North Korea's Home-Grown Operating System Mimics OS X 252
CambodiaSam sends the latest on "Red Star OS," North Korea's attempt at a home-grown operating system. Previously, it had closely resembled Microsoft Windows, but a new update now strongly mimics Apple's OS X.
"Despite living in a country very much shut off from the outside world, many people in North Korea do have access to technology - including mobile phones. However, devices are heavily restricted. Internet access, for instance, is locked down, with most users able to visit only a handful of sites mostly serving up state-sponsored news. The Red Star OS is peppered with North Korean propaganda, and its calendar tells users it is not 2014, but 103 — the number of years since the birth of former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. An earlier version of Red Star OS was made available worldwide in 2010 after a Russian student posted it online. The latest version is believed to have been released some time in 2013."
Seconds since 1970 (Score:5, Insightful)
Are we really any different? All hail the Unix gods.
Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod up. Yep. and i'm willing to burn my excellent karma supporting this off-topic war.
OS != GUI (Score:1, Insightful)
Looks like someone confused an OS with a WindowManager again.
\kids these days
Slashdot morphing into Kuro5hin? (Score:5, Insightful)
imo soon /. with their beta design, will create a mass exodus of users and the end game is a ghost town like Kuro5hin, if any of you remember it.
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
As am I! Kill this abomination. You fucked up Slashdot/Dice. Admit it, kill the beast, and we can all get back to beating on ACs.
Re:Dates (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
And in a last ditch effort to save the classic site, all my mod points will be burnt promoting these off topic protest posts.
Re:There's a solution - at least for now (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead, its going to look like somenobody's blog
Fuck you, slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot Beta ruins the foundation of Slashdot, the discussion system.
Dice: listen to your users and abandon the project. Accept your losses and move on before your users move on to other sites.
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm actually quite worried now. My favourite site might die. Yeah, my favourite, because despite everything wrong I do spend a lot of time here. If the classic site ever goes away it's dead, and with the beta as default it's likely to make a lot of people leave. ACs in particular are going to get fed up pretty fast.
Don't do it Dice, don't kill Slashdot.
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod up. Yep. and i'm willing to burn my excellent karma supporting this off-topic war.
War? On the one hand, you've got slashdot users, who know what they like. On the other side, you've got Dice employees, who have been tasked with creating something new.
Oh, does the beta display unicode properly? If not, what good is it? If it does, have they tested it on links?
Honest questions, as I've never ever seen the beta site; with javascript disabled, I even missed the previous interface update, as the non-js version hasn't changed in years....
Re:Dates (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's do this. Burn the redesign into the fucking ground!
Re:Dates (Score:5, Insightful)
#3803. You've been at slashdot for more than a while. What is your view of beta Slashdot?
From what I've read here, my view is "I'd like to avoid it if at all possible". If I can temporarily try it, and revert (and complain) if it really sucks, I might try it just to make sure they haven't "improved" it as much as, say, nbcnews.com has "improved" recently.
Tried it. It hasn't "improved" quite to the the extent of nbcnews.com, but it's definitely an "improvement" in that sense. (More shiny, less useful; too many big pictures. I'm waiting for headlines like "15 ways to improve your .Net skills" or "5 weird ways LISP can simplify your code" or....)
Awful beta (Score:5, Insightful)
Why change for the sake of change? Why are site visitors to be forced into something awful and unwanted? The new beta is awful. There is no other way to put it. If I am forced into the beta I will simply leave - forever.
Beta Comment (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still waiting for an "Ask Slashdot: Once Slashdot beta has been foisted on me, what site should I use instead". I'm only partially joking. I actually want to know the answer.
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:4, Insightful)
I too would like to score +5 Insightful! Boo, beta!
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
another anti beta vote here. I'll seriously consider leaving if the beta becomes the "only" option, my only option will be hacker news and fuck DICE for screwing over one of best tech/geek news sites on the internet.
Indeed I have never signed up but have been coming here for so many years it is not funny. As I told them in the feedback email they wanted the day the BETA crap goes live is the last I will ever be here.
HA!! captcha is molests which is sort of how I feel after getting a beta page my slashdot experience was molested...
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know. Ars' current layout is busy and nigh unreadable. Reddit is fucking Reddit. Hacker News has been brought up and is okay I guess, but glancing at it the front page layout is a pain, and I care about almost none of the news on it (while Slashdot's focus seems to gel with me). Any other frequent suggestions?
Oh, My. (Score:5, Insightful)
Beta beta beta (Score:5, Insightful)
I rather enjoy the fact that almost none of the higher moderated comments have anything to do with the story itself and rather about Slashdot Beta. Goes to show how much people hate what this will do to Slashdot.
Re:Boycott (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope you're promoting those comments because it's probably the only way the dipshits who run this place will get the message.
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone want to host a new /.?
Seriously. Slashcode is still out there. A few developers could polish it up and post a story here to announce the new site.
Any reason this hasn't happened yet?
Beta will kill Slashdot and drive users away (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been a regular visitor to Slashdot for around 15 years. For that, I get the checkbox to disable ads, though I browse with Javascript disabled so my browser does not slow down.
I come here for the discussions, and often read comments at +5, changing that only if I find a discussion interesting and warrants reading at a lower level.
The new beta uses JQuery for the comment threshold selector, and changes that on the fly. This means all the comments are loaded, but not visible, and processing any page with considerable number of comments will slow down MY computer! If I have a few tabs open to read later, my computer will be unusable.
If they insist that I enable Javascript to browse the site at the threshold I want, then they will lose me as a long time. I imagine that others long timers will hate the site too.
Dice have to remember that this site has two unmatched features, interlocked: a moderation system that is good at cutting down the trolling, spamming, and noise, and a comment section that is frequented by many people who are passionate about technology and other nerdy stuff.
If they manage to aggravate a lot of their users, the comment section will no longer be attractive to the audience. Perhaps we should revive kuro5hin?
I wrote the above in a feedback form that I filled a while ago, and I am emailing this comment to their feedback@slashdot.org.
Please send them feedback too.
And mod this up so Dice can see what they are getting themselves into.
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
May the person who directed that it be redesigned die in a fire.
Not for the redesign itself, but for INSISTING on it instead of dropping it and admitting it was a fuckup. Their departure from this mortal coil would reduce oxygen wastage.
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you can explain to me why there isn't a news item for the beta, to provide a proper forum? Cowardice?
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
I just had the displeasure of trying the beta for the first time because of the comments here. I don't like it either (and I like even Windows 8, so come on!); the worst part is that the comments are in a VERY narrow box, and all the useless framing takes up a significant chunk of space.
Also it seems to require Javascript, but I know that even on this site I'm in the minority with that particular dislike.
Re:Fuck BEta (Score:5, Insightful)
The Apple puck mouse thinks that the beta is painful and unusable.
That's how bad it is.