Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Turns 5
As much as I avoid discussing Slashdot on Slashdot, I figured I'd just take
a moment to say that Slashdot is 5 years old now. I've written a
Journal Entry with a few more comments on the subject. And yes we know we jumped the shark about a week after we registered the domain name, but we just don't care! Here's hoping we're here 5 years from now doing exactly the same thing with the same folks. (As a side note, due to a data importing bug, we really don't know exactly when we made our debut, but I spent september 97 putting the site together... and when we went live, we didn't even have comments for the first week or so!)
That are not corporate sites, like Microsoft.com, etc
I'm talking...ad-supported.
Slashdot is the site I spent 90% on when I'm connected to the internet. It's the first thing I read every day.
Slashdot is a source of info, of pure fun and of substancial debates.
Congrats, Mista Taco!
{{.sig}}
On a related note, it would be interesting for someone to study the effects of /. on society, along the same lines as this story. I don't know about anyone else, but /. tends to be one of my greatest joys and frustrations all in one. The ability to voice your opinion in such an open manner can have a staggering effect, and I would be interested to see a study trying to quantify exactly what that effect is.
"Herbivores eat well cause their food never, ever runs."
How many registered users are there anyhow? Any count on active heads as well?
Sometimes, I feel like an old geezer having a user ID of 3264, when I see user IDs in the 6 digits range.
With one of the top stories on the same date five years ago featured again.
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
Congrats! I sure hope that you last another 5 five years. But is the site profitable? Could it stand on its own? Could you guys buy it back if VA decides to shut it down?
Lasers Controlled Games!
But who made the _FIRST_ post to /. ?
That's what I would like to know.
I started scanning /. about three years ago. I had just started with a new company, and no other company I had worked for previously allowed lowly employees like me internet access. With slow dial-up at home, this data pipe into my work computer was amazing.
/. through some mention in a Canadian magazine I had purchased at an airport. Now, I'm not techno-geek, but I'm also not a techno-phobe. Yes, I have Windows. But yes, I run Mozilla. I'm kind of "middle of the road" when it comes to computers.
/. to be at the very least interesting, and at the very most informative and entertaining. I've learned a lot about computers, programming and technology through this site. But I've also learned a lot about law, public opinion and other diverse topics.
/. posters, it's frequently the most stimulating thing I read all day.
/. and the /. community.
/., I've managed to use a lot of what I read to my advantage. frequently, my coworkers will come to me for problems instead of bothering with our slowwwwww IT dept!
I found
I've always found the content on
I may have missed the first two years, but I'll read for the next two to make up. Although I may not always agree with
Thanks,
SIDE NOTE -- because of
Early slashdot is just as valuable as early usenet, and I think we need to find a way to make it accessible. Isn't there some NNTP gateway code somewhere? Could slashdot export month-old stories for google groups to pick up? I bet the google guys would even help develop a new protocol if necessary.
Most valuable of all would be to establish a mechanism that other web discussion boards could use, and encourage them to make their archives available. Imagine the power of all your favorite weblogs searchable through one interface. This would be a boon for users and net historians alike.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Slashdot doesn't archive -1 posts.
Slashdot has archived comments that had been moderated to -1 since the upgrade to Slashcode 2.x. In fact, the story about the 2.x upgrade is an example of an "archived" discussion with some extant -1 comments. So is Oracle Breakable After All, where more than half of the comments are -1 (due to The Post). It's true that -1 comments before the 2.x upgrade were discarded, but more than half the comments in Slashdot's database have been posted on 2.x. Not even the editors can change that.
Will I retire or break 10K?
As you can see from my user id number, I've been around here for a while. And I didn't even get an account for a while... Anyone with a lower id still around? What do *you* remember from 5 years ago?
/, as root" (or similar destructive advice)?
Reminiscing for a minute: Remember when...
* the Enlightenment window manager was still using DR (development release) in the versions?
* having to download 50 different graphics libraries to install Enlightenment?
* the first time someone told you to run "ldconfig -v" ?
* the first time someone told you to run "rm -rf
* a time before GNOME vs. KDE, because there was neither?
* you were the only kid on your block (in your school, at your job) who knew what an mp3 was?
* big companies announcing Linux support was a big deal?
* when XFree86 supported about 10 video cards?
What else?
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
Congrats on the five years, but you'd think that after five years, the Slashdot bigwigs would have figured out that you have to include not only the time and date on a story, but also the year. There's nothing more frustrating than doing a search on Slashdot, finding an interesting story, and not being sure whether it is from this year, last year, the year before last year, etc.....
but there are still a hell of a lot o half arsed discussion sites out there that have a flat layout for comments
In an earlier life, when I was a DECcie we had a corporate network with maybe 100000 users and we had this groupware thingie called VAXnotes. Of course DEC couldn't sell it for shit, but it had a huge impact on the company internally.
The software was rather primitive. You installed it and created a conference on your box. The format went something like SLSHDT::COBOL for example, discussing the finer arts of Cobol. SLSHDT was the DECnet node, where it resided (limited to 6 chars, but those where the good ol' days).
Within the conference everybody could create an entry and after that it was just one flat stream of comments.
There where confererences for every product and every obscure piece of software which this company manufactured and produced. That was nifty, because if you had a Cobol question it wouldn't take an hour until somebody from Cobol engineering jumped in with a knowledgeable and comprehensive answer. But the most interesting part of the whole system where the EI (employee interest) conferences, which ranged from cats through tarrot over DEC issues (HUMANE::DIGITAL) up to Soapbox (damn! I can't even remember the node name...).
While it was primitive from a "layout" point of view I have never since experienced the power that a network can have on its participants. They where some really, really smart people bitching and flaming away, but sticking together whenever required. At one time we even pledged to get the best hated Soapbox contributor (Jamie, who was a very fat git, NOT!) to a boxbash in Bawston from Reading, UK.
It was also around that time (1993) when a really, really smart engineer (let's call him Dan K) mentioned something he was working on, something that would change the world, something so fucking (he didn't say fucking, since that was verboten) revolutionary it would blow us out of our socks. He couldn't really mention what it was, but it was later marketed under the term WWW.
Yep, it was a primitive form of discussion, but it didn't matter, not at all and it was one of the aspects in DECs culture, which made this company so great!
It saddens me until today, that one of the most important companies in computer history was sold off by a slick guy with a bad hairdo to some box-assembling marketing organisation in Texas.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Oh, and you forgot the infamous Signal 11, founder of the Karma Whore movement. Too bad he retired.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)