I don't know why there's so much hatred about this being a slashvertisement. I actually like articles about new hardware - it's one of the reasons I still visit sites like this.

I dig the new machine, and totally support people looking into alternative and hopefully improved/innovative designs. This thing looks cool.

You guys will figure that out when you calm down a bit.

Conversely, maybe we can now take snide, fucking smart-alecks and swap them into the body of a lardass so they can experience the humiliation and despair of being obese, so people like you can have a little more empathy for the human condition.

Meanwhile, every tranny on earth just got serious wood thinking about the potential of this technology.

It exists - sort of - and it's pretty cool. Check out www.squte.com. It's a web overlay to Usenet, permitting modding up and down and a lot more. Written by a guy who really loves Usenet but recognizes that it needs a web interface that provides the functionality people coming from systems like Reddit or Slashdot would expect.

It's pretty commendable, really. GIve it a look.

It's ridiculous one company can just 'sell' its customers. Customers should have the choice. This is ridiculous and unfair and shows any semblance of 'regulation' of the field is a joke. Regulation in name only.

How about if I just sell a couple of 'bought' Congressmen? Because they weren't doing much anyway, other than pissing me off.

The fact that there are no "Fuck Beta" articles at Soylent is irrelevant. There are none on the "Daring Fireball" blog either, for obvious reasons - that's not where you'd expect to find them.

Furthermore, while Soylent doesn't yet have a huge number of comments it's clear there is a committed community of interested readers that like the site. So it's got lots of hope and lots of promise. I think it's early to boast "Soylent has better comments" but there's certainly proof the gang is heading in that direction.

A bunch of us defected to Usenet too, and are hanging out at comp.misc where there has to date been some really interesting conversation.

In sum, there are now several competing forums run by different groups in different ways. Let the best site win! And to win, you need good articles, healthy commentary, and a committed community hoping to keep "their" place a good one to visit. I think that's kind of the way it should be.

I've read a lot of those old "doomsaying" articles and in general they're interesting. But the Malthusians have been preaching the same apocalypses for a long time now and they've generally failed to come true.

I agree resource scarcity is essentially at the root of most of our problems, and over at http://www.dictatorshandbook.n... the discussion basically revolves around the idea that religious wars are a proxy for resource grabs, while bad governments either prevent more violence or promote it to achieve short-term political gains.

Bring on the world war and let's get back out of everyone's face. And let the MiddleEast burn, so we can do something nice on the ashes.

Hey speaking of predicting uprisings, I'll bet Dice's models never predicted so many Slashdotters would bail out in disgust their commentary on the new Beta was ignored! See you on Usenet at comp.misc.

The more I visit alternatives to Usenet, the more I miss Usenet. It might not be forever, but during the Slashcott I'm going to need someplace to post and read and learn from other techies, and that place will be comp.misc on Usenet.

Anyone who doesn't know Usenet and wants to join the conversation, all you need is a news provider and a news client.

Clients:
Android: NNTP Reader, Phonews
iOS: Newstap
Mac: Thunderbird, MT-Newswatcher, Unison, Pineapple, Hogwasher
Windows: Gravity, Xnews, Thunderbird
Linux/BSD: SLRN, Knode, Pan, TIN, Alpine, others

Servers:
Albasani.net, AIOE,org, Eternal-September.org. I like solani.org, because it has lower traffic and works great.

Anyway, on Usenet, I can determine your karma all by myself, and assign you points as I see fit. And you can do the same to me.

Bonus: No advertising, no javascript, just crusty old nerds discussing news that matters.

I've been reading Slashdot since 2000, so going on 14 years now. But I'll be stopping next week in support of the boycott, and maybe after that, if the interface catastrophe called "Beta" goes live.

See you on Usenet at comp.misc where old school commenting is happening: no mods, no karma, no whitespace, and no advertising. Just a lot of old geeks with killfiles and a keyboard.

Uck fay Eta bay!

Thunderbird is a good cross-platform solution, though its competences are basic by the standards of people who love Usenet. But it's easy to get for Mac, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, etc.

On the Mac, though you have to pay for it, there's Unison, which is nice. Otherwise you can google MT-Newsreader or Pineapple Newsreader, both of which have been updated from the old Mac OS9 days and are useful and good software.

There are a ton of newsreaders for Windows. A lot of people like Gravity or Forte, but I'm not on Windows so don't use either. At work, where I am not allowed to install software on my Windows box I use Sylpheed from a pendrive, and you can get it at pendriveapps.com

Finally, Usenet on a smartphone or tablet is awesome! If you have an Android phone, check out Phonews or NNTP Newsreader, both of which have free and paid versions. It's the number one thing I do with my smartphone. And on the Ipad there's Newstap, which provides a better UI but which I find a bit slow if you have a long list of groups that you read.

See you on comp.misc at Usenet.

If you need a newsgroup/usenet provider I recommend newsgroupreviews.com. It's a site that takes advertising but it's run by guys who love Usenet. I personally pay for a provider, as it's better quality. I got a great deal at Blocknews. Individual.net is better quality because they keep it spam-free, but they don't carry all the groups, and comp.misc is one they don't carry. There are free providers out there, but I find they are often choked with spam and occasionally drop posts. That was the case for AIOE a while ago. Albasani.net is better, and eternal-september is also good.

You're also ruining the one good thing about this site: the discussion system and the comments of the people who use and like it.

Ever heard the story about killing the golden goose?

Uck-Fay Eta-Bay. Let's see what your corporate statement over at slashdotmedia.com has to say when your page views drop to single digits. I for one won't be visiting.

Going to be a quiet week, Timothy. Use that silence to reflect deeply on the asshatted-decision that led you to this situation.

On behalf of a lot of people, let me just say: if you build it, we will come. I just bookmarked your site. Give us a place to call home and we'll make it a place worth coming to.

Meanwhile, I support the boycott, and am hanging out on Usenet at comp.misc in the meantime.

The beta sucks donkey balls, so this "excellent karma" reader says to Dice: "Fuck Beta!" I'm outta here.

I don't code, but could do other things and am a big lover of Web 1.0. Web 2.0 can suck it, and frankly I'm still a big fan of Usenet, so let's concentrate on making it fun and easy to comment, and decide to ignore the new trend in AJAXy, eye-candy fluff at the expense of quality and content. If I can't read it in a terminal, I don't want to read it.

Sorry. Anonymous Cowards work for free!

I also wish him the best and agree he has a lot to do. But he's just made it a lot harder on himself by volunteering to attach the boat anchor of Bill Gates around his ankle before starting the race.

Lots of people have said the whole culture of "do anything but touch Office/Windows cash cows" led to a lot of the dysfunction, and that was very much the doing of Gates and Ballmer. In fact, at one point - don't know if that's how it played out - people were complaining that with Gates on the hiring panel they would be unlikely to find and hire a true reformer, and would be more likely to hire just a "rearrange the deck chairs on the Office/Windows" Titanic guy.

Maybe that's what has happened?

If Satya is smart and bold and aggressive, he'll tear Microsoft into a thousand pieces and throw them all into the shark pool, then only fish out the survivors. That place is a mess, with an entrenched "culture" that will take it at high speed to FAILville. That means really taking out the chainsaw and letting the blood flow.

Meanwhile, he'll have Bill Gates humping his leg, pouting "don't touch Office, don't touch Windows waa waa waa."

You can't coerce an open vote? The hell you can't. Go read the Dictator's handbook (http://dictatorshandbook.net/) if you haven't already. There's a forty page chapter on ways to trick-out Elections alone (URL:http://dictatorshandbook.net/book/node346.html>). The last election in Venezuela was a fiasco. Yes, it was a legitimate election and even electoral monitors found it hadn't been falsified in any way. But the Chavez government went to great lengths to make people suspect their votes were being recorded and tracked, and that those who had voted for the "other guy" would eventually suffer repercussions. That's a big deal in a country where 90% of the jobs come from the government. If the govt figures out you voted "wrong," you'll never get hired, or if you've already got a job, you'll get fired. Or your daughter won't get into the good school, or your son won't get a scholarship. Or in one of hundreds of other ways, something you need from the government will be denied you.

The game is simple: give everyone a vote, but make sure they are under intense pressure to "spend it" the way you want. Ta-da! You're a democracy, but you're not.

I wouldn't touch an ipad/android voting machine at all. They're already tracking me six ways to sunday; it would be a piece of cake for that voting software to also send to the "right people" how I voted. Game over man, game over.