Comment Once a glasshole.... (Score -1) 70
Always a glasshole
Comment Re:It would take a lot of convincing (Score -1) 487
You forgot "courage".
Comment Re:Cute. (Score -1) 36
He was not an employee just an "independent contractor".....
Comment Repost this EVERYWHERE!!!!!! (Score 1) 234
Dice: Frankly, many of us want a new design, Classic is broken in so many ways. But beta is terrible, and this is what is wrong:
* The value that Slashdot brings to its users is not in its articles. Frankly, the articles are terrible. The value that Slashdot provides is a discussion forum for self-selected nerds.
* As such, it is vital that you remember that the community is not just an audience, it is also your primary content creator.
* Your new redesign does not allow the community to create (or even consume) content because:
- It makes it impossible to follow discussions in the comments sections. This is largely because of the max-width on window and the fact that of the space left over is taken up by a useless sidebar. The vertical spacing is also overdone.
- Slashdot has a fragile but effective moderation system. Your changes make it impossible for readers to leverage that system to read a high quality discussion and ignore the trolls.
- It disregards conventions of the community. UIDs matter. We’re nerds. We understand that you need to attract a younger audience, but for a lot of us (including the younguns) it is thrilling to see a post from somebody who has been there from the beginning.
* In the last 24 hours Soulskill has bitterly commented that the community has been involved since October and that they also get emails supporting the new design; only the comments are an echo chamber. This comment demonstrates a deep incompetence in your development team. Soulskill should have been citing A-B testing numbers. A-B testing is cheap, easy and effective but instead you are taking stabs in the dark.
* Your ability to attain user acceptance is dismal. A number of years ago, when Taco needed to modernize the site, he solicited the community for designs, and awarded the best designer and used that design. That is how you leverage a community and gain their acceptance: incorporate them in the design process. As a bonus, you won’t have utterly useless redesigns that will either ruin your website or have to be scrapped.
Comment Repost this (Score 1) 232
Dice: Frankly, many of us want a new design, Classic is broken in so many ways. But beta is terrible, and this is what is wrong:
* The value that Slashdot brings to its users is not in its articles. Frankly, the articles are terrible. The value that Slashdot provides is a discussion forum for self-selected nerds.
* As such, it is vital that you remember that the community is not just an audience, it is also your primary content creator.
* Your new redesign does not allow the community to create (or even consume) content because:
- It makes it impossible to follow discussions in the comments sections. This is largely because of the max-width on window and the fact that of the space left over is taken up by a useless sidebar. The vertical spacing is also overdone.
- Slashdot has a fragile but effective moderation system. Your changes make it impossible for readers to leverage that system to read a high quality discussion and ignore the trolls.
- It disregards conventions of the community. UIDs matter. We’re nerds. We understand that you need to attract a younger audience, but for a lot of us (including the younguns) it is thrilling to see a post from somebody who has been there from the beginning.
* In the last 24 hours Soulskill has bitterly commented that the community has been involved since October and that they also get emails supporting the new design; only the comments are an echo chamber. This comment demonstrates a deep incompetence in your development team. Soulskill should have been citing A-B testing numbers. A-B testing is cheap, easy and effective but instead you are taking stabs in the dark.
* Your ability to attain user acceptance is dismal. A number of years ago, when Taco needed to modernize the site, he solicited the community for designs, and awarded the best designer and used that design. That is how you leverage a community and gain their acceptance: incorporate them in the design process. As a bonus, you won’t have utterly useless redesigns that will either ruin your website or have to be scrapped.
Comment Beta Sucks (Score 1) 135
Dice: Frankly, many of us want a new design, Classic is broken in so many ways. But beta is terrible, and this is what is wrong:
* The value that Slashdot brings to its users is not in its articles. Frankly, the articles are terrible. The value that Slashdot provides is a discussion forum for self-selected nerds.
* As such, it is vital that you remember that the community is not just an audience, it is also your primary content creator.
* Your new redesign does not allow the community to create (or even consume) content because:
- It makes it impossible to follow discussions in the comments sections. This is largely because of the max-width on window and the fact that of the space left over is taken up by a useless sidebar. The vertical spacing is also overdone.
- Slashdot has a fragile but effective moderation system. Your changes make it impossible for readers to leverage that system to read a high quality discussion and ignore the trolls.
- It disregards conventions of the community. UIDs matter. We’re nerds. We understand that you need to attract a younger audience, but for a lot of us (including the younguns) it is thrilling to see a post from somebody who has been there from the beginning.
* In the last 24 hours Soulskill has bitterly commented that the community has been involved since October and that they also get emails supporting the new design; only the comments are an echo chamber. This comment demonstrates a deep incompetence in your development team. Soulskill should have been citing A-B testing numbers. A-B testing is cheap, easy and effective but instead you are taking stabs in the dark.
* Your ability to attain user acceptance is dismal. A number of years ago, when Taco needed to modernize the site, he solicited the community for designs, and awarded the best designer and used that design. That is how you leverage a community and gain their acceptance: incorporate them in the design process. As a bonus, you won’t have utterly useless redesigns that will either ruin your website or have to be scrapped.
Comment Beta Sucks (Score 2, Informative) 249
Beta Sucks
Join the boycott Feb 10-17.
If Beta is still here on the 18th I will not return.
Do not fix what is not broken.
Wozniak To Apple: Consider Building an Android Phone 249
snydeq writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has some advice for Apple CEO Tim Cook: consider offering a phone based on the rival Google Android platform. Speaking at the Apps World conference in San Francisco, Wozniak made the suggestion of an Apple Android device when responding to a question about the fate of the faltering BlackBerry platform, saying that BlackBerry should have built an Android phone, and that Apple could do so, too. 'BlackBerry's very sad for me,' Wozniak lamented. 'I think it's probably too late now' for an Android-based BlackBerry phone. Apple, Woz said, has had some lucky victories in the marketplace in the past decade, and BlackBerry's demise may provide a cautionary tale: 'There's nothing to keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market.'"
Why Robot Trucks Could Be Headed To Afghanistan (And Everywhere Else) 135
malachiorion writes "I'm surprised I haven't seen more coverage of Lockheed Martin's autonomous truck convoy demonstration — they sent a group of robotified vehicles through urban and rural environments at Fort Hood, without teleoperation or human intervention. It's an interesting milestone, and sort of a tragic one, since troops could have used robotic vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan. What's fascinating, though, is that Lockheed is hoping to get into Afghanistan just before the U.S. withdraws, to help ferry gear. Plus, they have their sights set on what would be the defense contractor's first real commercial product—kits that turn tractor trailers into autonomous vehicles. Here's my post for Popular Science."
Major Internet Censorship Bill Passes In Turkey 104
First time accepted submitter maratumba writes to explain a bill in Turkey that extends what are already hefty Internet curbs in place under a controversial 2007 law that Earned Turkey equal ranking with China as the world's biggest web censor according to a Google Transparency report published in December. The text notably permits a government agency, the Telecommunications Communications Presidency (TIB), to block Access to websites without court authorization if they are deemed to violate privacy or with content Seen as 'insulting.' Erdogan, Turkey's all-powerful leader since 2003, is openly suspicious of the Internet, branding Twitter a 'menace' for being Utilized in organisation of mass nationwide protests in June in which six people died and thousands were injured."
Target's Data Breach Started With an HVAC Account 232
Jim Hall writes "Security blogger Krebs reports that Target's data breach started with a stolen HVAC account. Last week, Target said the initial intrusion into its systems was traced back to network credentials that were stolen from a third party vendor. Sources now claim that the vendor in question was a refrigeration, heating and air conditioning subcontractor that has worked at a number of locations at Target and other top retailers. Attackers stole network credentials from Fazio Mechanical Services, then used that to gain access to Target's network. It's not immediately clear why Target would have given an HVAC company external network access, or why that access would not be cordoned off from Target's payment system network."
Military Electronics That Shatter Into Dust On Command 221
First time accepted submitter MAE Keller writes "Two U.S. companies are joining a military research program to develop sensitive electronic components able to self-destruct on command to keep them out of the hands of potential adversaries who would attempt to counterfeit them for their own use. From the article: 'Last Friday DARPA awarded a $2.1 million contract to PARC, and a $3.5 million contract to IBM for the VAPR program, which seeks to develop transient electronics that can physically disappear in a controlled, triggerable manner.'"
Journal Update on the March of Progress: How Slashdot's New Look Is Shaping Up 237
In the weeks to come, you'll see Slashdot's ongoing redesign picking up several of the vital features that the
long beta period has been used to craft, as a new, cleaner look is implemented by default for more readers: quite a few of those "coming soon" info bubbles are finally being swapped out for genuine functioning tools that mean improved interfaces for some vital tasks and settings. Of note, since the last time we noted the progress in this blog, these features include:
- A functioning moderation system
- Comment filtering and threshold setting
- Account sign-up
- Password recovery (for when the inevitable happens)
- Further improvements to responsive design, and general UI cleanup, as rendering and other kinks get straightened out thanks to your ongoing feedback
By the end of the month, we aim to have in place profile update, newsletter signup, and even more UI cleanup and assorted big fixes!
Watch this space for more details; for most readers, we hope that the elements we've redesigned mean a page that's gentler on the eyes, and has controls that are fewer, more useful, and easier to manipulate. Your feedback is very valuable to us during this redesign, so please tell us if you run into things that don't work for you on Slashdot Beta. If you would like to keep track of the latest updates for Beta, what's in it so far and what's in progress, bookmark our Beta News page, where the evolution is being chronicled.
Submission + - Researchers Hijack Storm Worm to Track Profits (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Washington Post reports: "A single response from 12 million e-mails is all it takes for spammers to turn annual profits of millions of dollars promoting knockoff pharmaceuticals, according to an unprecedented new study on the economics of spam. Over a period of about a month in the Spring of 2008, researchers at the University of California, San Diego and UC Berkeley sought to measure the conversion rate of spam by quietly infiltrating the Storm worm botnet, a vast collection of compromised computers once responsible for sending an estimated 20 percent of all spam."
Comment Re:ACHTUNG! (Score 1) 338
It was a party.
We were invited!
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