You make an excellent point here, and I agree with you. I do think that it will be very important for the sponsor's to ensure that the person they select to be their representative be actually knowledgeable on the topic at hand. I don't think that I as a developer here will be able to enforce that, and I'm not even sure that the sales people and executives can really force potential sponsor's to provide a liaison who is really an expert. That having been said, as I believe your comment bares out, sponsor's who do not provide a high quality liaison to the discussion will likely feel the effects rather quickly.
To be up front: we probably will not have everything squared away and perfect the first time, but if this concept does get some traction, we should get better over time, and its these types of frank conveersations between our readers and our staff (both editorial and engineering) that will help us get there.
1. Who are you "PerlJedi (2406408) who works for Slashdot" and what is your expertise since you are a brand new hire?
You are right, I haven't worked here very long. I am just a software engineer fortunate enough to have landed what I think of as my dream job. I have been a slashdot reader for much, much longer than I have worked here though. I created this account after I started here to use as my "official" slashdot account.
I love slashdot. I love being a geek. I am fortunate enough to work for a website that I enjoy, and I am hoping to use my position here to keep slashdot as a great website for geeks and geek culture. So I haven't been working here from the begining when it was just Rob and his buddies, but I'm here now, and I'm doing my best to keep slashdot going as a fun and interesting site for news and geek culture.
2. I am noticing the quotes on "Expert". Either the people really will be experts, or else they'll be Astroturfing "Experts" in quotes. That is, unless your grammar just sux and you put gratuitous quotes which then accidentally totally flipped your meaning
I put quotes on expert because these will be people that the sponsor considers experts, which does not necissarily mean that I, or slashdot, would call them experts.
3. I bet no one cross-referenced which of these... "Experts" are currently also Slashdot users - I bet new ones in that ominous 2400000 range. As users they get Mod points? Who will be watching what they do with those?
You are correct, there is nothing to stop the sponsor from having employee's go out and create non-official slashdot accounts to moderate things the way they want them to be moderated. Of course there is nothing to stop them from doing that anyway, even if they aren't sponsoring a question.
4. Companies don't care about "being made a fool of" with the top 25% if the Astroturfing raises sales with the newer 75% userbase. Sure, some companies will provide a legit expert, but we're watching like a hawk. Slashdot has seen our comments on editorial quality. We've made fools of you for years. Not like it really helped. (Probably some, far from enough.)
Really? You don't think that companies care whether or not they look foolish in the public eye?
The sponsor will not be given any special treatment with regards to comment score and moderation. The "expert" the sponsor will be providing to take part in the conversation will have an account which is "badged", meaning that it will be visually apparent when the a comment was posted by the sponsor. Beyond the visual treatment that will make clear which comments are made by a representative of the sponsor, they will have no special power. They will not be able to hide comments they don't like, or highlight those they do.
We want to offer a sponsor the chance to have a serious conversation with our audience, but we are not going to be giving them a soap box to stand on. If they want to engage with our audience, they will need to understand that means taking the good with the bad.
I come to slashdot to get answers not marketing BS. Now you are going to give some company "authority?"
I think an importantent distinguishing difference here will be that the "experts" the sponsor is providing have no special powers over the conversation. The sponsor will not be able to censor what the average slashdot user has to say. I believe that the average slashdot reader will not be fooled by a companies marketing BS, which will in the end force the sponsor to actaully engage in a serious manner with our readers lest they themselves be made a fool of.
Think of it this way: When a company sponsor's a question, and provides someone they classify as an "expert" to take part in the conversation, you will have the opportunity to get real answers to your real questions.
I second this recommendation. The Henry Ford has lots of cool stuff to see, and its not just cars... They have planes and trains, I am also fascinated by the antique generators. Also, if going to the Henry Ford museum, you should check out the River Rouge factory tour.
A decade? Windows XP was 2003, so there hasn''t even been a decade, and windows has already released not one, but two entire remakes of their OS since then. And Vista was a huge success too. How long between vista and 7? how long between 7 and 8? How about windows 98, me, and 2000?
And lets look at microsoft office... Have you ever played with Office's internals via OLE or Active-X? Granted it has been 8 years since I have, but then it was a clusterf#$!k
Would Microsoft do an equally shitty job if they had a bigger market share? No one knows, but it seems unlikely as their terms are far stricter.
Because Microsoft has proven their attention to detail, and drive to produce stable and secure software? Microsoft never leaves 0-day flaws unpatched, and surely they'll show that same tireless dedication to policing their app store.
I seriously doubt that, since it has a locked-down app store and sandboxed applications (fairly restricted API's, no native code.) It should be at least as secure as iPhone OS, if not more so.
All software (iOS included) is vulnerable. I would think WP7 will probably have more problems than iOS on the basis that Microsoft has basically always put speed to market above quality or stability of software.
The only reason Windows phone 7 doesn't have the malware issues is that there are only like 2 people in north america that use them. If Windows phone 7 ever gets even 50% of the north american users of either iOS or android,it will have such a malware problem that I'd bet you'd be better off putting your social security number on TV than carrying one.
I have only faint memories of my "first" computer. Basically I remember playing "boa" on it because it had a mouse, and boa was the only program on it at the time that made use of the mouse.
I do remember very fondly spending time with my friend Jeremy on my second or third computer making DOS boot disks. We would remove things from config.sys and autoinit.bat, by trial and error trying to figure how we could remove enought stuff to free up the memory to play the newest game we'd spent our allowances on. That must have been circa 1990.
I also remember fondly writing my first "program". It was in BASIC on my TI-82 graphing calculator... the very first (beyond "Hello World") one did something vaguely useful like solving right triangles for my geometry class. Next from there was to write "Pong", followed a few months later by "Tetris". Those were the good old days...
I've been using for most of my personal (and professional) computing for a little less than 10 years at this point. I was rather unsure about gnome3 when I first saw it, but I've quickly grown accustom to it, and at this point would probably be annoyed if I tried to switch back. I'm not really vocal about it, in part because I've heard so many people trash talking it, but for me it just works. My experience may not be typical, but I have to imagine there are others who feel the same.
I like the way the new interfaces uses the "windows" key, for example. When I start my laptop up, first thing I do after logging in, is press the windows key and start opening programs. I like that where ever I am, if I press the windows key i see a nice display of all the windows I have open on my current desktop to select from. I like that whether I need to open a file, or launch a new application, if I press the windows key and start typing the name of the file/program, it is searching my computer for what I might be looking for, and showing me its best guess (kind of like a GUI version of command line auto-completion).
Another note: At least for me, it handles dual monitor support perfectly right out of the box. In previous versions, I've had to jump through hoops to get the dual monitor support to function correctly, and even then usually had to restart X after connecting the second monitor before it would work... with gnome3, it just plain works. If I'm already booted up, and I plug in an second monitor, just opening the "display" system setting makes it recognize, and begin using the second monitor. If I plug in the monitor before I boot, it just recognizes it out right. Beyond that, the 3D acceleration on my graphics card (ReadonHD 6750m) works without jumping through any hoops to install special drivers.
I'm not saying its all flowers and lollipops, there are a few things I don't like, and a few about which I'm on the fence, but all together, I think the advantages outweigh the negatives, at least for me they do.
I'd have to say PERL is better than a lot of purposefully crafted languages. Its syntax is very forgiving, and there are lots of ways to do most things. Those two components are likely the reason this study came to that conclusion. This in no way means that PERL is not a good language. It does mean that many people can write PERL badly, but many people speak English badly and that doesn't reflect poorly on the language.
PERL is, IMO, and should always be: Easy to do, but impossible to do "perfectly". But then I'm not sure that anything can truely be done "perfectly". Things may be done poorly, well, very well, or nearly perfectly, but to claim perfection is to deny the possibility of improvement.
I have never met a developer that thought Visual Studio is a great IDE. That's probably for the best, as I would laugh in the face of anyone who did.
And jeez, someone has the balls to have consistent opinions!
This statement doesn't even make sense... are you saying that you have consistent opinions because you think everything Microsoft does is just the best? Clearly you can't mean to say that Microsoft has consistent opinions...
Maybe its just me, but I can't see any good reason to care what Miley Cyrus, or any other celebrity, thinks about when I'm searching the internet.
In my mind the variety the internet bring to everyone should be the freedom to find, learn about, and enjoy the things that make us who we are. Having a search engine model the result sets it gives me based on the preference of some one else just seems pathetic. Be yourself, not some wanna be celebrity impersonator.
Slashdot Mirror
You make an excellent point here, and I agree with you. I do think that it will be very important for the sponsor's to ensure that the person they select to be their representative be actually knowledgeable on the topic at hand. I don't think that I as a developer here will be able to enforce that, and I'm not even sure that the sales people and executives can really force potential sponsor's to provide a liaison who is really an expert. That having been said, as I believe your comment bares out, sponsor's who do not provide a high quality liaison to the discussion will likely feel the effects rather quickly.
To be up front: we probably will not have everything squared away and perfect the first time, but if this concept does get some traction, we should get better over time, and its these types of frank conveersations between our readers and our staff (both editorial and engineering) that will help us get there.
1. Who are you "PerlJedi (2406408) who works for Slashdot" and what is your expertise since you are a brand new hire?
You are right, I haven't worked here very long. I am just a software engineer fortunate enough to have landed what I think of as my dream job. I have been a slashdot reader for much, much longer than I have worked here though. I created this account after I started here to use as my "official" slashdot account.
I love slashdot. I love being a geek. I am fortunate enough to work for a website that I enjoy, and I am hoping to use my position here to keep slashdot as a great website for geeks and geek culture. So I haven't been working here from the begining when it was just Rob and his buddies, but I'm here now, and I'm doing my best to keep slashdot going as a fun and interesting site for news and geek culture.
2. I am noticing the quotes on "Expert". Either the people really will be experts, or else they'll be Astroturfing "Experts" in quotes. That is, unless your grammar just sux and you put gratuitous quotes which then accidentally totally flipped your meaning
I put quotes on expert because these will be people that the sponsor considers experts, which does not necissarily mean that I, or slashdot, would call them experts.
3. I bet no one cross-referenced which of these ... "Experts" are currently also Slashdot users - I bet new ones in that ominous 2400000 range. As users they get Mod points? Who will be watching what they do with those?
You are correct, there is nothing to stop the sponsor from having employee's go out and create non-official slashdot accounts to moderate things the way they want them to be moderated. Of course there is nothing to stop them from doing that anyway, even if they aren't sponsoring a question.
4. Companies don't care about "being made a fool of" with the top 25% if the Astroturfing raises sales with the newer 75% userbase. Sure, some companies will provide a legit expert, but we're watching like a hawk. Slashdot has seen our comments on editorial quality. We've made fools of you for years. Not like it really helped. (Probably some, far from enough.)
Really? You don't think that companies care whether or not they look foolish in the public eye?
The sponsor will not be given any special treatment with regards to comment score and moderation. The "expert" the sponsor will be providing to take part in the conversation will have an account which is "badged", meaning that it will be visually apparent when the a comment was posted by the sponsor. Beyond the visual treatment that will make clear which comments are made by a representative of the sponsor, they will have no special power. They will not be able to hide comments they don't like, or highlight those they do.
We want to offer a sponsor the chance to have a serious conversation with our audience, but we are not going to be giving them a soap box to stand on. If they want to engage with our audience, they will need to understand that means taking the good with the bad.
I come to slashdot to get answers not marketing BS. Now you are going to give some company "authority?"
I think an importantent distinguishing difference here will be that the "experts" the sponsor is providing have no special powers over the conversation. The sponsor will not be able to censor what the average slashdot user has to say. I believe that the average slashdot reader will not be fooled by a companies marketing BS, which will in the end force the sponsor to actaully engage in a serious manner with our readers lest they themselves be made a fool of.
Think of it this way: When a company sponsor's a question, and provides someone they classify as an "expert" to take part in the conversation, you will have the opportunity to get real answers to your real questions.
Two more recommendation I didn't see on the list:
The SciFi museum and hall of Fame in Seattle: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60878-d493346-Reviews-Science_Fiction_Museum_and_Hall_of_Fame-Seattle_Washington.html
The Spy museum in D.C. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60878-d493346-Reviews-Science_Fiction_Museum_and_Hall_of_Fame-Seattle_Washington.html
I second this recommendation. The Henry Ford has lots of cool stuff to see, and its not just cars... They have planes and trains, I am also fascinated by the antique generators. Also, if going to the Henry Ford museum, you should check out the River Rouge factory tour.
I took my niece to The Tech a few years ago, it was great fun.
And at this point do you believe that there is no malware for either linux or Mac?
A decade? Windows XP was 2003, so there hasn''t even been a decade, and windows has already released not one, but two entire remakes of their OS since then. And Vista was a huge success too. How long between vista and 7? how long between 7 and 8? How about windows 98, me, and 2000?
And lets look at microsoft office... Have you ever played with Office's internals via OLE or Active-X? Granted it has been 8 years since I have, but then it was a clusterf#$!k
Would Microsoft do an equally shitty job if they had a bigger market share? No one knows, but it seems unlikely as their terms are far stricter.
Because Microsoft has proven their attention to detail, and drive to produce stable and secure software? Microsoft never leaves 0-day flaws unpatched, and surely they'll show that same tireless dedication to policing their app store.
I seriously doubt that, since it has a locked-down app store and sandboxed applications (fairly restricted API's, no native code.) It should be at least as secure as iPhone OS, if not more so.
All software (iOS included) is vulnerable. I would think WP7 will probably have more problems than iOS on the basis that Microsoft has basically always put speed to market above quality or stability of software.
It also doesn't leak data to Google like Android does, it doesn't have the malware problem that Android has
The only reason Windows phone 7 doesn't have the malware issues is that there are only like 2 people in north america that use them. If Windows phone 7 ever gets even 50% of the north american users of either iOS or android,it will have such a malware problem that I'd bet you'd be better off putting your social security number on TV than carrying one.
I'd add a few suggestions:
I have only faint memories of my "first" computer. Basically I remember playing "boa" on it because it had a mouse, and boa was the only program on it at the time that made use of the mouse.
I do remember very fondly spending time with my friend Jeremy on my second or third computer making DOS boot disks. We would remove things from config.sys and autoinit.bat, by trial and error trying to figure how we could remove enought stuff to free up the memory to play the newest game we'd spent our allowances on. That must have been circa 1990.
I also remember fondly writing my first "program". It was in BASIC on my TI-82 graphing calculator... the very first (beyond "Hello World") one did something vaguely useful like solving right triangles for my geometry class. Next from there was to write "Pong", followed a few months later by "Tetris". Those were the good old days...
I've been using for most of my personal (and professional) computing for a little less than 10 years at this point. I was rather unsure about gnome3 when I first saw it, but I've quickly grown accustom to it, and at this point would probably be annoyed if I tried to switch back. I'm not really vocal about it, in part because I've heard so many people trash talking it, but for me it just works. My experience may not be typical, but I have to imagine there are others who feel the same.
I like the way the new interfaces uses the "windows" key, for example. When I start my laptop up, first thing I do after logging in, is press the windows key and start opening programs. I like that where ever I am, if I press the windows key i see a nice display of all the windows I have open on my current desktop to select from. I like that whether I need to open a file, or launch a new application, if I press the windows key and start typing the name of the file/program, it is searching my computer for what I might be looking for, and showing me its best guess (kind of like a GUI version of command line auto-completion).
Another note: At least for me, it handles dual monitor support perfectly right out of the box. In previous versions, I've had to jump through hoops to get the dual monitor support to function correctly, and even then usually had to restart X after connecting the second monitor before it would work... with gnome3, it just plain works. If I'm already booted up, and I plug in an second monitor, just opening the "display" system setting makes it recognize, and begin using the second monitor. If I plug in the monitor before I boot, it just recognizes it out right. Beyond that, the 3D acceleration on my graphics card (ReadonHD 6750m) works without jumping through any hoops to install special drivers.
I'm not saying its all flowers and lollipops, there are a few things I don't like, and a few about which I'm on the fence, but all together, I think the advantages outweigh the negatives, at least for me they do.
testing, please disregard.
I'd have to say PERL is better than a lot of purposefully crafted languages. Its syntax is very forgiving, and there are lots of ways to do most things. Those two components are likely the reason this study came to that conclusion. This in no way means that PERL is not a good language. It does mean that many people can write PERL badly, but many people speak English badly and that doesn't reflect poorly on the language. PERL is, IMO, and should always be: Easy to do, but impossible to do "perfectly". But then I'm not sure that anything can truely be done "perfectly". Things may be done poorly, well, very well, or nearly perfectly, but to claim perfection is to deny the possibility of improvement.
Well when Taco left he took everything but the commordore 64s so he could run his 'services'.
Maybe but we are squeezing every last drop of compute power out of that commodore 64. :-)
And jeez, someone has the balls to have consistent opinions!
This statement doesn't even make sense... are you saying that you have consistent opinions because you think everything Microsoft does is just the best? Clearly you can't mean to say that Microsoft has consistent opinions...
Gaa... auto-correct (or auto-incorrect) created a typo: that is Daemon, and Freedom....
Just one... err maybe two: Daniel Suarez: Deamon and Freedom
Maybe its just me, but I can't see any good reason to care what Miley Cyrus, or any other celebrity, thinks about when I'm searching the internet.
In my mind the variety the internet bring to everyone should be the freedom to find, learn about, and enjoy the things that make us who we are. Having a search engine model the result sets it gives me based on the preference of some one else just seems pathetic. Be yourself, not some wanna be celebrity impersonator.