I would imagine the fact that this being, perhaps, one of the largest and most discerning groups of techno-literate and bullshit doublespeak phobic groups on the entire planet....I would imagine that would give someone in the organization some pause. Someone with enough pull that they might be able to communicate how suicidal that move would be to someone who might care, if for nothing more than profit potential concerns.

We are the filters. We see through this shit. This is perhaps why we aren't as click-baitable. Why we are so ad-averse. Why typical marketing paradigms have had no effect on us. We have the wherewithal to recognize it, the technical ability to eliminate it and the common sense to disregard it.

We aren't against being monetized. Lots of us make money doing that very thing. We are indeed a fickle crowd, but we are huge. We are smart. We want to be engaged.

...I'm starting to believe, as previously suggested, that this is an effort to bury /., as it has been deemed both unprofitable and perhaps a waste of money...perhaps even a way to bury value from another investment.

...who knows, lets get all tinfoil-hatty...maybe a conglomeration of so many technorati is undesirable to certain elements of society. Who knows what we might come up with? Tor? Mesh network? Uncompromisable encryption? Internet3? This is a concentration of brainpower from all ends of the information industry. All ends of all spectrums in information tech, electronics, security, programming, logic, mathematics, physics, all manner of political disciplines...maybe we're just a dangerous group?

Color me jaded, but, I think this is the end.

I'd just like to say to my comrades, It's been a brilliant and illuminating journey (for the most part). I've learned much, I've laughed even more. This one last hurrah has embiggened my heart. We have all universally united against a common foe--mediocritization...likely in vain.

I'll see you guys on the other side...wherever that may be.

I too have registered my intent to become a community member should things on /. play out as they will likely play out.

I suggest everyone else do the same.

This is absolutely astounding. This is one of the most absurd articles I have seen posted to /. in years...the amount of fanboy rage, absurd theories, wild conjecture, fallible prophesying....so much. This is such a juicy article. We have practically been waiting for this since the beginning of the iOS vs Android wars...

...and instead we have focused our efforts on drawing attention to the horrid design that is threatening our digital homestead.

If that doesn't drive home the point that beta = bad, well, I just don't know what will.

Flawless karma be damned, fuck beta.

After over 15 years of this site being my home page I will simply walk away and never look back if the concerns of the user community are not taken into serious consideration. Slashdot is the community.

Exactly ... just in case they needed to stab a server ... or a user. ;-)

Actually, it's a Simspons reference from "The Simpsons: Grift of the Magi (#11.9)" (1999)

It was probably because Killer Queen was taken by Freddie Mercury and the boys back in 1974 ;-)

Dirty deeds, indeed.

If the members of the MPAA & RIAA had received them before the other people they would be suing all the other recipients - as well as the 'John Doe' sender - for copyright infringement.

Is that true ... or are you just a psychopath?

Sure there is. First, you'll seek twitter therapy and twitter assimilation resistance resistance. If that succeeds your tweets will be indistinguishable from 99% of the population (and most of your followers will finally be able to understand them).

If your TT&TARR fails you'll have to go to twitter court (most trials are very short) or simply go to twitter confessions and throw yourself on the mercy of 12 randomly selected twitter addicts. Once you're sentenced to twitter prison (where all you say and read are tweets) you'll be able to start paying your debt to the twitterverse. When the time comes for your parole review they'll analyze your tweets during your sentence to determine if you're ready for early tweetlease or if you need to try harder.

So yes, there is hope for you ... though not much hope for society at large if we're making DSM-V quality diagnoses based on twitter (unless we're determining that those who use twitter really have too much time on their hands).

The ability to predict psychopaths in under 140 characters? What have all these mental health professionals been doing? All these face-to-face interviews, "sessions" and observations. Maybe if they submitted their reports in only 140 characters they would have figured all this out a long time ago. /sarcasm

So you're saying his "As an Australian" comment was ironic when compared to the traditional response? <Vinne Barbarino>I'm so confused.</Vinne Barbarino>

To be fair, we Americans have an understanding of irony that is limited to the situations included in the Alanis Morissette song. If some of the people on the list that was lost were recent lotto winners and plane crash victims, or had they recently quick smoking, or had their wedding been rained upon then we might consider it irony, but only if we've heard the song recently enough to remember it.

If the US passes a bill requiring ISP's to retain the data it would mean that their data (US Congress) would also be retained and possibly be subject to FOIA requests. I doubt that many in Washington DC want their data held for any longer than it takes to complete the http request.

Nice try, but it's a well known fact that the Stuxnet iPad app is still stuck in the app review process. Soon it will have to be recalled so it can be made compatible with iOS 6 and then resubmitted. I'm sure if they had made it a paid app rather than a free app the review process would have gone smoother. /sarcasm