Slashdot Mirror
The 11 Year Soap Bubble
-Overdrive- writes "Popular Science has an interesting article about an inventor and his 11 year quest for Colored Bubbles" From the article: " It turns out that coloring a bubble is an exceptionally difficult bit of chemistry. A bubble wall is mostly water held in place by two layers of surfactant molecules, spaced just millionths of an inch apart. If you add, say, food coloring to the bubble solution, the heavy dye molecules float freely in the water, bonding to neither the water nor the surfactants, and cascade almost immediately down the sides. You'll have a clear bubble with a dot of color at the bottom. What you need is a dye that attaches to the surfactant molecules and disperses evenly in that water layer. Pack in more dye molecules, get a deeper, richer hue. Simple. Well, on paper anyway."
Mad Scientist Invents Colored Bubble
Posted by Zonk on Thursday November 17, @03:19PM
Is expecting the /. editors to read the articls they post themselves too much to ask? Apparently so, and emailing the "on-duty editor" is a complete waste of time. Digg is looking better and better...
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
I noticed from the article that the dye they're using is a new/unusual organic compound. They're talking about people using the compound in their mouths (to know how long to brush their teeth), and the company's website shows pictures of kids playing with the bubbles.
But... is this product even safe? I'm not an organic chemist by any means, but it seems to me that you'd want to do a significant amount of testing on any new compound to make sure that it's not going to have any long-term negative effects.
--
Free 411! 1-800-411-SAVE
Free Conference Call -- No Spam, High Quality
I dunno, I realise that it's unlikely that he's spent 11 years on only this problem, but I can't imagine that there aren't any other problems/topics that are more important that he could concentrate on.
Assuming of course that there are no useful applications of a coloured dye that sticks to bubbles.
SonicNonsense.com - Random stuff from a bunch of random people.
OH yeah, it was from the Onion....
Physics is imagination in a straight jacket. ~John Moffat
... that whenever there is a dupe, there are people like the above posters telling everyone that it is a dupe. In reality, their comments are merely duplicates of previous posts. If duplication is really an issue for you at slashdot, either:
/. anyways?
:)
a. attempt to become a staff member
b. submit some non duplicated content.
halfway down this preachy tirade, I realize that someone already has probably told the dupe police here that what they are doing, is in fact, duplicating duplicates. So I find myself dubiously duplicating the disasterous duties of other dupe police dislikers.
FFS, talk about the article, say something funny/insightful/etc, or troll around to waste time at work. I'snt that why we come to
OT: Hope that didn't burst anyone's bubble
-AC
I don't know about you guys, but over here they're duping ads too. Like this 'Toshiba save up to $675 ad' that's taking up my screen space. Just so the editors know, this is only driving me nuts. I would more likely buy a sony than a toshiba after this.
So I can have that feeling of Deja Vu... all over again, Slashdot style.
The rate of at which Slashdot runs stories that appeared on BoingBoing first is getting embarrassing.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Yes, it is a duplicate entry because editors don't do their job... and this scientist/inventor/nut is still a jackass.
... that doesn't talk about this article being a dupe!
Oh - I did it too, didn't I?
We have this nice moderation system ... it can't be too difficult to change the story submissions to a system with checks. I'm thinking about a mixture of digg and slashdot. Just let a group of slashdot readers preread everything and vote on stories ( with a big "DUPE!" button ).
The editors still choose the stories but we have some kind of quality control.
This dupe btw could have been avoided with a little script to compare the text and the links in the story with all the stories submitted in the last weeks.
Maybe Slashcode is a little too focused on the user and should try to work on the editor part instead.
*an infinite number of monkeys wrote this sig
Ah, no, sorry, we just comment on the comments already posted as comments. Nobody ever cared about the article, but these days you can safely ignore the blurb at the top as well - everybody else does.
cheers
Majello
This opinion is mine, you can't have it.
I even sent a mail BEFORE publishing to the "in charge" editor about the dupe, with a link.
Maybe using a brain is behind their comprehension.... And "What a useful thing to signal to the editor"!
Grammar Zealots: please spare a non-english writer (lastknight dot com)
You should add a small snippet of code and insert it into the publication process; this snippet of code extracts all URLs from the href's in the proposed posting, and searches all posting of last 18months to see if they appear somewhere: in that case, a HUGE RED warning will flash on the screen, asking the post writer (and/or the editor) to check that the proposed posting is not a duplicate.
For example, Nov 11, the posting Mad Scientist Invents Colored Bubbles appears in
Are the bubbles easy to DUPLICATE???
What was the #2 Article to be posted. It could have been something that would have gotten a great response and worthy of the Reading of the numbers of people on slashdot. But the person who posted it got Rejected, and the story may never reach the masses. I remember my first rejected story "Ultra Sparc Laptops" then about 4 years later the actual story came out by someone else. And the only story that did get accepted was a post about a minor patch to OS X I just happened to be first because my Update OS X came up and while I was installing it I posted it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Ozzy Osbourne can now have black bubbles at his Christmas gigs rather than clear ones (what's f***ing evil about those?)
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
OK, please explain something to me, because I've never understood this. What is the big deal if a story is a dupe? It should be instantly obvious from the summary that you've read the article before, so why not just skip it? More importantly, why go to all the trouble of clicking on the description of the story you've already read, hitting reply, and then posting a diatribe about how it's a dupe and Slashdot is going further down the drain with every day and so on.
This is especially true given the often-Libertarian nature of many of the comments on Slashdot. Many a time have I seen comments along the lines of "if people don't like violent video games, they should just not play them" etc. So why not apply the same logic to dupes? You see it, recognise it for what it is, and move on. There are plenty of other stories to check out.
Sometimes, I miss the original story (if it was only posted to games.slashdot.org for example and not the front page, or if I just don't happen to click on the original). In those cases, the dupes are helpful. And they really don't seem to harm anyone, so who cares if they pop up from time to time?
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
so true. true with this story, btw, which I missed the first time - I'm glad it was duped.
Yep, another dupe. I guess theyll have to make a notofication on next edition. "Sorry for the dupe story about the bubbles. Instead, well offer you a $50 free certificate for a linux distro of your choice."
Oh goodie colored bubbles, just what i need while working on my next fusion reactor test in area 52 1/3rds.....LOL I wonder if this is a goverment contract? If so im going to go back with my Faster Ketchup proposal and start goverment testing on all brands of ketchup, and see if the English labeled version are any different then the Spanish labeled versions.......
Just remove the story when every1 tells u its a dupe. Like its sooooooooooo hard.
REMOVE
REMOVE
REMOVE
Then i can post it again.
They fitted George Orwell's coffin with rollers so he could turn over more easily years ago.
Dejavu... There is a glitch in the matrix! We better start running, they have found us!!!
This must be a government contract, because they would fire you if took 11 years to do anything anyware else!
Shortern your urls here iURL
Maybe slashdot should have a Dupeflag that does not show dupe stories to people who don't want to see them. I think it is good to have dupes, I am not 24/7 watching slashdot and the dupes are normally about something that is hot or something that is very cool, if I missed the first I get to see it again and skip it. If I did not see it in the first time then I am happy that there is a dupe because it if it didn't appeared I would never have seen the post. It happens that this one for instance, that I found very cool, would be lost for me.
You hear it, slashdot maintainers? A flag for dupes and a preference for not showing the flagged articles. I would go even deeper and add preference to show all/show normal/hide all of the sections. The show all would include the articles that appear only in the specific section.:-)
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Well, I missed the original story, so I don't mind the duplication. As for the actual substance, traditional soap bubbles are multicoloured, swirly and beautiful anyway. Monocoloured bubbles look very boring by comparison. What a waste of effort!
Wow.
Maybe some of us like things to be better?
Maybe some of us think they'll correct themselves if we point this out again & again?
Maybe it's just that we're nerds, and cant tolerate *OBVIOUS* mistakes, especially when it's trivial to prevent?
You know, if you keep missing these posts, you might as well subscribe to the remaining sections too right ?
Just a thought.
> What is the big deal if a story is a dupe?
It's sloppy journalism. It reduces the value of ads, as it puts people off returning to the site if they keep seeing repeats. It's boring, and suggests the people running the site don't even bother to read it. Given the site's nerdy nature it's amazing no-ones knocked up the simple code required to give at least a simple pass over the stories before they're posted looking for some correlation between a new story and existing stories. And it happens very frequently.
Then check out the 11 time duplicated post on ./ about colored bubbles.
Come on people, are they really THAT facinating?
So what? So it's being presented as new news that's what! Flag it as a dupe if you're going to post it multiple times and allow those of us who read here somewhat often to IGNORE it. Kripes the other day they did a dupe that was just three entries below the original posting! I mean really, how bad is it to have a "news" site post two different links to the same story at the SAME time?
I'm starting to like Digg more and more...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Insight is redundant.
...about non-breaking bubbles. Replace water or surfacant with quickly drying glue. Keep the bubble in air till the shell hardens. For more effect, dye lightly with phosphorescent paint and inflate with helium instead of air...
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
As I walk through this world
Nothing can stop the Dupe of earl
And you, you are my girl
No one can hurt you, oh, no
Yes, i, oh, i'm gonna love you, oh, oh
Come on let me hold you, darlin'
'cause i'm the Dupe of earl
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
And when I hold you
You'll be my duchess, duchess of earl
We'll walk through my Dupedom
And a paradise we will share
Yes, i, oh, i'm gonna love you, oh, oh
Nothing can stop me now
'cause i'm the Dupe of earl
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Yes, i, oh, i'm gonna love you, oh, oh
Come on let me hold you, darlin'
'cause i'm the Dupe of earl
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Dupe (nothing can stop me now), Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
Dupe, Dupe, Dupe of earl
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Sigh. To easy. Give me a hard problem.
how about spelling?
Sure. Here's the hard problem: make it work.
because, this early in the morning, I was thinking it was Thursday again.
And the inventor solved that early on. Indeed the dye has to be attached to the soap or else the relatively heavy dye will sink to the bottom of the bubble to form a dark spot in a clear bubble.
The other problem (if you'd read TFA you'd have known) is that parents do not like it much if their kid comes home when it is splattered with your dye, no matter if it washes of easily. He solved that problem with a dye that can switch between colored and uncolored.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Maybe it's just me, but it really sounds like he should have just spent the money to hire a real chemist in the first place, rather than spending about 10 years on trial and error, and causing lots of damage.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Explain to me who gives a smallest shit about this article being a dupe or not??? If you've read it on
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Because slashdot has thousands of submissions each day. Every dupe is a story that could have been posted that might have been more interesting.
sig?
"It should be instantly obvious from the summary that you've read the article before, so why not just skip it?"
It wasn't that obvious to you, huh?
So take your vocal minority ass over to Digg and quit filing /. articles with posts that the editors obviously don't care about anyway.
Your to late for the ketchup idea.
Since 1952 the US Government has been testing ketchup. Ketchup must flow between 3-7 centimeters in 30 seconds to be considered Grade A. Ketchup that flow closer to the 3-centimeter mark receive better scores. Ketchups that are too thick or too runny receive poor grades.
Example: I told some guy named xlr8ed to "try xlr8ing deez nutz" after he made a stupid response to one of my comments
I can't imagine why...
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
WTF?! I don't even read slashdot everyday anymore, and it just so happens that I pulled up the site this morning and here's a story I read last week. I actually RTFA completely. It was a very interesting read, albeit a little fluffy, but fun nonetheless. I wish the editors of this show would wake up and take it seriously. Aren't many of the guys paid at this point? I thought they had been for years. Fucking shitty. Imagine if this happened on cnn.com or another news site. I realize that comparison is unfair, because they're so different, but still--- wtf?!
Wake up guys!
I want a bottle of this stuff!
The reason to mention dupes is becomes it is criticism of the professionalism of the editor responsible.
This is meant to be a source of news, correct?
If the BBC started reporting that Saddam Hussein had been captured tomorrow, they'd lose credibility as professional journalists.
When people point out dupes (or that a story is cleary pesudoscience and shouldn't have made it onto the main page...) it isn't necessarily a bad thing. People stick around because of the community. So I assume they are pointing out dupes in the hope that that will raise the level of professionalism above the critical line of dupes/pseudoscience. Or so that they can say that they tried if eventually they decide the leave the community because of the decline in quality.
I used to read Slashdot. Now I read Boingboing and scan Slashdot. Boingboing covers all the big tech events, and quite often they cover them sooner - when I come here it's for the serendipitous smaller articles.
I noted that the story did not mention any testing to see if the chemicals broke down into different substances or what impact those chemicals would have on plants, water, or soil?
Do the chemicals really break down into nothing or will we be reading
about this 15 years from now in some class action lawsuit ?
I imagine the initial chemicals must be non-toxic to make them
into a toy for kids, but what is left behind after the colors fade?
Yeah, that's a hard one. I've been working on it for a long while but I've yet to come up with a good solution.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Was I the only one who read the title as The X11 Year Soap Bubble? I'm going to bed now.
Have you metaroderated recently?
(dolist (dup dup dup))
Because that makes too much sense and is the normal reaction of a human with better things to do.
Because a lot of people are lonely, bitter humans that think they're somewhat more important or more intelligent because they can point out a meaningless error. They like to try and prove they're smarter than other people that read Slashdot. I'm willing to bet the guy that posted that first remark about this story being a dup was so proud of him/herself after they got done posting. Meanwhile, all of the people with actual lives and jobs that don't RSS the Slashdot page and read whenever a new word is printed, point and laugh when someone gets all angry over a duplicated story and opt to either read it or pass it by because we read it before and don't really care...
Sorry. I couldn't help myself.
Won't happen again.
They have a video on their website of what these things look like:
s wf
http://www.zubbles.com/flash/ZubblesVideoPlayer2.
"First go like this, spin around. Stop! Double take three times. One, two three. Theeeen PELVIC THRUST. Whoooo, Whooooooo. Stop on your right foot, DON'T FORGET IT! Now it's time to bring it around town. Bring-it-around-town. Then you do this, then this, and this, then this, then that, then this and that..."
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
News implies newness. Of course, if we haven't seen it, it's new to us. But we have seen it.
"a finger paint that fades from every surface except a special paper, a hair dye that vanishes in a few hours, and disappearing-graffiti spray paint. There's a toothpaste that would turn kids' mouths a bright color until they had brushed for the requisite 30 seconds, and a soap that would do the same for hand washing"
Not just washing for kids: doctors and nurses too, this could slow MRSA superbugs a bit! Anyone think of any other cool uses for the dye?
There is no cure for AIDS
And no one is absolutly sure how gravity works
At least some funding was given so we can FINALLY have colored bubles
People get irritated when they feel that 20% of the readers pay more attention to the site than the paid, so-called "editors."
I think the correct term would be African American bubble
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I read the article blurb to my wife and the first question she asked was, "So, do the dye molecules bond with the carpet molecules?"
Who says women aren't good at science?
(FYI: According to the Zubbles.com website, the bubbles are non-staining, non-toxic, and use disappearing dye.)
"Maybe some of us like things to be better?"
You're assuming Slashdot would be better without dupes. MacGod's argument is that Slashdot is better with dupes. To proceed, you need to clarify how Slashdot would be better if links never appear more than once. You may be right but as it is, I have no idea how you think Slashdot would improve.
If you look at my recent journal post you'll see that those that had the best opportunities to "help" Slashdot become "better" were ignored repeatedly until even *I*, the Slashdot loving whore that I was, gave up.
Zonk has a personal vendetta against anyone that defies his "vision" for Slashdot. His vision apparently includes posting duplicates to spite those that are just trying to help and blatantly ignoring those that are paying to try and make Slashdot better.
Slashdot doesn't give a fuck and neither should we.
It's really quite simple. There's not a machine blindly just posting stories to the front page, there are actual people doing this work, and they're called "editors"; as such, if it this obvious to the readers of this website that a story is a duplicate, shouldn't it be even more obvious to the editors?
Although, it seems like for all the effort these "editors" put into their job, they could easily be replaced with a small shell script.
http://cylan.deviantart.com/gallery/
It lacks professionalism. /. is a commercial site. In most other places, customer complaints are taken seriously, for fear of losing that customer. Dupe stories add little, if any, value, yet at the same time increase the signal to noise ratio, so people complain (increasing the s2n ratio).
I got the same thing from the article. The scientist only gets a brief mention. The inventor wasted tons of time and money as well as risking his health, guessing and trying to solve the problem hap hazzardly. He failed, so he got some capital then found a dye expert to figure out the solution.
hope they're paying the dye science guru guy well..
-A
It seems that digg userbase is largely n00bs.
If you're just reading the articles, nothing beats diggdot.us
It's Slashdot's top stories, digg's top stories and del.icio.us/popular links.
Maybe it's the subject line, maybe it's the dupe factor but it seems the real point is being missed here.
It's not the bubbles that are important.
It's the *dye*.
A dye that will fade to nothing in air, or because of friction, or with plain water - anywhere, infact, other than in specific materials (i.e. the bubble solution), is fantastic! Anywhere where colour would be desired but has previously been avoided because of it's permanancy is now a target.
Yes, toys (ink grenades or coloured water gun fights anyone?) are the easiest applications to think of but I'm sure there are many more.
One I can think of (although I'd rather it never came to pass) is temporary signage or even (vomit) advertising. Some mobile printer just inks over whatever surface is available. After a set time, the print fades away. No more messy fly poster fragments or ripped posters.
Another that's just come to mind is the idea of exposure markings on air-tight or sterile products. Think medical syringes, dressings etc. Markings on these sealed products are made using one of these dye variants. It fades within 30 seconds or so. So if you get a approached by a nurse weilding a clear syringe you know it's been sitting around somewhere and can politely (or otherwise) ask for a fresh one.
What they have here is a completely new dye group - they have a scaffold they can tweak to get the exact properties (colour, fastness, fade speed etc.) they want. It's not gonna change the world but it's still an acomplishment.
OK, enough ranting - I guess I'm just quite taken with this idea. It seems like a mirror of what went into designing inkjet inks... Brings back fond memories of my student chemistry days too!
"...So I hung back and lurked. For 18 months. Can't beat a good old-fashioned lurking."
Maybe not typical of what is submitted and rejected but at least you'll see some of the stories that Zonk refuses to post.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Duuuup-dup-dup-dup-dup-dup-dup-dup...get a job.
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
Because they're obviously testing us, man. You see, right now the dupes are pretty damn easy to see, but eventually the dupes will get harder to spot and the stakes will get higher. Those who don't point out the dupes will be eliminated and the ones who point them out get lower numbers. In the end, there will be one person and he will be crowned King of Slashdot, and he will get girls. And touch their boobies.
I was hoping for a soap bubble that lasted eleven years.
i rock you.
Who gives a fuck?
And what needs to be improved? Sure, duplicate stories are redundant but I can just skip them. I usually do, too, because wars like this pop up every time.
Slashdot is still one of the only places you can go and discuss issues without logging in. And, the moderation system *does* work, although it doesn't work exceptionally well. But it's better then most.
I don't see why you think you need to improve it or bitch about it. I think it's fine. I don't love it or hate it; it's just Slashdot.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Shoot. A quick check tells me that about 90 people have already used that "glitch in the matrix" joke. I guess this is yet another dupe of a message about a dupe, responding to someone complaining about dupes.
SIX DAYS! Not even a _week_ ago was this story posted! I'll admit, it's fascinating, but not dupe-worthy.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
If it's a story that is more interesting, I'm sure it will be posted soon enough. PS I for one missed the original post. I probably wouldn't know about this story if it weren't for the duplicate.
Yeah! You know who you are!
Go shower and put on some clean duds or no beer and pizza for you tonight.
Congratulations. You are the only person to reply to this guy with a VALID argument.
...for a dupe
Like aw my gawd, like man , like are you from the valley????
/.
I have to say not a geek, more like a valley girl!!!
Complain Complain Complain....you need a bitch slap dude!
Seriously, instead of complaining about the problem why not
suggest atleast a better way of doing things, and show your
"geekyness" like the guy above you who commented that
should have a setting to avoid dupes...and a flagging system...
Like aw my gawd...
; )
Picture bubbles in NFL team colors...
I can't picture football fans blowing bubbles at a game for some reason, or anywhere else for that matter.
My kingdom for some mod points. For that comment, sir, you should be awarded a special sneak preview accidental-but-on-purpose brush with your arm against said boobies (through clothes) in advance of judgement day.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
This was already reported on DIGG three days ago.
:)
More proof that Slashdot is falling far behind.
Brooklyn - I'll never be a member here!
Mod me troll if you want, but does anyone else see this as a HUGE waste of time and resources? With so many other things in the world that need time and money devoted to them we choose something as trivial as making colored bubbles?
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill
If you guys weren't so busy bitching and whining about the dupe you might actually read a pretty good article.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
He spends years trying to color crap in his kitchen before he asks a chemist? He relies on consumer-grade detergents that contain a stew of fragrances and dyes and who knows what without obtaining some of known composition? This is not how you solve problems.
And the dye does not just go away. It does not disappear - it just becomes colorless. What ever toxicity it might have is still on your hands, clothes, and the dog.
And what about disappearing ink? The reporter never heard of that?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Okay, quit typing here and start coding!
C'mon! Open source doesn't improve on its own, even if comes close!
HAHAAH and for that comment you get to be the one wearing the falsies and cheap sweater. Enjoy!
The world according to SComps
the dye guy needed 500k (he is a one of a handful of people in the world with a phd in his field), and for expenses incurred in the development.
500k to create a whole new class of immensely useful dyes is a STEAL!
im sure that the first guy did not spend 500k on his kitchen experimentation. he just needed proper funding sources.
-
tried to make dark bubbles by mixing chinese ink with soap. It didn't color one bit. The layer was too thin. I skipped the '11 year' part tho.
Hey, asswipe, are you paying for the services or content provided by /.? Yea, then shut the hell up.
Almost all news is going to get repeated.
Uh, the link you posted sends me to /my/ journal.
Shurely something wrong?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Well for one thing it's really annoying to be modded down for a redundant comment, especially when the comment is appropriate, insightful, and well-written. It is particularly annoying when the comment was posted at nearly the same time as the comment with which it is apparently redundant meaning that no modding had taken place on the prior comment. So unless you've read through 200 comments at "1" just before you post, you get zapped.
On the other hand, a quick scan of recent headlines could ascertain that an article is redundant, but there's no "penalty" for an editor in posting a dupe. I think slashdot and the modding system is mature enough that there could be articles could be selected by moderators. We don't need no stinkin' editors! I'm sure that "more eyes" would prevent the kind of dupes and biases present in the current system.
That means it was three days behind the last slashdot article on the same subject.
The world according to SComps
Gah! Sorry. Just click on my user name and go from there.
*pounds head on table after he realizes his mistake*
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I dub this the coolest thing of the year.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. -Fight Club
that article has been on Popsci for this whole month... what about all the other cool articles on there? are they going to be posted here too? like Can We Stop Storms? With brutal hurricanes on the rise, scientists turn to far-out technologies to fight them off... http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/c955700641f87 010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html
In addition to the things mentioned above, it also splits the discussion between two different articles about the same thing. If someone needs to find an article - or more importantly a comment from an article - in the future, it makes things much more difficult.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
easy explanation:
;)
you know the only thing more duped than a story on slashdot is the standard slashdot dupe bashing comment...
c'mon. you don't expect hypocritical people's arguments to be "rational" do you?
-- dut
FTA: "No, not the shimmering rainbow effect you see when the light catches a clear soap bubble."
What's wrong with the shimmering rainbow effect? The colored bubbles look like they came straight from the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese's.
Grammar Lesson: you're is a contraction of "you are"; your means you possess something; yore means days gone by.
Are you sure it's not the smug superiority you feel from pointing out others mistakes?
Also all too often a "geek trait" as well...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
I can only speak for myself, but dupes on /. make it look like:
A)The right hand desn't know what the left hand is doing.
B)The editors do not have enough interesting new material to add
C)Someone has gotten lazy
Would you really expect a newspaper to carry a front page story today that it did a week ago, with no new relevant information?? Update, sure. DUPLICATION, never.
Just my 2 cents.
I don't think it's valid. It's based on the assumption that there are 20 daily Slashdot story slots (or whatever arbitrary number), and the Slashdot editors cannot make any more slots. Bullshit. They could post 438,291 stories on a single day if they wanted to. If good stories are being rejected because there's no space on Slashdot, then all I can say is WTF.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
and he will get girls. And touch their boobies
But will they be real girls and not just the vinyl inflatable ones??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Pointing out the mistakes of others [sometimes] motivates them not to make them again - unless, of course, the 'others' are the slashdot editorship.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I never have been able to understand why in hell people are willing to actually pay for this site. It's usually old news and as we are now discussing, it is full of duplicate postings. I would pay, but I want to see some effort. I definitely want to see the site become primo HTML, something that isn't so bloaty... There's no way in hell I'm paying for this.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"WE?" What, exactly, did *you*, personally, contributue to this process? This is one man's vision which he sucessfully built into a working process by enlisting the help of a number of other people - some with money, some with Ph.D.'s. I'm assuming that to use the "we", you must either have been one of the investors, or the man with the doctorate in chemistry? Or... as you suggested...
Maybe not typical of what is submitted and rejected but at least you'll see some of the stories that Zonk refuses to post.
Good idea! Perhaps add a link to that day's stories so your readers can see what drivel you were up against. Just a thought.
How's this for really lame/self-serving? I submitted this post twice, and they both got kicked. I tried submitting it the second time because I thought maybe they just didn't like the wording in the first effort? Nope. Now that I see that bubbles rate as twice-worthy geek news over the IRS vs. Creative Commons, I now know what we're up against...
Bet you can guess who kicked it the first time...
It's one thing to dupe an article about the xbox, but are colored bubbles really so fascinating that every editor on slashdot trips over himself to post it?
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
"In the end, there will be one person and he will be crowned King of Slashdot, and he will get girls. And touch their boobies."
Even the King of Slashdot will still have to leave his basement. You can't add anything to the term 'Slashdot' to turn it into a boobie magnet; that's even harder than making colored bubbles.
True... But at this point the posts pointing out the dupes are more annoying than the dupes themselves.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Why not build some sort of dupe detection into the backend? Start with checking for duplicate URL's. From there, go to something like maybe a bayesian analysis. "Hmm... popsci.com, colored bubles in both stories. Is this a dupe of this story: [insert story here]"
Maybe some of us would be willing to contribute some time and energy here so that we can manage this problem a little better.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Also...maybe hardcore /. posters just like to bitch, and bitch, and bitch. Perhaps because it helps them feel superior. If it was done in a somewhat more lighthearted vein, maybe it wouldn't seem so obnoxious.
I'm irritated far more by the DUPE! posters than the dupe story itself. If I've read it, I've read it...next...
DT
Because saying "dupe, stupid editors..." will get moderated +1 informative, funny, whatever.
Just another form of Karma Whoring...
has stained the whites of his eyes deep blue
wow. now that's scary. i'll be sure to give that to my kids
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
I'll wait 10 years, then develop the next great phenomenon... TRANSPARENT BUBBLES.
I'll make a killing, in the same way Pop artists rehash classics that people have forgotten about!
Cheers,
gooman
Discussions die after a few days. I don't believe that argument is true when the dupe is over a week after the previous post. If anything, it adds to the discussion since people who may not have seen the previous post will now comment. Personally, I'm gratified that they posted this story again since I missed the original post and enjoyed the article.
I like it, because it tells me I don't have to mess around with it. Occasionally an editor kills a dupe (though it doesn't happen often.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This story reminds me of another couple. One that spent long hours toiling away to invent something, and another that uses his smarts and brains to invent something more quickly, and better. The slow toiling guy takes the credit and the money, leaving the smart guy with a small sum of money. This bubble guy seems like much less of a jerk than Edison was, but there are still some parallels.
But... is this product even safe? I'm not an organic chemist by any means, but it seems to me that you'd want to do a significant amount of testing on any new compound to make sure that it's not going to have any long-term negative effects.
Don't worry, they'll do some animal testing and the FDA will pass it. Like with thalidomide.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
From experience, it's cardboard boxes. The kids that get the most toys are the young ones, and they invariably ditch the contents of the box and play with the packaging.
..I am not sure how many of you noticed that although the original idea was
thought out by an American it was eventually implemented by an Indian.
FTFA
"Ram Sabnis is a leader among a very small group of people who can point to a
dye-chemistry Ph.D. on their wall. Only a handful of universities in the world
offer one, and none are in the U.S. (Sabnis got his in Bombay). He holds dozens
of patents from his work in semiconductors (dying silicon) and biotechnology
(dying nucleic acids)"
He in fact did come up with a bubble that didn't burst. He came up with one that bounced like a rubber ball. He said it was his best bubble he made, but sadly he was unable to reproduce it. This was because he took no notes and obviously wasn't systematic about his experiments. It was the loss of the bouncing bubble that prompted him to set up a video camera to record his subsequent experiments, so he could reproduce it later.
-- Marcio
Just another geek gets his story rejected for a conformist(duplicate) article.
give me a call about a week before the IPO
The world according to SComps