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Zero Blaster Reviewed
Daniel Rutter writes "I've just reviewed the Zero Blaster, the smoke ring gun that ThinkGeek (among others) sell. It works. It's fun. It's a vortex ring physics demonstration with two triggers and a see-through mechanism. What more could you want for $20?" Thinkgeek and Slashdot are both owned by VA Software.
...did this make the main page on /.? Must be a slow news day if this makes front page, and Yahoo! News has a story about nine comedians on the front page.
ads.slashdot.org
Here. I must say I'm particularly excited about the ability of this device to "impress the laay-deees"... uhh.. yeah.
:(
oh, and there's a video here, though without any impressed "laay-deees."
So can anyone tell me who the among others are? Particularly anyone who might sell this toy from a retail store front? I would rather not mail order one and pay a steep shipping charge, and I do resent the Think Geek website approach of trying to make me "register" before I can even find out what the shipping cost is. (For all I know they might even be like other sites that make me give a credit card number before they will tell me the shipping charges, but I never got that far. I do buy on-line, but I never register or give a credit card number before I find out if I want to do business with the company, and for those that require it, I take my business elsewhere.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
...and it's a "smoke-ring gun". I mean, if /. is gonna shamelessly promote their wares (hey, they got bills to pay like the rest of us), shouldn't the product being plugged at least have some practicality (smart drinks, hardware etc)?
Maybe make a miscelaneous department for fluff stories like this.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Agreed. What's particularly bad is that the editorial staff clearly recognizes the problem:
Thinkgeek and Slashdot are both owned by VA Software.
The issue I have is that they don't realize what the problem is. It's like they think the issue is readership not realizing thinkgeek is associated with slashdot. We don't have that problem when there's a blinking thinkgeek ad right above the story.
Rather, the problem is that it's a plain and simple conflict of interest. OSDN trumpets slashdot as an "award winning news site", but slashdot editors continuously display zero journalistic integrities. Fact checking, not "reporting" about companies you accept advertising from, etc.
If it were news about thinkgeek, the disclaimer would not only be appropriate, it would be necessary. This however, was entirely a product suck-up....complete with the linkage. All that was missing was a [add this to your cart and check out] link. The disclaimer is for when you think you need to disclaim to readers that there's a potential conflict of interest. The disclaimer does NOT justify posting blatant ads as legitimate news stories.
Please help metamoderate.
I tell you what. You go ahead and design a site, pay for the bandwidth, support a couple of million hits on a daily bases. At that point, then you can bitch and complain about your site maintaining journalistic integrity.
Slashdot's editors are not journalists. Well, Roblimo would be, but Timothy, Taco, Hemos, etc. They repost news articles done by others. Journalistic integrity lies on the author of the article. The editors are there to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
Besides, this really isn't news. It's a review. Many small manufactures link to reviews of their products. It's nothing new. So they are promoting an item. Who cares. If you don't like it, don't click on the link. Go turn off reviews in your preference. No one forces you to come here. You don't have to pay to get the content if you so choose.
"The editors are there to seperate the wheat from the chaff."
Oh, you really didn't just say that... Do you really want to recount the all too numerous number of hoaxes, spam headlines and just plain assnine stories that have made it to the front page with these so-called chaff seperating "editors" at the helm??? No, their work is more akin to strip-mining. They take stories that grab their attention and dump them wholesale onto this site with barely a cursorary background check at times.
They aren't journalists and I can accept that. But even editors is too rich of a word for what they do. At most Slashdot is a hub where people post stories and the people who run it do the absolute minimum in their posting. In effect, everybody else does their job for them. Not that I have a problem with it, but lets overhype their job here.
And to that other guy, it's only a conflict of intrests if you claim that your organization is some how unbiased or impartial in some way. To my knowledge, Slashdot has never claimed that and has every right to hype their own products on their own site. It doesn't exactly look the best when it comes to credibility, but then, neither do the dupes, spam and other crap that make the front page, so who am I to judge?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Its an excellent point, and I think one that most of the complaining assholes on here seem to totally overlook.
The costs of running Slashdot must be astronomical, and whatever methods it takes for them to fund the site i'd accept. If for whatever reason I DIDN'T like it, then i'd just go somewhere else - I wouldn't sit here bitching about it, like I knew how to do it much better.
AC'd because of the trolls & flamers.