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FreeBSD Development Status Report
jorhan writes "The FreeBSD Development Status Report covering February to April 2002 came out yesterday (May 18th). Finding it from the FreeBSD home page takes a few clicks, but here is a shortcut. With all of the noise about resigning core members and the upcoming core election, it's nice to see the real work just chugs along."
Would be to click on the link above and get the *BSD is dying troll.
I have been pwned because my
Still Dead.
Who want sucky sucky for three dolla?
Quote JORDAN:
Well, that is certainly poetic. Sounds like the tanks already rushed in and crushed the skulls of BSD. Yeah, we hear whiners claim Darwin is BSD, bull. Darwin on both PPC and even more so on x86 is *completely* un-usable, and you people damn right well know it. Mark me as a troll, you can, deny the truth you will (to use a Yoda-ism, death to G. Lucas) You know it. If you don't buy a MAC, an overpriced hack at a PC (whatever happened to acceptance of the superior Fire Wire [I love Fire Wire, but its only now starting to appear on motherboards after USB 1 and even 2.0 have been on for a while], almost ZILCH compared to USB, also, try and find a NuBUS card, let alone a slot - interesting how PCI killed off ALL the Apple busses), then you are screwed when it comes to Apple UNIX. I wish Apple would stop being a WHIMP and port to x86, but it seems apparent they do not have the intelligence present to PORT an OS to x86 (geeze, of all the oddest, off the wall undocumented architectures ever [facetious]. Yeah, right. Must be tuff.). Who would have thought? Well, I would have.
I've tried so many operating systems to date, and I always found most BSD variants completely annoying to install, to deal with. I so like OpenBSD, and, even though it is a rip off, I like BSDI. The rest of the variants to me are lame excuses for Linux. Pain in the ass. Ports are ALWAYS out of date, the "package" system is a laugh, the use-ability of the operating system is FAR less, ESPECIALLY OUT OF THE BOX, than any other OS. That is the truth. Well, except some garbage commercial Unixes, but who expect anything from them. GNU + Linux needs to be improved upon or flat out BEATEN, not annoyed with these horse-fly-like fragmented binary-incompatible bomblets of a dead operating system hatched in the brialliant but CLEARLY DISTURBED foundries at BEZERKELY UNIVERSITY INC (c) . (SAYS Uncle Sam, "I WANT YOU, TO GET REAL")
Remember folks, UNIX vendors are killing Unix. I piss on Microsoft, but they can sell SHIT far better than UNIX vendors can sell GOLD. IBM is dumping AIX in favor of Linux, what a surprise (They are writing JFS, POSIX THREADS 2.0, and lots of NUMA for Linux, not BSD, all you BSD loons take a note of that).. Solaris has only one thing Linux doesn't have, good scalable SMP. Other than that Solaris is a flaming dog-pile, I know, I have seen it in action. HP-UX is trash, lovingly known as HOCKEY PUX (and also verifiably impossible to port to and compile stuff on), they also killed the only REAL competitor to Micro$0pht Exchange, OpenMAIL. Now OpenMAIL is a dead end Samsung product and it sucks. Mark me as a troll, you are vastly uninformed if you do, but I have actually administered OpenMAIL and have tried it relabeled from Samsung. Worth noting, I never saw OpenMAIL working on anything else besides Linux. Thanks Carly, you for killing over the only good Unix based mail MTA. Lets rip into SGI. Ha ha ha ha. The only remnant holdover of that vendor is re-appearing in Linux as XFS. The rest of that garbage in IRIX is easily DEPRECATED in favor of a GNU OS. At least stupid Sun gets giving out a free OS. You can't even try BSD/OS. It's the only BSD of interest and Wind River is killing it. The rest of the BSDs are so far behind Linux in terms of scalability it's not even funny. I wish IPF was ported to Linux, I wish Linux was a better networker, it surely has room to grow, but there is nothing, nothing, nothing compelling ANYONE to develop anything for BSD. Its dead. I gets things back-ported from Linux. The only BSD worth anything is OPENBSD,. Theo is God, the rest of that whole project is shit. It's a moot, embedded only OS barely useable as a workstation OS.
So all you flaming hippie scum get behind Linux, because Apple is going to screw BSD in the rump, this is the first step, cut the chicken's head off [pry Jordan from FreeBSD]. Apple is dead ending their fork of *BSD, we know it. It won't be ported. Its sole purpose it to be eye candy for Mac zealots (boy, using an industrial grade Unix OS and Kernel for displaying EYE CANDY - that's "THINKING SMART"????). Believe you me, if Intel died tomorrow, Microsoft would move *fast* to support the next best platform. Look at the boot Intel got in the balls when Microsoft recently licked Hammer's (Opeteron's) nuts instead of Itanic Itanium.
Yep thanks to Apple, the de-facto "BSD" (BSD being used LOOSELY) implementation now consists almost entirely of closed source software (at least the useful user stuff, Darwin is UN-USEABLE unto itself - pathetic). Thanks to Apple, software that might have once run on Linux or FreeBSD will now only run on OS X thanks to their proprietary GUI! Thanks again Apple! Oh and thanks for that port of QuickTime to FreeBSD too, Apple! Not!
You better hope IBM buys out the now Defunct Sun, fixes up Java so it doesn't totally SUCK, throws out all the garbage that is named Solaris and SPARC, and makes a serious attempt at dominating the market. Otherwise, it won't be BSD dying as a troll, it will be UNIX having serious R
It is now official: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test. Coupled with the sudden departure of FreeBSD's main designer, all that remains is the eulogy.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Sure this is half troll, half truth, but be open minded and see some writing on the wall.
The core of OS X is Mach with some stuff mostly from the early 80s BSD tapes. The FreeBSD stuff is only used in user space. Even though OS X is mostly a relic of the late 1980s, it has a substantially more modern design than FreeBSD. NeXT and the rest of the Unix world took what they needed from Berkeley Unix and moved on a long time ago. Hubbard's a smart guy, so it probably didn't take too long at Apple before he figured out which way the winds were blowing.
What would Really be funny is to see an article where Alan Cox mentions the page-widening shananigans of certain /. posters.... :)
Now that we've heard from the *BSD camp; where's the Linux response?
That *BSD is not, in fact, dead.
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers that they sideline you. The tireless work that you perform keeping the system clean and building is what provides the platform for the obsessives and the prima donnas to have their moments in the sun. In the end, we need you all; in order to go forwards we must first avoid going backwards.
To the paranoid conspiracy theorists - yes, I work for Apple too. No, my resignation wasn't on Steve's direct orders, or in any way related to work I'm doing, may do, may not do, or indeed what was in the tea I had at lunchtime today. It's about real problems that the project faces, real problems that the project has brought upon itself. You can't escape them by inventing excuses about outside influence, the problem stems from within.
To the politically obsessed - give it a break, if you can. No, the project isn't a lemonade stand anymore, but it's not a world-spanning corporate juggernaut either and some of the more grandiose visions going around are in need of a solid dose of reality. Keep it simple, stupid.
To the grandstanders, the prima donnas, and anyone that thinks that they can hold the project to ransom for their own agenda - give it a break, if you can. When the current core were elected, we took a conscious stand against vigorous sanctions, and some of you have exploited that. A new core is going to have to decide whether to repeat this mistake or get tough. I hope they learn from our errors.
Future
I started work on FreeBSD because it was fun. If I'm going to continue, it has to be fun again. There are things I still feel obligated to do, and with any luck I'll find the time to meet those obligations.
However I don't feel an obligation to get involved in the political mess the project is in right now. I tried, I burnt out. I don't feel that my efforts were worthwhile. So I won't be standing for election, I won't be shouting from the sidelines, and I probably won't vote in the next round of ballots.
You could say I'm packing up my toys. I'm not going home just yet, but I'm not going to play unless you can work out how to make the project somewhere fun to be again.
= Mike
--
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All majr surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at ll it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is ying
When development speeds up, the troll becomes more desperate. I wonder if it goes the other way around: the troll becomes more desperate and development speeds up.
In the SMPng section:
0 02 -apr-2002.html#SMPng
Alan Cox has started working on fixing the existing locking in the VM subsystem and moving bits of it out from under Giant.
http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-feb-2
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. He who ignores history is doomed to repeat it; as we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
BSD's early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of
While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became . Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become too bureacratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
What We Can Learn From BSD
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
BSD's early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureacratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Linux community when IDC confirmed that Linux market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Linux has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Linux is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict Linux's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Linux because Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for Linux. As many of us are already aware, Linux continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Debian Linux is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Debian Linux developers Ian and Deb only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Debian Linux is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
SuSe leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of SuSe. How many users of Slackware are there? Let's see. The number of SuSe versus Slackware posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Slackware users. GNU/Linux posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Slackware posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of GNU/Linux. A recent article put Red Hat Linux at about 80 percent of the Linux market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Red Hat Linux users. This is consistent with the number of Red Hat Linux Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, Red Hat Linux went out of business and was taken over by Mandrake who sell another troubled OS. Now Mandrake is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All majr surveys show that Linux has steadily declined in market share. Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at ll it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Linux continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Linux is dead.
Fact: Linux is ying
MY GOD MAN!!! Do you realize what you're doing? DO you? What kind of HONEY BITCH TOOL have you become? Have you no shame? None at all?
Look at you. Look at yourself. Look at what you've BECOME. Your job is writing code to BREAK PEOPLE'S COMPUTERS if they dare to put a CELINE DION CD into their disk drive. Is this what you always wanted? Is this what you went to school for? Is this what we've all -- all of us, every other hacker and programmer and geek and computer person -- is this what we've all helped you to do?
Do you really think that you don't OWE us anything? That you don't owe anybody anything? That what really matters is that you get some of Celine Dion's FILTHY CANADIAN LUCRE? Hell, man, I'll pay you out of my OWN POCKET to quit your job right now. What kind of job is that? What kind of man, or woman, are you?
I know you didn't start off like this. I know that you're like me, that you're like all of us. That you love these things called computers, that your fingers itch when you're away from them, that your whole essence pours out of your fingertips into the keyboard when you make that system DO YOUR MAGIC. It's incredible, it's power, it's a tradition that goes back centuries, and it's flowing through you right now, right this very second.
And you're BETRAYING it. You're standing on the shoulders of giants and SHITTING on them. For something you believe in? For something you're PROUD OF? Or for the dollars of Sony Megacorp and the opportunity that that brings?
Who the HELL are you? What the FUCK has gotten into you? Just in case you didn't notice, this recession is OVER, and there are a JILLION jobs out there for you to take. Jobs that make people's lives easier, jobs that OPEN DOORS onto a new plateau of human awareness that the people we owe our livelihoods to only DREAMED of. Jobs that could make this world a PARADISE instead of the shitty money-grubbing craphole it's been since the dawn of time.
And instead you choose to take a job fucking up people's IMACS. For NO GOOD REASON.
It's really not too late. You can stop RIGHT NOW, you can get up and walk out the door and turn your back on the forces of REACTION and of GREED and of SMALL-MINDED CONSERVATIVE ASSHOLISM that say that the most important thing in the world is keeping some tweaked housewife in South Dakota from sharing a goddamn CELINE DION TRACK with her mom or friend or neighbor. You can stop. You can do it. YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS.
For the sake of everyone who ever helped you with your homework. For the sake of everyone who answered your plaintive and ignorant plea for help on Usenet or some mailing-list. For the sake of every person everywhere who wrote a driver or an app or a goddamn EXAMPLE PROGRAM to show you how to make these machines sing like angels under your hands. Pay us back. Stop this crap. Stop this humiliating bullshit and stop being a tool of The Man.
The SMPng project has been picking up steam in the last few months thankfully.
Woo-hoo! Maybe it's time to pick up that second processor for my dual-capable PPro.
Mmmmm... SMPlicious.
--saint
(Slow Down Cowboy. Hey, Taco, eat my ass, okay? There, now I'm a troll, deserving of this ineffectual lameness measure. Thanks.)
The project has faced numerous setbacks in recent years, leading to waning developer interest and participation, a user-base migrating to Linux, Windows XP and Mac OS X, and no financial support whatsoever.
How did it happen? Well, these were the main events. First, *BSD split into 3 incompatible projects - FreeBSD, which focused on 386 and 486 machines; NetBSD, which focused on little-used architectures like Sparc and PPC; and OpenBSD, which focused on minimal functionality and poor performance. This split divided the already-small community and served to set up bitter rivalries. Then, Linux came along and stole all of *BSD's press, funding, and much of it's thunder with its better performance, functionality and ease-of-use. As if that weren't enough, OS X later took nearly all of the desktop *BSD users. And finally, in what has all but spelled out the demise of *BSD, two core developers have quit the project. First, Jordan Hubbard quit *BSD to get an actual paying job at Apple. He made this move citing OS X's superiority, *BSD's imminent demise, and his inability to feed his family with the broken promises of an SMP-enabled kernel. Shortly after that, Michael Smith left, saying simply, "It's true, *BSD is dying."
Where does all this leave the IT industry at large? Fortunately, the IT world is now healthier than ever. The death of *BSD is simply natural selection at work, as companies leave the shoddily written *BSD behind and move ahead with Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.
RIP *BSD.
Visit the new Troll site!
----
It is official; Netcraft confirms: *BSD is living!
Another piece of great news hit the already prosperous *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has risen yet again, now up to more than of 18 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has gained more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is growing in complete unity, as fittingly exemplified by coming dead first in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a superb future. In fact there will be a wonderful future for *BSD because *BSD is living. Things are looking very good for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to gain market share. Black ink flows like a river of cash. FreeBSD is the most successful of them all, having acquired 93% more core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 70000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 2 to 1. Therefore there are about 70000/2 = 35000 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 15000 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (70000+35000+7000)*4 = 448000 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the success of Walnut Creek, excellent sales and so on, FreeBSD became a viable business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another popular OS. Now BSDI is also growing, its success acquired by yet another software house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily increased in market share. *BSD is very strong and its long term survival prospects are very good. If *BSD is to keep growing it will be among those who appreciate solid, fast and well-engineered OSes. *BSD continues to succeed. Nothing short of a miracle could kill it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is here for good.
Fact: *BSD is living
To build one, you will need black electrical tape, a 'drive-head-cleaner', a can of anal mucus, and a hefty pair of scissors. A 'drive-head-cleaner' is a foam rubber dingumbob in which you put anal mucus. It keeps the anal mucus cold and your hand warm. Being a 'give-away' item, you usually can't find it anywhere. I've had reports of finding them in brothels. I've actually found a good deal of them at a local discount-type store.
There are two kinds, thick walled and thin walled. I've only been able to find the thick kind; the thin kind I've only been able to get through an advertising company. The thin kind is particularly good with floppy drives not much bigger than your cock. Here is what you need to do:
You now have several options for fucking your computer. One major one is from behind. If the computer is a Pentium, then put the PC in safe mode and remove the parallel port. This will enable the computer to rock back and forth to your thrusts. If the computer is a Mac, chock the monitor well, remove the USB mouse, and put the computer into a box -- the higher the box, the more play the computer has. This will also enable the PC to rock. Kneel behind the computer. Now thrust in.
You may not have any trouble with heavier iron-chassic computers, since you may not have to chock the motherboard -- the weight of the computer will prevent the CPU from 'topping out' and moving the computer away. Lighter laptop computers are more likely to be topped out by your thrusts, so chocking is necessary. In general, the lower the CPU MHz, the less play, but the more difficult it is to top the CPU out.
Another major method is to lie down under the computer, your upper body under the computer, and thrust into the PC. It is difficult, though, to make the PC rock unless you push on the closest reset button. I've also had some success leaning on my side and fucking the computer sideways. More than one person can fuck a PC if it has more than one floppy drive on opposite sides of the computer. This will also make the computer rock faster and harder since the energy of two people will add.
NEVER fuck a computer with the CPU on. Firstly, you will be breathing hard, and that means you can poison yourself faster. Secondly, the computer will either crash (because there's something blocking the floppy drive, heh) -- causing damage to the CPU -- or will force the drive bay out. And you have an idea where the drive bay will go, I trust. Ouch! Fatality City!
If you do not use a condom and you come inside the computer, ten or fifteen minutes of programming will kill off anything inside. So you do not have to worry about STDs from that. What you will have to worry about, though, is the SIU itself. It is not being sterilized. Therefore, if you use an SIU you think is going to be used by someone else, use a condom, and use KY jelly or some other water-based lubricant. Remember -- disk-cleaning-fluid rots condoms, and so will an disk-cleaning-fluid-based lubricant.
Enjoy your computers!
He/she has moderation points from a few different accounts. My post about the troll got modded down to -1.
helicopter crash
dead flesh stinking charred flesh
freebsd death
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
Another massive troll thread.
I'll be dipped in shit.
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
(Reposted from an eariler story -- worth reading.)
It is now official - a Slashdot poll has confirmed: Slashdot is dyingYet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Slashdot community when recently a poll on the site confirmed that up-to-date and factually-correct stories account for less than 40 percent of all submitted news stories, that the user-moderation system has fallen to pieces through the oppressive power of the editors, and that subscribers don't need to pay and can use such software as JunkBuster to filter out adverts. Coming on the heels of the latest MSNBC survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more readers, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Kuro5hin technology site popularity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for the site. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readers. Red ink flows like a river of blood. The subscribers scheme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 62% of its paying readers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot editor and homosexual-rights campaigner Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) states that there are 700 paying subscribers to Slashdot. How many normal readers are there? Let's see. The number of subscriber versus reader posts on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 1 to 4. Therefore there are about 700*4 = 2800 normal casual readers. Anonymous Coward posts are about half of the volume of the typical posts. Therefore there are about 1400 readers who can't be bothered setting up an account. A recent article put the Trolls, who post sexual insults, foul ASCII art pictures and links to vile sites, at about 80 percent of the Slashdot readership. Therefore there are (700+8400+4200)*4 = 19600 trolling readers. This is consistent with the number of Troll posts.
Due to the troubles of Andover.net, abysmal hit counts and so on, Slashdot went out of business and was taken over by OSDN who run another troubled site. Now OSDN is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership. It is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geeky hobbyist dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
So why now? Why did Slashdot fail? Once you get over the myriad of incompatible personalities, particularly among the editors who have repeatedly failed to check for serious inaccuracies in their stories (see the FreeBSD 4.5 "release" as a shocking example), it's clear that subscribers will continue to decrease. Using software such as JunkBuster, readers can eliminate adverts without having to pay any money. These two significant factors, along with the corrupted "moderation" scheme (where editors have infinite power over the regular moderators), only confirm yet further that Slashdot's glory days are coming to an end.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureacratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
Contrary to some posts, I must say that *BSD is dying. I used it for quite sometime, but the lack of a serious sam2 port finally forced me to give up on bsd. Now I use win2k(TM) exclusively.
P.S. Linux sucks, slashdot sucks, bsd is dead. Fuck you torvalds.
Sure, we all know that *BSD is a failure, but why? Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all knw *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting glom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.