My boss just got one of these things and he is considering setting up our sales force with something like this.
Consider the advantages:
No hard drive. The system cannot be corrupted by people installing software. Quite a plus for windows boxes with no access control
Boots off a CD. Anytime your sales staff needs new software, you just issue new CDRs to everybody
Ease of use. For example, you can always turn the thing off just by hitting the power button
Of course, this would only work for those with a small set of repetitive tasks that they need a computer for. You would also need the network resources to support it all.
One of the features of a network computer is that it has no hard drive. The thing boots the operating system off a CD. The few local files that it saves (ie Netscape bookmarks) are stored on a piece of flash memory connected to an IDE channel.
I mean, it would be nice and all to have an mp3 player in your car that couldn't play mp3s unless your car was plugged into your network.
Its a problem because you don't trust your neighbors. Heck, if you are like most Americans, you probably don't even know your neighbors. If you live in the suburbs, everybody has a house, a car, a yard. Everybody commutes to work. There is no corner grocery store. You don't get together to on a daily basis. You are more likely to invite friends or coworkers who live miles away over to dinner.
This is in sharp contrast to dorm life it college where everybody on the floor knew each other. We would have cried bloody murder if we had not been able to share files by turning on sharing over our network. Local sharing is so much more efficient than going through services like Napste
Linux articles (esp. ones like this) are almost *instantly* trashed right off the bat, while any troll who has an article saying basically nothing more than "Micro$oft sux" is almost always praised.
I have a few observations and theories on this point.
My first observation is that this is at least partially true, just because of the makeup of the slashdot community. Face it, we do have quite a few linux zealots and quite a few micros~1 haters.
However, I also believe that this has a great deal to do with some flaws in the moderation system.
The first problem I see is that the first posts to an article are the most likely to be modded up. Moderators tend to hang around the couple most recently posted stories.
Not everybody refreshes Slashdot every two hours. The people that do, are the ones that agree most with the stereotypical slashdot agenda.
Insightful posts take time. It could easily take an hour to *read the article*, do some other research, and post some meaningful commentary. Those who post fast seem more likely to spout out their gut feelings.
To sum up: The people who post first are likely to be avid slashdot readers and more zealotous. Posts that are made soon after the article goes up are not as likely to be based on facts.
On hot trigger issues such as this one, I have read comments soon, then comments later and been pleasantly suprised by a couple better posts that get moderated later. Often on looking further, I notice that there are several more that I would have modded higher than the ones that are modded higher.
Let me try to illustrate this with a graph:
Post Quality vs Time: |high | |+---+ |+++--+ |+-+&nbs p;+---+ |++ +---+ |++ +--------------- |++ |+-+ |++ ++ | |low +----------------------------------------- time--->
Sum of moderation done |more+-------------- ----------- |+-----+ |+--+ |++ |+ |++ |+ |+ |+ |+ || | |less +----------------------------------------- time---> As you can see from the graphs, I think there are a lot of good comments posted later that don't get moderated, while a lot of earlier comments that might not be quite so good, do.
I suggest the golden moderation system.
You get 5 moderator points. 2 of the are gold. 2 of them are silver. 1 of them is bronze.
gold points can be used on any post at any time. Silver points can be used on posts attached to articles that are more than 2 hours old. Bronze points can be used on posts attached to stories that are more than 1 day old.
I think this would really do wonders for Slashdot.
My housemate just bought a logitech optical mouse. Plugged into my usb and started working with no driver installation (Windows box). Plays nicely with my other mouse which I still have plugged into my computer. It also has an adapter for ps2.
The only annoying part is the blue lighted logitech logo which is bright enough to put an eerie glow into my room at night.
I don't know where he got it, but I can't find it on logitech's web site right now.
A few weeks ago, I posted that I was finding fewer bugs in Mozilla than were being fixed. At one point I was finding 2 bugs a week. I haven't found a unreported bug in mozilla for almost 3 weeks now, and in that time, several that are important to me have been fixed.
This morning (before this article was posted) I downloaded the most recent nightly build and it passed my smoketest. For the first time I was able to visit all the sites I visit on a daily basis (about a dozen of them) without a single crash.
If I find somebody on Napster that has quite a few songs that I'm searching for, I'll go and get the whole list of songs from that person and see if I like any of the other artists they like. I have found quite a few garage bands that I like this way.
I think he was suggesting a sliding scale. If a post is marked as a 5, you almost always want to read the whole thing, no matter how long it is. But if its a 0, then chances are, that if its long, its spam. Let me just see the very beginning of it.
Have you noticed that there is no better way to lose karma than to moderate very obvious trolls as such? If I use my points to moderate 5 fp, penis bird, hot grits, beer boy, etc., posts, the next week I will invariable have 2 or 3 fewer karma points. I've probably lost 25 karma doing this. It seem some meta-moderators think is funny to bitch slap you for doing this.
If you are fooled by the difference between an I and an l in the domain name, there is no reason that you wouldn't also be fooled by the same when presented with information about the security.
The wright brothers may have had more right than you realize. Today planes change altitude and direction using wing flaps. The wright brothers used cloth wings that could bend to change their course.
The wright brothers' design was much more efficient. Engineers today are looking for modern flexible materials out of which wings can be made.
Those of us who use deja on a regular basis will easily be able to tell what has been inserted by deja and what has not.
How the deja formats usenet messages: All messages are treated as plain text. Special characters are escaped. A < is replaced by a <. This means that deja users see usenet messages that are formatted as html as html source. Second, all urls in the message are hyperlinked to the url. So if I wrote http://www.slashdot.org, deja would format it as http://www.slashdot.org Presumably with its new system, deja will not be treating any urls as keywords that it will link back to itself.
I bought an Insight. I was on the waiting list for 4 months until a dealer found one for me. I drove it for 4 days and I was hit by maniac turning a corner at 80 mph as I was sitting at a stoplight. The car kept me safe, but its still in the shop a month later. I can't wait til I get it back. I wonder how many other slashdot readers bought one? I'll bet I was the first to have body work done to mine.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Consider the advantages:
- No hard drive. The system cannot be corrupted by people installing software. Quite a plus for windows boxes with no access control
- Boots off a CD. Anytime your sales staff needs new software, you just issue new CDRs to everybody
- Ease of use. For example, you can always turn the thing off just by hitting the power button
Of course, this would only work for those with a small set of repetitive tasks that they need a computer for. You would also need the network resources to support it all.I mean, it would be nice and all to have an mp3 player in your car that couldn't play mp3s unless your car was plugged into your network.
Its a problem because you don't trust your neighbors. Heck, if you are like most Americans, you probably don't even know your neighbors. If you live in the suburbs, everybody has a house, a car, a yard. Everybody commutes to work. There is no corner grocery store. You don't get together to on a daily basis. You are more likely to invite friends or coworkers who live miles away over to dinner.
This is in sharp contrast to dorm life it college where everybody on the floor knew each other. We would have cried bloody murder if we had not been able to share files by turning on sharing over our network. Local sharing is so much more efficient than going through services like Napste
My first observation is that this is at least partially true, just because of the makeup of the slashdot community. Face it, we do have quite a few linux zealots and quite a few micros~1 haters.
However, I also believe that this has a great deal to do with some flaws in the moderation system.
The first problem I see is that the first posts to an article are the most likely to be modded up. Moderators tend to hang around the couple most recently posted stories.
Not everybody refreshes Slashdot every two hours. The people that do, are the ones that agree most with the stereotypical slashdot agenda.
Insightful posts take time. It could easily take an hour to *read the article*, do some other research, and post some meaningful commentary. Those who post fast seem more likely to spout out their gut feelings.
To sum up: The people who post first are likely to be avid slashdot readers and more zealotous. Posts that are made soon after the article goes up are not as likely to be based on facts.
On hot trigger issues such as this one, I have read comments soon, then comments later and been pleasantly suprised by a couple better posts that get moderated later. Often on looking further, I notice that there are several more that I would have modded higher than the ones that are modded higher.
Let me try to illustrate this with a graph:
Post Quality vs Time: ;+---+ ;+---------------
|high
|
|+---+
|+++--+
|+-+&nbs p;+---+
|++ 
|++ 
|++
|+-+
|++
++
|
|low
+-----------------------------------------
time--->
Sum of moderation done
|more+-------------- -----------
|+-----+
|+--+
|++
|+
|++
|+
|+
|+
|+
||
|
|less
+-----------------------------------------
time---> As you can see from the graphs, I think there are a lot of good comments posted later that don't get moderated, while a lot of earlier comments that might not be quite so good, do.
I suggest the golden moderation system.
You get 5 moderator points.
2 of the are gold.
2 of them are silver.
1 of them is bronze.
gold points can be used on any post at any time. Silver points can be used on posts attached to articles that are more than 2 hours old. Bronze points can be used on posts attached to stories that are more than 1 day old.
I think this would really do wonders for Slashdot.
Tetris Tetris Tetris Pacman Asteroids Centipede
And for you people that grew up on the kaypro, cloned Ladder! (Shameless self plug)
I'm sure you can any of the most popular games just with a quick search on google. :
I hear its a new breed that will really make you high.
and it looks like this one doesn't have the annoying blue light.
The only annoying part is the blue lighted logitech logo which is bright enough to put an eerie glow into my room at night.
I don't know where he got it, but I can't find it on logitech's web site right now.
This morning (before this article was posted) I downloaded the most recent nightly build and it passed my smoketest. For the first time I was able to visit all the sites I visit on a daily basis (about a dozen of them) without a single crash.
There are still some things that need to be fixed before I throw away netscape:
Find in page does not work with frames.
Still a bit crashy including some on animated gifs
A much shorter list than the 10 or so things that I had on it about 2 months ago.
Also called another way to make your city as unfriendly as possible to bicyclists.
I don't know. It doesn't really seem like slashdot to me. Without JenniCam in a slashbox and all.
It appears that even their lowest level of service is not $25 per year. Their "extra" service is $69 per year.
They also nabbed www.esting.com for him.
If I find somebody on Napster that has quite a few songs that I'm searching for, I'll go and get the whole list of songs from that person and see if I like any of the other artists they like. I have found quite a few garage bands that I like this way.
IMHO this is a very good idea.
We obviously need meta-meta-moderation.
I wouldn't mind beating him into a pulp with an appropriate weapon. God I hope he's there.
Ok. It might say PayPaI Inc.
If you are fooled by the difference between an I and an l in the domain name, there is no reason that you wouldn't also be fooled by the same when presented with information about the security.
The wright brothers' design was much more efficient. Engineers today are looking for modern flexible materials out of which wings can be made.
[x] Actually post something relevant [x] Never post again
You can't say there couldn't be a better interface for this.
How the deja formats usenet messages: All messages are treated as plain text. Special characters are escaped. A < is replaced by a <. This means that deja users see usenet messages that are formatted as html as html source.
Second, all urls in the message are hyperlinked to the url. So if I wrote http://www.slashdot.org, deja would format it as http://www.slashdot.org
Presumably with its new system, deja will not be treating any urls as keywords that it will link back to itself.
So modems would have been added by deja but http://www.modems.com would have been in the original message.
If the author of the message had tried to make the first appear, it would look like: <a href="http://www.modems.com">modems</a>
Presumably deja users will figure this out after reading two or three messages.
(I think that was Dave Barry)
I have an Insight, and I love it.
I bought an Insight. I was on the waiting list for 4 months until a dealer found one for me. I drove it for 4 days and I was hit by maniac turning a corner at 80 mph as I was sitting at a stoplight. The car kept me safe, but its still in the shop a month later. I can't wait til I get it back. I wonder how many other slashdot readers bought one? I'll bet I was the first to have body work done to mine. :-)