The 100 Best Tech Products of 2006

prostoalex writes "You've read about the 25 worst tech products, now it's time to check out a list of the 100 best tech products of 2006 from the same publication. PC World named Intel Core Duo, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core, Craigslist.org, Apple iPod Nano and Seagate 160GB Portable Hard Drive the best tech products of this year."

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Sad for MS

[grub]

They have two products listed: a keyboard (#54) and the Xbox 360 (#89). Odd for a company that focuses mainly on software. Apple has a decent showing, even Ubuntu Linux shows up at #27.

Re:Sad for MS

[toddestan]

On the other hand, a product that enables Macs to boot Windows XP comes in at number 10.

Dual Core Processors

[bwave]

Can't believe they feel Intel Dual Core 2 Duo X2 Dual-Processor CPU2 better than the Athlon 64 X2?

Re:Dual Core Processors

[wolrahnaes]

I love my AMDs, but the Core 2 Duo is making a better showing in preliminary benchmarks than the X2. Remember, the P4's NetBurst architecture was what made it such an abortion. Pentium M, Core, and Core 2 are all evolutions of the Pentium III's "P6" architecture, which was a much better competitor with AMD.

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[therage96]

Not to mention the score is now on the far right from the title of comments.

Usability was definately not considered here.

1st

[mortonda]

1st post not talking about the new layout....

uh... wait. dang it!

Craigslist

[alfs boner]

The real irony is that Craigslist tends to be, like Ebay (which was responsible for 3/4 of ALL internet fraud complaints), something you have to approach EXTREMELY carefully.

People on Craigslist tend to be really flaky- we're talking the stoned kind of flaky, or the "I'm going to try and cheat you because I think I'm clever" kind of flaky; I'm not sure which is worse. Then there are all the wierdos posting in the various personals section- if you want a great laugh (no matter your gender), read those sections; makes you think of someone walking into McDonalds with $2 and expecting a rare Filet Mignon with sauteed mushrooms. Or the ever popular "I'm hot. Send a picture. Sexiest one wins." I laughed for about 5 minutes so hard I couldn't breathe, and resolved never to look in w4m again because it was dangerous to my health, even if it was a fantastic laugh.

Top problem though, is that people are complete IDIOTS when it comes to listing their items. "Printer. Best offer." Inkjet? Laser? Dot matrix? Made this decade? God forbid they tell us what company made it. I also love it when useless, worthless stuff is offered up- like cheapo computer speakers. People, I'm all for the recycling bit, but take that shit to the RECYCLING CENTER, don't waste anyone's time putting it up for sale for $5. Round trip subway fare costs at least half that...

The hysterical bit is that Craiglist supposedly has an "advisory committee" that handles how the site is presented to users. When I complained that even basic instructions were never shown to users as part of the posting procedure and it was clear there was a problem, Craig just replied, "thanks, the committee will think about it".

Then there are the people who post the "free" iPod/plasma/whatever emails (which are usually flagged by the community)...the problem is that there's nothing to keep them from posting over and over, because (to my knowledge) there is no automatic blacklist after X number of posts flagged...so spamming is pretty easy.

Then there are the ripoffs. Go read your city's /sys/ for a few minutes, and see how many times you say "WHAT?!"...like people asking $500 for a Pentium 3 system. Go read /ele/ and see how many times you see "Theater Research" speakers being offered for $500; the more honest (or naive) ones admit to buying it from some guys in a white van...the others just think "oh well, I'll get some other sucker to buy 'em".

Classic example of the try-to-sucker-you-by-omission-and-feined-ignorance approach was a Phaser printer being offered for sale for a few hundred $ with no mention of WHY nobody uses wax printers anymore. In short- you MUST cover your ass like crazy. If it's too good to be true, it most certainly is someone trying to sucker you.

Typical, but when you consider it against Craig's motivations (community building and other crunchy-granola-ness), Craigslist has ultimately been a pretty spectacular failure. I used to report at least 5-6 posts a day to the abuse department for various reasons (all were accepted, and the abuse group IS very nice; they ALWAYS write you back! To the CL abuse staff, you have my sympathies and admiration), and I just got tired of it...it was like throwing a sandbag into a levee break and watching it disappear.

I also have a policy now, which I inform sellers of upfront. If the item is different from how it was represented in the post or follow-up emails, both of which I will have with me, I walk out the door- this is after several sellers presented something that was nothing like what they described (like a PC missing half its ram, being sold by a software programmer who played dumb. Riight).

Re:Craigslist

[colini]

My backside is parked on a couch I bought from craigslist (Austin) and I'm completely happy with it. I've never tried to buy any PC hardware from the list, but it sounds like you're the one following up on 'too good to be true' ads. If the seller doesn't provide enough detail you can email them and ask for more, or just ignore it. WRT to furniture, I simply ignore postings that don't include a picture.

For a "spectacular failure" it sure gets a lot of postings every day, in an awful lot of cities. Personally I think it's going to kill the traditional 'pay' market for classifieds. The alternative weekly here has already started offering free classifieds.

Re:Craigslist

[ThousandStars]

All that may be true, but one thing Craigslist has helped enormously is in real estate. It's now *vastly* easier to find an apartment in most major metropolitan cities. I was recently looking for one in Seattle and found five times as many ads on Craigslist as compared to the Seattle Times. On Monday there were many more still.

The problems you're describing have always been true about newspaper classifieds; the only difference is in scale. But the scale factor is transforming industries ranging from real estate to used cars. That's fundamentally a good thing, even if Craigslist has problems associated with it as well. But it does serve a useful function.

Re:Craigslist

[slashdot.org]

I also have a policy now, which I inform sellers of upfront. If the item is different from how it was represented in the post or follow-up emails, both of which I will have with me, I walk out the door- this is after several sellers presented something that was nothing like what they described (like a PC missing half its ram, being sold by a software programmer who played dumb. Riight).

Yes, I have been thinking about an even more extreme version of that. Basically I think the seller should reimburse you for your expenses if they grosly misrepresented an item.

For example, I've been looking for cars and (unfortunately) it seems to continuously go like this:
me: so has this car ever been repainted?
salesguy: no, it's in great shape, original paint.
me: okay, well, I'm going to drive 80 miles to see this car, and I have to tell you that I used to work for a body shop, so I'll be able to tell in 10 seconds if it was repainted. I know you can tell it that quickly too, so I'm just asking you to be straight with me.
salesguy: it's never been repainted.

And then when you arrive, the car has not only been repainted (poorly), but the body has been "upgraded" to a newer model, the engine doesn't match the original car model, and the engine compartment is another color.

Last time that happened I actually started yelling at the guy. I mean, for fuck's sake. Posting freaking cell-phone pictures, claiming they don't do the car justice, insisting it's in "excellent" condition, and then presenting a car that was pretty much dug up from the Gulf of Mexico of the shore of New Orleans.

But what recourse do we have, as the person spending a few hours and cash on fuel to come see the pathetic piece of crap?

I think the asshole needs to reimburse us for the cost. I haven't tried it yet, but next time I'm going to propose this to the person because it's driving me nuts. You misrepresent your item, you pay for my expenses to come out to look at it.

Behold It's Glory

[TheMotedOne]

The games page is finally viewable without sunglasses.

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[suv4x4]

Not to mention the score is now on the far right from the title of comments.

I also hated that, it makes no sense. On my wide screen, by the time my eye reaches the right side of the monitor I've forgotten which post I'm looking for. Short memory, or wide monitor? Or crappy skin? voting for the latter.

The colors are way too contrasting, the sans-serif fonts make formatting less distinctive (like italics) and it looks really wrong.

Damn it :P

On the other hand, maybe I'll do some work now :)

Re:New layout?

[Osty]

Am I just hallucinating, or did slashdot just switch over to that new CSS layout like they were threatening to last week?

(Yeah, yeah, this is off-topic)

Looks like you're not hallucinating. However, it also looks like they didn't really bother testing it, either.

• Loading pages spikes my IE7 process to 100% CPU for a minute or so, even on short pages like this one.
• The subject and comment box I'm typing in right now extend too far to the right (or more precisely, they're not lining up on the left correctly, pushing the boxes out to the right).
• A number of the collapsible arrows on the main page to hide sections and such simply don't work
• Speaking of the left-hand section headers, don't click on them. If you do, you'll waste a couple minutes while Slashdot AJAXly tries to load configuration information.
• The "Meta Moderated" link in the "Have you Meta Moderated recently?" block is unreadable (dark green on dark gray)
• Bulleted lists in comments don't display correctly, at least in the preview. For those that can't tell, this indented section here is supposed to be a bulleted list. (This one is also broken in FF)

Interestingly enough, most of the above issues are fine in Firefox. While I realize Slashdot is Firefox-friendly and anti-Microsoft, I wouldn't be surprised if 50%+ of their traffic is still on Internet Explorer. I don't have IE6 installed on this machine so I can't veriify that the site works correctly there, but it's horribly broken with IE7. Way to go, guys.

MY EYES!!!

[brian0918]

THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[notque]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

1. The faded icons on the sidebar look like any html template look you'd find on a website. They don't look nice, just cheesy.
2. It's brighter, which for some reason gets on my nerves. I like being able to fade into the lull of the old colors.
3. It looks like any other blog. I like to pretend that Slashdot isn't just a blog, but a professional website full of incompetent writers.

We will all get used to it, but it sucks. It didn't need to be changed. Weeeee.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[kfg]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

It's clean and modern.

KFG

I'd love to be able to hide the left-hand nav bar.

[astrosmash]

It seems to take up more screen real estate than the old one, and I never use the damn thing anyway.

I like the design, overall, so I figure it's time to pick nits. And what's with using Tahoma? Not as bad as Verdana, but still, ugh. What's next, .aspx pages served from IIS?

Mostly blank column

[machine of god]

How about letting the comments extend to the left edge of the screen. To be honest, I don't come here for the crap articles. Slashdot's real content is the comments.

The way it is now looks like a xanga page 'customized' by someone with maybe some aesthetic ability. It looks ok, but it's still generic as hell. The front page is pretty good, but the format doesn't support area where the real value of the site is.

Re:Seriously... Re:1st

[grub]

Nice way to use a non-story to introduce the new layout. ;)

They kicked it in at 9:30 my time (32 minutes ago). I was editing a journal entry, reloaded and thought I was having an acid flashback for a sec.

Re:New layout?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm. I don't think anyone's ever accused slashdot of being pretty, but this new layout is somehow even uglier. How do I turn this off?"

I think it looks horrible. Kind of feels like a vague attempt to look "90's future", like a computer screen on Babylon 5 or ST:TNG.

Also, whoever designed it clearly has no experience with fonts. The logo on the top banner is blurry, the Helviticarial all-caps "tagline" is crisper and looks tacked-on at the last minute. The bold-white-on-green headlines are also blurry (and yes, I'm on a nice LCD monitor that's carefully calibrated.) The main body text is in sans seriff which is a difficult to read when the paragraphs get long. The strength of this font in web design is that it's very legible in small sizes, such as on menus on the side (speaking of which, the lines on the menu feel like they're too far apart.)

Of course, this is just an opinion, but I liked the old version-- a bit clunky but it had charm.

another "please consider advertising with us" list

[fermion]

This list reads like the top cars of the year list in an automotive magazine. Enough catagories so that each major mass market automobile manufactur gets one winner for each major automobile they produce. These lists are more like an effort to get more advertising from the manufacturers than editorial content.

So apple gets two listing for the ipod. Both Intel and AMD gets the top two spots. Hey, I wonder who makes chips for most computers? Googles gets a number of spots all the way through, and even Amazon, someone who probably advertises a lot but has done almost nothing interesting, gets an honorable mention for it's lame search facility. Throw in an award for every printer, every camera, and a few nods to popular technology, and can we say suck up.

I know that people like to complain about stealth ads on /. In this case, the complaints are warrented. This has no editorial content, and simply is a way for pcworld to prove to advertisers that pcworld cares about them.

Should have posted a separate story

[Anonymous Coward]

When the css change-over went into effect, it should have been a separate story; "New format in effect!"

Now the poor 100 best product story will be filled with NOTHING but comments on Slashdot itself.

Apple List entries

[Marcion]

The Boot camp is at number 10, while the Mac Mini is down at 35??? Surely they are the wrong way around?

Surely the trip-proof magnetic AC adapter is far more important than Boot camp?

Apple got Windows working on Intel hardware, Big Whoppee, Windows on Intel, like fifty billion other people haven't already?

-----------------------
If this is nuts then excuse me but I having a hyper-fit with this new Slashdot layout. I'll just go lie down in dark room for a bit.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[ResidntGeek]

1. The font sucks. It's harder to read.
2. Too much white, like there's too much space in between everything.
3. Posts not indented enough, it's hard to tell what's a reply to what without much pointless scrolling up and down.
4. Accidentally clicking on the "sections" header opens a settings box which won't go away for a minimum of 5 seconds after you click the [x].
5. The "Read More" link is far away from where my eyes and cursor end up after reading the summary.
6. Scores on the wrong side of the comment header.
7. Why the hell isn't the old layout an option? CmdrTaco was explicit in his statements that it was just a superficial redesign with no drastic changes, it can't require much more than an extra variable in the code.

I'm sure I'll keep discovering reasons to hate it as time goes on. If you'd like updates, just say so and I'll post them here.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[masterzora]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!
Gladly. The short version:

-The score being on the far right of the comment rather than near the title.
-The colors look like too sharp a contrast (not to the point of eye-hurtiness... just enough to look wrong)
-Newspost boxes separate all the info into small boxes without defining the newspost box (it just looks screwy)
-Overuse of gradients

And that's a small sampling. I couldn't tell you if any of them are real design faux pas, but I don't like them.

Re:Slashdot new layout crashes my Opera 9

[DavidWide]

If a browser crashes, it's the browser's fault. No web page can be held responsible for a browser crash, regardless of content. File a bug report with Opera.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Lord_Dweomer]

Honestly, I think we should have the option of using the old version. But the biggest issue I have with this version is that it COMPLETELY breaks up the flow of how I read comments. I used to be able to skim comments by their mod points. If I wanted to read a bit faster, I wouldn't change my threshold or anything, but I would just kinda skim over the 3s and maybe 4s since I browse at +3. However now that the comment scores are on the FAR RIGHT....completely away from all the rest of the post information, my eyes are jumping all over the screen and it is screwing things up.

Please for the love of god fix that, or give us the option of going back to the old way. If it aint broke, don't fix it.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Bega]

I dunno, I kind of am longing for the old look. I think the colors are lighter or something. It doesn't feel right anymore.

Sortof, yes, since you've probably gotten used to the old layout. I got used to it after some while, but let's face it, it wasn't the nicest to the eye. I think it's nice that Slashdot finally got a facelift, and a nice one at that too. And Slashdot got finally SPACES between the different parts of the pages.

Flickr

[BandwidthHog]

Flickr is an amazing piece of technology. Not only is it a remarkable demonstration of the much-maligned (in these parts) Web 2.0, but it has without a doubt made me a better photographer. (Well, that and doing enough overtime to afford a dSLR.) And any technology that can improve your skills rather than just compensate for your shortcomings is all-fucking-right in my book.

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[T.Hobbes]

I like the new look overall, but I have a couple complaints:

- The 'Sections' header in the sidebar should not open up a (kludgy) preferences window. People only change that kind of thing once in a blue moon; there's no need for it to be on the front page. I'd much rather it be a link (like the 'Vendors' header), pointing to the search page or something
- The open/collapsed state of the lefthand sidebar seems to be preseved between browser sessions, but only on the front page: Once you enter a story, it defaults to the open state for all items in the sidebar
- The comment score should not be on the extreme right
- The [blink] tag is used far too sparingly

Re:Slashdot CSS

[biglig2]

Worst thing of all, by not changing it at the same time as posting an announcement story, all the meta-discussion about the new look is stuck here in a story making it impossible to read.

Re:Slashdot new layout crashes my Opera 9

[residieu]

I initially had this problem but upgrade to the latest weekly (build 8455) and it now works fine. (The page is still ugly, but its ugly on all browsers)

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Araxen]

Come on now, you can't totally pass judgement on the new look Slashdot until we get the "OMG PONIES!" look. Imagine this in pink...

Re:Slashdot CSS

[hereschenes]

One thing with the comments - I don't like it how the moderation score is way over to the right. Would be better right next to the comment title.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[geminidomino]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

Took me a few minutes to put my finger on it, but I finally figured out why I hate it:

Too much negative space. (Read: blinding fscking WHITE). Sure, it's cleaner, with all that space, but now its little bits of black on white. Too hard on the eyes.

How about a green-on-black CSS option, CmdrTaco?

I like it

[joel8x]

I've been waiting a long time for Slashdot to upgrade the look, and I welcome the new font (I always disable serif fonts in my browser anyway). The coolest part is the Apple section - go check it out, its very nice!

And to the current mods who are modding down all the comments on the change, maybe you should all chill out and realize that this is a big topic for the loyal Slashdotters and a bit more interesting that the story these comments fall under.

Best new design rollout strategy evar!

[Hartree]

It's truly amazing. Zonk's on duty, and everybody's bitching about something other than him!

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[nmb3000]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

Very well. Here's what I've got so far.

  - First up: Big pages load and render SLOW. Pages with a large number of comments like this one make IE crap it's pants
  - Score and 'Read More' on the right away from other relevant information.
  - The 'Sections' link is worthless and annoying.
  - Spacing in IE is flunky. Various elements don't line up with others. Yes, it's probably IE's fault, but you can't ignore IE.
  - Links in the navigational menus (left and top) have different colors for visited/not visited. Looks better if they are the same and it doesn't really matter if you've clicked them before.
  - Comments are not indented enough.
  - Arrows on left-hand menu get out of sync easily.
  - Method of changing item color (gray/green) in left-hand menu is slow in IE.
  - Element spacing on User page blows in IE.
  - YRO is still ugly as sin.
  - The menu that opens when you click 'Sections' is a nasty kludge. It's way too slow to open, closes by reloading the page (real stupid).
  - The boxes containing "what is this" blurbs in Preferences are too big and conspicuous. They're supposed to be a subtle help, not obfuscate the main content.
  - IT is still puts Janet Reno to shame.
  - Comment headers (containing the subject) seem too big and waste space.
  - It'd be nice if there was some indication the little arrows were clickable (like using the pointer cursor).
  - The 'Sections' section closes after going into a section, regardless of its previous status. Annoying if you're browsing sections.
  - An old bug still exists where the content of a page will sometimes start a full page lower than it should in IE. Stories and user pages are affected.
  - Bad things usually happen if you click the Sections header after IE starts navigating to another page.
  - Simple Design option + the Sections header box = nasty.
  - Too much whitespace. Reduce it or perhaps go with a real light gray in areas.
  - I miss OMG Ponies! Really.

Personally, I think we should get the option to use the old template.

George Lucas raped my childhood and CSS raped Slashdot *cry*

I don't like the font

[JesusPancakes]

I'll be honest - I'm not happy with the default font.

There are two types of fonts. Serif fonts have little squigglies coming off the sides of the letters (like Times New Roman, Courier) whereas sans serif fonts are smooth-edged and end sharply. When you read text, serif fonts tend to slow your eye down whereas sans serif fonts cause your eye to move quickly and smoothly across the text.

When I read comments, I want to be slowed down so I absorb. I want titles to be smooth and continuous while text-heavy content is serif and slows me down to pay attention to detail - I'm getting a headache because my eye moves faster than I want it to across the new font.

I know that smooth fonts are all Web 2.0 and shiny-looking, but they're not pleasant to read a lot of text with.

Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[Bushido Hacks]

I believe that this list is BIAS. This list is not rated on raiting but by who gave PCWorld the most money. Since I, Bushido Hacks, is a broke college student here is a top 10 list.

1. YouTube.com - Who the hell put in in 9th place?
2. Google Earth - Google Maps: good. Google Earth: f***ing awesome!
3. eBay - Great spot to browse for technology products. Though the virtual mall is great, it is a good idea to browse the real mall to compare prices and features first.
4. Sony Viao Notebooks smaller than 12 inches - Any notebook with a screen larger than 15 inches is NOT a notebook. It is a freaking TV. Computers are suppost to be small as well as fast.
5. Any MP3 player not by Apple or Dell - As much as technological convergence is a convience, I prefere to buy things for what they were used for. An MP3 player is for playing MUSIC, not videos, not "podcasts", not these overated technology that turns everything into TV or as I call it "The Virus". Televison is stupid!
6. Texas Instruments graphing calculators with the USB port - FINALLY, TI gets with the program.
7. Sony PSP - Who cares what the critics say! This would be the greatest gaming platform since the Sega Game Gear if only Sony didn't keep trying to kill itself like a 15 year-old emo kid. Why does Sony keep trying to kill itself? By the time the PS3 gets here, Nintendo and XBox will be on to the next thing. Why does Sony keep procrastinating? The people who create the Sony products want what they are making as badly as their consumers, but their Marketing (marketing, the sworn enemy of any computer sciencist!) keeps pushing it back saying things like "people are going to hack into it" or "DRM". These Japanese guys need to grow a little backbone and stop letting these salarymen with hidden agendas kill their company.
8. Yahoo! Answers - I must get up to 20 answers sometimes with the questions I ask. Some times I ask questions to test peoples knowledge or to express their opinions about things.
9. Holograms - yet another suppressed technology. You know what would be a great application for these things: automobile decals. You've seen these cars with the hydrolics at car shows with teh airbrush. Why not airbrush a hologram onto a car. One of those 3D projected holograms with a half-naked valkyre warrior woman with a battle axe or sword riding horse with wings that breaths fire! Something worthy of Heavy Metal magazine and Popular Science! 10. The new Slashdot layout - Do I really need to explain why?

Re:Slashdot CSS

[sr180]

At first glance, it looks prettier, but its much less functional. I was much more comfortable reading slashdot in the old format.

#1 & #2

[skiflyer]

What gets the Intel Core DUO put at #1 & the AMD 64 X2 and #2?

Seriously? I have an AMD 64X2 system and I love it, so I'm just curious... all the research I did pre-purchase certainly put the AMD way ahead of Intel... true 64bit, shared memory space, better performance, and definitely better performance per purchase dollar as well as performance per electricity dollar.

Is this all the hub-bub I've been hearing about the last couple weeks about the brand new not yet out Intels that're supposed to be better yet?

Re:#1 & #2

[teg]

The Core Duo is the laptop chip released earlier this year, not Intel's next architecture released later this year. It's also used in some desktops, e.g. the iMac and Mac mini. A bit early for a 2006 list, isn't it? I'd expect the next Intel laptop chip to be better than the Core Duo, and the X2 might be better or worse than the Core 2 Duo - we don't know that yet.

Looks more like a "Oooo shiny" list ot me

[Sycraft-fu]

They don't seem to be rating the items on there by any useful metric, such as how innovative they are, how much money they've made, how useful they are, it just seem to be a list of what's big buzz. Case in point, the #1 entry the Conroe. Now I fully believe Intel's demos, I believe the Conroe is going to be a great processor. However at this point, it's not a great product because it isn't for sale. It's a tech demo. You show me real systems with real COnroes, then we can start talking about where it should rank on the product list. Until then, it's just hype.

Same thing with boot camp. It's a "Shiny toy" kind of thing. From a technical standpoint, it's nothing special. It emulates old BIOS to allow XP to boot (not hard) and Apple supplies the hardware drivers necessary. Great, nothing any other OEM doesn't do. From an impact standpoint it seems pretty low too. Basically all the Mac users I know (and I know quite a few) are going to put XP on there to noodle around with, but they aren't buying a Mac to run XP, they are buying a Mac to run MacOS. This is no big deal. I also haven't run in to any real converts at this point because of it. After all, if your intent is to run Windows, you'll probably do it on a PC that costs less.

I'm sure it will generate a few crossover sales, but nothing much. All in all, it's likely to be a nice feature for Mac users that need to run a couple apps not on MacOS, but nothing that's going to have any ral big impact.

However the concept of Windows native on a Mac is one that lots of people seem to have trouble wrapping their minds around. Thus it gets a big wow factor from many, despite the fact that it's really pretty minor. The fact that Apple is switching to Intel is the major tech story, not that because they have you can also boot XP.

To me, this looks like most of these lists where it's just a collection of whatever happened to catch the writers' eyes rather than anything based on any kind of useful metric.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[glavenoid]

No doubt!

Slashdot totally needs some sort of meta-discussion category. And here, on-site, not that silly sf.net bug tracking thing that's used for *slash* right now. Slashdot used to be so cool, but now, although the 3-day old "news" aggregation is still *sort-of* neat, it could so easily be so much better...

A few ideas...

1. Perhaps have a user-submitted section where people could vote on interesting links/headlines (freely submitted by users, a-la k5...) instead of waiting days for "news" to go stale. It could even work in a similar manner as the comment moderation system. Not too difficult to implement, no?
2. Slashback is great - I'm happy to see it's return! I think many other readers are also. Maybe give us more say, though, rather than just commentating... More interactive Slashback - Fuck yea!
3. More revelant polls that actually count for something here ie - Sections. BSD seems to be missing from the list, whereas linux, politics and IT are relatively new (what 3/2 years, maybe 2). How about meta-polls for logged-in users that help govern the direction of Slashdot? I'd like to see a music section. Nerds like music too! Or even entertainment/media. Put the vote to the users. Have a new section for digital media, see what happens... Not even sharing links to "pirated files". Just a place to have a diversion here from the "mentos and coke" articles?!
4. Post clarification - that is - editing. Not post deletion, merely adding onto a previous post to clarify a point, or even to publicly retract a drunken post... Even with a prominent "EDIT:" tag on the edited portion, this could save some bandwith. Which leads to the next.
5. A new posting system. This goes beyond all the other gripes that I have. For instance, have a larger input pane for posting. It's not necessary for people to post long messages, just clear messages. 11 lines is NOT enough. The ability to read the entire thread *so far* while posting would be nice also. Maybe even move the "submit" button to the bottom of the page like the moderation system, encouraging people to actually preview their responces first...

   That's just the beginning of *my* gripes. I know that this isn't the proper place, but this is the best I could do, because there isn't a proper place...

Re:Slashdot CSS

[John Nowak]

For the sake of building consensus, I also agree. I like most everything else about the new version, but, especially when you have a wide browser window, the current score location is very spatially jarring.

get yourself a userstylesheet, fixes it for me

[lixlpixel]

i added this to my userstylesheet (available in every decent browser) for slashdot.org

fixes (at least the frontpage) for me...

/* move the "read more" and "n comments" boxes to the left */
div#contents div.storylinks ul li
{
float: left;
padding: 0 0.2em;
}

/* put the "read more" link where it belongs */
div#contents div.storylinks ul li.more
{
border-right: 0;
float: left;
padding: 0 1.5em 0 0.2em;
background: url(//images.slashdot.org/read-more.gif) no-repeat 95% 50%;
}

/* normalize the link */
div#contents div.storylinks ul li.more a
{
background-image: none;
padding: 0;
}

/* get rid of the spaaaaaaces and make it a nic(er) font */
body
{
line-height: 1.25em;
font-family: Georgia, Times, serif;
}

Why not Gmail?

[slashdotmsiriv]

Any reasons why gmail does not make the list? From all the s/w products of the last 2 years gmail has dramatically changed the way i organize my email. It is a great improvement over previous paleolithic approaches. Every time i check my old hotmail and yahoo account I cannot help but wonder how i manages to live without gmail all these years and then i burst in laughs for all those milions that still use hotmail and keep it in the top of the list of web mail apps.

Re:Well, let's face it...

[dimension6]

I never mentioned any personal participation or lack of participation in the general public. I merely provided a couple (admittedly unencompassing) points to explain the parent's situation. Capitalism is built around the very fact that altruism is not commonplace (read The Modern Firm by John Roberts for insight as to why markets and companies exist or read this economic analysis of altruism). And, I think it's fairly safe to say that most individuals who sell items on Craigslist are not salespeople by trade (if you can provide some evidence proving otherwise, I will retract that statement). Incedentally, I am a licensed salesperson (real estate), although my license is inactive and that is not my profession.

I've used both eBay and Craigslist extensively (eBay more), both buying and selling (about 50%/50%). Because both those sites reach such a large audience, the range of users is really too great to summarize in any detail. The user groups get more homogenous when dealing in specific items, but even then there is a wide variety. One point I'd like to make is that in at least 600 transactions, I have not seen any bona fide altruism. I have never had any buyer pay more than was necessary and have never had a seller send me an item that was vastly better than what was shown in the auction (although every now and then they'll include something small that wasn't mentioned). If sellers included something small extra, it was often a way to vye for repeat business (and hence, they were probably more experienced salespeople). People do things for a reason (even the Dadaists ran into trouble there).

In judging on the amount of time it takes to list an item on eBay as compared to Craigslist, it's clear that Craigslist takes far less time to list an item on. It's also free to list most items/services. Because they have very little to lose, it's easy for anyone to throw a five-word ad up on Craigslist. Therefore it's reasonable to assume that because they have so little to lose, people will try to "reach" for the best deal they can. Craigslist does fill a need, though, for those of us who don't read newspapers at all....

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[dcam]

8. The scores are on the right hand side. The score is an important part of deciding whether to read a comment. When it is over the far right hand side you can't read the subject and the score in one quick glance.

Re:I agree, it's been fun

[skingers6894]

The font is AWFUL. Maybe it looks good on a Linux box or on a Mac, but the subjective readability of Slashdot's text on IE6 has just dropped by 50%. The only good thing about this is that I'm going to get about an hour of my time back every day I avoid reading Slashdot. Good luck, guys, it was fun while it lasted and I enjoyed most of my time here. There goes Slashdot's last IE user...

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[gEvil (beta)]

For the most part I don't have any major gripes about the redesign. However, this one I can agree with--there is a whole lot of white/negative space all over the place. I couldn't figure out what it was that bugged me until this comment pointed it out...