Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot During War?
Seen Dairen writes "How would Slashdot function during a war or comparable crisis? Would it help people distribute critical information? Would it help people keep in touch with their friends and enemies? Would it help to prevent a war? So far it seems no person in extreme need has submitted to Slashdot, but if they do, how would we respond?"
...do any of the North Americans (Canada, U.S., Mexico) on this site have *any idea* how many wars have gone on (were, are, will continue to be) since slashdot.org got up and running?
...do any of you read newspapers?
Reporting on wars is not the purpose of /., otherwise we would have heard about the war in Chechenia (sp?), in Macedonia, in Bosnia, and probably a whole lot of other locations.
Hopefully, publications will spring up, possibly using part of the /. technology, like the moderation system, but where everyone can post, and whose threads will later be sort of expired, based on a function of total score and time online. Hopefully, nothing will be deleted in that process, just archived in a searchable way.
Also, there might be news services that use the freenet technology (http://www.freenetproject.org/) to distribute the news, while achieving some level of resistance against disaster, be it censorship or weapon effects.
Regards, Ulli
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
What is it with Americans and worrying so much about war? Everything seems to involve national security. Even the damn road system was built so that aircraft would have a stretch of runway every few miles "in case of war". Constitutional support for the right to bear arms is so the people can form a militia and over-throw the government. Etc. etc. etc. Is it me, or do Americans seem rather paranoid?
Very simple. Ignore it while reporting on new exciting anime DVD's and Shakespeare TxtMsg Contests...
/. would post a poll, and we'd find out the awful truth... that CowboyNeal is the most popular OS on modern military hardware.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
You mean we're not already at war?
2004-09-27 16:48:22 How to stop current global thermonuclear war? (articles,ask slashdot) (rejected)
...'nuf said.
That green slime had it coming.
-Ellen (Posting anonymously to preserve my precious reputation as an objective Slashdot admin.)
Uhm.. Ellen? I think you forgot to check the little 'Post Anonymously' box, before smakcin' the submit button.. better luck next time.
Frankly if Slashdot becomes any kind of a major influence in a wartime situation, I'm moving to a small island and starting my own army. Outside of complaining that the US Govt. isn't running Linux on everything that contains a microprocessor or wondering what Natalie Portman looks like in fatigues I don't see posibilites for Slashdot being involved in a combat situation.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
You would function as Patriots of the United
States of America, of course, and hire
Tom Clancy as a consultant. =)
--- even the safest course is fraught with peril
yeah umm, can Slashdot help bring about world peace?
Here are the headlines by priority:
1.) Linux 3.4.1 released [Read more...]
2.) Europe destroyed in nuklear attack. [Read more..]
It is NEWS FOR NERDS, right?
- Knut S.
It may just be me being lame
This totaly depends on the level of computerising in the enemy army.
We have no guarantee that our enemy would even use a network that we/you could connect to, much less crack in such a way that a vital system could be knocked out.
- Knut S. May just be me bing lame
There ARE actually wars, mostly everywhere but in our calm occidental realms. Wake up guyz. But do populations there have even the possibility to reach slashdot. Think of it.
glop
Geek House
iRepairIT - iPhone, Mac, & PC Repair
What are you people on, for crying out loud??? First, there was a lunatic asking /. about alien rights (sure, worry about the aliens from other planets/galaxies and forget about the Planet Earth's "aliens" - right, my Mexican friends?), and now there is this bullshit about Slashdot during war. Drop the acid, guys... All of you! The ones who sent in those silly questions and the ones at /. who posted them in the first place. Smarten up... Well, I know, that's kinda hard for a Nation who elected an ass as their President...
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/who/ches/map/yu/index.h tml
Now, I don't know what'd happen to ./, but if there's connectivity, someone will step in. I've got my old ham rig boxed in the basement, just in case; that, and a packet radio TNC, and I could be a post-armegeddon ISP!
It doesn't seem to be mentioned above but I think that /. is quite capable of causing a major war or crisis all on its own.... Just let Cowboy Neal out of his cage for 10minutes and - oh dear
/. users Can you imagine Kate Aidey making her news reports inside a server room? "And as the B-52 fly overhead" - perhaps not that strange really :)
For British
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Please pardon my intolerable thickness; If only english were my first language :)
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
note to self: use spell-check, and always remember that ware is bad, mmmmmkay.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
If they're going to tease you... :-)
Answer: It may do, unless the tapes in question are in heavily-EM-shielded cases. However, since they will be, in very quick succession, toasted by the heat wave and blown apart by the shock front, this is rather immaterial. And even if they are outside this radius, the fallout will prevent anyone from using them for some time. Assuming anyone survives the bombing, and that they're not blinded by the flash.
In other words, whether your copy of Baywatch survives is likely fairly low down the list of priorities when a nuclear bomb goes off above you.
Grab.
I am sure that Americans not glued to CNN likely will be interested in keeping fresh with the hottest Star Wars trivia web site. Or the latest download of some cleverly-written Linux drivers for an old ISA modem. And (besides donning chemical warefare protective clothing) just what every G.I. needs to know while not dodging bullets: how to recompile his kernel!
Tease...
The editors could just link to important enemy web sites... Or the military could contract with them to create some sort of super slashdot effect...
The first thing Saddam will do is nuke the /. server location in order to silence Jon Katz ;-)
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Does anyone need to see a woman of some indeterminate Asian descent shooting liquid feces on herself in a bathtub?
If so then this is the right place.
---
This
it certainly *is* odd... ranks right up there with other concerns such as the cost of hen's teeth in moldavia, or which amplifiers the discos in Anchorage, AK use.
It was rather strange to be on IRC and to read someone writing that he could hear automatic gunfire in the distance and see tank columns in the city streets.
I also remember wondering that if the hard-line communists won, how long it would take before they remembered to cut the internet connections. Phone lines and radios would have been gone at once, but the net was such a novelty back then that the universities might have been able to keep a life-line abroad for a while longer.
Considering communications lines are the first thing enemies try to destroy..
Yeah, Slashdot and the Internet in general would be REALLY useful.
"Uhh, why can't I get online?" as sirens and the sounds of bombs crash in the background... "I need to check my email!"
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Did the Chinese embassy in Belgrade post when they heard a US bomber overhead?
8)
Concrete analysis...
Yeah, like daily cnn.com fixes?
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
AC asks: "Hi Slashdot. The U.S. government has ordered me to kill all the women and children of this village. I hear they are armed with biological weapons (poop on a sharp stick), and they must be eliminated to achieve global security and total economic domination of the Third World. They tell me that this is my duty, to serve Jehova and my country and keep the price of oil and RAM down.
:P
Our planes are dusting us with something that tastes like coal and makes me feel like LSD-25. They say deserters are shot in the back of the head. My question to you is, what should I do?"
sorry if I'm a cynic, but I am
The slashdot system is designed to cause public (geeks) responses that are then mined for value. The system is not designed to support back and forth communications over more than a few days at best. This helps to serve the objective of mining for fresh meat (initial responses). Anyone wanting to reach out with a request for help would more than likley not soley rely on /. to help, though it has been shown that if you need help with finding employees of non-standard programming quality, /. might well help you. For such a thing is alone the lines of the values extracted from the system.
3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!
Did slashdot do anything fantastic during the U.S. action against Yugoslavia? Do you really think that Slashdot is a sane alternative to 911 should someone in Oregon report a Chinese bomber overhead?
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
nah - that would be classified. theyd post a nmap -O of every piece of hardware they could ping thou. Without the actual IP of course, lest saddam start teardropping all of our tanks.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
"Would it help people distribute critical information?" Critical like Jon Katz's opinion on the latest shite movie he saw? "Would it help people keep in touch with their friends and enemies?" Why would you want to keep in touch with your enemies? Do you think warring nations would use Slashdot to negotiate a peace treaty or something? "Would it help to prevent a war?" More likely cause one... some super geek war over what OS/browser/chip is the best. Come on though, did I really just read this? Slashdot prevent a war? Do you really think there is anyone out there actually capable of starting a war that would be influenced (either directly or indirectly) by something posted on Slashdot?? "So far it seems no person in extreme need has submitted to Slashdot, but if they do, how would we respond?" Pending it actually got posted before the war was over, A handful of people would frantically vie for first post, a few would come up with some funny and clever response to it, there'd likely be a few off-topic posts. And after sifting through all that BS, maybe one or two genuinely useful posts.
Why would you use a public forum, thus an easy target, to call for help ? And Slashdot would be very promptly pressured into removing anything that it was told to (i.e.: the Scientology documents, DeCSS, ...).
What will you do?
That's easy! Shoot the hostage!
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Ask Slashdot: If aliens were to land during this war, which side would they help?
Your Rights Online: "Loose lips sinks ships" to be official motto of Carnivore 2.5
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
A more interesting question is how Slashdot (and others) would be permitted to operate in war. If the U.S. got into a serious conflict where our national survival was at stake, I'm guessing that the pressure to try to control the dissemination of information would be overwhelming. Any web sites that didn't toe the line on disseminating sensitive information would be shut down or forced to expunge content. Even if they were hosted offshore, I'd expect that if they had U.S. citizens running them, those folks would be subject to arrest. Plus, any sites that had content that was counter to U.S. interests, whether run by U.S. citizens or not, would be attacked electronically.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
I have just adjusted Shoeboy's karma manually. --Ellen (Posting anonymously to preserve my precious reputation as an objective Slashdot admin.)
mods metamodded as "Unfair"
Troll: to be used when a post downplays Linux, or brings up any German empire.
Flamebait: to be used when a post is the parent of a 5-post long discussion, regardless of the content of those posts.
Offtopic: to be used when a post does not cover all of the items discussed in a story.
Redundant: to be used when a post contains one sequence of words used in a previous post, no matter how unique the post actually is.
Overrated: to be used out of spite, or to fulfill a moderator's personal gain.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
...the Troll War and the War of the Flames.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
:) Dropping acid is what caused this thread in the first place.
--- What
Anonymous Coward: FP!!!!!!!
"Madness and Genius are separated solely by Degrees of Success." -Unknown
Or report wild speculation that all the US military hardware problems are a result of microsoft products...
disc-chord
It's gotten so bad that I'm tempted to "First post"... at least then I would be a part of the intelligent discussion portion of /., instead of this crap.
disc-chord
I'm sure Slashdot would shut down as all the nerds are fleeing to Canada in hopes of dodging the draft.
...and of course massive hard-drive degaussing magnets at all critical border points
I can assure you that the Canadian government already has plans for this contingency. We're stocked up on stuff sure to repel geeks at the border:
sports equipment
soap
girls
power tools and woodworking equipment
We've got enough problems with the french, we don't need a nation of geeks descending upon us...
What would Brian Boitano do ?
At the end of World War II, trade sanctions and persecution of native Germans devastated eastern Europe. Have you ever done the research to find out about what happened to the people who were affected by the conditions? Have you ever read in a history book, the debased and horrid descriptions of a people under seige or in a famine?
In the event of a crisis, if the trucks stopped rolling, the supermarkets in the major metropolitan areas would be cleaned out in 72 hours. The gas stations would be dry within 48 hours.
In these conditions, I think we will all stop worrying so much about free speech and Microsoft's latest blunders. Maybe then the systems like Slashdot would do something to help society move forward; granted that anyone will want to log on to check.
Oh, and speaking of political unrest, I heard of a little incident brewing with China...
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
This is LA
Historically, the internet-based media (in particular USENET) have acted as a distributed communication medium (duh, and it's what exactly?) allowing disparate views to be disseminated globally. Anyone surprised?
Example: Russian Abortive Coup
When factions of the military attempted to take over the Russian government in the last days of Gorbechev's presidency, (You know, when Yeltzin came riding in on a tank...), the Russian military coup-leaders cut off various media, but did not cut off basic phone lines and data lines from universities.
This allowed a myriad students, staff, and faculty to disseminate their view of the situation on the ground to the West (providing clear contrast to the reports of the controlled Russian media), and (more importantly) to hear from their equivalents in the West of the situation as we saw it.
In short, we could tell them, "Hang on! We're not letting this happen unopposed. We're not buying the line you're being fed from your media." How effective was it? In the actual effort to stop the coup, probably not very. But it was a focal point of morale boosting for those fighting to retain the new freedoms offered by Gorbechev, and prevented the will-crushing efforts of coup-driven propaganda. And tyranny typically requires compliance and ignorance to succeed.
The spread of information is a critical innoculation against propaganda, and serves as a potent aid in preventing the sort of war we had in the early parts of the last century. The unfortunate difficulty is found when we are faced when seemingly free information from commercially produced media, masking as true and unbiased reporting, spreads the propaganda. It is sources such as NNTP/USENET, the slashdots and other such media which can provide a buffer against the new propaganda machines as much as they provide such a buffer against old-style propaganda.
Increasingly I hope they also provide a jolt of reality and information where none such exists. A prime example of this is Burundi the 1972 genocide, an "intellectual genocide" wherin members of the majority Hutu tribe with high-school educations were executed by the Tutsi-controlled government of the day, or forced to flee. There was absolutely no reaction from the west. This to no small degree led to the retalliatory genocide against the Tutsis in the 1990's in then-Hutu-controlled Rwanda, Burundi's sister state.
Perhaps if such information were disseminated, and readers of such alternative media could mobilize to inform their governments of their strong opposition to such violence, such brutality could be avoided, and such cycles of retaliation could be prevented.
i - This sig provided by
I started wondering about this myself when I saw the news this morning that a spy plane had been forced to land in China.
You'd have to go underground to stay on line. During such crises the military (all of them) will try to control all communication. This is one reason why governments are trying so hard to set "content standards"... not that they particularly care about morality or even legality, but rather to install an effective means of control of internet monitoring and imput.
Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
Well while I agree something's gone terribly wrong with ask slashdot, I have to disagree with your comment about the Prez. Having met him on several occasions I've discovered that he is not an idiot as the media would have you believe IMHO.
Keep Austin Weird!
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhh
Mark Hillary
Shoot me
I didn't even load that one up ...
... Anyway, the Chechen republic sure seems to be in a state of chaos. There is quite a funny picture on the website: a gun on the page of Islamic religion information.
What was I going to say... Oh, yeah, prepostorious... the US maintains such an orderly cover; what lies underneath is unimportant, aside from the bomb. The bomb controls everything.
Here's an entertaining website: http://www.kavkaz.org/
this is as close to the subject as I can get...Want to see a somewhat modern day war and the voice of the attacked? English translations are decent enough
mwtr / THIS SIG HAS BEEN PRAYED OVER AND MAY BE USED AS A POINT OF CONTACT (ACTS 19:12)
No shit!
"Why isn't FreeBSD a desktop system?"
Christ...surely *that* had to be trolling
mwtr / THIS SIG HAS BEEN PRAYED OVER AND MAY BE USED AS A POINT OF CONTACT (ACTS 19:12)
Who's ESR?
-- Cure for Cancer instead of SETI! (only w32 yet - mail and beg)
Sounds good for communication during war? No. Do you honestly think soldiers are going to slug around a laptop just to go to http://www.slashdot.org in between enemy AK47 rounds? Somehow, no.
actually what i would think would happen would be that slashdot would compile a list of neat toys and cool widgets that the warring parties would use. Rate them upon their "neat" factor, divide by their actual usefullness, and take the integral of the number of units total. This would give us the "cool" factor, the sum of all of these "cool" factors would determine who should win.
As they all say...."this too shall pass."
If a fairly major war broke out, Slashdot would be a primary source of information for the entire IT community, a bastion of crack (smoking) reporting:
Jon Katz blowing hot air about war being good for the moral fiber of society. (But bad for digestion.)
Way too many "All your base are belong to.." Time to move "zig" away from that laser-guided bomb.
Detailed analysis of those PS2 Beowulf Clusters currently in use by Iraqi military.
Rambus suing all parties involved for violating patents on DDR-SDRAM technology used in guidance systems.
RIAA threatens to bomb Belgrade again because the Serbs just can't keep their citizens from using Napster.
President of China, Jiang Zemin, suffers coronary after being forced to look at goatse.cx. Chinese Communist Party declares war on ICANN.
Refugees asked to log on to Rotten.com to identify pieces of loved ones.
50,000 CueCat "marital aids" sent to US Congress both as protest and as silly publicity to try to keep company afloat.
1st Amendment seen as violation of DMCA, repealed by Congress at behest of RIAA, MPAA for "benefit of war effort", and to "protect the children".
Outlook email worm takes out enemy high command, US Theater Command scratches collective head wondering what terrorist cell these "31337 d00ds" that "h4x0rs & 0wnz0rz the w0rld" belong to. Enemy command advised to download latest IE Service Pack.
Of course, AFAIK, YMMV because IANAL. OTOH, WYSIWHG, so get over it.
How would Slashdot function during a war
For some reason, this makes me think ofkremvax.
--
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house"
--
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house"
-George Carlin
/. would just have more flaming.. or flaming sever.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
My biggest fear during the cold war was not someone hovering over the metaphorical red button, but windows 3.11 (that was running the russian missiles) would go "Fatal Exception xxxxxx .....
Defenisive mesures have been taken... DIE AMERICANS.. DIE M$"
Someone mod this to Offtopic! Please!
Love,
Offtopica
like lambs to the slaughter
Slashdot during wartime, The talking heads
Heard of a website that is loaded with people,
modd'ed up and ready to go
Heard of some other sites, on the super highway,
a place where nobody knows
The sound of goatsex, off in the distance,
I'm getting used to it now
Lived on slashdot, lived on kuro5hin,
I've lived all over this placea
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain't got time for that now
Transmit the kernal, to the receiver,
hope for an update some day
I got three slashdot accounts, a couple of emails,
you don't even know my real name
High on a hillside, linux is loading,
everything's ready to roll
I sleep in the daytime, I code at nightime,
I might not ever get done
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
He ain't no Hemos, or RMS,
he ain't got time for that now
Heard about kuro5hin? Heard about freshmeat?
Heard about latest kernals?
You oughta know not to mod down to zero
somebody might see do that
I got some cable, some kernal updates,
to last a couple of days
But I ain't got no slashdot, ain't got no
news for nerds, ain't got no weblog to read
Why stay at slashdot? Why go to freshmeat?
Gonna be different this time
Can't use cryptography, can't send a news story,
I can't write nothing at all
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
I'd like to read slashdot, I'd love to mod you
I ain't got no time for that now
Trouble in the code, got through the segfault,
we blended with the crowd
We got computers, we're tapping pohne lines,
I know that ain't allowed
We dress like students, we dress like housewives,
or in a suit and a tie
I changed my post stule, so many times now,
I don't know how i type!
You make me shiver, I feel so tender,
we make a pretty good team
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some modding,
you ought to get some sleep
Get your mod points, follow directions,
then you should change your email address
Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day,
whatever you think is best
Burned all my notebooks, what good are
notebooks? They won't help me survive
My linux is crashing, burns like a furnace,
the crashing keeps me alive
Try to stay healthy, physical fitness,
don't want to catch no virus
Try to be careful, don't take no chances,
you better watch what you say on slashdot
"Slashdot is the single most important english site on the internet"?
You're kidding, right?
I admit that slashdot has been my homepage for a very long time, but it is not, was not, has never been, and never will be "the single most important english site on the internet".
For starters, I could make the argument that sites like Freshmeat or Linux Today are at least as important as Slashdot, and perhaps moreso.
Then, we could go from there to actual sites in The Real World(tm) that cover topics such as: Current Weather, World Events, and... heck, even Technology.
And then we have the Meta Sites, such as Google: the duct tape of the Internet, without which we could find very little.
And then, you go on to say that the stories that are picked on Slashdot are redundant or boring. Gosh, I guess that rules out the rest of the Internet, then!
...except for this "Kuro5hin" site, which somehow isn't "the single most important english site on the internet", despite being possibly more diverse or colorful than slashdot?
However, even if you can't make an argument, at least someone found you Insightful. I just hope *they* aren't planning on posting, and enlightening us all with *their* newfound insight, TOO...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Now there's an idea. In the event of war, send Katz to report from wherever the fighting is the fiercest and the lead's a-flyin' :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
... that would be useful.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
The question of how well Slashdot would continue to work depends on the scale of war.
If this was a nuclear war, the commercial Internet would surprisingly go down pretty quickly--the detonation of several megaton-yield nukes at high-altitude over the USA and the ground destruction of critical communications backbone facilities would stop all commercial Internet traffic--I don't think commercial server farms are capable of withstanding the EMP burst.
Now, military communications would likely survive, since they are designed to operate even in high radiation/EMP environments.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
A friend of mine studied to get his HAM license. Just before passing his exam, one of his mentors pulled him aside, and quietly told him: "Now, that you'll be licensed, you have to realize that in case of war, they gonna come out and lock you away, and confiscate all your gear".
He did not bother taking the exam.
--
I would listen very carefully, as would the NSA. Actually, Taco et al would probably be drafted, and made to use this forum as an info gathering device as well as a disinformation channel.
I for one would either be in the theater fighting a meatspace battle, or in my bedroom hacking the enemy.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
If slashdot ever starts covering socially significant topics, they'll have to change their slogan to "Stuff that matters, nerds that don't."
--Shoeboy
During wartime, wouldn't we have bigger things to worry about than our daily Slashdot fixes?
IMO, Slashdot is the single most important english site on the internet, except when silly stories [ like this one ] are published so people can speculate about an event that will likely never happen. /. don't allow more color and diversity.
This shouldn't be debated when I know so many quality reader submissions are being sumarily dismissed without a second thought. Story selections are becoming a real problem lately - alot of stories are either redundant or boring -and I can see a mass exodus to kuro5hin if the editors of
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
The source of all the trolling, goatse.cx, AYBABTU, etc. is all coming from this website. Go and slashdot 'em, people.
--------------------------
I got some groceries, some peanut butter
to last a couple of days.
True story...
When I worked at CSC subcontracting for lockheed, the naval display systems for aegis battleships and cruisers ran HP-UX
Um... you have only to look here - http://www.indymedia.org/ - to realize that /. is, in fact, less than useful when it comes to the reporting and publicizing of armed conflict or serious issues such as nuclear weapons, the environment and so forth. Indymedia is about the only useful news sites on the web- the only real issue is that their updates are less regular and a little more.... focused.
Odds are that if somepleace like Korea gets nuked, you'll get the news from Indymedia.org, and a lengthy diatribe about how much [company X. movie X, processor X] sucks/rules from the slashdot editors, who wouldn't even notice until the submission line became clogged with nothing else.
Considering the number of wars that have happened during slashdot's history, and the number still happening now, I think we can conclude that for the next few wars at least, slashdot would be no help at all, and would be largely unaffected by it.
Or were you referring to a war affecting the slashdot editors? Geez, if someone invaded Jon Katz' territory we'd never hear the end of it...
War in the United States ain't gonna happen any time in the forseeable future. Nobody's going to invade the country with the world's most bloated millitary budget, and the likelihood of revolution of any kind, second amendment or no second amendment, is as close to zero as it's possible to be. (If the well-trained militia were really going to overthrow the government for being tyrranical, it'd have happened by now.)
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I can't believe how many people fell for this April Fool's joke.
So. You're new here, are you?
--
Someone you trust is one of us.
Sorry that was Stanford University, not "Standord".
--Matt
Serious Security flaw in US Anti-Missle Defence System
by Hemos
Will the War Delay Kernel Release?
by CmdrTaco
War is Targetted at Geeks Like Me and You by JohnKatz
Slashdot could win back peace just by slashdotting the servers of the Strategic Command on both sides...
You'd expect that they'd start a poll asking how certain aspects of the war should be conducted such as whether or not all-out sanctions should be imposed on Think Geek products or whether the B-52's should drop Binary encoded message T-Shirts on the enemy - how do you spell "We are gonna loose" in Binary?
Perhaps there should be a poll on how many Cowboy Neal clones would be neccesary to ensure victory ( or is one enough?:)
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
They'd talk about GPS, and how it's used for missle tracking.
And email their congressmen to get GPS turned back on in war zones.
--
i propose that we send Katz to do coverage directly from the front line ;-)
(then again, he'd probably survive the war and do a 10 part-er on the relationship between "smart" bombs and social inadequalities in Zimbobwe).
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
slashdot would go on posting things that it found newsworthy (ware related or otherwise) and 10% of geeks would continue reading the site.
any questions?
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
You get the idea.
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Slashdot Post:
Subject: Help us please!
Comment: We have no food or water left! The Canadiens have overrun us! We are in a small data center with a T1 and two laptops, please helps us!
modded -1 Offtopic
Reply Post
Subject: Re Help us please!
Comment: click here for help goatse.cx
modded - 1 Troll
Reply Post
Subject: Re Help us please!
Comment: Have you tried using
#!/usr/bin/perl -w?
use food;
M$ Sucks!
modded +4 Insightful
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This
How would Slashdot function during a war or comparable crisis?
About as well or badly as it does now, factored by as well as it is able to given whatever conditions are imposed on it and on the internet by the said war.
Would it help people distribute critical information?
Very doubtful that anyone would chose /. above other websiate and/or internet facilities.
Would it help people keep in touch with their friends and enemies?
Same answer. I'm not about to communicate with my sister via /. - I'll write her an email. Duh.
Would it help to prevent a war?
No. Good grief.
So far it seems no person in extreme need has submitted to Slashdot, but if they do, how would we respond?
We only know that no such submission has been published. Possibly this is because the /. crew do not want /. turned into a FAQ for newbies and the lame. How would we respond? Heterogeneously, as normal.
By the way, could I take this opportunity to troll by saying your president *really* *really* sucks over the Kyoto thing.
Define "April Fool's joke". Are we talking about an Ask Slashdot that's so unbelieveably stupid, inane, or silly that there's no way it could be taken seriously?
If so, I'd like to point out the following non-April 1st "Ask Slashdot" entries:
Given that the "Slashdot during War" AskSlashdot is less absurd than some of the "legitimate" AskSlashdot's and could (potentially) serve as a catalyst for worthwhile discussion, the question becomes just who pulled a prank on whom?
Or, to put it more simply, is trolling trolls really trolling? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Who is John Galt? What's keeping Godot? If a tree falls in the woods, will it knock out my Internet connection?
you should probably be aware that "dropping" acid does not mean setting it on the floor.
All your base are belong to U.S.
"pr0n": An anagram of "porn," possibly indicating the use of pornography. - www.microsoft.com
A war, Slashdot would be posting articles on it every 15 minutes, hell they'd have to make their own war page. But in a war, we would be a vital source because we could hack the enemy with hardly any possible legal resutition, hell it was wartime, we were helping our country!
We hold a lot more power than some of you think. We're the ones that can destroy the enemy's computer systems, but then again, we can do that to our own nation as well..cuts two ways
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
I posted and all I got was this stupid sig
If war hits Slashdot should just continue to function normally. Sometimes in war it's convenient to spread mis- and dis-information to the enemy, something Slashdot has proven itself good at.
That, and get Jon Katz to write a few essays to bore the enemy into submission.
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Someone you trust is one of us.
...and/or flame amongst yourselves. Anyone else noticed this trend?
"All I do is eat and poop!" -- Bean
Slashdot During War?
I can't believe how many people fell for this April Fool's joke.
I read /. in Bosnia regularly. Seems just the thing to remind me what home was and what was important beyond the minefields. It also kept me up to date on what the IT industry was up to.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
During a war, slashdot would bitch about how hard it is to get RAM through trade embargoes.
They would use cryptography, and get arrested. And their user base would bitch about it.
They'd talk about GPS, and how it's used for missle tracking.
In short, it would help the war effort exactly not one iota, and still waste the time of our geeks overseas.
But you knew that, right?
/. would more than likely report which Linux distro is running on US Military hardware.
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Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
"...no person in extreme need has submitted to Slashdot, but if they do, how would we respond?"
:(
Pop quiz, hotshots:
HHHHEEEEELLLLLLLPPPPPPP MMMMMMMEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
ESR just broke into my house. He's naked, covered in jelly and holding a gun along with a copy of ESR's Love Tips
What will you do?
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
I built the first site for the North Korean famine (www.northkorea.org) over some years with a past Newsweek editor in Japan. I've had some time to think about how to converge people on sites and solve problems.
Actually since the Kobe quake I've thought about how to make systems that could help focus responses to a web thread and help people solve problems. Slashdot might be better than nothing, though it lacks an editor who can continually digest and udpate info to provide a quick to consult page. On the web people tend to surf away and away from a given site, so while Slashdot is great for gathering a mass of people, you still are going to need a link at the top to someone's page. That someone will have to be a superhuman or have a lot of helpers to manage the information flood and remain of interest.
It seems there are a number of interesting components that could be useful in this case if they are not built monolithically, I'm thinking of sourceforge and open directory type collaborative services like dmoz.org.
There are a lot of other problems though, and one big one which it seems the people here might have a chance at solving, which is the political angle. It's everyone's business when there is a war, and lots of people may not want some information to be posted. There is also disinformation and the danger of getting people hurt.
In the North Korea project, we had a bank account closed in the U.S. and I kept my name off the board since I was worried about being able to travel. But the biggest reason and perhaps the only reason why it succeeded (we raised a quarter million dollars in food, medicine, clothing, and other items) is that it was masterminded by an ace journalist named Bernie Krisher who felt something had to be done, did it, documented it, and demonstrated integrity to people through the site. He pulled his contacts and he risked his life (just because he is elderly.. and still more active and energetic when it counts than most twenty-year olds) one of the trips he ended up hospitalized there. The story got out through the site's news items, essays, photo and video reports, faxes from the government of North Korea, and info about newspaper appearances around the world which were also very important.
I thought of using the web in the Kobe quake to help organize volunteers to assemble needed materials, but the fact is one manic person can do more than a CGI program. If you can somehow gather twenty manic networking people and filter everyone's energy through that you got something big. I say this because in the Kobe quake my own contribution was just to mirror a site on the beleaguered system that was still up in Kobe, and to direct people to a fantastic frequently updated site that everyone from student to megacorporation looked when it was the most important.
Where was the site? Standord University. A student there had the objectivity of five thousand miles and some incredible energy because before other companies took up the slack, and while the government was paralyzed, this guy was probably the most important communications channel.
You also will need to consider how to get people in and out. More information could be had from Eastern European linux people who have plenty of experience in this area. Even in a highly industrialized area you are likely to discover problems getting people physically in and out of the area. And the groups which can move freely may be highly politicized themselves. I think you will have a lot more luck if you try to be extremely focussed and selective about what you are trying to do and what you say you can do. In the end though if someone depends on your website, your ass is going to be on the line! Literally!
by FPTroll (kissmy@trollbutt.com)on Sunday April 01, @07:03 CST (#5)
(User #987765 Info)
First shot! Ow dammit, that was my foot!
Germanys past Performance... (Score:2 Funny)
by Gazundheit (sneeze@germanyr0x0rs.com)on Sunday April 01, @07:30 CST (#22)
(User #666666 Info)
Didn't Germany do rather well in the last big war?
Help!!! (Score:-1 Flamebait)
by unknown_soldier (unknown@soldieroffortune.com)on Sunday April 01, @07:45 CST (#37)
(User #425112 Info)
Help! Help! The guys with the anti-personnel flamethrowers are here!
Imagine ... (Score:4 Insightful)
by PortmanFan (biggestfan@Ilovenatalieportman.com)on Sunday April 01, @07:41 CST (#44)
(User #133755 Info)
We could really end this war if every guy had their own beowolf cluster of cloned Natalie Portmans who would serve them fresh, hot grits for breakfast.