Slashdot Mirror
Designer Seeds Thought To Be Latest Target By Chinese
An anonymous reader writes "Economic espionage is nothing new but one of the biggest areas being targeted now is agriculture. Here's a story about a FBI investigation to track down theft of seeds from research farms. 'The case of the missing corn seeds first broke in May 2011 when a manager at a DuPont research farm in east-central Iowa noticed a man on his knees, digging up the field. When confronted, the man, Mo Hailong, who was with his colleague Wang Lei, appeared flushed. Mr. Mo told the manager that he worked for the University of Iowa and was traveling to a conference nearby. When the manager paused to answered his cellphone, the two men sped off in a car, racing through a ditch to get away, federal authorities said.'"
It's really hard to feel all that much pity for DuPont. They have a long history of being enormous pricks.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I propose that we boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta.
Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta
Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.
Captcha: fuckbeta
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Who is this "we" you're talking about and why should the rest of us care where you're going?
Good bye.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
+10000
Agreed! BTW are Slashdot beta sucks posts the new "First!" posts?
The Chinese have had an open field day stealing tech and killing of Western businesses since our beloved Bill Clinton opened the doors to them. Those roks are now coming in to roost, USA is over and screwed by its own doing. Manchurian Candidate - for real.
In other news, slashdot beta sucks. More at 11.
Those Chinese spies could steal the slashdot beta code!
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
User hacking my personal inf, and account
Serious question: Did the same people who developed the Beta Digg that destroyed that site develop Slashdot Beta? Because it reminds me of the exact same site-destroying arc. And when Slashdot goes down, where will I get my daily hyperbolic Bitcoin article?
Slashdot Beta = Unity desktop. 'nuff said.
Threats are one thing. Action is another Is it possible for a website redesign to be so bad that people actually stop reading it?
Yes. I used to read Yahoo Sports every day. The latest redesign was so bad that it was just unreadable. I no longer bother with it.
Slashdot is heading down the same path.
This includes me and I'm thinking quite a few other people, 10 year lurker no account and adblocking so guess I'm not much of a loss for them.
Slashdot refuses to let my other account post anymore FUCK BETAs today. So I logged into this account I created 10+ years ago (May 08, 2003 was my last post with it).
a robot hand has invaded my space and now only Google searches for:
FUCK SLASHDOT BETA
sometimes in quotes, again and again!
Cool! He dresses in black but his penis is cocaine white!
(looks around)
Just one suck to see if he regains his color.
A major war between modern powers could be more effectively "won" with biological weapons than nuclear ones. Come up with something that will decimate the primary crop of the enemy nation (or even specific variations on that crop which might be planted en masse by Monsanto) and you severely weaken the country.
Which begs the question, what fuckwad insisted on doing so?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
post anymore FUCK BETAs today.
How exceedingly constructive of you. I took a look at the beta and I provided constructive feedback through the official channels, but I suppose that's simply too much. Thankfully I've seen the light and can now totally commit to finding my inner child, going all the way back to kindergarten and then to proceed to spam the comments section and tags associated to the articles with all sorts of stuff my new-found inner 5-year old would come up with.
How do I make this steaming pile of horse shit that they call a beta go away?
1. Ive done all that, many many times 2. There is utility in my second approach, as there is utility in the first.
these gmo mofos have been making life extremely hard for average joe farmer so fantastic. let the deluge of chinese copies hit the market and drive these guys into the ground. serve them right.
Burn this pile of shit you call a beta quick. Burn baby Burn.
http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1
*I* am Sparticus.
Fork Slashdot to a new site, move on and leave the dregs to remember the good old days and salt the ground with their bitter tears.
Oh wait, we've already done that...
2. There is utility in my second approach, as there is utility in the first.
Sure, if you're looking for other childish, immature people. But if you think your behaviour is going to change anything here you got another think coming; there is no good reason for why the people behind Slashdot would want to keep someone like that around, they're more likely to continue with their plan just to get more mature people here and to drive your kind out. But oh, don't let that stop you.
No, I am Guy Fawkes!
Wow, that bolded 'I' doesn't really stand out. I can see why you used asterisks.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
There are many of us who have been providing *constructive* criticism for *many months* only to have it fall on deaf ears. Now that the beta is being forced on users in a graduated rollout you're going to be hearing these complaints more and more often until either:
1. The Slashdot admins capitulate and concede the beta was a giant mistake.
2. Slashdot Beta has functionality and usability parity with the standard site.
3. Those of us who absolutely hate the new site leave and never come back.
4. Comments complaining are stifled and silenced.
I'm thinking #3 is the most likely possibility.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
I agree... I prefer this layout but possibly I'm just being stubborn. Still, I don't like being forced to change. I like to change because I want to change not because someone tells me to change.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I see it more akin to Microsoft Bob.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
And don't forget to use a condom! Nobody wants to see the unholy offspring of that union.
Well, nobody in their right mind.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
There are many of us who have been providing *constructive* criticism for *many months* only to have it fall on deaf ears. Now that the beta is being forced on users in a graduated rollout you're going to be hearing these complaints more and more often until either:
And that's an excuse for this rampant idiocy? Because last I heard the mature approach would be to provide constructive criticism, wait and see what happens, and then simply leave if the outcome is unbearable and the feedback is ignored, all without turning the whole place into a fucking kindergarten. I voiced my opinion to them and if they do nothing to alleviate my concerns I'll simply stop using the site. Alas, I suppose I just have better things to do with my time than spamming here.
Yes, slashdot beta sucks, but "classic" sucks too. The previous site code was better and THAT sucked too (no unicode support whasoever remember?)
However now that Slashdot is owned by DICE i think it's unlikely that it wil do something so uncapitalist as not targeting the unwashed masses. It's lowest common denominator or shutdown!
I think th ebest course of action is to move somewhere else. Reddit is the most promising one. Subscribe to the following subreddits:
http://www.reddit.com/r/censor...
http://www.reddit.com/r/biotec...
http://www.reddit.com/r/govern...
http://www.reddit.com/r/securi...
http://www.reddit.com/r/scienc...
http://www.reddit.com/r/space
http://www.reddit.com/r/law
http://www.reddit.com/r/techno...
http://www.reddit.com/r/openso...
http://www.reddit.com/r/politi...
http://www.reddit.com/r/privac...
http://www.reddit.com/r/pcgami...
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming
http://www.reddit.com/r/games
To get all of slashdot covered.
But... the future refused to change.
Buck Feta
Ive been visiting Slashdot since the late 90s (during the "don't get a username because of privacy"-era). The new redesign is awful and I agree with all the criticisms that have been made. I think we need a comment bounty reward to anyone who can find ONE remotely positive comment about the redesign. What is the point of asking for feedback when you are just going to do what you want anyway? Slashdot has a readership that dates back to the early days of the Internet and boasts one of the best comment communities out there, period. Tell your advertisers that Slashdot is the meeting place for people in all levels of tech companies, business and government, in other words, decision makers who purchase their products and services. This group values the site's robust discussion, not how well you can use the latest internet layouts, and the entire community will leave if you continue along this path.
Why do the redesign.
The new web page looks like shit.
I don't need more shitty news, but I guess I can take that.
But it's nowhere near as clear as the old one. The design of Slashdot is very clear and obviously feel very much at home for many of us.
We don't want to visit random blog, we want to visit /..
And you get /. classic.
90% of my browsing is with JS off. No ads or autorun videos to slow browsing down. No JS malware attacks either.
Alas, I suppose I just have better things to do with my time than spamming here.
Eat your own words.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
but the lowest common denomenator isn't interested in slashdot anyway so they are dumping real users for uninterested hypothetical users
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
King Louis XIV: Why has my own brother tried to do this to me?
D'Artagnan: And look what you have done to him!
1. Way too much vertical white space, which is more precious than dehydrated unicorn testciles thanks to 16:9 screens.
2. A More Button. WTF! The bandwidth for text is cheap. Give me the whole converstaion.
3. Coonversation context is lost because I can't see summarised comments nested under modded up comments.
4. Thick borders. 1 pixel is enough.
46137
What, no respect for Clippy?
Every comment I've seen on the new design is negative. Every single one... that just never happens, it's mind blowing. There should be a few people taking the opposite side, just for the sake of taking the opposite side, but this thing is so wretched that nobody wants to defend it, not even anonymously. Is this part of some shady corporate ploy to destroy Slashdot, sell off the ping-pong tables and take a tax write-off? Or are the new managers just not very bright?
Pardon me if I don't feel bad for a big company squeezing farmers everywhere to use their seeds and then not let them reuse the seeds. Go China!
This 'beta' stuff has been poking its head out for months. All the feedback that's been given has basically been ignored. The level of frustration is clear.
This whole "Sayonara Classic" attitude from Dice is rather offensive considering the "original Classic" has been around for a long time without any problems.
It's not just that we're resistant to change. This "new and improved" /. is not improved for the end user. It may be a better ad delivery device, but ads are irrelevant if the user base leaves in droves. Doubling the ads to 1/4 of the users == fail.
And let's not forget that the "new and improved" /. does not work with NoScript or GhostScript, which is commonly used by /. visitors. Whitelisting /. means a flood of irrelevant ads and tracking crap.
Block the javascript and it's a non-issue - it defaults to classic.
I gave up on google news when they went from the 2 column to the 1 column format.
Beta must die a horrible death. Delete it from the hard drives, degauss the drives, run the drives through a shredder, throw the scrap into a smelting furnace, cast into ingots, and then store the ingots with the waste from Fukushima.
I'm Batman! No you are not!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjuKABU-XPY
Every comment I've seen on the new design is negative. Every single one... that just never happens, it's mind blowing. There should be a few people taking the opposite side, just for the sake of taking the opposite side, but this thing is so wretched that nobody wants to defend it, not even anonymously.
Well, I personally think that the much needed face lift's lower contrast text makes the content blend in much more nicely with the background. The larger font also keeps too much information from being displayed at once. Less stories per page will make dupes less noticeable too. Personally, I can't find a single thing not wrong with it.
It's particularly curious given that 'don't pay for any web devs, coast along in bare-minimum maintenance mode, and ride it as long as it lasts' is always an available strategy, unless you have somebody breathing down your neck and demanding magic ROI levels.
Honestly, that's what surprises me more than anything when I see some web property being churned without obvious reason. Unless the backend is utterly fucked (in which case churning the frontend is Not where you should be spending your time) letting it coast along on commodified and encheapened 'cloud' VMs from one vendor or another is cheap, and can be drawn down at almost a moment's notice without having to hold a firesale on your datacenter gear. Given that, watching somebody who appears to have no clue what they want to accomplish voluntarily paying additional dev and/or designer salaries when they could just let the property coast always makes me wonder about that person or organization's sanity.
This site has been something special to a number of readers and posters here, and seeing the place go down in flames like Digg did when they ignored their users' feedback is a highly suboptimal emotional experience.
Saying that turns the place into the kindergarten you wanted to avoid.
If these seeds are GMO'ed I say let them have them.
That way several years down the road when only one company in China owns all of the food supply and it is ILLEGAL to grow your own food, we won't have to worry about their industrial espionage...
Oh wait, our government does the same industrial espionage...http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/26/us-security-snowden-germany-idUSBREA0P0DE20140126
Never mind.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Somewhat surprisingly, given its land area and population, China has total shit for arable land. Obviously more than zero; and a long history of intensive, relatively high-yield agriculture; but huge parts of the country are unsuitable in various ways (and various incidents of pollution, desertification, aquifer overdraw, and other mismanagement haven't helped).
Given that, along with the nigh-universal tendency of people to eat more meat (far less efficient per calorie than stuff lower on the food chain) if they get wealthier, and to rise up in revolution like they have nothing to lose (because they don't) if food supplies are dangerously constrained, doing absolutely everything they possibly can to keep agricultural yields high, and preferably rising, is probably about the sanest policy the Chinese government could be pursuing.
Sure, hypersonic missiles and supercavitating torpedoes and fancy fighter planes and stuff are good for dick waving, keeping Americans at a distance while rattling the sabre at Taiwan, and general jingoism; but it's not as though anybody outside of China wants to start a land war in Asia and directly slug it out with the PLA on Chinese soil, so all that stuff is really pretty secondary.
1.2 billion people (including the ones who you've provided with guns, and their families and friends) who are starting to see more and more of the weekly grocery list slipping beyond their buying power? Now that is what has any sensible leader (whether of a despotism, a monarchy, a republic, a democracy, doesn't matter) wake up screaming and drenched in cold sweat night after night.
If you move me to the beta slashdot abortion i'll add this place to the block list and never visit again.
Too many other news sites regurgitate the exact same storys i see here. And all of them don't look as shitty as the beta slashdot.
Stop being stupid
There is FUtility in spamming the news until you get your way.
The usual Beta-feedback page will be posted a few times, and mods will happen. If you don't like it after that, who are you blaming? We've been here so many times...
Same thing happened to failblog. It sux completely now.
The new managers don't use Slashdot themselves, hence probably don't understand the reason for all the disdain. The best thing they could do right now is write off the beta exercise as a failure and stick with the classic version. Showing that they're actually listening to the (remaining) Slashdot faithful would be a good sign.
Account abandoned. I can't fucking spell for shit and Slashdot doesn't even allow time-limited edits of posts. Plus you'
Holy Crap! I just tried Beta. It's pretty bad. I wouldn't call it as horrifying as some, but it is really quite bad from a design perspective.
But here's my main complaint: You can't read comments without Javascript enabled. Javascript is really cool, it's great for creating dynamic web pages. Things like OpenStreetMap have made my life fundamentally better when doing dynamic content perusal.
But there's a gap there; reading a comment tree is not dynamic content perusal. I click my desired mod level, then read the entire tree without any changes. Occasionally I pop open a new tab to reply to an existing comment, but that is rare enough that it can be done with static pages.
I don't enable Javascript by default, and I don't enable it on sites that don't need it. It's a security thing, like not leaving services running that you don't need. It's also about not chewing up memory and CPU for dancing baloney.
The value of Slashdot is the community comments. That is why I come here. It is why I spend so much time carefully crafting and editing comments that I hope will add to the experience for others (and often censoring my more bile-laden knee-jerk responses that would make it a more combustible environment).
Like so many members of the Slashdot community, I put a lot into making this a place that people like to visit. And I am happy for Dice to make a profit selling ad space on the comments that my community creates, in exchange for playing host. That's a pretty good trade all around. Don't fuck it up.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam,
Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam.
Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam?
Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam!
Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam;
Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam!
Ceterum autem censeo $lashdot esse delendam
Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam
Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam
Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam
If you can read this I've bypassed your "postercomment" compression filter.
It will be better to purchase from an owner who is a good farmer and a good builder.
Can confirm. The only time I read /. now is through RSS while taking a dump. Reddit is the site I read most things at and where I am most likely to participate.
You forgot to mention that Monsanto, DuPont, Pioneer, etc. didn't start their biotech companies with grass seeds and turn them into the fabulous(?) varieties that they have now, that they've freeloaded off of thousands of years of everyone else's hard work. So yeah, fuck 'em.
with its quoting stupid 70's TV shows instead of properly loading comments. It's not funny, it doesn't take away from the irritant that is beta.
Please take us with you. Serious. Give us an alternative site and many shall follow.
Time for your GMOs to grow Bladerunner style identification codes to enforce your IP rights.
Beta must die a horrible death. Delete it from the hard drives, degauss the drives, run the drives through a shredder, throw the scrap into a smelting furnace, cast into ingots, and then store the ingots with the waste from Fukushima.
I think you're forgetting that the act of writing beta to those drives produced electromagnetic radiation that even now is speeding away from Earth across the cosmos. We must not rest until FTL technology is available to go out and get those photons back. For the dignity of the human race!
I'm picturing a new mall store called "Off Topic." It's filled with disgruntled employees and shoppers, with their own ideas about how a store should be run, and suggestions for merchandise without any regard to, well, the topic actually relevant to the designated sale point at the end of the day.
Here is Dice's "Contact Us" page. Everybody be sure to call them tomorrow using whatever numbers from that page you can get to ring. Tell every darn receptionist in every darn one of Dice's holdings, along with anyone you can get them to connect you to, that the Slashdot beta is terrible and you won't shut up until it goes away. Fax them a well-illustrated complaint or two or three. Send them a choice letter via snail mail, along with whatever memorabilia you wish.
They keep soliciting our feedback, they can get our feedback, right where it counts.
Spread the word by mentioning this in every article's comments.
The most obvious contact points are:
Dice Holdings Inc.
1040 Avenue of the Americas, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10018
T: 212-725-6550
F: 212-725-6559
Slashdot
594 Howard St Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94105
Tel: +1-877-433-5638
www.slashdot.com
Beta sucks ass
Looks like some assburgers kid and an ADD dyslexic thalidomide kid designed it
I just got the "hey go check out beta" alert. I figured it would be the same with with different underhood. WOW this is shit. And sure enough, I had to enable scripting. Bro, it's fucking COMMENTS. It doesn't need java, or script, or javafuckingscript.
This could be the death of this site. Sad. Been browsing this since early college.
Have been refined by millions of years of evolution. That a few scientists with an ego problem think they can do better is laughable.
John_Chalisque
Despite the Dice developments, Slashdot acts as a filter that keeps posts on all of those topics down to a manageable level.
I got the nag today and went to the beta site, it's horrible. I don't like Slashdot on the Mobile phone for the same reason I dislike the Beta site. It's horrible to navigate compared to classic and wastes too much space.
If you want to push that gunk to the main page, at least leave this one as "classic.slashdot.com" so we can choose the best interface for us.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Seriously? Only in America can we start a conversation about Chinese seeds, and have the entire thread obliterated and hijacked by commentary about off topic interface. By the same audience that would decry this in any other forum. Have we devolved to a nation of mere trolls?
Get rid of beta slashdot and do not deploy it!
3 is the only option. I can't stand images posted from idiot sites for one. If we start posting idiot images on the front page, we're no better than any of the other idiot news sites. Congratulations, big pockets killed off Digg and maybe soon Slashdot.org. As long as we have Reddit.com I don't care.
God spoke to me
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque a rhoncus dui. Quisque aliquam lorem commodo tincidunt dignissim. Morbi nunc est, dignissim quis ullamcorper eu, varius sed mi. Vivamus tempor vehicula feugiat. Fusce dictum est faucibus mauris adipiscing ullamcorper. Phasellus id erat pellentesque dui ultrices dapibus. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam nibh ante, malesuada eget lacinia ut, commodo nec diam. Proin fringilla metus nibh, ac sollicitudin lorem congue ut. Nunc quis metus auctor, luctus turpis vitae, varius purus. Sed non augue est. Sed consectetur feugiat nunc vel sodales. Etiam semper arcu quis lorem scelerisque, eget aliquam tellus blandit. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Etiam et odio ut eros semper ultricies quis nec nunc. Maecenas enim quam, semper ac elementum et, euismod ut diam.
This seemed like an interesting one. Even included people like me, who don't run unless they're being chased. ;-(
--- Bigger bits, softer blocks, tighter ASCII.
A person directed the Slashdot redesign.
Who is he?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I don't know how, but they seem to have missed that the Slashdot user demographic is interested in useable content and not a good looking site. The disdain for the beta site seems unanimous.
I am glad I found the Classic site link, and if/when that is no longer available will have to find another site to browse while I have lunch.
[user since 2000, multiple forgotten logins, oh well]
lol capture was fitting: "excrete"
There is FUtility in spamming the news until you get your way.
The usual Beta-feedback page will be posted a few times, and mods will happen. If you don't like it after that, who are you blaming? We've been here so many times...
the community has been trying to give positive feed back and they just push forward a bad design anyway. This is a move that will hurt the slashdot brand and community.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Ditto! Slashdot went to hell when it was sold. Let's make a new site with a similar moderation process and start porting across. Is anyone interested in setting up a kickstarter to fund the infrastructure?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Bruce Perens tried that, as well as others. None of the /. altenatives last.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
No doubt they're in the 'research and development' department.
"...on charges of stealing trade secrets in what the authorities and agriculture experts have called an unusual and brazen scheme to undercut expensive, time-consuming research."
It stops being unusual when it's industrial espionage of absolutely anything that can be reverse engineered and copied on a constant basis.
The western state departments need to get their balls out of cold storage and deal with this economic warfare against us.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
these gmo mofos have been making life extremely hard for average joe farmer
Yeah, I'm sure their utter hatred for GE seed is why they keep buying and using it.
Please take us with you. Serious. Give us an alternative site and many shall follow.
Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/
Seriously, the faults lie with the companies that hire these ppl. Many of them will grab an opportunity to make large money while helping their nation. Chinese leaders are in a cold war with the west and will continue to steal all technology that they can. Look at Germany's transrapid. They put in a line because they were ASSURED by the gov. that the tech would not be stolen. In fact, Transrapid hired a 24x7 guard for their electronics cabinet. At the same time, transrapid quietly put in a camera to record the cabinet. What was recorded was that a known mag lev researcher showed up with 2 members of the PLA who told the security guy to step aside and to not talk about this. He did, and the camera record the researcher spending time in the cabinet looking around.
China can develop their own, but it comes at the same costs as what we in the west have. They do not want that. So, they find it cheaper to destroy the west via theft.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I sort of miss Clippy and the other Office Assistants. Sure, I never used them and they mostly just got in the way, but I still kind of liked them
Down with Beta! Leave Classic, or we'll go to Hacker News!
You've made your case, though it's not the one you thought you were making. Now fuck off back to reddit or post some more comments on Youtuber.
And take your PCmalware plugs with you (I think you know where you can stick them).
P.S. don't take that the wrong way.
"Here is Dice's "Contact Us" page. [diceholdingsinc.com] Everybody be sure to call them tomorrow using whatever numbers from that page you can get to ring. Tell every darn receptionist in every darn one of Dice's holdings, along with anyone you can get them to connect you to, that the Slashdot beta is terrible and you won't shut up until it goes away. Fax them a well-illustrated complaint or two or three. Send them a choice letter via snail mail, along with whatever memorabilia you wish. They keep soliciting our feedback, they can get our feedback, right where it counts. Spread the word by mentioning this in every article's comments. The most obvious contact points are: Dice Holdings Inc. 1040 Avenue of the Americas, 8th Floor New York, NY 10018 T: 212-725-6550 F: 212-725-6559 Slashdot 594 Howard St Suite 300 San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel: +1-877-433-5638 www.slashdot.com"
Complaining about the theft of a few seeds is like complaining about someone stealing your fire.
The fact that people have been convinced that this represents 'espionage' shows how brainwashed they are with IP propaganda. At no other time in history would such an action have been regarded as wrong. If someone breeds or engineers a new strain of a crop that can feed more people, there's a moral obligation to share it - and while people starve, there's a moral justification to try and take it - it doesn't deprive the owner of their crop. We're not talking about the source code for a missile guidance system, or iPhone knock-offs. The argument, as with pharmaceuticals, is that it hurts profits and further research. Well, if I'm starving, or can't afford some new drug - I would rather steal it, and worry about compensation later.
Open source generic engineering for all! Say, would you happen to know the nucleotide sequence for an enormous prick?
Here you go: http://www.snpedia.com/index.p...
Oh wait, maybe you mean the other kind of enormous prick?
"Remember, genes are NOT blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert 'the genes for an elephant's trunk' into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There are no genes for trunks. What you CAN do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals. For instance, we can in theory splice the native plants' talent for nitrogen fixation into a terran plant." -- Academician Prokhor Zakharov, Nonlinear Genetics
that's some well-reason advocation there...I just don't think it's relevant. Don't get me wrong, I didn't rtfa (I'm not new here), but tfs sounds racist and bullshit, so...
Also, FUCK BETA
That little kitty cat was kind of soothing when s/he'd curl up on top of your document and go to sleep. Better than my real cat who'd rather sleep on the keyboard and go batshit when the old Laserjet III fired up to print something.
Oh, and BETA SUCKS DOG BALLS.
All they need to do to turn Slashdot's fortunes around is get some editors. Not /. editors, I mean real ones. Ones that can spot typos, find less biased links for stories, tidy up summaries and that sort of thing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's more likely that the people who like the new layout aren't as vocal about it.
I like the new layout. It has a more modern feel to it, and none of the functionality is compromised(as far as I can tell). It's all cosmetic, and it's about time things changed. If the /. community had their say, it would have its old antiquated look well into the century.
If anything, I wish they would trash the damn comment subject line already. This is the only major forum I know of where comment subjects still exist.
The most annoying thing about the people who hate beta is that they're filling up each thread with spam, which makes it impossible to find the real discussions.
I've never had an overwhelming respect for the /. community, but these cry-baby antics are sending my opinion of the overall community into a downward spiral.
Even Windows 8 and iOS 7 have some fans...
The Japanese have a saying that there are even bugs which eat knotweed, meaning there will always be someone who likes even the most unpalatable thing. Apparently Slashdot Beta proves centuries of handed down wisdom wrong.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'm not one to curse, so all I can say is 'Fuck Slashdot Beta'.
I don't want to see which comments are insightful or funny or informative.
I have a treshold and use that to decide what to read. If I want to give extra importance to funny, I can set that up in the site preference as a +1 or +2.
Why are you breaking something that was working fine?
Also, get rid of all the images. This is a sight for adults, not teenagers.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Threats are one thing. Action is another
You're right. I'm taking action.
-- Common Joe
Slashdot Valentines Day Massacre: Boycott Slashdot because "Fuck Beta!": February 10 - 17
And Support Okian Warrior's Alternate Slashdot Idea!
"childish, immature people" ?
C'mon, this is Slashdot.
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
You forgot the backups but who are we going to find to talk to the NSA about that? :P
-- Common Joe
Slashdot Valentines Day Massacre: Boycott Slashdot because "Fuck Beta!": February 10 - 17
And Support Okian Warrior's Alternate Slashdot Idea!
If I recall correctly, you have some interesting comments from time to time so I'll respond. (And as always, with courtesy.)
You're right. The past 24 hours has turned into a kindergarten of sorts and I'm shouting too, but I don't think it will last long. I don't want to leave Slashdot and most others don't either. There is no better place at the moment. A lot of us have looked. There are still good things here, but they are about to be nuked with beta. When (if?) slashdot implodes, a lot of good communication between IT experts will be lost. It would be a real shame. No one wants that including you. I can see that.
-- Common Joe
Slashdot Valentines Day Massacre: Boycott Slashdot because "Fuck Beta!": February 10 - 17
And Support Okian Warrior's Alternate Slashdot Idea!
You're right. The past 24 hours has turned into a kindergarten of sorts and I'm shouting too, but I don't think it will last long. I don't want to leave Slashdot and most others don't either.
I was actually surprised to get a reply to the feedback I left them. They thanked me for the feedback and for the fact that instead of just complaining I actually provided some concrete examples they could do to make things better. The guy did mention that the beta-version is still very much under construction and they are, indeed, looking at the feedback they're getting. I felt rather encouraged by the personally-addressed e-mail I got so I provided them with some more ideas they could possibly look into. Hopefully it all means the beta will be more pleasant and useable in the long run.
I'm going to skip writing them as others can more eloquently say what the problems are than I can. I certainly hope you're right.
If you do write them again, perhaps you can add this: I think they're biggest mistake was saying that they were going to force us onto the beta without rolling out all the major features first. Only after good feedback of all major features should they say that they are going to force us onto the beta... and then they should give us time to adapt. There are too many things wrong or not implemented to give the premature news that we're going to move whether we like it or not.
For the time being, I'm going to still boycott just to drive my point home.
-- Common Joe
Slashdot Valentines Day Massacre: Boycott Slashdot because "Fuck Beta!": February 10 - 17
And Support Okian Warrior's Alternate Slashdot Idea!
I like it already. Thanks.
Bob had Rover, who outlived Clippy. Rover also had the best password security. Forget your password? Rover will just reset it for you. No questions asked.
You said everything I wanted to say, and posted about, regarding beta.
While many rail at it because of white space and what not, my main beef is requiring javascript.
Let me explain ...
I have been a regular visitor to Slashdot for around 15 years. For that, I get the checkbox to disable ads, though I browse with Javascript disabled so my browser does not slow down.
I come here for the discussions, and often read comments at +5, changing that only if I find a discussion interesting and warrants reading at a lower level.
The new beta uses JQuery for the comment threshold selector, and changes that on the fly. This means all the comments are loaded, but not visible, and processing any page with considerable number of comments will slow down MY computer! If I have a few tabs open to read later, my computer will be unusable.
What is worse it that they require you to click on the slider on every article to change the threshold! This is just insane!
If they insist that I enable Javascript to browse the site at the threshold I want, then they will lose me as a long time. I imagine that others long timers will hate the site too.
Dice have to remember that this site has two unmatched features, interlocked: a moderation system that is good at cutting down the trolling, spamming, and noise, and a comment section that is frequented by many people who are passionate about technology and other nerdy stuff.
If they wanted to intentionally ruin the site and drive people away, they would not have done any worse than what they are doing now.
If they manage to aggravate a lot of their users, the comment section will no longer be attractive to the audience. Perhaps we should revive kuro5hin?
I wrote the above in a feedback form that I filled a while ago, and I am emailing this comment to their feedback@slashdot.org. Please send them feedback too.
And mod this up so Dice can see what they are getting themselves into.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Non-beta is unusable on mobile.
Nixon was a Republican. Can't criticize them, so you blame it on the first Democrat to take office after the event you hate. For reference, see current debt/recession and Obama.