If you switch to this design I will stop reading Slashdot.
It is unusable. Too much vertical space is wasted. Layout does not scale up with font size. Default font size is miniscule. The top three stories are squished together, and I cannot distinguish between them. Story text is truncated too short, so I have to click on *every* *single* *story* just to get the gist, which takes too long.
Please define the layout in units of ems not pixels.
Some of us have hi-res displays and need to crank up the font size for readability. We do not appreciate our content being squeezed into a rigidly fixed-width column, nor do we enjoy the associated wrapping and overflow effects that result.
1. Sit non-techie in front of Wikipedia and navigate to a page of their choice. 2. Click the "Edit" tab and show how easy it is for anyone to modify the article. 3. Explain the productivity benefits of low barriers to entry -- no locks, no approval process. 4. Ask what the downside would be. Hope for an answer about dangers of vandalism or poor-quality contributions by unqualified people. 5. Click the "View history" tab and show how all edits are visible and never lost. 6. Show how easy it is to "rewind" to an earlier version of the article. At this point, the non-techie should start to understand why Wikipedia works and is not just a mess of low-quality, vandalised articles. 7. Help by pointing out how every edit identifies the contributor, or at least their computer (IP address) so they can be blocked. 8. Explain that source code control is like Wikipedia but for computer programming -- nobody's work is ever lost, all contributions are identifiable and traceable, rewinding is easy, and people can build on each other's work quickly and easily. 9. Explain that modern (distributed) SCC systems are much more powerful than Wikipedia in terms of what programmers can do to organise their work and their teams.
The main reason that spam is proliferating and will continue to do so is simple: it is a commercial activity, hence sacrosanct.
Governments today can make effective law against all sorts of things, but the sacred cow that they must never interfere with is people's and corporations' right to make profit. As soon as they mess with that, they can wave their economy bye bye as all the powerful corporate players jump ship.
Long-established commercial activity such as farming, mining, agriculture, retail, insurance, medical practice, etc. have equally long-established, effective laws that protect us from the abuses of their worst practictioners. Those laws were made in the days before "free enterprise" ruled the roost. Today, though, new enterprises are free to neglect their social responsibilities, and they will get away scot free because governments no longer dare to make effective law to inhibit them. They will make new law, yes, but not effective law.
So now the U.N. is picking up the ball. That's not surprising, because all the lost causes get booted to the U.N. eventually anyway, which is why they have gotten a reputation for being ineffective and goody-goody.
Until recently I'd never seen more than ten seconds of Farscape. They don't run it on any of the free-to-air channels in Sydney, much to the ire of many. I'm not much of a TV watcher myself, but I don't mind the odd episode of ST:TNG and happily admit to having been hooked by Babylon 5 when they were playing it on late night timeslots four years ago here in Sydney. I only knew about Farscape because my brother once played a bit part in an alien bodysuit for one episode. But now I've seen three whole minutes, and what's more, most of them not yet seen by the public, because last night I sang in the soundtrack recording for the penultimate episode (21) of the 3rd season at the Sony studios in Sydney. The production company contracted us (the Sydney Chamber Choir) to provide sixteen male voices for a couple of hours. The music was dark and Mozart-Requiem-like with lots of low notes, and we had to make it sound as much like a Russian choir as possible (for the choral iliterati, that means cavernous and subsonic).
SPOILER FOLLOWS
In the scenes we accompanied, an immense spaceship was being destroyed, water everywhere, and there was a tense meeting between some human bloke and a mean-looking alien commander in a black leather headpiece with a shrivelled face and pointy teeth (seems it was his ship being pounded). They both wore identical technological amulets which they discarded while talking. This seemed to be significant. There was no dialogue track, so all we had to go on were the visuals. Does any of this make sense to you diehards out there?
Slashdot Mirror
If you switch to this design I will stop reading Slashdot.
It is unusable. Too much vertical space is wasted. Layout does not scale up with font size. Default font size is miniscule. The top three stories are squished together, and I cannot distinguish between them. Story text is truncated too short, so I have to click on *every* *single* *story* just to get the gist, which takes too long.
Please define the layout in units of ems not pixels.
Some of us have hi-res displays and need to crank up the font size for readability. We do not appreciate our content being squeezed into a rigidly fixed-width column, nor do we enjoy the associated wrapping and overflow effects that result.
See http://developer.servalproject.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=content:servalmesh:main_page
1. Sit non-techie in front of Wikipedia and navigate to a page of their choice.
2. Click the "Edit" tab and show how easy it is for anyone to modify the article.
3. Explain the productivity benefits of low barriers to entry -- no locks, no approval process.
4. Ask what the downside would be. Hope for an answer about dangers of vandalism or poor-quality contributions by unqualified people.
5. Click the "View history" tab and show how all edits are visible and never lost.
6. Show how easy it is to "rewind" to an earlier version of the article. At this point, the non-techie should start to understand why Wikipedia works and is not just a mess of low-quality, vandalised articles.
7. Help by pointing out how every edit identifies the contributor, or at least their computer (IP address) so they can be blocked.
8. Explain that source code control is like Wikipedia but for computer programming -- nobody's work is ever lost, all contributions are identifiable and traceable, rewinding is easy, and people can build on each other's work quickly and easily.
9. Explain that modern (distributed) SCC systems are much more powerful than Wikipedia in terms of what programmers can do to organise their work and their teams.
The main reason that spam is proliferating and will continue to do so is simple: it is a commercial activity, hence sacrosanct.
Governments today can make effective law against all sorts of things, but the sacred cow that they must never interfere with is people's and corporations' right to make profit. As soon as they mess with that, they can wave their economy bye bye as all the powerful corporate players jump ship.
Long-established commercial activity such as farming, mining, agriculture, retail, insurance, medical practice, etc. have equally long-established, effective laws that protect us from the abuses of their worst practictioners. Those laws were made in the days before "free enterprise" ruled the roost. Today, though, new enterprises are free to neglect their social responsibilities, and they will get away scot free because governments no longer dare to make effective law to inhibit them. They will make new law, yes, but not effective law.
So now the U.N. is picking up the ball. That's not surprising, because all the lost causes get booted to the U.N. eventually anyway, which is why they have gotten a reputation for being ineffective and goody-goody.
Until recently I'd never seen more than ten seconds of Farscape. They don't run it on any of the free-to-air channels in Sydney, much to the ire of many. I'm not much of a TV watcher myself, but I don't mind the odd episode of ST:TNG and happily admit to having been hooked by Babylon 5 when they were playing it on late night timeslots four years ago here in Sydney. I only knew about Farscape because my brother once played a bit part in an alien bodysuit for one episode. But now I've seen three whole minutes, and what's more, most of them not yet seen by the public, because last night I sang in the soundtrack recording for the penultimate episode (21) of the 3rd season at the Sony studios in Sydney. The production company contracted us (the Sydney Chamber Choir) to provide sixteen male voices for a couple of hours. The music was dark and Mozart-Requiem-like with lots of low notes, and we had to make it sound as much like a Russian choir as possible (for the choral iliterati, that means cavernous and subsonic).
SPOILER FOLLOWS
In the scenes we accompanied, an immense spaceship was being destroyed, water everywhere, and there was a tense meeting between some human bloke and a mean-looking alien commander in a black leather headpiece with a shrivelled face and pointy teeth (seems it was his ship being pounded). They both wore identical technological amulets which they discarded while talking. This seemed to be significant. There was no dialogue track, so all we had to go on were the visuals. Does any of this make sense to you diehards out there?