If n-key rollover is important to you, do not buy a Unicomp. They don't support that. I learned the hard way.

Eagletec KG-011's are around or under $40 USD on Amazon even without any holiday deals. They're mechanical keyboards that strongly borrow from the design of Corsair's $200-$230 keyboards, with some caveats. They use better controllers that won't just go out on you after a warranty period ends, and they use Outemu brand switches, which are knockoffs of Cherry brand switches that are -in every way superior- to Cherry brand switches.

After having so many expensive mechanical keyboards fail on me, I bought these, and I'll never go back. Outemu switches feel superior and don't seem to suffer from the same fail-rate as the more expensive Cherry MX switches that all the high-dollar keyboards tend to use (except Razer, whom I believe may use something else? I haven't kept up with them in a while.)

I am a major keyboard snob. If you can name a keyboard switch or a particular design, I've probably tried it, or probably own it. In this day and age though, I can not -fathom- buying a keyboard for $200+ when I know how low-quality the components are going to be, or how poor the firmware in their microcontrollers is, or how terrible and pointless their "driver" software might be.

No matter what, I'd never, ever buy Razer. Their design principles involve everything requiring some proprietary Windows software which tends to store settings on the cloud - including for setting the DPI of their freaking mice.

Another good thing about the beta website: it can also be worn... as a hat.

They can't make it good, though. The only thing that'd make the beta website become a reasonable experience for the "audience" would be to hold a ritualistic sacrifice of a thumb drive containing the sole copy of all its Javascript bloat and ugly style sheets and then post a video of the activity perfectly syncronized to the chocobo song from Final Fantasy IX!

Posted by SGT CAPSLOCK on Friday February 07, 2014 @03:59PM
from the straight-to-release dept.

Dice Holdings makes beta websites and awkward poll questions. SGT CAPSLOCK talked with them at slashdot.org and made this video of how their thought process works. Alternate video link @ void.org.

[video link: NULL]

srsly the beta sux

^ This comment looks ugly when viewed from the beta.

I assure you that it's BEAUTIFUL when viewed from the classic version though!

Ahem. Pretend that read:

(Company) resurrects (popular product) with the newer, nicer (more expensive, less functional product)!

Someone writes:

"A year after (random event), (Company) today brought back the design of what it called 'the best-selling product of all time' but now with (common feature). We are talking about the classic (popular product). After caving in to community demands, (Company) has decided to release (more expensive, less functional product) at the inflated price of (too much). A spokesman for can be quoted as having said, 'give me your money!'."

resurrects with the newer, nicer !

Someone writes:

"A year after , today brought back the design of what it called 'the best-selling product of all time' but with . We are talking about the classic . After caving in to community demands, has decided to release at the inflated price of . A spokesman for can be quoted as having said, 'give me your money!'."

This article is just trash. I mean, the whole thing! It's just buzzword-laden bullshit that can't even be parsed into coherent thoughts. There is very little meat in this supposed roundup of interface wins & losses, and to top it off, it doesn't even mention the horrendously well-accepted "interface failures" which have been primary topics of discussion in the wide open world of UX this year.

My take: anything involving the word "UX" this year has most assuredly been a GRAND success at the unstated mission of screwing people (the ones forced to use the interfaces) over, whether it be by way of simplifying (read: removing) functionality, tightening (read: hiding) features, or even just by repurposing (read: obfuscating) old "paradigms".

Well, at least -I- think my summary is better than their article!

My cloud provider is the NSA!

Anyway, I don't really store anything online. I'd sooner not use a computer at all than trust a "cloud" storage system on the internet to archive my data even half as well as my own physical drives do.

I've got convenience -- my drives are insanely fast, instantly available, and I can connect them with USB 3.0, eSATA, or drop them into a SAS backplane at my leisure. I own the drives, I own the data, and I own all the options.

When I want my data to be reliably backed up, I make reliable backups.

When I want to share it, I can do that.

But most important -- when I want to delete my data, I make it truly vanish.

This guy's got it right! I don't want to navigate a bunch of bullshit personalization settings in order to be able to get to meat of a web site. Aside from that, excess javascript is the very reason that I use noscript in the first place.

Aside from the thick fucking white borders, the ugly "this domain has been parked, here's some ads (articles, really - look more closely)" interface, and the tremendous abuse of javascript, there's also the matter of usability. Let's say that I whitelist this site with noscript. Well, now I get LOOK-THE-FUCK-AT-ME giant tooltips explaining that it's alright to click on things at the top of the page every single time I visit it because I have my browser set up to delete all cookies/history/etc upon closing a tab.

In such a case, I also have to navigate those bullshit personalization settings I mentioned in order to disable the gigantic/distracting images, leaving only the article summaries which are in fact tinier than the images themselves. Now it looks like I'm on some beta version of a Wordpress blog that a kid just set up.

Well, I guess I'm not really fighting against this. If this is the direction that Slashdot thinks that it should go, then by all means, do it. If it happens though, don't expect to retain your usual base of contributors.

Dunno why that's modded funny. It was my first thought as well.

The problem is probably when governments start trying to enforce it for all communications, but that's such an unrealistic logistics nightmare that it simply isn't a plausible concern.

My first thought was scameras / licence plate cameras at intersections, etc. I hope it's not something malicious like that!

Ew. The comment box ate my clever mark-up!

My comment should've read something like:

"U.S. officials have learned that (China|Russia|Syria|Al Qaeda|etc) have commited cyber(terrorism|war|crime|etc)".

With brackets. :

Mod this guy up!

My personal opinion is that tftp can be both right and wrong, and it deserves some discussion.

He's right in the fact that: "U.S. officials have learned that have commited cyber" is becoming downright annoying to read, especially without any credible evidence ever pointing to the former culprit truly being the one to commit the latter [horrible] cyber-deed.

The other part - well, that's already been claimed by other threads. It's the oft-discussed "is there even enough credibility in this government to warrant giving their finger-pointing even a single thought?"

Ahhh. My signature should be "cyber-lol"!