I really do. I checked out the beta back in October. I felt, like now, that the front page and headers and stuff were alright, even quite nice looking, but that the comments section had been totally ruined. I said so in an email to the feedback address. I got a personal reply from Timothy agreeing that yes, comments were the most important part of the site, and that he understood the complaint about all the whitespace.
Looking at it now, at least it's no longer fixed width, but there are still huge amounts of pointless padding and margins everywhere, and comments are still confined to a column of about 55% of the window width. Compared with the existing design, every comment takes up about 150% of the current vertical space whilst simultaneously providing about 10% of the current information.
I quite like the new navigation, and the article list... don't really need such a massive font, but I could get used to it. But it still seems like nobody's really listening regarding the comments. They keep saying that they understand and agree, but still seem to be missing just how incredibly seriously they should be taking this. There's nothing special about the news on Slashdot. It's usually old, with a poor summary. What's special is the community of people who comment here. Without them, there is no reason to come here. Until the comments are fixed, the new design never stands the slightest chance of being accepted, no matter what they do to it.
There's obviously no way the redesign is going to be cancelled. It's going to happen, so let's concentrate on fixing it. Here's what you need to do: drop everything else for now, it's not anywhere near as important. Polish all the shiny bits later. Work on the comments, right now, for as long as it takes, until the community approves.