Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Will Own Part of Corel
<RANT> I need to get something off my chest a minute. If you don't care, just skip below and start reading comments.
Why is it that some people are such asses (and please note, that "some" is perhaps a dozen a day) about having their submissions rejected on Slashdot? Last week we rejected nearly 3000 story submissions and posted about 75. So why is it that sometimes when someone gets their submission, they have to go attack Slashdot? It becomes a conspiracy: favoritism, Rob not caring, Slashdot really sucking these days, the list goes on and on, but it never mentions the real reason.
The fact is that we post a fraction of all submissions. And we don't post any submission just because it contains the word Linux or Microsoft. Just because we reject a submission doesn't mean it doesn't matter, it just means that when it was submitted, it didn't make the cut. I want Slashdot to be a fun mix: stuff that matters. Legos? Linux? Black Holes? Nanotech? If Slashdot was all serious, I wouldn't enjoy reading it or running it. I've always worked hard to make sure that there's a good mix of stories. Stuff that appeals to a wide range of interests within the 'News for Nerds' umbrella.
But I see Web sites all over with these childish little notes on them: "Slashdot rejected my submission, so obviously (fill in blank with conspiracy theory listed above)". This gets worse because in the last 18 months or so, cheesy little Web sites with the word "Linux" or "Geek" in them have started growing exponentially. Don't get me wrong, a lot of really great Web sites have sprung up too, but the fact is that there are hundreds of them now, and a lot of them have hostility towards Slashdot, and take it very personally when they get rejected. I'm not going to link anything and everything they post.
The personal attacks get old; they hurt because we all work so hard making Slashdot happen each day... and attacking us because we didn't agree with your submission doesn't make our jobs any easier.
Oh, and best of all, most every story we post has comments bitching that it shouldn't have been posted. Oh what fun.
All right, I got that off my chest. I'm not mad, I just felt the need to vent a little. Thanks for reading.
update This rant originally was not offtopic: this was in regards to a mean spirited little statement that was attached to this story on AboutLinux.com. The statement was dropped almost immediately after this story appeared. I appreciated that, but an apology would have been nicer.
</RANT>
Somehow, I don't see many people on this site crying over that, if it happens.
Next, a note to CmdrTaco - Hang in there! There -ARE- people here who know how hard you work, how hard it is to maintain a popular site, and how abusive some of the folks out there can be, if they feel they're not getting enough limelight.
If there is ANYTHING I can do to help, feel free. This is an open-ended, no-strings-attached offer. Even if you just want someone to listen, whilst you vent, that's fine. Sometimes, we all need that. You're a nice guy, and deserve better than to be used as a target.
Lastly, a note to all those who complain that their submissions are being rejected: Run your own news site, if you feel that way! DON'T bug us readers, OR the admins, over your petty jelousy. Slashodt posts maybe a dozen or so topics per day. I've YET to see a day in which the queue hasn't shown 220+ submissions ahead of mine. If your odds of getting a single entry in is 1:220, then you'd have to post 220 articles of interest before you'd have an even chance of getting ONE of those posted!
Are you going to stand there and whinge over the other 219? Or are you going to act like a mature human being, accept that you're not God, and read & reply to the topics that ARE covered?
Are you man or mouse? Human or Heffalump? Are you willing to put your pride to one side, and talk about matters of interest, or wallow in childish self-pity?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Can someone inform me what the trouble is between Debian and Corel? I have no clue.
On the subject of the rant:
Can Slashdot et. al post more stories/articles in a day? I just want to be able to read more interesting stuff.
This'll be great. Now everytime Corel does something unpopular all of the idiots will be blaming it on MS's 4% ownership of Corel. Great fodder for all of the zealots out there.
What Fools These Mortals Be!
Ok, this'll get hammered mercilessly, but as Lando Calrissian once said.. here goes nothing:
Rob, you've been enormously successful with this site. You get million(s) of hits a day. And as your success grows, so does criticism.
You don't learn that studying algorithms and putting together nifty CGI movies, but either in management school (oh, the horror) or through personal experience - as people's attention to your action increases, so does negative coverage. I mean, what're trying to do here is noble; a weblog of matters relevant to a small subsection of the population. Yeah, I know - it's frightening, but the type of geeks we are is and never will be the majority - 'cause if Jon Katz's Hellmouth articles taught us anything, then it was that we're a minority. We were the strange outcasts in school. We were weird. Why? Because we were different from everybody else - yeah, that's right. Everybody else was a majority.
(Bear with me here, I'm getting to a point)
Now, you've created a site that caters to - supposedly - every geek's wet dream, a concoction of tech news, relevant media stuff, general assorted 'rights online' politically-related stories and everything else one could possibly ever care about. And here's the catch. How many stories do you post a day? Not more than a dozen or two. Selected from 400++ daily submissions. Who makes the selections? You do. Hemos does. Roblimo. Emmett. The rest of the gang. And most of those people are either friends of yours or share a fairly near-identical view of what's relevant. Of what's news for nerds. Of what is Stuff That Matters. However, a million page views or so a day to Slashdot is likely to attract the attention of say, 20% of people whose views are fairly different from your own. Of those 20%, perhaps half will fairly violently disagree with the comments attached to stories - and with the general mood of the discussions going on after the stories are posted. I know Slashdot caters to a wide audience, but maybe there're tens of thousands of people reading this, people we're commonly deriding as PHBs. What do they want to read about? Tech news. Stuff that's relevant to their jobs. Perhaps they're even interested in the 63k+ Windows2k bugs, and need to make strategic decisions on how to upgrade their systems. Maybe they care that StarOffice is now supported by Sun. Or that LinuxCare has a deal with Dell. Like that very subsection that we're deriding, another subsection is very dissatisfied when a story they're submitting isn't posted. Perhaps some of the people bitching are not old enough to understand the consequences of their actions. Perhaps they're just annoyed that their latest "M$ SUCKZ, D00D!" article was rejected and Slashdot instead posts something about "Research Institutions and Corporate Interests" - I mean, who carez, D00D? You're not giving any thought to the fact that Slashdot is probably one of the favourite places for script kiddies to go. Their juvenile sense for destruction can express itself in flaming away on the discussion threads. Finally a way for them to publically attract attention to their verbal skills. Finally a forum where their PEERS live. What many people don't figure out is that script kiddies often think that they're ELITE. Some of them may even quickly paste together a website mimicking Slashdot, to attract the same amount of peer attention that you, Rob, have done. So people worship them in the same sense that Rob has become an OSS hero and icon of geeks worldwide. Who became a multimillionaire (Andover money + stock options + VA Linux stock options == lots of AIBOs) simply by turning his hobby into his job. Who wouldn't want to become rich and famous by writing a web page? The complexity of the behind-the-scenes work necessary for Slashdot seems to be lost on many of them, though. Which is why you're in the limelight, Rob. Your work isn't appreciated. You are admired and hated at the same time. The time people spent honing their '$ winnuke www.microsoft.com' skills wasn't used to acquire any social skills. On the internet, people will flame if they dislike who you are, and what you stand for.
Please Rob - don't be amazed and rant at people complaining about story submissions. Slashdot has become increasingly pro-Linux, anti-MS, pro-Libertarian, anti-Responsibility ("don't like that piece of software? hack it yourself!"), and unpalatable for many people. I still like it, but many others don't. Just please don't rant at the reactions caused by the creation of your own hands. It's become very, very big - and all that's missing is the 'Caveat Emptor' banner over the main page.
Finally - in the 'Ask Rob and Hemos anything' interview a while ago, people asked why the story submission queue wasn't opened up for moderation. You guys answered that you didn't really know what the person meant. To clarify: Have a separate page, or possibly even a very very long slashbox, where people can see all the stories currently in the submission queue. People with moderation points (that means more moderators) can then give moderation points to a story. Once the story reaches a certain number of points, it gets moved onto the front page. People can then set their 'threshold' for front page stories, and moderators can still give stories points, so I can for instance decide that I only want to see stories that received 20+ points, etc. Similarly, it's still possible to filter out stories that are on a certain subject - so I can still killfile Apache stories, or FreeBSD stuff.
The result? A truly open source forum. Won't happen, though.
Anyway, here's the end of my offtopic troll flamebait rant. It's really not an ad hominem attack against Rob or anyone else in particular. However, once you reach a certain status/fame, you're subject to attacks by 'lesser' people - as ESR's 'take my job, please' rant once attested.
int end_of_rant();
Alex T-B
kuro5hin.org (corrosion) lets readers moderate the submission queue. It's really neat to see it in action for the first time, (log in as a user, then go to "moderate submissions).
As a matter of fact, the website owner hasn't been in town for half the week, and good stories are still making it to the front page. Truly a very interesting website.
--Robert
Ignore Alien Orders
Like every other deal that involves a lawsuit, a "fair value" amount is assigned to the IP, and what should be punitive damages becomes an "investment" in non-voting preferred stock.
Non voting stock in this case is nearly worthless. If the company goes bankrupt, preferred stock members receive claims to the liquidation before common stock holders, for tech companies, BFD. Additionally, most preferred stock (traditionally) included guaranteed dividends and they were to be paid before any common stock paid dividends. Now, with low capital gains tax rates, dividends rarely exist. Additionally, this "investment" probably didn't include any dividend rights. It may not even involve liquidation claims.
Microsoft does NOT really own any of Corel/Inprise, nor does it REALLY own any of Apple. This is a way of settling law suits off the books.
The reason for this has to do with accounting practices. IANAA (I am not an accountant), but as I understand corporate finance, everything has to go on the books somewhere. The settlement for IP can go on the books as an asset, the technology rights. However, if it were overpriced, it would be fraudulent accounting. The rest can go in as an asset now, because it represents ownership of sorts. This allows companies to settle court cases without screwing up their books. On paper, Microsoft didn't "lose" $25 million, they spent $25m to get $25m in assets. I don't know how companies handle punitive damages from lawsuits. My guess is that it shows up as a loss, which isn't good.
This way, Inprise and Microsoft's balance sheets are unchanged (cash assets -> other assets) which is good for Microsoft an encourages them to settle. It is good for Inprise because as an investment, it isn't subject to taxes (to my knowledge). Microsoft's cash flow drops, Inprise's rises. For a real business, cash flow is MUCH more important than the balance sheet. The balance sheet affects taxes and corporate reports, cash flow affects the ability to conduct business.
Alex