Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Updates
The formkey bug that was wreaking havoc all weekend was fixed. It was a mistake in seeding rand that was causing a small percentage of users to have problems posting. It wasn't a conspiracy designed to thwart anyone, just you. Man it was a pain in the ass. But it was squashed on Sunday (thank god).
Anonymous Coward filtering is now in place. It's not exactly finished, but it'll do for now. Essentially there is now a user preference that sets all AC posts to -1. This has been a very common user request for some time, so turn it on if you like. It's currently off by default. It's only a baby step: eventually there will be more fine-tuned controls for anonymous posts, as well as comment types. For Example: I'd personally like to assign a -2 penalty on any comment rated 'funny' because most of them frankly just aren't funny at all. But humor is far too subjective to say that the moderation is unfair. Anyway, now everyone can decide for themselves. That should happen in the next few weeks.
Last up, I'm gonna talk a little about advertisements and subscriptions. Slashdot continues to grow: our traffic has increased by like 10% in the last few months, and simply selling the banner ads you see on top of each page isn't going to be enough to keep us afloat if we keep growing. And selling banner ads in 2001 is an awful lot harder then it was in 1999.
The change will be a different ad size on the article page. Currently we have the standard banner size on top of all pages, but soon the article pages will instead have those huge square things that you see on CNet or ZD. I know this will be unpopular with many people, myself included, but when we make the switch, we will also have some sort of subscription system where you can pay a fee to disable them honestly. (No I don't know how much yet!)
Just to shut down the conspiracy theorists, nobody is forcing us to make these changes: The navbar. The new ad formats. The subscription system. I could just say 'No' to changes like these. But Slashdot is now four years old ... and I want it to still be here four years from now. I hope you can understand the expensive reality associated with making this site happen every day for a quarter of a million readers.
Now flame me if you feel it necessary. Get it out of your system.
Cmdrtaco: X will make less sense to blind folk. If you put a title="blah" attribute in your anchor tag for the X you can have proper description of the link :)
Actually I would prefer X10 ads - as another /. reader pointed out, X10 ads can be turned off for 30 days at a time.
Most slashdotters are advocates about retaining their privacy and personal information. Yet when it comes to other peoples privacy, ie Anonymous Cowards, it's just unacceptable.
How is this about privacy? The *only* piece of personal information you are *required* to give slashdot is a real e-mail address, which is required for validation purposes and for subscribing to the headline poster. (A few other things like messages were added with Banjo!)
The address you give them doesn't even have to be your main address anyway. You could (any many people do) give them a hotmail address or whatever.
Your posts can always get linked back to your IP address, AC or no AC, there's no way around that short of an anonymizer and there aren't too many of those around either. Besides anonymizers can't be trusted anyway.
So if you're so worried about privacy, disconnect your computer from the Internet, get your phone shut off, and move into microbus and go traveling around the country, even then you wouldn't have complete privacy.
My journal has hot
Actually hardware wise we are pretty trivial (and currently we have capacity for twice what we are doing on an average day). So 9 2U 2ways, plus 3 Intel based 4ways.
For a site of our size that is not a lot of Hardware at all. Looks at sites even smaller then us and they will normally run on more hardware then what we do.
You can't grep a dead tree.
"But then maybe it's just a mad conspiracy theory."
In a way it is a conspiracy. NewsForge exists in large part because of advertiser demand for a "serious" Linux and Open Source news site that would appeal to people who have the power to sign purchase orders, combined with endless reader email asking us to turn Slashdot into more of a news site.
But everyone at OSDN *likes* Slashdot in all its anarchic glory. I've liked it longer than 99% of all current Slashdot users (note my UID), and I don't ever want to see its content change because of corporate pressure.
Hence NewsForge. Think of NewsForge as a trick to get our bosses to leave Slashdot alone instead of trying to turn it into something it was never meant to be.
- Robin "Roblimo" Miller
Editor in Chief, OSDN
Actually, you can change your prefs now to include more news... just choose the 'Collapse Sections' checkbox on your homepage prefs.
UserAdvocate: The voice of the user
If you view in light mode you won't see it at all anyway. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about until I cleared my cookies and viewed the page regular (ie bloated).
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
But everyone at OSDN *likes* Slashdot in all its anarchic glory. I've liked it longer than 99% of all current Slashdot users (note my UID), and I don't ever want to see its content change because of corporate pressure.
Not to get into a pissing match, but a lot of us liked slashdot before the uid's became almost compulsory for a post to get viewed. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I liked slashdot before uids altogether.
I finally got around to creating a hosts file like that when I was working at a company that had IE locked down so hard that you couldn't even turn off animated GIFs. I strongly recommend it as a solution, or at least a start. Here's my little collection (Note, it kills almost all CNET images);127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.0.1 active.macromedia.com 127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ln.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ads-c.focalink.com 127.0.0.1 adfarm.mediaplex.com 127.0.0.1 js-adex3.flycast.com 127.0.0.1 us.a1.yimg.com 127.0.0.1 ad.iwin.com 127.0.0.1 ads.mindsetnetwork.com 127.0.0.1 a1444.g.akamai.net 127.0.0.1 image.linkexchange.com 127.0.0.1 ads.web.aol.com 127.0.0.1 adremote.pathfinder.com 127.0.0.1 a.r.tv.com 127.0.0.1 adsrv.news.com.au 127.0.0.1 images.ads.fairfax.com.au 127.0.0.1 ads.msn.com 127.0.0.1 ads1.sptimes.com 127.0.0.1 ad.au.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 global.msads.net 127.0.0.1 au.a1.yimg.com 127.0.0.1 ads.x10.com 127.0.0.1 eur.a1.yimg.com 127.0.0.1 utils.mediageneral.com 127.0.0.1 ads.ad-flow.com 127.0.0.1 ads.gamespy.com
It ain't that simple.
You've gotta sell those ads. And that's not so easy, anymore. If you don't sell an ad, serving the page is a cost, not a benefit.
"But wait!" you say. "There's ALWAYS an ad at the top, so they're clearly selling them all!" Nope. You know all those Think Geek ads? And the NewsForge ads? And all the other adds that point to things OSDN owns? Those are all "house" ads that
So, if they're not selling the ads, now, more pageviews just results in more bandwidth costs, not more ad sales.
One word : unacceptable. These make me sick. I can understand the need to make enough money to keep the site going, and that's fine, but nothing is gonna make me endure that. Sorry.
Maybe I will buy a subscription to disable the ads, but I wonder. The quality has gone down the toilet since Andover had been taken over by VA. Considering these "reorganisation", we can wonder how low /. is gonna go. Who would pay for another ZDNet ? Not me ...
Now about the replacement :
Unfortunately, none of these can give me EVERYTHING I want to read at the same place (like /. used to do). I will miss that.
:wq