Weird.

I posted a reasonable, well-intentioned, and sincere query about how anyone could think that the FSF has any real leverage over Suse--any meaningful way of expressing their evident displeasure at Novell signing on with Microsoft.

There was no inflamatory language. There were no waving red flags. There was no fanboi-ism. Frankly, I don't think there was any discernable bias one way or the other.

And along comes some clueless n00b to "-1 Flamebait" it.

Simply amazing. Amazing that mod points could be graced upon a slashdotter who could be most charitably characterized as a waste of oxygen. Amazing that once said slashdotter (henceforth known as "Puddinhead") got those mod points, he could wipe the drool off his chin and summon the intellectual muscle to work the moderation combobox. Even more amazing, if this moronic abuse of moderation represented Puddinhead's idea of taking a genuine and well thought-out position on the subject rather than the spastic twitches and burbles of the defective mentality he surely has.

Sigh. I am guessing the metamods will address this, but there are plenty of fanboi sheeples who M2 here who will agree with what they read into the moderation ("How dare he question The Stallman and his Crusade!?!"). But it doesn't matter. My karma remains excellent, because in the end, this moderation is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Today's poll, "Favorite tool of destruction?" has among other choices "Other (specify)". (Sadly, not a CowboyNeal option, but I'll get over it.)

Anyway, great. I love chiming in. After all, "High explosives" wasn't one of their offerings, so I had to vote "Other."

Ooh, lookie, no comments at any mod level. Schweet, I get FP!

WTF!?! No "Reply" button? And why the flaming hell does it say that the discussion has already been archived? It's been up maybe a day! With NO COMMENTS! Only 5000 votes! AND NO COMMENTS!?!?!? "Archived" my caucasian butt!

Feh. So much for "Other". I just wasted my vote.

Somebody screwed up most cleverly here.

I've not angry, just terribly, terribly hurt. -- Marvin Martian

Well, out of the blue, 5 mod points! After months of moderation drought. I wonder if this is the beginning of something big?

On the other hand, Scientific American's "Skeptic" column pointed out that we primates have a bad habit of using our acute little pattern recognition cability to draw little causal connection arrows between completely unrelated but coincidentally-timed events. So maybe it just means /.'s PRNG hiccuped just so and bestowed precious precious mod points on me.

Naah, it's really because I'm extra spe-shul.

I find myself slowly falling in love with wikipedia. Damn. It's scary.

Yeah, I know, it lacks authority, it's just a rabble spewing their institutionalized ignorace, it's a blog pretending to be an encyclopedia.

So, it's a lot like /. How's that for scary?

Anyways, it's fun. Lately I'm mostly playing whack-a-vandal. It's a petty game, really, but I get the cheap and vindictive thrill of undoing some yutz's graffitization of a perfectly good article. There's a moment of "In your FACE, Mr. 204.23.152.19! Don't bring your weak editing crap here NO MORE!" And then I have to ride herd on the article, because I know the foo' is coming back for more.

Eventually, I'll outgrow this phase. I guess it's like the first 5 mod points here, where the desire to smack down offtopics and flamebaits is irresistable. I'm sure in time I'll move on to more positive pursuits there, just like whenever I get modpoints here I try to upmod, not down.

In a not-so-recent journal entry, I noted the rather sudden and unheralded ability of Slashcode to display the Euro currency mark: €

At the time, I tested to see whether some other currency marks would work. The yen, the pound, and the cent all failed to display.

Examine that journal entry now, and you'll find that the Yen mark (¥) and Pound mark (£) display beautifully. As they do now in this very entry.

WTF!??! How and when did this suddenly get fixed!? My old journal entries are beginning to look like unwarranted whining. I'm beginning to look like a clueless putz because of it.

Dammit. At least the cent mark isn't working:

<-- see, nothing!

(At least for now.)

My "excellent" karma is not bringing me the adulation and peer respect I was expecting. I mean, isn't karma the coin o' the realm, the key to the voting public's heart, the precious bodily fluids of human kindness?

Maybe I'm a lame-o weenie for missing it. Maybe I'm off my game. Maybe they've wised up and caught on.

Naah. It couldn't be my fault.

Amazing. In my last journal entry, I was bemoaning the fact that the Euro currency character ampersand-entity didn't seem to work here. Now, all of a sudden, it does. I don't think I changed anything, but right there, in my untouched post, the Euro character sits where I entered my &euro; character.

Does it still work? €

Amazing. On the upside, I can now discuss European money issues with almost the same ease with which I discuss American, Australian, Canadian, or Singapore financial topics.

Now, what about others?

Yen: ¥ <- Nope
Pound: £ <- Nope
Cent: <-Nope

Oh, well, at least the Euro is there. I wonder if non-break space is still gone, or will we be inundated by page-widening trolls? No, actually, I don't want to know.

But why does slashcode seem to have problems with ampersand-entity characters? I can't insert a Euro character to save my life.

Witness: €

Shoulda been a Euro character there. I bet there wasn't. Now, some seem to work: < for less than, > for greater than.

Perhaps it's my Mozilla settings? No, it shouldn't matter, because I seem to see Euro signs on other websites OK. I don't get it, and it seems kinda unfair to have to type out "Euros" when talking about European economic issues when I can just hit "$" for American (and Canadian, and Australian, and a few other) money.

Is there a kind soul who can explain which amp-entities work, and why the others don't?