Slashdot Mirror

It's been said that the mix of stories on Slashdot is like an omelet: linux and tech, mixed with science and Legos, and a few reviews and sci-fi folded in. It's not just the stories that are a good mix, however, it's the people behind them. Through the past 15 years, an unusual cast of characters have been responsible for keeping the site up and running and bringing you the stories you want to read. We've asked a number of them to write a few words about their time working here and to share a few memories. Below you'll find that some of our former employees don't know what "a few words" means, and a collection of what bringing you news for the past 15 years has been like. Chris DiBona
Right after they had switched from being Chips & Dips to Slashdot, I was working at a company called VA Research. VA Research, at the time, shipped Linux hardware to dotcoms and other people and that was groovy. I liked Slashdot. It was fun. That was really the only place to go to find people who gave a crap about Open Source and free software at the time.

I said to them, "Hey. What if I just send you some hardware so that you can beef up the site a bit." They're like, "Oh my god. That'd be so helpful. Please send it." I did, they got the hardware and it was pretty helpful, it seems. They re-wrote the [Ad Foo], ad servicing system at that point and we were the base ad, so if they had no ad to show, it'd just show a VA Research ad as a thank you to us.

That went on for a year and a half, two years, I want to say, except for in classic Rob, Jeff, me style. It showed the same ad for two years and we would know that the site was broken, or Ad Foo was hosed, because it would show the ad with chips that were four years out of date. That's how I got involved and how I got to know the guys

Nathan Oostendorp
My only real association with the site is with the technology, and what I remember about Slashdot is that it was an entirely "seat of the pants" affair - there were no patterns laid down to follow, it's not like there were a hundred other sites using MySQL and there wasn't much precedent for using a database backend in the first place -- it was routinely even condemned as being risky. We had this feeling of "okay we've discovered that using Perl and MySQL to create pages of HTML is pretty awesome" so we played around a lot. Slashdot was the main thing, but there were a bunch of other projects like DJ Hernandez, which was I guess an early version of Spotify, and the original Everything (cum Everything2) which was kind of a proto-wiki system.

Fundamental to Slashdot was the Story submission and moderation system, and then the comment system, and the several dozen (what would now be called RSS feeds) for "Slashboxes" which at the time were a lot of HTML regex cron jobs from yours truly. We had idea that all the information on the internet was going to be accessible, and Slashdot could be the channel for it. The universe we were living in, everything was accessible and Slashdot could be the "geek lens" for everything to flow thru.

Very quickly we started realizing that we had to make money doing this business and so we created an "open source ad system" called Ad-fu (Inspired by one of the quote by the X-Files Lone Gunmen "my kung-fu is the best"). I spent an inordinate amount of time building this system, which was quixotically designed to put DoubleClick out of business -- once you've mastered mod_perl and databases, scheduling ads and counting the results should be easy, right? Ad-fu was several weeks of my full-time effort and got us through about 18 months and the acquisition by Andover.Net, at which point it was migrated to their Ad System which was written in C and flat files "for scalability"...

After the acquisition my relationship with Slashdot was intermittent -- the "ajax-y" single-page comment system was originally based on a hacked-up prototype I did in grad school in the mid-00s. I got my black belt in Perl, MySQL, and web programming thanks to Slashdot, and it's served me well as a practitioner in the ensuing 15 years.

Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
15 years ago I spent every spare moment building a website hosted on the silliest domain name I could think of. I ran polls asking how many shots my roommate should drink. I posted stories detailing personal art projects, or explaining how our car broke down driving from Michigan to North Carolina. Somewhere between then and now, amidst all the movie & kernel releases, technological breakthroughs, and ceaseless threats from governments and corporations, I came to understand that Slashdot was itself made out of The Stuff that Matters. My heartfelt thanks go out to everyone who remembers.

Jeff "Hemos" Bates
One of the things people often have asked about over the years is, how did you guys know you wanted to build this business? Yeah, well we didn't, is the reality. There was no Machiavellian plan, there is nothing like that, it was absolute sheer evolution, I think that's a good way to put it. Which made for some particularly interesting discussions with BC's and people who wanted to buy it in the early years. Because, they would ask things like, well what is your burn rate. And I would say, well the landlord likes to be paid and I like to eat, so there isn't one.

I think in terms of things that Slashdot did that meant a lot to me or I am proud of, I think the post-Columbine stuff that John Katz did. I know I just said John Katz so we might as well just turn on the troll radar right now. I like John just for the record.

John is a great, very thoughtful guy. And I think that what he did during Columbine, for giving a voice to the freaks and weirdoes, and by no means am I saying that, I don't even remember their names, Eric and Dylan, I guess? That what they did was a good thing. Not at all, that was a terrible, terrible thing. But, I think that the writing that he did and the discussions that happened around that was fantastic. I think that that is a situation that is the epitome of why sites like Slashdot and social media sites are so important and meaningful. It was knitting together people all across the country, and all across the world where they didn't have a lot of people around them that they could talk about this with. They had to go online to find a community that understood what it was that they were trying to say.

Jon Katz
Slashdot was an important place for me, if not a great fit. I loved the energy of the site, and the Linux ethic looks stronger now even than it did then. After Columbine, I wrote a series on the site called "Voices From The Hellmouth" and it was one of the most important pieces I ever did. If convention media had followed the idealism and values of Rob and Jeff, they might not now be such a shambles. Slashdot was a revolutionary website, a landmark in Internet history. I was very proud to have written there.

Emmett Plant
“You wrote for Slashdot?”

I get this a lot, even twelve years after I’d written my last piece. It happened again just two weeks ago, talking to a guy from InfoSec.

I was young, idealistic and had no idea what I was doing. I imagine that for most of us, this is still true. We didn’t write for a market or to capitalize on a trend. We wrote about things we liked, and tried to get other people to like them, too.

A cynical perspective could see Slashdot as a place where angry nerds gather and rant anonymously about the topics of the day, but it misses the point. It’s actually a place where hundreds of thousands of people show up to say, ‘Hey, look at this thing, isn’t it cool?’

Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it’s hell-no, but there’s always an answer.

Nerds are some of the weirdest people you’ll ever meet. They also tend to be intelligent, opinionated and enthusiastically kind. Twelve years later, Slashdot still makes that obvious -- Even when the readers are loudly complaining about software patents, arguing about intellectual property and demanding new Firefly.

“What was it like?”

Rob Malda had managed to learn most of Darth Maul’s moves, and was terrifying with a dual-bladed lightsaber toy. We knew every word to ‘Cowtown’by They Might Be Giants, and we broke out into song while driving down a highway in Michigan. The ‘geek compound’was actually a few houses at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac. Jeff Bates did a killer Dr. Evil impression, and was able to eat clementines at a terrifying pace. The one-and-only time I’d ever visited the aforementioned ‘compound,’I had a flu and was taking a terrifying amount of medication for it, which led to me saying wildly inappropriate things to people I’d just met. No one really seemed to care. I slept on CowboyNeal’s couch, and learned that Rob and I had not only run BBSes ‘back in the day,’but ran them on the same software as well.

I wrote a lot of pieces that I still enjoy to this day. I also wrote a lot of pieces that I’d prefer to never see again. I approved some stories that I shouldn’t have, and rejected a lot of stories that probably should have gotten more attention. Have I mentioned that I had no idea what I was doing?

I enjoyed my time at Slashdot tremendously, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. It’s unsettling to know that what you’re typing in vi tonight is going to be in front of more than a million smart people tomorrow morning. Then those smart people will be encouraged to comment on what you write, telling you exactly how much of an unparalleled genius/complete moron you are. They may even make a chart.

No matter what we had to say on the site back then, everything at the time was colored by money. The dot-com investment mania was at full strength, and there was a wildly inaccurate assumption that we were all hip-deep in filthy lucre. Writing about technology isn’t terribly lucrative, even if you’re writing for one of the most popular sites on the planet. Putting the technology to use is considerably more valuable: When I left tech writing and journalism to go back to work as an engineer, my income more-than-doubled.

“All good things...”

I left Slashdot to take over as the editor-in-chief of Linux.com, which ended up being a beautiful disaster. I went back to engineering for about a year, then took over as the CEO of the Xiph.org Foundation for a while, and then went back to engineering again. I started a production company and was able to fulfill childhood dreams by working on Star Trek and writing a lot of music for video games. My current time is divided between working in systems engineering, managing my production company and training for my private pilot certificate here in the Valley of the Sun.

I still love tech, and I still love sharing cool new things with people I barely know.

I still run Linux machines at home, at work and in outside projects.

I still think the DMCA is a terribly stupid piece of legislation.

I still throw down with pudge on political matters.

I still read Penny Arcade, run a BBS and hang with trekkies.

...and I’m on IRC right now.

Jonathan "CowboyNeal" Pater
My fondest memories of Slashdot are always those that surround the events when people came together to effect a positive change. Starting already in the site's infancy when there was a real push among our readers, spurred on by one of CmdrTaco's editorials, to open the source of Netscape. When it actually came to pass, it was clear that in addition to being a fun way to keep up on the news and waste some time during coffee breaks and slow work days, Slashdot could be a force for good as well. Years later, we still haven't been able to influence any sort of software patent reform, but, we can keep hoping.

I always enjoy the Slashdot interviews. We've been able to interview a diverse group of people that ranges from David Korn and Rob Pike, to mc Chris and Warren Ellis. I feel that that diversity is something that makes Slashdot more interesting than just a technology news site, and the ability to pass questions on to the interviewees from our readers makes for an interesting article.

The other memory foremost in my mind, is of the infamy of being the most ubiquitous Slashdot poll option of all time. I read not long ago via Wikipedia that this was because I was in charge of the polls, and had inserted myself into them. This isn't true at all, but because Wikipedia needs a source to quote, I feel that now for our 15th anniversary, is a good time to set the record straight. While I've never been fully "in charge" of the polls, I did make plenty of polls over the years, but I never put myself into one. The honor and prestige of starting that tradition belongs to Chris DiBona, and even after he moved on from Slashdot, the other editors managed to keep it alive. I'd like to both thank and forgive him, for starting the tradition. I never kept track if I ever won any of the polls, but I have to assume I won at least one of them. That time, whenever it might have been, was pretty sweet too.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who ever emailed me over the years. To be sure, it's often been a deluge of stuff to wade through every morning. I may or may not have had time to respond to your particular email, but I read all of them eventually, even the nasty ones. Thanks for writing me, but most of all, thanks for reading the site. It's the readers that make everything possible.

Jason Scott writes "Hi, this is Jason Scott, director of the BBS Documentary, a 4 year project to tell the story of the dial-up bulletin board systems of the 70s, 80s and 90s. The documentary's out, for sale, and is completely Creative Commons licensed. But like most documentaries, there's tons of stuff left on the cutting room floor. And that just won't do. I'm happy to announce that I have partnered with archive.org to present what will be hundreds of hours of interviews online. The BBS Documentary Interview Collection will be extended edits of the 205 interviews I conducted, presented as video and audio files, along with ZIP archives of all the photos and supporting materials for that interview. And of course, every minute is Creative Commons licensed as well. It's going to take me upwards of half a year to edit and upload the half-terabyte of files; I hope people watch a few hours here and there to get an even deeper knowledge of the history of the BBS, or maybe even make a documentary of their own."

Jason Scott writes "Hi, this is Jason Scott, director of the BBS Documentary, a 4 year project to tell the story of the dial-up bulletin board systems of the 70s, 80s and 90s. The documentary's out, for sale, and is completely Creative Commons licensed. But like most documentaries, there's tons of stuff left on the cutting room floor. And that just won't do. I'm happy to announce that I have partnered with archive.org to present what will be hundreds of hours of interviews online. The BBS Documentary Interview Collection will be extended edits of the 205 interviews I conducted, presented as video and audio files, along with ZIP archives of all the photos and supporting materials for that interview. And of course, every minute is Creative Commons licensed as well. It's going to take me upwards of half a year to edit and upload the half-terabyte of files; I hope people watch a few hours here and there to get an even deeper knowledge of the history of the BBS, or maybe even make a documentary of their own."

Prophetic_Truth writes "Jason Scott is now shipping his BBS Documentary, which consists of five and a half hours of episodes outlining the history of Bulletin Board Systems. On a personal note, I can't wait to get my preordered copy! I've been looking forward to this documentary more so than HHGTG and Star Wars ROTS."

Prophetic_Truth writes "Jason Scott is now shipping his BBS Documentary, which consists of five and a half hours of episodes outlining the history of Bulletin Board Systems. On a personal note, I can't wait to get my preordered copy! I've been looking forward to this documentary more so than HHGTG and Star Wars ROTS."

sinnergy writes "One of the Midwest's only remaining "hacker" cons, Notacon, will be happening April 8-10, 2005 in Cleveland. As an interesting subtext, an extraordinary amount of interest in independent media coverage for this event has been occurring. One project includes Jason Scott's Notacon Radio project. The Packet Sniffers are doing their own Notacon TV project. In addition, numerous other online media outlets, oline radio shows and bloggers have really picked up on the idea of events like these being truly valuable to the geek community. Even the local geek radio show is keen on the idea. Richard Thieme, one of the event's selected speakers, has promoted the hacker con as being one of the final bastions of open speech. Is this the birth of a new trend or is this simply geeks doing what they always do... spreading the word about something new and different going on in their world?"

spyrochaete writes "Jason Scott, proprietor of textfiles.com, is nearing completion of his 3-DVD, 7 hour documentary on the history of the BBS. This documentary is 3 years in the making and is a patchwork of nearly 250 interviews spanning hundreds of hours. Trailers and samples are available for download (also available in low quality for you 300 BAUDers out there). Pre-order before Nov. 10 and you can submit a paragraph to be included on a file on one of the DVDs."

spyrochaete writes "Jason Scott, proprietor of textfiles.com, is nearing completion of his 3-DVD, 7 hour documentary on the history of the BBS. This documentary is 3 years in the making and is a patchwork of nearly 250 interviews spanning hundreds of hours. Trailers and samples are available for download (also available in low quality for you 300 BAUDers out there). Pre-order before Nov. 10 and you can submit a paragraph to be included on a file on one of the DVDs."

spyrochaete writes "Jason Scott, proprietor of textfiles.com, is nearing completion of his 3-DVD, 7 hour documentary on the history of the BBS. This documentary is 3 years in the making and is a patchwork of nearly 250 interviews spanning hundreds of hours. Trailers and samples are available for download (also available in low quality for you 300 BAUDers out there). Pre-order before Nov. 10 and you can submit a paragraph to be included on a file on one of the DVDs."

Jason Scott writes "While we're celebrating 30 years of Dungeons and Dragons, Slashdot readers might as well sit back with their DVD players and enjoy a few documentaries that have recently popped up; all of them done by independent filmmakers, too! Uber Goober: The Movie calls itself 'A Film About Gamers' is a not-taking-itself-too-seriously overview of the life of RPGs and LARPs. Life With the Dice Bag, a 'Documentary about Role Playing Games and the people who play them' looks to take itself a bit more seriously as it covers the last GenCon held in Milwaukee. And finally, who can resist the pull of The Dungeons and Dragons Experience?"

Slashback tonight brings some updates and clarifications to previous stories, including news of the successful production of both a BBS documentary and an open-source directory. Read on for more!

I goof, therefore I am sorry. Many readers submitted rebuttals to the claim I repeated that an Israeli web portal was the first to give users 1GB email accounts; Protein Shake, for one, writes that Spymac has them beat. "Forget Google, forget Israel's web portal... 1 GB e-mail is already out there. At least a few weeks ago. From their site '1 GB e-mail account, 350 MB combined storage, personal blog, forum, gallery, auctions and more...'"

"And this was back when phone lines were just strings painted to resemble copper ..." Jason Scott writes "The BBS Documentary, announced on Slashdot nearly three years ago, has wrapped up filming. With over TWO HUNDRED interviews in the can, I've been spending a lot of my spare time (and not-so-spare time) editing, but I decided to put out the first of what will likely be a few trailers for it. Stop by and check out how I've spent the last few years. The Documentary will be released as a 3-DVD set later this year."

It's like Who's Who, only different. Another gargantuan effort completed on a different front: Tony Stanco writes with word that "The 910-page Open Source Reference Book is available for download."

The project was announced just over a year ago; considering the contents that's not a bad turnaround.

It's nearly enough to make one cynical. Alex Wolfe writes "In a move worthy of the Luddites, the New York City Council is quietly trying to ban the Segway . The Council has proposed a law that's technically a ban on motorized scooters, but Harris Siliver, founder of Citystreets, an urban improvement organization, says the NYC Department of Transportation is specifically targeting the electric, non-polluting Segway. Silver is joined in his opposition to the bill by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak."

Get out much? If you just can't get enough random flamebait, here's a small fix to follow the anti-Linux FUD spread earlier this month by Green Hills CEO Dan O'Dowd. InfoSec writes "This morning's Security Focus page had an article about Consumer Grade *nix. The writer of the article slams Linux for not having free automated updates, enabling services in default installations, and not warning users when they are using 'root'. Uhmm, I could be wrong, but hasn't Mandrake been doing that for quite some time?"

apt-get update seems to count as free updates to me (though those folks do take donations), and root-use warnings may not be perfectly applied, but they are found in various forms (depending on distro) at OS, WM, and application levels, including notices that certain tasks can only be run as root or other superuser. (I think it's Xchat that calls me "an idiot" when I've tried to run it as root.)

Slashback tonight brings some updates and clarifications to previous stories, including news of the successful production of both a BBS documentary and an open-source directory. Read on for more!

I goof, therefore I am sorry. Many readers submitted rebuttals to the claim I repeated that an Israeli web portal was the first to give users 1GB email accounts; Protein Shake, for one, writes that Spymac has them beat. "Forget Google, forget Israel's web portal... 1 GB e-mail is already out there. At least a few weeks ago. From their site '1 GB e-mail account, 350 MB combined storage, personal blog, forum, gallery, auctions and more...'"

"And this was back when phone lines were just strings painted to resemble copper ..." Jason Scott writes "The BBS Documentary, announced on Slashdot nearly three years ago, has wrapped up filming. With over TWO HUNDRED interviews in the can, I've been spending a lot of my spare time (and not-so-spare time) editing, but I decided to put out the first of what will likely be a few trailers for it. Stop by and check out how I've spent the last few years. The Documentary will be released as a 3-DVD set later this year."

It's like Who's Who, only different. Another gargantuan effort completed on a different front: Tony Stanco writes with word that "The 910-page Open Source Reference Book is available for download."

The project was announced just over a year ago; considering the contents that's not a bad turnaround.

It's nearly enough to make one cynical. Alex Wolfe writes "In a move worthy of the Luddites, the New York City Council is quietly trying to ban the Segway . The Council has proposed a law that's technically a ban on motorized scooters, but Harris Siliver, founder of Citystreets, an urban improvement organization, says the NYC Department of Transportation is specifically targeting the electric, non-polluting Segway. Silver is joined in his opposition to the bill by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak."

Get out much? If you just can't get enough random flamebait, here's a small fix to follow the anti-Linux FUD spread earlier this month by Green Hills CEO Dan O'Dowd. InfoSec writes "This morning's Security Focus page had an article about Consumer Grade *nix. The writer of the article slams Linux for not having free automated updates, enabling services in default installations, and not warning users when they are using 'root'. Uhmm, I could be wrong, but hasn't Mandrake been doing that for quite some time?"

apt-get update seems to count as free updates to me (though those folks do take donations), and root-use warnings may not be perfectly applied, but they are found in various forms (depending on distro) at OS, WM, and application levels, including notices that certain tasks can only be run as root or other superuser. (I think it's Xchat that calls me "an idiot" when I've tried to run it as root.)

Jason Scott writes "Among the people I have interviewed for the forthcoming BBS Documentary are members of what was known, throughout the 90s, as the 'ANSI Scene'. They released artpacks of ANSI art on BBSes across the world, and then later on the Internet. Among these were members of the group known as ANSI Creators in Demand, or ACiD. Besides inventing the artpack, the group has continued to release them for the last 13 years... until now. The group's leader, RaDMan, has announced the arrival of the 100th and final artpack. Clocking in at a mind-boggling 400 megabytes plus, it contains high-rez, ASCII, and of course ANSI art, as well as a huge selection of music. It even has a rap featuring RaDMan himself claiming domination over the art scene. The download page lets you grab it in FTP, HTTP, and Bittorrent. If you ever spent an evening poring over the latest 'pack', now's the time to see ACiD's last hurrah."

Jason Scott writes "25 years ago today, Ward Christensen and Randy Suess officially announced the creation of a little project they threw together with a 300 baud Hayes modem, a Z-80 based S-100 computer, and a phone line. They called it "Chicago Bulletin Board System" (CBBS) and it was the first dial-up BBS. From this beginning, BBSes grew into the many thousands and became an entire industry, and when the Internet started to mature with the World Wide Web, the users who had cut their teeth on BBSes moved over to it. So raise a toast to these two fellows for a quarter century of great online times."

Jason Scott writes: "Readers of Slashdot might remember some stories posted about a BBS Documentary that was being filmed. Well, we're at about a year of production and I've released a status report about the project, including some pictures, some statistics (over 120 hours of footage have been filmed!) and some information about where the project is heading. If you remember reading about it last year and are wondering what's up with it, check it out."

Jason Scott writes: "Readers of Slashdot might remember some stories posted about a BBS Documentary that was being filmed. Well, we're at about a year of production and I've released a status report about the project, including some pictures, some statistics (over 120 hours of footage have been filmed!) and some information about where the project is heading. If you remember reading about it last year and are wondering what's up with it, check it out."

Jason Scott writes "Well, the BBS Documentary, after years of research and 4 months of pre-production, is set to film starting the first week in January. Once the filming starts, it's a solid year or more of interviews, travel, and hopefully some great footage of some very unique and interesting people. I'd like to thank Slashdot for the burst of letters and support, and I really appeciate the contacts they've helped me make with an amazing spectrum of folks to interview. The list is not complete, but I've so far gotten a great list of interviewees who helped make the Dial-Up BBS what it is in history (and today, I rush to add). Of course, the research is never done, and I encourage people to check out the BBS Software List and the timeline to help me flesh them out even more."

Jason Scott writes "Well, the BBS Documentary, after years of research and 4 months of pre-production, is set to film starting the first week in January. Once the filming starts, it's a solid year or more of interviews, travel, and hopefully some great footage of some very unique and interesting people. I'd like to thank Slashdot for the burst of letters and support, and I really appeciate the contacts they've helped me make with an amazing spectrum of folks to interview. The list is not complete, but I've so far gotten a great list of interviewees who helped make the Dial-Up BBS what it is in history (and today, I rush to add). Of course, the research is never done, and I encourage people to check out the BBS Software List and the timeline to help me flesh them out even more."

Windrip writes: "Jason Scott is compiling a history of the BBS. The BBS documentary is a virtual park bench waiting for people who want to reminisce about the good old days of FIDO, 9600 baud, zmodem. /. had an earlier post from Jason about textfiles.com, now he's looking for a few of the million stories in the naked net."

Windrip writes: "Jason Scott is compiling a history of the BBS. The BBS documentary is a virtual park bench waiting for people who want to reminisce about the good old days of FIDO, 9600 baud, zmodem. /. had an earlier post from Jason about textfiles.com, now he's looking for a few of the million stories in the naked net."