Slashdot Mirror
Negative Webmonkey Editorial on Andover/VA Merger
BigTed writes "Webmonkey has got an interesting article up about the VA Linux takeover of Andover and its effect on *gasp* Slashdot and the Open Source Community." Personal note: I almost quit when I heard about the merger, because I had exactly the same worries Jay Greenspan expresses in this editorial. Since then I have been personally reassured by Larry Augustin that VA Linux has no desire to mess with the content on any Andover site, including Slashdot. I'm posting this story, even though we've been over this ground before, primarily so that we don't get accused of bias by not posting it. And yes, we will continue to post news of Red Hat, Penguin Computing, and others in the Linux corporate community, same as before. Everyone who works on Slashdot, and everyone in Andover.net management, has sworn to defend Slashdot's editorial independence. Period. - Robin 'roblimo' Miller, Editor-in-Chief, Andover.net. Update: 02/09 05:16 by CT : here is a Salon Story by Andrew Leondard expressing the same concerns as the webmonkey bit.
I guess stories like these are necessary to make sure the journalistic independancy is still functional now that /. is part of this "mega-corporation" :) It's good to see that they're "allowed" to post even negative views about their owners. Good going.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Personally I'm a little perplexed at the broohaha surrounding this. VA Linux is commited to open source, they know the community, they know that it would be company suicide to annoy the very user base that develops Linux, and slashdot is a powerful voice in that community.
/. effect if LinuxOne had made the take over >;-)
This isn't MS, News International, GE or anyother big brother organisation, this is VA. If slashdot isn't seen as being independent it will cease to become popular, if its not popular its pointless to its owners. Worries about bias towards VA and against other like Suse and Red Hat are the sorts of things we all will be looking out for, its going to be tough to get pro-VA sentiment without accusations of bias. In the same was a we guarentee the quality of Open Source code it is our voices that ensure the independence of slashdot.
Although it would have been quite fun to witness the
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
There is this trend to over-hype any news of IT mergers/buyouts etc especially when the word Linux comes up. Okay, this is probably going to get more readers with the current upswing in public favour for Open Source, but dramatising does nobody any favours.
I'm quite happy to believe CmdrTaco et al when they say they have a cast iron contract which ensures Slashdot's individuality. Yes, even companies after money can act ethically. Anyway, why alienate the very population they want as a market??
Frog51
First Slashdot -> Andover.net then Andover.net -> VA Linux. With the current shopping runs of big companies, how long will Slashdot be free ? They said they have a contract to save their rights, but how long can they keep it up?
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
If the worst comes to the worst and editorial control is lost (not that I'm saying it will) the Slash code is always available. Someone can set up SlashNot, and the community can leave VA high and dry. No problem. Or am I missing something?
nt ;)
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
This merger is so sad. Rob can say all he wants that they will be independent but it just ainted going to happen. Because they are going to start to BELIEVE that VA makes better products blah blah blah. Imagine if Microsoft owned its own newspaper that published stories on software issues. I can't imagine anybody trusting a thing they said. And for good reason. I wonder if Rob and Co will now diclose their stock holdings in the companies they report on (like most respectable journalists). Why do i doubt it.
If some Big Nasty Corp. acquires /. and starts dinking with the content, how many hours do you suppose it would take before an alternative site took the ballistic ride to success?
/. will be reluctant to tip the scale by meddling, unless either truely clueless or else hostile to what's going on here.
Actually, it's probably just a matter of time anyway, due to the ever-growing population of astroturfers and ex-segfaulters. But a corporation that shells out big bucks for another whose most marketable asset appears to be
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In fact, I am sure that co-operation will help ALL Linux providers, because it will lead to a better and better product for everyone. With more co-operation, more people will be exposed to Linux in a positive way.
Linux has the ability to avoid the balkanazation which happened in the UNIX space, the isolationism which happened in VMS, and obviously the "better windows than windoze" that happened to OS2. The Linux product itself is clearly superior to anyone who has used other "real" operating systems, (no, using just windoze 95 does not count) now it is mainly a matter of getting the word out.
The competition is MS, and in the long term MS has the same chance as a praying mantis does against a nest of fire ants.
Those who waited till the last minute to get off of the Titanic drowned.
Don't be the last to get out of Windoze
Hey, remember that Roblimo + bunch have some money now. Plus the Slashdot source is available and GPL. If VA/Andover screws them up, all the Slashdot folks need to do is to just resign and take Slashdot somewhere else. So in my opinion the Slashdot staff has an advantage.
However I don't know about what kind of contracts they've made with anyone, but I doubt that they would have signed anything potentially damaging to themselves.
It remains to be seen whether Slashdot borgifies into a corporate announcement site. One thing is for certain: if I see signs of that, I'm outta here for good. And I'm not coming back.
You see, trust is a fragile thing.
Now let me get this straight here. The same webmonkey that was bought by Wired, then by Lycos is now preaching journalistic independance? Apparently Mr. Greenspan there wrote this article out of the good of his heart, rather than accepting a paycheck for his efforts.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Yes certain companies do use their content providers to promote their products and their company beliefs over the beliefs of the founders. This can be seen a lot in the UK with the bias shown by the national press following their owners coporate whims (for a good example look as Rupert Murdock owned press and China.)
However the article forbodes of disaster and the community dying. Many companys allow their content arm independence from propaganda and spin and /. has a better than good chance of maintaining this with the current team's ideological stance. Sure the content is biased towards the founders choice of contributions, but not to the owners, and as long as the editorial team do not leave I for one feel it would stay this way.
ALso I feel that the /. comminity would smell out any bias towards VA over other distributers and developers and that would be when it loses it's high standing in the open source community.
Working for the (other) man
Troll Day was yesterday, dumb ass!
Sir, you have issues.
By pouring a hot bowl of em down the front of your pants. Timothy Rue
So, this is a negative post about VA & Andover. And it's posted with a very obvious piece of editorialising which tells a very obvious story. VA get to add positive comment to their stories before they get posted. Do Redhat get the right to reply to stories in the headline? Do Penguin get that right? I doubt it.
Alternatively, this is a slightly more subtle attempt to avoid discussion on this subject. By making the headline a mini-feature in itself, a large portion of the discussion will be about Roblimo's comments, rather than about the original story. They're trying to manipulate us!.
</ADVOCATE>
My actual opinion on this? I think the quality of Slashdot has declined somewhat since I first started reading it, which was quite a long time before anyone had heard of Andover. I miss things like the war against using www.slashdot.org instead of slashdot.org aka TDwww(TMS). On the other hand, I have also changed a lot in the time since I started reading here, so it is just as possible that the 'problem' is with me, not Slashdot.
I'm glad to see the guys who put this thing together get their just rewards. I think that the code is finally open, VA are a well-known and well-respected company in the community, and there is certainly no more need to worry now than there was about Andover, and they don't seem to have (directly at least) caused any problems.
This is my normal sig - it just happens to fit this posting well:
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
Well I for one am worried about the merger.
I mean, at the moment it might not sound that scary, VA Linux has explicitly told Slashdot that they don't want to do any censoring or content editing,
but what will happen in a few years?
Linux is becoming bigger every day, what will happen when VA Linux sees they can make loads of money with commercialising Slashdot,
promoting VA Linux and neglecting others? Maybe some Slashdot editors will quit Slashdot,
but that's the beginning of the end. Slashdot will keep on living, but not the way I, and I hope everyone here, would want it.
Arno
-------------------------------------------------
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler
http://www.picturez.net/ - All the people all the pictures
Am I the only one that isn't worried? I have faith in the /. crew.
Sure mergers can be a bit scary but I think the dedication that the maintainers of Slashdot give will prevent anything horrible from happening.
Perhaps it's long overdue for Slashdot to remove the anonymous posting. If a person has something of value to add, they should attach their name to it anyway.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
I don't think this new corporate ownership is necessarily a Bad Thing. Granted, corporations exist to make money, but I don't think that makes them by nature unethical; a problem, however, that this article points out, is the new public nature of these companies. An IPO doesn't produce free money, it means a change in ownership, and no matter what the management says now, their responsibility now lies to a large extent with their shareholders. It would be unethical of THEM to not take this into account, even if it means dictating /. policy. Of course, freedom of the press issues enter into it as well, but as long as I'm allowed to say what I want, I can accept a slight VA bias in the stories presented. As for the market valuation, of course VA is overvalued, but not as much as Red Hat I think, since they at least have a hardware component, rather than just packaging freely available software...
Who moderated this to 'interesting?' Let's face it, Linux is about anarchy and no company that makes it's bottom dollar because of linux is going to try to reign it in. They'll sell off Slashdot before they try to tame it. You non-AC hens who think the sky is falling because a leaf hits your head need to drink some coffee.
::dips cock in hot grits:: LICK ME
RoadRage is his login genius. By the way, if you mark this as offtopic, just set your comment filter at +1 and stop reading AC posts period!
What a lie. Just as Wired is out of touch these days, so is Hotwired/Lycos. Webmonkey has only headed downhill in recent years, producing progressively simplistic, shallow, "beginners" articles suited to who? None other than the beginners using Tripod and Lycos.
To claim Webmonkey (or Hotwired) have been unaffected by their own ownership dramas is outrageous
Remember, Webmonkey are the same people who claimed ownership and copyright of everything posted to their email discussion list - prompting users to leave and form evolt.org
In contrast, Slashdot has continued to operate as it always has - the material posted hasn't changed, and I do believe that roblimo et al would leave if the site's editorial independence truly were in jeopardy. That will be our signal, as site visitors, to stop using Slashdot.
Bad form, Webmonkey!
-- mind over pixel
WebMonkey == Robotic Monkeys!
I can see it, why can't you guys? It's obvious that Slashdot has been singled out as a focal point of harrassment by the legions of Robotic Monkeys! We must destroy WebMonkey! We must stop the Robotic Monkeys at any cost! Who will fight with me?
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
all of us on slashdot will sit in a room with our eyes closed, then one of us will fart, and after 20 seconds as the smell has dispursed we can open our eyes and try to guess who farted, when we find him we strip em naked, and webmonkey all over him.
(how can an ac resist posting in a thread with webmonkey in its title?)
Either this guy is trolling for hits from Slashdot, or he is truly ignorant.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
But what if VA starts doing some really, really bad?
Say VA gets in an etoys.com like scandal. Do they let Slashdot cause them serious harm by posting highly critical stories, and letting Katz do his things, all mobilizing thousands of readers to turn against VA?
I doubt it. We won't really know what Slashdot's editorial freedom is until VA hits some hard times.
I'm posting this story, even though we've been over this ground before, primarily so that we don't get accused of bias by not posting it.
/. article writers are always worrying about not seeming biased, it will be just as bad as if you blatently were. You can't post every article that is negative about VA, but whenever you don't, I can promise people will jump on you for it.
You can't force yourself to be impartial, and in the end, if the
Having a communal site like Slashdot owned by strong corporate interests is simply a bad idea, and I just don't think it can work out in the long run. There is an element of trust in the fact that community is willing to let a couple of people decide over what topics will be discussed here, and that trust is human, not corporate. I think the reason there is so much antagonism against Jon Katz here is that many of us feel he is abusing that trust, using Slashdot as a pulpit for his own preachings rather than choosing stories for us.
Having Slashdot owned by Andover was one thing, because Andover was a web company based on the idea of selling banner ads, and therefore had the very clear of objective of getting as many readers to return here as often as possible. With VA it is a lot more fuzzy. VA obviously do not have banner adds as their main source of income, so they have other agendas for wanting to own (even if you keep claiming they have no control over) the backbones of the community.
The relationship between the Slashdot community and VA Linux is somewhere between mutualistic and parasitic, and I share many peoples concern that it is leaning toward the latter. I guess it should come as a bucket of cold water to those who keep claiming that the influences of corporations and money will not harm the open source community, that they started by grabbing our favorite node for discussion right from our grasp...
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
The Linux product itself is clearly superior to anyone who has used other "real" operating systems, (no, using just windoze 95 does not count) now it is mainly a matter of getting the word out.
</i>
Excuse me? Give me some proof. Linux is less scalable than almost every other Unix (and even other OSs like NT - Linus admitted the networking flaws). And it's only succeeded out of luck and good timing (straight from Linus' mouth).
Please don't delude yourself. Lets see Linux take over the job of enterprise Solaris servers.
If anybody really thinks that slashdot will change because of some monitary backing, they need to realize that slashdot has had backing for a long long time via banner adds. I see the VA ownership being about as strong.
Will they be more leniant on VA, maybe... but since when have we had to worry about them?
Will they miss an article on RedHat... maybe, but remember... we have open comments that are community moderated.
Will they show us how to run a well trusted and designed web forum? Heck yes... they have not changed a bit.
From what I can tell, overtime it has been the AC's have changed slashdot. Not money, not greed, but morons. These are what we should worry about.
Long live this open forum that many call home.
Long death for the morons that ruin it.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
All this discussion on bias and partiality is all for naught because /. readers are intelligent enough to recognize a change in the content, and when they do, some college kid will take it upon himself/herself to create a forum like /. (free of corporate influence) and get his/her buddies to post stories between classes. When something stinks change it. Ben Franklin said, "Fish and vistors stink in three days." Is VA a visitor or just a neighbor?
What I have trouble fathoming is why VA-Linux would want to be associated with a site that currently appears to be crumbling at the seams due to the activity of its users.
/. reader I am dismayed at the current troll activity. What's worse is that I just cannnot see it going away.
As a long time
If the troll activity continues, I cannot see VA allowing Slashdot to continue - let's face it, would you want your company associated with a site that consists about 30% of references to grits and Natalie Portman? I wouldn't.
Just my 2 öre!
A little planning goes a long way...
Okay, I don't think this will happen, but...
What if VA Linux is taken over by another company though. One that wants the software part, but doesn't believe that the users are important. (Yes, I know that this would be sheer stupidity on the part of a Linux distributor, but corporate stupidity is a common ailment)
There has been quite the mess lately, both here and on other sites, regarding Slashdot's alleged or future loss of integrity due to the recent acquisition of Andover.net. I'd like to suggest that everybody stop playing prophet and take a look at where Slashdot is in 6 months. If the staff at Slashdot keep the faith with their ideals -- and their contract agreement allows this -- then we will have no issue. This entire quandary can be resolved in one of two manners:
1) Trust.
2) Maxim: "Innocent until proven guilty"
I think that the worst mistake that Slashdot could make just now is to devour a lot of energy to showing people just how unbiased they are. The article this story linked to offered no insight beyond the rounds of discussion we've already engaged in. Yes, there is a perceived conflict of interest between a Linux vendor and a Linux-related information vendor. Yes, this could cause problems. But let's not forget -- the entire Slashdot staff is aware of our feelings on this matter, there is no need to rehash them ad nauseum. If all of you at SlashDot will remain independent despite standing beneath VA's banner, then you have my respect and gratitude. If not, then you have lost my traffic. There is no need to show me how unbiased you are. When and if I feel the ratio of stories representing VA interests has no bearing on the reality of the situation (I.E. We hear about VA's minor advances ahead of Red Hat's major ones), then I will make my decision as regards Slashdot and, perhaps, start tinkering with Slash code.
Since SlashDot has thus far displayed no obvious bias (save towards self-defense) they maintain my readership, and I suggest that anybody who has doubts or worries simply follow the same formula that I am: Wait and see.
-l
What you have to remember is that with the take-over of Andover by VA, VA has also taken over all rights and obligations that Andover had. Only if it is explicitly stated in the contracts that the terms might change in event of a merger, acquisition etc. can one change the conditions. Now Hemos and CmdrTaco had a good lawyer, so you bet this is covered. Therefore the answer will be, even after Microsoft Network takes over: NOTHING CHANGES AS LONG AS HEMOS AND CMDRTACO WORK AT SLASHDOT. Start worrying when they leave
Use Adsense for Charity
Hail and well met Anonymous Coward.
Well, Linux is about anarchy, but most of the Linux companies dont do all the work for peace and love.
They do it to make bucks, like everyone on this earth.
And what would be better than a major news service making good comments about your company?
Ps.: Anonymous Coward, one day you have to tell me how you get so many first posts.
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
Yes, but do you think Snowball would really want to buy VA Linux?
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
Yeah... I wouldn't about some 2 bit at web monkey tossing stones... especially since it's Lycos' web monkey. It's publish or perish at those places where your simply nothing more than a net slave.
First it was the new story posters,
;)
and the content started suffering,
and then it was the nasty colors,
and now we have all the Trolls,
and the new cheesy icons...
When do we get bought by ZD-Net?
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
My personal belief is that since Slashdot has such an awake and intelligent group of people reading it they will immediately tell if /. started getting biased. And in this open source world that would never be accepted. /. would suffer hard from such a thing, and that is something Rob and the boys wouldn't risk.
That's my $0.02
A. This is the same AC you responded to.
B. I never see 'first post' posts because I set my filter too high to see them and hence, do not get annoyed like most of the anti-AC retards around here.
C. I still think your original post lacks enough grounding to make your conclusion. I am indeed saddened that someone moderated it up further.
D. I just poured a bowl of hot grits down the front of my pants in protest.
True. I wouldn't use linux to run anything large-scale. However, I think it's much more flexible than solaris, though slightly less (and I mean very slightly)less robust, or at least has been so in my experience. Which brings to mind a question: if their respective companies had developed and promoted them as desktop systems, would the various UNIX flavors grabbed a serious market share? I know there were some 386 ports of various OSes, but they never seemed to get wide distribution...
Set your filter at +1 and you'll never have to put with another AC post ever again, slick. Eat your grits and STFU!
Maybe I wasnt able to exactly write what I thought, but you can blame this on my english skill.
English isnt my native language sometimes its just hard to get the post clear.
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
Steve Casey took his worthless, vastly overvalued stock and traded it for real assets. It's TimeWarner shareholders that were hosed.
/. will keep its editorial independence is a major down note. We all know who should be the first to go.
Whyfor is VA buying another vaporware company, whose main asset is the trolling attracted by Katzenfloobie?
Why not buy something real? Plenty of media assets for the taking.
And the note that
If we follow the logic pronounced in this editorial the german CT magazine is supposed to speicialize in the anal interfacing techinques to the almighty vend'a (brownnose the vendors) as much any other magazine does. Oh well it does not. And this is the reason for it to stay alive. And it keeps getting advertisments from all big vendors though it bashes tham on regular basis.
Same shall be true for Slashdot across its mergers and acquisitions. The moment it will go brownnosing it shall die.
So it either:
1. Goes the CT way. It may even increase advertisemnents (if they are not double-click I personally do not mind).
2. Goes the "countless number of owned sites and magazines way" and dies mizerably beeing read by nobody.
An intersting side note. So far the CT business scenario has been successful only in Europe...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
And you won't even see my reply. Don't complain about AC trolls if you read their friggin posts genius.
"Personal note: I almost quit when I heard about the merger..."
i can't help but think that public reaction would be far more positive if only we could have persuaded roblimo to bless us with his absence.
hey roblimo, is there anything else we could do to get you to leave? and please, don't forget to take jon katz with you.
-linus
99% of trolling is done in posts you don't even see because your filter is set to +1, right? Oh, you choose to instead view with a -1 filter? I wonder why?
Well read media has almost always been owned and controlled by large corporations, where as Slashdot has been seen as a user managed discussion server, usually impartial to the debate of the day. But now, things might be changing. What this presents is a chance for once for a business to actually deliver an impartial news/discussion source.
...Same problem here, maybe.
Does anyone really give credibility to a CBS story on Viacom, or an ABC editorial about the practices of Disney? How about th good old days of NBC and GE?
This could be make or break time for Slashdot. Your typical Slashdotter is of the cynical breed, not likely to be gullible to ingest the soothing words of your average CEO that "Don't worry, everything will be fine."
So here's the message.....
VA Linux, you are the new kid on the block. Fine, you are the biggest kid with a lot of resources behind you. Be careful, we are watching, and we ARE smarter than your average person.
I will generate these in laboratories and fuse them to adults in every country.
By the year 2002, those without a sack will be a minority. You will not belong to this group.
I am putting ultra-sensitive nerve structures in every sack in order to discourage circumcision. The removal of the sack will be punishable by pain and torture. Those who stand in my way will be given abnormally large sacks, prone rash, to grow hair, and to blemish. I have plans for all of you as an alpha test subjects.
The genesis of the first 10,000 sacks is complete. You will undergo attachment surgery at 0600 Friday Feb. 11. Please be advised not to resist. You will only make things very painful for you and your loved ones.
Think of yourself as a pioneer in B.A.G. Biosynthetic Accelerated Genetics. I will pioneer human controlled evolution of our race! With your help, we will be beautiful again soon, very soon.
J.10.5
No, that would damage the forums as has been discussed many times before. Anonymous posting is a useful service and there are plenty of legitimate AC's who post good comments.
There are also clowns like this, but that's the price we pay. I can't see the balance changing all that soon.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
So what can SlashDot do in this situation to maintain long-term credibility, short of a mass-resignation of the SlashDot editorial staff? Well, if any form of undue influence was going to manifest itself it would undoubtedly be in the form of article selection, currently a closed process. If this process was opened up to the SlashDot readership, possibly through something similar to the current moderation system, then the editors of SlashDot could correctly point out that they couldn't exert undue influence even if they wanted to! Editors could still submit additional stories (like Katz), so if it seemed that almost every editor-posted story was pro-VA then this would be painfully obvious (as opposed to a subtle censoring of anti-VA articles which would be much more difficult to detect).
At the moment this is something of a toy debate, but things change and I think that it is almost inevitable that Rob and co. will probably have to do something like this in the future if they don't want to risk their integrity and readership.
--
The risk is that we may see monopolies on parts of the new "Linux industry". These might become a problem in the future, when new managers take over. Also, if the kind of editorial bias that people discuss occurs at all, it will be subtle, gradual (and probably in the distant future).
I think for these reasons it is important to make sure there are strong community-owned organisations to keep some kind of parity with the Slashdots and Sourceforges of this world.
If enough influential organisations stay away from the profit goal, then we'll be able to keep the Open Ball rolling...
Fixing copyright
Give us micropayments and the web is destroyed.
Now there are free(beer) sites and some services that require a payment. With micropayment we would have to always keep an eye on the meter, no casual surfing around.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Funny you should mention that there will still be posts on other companies, yet yesterday i submitted an article on RedHat 6.2beta being released, and surprise surprise, the article isn't up...
one can draw many conclusions from that, but i will be a bigger man and pretend its because it got lost in the pile of submitted stories.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
I dont get this. I dont see a major problem. I read Slashdot for the debate and the followup on the chosen news articles. Slashdot doesnt cover all the news Im interested in, and it certainly covers news I'm not. But Im interested in its 'dipstick' effect, ie the way it reflects a slice of opinion within a particular group. I also get more from pro/con arguments on a topic than just a rehashed press release.
If the Slashdot crew say they'll maintain their own biases, rather than VA's I'll believe them. I think that the fuckwits around here spending half their time slagging off Rob etc should go build their own friggin' sites instead of bleating about Slashdot, Moderation, the source code, or whatever other facile little gripe they have.
Who cares if a Linux company owns the company which owns Slashdot. Slashdot isnt a Linux site. Its a news site. People bitch pointlessly about RedHat news anyway; now they'll bitch pointlessly about VA news instead. They bitch pointlessly about KDE vs GNOME, now some of them will bitch pointlessly about VA. They already bitch, constantly, about Slashdot, and Andover. SFW.
Slashdot is biased. It has to be, it always was. If you're 100% the bias will change, such that VA/Andover control Slashdot's news, then fuck off, start your own competitor. You bleated about the code, now take it, and go prove you can do something real with it. Just bleat there, not here.
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
I don't think it's going to be a problem this time. If you remember Byte, it was pretty obvious very soon after the takeover that the paper edition was in trouble, there's no sign of that here.
When MSNBC was created, everyone assumed that Microsoft would muck with the content. Over the time that it has been around, how many Slashdot stories have referenced positive Linux or negative MS stories at MSNBC? I can remember 3 rather devestating ones right off the top (including an entire series on how easy Linux was to install and use).
Slashdot will continue the way it is now for a while. If and when it gets unpleasant, I suspect that we'll see the original people leave and the "info for the new users" to start showing up. It won't be VA touting their own strengths, that would make them stupider than MS, but I could certainly see a watering down of content in the next 2-5 years. For now, though, Slashdot is the best geek site on the net!
Thanks Roblimo, CmdrTaco, Jon, et al! It's been a fun ride (I say this as a reader, submitter, followup contributor, stockholder and geek), and I trust your standards enough to keep reading, learning and sharing.
I would moderate this baby so far up so fast it would get the bends.
--
Java banners:
Bad for users because Java kills Netscape
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
VA Linux's logo looks remarkably like half a swastika. Coincidence? Anyway, personally I think slashdot started going downhill after they implemented the stupid account system and even further when they sold out to Andover. The site is no longer "fun" as it was back then. We didn't have problems with anonymous cowards posting Natalie Portman messages because EVERYONE was an anonymous coward unless they decided to fill in the blanks for their name.. that is a GOOD thing.
I had been working with a small digital media company for about two years. Around the end of my second year we were bought up by a larger entity. Initially we took it rather bad. We liked being a small seperate company with our own independant goals and longterm goals. Now that we were part of a larger organization, we lost those goals.
They sent out a rep. In fact he was the one in charge of aquiring us. To tell us that things were not going to change. Our mission would not collide with their mission. It was not their intent to change that in any foreseable future. It sounded nice, it sounded like we would now have the extra fund backing to do some of the things we had always wanted to do.
Later on, I found out the rest of the story. I found out that their plan in two years was to dissolve our newly coined "branch" and move us to another entity entirely. Kinda like a payoff they had been needing to pay with this other organization. So in short, their plan was to use our talent and equipment in the short term for their immediate plans, and when those plans ended, dissolve us and sell us off to another organization that they owed. At that point we would lose all of our goals.
They are going to tell you things like that. They will tell you that things will keep going indefinatly the way they are. Why? Because they bought you for a reason. They bought you for their purposes. The last thing they want is a big walk-out and losing all of their staff that they just purchased.
But don't ever think they won't try and change you eventually.
As I said at first. I am not necessarily saying that VA Research is guilty of what happened to my company. (I left by the way when I found the full story). They might have the best intentions. It just struck me when I heard Larry's explaination to you, and how it was practically word-for-word what I got out of our representative.
V
Just wait. We'll come back from lunch one day and notice our precious NASDAQ is down a couple THOUSAND points as people flee the tech stock market. Watch the thousands of tech startups fold overnight as people abandon the wild fantasy the putting venture capital into some stupid geek's idea is going to make them a fortune. It IS going to happen like this folks, it is just a matter of time. It will be 1929 all over again for the tech stock market. VA Linux, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, Redhat, AOL etc. will all most CERTAINLY fold because.. bing bing bing.. THEY DON'T MAKE ANY PROFITS THAT ARE WORTH THEIR STOCK VALUE!
Disclaimer: I don't think this will happen but...
There are a number of clever and subtle ways to bias the discussion and some of them include the way you choose the people that will get the moderation points, without touching the editorial part of the news.
Lets say that the administrator is interested in putting out more articles about "enterprise computing" (something VA could possibly be interested in doing, if they where unethical) as opposed to "civil rights disscusion":
All you have to do is to change the algorithm that chooses moderators and make it give more points to people that did post on enterprise computing threads.
This will mean that the next round of moderators will "probably" give more points to people talking about enterprise computing (generally that is what they would be interested in and good at because otherwise they wouldn't post to the enterprise threads) who in turn will come back to talk more often because the good posts get moderated up!.
You do the opposite for the "Civil rights" type of guy, so he doesn't get a chance of doing moderation, and is less likely to be moderated up (or down, but this would only show to him that there is no interest on this threads).
After some time of running this system you would have a site where there is a lot more talking about enterprise computing and the community would just think that _they_as_a_community_ stopped being interested in civil rights or whatever.
It would be very dificult for anyone to be able to tell that the way moderators are chosen is twicked because the results are just probabilisticly leaning towards some spin, and this spin is coming from commentators, not from editorialists.
VERY paranoic but there you go... Pirilon
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
> Does anyone really give credibility to a CBS story on Viacom,
Or a Microsoft story on MSN... !
"sworn to defend Slashdot's editorial independence"
This means that even the Andover mgmt team thinks there is a possibility that VA might infact try to control/guide the Andover media group.
Imho, whatever the VA/Andover people say the whole deal isn't positive for the Slashdot community at all. It might be for the Slashdot staff but not for us users...
The problem, the way I see it from experience with mergers and buy-offs. Is the company who is performing the aquisition bought them for a reason You don't just through away money, not when you are in the highly competitive technology world. They have reasons for purchasing, and what are those reasons. Those are what concern me. It may not even show up for a few years, who knows.
V
"I wonder if Rob and Co will now disclose their stock holdings in the companies they report on (like most respectable journalists)."
To me this seems like the critical question-- if a negative story about VA will cost Rob&c money, then we have to expect they'll spin it in the other direction.
These lines: "I almost quit when I heard about the merger... Since then I have been personally reassured by Larry Augustin..." also give me pause, because *persuasion* is what makes capitalism run, and there's no way to draw a line between a little 'safe' persuasion and a whole lot of utter-crap persuasion.
If VA/Andover screws them up, all the Slashdot folks need to do is to just resign and take Slashdot somewhere else.
Hmm, are there any non-compete clauses in the Slashdot crews contracts? If so, they might not be able to do that.
George
As the representative of Anonymous Cowards everywhere, I vow our support to your wonderful cause!
We have been working in secret to discover the robotic monkeys' weakness, and are proud to say that WE HAVE FOUND IT! They apparently live in a symbiotic relationship with REAL monkeys, and are actually controlled by the collective mind of all the monkeys on Earth!
Therefore I say... that for each First Post, for each time Natalie Portman, Mae Ling Mak, or Grits is mentioned, for each time someone posts with just the words "Me Too" in the comment section, for each time someone posts something excessively long, for each time someone uses a complaint generator to generate their post, for each time someone flames someone else for bad spelling, for each time someone mentions a Beowulf Cluster, for each time someone flames Microsoft, for each time anyone mentions Monkeys in a serious context, for each time someone creates a run-on-sentence, for each flame based on grammar, for each Jon Katz article... and anything else not mentioned that Trolls and ACs are good at... we will kill a live monkey! Their reign will soon end under the huge terrorizing force of Slashdot Spam!!!
(23 monkeys were killed as a result of this post.)
How does roblimo (Andover management) posting fit into editorial independence? I've seen his name on a ton of posts.
One monkey died as a result of this post.
Then Andover bought /.. And we got assurances that /. would continue to enjoy the same editorial independence. I think that's probably the case...as long as the same staff runs the show. And since Andover is really nothing more than a collection of web sites, they are very dependent upon maintaining their audience in order to maintain their advertising revenues.
Or are they?
Andover's acquisition by VA Linux kind of throws that into question, in my mind. You can hardly say that VA Linux's goals are the same as Andover's (unless "make money" is the only goal). But I think that, for now, /. will remain the same /. that it has become.
Maybe /. will change and it will become just another highly focused techno-news portal. Maybe somebody at VA Linux will decide that things need to be different at /. and order a change. It's their site...they can do what they want. And if that happens, and if it creates a void in the nerd news system, another site will spring up. Never fear.
But, after not just a few years working in the merger happy tech world, I can say with some degree of certainty that management will defend an ideal only until the heat is turned up just so high. Everyone has a boss and at some point somebody's integrity will collapse.
This merger isn't the downfall of /.. It's part of the natural evolution of a hugely popular web site. And it's just business.
I hope in all this that the
I know that "journalistic integrity" isn't directly related to "editorial independence", but some of the reaction to this merger is to treat Slashdot as if the New York Times had been bought. Yes, we all expect that stories of interest to us on all sides of things continue to be published. That's a serious implication. But to hear "journalism" tossed about in this discussion is looking at things the wrong way.
Without the huge open-source community here behind it, Slashdot is just another weblog, and that does not change just because the ticker symbol does. Don't lose sight of that.
There are a number of clever and subtle ways to bias the discussion and some of them include the way you choose the people that will get the moderation points, without touching the editorial part of the news.
Lets say that the administrator is interested in putting out more articles about "enterprise computing" (something VA could possibly be interested in doing, if they where unethical) as opposed to "civil rights disscusion":
All you have to do is to change the algorithm that chooses moderators and make it give more points to people that did post on enterprise computing threads.
My only question about this would be who picks the moderators?
If it's a program (implied by the word algorithm), wouldn't it show up in the Slashdot code? It if showed up on the code the AC's with axes to grind would be posting it immediately.
It's it's a personal preference of the editor's, well then we're back to bias again.
George
To: 'jay@wired.com'; 'webmonkey@wired.com'
(I'm writing this from my NT4 box while I'm still setting up my new Debian box, so pardon the use of MS Outlook.)
After reading your "Et tu, Slashdot" article, I'm struck by the lack of solid facts you incorporate in your writing and prognosis of the future for Slashdot and Andover. What gives? VA Linux isn't even a *software* company, for crying out loud; they integrate hardware into systems, provide support and services, help out with a lot of free software efforts, and do a damn good job of it. (Think Dell, not Microsoft.) And the sale of Slashdot to VA Linux certainly isn't making the kinds of waves in the Linux/Open Source community that you might think it is. VA Linux are good people, it's hardly like Corel or IBM or another corporate "Hey, we discovered Linux last week" entity is buying them out.
I'd wager that most Slashdot readers (like myself) don't ultimately care which Linux/Open Source company pays the bills for Slashdot, so long as content isn't affected. And knowing the history of CmdrTaco and company, if anyone tried to put the big smack down on editorial freedom and fair posting, they'd get hit hard by their readers and move somewhere else. Even if someone else ended up owning the domain name for Slashdot, the content would live on in other places. The 'net will route around problems.
What this sounds like is a lazy attempt at getting a "relevant" article out before deadline. Writing like this is why I don't *pay* for Wired anymore, and rarely visit your sites. Outside of Webmonkey's excellent tutorials, there just ain't much good content left in the Wired name.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
If Slashdot turns into a corporate shill zone, we in the "anarchistic" Linux hacker community will find another place to hang out. Simple as that. Just like when they tore down the only video arcade in my hometown and put up a Staples.
slashnot.com,.net,.org are not available, at least according to the netwroksolutions lookup page.
-josh
All you have to do is to change the algorithm that chooses moderators and make it give more points to people that did post on enterprise computing threads.
This will mean that the next round of moderators will "probably" give more points to people talking about enterprise computing (generally that is what they would be interested in and good at because otherwise they wouldn't post to the enterprise threads) who in turn will come back to talk more often because the good posts get moderated up!.
To an extent this already occurs on /., although not officially through a change to the site's source code. It's far easier to earn points through extolling the virtues of open source and/or Linux than it is to write a genuine piece on how MS isn't the root of all evil. This isn't a policy - it's just that these are the prevaling views on /. and so moderators look more favourably at the former than the latter. That's just human nature unfortunately.
Of course another complicating factor here are moderators who only moderate articles already at 2 or 3, also leaving less chance of a post getting a good score. But I don't really want to start a(nother) rant about the /. moderation system so I'll leave it there.
Having media channels owned by large corporations with mixed interestets is nothing new. Most newspapers and television stations have experienced this for a long time now. Still we usually trust that their news coverage is fair and unbiased. The independence of the editor is a will established and respected institution. What it usually comes down to is if we trust the people that deliver the news and stories, and I think that Malda, Hemos and the rest of the Slashdot team hasn't done anything yet to make us loose that trust. If we find that Slashdot starts to be a propaganda machine for VA we will quickly loose both interest and trust in Slashdot. Personally I believe that the Slashdot gang would rather quit than be a part of such a development. BTW, could all you trolls out there stop picking on Katz, I hope that the Linux community still is open enough to accept that people have different opinions and views than themselves. Christian Schaller Uraeus@linuxrising.org
Actually, the internal joke is that I do so much worrying about editorial integrity that no one else has to do any. There's truth to this. I come out of "old school" alternative journalism, back when weekly alternative newspapers were more interested in covering news the increasingly monopolized dailies overlooked than in selling futon ads and 900-number "telepersonals."
So please do wait and see. I work with people I respect; we don't always agree, but we *do* respect each other and each others' opinions. We screw up from time to time because Slashdot is, in many ways, an experiment in new ways to gather and distribute news. By definition, when you are experimenting you are bound to fail more often than if you stick to the "tried and true," but on the whole, I believe we have more successes than failures. And that's what counts in the long run.
More than anything, I worry about losing Slashdot's freedom to innovate (if I can use that phrase without stepping on a Microsoft copyright *grin*). One of the beauties of Slashdot is the fact that it's constantly changing, and if Rob et al are ever held back by a risk-averse management more interested in this quarter's profit than in trying new things that might lead to a better product (in this case, news and discussion) later, this site will slowly wither away.
But again, I do enough worrying about this for the whole bunch. I don't mind doing this, because I am a natural worrier. Note that both my Slashdot and "Andover corporate" e-mail addresses are easy to find because I *want* feedback and take all reader concerns to heart, even ones with which I don't agree. I try to personally answer as much e-mail as I can, although I've admittedly been getting a little sloppy on this front because of increased e-mail volume and increased job responsibilities.
My main point, though, is to make sure you know that it's not just Slashdot people who worry about the site's integrity, but the entire Andover management crowd. A large part of the reason Andover bought Slashdot in the first place is that it was the most popular news site among Andover employees. And it still is!
- Robin 'roblimo' Miller
Mergers are bad. Always.
I'm disappointed that more Slashdot readers don't seem to feel this way;
Oil companies are merging; media companies are merging; telecommunications companies are merging; ISP's are merging; internet companies are merging; Linux companies are merging.
People don't care now because the economy's floating along and their stocks are going up, but this is all wrong -- giving all the power to the few big companies is gonna come back and hurt the consumer.
Go read about Teddy Roosevelt.
Two cents: 1) Obviously the article itself is rather hypocritical. As the author himself comes close to mentioning, the same is true of just about every content site. Witness that amazing article in Time magazine a while back where the author attempts to figure out who exactly he works for. 2) Regarding a "personal assurance" from the President of VA Linux: I think this misses the point. As the author mentions, it isn't about people any more, it's about stockholders. Nobody who works for VA Linux is in *any way in charge*. This is important to remember. As a public company, Slashdot and VA Linux are responsible to their shareholders - and that responsibility entails making money. The personal opinions or mores of anyone working for either company no longer matter, in a very real sense. That is why content sites often go the way of the commercial junk heap.
The players tried to take the field. The marching band refused to yield...
Two cents:
1) Obviously the article itself is rather hypocritical. As the author himself comes close to mentioning, the same is true of just about every content site. Witness that amazing article in Time magazine a while back where the author attempts to figure out who exactly he works for.
2) Regarding a "personal assurance" from the President of VA Linux: I think this misses the point. As the author mentions, it isn't about people any more, it's about stockholders. Nobody who works for VA Linux is in *any way in charge*. This is important to remember. As a public company, Slashdot and VA Linux are responsible to their shareholders - and that responsibility entails making money. The personal opinions or mores of anyone working for either company no longer matter, in a very real sense. That is why content sites often go the way of the commercial junk heap.
The players tried to take the field. The marching band refused to yield...
Bullshit.... show me two worthwhile AC comments in the history of slashdot and I will be amazed.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
...guy who used to be with Wired. I mean, they got close to IPOing at least twice and never quite mananged to cash in. Probably just jealous.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Something that brings a slight smile to my face is the persistant use of the word "merger" by the Slashdot/Andover people, and the use of the word "acquisition" by everyone else (including VA Linux).
It almost sounds like Slashdot is trying to put a spin on it like they are partnering with VA or something, to kind of keep it looking "impartial". VA *owns* Slashdot. There is no merger.
Slashdot will continue to be a better-than-average news source.
The "community" is going to have to look elsewhere for "community-ness" because "community" and big-business don't mix, whatever Slashdot or Andover or VA has to say.
Look at various movements that started as a "community" and where they are now. Aren't the roots of the PC in a "community". Look at the PC industry now...
Jon Katz, Slashdot's self-appointed crusader against corporate misdeeds, has been silent on the matter.
/.'ed.
Anyone else notice that this guy sounds a whole lot like Katz? He also reminds me of Dvorak: it looks like this entire article is about hitting a nerve and getting his article
Just a thought,
-Sam Black
The connecion here is too good to pass up.
Since Slashdot is open source -- all the way up to the code actually running -- it is possible for a dedicated group of folks to create a new Slashdot if this one gets corporatized.
By opening the source, Slashdot's most irreplacable assets are now the skill and integrity of its story authors and editors. Which means that if that skill and integrity falls too low, slashdot can be replaced.
In this sense, VA/Andover/Murdoch/Fox/Disney/MegaCorp would be foolish to try to comprimise the reputation and integrity of Generalissimo Taco: They would be burning the only really valuable assset Slashdot has. The open code guarantees that all the rest of Slashdot is replaceable, and so provides a sort of insurance policy to us that we have do not have a Soft Taco Supreme.
--G
>I don't think you have to worry about corporate pressure from VA
It could be more covert actions from VA. As an employee of VA the editors of Slashdot will be bombarded with news of the good and holy works of the head office. It could also be the internal gossip/grapevine that could also provoke an imbalance in their views.
The editors will get news/propaganda from VA from the normal slashdot submission box AND from their management.
I feel that already they colour the content of Slashdot with their personnel lifes. I mean how many stories do we have on nanotech?
>then they will be the ones that are hurting, because in the hearts and minds of Slashdot readership, they will be viewed as being no better than Micros~1.
But when will we know? When that 5th story on VA is posted in one week, will we ALL automaticly jump into outrage-mode?
>they realize that serving the community in a non-biased way will help their stock portfolios in the long run,
Actually, technology stock prices has nothing to do with people who use the technology. Its all about the people who buy and sell stocks. Slashdot has a reputation which could last them for a long time, regardless of any uprising a few disgrunted, ex-readers have. They will still get the hits which is what is important to stocks.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I've noticed that nobody has yet asked ``Why'' Why IS VA, a linux hardware company buying andover, website hosting/owning company?
Why did they purchase it? Companies don't tend to foolishly spend a whole lot of money for no reason.
Is VA doing this because they support linux, that they are going to funnel more money into linux projects? If this is it, then why buy slashdot/freshmeat, you'd be better off creating another Precision Insight, or funding Abiword or GNOME development.
Is VA doing this because they want to (eventually) bias the editorial content, like the media companies?
Or, is Andover falling over, and VA came over as a white knight to rescue the important linux infrastructure of Freshmeat and Slashdot? If this was the case, then haven't we heard about it before?
Microsoft buying/building MSN and MSNBC parallel doesn't work in this case. There is a strong strategic reason for it. Microsoft along with AOL knew that computer networks and widespread ubiquious networking was going to happen. Both fought over controlling it, though (thank god) the open internet blindsided both. Microsoft thought with their OS monopoly and content that they could funnel and attract people into their own commerce network and make lots of profit. VA doesn't have this reason, andover's most public properties don't sell anything more than banner ads.... (unless they're planning on changing this?) And banner ads aren't going to scale to large profits.
So, why did VA butt their nose in where they knew it wouldn't be desired, into purchasing a company that seems to have no importance in any strategic plan?
There once was a man from Andover Who asked Slashdot to bendover He bribed them it seems And fulfilled all their dreams But slashdot as we knew it is over
So let's suppose that our nightmares come true and Slashdot becomes a mouthpiece for VA and posts unashamedly biased reports. The cost of entry to this little marketplace is so amazingly low that a competing site (let's call it Crashpoint) would appear within days, if not hours, and we would all skip over there to get our daily fix of nerdnews. We Slashdot readers aren't stupid and it's not as if anybody would have to rebuild something like cnn.com from scratch.
The result would be that Slash loses its ad revenue and VA loses a very valuable jewel in its crown. So if the Slashdot/VA guys have any sort of clue, they'll continue to be independent.
As an aside, it wouldn't hurt for Slashdot to have a prominent 'Part of the VA Network' banner or something so that all know where we stand.
As another aside, I think it would make sense if there were more competition to Slashdot, just to keep the guys on their toes. If only ntk were updated daily. I wouldn't point my browser anywhere else.
Crashpoint.com is available at all good domain name resellers, by the way.
It is high time that slashdot came clean and dropped the fiction of independant not-for-profit org status and became slashdot.com. Either that or they should divorce themselves from Andover and VA linux and set up a real not-for-profit organisation that is supported by independant means. Perhaps a consortium could be funded by the numerous open-source companies to run a truely independant forum site.
Aren't most dot-com investors betting on future profits, and how long are they willing to wait? When they begin to lose patience, you will probably see some correction. It's the same old story: tortoise vs. hare, or value-investing vs. dotcom-mania. Or, call it Warren Buffet's revenge. (I'm dying to see the market's response to the outcome of the MS antitrust case.)
It seems to me that the high price per share of VA Linux is more a function of supply and demand than of value. Same goes for RedHat. There just isn't much stock available, and there are plenty of people who want to get in on the action no matter the cost.
FYI, I'm not too worried about the fact that VA Linux bought Andover.net. The Internet is a big place, and there are other places to read the news and to discuss events. If slashdot shows signs of rigormortis, others will replace it. There are too many intelligent and outspoken readers following slashdot for this not to happen. This will keep Rob and the others on their toes.
We'll be watching.
We'll also be hyper-sensitive to anything that even appears pro-VA biased.
The sad thing about this deal (VA buying Andover.net) is that there are probably good things to come from VA. But sing the praises of them on /. or freshmeat...and expect backlash. It may be that the uncomfortable purchase of Andover by VA will limit the favorable coverage of the latter by the publishers with the former.
Good luck. You'll need it.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
And furthmore, I could prove in the history. In the last month would a more difficult case, but still doable. In 98 (gasp!) I posted anonymously most of the time (still do) and many others did also. Since you are in the twenty thousand range for an ID, I think you would know that. When there was no first post comments or anything like that.
I'm more amazed you even wrote that. Moderators have an unfair bias against Anonymous Cowards, as none of my Anonymous comments ever seem to be moderated up. And this one won't be either.
Since when did /. have a whole topic dedicated to VA anyway?
Well, andover's been around since 1992 (albeit in software publishing rather than online ad-serving), so at least someone heard about them before.
;)
As for whether slashdot has improved or depreciated since the Good Ol' Days (TM), I'd have to say it's done neither. C'mon, you remember what a pain it was to read/post on slashdot before threaded comments were implemented, and you remember how nice it was when nested comments were later implemented (and if you need to remind yourself how inconvenient it was before, just hop on over to technocrat.net, unless Bruce has upgraded to the latest slash version). Cachedot.slashdot.org was cute in its day, but isn't it nicer just to have the main site have more serving capacity? (Of course that could use another upgrade, and cachedot was long after the primordial age you're pining for.) The editorial content hasn't changed much -- slashdot was always quick to announce, quick to get it wrong, and quick to retract. There're certainly more trolls than before, but that's inevitable and the moderation takes care of them as it should.
I'd say it has to be you.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
These are the thoughts I had while reading the article..... "But this simple equation (good content = good money) no longer applies, because Slashdot has ceased to be a part of an over-valued content company and now belongs to the content arm of a ridiculously over-valued software company." VA=software???????? "Remember that Red Hat did its best to reward Linux programmers with bargain stock prior to its IPO." That is not what I read... I thought quite a few people were upset with Red Hat. I thought VA tried to do this. Didn't VA 7,000 emails send out to cover as many people as possible? "the flawed feature from VA or the slightly better version from Red Hat?" Does this mean Mr. Greenspan thinks that Red Hat produces hardware? Or that he really believes VA is in the software business? It would just seem to me if Mr. Greenspan is going to comment about Linux and its community, should he not try to at least get the players and their products correct? just my opinion and you can't take that away from me.
What I propose is two tiers: the Slashdot staff do the preliminary work in filtering out trolls, unnewsworthy items, etc. Then it should be up to the community (or a segment that cares) to moderate up the submissions and the top 10 or so get posted. Or perhaps we could reverse who gets first cut at moderation every week just to make things interesting.
Some benefits to this method: If Mr. Katz' articles aren't up to snuff, they won't make the cut. Perhaps more authors will consider writing for this technically savvy bunch of savages. May the best organic unit win!
Linh
A. This is the same AC you responded to.
But are you the one, true AC?
B. I never see 'first post' posts because I set my filter too high to see them and hence, do not get annoyed like most of the anti-AC retards around here.
But do you see your own posts? If an AC posts, but has his threshold set at 1, is he still an idiot?
C. I still think your original post lacks enough grounding to make your conclusion. I am indeed saddened that someone moderated it up further.
I couldn't imagine why he was bothering to argue
with an AC, so I lowerd my threshold to see. I shouldn't have bothered.
D. I just poured a bowl of hot grits down the front of my pants in protest.
Ah, a true troll. Now I can set my threshold back up to 1.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Those wily Slashdot puppetmasters have slyly undermined the resistance to their corruption by showcasing to such breathtakingly lame attacks.
What else can explain linking to an article that calls VA a "software company" in "direct competition" with Red Hat, and which implies that VA didn't have a community stock offering like Red Hat's. Why else would they select an article that renders itself easily dismissable by blithely asserting that there is no potential conflict of intrest between Lycos and Hotwired?
Only to discredit their attackers! But their sinister scheme must not succeed--onward, freedom fighters!
It appears many people believe stockholders will invariably demand immoral or near illegal behaviour from the companies they own. How come?
Successful companies enjoy near total freedom as far as the stock holders go. And VA Linux is so very very successful. Remember, most stock owners don't understand VA Linux' or Red Hats' business case anyway - they just enjoy the booming stock. The idea that they would, en masse, turn around and demand the resignation of the board or the CEO because some nerd site doesn't post propaganda is absurd.
Now when/if the bubble bursts and the stock takes a nose-dive, that's when we're in trouble (or, rather, Slashdot). Nobody likes to lose money, and if enough stock holders think the board/CEO has substantially mishandled the company, there may be some ruckus. But not many people are going to rock the boat now, when they don't even know what's making the magic carpet fly!
I'd really like to see some cases where a company that was trying to do "the right thing" was lambasted by their stock holders for it. Until then, I'll put this tired argument down as yet another FUD issue.
Perhaps CmdrTaco shared the same concerns as Roblimo before all of this happened. He might have heard that VA was going to buy Andover.net and end up with control of Slashdot.
:)
:)
If that's case, then he made a very intelligent move, and it's called Slash
Think about it, there was probably the fear that VA would gain control of slashdot, and there would be nothing the current maintainers of the site could really do. So they rush and get the code out there as a form of insurence. Now, anything happens, they simply jump ship, grab a tarball off of sourceforge and start anew. I don't think there is much doubt that the readers would follow.
I've been trying to figure out why the sudden change in their stance on slash and why they released it so fast, now I think I know.
Finkployd
Things do change. Slashdot is not a News for Nerds anymore, it's News for Linuxnerds. Which, by the way, had nothing to do with Andover or VA, it has been like this for a while now. And while I'm a linux user myself, I get sad when I look at the quality of Slashdot lately. Even if the articles are OK, and unbiased Nerdnews (which they aren't), the comments are of such low level, that I really wonder how many people with a login ID 70% of the comments on that poll are useless...
Maybe someone (with a BEEG pipe) needs to stand up and take Slash0.9 (finally!) to make a real "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters", and let Andover's "News for Linux develkernelusers, Polls that are too silly to even comment on" die a quiet death.
Disclaimer: I don't have a BEEG pipe.
<grub> Reading
sheesh. reading that article made me wonder if it /. still provides the best news
was talking about VA/Andover or just the coming of
the apocalypse. It sounded as though it should be
read by Satan (or your personal [a]religious
choice of a mightily evil being) himself in a loud
booming voice. I hope that what he says does not
come true and that
for nerds.
Before the buyout/merger, would Slashdot have posted anti-Slashdot articles at all? I don't particularly remember any, although Slashdot wasn't as high-profile back then, so external critical articles may not have existed.
Personally, I don't feel that Slashdot has any particular responsibility to put themselves on a whipping post to "prove" their independence.
--
And since "extrans" doesn't seem to work at the moment I had to use HTML formatting which screwed up the next paragraph:
...how many people with a login ID <10000 have "mode=nocomment". The only thing people can post here is GPL/BSD license advocacy. I would like to see a poll named: "My default threshold is". Oh, and throw in a "Hemos the Hamster" in the answers, so we can make sure >70% of the comments on that poll are useless...
<grub> Reading
Except that I don't think it's capitalism (the desire to make money) that's keeping Hemos and Roblimo (and probably CmdrTaco, though I've not met him) running Slashdot. I've talked to them, and they've told me that they work on Slashdot because they enjoy it, not because they need the money. They don't need the stress or the additional work, but they want to make the site stay useful and interesting and as free as possible.
You're welcome to question their motives, but you're doing them a disservice to say that money is the largest (or only) factor in what they do.
--
how to invest, a novice's guide
This actually brings Slashdot closer to its worst enemy, Segfault.org. (Just kidding Rob, we love you really! :)
Segfault has been assisted by VA for quite some time now. When I left my last company Segfault nearly went homeless, and VA came to the rescue, securing us a machine to use, paying for it to be hosted in the states etc.
Hell, they even payed the cost of a transatlantic plane ticket to bring me to LinuxWorld Expo last year.
Even Slashdot received help from VA in the early days.
VA has a long history of helping the Open Source community and working with it the best they can. Their own portal site, linux.com is pretty unbiased and SourceForge is a huge benefit to the community.
I really don't think VA are stupid enough to mess about with Slashdot, they are well aware of the value it has to the Open Source community if its left as it is.
Just my two cents, I'm gonna go and hide now and hope nobody caught me reading Slashdot :)
We all bemoan the idea that some day, all the new moneyed interests in the Linux market are going to figure out some way of advancing their own financial interests by screwing the community. So, just think of this merger as insurance against at least one company's doing that. If slashdot/freshmeat/everything-else-andover.net-bou ght defines the community or at least the most vocal portions of the community, then having VA's revenue tied (in part) directly the community's happiness is a good incentive not to act contrary to the community's collective desires and interests.
:-)
If it were just about slashdot, then I might agree with some who'd say that the problem with corporate influence is not the obvious problems we see with companies like Microsoft but rather the subtle corrupting influences it has on a movement full of idealism. But remember, while slashdot may seem overly dominated by trolls and kiddies who wouldn't care about such corruption even if they could see it coming, Andover's other sites (particularly freshmeat) are dominated by the precise people who take the time to notice and care about these things: the programmers who fuel the open-source movement.
The sky is not falling. Now if only VA wanted to help the community a bit more with some more free hardware, we'd deign to be satisfied.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
The article makes a big deal about VA Linux vs. Redhat, saying that they're going to be going head-to-head and they'll probably cause at least the demise of one of them. Basically, all I know about VA I've learned from reading Slashdot (although I will soon have VA stock from this nice little buyout), but I've always thought that VA was primarily a hardware company and Redhat was primarily a software company. To me, it seems, it's much more likely that these two companies will work together rather than against each other. Does anyone else see it that way, or am I wrong about VA Linux?
On a side note, even with all this commercialization, the Linux community is stronger than ever. The companies that are investing themselves in Linux (like VA Linux and Redhat, but not companies like IBM) understand the community and are doing everything they can to support it and each other. It's a far cry from the nasty capitalism that most companies partake in.
Open source and big bucks and pretty problematic mixtures. I remember Bezroukov's paper about this and he suggested that open source is an academic community and like science should strive for independence and should not mix with big bucks. A good test would be to see how GNU will be treated on Slashdot.
Open source and big bucks are pretty problematic mixture. I remember Bezroukov's paper about this and he suggested that open source is an academic community and like science should strive for independence and should not mix with big bucks. A good test would be to see how GNU will be treated on Slashdot.
The big danger isn't about slashdot becoming VA oriented. VA could concievably be good for Slashdot. The big danger is what happens if a bigger fish than VA decides to buy out VA.
VA are trying to show themselves as a united open source/linux front, and doing a pretty good job at this. This does leave them open for other sharks.
If Microsoft decides that they best way into the Linux market is to buy out VA, what happens then?
If another company buys out VA and decides to really interfere in Slashdot, or sell it off to Lycos or Time Warner because it isn't needed or doesn't match the parent companies "vision", Slashdot could really end up suffering this way.
What needs to be done is to make sure that there is an Iron Clad contract that allows Slashdot a way out in the event of a hostile takeover.
They have this in that nobody can fire Taco or Hemos, but after this contract is up for review and Taco and Hemos decides that working for MS or Time Warner isn't where they want to be, Slashdot will fail.
Oh great...does this mean that CmdrTaco and Roblimo will be taking it in the ass from VA Linux? Hey guys, you gettin' any stock in this? And why hasn't Jon "I'm against everything corporate" Katz commented on this? Holy fucking bias Batman!
So in short...this is how all of you Linux nerds see things...
Anything Microsoft does = BAD EVIL ANTI-COMPETITION LONG LIVE COMMUNISM!!!
Anything the Linux community does = GREAT OPEN SOURCE LINUS RULES CAPITALISM 4 ALL SCREW GATES AND BALLMER WHAT BIAS NO LINUX SUPPORTER IS EVER BIASED!!!
Boy, maybe if you no-life morons would stop bitching about how evil the software market is (it's called capitalism, live with it, or move to China or Cuba you dumbfucks) and get back to working on your various Linux distros, then maybe Linux use would become mainstream for REAL, none of this "Oh hey a COLLEGE is using Linux!" shit. Besides, who would want to use something that's hard to configure? No wonder Linux has always, and will always, be known as an OS reserved solely for nerds and anti-capitalist communist motherfuckers.
Fucking hypocrites.
Whether or not Malde & associates have true independence will be seen on the day that they post a story that causes VA Linux stock to drop...
I bet your options aren't vested yet. You'd probably be giving up one hell of a lot if you just walked out.
As far as editorial independence goes, most news sites seem to have a fair amount of leeway from their owners e.g the Linux DVD community has received a fair amount of support from the press despite the fact that a large number of their associate companies may be part of the MPAA.
The problem I can see is that whilst I appreciate that Slashdot is not exclusively a Linux site, such users must make up a fair proportion of its readership. And if there's one thing Linux users like it is lots of choice. It seems that choice is going to be significantly lessened if companies such as VA and RedHat gobble up all the myriad companies under their own corporate umbrella. A huge number of people moved onto Linux so they didn't have to do things the Microsoft way.
In the main I have no objection to companies growing organically, but the Linux market is starting to look very acquisitive, and in the end this may severly curtail the amount of choice out there.
P.S. Aplogies for any typos - just had LASIK eye surgery, so vision is a bit blurred out of one eye at the moment.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Money. /. wants our readership. Good stories bring us here therefore they get more money. Simple as that. We really don't have that much to worry about. Granted some people might be worried that it will become less technical than it used to be but biased to companies? No, I'm not worried.
Andrew Shaw
Sadly Rob, I don't think it will help you too much to have VA keep their hands out of things (although I'm glad to hear they will keep their hands off). The problem is that now, even though you don't have any bias, you have an APPEARANCE of bias. And (as this posting of yours proves) you now have to think twice about everything - first you have to think 'do we want to post this' and then 'does posting this make us look biased?'. Even if you aren't biased (and so far I don't see you being biased), your editorial outlook has just been permanently altered, whether you like it or not.
Of course, I'm going to continue reading, but it won't be the same. Now in addition to deciding how I feel about your editorial stances, I will be analyzing them for bias. I suspect I won't find any, but that doesn't free me from having to look for them.
It's great that you posted this - it's best to get these things out in the open, rather than let people assume the worst.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Change of subject: What I do think, however, is that anonymous posting should only be anonymous to the readers, not to the site. i.e. You must be logged in to post, but there is always the option box for posting as an AC. This can be logged for up to 24h, for example, and thus the comments cannot be held against the user but truly stupid first post/hot grits/natalie portman posts can simply result in the user being terminated.
Just an idea...
Dave
Time for slashdot to distribute itself massively. Rob&Co don't have to lift a finger therefore they're not responsible. Instead of lazily leeching the slashdot submit queue, get your own site up.
I have an idea for an educational site that reduces computing to very simple concepts like:
The monitor is a machine that uses electronic signals to mix red, green, and blue in a rectangle of dots.
The printer is a machine that uses electronic signals to mix black and white dots or mix red, green, and blue dots on paper.
The sound card is a machine that uses electronic signals mix sounds in the speakers.
The scanner is a machine that separates colors on paper into red, green, and blue which it sends to the computer.
The device driver is a software machine that tells devices what to do with signals and what to send to the outside world.
The reason I want to do this is, there's got to be a way to take complete computer virgins and get them educated the right way rather than being elitists and just teaching them how to get on the net like good consumers then leaving them helpless and dependent.
Also a project i'm working on is to put the finishing touches on the all devices are files idea to allow interfaces like OCR to voice to be designed with a few lines of script code or even a simple drag of an file icon to a device icon (note unlike windows dragging a file to a device is exactly what the software is doing. In windows you need some redundant program for every different combination of tasks you might want to do)
Any takers?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Since this column mentioned me, I thought I ought to say why I haven't written about the VA takeover. The answer is pretty simple..nothing has happened yet that would offer anything to write about. Nobody on /. has been corrupted or interfered with, and to declare one's honesty and self-righteousness would be..well, self righteous and self-serving. The proof is in the evolution of the site, not in pious declarations. I've had sorry experiences with takeovers and mergers, from CBS News to Hotwired, and have never had trouble leaving. But I'm far from thinking that way. /. this week looks pretty strong to me. If Rob or anyone else here felt compromised, he'd be gone in a flash, taking a horde of people with him. It's not hard these days to find websites to start, write for or go to.
Rob (and Jeff and others) have created a brilliant, pioneering site with several missions I love and believe in. They are the best people I have worked for in my writing life, and I have complete confidence in them. Robin Miller is all sorts of interesting things, but corrupt isn't one of them.Nothing would make him happier than storming off in a huff and going for a ride on his boat.
I think Jay's declaration that Slashdot is doomed, and that the geek community has suffered a grevious blow is a bit knee-jerk, even premature (I asked him what's the difference between a "self-appointed" crusader and other kinds). The content on
But that would be an incredibly dumb thing for VA Linux to provoke, as the site would quickly become fairly worthless.
The people who put this site together had a great idea, and were helped by an enormous and impassioned community that is still very much here and very much engaged. They are entitled to whatever money and rewards they get out of this. As for me, I don't own stock in anything..Andover, VA Linux or any other place. I'm deleriously unattached. My own feeling is that it's way too early to make thunderous declarations about Slashdot's being doomed or saved. We'll see. But when the time comes for pompous pronouncements, I'll be lst in line..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
(This concludes my blatant sarcasm... for now...)
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
how many of us would bother filtering them out?
:), rather than something slow like netscape.
.}
I don't think that I have *ever* filtered out anything with junkbuster until it blinked at me. It's annoying, and it sucks power. I had a k6-200 brought to its knees by just two open pages (ok, an unaccellerated server).
Guess what, ad folks--I do follow ads sometimes--when the text shows me something interesting. Usually that means (like now) that I'm using lynx, the one true browser
\rant{I used to go to foxnews a lot. Now it's impossible to read without java (so they can throw ads better, apparently). Guess what? I've found that cnn is almost as good . .
anyway, the point is that if the damned things didn't blink, and didn't prevent a page from rendering, we probably wouldn't bother blocking them.
you should have to register to post. people who post about hot grits will have to do so with an id that can be revoked. maybe then slashdot will stop sucking so much.
Did the big corporate bad guys make you run it?
How come my mouse pointer is stuck looking like a hand?
Things change, by the way. If you sell your stock, you can start over
Score (-2) flamebait
Roblimo says that /. won't change. /. ??? Just for fun ? /dev/null.
So why VA bought
They paid big bucks for it. There must be
a 'business' issue here, it's an investment
for VA, nobody throws money into
They MUST expect something in return, huh ?
What that could be ?
Minek http://minek.nodevice.com
>Things do change. Slashdot is not a News for Nerds anymore, it's News
>for Linuxnerds. Which, by the way, had nothing to do with Andover
What the hell are you talking about? Slashdot has always been a linux-focused WWW site. You microsoft astroturfers are just pissed because you couldn't remake Slashdot into a pro-MS WWW site.
Personally I don't see anything wrong with VA Linux buying Andover. Better VA Linux rather than the clowns over at ZDNET.......
Yeah, you "almost quit" until you saw those dollar signs and realized your options are worthless if you did.
I guess money is king, even in the linux community!
The hope that the common market concerns will not reach into /. the way it has in every other media market where the company is publicly traded is just that hope. There is no option given enough time Slashdot will change, look at history for the reasoning.
Sheesh, when was Slashdot NOT News for Linuxnerds?
Didn't Slashdot BEGIN as Rob Malda's stream-of-consciousness diary about the joys and sorrows of setting up and running Linux?
I agree. Why, at this moment I'm responding to some clueless guy who is making silly statements on what Slashdot once was and what it has become.
-Jordan Henderson
...you know why? We've got the slashcode. That's right, if things get really bad, we can go and start our own "New For Nerds. Stuff That Matters." site. Wasn't this the whole point of the OSS movement? Having the flexibability to bend code to our needs? If we need a site with more editorial integrity, we simply go and start our own. Simple as that.
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
The journalist on webmonkey asks, what if Microsoft owned Webmonkey? The question here is, is anyone afraid that slashdot will be biased toward Linux? Well duh! Slashdot is "biased." Slashdot is mostly:
pro-geek
pro-linux
pro-BSD
pro-Apache
pro-any company that does good things for Linux (IBM, Loki, etc.)
anti-any company that does anything against Linux
anti-software patents
anti-censorship
etc.
Bring on the bias! Forbid Slashdot should ever lose its soul in the name of trying to look unbiased. I'd rather have a site where the authors let their personalities show. If you don't like the bias, or at least don't like to challege that bias in the comments then you* don't belong here.
*you meaning "one" here.
If there is bias, you will hear about it in the comments, and so will everyone else. And the moderators are also the posters. The users send in potential stories, and usually their own comments are what get posted. When a top-level poster (like Roblimo) editorializes we see the bias as well. Great! Bring it on!
I read with interest your recent article on the Andover / VA Linux merger.
Unfortunately, it was marred by a significant error on your part. You appear to believe that VA Linux is a software company, and will thus be in competition with Red Hat and other distribution companies. Therefore, your logic goes, it is inevitable that Andover and Slashdot will be biased against Red Hat.
However this argument is based on a faulty premise. VA Linux is not a software company, they are a hardware company. In fact, it is apparently possible to purchase VA Linux servers with Red Hat software preinstalled.
To quote from "http://www.valinux.com/products/software.html":
"Although we do not create our own distribution, VA optimizes the Linux kernel for each system type and includes the most popular Linux distributions preinstalled."
That kind of wrecks your whole argument, doesn't it?
BTW, I am not associated with VA Linux, Redhat, or any other Linux company, so I have no conflict of interest. But I like reading Slashdot.
You, on the other hand, work for a content company. A really big one, in fact. And Andover is a content company. Perhaps you have a conflict of interest that affected the accuracy of your article?
(This email has also been posted as a comment on Slashdot, which covered your story).
Torrey Hoffman
Azog on Slashdot
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Nothing lasts forever. Sometimes it gets better.
I find myself more afraid of not knowing what's going to happen than I am of any of the potential outcomes I can imagine.
The worst case scenario that I can think of: VALinux exerts some level of 'editorial control' of SlashDot content, but it is done so well and so subtley that we don't catch on for months or years.
A Suggestion (apologies if this has already been covered): Employees of VALinux, except for our leaders, are forbidden from posting on SlashDot. This would help. But an absolute: Employees of VALinux must NEVER be given moderator points, even if they do not identify themselves as employees of VALinux. Just like employees of companies sponsoring a contest are not allowed to enter the contest. And employees of OTHER distributors DO get to post and get moderator points. This is the price of 'owning' SlashDot. And part of the price of maintaining some integrity.
A Hope: If the worst happens, and this place 'goes commercial', a new site will spring up somewhere else.
A Fear: If the worst happens, hundreds of new sites will spring up, some of whom will be more 'product-biased' than any commercial site would ever dream of being, and others will devise a way so that only their private 'inner circle' ever get moderated up.
I am reminded of the pronouncements of the soothsayers and prognosticaters when this 'open source thing' was still in it's infancy. 'They' said things like:
--'anything designed by committee is inherently inferior',
--'it'll never amount to anything',
--'the best they could ever hope for is some simplistic OS whose only real-world application would be as a teaching tool for beginners',
--'they'll be lucky to get all the source to compile at one time, much less do something usefull'.
'They' were wrong once before. What do WE need to do to make 'Them' wrong again??
Perhaps the writer of this "editorial" should do some basic research on his topic before crying wolf for the community.
I think (and hope) VA's emphasis on distribution-neutral hardware will help keep things clean.
"Open Source Credentials?" How about project lead IA-64, cluster management, SourceForge, OpenProjects....
It's obvious this person has no clue who VA even is. If he did a little research (ESR on the board for crying out loud) he would probably pipe down.
While I agree that the Linux companies, red hat, va linux, et al. are grossly overvalued, the author of the article claimed that the $5Billion market cap value of VA Linux is unjustified compared to Compaq, Dell, HP, etc.
I'd like to point out that the market cap value of Dell is over $90Billion and Compaq's (who's market cap value should be much greater if it wasn't for their own distribution incompetence) is over $40Billion and I didn't bother to check HP's but one can say that it's up there. VA Linux's market value is pretty small in comparison. I'm pretty sure that when Michael Dell goes to sleep on his bed of money at night, he's not wondering what VA Linux is doing. (He's probably wondering how to expand the brand of Dell beyond pc's to other markets that IBM competes in.)
But in the end, Who really cares what I think?
Anyone know? The blurb on slashdot.org said slashdot will still post news from Red Hat and Penguin Computing, but there's only a slashdot topic icon for Red Hat. Isn't VA Linux in direct competition with a whole bunch of linux companies? Anyone got a list so we can keep track of who gets mentioned?
Next time we have Larry Augustin up for an interview, somebody remember this statement and ask the question:
"If you don't want to make any content changes to any Andover site, why, exactly, did you buy Andover?"
My guess is that the VA/Andover merger has to do with VA Linux wanting to increase their Linux mindshare, of emphasizing, in everyone's minds, that VA Linux means Linux, everything about Linux, all the time. If that's the case, it's a good answer, after all modern marketing is all about creating a "brand".
But, I'd like to hear the answer from Larry.
-Jordan Henderson
Y'all are a bunch of screaming meemees. It is done, and the disclaimers and such are out there in the open just like in every other news media...
/. to a higher standard than TIME?
/. now?
Take the recent Time/Warner/AOL merger: Time magazine routinely announced the obvious conflict of interest in reporting on the subsidiary branches' issues. Actually, IMO they tended to be a little bit harsh in their judgements. Maybe it is just to put the less paranoid of us at ease while they are in the spotlight...or maybe they actually have Ethics.
Should we hold
Well, we can and DO...with the open forum here.
Is anyone really wound up enough to leave
More importantly, are we going to have to go through 1001 days/threads of haranguing them for their angle on this or that story? If so, the S/N ratio is going to take a hit and we are going to see an increase in "good ol' days before they got bought out" threads--->lower S/N
Can we have a "no finger-pointing bullshit ethics discussion" checkbox? That would help. Some people can't see the forest for the ticks.
John
OK, I wasn't there from the very very beginning. (btw, I recently changed my username, so my high login doesn't say everything :)
But I do know that it was more interesting to read Slashdot about 1.5 years ago.
And about your comment "when was Slashdot NOT News for Linuxnerds", well, it seems Slashdot really doesn't want that image themselves, otherwise they would have a) changed their motto to "News for Linuxnerds" and b) not desperately trying to pay some attention to, for instance, BSD and apache.
<grub> Reading
Is it just me, or are these new ad cookies coming from Slashdot brand new?
Didn't the slashdot blurb say they will continue to cover stories about Red Hat and Penguin Computing? I can say that I remember seeing some Red Hat posts but there's not even a slashdot topic icon for Penguin, and try the slashdot search engine for these companies. Is there a bias towards VA Linux Systems? Who are VA's competitors and is anyone going to keep track of whether VA competitors get mentioned?
Those of you with your browsers set to "warn before accepting a cookie" will notice that /. has suddenly started trying to give out ad cookies. Just started today, I think.
Any relation to the VA takeover, Rob, or just coincidence?
And I notice that you have a privacy statement, but it doesn't tell me much about how these cookies are helping you "server me better when I return to the site".
ps - In the past I've supported you through thick and thin, but surely you're geek enough to realize that ad cookies are the first sign of generative disorders in a web site. Ditch them now, before it's too late.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You just backed up what the previous commenter said. Your instant jump to assume that anybody who isn't gung-ho all-the-way Linux committed is a 'microsoft astroturfer' characterizes you as part of the 'dominant minority' of Linuxnerds on Slashdot.
Have you ever thought that some of us prefer a mixed computing environment? Say, one that includes significantly more than just Linux and Microsoft OSes?? Try a BSD on for size sometime. Maybe even look at the BeOS.
Or just sit there and crow about your one-true-path OS.
The problem with VA buying /. is not that editorial independance is going to be compromised today, or next week, or even next month.
/. becoming the propoganda arm of VA is to believe that promises, once made, will never be broken, and that the vision of VA will always remain what it is today --- and any student of history, or of business, can tell you that both are unlikely.
The problem is that some day in the future Larry Augustin might _change his mind_ --- or, if he's honorable enough to do that, the internet stock crash that people have been predicting will come, he'll be gone, and whoever comes after him will no longer feel bound by his agreement.
To believe that there is no risk of
I wish I had andover stock so I could vote against this merger.
What if after a couple years of slashdot independence there was a scandal involving VALinux?
I personally imagine it like The Insider, the story about the 60 minutes producer who broke the story about the brown and williamson tabacco company with Pacino, and Russel Crowe. I imagine CmdrTaco as Pacino the hardened geek fighting against Larry to release the news of the major security breach discovered by their testing organization.
I can see some tester being convinced by CmdrTaco to go to Linux World and tell the world.
Start keeping a diary! It could be a script one day.
Calling yourself "Metrol" is just as anonymous as an AC. How exactly are you accountable for the things you post here? Who are you?
It is already too late to matter.
The signs of Slashdot's decline are already out there. Any time this much of a site's bandwidth is tied up with these meta-discussions of the site itself, a line has been crossed. It seems like a sizeable percentage of the discussion here is Slashdot-centered stuff about Moderation, Meta-Moderation, Slashdot-owned-by-outsiders, etc. Slashdot has become very self-indulgent, quite obsessed with "we're so great, we aim to keep it that way" reasoning.
Which is deadly stuff. Like a formerly effective committee that slowly becomes stacked with Robert's Rules type people.
As far as /. goes, this site is brain candy. They don't even bother with copy editors like a decent content house. /. will be gone in a flash when someone figures out how to really write about open source software, not just link to other people's stories.
Slashdot has always been the most misinformation-filled site on the web, but now finally it will be PURPOSEFUL misinformation.
No matter the alturistic ideals VA was founded on as a stock holder they better damn well make money ot I'll vote my shares for someone else. That is the stockholder rational and soon when the shares begin to spread around hat will be the prevalent attitude of the majority of share holders...imagine the scene at the 1st share-holders meeting...we opted to not make a profit to support OSS community...I can hear the UPROAR NOW....reality sets in and corporate politics take over it is UNSTOPPABLE...ask the Woz...
Of all websites, Slashdot rates highly in my humble opinion because it has a very well thought out moderation system. Okay, so it's not perfect, but it's probably the best out there.
/. crew could post their own stories (hey - it's still their site!) but we would know it was because they chose it themselves and not the unwashed masses (moderators). Similarly, if a high profile story dissing VA was voted on by the moderators, yet rejected by the /. team, then that bias would also be noted.
/. has really lost it.
/. in the hands of the people that care about it for what it is, and not how much money it can make!
:-)
The idea that a regular member of the community can gain temporary moderator status could surely be used to help filter the hundreds of new story submissions.
If Rob and Co don't want any random user selecting stories, how about the moderators get to see what the queued stories are, and vote on the stories that are interesting? This would be a form of meta-posting, and if this list was visible to the whole community, then any bias at the hands of the "now evil corporate Malda and his evil henchmen" actually happened, then everyone could see it.
For example, the
If this is implemented soon, before any chance that the contract Rob has with Andover/VA is questioned then it would be difficult to remove it - there would be too many questions asked.
Okay, so it wouldn't stop Rob from modifying the backend code, but if things get that bad, then
It's not a perfect solution I'm sure, but it should keep
So, use this idea now and claim prior art before I patent it! (joke)
This article was so obviously biased, I must wonder if they athuor is mad because he didn't get offered to take part in the VA IPO. Which reminds me - he herolds Redhat's IPO giveaway as such a benifit to the open-source community, but nary a mention of the VA IPO giveaway was mentioned.
I've yet to see VA make any overt Microsofty moves, nor do I expect to. It wouldn't make sense to be a bully in the OSS community - you'd be dropped like a 2 ton sack of hot potatoes!
Hey, Slashdot was a great site for quite some time - it remained interesting much longer than most other web sites. I've learned a lot from the discussions here. But eventually, everything comes to an end. Today, Slashdot is about hot grits and Natalie Portman, and it's even kind of funny. Yes, all the other comments about Open Source being the greatest thing since sliced bread are still there, but they're the same as last year, and the year before. Everyone who was on Slashdot when it was worthwhile should just be thankful for the great time, and move on. Clinging to the remains of what Slashdot once was ist just so undignified.
It describes a clueless "suit" at andover.net who apparently apparently needs some lessons on the whole free software idea.It would be nice to get an informed explanation other than "just another clueless marketing droid". Also I think that attitudes like this are rather incompatible with the philosophy behind slashdot.org
Andover.Net and the deep pockets of Wilber the GIMP
There's people reading Slashdot for a lot of various reasons, there's people posting on Slashdot for various reasons, but there's nothing connecting these people into what may be called a "community". Online Communities are an invention of Yahoo's maketing people.
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Play Match-It.
Subject says all. :-)
What would keep Malda and company from simply doing it again elsewhere if VA pissed them off enough?
Nothing as far as I could see. The Slashdot faithful would follow I am sure.
They haven't un-GPL'ed the slashcode have they?
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
Bias is most likely to appear in the form of an absence of negative stories about VA Linux and its business units. I'd be very suprised to see stories titled "VA Linux, Inc. - overpriced and overhyped?", or "Alternatives to Sourceforge". That's the usual problem with corporate journalism - negative stories don't get written. We'll see.
so what's so cool about slashdot anyway?no more pure joy of reading high quality opinion. It is not as high quality as it used to be. hell deja.com gives me more informative stuff than slashdot when it come to nerdy stuff.
slashdot is loosing it's focus and it's coolness. Now it is more of link to current news, than something cutting edge in opinion and news.
too bad...it could have been something contender
> Have you ever thought that some of us prefer a mixed computing environment?
/., why are you here? Why haven't you set up another site that will appeal to the millions of others who think like you do?
Some of us would also like a forum where every second post didn't draw a flood of you didn't mention my favorite toy responses.
If you're so unhappy with
Truly, Rob should change the tag to "News for Nerds and a Form for Whiners".
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Well, Linux is about anarchy, but most of the Linux companies dont do all the work for peace and love.
Must be troubling for an exec to know that all his best customers are anarchists. What better strategy than to acquire an established anarchist rag, pay its expenses, and let the editors keep on keeping on? That way when the anarchists start saying that the company is too focused on making money, "like everyone on this earth", someone will always pipe in and say "but hey - they fund our rag and don't futz with it, so there must be at least one cool dude on the board".
ps - I wonder whether any VA/Andover execs are following this discussion?
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There have been several cases where the wording of an article has had a definate negative impact on things. I think the best example of this is the article declairing small clustering kernel module that TurboLinux is distributing under GPL (presently seprately from the offical kernel) as being "Potentally Dangerous". Did TurboLinux's actions really deserve getting them ripped a new hole like they where on that day? Personally, I think Rob is already abusing his power to lead Slashdotties like sheep.
I've been thinking about the following for several weeks now. I just can't seem to get it out of my head.
I've been on the net since 1994, though with about a year of almost complete abstinence between 1995/1996. Before that gap I never used the web, just ftp gopher and Usenet.
After I got "reconnected"... there was a lot more web and I started using Nutscrape (on Linux, natch). I don't remember discovering Slashdot almost straight away but it seems like it's always been there. I mean, I can't remember surfing without Slashdot. When did it begin?
One of the things that frustrates me is that I can't even remember exactly what it used to look like. Same green/white colour scheme, sure, but I know it's had one or two facelifts since I started.
I wonder...did the dynamic duo ever think to archive copies of the site in its earlier incarnations, for posterity's sake? It would be bloody cool if they could put up some examples. I'd love to be reminded what Slashdot was like back in the early days. Not just the look&feel, but the news items and posts...I seem to remember there were a lot fewer professional trolls on Slashdot in those days, and even the ACs seemed more serious. Or is this just rose-tinted specs?
How about it, Rob and Jeff?
It all seems like such a long time ago now. Internet time is strange.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That led me to wonder exactly why VA bothered to purchase Andover in the first place. What do they stand to gain? I decided to go to the source and read the VA Linux press release regarding the takeover. Amidst the usual rhetoric, I found the answer I was looking for in these quotes from said press release on what the purchase was to accomplish:
And
They aren't looking to control the content of these sites. They're looking to bolster their image in the business community by attracting developers to their web sites. This is a very similar tactic that was used by our dear friends at Microsoft. They built a developer community and won over many software developers by giving away their toolkits and giving them a place where they could chat with the best and brightest people engaged in similar work.
In this case, the toolkits are already free. What VA is trying to do is buy/build the best open source community network out there. The most important thing this does for VA is that it builds a mental association in the public at large between themselves and the best, brightest, most influential open source developers in the world. (Not to mention that claim can give them reason to jack up ad rates)
As I see it, VA stands to lose much more by trying to control Slashdot than taking the heat for anything stupid they might do in the future. It would go against the very reason why they bought Andover in the first place. If they lose the developers, they've lost everything they set out to do in this acquisition. They can disseminate their propaganda, push their corporate ideology and perform necessary damage control through the news section on the valinux.com web site.
Martin Sevior
This article ignores that VA Linux is solidly behind Open Source and is built on quite strong principles with no real difference (in principle) from Andover and /. It ignores that unless VA does business differently than a Compaq or a DELL and offers something different and better it will get creamed. It ignores that contractually /. cannot be coerced into puff-pieces for VA or anyone else, as if VA would be stupid enough to want such, especially from a source it owns.
/. do something different than what they would do anyway in order to justify that level of investment. Just providing more powerful hosting and room for expansion of /. and reaping tons more goodwill and name recognition and more eyeballs just doesn't seem like $900 million worth of benefit. Does someone out there understand where the beef is in this thing? What makes Andover worth acquiring for $900 million real dollars?
Most of all the article and most of the comments ignore that VA Linux is on the same side as most of us supposedly are. Acting as if it is one step from VA to Redmond is ridiculous and scandalously offensive.
What I object to about the merger is much simpler. I object to $900 million of investor money being diverted from research, development and marketing to acquire Andover when there is no real great value in such an acquisition as Andover and VA are pretty much on the same team in stated principles anyway. Hmmm. Maybe I am missing something. VA must plan to have Andover and
Isn't the whole point of these new companies was to sell a service, not shrink wraped crapware? That is, they should be staffed by people competent at utilizing and modifying freely available software to get work done. The product was not supposed to be a shiny binary, but the knowledge to serve corporate needs.
Under this new model, there is every reason for Slashdot to continue unbiased. When you sell knowledge, you had better be impartial. When you open up your publishing for anyone in the world to slam you, you had better know what you are talking about. If VA starts to pull Microsoft type tricks, it will end up in Microsoft shape. Bad smells move at the speed of light here. Slashdot and VA could dissapear in a flicker if they act up.
Traditional engineering consultants have operated under this kind of model forever. The knowledge that is their product if freely available, some just have a better grasp of it than others. Mostly, they brag about what they do, rather than hinder others or mess with trade magazine contents to make themselves look better than they are.
There's no difference in any case. If Slashdot starts to blow, away we go. There will always be someplace to learn and share information, especially since the Slashdot source is available. If VA bites, I've got Debbian, Red Hat, Suse, and what have you.
No, by that logic if Bill Gates told me he has enough money, I'd deduce that he's staying on as Chief Innovator (his terminology) because he enjoys it and he wants Microsoft to continue as it is.
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how to invest, a novice's guide
Well, the 60s failed because the radicals were too friendly with marxists, and marxists think freedom is stupid. Big corporations stumble badly when they don't realize that lack of freedom in the rank and file finally makes them stupid. Then again, freedom sometimes benefits from a little packaging, like those lucious spreads in Life Magazine with photos of hippies in the late sixties - never mind that the editorial line was totally against 'em. And after awhile the packagers take over, and you get mid-70s rock. So with VA's billions behind it now /. can become this year's ultimate packaged freedom, even moreso than the kids in the soda pop commercials. What brand is the fave in headquarters, by the way? Anyway, keep away from the marxists, and maybe this time around freedom expansion can enjoy the same long boom as economic expansion, ever ascending beyond the point of no return, as the logo proudly symbolizes /.
To the point: if a society engineers a massive transfer of wealth to the crazies ... well, if you give me some money, I work for you; if you give me all your money, you work for me. Am I crazy enuf, or what? Not yet, but put out the message: strive to become crazy enuf, and they'll work for you.
I don't think anything will effect the nature of Slashdot as long as CmdrTaco runs the shop.
Slashdot is sort of his baby and he's stuck with his guns before and he will in the future. Nothing Andover or VA can do about it. Contract or not he'll scream fuzzy blue mud if someone trys to insert commertal intrests into Slashdot.
He allready seems annoyed about being dragged to shows. There was a mention of "strapping microphones to you morons" I work at night and sleep during the day so I'm not shure however as far as I can tell that was scaled back to a webcam and a recording of the beany awards...
Lets face it.. NONE of the people at Slashdot like being messed with. None of them will stand for it. They will ALL rase a stink if someone trys to pull something... piriod...
However.....
The illusion of editorial bies is enough to send some people into psycotic fits.
Slashdot has come under attack in the past and some people have allways been there in support of the attack.
Things don't run perfictly and there will allways be someone who dosn't like whats going on.
Currently there is the problem of "first posts" and similer posts on every topic.
The authors of the posts feel they are funny and that a hummorless Slashdot has chosen to censor them.
A body of Slashdot readers believe Slashdot has not taken effective mesures to eliminate such posts.
No matter what Slashdot dose someone will accuse them of some sort of bies...
I don't think Slashdot will change any policys to favor VA but I'm shure a lot of people will think they have and that will effect Slashdot...
I don't actually exist.
Possibly the fact that slashdot editors have a major set of shares in VA linux will subconciously impact on some bias. Surely it is a normal human instinct to fend for oneself, and it would take an unnatural and unjustified amount of energy to keep slashdot unbiased. Possibly you may want to do some VA shareswopping with Redhat and/or others. I am sure there are some BSDI shareholders that would join the party?
Enter a micropayment system. Who is likely to use it? As you say - professional content creators. The likes of AOL/TW, microsoft, RIAA etc. Companies that will make damn sure that there is no easy way to get the same information for free.
The result would (OK might) be that valuable information is locked up on the protected micropayment servers, while the free web is flooded with marketing material and FUD.
Remember "micropayment" does not stand for cheap payment. It stands for "a little amount per view" So it wont be "$0.05 a week" but "$0.02 a story".
This would be a web that suits companies like a glove. Not a web where I stumble on the occasional pearl browsing through annoying (but free) noise.
I've seen far too many business types drool at the thought of locking up their information (today freely available) in a micropayment system.
All opinions are my own - until criticized