- My sentiment also. In particular, the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission operates its own illegal "police force" to prevent entrepreneurs from competing with medallion cabs. It has been known to illegally kidnap people who drop off their spouses at JFK or LaGuardia, accusing them of operating a taxi service.
Note my corrections. You are going to have to cite some serious evidence of your claims because your tinfoil hat...or Uber shilling...post is pretty outlandish.
While true they have come in the way of updates that can be uninstalled: https://gist.github.com/xvitaly/eafa75ed2cb79b3bd4e9
Further Win 7 does not include any of the Win 8 UI elements. Trying to mash a touchscreen UI onto a desktop OS. As well as since you don't have the "tile" elements you are not being served ads nativly on your desktop or start menu. (They did sneak the Win 10 upgrade ad into the Systray but since there is no MS Edge for Win 7 you don't see the ads that pop up there on Win 7.)
Win 7 does offer control on how your updates are done. Not a native option for non-enterprise Win 10 users.
Finally I've yet to see any real hardware issues with Win 7 that this blog post purports. The very closest thing that I will say is that there are some new Win 8+ kernel SSD bits of functionality that you can't get with Win 7 at all. However those bits of functionality are not a dealbreaker to me, an avid SSD user, by any means.
I've got uBlock as an extension for my tablet's Mobile Firefox install. It works preventing ads. However the performance hit is pretty steep compared to the native YouTube app.
Also I've not seen many people mention that streaming services, for me mainly Twitch, is a thing now? For me I use both with regularity. Seems pretty obvious that if the live streaming services like Twitch gaining market share that will eat into YouTube.
Overall I view that as a good thing. We need less monopolies in the computer world.
Ok, sounds like you addressed the usability, logistical, and other tech issues about Win10 at your place of business.
However you did leave out the elephant in the room aka "Telemetry" and its related security issues. That kinda is a big thing and I guess you and those in charge just view it as a non-issue?
If it were not for dirty tricks like forced telemetry, a forced touchscreen UI on a desktop OS, and the removal of tools/applications in Windows (Media Center and the backup that they later did put back in just off the top of my head.) people would move to a new version of a Windows OS without the need to pull the Windows 10 level shenanigans.
Windows Vista was even poised to be another success for MS but they botched that up so people stuck with XP. The idea that people want to stay with an older OS is only because MS has had such a terrible track record. Release a solid desktop OS for desktops and it will be used. Release garbage and duh, people are going to stick with the older version that is proven.
Someone upvote the AC to let the lofty 4 digit UID guy know that he needs to take a refresher course in digit counting.
I want to 2nd that/. has always had some fluff as its content. And props to wannabe to remind us of when K5 existed and was the answer to/. "going soft".
It could very well be a slow tech news day. Talking about how marking droids, or trashing them if you so prefer, is a time honored tradition so why not have a thread about it.
The most annoying thing about Windows is there is a ton of places where program data can be stored: The program's own directory (Program Files, Program Files (x86, and of course if you or the program is installed somewhere else), some place in the My Documents folder and variations on that same theme like My Games, in the User App Data folder, or even just in the User directory (I'm looking at you VirtualBox!).
And even if you happen to track down all of the program data files there is a high likelihood that some of your program settings were stored in the registry anyway so you are just going to lose those.
I've gotten it down to a science for my Windows reinstalls but it takes some doing.
The biggest issue is not the draw from the 6 pin connector from the PSU, rather the draw from the PCIe slot.
That draw is regulated by the motherboard and that is not a given that the mobo will not just roll over and die and maybe take some other system components with it along the way.
Heck if the mobo dies and you still even have the RAM and CPU surviving who knows if you can find a replacement for that CPU. Most times when my mobos have kicked it I've just gone ahead and upgraded my system.
Maybe that is AMD's master plan! We'll design a card that looks to kill motherboards and that way people will be buying more of our CPUs! (Evil Mr. Burns finger steeple.)
The best part of modern "support" is that it is a thinly veiled front for their sales pitches. Calling in to your cable company because your modem keeps rebooting? Well that is great lets troubleshoot that and while I'm at it did you know that we have a special on our internet speed upgrade!?
I once spent no less than 20m on the phone with my then cell phone carrier trying to reduce my total phone setup down from 3 lines to 2. There was no change go anything else, even the price, because the plan provided for 2 to 4 phones with shared mins. So it was not like I was even going to be giving them less money, but I'm damn sure that poor rep knew that their real metrics (not customer satisfaction but their sales numbers) would reflect that for my call I was going down a line.
Here is a list of what a current CSR job would like you to have:
High School diploma or equivalent is required.
Experience with computers, keyboarding is required
Minimum 2 years of Customer service experience is preferred
Minimum 2 years of sales experience is preferred
Minimum 1 year of inbound call center experience is preferred
Minimum 1 year experience in the hospitality industry a plus
Demonstrated excellent verbal and written communication skills along with basic practical math, reading and comprehension abilities
Ability to work a flexible schedule, including nights and weekends
Two years of sales experience. It took me all of 5m to find a job listing like that and there are plenty of them out there. And these people are the gatekeepers and support agents that you have to get past to get any real support.
Cars are not routers. Trucks are not CPUs. I can't run over someone with my overclocked desktop. I can't go at such an unsafe speed that I lose control and crash into others with my modified router.
Your analogy is wrong. We treat vehicles very differently because of what they can do. "We" the Slashdot crowd that understand that are not opposed to modifying things that can't go at speeds that can kill someone if operated wrongly. "We" instead understand that vehicles are something that need to be well regulated due to their nature.
But this also creates the Problems with the Trumps and Sandars who are focused on particular issues and not the general complexities of running a government.
You almost had a good comment there until that part where your really went off the rails. One of those two people has never held public office. The other was a mayor, a US Congressman, and a US Senator. Likely knowing more about the general complexities about running a government more than you ever will.
However you did do a good job in showing that your point, up until your own personal bias slipped in, about how trust in reporting can be very tricky. And when we are are on Social Media, which I suppose we can classify/. into these days, it gets even more so. We get people like yourself who mix in their own opinions with the facts and because there is some truth to the totality of what is said the whole thing can be viewed as acceptable.
Local data in the very real sense of keeping your personal data to yourself is a thing. Do I need to go on an NSA rant about how anything you transmit over the internet is compromised?
Further local data is just that local. If they go offline they have their backups right there. They don't have to worry about going online to put their data back in place. They can do it offline if needed.
I understand your arguments for server (cloud) data and have no problem with using server storage when it is appropriate. But we have the ability to have large amounts of data at our local fingertips. Why would I want to give it away when my 1st point is very real? If you could say that the NSA, and all other bodies, were not there then you might have a case. However you do not. The NSA and all the other things are snooping on your data right now. Thank you no.
Here is what you can do for now. Run Win7. It is a perfectly fine OS. Yes MS has packported the spyware, aka "telemetry", to the system and how do you fix that? You manually monitor your system(s) for what updates are on them. Use this script: wmic qfe get >C:\updates.txt
Run that batch file as admin and then search for KB3035583 (the Win10 installer) and KB3021917 (spyware) and if they are there remove them.
Is this annoying and bad? Yes. Is it doable on a large scale where you have to admin hundreds or thousands of machines? Likely not. But if you just need your own personal machine that runs a stable Win64 OS then Win7 still is a decent system and you can fix it to run just fine.
Let us all stop freaking out until we see how this shakes down after Win10 goes "not free" and see if Redmond has another epiphany like they did after Vista and releases a real OS again.
The main reason they don't want to talk about it is because they keep wanting every end user to believe that "the cloud" is some sort of mythical thing. That it will always be there to have their data and that they should pay their monthly subs to have that privilege.
Of course in reality we IT professionals know that "the cloud" is nothing new and not even remotely secure. Local data is always better than remote data and we have the tools to make that a very secure platform for end users. However that is just a one time cost and well...we can't have that now can we Win10?
As someone who has worked in F&B, that is Food and Beverage for those of you who have never been a part of the Hospitality industry, I've thought about robots in the workplace for a long time. And by a long time I mean going back to when I was reading sci-fi by Harry Harrison who wrote about such places that were purely staffed by robots.
Knowing the nuances of F&B I honestly question that any of the robots that we have these days could replace a human worker. That is just because you see a "robot" that is able to flip some burgers is doing it's thing over and over and over but can it go to the back of the shop to get the frozen burgers out of the freezer? Can it clean up the burger that fell on the ground (oh it will happen) and is starting to stink? Can it do any of the other jobs that it has not been designed for?
There likely will be a point, very likely in my lifetime, that we have robots that are sophisticated enough to replace low level workers. That time is not yet. For right now my burgers are going to be made by humans and personally, downvotes incoming, I'd like them to be paid well.
Desktops are not dead of course but they are not locked down yet. Until the final assimilation of Win10 takes place of course. Would you like to update now or...now?
So right now the profit motive drives around mobile devices that are nice and locked down for the masses. So you WILL learn to love "apps" vs programs or games. You WILL learn to love not having control over your data. You WILL learn to, what's that? You are going to switch to a FOSS? Well er...want a job? We need tech savvy people.
I'm guessing you mean that in the sense of what 4chan represents as an internet culture not literally. Given that/. was launched in 1997 and 4chan in 2003.
But I do agree with your underlying point as all online forums face similar issues. And this is even bigger than a online issue rather an issue with human nature. I personally think that keeping AC around is a good thing because it gives the opportunity for people who would otherwise not want to be able to speak out that option. It is a form of speech that is chilled without it and we then all lose.
So what I have learned to do, and mind you it is not easy, is try to just sift though the much and take what gems you can find. Much like RL.
uBlock actually seems to be coded a bit better. I've noticed that with it installed on my desktop, in Firefox, my browsing is snappier. And for sure on my mobile device using uBlock, Firefox mobile on an Android, it is much better than Adblock.
I personally did not like the idea of the white-list and the philosophy behind it. However that did not stop me from using Adblock and just toggling the white-list off. But since uBlock is faster I've switched to it. Finally some options when it comes to picking apps/add-ons is always good too.
If you have the room for a PC then we, the collective we as in every geek that is here on Slashdot, can build you a really really nice PC.
I mean that you say you are using your console because it is faster than your PC. I just cringed reading that.
So...we need to get you a good PC. Then we can talk. Because until then I really did not see much past that. And you seem like a person that wants a good PC. Yeah, we can do that.
I've been using ABP for years now on my machines and those I admin for friends/family/clients. It was, as we all know, a good solution for a number for reasons: Using less bandwidth, limiting infection vectors, and of course removing annoying ads.
However I've recently switched to UBlock because it simply runs better...and it does not have any sort of "acceptable whitelisting". Now I actually still pretty much trust ABP as I'd used it a fair amount since they have allowed what they deemed as acceptable ads. Not only could you opt-out (Yes you were auto opted-in however.) but some times when I did forget to opt-out I did not see anything egregious.
None the less with an alternative out there that is faster I think it is a good thing to give it support. As I've said about this topic before, I'll use my hosts file again if need be to block ads. I'll personally update it if that is what it comes to. The tears of ad execs do nothing but bring me joy as they rationalize why they have a right to my bandwidth and all of the other data they want to collect.
Lets hope they do fix that because I find that issue rather irksome as well.
However, and I wrote up a pretty scathing post when the news of ownership change hit, I doubt we will ever see any corporate PR person be that blunt. Yeah of course it is about the money but the thing is if there is no money to run something then it will go fully away.
So what they have to do is find a way to make such a site/system/et all profitable (or at the very least not losing a ton of money) to have it exist at all. And as I said in my post they have to find a way to do that ethically.
The major problem for them is for every company that tries to go down the ethical road there are 10, 100, 1000 others that are more than willing to do things in unethical ways. So I don't envy their task. But that also does not mean that we should let our guard down. So yeah, we both have to walk a tightrope here.
Part of what I view what has happened with Slashdot, and it is not alone, is that forums are everywhere today. And not just forums but all sorts of different takes on the genre.
I'm going to say some pretty obvious things but back when I 1st discovered the site there was no Facebook or some means of having a forum type discussion on every website. (I honestly don't remember when I 1st made this login but it was a long time ago now. Rob still had links to his favorite sites as part of the content.) So having not only having a forum that was dedicated to "News for Nerds" that also incorporated a system that tried, oh how it has tried over the years, to self moderate the comments was a pretty unique thing.
And while/. still is somewhat unique in its moderation system there are so many options for people these days who want to express their viewpoint that it is tough to point to anything that/. might have as a strong draw. I say that also with the idea in mind that so many people prefer to live in their own echo chamber such that they are not often look for an educated discussion, rather just a way to be a part of their flavor of groupthink. (And/. has been guilty of that as well of course.)
I don't envy you the challenge of keeping/. relevant and something that will not just be a money sink. It would take way more thought than I wish to do here this late at night. (I was hoping that this post would come earlier when the news broke on the web but cest la vie.) However I will say that I will be keeping a close eye on what the direction of the overall site. Especially things like G+ trying to force me to disclose personal information or any thing like that. The very moment I get a bad vibe from the site or the direction I think that it is going I'll add slashdot.org localhost to my hosts file and that will be that.
Not trying to come across as combative but I felt the need to say as there has been a strong push by many corporations to monetize every part of their IP/data/etc. And I'm not looking for some promise of how exactly you will make/. something other than a money sink. That is for you to figure out...ethically.
Slashdot Mirror
- My sentiment also. In particular, the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission operates its own illegal "police force" to prevent entrepreneurs from competing with medallion cabs. It has been known to illegally kidnap people who drop off their spouses at JFK or LaGuardia, accusing them of operating a taxi service.
Note my corrections. You are going to have to cite some serious evidence of your claims because your tinfoil hat...or Uber shilling...post is pretty outlandish.
While true they have come in the way of updates that can be uninstalled: https://gist.github.com/xvitaly/eafa75ed2cb79b3bd4e9
Further Win 7 does not include any of the Win 8 UI elements. Trying to mash a touchscreen UI onto a desktop OS. As well as since you don't have the "tile" elements you are not being served ads nativly on your desktop or start menu. (They did sneak the Win 10 upgrade ad into the Systray but since there is no MS Edge for Win 7 you don't see the ads that pop up there on Win 7.)
Win 7 does offer control on how your updates are done. Not a native option for non-enterprise Win 10 users.
Finally I've yet to see any real hardware issues with Win 7 that this blog post purports. The very closest thing that I will say is that there are some new Win 8+ kernel SSD bits of functionality that you can't get with Win 7 at all. However those bits of functionality are not a dealbreaker to me, an avid SSD user, by any means.
I've got uBlock as an extension for my tablet's Mobile Firefox install. It works preventing ads. However the performance hit is pretty steep compared to the native YouTube app.
Also I've not seen many people mention that streaming services, for me mainly Twitch, is a thing now? For me I use both with regularity. Seems pretty obvious that if the live streaming services like Twitch gaining market share that will eat into YouTube.
Overall I view that as a good thing. We need less monopolies in the computer world.
Ok, sounds like you addressed the usability, logistical, and other tech issues about Win10 at your place of business.
However you did leave out the elephant in the room aka "Telemetry" and its related security issues. That kinda is a big thing and I guess you and those in charge just view it as a non-issue?
That is just normal Cxx level who can be the biggest asshole as to establish dominance within a meeting bullshit.
And given that Jobs was a known asshole it is pretty unremarkable that such a culture would form at Apple.
If it were not for dirty tricks like forced telemetry, a forced touchscreen UI on a desktop OS, and the removal of tools/applications in Windows (Media Center and the backup that they later did put back in just off the top of my head.) people would move to a new version of a Windows OS without the need to pull the Windows 10 level shenanigans.
Windows Vista was even poised to be another success for MS but they botched that up so people stuck with XP. The idea that people want to stay with an older OS is only because MS has had such a terrible track record. Release a solid desktop OS for desktops and it will be used. Release garbage and duh, people are going to stick with the older version that is proven.
Someone upvote the AC to let the lofty 4 digit UID guy know that he needs to take a refresher course in digit counting.
I want to 2nd that /. has always had some fluff as its content. And props to wannabe to remind us of when K5 existed and was the answer to /. "going soft".
It could very well be a slow tech news day. Talking about how marking droids, or trashing them if you so prefer, is a time honored tradition so why not have a thread about it.
The most annoying thing about Windows is there is a ton of places where program data can be stored: The program's own directory (Program Files, Program Files (x86, and of course if you or the program is installed somewhere else), some place in the My Documents folder and variations on that same theme like My Games, in the User App Data folder, or even just in the User directory (I'm looking at you VirtualBox!).
And even if you happen to track down all of the program data files there is a high likelihood that some of your program settings were stored in the registry anyway so you are just going to lose those.
I've gotten it down to a science for my Windows reinstalls but it takes some doing.
The biggest issue is not the draw from the 6 pin connector from the PSU, rather the draw from the PCIe slot.
That draw is regulated by the motherboard and that is not a given that the mobo will not just roll over and die and maybe take some other system components with it along the way.
Heck if the mobo dies and you still even have the RAM and CPU surviving who knows if you can find a replacement for that CPU. Most times when my mobos have kicked it I've just gone ahead and upgraded my system.
Maybe that is AMD's master plan! We'll design a card that looks to kill motherboards and that way people will be buying more of our CPUs! (Evil Mr. Burns finger steeple.)
The best part of modern "support" is that it is a thinly veiled front for their sales pitches. Calling in to your cable company because your modem keeps rebooting? Well that is great lets troubleshoot that and while I'm at it did you know that we have a special on our internet speed upgrade!?
I once spent no less than 20m on the phone with my then cell phone carrier trying to reduce my total phone setup down from 3 lines to 2. There was no change go anything else, even the price, because the plan provided for 2 to 4 phones with shared mins. So it was not like I was even going to be giving them less money, but I'm damn sure that poor rep knew that their real metrics (not customer satisfaction but their sales numbers) would reflect that for my call I was going down a line.
Here is a list of what a current CSR job would like you to have:
High School diploma or equivalent is required.
Experience with computers, keyboarding is required
Minimum 2 years of Customer service experience is preferred
Minimum 2 years of sales experience is preferred
Minimum 1 year of inbound call center experience is preferred
Minimum 1 year experience in the hospitality industry a plus
Demonstrated excellent verbal and written communication skills along with basic practical math, reading and comprehension abilities
Ability to work a flexible schedule, including nights and weekends
Two years of sales experience. It took me all of 5m to find a job listing like that and there are plenty of them out there. And these people are the gatekeepers and support agents that you have to get past to get any real support.
Cars are not routers. Trucks are not CPUs. I can't run over someone with my overclocked desktop. I can't go at such an unsafe speed that I lose control and crash into others with my modified router.
Your analogy is wrong. We treat vehicles very differently because of what they can do. "We" the Slashdot crowd that understand that are not opposed to modifying things that can't go at speeds that can kill someone if operated wrongly. "We" instead understand that vehicles are something that need to be well regulated due to their nature.
But this also creates the Problems with the Trumps and Sandars who are focused on particular issues and not the general complexities of running a government.
You almost had a good comment there until that part where your really went off the rails. One of those two people has never held public office. The other was a mayor, a US Congressman, and a US Senator. Likely knowing more about the general complexities about running a government more than you ever will.
However you did do a good job in showing that your point, up until your own personal bias slipped in, about how trust in reporting can be very tricky. And when we are are on Social Media, which I suppose we can classify /. into these days, it gets even more so. We get people like yourself who mix in their own opinions with the facts and because there is some truth to the totality of what is said the whole thing can be viewed as acceptable.
Local data in the very real sense of keeping your personal data to yourself is a thing. Do I need to go on an NSA rant about how anything you transmit over the internet is compromised?
Further local data is just that local. If they go offline they have their backups right there. They don't have to worry about going online to put their data back in place. They can do it offline if needed.
I understand your arguments for server (cloud) data and have no problem with using server storage when it is appropriate. But we have the ability to have large amounts of data at our local fingertips. Why would I want to give it away when my 1st point is very real? If you could say that the NSA, and all other bodies, were not there then you might have a case. However you do not. The NSA and all the other things are snooping on your data right now. Thank you no.
Here is what you can do for now. Run Win7. It is a perfectly fine OS. Yes MS has packported the spyware, aka "telemetry", to the system and how do you fix that? You manually monitor your system(s) for what updates are on them. Use this script: wmic qfe get >C:\updates.txt
Run that batch file as admin and then search for KB3035583 (the Win10 installer) and KB3021917 (spyware) and if they are there remove them.
Is this annoying and bad? Yes. Is it doable on a large scale where you have to admin hundreds or thousands of machines? Likely not. But if you just need your own personal machine that runs a stable Win64 OS then Win7 still is a decent system and you can fix it to run just fine.
Let us all stop freaking out until we see how this shakes down after Win10 goes "not free" and see if Redmond has another epiphany like they did after Vista and releases a real OS again.
The main reason they don't want to talk about it is because they keep wanting every end user to believe that "the cloud" is some sort of mythical thing. That it will always be there to have their data and that they should pay their monthly subs to have that privilege.
Of course in reality we IT professionals know that "the cloud" is nothing new and not even remotely secure. Local data is always better than remote data and we have the tools to make that a very secure platform for end users. However that is just a one time cost and well...we can't have that now can we Win10?
As someone who has worked in F&B, that is Food and Beverage for those of you who have never been a part of the Hospitality industry, I've thought about robots in the workplace for a long time. And by a long time I mean going back to when I was reading sci-fi by Harry Harrison who wrote about such places that were purely staffed by robots.
Knowing the nuances of F&B I honestly question that any of the robots that we have these days could replace a human worker. That is just because you see a "robot" that is able to flip some burgers is doing it's thing over and over and over but can it go to the back of the shop to get the frozen burgers out of the freezer? Can it clean up the burger that fell on the ground (oh it will happen) and is starting to stink? Can it do any of the other jobs that it has not been designed for?
There likely will be a point, very likely in my lifetime, that we have robots that are sophisticated enough to replace low level workers. That time is not yet. For right now my burgers are going to be made by humans and personally, downvotes incoming, I'd like them to be paid well.
Desktops are not dead of course but they are not locked down yet. Until the final assimilation of Win10 takes place of course. Would you like to update now or...now?
So right now the profit motive drives around mobile devices that are nice and locked down for the masses. So you WILL learn to love "apps" vs programs or games. You WILL learn to love not having control over your data. You WILL learn to, what's that? You are going to switch to a FOSS? Well er...want a job? We need tech savvy people.
> Well slashdot has always been a nicer 4chan.
I'm guessing you mean that in the sense of what 4chan represents as an internet culture not literally. Given that /. was launched in 1997 and 4chan in 2003.
But I do agree with your underlying point as all online forums face similar issues. And this is even bigger than a online issue rather an issue with human nature. I personally think that keeping AC around is a good thing because it gives the opportunity for people who would otherwise not want to be able to speak out that option. It is a form of speech that is chilled without it and we then all lose.
So what I have learned to do, and mind you it is not easy, is try to just sift though the much and take what gems you can find. Much like RL.
uBlock actually seems to be coded a bit better. I've noticed that with it installed on my desktop, in Firefox, my browsing is snappier. And for sure on my mobile device using uBlock, Firefox mobile on an Android, it is much better than Adblock.
I personally did not like the idea of the white-list and the philosophy behind it. However that did not stop me from using Adblock and just toggling the white-list off. But since uBlock is faster I've switched to it. Finally some options when it comes to picking apps/add-ons is always good too.
If you have the room for a PC then we, the collective we as in every geek that is here on Slashdot, can build you a really really nice PC.
I mean that you say you are using your console because it is faster than your PC. I just cringed reading that.
So...we need to get you a good PC. Then we can talk. Because until then I really did not see much past that. And you seem like a person that wants a good PC. Yeah, we can do that.
I've been using ABP for years now on my machines and those I admin for friends/family/clients. It was, as we all know, a good solution for a number for reasons: Using less bandwidth, limiting infection vectors, and of course removing annoying ads.
However I've recently switched to UBlock because it simply runs better...and it does not have any sort of "acceptable whitelisting". Now I actually still pretty much trust ABP as I'd used it a fair amount since they have allowed what they deemed as acceptable ads. Not only could you opt-out (Yes you were auto opted-in however.) but some times when I did forget to opt-out I did not see anything egregious.
None the less with an alternative out there that is faster I think it is a good thing to give it support. As I've said about this topic before, I'll use my hosts file again if need be to block ads. I'll personally update it if that is what it comes to. The tears of ad execs do nothing but bring me joy as they rationalize why they have a right to my bandwidth and all of the other data they want to collect.
And you do that via a VM. Running Win10 day to day when you could just be keeping it sandboxed in a VM to stay ahead is just silly.
Lets hope they do fix that because I find that issue rather irksome as well.
However, and I wrote up a pretty scathing post when the news of ownership change hit, I doubt we will ever see any corporate PR person be that blunt. Yeah of course it is about the money but the thing is if there is no money to run something then it will go fully away.
So what they have to do is find a way to make such a site/system/et all profitable (or at the very least not losing a ton of money) to have it exist at all. And as I said in my post they have to find a way to do that ethically.
The major problem for them is for every company that tries to go down the ethical road there are 10, 100, 1000 others that are more than willing to do things in unethical ways. So I don't envy their task. But that also does not mean that we should let our guard down. So yeah, we both have to walk a tightrope here.
That sounds about right, thanks!
Part of what I view what has happened with Slashdot, and it is not alone, is that forums are everywhere today. And not just forums but all sorts of different takes on the genre.
I'm going to say some pretty obvious things but back when I 1st discovered the site there was no Facebook or some means of having a forum type discussion on every website. (I honestly don't remember when I 1st made this login but it was a long time ago now. Rob still had links to his favorite sites as part of the content.) So having not only having a forum that was dedicated to "News for Nerds" that also incorporated a system that tried, oh how it has tried over the years, to self moderate the comments was a pretty unique thing.
And while /. still is somewhat unique in its moderation system there are so many options for people these days who want to express their viewpoint that it is tough to point to anything that /. might have as a strong draw. I say that also with the idea in mind that so many people prefer to live in their own echo chamber such that they are not often look for an educated discussion, rather just a way to be a part of their flavor of groupthink. (And /. has been guilty of that as well of course.)
I don't envy you the challenge of keeping /. relevant and something that will not just be a money sink. It would take way more thought than I wish to do here this late at night. (I was hoping that this post would come earlier when the news broke on the web but cest la vie.) However I will say that I will be keeping a close eye on what the direction of the overall site. Especially things like G+ trying to force me to disclose personal information or any thing like that. The very moment I get a bad vibe from the site or the direction I think that it is going I'll add slashdot.org localhost to my hosts file and that will be that.
Not trying to come across as combative but I felt the need to say as there has been a strong push by many corporations to monetize every part of their IP/data/etc. And I'm not looking for some promise of how exactly you will make /. something other than a money sink. That is for you to figure out...ethically.