Slashdot Mirror

Although this site has a very liberal taste to it, and doesn't always stick up for the other side... the commentary by the readers, etc make for a vastly greater view of many subjects then I would get from a mainstream news medium. Plus it runs slashcode ;)

As seen on Plastic : An alternative view of Black Hawk Down.

As seen on Plastic : An alternative view of Black Hawk Down.

This post is relevant, and on topic.

Hey Mods, you may want to check out this post for a little insight between your legs.

Hey Mods, don't forget what everyone else already knows about you. Try:

Plastic.

k5.

This post is metatopic. Mod as will

This post is relevant, and on topic.

Hey Mods, you may want to check out this post for a little insight between your legs.

Hey Mods, don't forget what everyone else already knows about you. Try:

Plastic.

k5.

This post is metatopic. Mod as will.

I read this book when it first came out and I've been working on a review of it myself. I figured it was an ideal candidate for a review on /. given Steven Johnson's (the author) multiple referrences to /. in the book. It is interesting to note Johnson's background in the context of site many Slashdotters used everyday. Johnson was a founder of now dead community generated content sites Feed Magazine and Plastic, which are very similar to /. in the way they are generated an community maintained. Plastic even uses Slash as its base. I found the sections pertaining to how sites like these work to be very insightful and they'd probably be of interest to anyone who's ever wondered why /. works as well as it does.

Additionally, our reviewer leaves out the parallels between biological emergent systems (slime molds, termites, etc.) and computer systems. Johnson gives an entirely new deconstruction of the 'pacemaker' or 'queen ant' theory in both computer and life systems. Altogether, I think the book is worth the 3 hours it takes to read.

I assume it means "story" (actually it must, because he apparently fixed it) but that's still confusing. Salon doesn't use slashcode. Their Table Talk system uses some piece of crap (I think it's called WebX) that totally sucks.

Was chrisd thinking of plastic.com??

Kuro5hin, Adequacy, and Plastic are down!

This Slashdot story probably got you a good start. Hell people mentioned your site on mine after this article appeared. LOL.

I run a site that is somewhat obscure, certainly by Slashdot standards, but it does have a small community. It's also a political news forum. There are definatly some lessons along the way.

First off it takes time. I have been experiencing slow but steady growth in traffic from the beginning. It may be hard to swallow but at this point in the news forum game, barring big budgets like Plastic, I suspect slow and steady wins the race.

Secondly some people will attract much more traffic then others. The excellent staff at Geeklife have definatly pushed a lot of traffic my way. If your reading this, thanks again guys you rock. Finding sites you share common cause with and linking to each other helps.

After a quick look I would say you need more stories. The updates seem a bit sparse.Then again, what do I know.

BTW I would happily accept constructive criticism or anyone who just pops by for a visit. ;

Does /. pay you by the word?

While I'm sure it's not the only example of the dangers of the acceleration of news coverage, CNN recently ran a story in which the Taliban claimed to have shot down a U.S. Special Forces helicopter. Seems like reasonable news. But according to a blurb on Plastic, CNN could have gotten the real skinny on the story if they'd bothered to do a little research. As another poster noted earlier, journalists can't be bothered to take the time for fact-checking. The drive is to get the breaking news first, regardless of whether it must later be retracted. Facts? We don' need no stinkin' facts!

The biggest problem is that much of the hysterical news-watching public just plain doesn't care about facts. Sensationalism, spin and sordid details are the name of the game. Katz mentioned the Lewinsky scandal, a fine example of media sensationalism that glossed over the facts (like perjury and obstruction of justice) with sordid details (like activities with cigars and telephones). Welcome to the world of infotainment.

I did notice that Portugal has sensibly decided that the war on (some) drugs is a mistake, and is now treating drugs as a medical, not criminal, problem.

or maybe it's because they got some taste and realized that Rage is crap?

This following courtesy of kbrownecon over at plastic:

They forgot Harry Belafonte's Banana Boat song, you know, the one that goes

"Come Mister Taliban, carry me banana"

One problem with using Slashdot as a gauge of public opinion is that Slashdot is biased toward geekiness, toward protecting privacy even at great cost, and against large corporations and major religions. If you were aware of the kinds of biases that are common on Slashdot, you could ignore comments related to those topics -- but then you would be mislead if non-Slashdotters were focusing on those topics.

I thought Plastic did a slightly better job of being unbiased, but then again Plastic has a reputation for having a strong liberal bias, and I tend to be liberal.

You should go after Salon or Plastic. They are as anti-American as they come.

On geekizoid you can see any submissions in progress, even as an AC.

But both of these are relatively small sites. On /. I am doubtful that it would work - too much crap in the queue for anyone to want to wade through it.

Take that, monkey boy!

I would say that he should post to Plastic.com, but I think he'd be severely outclassed by the posters over there.

When the cookdandbombd .avi mirrors were first linked to from the Plastic forums, they were immediately unavailable due to high demand. I was able to download the first avi from mirror4 and the second avi from mirror5 (only mirrors 1-3 had been linked to from the main page), but most Plastic readers probably didn't think of that. Now, cookdandbombd has stopped distributing the avis, and their front page says "closed for legal reasons" (copyright?).

What if, instead of hosting the avis themselves, they had put the avis on freenet and given out the key on their web site? That would have taken care of the Plastic effect (which, btw, is an order of magnitude weaker than the Slashdot effect) and also any legal problems arising from distributing the copyrighted show.

Ahem, Plastic. They even use Slash, for chrissake.

Try gnutella (The Phantom Edit or TPE). I tried a google search and kept coming back with very nothing about it. I couldn't even find the denial on Kevin Smith's web site that he was the 'editor'. I'd certainly like to see it. There was a news blurb on Plastic.com and my submission to /. about it got rejected ;-). You can try The Phantom Edit Fan Site.

"browser", "cybersex", "internet relay chat", "MP3", "webzine", and more. (By the way, the OED story was on plastic yesterday.)

"browser", "cybersex", "internet relay chat", "MP3", "webzine", and more. (By the way, the OED story was on plastic yesterday.)

1) Mass-generated news sites such as Plastic or Slashdot (please pardon my karma whoring, but let's not underestimated the potential of such media, especially when the mass news media are concentrated in the hands of a few corporations.
2) Zines with such a narrow audience that it is not cost efficient to publish on paper

If you aim to a nationwide audience then there are savings of publishing on the net, but there are costs of less ad revenues and smaller audience. People still prefer to read regular news on paper media.

Oops, I must have stumbled onto Plastic by accident. My bad.

But Plastic.com has Oog the Open Source Caveman.

What else do you need?

Kuro5hin.org, another fine community site, has a completely different tone. Ditto for smokedot.org, metamuscle.org, and countless other sites based on the same model.

The fact that Plastic has survived out of the group of three reinforces the strength of the slash-like model.

With the price of publication at near zero dollars, is it any wonder why conventional sites aren't working? The dot-bomb era has reduced commercial interest in web sites that rely on intellectual property for revenue. The pendulum has swung the other way, back towards a volunteer-run website model. The truth of the matter is that intellectual property is essentially free to distribute, but very expensive to produce.

One problem remains: What are Plastic, Slashdot and others going to link to once quality content producers such as Feed, Suck, and Salon dry up and become scarce?

[additional shameless self-promotion follows in .sig]

On a prior thread, the subject of plastic.com came up. In my prior and current opinion, plastic.com doesn't have a long-term future as a viable community. It seems, at least to me, that the operating assumptions regarding the generation of meaningful, tangible value- are inherently flawed.

Plastic.com has mistakenly assumed it could replicate the success of Slashdot simply by repurposing the Slashdot message board system for the purposes of broad-minded subjects mostly related to pop culture, pop technology and pop politics. They have failed to realize that Slashdot's success has come through its specialization. The broader the subject matter, the less compelling the appeal to a broader base of people. The narrower the subject matter, the stronger the potential appeal to a smaller base of people. They are failing because they thought if they focused on broad subjects, that all your base would belong to them. But they ain't CATS. They are on their way to destruction. They have no chance to survive, make their time.

Seriously, though- I think most people who read and participate in Slashdot would agree that there is something of a Slashdot POV that is reinforced through the editorials, through the article selection, through much of the posting activity, etc. While you see a lot of variation in the worldviews of participants (agnostics, christians, atheists, relativists, absolutists, humorists, nihilists, etc.)- the community still has several hundred thousand participants who fit the profile one-way-or-another (in short, they understand at some level the Slashdot narrative, and want to participate in and contribute to it).

What is the Plastic.com POV? There isn't one, really. It isn't created BY a certain specialized community FOR a specialized community. It is a created by a conglomerate of differently-minded interests, lacking in a coherent POV, and it feels like it. Oh sure, it has a sort of ironic, detached postmodern perspective- that is reflected in the cheeky commentary here-and-there, but come on- isn't that the standard TONE of almost web-based content sites these days? Salon, Slate, Wired News, etc.? So how original is that?

Now, Plastic.com will have two less sources funnelling a readership towards its community board. No Feed readers, no Suck readers. Who will it continue to receive readers from? Modern Humorist? (who jokingly noted in a recent press release that they were almost out of the seven-figures in venture capital they raised only a year ago, and could be in trouble?) Netslaves? (who repeatedly asks on their own site if they should discontinue the site itself since their purpose has been satisfied and frankly, Netslaves isn't exactly making anyone richer OR happier?) Inside.com? (who at their PEAK had less than 2000 paying subscribers, as noted by Poynter.org a week ago?)

I don't bear Plastic any ill-will, that isn't why I'm bringing this up. I think the concept is flawed and in time, this will be manifest. But I'd be happy to I was wrong about that.

But, backing up, it begs the question- who in the Internet content business is going to survive?

Jim Romenesko's Media News had a link today to a story in which Slate publisher Scott Moore "was kind of funny, drolly knocking down anybody's ideas about what might make a dollar online... He didn't seem to think any known model will sustain a Web-media company. Because his publication is paid for by Bill Gates, he can afford to be pessimistic."

Truth be told, Moore is wrong. We see that at least The Onion has been able to make a ton of money ($2,000,000 in ad revenues alone last year, for their website only). They also have print advertising in their print publication, and several best-selling books they've released, plus "The Onion" radio news (syndicated for indy & college radio stations, mostly), and have made money optioning articles to Miramax for film development (two to date that I know of).

So, there is a hybrid new media / old media company that is making serious money in content. And, most would agree, they are the best at what they do.

Another content company making money online is Fu----company.com. Founder Pud runs the thing pretty much by himself. He's got a book deal with Simon & Schuster, he's got at least $60,000 a month in subscriber revenues to his unedited gossip / rumours database, he's got some banner advertising (prolly not too special revenue wise), and he's got f'dcompany-branded products he sells on his site (I think I read this may bring in over $100,000 this year, but I'd need to double check).

There are other Internet content players who are surviving, generating revenues and even profits. I don't know of ANY that have done so after raising venture capital. Ironically, the sites that raised capital to fund content are the ones who are dying here, there and all over the shop.

I wish I could think of some more Internet content "pureplays" that seem likely to survive, but I can't off the top of my head.

Where was I going with all this? I don't know. But now that I'm here, I think I'll rest and pretend this was where I was intending to head.

Good luck to the content players still out there, still trying to make something work while remaining independent. I feel obligated to say that after reading that 4 corporate players control over HALF of the public's internet browsing needs or some such nonsense.

All of this speculating has got me depressed. Think I'll go read some old USENET articles and think of a simpler time. A time when it looked like Netscape was going to change the world, when it looked like Microsoft had finally been bested, when Amazon was just selling books and it seemed like the people starting companies left-and-right were doing it because they wanted to make a change in something other than their personal worth.

For those that haven't yet made Plastic a part of their day- Check the site out now.

It's a Slash-based site very similar to Slashdot, but leaning much more towards political issues. If you're a libertarian (Lower-case 'L' intentional), you'll feel right at home.
signature smigmature

At the same time though, Americans are reading less and less.

(By the way: they're semi-indie now, spun off into a company called Automatic Media, which also runs Slash user Plastic.)

When ./ moves to 2.0, I wonder if we're finally going to see a redesign of the site.

Other sites that run slash like Plastic and Slashcode have a much nicer and slicker interface. I especially like how plastic says how long ago each article was posted. Also things like having your karma displayed on the front page is nice too.

-Cire

ya. because everybody's so concerned with impressing this guy.

Yeah, he came off as being quite a dick.
I like smart people, but this sort of arrogance and pretentiousness just annoys the hell outta me.

Musta been fun chatting with 'im on the plane for 2 hours...

C-X C-S

1) It has mistakenly assumed it could replicate the success of Slashdot simply by repurposing the Slashdot message board system for the purposes of broad-minded subjects mostly related to pop culture, pop technology and pop politics. They have failed to realize that Slashdot's success has come through its specialization. The broader the subject matter, the less compelling the appeal to a broader base of people. The narrower the subject matter, the stronger the potential appeal to a smaller base of people. They are failing because they thought if they focused on broad subjects, that all your base would belong to them. But they ain't CATS. They are on their way to destruction. They have no chance to survive, make their time. HA HA HA HA.

2) It assumes it can create value through the aggregation of the readerships of several specific content sites into one single site. YET MANY OF THE CONTENT SITES CONTRIBUTING PARTICIPANTS ARE LOSING MONEY, SOME AT ASTONISHING RATES. If you're a fan of Poynter, which you should be, you'd already have read articles chronicling the plights of Inside.com, Feed, ModernHumorist, and others participating in Plastic. - It prolly aint gonna be with us much longer.

One of the things that the recent dot-com bust has shown is the difficulty of making money off of a website, especially in the so-called B2C arena. Generally speaking, those sites have done the best that offer tangible goods, such as eBay and Amazon. /. does fine by providing information only via it's banner ads, but /. is an exception because of the huge amount of traffic it receives.

To answer your question, you have few options:

Banner ads

Co-branding a la Plastic

VC funding

Goodwill of others

Subscriptions

None of these are ideal, and none (with the exception of VB funding) will bring huge amounts of cash to your bank account. If you are simply seeking to recoup costs, you will probably want to go the banner ad/goodwill route. If you're trying to make a profit, however, you'll need a business plan on some solid relationships.

Good luck.

Yeah, it's funny how pretty much an identical submission ended up in Plastic a day ot two ago.

Charles Miller
--

With two sex articles on the front page and another at the beginning of the week, maybe it's time to join our friends at Plastic and create a new Slashdot topic?

Plastic just ran a thread regarding an article on the subscription side of Inside.com. It was about an as yet unpublished book by UK physicist Sir Martin Rees titled "Our Final Century?" as of the date I checked, there was nothing to be found on that book on the three search engines that combined have never let me down before: GOOGLE (Web & groups), RAGING (secondary web search) & DOGPILE (Print news). Part of the the problem is likely to be how current the story was, so my back up was to hit the big UK media sites BBC.co.uk, thetimes.co.uk, etc. but these also drew blanks.

Simple retort: The people in charge of the site are mostly idiots. That's why the site is infuriating and annoying.

If it weren't for the precious few who contributed real content the site would be just as crap as http://www.plastic.com/. You're not one of them.

Hey mat! Remember your first node, way back last year? It was a stupid, bitchy whine defending people who blast their music at 2am in the morning and wake everyone up!

Your second node consisted of a pure flame with no content whatsoever.

So STFU, "mat catastrophe", and go back to anarchist dreamland. From your flaming entrance in Everything 2 and the following months of irrational rants, it is pretty easy to how you're just a hypocrite.

No matter what Hillary says, that phrase is important because it points closer to what it is that allows for the evil suggestion of a student's Final Solution to enter his brain and seem like the Only Solution.

Stay with me here, I think I have part of the answer, and a damn sight bigger part than a politician would dare try to tackle.

The "village" in this instance is the environment of the kid; this includes parents, school authorities, his peers and friends, TV, video games and computer games. From this village he forms his opinion of the world and obtains a sense of 'connectedness'. 'Connectedness' in this sense represents his relationship with his village: i.e., he gets what he needs from his environment and in return he is responsible for contributing his part to the environment ('he' is generic here, okay ladies?); he feels connected to it, a part of it.

But our village is burnt out.

The parents have skewed values and pursue money at the expense of time with their children. The child is latch-key and unsupervised and unloved in a real sense.

The school environment is composed of overworked and burnt-out teachers: sure they Could care, but who Cares if they Care? So none of them connect with the troubled teen in a realistic manner. And the teen feels inadequate to approach them for help; it certainly isn't encouraged in this day and age. Teachers are Not Parents, but they play them in the classroom.

And now for the Active elements in the Boy's young life! TV actively plays teens against their parents, portraying them as the enemy and corrupt and evil. Kids buy into this because they want power and ally themselves with a 'villager' who appears to be their ally. But it isn't their ally; it is their 'wormtongue', placing messages of destruction into the child's mind. No one would argue that TV is a poor parent for a child. TV actively increases the level of anxiety in the teen's mind... I could go on and on about this, but I think we all agree its fairly evident.

Finally, and in league with the media, is the interactive world, the electronic world of messages that play into the natural tendencies of a child's aggression. He doesn't roughhouse with Dad, he doesn't play capture the flag with his friends, he isn't wrestling in the gym. No, he is sitting in front of a screen blowing the bejeezus out of a bunch of frightening images, getting a subtle (not so subtle?) rush of adrenaline (adrenaline, the drug of choice for Americans, bar none) in doing so. And, as Ashcroft correctly if misguidedly asserts, learning how to kill.

Finally, add the complete humiliation day in and day out of his peers, the final element of his village, taunting and ridiculing him freely and
without supervision. Nothing will stop this daily terror.

Oh no, add one more thing.

Give him a gun.

Therein lies the recipe for these disasters. And when you add the sensationalism and copycat solicitation provided by the media, you really shouldn't be surprised in the monsters you have created.

It takes a village, alright. A village of village idiots.

Last thing. All you single-cause zealots who use these tragedies to foster your cause are doing nothing to help. You add heat but little light to the discussion. Banning guns would help but it ain't gonna happen. The Ten Commandments in school halls would remind us all who is really in charge here (White Christians, not God), but would lessen the alienation of our troubled youth not one whit. Punishing Hollywood, punishing parents, laying blame on Any Single Thing is perpetuating a vicious spiral that gets us nowhere. So please, if you care to respond to any of this, keep that in mine when you do. It is a complicated problem and it might even be one that cannot be solved today or even ever. But we can't make headway if we fall back into old and tired arguments. Not that the NRA isn't an idiot, but that it is too thickheaded and stubborn. Not that Christians aren't the new Nazis, but that calling them names doesn't allow them to trust America enough to open a dialog. We need a brand new paradigm, just like the old paradigm that we once held sacred, albeit only for the landed gentry. Perhaps if we can extend it to All Men and Women and Children, the village can have meaning again for a nation of alienated and Disconnected youth.

(Reprinted from a Plastic article I wrote. I only got one karma point, but a bunch of replies. :)

try posting it to plastic. they tend to cover stuff like that, and i'm sure they'd accept that story!

- j

A reader over at Plastic expressed concern that humans should perhaps not be buying upgrades for their own bodies. On the contrary, there are circumstances by which it becomes very benificial to augment our bodies where they would otherwise provide a hinderance to us. Admitadly, there are limits. But this is just an extension of the first neanderthal man with a broken (or missing) leg being constructed a crutch to help him walk. It's part of what makes us human. To try to improve the lives of our fellow men. Of course there are limits to the circumstances that our technology should (and can) be used.

...good fucking riddance.

I see why you call yourself "Rudeboy777".

The system is in place to promote and maintain intelligent discussion..

And should I consider "good fucking riddance" part of intelligent discussion?

...it's the Internet's best way (thus far) of maintaining a large community.

I'm sure you meant "it's Slashdot's best way...".

Getting modded up and replied to is nice, but the karma thing is NOT a game.

Well, for better or for worse, it has become a game to many Slashdot readers and contributors. I find it contradictory that the Slashdot staff want you to forget about karma but at the same time, they reward you with karma for having stories accepted (which is another game in itself), give you rewards for having high karma (+1 bonus), and penalize you for low karma (posts starting at 0 or -1).

As far as I know, karma is a feature of every Slash-based site. Slashdot probably doesn't want karma to be a game, but you should see what another Slash-based site is doing. I don't agree with you about karma not being a game, but I'm sure you can agree with me that what that site is doing takes it way too far!

...good fucking riddance.

I see why you call yourself "Rudeboy777".

The system is in place to promote and maintain intelligent discussion..

And should I consider "good fucking riddance" part of intelligent discussion?

...it's the Internet's best way (thus far) of maintaining a large community.

I'm sure you meant "it's Slashdot's best way...".

Getting modded up and replied to is nice, but the karma thing is NOT a game.

Well, for better or for worse, it has become a game to many Slashdot readers and contributors. I find it contradictory that the Slashdot staff want you to forget about karma but at the same time, they reward you with karma for having stories accepted (which is another game in itself), give you rewards for having high karma (+1 bonus), and penalize you for low karma (posts starting at 0 or -1).

As far as I know, karma is a feature of every Slash-based site. Slashdot probably doesn't want karma to be a game, but you should see what another Slash-based site is doing. I don't agree with you about karma not being a game, but I'm sure you can agree with me that what that site is doing takes it way too far!

Sure! At least /. doesn't have a Sex section like Plastic...

Try Plastic instead. You'll be glad to know that Shoeboy is already active on the site!

Try Plastic instead. You'll be glad to know that Shoeboy is already active on the site!

Seeing as you're gay, let me ask you a question:

Aren't you fscking sick of seeing so many gay people paraded around on TV? I mean, it's like a fad now. It started with Will and Grace, which was a shallow and horrendously unfunny show to begin with. Now every sitcom has to have some fricken gay angle to it. Take "Normal Ohio". What else was this other than an attempt at taking a tired old sitcom star, and "magically" creating a successful sitcom by making his character implausibly gay? I mean, who really thinks John Goodman plays a convincing gay person? It's just painful.

I have nothing whatsoever against homosexuality, but I think people are started to feel "gay fatigue".

This was posted at Plastic.com several hours ago :-D But, it is a good story, so let it be.
______________________________
Eric Krout