Fire Destroys Iron Mountain Data Warehouse, Argentina's Bank Records Lost

cagraham writes "A fire at Iron Mountain's data warehouse in Buenos Aires left the facility 'ruined' and killed nine first-responders, according to the Washington Post. The origin of the fire is unknown. The facility was supposedly equipped with sprinkler systems, fire control systems, and had a private emergency team on standby. Among the records destroyed are Argentina's bank archives, the loss of which could have some surprisingly far-reaching implications."

Comments

So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[cheesybagel]

Kewl.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[ShanghaiBill]

The obvious question is: Cui bono? Do any of Kirchner's henchmen have a gasoline odor on their hands?

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more like Shell having the gasoline in their hands, if any of the accusations of the Argentinian government are true, since it seems Shell is trying to destabilize the Argentinian economy, they raised the price of gasoline 12% and have made some speculative monetary moves that are devaluating the Argentinian peso lately.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Ralph Wiggam]

People's debts to the bank or the bank's debts to others? The foreign banks that are owed money by Argentina still have all of their records.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[TWiTfan]

Is it wrong that when I hear about some strange calamity befalling a leftist leader in South American that I immediately think "CIA"?

Nah, those guys are pretty honest and good-hearted. I can't see them doing anything nasty in South America.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[interkin3tic]

And not even the usual "insurance scam" way!

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[AmiMoJo]

I wonder how effective that would actually be... If a national bank decided to destroy a large amount of debt records and then simply refused to acknowledge foreign debts without extensive documentation?

In the UK if you dispute a debt the onus is on the lender to prove it exists. Quite often with old debts they have lost the paperwork and end up having to drop them.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Nutria]

The stupidity of your comment is in fetishising the CIA. They really aren't the only people capable of acting badly.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Nutria]

If a national bank decided to destroy a large amount of debt records and then simply refused to acknowledge foreign debts without extensive documentation?

Your logic is completely ass backwards, since the foreigners will have the original loan records, not the Argentines.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[garyebickford]

In the last 120 years, Argentina has singlehandedly destroyed their own economy a total of three separate times. In 1910 Argentina was a 'first world' state, IIRC the fifth largest in the world. Then Peron got elected, and almost his first act was to pull all of the gold out of their national bank and spend it.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[garyebickford]

That happened here in the US for a number of home loans - their loans had been shuffled so many times between institutions that some borrowers successfully argued in foreclosure proceedings that there was no evidence that the foreclosing party actually owned the loan.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[NFN_NLN]

If a national bank decided to destroy a large amount of debt records and then simply refused to acknowledge foreign debts without extensive documentation?

Your logic is completely ass backwards, since the foreigners will have the original loan records, not the Argentines.

Abolishing foreign debt is one of the 5 ways to eliminate debt and you don't need to destroy records to do it.

Germany was having significant financial problems in the 1930's; which actually allowed Hitler to gain control. Once in power he basically said "fuck you" to all foreign debts - as that was the previous government's doing. That will ruin your country's credit rating, so he just pillaged all of Europe instead.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[sribe]

Billy The Kid was a hero to many in the west not merely because he "stood up to the man", but because in the middle of a depression, when he robbed the banks, he burned them on the way out, thus destroying the only copies of mortgages and freeing many from impending foreclosure...

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Paradise Pete]

Billy the Kid? I think you must be thinking of somebody else.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[starcraftsicko]

Do you have any record of this?

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you don't know squat about my country's economy or the facts which led to this. Argentinian justice department was investigating a massive fraud commited mostly by US based companies sucha as Monsanto and Shell, and several international baks were impled in the maneuver, the HSBC to name one. This fire looks more a way to cover up for that fraud. If you'd like to exercise your memory, I recommend you to take a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Mountain_Incorporate]trip down Wikipedia lane[/url]. Iron Mountain has a long history of destroying their own facilites to safeguard their customer's data from Justice investigations.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[sribe]

Billy the Kid? I think you must be thinking of somebody else.

Maybe. Especially since some quick googling indicates that he didn't rob banks...

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[bitt3n]

Cui bono?

Where was Bono? Probably "doing some charity gig in Africa," or so he always claims...

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[sanced]

it'd be naive to think lender banks would keep documents of claims within the borrowers territory/control.

and to the bully posts here: Yeah my government sucks, we are screwed, no need to rub it in.

Re: So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Until today, I did.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Max Threshold]

Give them a break. They're just trying to emulate the United States.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

And in response most states enacted laws requiring that the mortgage be paid off before it could be challenged in court. Of course once its paid off... who the fuck cares? Result: Literally millions of fraudulent foreclosures. It was so bad that there were legal documents being presented in federal court signed with the name of an employee of the bank that could not be found. The bank had absolutely no record of anybody by that name ever working for the bank. The bank had made up a name and the signing of the documents was fictitious. But because the law required that you pay off, or otherwise post a cash bond for the amount of a loan, before you could challenge it... the fraud was allowed to stand in federal court unquestioned.
Source: I was a mortgage broker in California and watched this happen first hand.

Oh, I will add too... that with the law so protective of the lenders... they got bold. I dealt regularly with court documents where the value of the home, interest rate, mortgage value were all different than what was on the original wet ink signature documents (that I kept scanned copies of). I tried several times to submit my scanned copies to the court as the mortgage broker involved (showing that the lender was fraudulently foreclosing...) in the original transaction but was stymied every time. Any evidence submitted by the defense was essentially void until a bond had been posted for the same amount as the outstanding mortgage. The judge would not even listen to any discussion about inconsistencies, possible perjury, fraud or anything until we paid the bond to gain standing in court. We tried that route and the lowest we could find was 90% equity on a bond. Meaning we had to put up 90% of the value of the mortgage just to fight it in court. When you are fighting over a $700,000 mortgage... who has that kind of scratch just sitting around? If you do... $630,000 is most likely pocket change to you.

I will never, ever, ever buy a house in the united states after witnessing that.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[brakarific]

Here is a historical breakdown of why Argentina is where it is (summary: it has absolutely nothing to do with Shell):

- Starting with Nestor Kirchner (Christina Kirchner's husband), there were a ton of social programs started that basically bankrupted the already bankrupt country

- In order to keep funding said programs, Argentina decides it doesn't want to pay it's foreign debts anymore, especially to the US. Argentina claimed that they had already paid back well beyond the original loan amounts. Simply put, they didn't like the terms of the loans and decided to threaten defaulting. The IMF threatened to put them on credit blacklist which drove their borrowing interest rates up even higher. In the end they restructured their debt, but like all spending problems, it is never the math that causes massive debt, but behavior.

- Fast forward to about a year or two ago. Christina Kirchner keeps spending on social programs with no way to pay for them and is facing massive devaluation of the Argentine Peso. Investors and individuals start buying up dollars and euros before the peso collapses. Kirchner bans the exchange of foreign currencies in Argentina.

-Fast foward to a couple of weeks ago. Argentine economists fear a massive bubble is building over the artificially propped up peso and convince Kirchner and politicians to open up foreign exchanges before the bubble gets so big that its collapse will crater the country like it did in 2001. You can read more about that incident's culmination here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

- As a result of foreign exchanges opening up the bubble pops and the peso loses 15% of its value in less than 12 hours.

-Foreign companies that operate in dollars or euros have to raise prices. Commodities tied to dollars or euros are always the first to rise. Oil is probably the most exposed to this as all Oil selling countries have to sell Oil in dollars.

-After a week of rapid inflation, Shell raises it's prices, and...drumroll...SO DO ALL OTHER GAS STATIONS TIED TO IMPORTED OIL.

It bothers me that people are always so quick to crucify companies (in this case oil companies) just because it is the popular thing to do. Those dirtbag Politicians in Argentina are no different than the dirtbag politicians we have here in the US. Their arguments consist of blaming anyone but themselves for domestic policy disasters. Just like Bush blamed Terrorists, Obama blamed Bush, and whoever comes next will blame Obama. Down there, they just say "Those damned European/American money grubbing corporations are doing this to us!" Sadly, like here in the US, the people there buy it hook line and sinker.

Sources - Reading the news, living in Argentina for a few years (2003 - 2005), and having a basic understanding of macro economics and currency valuations.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[brakarific]

Obviously you don't know squat about my country's economy or the facts which led to this. Argentinian justice department was investigating a massive fraud commited mostly by US based companies sucha as Monsanto and Shell, and several international baks were impled in the maneuver, the HSBC to name one. This fire looks more a way to cover up for that fraud. If you'd like to exercise your memory, I recommend you to take a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Mountain_Incorporate]trip down Wikipedia lane[/url]. Iron Mountain has a long history of destroying their own facilites to safeguard their customer's data from Justice investigations.

Shell is European. Yes they probably committed fraud in one form or another. Unfortunately, it is the fraud of your elected officials that is to blame for your overall problems right now in regards to your economy tanking. In classic political fashion they are blaming some foreign entity for your problems (all countries suffer from this sort of scapegoat shaming, not just Argentina).

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[radarskiy]

"In 1910 ... Then Peron got elected"

Argentina, of course, did not participate in the years 1911 through 1945.

"to pull all of the gold out of their national bank and spend it."

You mean the part where he paid off the debt to the Bank of England?

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[phantomfive]

if any of the accusations of the Argentinian government are true

Which is more likely, that Kirchner is telling the truth, or the multi-national oil corporation is telling the truth? There's definitely someone devaluing the Argentinian peso, and it's not Shell.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[garyebickford]

He spent the gold reserves nationalizing the railroads and buying votes. Later the lack of those reserves resulted in the Argentine peso having the highest inflation rate in the world. If you were reading the Wikipedia article on Peron, it is apparently written by a die-hard Peronista and doesn't cover the real impact of his policies or the true reasons why he was tossed out - not once but twice. I haven't been able to track down the original citation but from what I've read, literally when he became President his first action was to be shown the gold reserves, where he said, "We will take this and spend it on the people!" - the original wording was better but hey. He did in fact spend nearly all of the reserves, and that was a key factor later in the destruction of the stable peso.

Here's just one analyst's view:

In 1930, Argentina’s gold reserves ranked 6th. After the “experts” took over the central bank, reserves fell to 9th in 1948 (with $700 million), 16th during 1950-54 (with $530 million), and 28th during 1960-1964 (with $290 million).
The Argentine central bank, created in 1935, was at first a private corporation. Its president lasted longer (seven years) than the president of the country, and it had strict limits for government debt purchases and even had foreign bankers on its board. It became a government entity in 1946.
When Perón assumed power shortly thereafter, he hastily expanded the role of government, relaxed central banking rules and used the bank to facilitate his statist policies. In just 10 years, the peso went from 4.05 per U.S. dollar to 18 in 1955 (and later peaked at 36 that same year). After Perón’s rule, Argentina further devalued its currency to 400 pesos per U.S. dollar by 1970.

(http://www.visionandvalues.org/2013/06/dont-cry-for-me-america-comparing-argentina-and-the-united-states/) - I don't know anything about this site, it was just a convenient Google result. But these facts are well known.

It should be said that Peron was not the first, or only, leader who made a mess of things in Argentina. The Argentine political system was already suffering from various issues including classism, huge gaps between industrialists and workers, etc., and (according to several sources) a political mind set that made and makes it difficult to maintain a working democracy. The so-called 'Infamous Decade' starting in the 1930s destroyed what was left of a traditional political system and made it possible for the fascists to take over. This is a pretty good description of the situation.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Calinous]

It's Old World, New World and Third World

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[AmiMoJo]

Yes, assuming they can find them and that the Augentine bank accepts their authenticity.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Nutria]

By that logic, I can burn my mortgage papers, stop paying it and when the bank forecloses, tell them that I don't accept the authenticity of their documents,

Thus, the question: are you actually so stupid as to think that would work?

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Argentina has singlehandedly destroyed their own economy a total of three separate times."

With most recent collapse the IMF helped by demanding austerity every time the economy got worse...

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[cHALiTO]

He didn't say Argentina's economic problems were due to this. He just said that this particular event (the Iron Mountain site catching fire) was a move to remove evidence in a particular fraud court case.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Jaysyn]

"The Argentine political system was already suffering from various issues including classism, huge gaps between industrialists and workers, etc., and (according to several sources) a political mind set that made and makes it difficult to maintain a working democracy."

Gosh, why does that sound so familiar?

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[TWiTfan]

They really aren't the only people capable of acting badly.

No, but in South America, they're certainly one of the best and most consistent at it.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Muad'Dave]

But he did help the Germans bomb Pearl Harbor.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[daem0n1x]

Unfortunately, it is the fraud of your elected officials that is to blame for your overall problems right now in regards to your economy tanking. In classic political fashion they are blaming some foreign entity for your problems (all countries suffer from this sort of scapegoat shaming, not just Argentina).

Like the frauds committed by corrupt officials of weak countries don't serve economic interests in stronger countries.

It's funny, because outright denying the fault of foreign entities and blame it solely on locals is scapegoating, too. The former just as dishonest and short-sighted as the latter.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[cusco]

A commenter in the second posted story claims to be an Argentine fire fighter. He says that the fire was deliberate.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[cusco]

A rather extreme over-simplification of the Peron regime, and if you look at the whole picture you may realize that the other two collapses were caused almost completely by the foreign banks. The only reason that Argentina's economy is recovering now is because they mostly abandoned the World Bank/IMF policies that they've been following for decades.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Lord Lemur]

You are not a nation-state. Granted the solution is the same, some one applies force or threat of force to make you comply. A few billion of debt might not be invasion worthy, but it could offer a pretext.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Nutria]

might not be invasion worthy, but it could offer a pretext.

It's 2014, not 1914.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[garyebickford]

The only reason that Argentina's economy is recovering now is because they mostly abandoned the World Bank/IMF policies that they've been following for decades.

Apparently you haven't been following the news lately.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are the most capable and the most eager.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[minstrelmike]

Pillaging Europe didn't get rid of Germany's debt (because they didn't win).
Here is a link to the wikipedia article on WWI reparations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
The final installment of this repayment was made on 3 October 2010

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[Lisandro]

"Some speculative monetary moves" = buying $1,500,000 USD at a 8,70 ARS rate when the official rate was 8,50 and climbing fast. If buying 1,500,000 accounts as "speculation" from a huge oil company we're in deeper waters than we thought.

Re:So they eliminated their debt with a fire?

[RockDoctor]

as all Oil selling countries have to sell Oil in dollars.

Not exactly true - several times, and continuing, a variety of countries have attempted to break the dollar basis of the oil market and to re-establish it on an Euro basis. Or on an open basis (which would make it a mixed dollar/ Euro/ Yuan basis.

It's going to happen. Whether it happens driven by governments trying to reduce their economies' exposure to American economic policy, or by traders fleeing a collapse of the dollar when the Chinese call in some of the debt they own, doesn't really matter. At some point, probably in the near future, oil and the dollar are going to decouple.

Doesn't fuss me ; I get paid in sterling anyway.

Classic Slashdot

[dknj]

This is off topic, but I'm getting a warning at the top of Slashdot that classic is going to be going away soon (looks like in 4 months).

How many readers are going to leave if they cut it off slashdot classic completely?

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Chris Mattern]

I'll probably be gone.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Beta can lick my salty balls. If slashdot classic (read marginally usable slashdot, as opposed to this COMPLETELY unusable beta crap) goes away, I'm gone too.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[larry bagina]

I've been coming here less and less because the stories are no longer interesting. A shitty redesign might be the final nail in the coffin. Pick a couple subreddits you like and enjoy.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Just need fire to destroy all data then you won't have to be gone....

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Alkivar]

I've been coming to /. since before you had to register to comment.
This is the first design change that has actually made me consider leaving.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[ZahrGnosis]

I'm sure I'll keep the newsfeed in my rss for a while, but the beta comment section sucks, so I expect I won't last long as a regular visitor. Unless of course they fix it.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll go with it. As others have said, as bad as the "classic" interface is, it's still better then the "new coke" interface.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[jafac]

4-digit UID here.
Don't like the beta one bit.
Get off my lawn.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[ZahrGnosis]

Ob-On-Topic Follow up... off site backups are BACKUPS... if you archive something off of your production systems (say, because it's outdated), you once again need TWO COPIES (like beta and classic Slashdot!). Putting an entire country's banking records in one place seems like an awful bad idea whatever that place is.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

They should just offer CSS "skins" that allow you to use this style, ponies, whatever.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

The front page sucks too. It's the same content spread out over 1.5 times the page length.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[cyberchondriac]

Whoa, I don't think ever seen that low a UID here before.. or I just never noticed. I thought you had all died out by now.
Why not tie a bunch of balloons to your house and float it on over to Argentina. Their banks are getting a fresh new start, mortgages should be cheap.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Fluffeh]

Erm, you don't have to register to comment. That Anon Coward isn't just a funny nick you know? :P

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to leave feedback, but their link took me into third party site hell (nice going guys).

The redesign is a bad idea. What makes the classic design work is the same thing that makes Craigslist work - there's a maximum of readable poop per area of screen real estate. We don't need large, flashy fonts, big catchy icons, etc if that means fewer stories or shorter summaries on a page. That's how you get into the "we made the site look so good that everyone left" syndrome.

Microsoft's Windows 8 designers had a similar idea; you'll notice that Windows 7 is still doing a brisk business.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[lgw]

How many readers are going to leave if they cut it off slashdot classic completely?

I'm likely to. I'm thinking of changing my signature to "If Hitler were also a pedophile, he'd still be better than Slashdot Beta". But maybe beta will improve?

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Racemaniac]

i've got the feeling the beta slashdot was designed by someone who makes websites for the elderly

huge fonts, extra pictures, tons of whitespace everywhere >__
it might be decent for a mobile version, but not for desktops, we're not reading this on 8" screens

Re:Classic Slashdot

[gaudior]

You are complaining about crappy stories and shitty web design, and then recommending Reddit as an alternative?

The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

My desktop machine can boot into three different operating systems; I switch between Gnome, Unity, and KDE in Linux depending on need; I instinctively use keyboard shortcuts in vi, ed, pico, WordStar, Word Perfect, and MS Word; but I'm having a major freakout because a particular website is changing its format? Excuse me? When did techies become so change averse? Sheesh! Change happens. Embrace it.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[mythosaz]

Much like anything else on the internet, if you want to see something done, just announce loudly that it's not possible.

There are no THREE DIGIT ID posters left on Slashdot

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

No, dude. I'm totally logged-in. I think my password got leaked a little while ago, though...

Re:Classic Slashdot

[MarcoAtWork]

change happens, sure, but when change is for the worse should we really embrace it? There is no shortage of news sites on the internet, I think the majority of old users like myself still come here for the comments/discussion, and if a redesign makes the comment section less usable and so causes people to leave, what's left then?

Re:Classic Slashdot

[0123456]

When did techies become so change averse? Sheesh! Change happens. Embrace it.

Why should we embrace change for the sake of change? Most change in the IT world over the last few years has been makework at best and awful at worst.

Techies want something better, not something that changed just because.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[FatdogHaiku]

Unless the beta improves, I have other ways to get old news...

Re:Classic Slashdot

[TWiTfan]

That's half of what's left!!

Re:Classic Slashdot

[TWiTfan]

I really wish someone with a big-name reputation in the geek community would do a Slashdot fork.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[TWiTfan]

Good change = good
Bad change != good

Re:Classic Slashdot

[BronsCon]

I'll be out.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Scotch42]

I guess I will...
I know! this a totaly unuseful comment but an opinion.
I usually don't comment here but lurk at least twice a day for more than two years before registering.
I guess I will have to find another site where I can find news for nerds and stuff that matters...

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

You are complaining about crappy stories and shitty web design, and then recommending Reddit as an alternative?

The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one.

You're full of it. The reddit's stories are much the same as /. but they have many more of them. In addition reddit's web design is far superior to slashdot beta. Slashdot beta have got so many things wrong with it it's just ridiculous. The so-called "designers" who did it should hang their heads in shame. I put an entry in my hosts file to kill the random redirects to beta. If that dies then slashdot is just another advertising junk site as far as I'm concerned.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[bamf]

Aren't there?

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Monoman]

Why not give it a shot yourself -> http://sourceforge.net/project... ?

Re: Classic Slashdot

[sconeu]

5 digits agrees with the almighty four digits.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Wizy]

Another 5 digit agreeing with the 4 digit parent.

This redesign is horrible. I will be leaving Slashdot after >10 years if this is forced on us.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[mdielmann]

So, in short, they took the Windows 8 approach, and were surprised to get an identical response.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[dcollins]

Probably me. We should fork the site.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Iskender]

Don't forget Greased Yoda if you do. Slashdot Beta deserves it.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Quirkz]

An old RPG scenario I played in included some meddlesome wizard who appeared and disappeared repeatedly with what the DM enunciated as *bamf* each time. So your user name fits exceedingly well with what you just did there.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Quirkz]

I just saw that note. Tried the beta. Didn't particularly *like* the ginormous layout, but figured I could live with it. What stopped me is I couldn't figure out how to see if anyone had replied to any of my prior comments. The current non-beta comments page shows a nice list at a glance with both indications of replies and moderation; the beta comments page shows each of my comments like an article, with no indication of whether anyone had replied or moderated the post. Am I just missing something, or is that feature unavailable in beta?

Re:Classic Slashdot

[millertym]

All the hate seems overly picky. I went to check it out after reading all the hate in this tread... wtf it's just fine. Yeah, it's redesigned. But from a quick browse around story read, comment read session I hardly saw anything worth deleting my shortcut to Slashdot for. I think you are all caught up in a yet another bout of senseless internet nerd rage.

Do you know what this reminds me of? When a popular MMO game releases a patch and all the power gamers freak the hell out. But to the other 95% of players they can hardly tell a difference between pre and post changes and certainly not any that they don't get used to and play just fine with within 15 minutes.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Bearhouse]

have mod points but you are at 5 already so...

excellent karma and all that stuff, been here for years etc blah

And I loathe this beta shit. I come here with a variety of browsers on different platforms; it's managing to break most of them in different ways.

Why?

Re:Classic Slashdot

[whoever57]

Putting an entire country's banking records in one place seems like an awful bad idea whatever that place is.

That depends on your intent. The articles hint that some people will be very happy that this data no longer exists.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Bearhouse]

You're kidding right?
It suck donkey balls on iPhone/Pad and Android too.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[TubeSteak]

This is the first design change that has actually made me consider leaving.

Classic is the only thing keeping me in the comments section.
The fact that /devs decided to truncate long urls, even for classic Plain Old Text, should have tipped me off that my kind isn't wanted here anymore.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[whoever57]

it might be decent for a mobile version,

Last time I looked at /. on my phone, 90% of the screen was filled with something like: "this comment hidden ...". Really, 90% filled with no useful information.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[tlhIngan]

Another 5 digit agreeing with the 4 digit parent.

This redesign is horrible. I will be leaving Slashdot after >10 years if this is forced on us.

Likewise, but if you're a 5-digit, it should be more like 15+ years of coming to /.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Ecuador]

Wow, you waited and waited for almost 2 years since your last post just for such an opportunity? :)

Re:Classic Slashdot

[denis-The-menace]

ahem. You have to kill him first.

Maybe Taco was told about the forced changed coming and bolted before he would suffer karma/reputation damage.

It seems Dice want to repeat history:
  The demise of DIGG and immediate exodus to Reddit.

Reddit is the closest thing to /. if you can tolerate the twerps.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[AmiMoJo]

Na, it's someone who designs websites for morons. Too much text is bad, morons don't like to read. Put some shitty stock images in there for them, and add loads of whitespace so the text looks less dense. Presentation is everything, content is just something that fills the gaps between layout elements.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[dkf]

Na, it's someone who designs websites for morons

This is not inconsistent with being for the mobile version.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Ozymandias_KoK]

Yeah, I started in 1998, so you're (both) clearly from at least that time or before. No idea how fast UIDs went, of course.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[ximenes]

That's correct, only two digits are left. Also I never post anymore and barely read the site anymore.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[jpatters]

Slashdot beta is a non-starter for me. Just a painful mess. I will not be using beta, and if classic goes away, I go away.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[DarkOx]

Nobody is freaking out just because its different. We are upset because is buggy, the threashold system simply does not offer the functionality of the v1 discussion system. Its difficult to use because the page no longer flows, etc.

Honestly the only more broken site out there is slate.com.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[rsmith-mac]

i've got the feeling the beta slashdot was designed by someone who makes websites for the elderly

Not quite. It was designed by someone who (sadly) knows what they're doing, and more importantly knows what advertisers currently want.

A lot of sites have shifted over to this kind of design, so Slashdot is far from alone. Advertisers like it for various reasons - mostly it comes down to ads being more eye-catching - and of course advertisers control the purse strings. But at the same time the public has also had it ingrained into their heads that such a design is the definition of "modern", and therefore any site not using such a design is by definition not modern, and therefore not worth their time ("the site's owners can't be bothered to keep up with the times?"). Which just leads to a feedback loop of advertisers liking it even more, since they want to advertise on sites that the public perceives as hip/modern so that their products are seen in a similar manner.

But the truly terrifying thing is that the industry isn't done yet. I can show you what the future will look like and it isn't pretty: http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/21/5307992/inside-the-mind-of-a-fanboy. By all accounts the advertisers seem to love it; the text is big and readable (i.e. not threatening), there's animation and lots of flashy effects, etc. It basically reads and behaves like an interactive glossy magazine (People, not Popular Science).

Not that I agree with any of this. Beta needs to be buried 6ft under in a grave lined with lead. But there is a method to their madness; despite what a lot of people here think, Dice hasn't gone off of their rockers. The rest of the world is just slowly moving on from text to images and iconography, as sad as that may be.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[rea1l1]

A tiger riding a llama - IMPOSSIBLE

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Tom]

get off my lawn, youngster.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Tom]

Wow.

It's like seing a unicorns.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Threni]

Whenever I try it, it sucks. Mobile sucks, because it's that funky ajax shit which doesn't tell you when it's doing stuff in the background, so you're never sure if it's still getting data,but slowly, due to a problem, or there's a problem and it's stopped, or if it's supposed to have stopped there. I can go back 2 pages on mobile then it stops - no more `older`. Why? Why can I go back further on the main site? I don't understand. I don't read this site every day, and sometimes I like to catch up on my phone. Is this an edge case. There was a sort of survey thing to leave comments but it looked a bit shit and didn't let me comment on what I thought was good/bad outside of strict and uninteresting parameters.

When I first started reading Slashdot many years ago (I had an older account than this but lost the password and my email account it was tied to vanished when I moved ISP (yes, I used to use ISP email accounts!)) there was no sensible alternative to Slashdot, but you can't move without bumping into tech news aggregators these days, and the users have have changed from techies and developers into..well, users. And if there's one thing I can't stand it's fucking users.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[ultranova]

How many readers are going to leave if they cut it off slashdot classic completely?

Me, unless playing with user CSS and GreaseMonkey will get the something useful back. But even then the reverse network effect applies: the more users leave, the less valuable this site is for any remaining one.

I think we're witnessing the end.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[TopSpin]

None at all.

And yes, beta has serious problems. Regressing to having to bang on the "Load More..." button instead of "Load All Comments" while not logged in is one glaring example. The fact that comments don't flow around the end the right side ad bar is another.

This is not Twitter. People write lengthy comments here; please don't piss away space with huge margins and poor layout.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[MickLinux]

I'll likely drop out of slashdot, too, if it's all you say it is. I've seen what has happened to formerly great magazines like "Boys' Life" (scouting mag), when advertisers got their claws in it.

Think ads. Think advertorials. Think page-at-a-glance, and light on pages. All the articles, gone. All the features, gutted. All the stories, made vapid. oh, and now in digitized 3-D cartoons.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[iONiUM]

Please send e-mails to feedback@slashdot.org saying this. Coming from low UID accounts might make them listen.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Anubis IV]

I completely agree, but I can also see where they're coming from.

Numerous episodes of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares featured situations somewhat analogous to what Slashdot is facing here. I recall one in particular where the only regular patrons at a restaurant were from a nearby retirement home. The business was slowly tanking as their customers died off. Ramsey forced them to wake up and realize that there was no sense in clinging to those customers, since that path would lead to certain financial ruin. They needed to try something else, anything else, even if it meant sacrificing everything they were.

Well, we're the retirees who are slowly dying off, and Slashdot is the restaurant that can't sustain itself forever on our patronage. It used to be that anyone using a computer had to be a nerd. Nowadays, everyone can happily use one without having to know the details, making it harder for folks to discover their inner nerd. And while computing technology is by no means the sole producer of nerds, they are a very large one.

Given that state of things, Dice essentially has two choices: double-down on retaining current users (a failing proposition, since we're a dwindling niche), or strike out in a different direction and hope they attract new users.

I don't like the choice they're making, but I can certainly understand it.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[lister king of smeg]

Why not give it a shot yourself -> http://sourceforge.net/project... ?

I have thought about it but the code there was last touched in what 06? I might give it a go but I have school and no money to pay for a server more powerful than a raspberry pi right now and my internet connection is laughable. But if slashdot keeps this shit up I may give it a try. If anyone else started one I would be more than willing to help where I could.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[iONiUM]

I'm flattered; you directly copied/pasted my comment, along with the title (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4756311&cid=46164335).

Impressive.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[trims]

Barely a 5-digit myself. Been here since early 1997. And Beta will cause me to never come back. I tried it once, and it was hideous.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[fnj]

I'll probably be gone if this beta abortion becomes the only available interface. I mean WHAT THE FUCK?! This nazi piece of shit just imperiously throws away all of my paragraph breaks!

Come on, slashdot. Really? Admit failure. Fire whoever needs to be fired, and get back on track.

I mean jesus christ. Maybe I will even start a site to compete. One whose design is not brain dead and whose management will never become brain dead.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Mashiki]

I can show you what the future will look like and it isn't pretty:

Holy fuck. I want to punch someone in the kittens for that layout. ZOMG POP! POP! POP! ZOMG POP!

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Ol Olsoc]

You are complaining about crappy stories and shitty web design, and then recommending Reddit as an alternative?

The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one.

Perhaps we can teach this one no more.Our job here is done. He now graduates to Yahoo comment boards.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[fnj]

I got the warning, previewed beta for a heads up, was horrified, and replied using beta. My reply isn't even visible using the classic interface, so I am copying it here. You can stuff the "redundant" mods. Send them to beta.slashdot.

I'll probably be gone if this beta abortion becomes the only available interface. I mean WHAT THE FUCK?! This nazi piece of shit just imperiously throws away all of my paragraph breaks!

Come on, slashdot. Really? Admit failure. Fire whoever needs to be fired, and get back on track.

I mean jesus christ. Maybe I will even start a site to compete. One whose design is not brain dead and whose management will never become brain dead.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[MarcoAtWork]

I think the restaurant metaphor is misleading, because it assumes your patrons are entirely interchangeable. /. to me is more akin to a club, where you do have the old members with the most knowledge, and the new members joining and learning from the old members and perpetuating the club "culture". If this redesign goes through, a lot of the mentors/old members will leave, and if they go under the critical mass needed to sustain it there is a risk the site itself will become non-viable and just a news aggregator with lowest-common-denominator discussion.

I can't see why sites continue to change their look to be "fresh" while not leaving the previous look available for people that prefer it, if you have your articles in a db it should be trivial to leave the old codebase up and running "forever" if you really can't be bothered to have your new codebase support the old format (which in my opinion should be the #1 feature of any code redesign, backwards compatibility).

A similar charade is going on with my.yahoo.com right now, which has force-update everybody from the old very comfortable and information-dense layout to a new "fresh" layout with less functionality (can't hover on stories to read the abstract for example, which should be a fairly basic feature) and gobs more wasted whitespace and large fonts everywhere: users are up in arms on the suggestion boards and have been since it was in beta, but the company went forward anyways and it looks like it's unfortunately here to stay.

The only constant in life is change, but it sure would be nice if this change didn't always seemingly happen hand in hand with reduction in functionality and less customizability. It would be like if the next version of emacs forced you into a 3-pane buffer with 16pt fonts and mandatory purple on white font/colors because it looks more "fresh", just because something is old it doesn't mean it's "stale", it can just mean it's tested and works well and so should be left alone.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[EETech1]

Sure there are...

I've seen THOUSANDS of 3 digit UIDs around here lately...

Re:Classic Slashdot

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

1. From my profile I have to be able to click my way to my recent posts, check if anyone has posted a response. The beta does not have that feature. If I can't do that I would post much less.

2. I need to able to control the levels and see the posts chronologically. Sorting by insightful/informative/funny may be ok, but so many posts flip and flop between funny and insightful...

3. Pity if I lose interest and walk away. All 31 achievements... lost for ever.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[gmezero]

I read Reddit and Hackernews for most of my tech news these days but have always fallen back to scanning Slashdot every day for the cream of the crop and to check the comments for interesting dialog because it was a lightweight, scan to get through the content.

I've gotta say, the Beta is pretty bad from a UX perspective and I would say that it is out of line with my perceptions of who a Slashdot user is.

It's like someone just said "this is trendy, make it happen" without any real consideration for the active user base. I can only hope that the feedback from the Beta supports my perception and they reverse on it, but I have to admit to myself that that's highly unlikely and I can say right now that it will very likely effect my visit frequency to the site.

Pretty bummed about it.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[gmezero]

OH yeah, and I already e-mailed them my feedback saying as much.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[gmezero]

Yeah, we're here. Just keeping an eye on you guys... but clearly not well enough as apparently one of you brought your girlfriend in and she's putting photos all over the place instead of the news.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[gmezero]

Good grief!?!? 2-digit! I didn't think they let people in the old-folks home have computers!

Re:Classic Slashdot

[gmezero]

IDK, the 2-digit ID guy that posted elsewhere in this thread didn't like the new look either.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[ColdWetDog]

At your age, it's probably just cataracts.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Slamtilt]

Sure does smell of old people here. I wonder if beta comes with air freshener?

Re:Classic Slashdot

[ColdWetDog]

Excuse me? When did techies become so change averse? Sheesh! Change happens. Embrace it.

Ok, Mr. "Hope and Change" - I don't see Windows 8 on your list.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[cold fjord]

They have a proxy interface for the teletype. The one digits use the proxy for the telegraph hooked to the old dashdot site that then forwards the text.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[ColdWetDog]

I'll be gone. Lots of us AC's will be.

That's the first good thing about the beta design that I have heard all day.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[gman003]

I will leave unless they can fix the major issues. Foremost of which is the comment full/abbreviated/hide system based on scores. I don't want to choose between just insightful, funny or interesting - I want all of them, but not the horrible comments.

Contrary to popular consensus, Slashdot doesn't have a good commenter base. There's just as many assholes and retards here as there are on Youtube. But having a good karma system, good moderation system, and most of all the ability for users to use those rankings themselves to show/hide comments, makes it look like one of the best comment sections around. Hell, I rarely actually read the articles anymore - the comments are usually more accurate and better-written.

Other than that, and maybe making the site less mobile-styled, make the headlines a more reasonable font size and shrink the gaps between everything, I could deal with it. But without that piece of functionality, I may as well just read Reddit.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[ktappe]

Maybe I will even start a site to compete. One whose design is not brain dead and whose management will never become brain dead.

It's called Reddit.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[schklerg]

That site... My eyes... Must move back to lynx

Re:Classic Slashdot

[theArtificial]

I'm interested in contributing, I've got a couple machines and some bandwidth, but it depends on some other factors. I really enjoy Slashdot, and would love to see this community continue, or if "we" go elsewhere, join that crowd. Maybe we can make a poll or something in what users are interested in feature wise? Slashdot of a certain era for example, or this could be a great time to refactor while keeping a familiar layout and moderation system. What's your skillset?

Re:Classic Slashdot

[petsounds]

To use your restaurant metaphor, it's more like taking a classy pub and turning it into a 7-11 convenience store.

Slashdot is a place for nerd/geek discussions on topics curated by "editors". The problem is that DICE is a company whose product is ads. When your product is ads and not user discussions, the site will be changed to make ads the focus.

Slashdot should have been taken in the *opposite* direction – towards better curation, towards longer-form tech articles and original content, and towards keeping the level of discourse high. Because slashdot was never about news scoops -- it was about the interesting melange of tech industry people, scientists, academics, geeks, and cultural misfits discussing interesting things and having interesting things to say.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[antdude]

Any single digits left? :P

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Kaenneth]

I can't recover my old 3 digit ID since the ISP for the related e-mail address died (literally, a one man run ISP, and he died.)

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Monoman]

Last Update: 2013-05-09

Re:Classic Slashdot

[lister king of smeg]

I am not exactly a web dev. Mostly manageing and maintaining small office networks (linux and windows) desktops a couple of windows server at several local business, a smattering xml html 4 and css, oh and some uglyass 16 bit assembly I can spin up a very simple apache sever. I am willing do what I could limited as it may be.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Anubis IV]

You won't hear any disagreement from me.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Anubis IV]

I think the restaurant metaphor is misleading, because it assumes your patrons are entirely interchangeable. [...] If this redesign goes through, [...] there is a risk the site itself will become non-viable and just a news aggregator with lowest-common-denominator discussion.

Actually, that was exactly what I was getting at. As far as they're concerned, one user is as good as another, and they have no interest in preserving the culture of the site if that culture isn't in alignment with their desire for profit. You just hit the nail on the head for what I was talking about when I said, "They needed to try something else, anything else, even if it meant sacrificing everything they were." You're quite right that users are not interchangeable with the current culture here, and that's something they may want to "fix".

Re:Classic Slashdot

[lister king of smeg]

did you look under files?

Bundle-Slash modified 2006-08-18
Slash-Client modified 2005-11-21
Slashcode modified 2002-07-03
slashcode-dev modified 2001-10-31

So what exactly was modified when they last "updated"? The last entry in the mailing list was back in Oct 2011.
looks to me like the only thing resent is a user review.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[bill_mcgonigle]

How bad is it? Can this be fixed with a user stylesheet, or have they gone full-retard?

Re:Classic Slashdot

[rockmuelle]

Just sent this to feedback@slashdot.org ... please everyone do the same with your comments. Spam them into compliance with our demands! ;)

I have been reading and participating in discussions on Slashdot since 1996.* Over the years, there have been few times when I have gone more than a few days without reading /. /. is my connection to the broader geek community and the discussions on the site have been influential in shaping me as a geek. As an older geek, /. gives me a chance to share what I’ve learned and also keep up with how people are thinking about new technologies.

I have yet to find a site that is as comprehensive in its community and coverage as /. Let me restate that: there is no other place on the internet as essential to the geek community as /. Nothing comes close. /. works because of its community. The community values /. because it’s given us a place to discuss a broad range of topics in a civilized manner. Without the community, /. will simply be another discussion board on a news site, with loud voices screaming their opinions and very little civilized discourse.

If you haven’t noticed by the comments on many of the stories recently, the community will disperse if the beta is rolled out. I won’t go into the reasons why (there are thousands of great comments explaining the shortcomings of the new site) other than to say that the new format discourages discourse and community and encourages quick comments with little context.

Deep, threaded, moderated discussions that are easy read and inviting to participate in are what makes the current site work. The conventions for discourse that have evolved over the last 17 or so years, many enabled by the design of the site, are what allows the community to function. Change it too much, and the community will disperse and go their separate ways - off to Reddit and 4chan and the comment sections of Ars, Wired, Toms, and other tech sites.

The managers in charge of this redesign are facing probably the biggest decision of their career. By going forward with the beta, they will surely meet their quarterly goals. But, in doing so, they will be directly responsible for the destruction of one of the most important communities on the internet.

Please make the right decision and don’t go forward with the beta as it currently exists. (and note: redesigns are fine, just understand why your site works and don’t destroy its soul in the process)

-Chris aka rockmuelle

*My 6 digit ID is only due to the fact that I valued privacy in the early days of the internet and was reluctant to sign up for accounts anywhere.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Jadeus]

It's bad enough that we have to use it in the state it's in currently.

Way to race to the bottom.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Chas]

So.

What was it like?

Back before...y'know...dirt?

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Chas]

Yeah. The main problem is, Reddit is a fucking mess in terms of layout.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[cyntax]

Damn right.

The beta version reminds me of bad Facebook Comments plugin. Yuk!

4 digit uid says, nay to the new design.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[speederaser]

I can't code but I can write a check. Post that bad boy to Kickstarter and auction off the low user ids. I would suggest the name 'slashdottir' but you'd get sued.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[ridgecritter]

Theverge link was amazingly awful. I had no idea. And I can certainly see how it's Dice's direction for /. Just as certainly, not mine.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Mathinker]

Mad Scientist's Club FTW!

Wow, this stuff got republished in 2001-2002? I loved reading it when I was a kid, but can't imagine enjoying it that much if I read it now, nor that my own children would be at all interested. Some things just have to be experienced at the right age and in the right context, I think.

Well, well, maybe this comment does have something to do with the new beta (omega?) design, after all...

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Mathinker]

> Am I just missing something, or is that feature unavailable in beta?

I couldn't even figure out how to get a permalink to a comment... ugh.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Jesus Christ, this is your first post in almost 4 years. Were you reanimated after being cryogenicly frozen? What's your thoughts on how the tech world has evolved over 4 years? You were around just after the iPad was announced, what do you think now that mobile apps are everywhere and Slashdot wants to make their site look like one?

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Malc]

A lot of sites have shifted over to this kind of design, so Slashdot is far from alone. Advertisers like it for various reasons - mostly it comes down to ads being more eye-catching - and of course advertisers control the purse strings.

You'd think there'd be a higher proportion of people here using browser plugins like AdBlock Plus. For this of us who do, what's left of the new /. with the ads removed? Maybe comments and discussion don't bring enough value encourage enough repeat visitors of people who do get the ads?

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Trogre]

Perfect! The GP's point is proven beyond doubt!

Re:Classic Slashdot

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Wait, people read /. in browsers? why? /me gets nothin but the facts in his RSS reader. Don't need none of that crazy css crap :)

RSS has been going to hell with things like Google Reader shut down. Still haven't found a substitute I like.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Splab]

Then you haven't tried the mobile version.

I've already abandoned that part of slashdot, it is absolutely impossible to use - the font is too small to read, and reszing is disabled...

Re:Classic Slashdot

[PingXao]

It's not a matter of management becoming brain dead, it's a matter of them "selling out". FFS I saw an ad for Dodge the other day that had a Bob Dylan song playing in it.

If Bob Dylan is selling out you know anyone can (and will) sell out. Time to move on.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[LongearedBat]

the world is just slowly moving on from text to images and iconography, as sad as that may be.

So, we're moving from literature back to cave paintings.

That's one way to make civilization implode. And I always thought civilization would come to a more dramatic end due to some calamity.

Oh well. The end is nigh in yet another way, then.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[TranquilVoid]

What they should have done is posted a flood of Windows 8 stories and seen how we responded.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[akh]

Mind you, the 2006 version _was_ the apex of usability.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Mantrid42]

Are there any slashdot users who actually SEE ads?

Re: Classic Slashdot

[ximenes]

I still read the site every so often, but it's gone from one of my main sites that I read religiously to one that I forget about for a week or two.

The level of the articles don't even warrant skimming the summary in most cases, let alone reading the comments or actually commenting myself. Part of it is that my interests have diverged and part of it is that Slashdot has seriously lost any edge it ever had.

I can see why they feel the need to freshen up the design -- and it's not like it's ever been strong on a design front -- but the beta is atrocious and once I can't avoid it I doubt I'll ever be back. Slashdot may have outlasted Digg but I suspect it will share the same fate.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[sociocapitalist]

I really wish someone with a big-name reputation in the geek community would do a Slashdot fork.

We could call it a Slork !

Re: Classic Slashdot

[sociocapitalist]

Aren't there?

This reminds me of the "Interesting Times Gang" when the old ships come out of nowhere to start commenting during the emerging Excession crisis...

Re:Classic Slashdot

[thegarbz]

I have thought about it but the code there was last touched in what 06?

Why is this a bad thing? LOOK WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY TOUCH THE CODE!

Re:Classic Slashdot

[theArtificial]

I'm interested in realizing something, seems like an great way to contribute. I'm not a perl guy, so grokking Slashcode will require some ramp up. I am familiar and feed myself with web. What makes a site is the community, the hosting for such a project isn't my primary concern, infrastructure is something that can be acquired as need permits. Besides the design my present curiosity is mitigating abuse and request volume for visitors and flagged comments.

As wild as 2/4chan are the focus on what is being said rather than the who is appealing, unfortunately there are some drawbacks, too. I really like ycombinator, too. Based on some of the comments in this story it looks like the main draw for the community is an easy to digest comment section. I'd like to better understand how the mod points are awarded in Slashdcode. Other concerns are popular platform support, such as mobile, RSS, does anyone care about the achievements, blogs etc.? Additional moderation points?

As far as a name, I've got title in mind, something old and something new, only a few characters longer than Slashdot. I realize the switch is coming soon. I've got a few logs on the fire and will not be able to dedicate any serious time for another ~6 weeks. In the mean time I can put some thought into a prototype application design and schema. I don't want a carbon copy, so input is welcome. What's on your mind?

Re:Classic Slashdot

[smallfries]

I've been here about 11 years and this will make me leave. Screw whether or not it looks nice - this new interface is functionally broken. I can't see what selection of comments has been loaded or not loaded. There is no indication of parts of the tree that are not shown. The load more button gives no feedback about where it is inserting comments, or how many.

If I wanted to see a flashy rendering of the headlines with no context then I would read the site over RSS. If I wanted to see some random selection of the comments instead of (an outline) of the whole tree then I would just ask somebody else to read slashdot and give me a badly organised summary of their interpretation of the daily feeling of slashdot.

This interface does not work on a mobile device. It does not work on a desktop. It does not work. The final insult is that I had to switch to classic to post, because that doesn't work properly on the new interface either. Complete shite. So this is how slashdot died.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Tom]

yeah, I feel like Jamie some days :-)

But I can tell you what it was like a decade ago. Most of the stories actually were relevant and you felt like commenting on them. The stories definitely were better. However, the comments were not. When it grew, /. acquired quite a number of famous readers with real, personal, first-hand knowledge of the topics. You didn't have many of those in the early days, aside from some hardcore tech guys. But people like NewYorkCountryLawyer were missing back then.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[greggster]

Dang that fanboy site is ugly, slow and bloated. 32 digit user posting here from classic slashdot. So.. will they keep this at classicslashdot.org? Or be like Coke and redo the recipe with corn-syrup, and call it classic.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[coolmadsi]

Whoa, I don't think ever seen that low a UID here before.. or I just never noticed.

...or you've been using the beta where you can't see anyone's UID next to their name in a comment

Re: Classic Slashdot

[bamf]

I only look at /. when I'm really bored. It's a been a long time since it was worth reading on a daily or even weekly basis.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[ultranova]

It's not a matter of management becoming brain dead, it's a matter of them "selling out".

Slashdot wants to sell out, no one wants to buy. There ain't getting back your youth...

Re:Classic Slashdot

[ultranova]

Why not give it a shot yourself

Because without a single replacement the user base will fragment and disperse, leaving each individual page with too few users to keep conversations going.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[ultranova]

Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares

Is GRKN having a campaign or something? It's been mentioned twice now on this subthread, and bears no obvious connection to a tech website.

Well, we're the retirees who are slowly dying off, and Slashdot is the restaurant that can't sustain itself forever on our patronage.

The obvious difference between a restaurant and Slashdot is that a restaurant has lots of sunk capital - fridges, ovens, real estate - that's independent of its customers, while Slashdot has almost nothing. If us old-timers leave, you're pretty much looking to start up a new site rather than reopening an old one.

The lesson here is that the details of your business absolutely matter and can't be abstracted away.

Given that state of things, Dice essentially has two choices: double-down on retaining current users (a failing proposition, since we're a dwindling niche), or strike out in a different direction and hope they attract new users.

Or they could had used the same backend to start a new site and seen if it got more popular than Slashdot, then gone with the winner. Or they could simply keep both sites going side-by-side as alternative interfaces to the same underlaying database. Or just let Slashdot hemorrhage readers till it dies. Product lines sometimes do, it's no more dramatic - or at least shouldn't be - for companies than a single cell dying is for your body.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[c]

I wonder if beta comes with air freshener?

If you consider living next to a pig farm to be fresh country air, then I guess you could call it that.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[lowen]

Yeah, reading Slashdot just isn't what it used to be. It, freshmeat.net, and linuxtoday.com were three of the sites I began reading in 1997 prior to putting up a new server install online..... of Red Hat Linux 4.1.

I forget when I registered, but it was a while after I had started reading it.

The only deal with a low id is that you have to maintain ancient e-mail addresses to keep it.....

So, the beta leaves a lot to be desired. But that's partly why it's beta, no? (and, no, I'm still on classic, and plan to stay that way as long as possible.)

Re:Classic Slashdot

[TWiTfan]

Why not give it a shot yourself

Because I'm not famous in the geek community. If every dipshit does their own fork, then you just end up with a million forks with a tiny userbase on each (and probably all fighting with each other over which fork is best). It's the same reason Linux on the desktop has been (and always will be) a complete fail: 1% marketshare divided by a million.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[TWiTfan]

I suspect that Taco signed some sort of agreement with Dice not to set up a competing service, as part of his deal to leave.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[twocows]

I think I vomited in my mouth a little at that link. My laptop's fan came on just from opening it. Ugh.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Agent0013]

At least the Verge link is a full article. It bothers me less there then the stuff Slashdot is doing with the beta version. If an article page wants to try to look like a glossy magazine page with some small animations and popping up text that is fine, I can still read the article through without things being missing. The beta version of Slashdot has things missing that leave you stuck without being able to read what you wanted to read. Trying to see a parent post is not possible and I don't even remember being able to find a way to change the moderation cut-off filter level. Slashdot isn't read for the article, it's read for the comments.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[Agent0013]

They may think that one user is as good as another, but I feel they would be wrong in that thought. If people only came here to read the summaries, then trading in existing users for new users would be an even trade. Since people, by and large, come here to read the comments of other users, trading in the existing users for new ones would be a disaster. These users are the content generation. If you loose your content generators without getting new ones that are at least as good then there is less reason to come to this site. The summary can be read anywhere, the insightful comments by informed users of the site can only be read here while it lasts.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[mjm1231]

I actually got an email reply to my complaint about this site design in which the editors seemed sympathetic to my concerns, but apparently not in control of the look and layout.

My problem with this design is mostly the color and font of the comment system. The font is very light weight. In addition, it is only slightly darker than the background and just doesn't contrast enough to be easily readable. I mean, it looks pretty, but it is a real eyestrain to read. Actually, looking at it again, I guess they modified it a little. Previously I had to magnify the page to 125% to read it. Now I can read it reasonably at 110%, though not comfortably.

A darker font might not be as pretty. But this isn't an art museum. This is text, and I am trying to read it.

Oh, the functionally of the Preview Comment button is just plain stupid... Is that check mark above my comment supposed to be submit? If so, it doesn't work for me at all. I had to switch back to classic view to submit this.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[neurovish]

Jeez, 10? How much did that cost? ...and if you didn't buy it, do you have any idea how much somebody probably would've paid for that UID before the looming beta threat.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[EdIII]

While I know that you are probably joking, you can make the number 9 and include me.

For a half a day I suffered their new interface and noticed nothing but problems. I come here to read comments, and possibly write them. The new interface is much more difficult for me to read. It's not about it being different and jarring, it's about it being the worst coded piece of shit ever.

It's simple. If the interface makes it difficult, and they don't have the bugs fixed, and the layout isn't conducive to easy reading.... I'm just going to stop.

Slashdot won't provide me with what I come here to enjoy, so whatever, I move on and go someplace else. Stuff happens, stuff changes, and all sites die eventually I guess when the owners tank it.

I would love to see the list of problems and feature requests that made them create that abomination of code in the first place. ..AND... as far as the low amount goes.... you notice whole articles now like this where we are talking about this shit instead of about the article. That can't be a good sign.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[millertym]

If you think that the 100 commenters here are even close to representing the typical reader of this site - then you are more like the self centered power gamers of a certain MMO than you realize. A boisterous minority are about all that us who enjoy posting comments are, compared to everyone who visits. Go look at the number of visits per article numbers. Going by the numbers of the "most visited" articles I'd guess that less than 1% of people visiting this article posted here.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[DocSavage64109]

So, we're moving from literature back to cave paintings.

That's one way to make civilization implode. And I always thought civilization would come to a more dramatic end due to some calamity.

Oh well. The end is nigh in yet another way, then.

Those of us who've seen the movie Idiocracy are not surprised by any of this.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[akpak]

Say what you will about reddit's content (debatable, since there are lots of quality sub-reddits you can subscribe to), but the site design (by default) is completely useable. It may look primitive, but by goodness it's great for reading walls of text-type comments.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Trixter]

4 digits agrees with the not-so-mighty five digits.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[DeVilla]

I read most of the summaries in rss. I follow the link to articles that I think might have something interesting in the comments. Reading from work, I get sent to beta. Once the beta interface is the only one, I'll probably stop following the link to the comments. It's irritating to navigate.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[denis-The-menace]

Once you understand how the site works, the mess makes sense.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[kmoser]

I want to see the person with the NULL uid chime in. (No, I don't mean AC. His uid is NaN.)

Re:Classic Slashdot

[balbus000]

Some ideas:

1) Let's set up a boycott for the day that the beta site becomes the default. No one visits slashdot on that day, even the classic version that's still available.

One whose design is not brain dead and whose management will never become brain dead.

2) Let's take slashcode and set up a site with the moderation system modified so that the top 0.5% or whatever of the pool are eligible for "editor points" as well as "mod points". Editor points would give them the ability to post stories to the front page and edit the summary. The "management" would then come from the community and not be as easily corruptible.

Re:Classic Slashdot

[balbus000]

I read /. in chronological order, and am usually 3-5 days behind lately. I'm just getting into the stories with all the beta comments. My ideas and many more have already been voiced, so the above comment is mostly outdated.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[cyberchondriac]

Ugh.. nope. Classic here.

Re: Classic Slashdot

[sincewhen]

Give him a break - he doesn't type so fast these days, what with the arthritis, and forgetting what he was doing midway through...

Re: Classic Slashdot

[Drey]

Quite so.

Wasn't this a movie with Emelio Estevez?

[Gothmolly]

Like he was some kind of Robin Hood figure who was trying to give time to people to catch up on their mortgages? And he ends up shot and crying in a failed bank heist or something?

Re:Wasn't this a movie with Emelio Estevez?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Don't know that movie, but it was definitely the like the last act of Fight Club.

Re:Wasn't this a movie with Emelio Estevez?

[Ralph Wiggam]

I love Fight Club but I hate that last scene. My old roommate was a data librarian for Eli Lilly. They had multiple copies of their data backed up at locations around the country, including one vault at the bottom of a old mine. Even a nuclear war would not destroy their data. I have to imagine that banks use a similar system.

Re:Wasn't this a movie with Emelio Estevez?

[TWiTfan]

Wisdom

One of the last great Brat Pack movies.

Re:Wasn't this a movie with Emelio Estevez?

[ClioCJS]

You mean, except the banks mentioned in this article.

Re:Wasn't this a movie with Emelio Estevez?

[Ralph Wiggam]

Yes. But they are idiots and/or the data loss was intentional.

I've worked at small companies where the IT manager took home backup tapes in case the office burned down. It's almost inconceivable that a major bank would have less sophisticated policies than a 20 person company.

Re:Wasn't this a movie with Emelio Estevez?

[Cramer]

Yes, you would have to imagine it. I don't know of any bank that does more than writing to a tape (maybe encrypted) and handing that to Iron Mountain to lose, mangle, and now burn. (yes, I've had those fools lose many of my tapes. About half come back unreadable, and many of those permanently unusable.)

Classic Slashdot

[EvilSS]

How many readers are going to leave if they cut it off slashdot classic completely?

8

Some far reaching implications...

[Syhra]

Like how exactly does a mountain made of iron burn?

Re:Some far reaching implications...

[Anonymous Coward]

Iron burns as follows:

4Fe(s) + 3O2(g) -> 2Fe2O3(s)

Re:Some far reaching implications...

[aix tom]

And it looks real pretty, too, when it burns.

Although that's not a mountain, just wool. But, when you thing about it, a lump of wool sometimes just looks like the "cloud" that just burned up here.

Re:Some far reaching implications...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

This can be nicely demonstrated with a kitchen match and some steel wool.

So where are the US bank records stored?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wondering. No reason.

Re:So where are the US bank records stored?

[Ralph Wiggam]

In offline bunkers guarded by men with machine guns.

Re:So where are the US bank records stored?

[Jmc23]

Well, the stuff that mattered was in the buildings that went down along with the towers on 9/11.

Offsite copies

[Rob_Bryerton]

Well, hopefully that Iron Mountain facility was storing their backups offsite at a safe, secure location.

Re:Offsite copies

[JustinKSU]

Someone needs a sarcasm detector.

I'm trying to reply from the beta

[bmajik]

have you left any constructive comments in the Slashdot "blog" threads? That appears to be the official avenue by which they claim to want feedback, so duplicate your efforts over there.

I too am a classic user, and I don't much care for the beta interface. I left comments indicating what I wanted the UI to do that it wasn't currently doing, and why I still use the classic mode.

Re:I'm trying to reply from the beta

[halcyon1234]

have you left any constructive comments in the Slashdot "blog" threads?

Yes, and they've all been ignored. Just like every "feedback" thread that's ever been run by a corporation. I also filled out the survey. Ignored.

The change will happen. Readingship will nosedive. Someone at Dice will say "See, told you Slashdot was dying, this proves me right". The site will be mothballed, and Dice News (tm) will be opened as a "leader in a newspace with no competition".

Re:I'm trying to reply from the beta

[sincewhen]

You left out the part where when they notice readership is in decline, they double-down on making it more like .

Hmmm....

[MightyMartian]

Argentina having an economic crisis... Making impotent threats over the Falklands didn't work, let's try burning all the bank records.

Re:Hmmm....

[lgw]

When that many failsafes all fail (and Iron Mountain certainly takes this sort of stuff seriously), it's pretty clearly an "accident" not an accident.

Re:Hmmm....

[Charliemopps]

Yea, if any of you haven't been in one of these data centers, the sear improbability of this kind of fire is staggering.

The rooms are usually kept so cold you need a jacket.
There are firewalls everywhere (and I mean the physical kind)
They have sprinkler systems in the looses sense of the term, They more likely dump CO2 to avoid damaging the equipment.
If all else fails the room seal and Halon dumps (or one of its alternatives) making combustion almost completely impossible.

The only way I could see it happening is if things were shut down for a test or something...
or some neighboring building that was much larger exploded or something.

Re:Hmmm....

[lgw]

You do realize the Iron Mountain is the offsite backup, right? If you mean "did the bank send offsite backups to two different places?" then I'd bet not.

Re: Hmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

So improbable that already happened twice:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/5175568.stm
Sure it's not everyday, but they seem to turn into ashes with a big show of flames.

Re:Hmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

There are firewalls everywhere (and I mean the physical kind)

And there is you have the culprit. Walls of fire should not be placed anywhere near anything you don't want to burn. "But the Mount of Doom has a lot of fire" you say. Yeah, and it didn't do them any good, now did it? Just use a few more Orc patrols and be done with it. It may seem more expensive, but at least you won't have problems with people accidentally catching on fire and burning everything.

Re:Hmmm....

[medv4380]

If there were something like a large building that could explode the data center wouldn't have reached the appropriate certification for these documents. I had a teacher who worked for HP, or Micron who's team thought that they'll go overboard with this tiny little data center, and get a Tier 4 certification. The reviewer didn't even need to enter the building to reject them. Their facility was too close to railroad tracks, and the possibility of a train derailing, and wiping out the data center forbid the high tier certifications.

Re:Hmmm....

[lgw]

Now the company which safeguards those companies' financial records has their facilites burnt to the ground... I encourage you to google "iron mountain datawarehouse fire" and look past the obvious results from Argentina. You'll find this firm has a history of destroying their customer's recors on demand.

Hehe - well, they do offer records destruction as a service line. Maybe this is just the deluxe version.

Have to ask...

[GameMaster]

I know it's horrible that some first responders died in this, but I have to ask if anyone's looked to see if there have been any new hand-crafted soap manufacturers and/or liposuction clinic thefts in the area lately...

Confessions Of an Ex-SLASHDOT BETA user

[Anonymous Coward]

Day 1: It wouldn't stop, the redirecting. At first I thought it was malware. Had my first drink in a long time.

Day 2: Barely had the strength to carry on as the BETA REDIRECTIONS continue.. trying not to talk to hallucinations at the bar and in the bathroom which laugh at me about these redirections.

Day 3: Discovered the BETA redirections were random, and while at first they looked somewhat usable, when I looked at me and my monitor screen in the mirror, a horrible woman with flesh hanging off of her body looked back, trying to lead me into a dance as the word BETA appeared across her rancid breasts.

Day 4: These BETA corridors go on FOREVER! On the plus side, I've taken up disassembling vehicles to corner this BETA beast and sacrifice myself rather than lead others to discovering it. I ate some red snow.

Day 5: Finding it harder to concentrate. I've ate some more of the red snow. The taste is starting to grow on me.

Day 6: This typewriter is the only entertainment I have, apart from throwing things at the walls, trying to get some response from the BETA which is now taking over my mind.

Day 7: Hahahahahha! Would you believe it? I'M STILL BEING REDIRECTED TO SLASHDOT BETA PAGES! AHAHhahahaah! Type, type, ding, ding! Wooo!

Day 8: The hallucinations are actually real! Would you believe it? They have offered to help me if I agree to work for them. I'm thinking about patenting this delicious red snow, the taste is unreal!

Day 9: Having black out sessions where I cannot remember large passings of time. Found some makeup, thought I'd paint a joker smile on my face to amuse the people only I can see!

Day 10: Productive today, part of what I wrote for my new screenplay:

I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slas

(drops of blood on paper)

Amazing

[cold fjord]

It's hard to believe this wasn't arson if that facility was like the Iron Mountain facility I've seen.

I wonder why the fire suppression system wasn't able to stop it?

Re:Amazing

[lgw]

A fire suppression system wouldn't stop military incendiaries. You can't really put out thermite, for example (don't throw your burning thermite in the swimming pool, it will merely burn through the concrete at the bottom and crack the pool). A similar explanation would cover the nearby fire fighting team. If Iron Mountain has the same warehouse standards worldwide (I think they do), Hanlon's razor doesn't cover this fire, I don't think.

Re:Amazing

[FuegoFuerte]

Could have been an inside job and someone disabled it?

Re:Amazing

[Charliemopps]

Even with Thermite, Halon wouldn't put it out but it would prevent it from starting anything else on fire. I suppose if they threw in enough thermite it would melt everything or damage it with heat. If the halon wasn't shut off I'd have to imagine a neighboring building caught fire first and fell on it or something.

Re:Amazing

[lgw]

Well, that's a good point. If you dump enough energy into the building, it will burn, but the bomb holes in the building would be pretty obvious. OTOH, a bit of sabotage to the fire suppression system would go a long way.

Re:Amazing

[RobertLTux]

Do you have any idea what THERMITE is?? once it is in runaway you would have to somehow freeze it to arrest the reaction and i think you would have to use Liquid Helium to get cold enough.

Now if you wanna talk Military grade stuff good luck putting that out. ( i will be watching you from a couple nethops away)

Re:Amazing

[Sarten-X]

The problem with thermite for arson is that it's rather heavy, being essentially metal powder. It's difficult to get more than a few pounds of it into any particular location. Once burning it releases a lot of heat, but in doing so, consumes its fuel quickly. After the reaction stops you just have a pool of molten metal that water can easily keep under control.

On the other hand, non-military incendiaries are more difficult to control. Molotov cocktails throw burning fuel when they shatter, which is a good way to light unprotected papers on fire.

If I had to guess, I'd put my money on incompetence on behalf of Iron Mountain. Apparently the building was equipped with fire-detection and sprinkler systems, but from the details currently available, it doesn't look like the building's contents were sufficiently (individually) protected.

Re:Amazing

[lgw]

Military incendiaries burn under water, in a halon dump, etc, because the oxygen is in the reactants already. But as was pointed out in the thread - the paper still wouldn't burn without environmental oxygen.

If I had to guess, I'd put my money on incompetence on behalf of Iron Mountain.

You wouldn't if you'd even been inside one of their facilities. (That being said, maybe Argentina is different.) Malice seems more likely than incompetence, at least given how Iron Mountain facilities in the US are run.

Re:Amazing

[Sarten-X]

I never said it wouldn't burn. In fact I said it'd burn quickly, which is precisely because it includes its own oxygen. The reaction isn't self-regulating as it is when environmental oxygen is required. My point is that thermite, being so heavy and so fast-burning, would remain in one small area and fall down quickly. It'd be unlikely to cause widespread data loss, though anything in one small area would indeed be thoroughly destroyed. This is a common trait across most military incendiaries. Anything small is typically designed for reliability, rather than area of effect. If the military wants to burn a whole building, they'll just drop a bomb from an airplane.

Personally, I haven't been in any Iron Mountain facilities. I've been in a facility for one of their competitors, though, and noted that archived items were stored in large fireproof boxes, in addition to having a building-wide suppression system. Anything that breached one box would be unlikely to spread to other boxes nearby. From a quick look online, it doesn't look like that's Iron Mountain's method. Given that Iron Mountain has had several incidents of arson in the past few years, perhaps they should invest in some new techniques?

Re:Amazing

[1s44c]

He is saying that if you put burning thermite on a pile of books in a halon atmosphere nothing will stop the thermite but the books won't burn either.

People don't commit arson with thermite anyway, they use gasoline or maybe just one match would work in a warehouse full of paper.

Sherlock...

[ExXter]

...would say "Sorry but this is boring....too easy, too obvious, too undetectiv..." and I personally agree. If the headline doesn't already smell like fish, then the rest of the article makes it a batch of whales stranded in cuba with tobacco pipes in their nostriles. Who knows what debt they wanted to cover up or who is the looser behind all the lost "recordings of transactions"... I feel sad for the families of the first-responders who probably won't receive anything besides a wet, stinking and cold handshake for the valour of their relatives.

There's no default title in a reply in slashdot be

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm masochistically viewing this story in slashdot beta. It's horrible.

A few replies down a tree, and comments are squished into a bar about 1/16 the width of the screen. Half of the left-hand side is taken up with whitespace and vertical rules, the right-hand side is taken up with ads.

The comment threshold system is fundamentally broken.
There's a stupid ever-present menubar at the top of the page.
The fucking 'dept' joke is *below* the summary, not above it. Why? Who the hell knows.

I'm pissed, because I've been coming to this site since 1998, I like the community, and I fear that a good chunk of the regulars will leave if Beta is really forced on us.

Neither surprising nor far

[michaelmalak]

The linked WSJ story says that a creditor to Argentina was seeking the bank records related to the country's 2001 default. That is neither far-reaching nor surprising.

Business majors

[Okian Warrior]

McDonalds notes that the best people to own franchises are farmers, because they follow instructions to the letter. Since the McDonalds franchise model has been honed to perfection, the farmer-owned franchise is a guaranteed success.

The worst franchise owners are MBAs. They want to make changes, to do things "better", and this never works out in practice. The franchise instructions do things in specific ways for a reason, all the bugs have been worked out, and the franchise model really is the best way.

Slashdot is run by MBAs, they won't listen to us. They know better, because they are, like, business majors... ya know?

The biggest mistake MBAs make is thinking that management/administration is a plug-in skill - you can move to a different business and manage it without knowing the ins and outs of the business.

Any MBA can become a middle manager in, for example, a newspaper without knowing the newspaper business. It's all about managing people, getting projects done on time, and being a buffer between management and workers.

Any MBA can manage Slashdot, you only need to survey the landscape and implement all the features that make other news sites great.

Being like other sites will make Slashdot even greater!

Re:Business majors

[Kaenneth]

Management professionals, that know nothing about the actual business, are the ruin of an thriving business. They generally run it into the ground and have no clue why.

I was watching a 'Kitchen Nightmares' (unexpectedly good show BTW) where an MBA had bought a restaurant 5 years before, and it was failing...

She had literally never so much as looked into the fridge in the kitchen over those 5 years, she also was a vegetarian, and so never tasted half the menu.

outsourcing your data

[datapharmer]

And this is why you should always outsource your data backup and security. 3rd parties are way more experienced and equipped at losing your data than you ever could be! It's like the cloud, but for paper records and tape backups!

Re:outsourcing your data

[Ralph Wiggam]

A good third party cloud service will be able to have one building burn to the ground with no interruption in service.

Re:outsourcing your data

[datapharmer]

Sounds great! Who do you recommend. Maybe Amazon or perhaps Softlayer/The Planet?

Re:outsourcing your data

[Ralph Wiggam]

Obviously short service interruptions can happen. Have any Amazon or Planet customers ever lost data?

Re:I'm thought about trying to reply from the beta

[BeerCat]

I looked at the beta, and thought "I'll give it a go"

And then found the large default font, the lack of auto-copying the OP subject and the general "messiness" of it all too painful.

Just as well I had the classic in another tab...

I've found a test of the New Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

You can see what it looks like here.

yay for backups, regards to the perished.

[sl4shd0rk]

Any company that could have "far reaching implications" will have implemented a stellar disaster recovery plan and a rock-star off-site archive solution. The money they spent on their DR plan will really pay off here.

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[epyT-R]

My big issue with it is the crazy amounts of wasted whitespace. This is a trend in site layout that needs to die.

Survey response

[Okian Warrior]

The survey asks:

What do you like the most about Slashdot Beta?

My response: "It encourages me to find and read new sites."

Re:Survey response

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Once you've filled it out, you can't go back, you get redirected to the beta front page. There were several "WTF does that mean???" questions that REQUIRED yes/no answers. Even the QUESTIONS about the beta site suck.

Re:Survey response

[Bearhouse]

Way to go. Mine was "it makes me want to turn off the PC and go exercise".

Re:Survey response

[DMUTPeregrine]

What would I do to improve Slashdot Beta? I'd take it out back and shoot it.

Re:Survey response

[sincewhen]

Come on, don't be so hard on it; that survey is still in Beta!

the first rule of fires at Iron Mountain is:

[callmetheraven]

Suspected arsonist: Tyler Durden.

Fireproof NAS

[Billly Gates]

You know Fireproof NAS does exist for when you absolutely can not lose your data. Sure the units are melted and cooked away, but the hard disks within are perfectly retrievable.

Isn't there a safe there too where the computer room is as another layer of security.

 

Level 5

[medv4380]

So why weren't the "important" bank records held in a Tier 4 or Level 5 data center?

Re:Level 5

[Charliemopps]

How could they burn them all up if they'd done that?

Re:Level 5

[lgw]

Because these were paper and tape records? Iron Mountain is as good as it gets for storing those.

Yay!!

[benjfowler]

How do you say "DEBT JUBILEE!!!" in Spanish?

Re:Yay!!

[ultranova]

How do you say "DEBT JUBILEE!!!" in Spanish?

I suspect it'll go the other way around: the bank will say you owe them money but the records were destroyed in the fire. Proof you don't, or have your home taken.

Re:I am going to neowin.net

[Billly Gates]

At least at Neowin.net I gut totally unbiased news about all that is linux and all that is bad from Microsoft. I mean wouldn't you see the appeal?

Multi-tiered backup strategy

[Guspaz]

Allow me to stress the importance of a multi-tiered backup strategy. The loss of any individual tier should not result in the loss of any data...

We're not exactly fanatical about our backups, but we still go for a three tiered strategy for our live systems: on-system (like nightly SQL dumps), off-system (nightly disk images stored in the datacentre), and off-site (nightly incremental rsync-based backups). The failure of any one of those backup tiers wouldn't be an issue...

I don't see why archival storage should be much different. You should have at least two copies of everything in different locations, on-site and off-site. Basically, if you're shoving archival data in a third-party facility like this, you have no backups of your archives...

Re:Multi-tiered backup strategy

[lgw]

Very few companies want to keep those archives - the data can only harm them. You store one copy as legally required, and you store it in the best facility to show you made a proper effort, and if something still happens, well, it's not your fault any more.

Re:Multi-tiered backup strategy

[Bender0x7D1]

I don't see why archival storage should be much different. You should have at least two copies of everything in different locations, on-site and off-site. Basically, if you're shoving archival data in a third-party facility like this, you have no backups of your archives...

I'm guessing they only keep a single copy of 13-year-old data because the cost/perceived value equation says they don't need multiple copies. I mean, how often does someone pull up detailed business data that hadn't been used in that long? (Summaries and stats, sure. But the detailed records themselves? Practically never.)

Re:Multi-tiered backup strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

This is it! Very often, data retention policies have nothing to do with storage costs, and everything to do with how much data the company wants to keep around for lawyers to look through.

Let me get this straight....

[rts008]

So, you're saying Slashdot should be run farmers?
*unhitches mules from plow*

I'm on my way!

Re:Let me get this straight....

[NeverWorker1]

They certainly couldn't be any worse...

Re:Let me get this straight....

[cold fjord]

So, you're saying Slashdot should be run farmers?
*unhitches mules from plow*

I'm on my way!

I thought there was something plain about you, English.

Re:Let me get this straight....

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the choice between farmers and MBAs .... any rational person would choose the farmer to run slashdot.

Just ask the NSA...

[WoodstockJeff]

... to copy their backup of the data...

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[TWiTfan]

Maybe Dice has wisely realized that we're all really coming to Slashdot for the wonderful summaries and ads, not the comments.

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[wile_e8]

The comment threshold system is fundamentally broken.

This is the part that kills me. As far as I can tell, there is no way to expand/view the parents or children of highly-moderated posts without viewing at -1, at which point the highly-moderated posts get lost in the noise. Lots of "Funny" replies where I can't even open the parent post to get the context of the joke.

Off-site data duplication!

[Mattsson]

This is why you should have off-site data duplication.

Re:Off-site data duplication!

[Charliemopps]

unless your intent is to destroy the data in a fire.

Re:Off-site data duplication!

[radarskiy]

They should have had a contract with Iron Mountain. Oh, wait...

I've seen this one before

[C3ntaur]

This seems to be the standard way to make inconvenient records disappear. http://youtu.be/hZEvA8BCoBw

Not so true

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello Ciber-K, the ones who destroyed the economy are Kirchner and friends (which used to include Clarin & cia, so they are NOT saints).
Shell raising the gas prices is obvious taking into account the more than 12% devaluation from the other day, you do remember that Oil is a commodity right? and it's price, and it's extraction costs are all dollar-tied?
Why don't you go ask Capitanich (Former province governor, current second in command) why the Gas Stations he created back in his province have the most expensive gasoline in said province?

Have a little respect for the emergency responders that died, just like the people who died back in Rio Tercero when Menem made it blow to cover his arms trading...

Re:Not so true

[Anonymous Coward]

That was exactly my first recollection reading this story: building 7.

Re:Not so true

[stealth_finger]

You mean the one that was structurally tied to the other buildings that fell & had their debris fall on top of it?

You mean debris from the two huge buildings brought down in a controlled demolition?

*sigh*

[sootman]

I'll be very sad if Slashdot gets flushed down the tubes. Like everyone else, I come here for the comments. (Certainly not for the summaries, or timely news.) I can find neat stuff anywhere (reddit!) but nowhere else has anywhere NEAR the level of discussion that you find here. At the other end of the scale, HN and Quora get dominated by a few heavy writers and they're way too serious most of the time. I LOVE Slashdot's patented mix of light, informative, funny stuff.

After 17 years here (HOLY CRAP!), I have no idea what I'll do if (when?) it goes.

Dear DICE: Can you PLEASE not fuck this up and turn it into some shitty Business Insider clone or something? Can you possibly just let a good thing stay as it is?

Re:*sigh*

[Beeftopia]

If there must be change, there's something to be said for "incremental change."

Suspicious

[nurb432]

It was planned. At least the fire was, who knows what was the planned destruction and what was collateral damage.

The floods of 1967

[giorgist]

This reminds of a Yes Minister episode, where they referred to the floods of 1967 every time they "needed" to have lost documents.

Backups rule of three

[gmuslera]

At least for what is important, 3 copies, 2 different formats, 1 offsite. They failed at the last one at the very least.

I hope ...

[PPH]

... someone called to warn of the impending fire. So the responsible parties will be absolved of all guilt for the subsequent damage and fatalities.

Only one back up?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when a back up hard drive containing Mastercard accounts went "missing" from an Iron Mountain warehouse. That company is not fail safe. Banks in Canada have real time backups in many locations and countries so if one place is destroyed they will continue to operate. Think deep underground data warehouse in an abandoned mine up north. :)

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[labnet]

My big issue with it is the crazy amounts of wasted whitespace. This is a trend in site layout that needs to die.

Here Here. Slashdotters like data density. We extract lots of information very quickly. eg. Having a UID next to a user name infers how long they have been in the community.
It is like pixel density in monitors which has gone backwards in the last 10 years, and now is only just starting to progress again with 4k displays. I want more data density, less white space.

Iron Mountain places seem to burn easily

[Bearhouse]

Out of interest, I was looking for more detail.
Found a story on the BBC about one of their facilities that went up in flames in London in 2006 (I think)
Was a link to another fire too..

Maybe not the safest archivist out there, then..

Re:Iron Mountain places seem to burn easily

[Arrepiadd]

And if you had read the first article linked in the summary, you'd find out about another one of their facilities who burned even earlier than that. But I'm not going to tell you more about it, I know reading the articles goes against Slashdot's MO.

Re:Iron Mountain places seem to burn easily

[1s44c]

Depends what you mean by safe.. All that evidence getting destroyed must have made a lot of criminals safer..

Data Warehouse fire? Burning Leaf-elements?

[charlieo88]

cagraham, Data Warehouse doesn't mean what you think it means. The fire was at just a warehouse.

Re:I'm thought about trying to reply from the beta

[AmiMoJo]

Even the front page is a disaster. Classic Slashdot has a nice list of stories. A list is easy to scan. The new site has some kind of bullshit "showcase" of stories at the top, followed by massive story blocks that make me scroll like I'm looking at a mobile site on my 5" phone screen. Throw in some stock images because... well, who knows, it pads the space I suppose, and maybe some people like stock images of network cables and company logos.

Corralito (2001 - 2002)

[handy_vandal]

Corralito (Spanish pronunciation: [koralito]) was the informal name for the economic measures taken in Argentina at the end of 2001 by Minister of Economy Domingo Cavallo in order to stop a bank run, and which were fully in force for one year. The corralito almost completely froze bank accounts and forbade withdrawals from U.S. dollar-denominated accounts. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito]

iron mountain sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a client who uses them. You would not believe how often they are unable to locate records and pull them when requested. You would not believe how wet, moldy and decaying some of the records they can find are.

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[Mashiki]

Quite you. Your new DICE overlords don't believe in UID's having any value, and they don't value data density. They believe in being the next gawker with a horrible UI that will make them trendy and hipsterish.

beta sucks balls

[Ralph Wiggam]

What does the CIA gain from this?

Re:beta sucks balls

[Yo Grark]

Oh nothing at all. http://fredw-catharsisours.blo...

YoGrark

Re:beta sucks balls

[TWiTfan]

They seem to view anything that destabilizes or deposes an anti-U.S. socialist leader in Central and South America as to their benefit (financially and politically). And they have a very long history of going to very great lengths to achieve those goals.

Re:beta sucks balls

[Ralph Wiggam]

Yet the highest profile socialist leader in recent South American history, Hugo Chavez, served for 14 years without incident. Is the CIA completely incompetent?

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[hurfy]

ROFL
Tried it myself after all the fuss here and it doesn't resemble what you descibe at all. To make it truely painful try XP and IE 8. The 1st 3 stories (i think) are all kind of on top of one another. There is a little helper box descibing and pointing to menu items I don't actually see. Some more odd menu? entries or buttons. Past the 1st screen it seems to settle down with less than ONE story per screen usually with a HUGE pic with little relevance. Oops, i mean no stories per page, took 2 pages to get something to read. Really? Someone replaced the little icons with a pic taking up 90% of the screen, wtf? BIG green header bar with a little tiny "slashdot, news for nerds" Why the hell does it need a HUGE header, half of which (which should be the whole thing, and certainly has room for the news for nerds tagline) follows me down the screen in case I forgot where I was.

Even if it worked as it appears to be attempting to, I have no desire to read news stories that take longer to scroll to than to read. Since I am not getting a new office computer to read slashdot I would be gone too. Feel free to paste this to feedback, with where I see this headed it isn't worth investing my time.

I am with the one that mentioned data density, everyone seems to be going content-free lately :(

Try thier best?

[fermion]

Such disasters are one of the things data storage companies like Iron Mountain try their hardest to prevent.

It seems to me that preventing disasters such as this is the primary reason such firms exist. Anyone can be a data archive firm. I have known a few people who dabbled in this high profit business. One contracts with the big guys because they (should) know to insure this never happens.

So this is suspicious. Maybe not the case cited, but maybe something else is going on. It is not likely that Iron Mountain allowed itself to make such a big mistake.http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/02/05/2131205/fire-destroys-iron-mountain-data-warehouse-argentinas-bank-records-lost#

Re:Try thier best?

[cHALiTO]

The government was investigating monsanto and shell for fraud. Their records were on that site. Do the math.

unenforceable debt

[Anonymous Coward]

according to my records, Argentinas banks owe me a trillion dollars.

Re:unenforceable debt

[sanced]

and how much do you owe? do you realize your debt is even bigger than mine?

Re:unenforceable debt

[shugah]

They'll pay you in New Pesos.

Shell is being used as the subject of govt propaga

[carlos92]

Secheep, a state-owned oil company raised prices higher than Shell, please see http://www.diarioprimeralinea..... The supposedly speculative monetary move was an offer to buy just 6 million dollars at a price about 10% above market a day after the dollar price in pesos raised 15% - most likely just trying to cut losses.

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[Blue Stone]

Readability is less in the new version too. A lot in uselful info of a comment is dimmed. The contrast is diminished all over a post. No clear demarkation between a title, user details and post content.

It really sucks.

in places with better fire codes then Buenos Aires

[Joe_Dragon]

In Buenos Aires what they had must of been very good in us other then there own fire men (not likely needed) in likely on par.

Helium filled HDD's are out there

[Joe_Dragon]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t...

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[ColdWetDog]

That and the god damned random I-found-something-on-Flickr-that-sort-of-is-maybe-related-to-the-thread pictures. Yes, it's trendy (Google News, ad nauseum), no, it doesn't improve understanding of the issue nor are the pictures intrinsically interesting.

Stop the Madness!

Re:I am going to neowin.net

[Joska]

Why in the name of heaven did this thing post my comment as AC? Oh, because I thought putting a checkmark beside my name was the thing to do. So much for singing the praises of the old site's wonderful design. Anyway, Neowin time, like I said.

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[epyT-R]

Seems to be a trend in a lot of places, now. I know it's rapidly becoming a tired cliche to say this, but maybe the movie idiocracy is prophetic.

A single "backup" is not a backup.

[couchslug]

So much for going the cheap route.

fight club?

[jinchoung]

oooo nice... a little fight club action goin'.

When you want stuff safe until you don't.

[Vitriol Angst]

Isn't this the same place that LOST all of George Bush's emails? Conveniently?

So they protect information for their clients, until they don't.

I'm willing to bet that Argentina's bank was up to no good and the records might have been evidence. Just curious.

Re:When you want stuff safe until you don't.

[cHALiTO]

Actually the companies being investigated for fraud held their documents there.

Re:WHAT datacenter are you talking about ?

[Z00L00K]

Chewing on the article it looks like it was an archive building containing both electronic media and paper.

More interesting is the following statement (from Google Translate of the first link in parent post):
"According to a newspaper report released today by the BBC and other file New York Post, the company has a history of losses in three deposits in New Jersey USA in 1997 and two fires in England and Ottawa, Canada in 2006."

Re:I will leave

[Mathinker]

> I would prefer that firefox shows the "302 Found" webpage instead of redirecting me, always, even for non slashdot pages.

There are multiple extensions for that, IIRC.

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[Splab]

What new design? Oh you mean the one that isn't on classic.slashdot.org? I was half way out the door back then when they allowed us to switch to the old design.

If Beta goes ahead, there will be a mass exodus, the slashdot user base isn't the average "uh shiny" consumer.

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[torsmo]

Here Here.

Where? I see only whitespace.

Assumption

[sociocapitalist]

It seems y'all are assuming the documents were digital in nature. These might have been paper documents which would explain why they were only stored in one place.

And yes, it would be logical to have scanned copies or whatever but that doesn't mean it was done - quite possibly deliberately in the same spirit that this fire is just a bit too convenient to occur just after said records were requested.

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Come on, the new design isn't that bad. That's just your scrubby, inflexible brain talking.

Unfortunately...

[gardyloo]

... you simply have to take someone's word for it, unless you click on his UID [yet another thing that Beta gets wrong].

Unfortunately

[gardyloo]

without clicking on a UID, you have to take a person's word for it. I'm a TWO DIGIT ID poster left on Slashdot.
(So you're still right.)

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[nospam007]

"Classic Slashdot will be available from the footer for several more months."

OK, then it's still a few months before I leave.

Beta sucks, Giant fonts dispersed with tiny ones for no apparent reason.

We wanted to be able to use an Umlaut or 2, but not _this_!

How Convenient

[residents_parking]

And some people wonder why we don't just hand over the Falklands.

BETA SUCKS

[Dr. Zim]

See subject

Off site backup?

[1s44c]

No problem, just restore it from an off-site backup.

They had a off site backup didn't they? Didn't they?

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[1s44c]

People have been complaining about changes to this site for as long as I've been on it. Slashdot never dies.

Re:Business majors (drifting further off topic)

[danaris]

The biggest mistake MBAs make is thinking that management/administration is a plug-in skill - you can move to a different business and manage it without knowing the ins and outs of the business.

No, actually, there's a bigger mistake that they make.

They think that management/administration is a skill that having an MBA gives you. A formula, that once you take those classes and have those letters after your name, you can apply to manage businesses, and no one else has it.

I know a few people who are actually really good at management and administration. None of them are MBAs, or studied it in any formal capacity—they just have a natural talent for it, which they have honed by years of experience. And at least some of them have shown that if you do really know what you're doing with management, you can apply it to a different business and do quite well, after an initial period of learning the ins and outs of the new business.

Dan Aris

/beta SHOULD be optional

[gnupun]

Please don't shove this poor web design down our throats. If you do, I'll be leaving. There are many problems with the new design:

• Fixed Frame: There's a fixed frame/horizontal bar on the top of the page that you cannot scroll away from and it cannot be disabled. I can't express why, but it makes scrolling unpleasant. It seems all major site have copied this horrid design: yahoo, google etc.. Worst of all it serves no real purpose: what user can't scroll to the top of the page and perform the actions it provides?
• The Load More Button: Pressing this button loads less than a dozen comments vs the hundreds of comments you get from selecting a classic slashdot page. Ugly, not to mention the delay between pressing the button and getting comments. What about the case where a story has 1000 comments? Do we have to tap "Load more" hundred times to load all the comments? Won't that cause a lot of RAM to be consumed in the browser? There's no way to read the last 100 comments. This is yet another idiotic "feature" copied from other major websites
• Jumbo right margin: White space margin to the right side of comments is huge. This makes comments vertically longer and difficult to read without scrolling. It also increases amount of scrolling required even for shorter comments. This style of margin is suitable for sites that have 1-line comment, like youtube, not text-heavy sites like /.

Re:Ouch!

[TractorBarry]

Ho ho. This is why NoScript and AdBlock are essential for browsing the interwebz :) All I saw was a load of badly laid out text that didn't seem to say anything worth reading and some huge fonts. Even better browse with Lynx for the win !!!!

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[V for Vendetta]

Here Here.

Did you by chance mean "Hear, hear"?

Another successful NSA mil black ops operation!

[WillAffleckUW]

Mwah hah hah! ...

Constitution?

What Constitution?

Sock puppets

[Camel Pilot]

Are you counting the sock puppets?

Corruption, not doing their jobs?

[bbsalem]

After seeing this long-winded debate over Argentina's political and fiscal history, I come back to the article which says that there is an assumption that security measures were in effect, but that they were ineffective or even non-existent. We know for example that the large earthquake that struck Mexico City in the 1980's was made far worse by construction that did not meet their standards, that there were corrupt practices. I think we are seeing that in Sochi in Russia. The story there will be that the Russians spent the equivalent of $51 Billion US, and the Olympics site was not ready and not done well. Politics and economics do provide the backdrop but the result is that somebody didn't do what they were asked to do, and there may be a long tradition of that, like there is elsewhere.

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[Flymo2]

The comment threshold system is fundamentally broken.

This is the part that kills me. As far as I can tell, there is no way to expand/view the parents or children of highly-moderated posts without viewing at -1, at which point the highly-moderated posts get lost in the noise. Lots of "Funny" replies where I can't even open the parent post to get the context of the joke.

Maybe none of this really matters.

Up in smoke

[PGC]

So their cloud went up in smoke.

Moving towards a social semantic desktop

[Paul Fernhout]

My comments to the Diaspora list: https://groups.google.com/foru...

A video I put together a couple years ago for a Kickstarter project, but did not proceed with, thinking Kickstarter is not a great match for funding open source software (as opposed to projects where people get something tangible -- although I liked your user ID suggestion):
http://twirlip.com/

Work I've done towards those ideas there:
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...
http://sourceforge.net/project...

Anyway, I'd like to see the Slashdot community (and the world) move towards a more distributed model of knowledge sharing instead of towards just another website. Essentially, it would be a model where users posted content to shared archives (like in response to a discussion topic). The archives would be RESTful systems that mostly just accepted and served content files and perhaps provided some indexing. All the presentation would be done in the web browser via JavaScript-powered tools (now that you can compile C to JavaScript and run it fast, anything is possible in the browser). The content objects could be tagged in such a way that further posts could reference the previous posts moderate them up and down, or refine them into new posts, or link concept maps or hierarchies to ideas in specific posts. In some ways similar to Slashdot, the application used to read the content could check digital signatures for content (done using public key cryptography) to calculate valid mod point usage and to give priority to posts from "friends" or others who were deemed by the user (or other trusted users) to be non-trolls. Copyright licensing for posts (such as Creative Commons) could be specified in digital form. Still lots of things to be worked out for a fully distributed system. In the end, a specific community might still have some central database of users and karma and public keys hosted by some community-approved group organized by some official non-profit constitution, but at least the content would be replicated everywhere and available for local processing in creative ways. That distributed nature would reduce the risk of all the content being lost in another "Iron Mountain"-like scenario.

Re:There's no default title in a reply in slashdot

[minstrelmike]

Tell them whitespace is racist.

That ought to take care of the problem.

hmm

[poetmatt]

I don't quite understand, what is really being changed?

Not that I think it needs to be changed, but isn't moderation and threading still here?

Malvinas

[abuelos84]

"Making impotent threats over the Falklands"
Yeah, saying "we'd like to sit down and talk about this" is making impotent threats...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

At least you can finally type unicode, right?

[michelcolman]

I'm actually posting this to see IF they managed to support unicode in comments. If they didn't, that would be beyond unbelievable.

So let's see how this preview turned out...

What? The symbols all disappeared?!?!?!?!?!

OK, I'm joining the beta complainers now.

Three digit ID posters.

[fox171171]

There are no THREE DIGIT ID posters left on Slashdot

Not so... I just saw one...

http://games.slashdot.org/comm...

by Rostis (797) Alter Relationship on 2014-02-09 0:18 (#46200149)