Actually, Firefox is the only one losing now. Even IE is just slightly gaining users.

Sadly, I don't think they will. That's always a good dream, but casual people will be okay with all this if it means they can continue watching their favorite TV shows, movies and listen to music. You really think they're going to drop watching their TV shows just because some heavy downloaders get billed more?

Not everyone is from US. We had our own magazines in our own language back when I was a kid. There was english PC Gamer too, but for obvious reasons it wasn't as popular. I don't really remember other english magazines that they sold, but there wasn't many.

I stopped ordering and reading them when internet became more mainstream and I guess so did many other people, as the magazines first changed to console-only and later just stopped making paper version.

It forces you to get to the point and not jabber endlessly. Learning to write in a way that is simple, short and well understood is important skill too. I can't stand people post walls of text, even if it would be interesting or intellect text. Whenever Slashdot shows that "Read the rest of this comment..." in bottom of a comment I

The poster? Just that it doesn't show your details on the page doesn't mean it makes you invulnerable to prosecution if you break the law. Even Slashdot saves the ip addresses of commenters and if you post something that breaks the law and police comes asking about it, they have to hand out the details. That is not going to ever change either.

Incorrect how? I didn't state how the moderation system works currently. I stated how it should work. Read it again.

Ah, perfect example here. As I posted this someone went and mod bombed my last comments and now my karma went to 1. Well, I kind of excepted that when making the comment :)

The conversation wasn't about Visual Studio, it was just about one of the examples, hence the dumping down to "kicks ass". I could go on and list why and features I like, what features other IDE's miss or have wrong, but that is completely not relevant to the discussion. It was a generalization, because it fitted.

Reading comprehension. I stated how it is currently, not how it should be.

I have an six digit UID, but along the way I just got bored of trying to fix my karma because some asses went raging and modded down all my comments, resulting in me posting at -1. Easier to just make new account.

Let's face it, the slashdot moderation system has been broken for a long time. That's where the term slashthink/slashdot group think comes from. If you post a comment that general user base of slashdot likes, it will be modded up. If you post a comment, even a really insightful and interesting one that the general user base doesn't like, it will be modded down. Comments that rank up? Promote free speech, removing copyrights, getting rids of patents, point out how "suits" just don't get us geeks and so on. Comments that go immediately down? Tell informative, but bad points about the current state of Linux, dislike Google, try to be reasonable about copyrights and DRM or say that Microsoft's Visual Studio still kicks ass any other IDE out there.

I can't find the old post now because it was long time ago, but it went something like this. Every user are given some amount of moderation points, that affect the moderation as a whole. In addition to that, it affects the moderation you see favorable to the likes of you. If they are on your friend lists, their moderation carries more value. If they have moderated similarly to you, their moderation weights more to you. Of course, this should be balanced so that you don't get fully one viewed comments - if some comment is generally modded very high (and forget the -1-5 scale now), it would be displayed to you anyway. If you add to that that comments where you, or similar persons to you have commented, will be fully displayed regardless of their moderation (or some adjustation of that), it would work out really well. Of course, it needs a lot more computation power on the server side.

For me, personally? I like Reddit's comment system. It has it's faults, but it's better than Slashdot. Interesting posts are on top, and you can just scroll down for more.

Still, I browse Slashdot at -1 and read what interests me. I come here for the comments, jokes and all that. I like to see it all when the subject is interesting. No moderating system can ever beat your own judgement (even if it's wrong one).

Maybe for the fact that I have an Asian girlfriend who works for amount that seems crazy to me. Yes, I am a lazy European too, but only second after US. Her days are minimum 10 hours, sometimes 12 hours. At $200-300 month. Still, she is really happy when she gets back from work and we go out for a dinner and see friends, often talking, laughing, eating and drinking out until 3am. And in the morning she goes to work again.

So yes, I would say Americans are lazy. Hell, I as an European am lazy too.

There it is. Proof of how wise Americans really are!

How about if people crying about "there are no jobs for me" would either make new products or services people want or improve themselves to be more useful to employers? But nooo, now they're crying how no one is giving money for what they think they want to do.

I learned this very skill in my teen years. You need to be useful to others to be successful yourself. It applies to work, woman and everything. Everyone is selfish and looking for their own good, in a way or another. Either with money, self-improvement, confidence, skills or experiences. Behind every action every human ever does is a selfish though. Leverage that knowledge, be useful and via that, make yourself successful.

Maybe that comes from the fact that Asians are not as lazy and against "stupid jobs" (when they are in fact the most useful ones) as Americans?

Because it's a practice Google started, by offering services and software free of charge in return of spying and data collection.

Currently, I use my old HTC Touch HD, which comes with Windows Mobile 6.2. The OS that was made before Microsoft also went the Apple and Google route because it was more profitable way. Before that I used Symbian phones, which either didn't come with none of this bullshit. Frankly, Asia and Europe (made by Asians) still has many manufacturers who understand this thing and I can get phone that suits me. Americans, not so much. But they managed to ruin the phone industry for all of us. Did you know in Europe and Asia, you buy the phone you want and then get the contract from telephone company you want, who are only competing with service prices, not with devices they offer? (at least were, until all this iPhone and Android bullshit)