Well, yes, you are the only one who likes the beta. And let me tell you why ...

The problems with the beta aren't about how it looks, but about how it works. Even the complaints about narrow text columns and excessive whitespace are based on how difficult those features make it to use the site for it's intended purpose (reading and posting comments).

In addition, the beta removes critical elements of the comment functionality, and it's largely based on Javascript. That functionality is the core of the site, and many in the Slashdot community (the people that actually post all these nice comments that everyone comes here to read) would rather pour battery acid in their shorts than allow Javascript to run on their browser.

Creating a Slashdot that looks like Beta, and functions like the current site would take any competent web designer no more than a few minutes (just some CSS tweaks), and it would be easy to maintain both looks, because switching stylesheets is easy. Unfortunately, that's not the approach they've taken, and so now they face the choice of either throwing away all the work they've done on the Javascript-based Beta (essentially they may as well start over if they do this) or having the bulk of their contributors leave, which would basically kill the site.

That's not really the point. This sort of security breach could have cost Facebook millions in stock value alone, to say nothing of potential losses in revenue. Paying such a niggardly amount is not only insulting to the value that the man has provided to the company, but it also says a great deal about how Facebook views its own investors, who would bear the burden of a sudden drop in stock value.

This was true until 2002, when Neverwinter Nights was released. The buillt-in toolset allows the DM pretty much the same flexibilty as the D&D PnP rules, while the extensive (and C-like) scripting language allows for all kinds of automation. If that's not spontaneous enough, there's also a DM client that allows the DM to manipulate the game with near-omnipotence(create "rules" on the fly). Just like PnP D&D, the DM can assume the role of NPCs while they interact with the party(there's your diplomacy). You can even setup a system that let's you use a MySQL database to dynamically generate new areas while a game is in progress.

I've played D&D since the '80s, and the only real limitation that I could spot with NWN was the fact that everyone needs a computer, so you either have LAN party, and cimmunicate outside the game, or you're limited to typing your conversations (which is just not as fun as talking to people). Well, I suppose you could use something like TeamSpeak, but it's still not as social as the sitting around a table with beer and snacks.

Of course, much of the human brain is used for visual processing. What dolphins do with sound, we do with light. Well, except for the part where we would send beams of light shooting out of our eyes to illuminate our surroundings.

More importantly, the whole point of terrorism is not to make the victims more or less safe, but to acheive a poltical goal. In this case, the goal (well, at least one of the goals) was to prove that the U.S. doesn't actually support freedom. Giving up those freedoms is essentially surrendering without even putting up a fight. It's also simple cowardice.

Every week, we sacrifice several times the number of lives lost to terrorism for the convenience of driving large boxes of metal at ridiculous speeds, but we run and hide under the bed and call in the drones the second anyone breathes the word "terrorist."

Actually, in some ways it's grown even worse than the difference between profit motive vs. public service. The rise of the large-scale corporation was accompanied by a drive to wring the maximum possible efficiency out of the corporate structure. Since large organizations were considered the ideal, a great deal of effort went into finding ways to make those organizations run as smoothly as possible. The government was able to apply these theories to its own expansion in the middle of the century, so you generally find that departments that date from that period still function with a high degree of efficiency (those that haven't been axed by later cuts).

The problems started with the adoption of downsizing and outsourcing as the norms for corporate ideals. The resulting race to the bottom not only wreaked havoc with long-term employment stability and any semblance of quality control, but it also deprived the government of a vital source of management theories, one which couldn't really be replaced.

Which, of course, is exactly what reub2000 replied just over a screen down.

I really need to read ahead more ...

If I had to guess,(and I do -- I have no inside knowledge) I'd say that they'll help the CentOS team by keeping them apprised of upcoming changes to RHEL, and so reduce the lag between a RHEL version release, and the equivalent CentOS version.

Well, that's your problem right there. You don't go to put your foot in.

(Sorry ... couldn't resist)

Well, I'd say that Microsoft disagrees with you. Consider this -- their current ad campaign for Windows, which includes primetime television spots, is almost entirely taken up with bashing a Chromebook. No more catchy music or complex choreography, just a plain ad using a reality TV star to talk about how a Chromebook doesn't have all the stuff that Windows has (oddly not mentioning BSODs), and so is worthless.

Maybe Microsoft is spending millions of dollars because they're bored, but that ad sounds like fear to me.

I wasn't suggesting that Apple is the only company that is a front for a marketing agency, though they are among the most egregious. Microsoft, for instance, owes its success almost entirely to marketing, as its flagship product has always been mediocre at best. It's become the norm in the modern marketplace to substitute marketing for product quality as a way to gain market share.

What Apple does, though, as I mentioned above, is deliberately target those who are technically illiterate. By marketing themselves as stylish and easy-to-use, they've focused on the artsy-hipsters-and-grandparents demographic. You would never catch Apple cheating on a benchmark, because their target market wouldn't know a benchmark if it slapped them in the face. Apple's approach has always been to limit choices as much as possible ('just give them one button") so that any moron can use it. Seems like it works.

Dang it, that's what tags are for!

More seriously, and in my defense, it's exactly the sort of comment I've come to expect from Apple fanboys. My apologies for having confused you with one.

Well, no, it doesn't. In fact it proves nothing of any sort when it comes to the quality of the hardware, though it may suggest that they are using cheap hardware, and thus reaping massive profits from their huge markup.

Apple's success is in marketing, and they deilberately market their products to the most vulnerable, least technically-informed demographic so that they can use Foxconn boards and other low-end hardware without their customers realizing the extent of the ripoff.

Or you could even spend an extra $40 on your "Windows" box and buy a copy of MacOS. Then you could run wahtever Mac software you wanted and still pay half the price for the hardware.

It astonishes me that anyone actually believes that Mac hardware is somehow superior -- they're Foxconn boards fer Chrissake.

This was actually the plot of a Heinlein (if memory serves) short story. The main character became wealthy by devising a box that detected commercials by their louder volume, and muted the volume until the commercials were over.