Wait, how can it be a problem to link to content *behind* a paywall. Either the person clicking the link will not be able to get to the link as the content is behind a paywall and they haven't paid, or, they have paid, have rights to the content, and can get to it by following the link. Is there some other possibility?

all the best,

drew

All science, including the technology robots are built on, is an outgrowth of the scientific method. Research, reasoning, and altering your path based on data. If you wish to reject that method when building robots, that's cool. You are going to get a shitbot. You want to reject one of the consequences of scientific research, I call on you should reject all the outputs of scientific research. To assert that the method of gaining knowledge only works as long as you get to ignore the parts that you don't think you "use", or "agree with". Well then you'd a damned fool, and I suggest you return to the stone age animal herders afraid of the night.

While I don't dismiss trade style training programs or apprenticeships, no part of US high school education make you an expert in anything. The idea, however, of forcing every student into advanced section of every topic is foolish, few people do well in all areas all the time. I excelled in the hard sciences, I could have also excelled in history, but I just didn't care; now oddly I have a not insignificant interest in politics and policy, while my job is IT.

Short version, calculus isnt for everyone, and trying to make every child pass calc is a filing venture. However having basic exposure to the whole set of topics breeds a better base for success than trade only (excluding everything else) programs.

Unfortunately, it will take the child until they are 20 or so to feel the full effects of being poorly educated, worse, being denied the tools of critical thought. At that point bringing that person up to the capability to deal with the technology of the workplace that will face them in 2030 will be nearly insurmountable.

The mere fact that someone should be able to assert that any old idea they have, has equal supportability because of what they assert semantics of words to be, is wrong at best, and megalomaniacal at worst. And we all know that this isn't about "alternate 'theories'" this is about attacking things that don't support the christian creation myth.

I challenge *any* "teach the controversy" supporter to lay out their syllabus and rubric for *ALL* alternative science theories. As it has been stated above, it would have to include astrology, and alchemy, probably phrenology, humors, and I guess demonic possession.

You cannot be honest in this "teach the controversy" thing and only do one piece. Doing so is really a lie to yourself, and everyone knows it.

That is one way to reduce health care costs I guess.

drew

Ah, but with the new reality of ownership, we are not the client. We are the product. The advertisers are the clients.

One wonders if the clients will still buy a product that ceases to be profitable once the product delivery system is broken in the name of progress.

I don't really see how the new design truly benefits the advertisers, other than giving DICE's ad execs newer, bigger, louder ad spaces to tout. The fact that it reduces the audience for those ads doesn't seem to enter into the equation.

The first thing you should ask the design team:

Do you understand that—while most of your readers don't really care about the design—those who do care are the sort of people who take one look at a site that mixes multiple sans-serif fonts in its interface and immediately have a visceral, intensively negative reaction that strips you of all design credibility and makes them look away just as surely as if they'd seen goatse?

The excessive whitespace and awkward layout compounds the problem. There is a "right" amount of line spacing; it's a very well understood thing in the publishing industry. Any nerd understands that nerds tend to favor information density over "right" line-spacing. Therefore, incorporating excessive line spacing on a News For Nerds website simply shouts "incompetence" to the world.

Seriously, the visual aspect of the redesign is as if your web designers saw the style and popularity of Apple's Jonathan Ives' school of design (but not the typical Slashdot readers' reaction to such), and then hired the sort of people whose work is featured on Cake Wrecks to implement their own version.

Someone needs to be put in charge of this effort who has the understanding and the authority to say "our 'audience' does not want a custom, trendy font; they know that webfonts have to be loaded and will slow things down. They want whatever they've chosen as the body font in their browser's options."

Me, I'd start with the idea that Slashdot has to be minimally usable even if no CSS or JavaScript is loaded. It needs to have well-structured HTML that is content-based, not design-based. Then you can start layering design on top of that, in ways that allow for customization. If your guys want to have a CSS option that looks like a marketing MBA's WordPress wet dream (Beta), that's fine, as long as it's not the only choice—or, indeed, the default choice—and doesn't drive the bones of the site.

Scrap the Beta. It's a dead end. Start over after you draw up realistic specifications that include honest user research, not just advertising optimization hacks.

If this is the kind of thing the FBI has time to spend agents and hours on, we have way too many FBI agents.

"It makes me wonder why the NSA is pushing so hard to keep unconstitutional spying programs in place"

CYA? Seriously, leadership never takes responsibility. When you dump every possible thing on the table for the leaders to look at, at no point can the phrase "we didn't know" be said honestly.

What I think is most disturbing about this is that a company could seed/pay some fly by night person to upload come code to an OSS competitor and basically bring the project to a close, killing a competing product.

http://consumerist.com/2011/02/11/hp-pretends-linux-voids-netbook-hardware-warranty/