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Submission + - /. Goes down in flame war 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Slashdot users flame all site stories with comments about the sites forced switching over to Beta version. The comments are relentless, calling for a ban of the site from Feb 10 to Feb 17. The following post is being made in every story comment:
On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design.
Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.
If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this [slashdot.org] in a new tab. After seeing that, click here [slashdot.org] to return to classic Slashdot.
We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott [slashdot.org]
Moderators — only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors — only discuss Beta
http://slashdot.org/recent [slashdot.org] — Vote up the Fuck Beta stories
Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.
Captcha: fuckbeta

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

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
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.

Comment Pointless stock photo. (Score 1) 457

by preflex (#46171193) Attached to: Judge Says You Can Warn Others About Speed Traps

Thanks for the pointless stock photo of a MP holding a radar gun.

WTF does this story have to do with MP's? Why are you wasting my bandwidth and screen space?

Just because you can attach an image to an article, doesn't mean you should. The slashdot beta is even worse than I first thought: it's encouraging editors to do even more stupid shit.

Comment Brandbar (Score 1) 237

by preflex (#46171133) Attached to: Update on the March of Progress: How Slashdot's New Look Is Shaping Up

I also couldn't find the reply button, so replying to first post...

The brandbar is pointless. It's a waste of space. It performs no function, other than reminding me I'm viewing slashdot. I don't need to be reminded of this.

It's also slow as hell on mobile browsers. No, I will not use mobile slashdot. That shit is even worse than this horrible fucking beta.

Slashdot isn't broken. Don't fix it.

Comment Re:UK Law is clear (Score 2) 617

I think in this type of situation, it's a reasonable expectation that the recipient should return the PS Vita too. They paid £19.99 and got sent a completely different item; it isn't as if the PS Vita was priced at £19.99 in error and the company mistakenly fulfilled the order.

It's only reasonable if the company is compensating them for the expense and time of sending it back. Personally, I would only consider it if the company was at least offering to send me the correct merchandise after refunding my £19.99 in exchange for the return. I'd probably hold out for a check for £19.99 in addition to a full refund and shipment of my intended purchase item. I'd call it a "restocking fee". If I had mistakenly ordered a PS Vita and then sent it back, the company would charge me a "restocking fee" too.

If they refused to compensate me, I'd just sell the Vita, buy the correct game from someone else, and pocket the difference. I would see this as fair, because it would require additional effort to obtain the item I had paid for but not received, and I would expect to be compensated for that.

When I lose something, I offer a reward to get it back. I don't threaten the person who found it.

Sadly, I see similar situations happen all the time. Companies make a mistake with their pricing online and don't fulfil the order and the people who thought they were getting a 40" TV for £50 start talking about their "right" to buy it for that price.

That's because it's dangerously close to a bait-and-switch, which is illegal. It's only not illegal if it is genuinely a mistake. If you're advertising a 40" TV for $50 without any conditions, then customers do, in fact, have the right to buy it for that price. If it is an honest mistake, and the company does not ship the item, but simply refunds the customer's money, the customer has still been harmed. The company has wasted the customer's time.

Let's turn it around a bit: if the customers had asked to return the game they bought and accidentally sent a PS Vita to the company, would the customers be arguing that their mistake represented an "unsolicited gift"?

The company would probably send it back, not because it's their duty under the law, but because it makes good business sense. If they didn't send it back they would lose that customer forever, and they would badmouth the company to others. It could easily end up costing them more than the value of the item.

On the other hand, other than the legal threats, the customers have no incentive to send the devices back. If Zawi refuses to ever do business with them again, they'll just buy stuff from someone else.

Comment Re:Market share (Score 2) 15

by preflex (#45663661) Attached to: Sailfish OS Comes to the Nokia N9

I ask because since the Sharp Zaurus days I have wanted a phone which runs 'proper' Linux, a Linux kernel with glibc, X-windows, GTK, QT, etc... I wanted something that I could easily 'port' desktop apps over just by recompiling.

Sounds like you have wanted the N900. X11, Qt, GTK, SDL, Java, and even Mono are all available in the extras repo and easily installable through apt-get.

Sailfish uses Wayland and QT. I'm not sure if GTK is available in the Mer repos. You could probably get XWayland rocking on it.

My very limited understanding of Sailfish is that it is just a Linux kernel with webkit dropped on top of it to run HTML5 apps not unlike Google Chrome. Was I mistaken?

Yes. You were very mistaken. This is a good description of WebOS, not Sailfish.

Sailfish uses Wayland and QT. I believe Python is preinstalled. I'm not sure if GTK is available in the Mer repos. You could probably get XWayland rocking on it. Sailfish is the closest thing to 'proper' Linux available for phones right now, even closer than Ubuntu Phone.

Submission + - Windows chief struggles to explain the consumer value proposition of Windows (citeworld.com) 2

Submitted by mattydread23
mattydread23 writes: Microsoft's new Windows chief Terry Myerson gave a presentation to financial analysts today, and one asked him a very good question: When I see all these mobile Windows devices — phones, tablets, convertibles — in Best Buy, why should I want one? What's the consumer value proposition of Windows devices? His struggle to answer the question shows that there may not BE a good answer. Back when Windows was all we had, we used it for everything. Now, a lot of functions — communication, gaming, web browsing — can be served by other platforms better, cheaper, or both. This is a tough question, but one Microsoft has to solve if the Windows brand is to remain relevant.

Comment Re:resistive touchscreen Luddites. (Score 3, Insightful) 109

by preflex (#45580373) Attached to: Neo900 Hacker Phone Reaches Minimum Number of Pre-Orders For Production
One of the reasons I bought the n900 rather than one of the others was the wonderful resistive touchscreen. It was an excellent choice, as it was so much more precise than the capacitive screens on all the iOS and Android devices at the time. I could actually use the tiny UI elements in desktop apps running from a debian chroot.

Submission + - Lawsuits Could Turn Chimpanzees Into Legal Persons (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: This morning, an animal rights group known as the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a lawsuit in a New York Supreme Court in an attempt to get a judge to declare that chimpanzees are legal persons and should be freed from captivity. The suit is the first of three to be filed in three New York counties this week. They target two research chimps at Stony Brook University and two chimps on private property, and are the opening salvo in a coordinated effort to grant “legal personhood” to a variety of animals across the United States. If NhRP is successful in New York, it would upend millennia of law defining animals as property and could set off a “chain reaction” that could bleed over to other jurisdictions, says Richard Cupp, a law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, and a prominent critic of animal rights. “But if they lose it could be a giant step backward for the movement. They’re playing with fire.”

Comment Re:What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? (Score 1) 118

by preflex (#45564455) Attached to: Sailfish Can Officially Be Installed To Android Devices
I agree. The article and summary are badly written. However, parent was complaining there was no "hint" as to the identities of Jolla and Sailfish. He was so emphatic about the word "hint" that he used the emphasis tag. I simply pointed out that there were plenty of hints available, and that those hints should indicate whether the article might fall within his interests. He could simply ask, "Am I interested in installing an alternative OS on an Android phone?". If yes, research Jolla and Sailfish. If no, don't.

I understand that he didn't really want hints, and that he wanted explicit background information. However, parent's statements were so exaggerated that they undermined his argument by being demonstrably false.

Comment Re:What's Jolla? What's Sailfish? (Score 2, Informative) 118

by preflex (#45563715) Attached to: Sailfish Can Officially Be Installed To Android Devices

would it kill you just to give a hint of what Jolla and Sailfish are?

They gave you several hints.

"Jolla CEO Tomi Pienimäki": Hmm. Jolla must be a corporation. That name sounds Finnish.

"If Jolla truly is compatible with Android devices...": Jolla seems to be making some sort of cell phone software.

"Is Jolla going to let individual users to install the Sailfish operating system ..." Sailfish is an operating system for cell phones.

So, Jolla is a Finnish cell phone company that is producing an OS called Sailfish. It will be installable on Android devices. It seems like you would have enough information there to know if you want to know more. They've even provided all the relevant keywords: "Jolla", "Sailfish", which you can enter into a search engine to find more information

Complaining about this makes you appear stupid and lazy.

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