Slashdot Mirror

How well is Andover/OSDN, owner of Slashdot, doing? Honestly.

To those familiar with it, #5 obviously is:

• Sell it all to Andover.

• SCO. Formerly "Caldera," the one Linux company who released their distribution as crippleware as they tried to compete with dozens of other vendors who gave their distros away for Free. You can see where this is heading. Caldera is run by a bunch of Ivy League suits who think that the old fashioned business ideas of monopoly, per-seat licensing games, and control over the source code can easily be used to sell a Linux distribution. SCO has an abundance of clue, but unfortunately it all left the company when they laid off the Unixware developers.
• TurboLinux. Are they even still alive? I have many friends who are Linux geniuses (one of them is the president of the local LUG) and none of them know anybody who runs TurboLinux, much less pays for it. The simplistic reasoning behind this is that if somebody wants to run RedHat 3.0, they will just download a copy of RedHat 3.0, instead of buying it from TurboLinux.
• Connectiva. This is another pointless Linux distribution. The one advantage that Connectiva has is that their VCs did not wise up as quickly as other VCs did, to the fact that they produce nothing of value. Everything that Connectiva offers is done better by some other distribution.
• SuSE. The distribution that prides itself on a half-baked, closed-source installer and too many installation CDs to count is also a distribution that has no future. Mandrake has usurped the European market and most other potential SuSE users, simply by virtue of being a better distribution. SuSE once earned a bright yellow star in my book for funding so much research and Linux development projects, but nowadays the only such project they have left is ReiserFS and that is so unstable that even Gentoo (!) recommends against its use.

• UnitedLinux aims to make money off the backs of the best developers. The UnitedLinux coalition, unable to cobble together a decent distribution of their own, fully intends to pilfer the best features of Debian, RedHat, Mandrake, and Gentoo Linuces, and then add a tiny bit of closed-source software to make their distro difficult to copy legally. This is unethical and violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the GPL.
• UnitedLinux lacks a good package manager. As a so-called "cracker," package management is *the* most important thing I consider when I choose a distribution. Debian has dpkg/apt (which is excellent, if you are lazy enough to use binaries). FreeBSD and Gentoo have their superior ports trees, which make bug fixes a cinch. And Mandrake has its own proprietary system, which is also great. UL has none of the three, and will rely on the outdated and frequently annoying RPM system. Shame on them.
• UnitedLinux has no business support. Businesses prefer to get things for free instead of paying for them, so it is no wonder why my company tells us to head to linuxiso.org instead of UL when we need a new Linux CD.

Disclaimer: Slashdot is a subsidiary of Andover/OSDN

Oh, wait...

I just read the story on a homosexual news site. It doesn't mention many details but says Slashdot's founder Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda has been found dead. He murdered himself after being caught by his wife, Kathleen Fent, while in a circle jerk at the local pool. News has it that CmdrTaco was with fellow Slashdot editors when the incident with Kathleen occurred.

Whether or not you were a fan of his openly gay attitude and right wing political views, you cannot deny CmdrTaco's contributions to the alternative sexuality community.

As a memorial, he will be fucked repeatedly in his gaping anal cavity by fellow geeks. Then his pasty white body will be burried, along with the many "extra-small" sized spent condoms.

It is indeed a black day as he will be sadly missed by his former gay geek friends and male prostitutes. Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda was truely a homo-geek icon, and I am sure the "Open Sauce" community was proud that he was once their own.

~~~

Why Slashdot Sucks
I work with a bunch of geeks. And that's okay. They do their thing and I do mine. Most of the time I'm happy for them, that they get joy and happiness out of playing with electronics. Admittedly I disagree with a lot of their thoughts about life. People used to believe that the Earth was the center of the universe, then it was the sun, but now we all know that the computer is the focal point of the universe, projecting its cathode ray goodness on our souls. You can't eat, sleep, breathe, live or run a business without one, or so we're told.


---> But if there's one thing I have no tolerance for, it's the geek phenomenon known as slashdot.org, the sorriest case for content on the web I've ever seen pawned off and gleefully accepted by the masses.

When I look at magazines, newspapers, or any other source of information, I judge them on three items: usefulness/uniqueness of content, quality of that content, and the depth of coverage regarding that content.

Slashdot has none of these things. And yet people try to convince me that the people who run that website are working hard at it.

Say what?

That's right - when Andover.net filed its IPO, making the editors of Slashdot instant wannabe millionaires, someone in the office said "Those guys put in a lot of hard work, and they deserve the success."

Now, I write code for a living, and I work hard at it, so I have a good idea of how slashdot operates. I guarantee you that the entire website is little more than leftover code from college projects and other unrelated work. At the very best, it is ill-conceived and poorly developed, which explains in part why the interface is so miserably awful, and the site is unbelievably slow.

Let's theorize what goes on in the average day of the slashdot editors:

10:42 AM - get out of bed.
10:45 AM - first Dr Pepper of the day.
10:46 AM - unglue keyboard from desk, check stock market.
10:56 AM - find a few interesting tech stories on the web. This is easy, since users send them to us all the time.
11:04 AM - post said stories to slashdot, disregarding spelling and journalistic impartiality.
11:08 AM - start playing Quake 3 (or whatever the game of the moment is).
3:15 AM - go to sleep.

If I'm wrong about anything, it's that they get up even later than that. And I couldn't figure out what time that order the pizza for dinner. But they have pepperoni on them.

Content - The content of slashdot is, admittedly, targeted towards geeks. But apparently not very smart ones. Regardless of the target audience, the content is never challenging - it never pushes the reader to think. Have we become a society where the last place you really exercise your brain is in grammar school? The average news article on slashdot is little more than a snippet from some tech rag about a new product that everyone loves, usually with an editorial comment tossed in telling everyone how they should feel about it.

I can get that same crap anywhere else. The TV tells me what to think, newspapers and magazines back them up, and slashdot does the same exact thing and is somehow worshipped as a haven for free thinking.

Quality - Why not try out that spellchecker? One word for you slashdot folks: dictionary. Try one on for size. Work on your spelling and grammar, and once those improve I'll attack the quality of your writing.

Consider this - Jon Katz is the best writer on slashdot. If you're familiar with his work, then you might appreciate that, or you might realize how lousy the writing must be if that's the case.

Katz has written some decent articles for slashdot (In particular, his Hellmouth series). But he's too wrapped up in the medium to see what he writes about. He's too busy dropping buzzwords that define his writing more than his actual content.

But the truly amazing thing about him is - almost everyone who reads slashdot hates Katz. They loathe him. The self-proclaimed geeks who read slashdot don't want to be challenged by his writing. There are people who attack every article he writes, regardless of the content.

Depth - unless its the updated release schedule for the new linux kernel or a new game, you're not going to get much repeat coverage on slashdot. And you're not likely to extract much from an article unless you already knew a certain amount of information about the topic. Once again, the exception might be Katz, who writes multi-part articles, but mostly that's because he's a hopeless wheezebag.

The thing that really scares me is that all sorts of little slashdots are popping up all over the web, popular sources of sludge pawned off on the accepting readers, and we readily accept is all as verse. Is this what 200 years of the Industrial Revolution primed us for? 50 years of television? Or was it something else? In my short lifetime I've watched the quality of information sources decline to a point where coverage is simplistic enough that it could be fictionalized and no one would notice the difference. While people ignore the WTO or slaughters in Burundi, Angola, Cambodia, anywhere else to devote coverage to wonder drugs, the newest Internet craze, the Hollywood minute, or any other sort of "News you can use."

And now, in a time when information should be even more readily available, so much of it is crap that finding the gems is rarely worth the shit you need to shovel. The sort of crap you find at slashdot instead of insightful knowledge about this increasingly impersonal, computerized world that we all blithely accept and even embrace.

And that is why slashdot sucks. That website isn't encouraging any free thought, any independent thinking, and certainly not any dissenting viewpoints on the information age. And we all accept it, even 'credible' websites like Wired frequently link to slashdot as their source of expert information and news updates.

If you're not directly connected to the information you want, you're not likely to find anything of depth nowadays. And if you have that sort of connection, then why do you need the web in the first place?

As if cars, skyscrapers, television, mini malls, supermarkets, drugs, war, and McRainForest (brought to you by the Big Mac!) weren't enough, now we have to venture out on the web with millions of other people, and not once challenge out horizons or open our minds.





Willow John

Here's to hoping that the inspiration isn't a flash in the pan. I've been musing lately about my recent experiences with quicken, as well as airlines.

in the grand tradition of one of my closest associates, nate oostendorp, i have elected to construct one of the easiest web pages on the planet. if you want neat, go to Rob's Page. or you can go to the main place i work on, the redoubtable slashdot.org (which we've sold to Andover.net, a great bunch of people). Of course, since I wrote that, we've merged with VA Linux Systems. Like before, it's a good bunch of people - which goes to show that people make work interesting. what else do i do? i work for blockstackers, a small firm that is basically an umbrella to all the things in life that we like to do. I also play computer games - most recently Baldur's Gate II, although some Diablo II, and SimCity 3000 Unlimited. I run Linux. I listen to a huge assortment of music as well, but particularly enjoy ambient music. I'm also very interested in nanotechnology. i like to read (and you can see what I'm reading right now) and not just on the computer screen. if you want to read, you should read things like Neil Gaiman, Terry Prachett, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, William S. Burroughs, Kerouac, James Joyce, Shakespeare, Stephen Ambrose and Douglas Coupland. They've all got things to say, and say them well, and you should listen to them. But you should also listen to what you have to say. You should write that down, and keep that somewhere, because in seven hours, you aren't going to be able to recall this moment. That's one of the biggest lessons in life. why should you listen to me? well, no particular reason-other then i think i've learned a bunch of neat stuff about computers, but more to the point, how computers and people work together. because it doesn't matter how good computers can be-we have to use it. and we need to, because technology is only going to get cooler. i am eagerly awaiting the day for nanotech. my significant other thinks differently. but that's ok-because people need to think different things. besides, she brought her daught er into the world, who is the apple of my eye. on other occasions, i've taken the time to write things down. due to bad luck, as epitomized by a big house fire, i've lost much of my writing, but what i have...well.

and for those of you who wonder where the name hemos came from, perhaps an answer can be found. write this moment down

Anyone who thinks JavaScript is mature has obviously not seen this :)

Comment forums for each ad banner

I really do like this suggestion, especially on sites such as the OSDN ones where the audience is so specialized.

And I like the idea of being able to give feedback on advertisements. Traditionally, ads are forced down my throat (unless I filter them) without me having any ability to give my input on them. I would love to be able to tell those that make horrible ads that they bug the hell out of me, or tell those that make good ads that I have gained an interest in their products because of it.

Truthfully, I find that I take the ads I see on the OSDN sites more seriously than ads I find on other sites, simply because they deal with things I am interested in or directly concern me.

Turning off annoying ads

This is also where the ad forum site could come in handy. I know that I would be visitting a site like this regularily to turn off those ads I can't stand seeing (what's the deal with the one with the BIG FAT GUYS ASS?)

Choice of ad topics and categories Not that I particularily like being targetted for advertising.... I'd still love to be able to not have to see ads for products/services I don't want.

It is interesting that www.thinkgeek.com (another andover.net property) just proudly gave away three of these heavily Macromediaized Panasonic Showstoppers, as well as featuring it proudly on the front of their most recent mailing.

You would think they would be promoting and selling Tivo's since they run Linux, and are much more hacker friendly. Eh, a foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds... or so says Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Related links: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Related links: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Related links: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

3) Find the phrase "It's funny. Laugh." in the list of TOPICS .

X It's funny. Laugh. place an X here

4) Scroll down to the bottom of the page and find a button that says savehome and click on it.

Your /. experience will now be as informative and interesting as before but without those dreadfully trollish rantings from the tiresome and clueless "king of everything taco".
___
___

3) Find the phrase "It's funny. Laugh." in the list of TOPICS .

X It's funny. Laugh. place an X here

4) Scroll down to the bottom of the page and find a button that says savehome and click on it.

Your /. experience will now be as informative and interesting as before but without those dreadfully trollish rantings from the tiresome and clueless "king of everything taco".
___
___

3) Find the name Jon Katz in the list of AUTHORS (try not to wince in discust while reading his name):

X JonKatz place an X here

4) Scroll down to the bottom of the page and find a button that says savehome and click on it.

Your /. experience will now be as informative and interesting as before but without those dreadfully trollish rantings from the tiresome and clueless yonny cats.
___

3) Find the name Jon Katz in the list of AUTHORS (try not to wince in discust while reading his name):

X JonKatz place an X here

4) Scroll down to the bottom of the page and find a button that says savehome and click on it.

Your /. experience will now be as informative and interesting as before but without those dreadfully trollish rantings from the tiresome and clueless yonny cats.
___

If you can remember the name of the vendor, try http://report.andover.net/cgi-b in/ad_current_ads.pl.

-------
CAIMLAS

... look at slashdot.org. Does it pass the test?? Lets see, from the article: "offer consumers the four types of privacy protection the agency deems essential: a notice defining privacy policies, a choice as to how data collected by the site is used, access to that data and assurances that the data is secure. "

1) a notice defining privacy policies.
YES, at http://andover.net/privacy.html (link on the left of the page)

2) a choice as to how data collected by the site is used.
NO, though the editors have talked about adding an option for opting-out of book publishing deals.

3) access to that data.
NO, correct me if I'm wrong here...

4) assurances that the data is secure.
NO, at least not that I can find in the FAQ or the about sections.

My point is that the criteria were pretty strict, as #2 and #3 are not readily available on most sites. I am really surpised that ANY sites offer #3. As for #4, it's pretty useless so I don't really care about it.

So before you get all upset about all those sites failing... remember that privacy-respecting firms like Andover.net (I hope) fail too.

-rt-

I agree...

Intelligent trolling can lead to interesting discussion. I'd rather read a good troll than a mindless flame...

-jerdenn

Maybe they're still hunting the culprit; maybe they don't want to give the little bastard the attention he wants; maybe server downtime is something that speaks for itself; maybe you could just phone Andover.net and ask them? It's not as if anything they don't announce is automatically a conspiracy of silence (or is it? maybe Bill Gates' minions got into their underpants this morning...).

I think MS doesn't have a leg to stand on with regards to the latter two issues they raise. I don't think, and I believe it has been backed up by court case(s) (I trust fellow /.ers will advise me if I'm wrong or right), that linking is not illegal. Similiarly, telling someone how to do something is generally not illegal either. Search long enough and you'll find specifications on how to make bombs, tap phones, etc. Things such as these are illegal when done but not when discussed.

The only thing I believe MS has a legit gripe with is the posting of the copyrighted work. I realize how unpopular this is going to make me around here, but what is the difference between this and if I posted the complete text to Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October? Each is a copyrighted work, and just because this is an open discussion forum doesn't give me the right to reproduce the work as a whole so that anyone may get it.

Hell, down at the bottom of the page there is the copyright notice for Andover.net. What do you think they would do if I started a website called Slashdotdot.org in which I did nothing but reproduce all of Slashdot picture for picture and word for word? Do you think Andover would just let that go?

So by my estimates, SlashDot could bring in anywhere from $12 million to $100 M per year.

That's enough to make me want to get in on the goldrush!

The transaction and journaling stuff is being worked on now because we need it for Slashdot and Freshmeat, as well as some other stuff. press release here

A) Sorry, chum. VA and Andover arent "merging". VA bought Andover out because they wanted control of their holdings, ala Slashdot and Freshmeat. Believe me, they didnt buy Andover because they're big fans of Canadian publishers. They wanted control of important fixtures of the Linux community. Andover was aquired . Dont try and sugar-coat it, Chris.

B) You guys "rescued a site that was liked by a bunch of people with no strings attached"? Bullshit. If VA was interested in philanthropy, they would have donated money to Rob & Hemos, and done the same for Patrick over at Freshmeat. Guess what. They didn't. They paid millions of dollars for the right to own it all lock, stock and barrel. Infact, if the rumors are true, VA was one of the original bidders for Slashdot, from what I hear. They were turned away because of details they insisted on including in their offer. They didn't get it. So, they did the next best thing they could. The instant they had the money to do so, they aquired the company that DID get them. Somehow, I dont think "love" was Larry's main motivation here. Of course, you're welcome to have your own opinion, Chris. Then again, you'de probably be canned if you said anything even remotely damaging your company.

C) Thats right. VA owns and controls the things it owns. Andover.net, and everything beneath it, are now corporate holdings. This includes Sourceforge. See, thats why they purchased Andover.net. In other words, they payed money to obtain ownership of it all. I know, wacky concept, isn't it. Paying money means you own things. The reality of it is, VA Linux Systems, at any time, can pull the plug thousands of community projects at its own discretion. They own the boxes, they lease the pipe, they employ the admins. All it takes is a call to one employee to walk over to Above.net and yank the plug out of the wall. With Sourceforge, they now own a little ant-farm called where they can watch bright-eyed kids come up with amazing things that might be of use to the company. If one of ideas is important enough to VA, they'll put people to work on the task full time, under the auspices of "community involvement".. This is precisely what happened with System 12, in my opinion. We were forced off the map the instant we started talking about being a fixture in the Linux community. They couldnt own the idea, so they gave the order to their own full-time employees to replicate it and slap their name on it first before we could even get off the ground. Why else would they have put several of its employees on the task full-time? I'll bet you ten bucks to a goddamn donut the same thing is happening on Sourceforge right now. Someone there , right now, has an idea that could give VA an advantage over their competition down the road. Right now, VA doesnt have to worry about a thing. VA has no competition--They now own their competitors. And when the bright-eyed kids begin making waves about what they're shooting for, they'll get screwed so hard they wont be able to walk straight for months.

The premise that VA purchased Andover.net, Freshmeat, Slashdot, and countless other sites out of the kindness of their own hearts sounds about as laughable as hearing Bill Gates whine about how Microsoft is being denied their "freedom to innovate."

Snap out of it. I'm so tired of your spin and bullshit I could squat.

Bowie J. Poag

With the recent assimilation of slashdot into the borg^H^H^H^HAndover machine, and the subsequent rash of irrelevant and generally non-News-for-Nerds stories on slashdot, the recent "Your CPU Will Explode" and the whole April 1st debacle, being prime examples, slashdot just isn't what it used to be...

Your average Anonymous Coward is forced to look elsewhere for his/her nerd news in these sad times. Where are the geeks going now that slashdot is dying?

http://kurt.andover.net/Reiser -filesystem-HOWTO.html

Reiser driver and utils are still in development, and there's been some flamage on the kernel-dev list over it, but hey, works for me!

You guys might want to point out that it's presented by Andover.Net and VA Linux, who are the owners of Slashdot. I know, in this case it's something they're sponsoring, not something they're trying to promote and make money from -- but now that Slashdot is sponsored by the big boys, you guys should start putting a disclosure statement in things involving Slashdot ownership.

Btw, for those of you like me who have no hope of making it on such short notice, I saw this on the site:

The Festival is Distributed. If you can't physically make it to the Festival, connect to the website and watch the happenings. Or, get your local Net cafe to join up and throw their own fling. All they have to do is let us know and they're in. It would be kinda cool if geeks from all over this little old world of ours could take a couple days off to celebrate. What the hell!

With this latest in a string of stories about Amazon and their evil "1-click patent". Not to mention the numerous stories about the evils of software patents, why do we still find this in the book reviews section:

The books here are brought to us in Partnership with Amazon.com.

I'm amazed this post has a score 4, considering it seems to have even less fact checking than your average /. story.
--

*Sigh*

For those of you with truly no lives, check out some pics... Live from the Kurt cam I know, I need to get out more.....

Has anybody considered the possibility that Andover.net would consider buying the linux.net domain? It would make a good fit for their most profitable businesses, and would probably make their stock price jump.

"The Linux Network" says a lot more than "Andover Net", besides, look at their index page and see that they are calling themselves "The Leading Linux Desination" so it's a fit.

Don't be too surprised if I'm right!

These guys have a horrible record, denying Slashdot addicts the ability to get through to Slashdo during peak U.S. times.

ZDNet bids item with pro-linux description
Posted by Roblimo on 04:15 AM April 1st, 2000

ZDNet Employee writes "ZDNet's CEO is auctioning his old Porche for a new Ferrari. The good thing is that the Porche comes with a Redhat 5.1 CD in the back on the trunk. All proceeds go to the CEO and his girlfriend." It's worth $11,342,251 as we speak. Can I bid with my inflated Andover/RedHat stocks?

in your spare time, come up with a great web site that generates thousand of hits every day and just wait for Andover.net to buy you out.

...of being repeated in 10 hours just like this was.

But it will not because the corporate behemoth Andover has silenced John Katz in some Microcoft mind reeducation camp along with that pitcher from the Atlanta Braves!

John!!! The sky is really falling!!!

Now back to the Andover approved comments and "content".

(No, duh, I am really just kidding, this is intended as humour, get a sense, k?)

Has BSI been bought by Andover or has just /. been purchased? I guess my main question is, does Andover own Everything and Everything 2?

---

Has BSI been bought by Andover or has just /. been purchased? I guess my main question is, does Andover own Everything and Everything 2?

---

It is currently so bad that there is no point in trusting the summaries.

Amen, brother. It seems that the proportion of downright incorrect summaries has been growing steadily lately -- do Malda & Co. simply post anything that strikes their fancy without bothering to read it first? Honestly, how long can clicking a link and reading through an article actually take?

Fortunately, now that Slashdot is owned by Andover.Net, there is a solution -- e-mail Andover.Net to complain about the careless reporting. Tell them you think it's ridiculous that a site that styles itself as a news centre is so lazy as to never verify the stories it runs. Hell, name names if you'd like -- CmdrTaco, Hemos, et alia are employees just like everyone else, and are easily replaced. Perhaps if the current Slashdot crew can't scrape together a few threads of journalistic integrity, Andover.Net will find some people who can.

Regards,

Look at this

Has anyone else noticed that RMS looks a helluva lot like Ron Jeremy there?

I bet with a little shaving, RMS could be the next great porn star!

Roblimo left out the "http://" -- to see the photos, click here.
-
<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht

Kurt

pax, Bishop

It looks like the real URL for the pictures is: http://kurt.andover.net/bazar/fsf
or http://kurt.andover.net/bazaar/fsf, but note they won't be up for another hour or so.

Also, ZDTV will be broadcasting the awards here: http://www.zdtv.com/radio on Thursday, Dec 16 2:00pm http://www.zdtv.com/radio

It looks like the real URL for the pictures is: http://kurt.andover.net/bazar/fsf
or http://kurt.andover.net/bazaar/fsf, but note they won't be up for another hour or so.

Also, ZDTV will be broadcasting the awards here: http://www.zdtv.com/radio on Thursday, Dec 16 2:00pm http://www.zdtv.com/radio

First, the story clearly stated that the pics might not be available for up to an hour, so have some patience, cowboy. Second, don't you know how to hack a URL? The correct location is probably going to be something like http://kurt.andover.net/bazar/fsf - It looks like maybe Roblimo got a bit confused in the cut and paste or else the URL got interpereted as a relative rather than absolute URL.

Anyhow, until the Bazaar pics are up, you can still waste your time looking at the fun pics from the /. trek to Comdex last month or whenever that was... The URL for that is http://kurt.andover.net/

First, the story clearly stated that the pics might not be available for up to an hour, so have some patience, cowboy. Second, don't you know how to hack a URL? The correct location is probably going to be something like http://kurt.andover.net/bazar/fsf - It looks like maybe Roblimo got a bit confused in the cut and paste or else the URL got interpereted as a relative rather than absolute URL.

Anyhow, until the Bazaar pics are up, you can still waste your time looking at the fun pics from the /. trek to Comdex last month or whenever that was... The URL for that is http://kurt.andover.net/

>rant>
If you insist upon being a license zealot, at least try to be a literate one. There are few things that bother me more than people who cry wolf in terms of "invasion of privacy" or "misuse of term Free" before really even reading what they're berating.
</rant>

One of the highest-ranked posts on this thread so far mentioned being a developer who already uses a native version of this product and got some benefit from the Java version, which this story addresses.

At least one guy benefitted from this.

Several people moderated him up, apparently because they thought the information he had share regarding this program was worth the time of others. Apparently, more than one guy benefitted from this.

All I'm saying is, there's no point in trying to start a flame war, when [hopefully] most Slashdot readers are intelligent enough to realize that free in this context did not imply open source (in the general, nonpolitically stunted meaning of the term). As such, what did you hope to contribute to the discussion with your post?

Just a thought.

-chet