Sadly, I have to agree. I've been a frequent visitor to the site since 1999, and in that time, I've seen lots of ups and downs. I think things really culminated in a fever during the iOS vs. Android arguments three or four years ago when every article was clickbait to get the masses to chew each other up. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the "old guard" packed up and left during that time.

Since things have calmed down, Slashdot seems to be slowly sinking into irrelevance. I'm seeing a lot more conversation that almost mimics the comments of any CNN political article. I'm also seeing some terrible moderation -- flamebait being labeled as insightful and so forth.

From 2000-2010, I probably only modded down five posts. In the past couple years, I feel like I'm moddng down all the time. It's sad but this place used to feature high quality discussion. It just doesn't anymore. It's running on pure inertia. The only thing that keeps me coming back is habit, but I rarely read stories anymore. I just skim the frontpage like it were a news aggregator, then move on.

I'll keep doing so because of habit, but once the beta becomes the defacto version, I'll bow out. It was a great site with some good memories, but all good things must come to an end.

As an independent developer who has become homeless after a patent lawsuit even though it was bogus and later thrown out by someone with the money to fight back. FUCK YOU.

Eventually your system will either collect enough entropy that it will suck ass and die -- OR, you'll pull your head from your anus, implement a meta complier that generates code in Java or C or whatever flavor of the month, decouple your business from any single platform's destiny, and survive into the future.

Yes, code generation is key. That's what compilers are: Machine code generators -- but not shitty incomplete code generators that have no full language of their own. That's the difference between Java or a Meta Compiler or C or your POS garbage that no one understands but you.

"One of us"

Speak for your self. I haven't been compromised.

If you have a hole in the side of your bank, you don't fight the theves forever, you fix the fucking hole in your bank.

You've made some terrible assesments of reality. You can't even see the holes anymore.

"Fight this", "fight that", you're a shadowboxing fool.

I don't suspect. I know.

This is because: I read.

You'll have to start at the language level. Trigraphs? WTF? En\
d of line continuations absolutely anywhere?

Protip: Languages that are a nightmare to lex parse and implement have terrible security. You made your own bed, now die in it.

And while you pine for that which never was, I'll simply scratch my head and think, "Well, the Internet IS a single point of failure, innit?"

What the fuck does this even mean when 4chan and the Streisand Effect exist? Go leap in a tar pit, you're retarding the herd.

What if we just manufacutred criminals by making it illegal to tamper with a URL bar's contens, and then taught every kid to code!

"Genius! This thing prints money!"

-- Reform the fucking CFAA. Every kid has a million times more accessibility to coding and information than when I taught myself at age 8. If you're not coding it's either because you don't want to, or your parents are fucking daft.

Chomsky explained everything you need to know in the 70's. Educate yourself, idiots.

Here's news for you mate. There is no shortage of skilled workers. There is only capitalistic elites applying very strict selection requirements via flavor of the month bullshit requirements (ignoring that coders learn new languages without having to get a degree or cert). This is done so they can pretend to be looking for workers, when in fact they are trying NOT to hire anyone so they can meet the government's requirements and employ more lower paid H1B visa workers. There are actually HR seminars about how NOT to hire people while still complying with the requirements of looking for work. "Oh my, you don't have a Certificate or Degree in $LANG, I'm afraid that's a requirement. Yes, you may say you know it, but how do I know that?" In fact, they just filter all applicants by their strict filter and you don't even get interviewed. They have to interview a few folks, just to seem legit, but that's the nature of this beast.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

I reached that point in the 90's.

Now I write all my code in a meta language that compiles down into COBOL, C, C++, C#, Erlang, FORTH, Fortran, Google's Go, Haskel, Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and more.

It takes about two weeks for me to learn a new language and write the "runtime" for my meta compiler. Then I can deploy all of my existing solutions on the new platform faster than the other guys can get "Hello DB Connection" out the door.

Fuck all the shitty languages and "new" platforms. Now that you've actually grown up and stopped being a fucking fanboy, go write your own meta compiler. I'll open source mine when I retire, it's what gives me the edge over all the noobs still wasting time reimplementing their wheels.

me: Hi Jibo
It spins and spins.
me: Over here. Over here. I'm standing here. Jibo. Stop spinning.
jibo: would you like take out.
me: no.
jibo: how about sushi. Your favorite food.
me:That's Lizzie's favorite.
jibo: Ordering. Unable to comply. Please check your network settings.
me: Cancel
jibo: Please say that again. I did not understand.
me: Reset. Stop.
jibo: Want me to take a picture.
me: No.
jibo: Cheese. Hard drive full. Please delete some of your pictures.
me: Stop taking pictures.
jibo: taking picture. Cheese. Hard drive full. Please delete some of your pictures.
me: Why did I buy this friggin thing?

Seriously, compare the Kinnect promo videos to how it actually turned out. That's Jibo, except from an extremely well funded company. This is just snake-oil.