Graphene Conducts Electricity Ten Times Better Than Expected 161
ananyo writes "Physicists have produced nanoribbons of graphene — the single-atom-thick carbon — that conduct electrons better than theory predicted even for the most idealized form of the material (abstract). The finding could help graphene realize its promise in high-end electronics, where researchers have long hoped it could outperform traditional materials such as silicon. In graphene, electrons can move faster than in any other material at room temperature. But techniques that cut sheets of graphene into the narrow ribbons needed to form wires of a nano-scale circuit leave ragged edges, which disrupt the electron flow. Now a team led by physicist Walt de Heer at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta has made ribbons that conduct electric charges for more than 10 micrometres without meeting resistance — 1,000 times farther than in typical graphene nanoribbons. The ribbons made by de Heer's team in fact conduct electrons ten times better than standard theories of electron transport they should, say the authors."
In other news... (Score:2)
How about making Macroscopic wires? (Score:2)
Then produce big enough cables of wire to deliver electricity long distance?
And produce these wires economically?
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It is if you're moving data, but not for delivery of power (faster wires won't make your stereo sound better or toast your bread any faster).
I doubt it's faster than fiber, though.
Re: How about making Macroscopic wires? (Score:1)
Re:How about making Macroscopic wires? (Score:4, Informative)
Graphene has very high conductivity for what it is: a monoatomic layer. This is important in ICs where certain material thicknesses are in the nanometres. Also graphene has a very specific and uniform thickness, which solves uniformity problem when trying to deposit 1 nm material uniformly across 300 mm wafers. But when you can afford to increase the thickness (in macroscopic systems), metals become much more conductive than "macroscopic grahene," which is just regular graphite and is not so conductive. Actually graphite is used as electronic resistors and in certain heater elements (as it is conductive enough to pass large currents, but resistive enough to heat a lot by Joule effect and finally stands very well high temperatures).
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You are conflating two seprate concepts. Graphene and bulk graphite are not the same, even though graphite is largely composed of small layers of graphene. Much of the insulation/resistive nature of the graphite is due to the poor mesh between the different pieces of graphite. If this can be solved, then it's not implausible that conductive graphite wires would be possible. I'm not sure about practical. Joining pieces of graphene while maintaining smooth edges sounds quite difficult. And you would nee
10x better than standard theory says? (Score:2, Insightful)
I am skeptical about such an extraordinary claim.
Side note: Please, stop with the "fuck beta" campaign; I find this campaign FAR MORE DISRUPTIVE to the enjoyment of /. than the beta itself. Get over Yourselves already.
Re:10x better than standard theory says? (Score:4, Insightful)
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Fuck beta now, or be fucked by it forever.
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I'm skeptical about the claim as well. If it's true, that's far more exciting news than "better conductivity". It tells us our models are wrong. If we crack the puzzle, who knows what our new models could predict about new materials?
Which is why I'm skeptical. The summary only mentions the "better conductivity", which leads me to believe "10x better than the standard theory says" is more like:
Researcher 1: What's the conductivity going to be?
Researcher 2: Graphene is basically just pencil lead - so run
Protests will die, but that won't mean acceptance. (Score:2, Insightful)
Side note: Please, stop with the "fuck beta" campaign; I find this campaign FAR MORE DISRUPTIVE to the enjoyment of /. than the beta itself. Get over Yourselves already.
It will die down on its own eventually as people grow tired of yelling and not being heard. We don't live in an age in which protests are appreciated or encouraged anymore. Unfortunately, this will probably lead the powers to be behind the site design to believe that this meant it was just a vocal minority and that the majority of Slashdot is chill with the redesign or have "come around" on it. That will be wrong, but such self-delusion is inevitable.
There's obviously heavy personal investment in the tim
Real question (Score:4, Insightful)
While it is interesting to see the advances with graphene, if used to make super fast computers, isn't the "wiring" on the chip only a small part of the problem? Have they found a way to make the transistors and resistors and parts on the chip out of graphene? If not, wouldn't the speed improvements be nonexistent? It would seem that it would be like taking a super highway and bringing all the traffic down to one lane at the exits (or maybe a bridge in NJ).
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I'd imagine that the immediate benefits would be: lower power requirements and less heat at equivalent speeds (which can indirectly lead to higher safe clock-speeds) as well as bigger limits on max physical bus lengths due to extremely reduced latency.
Re:Real question (Score:5, Informative)
People are certainly investigating how to turn graphene and nanotubes into transistors. There have been demonstrations of using an applied voltage to mechanically 'kink' a nanotube so that its resistance changes. Thus it can be used as a non-volatile memory element. (The kinking is reversible and fast.) Others have looked into ways to 'dope' graphene by controlling what material it is sitting on top of (which changes its electrical properties, similar to doping atoms into silicon). Things like this can be used to make transistors out of these carbon nanomaterials; and in principle to do it in a way where the conducting carbon network is unbroken.
Of course, the devil is in the details. We've seen demonstrations of many pieces of the puzzle, but turning it all into a technology (where you can build it all easily on a single substrate, in a scalable way, etc.) is still a ways off. But there is at least a chance these materials will pan out.
P.S.: Don't let this comment distract from the legitimate outcry against Slashdot Beta.
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IBM and they typical universities are making pretty decent headway into the research on these. None ready for prime time but if you really want to keep read more on these methods this site isn't bad http://www.graphene-info.com/ (http://www.graphene-info.com/tags/graphene-applications/graphene-transistors?page=1).
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better conductor = less heat for same voltage = more voltage = more stable clocks at higher speeds = win
I love it (Score:3, Insightful)
For people who claim that science is wrong/bad/not complete - this is the kind of thing that research and study can do.
The expected result was off by 10x. This doesn't mean that science sucks - but rather there is a new question to be answered that will allow us to understand the world just a little bit better.
AWESOME.
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Yes, the greatest advances in science haven't come about through carefully planned milestones paving the way towards a predetermined goal, but rather through someone peering at a report in surprise and saying wtf?
Technical question about electricity transmission (Score:1)
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Hey slashdot, keep the javascript-free version.
It's been decades since I took solid state physics courses, but here's what I remember.
Conducting solid, like metal, is modeled as a single monolithic entity as opposed to a set of individual elemental atoms. Each atom's high(est) energy electrons become "free" electrons that can move about the whole solid with minimum provocation (i.e., voltage). So when electric field or voltage is applied across the solid, these free electrons bunch up towards positiv
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The electrons are always moving, and fast, very fast, on all directions, with a zero average speed. Electrical current appears when their average velocity goes slightly above zero.
It's not one electron bouncing in another that causes the movement, all electrons are equaly pushed by a potential. Bouncing is one of the causes of resistivity. What this istudy did was reducing bouncing to the point it become negligible, with the expected impact on resistivity.
I hope that answers. It's like none of your options.
Theoretical flaw, anyone? (Score:1)
That's very great news for graphene and everything that could be built out of it.
But didn't these results just invalidate a theory? Is there someone that is actually looking why the current theory fails to explain the observed behavior?
so graphene... (Score:1)
Is this article about graphene or as the comments suggest, about Beta?
Slashdot beta works ten times worse than expected (Score:2, Offtopic)
And we expected it to be pretty bad.
Fuck beta.
Oh, what the hell (Score:1)
Something something BETA dark side!
Graphene should have been used... (Score:1)
...to lower the resistance to the Slashdot beta.
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Beta will be gone when they put it in full Production.
Instead of being an ass, Clearly post your issues to the correct authority, instead of spamming the message boards over and over again.
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Instead of being an ass, Clearly post your issues to the correct authority, instead of spamming the message boards over and over again.
People have been saying "Beta sucks" for ages.
It's not just a matter of them using the wrong colors, the new comments system is unusable.
Re:I am in Beta Now, (Score:5, Insightful)
Try using bold or italics or posting a link. Try to find the URL of a comment. Log off and try to log back in, I couldn't log in at work (they use IE7).
No, they added nothing of value and removed much of value. Does Microsoft own Dice?
Try (Score:2)
using bold or italics ?
http://www.google.com/ [google.com]
Link to Google [google.com].
URL to a comment, I have no idea. I see how that'd be annoying.
Okay, so you have to use "em" for italics...
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It must have been the shitty old browser, then, because it didn't work for me. I'll try it on this notebook (but not my main browser).
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Log off and try to log back in, I couldn't log in at work (they use IE7).
While there is a lot of very valid crticism about all this beta stuff, this
isn't one of them. IE7? Seriously? And you blame the website?
Come on...
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When you're not on your own computer you have little choice of browsers. I, for one, would be furious if someone installed anything on my computer without permission and I refuse to do it to anyone else.
Maybe I'll try it in IE on my own laptop, not going to risk trying it in Firefox and getting stuck in beta. IE wouldn't even be on the laptop if I could uninstall it (too lazy to put Linux on it, W7 is "good enough").
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When you're not on your own computer you have little choice of browsers. I, for one, would be furious if someone installed anything on my computer without permission and I refuse to do it to anyone else.
That's perfectly all right - I'm not blaming you. However, you should absolutely be
blaming your IT department, IE7 is incredibly deprecated.
Re: Correct Authority (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than see these as off topic posts, spamming the message boards, try the perspective that there is only one topic until this issue is resolved to the communities satisfaction and that these comments are in fact using the message boards for their intended purpose: maintaining a moderated discussion guided by the consensus generated by the readership.
These posts have become the most effective manner of communicating to the correct authority. The correct authority in this case is the broad readership, some of whom are just learning about this. The other authority is the controlling entities who have thus far made some poor choices about not responding to the communities posts in the designated channels. Therefore this is the next step in a spectrum of responses.
I personally apologize to you for the necessity of this step which has been provoked by the site operators. I do hope things change quickly, since I love slashdot. I am slashdot.
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Beta will be gone when they put it in full Production.
It doesn't matter if Beta leaves or not, most of slashdot's posters will be gone when Classic is gone. I will be. If they keep Classic as an option it won't matter, we'll stay. The issue is their getting rid of Classic, not the existence of Beta.
Instead of being an ass, Clearly post your issues to the correct authority, instead of spamming the message boards over and over again.
It's a protest. Lets hope it's effective. I posted in the page about beta and
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I just looked (for the first time in years). kuro5hin.org, despite having rather more inflammatory 'articles' than Slashdot, has at best about 1/5th the number of comments, and on brief perusal, appears to have maybe 1/10th as many unique users active in any given story.
Or perhaps you really meant kuro5hin.com, which is even more empty, being it's a domain squat.
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Ten years ago they were thriving. I just checked their front page (first time in years for me as well). Only one or two stories per day posted on the front page, it sure doesn't look like it's thriving. Ten years ago there were as many front page stories per day as slashdot.
What K5 looks like today is what /. will look like in ten years if they don't come to their senses.
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Yeah, I remember when people here would commonly post links to one thing or another on K5. Can't recall having seen that in years.
Did you see the video someone posted a link to, with Fark's design guy talking about how changing their interface was a major fuckup? Also had some very telling slides of another site that did likewise (I think it was another site -- the sound was bad) and experienced a precipitous drop in visits and therefore ad revenues.
Unless the site is very, very quick to catch on and repent
Re:Beta delenda est! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a mere redesign, it's a fundamental change in the way slashdot works by changing what slashdot is all about. They should have waited until things actually worked before revealing the beta, but as it is, by forcing users to the fundamentally broken beta site they've shown that they no longer care about the community.
Forcing users to a completely unusable site shows nothing but contempt for the users.
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Burn baby, burn!!
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It's my understanding that for 20% of the users, going to slashdot.org did in fact force people to the new beta.
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Re:Beta delenda est! (Score:4, Insightful)
These comments are Slashdot's response. The management-speak in the Beta article is Dice's. They made it perfectly clear that, even after all this backlash, Classic will soon be gone:
Most importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready. [slashdot.org]
I, too, am here for the intelligent discussion. So I do apologize. But Dice ignores our complaints, while pretending to listen. Ruining every single discussion is the only option we have left.
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Well, there's always terrorism.
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Spoken like a true /. member!
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Someone else has started new slashdot. [altslashdot.org] I registered an account this morning, even though there's no real content there yet.
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It's not working very well.
dig altslashdot.org
Got answer:
HEADER opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 26206
flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
(Stupid slashdot renders garbage if I try to paste the entire output, no matter if I use <pre> or anything else).
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Looks like they got slashdotted. I logged on today and they mentioned getting new hosting.
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Yes, Altslashdot.org while the name is only tentative and a better name will replace it, it is a greenlight project and has already gotten a lot of interest. DICE killed what was good about slashdot (the community) and the people have spoken, they want the old slashdot and the people are making it happen. Slashdot was FOR the people by the people and that's what project altslashdot is about.
DICE will without a doubt go in their own direction and with that said, they don't care about its current audience but
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I didn't realize what the hub bub is about until I clicked on the beta link. I'm not even the picky type and all I could say is wow this sucks!
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And my concern still stands:
http://news.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org]
Re:We don't know that. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can assure you it's not the same AC over and over because AC comments are throttled by IP address.
However, if slashdot dies because of this, it won't be because of Dice. It will be because like the dinosaurs, we couldn't adapt.
Why should we have to adapt to garbage? I don't think anyone would refuse to adapt to a new paint scheme, it's the fact that the new site is fundamentally and functionally broken by design. The fact that dice felt now was a good time to start forcing users to something so broken shows that they have a fundamental misunderstanding of what this place is about. It's not that the beta site is a little buggy, it's that it is completely broken.
At the very least they should have waited until commenting was at functional parity before revealing their hand but now it's too late, they have revealed the direction of things to come and it does not bode well for the future of the slashdot.org domain.
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The fast majority of the F*ck Beta comments are coming from ACs.
One was mine, I don't log in or comment at work and was thrown into that mess with no way out (?&"nobeta=1" didn't work) and no way to log in.
But yeah, many of us feared this clusterfuck would happen when a corporation bought it and Malda left. Meanwhile, slashdot's replacement is being worked on now (I registered an account this morning, user name mcgrew UID 123).
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What replacement?
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altslashdot.org, someone started it a day or two ago. Not much there yet.
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That puzzled me at first, too. The wiki is temporary, they say they should have the slashcode done Monday. Registering at the wiki registers you, registering at the forum doesn't, apparently.
It looks like they got slashdotted yesterday. I hope they succeed, I got username mcgrew with a UID of 123.
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Apparently, I tried for a while and got it to almost load.
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Mine's 123! And I'm still mcgrew, like I am everywhere (except for a while on slashdot when I couldn't log in).
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It was slashdotted yesterday, today I got a 404. It has a new domain name, I can't remember what it is, soylent something dot org.
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Re:We don't know that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, Beta is like world destroying comet, and we the inhabitants of that world.
The real question is, in what way does the fucking beta make slashdot better? Just take one example, the ridiculous amount of whitespace around posts. That's millions of monitors burning electricity displaying absolutely nothing. Secondly, because so little information is displayed, there will be a lot more scrolling required. That will contribute to wrist and elbow problems for those who don't yet have them, and for people like me who do, aggravate them.
Fucking beta is killing the planet and it's bad for your health. So yeah -- dinos like me are gonna bitch. Suck it up.
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The real question is, in what way does the fucking beta make slashdot better?
More room for ads. That's the only thing that anyone could say is better about BETA. FUCK, ASS! Sorry, meds wearing off. This sight has a distinctive look that should not be dismissed given the seeming proclivity to make the site look like a crappy copy of Engadget.com. FUCK BETA, ASS! It's look and feel are its brand identity. Anyone with half a semester of Marketing 101 would know this. FUCK, FUCK FUCK BETA! And the idiots that said, "Yes, let's do that!" Tards!
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Re:We don't know that. (Score:5, Insightful)
The fast majority of the F*ck Beta comments are coming from ACs. For all we know that could be a single individual or even a bot.
No, actually, I've been surprised by the number of real posts here against the beta, some of them with some incredibly low UID's. Much as I hate the beta, even I never expected such an overwhelming response (and, believe me, I've been around here a lot longer than my UID would indicate).
I have an incredibly low UID (Score:2)
Beta sucks
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Didn't quite sign on early back in the days, but yeah, beta sucks.
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No, actually, I've been surprised by the number of real posts here against the beta, some of them with some incredibly low UID's.
It's not the low IDs that matter. If the high IDs, i.e. new accounts, are also bitching, then maybe Dice might back off. Right now, they think that Betabortion will attract new, young, hip, ad-vulnerable users. If high IDs bitch about it, maybe they can be dissuaded from their determination to follow Digg into oblivion.
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What are you talking about? Dice didn't have to adapt, just keep everything unchanged and take the coin.
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What are you talking about? Dice didn't have to adapt, just keep everything unchanged and take the coin.
Slashdot wasn't profitable, so exactly what choice does Dice have for their shareholders. It is either trying to make it profitable, by attracting new users (thus increasing advertising revenue) or shutting it down. Dice most certainly had to adapt. In business, if you don't adapt to the changing environment, well, you aren't in business long.
Now, whether this particular adaptation was the correct one, that's open for debate.
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However, if slashdot dies because of this, it won't be because of Dice. It will be because like the dinosaurs, we couldn't adapt.
Well, first, why should a user base be required to "adapt" to a broken system? If they functionality they want goes away, they'll go somewhere else. Try to learn from other mistakes or you will die. Just check out all the comments there, most are along the lines of "Well it's too little and too late, me and all my friends have gone elsewhere."
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However, if slashdot dies because of this, it won't be because of Dice. It will be because like the dinosaurs, we couldn't adapt.
Well, first, why should a user base be required to "adapt" to a broken system? If they functionality they want goes away, they'll go somewhere else. Try to learn from other mistakes or you will die. Just check out all the comments there, most are along the lines of "Well it's too little and too late, me and all my friends have gone elsewhere."
Hmmm... linky failed. Should have been this [uservoice.com]
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We don't know that those predictions will come true. The fast majority of the F*ck Beta comments are coming from ACs. For all we know that could be a single individual or even a bot.
Slashdot has always had disgruntled people participate with it. But a lot of postings by an AC really are worthless to base anything on.
However, if slashdot dies because of this, it won't be because of Dice. It will be because like the dinosaurs, we couldn't adapt.
Fine, here's one more non-AC comment. Beta ought to go to hell. I'll read classic Slashdot or no Slashdot.
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We don't really know that they won't fix the identified problems before imposing it on people who don't want it. We may have a strong belief, but that's not the same.
FWIW, I'm not promissing to leave. But I'm sure not promissing to stay. It depends on what alternatives I can find, and how bad the final version is. Mind you, most of the explicit criticisms I've seen have been reasonable. But the strongly emotional ones, whether of praise or dislike (and both exist), don't convince me. What will convinc
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To start: fuck the beta. Everyone involved in it should be ashamed of themselves.
The comparison to dinosaurs is a bit ridiculous. Slashdot fucking itself over is not the fault of the users, especially disgruntled long time users. It's the fault of myopic management with delusions of grandeur.
Slashdot is not a destination because it aggregates somewhat nerdy stories hosted on other websites. It is also not a destination because of the impressive grammar and spelling skills of the "editors".
It's a destination
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Funny they state part of their goal is NOT to poach from slashdot. Which is what you are encouraging.
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Maybe all the grammar nazis and goatse posting acs will go to the new slashdot and leave the rest of us in peace. Or they'll stay here and I can go there and be in peace.
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They'll go away when the beta is a steaming crater in history. Part of the point of protests is to keep the apathetic crowd from enjoying a world where the specified injustice continues.
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And no, my use of the phrase "injustice" isn't meant to compare the severity here to the severity of much more serious problems.
Re: We don't know that. (Score:1)
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yeah, right (Score:3)
Very much so and thanks for your contribution. DICE will not listen, but altslashdot.org will listen. The name is tentative but the goal is clear: community first.
Yeah, right, don't you mean community first until the community doesn't like something that owner/provider doesn't like?
If altslashdot.org users start posting porn, will that be acceptable? If they decide only whites or males should be allowed to post, will that be acceptable? The moment you post rules, you have dimminished community first, even if the community votes on them. Why? because future members of the community don't get a chance to vote on them, so really what you have is founders first, not co
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Creating a site with a coherent and congruent purpose for the people using it at least establishes clear compatibility for users going forward. People who agree with the founding principles will want to become involved, and people who don't can GTFO.
And your hyperbolous mythical monsters of bigotry by a majority are extremely unlikely. How many mainstream sites do you know of that are openly racist or misogynist? And I don't mean the sort of soft bigotry of disagreement being pu
Re: I think we can all agree.. (Score:1)
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I can only speak for myself, but this is a great troll and I personally look forward to seeing it spammed in every article. While it probably doesn't have the staying power of GNAA or the indomitable "Netcraft Confirms It", it's the first solid troll of "Beta sucks" I've seen. You're the first - or at least the very best - to take advantage of a brief window of passion in a typically dry setting. Depending on how this thing plays out you could very possibly be the Last Great Troll of the /. era.
My heartf
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And you are associated with those ugly smelly nerds from the 1970s. But you have lower self-confidence and have to post from behind AC shroud. Fuck beta.