Slashdot Mirror
Technocrat.net Shut Down
twitter writes "Bruce Perens has pulled the plug on Technocrat.net. 'The technocrat.net public discussion site is shut down. This has happened because the site never achieved the ability to financially sustain its editorial staff and system expenses with its revenues. When it became evident that Technocrat was un-viable as a business, I found that I did not wish to keep supporting the site as a hobby. Certain elements of the community that developed here, unfortunately, creep me out. At the end I faced the decision of asking for donations to keep the site running, or letting it die, and it became clear to me that I'd feel better if it would just die. I am very busy building a new software business, with some great new (and yet unannounced) Open Source software in development. I must focus on that for now. Best holiday wishes to you all.'"
January 04, 2001 (8:00:00 AM) - 7 years, 11 months ago
Check out the story submitter. Coincidence?
I can't believe you don't remember the "great exodus" maybe five/six years ago. A bunch of people (mostly the journal writers) left Slashdot for Technocrat. I don't remember the reason for the boycott. Sorry about that. I think it had something to do with deleted posts and editor mod points.
The stories on TC were really good to start with and the conversation was clean. The platform was slashcode. The site worked pretty well for a month or two, but then died out. I've checked in on it a couple times a year since then.
Put identity in the browser.
I had been reading Technocrat daily for I guess 9 or 10 years, I can't really comment on what facets of the community that Bruce objected to, so I will comment only on my observations.
The regular contributors of Technocrat were a pretty small group, so whenever one (or perhaps some) found themselves with a lot of spare time and an axe to grind they became the center of gravity of the site and swung the nature of the site to their particular interest, gripe, political view... or whatever. As contributors lost employment, ended relationships, faced large medical bills, and whatever other trials and tribulations people face they have a tendency to become vocal and extreme (while this is apparent to me in hindsight, as a daily observer, it can not possibly be apparent to casual readers).
The summary of the interests of the regular contributors includes disaster preparedness and self sufficiency... which occasionally crossed the line of rationality took on the appearance of armed lunatics holed up in their self constructed secret bunkers, prepared for a shooting war with both revenuers and the starving populous streaming out of the cities (and sometimes I suspected they expected zombies).
I know that a couple of the regulars have mental health issues and I suspect the number to be slightly higher than just 2. Not that I in anyway hold this against them... but I often wondered how our (very public) conversations must look to the outside world.
On several occasions, the world's circumstances focused most of the community on a single topic for comparatively long durations... and for some reason convinced the group that they were experts. The most recent of which is the global international econpocalypse, which convinced most of the group that they were expert economists, bankers, politicians, &tc. The result of this was long passionate diatribes of thinly veiled bigotries and prejudices of every possible flavor (which we all have)... Which naturally created flame wars increasing in extremist rhetoric. Combined with the interests I described above, the theme on Technocrat would take on this protracted dommerish theme... Perhaps we were never really able to overcome "John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory".
Some of the most frequent Technocrat contributors habitually proselytized non-mainstream ideology which I personally found alarming and repugnant: Market Fundamentalist / Extremist Libertarianism, Nationalism & Jingoism, Christian Reconstructionism, Militancy, Fascism, Racism ... it's a profoundly scary list.
Oh... and naturally we had trolls: two of them.
Now having said all of that... I feel like I should make a few disclaimers:
I was a contributor of technocrat. I also participated in these discussions and I also injected my own bigotries and prejudices into the conversation. Doubtless some christians and or capitalists were uncomfortable with or offended by some of my past comments. However I am not doing so in ostensibly in connection with my private business enterprise... this is a point lost on many of my fellow contributors at Technocrat, I think. And in this way I feel that we treated Bruce unfairly. Bruce is an important member of the Open Source community and it was very gracious of him to provide a sand box (or perhaps soap box) for us to play in. However I don't think we sufficiently recognized how the resultant community reflected on him.
If you look here on Slashdot you will find all of this, and more, in a single day... but generally it is overwhelmed by the volume of normal and reasonable comments... and the moderation system. such that it is.
You may get the impression that I intensely dislike many of the regulars at Technocrat. For the most part this is not the case, nearly all of them are good people, I would gladly have a number of them over to dinner and introduce to my "in real life" family. (excepting the trolls of course).
I have to say, I am profoundly disappointed in Bruce's decision. BUT, I completely understand and agree with it. I think Bruce is a really great guy... and I'd much rather see that he have more of an impact in our community than just running Technocrat
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
"Soviet Russia achieved more under Stalin in 10 years than what took most of the Western hemisphere a century."
What, 20 million dead Russians?
Some archival researchers have estimated the number of victims of Stalin's repressions to be 4 million in total or less, others believe the number to be considerably higher.Russian writer Vadim Erlikman, for example, makes the following estimates: executions, 1.5 million; gulags, 5 million; deportations, 1.7 million out of 7.5 million deported; and POWs and German civilians, 1 million - a total of about 9 million victims of repression.
Some have also included the 6 to 8 million victims of the 1932-1933 famine as victims of repression. This categorization is controversial however, as historians differ as to whether the famine was a deliberate part of the campaign of repression against kulaks or simply an unintended consequence of the struggle over forced collectivization.
Certainly, it appears a minimum of around 10 million surplus deaths--4 million by repression and 6 million from famine -- are attributable to the regime, with a number of recent books suggesting a likely total of around 20 million.Adding 6-8 million famine victims to Erlikman's estimates above, for example, would yield a total of between 15 and 17 million victims. Researcher Robert Conquest, meanwhile, has revised his original estimate of up to 30 million victims down to 20 million.Others continue to maintain their earlier much higher estimates are correct.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
No, Twitter submitted the article, which consists of 9 words of his own, followed by a copy-paste quotation from Bruce.
...or are you saying that Twitter is a Bruce Perens sock puppet?!?!?! (ZOMGWTF!)
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Wow. Ever heard of the fallacy of false dichotomy? Because you just gave two textbook examples in one sentence!
Bruce Perens was well-known in the open source community as the project leader of Debian and for founding the Open Source Initiative (and creating the Open Source Definition) long before his 2-year stint at HP.
and i don't recall Perens or any other open source leader ever claiming that Linux was a 'sure thing.' though pretty much every major system vendor (HP, Lenovo, IBM, Dell, Apple, etc.) today has a Linux division or is involved with FOSS in some way--a situation which Perens has played no small part in creating.
The black arrow indicates the current post you are at.
Soviet Russia achieved more under Stalin in 10 years than what took most of the Western hemisphere a century.
Not that hard when you're two centuries behind the rest of the world to begin with. He was playing catch-up, the rest of the world having already done the much of the scientific discovery legwork, and even then never achieved any sort of parity. Granted, organizing a giant country full of ignorant feudalism-era peasants and dragging them kicking and screaming through the industrial revolution is no mean feat, but it was largely just a matter of shooting enough recalcitrant people to get the rest moving, and it was Lenin and Trotsky which did the job of putting those guns in Stalin's hands.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Didn't quit. Was pushed out for being a useless crackpot.
Other companies figured out you could have a linux business without hiring well-known internet kooks.
Ahh, but using the keys marks those posts as read, and the next time you visit the page the posts that were made after you left will stand out.
If you don't derive much benefit from this, that's fine. I like it though.
It wasn't that he was campaigning for Democrats. I'm fine with that. But the attitude that he took in those posts towards those that preferred to vote Republican, Libertarian, or whatever else was dismissive and arrogant. That's the part that I'm talking about.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.