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Comment: Re:The Beta should have a killswitch! (Score 1) 341

by demachina (#46196429) Attached to: California Bill Proposes Mandatory Kill-Switch On Phones and Tablets

Either that or you are all just really good at doing ptich fork weilding mobs, an Internet tradition since 1999.

If you want to boycott it, then boycott it which means stop using it, not defacing it. What you are doing is a DDOS.

Its their website since Cmdr Taco sold out. If they wanna trash it then, tell them you don't like it, stop using it and let them wipe out their investment if they are that stupid. It would probably be better if someone with a heart and a sole started a new version anyway. Slashdot has been pretty much soulless since Taco sold out to VA Linux anyway.

If the people that run the site have are as malevolent and clueless as you say, this little mob isn't going to save it in the long run anyway.


by demachina (#46192505) Attached to: California Bill Proposes Mandatory Kill-Switch On Phones and Tablets

Uh yea, but if you continue actively wrecking the site for as long as you are proposing, if they do cave, there wont be anyone left here to use Classic anyway.

If you login in they aren'ty forcing anyone to New Coke anyway. I've never actually seen it. Its mostly only the anonymous cowards who are suffering with it.

It would be better if you declare a cease fire, you guys stop trashing comments, they leave the Classic mode switch in permanently. Then people vote with there feet for the one they prefer. If everyone votes for Classic and they can't fix New Coke then eventually they give up.

The comment section is what made this place great in the 1990's when I joined. Its already a pale shadow of what it once was with the insightful being swamped by a rising ride of pointless and stupid. With you guys completely trashing it with the boycott there is seriously almost no reason to bother coming here any more.


by demachina (#46186597) Attached to: California Bill Proposes Mandatory Kill-Switch On Phones and Tablets

Just curious, on the course this boycott is currently taking are you seeking to kill the beta or kill /. ?

I doubt there is going to be anything or anyone left here to come back to when its over, win or lose.

This coming from a 5 digit UID, not some recent arrival.

Comment: I am the Slashdotter,Please describe your problems (Score 5, Funny) 241

An argument has been made (by both myself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already. Not necessarily an intelligent one, but a script nonetheless.

Does it bother you that an argument has been made (by both yourself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already?

Comment: Re: Not too bad...for a PC. (Score 1) 178

by Dogtanian (#46094955) Attached to: IBM's PC Junior Turns 30, Too

The DMA controller was a seperate 40 pin Intel chip and omitting it probably reduced the cost by tens of dollars. It also severely crippled the I/O throughput.

"Tens of dollars" (cost price) would still have been a significant amount back then. Also, if, as others have commented, the PC Jr was already intentionally hobbled to avoid competing with IBM's more expensive machines, this reduced performance would likely have suited marketing anyway(!)

Comment: Despise that low-profile keyboard and mouse (Score 1) 178

by Dogtanian (#46094817) Attached to: IBM's PC Junior Turns 30, Too



To be fair, AFAICT (*) "chiclet keyboard" is a word that seems to have changed its meaning over the years. In the PC Jr's day (again, AFAICT) it referred to *rubber-keyed* keyboards with the "chiclet" appearance. Rubber keyboards- like the PC Jr's- are not fun to type on.

The present-day Mac desktop keyboards often called "chiclet"- like this one- are, to be fair, not rubber keyed.

That said, I'd now like to agree with the parent and grandparent... they're still absolutely f*****g awful, style-over-substance garbage. I was typing on one (like the image above) today, and it's utterly horrid. I would blame it on the keys' lack of travel, but I've used laptop keyboards that are actually quite nice despite that. It may well be the "chiclet" layout, can't say. I've used it before as well, so it's not a case of being unfamiliar with it.

On the same machine I'd already swapped out the equally overrated "Magic" mouse mainly because its low profile might have looked good, but it was odious from an ergonomic point-of-view (i.e. nothing to hold in the hand, and I don't even have big hands).


(*) Based on what I've read from US sources. I live in the UK, and the expression "chiclet keyboard" wasn't used over here in the early-to-mid-80s (because "chiclets" gum wasn't sold here either). We simply called them "rubber keyboards".

Comment: Re:Collecovision (Score 1) 178

by Dogtanian (#46094375) Attached to: IBM's PC Junior Turns 30, Too

As a matter of fact, the basic design [of the Coleco Adam] was tweaked slightly and became the MSX standard that was so popular in Japan.

It didn't "become" the MSX standard, where did you get that ... interesting ... history from?

Maybe he's getting it confused with the Spectravideo SV-328 (and SV-318) which *were* supposedly the design upon which MSX was based, although not 100% MSX-compatible themselves.

Comment: Re:Not Really (Score 1) 635

by Dogtanian (#46007171) Attached to: U.S. Teenagers Are Driving Much Less: 4 Theories About Why

I drive about the same, but live in the UK where "gas" costs have always been high. Thing is though, it's still cheaper (and twice as fast) as taking the train.

Yeah, but that's not saying much- the UK's privatised train system is horrendously expensive compared to similar railways (*) elsewhere in Europe- it makes a mockery of the Conservatives' claimed motives for privatisation, that it supposedly increases competition and efficiency and drives down costs. (**) Years upon years of way above the rate of inflation increases on prices that weren't cheap to start off with. When even the Tory-friendly Daily F****** Mail is running a story on how shockingly expensive it is (***), you know it's bad.

(*) Run along OMG COMMUNIST!!!!111^w^w more socialist lines

(**) Then again, we all know that this is about Tory dogma and feathering their own nests, regardless of how they dress it up. Their recent privatisation of the Royal Mail, despite the fact that the majority of people in the UK- including many Conservative supporters!- were opposed to this, and the fact that it was blatantly sold off at far below its market value, makes obvious what most people had already figured out long ago. Expect the Royal Mail to go the way of the Dutch national mail service when *that* was privatised and is apparently very poor now.

(***) This story was the top of the search results last time I searched for a story to make this point, so go figure...

Comment: Re:Well Duh. (Score 1) 635

by Dogtanian (#46006817) Attached to: U.S. Teenagers Are Driving Much Less: 4 Theories About Why

Yes, because I'm retired now. Used to be 15K miles per year, now it's 4K.

Why's that a "Well Duh"? The story was about teenagers, and unless you're exceptionally precocious, I suspect that you're not a retired teenager, right? And if you are, well, I suspect you're *not* a typical example... :-)

I think it's safe to assume they meant "the demographic group that are teenagers", i.e. the fact that you got included in the group of teenagers for several decades back doesn't mean that you still get to count towards the present-day "teenager" statistic!

Comment: Re:Small pictures are small (Score 2) 207

by Dogtanian (#45990153) Attached to: Previously-Unseen Photos of Challenger Disaster Appear Online

Just get over it dude. People are going to make jokes. Often times those jokes will be in questionable or bad taste.

Go back and read what I said. I wasn't responding to the original (lame) jokes, but calling out the OP's bullshit *response* of "black humour is a coping mechanism" being used by people who clearly *weren't* using it as such.

Specifically, these people *didn't* have the guts to say "yeah, I made a sick joke"- quite the opposite, they tried to put themselves in the same position as those actually affected by the event and grab the moral high ground.

You have no right to control what other people say

That'd be why I didn't tell people what or what not to say at any point, then. I simply exercised my (equally legitimate) right to call them out on it.

Ironically, it sounds more like you're telling *me* what I shouldn't say- that *I* shouldn't be allowed to call people out on bullshit self-righteousness. "Too bad", because it doesn't work that like that. If someone's free to make a sick joke (and I never claimed they weren't), other people are just as entitled to call them a sick f*** or express their dislike. And if you respond to that with the weasellishly BS self-justification above, *I'm* quite entitled to call you out on that.

If this "offends you" then tough- freedom of speech cuts both ways. "Just get over it dude". :-P

Comment: Re:Small pictures are small (Score 1) 207

by Dogtanian (#45981009) Attached to: Previously-Unseen Photos of Challenger Disaster Appear Online

People who can laugh at life's ineviable hardships and disasters - whether their own or someone else's - bounce back. People who are afraid to face life and death and laugh at him, cower.

Yeah, very poetic. Still the same old self-justifying misappropriation of "black humour as a coping strategy" being used to rationalise sick jokes by those who were neither involved in nor traumatised by the event being mocked. As I said last time:-

Most of the time I see that argument parrotted on Slashdot, it's being intentionally misused some borderline sociopathic asshole that's just made an insensitive joke about something that happened on the other side of the world and been called out on it.

Sure, we all know that you made that sick joke about that tragedy in the Philippines/China/wherever that'll never affect your home in Buttfuck, Illinois (which you'll have forgotten about by the time you move on to the next news item) as a "coping strategy". It's because you were scared by it.


We all know that people closely affected by events (or feel themselves likely to be affected) often take solace in black humour- fair enough. We also know that many people are just dicks that like to make sick jokes about stuff that doesn't affect them personally. Anyone in the latter group trying to justify themselves and place themselves *above* their critics with a self-righteous appropriation of the "non-PC coping mechanism" argument is full of it.

Comment: Re:Already in use? (Score 1) 514

by demachina (#45902891) Attached to: Weapons Systems That Kill According To Algorithms Are Coming. What To Do?

The problem with remotely piloted vehicles is the up and down links are the weak link. If you take out your opponents comm links with jamming or by shooting down their relays you take out their entire drone capability at least until you can restore the comm links.

If you are going to depend on drones the only solution is they have to be autonomous. The only other solution is they have to be manned and introducing pilots entails increased cost, lowers mission duration, increase risk of loss of life and capture.

I would think there probably are already autonomous offensive drones flying, they are probably just restricted to targetting predetermined GPS locations. They desperately need the ability to discern people or vehicles (cars, armor, ships, planes) which are the desired target without having to rely on a comm link or pilot.

It is nearly an inevitable technological evolution now that drones are out of Pandora's box. If the U.S. doesn't do it everyone else will.

Oh, so there you are!