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Comment Re:I thought this had been settled long ago. (Score 1) 491

by naris (#46345359) Attached to: Do We Really Have a Shortage of STEM Workers?

When there are complaints of a "Shortage" of STEM workers, what is meant is not enough newly graduating students with STEM degrees willing to work long hours for little money. There is no consideration of workers already in STEM fields or unemployed workers with STEM experience, especially if they are over 30!

What these employers really want is more H1B indentured servants and/or an excuse to "offshore" everything.

Comment PogoPlug (Score 1) 146

by naris (#46231293) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Local Sync Options For Android Mobile To PC?

You could try Pogo Plug's Private Cloud, a $50 box you can plug a USB hard drive into and use as your own 'private' cloud. There is sync/streaming/backup software for Andriod and iDevices and backup/management software for Windows and Mac.

//also the PogoPlug is a small linux box that can be modified to do whatever you want.

Comment beta site is broken (Score 1) 2219

by naris (#46186103) Attached to: Slashdot Tries Something New; Audience Responds!

The first time I tried the beta site, it was horribly broken in chrome (massive whitespace with random links and text everywhere), but looked much better in Firefox. Now, it looks horrible in Chrome and Firefox, yet looks marginally better when using Internet Exploder 8.0 (the corporate standard here).

I think this is very much a work in progress and mostly broken. I am assuming that the slashdot developers are hard at work on it. //It is also possible that the corporate firewall screwed something up, but judging from all the various comment in *all* the articles, it seems to be broken everywhere :(

Submission + - Slashdot Beta Woes 16

Submitted by s.petry
s.petry writes: What is a Slashdot and why the Beta might destroy it?

Slashdot has been around, well, a very long time. Longer than any of it's competators, but not as long as IIRC. Slashdot was a very much one of the first true social media web sites.

On Slashdot, you could create a handle or ID. Something personal, but not too personal, unless you wanted it to be. But it was not required either. We know each other by our handles, we have watched each other grow as people. We may have even taken pot shots at each other in threads. Unless of course you are anonymous, but often we can guess who that really is.

One of Slashdot's first motto's was "News for Nerds" that Matters. I have no idea when that was removed. I have not always scoured the boards here daily, life can get too busy for that. That excuses my ignorance in a way. I guess someone thought it politically incorrect, but most of us "Nerds" enjoyed it. We are proud of who we are, and what we know. Often we use that pride and knowledge to make someone else look bad. That is how we get our digs in, and we enjoy that part of us too. We don't punch people, we belittle them. It's who we are!

What made Slashdot unique were a few things. What you will note here is "who" has been responsible for the success of Slashdot. Hint, it has never been a just the company taking care of the servers and software.

— First, the user base submitted stories that "they" thought mattered. It was not a corporate feed. Sure, stories were submitted about companies. The latest break through from AMD and Intel, various stories regarding the graphic card wars, my compiler is better than your compiler, and yes your scripting language stinks! Microsoft IIS has brought us all a few laughs and lots of flame wars to boot. Still, we not only read about the products but get to my second point.

— User comments. This is the primary why we have been coming here for as long as we have, many of us for decades. We provide alternative opinions or back what was given in the article. This aspect not only makes the "News" interesting, but often leads to other news and information sharing. It's not always positive, but this is the nature of allowing commentary. It also brings out the third point.

— Moderation. Moderation has been done by the community for a very long time. It took lots of trial and error to get a working system. As with any public system it's imperfect, but it's been successful. People can choose to view poorly modded comments, but don't have to. As with posting anonymous versus with our own handle it's an option that allows us to personalize the way we see and read what's on the site. And as a reward for submitting something worth reading, you might get a mod point of your own to use as a reward for someone else.

Why we dislike Beta and what is being pushed, and why this will result in the end of an era if it becomes forced on the community.

1. Bulky graphics. We get that Dice and Slashdot need revenue. I have Karma good enough to disable advertisements, but have never kept this setting on. I realize that Slashdot/Dice make money with this. That said, the ads sit away from my news and out of the way. I can get there if I want it (but nobody has ever gotten a penny from me clicking an ad... nobody!), but it's not forced into my face or news feed.

2. Low text area. I like having enough on my screen to keep me busy without constant scrolling. Slashdot currently has the correct ratio of text to screen. This ratio has never been complained about, yet Beta reduces the usable text area by at least 1/2 and no option for changing the behavior. I hate reading Slashdot on mobile devices because I can't stand scrolling constantly.

3. JavaScript. We all know the risks of JS, and many of us disable it. We also have an option of reading in Lync or non-standard browsers that many of us toy with for both personal and professional reasons. This flexibility is gone in Beta, and we are forced to allow JS to run. If you don't know the risks of allowing JS to run, you probably don't read much on Slashdot. Those that allow JS do so accepting the risk (which is admittedly low on a well known site).

4. Ordering/Sorting/Referencing. Each entry currently gets tagged with a unique thread ID. This allows linking to the exact post in a thread, not just the top of the thread. In Beta this is gone. It could be that the site decided to simply hide the post ID or it was removed. Either way, going to specific posts is something that is used very commonly by the community.

5. Eye candy. Most of us are not here for "eye candy" and many have allergic reactions to eye candy. Slashdot has a good mix currently. It's not as simple as the site starting with a r-e-d-i-t, which is good. That site has a reputation that keeps many of us away, and their format matches my attitude of them (s-i-m-p-l-e-t-o-n). At the same time, it's not like watching some other "news" sites with so much scrolling crap I can't read an article without getting a headache. The wasted space in beta for big bulky borders, sure smells like eye candy. Nothing buzzes or scrolls yet, but we can sense what's coming in a patch later.

The thing is, the community cares about Slashdot. We come here because we care. We submit stories because of that, we vote because of that, we moderate because of that, and we comment because of that. At the same time we realize that without the community Slashdot loses most of its value. We respect that we don't host the servers, backup the databases, or patch the servers. Slashdot/Dice provide the services needed for Slashdot.

It's a give give relationship, and we each get something in return. Slashdot gets tons of Search hits and lots of web traffic. We get a place to learn, teach, and occasionally vent.

Look, if you want to change default color scheme or make pre-made palettes for us to choose from, we would probably be okay with that. If you want to take away our ability to block ads by Karma, or move the ads to the left side of my browser window, I would be okay with those things too.

If you want to make drastic changes to how the site works, this is a different story all together. The reason so many are against Beta is that it breaks some of the fundamental parts of what makes Slashdot work.

User input until recently has not been acknowledged. The acknowledgment we have received is not from the people that are making the decision to push Beta live. We told people Beta was broken, what it lacked, and we were rather surprised to get a warning that Beta would be live despite what we told people. People are already making plans to leave, which means that Slashdot could fade away very soon.

Whether this was the goal for Dice or not remains to be seen. If it is, it's been nice knowing you but I won't be back. A partnership only works when there is mutual respect between the parties. A word of caution, us Nerds have good memories and lots of knowledge. The loss of Slashdot impacts all of Dice holdings, not just Slashdot. I boycott everything a company holds, not just the product group that did me wrong.

If that was not the goal of Dice, you should quickly begin communicating with the user base. What are the plans are to fix what Beta has broken? Why is Beta being pushed live with things broken? A "Sorry we have not been communicating!", and perhaps even a "Thank you" to the user base for helping make Slashdot a success for so many years.

Comment Re:Shut up unless you've actually lived in Detroit (Score 5, Insightful) 398

by naris (#46083955) Attached to: Detroit Wants Its Own High-Tech Visa

I have lived in Detroit and paying an extra tax so that I have no police, no fire department, no streetlights, no security, no infrastructure and unplowed streets is just not appealing. Especially when you can live 8 or more miles north to live in a better area without the drawbacks or the extra tax.

Comment Re:most people don't want to bother (Score 1) 162

by naris (#45024079) Attached to: Security After the Death of Trust
So, the NSA can read my gmail. It will probably put them to sleep. I am not concerned about putting NSA agents to sleep. Perhaps they might find out I buy stuff from newegg form time to time? or about my average bills? Sure, I could spend a lot of time (that I don't have) and effort to setup my own computer running my own SMTP server, and have to setup my own SPAM filter and maintain that, using copious amounts of time that I don't have. Perhaps I could even use PGP to encrypt both of the personal e-mails that I have time for per year, but what would I really be accomplishing? To claim that I am being "private" and "secure". Also, even the NSA does not have the resources to read each and every one of the 294 billion e-mails sent every day. The best they can do is to quickly scan a small percentage of them. most likely for a fairly narrow target criteria. No thanks, I'll continue using my gmail account that filters the spam for me. Especially since 90% of the e-mail that make it past the spam filter is utility bills and the like. I am not interested in hiding the fact that I heat my house with gas from the NSA...

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