I am not OP, but I since i think i am part of that audience.
Sure i don't have a 3 digit ID like you, I am fairly recent user, I comment rarely, my comments are barely interesting, but guess what? people like me are the vast majority of the users, most of them don't even have an account. I am happy that slashdot is trying to stay relevant and there are people like me still joining and visiting the site and it has not (yet) become a site of old men complaining about the good ol'days.
if the community is thinking that slashdot can continue being a viable new site by catering to links browsing sys admins from the 90's it is unrealistic.
It is not like dice is changing a winning formula, readership is dwindling, they have invested a lot of money, are they supposed to just sit and watch it all collapse? If you really want to make a difference and keep slashdot classic, offer to pay for it. if enough active community members do, they will keep it. Advertisement based business models need certain critical mass, slashdot is fast losing it.
Don't want to pay big bad DH anything? build your own news aggregator, there is enough unhappy with the beta people with serious talent and plenty of time on hands in this site. Do something useful and quit bitching about.
P.S Beta IS shitty, broken, very JS heavy etc etc,However #fuckbeta doesn't help either, giving constructive feedback is more meaningful? Dice may not listen/execute it, but at least it has better chance of working than #fuckbeta
A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the program on which he was working. ``It will be finished tomorrow,'' the programmer promptly replied. ``I think you are being unrealistic,'' said the manager, ``Truthfully, how long will it take?'' The programmer thought for a moment. ``I have some features that I wish to add. This will take at least two weeks,'' he finally said. ``Even that is too much to expect,'' insisted the manager, ``I will be satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete.'' The programmer agreed to this. Several years later, the manager retired. On the way to his retirement luncheon, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal. He had been programming all night.
P.S. I don't like the beta either, but am happy at least they are trying to do something.
Welcome to Management One on One
Management getting some!
(e.g. submitting the same fucking thing 100 different times hoping one submission will slip by an overworked patent reviewer)
I am not a fan of the current patenting system, but this is BS, a patent application costs $10,000, if the patent reviewer is overworked it has nothing to do with the abuse of the system, even considering a cost of $200,000 to the USPTO per patent reviewer including all the overheads a reviewer has to only review 20 patents a year to make the system viable.
It's like PCI Express or USB. Sure it's patented but end users don't pay patent fees.
Perhaps you did not pay it directly but if you bought the device then you did pay the fees for the patents, along with the illegal pollutants in it, the Chinese sweatshops making it for you. The minute you pay for it, It is your endorsement of all the things behind making that product.
IF I HAD A MINE SHAFT, I don't think I would just abandon it. There's got to be a better way. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.