Slashdot Mirror
Sony Selling Off VAIO Computer Business
Kensai7 writes "Confirming reports from earlier in the week, Sony has announced plans to sell off its VAIO computer division to a Japanese investment fund. Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) will take control of the operation for an undisclosed fee, and Sony will 'cease planning, design and development of PC products.' For a variety of reasons 'including the drastic changes in the global PC industry,' Sony says 'the optimal solution is to concentrate its mobile product lineup on smartphones and tablets and to transfer its PC business to a new company.'" I have some nostalgia for the tiny old VAIO laptops; I wish more companies incorporated the swiveling camera that they came with.
i am on my 3rd sony vaio product - have been using them for the past decade pretty much. OMG. Sony's vaio design team is awesome!!! Very sad news.
Join the Slashcott!
February 10th - 17th
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Slashdot Overlords, You can continue posting new stories, but we will just keep complaining about the beta. Can you meet us halfway and actually create a story for us to dump hatred into so that we can go back to commenting on articles we haven't read? This isn't going to go away, and you might have realized this is not the most patient and incapable group. In a week this whole community can be destroyed or moved...
Indeed, a company that neglects the views of a site's user community is truly clueless. Slashdot has its own traditions, and Slashdotters like the fact that it has an older and faster design that allows more content on the page. That's part of what makes this site special. If Dice doesn't understand some of these very basic matters, then I don't trust them with the future of Slashdot.
The new design is really ugly Web 3.0 crap, by the way. Just a bunch of huge pictures, excessive whitespace, and fade effects -- treating a technical website like a picture book for Joe Sixpack! Part of the greatness of Slashdot was always its special moderation system, also, which controlled discussions in a positive way (not just +1 or -1 for dumb-dumbs). Talk about not understanding your demographic...
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
Is that good or bad?
For open platforms manufactured by large companies, it's bad. We can still buy barebones PCs and cheap laptops, but there's an obvious transition away toward locked down systems like tablets and consumer products.
OTOH: the old PC was a successor to prior hobby platforms that were fully open. The old ALTAIR / IMSAI, Heathkit, SWTPC, Apple II, etc world of 8 bit before it went corporate. If IBM had had its way, what we're seeing today would have happened much sooner. Ironically, we can thank Microsoft for stalling that outcome for decades. It had already happened twice with mainframe and minicomputer players decades before, as they swiped ideas and technology developed in university labs for commercialization and then locked them down.
So maybe this shift will engender a resurgence of very slow systems designed for hobbyists to built from scratch. A bifurcation of commercial products for the general public and a hobby community that might lead to hands on hardware / software development of entirely new platforms. A real resurgence of competition without commercial pressure because it's being done just for fun.
Such systems wouldn't fulfill the expectations of consumers. Nor should they. But they might be cool to tinker with. And that could have second order effects down the road that could impact future markets in unexpected ways. Or not. And who cares?
A hobbyist / commercial hardware split might be for the best.
Or, maybe I'm talking nonsense. I often do.
Dear Slashdot,
I'm fairly sure that I know what you're trying to do with Beta crap. You're trying to lure in a younger, more hip readership that's less technical but brings in more revenue. In other words, this "Web 2.0" redesign is trying to attract people exactly like me. I'm young, male, middle-class, and (possibly) looking for a new job, which I suspect is exactly the demographic you're aiming the Beta at. I'm also less technically inclined - I'm an actuary, not a programmer or an IT guy. As you can see from my posting history, I've only been here a short time, although I read and posted anonymously for a while at first.
But I hate Slashdot Beta every bit as much as the old fogies who are complaining above me. I don't come to Slashdot for flamebait articles or glitzy graphics, I come here because I want to learn about and discuss technical topics that I don't encounter in my day-to-day work. I read the discussions here so that I can understand the technical stuff that my office's IT lady tells me, and so that I can better understand the technology that I interact with. I comment in discussions here because I want to avoid the teenage, brain dead, narcissistic, color vomiting "new new internet" bullshit twittering that's infecting discourse on the rest of the internet.
I've just started participating in the Slashdot community. I'm pretty sure that I'm the exact demographic you want to attract. You had such a good opportunity to reel me in permanently. Yet you've utterly failed with Slashdot Beta. I've already abandoned a fair number of web communities after they gutted their discussion system or went too far with the Web 2.0 nonsense. Likewise, I'll regretfully, but quickly, abandon Slashdot if I'm forced into this Beta bullshit against my will and against the obvious will of the community here.
Sincerely,
hendrips, a representative member of your target audience