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Comment Re:its also about reducing liability (Score 1) 185

Tesla does a good deal of spot welding on 5000 and 6000 Aluminum for their S and X. Do you think Ford is evaluating Tesla's joining methods for future Aluminum projects? (ie F-150 is 100% riveted, replacing some rivets to spot welds will shave weight and production costs) Hell, maybe they just want to see the friction stir weld on the battery tray.

Comment Re:Are you sure? (Score 1) 863

In principle, I am fine with the basic idea of systemd. I don't like the specific execution (binary logs? WTF?) and political maneuvering to put this into Debian mainstream and forces the users to use systemd. If systemd only replaced init, I would be more accepting but it forces you to also install all of its accompanying daemons. Replacing one part of the system? fine, sure. Replacing everything between the user space and the kernel? fuck no. Especially not from the project manager that so <sarcasm weight=strong>successfully</sarcasm weight=strong> managed PulseAudio.

Comment Re:Are you sure? (Score 1) 863

I am an Ubuntu and Debian user. I am not excited by systemd. If I had a vote, it would be no. Not that I don't want systemd developed, but I would like it as a drop in replacement of init V, not a replacement of init and the forced replacement of the kitchen sink, stove, oven, counter top, refrigerator, floor, cookware, silverware, garage, patio, wall hangings, and spouse.

If I were to make a car analogy, I am replacing the old traditional key ignition with newer key-less FOB system. However, to make the upgrade happen, I have to replace the battery, the wiring, the computer, the dash, the steering column, the power steering system, electric windows and door lock controls, the air bags, seat belts, tires, fuel filter, and exhaust. And from that day forth, I will have to fill the fuel tank with certified organic peanut oil. Why? Well, cause it will make my car start faster. Isn't it amazing? The A/C and radio will start in parallel with the engine. I should be thankful.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 2219

It is a mix between lazy, multitasking, and getting diverted. Usually I'll get on the PC for a half an hour to an hour to look up something or just read some news. Before I am finished, I get called away to take care of some non-computer things. (It seems to happen a lot when you have a wife and small kids.) And then it will be a few days before I get back to the computer; I will need to reference something again, so I will open new tabs or windows because I didn't finish what I was looking at before. After a few months, you've managed to accumulate hundreds of tabs. Bookmarks might be a good solution, but I'd have to be motivated to bookmark a few hundred tabs. And then I'd have to manage the bookmarks.

My point was a single page with some crappy javascript can bog down any PC, regardless of its age. It's also a well used infection vector. I'd hate to have one of my favorite sites so entrenched in javascript that I can no longer read it without disabling noscript. I will find it aggravating if /. laments the woes of javascript and preaches of its dangers and yet require me to enable it.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 2219

Its an Athlon from 2006, running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with 5 firefox windows--each with ~20 tabs, a dozen chrome windows also with ~20 tabs each, usually something open in wine, a few terminal windows, and who knows what the hell else. I don't tend to close windows, and thus javascript, java, and firefox tend to give me issues. Chrome tends to fail a little more gracefully.

I'd love it if Slashdot felt functional in lynx. I would love to read it through ssh at work on my windows laptop.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 4, Insightful) 2219

Since there's some constructive comments here, I'd like to add my own:

NO JAVASCRIPT!!!

Sorry for shouting, but I have old PCs at home that choke on javascript. I'd rather not resort to viewing /. through noscript if I can avoid it because I understand ad revenues are import to funding /.

At least have a light version for alternative browser like lynx as many users don't have access to graphical browsers where they work.

Submission + - Slashdot Beta Woes 16

s.petry writes: What is a Slashdot and why the Beta might destroy it?

Slashdot has been around, well, a very long time. Longer than any of it's competators, but not as long as IIRC. Slashdot was a very much one of the first true social media web sites.

On Slashdot, you could create a handle or ID. Something personal, but not too personal, unless you wanted it to be. But it was not required either. We know each other by our handles, we have watched each other grow as people. We may have even taken pot shots at each other in threads. Unless of course you are anonymous, but often we can guess who that really is.

One of Slashdot's first motto's was "News for Nerds" that Matters. I have no idea when that was removed. I have not always scoured the boards here daily, life can get too busy for that. That excuses my ignorance in a way. I guess someone thought it politically incorrect, but most of us "Nerds" enjoyed it. We are proud of who we are, and what we know. Often we use that pride and knowledge to make someone else look bad. That is how we get our digs in, and we enjoy that part of us too. We don't punch people, we belittle them. It's who we are!

What made Slashdot unique were a few things. What you will note here is "who" has been responsible for the success of Slashdot. Hint, it has never been a just the company taking care of the servers and software.

— First, the user base submitted stories that "they" thought mattered. It was not a corporate feed. Sure, stories were submitted about companies. The latest break through from AMD and Intel, various stories regarding the graphic card wars, my compiler is better than your compiler, and yes your scripting language stinks! Microsoft IIS has brought us all a few laughs and lots of flame wars to boot. Still, we not only read about the products but get to my second point.

— User comments. This is the primary why we have been coming here for as long as we have, many of us for decades. We provide alternative opinions or back what was given in the article. This aspect not only makes the "News" interesting, but often leads to other news and information sharing. It's not always positive, but this is the nature of allowing commentary. It also brings out the third point.

— Moderation. Moderation has been done by the community for a very long time. It took lots of trial and error to get a working system. As with any public system it's imperfect, but it's been successful. People can choose to view poorly modded comments, but don't have to. As with posting anonymous versus with our own handle it's an option that allows us to personalize the way we see and read what's on the site. And as a reward for submitting something worth reading, you might get a mod point of your own to use as a reward for someone else.

Why we dislike Beta and what is being pushed, and why this will result in the end of an era if it becomes forced on the community.

1. Bulky graphics. We get that Dice and Slashdot need revenue. I have Karma good enough to disable advertisements, but have never kept this setting on. I realize that Slashdot/Dice make money with this. That said, the ads sit away from my news and out of the way. I can get there if I want it (but nobody has ever gotten a penny from me clicking an ad... nobody!), but it's not forced into my face or news feed.

2. Low text area. I like having enough on my screen to keep me busy without constant scrolling. Slashdot currently has the correct ratio of text to screen. This ratio has never been complained about, yet Beta reduces the usable text area by at least 1/2 and no option for changing the behavior. I hate reading Slashdot on mobile devices because I can't stand scrolling constantly.

3. JavaScript. We all know the risks of JS, and many of us disable it. We also have an option of reading in Lync or non-standard browsers that many of us toy with for both personal and professional reasons. This flexibility is gone in Beta, and we are forced to allow JS to run. If you don't know the risks of allowing JS to run, you probably don't read much on Slashdot. Those that allow JS do so accepting the risk (which is admittedly low on a well known site).

4. Ordering/Sorting/Referencing. Each entry currently gets tagged with a unique thread ID. This allows linking to the exact post in a thread, not just the top of the thread. In Beta this is gone. It could be that the site decided to simply hide the post ID or it was removed. Either way, going to specific posts is something that is used very commonly by the community.

5. Eye candy. Most of us are not here for "eye candy" and many have allergic reactions to eye candy. Slashdot has a good mix currently. It's not as simple as the site starting with a r-e-d-i-t, which is good. That site has a reputation that keeps many of us away, and their format matches my attitude of them (s-i-m-p-l-e-t-o-n). At the same time, it's not like watching some other "news" sites with so much scrolling crap I can't read an article without getting a headache. The wasted space in beta for big bulky borders, sure smells like eye candy. Nothing buzzes or scrolls yet, but we can sense what's coming in a patch later.

The thing is, the community cares about Slashdot. We come here because we care. We submit stories because of that, we vote because of that, we moderate because of that, and we comment because of that. At the same time we realize that without the community Slashdot loses most of its value. We respect that we don't host the servers, backup the databases, or patch the servers. Slashdot/Dice provide the services needed for Slashdot.

It's a give give relationship, and we each get something in return. Slashdot gets tons of Search hits and lots of web traffic. We get a place to learn, teach, and occasionally vent.

Look, if you want to change default color scheme or make pre-made palettes for us to choose from, we would probably be okay with that. If you want to take away our ability to block ads by Karma, or move the ads to the left side of my browser window, I would be okay with those things too.

If you want to make drastic changes to how the site works, this is a different story all together. The reason so many are against Beta is that it breaks some of the fundamental parts of what makes Slashdot work.

User input until recently has not been acknowledged. The acknowledgment we have received is not from the people that are making the decision to push Beta live. We told people Beta was broken, what it lacked, and we were rather surprised to get a warning that Beta would be live despite what we told people. People are already making plans to leave, which means that Slashdot could fade away very soon.

Whether this was the goal for Dice or not remains to be seen. If it is, it's been nice knowing you but I won't be back. A partnership only works when there is mutual respect between the parties. A word of caution, us Nerds have good memories and lots of knowledge. The loss of Slashdot impacts all of Dice holdings, not just Slashdot. I boycott everything a company holds, not just the product group that did me wrong.

If that was not the goal of Dice, you should quickly begin communicating with the user base. What are the plans are to fix what Beta has broken? Why is Beta being pushed live with things broken? A "Sorry we have not been communicating!", and perhaps even a "Thank you" to the user base for helping make Slashdot a success for so many years.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What's there to like about the BETA? (slashdot.org) 7

Narnie writes: I come to /. not for the nearly interesting pseudo-tech articles, but for the lively, self-moderated discussion. Today I'm bit surprised to see every discussion summarized to fuckbeta. Popping up all over the place there's discussions about beta and even alternatives being revived and created. As I tend not to RTFA, I haven't sampled the beta myself. So, I ask you guys, what's there to like about the BETA and what's there to loath?

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Why Can't Slashdot Classic and Slashdot Beta Continue to Co-Exist? 9

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Slashdot has been a big part of my life since I had my my first stories accepted over ten years ago. Some people my age do crossword puzzles to keep their mental agility, some do sudoko, or play bridge. I enjoy searching for and putting together a story a day for slashdot because it helps keep me on my toes to have readers find errors and logical fallacies in my submissions and I enjoy learning from the different points of view expressed on a story I have submitted. That's why I have been so discouraged in the past several years to see readership in slashdot drop off. As a close observer of this web site, I know that ten years ago it was unheard of for any accepted story to get less than 100 comments and there was at least a story a day that got over 1,000 comments. Those days are long gone. Not it's not uncommon to see some stories garner only a few dozen comments. That's how web sites die. If you slip below a critical level of readership, readers will abandon the site completely. I know from my own experience running a web site devoted to the Peace Corps that I used to have hundreds of comments to some of my stories but once comments slipped below a certain threshold, then they disappeared altogether. I think that slashdot is nearing that threshold and I fear that imposing Slashdot Beta on the site's readership will push it over the edge and I don't want to see that happen. I'd like to propose that slashdot continue running slashdot classic and slashdot beta in parallel. I'll stick with classic most of the time. One of the best features of slashdot classic is that comments can be displayed in four formats (threaded, nested, no comment, and flat) and in two directions (oldest first and newest first) providing a lot of flexibility in watching conversations develop. I switch between the formats several times a day depending on what I want to see. But slashdot beta also has its advantages in certain situations. Slashdot needs a blockbuster story or two every day where people can pile on and slashdot beta facilitates this by putting the most commented story at the top of the page and I think that is a good thing. Still I'll use slashdot beta occasionally when I'm on a mobile device but slashdot classic will be the format I use on my desktop. So don't deprecate slashdot classic. That would be like Microsoft disabling Windows 7 and forcing everyone to use Windows 8. And not even Microsoft is that stupid.

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