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.
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"...
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.
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.
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)
I've never come to /. for the speed of news... I've come for the OVERALL quality of comments... there's some extremely bright people on here amongst the crap.
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
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
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.
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."
I suspect Linus's role is rather like that of a Highly Effective Systems Administrator; he doesn't seem to do much, everything just works, and even if some idiot runs him over with a truck, it takes a long while for things to fall apart afterwards. OTOH, if when the time comes you don't replace the loss with someone nearly as good, the difference will eventually be noticed.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.