Slashdot Mirror
The 10 Tech People Who Don't Matter
TopShelf writes "Business 2.0 recently ran a feature on the Top 50 People Who Matter in the business world, but perhaps more interesting is their list of the 10 People Who Don't Matter. Leading off the list is a Slashdot favorite, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer..." Given, Rob's in there as well, but I'd say his company in the list is pretty decent.
The last post. On slashdot. Ever. Poor Rob!
I don't agree with the article at all, and I definitely don't agree with the top 50 article. In the long run, nothing matters in history. The consumers have been, and always will be, the only important unit or group in any market transaction. Without demand, supply matters little. Even if demand is created because of a new supply of a new item or service, it matters little as that demand is fixed -- it would have gone elsewhere.
Slashdot is definitely slowing down. So what? Digg is a mess, too. All I see on various blogs lately is "Click my ads!" and "Help me digg up my submission!" Nice.
I'm a free market believer because I believe in ultimate freedom for the consumer. The only way that can happen is if the producers are given the chance to compete without favoritism, preferential grants or subsidies, or anti-market entry taxes, tariffs and regulations. It doesn't matter WHO the person is that discovers a new market or makes it better, it matters that the consumers are given the ability to voice what they want, no matter if it is immoral or even considered illegal by the previous generation.
Slashdot will be gone in years or decades. So will Digg. So will Business 2.0. Who cares, as long as consumers consume, and producers can create what new consumers desire.
Right, I'm sick of this. The one article where I deserve a mention and they leave me out. Guess I just don't matter.
Meta will eat itself
Hey, at least you got there in the first place. More than most of your readership will ever accomplish!
John
In a word, wow.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
This article is complete fake, and you know how I know...
Malda knows his subject, and he's a good editor, but in the end, he's just no match for the power of the multitudes.
Only kidding, slash is home I won't believe its dying until netcraft confirms it.
liqbase
#11 - Cowboy Neil
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Millennium Crisis Line: 0890 900 2000 [calls cost 50p/min]
Real list:n tmatter/frameset.exclude.html
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/peoplewhodo
Leading off the list is a Slashdot favorite, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer..."
Even though the list says "In NO particular order"
But hey, I think Ballmer is a tool even though I'm not a big MS hater...
An innocent bypasser was killed in Redmond today by a mysterious falling chair...
João Pinheiro
FYI, it's just in alphabetical order.
Slashdot - News For Nerds Stuff That Doesn't Matter.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
Just ouch. They put extra sand in the vaseline for slashdot in that little article.
Look, people! Here's one that does read the article without reading the blurb. In one word -- wow.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
It's a list from Business 2.0. I'm afraid I'd have to put them on my top 10 list of "magazines that don't matter"...
Wait what is that I hear - the sound of a continuous stream of chairs being violently
thrown in the general direction of Business 2.0 Magazine offices.
So I went to look at the list, and it wasn't in the article. There was a link to it, though. So I middle-clicked the link, to open it in a new tab, and... oops. The tab's empty.
Oh, I see, it wasn't a link at all, it was a pointless bit of JavaScript that merely looked like a link. So I go back and click on it the way they were expecting, and... oops. There's still no list: just an empty window with a title at the top.
Okay, fine, their online article won't work in Firefox. So I'll use the print version instead. No JavaScript there, right? Wrong. The print link takes you to... the same article, formatted for printing. Complete with lack of list, complete with stupid JavaScript non-link.
Sorry, guys, but if you've gone to such lengths to make sure I can't read your damn article, I really don't see why I should care who you think matters. If you can't write plain HTML, you have no business talking about the web.
ok here goes.. one two and three
fifteen jugglers, five believers
Business 2.0 confirms!
(it's a joke. laugh.)
I see stories on Digg, Wired, and Drudge hours (sometimes DAYS) before they are on /.
Granted, I can't live without the flamewars and discussions I've come to know and love in this moderated world of slashdot (at least since 1998), but I think the article may have a point...
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Yeah, sadly slashdot is becoming less and less a part of my daily habit. I use to be sure to meta moderate and try to give meaningful contributions to the site but seeings as where the development end of things have been in a nose dive around here and the site has become more a Bush bashfest than a technical news source... eh... I just don't feel bad not being as much a member of the community anymore.
On another note about the top ten: I have to completely disagree with the "DVD is an endangered species" noise mentioned for NetFlix. While I'm not a NetFlix subscriber physical media like DVD is certainly nowhere near its endlife. I just don't know what people think is going to replace the physical aspect of DVD media in the near future. I've heard this boy cry wolf before and frankly it's gotten old.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I'm reading Linus Torvalds Creator, Linux on the list of un-important people as well. Doesn't that bother anyone?
In the thirty years I've been involved in IT I have to guess that we're approaching the point where hero-god-gurus don't matter much at all. Hasn't the industry matured to the point of being boring yet? When are we going to get past eccentric non repeatable brilliance and to the point of dull efficient execution?
My god, could they have found a more unflattering photo of Linus? But then again, they chose not to even include a photo of Rob Malda.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Finally, an oppertunity for a Digg Sucks thread... while TFA may be right that Digg is "supplanting" Slashdot, this is not for the better. Digg posts inaccurate articles, tons of dupes, poorly edited articles, etc. on its front page. Slashdot occasionally does the same, but not like 20 times every day. Recently Digg seems to be up in arms about Scientology, as if this is some sort of new thing. I read "A Piece of Blue Sky" about 6 years ago...
Socrates said that democracy was the WORST form of government because it meant rule by the ignorant masses... the content of Digg is just proof of that.
Linus has the one entry that is really a compliment.
Dennis Ritchie gave a nice talk on the 21st(??) birthday of Unix about how it is like a child growing up, leaving home, being all grown up and an adult... He felt a little like a proud parent.
What better compliment for Linus than to have created something that has grown and matured to the point that it is beyond the creator? I can imagine few more satisfying accomplishments in life.
YOU....
Yes, it bothered me. Because Linus is not only the creator of Linux. He also maintains the kernel and adds new features once in a while. The latest kernel release adds significant features and possibly performance enhancements.
It seems to me that whoever wrote the article, thinks that Linus' role is over and that he's nothing more than a decorative figure. He's not.
firefox 1.5.0.4 under windows ... article read just fine
Very S L O W news week we're having here, eh?
----- I have bad karma for a reason! -----
Slashdot is consistantly several hours if not days behind other geek news sources now, so yeah it is a lot less relevant.
...things could be worse. All in all, isn't it true that bad publicity (though I hardly think of this to be highly negative in any way, save for being grouped with Balmer...) is better than no publicity?
Another note: for some of the names on the list, its hard to understand how they can be considered to have their 'glory days behind them.' Personally, they have little individual input, but the movement or company is still always 'theirs.' Microsoft will always be attributed to Gates, Linux to Torvalds, Apple to the Steves, etc.
With more people, the leader of a company or movement cannot feasibly do the ground level work on a project and conduct all of the administrative and upper management work. Its how any movement will grow. Sooner or later, the guy who started the whole thing has to take somewhat of a back seat in order to manage the organization. There are some exceptions to this of course.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Slashdot could have easily had the equivalent of Digg if they had opened up the story queue for public viewing. I know that this is not how the editors want Slashdot to work, but I think it would have let Slashdot address the audience that wants the absolute latest stories and the audience that wants indepth discussion. I have read the FAQ and I understand the issues with spam, but I think those are all solvable problems.
:)
Oh well, too late now, Digg stole that thunder
The title of this article appears to be its major problem. This is not an article about People Who Don't Matter. This is an article about People of Whom We Disapprove or People Whose Current Operations Don't Impress Us Much or some such thing. One doesn't need to be justified or qualified to matter, in the grand scheme of things, and the fact that Business 2.0 is unimpressed by these individuals' current endeavours ultimately has no bearing on their importance to the world of business or to society in general. A powerful fool can change the world in a way that matters, whether or not we may think he's a fool.
Karma: Chameleon (comes and goes)
Alexa is spyware, is it not? If Digg is getting more visited by Alexa users than Slashdot, to me that signifies that more people that read Digg are unsavy enough to have spyware installed on their machine. To me, having a lower rank in the Alexa ranking system when you are talking about a tech news site means that the readers of the lower scoring sites have better spyware protection and are more tech savy. This lends MORE credence to slashdot than Digg, IMHO.
Although describing our esteemed head honcho as a great editor may be pushing things a bit, the comments about Slashdot miss an important point.
The challenge faced by many Internet sites is not to generate reams and reams of content, but to allow users a way to filter out only what they want or need. What with "citizen journalists" and plain old trolls and conspiracy theorists, there needs to be some kind of moderating hand to make information useful.
Peer review, like that created by Slashdot, is one way of doing that, but a firm editorial hand is even more useful. That's why my daily reading includes not just Slashdot, but other sites and blogs which cover specific topics and direct me only to the stories or posts that are of value.
Despite gripes - and I don't even bother trying to post stories any more - Slashdot does a reasonable job of that filtering.
Three Squirrels
WTF is this list about?
Is this just a frail attempt at a flamebait or something?
I mean, there are millions of tech people that don't matter, yours truly included.
For those that were not morbidly curious enought to RTFA, Rob Malda is #6, Jonathan Schwartz is #8, and Linus Torvalds is #9.
BTW, Linus' picture is pretty scary. I haven't seen a picture of him in a while, kinda looking Stephen Hawking-like.
If this Business 2.0 article makes no sense to you either, simply mod my post as "underrated". Nothing more, nothing less.
WTF????
That list is totally inaccurate. It's missing both Dvorak and John Thompson.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
"On another note about the top ten: I have to completely disagree with the "DVD is an endangered species" noise mentioned for NetFlix. While I'm not a NetFlix subscriber physical media like DVD is certainly nowhere near its endlife. I just don't know what people think is going to replace the physical aspect of DVD media in the near future. I've heard this boy cry wolf before and frankly it's gotten old."
I agree. DVD's will still be around for a while yet. I would love IP TV and downloadable content to come, but it's still an issue of bandwidth and quality. Bit torrents are only fast when something is just released, otherwise I could spend days and weeks trying to get movies and TV episodes. It's faster to walk to the mall and buy it. And if Net nuetrality is killed you can forget getting any quality video content on the internet.
Slashdot.mil has demoted Malda down to LtTaco.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
you still matter to me :)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Q) How do you get people to read your lame business articles?
A) Say something inflammatory about Slashdot so that it gets posted on Slashdot!
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Its me, you, you as well, especially you, you too four eyes, and you, hiding behind him (also on the list) won't help....
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
Too many political topics have destroyed this site. Sad, really.
Slashdot isn't about news... everything that's on Slashdot has already been discussed in the blogosphere for a couple days. The value here is in the community and user comments.
What is so difficult for you in making voting system for stories?
The same thing that makes it difficult in Florida and Ohio. Even when it turns out that it was working, people who don't like the outcome say it's the system that's broken. When they do like the outcomes (because they've figured out how to perform the Digg equivalent of Karma-whoring or stirred up a bunch of traffic for their simpering Google-ad spam page), then, gosh, Digg sure is timely and wonderful!
Nope, just like the recent discussion here about how even the Washington Post web site is turning into a "conversation" instead of journalism - I fear that the droning of Digg will become the norm, and only people who appreciate some editorial steerage will populate sites that perform at least a little thoughtful editing. Which is not to say that Timothy counts.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Sadly, I have to agree with most of the sentiment regarding /. now, compared to /. back then.
I've been posting a long time (This UID shows it) and reading even longer. But over the past several years, the quality has waned - I now come here more as a novelty instead of a necessity. Shame really - I really loved this place.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
"Today, the buzz has moved elsewhere. Slashdot's editor-driven story selection model is being supplanted by user-generated systems such as Digg. According to recent Alexa data, Digg already has more daily reach and generates more page views than Slashdot. Malda knows his subject, and he's a good editor, but in the end, he's just no match for the power of the multitudes." Wait, you mean 'multitudes' like the dozen or so Diggers who have hijacked the system and are responsible for 100% of the front page content?
Sure Linus is in there, but other than him it looks more like 10 CEOs of companies that don't matter.
That article is prety stupid to make a reference to Alexa. Im looking at the graph for Digg vs Slashdot and something seems fishy. For the past few monthes Slashdot and Digg were pretty much neck and neck which makes sense. In April both Slashdot and Digg jump almost straight up in page views. Something is odd with that data.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Ok seriously, putting these two together in the same article and calling them both losers?? Ballmer has the ability to turn the biggest ship in history and while he has been lost at sea during his entire reign (and survived ongoing mutinees), I would not say he doesn't matter. He does matter. He's just ineffectual.
Linus on the other hand claims that he is an engineer and not a revolutionary and as a result, this simple statement makes him more of a revolutionary than even he would like to be. Linus has tried to avoid being cast as that and never once thought of himself in that way. In int5erview after interview, he always downplays that aspect and promotes Linux to meet the demands of consumers AND of business and not to have the OS dictates the rules of how the computer industry must move (unlike other monopolistic companies).
I think LInus's greatest ability is his ability to lead without leading. His actions and statements have often made me pause to reconsider my zealotry at times and made me understand why he supporets some of the things that he does. While I still disagree with him on some points, he still has alot of influence... to alot of people and alot of companies.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
But that doesn't mean that it's useless. The NY Times was supposedly dead as well. I still read that. Radio has been dead forever, but here I am listening to NPR almost every waking hour. I seem to remember that the paperless office was right around the corner too. Oh well. Ho hum.
All that said, I can actually imagine that Linus is happy with what was written about him. It reflects pretty well on the strength of the open source model.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
And lets face it, the best articles on /. showed up on Boing Boing two days earlier.
My humble opinion is that /. is dying, at least partly, because of bias. From article selection to discussion, you can predict what stories will run and what the discussion will be, and how they will get moderated. Boring...
Just my 2 cents.
Slashdot - Where the slash is most definitely to the left.
Checks list, not on it, I must be important. Time to print that list off ready for my next pay review.
Amen to that, I know I LIKE having the shelf of DVDs. It means I will always be able to watch those movies and shows, whenever I feel like it and without paying per view. No streaming service will ever be able to offer either of those features.
And I know what certain clueless types are already getting ready to reply with and; No, it won't. You will get whatever selection the services you are subscribing to have up at the moment, with zero certainty that same content will still be available in ten, twenty, fifty years and without a per use fee and/or user tracking. Terms of service are subject to change at the whim of the provider, your provider today will be just a cog in a different corporation next year, etc. Hell, a Cable Company hasn't kept the same name on their trucks for a decade in any city since the invention of Cable TV as best as I can tell, don't expect me to believe in permanancy on an Internet based service.
Streaming will offer DIFFERENT benefits, once the obsession with DRM is overcome, but I can't ever see myself not wanting physical copies of the stuff I really care about. A working streaming system would certainly make NetFlicks obsolete overnight, for example. And for that purpose it could even have DRM.
And of course I don't expect the obsession with DRM to end in the next decade so the whole streaming thing is mostly moot. Same for the various attempts at HiDef content. Given a choice of open (as a practical matter, Thanks DVD Jon) DVDs or closed hi res variants I can live with 720x480@60i.
Democrat delenda est
So that's what Rob looks like.
The article implies that Netflix isn't working on an internet distribution of movies. It also implies that Sony is the lone creator and crusader of Blu-Ray. I wasn't aware that Sun was supposedly starting the drive to power efficient servers, that may be my fault, bit I don't remember any SPARC variants being known for power efficiency. I don't use Linux much but I wonder if they are a bit hard on Linus. It may very well be that he intended Linux to be bigger than himself because he can't do it all or control it all. He's the kernel maintainer and most of the visible stuff about Linux is in the applications - the thing that drives computer use in the first place. It's a great foundation, but if the "Linux space" didn't have a plethora of applications to make Linux useful, then the kernel project would be pointless.
Why are any of these people supposed to matter in the first place?
Ballmer can't do much to change Microsoft's direction. Their internal inertia is huge. The only reason any CEO of a huge public company would matter is that when they do manage a tiny change, it has a relatively large effect becaus eof the comapny size. But by that criteria Ballmer does matter, even though he doesn't do anything interesting.
Of course, another factor is that he's not as famous as Gates, but that's only because Gates is an interesting "nerd becomes billionaire" sterotype the media like.
As for Rob, well, he never really mattered at all, did he? Slashdot is what would matter. And it doesn't! It's a community, it doesn't matter. If everyone goes off to Digg, who cares? (Well, People who work for slashdot and their advertisers would, but never mind that). Anyhow, can you really say that Digg is competing with Slashdot? It's different enough that lots of people use both equally.
Lastly, Linus. Well, he deliberately tries not to matter, so I don't think that counts.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
So the article says Rob's not important - big deal. I RTFA and I know it slams the slash in the text, but it reality, it's a list of people. Just like the Torvalds bit, Rob isn't as important as what he created is. Basically, he's no more important to the process at slashdot today than any other moderator.
As others have already stated, what separates Slashdot from Digg is quality. The articles may be the same, similiar, delayed, dupes, whatever - but the moderated commentary from users is what makes Slashdot worth reading.
That said, Rob deserves a huge portion of credit for creating and maintaining this community. The man may be irrelevant, but the community is not.
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
(Because CNN's site sucks worse than anything else I've seen lately; if you want to read the little blurbs on each, you'll have to suffer through their shit, because I can't be bothered to copy/paste it all...)
Allegedly in "no particular order:"
1. Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft
2. Jeffrey Citron, Chairman and chief strategist, Vonage
3. Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix
4. Ken Kutaragi, President, Sony Computer Entertainment
5. Warren Lieberfarb, Senior Consultant, HD-DVD Promotion Group
6. Rob Malda, Slashdot.org
7. Arun Sarin, CEO, Vodafone
8. Jonathan Schwartz, CEO, Sun Microsystems
9. Linus Torvalds, Creator, Linux
10. Mark Zuckerberg, Founder, Facebook
Here's the blurb about Malda:And just because I thought it was interesting, here's the blurb about Linus Torvalds:
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Jeez, it's halfway through 2006 already. What the hell did I do with my life?
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
Isn't that the whole point? To have many many others contributing to the project so that it can grow in such a way that is larger than just an individual?
I don't think the author meant that DVDs were dying (in fact, he says as much when talking about the blue-ray DVD vs. HD-DVD format wars--there just isn't much consumer demand for HD yet). Rather, he says Netflix is threatened by on-demand streaming video.
I think he's absolutely correct. I would cancel my Netflix subscription in a heart beat if I could simply stream the videos. Then there would be little to no waiting, no bad DVDs, no need to return the DVD, etc. The whole point of Netflix is to distribute movies for customers to keep temprorarily, not permanently so the permenance of the media matters little to the consumer and is instead a hinderance since it gets damaged over time.
...or do they all have freakin' scary smiles!?
(And I am yelling, because it's scary!)
1. Articles by Business 2.0
2. Microsoft Security Updates
3. Digg
4. Opinions of Hollywood Actors
5. Printed Newspapers
6. Seatbelt Laws
7. Global Warmning
8. The National Deficit
9. SCO Linux
10. My Slashdot Posts
So when's Rob gonna roll with his crew and bust some caps in Business 2.0?
YOU GOT SERVED, bitch.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Sheesh. I just came from Digg.com to see what scraps were left on Slashdot, and the top link is a story about how it doesn't matter anymore. Hmmmm.
... but I respect the editorial power it has.
While I agree Slashdot is no longer the king, largely supplanted by Digg, it's approach is NOT obsolete. Sure, it's website sucks and hasn't had any user-facing usability changes EVER
I don't believe the majority knows what's best for me-- but Digg.com sure has an interesting future. If anything, it'll fall under it's own weight when it's credibility is compromised by the very people being it's editors. But I also think they know what they're doing over there and will find a way to mitigate that risk.
In the meantime, Slashdot will seeminly be stuck in time forever. But is it the tortoise or the hare that wins this race?
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
People at CNN with lots of spare time and no knowledge of who is who or what is what...
They put Torvalds as a guy who does only the core of the system, while the remaining is done by RedHat, Novell, etc... This only shows that the guy who wrote the article don't know shit about operating systems. The "core" in Linux is the OS, all the rest are daemons and programs running over it.
To make it fair, I don't like Balmer, but let's face it: he IS the face of Microsoft today, with Bill Gates being just a nerdy guru..."
Lists of "popular people" and "losers" are for teenager high-schoolers! Grow up!!!
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
H. L. Mencken
In other words, Digg fuels and exacerbates your ADHD...
Pretty much.
I've gone over to Digg from time to time, but I've never stayed there because I just don't enjoy it as much. Slashdot, to me, is a discussion site. The articles are really just prompts that get people talking; the real "content" isn't in the links / TFAs -- which are mostly just stuff you can find on Google News most of the time anyway -- but in the discussion itself.
Digg is the other way around. It seems like it's basically a news aggregator, and the discussion is mostly mindless drivel (even compared to Slashdot) and people voting. Maybe I just picked the wrong threads to read, but the S/N ratio was even lower there than it is in your average Slashdot thread, and that's really saying something. Yeah, Slashdot has bizarre trolling phenomena (FPs, the whole GNAA business, etc.) but there's almost always good posts as well; on Digg, quality posts seemed more the exception than the rule.
I can get my news anywhere -- there are tons of aggregators and newsfeeds and bloggers who sift endlessly through basically everything the internet has to offer, pulling out things to read. That, to me, isn't particularly interesting. The discussion (which comes from the userbase) is: that's something that has value to me, and why I think Slashdot still comes out on top of Digg.
If Digg draws the ADD-types away who are just looking for an endless stream of new links, all the better.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Steal their idea. Do it better. History is full of examples of the second (or third) guy in winning the prize. Why not a new filter setting? Give me options. Show me user-submitted articles Digg-style. Show me editor-submitted articles /. - style. Show me both, in side-by-side windows. Maybe have the editors pick "best of Digg" after everyone has had their say, to weed out the crap.
The key is to be agile, keep innovating, grab and implement the best ideas.
Yes, it's the equivalent to the same strategy that John Dvorak uses - get people to read through your article by hitting a nerve.
By simply including Slashdot, the magazine editors could guarantee that this article would be /.ed. They even admit this point themselves: "Remember the days when "getting Slashdotted" was every sysadmin's worst nightmare?...For those that survived the flood, it was the online equivalent of a papal benediction."
They also attack both sides of a few spectrums: Blu-ray vs HD-DVD, MS vs Linux (vs Sun?). In addition they hit services and products that quite a few people use: Netflix, Sony, Myspace, Slashdot.
People who read through this type of "news" will end up seeing a service or company they like mentioned in this article, then go to the source to read through. In turn, Business 2.0 ranks up the page hits.
Prove it.
Really amazing. Wowee! wow.
I just see poorly written crap compared to slashdot. Some are so sparse it makes you want to click on the link. Slashdot seems much better than that even if the story isn't exactly the newest.
Really some of that, if not all of that article to me is junk.
It is the owner that crashes the system. If you are enough of an idiot to put 50 background processes in Windows you sho
I just had a peek at Digg for the first time in my life. It seems clear that I've been failing to appreciate how good slashdot actually is!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
It's called ALPHABETICAL ORDER.
(someone read TFA)
-
Karma=bad
I care=no
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Just in case you can't access it, or don't wanna RTFA.
Steve Ballmer
CEO, Microsoft
Jeffrey Citron
Chairman and chief strategist, Vonage
Reed Hastings
CEO, Netflix
Ken Kutaragi
President, Sony Computer Entertainment
Warren Lieberfarb
Senior Consultant, HD-DVD Promotion Group
Rob Malda
Slashdot.org
Arun Sarin
CEO, Vodafone
Jonathan Schwartz
CEO, Sun Microsystems
Linus Torvalds
Creator, Linux
Mark Zuckerberg
Founder, Facebook
Mod Article -1, Troll
According to Google Trends, searches for "digg" surpassed those for "slashdot" early this year. http://www.google.com/trends?q=slashdot%2C+digg&ct ab=0&geo=all&date=all
How many times do I need to tell you people, pointing out the faults of others does not justify your own.
digg may suck, you may love it, or you may not care, but justifying the short-comings of slashdot by pointing out the short-comings of digg is just plain childish.
Digg has speed of news and Slashdot has moderation.
/. idea ever).
Frankly I read stories over on Digg and rarely read the comments. On Slashdot I will read comments on some sections but rarely YRO or anything Science.Global.Warming (my fake category). I totally ignore the political section (worst
Moderation does work on Slashdot as long as the story does not cross into political areas. If it does the moderation system becomes totally useless and any intelligent discussion is lost. How is this different than what people accuse Digg of?
Still the moderation system here is better because its not unlimited points. I do prefer their method of determining which stories get posted.
The site rivalry here certainly isn't helping us win points, comments that "Digg is shit" getting modded high points out the idiocy that occasionally overruns slashdot.
Ignoring the fact that Digg is doing something right will only keep Slashdot on the "has been" list.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It annoyed me how everyone was listed by their last name in the list, except for Malda, who was simply "Slashdot." Look, if you want to bash the editor of this fine website, at least do it properly.
blog & fiction: jd87
"to go with sites that are actually relevant in today's connected world"
Care to give some examples?
The list is horrible. First, as much as I loathe Microsoft, Ballmer is integral to Microsoft's partnerships, which drives much of the technology out there. Second, Sun is setting the direction for energy-efficient computer clusters; something that the whole Energy Star thing could never pull off. Third, Slash as a content management system, was up and running in the frontierland, and is important because it is still a focal point for nerds (I have never visited Digg, Kiro5hun, etc). Fourth, Linus is still advocating Linux and keeping it on one development tree; both are difficult tasks, both he pulls off well (Linux is not out of control). Lastly, obsolence is not something to take lightly -- is the same true for Eric Allman, Richard Stallman, Bill Joy, Jamie Wazinski, Bruce Perens, etc? I think they form a foundation for future coders, computer politicos, and hackers.
Click here or here.
Not to mention that Alexa is installed by default only in IE....so Firefox users won't get it at all.
The only reason they included Linus in the list is to not being sued by Microsoft/Ballmer.
You hit 30, and its all downhill from there!
This is another reason of why I choose to stay known as an anonymous handle, rather than a target for lame-duck biz-tech journalists who feed off of the creation and accomplishments of others, only to ridicule and defame them.
Not that I have accomplished anything to be put on that list, but still... =p
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
I still remember some 8 years ago probably -- when I first came to Slash
/. at work and end up laughign out loud at some of that spork shit.
It was different scene then. I remember it as well, I stublem across slashdot whiel in college in 1999. It was a different place then. Shit, even the trolls were funny, not as many GNAA or other complete crapflooders. Remember the spork invasion. I was workign at IBM as a programmer during that whole thing and I woudl read
How about Giz, the true anti slash. That place was a riot....
enough reminiscing, back to work.
Slashdot is far from free and open. The editors exert great control, in secret, over what articles are posted. In exercising this control they have provided fertile ground for self-promotion and half-baked and outright crazy ideas. I cannot count the number of press releases and blogs and testimonials and deliberate misrepresentations they have reported as truth.
The mitigating influence of replies -- which are indeed free -- is overwhelmed by the initial selection bias.
I wish I could agree with the story that Slashdot's power had been supplanted by more open media such as Digg, but it ain't so. Slashdot is a powerful tool for internet demagogues, and the editors are complicit.
I do submit stories. Not enough to get in the High Score table - I generally stick to stuff I firmly believe is highly significant in science or technology, though there have been a few exceptions. Then, there's also the obvious - I regularly post, moderate and metamoderate, and even occasionally journal. I am still not satisfied, though, that I'm doing as much for Slashdot as I'm getting out of it. Any thoughts - particularly from any of the editors - on what more to do would be appreciated.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Whenever people proclaim that Slashdot is being beat by Digg, they drag out the Alexa pageview stats. However, people forget that Alexa's software only runs on IE. Considering that a large number of Slashdot visitors use browsers other than IE, the Alexa stats don't accurately reflect the number of pageviews that Slashdot gets.
Discussion site? Try carrying on a friendly discussion on /. Every time you turn around you're getting modded down for not staying exactly on the exact subject at hand. There's barely any friendly banter here because no one can get anything across without getting modded down by some lamer.
Interesting point, but from my viewpoint, the more trolls that go over to Digg, the happier I'll be, especially if they take all the science-denying posters with them.
But, it's strange to see a list with Ken, Rob, and Linus as the ten least important. Linus never was important per se, so long as he did his work well, Rob is just a person (code lives forever), but pretending that Sony doesn't matter, even when they're wrong (PS3, Blu-Ray) and nuts (DRM, rootkits), is probably not correct.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This pundit ALSO gets wrong the whole ATT/SBC/Cingular/Bell South musical chairs.
He knows that AT&T (the old SBC) will be absorbing Bell South. Then he says that AT&T will own 60% of Cingular. Nope. SBC always owned 60% of Cingular. The other 40% was owned by....Bell South. Somebody check my math but I think 60% + 40% = 100%, in other words after the Bell South merger AT&T will own all of Cingular which, just to confuse you if you followed this so far, will be called AT&T Wireless after the Bell South merger. Yep. You're right. Cingular absorbed AT&T Wireless a few years ago. This will bring the name out of the still-warm grave.
Somebody needs to put this saga into a graphic. There's a lotta confusion.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
PS3 does matter. It's standing on the shoulders of PS2 and that's why people are complaining loudly about how Sony "lied" and used them when it came to the original PS3 announcements. While it is a bit over blown to say that Sony lied(Seriously, who can even -use- 2 HDMI ports? Not even talking about -need-, but who can take advantage of that?), it is a bit more understandable to be disappointed by the price and release pushbacks. But that doesn't automatically make him, or the PS3, irrelevant in the market. Whether or not it will help establish BluRay as the dominant force in the market place is yet to be seen(the fact that more studios are behind BluRay probably will, though) also. BluRay isn't the UMD disc, betamax, or Minidisc. It's not Sony's proprietary format. The first drives are coming from Pioneer and Samsung for crying out loud.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Cue the UID comparison thread.
/. has really taken a turn for the worst in quality, and UID comparisons (where smaller seems to be better, for some reason).
You got it.
Oh, and I agree, too. The quality of the articles has turned into a gamers' report site, and the discussion threads always degenerate into "me, too" posts, talks about how
It's shameful, really.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I certainly don't matter, why am I not on that list?
Not to be matter of fact, but how much do you have to not matter in order to get on a 'People Who Don't Matter' list?
To make matters worse, you matter more just for being on that list.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
The thing that turned me off Digg was the lack of "see replies to my posts"
I like Digg's article mix and it's one of my clicks when I'm bored but the discussion isn't really there. My opinions are great and all that but what I want is responses. Some of the best posts I read are the ones telling me what's wrong in my own. Being challenged is one of the ways to learn, and often when one does some background research into one's opinions one finds that the world has changed since you formed the opinion or you were wrong all along.
Digg just doesn't have it.
plus the layout screws up when you force large fonts.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The webmaster who maintains cnn.com
n tmatter/content.1.htmln tmatter/content.2.htmln tmatter/content.3.htmln tmatter/content.4.htmln tmatter/content.5.htmln tmatter/content.6.htmln tmatter/content.7.htmln tmatter/content.8.htmln tmatter/content.9.htmln tmatter/content.10.html
javascript only, yawn
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/peoplewhodo
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/peoplewhodo
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/peoplewhodo
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/peoplewhodo
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/peoplewhodo
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/peoplewhodo
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/peoplewhodo
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/peoplewhodo
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/peoplewhodo
http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/peoplewhodo
not that they are worth reading
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
People in politics who don't matter any more:
There's really no need to state the obvious.
With the way jobs are going, these are the top 10 things that "dont matter" in said industry but are not exclusive to said industry:
1. Job Security
2. Domestic Talent
3. Non-Exclusionary access to all levels and all places of education(this means being able to enter into a university without Fraternity connections, dubious high school volunteer projects, or using merit as a status symbol)
4. Morals/Ethics in corporations in all aspects
5. Quality of Worker = Quality of Product
6. Quality of the resulting product
7. Worker group bargaining in any worker-favorable manner
8. Treating anyone not of the investor class with respect (this does not include such things as mutual funds, this is more towards corporate investment)
9. The Midwest as a valuable pool of workers worth subsidizing all education on merit blind basis
10. Other minor areas not covered by #9
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
You seem to take this 'dupe' thing as an accident, a completely random event. Unbeknownst to you, your tap-tap-tapping of the URL 'slashdot.org' actually triggers a series of complex algorithms, that retrieves information about you, such as the date and time of your last visit to the website, how many reloads of said site were requested, what articles you may have missed in between visits, and then using a computer model of your mind and by running it through a probability matrix, the system determines which article that you missed would prove interesting to you, and others like you who have missed that article. The article reappears, and mini-scripts generating completely artificial 'slashdotters' post comments indicating 'dupe! Dupe!' to make the illusion all too real.
This is what I was explaining to my co-workers today. Slashdot is still a "geek" website with lots of people who have a clue. Plus its a place where hilarious fights over technology happen all the time. The slashdot posts are full of "experts" and many times I learn from the posters. Digg has a lot of crap all over the front page all the time. I don't care about most of it and don't enjoy sifting through it. The discussions generally suck and most of the comments seem to be from 14 years olds. They both have their benefits, I just think Slashdot has a different community. Digg is just a crapshoot in a lot of ways.
Math
The fact is, there isn't much news in the tech world at the moment. For the most part, things are just continuing along the paths they've been going on.
It's not that things aren't progressing in terms of technology. Capacities of new hard drives, flash memory, and RAM continue to get larger. Multi-core CPUs are marketed to ordinary consumers. The version numbers of open source projects gradually increase.
But there hasn't been anything really interesting lately. Sure, Apple has switched its computers to Intel CPUs. Palm released a Windows-based Treo. Even these things are not that exciting, since these changes were pretty widely predicted as being inevitable.
And so day after day, we get the usual articles about ODF, global warming, the supposed evils of the Bush Administration, network neutrality, and so on. After a while, it all runs together.
(Score:0, Troll)
Digg covers other areas beside technology these days. It now supports videos, sports, etc.
/. and Digg work.
You can always start your own Web sites if you have the resources and time if you don't like how
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I do like Digg's community-driven aspect that tends to surface many interesting articles very rapidly. Slashdot could "easily" offer a community-driven story pipeline if they wanted to (we've talked about it for years here ...)
That said, the signal-to-noise ratio in Digg's discussions is way too crappy. When I go to digg, I wind up following offsite links to original stories; when I come here, it's to participate in the discussions.
And Top / Bottom Ten lists are generall self-serving horse-crap, anyway. (and the audio ad that starts automaticaally when reading this Biz 2.0 is downright offensive)
Steve
It's so cute when they rationalize.
What other magazines join _Business 2.0_ in the "Top 10 Magazines That Don't Matter"?
We should have skipped right to biz 3.0, just like IP skipped from IPv4 to IPv6 when v5 was worse than useless.
--
make install -not war
I notice while they dumped Netflick's Reed Hastings into the "doesn't matter" list, they still seem to enjoy the revenue from running Netflick's banner ads....
Apparently $$$ still makes it into the "does matter" pile.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I've gone over to Digg from time to time, but I've never stayed there because I just don't enjoy it as much. Slashdot, to me, is a discussion site. The articles are really just prompts that get people talking; the real "content" isn't in the links / TFAs -- which are mostly just stuff you can find on Google News most of the time anyway -- but in the discussion itself. Agree 100%. Half the time (like so many others) i don't even RTFA. The very existence of the acronym "RTFA" shows how valued the discussions are.
You know, that guy that caused a stir with Napster, then sold out to the man, and has been selling out ever since!
It kind of hurts that Slashdot was listed, but I guess a website that only matters to nerds DOESN'T matter to anywone else.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
In many ways I equate Slashdot with NPR, and Digg with a network news station.
With NPR (and Slashdot) there is more time for each story and a more in-depth study of the topic at hand. On NPR, the increased depth is through quality reporting and in-depth analyses. With slashdot, the in-depth analyses comes from user comments. I actually learn something from listening to NPR and reading slashdot.
With Digg, we have the nerd equivalent of "Thousands Die in Tsunami... and pictures of Britney's baby!!! More at 11:00!!!" It tells you something... in a very quick and sensationalistic manner. I suppose in many ways, it shows the difference between information, and providing actual useful knowledge.
This is a bit off-topic, but I wonder how many slashdotters listen to National Public Radio?
LOL, you're all bad losers.
You have to read the notes to know that
both Rob and Linus have done there job
completely and correctly as any good
programmer should. Both have automated
there work. Both have reached the the goal
of any sys admin! Now its time to for nethack.
Yes, you left out a whole group of people who don't matter (not only to the tech/biz sector, but also humanity): The editors, writers, and staff at Business 2.0 Magazine.
Slideshow requires IE.
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
Guess this article went to digg's head. Now to even view stories you must be a registered user. There goes one RSS feed...
This is the kind of fresh thinking we need around here.
barack to the future?
A blogger explains how they found this out:
http://www.cybersoc.com/2006/05/behind_netvocat.h
I wouldn't say it's "completely, totally, absolutely broken" but we know that our moderation system can benefit from a serious overhaul. We're actively working on major improvements. Stay tuned...
Business 2.0 "invited me" last month to receive their magazine. I ignored the offer and they sent it anyway.
It was obviously the result of my (now expired) Fortune magazine subscription information that they bought.
The joke is on advertisers -- I never read either, since Fortune was delivered due to paying once for web content.
Actually, there is more noise on Digg discussions and it forces you to read the linked articles there, unlike lots of instances where people on Slashdot take this site's submitter's point of view as gospel and reply to that.
Actually, what it means is that Diggers are installing Alexa to artificially boost their stats.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
The benefit being to keep ADHD-affected 14 year olds off of
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
me2
/. is read the replies to my messages. It is cool to see how and why various people disagree or, occasionally, agree with me. I noticed you got a lot of replies to your Stallman messages, so I will have to go there next.
/. has more threads that are interesting including quite a few that are both stupid and interesting. Heiarchial threading (sp?) does a better job of displaying the conversation structure. Why don't more websites use it? It's not a new idea, it's also one of the things I like about usenet.
/. design: I have a harder time following the structure, children seem to be nowhere near their parent.
The first thing I do when I come to
I just went to Digg and checked a few threads, the Apple sweatshop thing and another which I forgot. The comments were stupid and uninteresting.
Minor complaint about new
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
The first post therein, by user #2274 BWing, is as follows:
Way to go BWing! You've inadvertantly made the first /. post not lost to the sands of time. Perhaps this warrants a Hall of Fame entry?
But seriously folks, there are benefits to editor-based blogs as opposed to Digg. I do like being able to keep track of the stories and comments on a daily basis. I would put more stock in the quality and relevance of the stories and links than the quantity any day. Slashdot will always have to battle upstarts for the eyeballs, but to succeed in that, it should stick to its winning formula, and refine and improve it whenever possible.
I know it is hard to believe but it looks as if Digg has a less friendly and or mature community than even Slashdot!
Frankly Digg makes Slashdot look like a downright friendly place in comparison to Digg.
Things I would like to see improve on Slashdot are.
I would love to see Slashdot back off on some of the "yellow" journalism that I see in some of the headlines.
Yes the Editors really need to check for dupes better.
An interface that works well on my cell phone would be nice.
More Ajax goodness like a spelling checker would also be nice.
And yes the green is so not Web2.0. Get a clue people everything must look like Google!. Just kidding about that last part.
I hope that Slashdot will be around for a long time. Maybe the real nutcases will all move over to Digg and leave Slashdot a bastion of good manners and civility.
BTW Windows Sucks! Linux Rulez! In Soviet Russia the dot slashes you. And of course imagine a Beowulf cluster of Slashdots!
Does anyone remember if the article on the uCsimm was the one that started the whole Beowulf cluster thing?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Now I am really depressed; the parents basement won't ever feel the same :)
OK, it's a top ten list, this is no better than your average letterman joke. Sony guy being there is a little odd IMHO, sure blu-ray and ps3 are currently non-existent, so what, big deal, both could flop and Sony is still doing good, lots more apples there. But seriously, i bet Joe Smith, janitor of your local high school is more of a contender for people who don't matter, but not according to CNN, i'm sorry but all i can think of doing is beating this person with the clue stick. Guess who matters less than this list, the writer of the article at CNN whoes name I don't even remember now, that's who doesn't matter - what an imbecile. i've got some monkeys i think i should chuck at a CNN writing position, geez, maybe Malda the "good editor" should go to CNN to screen out this crap.
... I mean, Business 2.0.
This is exactly the sort of pure fluff that masquerades for journalism now. Does Steve Ballmer, the man who runs the most powerful computer software company on the planet, suddenly have no power? Ask his employees. Ask companies that partner with Microsoft. Ask Scott McNealy. Sure, Microsoft is on a downward slide, but that doesn't mean Ballmer is suddenly a garden gnome.
Torvalds? Hastings? Both very, very smart guys with long roads ahead of them. I don't know about the rest of the folks on the list, but Schwartz could surprise a lot of people. If Sun is thriving in five years, ask the knuckleheads at People.. uh... Business 2.0 what they think of Schwartz.
The "what's the flavor of the minute" attitude of the article is made manifestly evident by the Slashdot v. Digg comparison. As others have pointed out, Digg may be hot, but it is absurd to suggest that the level of discourse on Digg compares to that found on Slashdot. Digg is oriented toward instant "hot or not" feedback, while Slashdot is about in-depth discussion of a smaller number of topics.
I suppose they have to come up with something to write about, but the world is full of interesting business and technology stories. This sort of crap is worse than useless, because at least some percentage of the people who read it actually think it is worthwhile information.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I'm the guy that got (a|the) dugg version of this article- Here's what I wrote in the (crappy) digg comment section: Let it be known that as the article link submitter, I prefer slashdot over dig. digg is information overload. I submitted the same article to slashdot with a "Does slashdot matter?" type of discussion post asking questions of the slashdot community. It got rejected. My headline is inflamitory and troll like. I hastily submitted it since I thought I would take advantage of the best feature of digg- the quick responsiveness of the community. Bring to the people quick. Had I been less urgent in my submittal- I would have phrased it: "Does slashdot matter? Are sites like digg more relevant now?" But in fairness to me- I think I summarize the point of the article. The No.1 on the Main article on who *does* matter (my submission is a companion to it) is "You!" meaning- "social" sites like digg and the ilk are clearly the "winners" -hence the "digg wins" part. But again- just because I submitted the story doesn't mean it's my choice. I just thought it was newsworthy and relevant. IMO- slashdot is better, digg is quicker, and business2.0 is wack.
http://popurls.com/ lists the stories from both digg and slashdot, so you don't need to go to both sites to see what's up. oh yeah, it also lists google news, fark, furl.net, reddit, del.icio.us, metafilter, and other ones i don't know much about. all on a single page that takes less time to load than slashdot or digg. and it updates very often. it's how i found this article, yay. just go there, it's really cool..
I've been reading it faithfully since (circa) 1998, but it's not as hardcore as it used to be. It might be I'm getting older and wiser or that I'm not as militant about Linux as I used to be, or it might be a dilution of the nerd population to other discussion forums - I dunno. But the fact is I've seen contenders vie for /.'s crown before (Kuro5hin immediately comes to mind, maybe Plastic) and they've been trounced. Slashdot feels like home. It's a part of my life. I enjoy the readership and have made lots of friends and enemies here. And best of all, I've learned alot.
Malda may be irrelevant to the biz/tech world, but not to me and many other readers. I guess what I'm trying to say is "thanks Slashdot, for being a part of my life!"
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
my favorite part is when you see Linus Torvalds on the list, and instead of a job title it just says "Creator" and then it goes on to mention that it means Linux because for a second there I'm sure every other Linux fan reading it questioned for a moment..."Linux Torvalds is the Alpha and the Omega? Could it be true? No wait, that's silly"
..and the defense rests its case.
Rob - sometimes not being the leader still allows you to win...
I'm probably going to check out Digg after a single "troll" rating on my post seems to have knocked down my "excellent" karma based on many well rated posts. I know it is pretty meaningless but the modding system here can be very irritating at times.
I wasn't aware that -1 = 5+3+4+5+3+2+2+.... Apparently it is the new slashdot math.
Back to relative anonymity I guess.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Holy Crap! How can you listen to NPR *ALL* freakin' day?
Only a fraction of their programming is interesting--well, at least to me.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I agree. I wish there was some way I could raise the threshold on the stories that get sent to me through their RSS feed. Something like, only stories with 350+ diggs. It's a pain to go through the huge volume of output.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
ballmer doesn't matter? let's see what you think when he finds a way to charge your credit card annually... or monthly...
uh, he already has... but how can he do it for *everyone*?
the best and the brightest at msft aren't programming their 1200 lines of code this year, they are trying to answer this very question right now.
linus doesn't matter? if it weren't for him, you'd already be paying msft monthly... if not daily.
When the new comment system came out on digg they had comments nested 3 deep. As a user interested in digg's possibilities, that was pretty exciting!
Within an hour or so the nesting was restricted down to 1 deep - that was such a horribly frustrating moment for me and digg.
I agree that messaging and replies are such an important part of the web experience. In order to read my replies on digg or fark, I need to go back through the stories I commented on, and text match my username to see if anyone gave me a shoutout. It's a slow and tedious process. This is one of those things that slashdot gets right. Flickr has a pretty interested system where I can go back and see my comments pretty easily, but with no nesting you are again doing the text-matching username thing.
It's really frustrating being on "the other side of the fence" on the internet. I guess I better start brushing up on my coding skills so I can make the ultimate news website - basically:
1. user submitted stories like digg
2. deep nested comments like slashdot
3. comment headers/titles like slashdot
4. comment messaging system like slashdot - read who replied to your comments, etc.
5. ability to post pictures like fark
It would be a digg/fark/slashdot hybrid, with a superset of features.
The biggest thing I haven't decided on is the moderation system.
Anyway, if someone wants to do this for me, be my guest!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Linus and the Facebook guy are on the list. Where's MySpace Tom? They didn't do 2-11, did they???
I sorta like the slashdot system for moderation, but for some reason, I don't like metamodding.
My idea for a mod system would be sorta diggish, in that everyone who reads can give a thumb up or down at any time, but different users would have different weights based on their karma. Metamodding wouldn't be necessary because the system would be able to see whether your mods were out of whack. The more out of line your mods, the lowing your mod weight would become. Please no fat jokes!
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
"Remember the days when "getting Slashdotted" was every sysadmin's worst nightmare?"
They've got to be kidding -- getting Slashdotted is still every sysadmin's worst nightmare. Slashdot turns servers into smouldering wrecks on a daily basis.
Number one "person" who doesn't matter?: The Business 2.0 Magazine staff who wrote this garbage.
--Insert catchy
It seems like it's basically a news aggregator, and the discussion is mostly mindless drivel (even compared to Slashdot) and people voting.
Mindless drivel compared to Slashdot is like saying it's bad music, even compared to Brittney Spears. It's like saying it's black, even compared to a Black Hole. It's like saying it's bad comedy, even compared to Gallagher. It's like saying it's hot, even when compared to a nuke blast. It's like saying it's a bad posting, even when compared to this one.
Just as a side note... Can someone stick a fork or 20 into whomever invented the damn flash crap that they use for ads and stuff on the frickin CNN site? That damn flipping of pictures was making me insane and wanting to move on to other pages.
No offense there...but even with all those other activities, you're obviously still here. You may have found other ways to spend your time, but they haven't replaced slashdot in the least. You can't even argue that you just do it casually. I took a look at your posting history and you have the same number of posts I have for the month of June (well, this post will put me on top). And I have no life right now. I spend my entire day at slashdot. Sure, I go to my office...and read slashdot while there. I've been watching world cup games...at my other monitor while reading slashdot. Basically, I'm here a lot, and I'm not beating you by a significant number of posts.
Maybe, slashdot's staff is right in thinking the site is still relevant. You may not like the progress it has made, but if you had indeed found something better, you wouldn't be here anymore. And if you still wish to be here talking about the glory days of slashdot, maybe you'd miss it if they shut it down "before it becomes sadder than it already has."
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
When I submitted this story last week it got rejected. That must've been Rob's doing...
People love the heydays, though. Ah, for the days when you could teach yourself to fly in an Army-surplus Jenny! Now you need a license to be a passenger. ;) My most recent hero-god engineers died (in happy retirement) a decade ago. Possible sign of a muturing market: art majors started finding that they needed specific graphic arts degrees in order to make it to the end of job interviews. "Nice portfolio, but your degree is in the wrong field."
In short, your industry is "mature" when you need standardized govt-/industry-approved training and licensing to practice your craft. "May I see your Z-Java license sir? Your C++ license is worthless here."
The upside is that you don't have amateurs building public bridges or skyscrapers, or screwing up expensive print jobs. What about the software?
Since when was alphabetical "No particular order"?
Steve Balmer, CEO and soon-to-be dictator of Microsoft of Bill Gates Mercy, opened up his purse yesterday bought the 'Business 2.0' online news franchise and sacked the entire staff after they signed a contract that permitted their employer to use their mugshots in a Flash Online Game to be set up on the site. Details where revealed after the layoffs. The Game will be called "Steve-o-Balmers Super Deluxe Office-Chair-Throw", subtitled "Hit as many stupid online journalists as possible and score!". The layoffs weren't available for interviews and stated through their representatives that they had signed an NDA that would oust their soul to MS if they talked about the issue to anyone.
MS stock up by 5% this morning.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Darl McBride of SCO should have the top spot on this list!
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
I'm with you.
Taco and Hemos = Click and Clack.
Cowboy Neal must be Daniel Pinkwater.
I think I need a new sig here.
See! Look at that. This is what drags /. down. It's full of fucking free market apologist boot lickers. The bizare thing is that it has any sort of association with free software at all because most of the posters are so gung-ho cheerleaders for plutocracy.
... and still keep a straight face? "2.0" is surely the most risible buzzword ever conceived. Everyone with any sense realises that it's just a short way of saying "with more hype and less quality".
I dismissed the relevance of the lists on the basis of the magazine's title. When I checked my dismissal, I found I was correct to do so.
Any sufficiently self-referential snowcloned
You're absolutely right, there's no refuting it.
How do you have a list of tech people who don't matter with out leading off with John Dvorak?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Running Linux and Firefox 1.5.0.3. None of the galleries show up. Is this an IE only thing?
Slashdot, to me, is a discussion site.
Correct. It is a discussion site moderated by intelligent monkeys. I say this as a being good thing.
Snap. (FWIW I don't listen to NPR as I'm not in the US, but I do listen to BBC Radio 4 online a lot.)
"I like the speed of Digg more"
:-p
...does it run Linux?
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
When I come to slashdot, I learn. People write good posts and you have some smart cookies here. If I see one more nintendo fan boy article on digg.... The people on there are pretty pathetic, and lack any real knowledge. Or if they do, they certainly aren't posting it. Geek.com has the problem where there is no registration or anything, you just type a handle and post. I must give some credit though, there are some smart people on geek, but they are also days behind the news.
/.
digg offers some good articles from time to time. But for much more in depth knowledge of whats going on, I'll be here on
Ok, there seems to be some errors and misfirings here, so I will attempt to clarify and align some dates and times.
... just curious.
:)
.org/slashdot.cgi?mode=article&artnum=411
Because of the lack of evidence, I have to bring things from numerous sources.
The article "AICN under fire" attributed earlier in this discussion as having the first archived comment was spidered by the internet archive on January 13th 1998 at 19:44:55.
This is not the earliest slashdot article and comment I found.
During the same spidering run by the archive, the spider grabs more than a single page. slashdot has a link to previous article which can be followed in the archive.
Following this link leads to comments starting on the 9th of January 1998 at 16:20:
Intel Releases 266 Pentium (sidenote: wow, I had one of those for ages)
Pentium Bug
Jasper Nuyens
Fri Jan 09 at 4:20PM EST
Just a question that came into my mind:
is the (quiet old) pentiumbug still 'working' on this faster processor? I don't know much of processor-development but I understood it takes alot of time to finish such a thing.
Jasper
A sibling poster has remarked that slashdot cannot find any of its comments for the 1998 year, this appears to be correct.
The first comment in the live slashdot database appears to come on 1st January 1999.
Moving back onto the articles, slashdot articles appear to begin in the live slashdot database on 1st January 1998:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=98/01/01/012000
This probably marked a change in the database and web interface format because previously (and concurrently as it happens) the articleID was a numeric.
I found the same article had been archived as well as being live using its old artnum variable and the new date format.
This ties the articles with their origins, and extrapolating back at about 2-3 articles per day brings the artnum back to the start which roughly matches up with with the Chips&Dips days (if I were creating a system it makes sense to start with article 1)
http://web.archive.org/web/19980113193426/slashdot
And its live version:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=98/01/09/122900
Now, a couple of questions for Taco (if he finds out about my little big of digging),
Do the artnum references actually go all the way back to the C&D database?
what happened to the earlier comments and articles? (it looks like a choice to simply upgrade the db to me)
do you still have them from your C&D/early slash days? (theres an archive grabbed and stored from Chips & Dips in July '97 here)
Was the time between C&D and slashdot a quick changover with essentially no stopping, or did you have a break for a while?
Mini timeline
yyyy mm dd artnum notes
1997 07 29 0xxx Front Page: Chips & Dips archive
1998 01 01 0xxx Article: Become 007 On The Internet First live article, no comments
1998 01 08 0403 Index: Smurf Attacks First article reference in archive (lo
liqbase
Slashdot has gone downhill since the local troll population was hounded out by hideously nasty long IP/subnet bans. Lets be honest, the trolls - even the likes of the GNAA - made Slashdot worth reading, and many of the trolls were also constructive posters when not on troll-duty. The last remaining sane reason for the ban system, to prevent automated crapfloods, has been rendered redundant with the advent of CAPCHA system. Please repeal the ban system entirely with immediate effect.
Thanks to whoever posted that article, great laugh.
In thier rush to bash Macro$loth, they failed to read far enough to see St. Linus and Slashdot.
Hoisted by their own petard![/stewie]
Am I the only one wondering why a group/publication/whatever with a buzzy name like "Business 2.0" has a web page, containing links, that do nothing more than open a blank window when I try to view it under firefox? I'm assuming that it will work properly under IE, but I don't care enough to confirm - I just wrote them off.
mark cuban. the "internet billionaire" who sold broadcast.com to yahoo in the height of the dot-com bubble and whose job now is to prop up failing IT ventures and piss off NBA Commissioner David Stern. He still gets a lot of notoriety as a great businessman (and writes as if he was one, too) although it would appear that he was mostly just in the right place at the right time.
So here are some honest questions: Who's goals are we talking about here? Who chooses these goals, and on what authority to they force their countrymen to follow these goals? So if 'society' chooses goals, how do we really know if the goals are worthy? The ways we can know are Science (this seems to have proven itself disastrously ineffective), revelation, or vastly superior experience. Have I forgotten anything? I am really afraid I am sounding trollish, but these are serious questions I have, and I have not heard any satisfactory answers. I may be going to far, but I am trying to make a point.
Since God, a monarch, or a parent would be the only entities that could command this sort of authority (the authority to compel a man to reach another's goal), are you suggesting we become a theocracy, a monarchy, or a patriarchy? I may be taking it too far again.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Let's use the generic counterexample: pollution. Nobody "owns" the atmosphere, but we all lose as the air quality is degraded. You need regulation to ensure externalities are recognised by private parties in a free market.
Personally, I've given up on moderation systems. I read Slashdot at -1 and try to do the same on Digg, even though the option was broken last time I checked it. Since highly rated posts tend to be meaningless without context, and that context is often hidden away in buried posts, trying to make sense of what I see is just an exercise in frustration, with much unburying and re-burying of posts. I'd rather just skim the thread myself. That's assuming that the moderation system isn't abused. When it is, it becomes even more useless. So I just ignore it entirely. I honestly don't think it's necessary to have anything beyond a "report this user for breaking the rules" button in case someone starts crap flooding. I find it much more overwhelming to try to make sense of moderations than to just read through.
It would be rediculously easy to game the system. Simply create a bot that that reads a comment's score and moderates inline with that. Bingo, prop up the hegemony, fall inline like a good sheep (or bot) and you are rewarded with maximum influence. Hmmmm.
How about the complete opposite, you can moderate a topic only if you leave a short explantion of your reasoning. Meta-mods can choose to view your moderation AND explanation and agree/disagree with you. I am always worried about modding an unfactual post down (my only choice being "overated") for fear that a meta-mod simply won't understand, or do the work to uncover, the true facts. I'd like to be able to Mod (-1, Unfactual) for the following reasons: xyz.
Thing is, I'm holding down a full time job and a full time non-work life too.
I don't have time to traverse the blogosphere.
There are only three blogs I've read more than a couple of articles on. All three of them are very tightly specialised in their little area, and I tend to go to them once every few months and spend a night catching up.
So it doesn't really matter what's being discussed "in the blogosphere", unless a site like Slashdot picks it up, it's going to pass me by.
It does maybe mean I'm not on the beat, at the cutting edge. I'd bumped into MySpace, Flickr long before they got big. I never looked at them seriously until after they'd got big. I still don't tend to use them (although I'm finding more people linking to Flickr).
But I'm happy to wait until something that's mature and adds enough value comes along, and then I'll participate a little. And if it takes off, and grows, then it may become the next Slashdot. Until then, the current one will have to do - it's still better for my needs than most other sites I've tried.
now that I got that out of the way, I just wanted to check and see if your post is completely delusional or intentionally inverted. Seriously, I can't tell. Everything changed after 9/11.
harmonious design
Your comment brings to mind the old phrase "lead, follow or get out of the way" wherein the last choice is the only logical one when herding cats.
Slashdot simply got it right from the start. Unconstrained and out of control social projects are already being forced to disciplinary actions. Digg and others like Digg will end up with similar format as Slashdot.
Can I borrow a cup of sugar?
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Too many wasy to mod something would mean careless moderation.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I grew up on NPR in the seventies and eighties so it really saddens me to listen to it today. The Republicans in the Bush administration made a specific decision to drop the long-standing call to cut funding to NPR and to, instead, take over editorial control. That is so freaking obvious to anyone who has been a long-time listener of NPR.
So, the analogy to Slashdot is actually quite fitting. Slashdot started off as a site where people were actively advocating open source and zealously prostletyzing free software. Over the years, it has become the center of a community more likely to criticize open source and the principles of free software movement than any sort of advocacy resource. The resentment towards free and open source software in the comments here at Slashdot is really disapointing to a long-time user.
If you want something similar to what NPR used to be, you need to go with Pacifica Network. Democracy Now! is archived at Archive.org in both audio and video formats. Indymedia.org's torrent site is another nice resource for the kind of news coverage you used to get at NPR. Personally, I still listen to NPR streams in order to keep up on the latest Republican spin but I find the degree of propaganda apparent in the editorial decisions disturbing. You can hear the strain and hesitation in the voices as they read some of those scripts.
While Digg isn't really analogous to Slashdot, at least you see more of a gee-whiz enthusiastic attitude towards free and open source and DIY technology in the kinds of stories that get featured. For that reason, I have come to prefer Digg although I rarely bother with the comments on Digg except to find mirrors and the like. My personal opinion is that Slashdot could be redeemed with a moderation system that gets away from numeric scores and offers something more like what educators refer to as portfolio assessment.
This might sound mysterious and abstract, but it doesn't have to be a huge difference. It could be as simple as adding new sorts of descriptive moderation categories like "activist", "funny man", "coder" or "solder monkey". This would allow people to customize their view of the comments in accordance to their interests rather than converting everything to a single numeric value from -1 to 5 that becomes meaningless as various interests battle to draft its definition in a big competition.
Furthermore, these descriptive categories can have sub-categories. Take the "activist" mod for instance. Perhaps you have sub-categories like "free market fuckhead" and "liberal god" --okay, that was just a little joke. But you get the idea. The "coder" descriptive mod might have a list of programming languages that the person actually has experience with or has previously discussed on Slashdot.
Anybody who reads Slashdot for any period of time knows the mod system is clearly the biggest source of complaints. It was great for a community of a few thousand users, but it was pretty much trash long before I opened an account. The inaction on this aspect of the site is really disappointing since there are real opportunities to be had here. While the original idea of a competitive mod system modeled on the crust old educational A-F grading system was fine when the idea of a web-based technical news forum was new, it no longer serves a meaningful purpose. Schools, and I happen to be well aware that this is true even at ETS, are getting away from score based reporting. It's about time Slashdot got with the program. Let's move to descriptive moderation rather than a score based system.
There was a time when people thought their posts at Slashdot could help them get a job. Well, instead of just ridiculing that notion, why not run with it? Remake Slashdot as a portfolio based site where people are really motivated to make genuine contributions instead of just gaming a tired system that even mainstream education is putting behind it.
The more out of line your mods, the lowing your mod weight would become.
The problem with that system is that it will even more quickly marginalize non-mainstream opinions. Just because you disagree with the majority doesn't make your opinion less valuable - in fact sometimes quite the opposite.
That article had a lot of "wah wah" and no substance. Johnathan Schwartz isn't a lame duck... shit he hasn't been CEO for more than 60 days. Scott McNealy was CEO of Sun while most of Wired Magazine's reporters were in diapers. And saying that Digg's multitude voting system will replace Slashdot is like saying that popularity votes will create good government. What a load a shit. "Oh! Let's pick on Vodaphone and Slashdot and Linus Torvalds! That'll really get the hits! We're so CLEVER!"
You think it's just Digg editors that edit user comments? I've got news for you: Rob Malda of Salsashdot woud nevr edit no comments no way im jus not that sorta guy
I wonder if the all-wise at Business 2.0 know that their slideshow runs slower than my g'mother.
Hey asshats-in-suits, just give us a list with your "rationale". Do I need to see a picture of Ballmer, Torvolds, etc? No.
I don't think an anti-commercial modding is such a good idea, as I think it would be misused to mod down many people simply expressing positive opinions ofa commercial product. There are truly people who admire products from a company without being paid for it, just as there are astroturfers... I'm not sure a special form of moderation is needed when misleading posts can be pointed out and then modded down as "overrated" if they were inflated at some point.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley