Comment Slashcott - don't visit this site from 2/10 - 2/17 (Score -1, Offtopic) 195
If only Dice was willing to sell it's slashdot business to someone who understood the audience it has served historically.
Graphene Conducts Electricity Ten Times Better Than Expected 161
ananyo writes "Physicists have produced nanoribbons of graphene — the single-atom-thick carbon — that conduct electrons better than theory predicted even for the most idealized form of the material (abstract). The finding could help graphene realize its promise in high-end electronics, where researchers have long hoped it could outperform traditional materials such as silicon. In graphene, electrons can move faster than in any other material at room temperature. But techniques that cut sheets of graphene into the narrow ribbons needed to form wires of a nano-scale circuit leave ragged edges, which disrupt the electron flow. Now a team led by physicist Walt de Heer at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta has made ribbons that conduct electric charges for more than 10 micrometres without meeting resistance — 1,000 times farther than in typical graphene nanoribbons. The ribbons made by de Heer's team in fact conduct electrons ten times better than standard theories of electron transport they should, say the authors."
Comment Re:Slashdot readership to Dice (Score 1) 249
Well, I could make the case that "X to Y" is more like a mail header. "Consider Z" does stand as a sentence on its own...
Comment Re:Slashdot readership to Dice (Score 0) 249
Yeah, then I changed my sig
Comment Slashdot readership to Dice (Score 2, Informative) 249
Consider scrapping beta.
Submission + - Dice Holding Slashdot Beta Yields Withering Reviews 1
LordFlower writes: Fuck Beta and the hole it came from
Submission + - AltSlashdot is coming (altslashdot.org) 3
Okian Warrior writes: I've registered "AltSlashdot.org".
I intend to run a site much like Slashdot used to be — better articles, less decoration and less "in your face" functionality. I'm reviewing and getting comfortable with slashcode right now. I'm looking for volunteers to help with setup and running the site.
If the site becomes profitable, I intend to hire from the pool of volunteers. If you've ever wanted to participate in a site like Slashdot, here's your chance!
I'm particularly in need of people who can:
- Set up and manage a high-traffic site (servers, load-balancers, data sites, &c)
- Edit story submissions
- HTML, CSS, and script creation/bugfix/repair
Contact me if interested
John (at) AltSlashdot (dot) org
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Why Can't Slashdot Classic and Slashdot Beta Continue to Co-Exist? 9
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Slashdot has been a big part of my life since I had my my first stories accepted over ten years ago. Some people my age do crossword puzzles to keep their mental agility, some do sudoko, or play bridge. I enjoy searching for and putting together a story a day for slashdot because it helps keep me on my toes to have readers find errors and logical fallacies in my submissions and I enjoy learning from the different points of view expressed on a story I have submitted. That's why I have been so discouraged in the past several years to see readership in slashdot drop off. As a close observer of this web site, I know that ten years ago it was unheard of for any accepted story to get less than 100 comments and there was at least a story a day that got over 1,000 comments. Those days are long gone. Not it's not uncommon to see some stories garner only a few dozen comments. That's how web sites die. If you slip below a critical level of readership, readers will abandon the site completely. I know from my own experience running a web site devoted to the Peace Corps that I used to have hundreds of comments to some of my stories but once comments slipped below a certain threshold, then they disappeared altogether. I think that slashdot is nearing that threshold and I fear that imposing Slashdot Beta on the site's readership will push it over the edge and I don't want to see that happen. I'd like to propose that slashdot continue running slashdot classic and slashdot beta in parallel. I'll stick with classic most of the time. One of the best features of slashdot classic is that comments can be displayed in four formats (threaded, nested, no comment, and flat) and in two directions (oldest first and newest first) providing a lot of flexibility in watching conversations develop. I switch between the formats several times a day depending on what I want to see. But slashdot beta also has its advantages in certain situations. Slashdot needs a blockbuster story or two every day where people can pile on and slashdot beta facilitates this by putting the most commented story at the top of the page and I think that is a good thing. Still I'll use slashdot beta occasionally when I'm on a mobile device but slashdot classic will be the format I use on my desktop. So don't deprecate slashdot classic. That would be like Microsoft disabling Windows 7 and forcing everyone to use Windows 8. And not even Microsoft is that stupid.
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Can some of us get together and rebuild this community? 21
wbr1 writes: It seems abundantly clear now that Dice and the SlashBeta designers do not care one whit about the community here. They do not care about rolling in crapware into sourceforge installers. In short, the only thing that talks to them is money and stupid ideas.
Granted, it takes cash to run sites like these, but they were fine before. The question is, do some of you here want to band together, get whatever is available of slashcode and rebuild this community somewhere else? We can try to make it as it once was, a haven of geeky knowledge and frosty piss, delivered free of charge in a clean community moderated format.
Granted, it takes cash to run sites like these, but they were fine before. The question is, do some of you here want to band together, get whatever is available of slashcode and rebuild this community somewhere else? We can try to make it as it once was, a haven of geeky knowledge and frosty piss, delivered free of charge in a clean community moderated format.
Comment There is no authoritative 4K standard. (Score 1) 520
the monitor is not 4k, it's 3840x2160 which is only UHD. 4k is 4096x2160.
There is no "4K". What you're referring to is DCI 4K.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution#Resolutions
And 3840 x 2160 is "4K UHD", so it's as much "4K" as "DCI 4K" is. (Though to the extent that actually having at least four thousand pixels across would be a defining characteristic of any "4K" resolution, the DCI standard has more "4K-ness".)
Comment HOAs / covenants (Score 1) 324
stricter "quiet hours" than the municipal code provides
I used to think HOAs and deed restrictions were the tools of reactionary conservatives whose top priority was maintaining their property value. Then I made the mistake of moving into a neighborhood where people let their dogs go outside at 3:00 AM and bark at who knows what.
Now I'd gladly relocate into an area with an active HOA if it meant a strict ban on barking dogs during the sleeping hours with stiff fines for violations. (Presumably enforcement would be swifter and more certain than calling the cops, who either don't care or show up after the barking has stopped.)
Comment Escrow of sorts (Score 5, Insightful) 314
If the goal of the unmasking is to determine whether the Yelp complainers were actual customers (as the fine article states) couldn't the judge be provided the names of the Yelpers and the list of Mr. Hadeed's customers and make that determination without revealing their identities to Mr. Hadeed or the public at large? (I'm not saying it's morally or legally correct for anyone to know the identity of the Yelpers, but this would seem preferable to telling Mr. Hadeed who the complaining customers were, enabling him to harrass them.)
Comment Praise Bob (Score 2) 116
2013 failed to produce industry-altering innovations
GOOD.
UX: the field of taking something that's familiar and works well and replacing it with some as different and as "sleek" as possible regardless of the critical importance of visible affordances, constraints, natural mappings, etc.
"We've replaced your boring 20th century 'steering wheel and pedals' interface with our new three shells interface. Drive safe!"
The only people bemoaning a lack of "industry altering innovations" in user interface are the people who want to be paid to throw out every principle of designing things to be usable.
Comment I know this is off-topic. (Score 1) 128
I assume you watch Netflix yourself, let me know if I'm wrong.
You know how when you see a movie in a theater and it has a conclusion that's full of emotion or has a surprise twist... and the credits start rolling and you have a moment to absorb what happened.
What if instead of having that moment, the film being projected shrunk to a tiny corner of the screen and trailers for other movies started playing?
"SO YOU JUST WATCHED SCHINDLER'S LIST. YOU MIGHT LIKE THE PIANIST!"
"SO YOU JUST WATCHED THE SIXTH SENSE. YOU MIGHT LIKE FIGHT CLUB!"
Do you agree that this would be annoying and would be doing the audience a disservice? (I'm hoping that you do.)
If you were watching a box set of a great TV series, would you WANT to see a still and a plot summary (rife with spoilers) of the next episode appear the instant that the end credits started rolling?
To me, this seems like a disservice, yet it's exactly what Netflix does. Worse, Netflix doesn't see any need to provide customers with an option to disable it. Are they so intent on encouraging binge viewing that they don't care about shitting all over the user experience?
I already registered my complaint (sans profanity) with one of their CSR chat people.
The only solution I've heard is to buy a Roku, but I'm not inclined to spend money on a device which doesn't do anything my PC can't do EXCEPT play Netflix content without crassly jamming suggestions and spoilers in my face at the end of a video. (And how can I know that this disease won't somehow start manifesting on Roku?)
I'm much MORE inclined to simply direct my monthly entertainment budget to Hulu Plus or Amazon Prime or some content provider that doesn't provide an experience that's qualitativly worse than going to a theater.
What say ye?
Comment Re:Yes (Score 1) 246
But the good news for people writing software is that this is the last job that will be automated. Once AI is strong enough to write quality software it will be able to improve itself at a dramatically increased pace and the intelligence explosion described by I.J. Good will take place, after which human affairs presumably will no longer be administered by human intelligence.
