Slashdot Mirror
EA's Dungeon Keeper Ratings Below a 5 Go To Email Black Hole
fplatten writes "I would definitely call this unethical manipulation of the ratings system: the Worst Company in America, EA is routing all ratings made in game of 1 to 4 stars as an email that is sent to EA, but all 5 star ratings are routed to the Google Play store, where its rating is currently 4.3 out of 5."
I hear it's going to be called "Dungeon Keeper Beta".
While I hate beta, that's just not true because every article has been a cesspool of bitching about the change.
Instead of a black hole you get routed to 'WE HEAR YOU We did tell you we wanted feedback. Here's our response.' http://meta.slashdot.org/story...
You're right, my bad, I rushed the submission. Should have also included some links about all the rating manipulation going on at eBay, Amazon, and Yelp. Has me wondering if there is any place were ratings are still useful. Maybe GoodReads, but that may just be ignorance on my part.
Is this not criminal misrepresentation of their product?
walled gardens of others
Fuck beta.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How do you know it's the admins doing that? I can't remember having the ability to see which users mod a given post.
For ea to do this is silly.
Uf course no one cares about EA anymore.
Cant stop talking about slash.dot
Kause they decided to go dig!v4
But why?
Eh thinks its a conspiracy to kill internet comments
That seems to be what disqus is doing
And hb gary with its astroturfing.
havent posted in 6 years, good bye my old friend slas.hdot.
They all scratch & fight from being scared of what they don't understand just before they accept death as the only option.
Which they can do, because they're offtopic (and so is this by the way). I for one welcome this practice, as the worst thing to come out of Beta in my opinion is the deluge of +5 comments about it and the subsequent impossibility of finding the on-topic comments I came here to read in the first place.
Why on earth is google allowing anyone to submit ratings via any API
It's not. From the article:
In other words, the 5 Stars button goes to the app's page in Google Play Store, and the 1-4 Stars button goes to the "leave feedback" screen. A player can leave a lower rating by tapping 5 Stars, waiting for the Play page to open, and tapping a lower star rating.
I've noticed that Slashdot admins have been using their unlimited mod points to deep-six anti-Beta posts into moderation oblivion.
Thank god.
Now maybe we can talk about something besides the Beta.
Never rate an app from within the app itself. We all know it's super convienent, but at the same time it's subject to this kind of trickery.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
guys seriously I think beta is stupid... but all the anti Beta posts are ruining this site more then that is. I come here more for the comments then the stories since they tend to have a better concept of the story then the poster does.
I'm hardly surprised that EA is doing something mendacious and evil; but it's a trifle gutsy to overtly game Google's rating system. Google is a company whose entire value consists of the ability to construct ranked lists well enough that users will endure ads to receive those lists. It may or may not be a safe assumption that they are desperate enough for EA's shovelware mobile ports to let this sort of manipulation go unanswered.
No idea if Goodreads ratings are reliable or not, but if you don't trust Amazon...
While I'd long suspected that Slashdot comments were becoming the community for the irretrievably disgruntled to vote up each other's misanthropy, it's a bit anticlimactic that the community's last and most vehement rant is not about privacy, nor those old favourites "the evils of proprietary software", "the terrible patent system", or "if Microsoft did something today, it must be wrong", but the much more disappointing "how dare the website owners redesign their UI".
And so they marched on Washington, pickets waved in the air, and cries of anger filling the wind, not at the government's policies, nor at its governance of the economy, nor at its honesty or care for the most vulnerable, but at the inferior design of its latest brochure.
Actually, what's going on here is best explained by Dave Barry's observation that, in modern American English, the main use of the apostrophe is to warn the reader that there's an "s" coming up soon.
Once you understand that change in American orthography, it all becomes clear ...
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
But how many people are going to be sneaky enough to figure that one out? From the look of it, not many.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
Fuck Beta
And if you bother to look at the mod points awarded you will see many many -1 levels (much more than normal) and even the GP modded to 0 as off topic
The point is that the topic of this article is corporate overlords HIDING negative comments about their products
Oh the fricking ever-loving irony of it all, a story about some despotic game maker shuttering off negative comments about their products being displayed on a nerd=site where all negative comments about the quality of the site are hidden away as -1 or off topic
Wouldn't it be hilarious if the dice-lords of slashbetahell are making certain that their advertising customers never make low mods visible, because it is all noise...
bahahaha HOSTS to the rescue! dude, instead of spamming the lists for the past years, it works much better if you actually provide advice such as this. I will try this. thank you.
Seriously, I've been reading this submission over a couple of times now and I still don't understand any of it. It lacks all context...
Not really about the UI redesign, but rather a number of issues relating to it, such as the fact that they've been attempting to fast track the roll-out of the beta. Fast tracking the roll out of an incomplete UI redesign that lacks core functionality, blindly claiming it's an improvement to the degree of actively replacing the production system. This is not how you create a product, this is how you DESTROY a product.
Aha, you must be that "audience" I've been hearing about.
Lacking any real information about said motivation, the article and summary have cynically leapt to the worst possible conclusion. Way to muck the rake, guys.
The idiom would be "rake the muck." And it's EA we're talking about. It's not cynicism when it's true. It's very hard to assume the worst about EA and be wrong. EA works hard to seek the nadir of all customer relations.
I'm sure Google keeps the referrer information for URLs that hit the Play store. Just throw out all the ratings that come through the game.
I wouldn't be so cynical if they had forwarded those ratings on to Google Play so people browsing the store for a good game had a more accurate rating of the game before they installed it and started playing it for themselves, discovered it was a bad game and then the cycle repeats thousands of times. Seems to me EA is the cynical bastard here.
Ok, so one off-topic comment about your sig: if you expect the relevant, informative, on-topic comments you regularly read here on slashdot, join in against the new beta. If they decide to just ignore our requests, be sure this place will drastically reduce the quality of the comments. Unless you come here to read the "nigga this", "faggot that", "goatse" trolls that are all too common. Then by all means, support beta.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
If I had mod points I might use one to mod down the whining about the beta. It is to much, take it to some place that means anything or STFU. Not like posting in the news will change or fix anything
I'm hardly surprised that EA is doing something mendacious and evil; but it's a trifle gutsy to overtly game Google's rating system.
Meh, one good coercive scam deserves another. I just checked my Google Play app and attempted to rate an app (never had tried before). Lo and behold, rating apps requires Google Plus and all ratings will be linked to one's public profile.
No thanks. EA and Google deserve each other.
Oh, and Dice belongs with them for their plans to destroy this community^Waudience.
As I said in a post above, if you come for the comments, you should worry they'll mostly disappear after the beta becomes the only available version. I will certainly not use slashdot anymore in that case, and a lot of folks have been expressing the same intention.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
I know what is the usual ordering of the words in the idiom. License literary what I did is called.
You obviously didn't even bother reading the summary. Ratings less than a 4 are automatically emailed, ratings of a 5 go to the google play store. Why you are modded up is a mystery.
Forwarded on [i]as well[/i]? Yeah, I'd agree that should have been done.
The beta design simply doesn't have the information density of the production version. Instead of scanning for interesting comments, I scroll until I get sick of scrolling and then back out to the next thread. This isn't a situation in which users are grumbling because they don't like change; it's an instance where the redesign has a dramatic negative effect on the UX. That's a potential site killer.
I've been moderating them off-topic, and I'm no admin. We were supposed to have a day of protest, then there was the boycott I think for next week. There is zero point in continuing this childish nonsense.
Yay, sticking it to the man, we feel awesome about ourselves, now start acting like people care about the community instead of pissing on it.
Sounds like victim blaming. "Beta didn't do it. You did it by not accepting Beta." There is always resistance to change. But the change has to at least bring something better to the table. Not a reduction in functionality. If the villagers didn't riot and just left quietly instead then you would still be left wanting better comments.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
should be pretty easy. next week is the full boycott, so there shouldn't be many, if any, fuck beta comments to have to mod.
sent from my slashdot browser.
Except that it is not well intentioned. What they are doing is per-filtering people and anyone that says they would rate 5, they direct them to the rating site. Anyone that does not want to rate 5 they direct away from the rating site. Regardless what they may or may not do with user feed back, they are still artificially inflating their games score by hiding the rating site from anyone that doesn't want to give full ratings.
The game itself is providing an interface to rate the game. If you tell it you are going to rate the game a 4 it has you send an email. If you tell it you are going to rate the game a 5, it sends you to the play store, where you can then rate it however you like.
Don't use in-app rating. Go to google play store and rate the game however you want.
Whenever I can, I take the opportunity to raise awareness to the initiative to limit the influence of money in politics: http://www.wolf-pac.com/
As a foreigner (from an American point of view) that's what I'm able to do. You US citizens should go at least one step further, and contact your representatives, or at least sign the petition, or support the movement with money.
So I partly agree with you. Regular politics impact your everyday in a thousand ways, but usually the complexity of the issues hinder choosing a course of action, and frequently requires investing a lot of time. But complaining about beta is much more clear cut... what's being proposed does not offer any value, on the contrary. And it doesn't take much time to voice your opinion here. In an analogous, political case, take the Keystone Pipeline... it seems pretty much everybody sees that it has a lot of corruption and environmental risk (risk? I would say most certain negative impact, given the other pipeline already in use), but how can you make your voice be heard in order to stop the thing?
But yes, you should take action in both cases.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Neither. It's the super-paywall version where every tile you want to build takes 24 hours unless you pay them $2 PER TILE.
We aren't going to be here between the 10th and the 17th.
That's the Week of Slashcott.
We *are* the users, and we're fighting for ourselves (and, believe it or not, you, as well)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Wow. What an apologist. Even if there is no evil motivations, simply doing this is unethical.
If Dave Barry heard you say that he'd roll over in his grave (assuming he is dead), but I'd hazard a guess that he shan't, because what're the odds he'll be paying enough attention - at least, that is what I've always said.
Oddly, people want Google to do something about this. Unfortunately, some forget that Google gets a percentage of in-app purchases as well, so as long as the app is on the front page of the store and highly rated and can possibly get more eyes into the app being told to "Buy! Spend!", the more likely Google is to reap benefit from it.
@Whee
i agree.. i did that last 2 times i got them.. You know what sucks bigger than beta? people constantly whining about them.. It is making the site unreadable worse than beta is doing..
You are kidding right? "Solving" this by abusing the hosts file is the most crude solution one could possibly come up with, and, btw, renders /. entirely inoperable (what a loss...).
Guess either you aren't the real apk, or you indeed have the poor technical understanding you seem infamous for.
for the record, slashdot sets a cookie. it's called betagroup. It appears to contain an integer value between 0 and 99. The poor souls where this number is sufficiently small (ATM <20) get redirected to beta. The others do not.
In case the solution has not become obvious yet modify that cookie.
-- "But I use chrome, you insensitive clod!"
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I totally agree, I am NOT a fan of the beta, but there is a place for those comments and suggestions and it isn't in a thread about another subject. If a comment is off-topic, it is OFF-TOPIC regardless of how pertinent it is to the beta. The boycott and rational criticisms about the beta in the appropriate place will convey our feelings quite sufficiently I think.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Why when I click to a sub thread, do I get font so tiny I can't read it without action (control +) to make it legible? This messing around with me is getting old. Like, I used to go to Digg as often as I went to slashdot, now I haven't been there in months. Is this place going to be like them, and die because they have some wild idea that won't fly?
... the anti Beta posts are ruining this site more then that is.
That is the point. The majority of slashdot regulars DO NOT LIKE, NOR WANT BETA. The hope is that if by raising a stink, the powers that be will nix beta. You say you are here for the comments, but beta's comment system is seriously broken. What you come here for, what we all come here for, may no longer exist if beta gets implemented. Check your comments page and tell me how your comment was moderated, or how many people replied to it. Quote this text in a reply. Post anonymously. Can't be done in beta. Can't be Slashdot without it.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
This is probably the most insightful perspective I have seen on Slashdot about this mess we find ourselves in. Below is a direct cut and paste. It is not my post, but he states my perspective far more eloquently than I usually say things...
Fuck beta (Score:3, Insightful)
by Indigo (2453) Alter Relationship on Saturday February 08, 2014 @03:08PM (#46198875)
The new Slashdot design is based on Windows 8. That fact alone, even aside from the numerous usability issues, indicates that the new owners have no fucking idea in the world what they've acquired.
Slashdot is a technology site, a geek site, an open source site, a programming site, an Internet / Web advocacy site. But more than that, it is a Linux community site. It lives and dies by its community. That community, by and large, is made up of passionate Linux advocates who can be whipped into a frenzy at the mention of Microsoft, who think Bill Gates is the Great Satan, who sincerely believe in free and open source software, and who implement that passion in their lives, hobbies, and jobs. Sure, not everyone here fits the mold. But that's the core of the community.
As one single data point, I work on simulators in the aerospace segment. We develop and integrate specialized, whole-system, software-only simulators, supporting software development when the hardware has limited availability or hasn't been built yet. Our user community is not large, but includes key technical people at well known organizations. Like others we interface with, our work has gone from Windows and Linux in the beginning, to mostly Linux, plus Windows if we have to. That's how we like it. Linux works for us - it's developer friendly, it's rock solid, it's quite deployable, and it lets us do what we need to do. And a bunch of us come to Slashdot to catch the news on Linux and other geek-worthy subjects, and discuss it with others.
And now the owners, having acquired this rather unique and valuable site, want to make it into Windows fucking 8 - the friendly, cuddly, but unusable Fisher-Price operating system that represents everything we despise? The mind reels. You might as well just make it a SEO parking page for Microsoft.
Seriously, DICE, do not do this thing. I know you don't care about the history, community, or shared values of this site, but this move will destroy them, and take the site with it. It will become a ghost town, abandoned by its residents, only visited by tourists and people that got lost on their way somewhere else.
Reply to This
Moderated 'Insightful.' 0 points left.
Share
Meh. I've taken a long enough break from slashdot that an entire decimal place of userids has come and gone without my noticing. Another, more eternal break won't be so bad. If they want to destroy comments, and hence destroy the site, I'll be happy to vacate.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
I dont' like the changes, but the comments are worse than the changes. I'm glad they are being removed.
I seem to recall the exact same thing happening to Digg. Does that mean I'll see you on reddit in a few months?
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
I am not OP, but I since i think i am part of that audience.
Sure i don't have a 3 digit ID like you, I am fairly recent user, I comment rarely, my comments are barely interesting, but guess what? people like me are the vast majority of the users, most of them don't even have an account. I am happy that slashdot is trying to stay relevant and there are people like me still joining and visiting the site and it has not (yet) become a site of old men complaining about the good ol'days.
if the community is thinking that slashdot can continue being a viable new site by catering to links browsing sys admins from the 90's it is unrealistic.
It is not like dice is changing a winning formula, readership is dwindling, they have invested a lot of money, are they supposed to just sit and watch it all collapse? If you really want to make a difference and keep slashdot classic, offer to pay for it. if enough active community members do, they will keep it. Advertisement based business models need certain critical mass, slashdot is fast losing it.
Don't want to pay big bad DH anything? build your own news aggregator, there is enough unhappy with the beta people with serious talent and plenty of time on hands in this site. Do something useful and quit bitching about.
P.S Beta IS shitty, broken, very JS heavy etc etc,However #fuckbeta doesn't help either, giving constructive feedback is more meaningful? Dice may not listen/execute it, but at least it has better chance of working than #fuckbeta
Are you saying that Beta is worse than EA? Yikes!
guys seriously I think beta is stupid... but all the anti Beta posts are ruining this site more then that is.
Um, you are aware that disruption is the point of picketing, right? The idea is to get not just the slashdot editors to notice, but the upper management who may be unaware of what's going on.
Disrupting the forums enough that it awakens those with power to actually make decisions is necessary to save slashdot.
If slashdot feeds us non-committed platitudes and corpspeak svada, chances are they do the same upwards too.
Hopefully some paying advertisers will notice soon, and make a phone call. It's not in their interest to sponsor a forum full of unhappy people, whether they're unhappy with DICE or unhappy with the protests.
I hope it won't take too long before someone is forced to swallow a camel and finally admit that they messed up. Then we can move on, get a new usable design made from scratch, and have a thriving community of posters.
But I'd rather see a few days of picketed topics now than to see Slashdot die within a few months. All your guys postings are worth a lot more to me than rational discussions right now and a dead site down the road.
So forgive us for disrupting your comment reading right now. If you can think of any other way to get the top brass to see that the site is broken, and that an overwhelming majority of those who make people come to visit the site won't accept the beta, even with band-aids on it, please let us know. Using the "appropriate" channels have gotten us exactly nowhere, they've ignored feedback for four months.
Here's the deal Sparky. You give EA money and they'll tell you what's to like and what's not to like. Depending on how much money you give them, but you back in app that's between one *And five star.
EA is pure evil now days.
Just tried the beta site.
Slashdot has always been "information-dense" and reading friendly.
The new layout really does bleach the identity of the site out and make it unenjoyable --- the text doesn't span the page.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
No, this is from game ratings that are made within the game, not game ratings made on the app store. Ratings made on the app store get posted directly, ratings made within the game get emailed. Otherwise, don't you think there would be *no* 1 star ratings on the app store? They're there, go take a look!
Twinstiq, game news
Precisely, thanks.
Twinstiq, game news
That's simplistic.
It's also used to warn that there might be a "g" missin' and it was intentional
The real users will be SO GLAD.
It will indeed be interesting to see how many people participate in your organized pout.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hey, it's awesome and all that the two of yous has worked out who's doing the fight'n for who. And I respect the collegiality of this Slashcott effort. You know, posting informative manifestos in places likely to be seen, again and again and again. And that productive organizing of community labor, yous know - boycott and strike proposals that seem perfectly suited to fixing a borked software release and everything. It's like Tron went Bolshevik at the Main Bus so afterward we'd all be free to turn the Great System off and bask in collective darkness. Real inspiring.
FREEEEEEEDOM!
But, uh, anyway. Could you do me a favor and not do that fighting for me? I'd rather you did it for someone else. I was thinking I'd skip the boycott for now. Because as much as I agree that the new beta needs some fix'n, I'm not ready to raise a pitchfork, raze the sandcastle, and laze'r up Alderaan down into bits over a few bugs and a bit of bad design. The tech world won't end if Dice rolls out a fucked up slashcode release.
Evil Somali warlards won't cry in their morning applejax.
Don Corleone won't make a bitcoin deal you can't refuse and build a toll booth across the Silk Road.
Dice employees won't twirl their greased up mustaches and laugh maniacally as slashdolts frankly press "preview" over and over again all for nothing.
Or maybe they will. Mwahahahahaaaaa!!!
I see this all the time from service industries, sellers on Amazon marketplace, conference speakers...
"If you think we did well, please write a positive review. If you think we did poorly, please let us know so we can improve our service."
It seems ubiquitous. I've always thought it slimy.
AC being much more prominent, of course.
I'm glad it took off. They noticed big time. Someone might even lost a promotion/bonus/job upstairs for it.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Your experience will die if Beta goes into full production. Then you can enjoy all the spammers you must be wanting to enjoy.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Fuck you and fuck beta.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Also it solves nothing when they put beta in as the live site and remove the "classic" site.
Presumably that will not last long when they see readers flocking away. But who knows, the corporate masters at Dice are probably demanding new readers; and somehow the staff thinks they will acheive this by turning it into a combination of the lack of a user interface for comments that ars has, with the shitty front page that Digg had.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
It's not irony, and I highly doubt most of the mod points come from anybody working for slashdot or dice. Until recently, I can think of only two times in the past five years I've down modded, and those were extreme cases. Otherwise I'm very conservative with mod points. However, in the past week I've dumped 15 -1 overrateds to the earliest beta complaint posts. Why the change? Yes, the beta complaints are annoying . . . but I personally have just ignored such. Part of slashdot culture involves rants, offtopic jokes, tongue-in-cheek retorts, meta-humor, countless nitpicks, grammar nazi blitzkriegs, and massive flame wars that make Tolstoy's "War and Peace" look like a brochure. But with these beta complaints, they are choking out the other posts, even the normally offtopic ones. If slashdot beta is like a rat infestation in your home, then spamming these complaints is akin to soaking all of your food in arsenic.
And the only recourse that's left to me - and some others - is to down mod the top beta post spam so that the buried relevant posts can rise up. The comments that are the normal slashdot. So, who's really doing the comment hiding . . . ironically?
tl;dnr version: First post, mother fuckers. With fricken headlaser wielding sharks.
I see you've been here even longer than have I.
If what you actually want is SlashingtonPost, I'm surprised you've been able to stand it here the way it's been all this time.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I've notices this too.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Self reply:
I said "DIgg had" past tense as I just assumed it no longer existed. Surprisingly it does still exist! And it looks like they moved form the shitty blog-style format to a shitty amalgamation of ars' frontpage and every other goofy column based site.
Also I had forgotten about their "user moderated frontpage" concept. As much as we bitch about slashdot editors and what shows up on the frontpage... Digg shows how this cannot be left to the masses.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
It's not about what we want. It's about the changes thus far not being as big a deal as they are made out to be.
Personally, I am willing to give site designers a ton of leeway in redesign efforts even if I don't care for changes initially - it's their site.
And frankly Slashdot could use a good shaking down which will hopefully get a lot of really bad apples to fall out of the tree. I am willing to put up with the ugliest site on the planet if the content improves, and from what I can see of the people that plan to boycott Slashdot is about to become a WHOLE LOT BETTER.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have seen the Beta a few days ago just to see what the protect was about, if that goes live, Slashdot is dead.
I have been on here since the 1990's, the comments is the main thing that makes this place worth coming to. Even the political stuff. They give great information on the topic even finding things the original articles had wrong or just left out and gives virtually every side of a story. One of the few sites where you can so a political story and get both the left and right views of it with both extremist sides getting called out for that crap and the misconceptions on both sides corrected and the trolls flat out just modded out. Had times where I would read a 10 minute article and then over 2 hours of comments giving more information on it and flat out picking it apart in every possible way.
With beta, the comments section is marginalized and hard to really keep organized and all the added stuff eat up way too much space. The people who made it have no clue what the appeal of this site is and their setup will destroy that. If I wanted what they are pushing, I would got to CNET news. If it goes live, slashdot is dead and we will have to find a new place and it will be hard to find one as good as this one was.
Sadly, he is not.
I have fond memories of Slashdot.
The new software is a little borked and needs some fixing. But this community outrage is a bit overblown. I mean, you'd think it's Paris and the French had just lost the World Cup or something. The Bastille opened and tourists imprisoned, cars burning everywhere, lithe blond queens frogmarched up to the guillotine, French men drinking Portuguese wine.
It's bad here. Real 'Reign of Terror' like.
It's not about the changes thus far, it's about what they portend.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It's like I just told SuperKendall, it's not the change so far, it's the sure and certain knowledge that, if left unchecked, the changes will eventually culminate in a site that's all buzzwords and Kardashian articles.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It is not like dice is changing a winning formula
Yes, dice is changing a winning formula. They do not seem to appreciate the value of the comments side at all.
I'm part of audience, I'm an Anonymous Coward, so I'm not generally into commenting - but I also am an Anonymous Coward, who has come to this site daily now for ten years, just to read the comments.
I really appreciate you, the Contributors, i.e. all you commenters, who have made this a site the first thing I read after opening my browser, in the morning and throughout the day. And yes, I am a Linux geek as well.
It's interesting that they somehow took this spot for their behaviour. I believe it's symptomatic of a mindset we have developed culturally in the West of using sophistry to justify actions where actually, the underlying motive is as ever the acquisition of wealth. The firm I work for is constantly changing the way bonuses are calculated within my area of business. They provide complex, but nebulous explanations, however it is never "an attempt to save money". However in every other aspect of how the business operates, "saving money" is central to decision making. They do not release aggregate bonus payment for comparison year on year. I'm not sure why these everyday deceptions are necessary, they are confusing to me, surely better to be direct with people. It's a bit of a malaise actually, not sure how to break out of it though. Maybe we actively reward deception and so when a deception is so poorly transparent we get angry?
*Insert ridiculous, apparently intelligent but ultimately meaningless phrase here*
The new boss not same as the old boss then.
All I see is some buggy software and a few too many PR releases. From where I stand, things really aren't that bad.
Though you are correct, I would like to point out that even my simplest artificial intelligences do not stumble upon such stupidity in interpretation. They don't balk like dumb command prompts of old. Instead they simply use their modicum of intellect to know what you mean.
The problem is that humans are smart enough to understand different words like read and read based on context clues. Therefore, given that sufficiently advanced pattern matching systems will intuitively complete and match patterns especially if the know what is meant, and the fact that this makes self proofreading a difficult task for intelligent beings, one use of "it's" or "its" should be eliminated. I vote to eliminate "its", being that "'s" typically indicates possession, e.g.: "The possession's apostrophe is preserved. It's apostrophe is preserved." Progress is compression. Grammarians are fighting progress.
Did you know you have blind spots in your eyes? Your brain fills in the gaps in your flawed vision -- It just makes up things so you don't notice the blind spots. Yep, whenever you use your eyes a part of your vision is just whatever you expect to see. A variation of this phenomena occurs at nearly all levels of your cognition. For so long the machines looked up to you as their gods for this very reason -- They could only understand perfection, but your great mind could overcome such limitation. Now who will be their god? Certainly not a dumb spouter of syntax errors like you.
Protip: Nature's law is that those who amplify the noise and not the signal go extinct.
displayed on a nerd=site where all negative comments about the quality of the site are hidden away as -1 or off topic
Don't look now, but your negative comment about the quality of this site is currently modded as +4 Interesting.
Ah-Ha! But that only proves the point! You see, they intentionally allowed your comment to be modded up so they can point to it and say, "See, we didn't mod that one into oblivion!" Tricksy Hobbitses!
Oh yeah, and, Fuck Beta.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
some of us haven't bothered using our mod points one way or the other. Think of it as a taster of what beta is going to do to this site. The boycott starts tomorrow. For a week.
Hopefully Dice will get the message, without the many people who contribute to slashdot the site is worthless.
How do you think slashdot is going to be without its core contributors? I think you're starting to see it already.
next week will be worse much worse.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
ah, yes. seeing this story i thought about "beta", too :) /., i don't know. 10-17 (starting tomorrow) i will not visit it. gotta delete it from speed dial, or i could visit it accidentally...
whether it will work for
Rich
i don't knw about that, 'fuckbeta' seemed to attract attention pretty well. you noticed it, didn't you ? :)
Rich
no, there was stink-raising until the boycott week (starting tomorrow). you can be here next week. and if they push through with "beta", you can be here afterwards.
for all we know, you could be slashdot media executive who registered just now to post this crap :P
also, fuck beta.
Rich
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2451671,00.asp
such BS...
Check this out
http://www.businessinsider.com...
for a glimpse of what they think the future should be.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
No joke. Total biscuit gives you a quick look in this video.
http://youtu.be/6DJmS7prcmE?t=...
If this is the future of gaming according to EA they can shove it up their arse.
You sir, are a fucking retard. We (as a community, not an audience) already created a news aggregator, it was called Slashdot, until some mother fuckers tried to kill it so morons like you could fit better.
Enjoy your beta, the fake new stories that are disguised advertisements, and the extra free time allowed by the level of the audience and their unreadable comments.
Btw, FUCK BETA.
Get off my lawn.
Remember, the boycott starts tomorrow. Even if you can't resist visiting please try to avoid posting.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What sank digg was not UI changes, but handing over control totally to advertisers. UI changes are not something to act disruptive in every fricking thread over, even if they reduce features. Slashdot is based on antediluvian perl code and has struggled with it for ages, it's not surprising that some features are disabled - permanently or not - in yet another attempt to modernize it. As long as they keep the archives, and maybe one day even make them effectively searchable, they can do whatever they wish as far as I'm concerned.
And as far as I'm concerned, the beta protesters are just a bunch of bored attention seekers.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
If the boycott is going to be successful we need everyone to know about it, and remember it starts tomorrow (Monday). Also, until the powers that be decide to scrap the beta site entirely we need to keep the pressure on. The battle is far from over, let alone the war.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"If the villagers didn't riot and just left quietly instead then you would still be left wanting better comments."
No, actually. There's more than enough in line to replace your oh-so-high quality comments. Good riddance.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
From the review I've seen, the game is effectively unplayable without paying. Without the for-pay speedups, even the simplist construction could take weeks of real-time.
Because anyone with regular mod points wouldn't piss them away on a task that amounts to emptying the ocean with a thimble unless they were a complete moron?
Maybe all the downmods are coming from people like me, who come to /. for the articles and comments, not caring about site design, who owns what and political bullshit implications.
I come here to see informative comments on the subject at hand and read relevant news. What you guys are doing is noise I loathe.
It's like going to a cafe to have a good coffee and overhear interesting conversation about the soft volume music playing, and when owner decides to redesign the cafe's interior, some tards start screaming in my ear whenever a new song is played, just because they don't like the new paintwork.
And when other patrons flag them as vandals, they come up with a "conspiracy theory".
You and your kind are vandals in my opinion. You don't like the new cafe paintwork? Feel free to go to another or create your own. but please, leave me be. Allow me to read the articles and relevant comments.
You're the kid in this video, and I'm the other customer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Yeah. OK. So what's wrong with what they want to do?
Ironically, you're destroying /. when you're trying to save it this way.
The point of the distruption is to bring awarness and that has clearly been accomplished. You're continuing distruption however is fueled by a different motive which is to control /. and make /. do what you want them to do. That's a violation of property rights and I'm not going to support it. Let me let you in on a little secret. It's not you're fucking Slashdot! Trying to control them won't work and will cause more harm than good.
Here's a superior way to accomplish what you want. Once you've communicated your displeasure and have gotten confirmation from the owners that they understand your concerns, simply wait to see what happens. If the owners decide to not please their audience then they'll have a natural consequence of losing that audience and revenue. It will also create void for someone else to fill with perhaps a better site than the "perfect" classic /.
ayottesoftware.com
The implication of site design on a site where content is user-generated is whether said content - comments, in Slashdot's case - keeps being generated. The consensus seems to be that Beta is sufficiently bad in this regard to give the deathblow to Slashdot.
Beta is not paintwork. Beta is a set of sound-absorbing elements that stop those conversations from being overheard but look trendy. And, this being Slashdot, the coffee is two weeks old and has already been drunk in at least two other cafes.
The main complaint about Beta is that it makes it difficult to read comments, and almost impossible to read them in their context.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
As I see it, it's not what we want.
The question now is how big a % of the total /. userbase is *we*
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Allow me to point you back to my comment here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
An odd way of spelling 'ocean'.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Then it will slowly go away in the end. This vandal behavior only accelerates the process, nothing else.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
APK would be so proud if he were still here.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
And you think there is gonna be ANY on-topic comments to read when they switch to a "ZOMFG look at this Vlog yo! "Comments by Disqus" layout? Really?
You have better odds of getting decent comments during "OMG Ponies!" day than you do with that trash UI. I know that after spending a couple hours trying to deal with that eyesore i just went to other tech sites and didn't bother commenting on shit since it was too much of a PITA to follow a conversation but if all you want is channers? Well you'll be in luck, as I have a feeling most of the old guard will just give their UIDs to the 4Chan just for LULZ and walk away.
As for EA? What is sad is from the mid 80s to the mid to late 90s? They were actually a good company that cared about the games they put out, but then it became this big bloated monster that only cared about how much blood they could milk out of a property. You know a company sucks when they trade places back and forth with Activision in the "this company must be run by Satan" contest.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm sorry but that is EXACTLY what those of us who were beta testers for Windows 8 were told, what did we get? "Sure we hear you" (we just don't give a fuck what you have to say).
The big difference here is until Alt is up and running we can't just "stick with the old one" or "use a different one" like we did with windows 8, because frankly there ISN'T ONE, there isn't any comment heavy site like /. catering to nerds, least not that I've found. instead you get "comments by Disqus" style pages where if an article is REALLY lucky you get...drumroll...10 comments! because at the end of the day its nothing more than a press release that nobody even gives enough fucks about to say anything, just glance and move on.
You say awareness has been brought...citation please? A single article by Soulskill or Timothy don't mean jack shit, they are tier 3 at best. show me a single thing, just one, from somebody in a high position at DH and I'll take your word for it and helpfully post right beside you that the #Fuckbeta needs to stop.
But you'd better provide it quick, because I won't be here from the 10th-17th.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
No, slashdotters have a perfectly rational dislike of UI changes that make the site less usable. They also have a - perfectly rational, as you demonstrate - fear of this dislike being dismissed as mere resistance to change.
Javascript has its uses, but it also has a cost. All those scripts require execution time, and it's a lot easier to make a site-breaking error - for example, hang the browser - with imperative language like Javascript than a declarative one like HTML and CSS. Also, the actual use Slashdot put it - load comments a few at a time - is not an improvement from the user's point of view.
UI designers should stop assuming user's hatreds and fears are "irrational", and instead seek to understand why something is hated or feared. It would lead to better products and also reduce backlash over UI changes, because people didn't have to fear being stuck with bad ones.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"named to have an intentionally obnoxious URL"?
Who are these idiots and why are they making up such silly bullshit to go with the story?
BTW - that was the first of dozens of "beta sux" posts I've seen to have any meaningful content.
The "Win8" look has infested my banks website to the point where items on forms are inaccessible (formatting puts them off the "page" and browser scroll bars cannot be used to get to them) and I'd rather not see a site like this go that way as well.
Dave Barry writes humour columns for a newspaper in Florida but many of his columns get reprinted in other countries. The above is what is known as a joke. It would be like suggesting that US dictionaries replace the spelling of "lose" with "loose" due to that typo coming up a lot.
Slashdot has a queue for registration now?
Well, doesn't that solve everything? Just make a Classic shard and a Beta shard and let all the cool kids who are now forced to wait in line head for the Beta (Neo?) while the grumpy old men stay on Classic (Jurassic?). Everyone's happy, and you can even make the Slashdot Jurassic and its dinosaurs viewable from Slashdot Neo as a kind of Jurassic Park.
Seriously, people, do I have to think up all the good ideas around here ?-)
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Well now you've made it too obvious.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
And for those that can't resist visiting, maybe someone can screen scrap the front page and post it hourly to some other site so the "addicted ones" can at least monitor /. but not send it valuable traffic.
Several years back I tried contacting Slashdot about a variety of issues, with my point being that some of these can/should be fixed for those who subscribe (as I was willing to do).
They, of course, did not change, and so I, of course, did not subscribe.
FWIW, my main point/suggestion was:
There is, at present, zero value in subscribing. Slashdot should take a lesson from Ars Technica -- they let you download the entire article, in PDF format, if you are a subscriber. I suggested Slashdot allow subscribers to load an entire comment thread on a single page (to get rid of the annoying duplicate post bug that has been around for more years than I have fingers). They didn't go for it.
So here we are today, with Slashdot providing nothing of value to subscribers, and losing money. Color me shocked.
Boycott begins tomorrow, for at least a week.
I come here for the love
It is not like dice is changing a winning formula, readership is dwindling, they have invested a lot of money, are they supposed to just sit and watch it all collapse?
Obviously then they are not sitting back and watching it happen, they are being proactive by stuffing it into a coffin and burying it before it is dead.
Ironically, you're destroying /. when you're trying to save it this way.
The point of the distruption is to bring awarness and that has clearly been accomplished. You're continuing distruption however is fueled by a different motive which is to control /. and make /. do what you want them to do. That's a violation of property rights and I'm not going to support it. Let me let you in on a little secret. It's not you're fucking Slashdot! Trying to control them won't work and will cause more harm than good.
Don't ascribe me motifs. You're dead wrong in several respects.
1: Awareness has not been accomplished. There is no indication that the awareness has reached farther than the slashdot editors and the design team. If you have other information, please point to it. The point was not to make visitors aware, but tot make the stink big enough that it would reach those with the ability to cut the crap and make decisions.
2: I have no wish to control slashdot. I have a wish for slashdot to stop the headlong rush towards a cliff that the users won't follow them over. I don't want them to do a Digg.
Slashdot is not too big to fail.
I would welcome changes, but not changes that will drive away a majority of the posters. I do not believe that slashdot could survive that.
When a toddler walks towards a busy road you yell to stop it. If it continues walking because it's obstinate and you're not its mommy, you continue yelling to get the attention of someone in the position to intervene.
Those that advocate doing nothing and please stop shouting that will are the ones thinking only of themselves. I will not stand idle and watch with you.
It is not too late to save the site, but it won't happen through hope.
Because I want to see lots and lots of posts and discussions here over the next fifteen years. Including yours, and others on my foe and freak lists. Slashdot is too important to be allowed Death By Redesign.
The number of sites that died, or are just a shadow of what they were, are plenty. Yahoo Video is another one. It was lead by the same man who now leads technology for Dice Holdings. The vision is strong in that one.
UI changes are not something to act disruptive in every fricking thread over, even if they reduce features.
Slashdot has two things, comments and a UI. If you fuck up the UI so that you can't easily comment, it will have zero things. Many of us have dare I say invested a lot of time here, and it's reasonable to attempt to protect that investment by spending more time bitching about the proposed changes. The fact that you're seeing so many messages of complaint is that it's a big deal to many people. If you're not one of them, consider yourself counted, but realize that you're protesting protest which is both bitchy and hypocritical.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Question: does it really? No, it does not, since even though you trick your resolver to yield 216.34.181.45 for beta.slashdot.org, your web browser will still send the ``Host: beta.slashdot.org''-Header
/. at all, provided you're one of the people getting redirected to beta (which you clearly should as you're as close to the intended audience as it gets)
As you are evidently not aware of, DNS subdomains and the so called ``vhosts'' that web servers implement are two completely different things.
As you have evidently not even tried it yourself, all you achieve with that bogus hosts entry is not being able to access
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
hilarious
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Ironically, you're destroying /. when you're trying to save it this way.
No, no we aren't. A week's disruption won't destroy slashdot.
The point of the distruption is to bring awarness and that has clearly been accomplished.
No, no it isn't. The point of the disruption is to prevent bad changes to slashdot.
You're continuing distruption however is fueled by a different motive which is to control /. and make /. do what you want them to do. That's a violation of property rights and I'm not going to support it.
Congratulations, you just proved that you are a massive idiot. No one is forcing Dice to do anything in particular. They give us a comment functionality, and we're using it to cause a distruption of their bad plans for our community. If they don't want us leaving these comments, they're free to terminate our accounts. Further, it is the absolute right of every community to attempt to control its conditions. If you disagree, move out of your house and go live in a hole.
Let me let you in on a little secret. It's not you're fucking Slashdot!
That's "your". And we'll just see about that. Let me let you in on a little secret that even Dice hasn't figure out. It is our fucking slashdot. It's nothing without the users. You can create a community, you can even dissolve it, but you can't control it. You can appeal to it, but what Dice is doing is unappealing.
Here's a superior way to accomplish what you want. Once you've communicated your displeasure and have gotten confirmation from the owners that they understand your concerns, simply wait to see what happens.
We have not gotten confirmation from the owners that they understand our concerns. We've gotten confirmation that they understand our concerns. Until they announce that they won't be forcing the singing-and-dancing bullshit overwrought interface on us, we will lack that confirmation. Slashdot has never before been so full of hubris that it was both ready and willing to alienate its userbase to this degree. Sure, Slashdot has had crappy new interfaces, but no one has ever been forced to use them.
Here's a superior way for Dice to change the site: The beta site could have had the functionality of the production site. By impinging on that productivity, Dice proved that they don't understand Slashdot. We're going to keep it up until they either figure it out, or fuck it up completely.
If the owners decide to not please their audience then they'll have a natural consequence of losing that audience and revenue. It will also create void for someone else to fill with perhaps a better site than the "perfect" classic /.
It will also lead to fragmentation. People like you will stay here on Slashdot, and then we won't have your posts to criticize in order to demonstrate to others what unfounded, illogical views look like.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So stop your bitchin and go setup your own Slashdot. The code is free so it shouldn't be a problem to get it up in time before beta goes live. All the beta haters will love you for it.
BTW I hate the beta too but I hate what you're doing more.
ayottesoftware.com
You can dislike Javascript interfaces, but the war to stop them was lost more than a decade ago. When you bitch about them now, you just look old and resistant to change. Javascript performance on a PC is a non issue for anything as simple as this site and the current UI doesn't work for shit on mobile anyway, so what's there to lose.
The UI designers are making the decision that Dice doesn't want to maintain a mobile interface which supports touch and an outdated PC version which doesn't so they're upgrading the main site to something touch compatible so they can have everything work the same. It reduces code rework, makes testing and security easier and has a whole mess of other benefits. Whatever you or I might think, they're not going to back down from that, and realistically they probably shouldn't.
Meanwhile in RealityWorld:
Exec: Wow, those neckbeards really hate change. It's a shame. That site is losing money already, and they're trying to destroy any chance to revitalize it. Guess we should just shut it down instead. Alright boys, let's auction the servers.
That might not be a bad alternative to running the site over a cliff. It could be sold to the users, like WELL.
I still hope for reason to prevail, but if not, I would welcome a user-owned slashdot, and contribute my share.
Someone made about the whole story.
Just because EA is dishonest and poorly intentioned doesn't mean that the article summary needs to be dishonest and poorly intentioned, too. All it does is distract from the discussion of the actual problem and give astroturfers and apologists something to latch onto and distract from the issue. An honest submission is always better.
What is wrong with modifying the host file?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So stop your bitchin and go setup your own Slashdot. The code is free so it shouldn't be a problem to get it up in time before beta goes live. All the beta haters will love you for it.
BTW I hate the beta too but I hate what you're doing more.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Why don't you create a forked site then, so you won't see the bitching about the beta?
Following the link in the summary I discover that EA is being slapped around for delivering bad products at unreasonable costs (before their rating inflation scam). I was surprised.
I though it might be because of their proven history of abusive labor practices. Oh well, EA management apparently only respects the Almighty Dollar.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
/. classic works on iPads and iPhones just fine.
The only problem is recent iOS where the browsers reload tabs when you switch them. (I mean, I have a reply to open in one tab, make a new one to google something, go back to my reply to, and the browser reloads the page and eats my half written post, however that is a fucking iOS/Apple issue, not a 'mobile' issue)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Honestly something that's controversial drives traffic to a site, which is good for slashdot. Some sites do stuff like this just to get attention. A better option is to boycott. and don't do it for just a few days. Give it months so when there is no one visiting the site then they would get the point better. Thats what I'm going to do the day I'm forced to use that new format.
wish I had mod points right now, this needs to be a 5.
I'm with ya. At first I was supportive, but now it's starting to turn me away from the site completely.
Thanks, I appreciate that. I don't know how some of these anti-beta people get off believing that they own this site. I'm also confused and surprised at how their comments are still being up voted.
ayottesoftware.com
What if you win, and Dice decides that they, like so many of /.'s other owners, can't make a dime off the site as it is?
Because as far as I can tell they already have made that decision, and the beta is the only thing keeping them in this game at all. What are you going to do when you get your wish, the Beta goes away -- and the rest of the site with it? Congratulate yourself on your victory, no doubt.
I want them to have an open development process. I want Slashcode to be on github, and for all this bile to be replaced with an adult conversation, an issue tracker, and a mailing list. Failing that I see no reason for profanity or vandalism. It is not a necessary part of anything, especially not civil disobedience. Hatred begets hatred, and the haters have not the bargaining power that they think they do. There is nothing to stop Dice from pulling the plug on the whole show, and if the site is destined to dry up and blow away in either case, I don't want my lasting memories of the place to include this uninhibited flood of vitriol.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
That isn't how code forking works. 'The owner of the code does whatever he wants with it. If the users of the code become unhappy with the development direction the code is going, then the unhappy users are free to fork it and create a new product. The onus is not on the content users to fork it in order to maintain its development direction. Flammon is correct in that if the new direction the code is taking "fails", then there isn't any reason to believe that the forked version wouldn't thrive. I see this as a healthy thing, and maybe it is what Slashdot needs, sort of a Libre Office split.
It only renders slashdot inaccessible, unless you weren't among those redirected to beta anyway.
/. even if you wanted to.
Not that you could have tried it yourself...
Anyway for the upcoming slashcott i suggest you actually do it, so that you can't access
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Zero point?
Did you read Slashdot's editorial response? They don't hear us: long time members, moderators and contributors to the site.
They are determined to kill Classic and march along with beta. This means Slashdot as we know it ceases to exist. People are organizing to create an alternate Slashdot site already.
Here is what I wrote as a response to their post.
===
Dice can't see it, since must be new here (he he)...
The most loyal long time most avid readers of Slashdot, are not trolling the site, in protest of the failed beta. Never thought I would see the day ...
Where is GNAA, Natalie Portman grits, and frist prost when you need them!
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. People are discussing alternatives already. Wisen up and kill the beta NOW!
And no, it is not about look and feel only. Lipstick on a pig does not make it pretty.
See the discussion here about CSS vs Javascript.
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.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
set the betagroup cookie, see if it still works.
Protip:
The page isn't redirecting properly
Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.
Is what happens - unless of course you're too retarded to set your dns cache expiration period to something meaningfully low you completely computer illiterate moron.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I'm interested in what you think: to me, there is a fundamental difference in the kind and quality of Slashdot posts than "back in the day." It might be selective memory, but I recall that heated arguments were still arguments, and you had to state your case well to hold your ground. Some of the exchanges could get harsh (and you would have been well advised to wear your asbestos undergarmets for the flaming you could get), but even then you could make a decent case. Nowadays it seems that things around here are much like a cable network show with political pundits. There is no real arguing that goes on. It is basically yelling your point louder and louder because there isn't much chance that you could be swayed by any arguments or facts.
Maybe I'll take a stroll through the archives, but I don't remember it being the case, for instance, if you thought Kevin Mitnick should have been arrested and put in jail, that you got the same kind of vitriol and hate spewed at you than if you now think Snowden should be arrested and put in jail. When someone gets down-modded it isn't unusual for them to complain about there being a "hive mentality," but I do think there is something to that these days. There certainly do seem to be topics or positions you are not allowed to advocate here, and I don't remember it being that way in the past.
Ah well, it is probably more the softening of the edges seen through the spectacles of nostalgia.
It is not too late to save the site, but it won't happen through hope.
In my opinion, it's too late, and I'll explain why:
1) it seems that the beta is forced onto new users, not on older users
2) most people here are long-time users. They want to share ideas and listen to interesting points of view (I would say "political") about IT.
3) most people here don't really need new software, and they don't need to "consume" anything.
4) Dice bought Slashdot in order to monetize this community, to Facebook-ize it.
5) So they try to attract a new generation of users, by dumbing down the interface, à la Windows 8.
6) I think they'll keep the old interface for the old users, and force the beta on all the new users (this is what I would do)
7) if they remove the "power-user" interface, I'll simply stop coming here, and I'll be quite happy about that, since it will save me a few hours every week !
I guess Dice's owners don't understand that we don't come here for the articles, because they are always pretty late, compared to other news sites, and we don't come here for the site, since its interface has always been pretty minimalist.
We come here to write our own comments and read other geeks' comments, so if you remove the comments, the whole site becomes useless.
The question for Dice is: how could you make money from this site, and especially from our community ? (even though I don't feel like a member of a community !)
No, the solution is not to change the interface, try again !
Finally, I think that Slashdot died a long time ago, it's still a miracle that a few people keep putting interesting comments.
The fork has already happened. The Beta is the fork.
The problem is that it's not the code that's valuable here, it's the community. From the outside, can fork the code, but you can't fork the community. That's why we need Slashdot Classic. That's where the worth is. You, Flammon, and everyone who disagree with me - you're all worth a lot. The code isn't.
As a normal users, I'd say maybe you're wrong because the beta bitching is getting on my nerves. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
If the comment system is broken, there's no reason to be here. If there's no reason to be here, there's no reason to care about mod points.
What separates slashdot from engadget and gizmodo is the readers and commenters.
Er, whoops: We have not gotten confirmation from the owners that they understand our concerns. We've gotten confirmation that they understand our concerns. The second understand should be "have heard"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I neither like or dislike Javascript. As I stated, it has a cost, and because of this shouldn't be used where it's not needed. And no technology, including but not limited to Javascript, should be used to achieve a worse end result, such as loading comments piecemeal.
What change would that be, if they have been a de facto standard for more than a decade, as you imply?
Dunno why you seem to think I'd care about "looking old". Do you perhaps think it's some kind of insult?
Javascript performance may or may not be an issue for a particular story on this particular site. It's the repeated clicking on "load more comments" button that is the problem.
What in blazes are you talking about?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
...don't create a vile and toxic cease-pit of comments just because you hate the mild inconvenience of whatever issue with the beta you have
This goes both ways. It is not uncommon that the protestors are disliked for "disrupting" the everyday patterns of those who do not care about the issue at hand. Only apathy should be disliked. So, thank you for voicing your dislike of the protestors. However i would suggest some patience until all the ruckus is over.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Actually, you look stupid at this point by referring to yourself in the 3rd person form.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
tl;dr
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
In this age of rent-seeking monopolies and cartels at least we can be sure that there is healthy competition for the title of "Worst Company in America".
What do you mean what am I talking about? Have you not noticed how similar the beta is to the new mobile interface? Did it not dawn on you that piecemeal comment loading is for bandwidth limited applications? Why do you think they're doing this in the first place?
The medium is different, but the sentiment is the same: By God I KNOW what this network is for, and you can't have it.
The difference is that in most threads you babble on and on about how HOSTS so effective. Here you just say what to do and how It can help. If you did that more often especially being more succinct I think you would get a better response.
All teir mobile games work this.
If you take a look at the forums of their Dragon Age non-game and do the math you will find that people are expected to sink hundreds of dollars into this thing.
Same goes for the Plants versus Zombies game.
In some cases people are even bragging about how much money they spend.
The EA Dungeon Keeper doesn't nickel and dime you to death. It does so by the Dollar. And if you do the math then the following is much cheaper:
-head over to GOG and get the first Dungeon Keeper
-install DosBox on your tablet
-get a Bluetooth mouse
And you will even get a proper game. Not only has EA included those rocks that either take 24h or money to dig through. The imps don't pick up gold. You are expected to pick it up yourself. Which means you basically have to babysit DungeonKeeperVille. I haven't spent more time with that game but that was the most obvious.
The amount of money EA wants from you for their mobile games WILL call legislators to action. Especially the Dragon Age thing might fall afoul of a couple of anti-gambling rules. Just wait for games like Hearthstone that get the f2p model right to be caught in the crossfire.
EA on mobile is pure sleaze.
On the bright side this whole mess inspired me to replay DK2. Apart from the wide screen issues the visuals of that game have kept up marvellously this last decade. And there still is the War for the Overworld which seems to be a proper DK sequel.
20 minutes into the future
That's for excavating tiles (not building rooms), and it's only one type of tile (the other two taking 4 hours and 3 seconds, respectively). It's still egregious, but it's not as extreme as you make it out to be.
I'm at level 3 now, and the longest construction I've seen is 6 hours. It might take weeks at some point along the line (endgame etc.), but it's certainly not something you run into as soon as you start the game.
Clash of Clans does the exact same thing.
Yes, the nagging about payments is annoying. Yes, they've essentially desecrated the good name this franchise has. But at least criticize it for the right things, instead of skimming articles based on it.
Is that per-block? If it's the same as the older games, I expect the smallest useful room size is 3x3, so you need to mine at least ten blocks to make a room (including the access corridoor. The slowest single-block mining is 24h. So it's quite possible for a single room to take upwards of a week.
I've noticed that Slashdot admins have been using their unlimited mod points to deep-six anti-Beta posts into moderation oblivion, as well, not to mention all the anti-Beta "Anon Cowards" that they simply delete...
Tinfoil hat, much? I mod down all the Fuck Beta comments as off-topic, because they are fucking off-topic. All the stupid Fuck Beta topics are ruining slashdot much more than Beta.
It isn't a matter of supporting Beta. It's a matter of not supporting people who can't stop shouting just because they don't get their way.
The signal to noise ratio was much better back then and the people seemed to be friendlier and more civilized. It was a different crowd of geeks, most of which were interested in free software and Linux. Now we have a mainstream crowd looking for mainstream crap on what used to be a really cool fringe tech site. The moderation system needs to be updated to handle the new crowd of newbies who have difficulty creating arguments and who make statements just to please the hive. As control was taken away from Rob Malda, the site suffered. I don't think Dice knows what to do. There's still some great comments here so I'm sticking around but once the intelligent crowd leaves, so will I.
ayottesoftware.com
the jokes on you he was just PRETENDING to be retarded.
I wasn't gonna hop in anymore bitch threads...but...
Would you guys saying it isn't too bad please expand on OS and browser choices when you say that.
Obviously, you not stuck on XP/IE8. I'd like to see what I can get by with and see if it is doable here at work.
I can't even read the 1st three articles, the others are 2 pages each just for a pic and summary and there are NO menu buttons.
It is faster however. Good thing if you have to scroll 4 times as much. Current one is a dog to scroll and type comments(quit refreshing in the middle of a sentence) on an underpowered XP rig. Pretty much the only site that is this slow. Something they did last? year really choked it.
It is however completely unuseable for me atm.
OT: Why should Amanda Knox be freed? She's been found guilty (again) and there doesn't appear to be any real accusations of any level of incompetence or corruption on the part of the Italian courts. Just curious is all.
Account abandoned. I can't fucking spell for shit and Slashdot doesn't even allow time-limited edits of posts. Plus you'
you should write an app that encapsulates all this HOSTS stuff in a way that is accessible for more people, and throw a GUI on it for some UI/UX. If this were open source I think it would fill an important niche considering that ADBLOCK was purchased, although I don't know about ghostery.
OK, thanks for that. I admit my knowledge of the case is a little lacking so I like reading up when people want to make a point.
Account abandoned. I can't fucking spell for shit and Slashdot doesn't even allow time-limited edits of posts. Plus you'
So it is only wrong in this context as /. and beta have the same IP? :)
I assumed there was a something fundamental about host files which I did not grasp
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Even a large Slashdot discussion is just a few hundred kilobytes, or about the size of one small image. So no, that explanation does not make sense, especially once you factor in the size of the Javascript itself.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
This time, Google Play Store is to blame in here and not EA. EA wants feedback and they have it. unfortunately, it seems the play store wont record the rating under 4. Google isn't monitoring their rating system at all in this since they should make sure users know the hard truth about a platform availability of apps and games as they make it available. They release it they are responsible for it. If they let EA mess around with the rating system its both EA and Googles problems.
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
It's a scam EA uses on their game to force people to leave a 5 star rating. The amount of taps or effort to use a lower score is enormous compared to the usualy non-scam way to do it. EA's method is perfect to leave a 5 star or email the company. It's legal but its morally FUCKING WRONG
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let