Well I won't pry. Good luck with your transition and renewed eyesight.

Back in 2006, then outgoing network news anchor Ted Koppel wrote a New York Times editorial stating the obvious: The Iraq war is about oil. And though the Bush Administration at the time had vociferously denied this fact, two years before that even former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil had said the same during a CBS interview.

So now Panetta's saying it will be a thirty year war. Prepare ourselves for lost treasure, spilled blood, and the tears of war over this nearly indefinite period that compares in length to England's old The War of Roses. All to control a declining resource that's causing serious global environmental harm to boot.

Who here notices that this 30 year timeline dovetails in nicely with the UN's IPCC's Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation

Scenarios generally indicate that growth in RE [Renewable Energy] will be widespread around the world. Although the precise
distribution of RE deployment among regions varies substantially across scenarios, the scenarios are largely consistent
in indicating widespread growth in RE deployment around the globe. In addition, the total RE deployment is higher over
the long term in the group of non-Annex I countries12 than in the group of Annex I countries in most scenarios (Figure
SPM.10).

[chart in document]

Scenarios generally indicate that growth in RE will be widespread around the world. Although the precise
distribution of RE deployment among regions varies substantially across scenarios, the scenarios are largely consistent
in indicating widespread growth in RE deployment around the globe. In addition, the total RE deployment is higher over
the long term in the group of non-Annex I countries12 than in the group of Annex I countries in most scenarios (Figure
SPM.10).

So a thirty year war to control world oil that ends at just about the same time global deployment of renewable systems are predicted to offset world energy needs. Huh.

Thank you. And good luck.

A transition to CSS3/HTML5 is necessary, regardless of what nattering naysayers say. But I genuinely think it's only part of the solution.

Glad to see an editor read through all that junk and will give at least some of it consideration.

Best. -M

Hey, thanks for reading.

Reddit is divided by interest, so some subreddits are highly technical and attract an audience similar to Slashdot's. Others entirely not so. Like the difference between a tech forum and one devoted to web comics. Folks into comics might have great skills with Photoshop and Illustrator, but they don't know the first thing about the OSI networking model. Which is fine.

Regardless, management at Reddit has been smart about how they divide up audience by interest groups similar to demographic targetting to maximize potential across a general audience.

On a personal note, it sounds like you've transitioned to management. Been there. Sysadmins joke about pointy-headed managers, but it's a tougher job than most nerds realize. Better for all that techies rise up as team leaders into management. Having ground level past experience really helps understand the difference between technical and personal limitations that inexperienced managers often confuse.

Animation and video merges. For example, sprite jpgs with css can be both video snippets or on mouseover animations with movement. These matters of presentation - like color scheme and font selection - seem irrelevant to core message. Yet they have a huge impact on user perception. Apple understands that. Or at least, they once did.

But I think general video is also important. Many bloggers are using text / video combinations to build cross spectrum audience. There are nots of people who don't want to read 3K words and prefer a five minute narrated summary with visual aid.

Hey, off topic: somewhere you said you're an old-timer but shifted to a new account name after your gender transition. Did we communicate back then?

But interesting journals, to appeal to a broader base, need some visual content - PICTURES. Illustrative diagrams, photos.

Yeah, I really agree with that. Except you missed video. And web video is pervasive these days. But embedded text with AV is long past new and now standard fare across all content delivery platforms. Except on Slashdot. But a transition to CSS3/HTML5 for multimedia support is only part of the problem. There's editorial and cultural baggage that needs addressing as well.

The thing is, right now is an inflection point of user discontent over at Reddit. Someone - Slashdot, perhaps - has an opportunity to cleave off significant audience if they're smart. But it means acting quickly.

You may have been the only one. lol

Or as another staffer said, "I find the whole rulemaking context almost hilarious in many instances, because you know you're reading something, and you know it's not true. And you're guessing, you know, the person is hallucinating." Ordinary comments were, in other words, prone to error and lacked truthfulness, in the eyes of many of the Commission's staff. They also represented one person's opinion or experience, whereas according to staff, comments submitted by legal or economic experts collated information in a more systematic way, and from a much broader population of consumers.

The FCC got three million responses, or almost one percent of the entire US population. And FCC staffers deride the public comment process as filled with 'hilarious hallucinations.' Because, according to this staffer, those comments submitted by 'legal and economic experts' prepared under the employ of institutions with a vested interest "collated information in a more systematic way" and "from a much broader population of consumers."

Think about this. Actual citizen voices don't matter because private interests have the money to hire people and staff time to organize large submissions with systematically collated information about the population of Net product consumers. Do you see how citizenship to impact public policy has been stripped from the process, leaving the public as nothing more than consumers of product in a rigged market?

They think we don't understand. That we're simply unqualified to understand the nuance of policy. But that's clearly not the case. As highly qualified Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, including Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig have been stumping for Net Neutrality for the better part of a decade. These people are not policy stupid. They've submitted comments with 'systematically collated information' by nationally and internationally recognized experts.

These FCC staffers quoted would have us believe the public is misinformed and uneducated. That is the spin they want to present to the press.

It's offensive. Regardless of what position you take on the matter.

The networks run physical infrastructure across public lands. Furthermore, they hold natural monopolies at both local and state levels. The government - and citizens - have an interest in equal access to that infrastructure. Particularly since open communication access is crucial to a functioning market. These ISPs are engaging in restraint of trade, hobbling competition not just in their own market but across whole swaths of the economy with potential for vast damage to market competition.

Even Milton Friedman would recognize the danger here.

It took a while, but here you go.

http://slashdot.org/journal/13...

I have some ideas. I think it's time for a journal entry too.

There's a real dearth of quality submissions lately. Your work is being accepted because the editors need it. Badly. That's why Hugh Pickens keeps getting front paged too, even though he clearly engages in self-promotion. His choice of material is good and write ups concise.

Slashdot needs a new policy and system to foster community contribution. I don't think the site is dead. But I do think editors should consider how to rebuild audience share by transitioning focus away from link aggregation - a market they've lost to Reddit - to content creation. Too many submissions are easily found on Reddit hours before they go live here. That's a bad sign. Fresh content doesn't have that problem.