Pipedot USB Drive
As a promotion and a small thank you to the contributers, I am pleased to announce... a free USB drive sporting the Pipedot logo! Although this site is still pretty small, a dedicated few of you have really stepped up and helped submit stories, post comments, and moderate. If you have received an email from me about a drive, simply respond with your shipping info and I'll send you one!The drive is a modern all metal design with a convenient ring handle. The capacity is four gigabytes and comes preformatted as FAT32 - but otherwise blank. The drive is bootable; and I've used one this week to load Ubuntu 14.04 on a few computers. With a 14.3 MB/s average read and 2.6 MB/s average write speed, it's not going to win any speed competitions, but it sure looks sexy.
Proof, I suppose, of the other side of the argument about anonymity. There are so many different ways to run forums out there and there is a prevalent train of thought that anonymity leads to abuse and anti-social behavior. That may be true - hell, I've been on Usenet long enough to see it happen there - but some forums that allow anonymity also permit people to contribute who would otherwise be reluctant to do so. That's an interesting observation.
Likewise, forced use of real name (Facebook, G+) was supposed to make people more civil and stand behind their comments on the Internet. But in practice that hasn't happened either. Look at the comments on Youtube these days: even though accounts are tied to G+ accounts now there is still a surprisingly high number of asshat posts out there, despite usage of real name. I conclude that asshats will be asshats, and even anonymous cowards can be forthright and decent contributors.
Does this mean the debate on anonymity in forums has just been rendered null and void?