Slashdot Mirror
Thawte Protects The World From Crypto
nutsaq writes: "Thawte.com, a South African Certificate Authority, in a move of astonishing wrong-headedness, has inexplicably changed it's developer certificate policy. To quote from the site: 'Due to current world circumstances developer certificates can no longer be issued to individuals.'Sucks to be working with crypto these days. Apparently I'll get no help from Thawte to encrypt stuff, oh wait, I didn't need it, the browsers did."
To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it. We give it all.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5098 810,00.html?chkpt=zdnnp1tp02
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Slashdot seeks revenue through larger ads
By Gwendolyn Mariano
Special to ZDNet News
October 25, 2001 1:42 PM PT
Slashdot.org, the "news for nerds" Web site popular among software developers and Linux fans, said this week that it plans to use larger ads and offer a subscription service.
When Slashdot increases ad sizes, it plans to introduce a subscription service for people who want to pay for an ad-free version. Jeff Bates, who runs the site, said Thursday that Slashdot will launch the new ads and subscription service early next year. The cost of the service has yet to be determined.
"The larger ad formats are coming about really because, as Bob Dylan put it, 'The times, they are a'changing,'" Bates wrote in an e-mail interview. "While we'll still be mostly featuring the 468-by-60 banner, we're trying to work with our advertisers and see how we can work together. Rest assured though, we'll still be only having one ad per page."
Slashdot's move to a larger ad format and a subscription service mirrors the decisions of many companies attempting to capture new revenue in a battered dot-com economy. CNET Networks, publisher of News.com, introduced the new ad units earlier this year, followed by other online media outlets such as The New York Times. and Salon.com, which offers a subscription service free of advertising.
Tamara Gaffney, senior product manager at Nielsen/NetRatings, said larger ad units, such as the so-called skyscraper ads, are designed to capture the viewers' attention and draw them into the intended message. Such formats are also used to communicate more information in the ad itself rather than relying on viewers to click through the advertisement.
Larger ad units "have higher click rates, but that may be a fleeting phenomenon," Gaffney said. "You don't know if this is going to last. The bigger question is will they result in higher awareness, which is the primary objective for most advertising."
Slashdot's parent company, VA Linux Systems, has also been struggling. It once sold Linux servers when the operating system was sweeping the computing industry, but the collapse of the Internet economy forced VA to abandon the hardware business in June. It's now focused on selling proprietary improvements to its collaborative programming software.
Slashdot, however, has made aggressive moves to partner with other companies. In April, the site signed a deal with Digital Paths to offer its content on Palm's handheld computers. A month earlier, the company struck an agreement to let mobile services company Quios distribute its news and commentary to handheld devices.
In a message to readers, Slashdot founder Rob Malda said filling banner-ad space has been difficult this year.
"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," Malda said in a message posted Monday. "I could 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."
Staff writer Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.
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what do you mean by redundant ? The person rsponsible for this obviously doesn't know what i'm talking about : Everywhere in this world people are becoming more and more toys of the corporations, used to extract money, and becoming no more than things.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
As if recent events (attacks on the World Trade Centres, Anthrax Attacks) raising our collective conciousness into a state of terror wasn't bad enough, Hallowe'en is just around the corner. Soon, a new terror, a spooky terror, will unfold as the souls of thousands of innocent civilians who died raise from the dead on All Hallow's Eve to terrorise yawl's neighborhood. And you people have the gall to be discussing the fact that Thawte is protecting the world from crypto???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!
The angry souls of the recent dead could give a good god damn about Thawte protecting the world from Crypto, instead preferring to wander the areas where they met their untimely ends, seeking out unwitting victims for retribution. By all means, on the evening of Hallowe'en, try to avoid the area around Ground Zero of the WTC, the area near the Pentagon, and the crash site in Pennsylvania unless you don't mind becoming a victim of terror (a very spooky terror indeed), yourself.
You have been warned!
Thank you for changing 'Redundant into 'Insightfull'
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
> Have a quality day!
Shut The Fuck Up!!!
This is the first post I read that actually *makes some sense*.
Very well put, honest, robhust and reflecting adequate information so as not to be misunderstood or mistaken and at the same time interesting and complete as a whole.
-1 Redundant for the moderators
put it in yah!
FUCK. I completely forgot about TT tommorow.
I guess I'll just spam penis bird ascii art or something. I don't have time to be creative, fucking midterms.