Slashdot Announces Idle Section

For the last few months we've been beta testing Idle.slashdot.org, our offtopic humor/meme/viral video/pictures section. Like many of you, we spend most of our waking hours on-line seeking stuff to entertain our brains, but most replicators out there pick so much content that it's incredibly boring filtering through the mediocrity to find the funny. We intend to fill our idle section with a very small collection of the very best the net has to offer, making it the most efficient way to waste your time. Some of this content will make it back to the Slashdot mainpage, but much of it will be new content that we wouldn't dare soil the precious Slashdot mainpage with. We are also using it as a test bed for new functionality on Slashdot — currently the page is a reasonably dynamic/interactive experience with various voting controls and filtering options. Finally you will see occasional original content, starting with a recurring special feature today where Samzenpus shares some real tech support email from some of our most intelligent readers. We hope you will enjoy wasting a slice of your day with us, and in addition will submit content through the usual channels, but put it into the 'Idle' section so we know not to take it seriously. Now go about your day — it's mid August, so I'm sure everything you do is urgent, exciting, and oh-so-interesting.

Comments

Re:Critical thinking...

[AKAImBatman]

To generalize like that (which we are all guilty of at one time or another, of course) shows a complete lack of critical thought.

If you were looking for a more specific answer, ask a more specific question. General issues raised will result in general answers given. One cannot apply further critical thinking to a matter for which further data for consideration has not been presented.

In this particular case, I can say that watching Reality TV in general is definitely NOT a sign of intelligence. If you were to bring up specific examples, however, you'd get more specific answers. Some which would seemingly disagree with the general statement. Such is the way of things.

You also talk about the negative effect that reality TV has on a person's priorities... I find that statement interesting from someone who is so up in arms over this issue and wasting all this time bitching about it on Slashdot.

You seem to be suggesting that Slashdot is a priority for me. Which I can assure you is far from the truth. In fact, it has always been more of a release for me. I mean, where else can you have entire conversations in hex code* or about RC4 encryption?

I enjoy my day life and I enjoy my work. But sometimes it's nice to just plain geek out. :-P

(* Sorry for the lack of a link, but the hex code conversation is a bit hard to find in Google.)