posted by Adam S on Thu 9th Aug 2007 13:03
Over the last few days, I finally made some long overdue changes to OSNews. You may have noticed that we can now close conversations and news items. When closed, comments will no longer be allowed. This will be useful for threads that degrade into a flamewar or become overridden by trolls.
As suggested by one of our users, like trusted users whose comments start a score of 2, users with negative trust will start at 0 and users with really low trust will start at -1.
The new moderation system is done and works well, but I haven't turned it on yet because it will corrupt the experience of v3. At some point in the near future, I will "port" these changes over to v3 and make it active here.
The "average score" indicator has been removed as well. It was never a good stat, since it was easily manipulated. I am currently exploring a better option to indicate the "quality" of a user. One possibility is exposing trust, which was previously hidden.
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Member since:
2006-02-05
Not sure if this has already been covered, but an option to blacklist a persons comments, and not have them show up in your UI would be great. Just finished reading the comments in the post on the two new vista patches, and cyclops posted a whopping five times on the first page trying to hijack a thread into another "vista sucks/no it doesnt" shouting match. I never shy away from a good debate, and it always takes a degree of self control not to respond to trolls, especially good ones like cyclops.
Another thought as well would be to boost the user score when someone adds a person as a fan, and to drop it when someone blacklists, which would be an added incentive to not post wildly inflammatory comments.
Member since:2005-04-01
If you subscribe, you can have an "ignore list." That person's comments will auto-collapse and be out view. If you expand the comment, they show up with a red border around them. It's pretty cool.
As for boosting the score of friends and fans, that hasn't been implemented, but it would be fairly easy to do.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/12 23:54 UTC
"Windows 8 has a problem â" it really can boot up too quickly. So quickly, in fact, that there is no longer time for anything to interrupt boot. When you turn on a Windows 8 PC, there's no longer long enough to detect keystrokes like F2 or F8, much less time to read a message such as 'Press F2 for Setup'. For the first time in decades, you will no longer be able to interrupt boot and tell your PC to do anything different than what it was already expecting to do. Fast booting is something we definitely want to preserve. Certainly no one would imagine intentionally slowing down boot to allow these functions to work as they did in the past. In this blog I'll walk through how we're addressing this 'problem' with new solutions that will keep your PC booting as quickly as possible, while still letting you do all the things you expect."
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/12 21:40 UTC
This is interesting news. According to WinUnleaked.tk, and given credence by Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrot, Adobe has given Microsoft the source code to Flash, so that Microsoft could fully integrate it into Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8. Interesting move, and probably not a bad one considering just how popular Flash still is, especially for games.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/12 18:25 UTC
We've got some really good news for all of you: the jury verdict in the patent phase of the Oracle v. Google trial is in, and it's a unanimous one: no patent infringement. This means that the most Oracle could possibly get out of this is a few hundred thousand dollars if (and that's a very big if) judge Alsup rules that APIs are copyrightable. Oracle pretty much lost everything. Permit me to say, in your face, Ellison.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/12 17:22 UTC
"Seagate this morning announced plans to acquire LaCie, a Paris-based producer of consumer data storage devices, for at least $186 million. Seagate said it has agreed to buy a 64.5% stake in LaCie held by Philippe Spruch, the company's chairman and CEO. On completion of that transaction, Seagate intends to made an all-cash tender offer for the rest of LaCie's shares."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/12 23:26 UTC
"Just over two months ago, Chrome sponsored the Pwnium browser hacking competition. We had two fantastic submissions, and successfully blocked both exploits within 24 hours of their unveiling. Today, we'd like to offer an inside look into the exploit submitted by Pinkie Pie." A work of pure art, this. Also, this is not the same person as the other PinkiePie. Also also, you didn't think I'd let a story with a headline like this go by unnoticed, did you?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/12 22:22 UTC
"Sure enough, a product listing provides a lot more detail about the tiny Chrome OS desktop than Samsung gave us in January, including its use of a 1.9GHz, dual-core Celeron B840, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 16GB solid-state drive and six (not five) USB ports. We haven't seen mention of the promised wireless keyboard and mouse bundle, although the retailer's configuration might reflect a stripped-down trim level: at $330, it's a lot less than the $400 we were quoted at the start of the year." A $400 ChromeOS desktop box? Good luck with that.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/12 14:12 UTC
Google CEO Larry Page: "It's a well known fact that people tend to overestimate the impact technology will have in the short term, but underestimate its significance in the longer term. Many users coming online today may never use a desktop machine, and the impact of that transition will be profound - as will the ability to just tap and pay with your phone. That's why it's a great time to be in the mobile business, and why I'm confident Dennis and the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come." Strong hint that the Motorola purchase isn't so much about current devices and patents as it is about acquiring the hardware know-how for the device form factors of the future.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/12 12:02 UTC, submitted by MOS6510
"When Tudor Brown stepped down as president of ARM Holdings earlier this month, he left behind one of Britain's and indeed the world's, most successful technology companies." Thanks for a fantastic architecture. The technology world would be poorer for it without ARM.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/12 9:51 UTC
"Over half of PC users worldwide have admitted to using pirate software last year, according to a study by the trade group Business Software Alliance. BSA's ninth annual Global Software Piracy Study has shown a sharp increase in software piracy, especially among emerging economies. In the UK, more than one in four programs users installed in 2011 were unlicensed." If people decide en masse not to adhere to a law, said law is worth about as much as the paper it's written on. Laws become functional not because of the Queen's signature, but because the people decide to adhere to it. It's becoming ever clearer that as far as digital goods go, the law is not functional - for better or worse.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/12 23:47 UTC
"He's one of 10 reverse-engineers working full time for a stealthy company funded by some of the biggest names in technology: Apple, Microsoft, Research In Motion, Sony, and Ericsson. Called the Rockstar Consortium, the 32-person outfit has a single-minded mission: It examines successful products, like routers and smartphones, and it tries to find proof that these products infringe on a portfolio of over 4,000 technology patents once owned by one of the world's largest telecommunications companies. When a Rockstar engineer uncovers evidence of infringement, the company documents it, contacts the manufacturer, and demands licensing fees for the patents in question. The demand is backed by the implicit threat of a patent lawsuit in federal court." And then people wonder why I call Apple and Microsoft patent trolls. These are the people destroying this industry, with Apple, Microsoft, RIM, etc. money. Sickeningly low.More News »
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