Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Launches $300,000 Gigabit Community Fund
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has officially launched the Gigabit Community Fund, an organization that seeks to 'advance the development, experimentation and implementation of learning and workforce opportunities enhanced by new, super powerful Internet technologies.' The intent is to provide funding around cities like Kansas City and Chattanooga (and more, as fiber networks spread) for people to build open source applications that take advantage of super-fast fiber connections. 'The new $300,000 fund aims to bring discoveries out of the lab and into the field to help move prototypes to Minimum Viable Pilots and get tools in the hands of users. In each city, two, 12-week pilot periods will run, with up to 10 projects receiving awards between $5,000 and $30,000.'"
What is this? Beta Filla? Please refrain from commenting too sensibly in order to attempt to save Slashdot.
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If history is any sort of an indicator, any rights we sell today, our children must buy back with blood tomorrow
Will soon be hosted at AltSlashdot.org or a site linked through that domain.
It will be for the Nerds, by the Nerds, focusing on the Stuff That Really Matters: The community that makes the comments the best part of Slashdot.
The name will change to avoid any trademark problems.
Some have suggested encouraging Bruce Perens to resurrect Technocrat.net for the third time. With all due respect to Bruce, the problem with that is he has shown he is not a reliable host. He has twice deleted that site, the second time without warning. I don't think we want to get burned a third time.
Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet. (Copy-paste the html from here so links don't get mangled!)
On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design. Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.
If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.
We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott
Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta
http://slashdot.org/recent - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories
Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.
-----=====##### LINKS #####=====-----
Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=56395415
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=submission&id=3321441
Alternative Slashdot: http://altslashdot.org (thanks Okian Warrior (537106))
site operators need to understand that the people who come to slashdot don't want or need a "redesign", not sure why you feel compelled to execute one.
if you're looking for 'hipper' visitors, it's just not going to happen.. there are dozens of other sites out there for these purposes.
FUCK BETA
FUCK DICE FUCK BETA
Slashdot Beta still even sucks donkey balls on that!
I have a collection of fish that live in these little tiny jars, no bigger than a teacup. They're called Betta Fish and they're just like real, live fish. They look like fish, eat like fish, poop like fish (they even taste like fish, but don't tell anyone I said that!), but they don't live in a lake, stream or aquarium. They live in teacups. The only problem with owning so many of these things, is that FISH DON'T BELONG IN TEACUPS! One day, I suppose, my Betta Collection will finally die, and then I will be free (as in beer, I guess).
Until then, Ateb Kcuf.
This beta needs to go in a bowl, be sold to an impulsive shopper at a pet store sale, and then be left to die when the owner moves on to the next shiny thing (beta).
Fuck Beta
Actually I wish it would be that intimate. I could use a good ball-tickling. All I get is a bunch of white space. THAT'S RACIST!
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
fuck beta
Why? Your post worked. I know quite a lot of posts are failing since none of the ones I made from the Beta worked this week, but apparently that is fixed. Your post worked. Posting on the Beta is now supported.
Fast is fine but big parts of the internet
are build on assumptions of many talking
to many...
That is P2P not just central hubs that manage
and control all traffic and also have to source
all trafic.
What if Netflix was a P2P service and as part of
a discount strategy some 60% of you upload
bandwidth and some N-GB of local storage used
by Netflix to serve up content.
Sure encryption and other tricks could be well
employed to preserve valuable content.
I have had cause to trace route this and that service
and it is obvious that traffic does not move via any
short path but by some management heavy power centric
path. Perhaps this is necessary for FBI and NSA good reasons
but if so then these pipes should be nationalized, net neutral,
bigger, and free to all as the Interstate highway system is.
Yes businesses can build toll roads for low latency trading
or other needs but the Nation needs to facilitate P2P
and the cross sectional bandwidth that it can gain with
great connectivity.
Heck the next DOCSIS N+1 standard should embrace
a local box that can proxy bits as part of a neighborhood
of P2P servers. Just moving trending video, TV and other
current traffic to a P2P caching context could give us
vastly better responsive service.
And sure I like fast too...
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Why are you so strongly for VHS?
Where does the money comes from? It is an NSF partnership: is it just a NSF grant managed by Mozilla?
Yes, actually, we do.
You want the truth? Yoiu really want the truth? Here goes.
Back in 2008, CmdrTaco launched "D2". It was a monumental fuck-up of a UI, which undermined the entire discussion concept by encouraging users to just see fragments of what had been posted. To add insult to injury it was built upon a kludgy AJAX system.
Most of us hated it. Enough liked it for Slashdot to kinda sorta survive, but the regulars began to seriously dwindle at that point, and the discussion became somewhat dumber. Old hands hung on largely because the original discussion system was kinda sorta available, but it was a mess, the programmers kept breaking it and then refusing to fix the problems on the grounds that "nobody used it". There were exoduses, the "Slashdot circle" fragmented across Multiply, Livejournal, and a few other locations.
And so Slashdot's been limping on ever since. It's become a shadow of its former self. The discussion system is broken: it's incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't have the same mindset as CmdrTaco, does nothing to encourage the free exchange of ideas, and drives people away from the site.
So, Dice is finally fixing it. Is it fixed? No. Beta isn't finished - that's obvious. It's not got feature parity with D2 or the original discussion system yet.
But yes, it is a step in the right direction. The discussion system is finally sane. No, it doesn't have every bell and whistle, but many of these (like friends and foes, and a way to select your text entry mode) are obviously on the way.
But yes, this is something we've - that is, the real Slashdot regulars, not the toddlers - have been wanting for a very long time. Also wanted: unicode support.
for people to build open source applications that take advantage of super-fast fiber connections
Slashdot, you should apply for this.
Not only will you get between $5,000 and $30,000. Your beta site would be able to abuse all that "high speed fibre" with non-sense whitespace, videos and pictures!
All you need now is a "supercomputer" fund, so that all you users can upgrade their PC's to run beta.slashdot, at the same speed as classic.slashdot.
bloatware.slashdot wouldnt go a miss either, you'd pull in alot of youth with this one...
Ps, fuck beta.