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Submission + - Brazil shut down WhatsApp, and other social networks could be next. (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by TheUnknownCoder
TheUnknownCoder writes: A judge in Sao Paulo has ordered WhatsApp to shut down for 48 hours, starting at 9PM Eastern tonight.

WhatsApp is the single most used app in Brazil, with about 93 million users, or 93% of the country’s internet population. It’s a particularly useful service for Brazil’s youth and poor, many who cannot afford to pay the most expensive plans on the planet.

Brazilian telco’s have been lobbying for months to convince the government that WhatsApp’s voice service is unregulated and illegal (not entirely unlike the taxi industry’s posture on Uber), and have publicly blamed the “WhatsApp effect” for driving millions of Brazilians to abandon their cell phone lines.

A WhatsApp shut-down would be akin to taking half the country off the electricity grid because of an industry squabble over the impending threat of solar power.

Comment Boycott (Score -1, Offtopic) 1

by TheUnknownCoder (#46176149) Attached to: Major Internet Censorship Bill Passes in Turkey

Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet.

On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design.

Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.

If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this [slashdot.org] in a new tab. After seeing that, click here [slashdot.org] to return to classic Slashdot.

We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott [slashdot.org]

Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta http://slashdot.org/recent [slashdot.org] [slashdot.org] - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories

Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.

Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.p... [slashdot.org]
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.p... [slashdot.org]
Alternative Slashdot: altslashdot.org [altslashdot.org]

Comment Boycott (Score -1, Offtopic) 1

by TheUnknownCoder (#46176143) Attached to: Military electronics that shatter into dust on command

Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet.

On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design.

Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.

If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this [slashdot.org] in a new tab. After seeing that, click here [slashdot.org] to return to classic Slashdot.

We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott [slashdot.org]

Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta http://slashdot.org/recent [slashdot.org] [slashdot.org] - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories

Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.

Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.p... [slashdot.org]
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.p... [slashdot.org]
Alternative Slashdot: altslashdot.org [altslashdot.org]

Comment Boycott (Score -1, Offtopic) 1

Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet.

On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design.

Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.

If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this [slashdot.org] in a new tab. After seeing that, click here [slashdot.org] to return to classic Slashdot.

We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott [slashdot.org]

Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta http://slashdot.org/recent [slashdot.org] [slashdot.org] - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories

Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.

Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.p... [slashdot.org]
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.p... [slashdot.org]
Alternative Slashdot: altslashdot.org [altslashdot.org]

Comment Boycott (Score -1, Offtopic) 1

by TheUnknownCoder (#46176123) Attached to: DARPA to re-invent how we search the Internet

Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet.

On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design.

Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.

If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this [slashdot.org] in a new tab. After seeing that, click here [slashdot.org] to return to classic Slashdot.

We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott [slashdot.org]

Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta http://slashdot.org/recent [slashdot.org] [slashdot.org] - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories

Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.

Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.p... [slashdot.org]
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.p... [slashdot.org]
Alternative Slashdot: altslashdot.org [altslashdot.org]

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Can some of us get together and rebuild this community? 21

Submitted by wbr1
wbr1 writes: It seems abundantly clear now that Dice and the SlashBeta designers do not care one whit about the community here. They do not care about rolling in crapware into sourceforge installers. In short, the only thing that talks to them is money and stupid ideas.

Granted, it takes cash to run sites like these, but they were fine before. The question is, do some of you here want to band together, get whatever is available of slashcode and rebuild this community somewhere else? We can try to make it as it once was, a haven of geeky knowledge and frosty piss, delivered free of charge in a clean community moderated format.

Submission + - Alternatives to Slashdot post beta? 8

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Like many Slashdotters, I intend to stop visiting Slashdot after the beta changeover. After years of steady decline in the quality of discussions here, the beta will be the last straw. What sites alternative to Slashdot have others found? The best I have found has been arstechnica.com, but it has been a while since I've looked for tech discussion sites.

Submission + - Slashdot BETA Discussion (slashdot.org) 60

Submitted by mugnyte
mugnyte writes: With Slashdot's recent restyled "BETA" slowly rolled to most users, there's been a lot of griping about the changes. This is nothing new, as past style changes have had similar effects. However, this pass there are significant usability changes: A narrower read pane, limited moderation filtering, and several color/size/font adjustments. BETA implies not yet complete, so taking that cue — please list your specific, detailed opinoins, one per comment, and let's use the best part of slashdot (the moderation system) to raise the attention to these. Change can be jarring, but let's focus on the true usability differences with the new style.

Submission + - The numbers behind the Copyright Math (ted.com)

Submitted by TheUnknownCoder
TheUnknownCoder writes: MPAA claims $58 billion in actual US economic losses and 373,000 lost jobs due to piracy. Where are these numbers coming from? Rob Reid puts these numbers into perspective in this TED Talk, leaving us even more puzzled about the math behind copyright laws.

Comment Re:Comments are good (Score 1) 660

by TheUnknownCoder (#30118496) Attached to: If the Comments Are Ugly, the Code Is Ugly

Comments shall be avoided as much as possible :

No. Bad comments should be avoided. Those are the comments that add nothing to the code.

1) the code shall be simple and the name of variables and methods shall be self explanatory in most cases.

Reasonably naming variables and methods is a given. Most of the time the comments are (or should be) used to explain why a certain function was created and coded that way, rather than putting in plain english what we can tell just by reading the code. The requirements behind your coding can be (and often are) as relevant as the code itself.

2) the more you add comment lines, the less lines of code you can see on your screen.

True, but unless you're coding with chisel and stones, this is really irrelevant. A program is not a novel that requires two pages of comments to explain a few lines of code. Whoever does this is missing the whole point of code commenting.

3) comments introduce a redundancy.

They do not, if they're done properly. As aforementioned, comments are needed to explain reasons that one cannot tell from the code.

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