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Comment: Re:Why dealerships get a free ride (Score 2) 341

by Bruce Perens (#46459465) Attached to: New Jersey Auto Dealers Don't Want to Face Tesla

Yes, I can come up with a thousand free market answers. And yes, that pretty much answers your question.

Would you buy a vehicle from any company whatsoever if you knew that parts were difficult to acquire? A manufacturer can play a game with parts availability only if they don't plan to stay in business.

Maybe we should go back to renting our phones from ATT as well.

Comment: Re:Poor management (Score 1) 423

by NF6X (#46405585) Attached to: RadioShack To Close 1,100 Stores

If an employee didn't ask every customer about a cell phone AND a satellite dish they were fired. Even before that turnover was like a fast food place.

And no, I don't want to buy an extended service plan for the audio patch cord that I'm going to cut one end off of and mount a different connector on as soon as I get home, thank you very much. No, really, I'm positive.

Comment: Re:Electron Hobbyist store. (Score 1) 423

by NF6X (#46405563) Attached to: RadioShack To Close 1,100 Stores

Their components are substandard manufacturer rejects (best I can tell) that they package in small quantities and sell for 10X the price.

In my opinion and experience, that was true back in the 1980s, too. I bought components there at the time because I didn't know of any better option near me, and I didn't even know that I should be searching for a better option. It's not like I could order parts online from Digi-Key. I didn't know that it's possible to buy hookup wire whose crappy insulation doesn't flee in terror from an approaching soldering iron. I didn't know about ring lugs whose plastic insulation is tough enough to survive crimping without breaking off. I had one of the cool TI sound generator chips they carried, but one of the functional blocks never worked right. I thought that the way to buy capacitors was in a bulk pack of 50 random values.

They did have some excellent products like the set of Minimus 7 speakers that I still have, and my first exposure to computers and programming was my TRS-80 Color Computer. Radio Shack played an important part in my earliest experiences with electronics and computers, but I began looking elsewhere for most electronic components and supplies once I learned how to find higher-quality parts. Now I only shop for components there when I want something Right Now.


Submitted by Antipater
Link to Original Source

+ - Slashdot Beta: Because They Hate You 3

Submitted by boolithium


They aren't ignoring you. They are exterminating you."


Submitted by Covalent

Comment: Re:Timothy confirms Slashdot Classic will be gone. (Score 1) 207

by NF6X (#46186351) Attached to: Russia Bans Bitcoin

I think we should mark yesterday, February 6, 2014, as the day that Slashdot died.

Yesterday may be the day that the coroner declared the victim to be dead, but the fatal disease was contracted when Dice.com bought Slashdot. Slashdot is a vibrant community built around a tainted well, and Dice.com is the entity that poisoned that well.


by NF6X (#46186009) Attached to: Slashdot Tries Something New; Audience Responds!


Also if you were curious why the redesign looks like it does, check out the other dice sites. It appears they are going for a bland unified style across sites. http://news.dice.com/ is especially telling of what the future of /. may hold.

Thank you for sharing that quote from Dice.com. That makes it clear that Dice.com really does just think of Slashdot participants as an audience. Their motivations with respect to Slashdot are just to get ad revenue and to use us to lure eyeballs to Dice.com. We are not a community to them; we are a tool to be exploited to further their goals.

It is now clear to me that the problem is not that the folks running Slashdot aren't listening. The problem is that they don't care. Or at least, their bosses don't care. They aren't going to "see the light" and abort the Beta travesty because they want us gone. The folks who are outraged by Beta breaking what brings us to Slashdot are not the passive viewers that Dice.com wants. We are not relevant to Dice.com's goals. We don't come here to view ads. We don't even come here to read the posted stories, except as triggers for the discussion that follows. Dice.com does not want the core Slashdot participants; they want to use the Slashdot name to lure the cloud of passive Slashdot viewers to suckle at their corporate teat.

This suggests to me that Slashdot as we know it is already dead. It is a community built around a tainted well. The well became tainted when Dice.com came along and shat in it, and I don't see how the well can be purified other than by Dice.com leaving and taking their shit with them.

Boycotting Slashdot isn't going to change Dice.com's mind about these Beta changes. It's time to leave Slashdot and move to a new place.

+ - An open letter to the management of Slashdot. 14

Submitted by onyxruby






+ - Quarks Know Their Left From Their Right->

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes "How an electron interacts with other matter depends on which way it's spinning as it zips along—to the right like a football thrown by a right-handed quarterback or the left like a pigskin thrown by a lefty. Now, physicists have confirmed that quarks—the particles that join in trios to form the protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei—exhibit the same asymmetry.The result could give physics a new weapon in the grand hunt for new particles and forces. Or they can search for subtle hints of exotic new things beyond their tried-and-true standard model by studying familiar particles in great detail. In the latter approach, the new experiment gives physicists a way to probe for certain kinds of new forces."
Link to Original Source

Comment: AltSlashdot is coming (Score 1) 3

by Okian Warrior (#46183491) Attached to: New Slashdot Beta Sucks

I've registered "AltSlashdot.org".



I'm particularly in need of people who can:

  • Edit story submissions
  • HTML, CSS, and script creation/bugfix/repair

Go to AltSlashdot.org if interested

Debug is human, de-fix divine.