. Since I'm a php-head, I figured that I'd look
there to start. Nope! According to SourceForge, "This project has
not released any files". Well I can get by in Perl so I thought "Ok,
not my preference but ok". Nope. Well I think Python is neat and
people I respect a lot like it. Additionally Guido has just plain
guts to make the decision he did regarding mandatory indentation.
Break conventions is hard so I figured I'd look at the Python version.
Nope! Well once upon a midnight dreary, ... (bag the mock Poe), I
did a lot of Pascal. Nope! It turns out that only the C# and Ruby
versions exist. I couldn't get the Smalltalk page to come up so I
don't have a clue there.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything about the concept but just
pointing out that this posting is essentially wrong on many of the
major details. And, sadly, it doesn't really surprise me at all.
Legal uses for P2P catalogued on Slashdot
Legal uses for P2P catalogued on Slashdot12/27/2004 10:38 AM Cory Doctorow:
The Supreme Court have agreed to hear the appeal on Grokster v MGM,
the court case that EFF won, legalizing P2P networks. To help save the
Internet's bacon, Slashdot users have clubbed together to catalog
noninfringing uses for P2P networks.
Durring the beginning of the Iraq war, I used P2P to get video and
pictures that were censored from the US. The instant I hear about
pictures, recordings, etc. on another network they can't show in the
US, I go find them on P2P. Along with that search, I also found
pictures that solders had taken along the way. Then I found gunship
video (de-classified and classified because it had altitude/other
readings) showing people walking into a building. The order came, and
they leveled the building. Then started firing on anyone leaving the
scene. You could actually see the men get thrown around after getting
hit with munitions. On, and this video just happened to show one man
running into a mosque so he was let go. (sure it wasn't leaked on
purpose)
Slashdot: Mozilla 1.0 Released06/06/2002 06:01 AM Check out the cute and horny devils in the OPEN SOURCE NEEDS MORE
BABES post.
"tri" A disappointing release for me. In my javascript testing, it
appears to be buggier than the potty people at Hogwarts
.
"zeldman.cte2"
McCartney speaks out against war
McCartney speaks out against war05/28/2004 09:32 AM Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney criticises the UK for being too hasty
in its decision to go to war in Iraq.
Dawkins speaks!
Dawkins speaks!09/03/2004 11:20 PM Rich
ard Dawkins discusses religion with a Darwinian outlook. RD: Could
religion be a recent phenomenon, sprung up since our genes underwent
most of their natural selection? Its ubiquity argues against any
simple version of this idea. Nevertheless, there is a version of it
that I want to advocate. The propensity that was naturally selected in
our ancestors was not religion per se. It had some other benefit, and
it only incidentally manifests itself today as religious behavior. Grok Description matches for Slashdot troll speaks GrokA matches for Slashdot troll speaks
Get a Free, Powerful Message Board at Chumster.co.uk
Get a Free, Powerful Message Board at Chumster.co.uk12/28/2004 03:29 AM Chumster.co.uk is a new UK web site which allows non-technical people
to set up a powerful online message board. The service is completely
free and Chumster forums are highly customisable, allowing users to
choose from a range of templates and even use their own logo image.
[PRWEB Dec 28, 2004]
PHP 5’s official release occurred on July 13th with a complete re-haul
of object-oriented programming features and improved MySQL functions.
These are sure to be great additions to the package for PHP
developers. However, many of the changes to PHP are hinting to
something that may not necessarily be something PHP developers will
like down the road.
At first glance, the obvious changes to PHP are a result of the
success of the Java platform and the weaknesses of PHP revealed when
making a comparison. With the release of PHP 5, it's apparent that the
developers of PHP and the Zend Engine (which are essentially one and
the same) felt compelled to make PHP much more like Java with respect
to object-oriented programming. With its new interoperability with
Java, as it states on Zend’s web site, “full integration with Java
will be closer than ever before.” Hmmm, full integration with Java,
huh?
On November 4th, 2003, Zend, the Israeli company backing the
development of PHP announced a strategic partnership with Sun. This
deal also included advisors from Borland, Macromedia, MySQL and
others. The purported purpose of this deal was to make PHP part of
Sun’s web server and bring it to the corporate world of development
that previously had been dominated by ASP and ColdFusion. Now with the
release of PHP 5, it’s far more apparent which path PHP is taking.
Shirky on why light shouldn't be owned08/14/2004 08:22 AM Clay has posted the clearest, sober-est explanation of why it's time
to regulate spectrum as a public good and not as property. It's a
brilliant piece of writing in which every sentence tells....
Hackers owned Wi-Fi Planet
Hackers owned Wi-Fi Planet12/23/2003 02:43 AM In only what can be described as disturbing it appears that hackers
where very successful in hacking Wi-Fi connections. What...
City-owned network moves forward
City-owned network moves forward07/16/2004 01:27 PM Cities interested in building their own fiber networks are closely
watching developments in Utah.
Banishing the demons of stupidity from a system that has been owned
Banishing the demons of stupidity from a system that has been owned08/12/2004 03:25 PM Occasionally a computer will become so significantly compromised with
viruses, trojans, backdoors, hacked, spyware or malware that it
becomes irrecoverable with normal means. Occasionally said computer
will belong to a client, family member, friend or otherwise very
important person who needs said computer back with data. In most
business envrionments user data should be on the server and the
following process is not typically appropriate. This process is
Windows specific, and will help you deal with Windows less than
graceful failures when taken over by viruses, trojans, spyware or has
been hacked. If you do not have data to recover, or an substantial
operational need to keep that exact install, then just wipe the drive
and reinstall the Operating System. There are times however when you
really need to recover a system and format c:\ is not an option. This
process is not intended to be all inclusive, but to give you a
starting point so that you can start doing other needed system repairs
and or recover files safely. Fundamentally a recovered system that has
been owned can be recovered, but never again should be considered
known or trusted. It is always better to wipe and reinstall, but it is
not always an option.
Amazon-Owned Company Launches Search Tool (AP)04/14/2004 06:43 PM AP - Online retailer Amazon.com quietly launched an Internet search
service Wednesday, jumping into a marketplace already crowded with
tools and promised offerings from Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Corp.
PowerBook G3 DVD/Airport-Owned by former TechTV staffer, Laura Burstein
forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1066684 track
this site | 3 links
Latin American Owned Miami Cellular Accessory Wholesaler Provides Exceptional Pricing Causing Competitors Concern
Latin American Owned Miami Cellular Accessory Wholesaler Provides Exceptional Pricing Causing Competitors Concern03/17/2005 04:13 AM While its competitors are continuing to increase prices, Suplimet
Corporation is taking a unique approach and continues to slash cell
phone accessory prices. With unique customer needs forecasting, and
PULL market strategy, anticipating customer needs, SUPLIMET fills a
market need to its distributors and customers in the region [PRWEB Mar
16, 2005]
Former Ebony Magazine "Future Leaders 30 & Under" Entrepreneur, Plays Key Role in Launch of Black-Owned Tech Marketing Company
Sinotrading, an American Owned and Operated Import/Export (Sourcing) Company, Will Begin Training Translators, Web Developers and Company Executives From Chinese Manufacturing Companies
The White House Propaganda Broadcasting Network (AKA FOX News) Offers a Story from the Weekly Standard (Also Owned by Stalinesque State Propaganda Mogul, Murdoch) that Bin Laden and Saddam Were Tight. Didn't Bush Just Deny This? 11/16
Slashdot has a script that bans your IP address if you pull their RSS
too often. I'm at ETCON, where I'm sharing a public-facing IP with
hundreds of Slashdot readers who are all pulling /.'s RSS. So I have
been banned, along with all of them, for 72 hours.
View: 
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