• Jack (unregistered)

    I read this whole post, ready to be indignant.

    Then I got to the line about banning HTML and returning to GOPHER only.

    Well done, TDWTF. Well done. Best troll I've seen all day.

  • Luka (unregistered)

    FFS EVERYONE, IT'S A JOKE. THEY'RE TROLLING. IT. IS. A. JOKE.

    HOLY CRAP.

    Yes, caps was necessary here.

  • Jellineck (unregistered) in reply to jonathan
    jonathan:
    This was the last time i visit this site!

    Teamwork (opensource/free) > Competition

    LOL. I bet your drive a Lada.

  • x (unregistered)

    Wreck the web? Have at it, legislative idiots. I can imagine no quicker way of realizing a new decentralized web based on concepts like netsukuku and such.

  • z0iid (unregistered) in reply to TGV
    TGV:
    Nice one, Alex. Some people might need a sarcasm detector recalibration, though.

    I was thinking, with all these programmers here, perhaps we could start central list like you proposed with a kind of nickname for the server and its real, IP address. That would make it easier to refer to other sites.

    We could even use something like GreaseMonkey to automatically read the server's name, look up its IP address and redirect the browser.

    All we'd need would be some authority to keep the list of names and addresses sane.

    How about it?

    I agree.....we shall call it.... D...N...S!

  • Martin D (unregistered) in reply to Casey B

    o_O I think that's the point.

  • anti anti (unregistered)

    I support SOPA because my pants are not on fire.

  • Zarggg (unregistered)

    I honestly can't tell whether this is sarcastic or not.

    CAPTCHA: inhibeo - first person singular present of Latin "inhibere: to inhibit"?

  • Rocky (unregistered)

    Awesome post. Had me going for a moment until you said we should ban DNS, HTTP, and go back to Gopher! Awesome. Too bad it isn't April 4th. I feel sorry for the people that don't get the joke. Thanks for the laugh!

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered) in reply to TGV
    TGV:
    Nice one, Alex. Some people might need a sarcasm detector recalibration, though.

    I was thinking, with all these programmers here, perhaps we could start central list like you proposed with a kind of nickname for the server and its real, IP address. That would make it easier to refer to other sites.

    We could even use something like GreaseMonkey to automatically read the server's name, look up its IP address and redirect the browser.

    All we'd need would be some authority to keep the list of names and addresses sane.

    How about it?

    Let's make that "authority" the US Government. They are obviously crying out for some useful work to do.

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Captain Obvious:
    If JavaScript is outlawed, won't this site lose its main source of material??

    If JavaScript is outlawed, only outlaws will write JavaScript.

    Wow... that might be the only thing that could make javascript cool. I write code in the "outlaw" language.

  • default_ex (unregistered) in reply to Just Kelly

    Even though your post reeks of sarcasm. Piracy has existed for nearly the entire lifespan of computers. Remember when my age still fit in a nyble I had a list of phone numbers to dial for bbs that hosted pirated software. Was a lot cooler back then though: fancy title screen replacements, goofy messages on boot, wares teams jabbing each other, the occasional phone number drops of lames/jerks, and a significant cut in file size without any content loss. Hell piracy was so rampant that "Don't Copy That Floppy" was created, which was so bad it made people want to pirate more.

  • Simon (unregistered)

    [in response to page 1; apologies if the commentards have already been eviscerated in the meantime]

    IT IS CALLED SATIRE. IT WORKS AND IT IS TEH LOLZ.

    PEOPLE WHO VISIT THIS SITE ARE MEANT TO BE ABLE TO PICK UP ON SHIT LIKE THAT. IT'S A SITE ABOUT IDIOTIC DECISIONS, AND SOMETIMES JUST IDIOTS.

  • z0iid (unregistered)

    I think what Alex is forgetting(not really, I think he knows!), is that many coders are on the Autism spectrum. This is not meant to be demeaning, only factual. Depending on where you lie on the spectrum determines how focused and detail oriented you will be as a coder. It also means you may take things LITERALLY. Incapable of detecting subtlety/sarcasm/satire.

    I am not a great coder. But considering the address in the address bar contains the IP, the article title contains 3 instances of the word "support", "cool story, bro" graphic....it was immediately obvious I was in for a real treat of an instant TDWTF classic.

    A great coder might catch the 3 instances of the word "support" and be instantly annoyed, thus setting up a fantastic trolling atmosphere.

    Alex, I see what you did there.

    :)

  • Simon (unregistered)

    ADDENDUM: God help those around some of you if you ever stumble across The Onion.

  • Luka (unregistered) in reply to Simon

    There's a whole Tumblr dedicated to this exact thing - people who have read articles from The Onion and thought they were real:

    literallyunbelievable dot org. Go - it'll make your day.

  • Simon (unregistered) in reply to z0iid

    Interesting point, although I wouldn't have thought that someone's place on the spectrum is guaranteed to correlate directly with their focus and detail orientation; and it's been proposed that autism and its ilk are often misdiagnosed, contributing to the "rise" in autism figures.

    I've never met an autistic-spectrum coder (that I know of) but do know an autistic-spectrum general IT guy. Are there studies floating around supporting this? I'm not being argumentative, I'm just interested in reading up.

  • Simon (unregistered) in reply to Luka

    Oh...my. My life is a constant war of attrition between maintaining optimism and faith in humanity as a whole, and the odd incidents that make me begin to doubt again.

    That site just TURNED THE TIDE OF WAR.

    Thanks though, in return I can only offer you the paltry (in comparison)

    onionlike dot tumblr dot com.

    But...gawd.

  • Sporky (unregistered)

    For those of you who still don't get it, here's a helpful entry from 92.123.66.243:

    sat·ire, noun

    the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.  

  • Jellineck (unregistered)

    Why do people keep posting IP addresses? What does SOPA have to do with DNS? Or are people just perpetuating old information to make their point that free movies and music are a free speech issue?

  • (cs) in reply to Jellineck
    Jellineck:
    Why do people keep posting IP addresses? What does SOPA have to do with DNS? Or are people just perpetuating old information to make their point that free movies and music are a free speech issue?

    One of sopa's provisions called for dns blocking (domain name to ip address translation blocking). Basically if www.thepiratebay.org were to be blocked, you could still access the site from the ip address as a workaround, cutting out the domain name server from the mix.

    The last time I read the legislation, this is how it was, but I have been told that the dns blocking provision is being dropped from the bill. I have yet to verify this for myself tho.

  • Champi (unregistered)

    I really hope you are joking.

  • TeMc (unregistered)

    Dude, this website uses tables for it's design.

    I guess that's a new HTML 6 trend ?

  • Jellineck (unregistered) in reply to PiisAWheeL
    PiisAWheeL:
    Jellineck:
    Why do people keep posting IP addresses? What does SOPA have to do with DNS? Or are people just perpetuating old information to make their point that free movies and music are a free speech issue?

    One of sopa's provisions called for dns blocking (domain name to ip address translation blocking). Basically if www.thepiratebay.org were to be blocked, you could still access the site from the ip address as a workaround, cutting out the domain name server from the mix.

    The last time I read the legislation, this is how it was, but I have been told that the dns blocking provision is being dropped from the bill. I have yet to verify this for myself tho.

    It has been. This is what happens when people start having knee-jerk reactions to bills that are still in committee and aren't even close to their final form.

    I'm looking forward to the next internet blackout based on conjecture and out-of-date information.

  • z0iid (unregistered) in reply to Simon
    Simon:
    Interesting point, although I wouldn't have thought that someone's place on the spectrum is guaranteed to correlate directly with their focus and detail orientation; and it's been proposed that autism and its ilk are often misdiagnosed, contributing to the "rise" in autism figures.

    I've never met an autistic-spectrum coder (that I know of) but do know an autistic-spectrum general IT guy. Are there studies floating around supporting this? I'm not being argumentative, I'm just interested in reading up.

    my wife is 3 semesters away from her EDS in School Psychology - she is pretty informed in regards to Autism spectrum stuff.

    someone's place on the spectrum is not guaranteed to correlate directly with their focus and detail orientation, but it is fairly common, part of their coping mechanisms. They figure out that the world is tolerable if they block out everything except specific tasks. The "anti-social coder" stereotype exists for a reason - a good coder can (or needs) (to) block out the rest of the world for extended periods of time to be productive, and not produce shitty code. There is a direct correlation to individuals on the spectrum (depending where) and their ability to detect sarcasm.

    Autism isn't "misdiagnosed" per say, rather the definition has been widely expanded. For instance, in California, early 2000's, headlines announced that within a few years, Autism had risen by 3 fold....well, standard "mental retardation" diagnosis had dropped by nearly the same amount. The expansion of the Autism spectrum could potentially encompass nearly everyone. Read this:

    Symptoms:

    Communication - both verbal (spoken) and non-verbal (unspoken, such as pointing, eye contact, and smiling)
Social - such as sharing emotions, understanding how others think and feel, and holding a conversation
Routines or repetitive behaviors (also called stereotyped behaviors) - such as repeating words or actions, obsessively following routines or schedules, and playing in repetitive ways

    I know any given week, I could identify with at least some part of those 3 line items.

    But, my initial point - was a stereotype. Good coders are literal, thus less likely to get sarcasm. They live in sarchasm - The giant gulf between what is said and the person who doesn't get it.

    Don't take my stereotyping to imply NO good coder could possibly get sarcasm. Just saying that a good coder that doesn't get sarcasm....can probably do their job with less effort than one who does. They aren't bogged down by plays on words, etc. (And I'm not saying "I'm right", just saying this is an observation and opinion of my own. No studies that I know of to support my rambling.)

  • Dustin (unregistered) in reply to MiffTheFox

    Once that transition happens, get ready for the IPv4 Darknet.

  • (cs) in reply to Jellineck
    Jellineck:
    PiisAWheeL:
    Jellineck:
    Why do people keep posting IP addresses? What does SOPA have to do with DNS? Or are people just perpetuating old information to make their point that free movies and music are a free speech issue?

    One of sopa's provisions called for dns blocking (domain name to ip address translation blocking). Basically if www.thepiratebay.org were to be blocked, you could still access the site from the ip address as a workaround, cutting out the domain name server from the mix.

    The last time I read the legislation, this is how it was, but I have been told that the dns blocking provision is being dropped from the bill. I have yet to verify this for myself tho.

    It has been. This is what happens when people start having knee-jerk reactions to bills that are still in committee and aren't even close to their final form.

    I'm looking forward to the next internet blackout based on conjecture and out-of-date information.

    Once its in its final form its a little too late to start bitching about it isn't it. The blackout protests the current form of the bill and tells congress that you don't want it in its current form. If no one did anything then it would all be one sided and that would be bad. If the bill changes dramatically into something quite a bit more useful and quite a bit less evil then the blackout had the desired effect.

    Just because there is opposition to it now doesnt mean that opposition should stfu and be quiet or else there will be no consessions in the final draft. Springing shit up on people at the last minute wont get anything done about it.

  • x (unregistered) in reply to Jellineck
    Jellineck:
    PiisAWheeL:
    Jellineck:
    Why do people keep posting IP addresses? What does SOPA have to do with DNS? Or are people just perpetuating old information to make their point that free movies and music are a free speech issue?
    One of sopa's provisions called for dns blocking (domain name to ip address translation blocking). Basically if www.thepiratebay.org were to be blocked, you could still access the site from the ip address as a workaround, cutting out the domain name server from the mix.

    The last time I read the legislation, this is how it was, but I have been told that the dns blocking provision is being dropped from the bill. I have yet to verify this for myself tho.


    It has been. This is what happens when people start having knee-jerk reactions to bills that are still in committee and aren't even close to their final form.
    Those knee-jerk reactions were, to some unknowable degree, what made that final form something other than it would otherwise have been.

    Jellineck:
    I'm looking forward to the next internet blackout based on conjecture and out-of-date information.
    And I'm looking forward to more information being rendered out-of-date based on the influence of conjecture, threats of internet blackout, etc.
  • Jellineck (unregistered) in reply to PiisAWheeL
    PiisAWheeL:
    Jellineck:
    PiisAWheeL:
    Jellineck:
    Why do people keep posting IP addresses? What does SOPA have to do with DNS? Or are people just perpetuating old information to make their point that free movies and music are a free speech issue?

    One of sopa's provisions called for dns blocking (domain name to ip address translation blocking). Basically if www.thepiratebay.org were to be blocked, you could still access the site from the ip address as a workaround, cutting out the domain name server from the mix.

    The last time I read the legislation, this is how it was, but I have been told that the dns blocking provision is being dropped from the bill. I have yet to verify this for myself tho.

    It has been. This is what happens when people start having knee-jerk reactions to bills that are still in committee and aren't even close to their final form.

    I'm looking forward to the next internet blackout based on conjecture and out-of-date information.

    Once its in its final form its a little too late to start bitching about it isn't it. The blackout protests the current form of the bill and tells congress that you don't want it in its current form. If no one did anything then it would all be one sided and that would be bad. If the bill changes dramatically into something quite a bit more useful and quite a bit less evil then the blackout had the desired effect.

    Just because there is opposition to it now doesnt mean that opposition should stfu and be quiet or else there will be no consessions in the final draft. Springing shit up on people at the last minute wont get anything done about it.

    Let me put it this way, when the bills finally makes it out of committee and head for markup, is there going to be another blackout? And after that, if the bills make it that far (bearing in mind that in these bills have been parked in committee since 2009), will there be another blackout? And when the House and Senate go to joint committee to compromise on the bill, will there be another blackout? What about during the following steps on the way to the bills becoming law (as unlikely as it has been for a while)?

    My point being that you don't need the big bad federal government to take down the internet, knee-jerk "internet activists" will do it themselves until the next tweet about death panels and The End Of The Internet comes around and they do it all over again.

  • Sopakingretarded (unregistered) in reply to me

    Thats a good idea. It would save all of those jobs and maybe make the post office profitable again.

    Jobs jobs jobs!

  • A Different Andrew (unregistered) in reply to Avenger

    I disagree. SOPA can only come into affect when the websites are either hosted in the US or viewed in the US. Websites will just move their servers to other countries and resume as normal for anyone not in the US. When the other countries see how crippled the US by SOPA they won't copy it.

  • Nag-Geoff (unregistered)

    This is an example of good trolling and Alex has caught a lot of bites.

    All trolls can learn something from this.

  • TheRider (unregistered)

    Maybe we should construct a new internet, parallel to the existing one. The new one must be totally private-owned, must have nothing to do with the government. Maybe only the geeks may own a router. This way, the government has no access to it and we can exercise our freedom of speech whichever way we want.

    We can then also control who has access to our new, private internet and, for example, shut out all those dumb people that keep getting on our nerves, as well as government agents.

    What a brave new world.

  • Kyanar (unregistered) in reply to PiisAWheeL
    PiisAWheeL:
    hoodaticus:
    We could all switch to TORR / onion routing and let the government forget about every controlling the net again.

    If you do some research into the bill, you will find that it actually makes tor/onion illegal, by allowing an injunction to be raised against "any site... [etc]... that distributes a "product or service" that can be used to circumvent or bypass blockades erected against alleged pirate Web sites..." (snipped from http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57346592-281/how-sopas-circumvention-ban-could-put-a-target-on-tor/ )

    Notice the key word "CAN". If you "CAN" use it to get by the protocol, then it is illegal, regardless of its legitimate uses.

    Put that in your PIPA and smoke it.

    Interesting. Since a VPN can be used to bypass blockades, I look forward to the US government shutting down Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Juniper, Array Networks, Red Hat, Oracle, Nokia, Samsung, HTC, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Research In Motion, and every other Operating System or Phone manufacturer (since they all have VPN clients). Dirty pirate companies.

  • (cs)

    Well done Alex! I didn't know anyone at this site knew anything about SOPA/PIPA. Anyone who wants to learn a whole lot more should visit the epicenter of SOPA/PIPA resistance.

  • Tom (unregistered) in reply to Tom

    Reading test failed.

  • immibis (unregistered)

    I'm browsing this through the IP right now, and every forum link goes to http://forums.110.120/. WHY, CS, WHY!?

  • (cs) in reply to Ban JavaScript? You've got my vote

    I don't like SOPA; I am against it. However, I do have gopher service on my computer. And there are many other gopher services available. I also prefer DVI instead of PDF.

    But my other idea is a new deceltralized network with encryption and privacy; no central DNS or anything else like that is needed, and can run over multiple media (including internet, disks, radio, telephone, printed barcodes, etc) it would be very difficult to stop it or spy on it.

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered) in reply to Simon
    Simon:
    Interesting point, although I wouldn't have thought that someone's place on the spectrum is guaranteed to correlate directly with their focus and detail orientation; and it's been proposed that autism and its ilk are often misdiagnosed, contributing to the "rise" in autism figures.

    I've never met an autistic-spectrum coder (that I know of) but do know an autistic-spectrum general IT guy. Are there studies floating around supporting this? I'm not being argumentative, I'm just interested in reading up.

    They should fix it so that people with autism and asperger's are exterminated.

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered) in reply to TheRider
    TheRider:
    Maybe we should construct a new internet, parallel to the existing one. The new one must be totally private-owned, must have nothing to do with the government. Maybe only the geeks may own a router. This way, the government has no access to it and we can exercise our freedom of speech whichever way we want.

    We can then also control who has access to our new, private internet and, for example, shut out all those dumb people that keep getting on our nerves, as well as government agents.

    What a brave new world.

    That suddenly calls to mind a certain scene in Cryptonomicon. You know the one I mean.

  • Martin (unregistered) in reply to Tom

    That is exactly what I thought, but I couldn't believe it, so I read the entire article. I suggest you do, too :)

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to Tom

    I totally agree.

    This will be perverted to fit the latest "target" and next it will be oh you were singing in the shower your phucked! now bend over you criminal.

    In principle I agree with the need to stop piracy however doing it would be near impossible! but the idea of giving a third party with its own agenda control is just phucking nuts!

  • Dave (unregistered)

    Lol. Alex. I was here yesterday. This post was here. But the whiteout box was not there! Was it supposed to cover the main website? It didn't happen!

    Only thedailywtf could fuck that up :)

    Chrome 16.0.912.75 on Mac

  • Someone (unregistered)

    Am I the only one who notices the irony of this post?

  • NotSure (unregistered) in reply to Rocky
    Rocky:
    Awesome post. Had me going for a moment until you said we should ban DNS, HTTP, and go back to Gopher! Awesome. Too bad it isn't April 4th. I feel sorry for the people that don't get the joke. Thanks for the laugh!
    Hm - could also have been April 1st, but wait: might be confusing it with July 1st, Independence Day...
  • Ross (unregistered)

    Poe's Law in action....

  • anoncow (unregistered)

    WTF thedailywtf.com ??

    I'm never coming back here. Watch your stats fall off a cliff why don't you. Too late now.

  • James (unregistered) in reply to me

    Who are you? Richard Stallman?

  • Bo (unregistered) in reply to Tom

    Lol, nobody realizes it's satire, do they? re-read it knowing it's sarcasm and everything should fall into place.

  • not me (unregistered)

    It may come as some surprise to some of our American friends, but the idea of freedom of speech being enshrined in law is regraded in most countries as a very silly one, so the hysterical reaction to these proposed laws is pretty much confined to America. Most people living in civilised countries understand the need for censorship, for example in my country if I were to wonder down the road shouting that homosexuals should be hung I would be arrested, and quite rightly so. Any country that works on the principle that I should be allowed to do that and my actions would be countered by a vocal majority who did not agree with me is a country based somewhere near cloud cookoo land.

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