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Comment Re:No More Bennett (Score 1) 187

In chromium/chrome, you can save the file as "nobennett.user.js" and drag it from your file manager onto the chrome://extensions page; chrome will then give you a popup to ask you to confirm.

In firefox, you can install it using the Greasemonkey plugin.

There might be other options for other browsers; this was the first/only user script I've ever written, so I don't know all the tricks.

Comment No More Bennett (Score 5, Interesting) 187

I was surprised to find this show up on the Slashdot front page, and then realized that since the last time we had a Bennett post, I had switched computers, and so my user script to block them was no longer installed. Since I'd already seen it, though, I figured I'd post a link to the script again: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/3235db049b18699c082b#file-gistfile1-txt.

This article isn't as stupid as Bennett's normal tripe; at least he seems to have identified a real issue here, although Slashdot is still allowing him to use their website as his personal blog. One amusing thing, though: he's complaining that United isn't responding to his emails about the hole. I've asked Slashdot repeatedly (through both e-mail and comment threads) to make it possible for us to block Bennett posts, or at least to comment on why they won't. The Slashdot staff have, so far, completely ignored me. They have apparently been too busy adding "share to TwitBook" buttons to the stories.

Comment Re:What about low-income boys? (Score 1) 473

Look, if I start a soup kitchen for the poor in some predominantly black community, it doesn't mean I'm a racist who hates white people. It just means I only have the resources for one soup kitchen and because I live there or have ties to that community I wanted to help those people with my limited time and money.

The program under discussion isn't serving a predominately female community.

Comment Re:I'd be in favour of something else... (Score 1) 233

I am making the leap that they do not mind them - this is not the same as enjoys them. I suspect that the vast majority do not watch them and even fewer do more than skim the transcripts.

The post I referenced in my original reply that you objected to said:

Thousands of people watch those videos and seem to like them...

If your point is just that most people don't hate the videos enough to complain about them in the comment section, then there's no point arguing further, because we agree.

Roblimo made the claim that a sparse number of complaints is evidence that people like them. That seemed to be what you were defending as well, but if that's not the case, then it doesn't matter.

Comment Re:I'd be in favour of something else... (Score 1) 233

However, it is faulty logic to assume what you dislike is normative.

My post has nothing to do with an assumption that everyone shares my dislike.

My point is that Roblimo has absolutely no proof that thousands of people like these videos. Neither do you, unless you've got a stash of private communication from people that like them. You're making a leap that there is some silent majority that enjoys them, but doesn't talk about them, because otherwise you'd expect more negative comments.

You could be right. I think that's doubtful, given the reasons I've outlined already -- the total of your evidence seems to be that I should "rest assured" that you're right -- but short of taking a poll I can't prove it.

Comment Re:I'd be in favour of something else... (Score 1) 233

What you are leading yourself to believe does not seem to be important or factual. It does not even seem to be logical. Do you think that the folks who watch the video are going to come post, "I am glad that was in video format, I liked it!" Surely you do not believe that... We, as a group, do not post about what we like - we post about what we dislike. If you see a few posts complaining then you can reasonably guess that far more do not mind.

Or alternatively -- and just as reasonable a guess -- only the people who have an extreme dislike for the videos post complaining about them, and the far more who do not post on the subject just don't feel strongly enough about it to complain. I fall into that category; I haven't complained about the video, but I think that a video interview is an extremely poor medium for conveying information.

People come to Slashdot for the comment section. Presumably, if there actually existed a large number (thousands) of people that like these videos, then they would respond to some of the negative comments. That rarely happens.

The complainers have had a positive effect, by the way. Originally there were rarely transcripts of the videos, which made them useless to anyone who has better things to do with their lives than watch them. I doubt we would have ended up getting transcripts for most videos if it wasn't for the complaints.

Comment Re:I'd be in favour of something else... (Score 1) 233

Thousands of people watch those videos and seem to like them, while 5 or 10 complain.

I don't have a problem with linking to a video as long as you have a transcript, but the fact that "thousands" of people watched them without complaining doesn't prove anything about whether they liked them. In fact, every single comment I've seen about the sort of "webcam interview" videos which are nothing but somebody talking is negative, which leads me to believe that very few people actually like them.

This is as opposed to videos that actually show something graphically that you're not going to get from a simple transcript -- people seem to be mostly OK with those.

Comment Re:We need a long-term solution (Score 1) 233

If you think a leap second is a pain, you should try switching to a new calendar. Some people can actually think past the next quarterly report.

There's a difference between not looking past the next quarterly report, and not worrying about a completely unrealistic scenario -- in this case, that my software will still be running 50,000 years from now when there actually is a disagreement in date between UTC and another standard.

Personally, I think leap seconds are a great idea because they expose shoddily made software and hardware.

Introducing pointless complexity to try to "catch" poor software or hardware is a bad idea. Engineering is a hard enough job without purposefully making it harder.

Comment Re:We need a long-term solution (Score 1) 233

UTC is designed so that the sun will always be up during the day and down at night.

There have been 25 leap seconds since 1972. At that rate, it will take around 6000 years for UTC to be even an hour different from TAI. Leap seconds don't have any appreciable impact on the sun always being up during the day.

I don't think anyone really cares about whether we use UTC or some other system, though. The problem is that software/hardware vendors have all been using the wrong time standard -- nobody but astronomers actually has a reason to want UTC. We just need to get developers to use a different standard that doesn't have the stupid leap second problem.

Comment Re:Comment bubble thing next to the story icon? (Score 2) 85

But the new design saves so much screen real estate!

Oh, wait. Because of that stupid "share" button sitting all by itself that nobody is going to use, you haven't saved any space at all.

Isn't one of the tenets of good website design that it's better make the links obvious so that people can find them? Old users are annoyed by the change because it breaks their expectations. New users are much less likely to find the comment section of Slashdot because there's no clearly-marked link to get to them -- you have to figure out to click on some cryptic icon that just looks like a decoration. You're not saving any screen space, and the "share" button sitting all alone like that just looks silly.

I don't mind an interface change if there's a good reason for doing so, but this one is all downside.

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