" Why, even the Cray Supercomputer would have been astounding in its day if AND, OR and NOT weren't the only gates we had to build with."
Do you know how hard it was to get the individual components and materials to build MAYBE gates, and how tight the tolerances had to be?
Doc Brown only needed one flux capacitor, those things each needed at least a dozen.
And you couldn't just take a MAYBE gate and slap an inverter on it to get an NMAYBE, you had to turn the whole design inside out, and the XMAYBE only existed on paper, because it would have taken the equivalent of 3 Manhattan projects and a quarter of the GNP of the entire Western Hemisphere just to produce a working prototype.
... Wiring a board wasn't programming either, (although it was often called that)...
In, or shortly after, the beginning, that is how programming was done, back when computers were made of vacuum tubes and relays and were about as big as a locomotive, if not as cool running.
It all depends on the numbers. If there is 5% less traffic in that week, they'll ignore it. If there is 50% less traffic, they might take notice.
Also, unlike most boycotts, this protest is not against an unpopular corporate policy, but against the product itself. The beta interface has such poor usability that I can't see myself using it, even if I wanted to.
Actually, *we* are the product.
Our presence at the site is what they sell to advertisers.
We're also the producers of the product by attracting each other here.
We need to help Dice more fully grasp that concept.
Over on slashdotmedia.com they brag "Slashdot averages 4,653 comments on a daily basis..."
If we can change that to a 3 digit number for 7 days, maybe it'll be like the old farmer treating the mule with kindness who starts by whacking it on the head with a 2x4.
But seriously, let me echo Common Joe's suggestion to check out altslashdot.org and see if perhaps you and he might collaborate if Dice doesn't come to their senses.
And let me plug my own idea for your consideration and critique...
Don't you mean a "dumb black" site? Oh wait, that would be 'racist'...
And by the way the word 'dumb' means 'unable to speak' as in 'dumb animal', it does not mean stupid, unintelligent, etc... Those words are reserved for the people who don't understand what the word 'dumb' means...
Actually, the word for people who do not know that dumb means incapable of speech is "ignorant".
It's not a lack of intelligence, it's a lack of knowledge, of specific information, just as is not knowing that data and media are plurals, or that when things differ, the differ *from* one another, that "than" is to be used in comparing differing quantities of the same quality, not in comparing differing qualities, or that a reduction in something which is in discrete, countable units means you have fewer of them and not less.
When you talk about what Slashdot needs, are you talking about Slashdot the group of users or Slashdot the intellectual property which Dice owns and expects to make money from?
Yeah, but the way I browse, refreshing should have included the replies tucked underneath and slightly indented from the parent post. They wouldn't be all the way down at the bottom disconnected from everything.
And if there had been a single "Discuss Beta Here" thread provided from the very beginning, and all the comments went into it, it well could have seriously borked something. Sort of an unintentional undistributed denial of service attack.
Allow me to recommend for your reading pleasure this particular squirt from the firehose:
...On the beta, bookmarking comments does not appear to be possible. (For any given comment, there doesn't seem to be anything that shows as a unique link like the current http://BLAH.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=XXXXXXX&cid=YYYYYYY. And I guess all the gems I've bookmarked will be dead links.)
Perhaps easier to shove them into the memory hole that way.
I'm afraid I can't answer this, since I'm not part of the design team. I will ask them to share their thoughts on design choices, but I can't promise anything.
I think I'm beginning to see the problem.
You've been put in the painful position of being expected to convince us that we're being served chicken salad, when it's so painfully obvious that it's really chicken s...
Slashdot Mirror
Soldering irons.
"... but a good speaker can't spee 2 words per second..."
You never heard me back in the day when I had to cram 90 to 120 seconds worth of furniture store copy into a 60 second spot.
" Why, even the Cray Supercomputer would have been astounding in its day if AND, OR and NOT weren't the only gates we had to build with."
Do you know how hard it was to get the individual components and materials to build MAYBE gates, and how tight the tolerances had to be?
Doc Brown only needed one flux capacitor, those things each needed at least a dozen.
And you couldn't just take a MAYBE gate and slap an inverter on it to get an NMAYBE, you had to turn the whole design inside out, and the XMAYBE only existed on paper, because it would have taken the equivalent of 3 Manhattan projects and a quarter of the GNP of the entire Western Hemisphere just to produce a working prototype.
...
Wiring a board wasn't programming either, (although it was often called that)...
In, or shortly after, the beginning, that is how programming was done, back when computers were made of vacuum tubes and relays and were about as big as a locomotive, if not as cool running.
Without the value provided by the first, they're not going to make money from the second.
You and I know that, but I'm wondering if Dice ever figured it out.
What they need is for people to visit the site, whether they post or not, so they can sell the eyeballs to advertisers.
What the user community needs is a website we can stand that gives us a place to all meet up at the same place and talk to each other.
We'd prefer that place be Slashdot, but we know it doesn't have to be.
The question is whether Dice doesn't understand that, or whether they're planning on replacing the user community.
????
I've often wished for one of those in the car.
Especially after jacked up trucks with with tractor tires became popular.
And please vote this out of the Firehose:
http://slashdot.org/submission...
It all depends on the numbers. If there is 5% less traffic in that week, they'll ignore it. If there is 50% less traffic, they might take notice.
Also, unlike most boycotts, this protest is not against an unpopular corporate policy, but against the product itself . The beta interface has such poor usability that I can't see myself using it, even if I wanted to.
Actually, *we* are the product.
Our presence at the site is what they sell to advertisers.
We're also the producers of the product by attracting each other here.
We need to help Dice more fully grasp that concept.
Over on slashdotmedia.com they brag "Slashdot averages 4,653 comments on a daily basis..."
If we can change that to a 3 digit number for 7 days, maybe it'll be like the old farmer treating the mule with kindness who starts by whacking it on the head with a 2x4.
"First you have to get its attention"
Hi, Bruce, long time-no gasp in awe of. : - )
But seriously, let me echo Common Joe's suggestion to check out altslashdot.org and see if perhaps you and he might collaborate if Dice doesn't come to their senses.
And let me plug my own idea for your consideration and critique...
http://slashdot.org/submission...
That's always included Slashdot.
It was what we had to say to each other about the news, fresh or otherwise, that made this place this place.
Speaking of sigs, love yours.
And I remember that sig of Bruce's, I even had one of my own parodying it.
So anyone with UID of 1128 or lower is literally older than dirt?
Your insightful and wickedly funny comparison to a certain cable channel's metamorphosis deserves all the mod points I'll probably never have again.
I think I sort of got Slashdot to show up in Arachne on DOS back in '98
Don't you mean a "dumb black" site? Oh wait, that would be 'racist'...
And by the way the word 'dumb' means 'unable to speak' as in 'dumb animal', it does not mean stupid, unintelligent, etc... Those words are reserved for the people who don't understand what the word 'dumb' means...
Actually, the word for people who do not know that dumb means incapable of speech is "ignorant".
It's not a lack of intelligence, it's a lack of knowledge, of specific information, just as is not knowing that data and media are plurals, or that when things differ, the differ *from* one another, that "than" is to be used in comparing differing quantities of the same quality, not in comparing differing qualities, or that a reduction in something which is in discrete, countable units means you have fewer of them and not less.
...I get to reply next with my 5 digit id, and only then do you post with 4 digits...
Well, if you insist.
Could be bumping them to -2 or deeper.
I think they did that to an entire thread about a decade or more ago.
I don't think any of us will ever get them again.
When you talk about what Slashdot needs, are you talking about Slashdot the group of users or Slashdot the intellectual property which Dice owns and expects to make money from?
Yeah, but the way I browse, refreshing should have included the replies tucked underneath and slightly indented from the parent post. They wouldn't be all the way down at the bottom disconnected from everything.
And if there had been a single "Discuss Beta Here" thread provided from the very beginning, and all the comments went into it, it well could have seriously borked something. Sort of an unintentional undistributed denial of service attack.
Allow me to recommend for your reading pleasure this particular squirt from the firehose:
A Modest Proposal, re: Beta vs. Classic
...On the beta, bookmarking comments does not appear to be possible. (For any given comment, there doesn't seem to be anything that shows as a unique link like the current http: //BLAH.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=XXXXXXX&cid=YYYYYYY. And I guess all the gems I've bookmarked will be dead links.)
Perhaps easier to shove them into the memory hole that way.
Here is the crux of the problem. Who is "we"? Because it certainly doesn't seem to be the slashdot community, that's for sure!
Noticed that, have you?
" It can only be better."
Oh no, it can be a lot worse.
HuffingtonPost worse.
The old Slashdot would have had the original article about the Slashdot PT cruiser, which you would also be free to ignore.
But it wouldn't be trying to look like every other site.
...
I'm afraid I can't answer this, since I'm not part of the design team. I will ask them to share their thoughts on design choices, but I can't promise anything.
I think I'm beginning to see the problem.
You've been put in the painful position of being expected to convince us that we're being served chicken salad, when it's so painfully obvious that it's really chicken s...