did you write this just for this thread? If yes, my hat's off to you. +5 Funny doesn't do it full karma justice.

whoa - I think the parent poster took quite a leap there. At least I read TFA (apologies for actually reading it) as saying:

a) it's impractical/unrealistic that a good argument can be separated from the motivation and credibility of who puts it forth.
b) debunking a falsehood is inherently more complicated than expressing it, especially in the case of arguments being made for and amongst people and groups with limited domain expertise. Or to simplify it: TFA posits, that the truth is too complicated to win an argument.

Quite depressing actually.

And I did not read a conclusion into TFA. But I might come to my own, and it would be quite different than the one suggested by the parent poster: The standard bearers for the truth need to simplify (and thus falsify) their arguments to carry the day in public debate. i.e. in the best case the "right" things end up being done for the "wrong" reasons. And I would further argue that scholars and scientists are actually not the best people to craft and lead that kind of debate. Maybe that would be ... marketers and ... (gasp!) politicians?

Props to you scudsucker -- looks like you've been around quite a bit longer - although even at my userid, it's been over three years since I got myself an id and became a regular reader. So you are clearly a very patient human being, a noble quality indeed :-)

There's only that slight problem, that one only finds out that a story was lame after one has wasted one's time to read it :-(

While you're right, that a 2.2 release of whatever may not be important or interesting, but at least it's genuine news, which at least for me puts it above a teenage fanboi blog, which isn't even an attempt at a real article but a rather non original routine fan blog. I have an iPod and I like it a lot - but to be honest, that article was hard to take.

This kind of front page post reminded me a lot of digg, where the masses rule - and I'm surmising that /. feels the pressure of digg in the war for clicks and therefore revenue - at least that's how I'm interpreting the ajax makeover currently happening at /. after so many years of staying put in the site design department.

And I clicked on the "read more" link just to post my comment. I'm not sure, if there are better ways to communicate to the editors. And as you probably noted, I didn't go into a raging flame /. post. Yours isn't flaming me either, so that's why I'm responding.

I did offer my sincere understanding of how hard it is to be in this business. But since this story was about Apple, it had struck me that Apple was in a similar predicament with feeling huge pressure from the popular choice MS, and in the early 90s tried to become more like them, allowing 3rd party white box makers, getting CEO's from Pepsi and IBM etc.

So at least to me, this kind of front page article was a step down from previous years. Even the famous Roland P. articles were mostly at least click-thru's to some real news.

So imho, I'm sensing some desperation at /. (I'm surmising it's digg), and I tried to suggest an alternative way of looking at their business problem: don't become like the competition, but keep riding your niche market, do that really well and maybe find another niche where you can re-apply your fundamental business strengths and own that one (like Apple did with the iPod).

But of course, I know, that it's quite silly to think that anyone who matters at /. would ever see my post, or even if they did, find reason to slow down and maybe reconsider what seems to be their strategy.

So this was just an honest heartfelt post by a single non-important reader, who senses that one of his very favorite websites is committing slow business suicide. And that makes me a bit sad.

And yes, I agree with both kinds of moderations I've gotten to this point - this is somewhat offtopic but in some other way it isn't.