From the pictures I've seen so far on Jalopnik, the fire was all in the front end of the car, and the FD had to rip open the front end of the car to access the area that was on fire. The lithium batteries are in the bottom center of the car. What's in the front? The 12 volt accessory battery. Either way, pouring water on an electrical fire with either battery chemistry involved is genius. (Flooding it with a LOT of water apparently does work though.)
I have a dead Mac Portable, but I'm pretty sure they're not quite rare enough for a dozen computer museums to care about a dead one. Those things won't even charge the battery if the computer was turned on, and require a charged battery to turn on, which makes them a real pain to fix.
But I also have a slightly screen damaged 2nd gen MacBook Pro (the first Core2Duo model), so I'm planning to mod its motherboard into the Mac Portable case. I just need to find a 7" widescreen display (yes, the Mac Portable had a wide-screen display!) and the result should be pretty awesome. I've been meaning to hit up Fry's to look for a suitable screen. I even have an ADB to USB adapter handy so that I can re-use the keyboard and trackball.
Now if only I could figure out how to remove the (intentionally removable!) keyboard and trackball from that thing.
What's wirth the G+ style 'magic bar that comes and goes at the top as you tr and scroll' thing? That's damned annoying..
But those floating bars are ALL the rage nowadays!
They only do two things:
* stroke the site-owner's ego by plastering HERE IS MY LOGO at the top of the page (real fun when trying to read at work!
* they make it so when you use the PgUp/PgDn buttons on your keyboard, you miss content because the web browser scrolls the entire area, including what is hidden by the float bar.
There is nothing useful on those float bars (any of them, not just this one) that I need so badly that I can't just scroll to the top of the page for.
What's next? Flyouts at the bottom of the page HEY READ THIS ARTICLE TOO!
Apparently it really works now. Yes, there does seem to be an incredibly small whitelist that only includes Latin-1 characters, but previously (at least up to a few months ago), a Unicode character (like the UK Pounds Sterling sign or smart quotes) would also include some other junk characters along next to it.
And stop doing icons in fonts like Gawker. I noticed this in the vote up/down buttons of a firehose article viewed with the beta interface. Just because Gawker does it doesn't mean it's a good thing to do. I have my browser set to not allow web sites to change fonts because most of them make BAD choices of fonts, so all that shows up is the Mozilla missing character box with a hex code in it.
Without even the basic message threading functionality like that which makes Slashdot what it is, how can they call this a "beta" with a straight face? It's not even alpha quality as far as actual features are concerned.
This. A thousand times this. The font size I set in my browser is the size I want to read text at. If you want other text to be bigger, MAKE IT BIGGER DON'T MAKE BODY TEXT SMALLER.
Great. It only took a decade to get/. to post Latin-1 characters without them turning into mojibake. I think their whitelist is still a bit too small, but it has finally achieved a minimum acceptable level of Unicode support while still preventing people from using it to post ASCII art.
The Japanese text and a few random naked diacritical marks disappeared (I just held down the option key and spammed a few letters), but it seems to at least not break Latin-1 characters. So how about smart quotes? “‘‘“
If you have a decent browser, go into font configuration and check/uncheck the box that denies web sites the ability to change fonts. Then find a decent font (I use Lucida Grande) and make that your browser's font. This will break icon fonts on Gawker sites, but who the fuck cares?
FYI, the most recent main page redesign has made Jalopnik somewhat less sucky. Also the comments section is now barely tolerable again (that horizontally scrolling bullshit is gone, and it's much more like the two-column comments they had for a while, only with end-of-page insertion instead of having to click a button. But I only read, not post, so I don't know how bad posting comments may still be.
This is clearly stupid and contrary to the entire purpose of a website- to let people READ your content.
You almost but not quite got it there. On most web sites, the content is the article. Comments are there just to let people whine about how it's Obamas fault, or post "I LUVZ BEIBER", so who gives a fuck if they're 85% gray text on 15% gray background at 85% font size?
Slashdot is basically a link aggregator site, so the "article" (aka The Fine Summary) isn't the "hero", it's the headlines and the comments. And whoever did the redesign apparently doesn't comprehend that basic fact.
The comment system on Slashdot is all about making it efficient to read a buttload of comments, and previous redesigns have been evolutionary, so they've managed to keep that basic function.
The new redesign is all about Web 3.0 wanking, not about usability. It's basically a bunch of egotistical snotty web desiiiiiigner cum squirted all over the page.
I told Seamonkey to use Lucida Grande as my sans-serif font and un-checked "Allow documents to use other fonts". It breaks the silly icon fonts that Gawker sites use, but fuck them.
Ditto in current Seamonkey. I think it's a relatively recent update to what browsers do to layouts when you zoom in. I've seen it working on a lot of sites with stupid sidebars. It still doesn't make sidebars a sensible thing to do.
So the important question is: why does nearly every other web site in the world look like what this "beta" is trying to be?
Answer: Because most of them are article-centric. The primary objective of the site is the well-written (we hope) articles.
Question: Where do Slashdot's "articles" come from? First, what is an article in the context of Slashdot? It's the summary. So back to where they come from: it's usually written by the article submitter, and slightly touched up by the "editors", who generally do a crappy job of taking 30 seconds to find misspellings and broken links. So in other words, slashdot's main attraction is not the "articles".
So if an article on Slashdot is just a quick summary, what's the most important part? It's what the article summarizes, which is almost always a link. So in that sense, Slashdot is link-centric. You just want a quick "why should I click this link" and that's it, with a bunch of links. Maybe a little icon for a category, and that's it. Another link-centric site was Digg, and look what happened when they forgot that.
But the other reason to read Slashdot is to see everybody's opinion on what is being linked to. The link is there to show us what we're going to comment on, then we read the comments. What other Slashdot users are saying is the content that people come here for. So Slashdot is also a comment-centric site, even more so than being a link-centric site. Another comment-centric site is 4chan, and I'll bet whoever did the redesign has never gone there. Go there and what do you see? Sidebars? Gigantic images starting every thread? Nope. You see a lot of comments, most of which have a small image next to them. Important here is that you see a lot of comments, without a bunch of stupid "hero" images between them wasting vertical space, and without a bunch of stupid sidebars (WTF do I care about "this day in Slashdot history?") wasting horizontal space.
So basically we have a web site which is link-centric and comment-centric, and someone is trying to redesign it as article-centric, without the article quality of a typical news site, much less an Ars Technica multi-page review.
This might be fine for the "topics" sub-sites (like SlashBI) that nobody reads anyhow, but It's. Not. Slashdot.
(And quit trying to force us to read SlashBI! It's not covering stuff that the Slashdot audience is interested in! It would do better if you simply put it on its own domain instead of being a sub-domain of Slashdot!)
Result: square peg in round hole plus bigger hammer = broken hole FAIL
Slashdot Mirror
"Ehhhhhh... cock's up, Doc!"
From the pictures I've seen so far on Jalopnik, the fire was all in the front end of the car, and the FD had to rip open the front end of the car to access the area that was on fire. The lithium batteries are in the bottom center of the car. What's in the front? The 12 volt accessory battery. Either way, pouring water on an electrical fire with either battery chemistry involved is genius. (Flooding it with a LOT of water apparently does work though.)
...and when winter comes, all the gorillas simply die off.
I have a dead Mac Portable, but I'm pretty sure they're not quite rare enough for a dozen computer museums to care about a dead one. Those things won't even charge the battery if the computer was turned on, and require a charged battery to turn on, which makes them a real pain to fix.
But I also have a slightly screen damaged 2nd gen MacBook Pro (the first Core2Duo model), so I'm planning to mod its motherboard into the Mac Portable case. I just need to find a 7" widescreen display (yes, the Mac Portable had a wide-screen display!) and the result should be pretty awesome. I've been meaning to hit up Fry's to look for a suitable screen. I even have an ADB to USB adapter handy so that I can re-use the keyboard and trackball.
Now if only I could figure out how to remove the (intentionally removable!) keyboard and trackball from that thing.
Slashdot/Dice plans to use this to get everyone to like the new re-design.
Fourth, be sure to say "I know I'll get modded down for this, but..."
This new system could be a real phase transition in the market.
What's wirth the G+ style 'magic bar that comes and goes at the top as you tr and scroll' thing? That's damned annoying..
But those floating bars are ALL the rage nowadays!
They only do two things:
* stroke the site-owner's ego by plastering HERE IS MY LOGO at the top of the page (real fun when trying to read at work!
* they make it so when you use the PgUp/PgDn buttons on your keyboard, you miss content because the web browser scrolls the entire area, including what is hidden by the float bar.
There is nothing useful on those float bars (any of them, not just this one) that I need so badly that I can't just scroll to the top of the page for.
What's next? Flyouts at the bottom of the page HEY READ THIS ARTICLE TOO!
If a blacklist were used, vandals would start using line drawing and dingbats characters instead.
FTFY
I think you're referring to so-called "smart quotes", and they actually work now.
Just in time for this new monstrosity to go live and everybody leaves. Last guy out can just let Soulskill turn the lights off.
Apparently it really works now. Yes, there does seem to be an incredibly small whitelist that only includes Latin-1 characters, but previously (at least up to a few months ago), a Unicode character (like the UK Pounds Sterling sign or smart quotes) would also include some other junk characters along next to it.
Here you go!
And stop doing icons in fonts like Gawker. I noticed this in the vote up/down buttons of a firehose article viewed with the beta interface. Just because Gawker does it doesn't mean it's a good thing to do. I have my browser set to not allow web sites to change fonts because most of them make BAD choices of fonts, so all that shows up is the Mozilla missing character box with a hex code in it.
Without even the basic message threading functionality like that which makes Slashdot what it is, how can they call this a "beta" with a straight face? It's not even alpha quality as far as actual features are concerned.
This. A thousand times this. The font size I set in my browser is the size I want to read text at. If you want other text to be bigger, MAKE IT BIGGER DON'T MAKE BODY TEXT SMALLER.
Great. It only took a decade to get /. to post Latin-1 characters without them turning into mojibake. I think their whitelist is still a bit too small, but it has finally achieved a minimum acceptable level of Unicode support while still preventing people from using it to post ASCII art.
The Japanese text and a few random naked diacritical marks disappeared (I just held down the option key and spammed a few letters), but it seems to at least not break Latin-1 characters. So how about smart quotes? “‘‘“
I'm seeing broken UL tags (no bullets) even on the regular site, and I'm seeing a couple of instances of non-broken unicode, so it's time for a test:
®¥ø íîïì £999.99
Hmm, a few of them disappear in preview, so maybe there's some white-listing of code ranges, but it looks good. Time to hit submit.
If you have a decent browser, go into font configuration and check/uncheck the box that denies web sites the ability to change fonts. Then find a decent font (I use Lucida Grande) and make that your browser's font. This will break icon fonts on Gawker sites, but who the fuck cares?
That's a Gawker site, isn't it? They're all terrible to read in exactly the same way. And whoever did this redesign apparently has a hard-on for them.
FYI, the most recent main page redesign has made Jalopnik somewhat less sucky. Also the comments section is now barely tolerable again (that horizontally scrolling bullshit is gone, and it's much more like the two-column comments they had for a while, only with end-of-page insertion instead of having to click a button. But I only read, not post, so I don't know how bad posting comments may still be.
This is clearly stupid and contrary to the entire purpose of a website- to let people READ your content.
You almost but not quite got it there. On most web sites, the content is the article. Comments are there just to let people whine about how it's Obamas fault, or post "I LUVZ BEIBER", so who gives a fuck if they're 85% gray text on 15% gray background at 85% font size?
Slashdot is basically a link aggregator site, so the "article" (aka The Fine Summary) isn't the "hero", it's the headlines and the comments. And whoever did the redesign apparently doesn't comprehend that basic fact.
The comment system on Slashdot is all about making it efficient to read a buttload of comments, and previous redesigns have been evolutionary, so they've managed to keep that basic function.
The new redesign is all about Web 3.0 wanking, not about usability. It's basically a bunch of egotistical snotty web desiiiiiigner cum squirted all over the page.
Don't change the font.
I told Seamonkey to use Lucida Grande as my sans-serif font and un-checked "Allow documents to use other fonts". It breaks the silly icon fonts that Gawker sites use, but fuck them.
Ditto in current Seamonkey. I think it's a relatively recent update to what browsers do to layouts when you zoom in. I've seen it working on a lot of sites with stupid sidebars. It still doesn't make sidebars a sensible thing to do.
So the important question is: why does nearly every other web site in the world look like what this "beta" is trying to be?
Answer: Because most of them are article-centric. The primary objective of the site is the well-written (we hope) articles.
Question: Where do Slashdot's "articles" come from? First, what is an article in the context of Slashdot? It's the summary. So back to where they come from: it's usually written by the article submitter, and slightly touched up by the "editors", who generally do a crappy job of taking 30 seconds to find misspellings and broken links. So in other words, slashdot's main attraction is not the "articles".
So if an article on Slashdot is just a quick summary, what's the most important part? It's what the article summarizes, which is almost always a link. So in that sense, Slashdot is link-centric. You just want a quick "why should I click this link" and that's it, with a bunch of links. Maybe a little icon for a category, and that's it. Another link-centric site was Digg, and look what happened when they forgot that.
But the other reason to read Slashdot is to see everybody's opinion on what is being linked to. The link is there to show us what we're going to comment on, then we read the comments. What other Slashdot users are saying is the content that people come here for. So Slashdot is also a comment-centric site, even more so than being a link-centric site. Another comment-centric site is 4chan, and I'll bet whoever did the redesign has never gone there. Go there and what do you see? Sidebars? Gigantic images starting every thread? Nope. You see a lot of comments, most of which have a small image next to them. Important here is that you see a lot of comments, without a bunch of stupid "hero" images between them wasting vertical space, and without a bunch of stupid sidebars (WTF do I care about "this day in Slashdot history?") wasting horizontal space.
So basically we have a web site which is link-centric and comment-centric, and someone is trying to redesign it as article-centric, without the article quality of a typical news site, much less an Ars Technica multi-page review.
This might be fine for the "topics" sub-sites (like SlashBI) that nobody reads anyhow, but It's. Not. Slashdot.
(And quit trying to force us to read SlashBI! It's not covering stuff that the Slashdot audience is interested in! It would do better if you simply put it on its own domain instead of being a sub-domain of Slashdot!)
Result: square peg in round hole plus bigger hammer = broken hole FAIL