First off, I'd like to summarily dismiss all of Brin's arguments that so-and-so must have planned for someone else to do something by acting like they wanted to opposite. This assumes that the characters are, in fact, demi-gods and have the ability to entirely manipulate every one's actions, taking into account that they can place barriers and assume that the foe will defeat the barriers. Brin says
...palpatine WANTS Amidala to escape from Naboo.
and
VADER's the one who sent the secret plans to Leia's ship! He arranged for the droids to get away, and coincidentally land just a few miles from his hidden son! Remember how, a little later, he talks Tarkin into "letting them go so we can trace them"? Likewise, he's the only close-up witness to Obiwan disappearing, when he supposedly "killed" his master in that sword fight! (Maybe he actually helped Obiwan pull a vanishing act.) Note that the "fight" with Obiwan distracted the guards & helped let Luke get away!...
Brin goes on to suggest that Vader/Anakin planned the entire course of the movies starting from his escape from Tattoine just to overthrow Palpatine by arranging for Luke to distract Palpatine at a critical moment. Finally, Brin offers a quicker way for Anakin/Vader to meet his life-long goals and chides Lucas for not seeing this simpler method.
My complaint with this entire criticism is that people, no matter how powerful, simply don't plan that far ahead. Brin accuses Palpatine of planning for Amidala to escape just in time to win him the senate. He then wonders why anyone had to die if this was the plan all along. This is ridiculous. The reason these movies (at least 4-6) are fun, is watching how powerful figures react to unpredictable events.
Palpatine's plan for Naboo.
Palpatine has three short-term goals. First, he wants to take over the senate. Second, he wants to rule Naboo (for a clone wars location??). Third, he wants to train Darth Maul.
So what does he do? Well, to take over Naboo, he sends the Federation. This is a solid move as he is either the victim, or he gets a planet and a moon. For the senate, he probably would raise a fuss over the Federation signing a treaty at home (play acting) and would call for a vote when Valorum sides with the Federation. Once that is done, he'd side with the Federation (announce they had reconciled) and he'd have a senate, a planet, and no queen. Palpatine does not anticipate the jedi heading to Naboo and saving the queen. But being a shrewd character, he does not simply confess to his actions, instead, he arranges for his queen, who did not sign a treaty, to make the call for a vote of no confidence herself. Brin asked why everyone joined her side so quickly... I say it is because Senator Palpatine talked to, and manipulated, the other delegates. This much he planned.
So why didn't Palpatine arrange for Amidala to escape in the first place? Well, he now has a queen again. She holds sway. The planet is not under his control. I think in ep2, we will see how Palpatine tries to take over Naboo again to further increase his power. In conclusion, Brin shortsightedly misses the point that we are not watching demi-gods, but that we are watching powerful characters reacting to changing conditions. Why does Palpatine recieve Amidala so nicely? Because he doesn't want to give his act away!!
Vader's goals
I argue that Vader/Anakin is not the boy wonder Brin makes him out to be. I argue that he is simply responding to the events around him, just like most people do. As a boy, Anakin knows he is special, and takes the opportunity to leave Tattoine as when it arrives. As Vader, he obeys the wishes of Palpatine up until his love for Luke overcomes his hatred of the world. When Vader sees Palpatine killing his own son, Vader becomes enraged and lifts Palpatine off the floor. Vader didn't plan this years ahead of time! He simply did so on the fly. He, at that moment, wanted to kill Palpatine, and so he took advantage of the opportunity.
As to why Vader chased Luke down the canyon, I would guess that Vader felt the force coming from Luke and was curious. He decided he either had to kill that fighter, or meet that fighter. This is like a moth flying to a flame. Luke is the flame and Vader is the moth. The moth does not plan to feed the fire, it just flies to the flame and does so. Vader was attracted to Luke's force and followed him.
Yoda
So what about Yoda? That cute little over mitt who forsees danger but is 'wrong' all the time? Is he like the Oracle in the Matrix? Or is he a false prophet?
I think Yoda is more like the Oracle in the Matrix. He is not predicting who will live and who will die. He forsees danger in that Luke will suffer. Vader will suffer. Although it is good that Palpatine dies and Vader reforms, Yoda simply forsees suffering.
Another interpretation is that his little mitochondria see a given future, but that the future they forsee does/doesn't occur.
Balance A major theme in the movies is that the force is balanced. One way to balance something is to remove both sides. Yoda, or his mitochondria, might see danger in the reduction of both sides of the force.
Fate
One final interpretation is the running theme that we choose our own destiny. This is a favorite theme in many myths, and definitely is relevant to Star Wars. If Yoda sees danger, then perhaps there is danger if someone doesn't choose the correct path. Luke was nearly killed. Vader nearly didn't kill Palpatine. Luke might have been converted to the Dark Side if he killed Vader... That is danger!
...Which brings us back to eBay. For those keeping score, eBay relies on Windows NT-based servers running Internet Information Server to provide front-end web services, and a single Enterprise 10000 from Sun Microsystems to host an Oracle database on the back-end. According to published reports, the outages at eBay, which began in February, are due to problems at the back-end.
Did anyone notice that they say eBay has problems in the back end? They say in another sentence that they use Oracle on the backend. What they don't say is that the two sentences are related! Perhaps they are having malfunctioning switch (which now can run NT!) on the backend.
The story is that they only implied that Oracle on Solaris was the problem. Perhaps a programmer forgot to unlock a row in Oracle. Does that mean Solaris' reliability is bad? They never said.
Microsoft and its enterprise associates believe that customers benefit most when they combine value priced, high performance Windows NT® server-based systems with the high availability advantages that distributed computing offers.
If you believe this sentence coming from Microsoft, then let me sell you some beach property in Nevada please. One rule in reading articles from any corporation, is to question the origin. Was the article written by an independent observer, or someone paid to write that line. In this case, I think someone was paid to write that line, whether or not he/she believed it.
-Ben
Re:eBay: Moderation points for auction
on
Slashdot Notes
·
· Score: 1
I think this would fall under the 'not announcing yourself' part of the moderation guidelines. Wouldn't the buyer be happy when they pay you for an account that just lost it's moderation!!!
By the way:--- I like how many more comments are moderated now than before. It is nice to see a few 5s on each page and most articles in the 1-2 range. Good work.
I read the entire article *before* it was even posted here. I realize that Linux was not mentioned, but Linux and gaming addicts have a very similar type of media representation.
We are rebels who wear long hair, have body piercings and have our own cliquish subcultures. We like to code/game for long stretches through the night, kept awake by the caffeine in CocaCola.
Since the media has been so nice to draw the link between some Nazi-loving death-wishers and gamers. What kind of link will they take next? I fear they might say that because Linux advocates are so rebellious, they are more likely to play vid. games. So don't let your kids run Linux!!! They might get into trouble. Don't let me get started on Hacking. All those Linux Hackers out there might teach your kid to hack into the nuclear power plants or something...
I think that SETI@Home really wins the usefulness contest. --- However, perhaps we should finish the one contest, that we know we can finish, first! If all but one person leave the DES contest, that one person will eventually get rich while the rest of us give our CPU fans a workout.
Shortly after Littleton, a military expert appeared on "60 Minutes" calling shooter games "a how-to manual for killing without a conscience," politicians howled, and then came the lawyers: last month Id Software was among 24 entertainment companies named in a $130 million lawsuit by the families of three victims killed in last year's school shooting in West Paducah, Ky. It turns out that the 14-year-old gunman in that case, Michael Carneal, also loved Doom.
It seems we have a new source of FUD. Don't buy Linux because your kids'll play Quake or Doom!!! I sure hope that type of argument doesn't take hold in the media.
Would this affect generator tags that some editors add also? It would be silly if someone got sued for not removing a generator tag from the html doc they just made using the suer's product!
I'm sorry if this is a small tangent, but I think this needs to be said.
Large corporations have a single advantage that the open source model does not have at all. The advantage is that they can quickly focus all development on a single topic. They can also issue and edict to all development teams ordering them to use a single interface in order to focus on an issue such as handicap accessibility.
How do we compete with such resources? We have two options and three outcomes: 1) We hope that everyone else does nothing and also do nothing. 2) We hope that everyone else does nothing, but find out later that they did so and get left in the dust. 3) We do something about the problem, wowing everyone in the world as we do so.
Let's assume #3 is the best answer. To do something about handicap accessibility, we probably need, as suggested in the article, a common messaging interface. This interface would have signals and data output. Based on the handicap settings, either the program would use its own interface to display the data or signal the user, or the handicap facility would do so.
Part of the problem with the current system is that we have condensed output in order to reduce information for the user. In order to solve the handicap issue, programs must give context information that is normally hidden to the user, but is revealed to the handicap facility in order to help presentation.
For instance, a word processor with this functionality would work normally without the handicap facility, but when installed, the word processor would behave differently. It's interface might change, it might read the output and menus, it might use sounds or visual cues to signal users.
What I'm saying is that someone, not me, should design such an interface. It needs to be robust enough to handle things from programming and word processing all the way to reading packets and perhaps even using the Gimp. It would be difficult, but feasible with the right design. Good luck.
-Ben
ps. For speach recognition users, someone might want to invent an easier language to speak than c or c++: for(int i=0;i10;i++){printf("%d\n",i);}
pps. hmm... a compact phonetic language in place of a compact character language...
Just because a report or book is published does not mean that it is valid. For instance, The Bell Curve, a book justifying the existence of races based on IQ score differences between Asians, Whites, and Blacks, has been criticized for ignoring environmental factors involved with IQ testing. This book, although published, is not considered scientifically sound.
What this demonstrates is that just because something exists does not make it dogma. We may worry because someone might read it and not the criticism, but each and every study should be examined for bias and flaws.
In general, what studies and benchmarks consistently show is that there is no such thing as a consistent benchmark. Someone should just conclude that YMMV by summarizing several benchmarks conducted by several people, without interaction between each team.
Along this line of thought, perhaps someone should start a statistical distributed benchmark system whereby different people can test different machines on different setups and get different results. Then compile them into a nice curve.
Don't get me wrong, common sense advice is a very good thing to have out there, especially with the current lack of this commodity in corporate circles.
First, I like his quick summary of why linux spread so quickly: 1) Support for 386 -> quick userbase 2) Good OS -- no crashes -> server market 3) Flexible -- source code -> multiple uses 4) Free 5) (mention in preceding paragraphs) curiosity in media and with hackers 6) (turning point; given first) apps including gcc, databases...
He gives the biggest danger at the ability for management to misunderstand the culture attached to Linux. This is a real danger, but not the only one. However, Maddog only addresses this issue, giving the advice that management keep in touch with reality, reading Slashdot and Freshmeat, communicating with engineers.
I think that the biggest point is that the engineers are not the only ones with communication problems. Management likes to live in their own worlds of analysis, numbers, and statistics. They choose to ignore or enforce their ideals onto other groups. This is what Maddog, sensibly, instructs them to avoid. Management needs to work *with* their engineers, not control them.
So what do we call this, the battle for the management?
The only thing lacking from this article is even a mention of the other dangers of corporate intrusion into Linux (eg. YA Licence, distribution favoratism, fragmentation, money, etc.) However, given its focus, this is a good article.
I wrote a whole bunch of code for classes last year. I had 5 compiler theory programs that each were around 1800 loc. Took me a while, but it all worked.
I agree with this completely. Another recent change also introduces a bad effect in my eyes.
If I were a newbie to Slashdot, someone with a low alignment, or an infrequent poster, I would feel pushed out by the big boys who post often and therefore have a hugely positive alignment. Why would I post unless my comment will be read by others?
The effect is, I think, that we will see an increase in frequent posters, and a decrease in new posters. This is not necessarily a good thing.
I might be repeating a few things out there, but here it goes:
First, I don't like the way the new alignment works. What happens if a user with alignment posts 50 comments, each at +3. They would then be posting at +5. Oops.
Second, this encourages frequent posters and discourages new users. This is the biggest problem IMHO. Why should a newbie post a good message if it will automatically be rated down?
Finally, I have found that an easy way to get moderated up is to segment your post into points, with a paragraph or two for each point. Then all you have to do is ramble and make sense, and then poof! You are moderated upwards.
I think I see a trend. Computer manufacturers seem to be very slow to accept new technology. Heck, new computers *still* have ISA in them. Why can't we all move to new technology??
Well, it seems like all that technology that computer manufacturers dislike is being put to good use in consumer devices (MP3 players, eBooks, email pagers, etc.) The other thing that these consumer devices is that they follow KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) You press a button and it works. You don't have to worry about rebooting your pager (at least I would hope so.) So the moral I see is that new tech + KISS -> Consumer Devices -?> money. Nice.
If the trouble is in that the money model does not work with easier to upgrade hardware, then maybe the model needs to change. Currently Dell and Compaq make money selling whole computers. Perhaps they should sell or lease parts in addition to cases. That way you could change the CPU every few months and keep current, for a fee of course.
Time and progress won't hold still, so perhaps you shouldn't.
I think this is a bad sign for Netscape/Mozilla. With Jamie Zawinskileaving and the recent layoffs at both Netscape and AOL, I'm beginning to worry about the future of the Mozilla project.
At the same time I think they can rid themselves of all doubt simply by releasing a product as small as iCab, has many more innovative features, and runs faster. There are two things lacking in iCab. First, it crashes on my computer. I expect this to be fixed soon. Second, it is slow in rendering images. I think Netscape/Mozilla can out do this easily, which would restore faith in the project, and enhance Mozilla's standing in the browser wars.
Do we know this post really came from Rowan? I can well imagine any high school freshment appending the name "Rowan" to an AC post. Why should we believe him? There is no entrance exam to Slashdot. One does not need to present a photo id. The only way to trust an identity is using an identity scheme (PGP or similar).
For instance, I could, at this moment, append an article with the name "W. Clinton" and confess to a global conspiracy that cumulates in the fabrication of a war in a made-up country called "Kosovo". We all know this is fake, but it takes just as much ease in writing as it would for someone to sign "Rowan" Did I make my point?
Hmmm... I think the biggest problem is understanding how this moderation is supposed to work. The moderators are supposed to promote good, well-thought out and insightful comments. They are also supposed to demote stupid comments, flames, and way-off-topic comments.
However, the moderators are *not* supposed to demote negative comments. Rob has repeatedly reminded the moderators that they are not to demote viewpoints with which they disapprove.
This all means that your biggest concern, that what they see upon first entering/. does not include negative posts is a moot point.
We do not necessarily want to expose newcomers and possible contributors to the verbose maniacs who swear, flame, and cannot make a contribution. We want to expose people to the average joe shmoe and better. That is why the 0-level threshold is good. We see all the average and poor posts, but miss out on the very worst comments.
Finally, these comments are saved, so they are not completely censored, just pushed aside.
[sung after "Happy Birthday", to the tune of "Down on the Farm"]
Down on the farm... they all ask for Hemos. Down on the farm... they all ask for Hemos. Down on the farm... they all ask for Hemos -- The pigs ask, the horses ask. They all ask for Hemos!!
Also, when I was previewing this comments, my < reverted to < in the comment entry box. This caused a problem because when I clicked preview a second time, it treated the < as an open brace for an html tag, but I had intended it to be inserted verbatim. Try it... Odd...
This bug is really weird: If I am in plaintext mode, every < is changed. If I am in HTML Formatted, then only the < 's that have matching > 's are changed. Odd....
You should only allow moderators to modify scores when they can see all of the comments. This would prevent a problem I forsee where a moderator goes through the +3 comments and ups/downs them, but ignores the really good, unmoderated AC comment because their threshold is too low.
2) Chop long comments
Set a length threshold (# lines, # kilobytes...) after which a comment is cut off. Allow someone to expand it in a manner similar to the story expansion already available.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, I'd like to summarily dismiss all of Brin's arguments that so-and-so must have planned for someone else to do something by acting like they wanted to opposite. This assumes that the characters are, in fact, demi-gods and have the ability to entirely manipulate every one's actions, taking into account that they can place barriers and assume that the foe will defeat the barriers. Brin says
and
VADER's the one who sent the secret plans to Leia's ship! He arranged for the droids to get away, and coincidentally land just a few miles from his hidden son! Remember how, a little later, he talks Tarkin into "letting them go so we can trace them"? Likewise, he's the only close-up witness to Obiwan disappearing, when he supposedly "killed" his master in that sword fight! (Maybe he actually helped Obiwan pull a vanishing act.) Note that the "fight" with Obiwan distracted the guards & helped let Luke get away!...
Brin goes on to suggest that Vader/Anakin planned the entire course of the movies starting from his escape from Tattoine just to overthrow Palpatine by arranging for Luke to distract Palpatine at a critical moment. Finally, Brin offers a quicker way for Anakin/Vader to meet his life-long goals and chides Lucas for not seeing this simpler method.
My complaint with this entire criticism is that people, no matter how powerful, simply don't plan that far ahead. Brin accuses Palpatine of planning for Amidala to escape just in time to win him the senate. He then wonders why anyone had to die if this was the plan all along. This is ridiculous. The reason these movies (at least 4-6) are fun, is watching how powerful figures react to unpredictable events.
Did anyone notice that they say eBay has problems in the back end? They say in another sentence that they use Oracle on the backend. What they don't say is that the two sentences are related! Perhaps they are having malfunctioning switch (which now can run NT!) on the backend.
The story is that they only implied that Oracle on Solaris was the problem. Perhaps a programmer forgot to unlock a row in Oracle. Does that mean Solaris' reliability is bad? They never said.
Microsoft and its enterprise associates believe that customers benefit most when they combine value priced, high performance Windows NT® server-based systems with the high availability advantages that distributed computing offers.
If you believe this sentence coming from Microsoft, then let me sell you some beach property in Nevada please. One rule in reading articles from any corporation, is to question the origin. Was the article written by an independent observer, or someone paid to write that line. In this case, I think someone was paid to write that line, whether or not he/she believed it.
-Ben
I think this would fall under the 'not announcing yourself' part of the moderation guidelines. Wouldn't the buyer be happy when they pay you for an account that just lost it's moderation!!!
By the way:--- I like how many more comments are moderated now than before. It is nice to see a few 5s on each page and most articles in the 1-2 range. Good work.
-Ben
I read the entire article *before* it was even posted here. I realize that Linux was not mentioned, but Linux and gaming addicts have a very similar type of media representation.
We are rebels who wear long hair, have body piercings and have our own cliquish subcultures. We like to code/game for long stretches through the night, kept awake by the caffeine in CocaCola.
Since the media has been so nice to draw the link between some Nazi-loving death-wishers and gamers. What kind of link will they take next? I fear they might say that because Linux advocates are so rebellious, they are more likely to play vid. games. So don't let your kids run Linux!!! They might get into trouble. Don't let me get started on Hacking. All those Linux Hackers out there might teach your kid to hack into the nuclear power plants or something...
-Ben Karas
I think that SETI@Home really wins the usefulness contest. --- However, perhaps we should finish the one contest, that we know we can finish, first! If all but one person leave the DES contest, that one person will eventually get rich while the rest of us give our CPU fans a workout.
-Ben
Shortly after Littleton, a military expert appeared on "60 Minutes" calling shooter games "a how-to manual for killing without a conscience," politicians howled, and then came the lawyers: last month Id Software was among 24 entertainment companies named in a $130 million lawsuit by the families of three victims killed in last year's school shooting in West Paducah, Ky. It turns out that the 14-year-old gunman in that case, Michael Carneal, also loved Doom.
It seems we have a new source of FUD. Don't buy Linux because your kids'll play Quake or Doom!!! I sure hope that type of argument doesn't take hold in the media.
-Ben
Would this affect generator tags that some editors add also? It would be silly if someone got sued for not removing a generator tag from the html doc they just made using the suer's product!
-Ben
I'm sorry if this is a small tangent, but I think this needs to be said.
Large corporations have a single advantage that the open source model does not have at all. The advantage is that they can quickly focus all development on a single topic. They can also issue and edict to all development teams ordering them to use a single interface in order to focus on an issue such as handicap accessibility.
How do we compete with such resources? We have two options and three outcomes:
1) We hope that everyone else does nothing and also do nothing.
2) We hope that everyone else does nothing, but find out later that they did so and get left in the dust.
3) We do something about the problem, wowing everyone in the world as we do so.
Let's assume #3 is the best answer. To do something about handicap accessibility, we probably need, as suggested in the article, a common messaging interface. This interface would have signals and data output. Based on the handicap settings, either the program would use its own interface to display the data or signal the user, or the handicap facility would do so.
Part of the problem with the current system is that we have condensed output in order to reduce information for the user. In order to solve the handicap issue, programs must give context information that is normally hidden to the user, but is revealed to the handicap facility in order to help presentation.
For instance, a word processor with this functionality would work normally without the handicap facility, but when installed, the word processor would behave differently. It's interface might change, it might read the output and menus, it might use sounds or visual cues to signal users.
What I'm saying is that someone, not me, should design such an interface. It needs to be robust enough to handle things from programming and word processing all the way to reading packets and perhaps even using the Gimp. It would be difficult, but feasible with the right design. Good luck.
-Ben
ps. For speach recognition users, someone might want to invent an easier language to speak than c or c++:
for(int i=0;i10;i++){printf("%d\n",i);}
pps. hmm... a compact phonetic language in place of a compact character language...
Just because a report or book is published does not mean that it is valid. For instance, The Bell Curve, a book justifying the existence of races based on IQ score differences between Asians, Whites, and Blacks, has been criticized for ignoring environmental factors involved with IQ testing. This book, although published, is not considered scientifically sound.
What this demonstrates is that just because something exists does not make it dogma. We may worry because someone might read it and not the criticism, but each and every study should be examined for bias and flaws.
In general, what studies and benchmarks consistently show is that there is no such thing as a consistent benchmark. Someone should just conclude that YMMV by summarizing several benchmarks conducted by several people, without interaction between each team.
Along this line of thought, perhaps someone should start a statistical distributed benchmark system whereby different people can test different machines on different setups and get different results. Then compile them into a nice curve.
-Ben
Don't get me wrong, common sense advice is a very good thing to have out there, especially with the current lack of this commodity in corporate circles.
First, I like his quick summary of why linux spread so quickly:
1) Support for 386 -> quick userbase
2) Good OS -- no crashes -> server market
3) Flexible -- source code -> multiple uses
4) Free
5) (mention in preceding paragraphs) curiosity in media and with hackers
6) (turning point; given first) apps including gcc, databases...
He gives the biggest danger at the ability for management to misunderstand the culture attached to Linux. This is a real danger, but not the only one. However, Maddog only addresses this issue, giving the advice that management keep in touch with reality, reading Slashdot and Freshmeat, communicating with engineers.
I think that the biggest point is that the engineers are not the only ones with communication problems. Management likes to live in their own worlds of analysis, numbers, and statistics. They choose to ignore or enforce their ideals onto other groups. This is what Maddog, sensibly, instructs them to avoid. Management needs to work *with* their engineers, not control them.
So what do we call this, the battle for the management?
The only thing lacking from this article is even a mention of the other dangers of corporate intrusion into Linux (eg. YA Licence, distribution favoratism, fragmentation, money, etc.) However, given its focus, this is a good article.
-Ben
Here are some other responses to said report:
http://lwn.net/1999/features/MindCraft1.0.phtml -- Linux Weekly News
http://www.linux-hw.com/~eric/mindcraft.html -- Linux Hardware Solutions
-Ben
I wrote a whole bunch of code for classes last year. I had 5 compiler theory programs that each were around 1800 loc. Took me a while, but it all worked.
-Ben
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/14/0042212.shtm l has the full story (with 780 comments.)
-Ben
I agree with this completely. Another recent change also introduces a bad effect in my eyes.
If I were a newbie to Slashdot, someone with a low alignment, or an infrequent poster, I would feel pushed out by the big boys who post often and therefore have a hugely positive alignment. Why would I post unless my comment will be read by others?
The effect is, I think, that we will see an increase in frequent posters, and a decrease in new posters. This is not necessarily a good thing.
-Ben
I might be repeating a few things out there, but here it goes:
First, I don't like the way the new alignment works. What happens if a user with alignment posts 50 comments, each at +3. They would then be posting at +5. Oops.
Second, this encourages frequent posters and discourages new users. This is the biggest problem IMHO. Why should a newbie post a good message if it will automatically be rated down?
Finally, I have found that an easy way to get moderated up is to segment your post into points, with a paragraph or two for each point. Then all you have to do is ramble and make sense, and then poof! You are moderated upwards.
-Ben
I think I see a trend. Computer manufacturers seem to be very slow to accept new technology. Heck, new computers *still* have ISA in them. Why can't we all move to new technology??
Well, it seems like all that technology that computer manufacturers dislike is being put to good use in consumer devices (MP3 players, eBooks, email pagers, etc.) The other thing that these consumer devices is that they follow KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) You press a button and it works. You don't have to worry about rebooting your pager (at least I would hope so.) So the moral I see is that new tech + KISS -> Consumer Devices -?> money. Nice.
-Ben
>/.++->:)
Do you mean, by your sig, that the enhanced Slashdot is should be called
I like it.
-Ben
If the trouble is in that the money model does not work with easier to upgrade hardware, then maybe the model needs to change. Currently Dell and Compaq make money selling whole computers. Perhaps they should sell or lease parts in addition to cases. That way you could change the CPU every few months and keep current, for a fee of course.
Time and progress won't hold still, so perhaps you shouldn't.
-Ben
Yikes that is scary! Almost as bad as NDL.
-Ben
I think this is a bad sign for Netscape/Mozilla. With Jamie Zawinskileaving and the recent layoffs at both Netscape and AOL, I'm beginning to worry about the future of the Mozilla project.
At the same time I think they can rid themselves of all doubt simply by releasing a product as small as iCab, has many more innovative features, and runs faster. There are two things lacking in iCab. First, it crashes on my computer. I expect this to be fixed soon. Second, it is slow in rendering images. I think Netscape/Mozilla can out do this easily, which would restore faith in the project, and enhance Mozilla's standing in the browser wars.
Good luck guys.
-Ben
Silly Stupid Question to ruin your day:
Do we know this post really came from Rowan? I can well imagine any high school freshment appending the name "Rowan" to an AC post. Why should we believe him? There is no entrance exam to Slashdot. One does not need to present a photo id. The only way to trust an identity is using an identity scheme (PGP or similar).
For instance, I could, at this moment, append an article with the name "W. Clinton" and confess to a global conspiracy that cumulates in the fabrication of a war in a made-up country called "Kosovo". We all know this is fake, but it takes just as much ease in writing as it would for someone to sign "Rowan" Did I make my point?
-Ben
Hmmm... I think the biggest problem is understanding how this moderation is supposed to work. The moderators are supposed to promote good, well-thought out and insightful comments. They are also supposed to demote stupid comments, flames, and way-off-topic comments.
/. does not include negative posts is a moot point.
However, the moderators are *not* supposed to demote negative comments. Rob has repeatedly reminded the moderators that they are not to demote viewpoints with which they disapprove.
This all means that your biggest concern, that what they see upon first entering
We do not necessarily want to expose newcomers and possible contributors to the verbose maniacs who swear, flame, and cannot make a contribution. We want to expose people to the average joe shmoe and better. That is why the 0-level threshold is good. We see all the average and poor posts, but miss out on the very worst comments.
Finally, these comments are saved, so they are not completely censored, just pushed aside.
-Ben
[sung after "Happy Birthday", to the tune of "Down on the Farm"]
Down on the farm... they all ask for Hemos.
Down on the farm... they all ask for Hemos.
Down on the farm... they all ask for Hemos --
The pigs ask, the horses ask.
They all ask for Hemos!!
Cheers.
-Ben
Some pages have a <UL> and </UL> bug in them. Try this link: http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/03/23/
Also, when I was previewing this comments, my < reverted to < in the comment entry box. This caused a problem because when I clicked preview a second time, it treated the < as an open brace for an html tag, but I had intended it to be inserted verbatim. Try it... Odd...
This bug is really weird: If I am in plaintext mode, every < is changed. If I am in HTML Formatted, then only the < 's that have matching > 's are changed. Odd....
1) Moderator limitation
You should only allow moderators to modify scores when they can see all of the comments. This would prevent a problem I forsee where a moderator goes through the +3 comments and ups/downs them, but ignores the really good, unmoderated AC comment because their threshold is too low.
2) Chop long comments
Set a length threshold (# lines, # kilobytes...) after which a comment is cut off. Allow someone to expand it in a manner similar to the story expansion already available.
-Ben