I'm a subscriber, so I see the stories before they're public. I don't know why the star isn't showing up, but I bought a 2000 page subscription.

I'll tell you why. Because troll moderators have taken over the site and are trying to subvert it. Because the IT readership that used to visit Slashdot has been bleeding from the site in the last few years, leaving behind the more extremist posters. Because if you say something that those posters don't like, they abuse the moderation system to drive you off the site rather than reply and explain why you're wrong.

The latest thing is to accuse absolutely everyone of being a "shill" so that others will follow along and do their dirty work. My post didn't go down to -1 Flamebait until someone else accused me of being a shill and got modded +5 Insightful (!). Because of the default filters, +5 comments are automatically expanded while less than +2 is collapsed, so now every moderator reading the comments for the first time will see that post first and likely not even read what I wrote.

CmdrTaco promised a new moderation system for years, and it never arrived before he left the site. This limited moderation pool concept is terrible. It makes it so that a single point in either direction has a drastic effect on karma and effectively restricts people from posting something that's unpopular, even if it's legitimately true.

This is off-topic, and so I'd be justified in getting downmodded for this, but since my karma is getting completely destroyed right now anyway, I may as well post it before I'm limited to two posts a day. Thanks, Slashdot. Thanks, troll moderators.

Yeah, but if you notice the moderation, my karma gets punished while the accusers get rewarded, because I guess I said something too positive about Apple or something? It's really getting to the point where every discussion must be a given party line, or you get censored. Hell, even this will probably get modded down.

It's a rumor article about the iPad 3. So I wrote additional rumors that have been known about the iPad 3, which is that the iPad 2 would continue to be sold but at a lower price. What in the hell is "canned" about that?

Should I have written "first p0st" instead of putting in any effort? This place is really starting to suck as a community.

What was canned about my post? I think I made legitimate points. I even hyperlinked them, for crying out loud. What does "cranberry" mean?

I'm looking over my post again, and I don't even get what would be controversial about it since it's just stating commonly known facts. The last part about tablets becoming the dominant computing devices is my own opinion, of course.

Okay, you people are retarded. What jabs at Google? And of course it quickly went to +5 (or whatever it's rated now), it was the first post that moderators saw.

Normally, I don't respond to comments like this, but the goofy paranoia on Slashdot whenever anyone dares to--gasp--say positive things about a really popular tech gadget is really nutty.

Google's advertising revenue is the primary reason they're the last browser vendor not to include support for Do Not Track. Really a shame.

Yes, that's literally the only thing that separates the iPhone/iPad's design from everyone else's, the fact that it's a rounded rectangle with a flat surface and glossy paint. It's certainly not the radius of the corners, the 1-inch black border with chrome backing that peeks over just enough to frame it, the grid of icons, the thievery of artwork, the touchscreen gestures that originated with iOS, etc.

Tablets didn't start looking like the iPad until the iPad came out. That really should clue you into the idea that the design comes from Jonathan Ive's design studio and isn't some obvious thing that has been around forever. Of course it seems obvious now, because the iPad is so successful. There's a cognitive bias going on where the thing that succeeded now seems obvious in retrospect even though it didn't before it came into existence.

...did you even read my post?

I seriously doubt they will shoot so low.

To be fair, everyone also thought the original iPad would be $1,000. I can absolutely see the iPad 2 going for $200-$250.

It looks the same? Then surely it will be as big a "disappointment" as the iPhone 4S was according to analysts--which went on to sell 37 million last quarter. In all seriousness, while the so-called Retina Display is the thing I'm most looking forward to (especially for reading text), the most interesting rumor is that the iPad 2 will continue to be sold at $200 to compete with the Kindle Fire. While the iPad is still the most dominant tablet, the Kindle Fire had a decent run over the holidays. By selling the iPad 2 at a cheaper price alongside the iPad 3, Apple will have both the high end and low end covered. This is the same strategy they're using with the iPhone 3GS (in fact, it's often free with contract), which helped Apple close the gap with Android's marketshare in December.

The next few years are going to be really fun to watch as companies fight over this new market. I think it's inevitable that phones and tablets will become the primary computing devices for most users in a matter of years, because they let people do the things that they use PCs for--Facebook, YouTube, email--without the hassle of PC maintenance. Tablets are already outselling the desktop PC market. Some people don't like "appliance computing", but having grown up with handheld consoles, I see appliance computing as a natural evolution and something to look forward to. PCs will still be around for those who need them.

Who said anything about beating off to pictures of 14 year olds? I said that 14+ is not a pedophilia.

If you'd RTFA, the most active subreddit now banned by Reddit was called /r/preteen_girls. But hey, enjoy your +5.

What's up with the moderation to this article? Everyone opposed to trading child porn pictures on Reddit is getting modded down, and everyone defending possession of those pictures is getting modded up. Please tell me Slashdot's moral compass isn't that horribly screwed up.

You don't know what the word "skeptical" means. It doesn't mean that you disbelieve something by default. It means that you don't believe something by default.

So Google will drop all the lawsuits the moment the acquisition is complete?