Speed limits (and some other types of rules) are to enforce safety on what some of the outliers do.
"Regular people" who are just trying to get somewhere do generally act safely, and for the most part adjust. (Though there are exceptions.)
The problem is the rules are for the people that don't adjust, they don't think anything will happen, or they aren't wise enough to realize what the consequences are.
Removing the rules, subjects the "ordinary people" to the mistakes of the outliers to a much greater degree.
If you haven't ever done this, go over to Youtube and search for "car crash" videos and enjoy a couple hours of soviets and other former eastern bloc countries slaughtering each other on the roads. Then about half way through, notice the body parts ones, kid gets dragged ones, etc. aren't posted because that sort of stuff is illegal there (the videos of it) and against Youtube TOS. The really bad shit, they won't show you. In almost all the videos, you'll see normal people and then some dumbass outlier who thinks there are no rules causing problems.
You are signing us all up for that bullshit with your hairbrained plan.
Rules are not for rules followers, rules are for people who will try to break the rules. Misplaced faith in those people to "be better" punishes us all.
If you're relying on reflective paint, what about fallen trees, deer, pot holes, other debris and road users not coated in reflective paint? If someone is using the road and relying on the lines to keep them on the route, then they are using the road unsafely.
We can't fix all problems, therefore, we shouldn't fix any problems!
I think it's a very reasonable thing to do in order to discourage behavior that is universally looked upon as bad. Yes, being abusive to software does no harm to the software, but if you can have your chatbot, or whatever you want to classify Cortana as in this scenario, act in a way that does not fuel this behavior (which let's face it would only be done by idiots), without compromising the functionality of the tool, then I support Microsoft's efforts.
Our communication with each other is coarsening at a fast enough rate as it is.
You are talking about a thought crime. Your "reasoning" can be used to criminalize all sorts of other accepted and even necessary behaviors.
Here are some other thought crimes along those same lines:
-viewing porn, creating porn, selling porn, talking about porn or just about anything else.
-any other simulation of anything that has an analog in real life, kicking a stuffed animal around the yard for example
-using memories of others from the "spank bank"
-using a completely fictional character you make up in your own head for the "spank bank"
-having a voodoo doll (fake or "real")
-having or using a punching bag
-any type of video game that uses violence, especially those where players go against other human players
It's up to Microsoft to decide how Microsoft's stuff behaves, however tacking on "should" to the reasoning is outrageously ridiculous and a great example of the stupid SJW stuff people have been complaining about on Slashdot. Your little utopia doesn't exist, and nobody WANTS it to exist. Go away.
Also, a few little tools that could be run as services to fill their telemetry system with garbage.
Microsoft windows: "OK, how many keystrokes so far today and what are they?" Tool: "45.345^12 keystrokes, all consisting of the letter Q"
Malware that poisons MS systems would be fun too.
Realistically though, a learning firewall that blocked all connections unless they were whitelisted would solve lots of problems. Spyware, adware, ads, stumbling on known rack space providers that host bullshit, all of china and pacific rim, etc.
The number of personal firearms is north of 360 ~ 450 million now.
There were something like 5 million NICS checks in January 2016. Rates have been ramping up since 2008 and records broken each month. There isn't a one to one translation for NICS to "firearms bought" but it is ballpark.
That "300 million" number has been tossed around a long time and the number is stale.
That's a false comparison. Nobody carries around a hunting rifle to, in your own words, "stop a threat."
If you're claiming hand-guns are somehow a "soft" method of defending yourself, then you are sorely mistaken.
You should try to get out of the city occasionally.
The line between "pistol" and "rifle" is a fake one defined by the ATF where "designed to be fired with one hand" and "designed to be set to the shoulder to fire" is the definition. Caliber and ballistic capabilities are not included in the distinction. Then there are dimensions and other stuff tacked onto those definitions, firearms that fall out of those dimensions are AOWs (Any Other Weapon) or SBS or SBRs.
So it IS quite possible to be using a "pistol" that's basically a rifle with rifle-like ballistic results but with pistol legality (whatever that happens to be at that location.)
It's about gun control, and besides, a 9mm is not for killing people. It's about stopping a threat.
9mm is almost as lethal as a.45 ACP, according to the charts. Not quite, but damned close. Hence the BHP in 9mm following the 1911...
It is if you use a modern expanding hollow point bullet with a decent weight and charge. Though, I'd be surprised if this thing could handle P+ or +P+ charges for long.
There is an outfit selling 80% Glock-clone lowers now too... which will turn out to be a FAR better firearm.
3. Don't pander to the morons - you know, the ones who see a story about a widely known open source project used by household names, and then shit up the place with, "HURR WAT DIS". Tech news. If you can't Google, you shouldn't be here.
On the other hand, there's a fine line between using technospeak mumbo jumbo language only relevant for some small sliver of some small OSS project where no explanation is given about what the heck the article is about and spoon feeding people a back story on basic physics that they should already know on some NASA project. They don't need to link to a Wikipedia article about what a lifting body is, but on the other hand a HDFOJ nozzle chroming chamber should be explained or at least linked in the submission.
Recent years have submissions that need Googling for acronyms, terms, company names, etc. where it's just simply sloppy submission writing and sloppy submission editing. Those should stop. The submission should be enough for the user to decide to read or not. If it isn't, it sucks, or it's click bait or it's not finished.
Editors should simply press a "we like it but the writing sucks" rejection button that sends feedback to tell people they suck and to get people to actually put effort into the original submission. They'd be able to edit and re-submit. Realistically, the burden is both on editors and submitters, but the submitters seem to be getting an undeserved pass on this issue.
Basically, the editors need a big red pen and smiley face stickers.
The comments on this site are occasionally funny, frequently snide, but all too often terrible--and that's without the trolls who spam the same thing on every story. The worst is when some well-meaning soul asks a question and the first two responses ridicule him before the third takes a tangent, igniting a holy war that completely derails the topic. For that reason, I never read Ask Slashdot because the question never gets answered. Now, I anticipate the jackals who frequent this site will begin tearing me a new one. Have at it, guys.
You can change your settings so you don't see them. If you bother to get an account and log in.
On the other hand, Ask Slashdot is one of the better sections as it is a reflection of what people are thinking / doing... often nerdy stuff like we all want here. But, true, people do ask stupid or have un-workable, contradictory, or impossible projects and THOSE people really should be told "what you are doing is unethical or impossible" when the situation warrants.
Forgot about that penalty point for the long comment. Due to my own verbosity, I obviously think that should be an option of the user, not the system.
Or at least there should be a warning when you've triggered it, eh?
All this talk of SJWs and you want to add a "trigger warning?";)
The "read the rest of this comment" link has had some issues, it used to open up just that thread branch (in the same window, when it should be a new window or tab) and do other crazy shit. One thing is for sure, "new window or not" is a UI issue that has been long ignored (and fucked up) by the previous owners.
I stopped using that link, and just skip the rest of the comment. Some people are too verbose.
Though, I would like to have a site-wide setting of "truncate long posts" Yes/No so I can just turn it off. I have a mouse wheel and a PgDn button, I don't need help.
As a user, I can't go back and correct grammar and spelling mistakes. Editors can. Heck,they can correct the summary after it's live on the front page. There is considerably less excuse for mistakes in the summary than there are for mistakes in comments.
You need to remove moderation power from users and take responsibility for the site content if you want to do this.
I once registered here and posted something perfectly reasonable and was banned from posting by other users. I have never registered since. The user moderation system is abused horribly to push agendas and silence opposing views.
I see the value of making them log in where "kill all the jews" becomes a daily, boring, no value adding AC comment that people have to spend their mod points to filter out.
When staff could simply kill the user account and they are gone for a while.... so nobody has to bother dealing with it.
Plus, the refresh see to see new comments at the top would work for more ads results of that would benefit the site owners somewhat, and people would be doing it willingly.
There's a happy medium between total ad block (where I am at now) and "that ad was useful and it didn't pop up in my face"
Also, if Slashdot EVER takes over my whole browser window, darkens the whole page, and shows me some fucking bullshit notice, I am out of here.
Please ignore all those users calling for bans, either banning users or banning ACS. Slashdot has long promoted totally free speech and banning users for what they say is exactly the reason that other sites have fallen.
It was promoted.
It wasn't always practiced.
There were some phases where the politically correct crew was in control of the ban hammer.
The moderation system is not excellent it is fucking horrific. Users can be banned from posting by other users and this is abused. You cannot leave the moderation of a site to its users. It will be abused. I registered once on slashdot and posted something perfectly reasonable that others did not agree with. I was banned. I will never register here again as long as other users do the moderating. Site staff has to do the moderating. Not users.
The moderation system and moderators are not the same thing. The system is the little drop down box and scores. Moderators are humans that check for flagged messages (or just see them) and act on it per policy, or per bias.
You probably ran into one of the biased SJW's that was tearing up the place. You could also just be in incoherent dick. (Your post seems quite incoherent.)
Some of that was valid removals, some was not.
So how about completely clearing the banned list because it is tainted with past poor management?
Yes our infrastructure is sound enough to weather a storm like that. Hopefully its not a similar storm, however
In case you weren't here for that... I recall a stripped "emergency mode" that had one or two stories that were about the event and NOTHING ELSE was done on the site and all the rest of the stuff turned off. Other stories were temporarily removed. I don't know what happened to advertisements (or if there were any) at the time, those need to be within your control to shut off as well.
Most other major news sites were offline or so slow as to be useless. Some of them were using advanced load balancing technology at the time (Akamai?) and it didn't help.
Slashdot was one of the few places that allowed for collecting information from "the hive" and getting first hand reports by people nearby.
One thing that has annoyed me for years is that using the browser's back button the site always causing the browser to scroll to top of the page and appears to be intentionally done via javascript somewhere. It's time that annoyance was removed.
Links in comments need target="blank" in them period.
No need for back button then. That's basic first five minutes of "how to make a web site" class.
If the discussion is good enough, people will come back and re-see the ads anyway.
And in the name of all that's unholy, get rid of the javascript that auto-scrolls you to the top of the page whenever you hit the back button. Just to serve more ads, I presume, but it really breaks usability when you can't follow a link in a large thread, and go back to where you were. That makes me leave the thread in disgust. Sure, I can open links in a new tab to get around the problem, but I shouldn't have to. Back is to where you were, not where advertisers want you to be.
Links in comments should be automatically tagged "target='blank' so they open in a new tab or window. Hands down full stop just do it. That is the norm for every other comment related site ever, and NOT having it here means forgetting to right click on links.
That would eliminate all sorts of bullshit that has happened here, and solves your particular problem too.
Slashdot Mirror
Speed limits (and some other types of rules) are to enforce safety on what some of the outliers do.
"Regular people" who are just trying to get somewhere do generally act safely, and for the most part adjust. (Though there are exceptions.)
The problem is the rules are for the people that don't adjust, they don't think anything will happen, or they aren't wise enough to realize what the consequences are.
Removing the rules, subjects the "ordinary people" to the mistakes of the outliers to a much greater degree.
If you haven't ever done this, go over to Youtube and search for "car crash" videos and enjoy a couple hours of soviets and other former eastern bloc countries slaughtering each other on the roads. Then about half way through, notice the body parts ones, kid gets dragged ones, etc. aren't posted because that sort of stuff is illegal there (the videos of it) and against Youtube TOS. The really bad shit, they won't show you. In almost all the videos, you'll see normal people and then some dumbass outlier who thinks there are no rules causing problems.
You are signing us all up for that bullshit with your hairbrained plan.
Rules are not for rules followers, rules are for people who will try to break the rules. Misplaced faith in those people to "be better" punishes us all.
If you're relying on reflective paint, what about fallen trees, deer, pot holes, other debris and road users not coated in reflective paint? If someone is using the road and relying on the lines to keep them on the route, then they are using the road unsafely.
We can't fix all problems, therefore, we shouldn't fix any problems!
I think it's a very reasonable thing to do in order to discourage behavior that is universally looked upon as bad. Yes, being abusive to software does no harm to the software, but if you can have your chatbot, or whatever you want to classify Cortana as in this scenario, act in a way that does not fuel this behavior (which let's face it would only be done by idiots), without compromising the functionality of the tool, then I support Microsoft's efforts.
Our communication with each other is coarsening at a fast enough rate as it is.
You are talking about a thought crime. Your "reasoning" can be used to criminalize all sorts of other accepted and even necessary behaviors.
Here are some other thought crimes along those same lines:
-viewing porn, creating porn, selling porn, talking about porn or just about anything else.
-any other simulation of anything that has an analog in real life, kicking a stuffed animal around the yard for example
-using memories of others from the "spank bank"
-using a completely fictional character you make up in your own head for the "spank bank"
-having a voodoo doll (fake or "real")
-having or using a punching bag
-any type of video game that uses violence, especially those where players go against other human players
It's up to Microsoft to decide how Microsoft's stuff behaves, however tacking on "should" to the reasoning is outrageously ridiculous and a great example of the stupid SJW stuff people have been complaining about on Slashdot. Your little utopia doesn't exist, and nobody WANTS it to exist. Go away.
Also, a few little tools that could be run as services to fill their telemetry system with garbage.
Microsoft windows: "OK, how many keystrokes so far today and what are they?" Tool: "45.345^12 keystrokes, all consisting of the letter Q"
Malware that poisons MS systems would be fun too.
Realistically though, a learning firewall that blocked all connections unless they were whitelisted would solve lots of problems. Spyware, adware, ads, stumbling on known rack space providers that host bullshit, all of china and pacific rim, etc.
The number of personal firearms is north of 360 ~ 450 million now.
There were something like 5 million NICS checks in January 2016. Rates have been ramping up since 2008 and records broken each month. There isn't a one to one translation for NICS to "firearms bought" but it is ballpark.
That "300 million" number has been tossed around a long time and the number is stale.
That's a false comparison. Nobody carries around a hunting rifle to, in your own words, "stop a threat."
If you're claiming hand-guns are somehow a "soft" method of defending yourself, then you are sorely mistaken.
You should try to get out of the city occasionally.
The line between "pistol" and "rifle" is a fake one defined by the ATF where "designed to be fired with one hand" and "designed to be set to the shoulder to fire" is the definition. Caliber and ballistic capabilities are not included in the distinction. Then there are dimensions and other stuff tacked onto those definitions, firearms that fall out of those dimensions are AOWs (Any Other Weapon) or SBS or SBRs.
So it IS quite possible to be using a "pistol" that's basically a rifle with rifle-like ballistic results but with pistol legality (whatever that happens to be at that location.)
It's about gun control, and besides, a 9mm is not for killing people. It's about stopping a threat.
9mm is almost as lethal as a .45 ACP, according to the charts. Not quite, but damned close. Hence the BHP in 9mm following the 1911...
It is if you use a modern expanding hollow point bullet with a decent weight and charge. Though, I'd be surprised if this thing could handle P+ or +P+ charges for long.
There is an outfit selling 80% Glock-clone lowers now too... which will turn out to be a FAR better firearm.
And you think taking that industry and releasing it from any form of regulation at all will make things better?
The part about removing scarcity and the monopoly taxis have is what will make it better.
3. Don't pander to the morons - you know, the ones who see a story about a widely known open source project used by household names, and then shit up the place with, "HURR WAT DIS". Tech news. If you can't Google, you shouldn't be here.
On the other hand, there's a fine line between using technospeak mumbo jumbo language only relevant for some small sliver of some small OSS project where no explanation is given about what the heck the article is about and spoon feeding people a back story on basic physics that they should already know on some NASA project. They don't need to link to a Wikipedia article about what a lifting body is, but on the other hand a HDFOJ nozzle chroming chamber should be explained or at least linked in the submission.
Recent years have submissions that need Googling for acronyms, terms, company names, etc. where it's just simply sloppy submission writing and sloppy submission editing. Those should stop. The submission should be enough for the user to decide to read or not. If it isn't, it sucks, or it's click bait or it's not finished.
Editors should simply press a "we like it but the writing sucks" rejection button that sends feedback to tell people they suck and to get people to actually put effort into the original submission. They'd be able to edit and re-submit. Realistically, the burden is both on editors and submitters, but the submitters seem to be getting an undeserved pass on this issue.
Basically, the editors need a big red pen and smiley face stickers.
The comments on this site are occasionally funny, frequently snide, but all too often terrible--and that's without the trolls who spam the same thing on every story. The worst is when some well-meaning soul asks a question and the first two responses ridicule him before the third takes a tangent, igniting a holy war that completely derails the topic. For that reason, I never read Ask Slashdot because the question never gets answered. Now, I anticipate the jackals who frequent this site will begin tearing me a new one. Have at it, guys.
You can change your settings so you don't see them. If you bother to get an account and log in.
On the other hand, Ask Slashdot is one of the better sections as it is a reflection of what people are thinking / doing... often nerdy stuff like we all want here. But, true, people do ask stupid or have un-workable, contradictory, or impossible projects and THOSE people really should be told "what you are doing is unethical or impossible" when the situation warrants.
In short, don't click on those submissions.
Yes we need to be more transparent about this
There are two ways rules will get you what you want.
First one is, obviously, they form a rigid framework that everything fits into.
The second is, that it encourages people to do more of what you want!
Not being transparent about it, completely ignores the second aspect... one which in my opinion is likely to be more powerful.
What's wrong with making a link and telling us why we should click?
There are about a million reasons NOT to add all that bulk to this site.
Forgot about that penalty point for the long comment. Due to my own verbosity, I obviously think that should be an option of the user, not the system.
Or at least there should be a warning when you've triggered it, eh?
All this talk of SJWs and you want to add a "trigger warning?" ;)
The "read the rest of this comment" link has had some issues, it used to open up just that thread branch (in the same window, when it should be a new window or tab) and do other crazy shit. One thing is for sure, "new window or not" is a UI issue that has been long ignored (and fucked up) by the previous owners.
I stopped using that link, and just skip the rest of the comment. Some people are too verbose.
Though, I would like to have a site-wide setting of "truncate long posts" Yes/No so I can just turn it off. I have a mouse wheel and a PgDn button, I don't need help.
As a user, I can't go back and correct grammar and spelling mistakes. Editors can. Heck,they can correct the summary after it's live on the front page. There is considerably less excuse for mistakes in the summary than there are for mistakes in comments.
You need to remove moderation power from users and take responsibility for the site content if you want to do this.
I once registered here and posted something perfectly reasonable and was banned from posting by other users. I have never registered since. The user moderation system is abused horribly to push agendas and silence opposing views.
That's not how the moderation system works.
I see the value of making them log in where "kill all the jews" becomes a daily, boring, no value adding AC comment that people have to spend their mod points to filter out.
When staff could simply kill the user account and they are gone for a while.... so nobody has to bother dealing with it.
Posting again with my account to add a point:
And with ACs having accounts makes the management side much easier.
That IS a good idea.
Plus, the refresh see to see new comments at the top would work for more ads results of that would benefit the site owners somewhat, and people would be doing it willingly.
There's a happy medium between total ad block (where I am at now) and "that ad was useful and it didn't pop up in my face"
Also, if Slashdot EVER takes over my whole browser window, darkens the whole page, and shows me some fucking bullshit notice, I am out of here.
No. If I wanted reddit and that kind of crap, I'd be over there participating in that kind of crap.
Please ignore all those users calling for bans, either banning users or banning ACS. Slashdot has long promoted totally free speech and banning users for what they say is exactly the reason that other sites have fallen.
It was promoted.
It wasn't always practiced.
There were some phases where the politically correct crew was in control of the ban hammer.
The moderation system is not excellent it is fucking horrific. Users can be banned from posting by other users and this is abused. You cannot leave the moderation of a site to its users. It will be abused. I registered once on slashdot and posted something perfectly reasonable that others did not agree with. I was banned. I will never register here again as long as other users do the moderating. Site staff has to do the moderating. Not users.
The moderation system and moderators are not the same thing. The system is the little drop down box and scores. Moderators are humans that check for flagged messages (or just see them) and act on it per policy, or per bias.
You probably ran into one of the biased SJW's that was tearing up the place. You could also just be in incoherent dick. (Your post seems quite incoherent.)
Some of that was valid removals, some was not.
So how about completely clearing the banned list because it is tainted with past poor management?
Yes our infrastructure is sound enough to weather a storm like that. Hopefully its not a similar storm, however
In case you weren't here for that... I recall a stripped "emergency mode" that had one or two stories that were about the event and NOTHING ELSE was done on the site and all the rest of the stuff turned off. Other stories were temporarily removed. I don't know what happened to advertisements (or if there were any) at the time, those need to be within your control to shut off as well.
Most other major news sites were offline or so slow as to be useless. Some of them were using advanced load balancing technology at the time (Akamai?) and it didn't help.
Slashdot was one of the few places that allowed for collecting information from "the hive" and getting first hand reports by people nearby.
One thing that has annoyed me for years is that using the browser's back button the site always causing the browser to scroll to top of the page and appears to be intentionally done via javascript somewhere. It's time that annoyance was removed.
Links in comments need target="blank" in them period.
No need for back button then. That's basic first five minutes of "how to make a web site" class.
If the discussion is good enough, people will come back and re-see the ads anyway.
What?
And in the name of all that's unholy, get rid of the javascript that auto-scrolls you to the top of the page whenever you hit the back button. Just to serve more ads, I presume, but it really breaks usability when you can't follow a link in a large thread, and go back to where you were. That makes me leave the thread in disgust. Sure, I can open links in a new tab to get around the problem, but I shouldn't have to. Back is to where you were, not where advertisers want you to be.
Links in comments should be automatically tagged "target='blank' so they open in a new tab or window. Hands down full stop just do it. That is the norm for every other comment related site ever, and NOT having it here means forgetting to right click on links.
That would eliminate all sorts of bullshit that has happened here, and solves your particular problem too.