That has to be the most reasonable explanation of this Beta stuff I've heard yet. The redesign has been a mystery to me -- why do it in the first place? Why design it along the lines of what the beta shows, when it's clearly and obviously not going to appeal to the/. community? Then, why be so insistent about it when the complaints come?
Your explanation -- that they want to ditch the existing community and replace it with a dumber crowd -- answers all of these questions very well.
There are MANY reasons to hate the beta but using Javascript is not one of them.
I disagree. Javascript tends to be a Bad Thing in general, which is why I use NoScript to block it out. I tend to avoid websites that don't function without it. Almost without exception, they're slow and full of shiny doodads and crap that just get in the way of enjoying what the site has to offer.
I don't read Slashdot because of the stories, really. I read Slashdot for the conversation about the stories. We are not an "audience," we are participants. Without the commenters there's be no reason at all to come to Slashdot.
In my experience, Firefox and IE 10 are roughly comparable. But I'm not that speed sensitive -- if the page loads in under a second or two, I'm good, and I couldn't care less if a different browser is a fraction of a second longer. All the browsers that I've tried can do that.
I'm with you. I don't like this trend towards "streamlining" everything, and I don't like IE10. Give me menus, status bars attached to the windows frame, etc. I have a big multi-monitor setup, I can handle it.
Unfortunately, at work, I have to use three different browsers: Chrome, IE, and Firefox, in order to be able to use all the sites I need to use. A single browser cannot run all the sites correctly. We've come full circle to the bad old days! At home, I just use IceWeasel and don't go to sites that don't work on it.
I'm not a web designer, so I can't speak to the technical pros and cons of CSS regions -- but if this results in fewer web sites flowing an articles text over multiple columns magazine/newspaper-style, then I'm all for it. I hate it when websites do that.
"You're supposed to carry them around in your pocket and use them when you're not at a desk. Why would anyone in their right mind want a USB port and RJ45 port on a 7" tablet?"
Why wouldn't they?? Even my smartphone has a usb connector, and I use it all the time. I certainly wouldn't be interested in a tablet that lacked one.
"To be fair, the linux touch-screen interfaces don't belong on a PC any more than windows 8."
I was actually surprised that Microsoft didn't learn from what happened in the Linux world when the major desktops went this way, and tried it anyway. The problem is that the idea is inherently flawed. The different platforms require different UIs. To make them all the same is like making an amphibious car: sure, it can be done, but it's not going to be the best car or the best boat.
The Start Screen is, simply, the worst possible UI design I could think up while keeping it still technically usable.
Fitting more shortcuts on the screen at once isn't a good thing. It just increases the clutter.
Drilling through folders is a good thing. It lets you keep less frequently used stuff out of the way, but still easy to find when you need to find it. (And don't say you can just start typing the name of the program you want instead of drilling down. I don't know the name of every program I rarely use, so I'll still be hunting, but in a more difficult way.)
Take advantage of the whole screen is a bad thing. It breaks my mental continuity and flow every single time. I don't want to switch completely away from the desktop to perform an operation on the desktop. That makes no sense at all.
The Start Screen is 1/3 of what makes me hate Windows 8 (which I've been using daily for over a year now). Another third is the "hot areas" you hover your mouse over, and the last third is those damned charms.
The problems with Windwos 8 are all centered around trying to make it both a desktop and a tablet interface. Those two are very, very different use cases and trying to cover them both in a single UI is guaranteed to make that UI suck in one case or the other (or both).
Tablets are fine as a media consumption device, and for many (most?) people, that's all they need. But once you add everything you need to be truly useful (keyboard & mouse + maybe more local storage), you have a notebook in a much less convenient form.
This is exactly right, and those kinds of geeks are not "good" geeks. They are a kind of evil themselves.
Your rocket scientist reference is both correct and a good example of that: Oppenheimer famously replied to someone asking if he was bothered by the fact that his work was being used to kill lots of innocent people and his response was that his only worry was getting them to go up. It was someone else's job to worry about where they come down.
I wouldn't characterize the NSA as "good guys", but ignoring that for the sake of argument...
If you really have to do general harm to listen in to the bad guys, then the solution is to give up on the notion of listening to them in that way. It makes the job harder, and that sucks for them, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
This is no different than a clerk waling up to people in different demographics and pointing out different sales that may interest them. That it is done by computer rather than a person is irrelevant.
I think it's highly relevant for a bunch of reasons, but skipping past that: I refuse to shop anywhere that is as intrusive as that. I don't want anyone walking up to me and pointing out different sales that "may interest me", whether it's by a computer or not.
How does confirming the attribute of humanity not qualify as authentication?
Because "authentication" is a term of art that specifically means "proving you are the specific person you say you are". Proving that someone is a human is not proving which specific human they are, and so it is not authentication.
As for the meters, that is just for a pilot program the real program will not use that, it will use odometer checks.
If that's true, that's a sea change from what they've been proposing since the first pilot program in 2004. Using GPS to track miles driven in-state has always been part of plan. It's not just for the testing programs. Google news archives for copious commentary and debate on this going back a decade.
However, us Oregonians who have been following this push for years know that GPS tracking of every vehicle is overtly part of the plan. This is not inference, this is consistently represented by politicians as being an essential and non-negotiable part of the whole scheme. It's also the reason people hate the idea. If they got rid of the GPS part, almost nobody would really care.
As a software engineer working on a large consumer product, I can attest that every single line of code coming from our team goes through code review. It does increase short term costs a bit (but not prohibitively), but results in great net savings over the long haul as most defects are found before shipping, when code fixes are cheap. Finding and fixing the same defects after shipping is horrendously expensive and results in angry customers.
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That has to be the most reasonable explanation of this Beta stuff I've heard yet. The redesign has been a mystery to me -- why do it in the first place? Why design it along the lines of what the beta shows, when it's clearly and obviously not going to appeal to the /. community? Then, why be so insistent about it when the complaints come?
Your explanation -- that they want to ditch the existing community and replace it with a dumber crowd -- answers all of these questions very well.
There are MANY reasons to hate the beta but using Javascript is not one of them.
I disagree. Javascript tends to be a Bad Thing in general, which is why I use NoScript to block it out. I tend to avoid websites that don't function without it. Almost without exception, they're slow and full of shiny doodads and crap that just get in the way of enjoying what the site has to offer.
Hell yes. Right on the money.
I don't read Slashdot because of the stories, really. I read Slashdot for the conversation about the stories. We are not an "audience," we are participants. Without the commenters there's be no reason at all to come to Slashdot.
The fewer browsers that support HTML 5 the better, in my opinion.
In my experience, Firefox and IE 10 are roughly comparable. But I'm not that speed sensitive -- if the page loads in under a second or two, I'm good, and I couldn't care less if a different browser is a fraction of a second longer. All the browsers that I've tried can do that.
I'm with you. I don't like this trend towards "streamlining" everything, and I don't like IE10. Give me menus, status bars attached to the windows frame, etc. I have a big multi-monitor setup, I can handle it.
Unfortunately, at work, I have to use three different browsers: Chrome, IE, and Firefox, in order to be able to use all the sites I need to use. A single browser cannot run all the sites correctly. We've come full circle to the bad old days! At home, I just use IceWeasel and don't go to sites that don't work on it.
I'm not a web designer, so I can't speak to the technical pros and cons of CSS regions -- but if this results in fewer web sites flowing an articles text over multiple columns magazine/newspaper-style, then I'm all for it. I hate it when websites do that.
Yes, there are performance improvement over 7 -- but the improvements aren't that great. Certainly not enough to overcome the UI issues.
"You're supposed to carry them around in your pocket and use them when you're not at a desk. Why would anyone in their right mind want a USB port and RJ45 port on a 7" tablet?"
Why wouldn't they?? Even my smartphone has a usb connector, and I use it all the time. I certainly wouldn't be interested in a tablet that lacked one.
"To be fair, the linux touch-screen interfaces don't belong on a PC any more than windows 8."
I was actually surprised that Microsoft didn't learn from what happened in the Linux world when the major desktops went this way, and tried it anyway. The problem is that the idea is inherently flawed. The different platforms require different UIs. To make them all the same is like making an amphibious car: sure, it can be done, but it's not going to be the best car or the best boat.
Or not using Windows 8 at all. It's not like there aren't alternatives that are at least just as good.
The Start Screen is, simply, the worst possible UI design I could think up while keeping it still technically usable.
Fitting more shortcuts on the screen at once isn't a good thing. It just increases the clutter.
Drilling through folders is a good thing. It lets you keep less frequently used stuff out of the way, but still easy to find when you need to find it. (And don't say you can just start typing the name of the program you want instead of drilling down. I don't know the name of every program I rarely use, so I'll still be hunting, but in a more difficult way.)
Take advantage of the whole screen is a bad thing. It breaks my mental continuity and flow every single time. I don't want to switch completely away from the desktop to perform an operation on the desktop. That makes no sense at all.
The Start Screen is 1/3 of what makes me hate Windows 8 (which I've been using daily for over a year now). Another third is the "hot areas" you hover your mouse over, and the last third is those damned charms.
The problems with Windwos 8 are all centered around trying to make it both a desktop and a tablet interface. Those two are very, very different use cases and trying to cover them both in a single UI is guaranteed to make that UI suck in one case or the other (or both).
Tablets are fine as a media consumption device, and for many (most?) people, that's all they need. But once you add everything you need to be truly useful (keyboard & mouse + maybe more local storage), you have a notebook in a much less convenient form.
Ambivalence can be the most destructive form of evil.
This is exactly right, and those kinds of geeks are not "good" geeks. They are a kind of evil themselves.
Your rocket scientist reference is both correct and a good example of that: Oppenheimer famously replied to someone asking if he was bothered by the fact that his work was being used to kill lots of innocent people and his response was that his only worry was getting them to go up. It was someone else's job to worry about where they come down.
That's pure evil, right there.
We are what we do. The NSA is doing evil, regardless of what their intentions are.
In the context of the NSA's activities, my answer is "the fourth amendment."
I wouldn't characterize the NSA as "good guys", but ignoring that for the sake of argument...
If you really have to do general harm to listen in to the bad guys, then the solution is to give up on the notion of listening to them in that way. It makes the job harder, and that sucks for them, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
This is no different than a clerk waling up to people in different demographics and pointing out different sales that may interest them. That it is done by computer rather than a person is irrelevant.
I think it's highly relevant for a bunch of reasons, but skipping past that: I refuse to shop anywhere that is as intrusive as that. I don't want anyone walking up to me and pointing out different sales that "may interest me", whether it's by a computer or not.
How does confirming the attribute of humanity not qualify as authentication?
Because "authentication" is a term of art that specifically means "proving you are the specific person you say you are". Proving that someone is a human is not proving which specific human they are, and so it is not authentication.
As for the meters, that is just for a pilot program the real program will not use that, it will use odometer checks.
If that's true, that's a sea change from what they've been proposing since the first pilot program in 2004. Using GPS to track miles driven in-state has always been part of plan. It's not just for the testing programs. Google news archives for copious commentary and debate on this going back a decade.
However, us Oregonians who have been following this push for years know that GPS tracking of every vehicle is overtly part of the plan. This is not inference, this is consistently represented by politicians as being an essential and non-negotiable part of the whole scheme. It's also the reason people hate the idea. If they got rid of the GPS part, almost nobody would really care.
Cars are renewed every 2 years in Oregon and I suspect a lot of cars change hands during a 2 year period. Who ends up being responsible for the tax?
Just for completeness, Oregon allows for registering cars for periods longer than 2 years. 2 years is just the most common.
I don't know how titles work in Oregon, but I have to report the current odometer reading when I sell a car in California.
Oregon only requires this for cars that are 10 years old or younger.
This is my experience, too: on multiple laptops, Linux has better battery life than Windows.
As a software engineer working on a large consumer product, I can attest that every single line of code coming from our team goes through code review. It does increase short term costs a bit (but not prohibitively), but results in great net savings over the long haul as most defects are found before shipping, when code fixes are cheap. Finding and fixing the same defects after shipping is horrendously expensive and results in angry customers.