Comment Viewing comments (Score 3, Insightful) 410
Having to click 7 times to view all the comments on this page is very annoying. The link at the bottom of the page says "Get N more comments" where N is the total number of comments on the article. Clicking it only returns 5 at a time. This makes it hard to read discussions when you have to continually scroll to the bottom of the page, click a link, scroll back up, continue reading for a little bit, scroll back down, click a link, repeat.
Comment Mobile bugfixes (Score 3, Interesting) 410
How about fixing the mobile version of the site? Its been broken for months:
- In Safari on my iPhone, going to slashdot.org fetches the 5 most recent stories. At the bottom of the page is a "Many More" link. Clicking it doesn't actually fetch the _next_ 5 oldest. Instead it fetches stories from earlier in the day SORTED IN THE REVERSE ORDER. This makes it very difficult to use the mobile site to catch up on news missed during the day. It wouldn't be so bad if
- The "Fullscreen" link at the bottom of the mobile version would actually work. The text says "Change view: Mobile - Fullscreen", leading one to believe that the fullscreen link should take you to the normal version of the site. But clicking it simply reloads the mobile version of the page with the "ss=0" URL parameter.
Comment Single point of failure (Score 1) 216
Single point of failure for a city. Great. Single system to compromise too; should be an attractive target for Bad Guys(tm).
Comment Thanks you (Score 1) 1521
For selfish reasons I am sad to see you go. Slashdot has been a part of my life in a major way over the last 12-13 years. Literally thousands of hours spent on the site.
Thanks for all your work and the great place to hang out. Best wishes to you and your family in the next phase of life.
Comment Seems reasonable (Score 4, Insightful) 505
Particularly if the research is publicly funded.
Comment Mossberg is an Apple fanboi, valid point though (Score 2, Insightful) 568
Mod me as troll if you want, but its not surprising that Mossberg rushes to defend an Apple product in the face of a new competitor. He also neglects to point out in his comparison that the 16 GB of storage on the iPhone is typically filled with music, leaving much less than that for applications.
Comment Re:Go Obama (Score 1, Insightful) 1505
Fiscally responsible? Seriously? He received a raw deal budget wise from Bush, but his own proposed budget for 2010 is $1.178 TRILLION (source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/asset.aspx?AssetId=764). Indeed he's projecting less of a deficit than 2009's budget. Hooray!! But this kind of proposed spending is hardly fiscally responsible.
Comment Am I cynical? (Score 5, Informative) 1505
Am I cynical to think that these businesses will just raise the cost of their goods to cover the additional tax, thus making consumers the ones to pick up this $210 billion tab? I somehow doubt that publicly traded companies are excited to see the earnings hit show up in their quarterly statements.
Comment Audio games (Score 1) 2362
Back in the day we used to play games on people with audio devices. Using netcat we would pipe from the microphone device on one box to the sound card on the target box. It was great seeing people's reactions to having somebody's voice come out the speakers of the machine they were sitting at in a lab or something.
"Hey, stop picking your nose!"
That kind of thing.
Feed Linux.com: Software Freedom Day: Taking open source to the streets (linux.com)
Submission + - Microsoft Patches 19 Flaws, 6 in Vista
Comment He's right (Score 1) 540
ESR's stance is that the end (more openness -- and that means more Freedom, too) justifies the means (deal with more proprietary software now).
Lots of people will also claim that there is danger of a slippery slope here, that if we allow *any* proprietary software, then we won't know where to stop. I simply don't think that's true. As Linux increasingly dominates the marketplace and the world wakes up and realizes that Software Freedom just makes more sense, then we'll see a shift away from the new-old way of doing things. (The old-old way was when code was delivered to the customer with the compiled executable(s).)
I believe we'll see the same sort of progress in DRM and music/movie/etc. copyrights and the related P2P battles. As artists wake up and realize that the Internet enables them to survive in a different way than the current studio systems allow, many of these issues will morph and the current battles will go away. Why do you need a studio pushing your single in stores and on radio when the Internet can simply bypass these traditional advertising means and 'Net-based word-of-mouse advertizing can do all of/most of the work?
Of course, these processes will take years, and I think Linux-on-the-desktop will be the first one to see significant progress.
Especially if the community heeds ESR's advice now.
Comment Re:US citizen prefered party registration (Score 1) 471
My understanding is that in the past the parties chose their own candidates without the help of the state governments. This generally meant that a few powerful members of the party -- the elite or rich -- chose their candidate in what was seen by the public as secret, corrupt "smoke-filled rooms". Especially in a two-party system, this bothered the voting public, so reforms were passed to help make sure there was a fair and open system for the parties' to choose their candidates.
Comment Overclocked Soldiers?? (Score 1) 458
- Lowering soldiers' core body temperature might keep them from overheating.