Nah, not especially likely. The Dice Beta crap is all pretty standard textbook plays. The users don't know what they want, so we'll give them something they don't yet know they want. And when they complain that it "sucks" or is "too different" we'll tell them, "Give it time, you're too stupid to know what you want. You'll get used to the new status quo soon enough."

Same for Unity, Gnome 3, and any other software project that is widely derided by users as crap, but the devs keep plodding on because the users are stupid to know how much they really want whatever crap they're peddling.

I think that the cookie popup has something to do with an EU disclosure rule. They basically have say "We're using cookies for X, Y, and Z. If you don't like it, well, go someplace else."

That's why there's always an Agree button, but nothing else. I've been seeing those pop ups quite a bit, and we know it certainly wasn't the US government making anyone do anything that might possibly get in the way of profit or have even the slightest veneer of consumer protection, so I'm assuming it's the EU requiring these notices.

Honestly, they're pretty stupid. The only cookies that matter are the tracking ones, and I've yet to see a single one of those cookie Opt-In things disclose the laundry list of trackers stuffed in the page. For instance, Ghostery is blocking 14 items on slashdot. 14. 70% advertisement, the rest "beacons', "analytics' and ironically enough, 'privacy'.

That's an interesting paranoid delusion you've got there, but the question you should really be asking yourself is "How do we always find you?"

Because in the end, we always do.

We always do...

Ooh, I'm a sock puppet now? But I thought I was a real boy... Jimminy, YOU LIED!!!!!

Relax, I wasn't defending Lumpy, don't even know who he is. Besides, don't we go way back?

So how does it feel to be on APK's shit list? Lol, haven't seen him trolling about in many a day, it's kind of refreshing.

+1 sad but true :(

I wonder what to make of the fact that none of the devices/software you mentioned are managing to make any meaningful headway into the market? It's pretty easy to write Surface Pro off as simply being too expensive, and anything with GNU in the title is a non-starter in the first place. I suppose the Ubuntu thing has a chance, given Valve's endorsement of the distro, but many in the traditional Linux community are abandoning Ubuntu due to things like the sponsored search bar kerfuffle and Unity.

I think I agree about the regulatory barriers, but I'm not convinced that the pat libertarian answer of "all regulation is bad" is much of a solution at all.

I'm sure I could look it up, but how exactly did they improve the multi-monitor support? I know at least for my usage with a dual-monitor setup I've never noticed any particular problems, even when using the TV as a third monitor that periodically comes and goes everything has been hunky-dory.

I'd like to see usage statistics for the Firehose, or whatever they call it now. I know the only times I've used it were a) when they introduced it, and b) during the Beta protests to vote up the anti-Beta stories. I'm rather afraid that we have a situation akin to the US primary elections where a small subset of the population choosing what the rest of us are going to read, where the rest of the population doesn't like the fact that this small group is doing so, but can't be bothered to participate in the process. Ah, our own little microcosm of the United States. All we need now is the Slashdot Army and world domination, here we come!

Nah, they're going to double down on the cloud thing. Expect more and more core OS functionality to drift away into the fluffy little cloud, with an optional, but expensive option to "run your own cloud" for those recalcitrant privacy advocates who don't want practically all their information stored "securely" in some huge corporate data center in Montana. Win 8 already has their stupid little Microsoft Account which you can use to "... get apps from the Windows Store, back up all your important data and files using free cloud storage, and keep all your favorite stuff—devices, photos, friends, games, settings, music, and so on—up to date and in sync." So Cloud (implied), Cloud (explicit), Cloud (implied). Don't worry though, just like a real cloud your files and information are just so many water droplets in a swirling mass, so it isn't likely you will be personally targeted! The crackers will just take ALL of it! No worries!

Personally, I can't wait for Cloud printing, where your document goes out to the internet, then back to your printer, unless your internet access is out for some reason, then you're hosed. Rah rah cloud!!

Lol, you say that like it's a bad thing, at least from the industries prospective. Once most of the big PC players have their own crap Chinese Android tablet offerings we'll start seeing adverts similar to "Out grown your tablet? We can help! Buy our workstation PCs and get more done with less grease smears and cursing at Google/Apple for idiotic media consumption centered design decisions!"

I'm sure we'll see some kind of resurgence in PC sales when it finally becomes apparent to most people that their little tablet toys are woefully unsuited for, you know, getting stuff done, other than Angry Flappy Birds or Youtube or whatever. I love my tablet for quick surfing on the couch, playing Minecraft PE with the kids, or carrying it around to make myself look cool. But write code? Write emails longer than a paragraph or so? Edit an image? Forget about it, I'm sick of having an app for everything that used to be a website and having websites squished into a trite little mobile package which removes or makes difficult 60%-70% of any useful functionality of the site. I realize we can't simply pass tablets, and mobile devices et al as simple fads, but we certainly don't need to pretend that they're computing or usability panaceas that will finally bring computing to the unwashed masses. At least until some enterprising soul releases a non-media-consumption tablet/OS.

Well, to start, despite your assertion (which I agree with, BTW) that nobody gives a shit about the UI on a server, it's undeniable that MS changed it in the first place when they explicitly put their UI-Abortion A.K.A. Metro on the Server SKU. In other words, the Win 7 interface was "good enough to get done what needs to be done while logged in to the server," so why bother changing the Server interface to Metro? My theory? It's just a big F U to the world, "See, you'll eat whatever shit we put in front of you, despite any high flying rhetoric to the contrary."

At most shops? Ditch server core. Microsoft is more likely to make a completely POSIX compatible operating system than most of these shitty vendors are to update their enterprise crapware in any meaningful way. And even if they did, I'm sure most of the enlightened corporate leadership would scoff at the notion of paying extra for, you know, actual positive changes. "What do you mean it makes managing our mission critical servers far more efficient? We've always done it this way, and the rep from Microsoft assured me that Metro is the wave of the future. Besides, I have a golf game scheduled in a few hours so I don't have time for this right now. No upgrade!!"

The sad truth is that it probably isn't.

You think the current mobile site is bad? Try the beta on your phone. Sweet raptor jesus, after the third nesting level or so the text is squeezed in a narrow little space and ends up being one or two words per line.

And there's no way to get it to show the "normal" layout on a mobile device, it seems to be based on window width somehow. For instance, if you take the beta site and shrink the window you can see it changing the layout to "suit" the smaller space, eventually ending up with this weird single column view that ends up being all you get on a phone. No, using "request desktop site" does nothing.

I suppose at the very least if they fixed the spacing issues the beta would be a worthwhile replacement for the current mobile site, which is, quite frankly, complete shit. I'll grant you that no matter what they do slashdotters are going to bitch, but the current outcry is far worse than for the current site, when it was a shitty beta.