Slashdot Mirror
Using Saran Wrap As A Polarizing Filter
cdneng2 writes "Here's a University of Toronto research paper on how
to use ordinary Saran Wrap as a polarized filter to turn your
laptop into a stereoscope. From the paper, cellophane
(costing mere pennies) proved to be a better half-waveplate than
a commercial half-waveplate (costing hundreds of dollars for the
required size) for rotating the polarization of white light.
The same paper is cited in www.mygeekdom.com."
Cellophane wonders may never cease.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Slashdot community when IDC confirmed that duplicate story count has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all stories. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that duplicate stories have lost more Slashdot share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Duplicate stories are collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Slashdot poll.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict duplicate stories' future. The hand writing is on the wall: Duplicate stories face a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for duplicate stories because duplicate stories are dying. Things are looking very bad for duplicate stories. As many of us are already aware, duplicate stories continue to lose article share. Red ink and cancellations flow like a river of blood.
Slashdot duplicate stories are the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its editor acceptances. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time topics Saran Wrap Laptop Filters and Ear on the Back of a Mouse only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Duplicate stories are dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor Timothy states that there are 7000 duplicate story posters on Slashdot. How many duplicate story posters on K5 are there? Let's see. The number of Slashdot versus K5 posts is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 K5 duplicate stories. Duplicate story posts on Slashdot are about half of the volume of K5 posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of K5 submitting dupes. A recent article put Slashdot duplicate stories at about 80 percent of the Slashdot story pool. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Slashdot users. This is consistent with the number of Slashdot posts.
Due to the troubles of Ear on a Mouse stories' abysmal duplicate posting rate, duplicate stories are going out of style and will probably be taken over by Natalie Portman trolls who post another type of story. Now duplicate stories are also dead, their corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that duplicate stories have steadily declined in market share. Duplicate stories are very sick and their long term survival prospects are very dim. If duplicate stories are to survive at all it will be among trolling dilettante dabblers. Duplicate stories continue to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save them at this point in time. For all practical purposes, duplicate stories are dead.
Fact: Duplicate stories are dying