OK, here's an actual, real solution to the "video problem". Since you're creating summaries and transcripts, post *those* on the front page and either have a video link in the story or just leave the videos on the video tab. This isn't perfect, because all the videos you keep making are atrocious, but at least alleviates part of the problem.

The solution, of course, is to STOP MAKING THESE AWFUL VIDEOS.

You make a compelling argument. I think we should just merge our positions and get him to stop doing *anything* with slashdot.

More terrible timothy videos. The editors continue to post this drivel on the front page. timothy continues his quest to ruin slashdot, and create the most awful videos he can. These gyroscope things have been around for many years, and were even sold by thinkgeek. You call the guy a huckster right in the article, the whole thing is completely not "stuff that matters".

If you're going to make these horrific things (a huge mistake) at least tag them as videos and let us have the option to filter them! I can filter Idle, why not videos? You seem determined to cram these things down our throats. Are you afraid we'll all filter them from the feed and ruin whatever crazy plan you guys have that involves these videos?

I disagree with your assessment that "most slashdot users aren't competent enough to figure out how to block the video", if anything they're more likely to know how.

Sure. They're poorly produced. They reek of being advertisements. The content is terrible. They're a waste of time and money slashdot could be investing in fixing the performance problems of the site as well as the bugs that have been dragging the site down for years. Videos are strongly disliked by a lot of readers (you can go back to the comments from previous video debacles to see evidence of that claim). They refuse to give us a way to filter them from our feeds.

Man, I almost wish it would have really been Roblimo posting this.

I don't see any "editing" going on, so I've no idea what you actually do. You just post unedited press output from various publications, and weird political tripe like Hugh Pickens stuff. Then you go off to CES like you're reporters and make incredibly lame videos. The site is a buggy mess, the slashcode site hasn't been updated in years...what the heck are you people actually doing all day?

Again with a lame video on the front page. Are you just determined to ignore all the negative comments and feedback on your slashvertisement video junk? You sem totally oblivious to the flags people are putting on the firehose entries. Why are you so persistently ignoring the readers?

Just *stop* with the videos. If you really want to do this, put it on youtube like all the other lame vieo makers. Stop screwing up slashdot. I mean, stop screwing it up more than you already have over the past two years.

After the last blowup over videos, you even made a big post about how you had made missteps, and you'd listened to the feedback, etc. And yet here you are, wit hmore incredibly lame CES junk. If something is notable out of CES, you should be posting articles referring to a real news source that discusses the story. You're not even posting stories about notable things! You're wasting your time, money, and the front page on such incredibly lame things as earbuds and lamps!

This is a vanity project, plain and simple, and needs to stop.

If the slashdot crew themselves hadn't created the video, do you think this "article" would have made it out of the submission queue? This is more of the insane slashdot video vanity project. More of the hoodie, more of the slashvertisements. Every time they do this, they drag slashdot farther from being a useful site, and farther toward something like Gawker. They need to start acting like editors, and stop posting their little videos where they have the fantasy that they can be reporters. They need to curate the site and seek out good stories. They need stop posting drivel like these videos, or the garbage that Hugh Pickens spews across the page, or the corporate submission feeds.

This stuff doesn't belong on the front page of Slashdot. You aren't a news source, you're not reporters, and you never will be. How about you spend more time actually editing and curating decent submissions, instead of the political tripe you've been doling out? Stop with the videos. Just...stop.

Don't blame Logitech for this. They inherited this model when they bought Intrigue Technologies, the company that created the Harmony Line (when it was called EasyZapper).

Oracle, and Sun before them, have been including that toolbar nag thing for several years. And it's not just Ask, it also will offer Bing and Google toolbars. It's an idiotic and annoying problem, but it's hardly a new issue or "the main contributions from Oracle to Java during the last year" as you put it.