A Podcast from Network Administrators

MakoStorm writes "The guys over at wehatetech.com have been working really hard on their Podcast. "After This Week in Tech", and others. It was time for a Podcast that others might enjoy. With a bit of ranting, whining, and over all dislike for the dreaded stuff we need to fix every day." The site also offers an open forum to dump your horror stories in an effort to prevent technophiles from going postal.

Comments

Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

[benna]

So true. Seriously, why is slashdot advertising someone's podcast?

Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

[Seumas]

I used to want Geeks in Space to return as a podcast, but I don't think that would fly anymore. The half dozen or so episodes they managed to pull together were all before 90% of the community developed a sincere hate for the editors.

Also, it was back when there weren't 400 different editors that nobody could remember.

Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

[Saven Marek]

ok I finished listening to the podcast and I must say it's disappointing this is on the front page of slashdot. If the poor quality mp3 wasn't bad enough, the shrieking and random burping out loud while babbling on like 14 year olds is.

No wonder some of the commercial station podcasts are climbing up the charts as popular if this is what counts for an amateur one.

Rant rant stupid users

[ReformedExCon]

Work is so tough.

But I got time to make a podcast! ;-)

Shameless

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting down another podcast while making a comment on one you like is just shameless advertising.

Re:As Good as a Rest

[Council]

Well that will certainly make a nice change from Slashdot's usual calm, reasoned discussions.

Well, on the Windows vs. Linux discussion earlier (guy who switched for ten days story), did you notice that the discussion was intelligent, civil, and pretty moderate? I think that Slashdot has just gotten overfamiliar with every W/L argument and the discussions just go like chess games played by rote.

Now I'm just waiting for the same to happen to discussions of copyright law.

Businesses Jumping into Podcasting

[dotslashdot]

Podcasting has really taken off. Many companies are trying to jump into podcasting to target consumers with ads, etc. What was once simply common folk making interesting podcasts will soon (if not already) become yet another communication medium saturated with advertisements and promotions, reducing its value.

Re:Businesses Jumping into Podcasting

[uprock_x]

What was once simply common folk making interesting podcasts will soon (if not already) become yet another communication medium saturated with advertisements and promotions, reducing its value.

Possibly, but I disagree, a few posts pack there is an article about independent net radio and similar media, someone brought up 9/11 Truth radio.

There is an enormous appetite for this kind of stuff these days because it's simply not being delivered by the so called mainstream broadcasting at all. On those very rare occasions I switch on the TV, it's just one terrible slice of goverment press releases. It's unwatchable.

When I discovered podcasting (which I'd long avoided as it seemed another shallow buzzword like blogs etc) I was really impressed at some of the content out there which I would call as good as if not better than any commerical mainstream outlet would produce. Even the crap podcasts are well...no more crap than the crap you would hear on the radio.

Ads aren't neccesarily a crime. It really depends on context. Targeted ads (although I tend to block all web page ads) are at least better than generic stupid TV ads or worse still 'state broadcasting' and if it's a podcast rather than a stream you can always skip them of course.

In a nutshell IMHO, if you have something to say ads are ok, if you don't then ads aren't gonna help you anyway.

Someone has to get to it....

[djupedal]

BOFH podcasts....now that's a match made in digital heaven :)

Or how about a website that reads other sites and podcasts them automatically? You supply a url and the 'bot stufs it where iTunes can grab it.

Re:Their site has an Alexa ranking of 2,853,057

[strider44]

Yes we should only visit the same sites as people with spyware damnit!

Podcasting eh..?

[hagem01]

The minute the guy that repairs my bike started to babble about how podcasting was cool I knew it had no future. Bike-guy: "Did you know you can download music and radio stations from the interweb and play it whenever you want? LIVE!" Me: "Live? As in, the radio people wait for you to turn on your MP3 player and then start their show?" Bike-guy: "YES! Is that not fantastic?"

Re:Podcasting eh..?

[bleckywelcky]

I know you joke, but This Week in Tech will be doing a live broadcast sometime in the near future. TWiT is a conglomeration of old ZDNet / TechTV folks that discuss the latest technology news. I personally think that the production is one of the most professionally done by a group of "hobbyists" (I say "hobbyists" because the podcast is not a production of some company, but most of the people in the podcast have professional video/sound production experience). Having said that, the content gets a bit dull sometimes. They will start off with an interesting subject but sometimes end up in back-and-forth banter. Still, most of it is pretty interesting, even if it mirrors the front page of Slashdot on occasion. They are currently up around their 18th podcast (headed by Leo Laporte), and have plans to meet in a SF Bay area pub/tavern/restaurant to do future tapings. As well, they will be doing their live podcast eventually.

Horror story.

[Vo0k]

So, I created this site, podcast, forums, submit your own horror story. Spare bandwidth of my company, not much, maybe 1000 hits a day, server working at leisure, no problem. And then some moron submitted the URL to Slashdot...

First, the corporate site went down. Then I got a call from the ISP that we're taking up 99% of their bandwidth and their customers are complaining. Manager called and told me to stop it at once or I get fired. So I shut the server down, but it didn't help, hordes requesting documents, storm of retry packets. The router began overheating and entered thermal shutdown mode, cutting off most of the LANs of the company. Boss showed up, just nodded watching as a glass of coffee I left on a tiny hub connecting the router with the main modem starts boiling, took his phone, called the CEO and said "Give them all a day off. We're slashdotted." and then looked at me and in terribly calm voice announced: "You. Fix that."

I hate podcasts

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or are 99% of the podcasts out there completely braindead. I couldn't listen to more than 10 minutes of this one. If you took all of the actual things said in this thing and put it together, you'd end up with 5 minutes of content. Do people actually listen to this junk?

Re:I hate podcasts

[Saven Marek]

I'm disappointed in many of them. It seems to be a great way to give broadcasting to the masses, so just anyone can make a radio show as easily as a large commercial radio station.

Unfortunately as the old cliche goes, this means that just anyone IS making their own radio shows. I'm finding the same stats as you, about 99% are trash, and the ones I've kept listening to are commercial/professional stations who just put their existing radio shows online.

We need a good freely accessible ratings service for podcasts in different categories. help people sort the chaff from the soap.

Re:I hate podcasts

[bhima]

I listen to about 1 to 1 1/2 hours daily... you just have to find some you like. And, in the words of the Beatles it's getting better all the time!

Re:I hate podcasts

[Rude Turnip]

"Is it just me, or are 99% of the podcasts out there completely braindead."

Tell me about it...I logged into iTunes yesterday and now George W. Bush's weekly radio address is now available as a podcast! I had to subscribe out of morbid curiousity.

Seriously though...there is a lot of crap to filter through, but there are some good ones. My two favorite podcasts are The Word Nerds and Catholic Insider. The Word Nerds are these three DC-area high school teachers that talk about the history and meanings of different words in the English language. Each week focuses on a different aspect of language and there is a "Rude Word of the Week." Catholic Insider is a weekly show hosted by a young Catholic priest in Amswoort, Netherlands, Father Roderick Vonhogen. It is not as overtly religious as you might think. He takes his listeners on soundseeing tours and is somewhat otaku about Star Wars. I'm not a Christian, but I'm a huge fan of his show because it is engaging.

Re:I hate podcasts

[slim]

Is it just me, or are 99% of the podcasts out there completely braindead

You're slamming the medium when your real beef is with the content. Saying "I hate podcasts" because 99% of them are rubbish is like saying "I hate MP3s" because 99% of those are rubbish.

On any medium, there's a lot of dross around. Buy a CD at random, and the chances are you won't like it. Go to a random web page, it's likely to be dross.

This was the problem with the old mp3.com -- I'm sure there was great stuff on there, but it was diluted with mediocre stuff, and there was no layer to sort the wheat from the chaff.

With a lot of traditional media, we have an infrastructure that wades through the surfeit of available material and picks out the best for us. That infrastructure includes music radio, newspaper and magazine reviewers, word of mouth, etc. Sometimes it lets us down -- the system might completely overlook a great new novel or band -- but at least it does something, and we can tune our exposure to the system by listening to that DJ whose choices we usually enjoy, or reading the film reviews in the organ that we usually agree with.

Podcasting -- and non-label bands who publish straight to MP3 -- need that kind of promotional path. It's nice to see that this is actually happening. Say what you like about Adam Curry's Daily Source Code podcast, but it gets a lot of listeners, and he frequently plays promos for other podcasts, or describes and recommends podcasts he likes or things his listeners should check out. That's a start. He has said that what needs to happen is for other high profile podcasters to do the same, substituting their tastes for his.

This is what needs to happen. I wish developers would recognise this, instead of repeatedly falling into the trap of implementing ratings collectors. Podcast Alley collates votes and produces a top 10. Top tens don't interest me.

Re:I hate podcasts

[slapout]

You have to weed thru them to find the good ones. Try http://itconversations.com/ and also http://www.thisweekintech.com/

Re:As Good as a Rest

[CleverNickedName]

Very true. :)

Perhaps there is a handy slashdot argument script doing the rounds.

l_slashdot.argueFor("Soldiers in Iraq");

So, geeks in space

[isorox]

So it's basically geeks in space, with an RSS feed? Wow, isn't 2005 such an amazing year!

When the world is full of metrosexual bloggers podcasting over a skinny latte with their blackberrys, you know there's no hope left.

Geeks in Space

[Anonymous Coward]

What I really want to see is a Geeks in Space podcast. I think it's time to revive the show in some form, and Podcasting is an ideal way.

Re:Their site has an Alexa ranking of 2,853,057

[benna]

I would say as a rule podcasts are not newsworthy, unless they are recorded by someone perticularly noteworthy, or they are particularly popular.

People hate books too.

[crovira]

99.99% of ANYTHING is crap. But that .01% of the total content of the universe makes it all worthwhile.

I listen to a podcast on wine tasting. If I didn't like wine, the entire thing would be an utter waste. Even then, most of it is only of passing interest, and then only to the people who had fun gathering the material, and to me.

Right now 99.99% of podcasts suck with their repellent production values. They have none. That will change as the geek factor diminishes and the abhorent contents kick in.

A lot of this is eminently forgetable. Some of it, like Slacker Astronomy is good (if you're into astrinomy...)

Podcast

[xerves]

Yeah, I will admit the last podcast was not really that great. After the first 10 minutes it gets better. What can I say, I am sicker than a dog and we did it around 1 AM with a $10 Mic and a FREE encoding program. If you have any comments on how to make it better such as software and mics to use, let me know.

Podcast Awards?

[chocolatetrumpet]

We need a good freely accessible ratings service for podcasts in different categories. help people sort the chaff from the soap.

Umm... Podcast Awards?

Try out the winners.