And you must draw too many conclusions from too little data to be able to discern my whole career from one paragraph. (Nice trick, BTW.)

Maybe they'll force the beta on us or maybe they'll listen. What would you do if you were them? If I were them, I'd either fix the beta enough to make it acceptable or give up on the idea entirely. They probably won't give up on it entirely, but I'm hopeful that they'll fix it. If so, what's so bad about that? (I know, some folks will say it can never be fixed. I disagree.)

It's clear that they forced the beta on too many folks too soon. I bet they've figured that out. It was a tactical error, probably driven by an arbitrary corporate deadline. (Been there, experienced that. Surprised?) They've told us they get that. What's not to believe?

OTOH, since paranoid thinking is endemic here, I'll play along. Dice has an evil plot to kill Slashdot as we know it by completely alienating its user community. In fact, they've actually gone so far as to pay some web developers to create a new website designed specifically to do just that. But why would they alienate the community (er, excuse me, the "audience")? - wouldn't that destroy all the value of the site? Sure, but look what they'll have left: a valuable domain name. Heck, a really good domain name with no user base might even be worth a few thousand bucks - like the new digg.com. Instead of losing money hosting a site whose ads everybody blocks, they can make a few thousand bucks selling the domain name. Eureka!

You see, corporations aren't just evil, they're stupid. Also, most don't bathe.

I thought they came here to curse. Don't whiny children use much better language?

Right. Can't they just steal that sort of thing from Wikimedia or somewhere? (BTW, I just typed "quote" above rather than automatically quote the whole parent. I do that a lot.)

It's nice to finally hear that they hear us, folks. Although this hasn't been handled very well, it sounds like they're trying to improve. So, let's think positive and give 'em another chance. Further cynicism isn't helpful at this point and can only lead to the demise of something that we've enjoyed for a long time. Please don't do that to yourselves.

As long as we're sharing heartwarming stories, mine amounts to the fact that Slashdot put me onto Drupal. (I know, many of you prefer other CMS's like WordPress.) I've since made several websites with Drupal. It's allowed me to do some sophisticated things I couldn't have done otherwise and made a big impact on my small home business. I'm not sure I would have found it otherwise because I wasn't even looking for a CMS at the time. Thanks, Slashdot!

I thought about that too, but I don't think it applies in this case. I think it's allowable to sell things below cost if you're not a dominant player. In fact, temporarily losing money on a product when entering a market is a common tactic to gain market share. This is distinct from predatory pricing, which is intended to force competitors out of the market. You would need to be a dominant player to do that, which Intel clearly isn't in the mobile space.

Hopefully, everyone will tire of the beta ranting and we can all go back to ranting about all other things soon. And hopefully, the editors already get the message, so all this beta mastering can stop soon. Personally, I'm still on classic (after 30 seconds or so on beta) so I don't even have anything to complain about until they actually take classic away. If that happens, I'll either adjust or go away, I'm not sure which. Meanwhile, they risk destroying the site, ala Digg. (It's not smart to even roll such Dice, Kids...)

I remember when the current look came in several years ago. I think it had round corners and a different color scheme. I didn't like it at first - cosmetic change is as hard for nerds as math is for Barbie - but I soon got used to it. Hopefully that can happen again if necessary. If not, sayonara Slashdot.

Glad to finally see someone finding a creative way to express the prevailing sediment. Though others may strive to be beta masters, you truly are the Master Beta.

Are you suggesting that Tim Cook is about to lose an uncle?...

If the goal is to prevent "bickering", there's no better way to do it than to post an article on the subject here.

I keep wondering how something on the limited scale of Flash could still have an ongoing stream of security issues after all these years. Is there something about its design that's just inherently unsecure?

Or, maybe he was just smarting from Adobe's prior treatment of Apple, as Walter Isaacson and others have reported.

This isn't exactly objective research, but I've noticed that overweight people *always* seem to be drinking diet drinks - you never see them drinking regular drinks. Can it be mere coincidence?...

Diet Cokes also reportedly can make you respond seriously to a joke, though I don't have any objective research to back that.

Don't forget the advertising opportunity: "Time to drink four more Diet Cokes!"