Now that the holidays are upon us (happy holidays!) and the year is about to end, we at OSNews thought it time to finally lift the veil a little bit on the next version of OSNews - OSNews 5. I've hinted at this next version of OSNews here and there in the comments, but we think it's time to make it all a little bit more official by taking in some initial feedback.
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Member since:2011-05-12
Votes are indeed opinions, but currently when you down vote you have to choose between 'inaccurate', 'troll' and 'off-topic'. It doesn't include 'I don't agree' or 'I don't like you'.
To keep things simple I don't think there shouldn't be any categories, because for one nobody ever sees the results. If these were dropped I wouldn't object to people down voting without giving a written motivation.
I do agree that it's rather difficult to cast any vote sometimes, because there seems to be an extensive set of rules of engagement which I have never encountered before.
Member since:2006-01-27
There are currently several different reasons given as choices to vote someone up or down. What I'd like to see are the reasons people chose for voting my hypothetical comment up or down. Did the comment readers thin I was wrong, or was I trolling? Was I insightful, or funny? And it would be interesting to see how many voters chose + or - to come up with the final score.
Then again, maybe I don't want to know. 
Member since:2010-03-08
Member since:2007-02-18
I think the comment-XOR-vote system is a good thing. Either vote, or write a comment to influence voting. Most people won't say anything that hasn't already been said, so they can just choose to vote. Commenting influences votes much more than an anonymous vote, so it's a matter of balance that commenters shouldn't be able to use both comments and voting to abuse their power of influence.
Member since:2011-01-28
kwan_e,
"Either vote, or write a comment to influence voting. Most people won't say anything that hasn't already been said, so they can just choose to vote. Commenting influences votes much more than an anonymous vote, so it's a matter of balance that commenters shouldn't be able to use both comments and voting to abuse their power of influence."
Kind of like how the bigwigs are prohibited from voting in real life.. err, oh wait. 
I can understand having vote quotas in place, but a voting system that tells us where we can/cannot vote is bad. Voting should be simple, straitforward, and open to all members. I suspect today's voting restrictions are motivating some users to register extra accounts for voting (write comments on desktop, but vote on tablet, etc) to get around the vote prohibitions.
Anyways it's looking like Thom's quite adamant about implementing the current voting system under drupal, and even though I complain about it, I still respect that it's his choice to make.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently.
"In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies.
"The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing."The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run."There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Member since:
2011-01-28
Votes are just that: opinions. People need to only read into them as such and not take them too seriously. Still, I think it should be fixed by making it much more transparent and ditching the you-are-prohibited-from-voting rules, which are an anti-feature IMHO.
Can this be put to a vote?