There is a discussion topic about the Beta. It is only about 5 items down from this one. We all get it: you don't want the Beta (and I share your feelings, btw). But can we please just keep on enjoying Slashdot too?
Why is it somehow we have ended up with people who are making things like Slashdot beta, Microsoft Metro, the new IOS, Gnome. A bunch of people who came out of the worst design schools ever?
Frankly, they probably came from very good design schools, but the organization behind those projects made 1 critical error: They put design before functionality. (I use the word design as meaning only graphical design, not engineering design).
A good design starts off with a set of boundary conditions, and I think that those were not defined according to the wishlist of the most registered users, for example because slashdot doesn't know its users, or because it was just defined too loosely.
Why are you so inflexible on the idea of keeping classic slashdot *forever*. Think of it as a protected historical landmark in the internet space.
I'm writing UNESCO World Heritage Centre to preserve the Classic right now!
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/
I totally agree. I only visit Slashdot for the comments (the news is often posted elsewhere up to 2 days earlier). No comments, no slashdot. And I noticed that the comments section is pretty bad in the beta (far less comments fit on screen, with much more whitespace, making it more difficult to browse the comments).
If you think that the beam of light is a problem, think of the many tons of burning fuel, explosives and scrap metal that are gonna fall out of the sky after the prey got blasted! Think of the children!
Problem solving always has to start by creating awareness of the problem. This may finally create a boatload of awareness for our lack of privacy.
Anonymity and privacy issues are only getting worse, and reading this, I thought: "Ok, let's just get it over with." If we're going towards a society without any privacy anyway, maybe it is better to go there in one giant leap, so that we can at least use all the outrage that it causes to start fixing it. If we go to this new culture without privacy in a thousand small steps, people may never realize what happened, and accept it as a part of life instead.
The actual problem is that the weather forecast is unreliable. In comparison to much of the EU, the weather forecast in the USA (not just Atlanta) is rather poor.
The National Weather Service (that's the US weather prediction) has no funds, and old computers. Their predictions just don't have sufficient resolution. That's not just a problem with snow, or other weather-related disasters... It is a problem every day.
Aww!
Take it easy on the Dutch people - they use apostrophe+s as a way to write a plural in Dutch for words ending with a vowel. The member name (DeTech) also suggests a Dutch background, since that simply translates as The Tech. In Dutch, the apostrophe is necessary, in for example the plural of "auto" ("auto's"), as it would be pronounced differently without that apostrophe.
I'm not suggesting that all Dutch people are excused from having to avoid spelling mistakes. But I think that burning a part of the keyboard is rather medieval.
Computers and automated systems are not replacing any cognitive tasks soon, at least not economically. Sure, if you throw in a team of engineers, several years of research and a couple million euro/dollars, then you can build a computer that can defeat a chess grandmaster. But until engineering companies are actually laying off their engineers and designers and replacing them with computers, I am not worried.
Computers are likely to replace the more simple jobs (as they always have). Driving a lorry or car is not exactly a highly skilled job, and I would be delighted if that is automated.
I agree that all participants have to say yes. But the Ruskies, Europeans and the 'Muricans are the three largest investors, and therefore it is a step in the right direction that Obama made the money available.
So in the UK, you get hordes of handicapped or elderly immigrants?
I don't know much about the UK, but over here in the Netherlands, mostly young people seem to migrate into the country. They tend to be healthy and require very little healthcare.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees, but: when are we all going to buy an unnecessary large amount of smart phones, sown into the fabric of our clothes?
For work-related passwords, my boss has every right to know my passwords if I get sick. So, it makes sense to store them offline (e.g. a piece of paper in a drawer at the secretary's office). The security my passwords then relies on the security guards at the gate.
For my personal passwords, I rely on security through obscurity: I don't believe that anyone can find my passwords in the giant mess that I call my office. If I get sick, I can use the recovery time to clean up my office. It will take weeks, if not months.
Btw, I don't need a terrible accident to forget passwords. It happens a lot for those passwords that I don't need too often.
As long as the currency is widely used, and if it does not require that I carry around large quantities of paper or valuable metal/minerals, I don't care. It seems to me that our current monetary system (mostly electronic) is just as practical as most sci-fi systems, and far superior to any fantasy system which still uses lots of valuable metals carried around in bags, just waiting to be stolen in The Shades or some other part of a fantasy universe with a particular high density of alleyways.
For the rest, this is just a popularity contest between different fantasy/scifi universes, isn't it? I vote for the Discworld.
What they are really saying is that they are programming their cars to identify an certain object, and in certain cases ignore it and just drive over it.
Ford: "We are terribly sorry our autonomous car ran over your baby. To the car it looked like a paper bag. Next time dress your child in brown fur, and we promise we'll go around it."
We have a equal opportunity Calculus class -- it's fully integrated.
