Custom Handheld Atari 2600

Krimsen sent in linkage to what has got to be the coolest hack I've seen in months. He built a portable atari 2600. Looks like a game boy, but it plays the old carts, and even features the old wood grain. Absolutely stunning. Someone's gotta sell these things.

Comments

Quick, get out.

[Alphons Clenin]

They just changed the matrix.

Re:geocities

[Frac]

Yes! If we unite as a community!

On the count of one... two...

Just another reason to open the story submissions

[_xeno_]

We all know by now this is a repeat. Oops, they messed up. Since I really don't have anything to say about the story (other than "that's kinda cool") since I don't now, and never did, own an Atari, I want to instead comment on how they might prevent repeats like this.

Open the submission queue! I have to wonder why they don't do it yet. Given that many people instantly saw this as a repeat (I didn't, missed that day), you'd think allowing them to moderate/comment on the story while in the queue would help...

From the FAQ answer as to "How about a page for rejected or pending story submissions?":

Abuse is much worse. We get hundreds of submissions a day: we don't need more submissions, we need better ones. A public forum that gets the kind of traffic we get tends to be abused (like, say, the Slashdot comments for example). We don't want to be deleting "First Posts" and "Natalie Portman" type trolls and spams from the submission bin: we're busy enough as is.

If you want to prevent worse stories, then open up the queue! That way people will be able to see how the community acts to their writing, and might actually get useful feedback. Since I have no way of judging whether a story is "good" or not, I have no way of knowing how to make a "better submission." The only other problem I can think of is repeats in the story queue.

You wanna know why you get so many repeats? I'd love to be able to go through the submitted stories and see if I'm sending in a repeat. But I can't! The only way I know I was being redundent is either after someone else's story was accepted. If they decide not to run a story, I never do! Let's say they decide not to run some piece that a hundred people think they should submit. Well... those hundred people can't see that they're all getting rejected, so in they come!

Appropriateness From there, we move to the many stories that are submitted which are very wrong for Slashdot. They are horribly off topic, or offensive, or just plain scary. Obituaries for people that aren't dead? Rants about events that never occurred? Random Conspiracy Theories? Bug reports? Feature requests? I don't want to propagate this stuff, and I'm afraid that another public forum for them would only make the problem worse. There is some stuff submitted that would make for a very interesting page, and maybe someday we'll implement that. But as it stands, the overhead and the potential for abuse is so high that we don't want to mess with it.

Yet again, he's missing the oppertunity. Sure, people will abuse it - but having hundreds of people going over to verify is better than just the few active authors. (How many are there? 10 to 20?) If you're really that constrained on time, then think please - you don't need to make this take more time - it can actually take less! Think about it as outsourcing the story submissions - the editors still choose what goes on the front page, but the readers can help by "moderating" the stories, allowing the editors to spend less time in the story queue - not more.

Yes, this is offtopic, but it should be addressed at some point. I know why CmdrTaco says he doesn't want to do it, and I just personally disagree. Since most of the thread is currently talking about how this is a repeat, I though trying to offer constructive critism might actually help.

Re:Just another reason to open the story submissio

[/dev/kev]

What about a nice middle ground, where moderators get access to the submission queue? Then give them a few 'submission points' to use there (as well as their standard 5 mod points), and let them work their magic?

This should stop junk/troll submissions, since not all of /. sees the queue, but it should also help the truly good, non-repeat stories float to the top of the queue, where the /. guys can then deal with them better/easier.

Imagine being a 'submission moderator' for a few days with a few points, and being able to mark things as '-1 Repeat' or '+1 Geeky'... Hell, I'd love to be able to correct the grammar/spelling in some of the submissions! :)