To whom it may concern,

I have been inundated with people hitting "reply all" to an e-mail that was clearly sent to the wrong distribution list asking to be removed immediately. So clearly was this sent to the wrong distribution list that the original sender actually issued a message recall. Immediately following this more, and in fact the same people from before, hit "reply all" again now stating that the [original]message was sent to them by mistake and again stating that they wish to be removed from this distribution list.

I propose the following solution in lieu of removing these individuals from said mailing list:

The following people...

[Names removed to protect the public at large from more "reply all" offenses]

...need to have their e-mail accounts disabled for an arbitrary amount of time as they obviously do not know how to use e-mail properly. This will grant all of us who do know how to use e-mail properly a moment of peace as retribution for allowing this to go on.

Employee #42 in Cube Farm A

I recently got into a discussion(argument) about the validity of having a blog to display topical information in an easy manner rather than just using a wiki.

My point being that the discussion tabs on a wiki are tedious to use and everything just runs together. The discussion tabs were not designed for presenting topical information so much as comments from other wiki users about edits to a project and aren't really suitable for proper discussion either. You wind up having to use nested bullets and leave timestamped signatures, which the user has to put there by clicking a button mind you rather than it being a transparent action.

The opposition has taken a few stances on the matter:

1. user1: "i simply like forums for discussions...those are my feeling"
2. user2: "the whole blog-in-a-wiki idea sounds rather lame too. we have discussion tabs and this irc channel"
3. user2: "there's slim to no chance of me using either a blog or a forum"

While I am inclined to agree with user1 that forums are good to discussion, I can't help but feel that they're antiquated. Merely an attempt by BBS folks to maintain an old tradition in a new medium that replaced them. Not to mention I know of no secure forum packages out there. In many ways the blog replaced the forum, but as someone else pointed out they do put more emphasis on the "first post" and less on comments. Given this, blogs are better at topical information, but less so for open discussion. We might have to bite the bullet and use both, a forum for open discussion and a blog for topical information. The wiki I believe should just be used for documentation.

As far as user2's notions, I would like to point out that they also don't use the discussion tabs on the wiki, so does it really matter. While antiquated, I like IRC and I think it's a valid method of realtime discussion with other people. It's problem however is data retention in a useful manner. Yes you can log it, but it's all text and not as easy to search through as a blog or forum would be. IRC might be a good way of keeping the flames out on the forum though, who knows.

Keep in mind that all this was over IRC.

Date: Nov 28, 2005 3:59 PM
Subject: RAYMOND

Body: ok dude i know you dont know me but i have a big favor to ask you my band wants to name our band name Strages and we want a myspace, unfourtuanetly your myspace is www.myspace.com/strages :( so if your fucking metal dude do us this huge favor PLEASE change you myspace name.


Nick.


Some guy on MySpace, who I don't know, asking me to change the name I've used for longer than the five years this site has been running so his band can use it! No sir, I don't think so, for then I would be selling out and selling out is not "metal".

Peter M Cohen
PROCESS MODELER

151.200.173.2 resolves to stargazer-o.stars-smi.com, which appears to be a firewall/proxy for a secure network. STARS SM/I is a subcontract of SAIC. Peter works for SAIC under STARS SM/I which is why he had access to my employee information. Peter used his issaic.saic.com login to get my employee number, e-mail, and username. 138.88.138.14 is Peter's home IP address as it was the one he posted the comment from. At least he was smart enough to post from his home box instead of work.

Lesson: If you're going to pick a fight with the owner of a website....

1. Make sure the owner doesn't work for IT Security of any sort.
2. Make sure the site isn't hosted by the owner, who has access to the logs.
3. Don't post from an IP that can be used to find you.
4. Don't surf the site from your work computer before trying to look like a badass.

I've been saying for years that the porn industry has been controlling the fast adoption of new forms of media for years, and I have been met with many many disbelievers. Behold, Porn industry mulls next-generation DVD, try arguing with that people...

Now I know slashdot is slow on getting news a lot of the time, but come on, this shit is really old news.


Google Exposes Web Surveillance Cams, I've been doing this for serveral months now, just ask my coworkers. We even have our favorites.


The Tin-Whisker Menace, this was so last year.