Slashdot Mirror
Hobbits' Brains Shrank Due To Remote Home
Hugh Pickens writes "The 'hobbits,' dubbed homo floresiensis, caused a worldwide sensation when they were discovered five years ago, when some scientists claimed that the 18,000-year-old human-like fossils found on the Indonesian island of Flores represented an entirely new species. Now researchers at the Natural History Museum in London believe that the creatures' small brains could have developed to reduce the creatures' energy needs, crucial for surviving in an isolated area with limited resources. 'It could be that H. floresiensis' skull is that of a Homo erectus that has become dwarfed from living on an island, rather than being an abnormal individual or separately-evolved species, as has been suggested,' says palaeontologist Eleanor Weston. 'Looking at pygmy hippos in Madagascar, which possess exceptionally small brains for their size, suggests that the same could be true for H. floresiensis, and the result of being isolated on the island.' Although the phenomenon of dwarfism on islands is well recognized in large mammals, an accompanying reduction in brain size has never been clearly demonstrated before."
Oh. My. God. In the era of Web 2.0, it appears that Slashdot has Jumped The Shark. The question now, is when did this happen? I remember in the early 2000s, Slashdot was THE geek website, but something has changed and it appears they have lost the magic. I mean, seriously, Hobbits??!
I therefore decided, today, to cancel my account (Smidge207) take them off of my RSS Reader, and cancel my Time Warner broadband "service". I am off the grid; I am off the 'net as of today. I am a free man, now; I own my own mind. I have piece of mind, now. I am free. Lordy, lordy I am free. See, the thing is, Taco, I find your stories trite, boring and dare I say, irrelevant to IT.
So the questions of the day are:
When was the exact day, and, what was the exact story, that caused Slashdot to jump the shark? What is your best bet to the cause of their demise?
This is just my opinion, and I am sure each and ever person that uses RSS at some point has made the same decision about another website. If you get angry easily you might not want to read the rest of this post:
1. I am 32, openly homosexual, and I have outgrown any interest in the usual stories that appear on Slashdot. A specific example is this story, about a "Coup" attempt in an Apple Underground User Group. I have absolutely zero interesting in ever reading something like this for the rest of my life.
I felt violated by Rob Malda's minions by reading something that stupid today, and I will admit it may be because of my age, and due to the fact that I now have a wonderful husband (RMS) and a fucking life.
2. I never really participated in the community much, I only read stories, and as I mentioned the stories are getting very bad. Terrible one should say.
3. I am bored of the terms, "Troll", "Trolling", and "Dvork", they make my skin crawl just like it would make my skin crawl to hear someone use the terms, "Your playa hatin", or "Give me the bling, bling", "Smidge is a sock-puppet troll faggot" or "Far out man". These terms are so commonly used on Slashdot that it is impossible to avoid them and the only possible alternative is to never read anything on Slashdot.
4. Slashdot played an interesting role in the early 2000's, as it was a human funneled aggregator for news stories. As technology has progressed, a different model of story submission has started to thrive and it does not require a select group of humans to filter which stories are good and which stories are not good. I believe the model that Digg, Reddit, and DZone use are far superior to the method of story submission and approval that Slashdot uses.
I feel that the method that Slashdot uses is a dying art, and the very poor quality of stories suggests that the human element responsible for editorial content is either very young, or not very good.
5. RSS Readers have changed the way people read technology and other news, and it has caused people to stop having a "home page" anymore. People now have the ability to create their own custom filters and get their own news in anyway they see fit. The role of Slashdot as the only aggregator for IT news has ended. Given a choice, I would much rather use RSS than the editorial process at Slashdot to get news stories.
6. As evidenced by the responses to MY WELL THOUGHT-OUT POSTS JUST TODAY, it is quite impossible to have a discussion with some outspoken members of the Slashdot community. I call out Eldavojohn in particular. It would take a large amount of patience, time and energy that I, frankly, am not willing to part with, to discuss why I am "liar, hypocrite, troll, etc". It is just not interesting to me, and even if it was I would probably need to quit my job just to respond full time to the complaints.
If you feel the urge to yell at me, please remember this is just my opinion and I am very sure other people feel very differently. I do not have the time to discuss the matter anymore due to work and personal obligations, but thank you to the people that did re
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
Just out of curiosity, what broswer are you using?
I've noticed on both Windows and Linux that Firefox 3 renders /. perfectly, but IE has a lot of overlapping text and is just all fucked up.
I tried Opera and it renders just fine, although I can't get over what a piece of shit their UI is.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Palin stated that "You can see Russia from parts of Alaska" which is a true fact. She did not state "I can see Russia from my house"
The joke, though, is that she believed that this fact made her qualified to handle the type of foreign relations work that's done by the federal government.
Palin was running for VP. So what was it that made OBAMA more qualified to be President? Did Joe Biden plagiarize Jimmy Carter's policies?
Let's see what's happened since Obama took office:
1. Obama blows protocol multiple times in meeting with foreign leaders, snubbing long-term allies like the UK.
2. After years of being quiet, North Korea starts launching missiles again.
3. Iran, trembling in fear from the possibility of an Obama sternly-worded letter, continues to work towards a nuclear weapon with which to fulfill the dictates of Islam and "wipe Israel off the map" and restore it to dar al-Islam.
4. Obama, in a bold stroke, decides to withdraw US troops from Iraq on the day George W. Bush set.
Woo hoo.
Off to a great start there! Way to show how qualified he is!
Please, name just one time the supposedly-stupid George W. Bush did something as utterly incompetent as blowing the protocol for a head-of-state meeting? Something OBJECTIVE, not a difference in policy.
Yet the "brilliant" Obama isn't bright enough to be able to figure out the White House and State Department have ENTIRE TEAMS DEDICATED TO PROTOCOL.