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Specs of Salons Subscription System

Posted by chrisd on from the slashcode's-story-serving-cousins dept.

legLess writes "Scott Rosenburg, Salon's VP of operations, wrote an interesting article for Web Techniques about Salon's subscription system. It goes into a fair amount of technical detail (JavaBeans and JSP on Linux for login and authentication; Perl, HTML::Mason and MySQL (CD: and oracle) for content). He also talks about their subscription numbers, what drove them to do it, and their plans for the future (technical and operational). A little fluffy, but still a good read."

64 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. In-house vs. outsourcing by DouglasA · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I read this article when the mag arrived, and was mostly fascinated by their decision to build it all in-house. Two or three years ago, they most likely would have thrown a ton of money at another company to develop the whole system. They would have gotten something that was not exactly what they wanted, and no doubt three months late (at least). Companies finally seem to be realizing that they need to make better use of the staff they have, and that even adding a few programmers or other employees can be cheaper than hiring outside developers. That's what I'm seeing at my company now, anyway, and others I know.

  2. As a subscriber... by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 3, Offtopic
    I think Salon has done the right thing. They were doomed otherwise - their stock was getting throttled (why they ever went public is beyond me) and advertising was flopping. Salon has good content - in the past critics could rightly claim that it was simply a shill for the Democratic party, but it has taken on a much more even tone. The sex content and the other bonus material is worthless, so don't subscribe if you think you are going to see nude hotties.

    In terms of their technology, I think managing two page management technologies (JSP and Perl/Mason) would get a little tired, and is likely unnecessary. While JSP might not be fast enough to handle the Mason-generated pages, you can certainly use Perl to transact credit cards if you want.

    From previous postings on this site, it seems that Slashdot will be going to subscription route as well. I think its a good idea. The quality of posts will probably improve (the best posters appear to be the /. addicts who would likely subscribe), and there would be capital in place to provide extensive services on top of what is already here.

    1. Re:As a subscriber... by foobar104 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      From previous postings on this site, it seems that Slashdot will be going to subscription route as well. I think its a good idea.

      I'm all for improved discourse, and I'd be disappointed if Slashdot had trouble staying afloat, but I don't agree that a subscription-based revenue model would improve the quality of the site.

      Not too long ago, Salon's "Table Talk" message board was a great place to find reasonably intelligent talk. There were no trolls, and it seemed that most everybody could spell.

      Then, sometime in the past year but I'm not sure when, Salon took their message board to a subscription-only model. Anybody can read, but only paying subscribers can post. It's not expensive, either; something on the order of six bucks a month, I think?

      The result? The boards that I used to frequent on Table Talk are now ghost towns. Tumbleweeds and cow skulls, and Yul Brynner wandering around dressed all in black.

      I, too, used to think that taking Slashdot to a read-for-free, pay-for-post model would be a good thing, keeping some of the riffraff out. But I don't think so any more.

    2. Re:As a subscriber... by foobar104 · · Score: 2

      Am I correct in my assumption that the idea of "pay to speak" is inherently inimical to democracy?

      You, of course, are not correct in this assumption.

      The US, certainly the world's best known democracy-loving country, has a long history of limited franchise. The Founding Fathers sometimes held the opinion that only the landed gentry (read "male property owners") should have a voice in governance. It was widely believed that the healthy self-interest of that class of society was roughly and usually coincident with the interests of the whole. Therefore the franchise should only be entrusted to those who qualified for it.

      The concept of universal franchise for all citizens is really a 20th century concept. I find this to be quite obvious, as the 20th century in the United States was the most prosperous, luxurious time, taken as a whole, in human history. If things were to turn bad, like really, really bad, the whole universal franchise thing might go right out the window.

      Now, as to your opinions on speech itself, as opposed to sufferage. It is true that reasoned discourse is the heart and soul of a healthy republic. (It actually has little to do with democracy, but let's ignore that.) But it is absolutely not true that I must pay to give you a forum in which to speak. If you want to take your milk crate to the nearest street corner, go right ahead. But don't try to tell me that I have to buy you the crate and pay your cab fare.

      In other words, Salon's (or anybody's) decision to charge a fee for the privilege of posting in a public forum is not a clear and present danger to democracy.

      Sincerely, Demosthenes. ;-)

  3. Premium only content - mark it by cowboy+junkie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As I recall, when Salon first implemented their premium content, they didn't mark what content was premium, but instead when you viewed the story it would give you the first couple of paragraphs then say that you had to subscribe to read the rest. This is a big mistake, as it really makes non-subscribers resent the wasted click, and I'm glad they finally wised up and starting marking everything clearly as premium.

    I had no problem subscribing to Salon, though, because these guys are the real deal. While I love sites like /. that point to noteworthy stories on the web, Salon is one of the only true purveyors of Internet journalism that provides stories worth pointing to. They have top-notch folks reporting and provides commentary on the whole spectrum of news.

  4. i'm still not convinced by vocaljess · · Score: 2, Interesting
    salon has always done a great job at covering things that most mainstream news services, and entertainment sources, tend to ignore. however, i'm still not convinced that paying for content is the way to go.... it reminds me of my experience subscribing to my favorite magazine and having it go through a complete overhaul and coming out at the other end as something completely different. there are no guarantees that the same thing couldn't happen to salon.

    my biggest point of annoyance with the site was when they took their news coverage out of the free portion of the site. they chose a moment when everyone around the world needed good, accurate reporting of the developing events after 9/11, and exploited that moment to expand their subscriber base. that should have been the moment when they kept everything open and freely available, perhaps soliciting for donations to keep the quality of coverage up. instead, they chose the greedy road and shut a lot of people off from a good information source.

    --
    "Why is all this crap here?" -- 4-year-old Brandon
    1. Re:i'm still not convinced by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 2
      however, i'm still not convinced that paying for content is the way to go....

      Do you subscribe to magazines? Watch cable TV? You likely already pay for content in other mediums. Don't be fooled by the "freeness" of the web to date - most of the large web companies are already thinking beyond free content models. The biggest inhibitor to paid content so far in my opinion is the payment models. While I wouldn't pay for the NY Times on line on its own, I might pay to be a part of a network that includes the NY Times, Forbes, Atlantic Monthly, etc. (I am trying to list publications with similar demographics as an example).

      my biggest point of annoyance with the site was when they took their news coverage out of the free portion of the site. they chose a moment when everyone around the world needed good, accurate reporting of the developing events after 9/11, and exploited that moment to expand their subscriber base.

      At some point any subscriber site is going to have to yank to family jewels from free users. You can't build a subscription seriice when your most valuable assets are free. The ymade the right move.

    2. Re:i'm still not convinced by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's not really correct. The majority of their news stories were always pay content (it was one of the first things to get switched to the Premium service). They actually stopped doing that and made all the news free for the first few weeks following 9/11. So they didn't really take the news content away; they just reverted to how it had been.

      I like Salon a lot. I don't think $30 is a lot of money for a "magazine" that's updated daily. And I have a hard time believing they would switch their focus and abandon the readers they've attracted over the last 6 years.

    3. Re:i'm still not convinced by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 2
      but from a moral standpoint i think they were dead wrong. information should be free, especially when that information is news coverage of events that could change every aspect of the world we live in.

      But Salon isn't a news site, its a commentary site. They make no claim to bringing you the latest news.

  5. what the fuck? by autopr0n · · Score: 2, Troll

    No wonder they have 87 million in debt. Why the fuck do you need oracle to serve content? MySQL works fine for slashdot,

    MySQL is a piece of shit. (no nested selects? WTF?) And incase you hadn't noticed, slashdot fails all the time. The only reason they stick with it is because the source was originally hard-coded with MySQL API calls. Andover even pored money into the company behind MySQL to beef it up when it was flush with IPO money. Nowadays they're using proprietary extensions (witch cost $$, btw).

    MySQL was not designed for a lot of the things its being used for.

    You're comment is a lot like saying: "Who the fuck needs a mainframe? my DOS LAN works fine!" or something.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
    1. Re:what the fuck? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Redundant
      The next version of the upcoming slashcode supports postgreSQL. Unlike mySQL, postgreSQL offers nested selects, transaction support, and ansi-sql 92 compliancy. Infact it may be the most sql-92 compliant database around. It may not be as fast as an embedded quick and ditry file system for internal programming jobs, which mysql was designed for. But postgreSQL is quite good as a standalone database. Of course nothing beats big iron databases like Oracle, DB2, Sybase and MS-SQL but if your on a tight budget postgresSQL will do wonders. ALso the next version should support replication which is essential in any enterprise level database. I believe MYSQl is qite behind in this. Why PostgreSQL is not the defacto poor man's database is beyond me. However in Japan all the linux magazines and books mainly only focus on PostgreSQL and the situation is reverse there. I believe www.phpbuilder.com did a test with postgreSQL and Mysql to see which was more scalable and PostgreSQL kicked ass.( I am too lazy to look up the url.)

      RedHat chose postgreSQL for a reason and not mysql. Hmm I wonder why?

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
  6. You can get it for free, right now, you know. by autopr0n · · Score: 2

    Personally, I would pay only for Slashdot Unpremium (not Jon Katz, no Michael/Timothy, YRO, in other words, just the basic stuff that slashdot was founded on).

    If you go to your user prefrences (if you have an account) you can filter out certan authors, (katz, michael, etc). Not that I don't think katz should be thrown off the site or anything.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  7. 6$ a month, now, another good move from Salon. by clarkie.mg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This month, Salon launched a monthly subscription program for 6$.

    Reading the article, I have to give credit to the way Salon deal with their readers.

    1. Even the free site is not overwhelmed by ads like those flash based ones that run around the page on wired, or those poping pages on yahoo.

    2. The price for the site is really low, compared to the price you would pay for a daily newspaper. They understood that internet users CAN pay for content but at a reasonable price.

    3. They give premium content, not only ads-free stories.

    Thumbs up, Salon.

    --
    Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
    1. Re:6$ a month, now, another good move from Salon. by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 2

      Salon writes "or if you prefer paying in smaller, spread-out amounts -- we hope this new option will fill the bill."

      six dollars a month equals 72 dollars a year. Why anybody would prefer to pay twice as much "in smaller, spread out ammounts" is beyond me.

      I wonder if they'll experiment with micropayments for individual stories.

      Yeah, premium content is good (and IMHO, worth it), but certain tactics of Salon-- holding political content for ransom, and adopting more and more obnoxious ad tactics in hopes that annoyed readers will pay for an ad-free version--while perhaps economically justified, aren't exactly "friendly".

    2. Re:6$ a month, now, another good move from Salon. by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 2

      I suppose that if 140% annual interest, compounded monthly, makes financial sense to you, go for it!

    3. Re:6$ a month, now, another good move from Salon. by Zeinfeld · · Score: 2
      As for why a person would continue to pay $6 month after month, I can't say.

      It is a standard model. I can pay $6 for a magazine on a news-stand or $30 for a subscription to the same magazine for a year.

      I have never subscribed to a magazine without buying several full price copies - or reading them in libraries etc.

      The different charge rates are justified by the overhead of cc charges chargebacks, gateway etc. - about 75 cents on a $6 charge, $1 on $30, so you save Salon $8 by going for the annual subscription.

      $6 is pretty much a disposable amount, I do not much bother if I buy a magazine at that price and find out afterwards it is not much good. $30 is not a disposable amount.

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
      Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
  8. Salon != Slashdot... by corky6921 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    After reading this article, I begin to see why it will be doubly tough for Slashdot to make the jump to subscription-based revenue.

    The biggest problem I see with Slashdot is that Slashdot doesn't have a Cringely or a Coursey or a Dvorak. Sure, Slashot has Jon Katz, but I just don't find his articles as readable as a Cringley column or a Dvorak rant.

    I see the real difference between Slashdot and Salon on a couple of other fronts as well. Besides not having several columns by intersting authors, most of Slashdot's content is made interesting by the readers, not by the story submitters. Personally, I am horrified by both the obvious lack of attention given to grammar, as well as the oft-biased one-liners added by the story submitters. Finally, although it has gotten better in recent times, Slashdot seems to crash a lot... even more than an overloaded MySQL database would suggest.

    For Slashdot to take a viable community and turn it profitable, the story editors do a lot more than Salon did. The fact remains that Salon's content is mostly unique, whereas Slashdot's content (in terms of story submissions) is mostly regurgitated. Salon's readers will pay because it's hard to find Salon-like articles anywhere else. On the other hand, I can honestly say that if ZDNet had a moderation system, I'd only rarely visit Slashdot. ZDNet's columnists keep me entertained, and their news is grammatically correct and up-to-date because they pay people to go out and write it.

    It all boils down to whether Slashdot can successfully differentiate itself from the hundreds of other "Cool Linux Stories" sites. In the end, what keeps Slashdot's readers coming back is the discussion and the attached moderation system. What remains to be seen is whether or not people will pay for that.

    1. Re:Salon != Slashdot... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 2

      Salon and Slashdot are very different sites. If Slashdot had no comment system, I would not visit this site. On the other hand, I enjoy Salon-- and never use "Table Talk".

      If Slashdot went to a subscription system, it would probably drive off not only its "reader base", but also its "writer base."

    2. Re:Salon != Slashdot... by Karma+50 · · Score: 2

      Karma, in the current /. isn't really all that useful. You get a +1 at 26 and you need some to be eligible to moderate (I don't know how much).

      Is posting at 2 useful or attractive?

      I v.rarely post with the bonus (of course, I usually post crap which will be instantly modded down because of bonus abuse, but that's my problem).

      And when reading I tend to look at the moderation description rather than the total score.
      "(Score:1 interesting) by Anonymous Coward" gets more of my attention than "(Score:2) by Karma Whore"

      --
      http://www.thehungersite.com
    3. Re:Salon != Slashdot... by Nater · · Score: 2

      That model isn't viable in the long term. Whether or not it is a good model or not is also debatable, but let's just stick to viability...

      First of all, the model obviously discourages trolling and other "down-mod" behavior. A few people might be willing to go pay-per-troll, but most will just vacate the premesis in favor of some other weblog. Therefore income from trolls will tend toward epsilon.

      Epsilon won't be enough to pay for the upward moderations on genuinely deserving comments. There are plenty of them as it is.

      So, in the long run, the pay/earn-per-mod scenario becomes a money pit for slashdot. It simply isn't viable.

      --

      I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
      "We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer

    4. Re:Salon != Slashdot... by yesthatguy · · Score: 2

      Yes! Then we truly can have _professional_ karma whores.

      --
      Yes! That guy!
    5. Re:Salon != Slashdot... by poemofatic · · Score: 2

      But I like the trolls. They are an important part of slashdot. Moderation lets people skip them if they like, and if you feel like it, you can see all sorts of ascii art, Jon Katz bashing, and some hilarious slams.

      On the other hand, a lot of the "insightful" comments are just ones that a lot of slashdotters agree with. "Insightful" should mean something you haven't thought of before. "Informative" should be some facts or urls which took longer than five seconds on google to find. I have no idea for an "interesting" criteria, and am not sure why it's there. I guess in those rare cases when you tell a bizarre and relevant story involving turkish customs inspectors -- that might be "interesting".

      Oh -- and "offtopic" -- that's this post right here.

      --

      When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.

  9. Re:I pay for Salon by MarkWatson · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Well friend,

    I find the news coverage on Salon to be broad and uncensored. Usually, I peruse foreign newspapers (German FAZ, British news, Times of India, English version of Pravda, etc.) at least once a week to get a broader view of what is going on in the world. I find much of the same news in Salon.

    Don't misunderstand me: I am fairly conservative (voted for George W.), but I still realize that huge corporations in the US own the news media so, for example, lot's of anti-globalization news is not covered in the US.

    BTW, there is porn on Salon? I haven't seen it.

    -Mark

  10. Re:Linux ? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2
    "If I remember correctly, Linux wasn't designed for many things it's now being used for, either..."


    Your right but support for scsi, smp and removable hard drives had changed this. MySQL is being modified to support some essential database features but its not there yet. PostgresSQL is already there except int eh instance of replication support. Sybase or Oracle would be a good decision for anyone with money to support a critical enterprise environmnet. Same is true with how Solaris is still used over linux today for hard core essential reliability.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
  11. The web isn't commercial only by WiggyWack · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm so tired of the whole "The free web is over" rants. Why do so many people think the commercial part of the web is the only part of the web? People have created content for free for a long, long, long time. Whether it be music, art, comics, poetry, literature, editorials, films, TV shows (yay for public access cable!), books, whatever... Many people are driven by ideas or creativity they just want others to pay attention to, without getting paid for it.

    So the "Soon you'll have to pay for all your web content" chant really means "Soon you'll have to pay for all the web content dished up by commercial organizations." Good. I don't need it anyway.

    The Internet is cool because all the free content that was out there to begin with can now be put online by anyone and viewed by anyone. So your underground newspaper, or garage band, or your off-the-wall comic strip has the potential to be viewed by a lot more people than just those in your town or school.

    I don't care if I have to pay for content owned by AOL Time Warner or whoever. There's plenty of people out there who want me to look at their stuff for free. (gee, kinda like how the Internet used to be)

    --
    Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
    1. Re:The web isn't commercial only by killthiskid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't think the problem is lack of people willing to generate content, it's the fact that putting that content on the 'net requires bandwith, which, as has been pointed out, requires money. Bandwith has the further problem of not getting any cheaper.

      Take spinsanity.org... great site, great weekly e-mail and for a long time, fairly small time. Now they are getting popular and getting press time, and now they are getting strapped for cash. They had to open up the path ways for people to make donations to pay for bandwith. They were perfectly happy to make the content for free... it's providing the content that is getting to them.

    2. Re:The web isn't commercial only by Watts+Martin · · Score: 2

      Even so, I think a basic truism about the internet gets missed as commercial interests run around trying to find a way to make money solely on the web: the "killer app" for the internet is communication, in the form of email and increasingly in the form of instant messenger services. (And of course in the form of peer-to-peer file sharing systems.)

      The WWW wasn't originally conceived as a for-profit publishing service, and what's happening is simply that companies are finding that publishing models from the offline world don't always translate to the web. Companies that don't figure that out in time will go under. This doesn't just include online magazines, of course--it includes most "free" services whose cost is borne by advertisers. The companies who think the answer is to make ads more intrusive will just dig themselves in deeper. (As a Slashdot comment I saw earlier today said, "It's amazing the lengths some companies will go to in order to drive readers away from their site.")

      And you know--that's probably okay. The predictions of the end of the internet utterly miss what people by and large use the internet for. Most of the people using the internet are paying for their bandwidth (that $19.95 to $39.95 a month charge) and they're getting their email and IM, and they're happy.

      And the web? Companies that have sites up to tell you about their products and provide customer support will still have them. Companies that do online business of selling offline goods (i.e., Amazon, CD Connection) will still have them. Universities will still have them. Government agencies will still have them. Newspapers and magazines will still have them. People will still pay for "vanity publishing" webhosting out of their own pocket because they want to. And of course, groups that have information people are willing to pay for access to will have web sites.

      Really, it sounds kind of like the web just before the cusp of the "dotcom boom," doesn't it? After the internet had been opened up to commercial access but before the gold rush. A time frame when companies on the internet by and large had a reason to be there other than "because it is there."

      It won't be the end of the free web, it'll be the end of the advertiser web. And maybe that's not such a bad thing.

  12. Re:I pay for Salon by bourne · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Agreed. I'm also a Salon subscriber, because during the heavy news burst after 9/11 I found their coverage to be more interesting, and to have more interesting points of view. I don't agree with all of the points of view but there's a lot more there than you can get off CNN, MSNBC, or any of the other news sites.

    Porn, such-as-it-is, is under the "Sex" tab. I can't really imagine paying for what is there either, but there you have it.

  13. Re:I pay for Salon by thegrommit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    http://news.bbc.co.uk

  14. /. Crash? by bstadil · · Score: 2, Informative

    Slashdot seems to crash a lot ?? What OS / Browser are you using? I have been "member" of /. for years ID 7110 and I can't remember having a slashdot Crash. (Currently using Opera 6.0 on SuSE 7.3)

    --
    Help fight continental drift.
  15. Re:I pay for Salon by foobar104 · · Score: 2

    You know, Salon isn't just leftist news. It's also leftist commentary, essays, reviews, and opinions.

    I watched maybe two episodes of the first run of the US version of Big Brother last year. (I was stuck in a hotel room with four channels, two of which were local event listings.)

    The show was terrible... but every morning after an episode, Salon posted a new entry in its "Big Brother: The Complete Story" ongoing review. The reviewer were brutal. The show sucked, and everybody knew it, so what was left but to make relentless fun of it?

    That hoot alone is worth the price of admission.

  16. Sell the code... by supabeast! · · Score: 2

    Salon should look into selling/licensing their code to other content providers. Bandwidth is not getting any cheaper, and a cash strapped web company would probably love a chance to buy Salon's code as opposed to spending the money to do this themselves. I know that it is not Salon's MO, but they need money, and so does just about everybody else on the web.

  17. Yes, TableTalk sucks (it always did) by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 2
    I agree with your complaints about TableTalk on Salon. Regardless of what people were saying, the message board system itself was always quite weak, even compared to early versions of slashcode.

    Now I believe they have merged with the Well, but unfortunately it doesn't appear that they have a community message board worth paying for. They would really benefit from using slashcode or another engine. What they have no is pitiful.

    1. Re:Yes, TableTalk sucks (it always did) by foobar104 · · Score: 2

      I agree with your complaints about TableTalk on Salon.

      I think you misunderstood my complaints. I have no complaint about the software that implements the message board, as it seems you do. Frankly, I never thought about it.

      I was just saying that I'm disappointed that evidently many of the smart, thoughtful people who used to post there have decided not to sign up for the new subscription thing.

    2. Re:Yes, TableTalk sucks (it always did) by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 2
      I disagree. The TableTalk posters were providing marginal benefit to most Salon users - most of them never bothered with it. The TableTalk posters were mainly providing a service to each other.

      Frankly Salon never had a compelling forum community on its own, and in that sense it was smart to merge with The Well.

  18. Agreed. /. would need "star" wirters by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 2
    Going forward it would behoove /. to bring more talented writers generating original content to the site.

    While I agree that there is something odd about users paying for a site where the users generate the content (via posts), its the network of users that one is paying for access to, not a particular user or set of posts.

  19. Alas... by O2n · · Score: 2, Funny

    From the article:
    In the end, of course, our subscription plan has worked because a small but significant portion of our users feel that Salon is worth supporting with their cash.

    Alas, this happens when you get older: you start paying for support, news and, alas, women. :)

  20. Re:I pay for Salon by Ian+Bicking · · Score: 2
    I pretty much lost respect for the BBC during the Kosovo bombing. They were pulling the line and slinging the bull just as hard as the US sellouts. I suppose it makes sense -- the UK has been following US foreign policy pretty strictly, no reason its media shouldn't go along for the ride as well.

    It's hard to really judge the integrity of sources, though -- unless you are getting information from a real diversity of sources, it's not easy to tell when important facts or stories have been left out (the most common problem in media). At least there's the internet -- the facts might not all be correct, but they are usually plentiful.

  21. shut up by paulm · · Score: 2, Flamebait

    A little fluffy, but still a good read.

    Why do slashdot editors feel that they have to throw in their 2 cents. I'm glad you posted the article, thanks for the summary, but I don't want to hear your lame ass opinion. Especially when it is something as non-specific as a little fluffy. It's like you are afraid that all the slashdotters will be talking amongst themselves and saying "what's up with that fucking fluffy article that was posted", so you are attempting to protect yourself against that eventuality by saying - hey this is fluffy.

    Just post the fucking thing.

    Thank you.

    1. Re:shut up by reverius · · Score: 2, Redundant

      That was not a comment by a slashdot editor.

      It was part of the submission by the user.

      Just thought I'd clarify that for the people who can't take the five seconds to see whether it's included in quotes, and is in italics.

  22. Other news sources by Nonesuch · · Score: 2
    revscat writes:
    Maybe it's because they are the only news organization on the fucking planet that isn't owned by AOL/Time Warner, Fox, Belo or Clear Channel?
    ...
    I am a liberal. This means I read books and have opposable thumbs.
    LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel... all owned by a firm not on your list.

    Oh wait, they are (relatively) conservative papers, so you can't possibly trust their reporting.

    IfI want a leftist viewpoint, I read Salon. When I want to see what the extreme right wing is saying, I read WorldNetDaily. Slashdot tends to lean about as far to the left as Salon, but doesn't have as much porn, which I suspect is the real reason many people subscribe.

    No, honestly, I just read it for the articles!

    --

    I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
  23. Re:80 Days Uptime by crisco · · Score: 2
    Server uptime and Server sending me the pages I want, with comments sorted in the order I set in my preferences and allowing me to contribute without sending me back to the front page when I hit reply are two different things.

    Slashdot hasn't been down so much as it just hasn't been working right lately. And its a myriad of browsers across several operating systems.

    --

    Bleh!

  24. Pay-for-content fragments the audience by YouAreFatMan · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I like Salon. I used to read Salon all the time. But they started putting 2/3 of their good articles on Salon Premium. I almost subscribed, but after a couple of weeks without it, I found I could live in a Salon-free world. Now I hardly ever visit it.

    I used to use Encyclopedia Britannica once in a while. But now, I can't use it at all because it's a pay site. I can't justify paying a subscription when I might use it once or twice a month.

    I currently pay to subscribe to one on-line content provider : Cooks Illustrated. Its worth it to me. Salon might be worth it to me, too, but I don't buy it. As more and more sites go pay-for-play, I'm not going to be subscribing to dozens of sites. 1) I am only a casual reader, and 2) even if I thought it was worth it, I'm not going to pay hundreds of dollars a month to keep up with all the sites I visit.

    And here's where it starts to break down: the (commercial) web can end up just like print media. Sure, any print publication could be subscribed to by everyone, but everyone is not going to subscribe to everything, or even one thing. So you have your subscribers, and you don't reach anyone else.

    I know that Salon Premium pretty much drove me away from Salon. I accept that in the future, I will be much more limited web site availability. I'm willing to pay that price because all that casual content isn't worth the thousands of dollars it would cost to maintain subscriptions.

    Micropayments, anyone?

    --
    Robotiq.com is heavily tested on animals
  25. Re:80 Days Uptime by NMerriam · · Score: 2

    I would say that one out of every ten times I come to slashdot, it is in the non-user specific mode (meaning that the personalization server is down, from what taco said a while ago).

    So technically a server is running, but the site itself isn't really functional.

    Plenty of times I show up and the only page I can see is the main page -- clicking on the story link takes me back to the main page...

    --
    Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
  26. Re:80 Days Uptime by sheldon · · Score: 2

    My understanding of the way slashdot is setup is that the main web server caches the frontpage and the story pages. This is to reduce load on the database as these are the most frequently accessed pages. They are updated periodically, like once a minute or so.

    When the database goes down, obviously slashdot can no longer do dynamic queries and so all you get are the cached pages. So you get into this situation, where most of the links don't work, you can't post, you can't moderate, and so forth. All you can do is view the cached main pages and the parent story pages.

    It's been mentioned various times by the slashdot folks that their MySQL database requires frequent rebooting. They've never gone into much detail as to why, but it appears to happen at least once a day from what I've seen of the frequence of the website "breaking" and only displaying the cached content.

  27. more detailed interview on the subscription model by Kraft · · Score: 4, Informative

    here. Interview with COO Patrick Hurley from August this year. The interview is very "content provider" oriented and is a good read.

    --

    -Kraft
    Live and let live
  28. Re:I pay for Salon by revscat · · Score: 2, Flamebait

    Additionally, most conservatives are able to communicate without using the f-word in every third sentence.

    Yes, that naughty "f-word." My goodness, the baby Jesus might cry if we were to use the "f-word!" Geepers, Wally, did he use the "f-word"? Better run tell Dad!

    As a counterexample to liberals being "arrogant elitists" I give you Exhibit A, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an arrogant fuck if ever there were one. (Ooops! There's that "f-word" again! My oh my! Won't somebody please think of the children?) Not saying he's not a genius, not saying I don't repsect him. But he is arrogant, he is elitist, and he is oh so conservative. Read some books. And let's just totally ignore Rep. Dick Armey, cuz, well, that's like shooting fish in a barrel.

    Oh, and by the way: Your post just serves to reaffirm my belief that conservatives are sanctimonious assholes who'd rather preach than think.

    TTFN!

    - Rev.
  29. 350 quid a year?! by Preposterous+Coward · · Score: 2

    Geez, I *bought* the (Compact, but perfectly readable with the magnifier) OED for US$300...

    --

    "Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
  30. Free subscription with the right cookie? by westfirst · · Score: 2


    Does this mean I can get a free subscription if I just edit the cookie file of a friend and grab the cookie?

  31. You can read it in the bathroom by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For you information, one of the benefits of "Premium" is that you can download the daily issue as a pdf. Good for reading on the commute, or on the commode, perhaps?

    1. Re:You can read it in the bathroom by (H)elix1 · · Score: 2

      Heck, even a long lan cable can fix you up on the throne - failing that a wireless kit - not that I would post to slashdot while doing that kind of thing...

      --
      +++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
  32. The main problem with the web subscription model. by Ophion · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The main problem with the web subscription model at this point is that one must pay separately for one's internet access. Imagine having to pay fifty dollars per month for the possibility of watching cable or satellite television. To actually view any content, one would then be required to subscribe to each channel individually, at additional cost. Not many takers, eh?

    One possible future model is actually a return to an old one: a model similar to that of CompuServe or America Online before the internet explosion--a package of access and (often exclusive) content.

  33. New Poll -- Pay for /. if... by gkbarr · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Here's a new poll for your marketing research. Would you pay for /. if...

    - /. had more original news pieces
    - Jon Katz wrote something worth reading
    - Paying members could turn off all ThinkGeek ads (et. all)
    - The moderators were fair [troll]
    - Paying users could turn OFF the Cowboyneil option in polls

    --
    Sapere Aude - Homer
  34. Static Mode by krow · · Score: 2

    I introduced static mode I think close to a year ago. Its used when the DB is down or a site update is occuring (like we put in bug features and such). We do the bug/feature additions probably twice a week now, and they normally happen around 1AM Eastern time as of late.

    During static mode you can only reach pages that are .shtml, everything else is disabled.

    Its certainly better then the old way which was to just to dish out zero content :)

    --
    You can't grep a dead tree.
  35. $72 per year? For Salon? by Animats · · Score: 3, Insightful
    That's a bit much. The online subscription to the Wall Street Journal is only $59 per year. And the WSJ has far more content, real content, created by reporters spread around the world. Salon is mostly columnists, and rather lightweight ones at that.

    What might work is, say, a service that lets you buy topics, like "politics", "literature", or "entertainment industry news" for a flat fee, but covers a large number of publications. Like AdultCheck and PornoPass, but for people who read. The "adult verification systems" are commercially successful, unlike micropayment systems. As usual, the porno industry figures it out first.

  36. Re:Inexperience can be expensive by Webmonger · · Score: 2

    Heh. You got that straight out of Stroustrup's book, didn't you? I'm reading his chapter on design right now.

    Well, here's a clue. Sometimes a mess is a bunch of bugfixes. And sometimes a mess is just a mess.

    If you start out with a bad design, and you fix the code instead of the design when problems arise, you get messes like that. I have no problem with rewriting large sections of my code once I have a better understanding, and hence, a better design.

    Or sometimes, I clean it up without changing how it works at all, by breaking one big function into several smaller ones, or replacing calculations with pre-calculated variables, or turning a function into an object.

    Sure, wanton "cleaning" is dangerous, but there is a time an a place for reprogramming. Especially when there's a payoff in reliability or flexibility.

  37. Slashdot subscription? Yeh, right... by autopr0n · · Score: 2

    I seriously dobut that many people would go for a /. subscription. It just isn't worth it, I mean, all the content is user generated. Salon, obviously, is a real magazine with paid reporters and all that and has a valid excuse to charge money for what they're doing. /. just links to other stories and lets people post about it.

    Maybe if the subscriptions were like $5/$10 a year or something.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  38. cost of subscription by Utopia · · Score: 2, Interesting

    May be a little unrelated but can't stop myself from offering my own comments on the cost associated with subscription

    Slate.com which competes for the same market as Salon ran a subscription experiment couple of years back. They ended up signing about 26000 subscribers. They were charging only $19.95/year, which is a pretty low price point considering that it was costing several times that much, even on the very best campaign, to acquire a subscriber. The cost of acquisition was averaging between $50 and $100, so obviously Slate was losing money on every subscriber we signed up.

    Eventually, they decided to go free again.

    Slate has only 40 employees while Salon has double the number - I therefore except their costs to much more.

    I think even with the $72/year that Salon is charging
    they are losing money. I would be suprised if they switch back to being a free ad-based site.

  39. Paid Sites by JSkills · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I read this article in print a while ago and found it interesting for sure (and yes fluffy since the tech details never went quite deep enough).

    It was particularly interesting to me since we at Goofball.com went through the exact same process a while back ourselves. We initially were a free site and at our peek were doing close to a million pageviews a day - not including the Apache requests for video downloads (that amount to like 500 GB per month in bandwidth). We were actually leasing 7 Linux boxes (3 running HTML::Mason dynamic content servers, 3 plain Apache image servers, and a MySQL DB server) and paying through the nose for them due to the bandwidth. However, back in the good old days of the CPM advertising model, we were making plenty to afford the costs.

    We were of course f----d when the "new economy" came to bear and we suddenly had no income for close to a year. Good thing we saved all that money we made on ad banners. We were eventaully forced to either close it all down or move to a payment model. We polled our viewers and decided to try the payment model based on their feedback.

    The site is now 80% pay / 20% free. We're not just charging for access to specfic areas of content, but for the actual utility provided for by the site's various personalization services. We also decided that micropayment were not feasible. Can you imagine the headache of tracking pennies for pageviews and the associated overhead of dealing with people's questions/complaints about charges to their credit cards? A yearly fee of $19.95 (or a nickel a day) was the way we went and you know what - it actually saved the site.

    Granted, traffic is at 10% of what it was, but that allowed us to drop off a few machines from the server farm and thus reduce costs further - keeping us slightly in the black each month.

    HTML::Mason is the key to the site's success for sure. We can provide dynamic content on the fly pulled from the database, but a key element of the delivery machanism is Mason's built in caching. Only the first page request for a given URL (that uses the DB) actually requests the data from the database - subsequent requests are pulled from a GDBM replica of the DB's content that was cached by the first request. Mason also provides us with the ability to maintain a persistent DB connection during the life of the Apache daemon. Additionally, the same Apache/mod_perl/Mason binary also listens for requests on port 80 and 443 for SSL requests. All credit card transactions are handled through a Mason enabled API gateway. All of our back-end tools are HTML::Mason as well.

    I didn't really get the part about "needing Java/JSP" in the Salon.com story. It sounded to me more like the author was not really in touch with the particulars of the technology at hand and was just repating what reasons he may have been given by the development team (who may have been looking to learn something new for the sake of it). I just came from a job where a decision was made to "go with a Java solution" simply because of the name of the programming language more than any other factor. I have nothing againsts Java believe me, but I'm so tired of buzzwords being used to influence decisions that are actually in dire need of pure business and software logic instead.

    I'd encourage everyone - if they haven't already - to have a look at HTML::Mason. And also, for a good diversion, take a look at Goofball.com.

  40. yeah, but by poemofatic · · Score: 2

    what about the other kind of economic discrimination: advertising. Advertisors influence the content of a site. Also, if you're trying to peddle a product or spice up you're corporate image -- you don't exactly want your ad to appear next to an in-depth four part study on homelessness. Finally, ads are geared to a target market which is usually affluent, so there is economic discrimination built in, too. I think advertising is the number one cause of all of the superficial, feel good, smiling prattle in the big media. Subscription is a pretty good way to go in terms of avoiding bias and paying the bills.

    --

    When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.

  41. Re:$72 per year? For Salon? by Dominic_Mazzoni · · Score: 2

    I agree, $72 per year is a bit much.

    That's why Salon only costs $30 per year.

    If you want only one month at a time, it's $6/mo.

  42. Re:The main problem with the web subscription mode by adolf · · Score: 2

    HBO seems to be doing fairly well, these days, and has been since the early days.

    Note: "Early days" in this context is defined as the time when "basic cable" meant paying a sum of money every month to a company which would deliver to your home via coaxial cable a handful of local television stations which could easily be recieved -for free- with an antenna, with the possibility of paying an additional monthly sum for HBO.

    --
    Kid-proof tablet..
  43. $72/year?? by Telek · · Score: 2

    As someone else pointed out, paying $72/year for any online amature news site is completely outrageous.

    I can get magazine subscriptions (PCMag, et al) for like $40/year... I can get a HUGE newspaper at my door *every day* for $60/year, and I can *guarantee* you that it has a lot more coverate and stories and information than any online news site around will have, and it will be a lot better written too. Plus I'm not tied to my computer to read it, which as of right now is a nice thing. Sure, the wireless internet is great, but during a 45min commute to work in a carpool it's great to just flip open a newspaper.

    I'd pay for salon if it was $30/year, but I think that's the magic number for me. Any more than that and there is a lot better places to go to get the information that I want.

    --

    If God gave us curiosity
  44. porn sites by phr1 · · Score: 2

    use something called "adult check" that works like that. I guess it's successful. I haven't tried it, thank you.