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.'"

Comments

eat my shorts, slashdot !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat my shorts, slashdot !!

Re:eat my shorts, slashdot !!

[Anonymous Coward]

For those that don't remember history, Bruce Perens was HP's Linux go-to guy. He quit HP PR to go it on his own. Little did he know back then that making a go with Linux is not the sure thing he said it was. Silly PR man, Linux is for kids !!!

Re:eat my shorts, slashdot !!

[Anonymous Coward]

it only goes to show that if one bruce perens can't make it with linux how the hell can you or i?

Re:eat my shorts, slashdot !!

[lysergic.acid]

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.

Re:eat my shorts, slashdot !!

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not supposed to "make it", he's supposed to sit back and enjoy it, damn the overdue bills. He should already know this, being an RMS turd handler.

Re:eat my shorts, slashdot !!

[CrazedWalrus]

I don't see how a failed discussion site about general technology has anything to do with "failing with Linux." I went to his site a few times, but found that it was missing a sort of critical mass that is necessary to make it an interesting discussion.

Yes, I know I'm feeding the trolls. They just look so cute and I'm still in the holiday spirit, I guess.

Re:eat my shorts, slashdot !!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:eat my shorts, slashdot !!

[lysergic.acid]

i know replying to yourself is bad form, but i forgot to link to this video of Bruce Perens talking about how he got started with Linux & FOSS (he once worked at Pixar) and why he continues to be involved. i think the video provides some great insight into the kind of person Bruce is and the mentality a lot of FOSS authors/contributors share.

Dear Bruce,

[donstenk]

happy New Year to you too. Pity I missed out on the creepy community. Never heard of that forum. Just as well that is gone then.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame. I thrive on reading the work of trolls and the drama they incite. Can't say I'm much good at trolling myself, but that's they way it goes.

Anyway, I think that's why Slashdot succeeds. It strikes the right balance between interesting and informative content, misguided zealotry, blatant outright trolls and vandalism.

I read it as much for the Unix pissing contents as I do for the antics of the various trolls.

It's tough competition.

P.S. Long live twitter. :P

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never been to Technocrat, but here's my story:

I dropped a brown rope this morning the size of a small black child. At one point, I wasn't sure if I was taking a shit, or it the shit was taking me. And while I'm on that point, what's the deal with taking a shit? Shouldn't it be leaving a shit? I'm certainly not taking anything with me when I'm done.

But back on topic, Technocrat suck ass.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, ever heard of 4chan?

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's okay, but it doesn't get the balance right. Balance, man. It's all about balance.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you buddy. The troll quality on slashdot has gone down, replaced with copypasta. Occassionally, I'll see something so outrageous (like n*gg*r instruction manual) it makes me laugh.
One thing you might do is post a "mirror" of the article with a comment somewhere in the middle about CmdrTaco molesting a boy. Another thing you can do is claim to know the person in question, then make over-the-top-but-still-plausible claims about them.

If all else fails, post instructions for having dolphin sex or amputating your pecker.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh for some goddamn modpoints!!

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Daengbo]

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.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I miss the GNAA. They were trolls of great artifice.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Whiteox]

Actually, I saw in Google Zeitgeist that Slashdot readership is also gradually falling last 12 months). I wonder if it is the case with other forum type sites?

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Yes, thereby greatly improving the quality of both sites.....

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Sheetrock]

Fuck trolling. Every time I start getting into a good thread about the relative merits of the GPL vis a vis the BSD license, or a deep legal examination of the ramifications of massive copyright theft, or the advantages of using strongly statically typed languages like Perl over Python for implementing LAMP servers... whammo, there's something gaping, oozing, or epitheting the middle of a decent conversation.

Enough already. Why don't you guys go troll a worthier target already, like the mainstream media or Canada. We're trying to literally make the future of the Internet here and you're ruining all over it.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Neoprofin]

Wait, is that delusions of granduer or a God complex? Both?

Can't say I like the trolls, but pretending that what happens on the semi-productive section of Slashdot is of some grand importance seems like a bit of a reach.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[khallow]

Looks like the cause is Facebook. Alexa shows it as well. Alexa has facebook going from 4% of "daily reach" to 13%. Given that the site serves a similar sort of purpose as Slashdot, I think it's sucking readers away. Here's a comparison with the top sites that Google will allow you to compare facebook to (they don't list statistics for google.com or youtube.com).

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

They're all being hauled off to interrogation camps.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[mzs]

Actually I think it is I cannot sort stories as highest ranked first anymore with the new discussion system. That makes a bunch of rants and trolls intersperse with the real discussion. I think a bunch of the insightful posters of the past simply stopped posting due to the signal to noise ratio falling.

Also I liked to open a new tab with all the comments under a post and then open them all to read the whole discussion. Now I have to use that slider over and over again or click like I am on Ritalin.

Finally I used to pick my mods from the drop down and then go back and pick the best. Now it takes it immediately, even when I let go of the mouse on the wrong selection.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

I apologize for the trolling Mr. Gore, it won't happen again.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

The plain fact of the matter is that I don't like Negroes. Now before you get on your high horse and start screaming "racism", let me have my say.

It is the Negro culture to which I can not relate.I don't like the way a Negro looks. I don't like the way they talk. I don't like their music. As far as I can tell, when measured by objective standards, the Negro culture is quite primitive.

This is my personal opinion. You don't have to agree with it. It is my opinion however, and it is the way in which I view things.

You can scream and yell, but it won't change my mind one bit. I am entitled to my personal preferences, and I don't prefer Negroes. At all. Period.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[khallow]

For me, the five minute waiting period between posts is pretty obnoxious and might eventually wean me off the site. And this isn't the first site "improvement" that simply fails. The tags are another example.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Steve Franklin]

"Fuck trolling. Every time I start getting into a good thread about the relative merits of the GPL vis a vis the BSD license, or a deep legal examination of the ramifications of massive copyright theft, or the advantages of using strongly statically typed languages like Perl over Python for implementing LAMP servers... whammo, there's something gaping, oozing, or epitheting the middle of a decent conversation."

You obviously have Slashdot confused with something else.

Now if you had said, "Every time I start getting into a good thread about the relative merits of taco salad and corn chowder..." I might agree. Deep? Here? Nah...

Note to moderators: Don't bother. I'm titanium plated.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[WalksOnDirt]

I still use the classic discussion system. If that option goes away I might leave too.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot comments started to decline in quality around 2002-2003. Prior to that, Slashdot seemed to be made up mostly of dev's, CS and EE students, IT professionals and other people with a very solid grasp of technology. I believe that the reason for the decline in quality is that as Linux was growing more popular and easier for computer hobbyists to install and use, sites like Slashdot started to get a huge influx of computer hobbyists who started to water down the level of technical discussion.

I have seen posts made, by people who obviously have never worked in IT, loudly proclaiming with absolute confidence that qmail can take over as a drop in replacement for Exchange, that a Linksys wrt54g can do everything that a Cisco 2600 can do (and better!), etc. The level of technical knowledge among users has been steadily dropping for years now. As people who really know their stuff leave, they are replaced by Joe Plumber who just installed Ubuntu and now considers himself a UNIX guru.

And what is now happening is that newer Linux converts are using other social websites like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. They use Slashdot for the first time, see how primitive it is, and move on. So the readership of Slashdot will continue to slowly fall until it gets to the level of once popular sites like kuro5hin.org.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Tubal-Cain]

I assume you aren't using the WASDFG keys to navigate?

• W to go up one thread
• A to go back one post
• S to go down one thread
• D to go forward one post
• F to go to the next unread post
• G to refresh

The black arrow indicates the current post you are at.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Random BedHead Ed]

Can't say I like the trolls, but pretending that what happens on the semi-productive section of Slashdot is of some grand importance seems like a bit of a reach.

There's a semi-productive section of this site? Wow. Hey, post the link to it when you get a chance.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck trolling. Every time I start getting into a good thread about the relative merits of the GPL vis a vis the BSD license

As far as Bruce would care - that WOULD be trolling. Old man B has no interest in the BSD license - to the point of actual hate it seems. In his world its GNU/Linux and the GPL or nothing.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[mzs]

I'm using a web browser with tabs not a new reader.

Yeah I knew about those, I don't much like all the pressing of keys rather than simply scrolling in an interesting discussion with them all open in a new tab.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Tubal-Cain]

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.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[IntlHarvester]

I have seen posts made, by people who obviously have never worked in IT, loudly proclaiming with absolute confidence that qmail can take over as a drop in replacement for Exchange, that a Linksys wrt54g can do everything that a Cisco 2600 can do (and better!), etc. The level of technical knowledge among users has been steadily dropping for years now. As people who really know their stuff leave, they are replaced by Joe Plumber who just installed Ubuntu and now considers himself a UNIX guru.

I dunno, I think that "hobbyist dabbler" quality has been around since the beginning of the site, and probably reflects Taco and the other guys who built it.

If anything the decline was because the *editors* aren't involved in IT, not the posters. So you get story selections skewed towards politics and tabloid drama. (As if anyone cared what a bunch of Unix nerds have to say about anything other than Unix.) Comment quality on technical topics in the realms of people's expertise tend to be much better.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[_Sprocket_]

Pssst... you've been trolled.

Trolling about trolling. Recursion. Profit.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[isaac338]

Can't say I like the trolls, but pretending that what happens on the semi-productive section of Slashdot is of some grand importance seems like a bit of a reach.

There's a semi-productive section of this site? Wow. Hey, post the link to it when you get a chance.

idle.slashdot.org

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Perens and his open ass, open source projects. This is proof that his ideology cannot make anyone a living. He is now reverting to his old role of male prostitute in San Fransisco. Look for him in a mini skirt with his dick hanging below the hemline very soon.

A message from the GNAA

ahhhh I wish I trolled that good... I miss them too.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Nick Ives]

+5 insightful? This is deserving of a +5 Troll more than anything I've read on /.!

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Nick Ives]

People keep on banging on about this five minute waiting period but I only get it when I want to post AC. This post is less than 5m since my last!

Re:Dear Bruce,

[gparent]

You're a good troll.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[rtechie]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. There are no "story rankings" on /. stories and never have been. Nor have you even been able to organize comments from highest-ranked to lowest ranked.

You can still open a new tab with all the comments if you use the old comment system. Ditto your complain about the mods. It sounds like you should quit whining and switch back to the old comment system.

I still use /. because the comments on this site are pretty good relative to what I've seen on other popular sites like Digg. If you've got a site to recommend that is as good as /. in terms of comments AND (this is really important) is as popular or nearly as popular as /. I'd love to hear it. I've been looking for a LONG time and I haven't found anything better. I used to use Usenet until the spam got too much. Then I switched to eGroups until Yahoo! ran them into the ground by slathering everything with advertising and breaking the UI. Since then I've been using /. because nothing has emerged to beat it. "New" discussion forums like digg and YouTube are crude and incredibly awful. From my perspective, it looks like everyone has given up and their sites are collections of vanity pages news listings, not discussion sites.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[khallow]

Do you have a subscription? I don't and I'd like to know whether a subscription eliminates the five minute wait.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Nick Ives]

No, subscribers get a * next to their name. It might be related to the fact that I've acquired the fifteen point super-mod status but I don't see how that should be related to not having the five min wait.

It could just be a bug :P

Re:Dear Bruce,

[khallow]

Hmmm, I'll check that out then. Thanks for the tip.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[lysergic.acid]

sure thing: http://slashdot.org/my/logout

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

Nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger Fuck you Slashdot ahjab ajhsjn diknf;lmsf oklsafn.nfossflns. sfkjsofj sfkljsfou nm,akyiuhtjkfpoh fioo fhkjn ofppqldk fn fiuuoikhfn filf9oolq,dlfoohhf

Re:Dear Bruce,

[afxgrin]

I'm sure we can get some computer generated trolling happening if you so desire.

The IEEE seem to think they're legitimate posts. ;-)

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

The GNAA should return, but reformed, as if the GNAA is not trying to be trolls, but actual intellectual comments contributing to the discussion. It would be perfect timing after scaring away all the people with no sense of humour.

Or at least start out intellectual, and then end the post with a GNAA standard - like an ascii goatse or a penis bird.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[paulgrant]

Clearly you dont read the interesting discussions - half the time I'm not saving the slashdot story link so much as saving a useful user comment I found informative.

'course I'm accused of being a troll on account of my penchants but then again, they're my penchant so nyaa :P :)

Trolling is over-rated at any rate - if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem....

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why trolls should just stick to gpl vs bsd or something as trivial is that in the mainstream media someone might actually take them seriously.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[hkmwbz]

What's the 15 mod points thing anyway? Any documentation on it?

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes - seriously. What a douche bag.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[not_hylas( )]

mzs:

"... the new discussion system. That makes a bunch of rants and trolls intersperse with the real discussion. I think a bunch of the insightful posters of the past simply stopped posting due to the signal to noise ratio falling."

Amen Brother.

On Slashdot Becoming Digg:

http://slashdot.org/~not_hylas(+)/journal/216371

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Nick Ives]

I can't seem to find any official mention of it. I remember when I first got it I googled and found someone talking about it on a private blog. Here's a thread with a couple of people talking about it.

I'm guessing it must be down to getting a good rating in M2.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[hkmwbz]

I'm almost afraid to discuss it here on Slashdot. Then again, I hardly ever get around to spending all my 15 mod points, which I seem to get regularly.

The odd thing is that I stopped getting mod points for ages once upon a time. I don't quite remember what it was - maybe too many negative meta moderations?

In any case, I was very surprised when I suddenly got 15 mod points. And then I got it again. And again. And now I'm wondering what on earth is going on, since I was apparently banned from moderating for several years...

I never consciously abused any mod points.. Maybe the system picked up on that somehow. Who knows... :)

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Neoprofin]

Oh no no no. When I have a chance I read every single comment on stories, but if you happened to have noted the purpose of technocrat, it was to bring smart people into a position to decide policy. There are plenty of smart people on slashdot, but the things they talk about, while interesting, are no closer to having a real world effect most of the time than if they had never said anything at all. The one exception might be ask slashdot, as I would hope that people looking for answers can take advice. Beyond that how much of what's said here is anything but a time sink?

Re:Dear Bruce,

[paulgrant]

life is a time sink; knowledge is never wasted.
and I never read technocrat so if your comment was in strictly
in relation to the website, my apologies - I read your comment
out of context. as to policy setting, it hasn't been we-the-people
in some time, and sadly sociopathic, belief-orient and/or ignorant
people prosper more under the current system than knowledgeable,
rational and/or ethical people. Such is life (for the moment).

Re:Dear Bruce,

[tehcyder]

I *hope* that the GP was exaggerating for comic effect.

But as this is slashdot, it might have been genuinely insane.

Re:Dear Bruce,

[Neoprofin]

Yeah, I can't say we'd be better off if everyone who thinks they're best informed were allowed to set policy, as they can be as dogmatic or ignorant as anyone, but at least there would be some kind of discussion about things that at least resembled informed debate. Even rule by fan-boys sounds like it has more potential than rule by greedy life-long politicians or their appointees.

Creeping him out?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is?

Re:Creeping him out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very recently someone with a similar Slashdot user name to Bruce was posting comments on Slashdot. They were writing about Technocrat moderation policy as a shining example of how things should work in public discourse. The poster, whom may or may not has been Bruce himself, disliked anonymous posting, for the typically misguided reasons.

Is moderation, a passive aggressive form of oppression and group think, an unprofitable business model too?

Re:Creeping him out?

[grcumb]

Is moderation, a passive aggressive form of oppression and group think, an unprofitable business model too?

I don't know, why you bothered, posting anonymously. We all, know it's you, Shatner.

8^)

A shame.

[haeger]

I enjoyed technocrat while it lasted. I got to understand a lot about americans and how they think. Especially those who don't share my "european liberal views" have been very interesting to communicate with.

I think that I've learned a lot about human cultures from technocrat. Sad to see it go.

And I hope I'm not one of the ones that creep Bruce out. ;-)

 

.haeger

Re:A shame.

[.Bruce Perens]

haeger,

I am very fond of many of the posts you made to the forum. I would like to continue communication with you even though the site is down. I do hope that you have more pictures of yourself with bananas stuffed up your asshole.

Re:A shame.

[Anonymous Coward]

Note the . in front of the name, a troll account impersonating another.

Re:A shame.

[Neoprofin]

From what I just read in a later post about some of the writers there I hope you don't think think right-wing survival nuts, "sovereign citizens", income tax evaders, so on and so forth are anything but the most thin of a fringe group of people.

There are plenty of people who own guns, or who keep some emergency food on hand just in case some disaster should befall them. Most of them were somewhat vindicated for their beliefs when Rita and Katrina hit, but they are normal everyday folks. Talking to them about disaster preparedness is awful, but that's true with a lot of people on a lot of things.

If you were just being sincer forget I said anything.

Re:A shame.

[rea1l1]

[In a more recent interview with the well known Bruce Perens of Technocrat.net, he informed us of his real reasons for letting the site fall "That bastard .haegar and his European liberal views just ruined us! RUINED US! We were having such a good time too. Damn Europeans and their peace mongering"]

Re:A shame.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but note also the sense of humor!

This is hardly troll. I would call it "da Vinci answers Picasso".

The modernists shall prevail!

Again?

[Chyeld]

January 04, 2001 (8:00:00 AM) - 7 years, 11 months ago

Bruce Perens: "Well, it's been about a year and a half, and unfortunately Technocrat.net has not flourished. I take the blame, I've not had enough time to run the site, and plans to fund a professional staff for the site fell through. Readership has gone low enough that there's no longer much reason to keep the site alive. Thus, I will no longer be accepting new articles or comments, and will take the site down in a week or so."

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I have the domain?

community

[Councilor Hart]

Certain elements of the community that developed here, unfortunately, creep me out.

I am not familiar with the community at Technocrat or the site itself for that matter. Anyone care to elaborate?

Re:community

[phunhippy]

they are a creepy community obviously!

Re:community

[noidentity]

I am not familiar with the community at Technocrat or the site itself for that matter. Anyone care to elaborate?

Come on man, just visit the website and see for yourself. Er, oh...

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the story submitter. Coincidence?

Re:community

[Councilor Hart]

This is \. Even if I could, I wouldn't read the article. Or in this case, visit the website.

Re:community

[Councilor Hart]

Too much \latex today.

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

> Certain elements of the community that developed here, unfortunately, creep me out.

Obviously he's referring to individual DEVELOPERS there who creep him out.

Begs the question, why not just fire them?

Might help the whole "business viability" thing.

Everyone's doing it.

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Too much latextoday?

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

BWAHAHAHAHA

OH SHIT, I can just imagine it

Perens: Wow, I can't believe it -this story has 30 whole comments from -what is this? Ten new users!

*checks the IP logs*

Perens: Oh -wait. what? Aw Fuck I can't believe this shit!

*closes website*

kaptcha: "decayed"

Re:community

[sleeponthemic]

Certain elements of the community that developed here, unfortunately, creep me out.

I am not familiar with the community at Technocrat or the site itself for that matter. Anyone care to elaborate?

There has been some talk of scripting a live action Jar Jar Binks movie on there.

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

It was all the guys fawning over the famous Bruce Perens and pesterim him to send them his used underwear. In the end Bruce relented and open sourced the "blueprints" for his underwear, but it was too little too late.

Re:community

[Councilor Hart]

It is /. and not \.
Latex, which I have been using the last few days uses \ for commands (e.g. \frac{}{}).

Re:community

[JonJ]

It's just copypasted off technocrat.net though, so it's not twitter that has written it. AFAIK.

Re:community

[Councilor Hart]

I don't think that is how the sentence should be read. You don't refer to people as elements, you would use members to do so.
I read it as that a certain mindset within the community creeps him out. A mindset that was not originally present, and certainly not planned for. I am merely wondering what that would be.

Re:community

[bhima]

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

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Think the other way around.

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce relented and open sourced the "brownprints" for his underwear

FTFY.

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Jar Jar Binks is adorable.

Re:community

[Goaway]

Sounds like you got a larger than usual dose of The Internet in there. It can get pretty caustic when concentrated!

Seriously, you'll see the same thing happen anywhere where self-declared smart people congregate. Slashdot gets some of it, reddit gets even more of it, and so on. I can see why Bruce would just want to get rid of the whole mess, if it got that bad.

Re:community

[karnowski]

I also participated in the conversation regularly. Who do you think were the two trolls?

Re:community

[Bartab]

Doubtless some christians and or capitalists were uncomfortable with or offended by some of my past comments.

Two things really creep me out in this world: People who present a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith, and those who continue to press economic systems that are known to be fundamental failures.

You sir, encompass both categories.

Re:community

[Neoprofin]

It's always fun trying to explain away that assumption that some people seem to get that there's a right or wrong answer to anything, and that even if there was people wouldn't choose a wrong answer because it's more fitting to their personal opinions.

Dealing with a large group of people who think they know everything, and this is true for slashdot as well, is frequently boring, sometimes highly enlightening, and always at risk of showing just what terrifying abuse a person will subject truth and reason to.

Re:community

[tehBoris]

If you don't put a {} pair after \LaTeX there won't be any spaces between it and the next word :-)

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Ever heard of the fallacy of false dichotomy? Because you just gave two textbook examples in one sentence!

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

If I am reading it correctly, it's not lack of faith you have problem with. It's lack of faith in religion you have problem with. They are two different things. I may have faith in humanity, I don't have faith in religion.

Just as we are talking about creepiness, anybody who uses the word dogma creeps me out the most. You, sir, have used it twice in once sentence!

Re:community

[zuzulo]

I also quite liked technocrat, mainly because despite the trolls the signal to noise ratio there was lower than anywhere else i have found. And this includes Slashdot! I will miss it (even the extremists), and look forward to seeing the next incarnation.

Re:community

[jp10558]

Why do people who present a dogma of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of the lack of faith not creep you out as much?

Re:community

[jcr]

I may have faith in humanity, I don't have faith in religion.

You sound like the kind of AC who makes /. worth visiting.

-jcr

Re:community

[shalla]

Yes, this is an OT response. I should really know better.

Two things really creep me out in this world: People who present a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith, and those who continue to press economic systems that are known to be fundamental failures.

I'm curious. Do you know the poster, or are you basing this solely on his /. post?

Because simply saying that "some christians and or capitalists were uncomfortable with or offended by some of my past comments" does not mean he lacks faith or favors another economic system. He just might not share the same views as certain elements of those two groups. Many people are Christians or of another faith but are uncomfortable with some of the views of other Christians. Many people are capitalists but think that there's such a thing as hard-core capitalism that could be tempered. Very few systems encompass people who immediately share all beliefs without offense.

In particular, I think there's a big difference between saying "I made some Christians uncomfortable or offended them" and saying that someone presented a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith. In that context you are assuming that Christianity is the only faith, and that only by supporting atheism or possibly agnosticism would someone make a Christian uncomfortable. It simply depends on the Christian. The poster could easily be a Christian who disagreed with them on certain topics, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Jewish, or... you get the point.

Re:community

[chill]

I'd guess he was referring to Pres4242 & Tom Lord, though neither were trolls. Both just have, shall we say, firm viewpoints.

Re:community

[nametaken]

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).

Well damn, if someone had told me that earlier...

Crazy survivalists and zombies? We need more websites like that.

Re:community

[karnowski]

I also suspected he meant Pres4242, but agree with you. He wasn't a troll, just lived in a strange reality. Tom Lord? I don't know how you can even suspect he was trolling.

I generally agree with bhima's well-written post though. The number of "Armageddon's coming, everyone grab their canned-food & guns" & general conspiracy theory stories was alarming. Reddit's the same way. Why is the Internets so delusional?

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Bartab,

People that assume they know everything, based solely on their own biases and thoughtless programmed reactions creep me out.

Why do "Christians" completely ignore every other religion in the world? Many of them have a much longer and richer history then Christianity and are no more or less logically questionable.

And as far as economic views, you cannot possibly be arguing that what the US is going through now is in any possible way "good".
I could even go so far as to say that U.S. capitalism could pass as a "fundamental failure" at this point. This isn't our first trip through a depression.

Regardless of his actual positions your clearly US fundamentalist republican views clearly creep out 51% of the population, me included.

Re:community

[lwsimon]

That sounds like AR15.com for nerds.

I expect Arfcom will see its membership rise because of this :)

Re:community

[lekikui]

Of course, \LaTeX\ works as well, and is quicker to type.

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds a lot like reddit, actually. Fuckwads aplenty.

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Two things really creep me out in this world: People who present a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith,

So, what you are saying is that because Christians do what is right and moral because of the threat of eternal damnation they are somehow superior to atheists who do what is right and moral of their own free will?

Sorry buddy, people that do what is right because it's the right thing to do will ALWAYS have moral superiority over those who only do what is right under threat of punishment.

Re:community

[chill]

Well, Tom & Pres went at it tooth and nail there for a little while. That is what I was thinking of.

Bhima's post was accurate. The site gravitated towards politics, the-end-is-nigh economics and the like. I think it was because there were only a relatively few article submitters. Personally, I tried to not duplicate posts on Slashdot, which limited some of our material. Of course, with this political cycle in the U.S., politics rose to the top. And throw in the bleak economic picture worldwide, and I can understand why the forum went the direction it did.

It is a shame that Bruce pulled the plug now, because I believe with the election being over things would have started to swing back in a more favorable direction.

Re:community

[demachina]

"which convinced most of the group that they were expert economists, bankers, politicians"

Based on what I've seen of our "expert" economists, bankers and politicians I am convinced that almost anyone with a functioning brain and some minimal ethics could surpass them in every way so this tendency on the part of this group is understandable. In particular there seems to be a litany of Harvard and Yale grads, who went on to get Harvard MBA's who appear to be running the U.S. economy and political system who seem to be completely incompetent. One wonders if either those Ivy league institutions are completely bankrupt as educators, or more likely they have turned in to diploma mills for the spawn of the "establishment" or if anyone whose parents have big enough check book. Or maybe Ivy league universities just can't teach ethics or Business 101. They seem to be giving MBA's that open the doors to power and wealth to complete idiots. George W. Bush being the supreme example of someone who has a Harvard MBA and nearly single handedly destroyed the U.S. through sheer incompetence and ignorance.

Reference the parting shot from Andrew Lehde a state university educated hedge fund manager who clean up betting against the Ivy leaguers on mortgage backed securities.

Re:community

[osu-neko]

Extremists tent to assume everyone else is an extremist too. They don't acknowledge the existence of moderate views or a defensible middle ground. Thus, anyone who they meet to expresses a view that makes it clear they aren't fundamentalist Christians are obviously pagans or atheists, and anyone they meet who isn't an extreme anarcho-capitalist is obviously a totalitarian communist. This strategy prevents them from ever having to consider a reasonable viewpoint in opposition to their own. They instantly transform it into an unreasonable one, then easily defeat the straw man. You suggest a reasonable course of action, they say "that's communism, and you see how well that worked out for the Soviet union."

Their favorite logical fallacy after the "straw man" is "The Slippery Slope". Anything that isn't their cup o' tea, even if it isn't the opposite extreme taken to the point of ludicrous, and thus isn't opposable for its own merits and flaws, is argued against because it's "the slippery slope to communism" or whatever. It's basically admitting there's nothing wrong with your proposal, so rather than point out the flaws in your proposal (which are either nonexistent or easily outweighed by the benefits), they say "it's the slippery slope to ..." and then argue against that thing everyone agrees is bad. I saw Mike Huckabee argue the other day that stem-cell research is the slippery slope to murdering old people once they can no longer usefully work! We must oppose stem-cell research because murdering people just because they're old is a bad thing.

Anyhow, it's unsurprising that extremists like that take any statement they don't 100% agree with as making the speaker an obvious advocate for the opposite extreme.

Re:community

[bcrowell]

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.

You're lumping an awful lot of things together there. As a libertarian, I'm not quite sure what you would mean by an extremist libertarian; libertarians essentially don't want government to exist, and I'm not clear on what would be more extreme than nonexistence. Anyway, the site ran slashcode and had a fairly small number of users, so if, say, someone expressed racist views, couldn't you just put that person on your foes list and not see his posts anymore?

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod -1, Creepy, please

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do "Christians" completely ignore every other religion in the world?

So, you've met every Christian in the world and they all ignore every other religion? (Or have I missed the point again?)

I would like to point out that the fundamentalists are in no way representative of a faith, a fact that is so oft forgotten.

Maybe all the Christians you have met have been the hardcore "it's the Bible's way or YOU'RE GOING TO BURN IN HELL FOREVER!!!" lot, but even other Christians look at them funny. (I know my mother does, and she's a Methodist preacher... (yeah, yeah... sample size of one, etc. ;) ))

Ah, well... I think I've rambled off topic long enough.

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do "Christians" completely ignore every other religion in the world? Many of them have a much longer and richer history then Christianity and are no more or less logically questionable.

They do? There are numerus examples of discussions among the various religions, organised by fairly high ranking members in these communities, joint samaritan actions and others. You're making quite a big straw man in your quest to counter the GP.

And as far as economic views, you cannot possibly be arguing that what the US is going through now is in any possible way "good".
I could even go so far as to say that U.S. capitalism could pass as a "fundamental failure" at this point. This isn't our first trip through a depression.

Regardless of his actual positions your clearly US fundamentalist republican views clearly creep out 51% of the population, me included.

This I mostly agree with, but you're also again projecting political views to the GP, which weren't in his post.

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Two things really creep me out in this world: People who present a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith,

So, what you are saying is that because Christians do what is right and moral because of the threat of eternal damnation they are somehow superior to atheists who do what is right and moral of their own free will?

Nope, he didn't say that. (Not to mention, that christians, who do good deeds because of a threat of eternal damnation and not because for a love of their neighbors, aren't acting as good christians)

Sorry buddy, people that do what is right because it's the right thing to do will ALWAYS have moral superiority over those who only do what is right under threat of punishment.

Yope. Which is, incidentally, one of Jesus teachings. And, damnit, I'm not even a strong christian.

Re:community

[MichaelSmith]

Certain elements of the community that developed here, unfortunately, creep me out.

I am not familiar with the community at Technocrat or the site itself for that matter. Anyone care to elaborate?

I don't know what elements creeped Bruce out but I thought there was a fairly strong right wing undercurrent among the regulars. Perhaps a few libertarians. Bruce seems to be a strong Democrat supporter so maybe that was it.

Re:community

[Goaway]

As a libertarian, I'm not quite sure what you would mean by an extremist libertarian;

Then you seriously need to take a much closer look at yourself and your compatriots, because you seem to suffer from quite a serious case of tunnel vision.

Re:community

[bhima]

Technocrat never had had moderation or relationships and Bruce completely quit using Slashcode a long time ago... but I still think you comments are still pretty on target.

Re:community

[atriusofbricia]

Certain elements of the community that developed here, unfortunately, creep me out.

I am not familiar with the community at Technocrat or the site itself for that matter. Anyone care to elaborate?

I don't know what elements creeped Bruce out but I thought there was a fairly strong right wing undercurrent among the regulars. Perhaps a few libertarians. Bruce seems to be a strong Democrat supporter so maybe that was it.

Nailed in one. Bruce is obviously fairly left wing, and deep "in the tank" for Obama. He lept at the chance to post non-verified anti-Palin stories more worthy of the tabloids than a serious site. He ended up with a ton of egg on his face when those stories were proven to be the tripe any thinking person should have known they were. Admittedly I do no know this for fact, so take this with a bucket of salt: It is my opinion that he expected, consciously or not, that a tech site would tend to swing left and when it instead went right, he wasn't comfortable and pulled the plug. Most unfortunate if true.

Re:community

[MichaelSmith]

For me the site was a good balance between slashdot, where it is almost impossible to get an article posted, and a personal weblog, where it is dead easy, but will be read by very few people.

Re:community

[mbourgon]

I just really hope I wasn't one of the trolls. Wasn't trying to be, but there was a lot of groupthink going on.

That being said, it had a few decent stories, but the volume was always quite low, and many of the stories were a screed by some person against some policy or action. Definitely not pointing fingers (heck, I couldn't tell you who the authors of the articles were), but pointing out that it didn't really fill a niche. Too few posts, too little true dialog.

Re:community

[ta bu shi da yu]

I think this says it all really.

Can you not see the problem with the following sentence?

"Why do "Christians" completely ignore every other religion in the world? Many of them have a much longer and richer history then Christianity and are no more or less logically questionable."

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

How is atheism (i.e. any non-theistic position) extreme?

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Like every set of beliefs, it depends entirely on how the believer goes about evangelizing his/her beliefs to others. When believers start to disparage people of other beliefs, they have crossed the line into extremism.

This message is for people of all beliefs, not just those who choose to worship Athe.

Re:community

[Mr. Slippery]

Two things really creep me out in this world: People who present a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith

Er? A dogma is that which is accepted on faith. No faith, no dogma.

and those who continue to press economic systems that are known to be fundamental failures.

So fundamentalist capitalists creep you out too. Great. Why are you insulting the GP poster, then?

Re:community

[Nick Ives]

Anyone who argues that communism has ever existed anywhere in this world, except for the brief period of democracy following the 1917 revolution, hasn't really read or understood Das Kapital.

Re:community

[Bartab]

Er? A dogma is that which is accepted on faith. No faith, no dogma.

Agreed. Which is why people acting on faith that there is no reason to have faith creep me out.

So fundamentalist capitalists creep you out too.

As that is an example of a known working economic system, it doesn't follow from my previous statement.

Re:community

[Bartab]

Always the easy excuse. "It's never been REALLY tried!"

Re:community

[Bartab]

I'm curious. Do you know the poster

Yes.

Re:community

[Nick Ives]

But you haven't addressed the point. Communism is about common ownership of the means of production and the destruction of the state. After the 1917 revolution there were democratic soviets; they were dismantled due to the ongoing civil war.

It's also quite telling that prominent socialists who've argued this were, in the past, persecuted and assassinated by Stalinists, most notably Leon Trotsky (who wasn't a saint by any margin).

So yea, a workers society with common ownership of the means of production and freedom and all that stuff. The USSR and China clearly don't qualify as that so therefore Communism hasn't ever really existed - never mind the fact that it was always supposed to have a "world historical" existence, and so some (I think the label is "Stagist") would argue that Communism can only possibly exist after global world capitalism.

There's lots to disagree with when it comes to Marx but it'd be nice if people disagreed with what he actually said and not a bunch of weird misconceptions.

Read up and then at least you can disagree in an informed manner.

Re:community

[mazarin5]

It was like Slashdot, with less posts. However, the stories were generally much longer, more in-depth, and more technical. The posts were, for the most part, also more technical and in-depth. Bruce was involved heavily in most discussions, which was nice.

However, the discussions generally didn't have too many people involved, and so it was exceedingly easy for trolls to derail the conversation. The S:N wasn't very good.

It's unfortunate, because it was a good site. It just didn't have the popular appeal to reach critical mass.

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing it died then.

God damn.

- AJK

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

As in...

http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:tveELSa85FcJ:technocrat.net/d/2008/10/16/51978+Pres4242&hl=en&client=firefox-a&gl=nz&strip=1

Re:community

[broeman]

It is so easy to judge people without any explanation ... I would base extremism on when people use force or threatening others to pursue their purpose. Libertarianism doesn't have a extreme solution to make a society more libertarian, because it is about doing as little politics as possible (but there is a big need to remove existing policies in many war/welfare states first).

But I will take the liberty to make a judgment of you and guessing you liked "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein, if you know the book.

Re:community

[Bartab]

There's lots to disagree with when it comes to Marx but it'd be nice if people disagreed with what he actually said and not a bunch of weird misconceptions.

No, there's more to disagree with when it comes to Marx as compared to the misconceptions that come about because his ideas were simply not workable in real life. He is in fact, weirder and less well thought out in his actual ideas than in the broken implementations attempted over the last few decades.

Re:community

[hkmwbz]

So yea, a workers society with common ownership of the means of production and freedom and all that stuff.

So they all invest their own money in the means of production (which you can do today if you wish)? What if I don't want to invest and just want a regular job with no ownership or responsibility?

Re:community

[Goaway]

I would base extremism on when people use force or threatening others to pursue their purpose.

Perhaps you would, but that is not the definition of the term as accepted by others.

Re:community

[Anonymous Coward]

Please read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal-to-noise_ratio/

I agree that Slashdot does have a "low" S/N but I don't think you mean it in quite the same way as I do.

Re:community

[Cally]

Sounds rather like mirror image of BoingBoing. I kid! I kid!

Re:community

[Cally]

What makes you so sure that expecting major social upheaval and breakdown is delusional? Expecting it *tomorrow* is pretty delusional, but a couple of months ago it looked like it was a few weeks away at most. I don't think many people yet realise how close we came to a real catastophe back in September/October. And no, a world-wide recession or even depression is really an escape from what nearly happened.

Re:community

[Nick Ives]

OK, so you've reached logic fail.

You started by saying that communism is known to be a fundamental failure, then you insinuate that I'm somehow wrong by suggesting that what Marx argued for has never come about and now you've accepted that I'm right by saying that Marxism has never been implemented but it doesn't matter because he's just too weird it can't possibly be done in real life.

Incidentally, I don't believe Das Kapital is like some sort of bible; I understand that Marx himself thought of it as a form of intellectual propaganda. By teasing out the contradictions in Capitalism he was hoping to show how broken the current system is and his critique is just as valid today.

Re:community

[Sergeant Pepper]

[fundamentalist capitalism] is an example of a known working economic system

Excuse me while I try to stop laughing...

Seriously, have you ever taken an economics class in your entire life? I mean, not to sound condescending, but GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY... there is very little debate among economists that you need government intervention to have a sustainable economy. What is debated is the amount that is healthy, but the fact that it's necessary is almost never debated.

Re:community

[Dragoness Eclectic]

So yea, a workers society with common ownership of the means of production and freedom and all that stuff.

Such societies have existed, and worked... on a small scale. Kibbutzim, early Christian communes, Shaker communes, etc. Curiously, the ones that worked all had a religious basis--and embraced common values of charity and compassion. They also kicked out or didn't attract the 5-10% of parasitical dickwads (criminals, freeloaders, authoritarians, etc) that exist in any large, non-selective group of human beings.

Larger societies have to work in spite of the parasites. Any system that requires 100% of its members to be good, upstanding citizens will fail... and that's the fundamental problem with "pure" Communism.

Re:community

[TobascoKid]

I had almost given up on Technocrat around the time of the election (I used the name "maethorechannen" on there). I think Bruce did the right thing to shut it down.

I just wonder where Guy Fawkes will turn up now.

Re:community

[TobascoKid]

I thought he was referring to Guy Fawkes and Tom Lord

Re:community

[chill]

That is possible. Since Guy disappeared, I had forgotten about his epic missives. Lord's & Pres' exchanges were fresh in my mind.

Creepy

[ultrabot]

Typically, announcemet about shutting a site down would have more of a "we had a good ride, and the great atmosphere of the site will be missed" tone to it. Here, we have quite the opposite, and nosy personalities will surely want to know the dirty details...

(Apart from the obvious ones,such as the internet being full of a*holes)

Re:Creepy

[Anonymous Coward]

(Apart from the obvious ones,such as the internet being full of a*holes)

Yeah, like Bruce Perens.

(Sorry, it had to be said. And yes, feel free to add me to the list, too; I deserve it.)

Re:Creepy

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm gonna guess he got a lot of "ZOMG BRUSE PERENS" sycophants, and was unable to financially justify continuing the site. Hell, last time I looked if a story had two comments in it, it was a red-letter day.

Basically he thought he could throw up a slash installation and that a community would magically form around it. It didn't; and instead he got trolls, jerks and brown-nosers (you know -the usual /. fare).

I always thought perens was decent enough, seeing him here on /.; but it looks like he's just as full of himself as ESR.

Re:Creepy

[drinkypoo]

Typically, announcemet about shutting a site down would have more of a "we had a good ride, and the great atmosphere of the site will be missed" tone to it. Here, we have quite the opposite, and nosy personalities will surely want to know the dirty details...

That's because this is just another bid for attention, like the last time he "took the site down". This time maybe he'll really do it, before bringing up a new site.

(Apart from the obvious ones,such as the internet being full of a*holes)

Those are speed holes.

Re:Creepy

[m.ducharme]

Except we can't add you to the list, as you're an anonymous coward.

Re:Creepy

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought perens was decent enough, seeing him here on /.; but it looks like he's just as full of himself as ESR.

Ha! Compared to Perens, ESR is the acme of humility!

Re:Creepy

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you sure have to be pretty full of yourself to make a public announcement on slashdot about closing down a website almost no one has heard of.

Classic Perens.

Re:Creepy

[wilder_card]

ultrabot said:"(Apart from the obvious ones,such as the internet being full of a*holes)" Really? I hadn't noticed! ;)

Re:Creepy

[Anonymous Coward]

Except we can't add you to the list, as you're an anonymous coward.

That guy creeps me out.

Re:Creepy

[Dun Malg]

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!)

Re:Creepy

[illegalcortex]

Basically he thought he could throw up a slash installation and that a community would magically form around it

To be fair, that's pretty much what slashdot did.

Re:Creepy

[Jesus_666]

Maybe Bruce Perens is a Twitter sockpuppet. Ever thought about that?

Re:Creepy

[Anonymous Coward]

> No, Twitter submitted the article

Oh, you're right. I didn't notice that. Maybe I got
thrown off by the lack of dollar signs in the text.

Running a crap slashdot knock off unprofitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoda thunk it?

Good

[midnighttoadstool]

Anyone who supports Stallman is supporting the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

In short: they're wrong, they refuse to accept they're wrong and they're jealous of the people who are right?

Re:Good

[loonycyborg]

What do does this rant based on strawman arguments has to do with Technocrat.net?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Churchill said it about communism.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest we have a witch trial to smell out those who are guilty of Stallmanism. If you ever used the GPL for anything... good luck getting a job, you dirty Stallmanie. All you pinko BSD people had better watch out too - you're next!

Yours sincerely,
J McCarthy
Council for Anti-Microsoft Activities

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Soviet Russia achieved more under Stalin in 10 years than what took most of the Western hemisphere a century.

But let me digress a moment: the idea that envy is wrong is a very Abrahamic one. Judaism and its offshoots have all been about keeping people suffering today with the promise of high life in the afterlife. Great con; now eat your gruel and continue to pay tithes to your master. As part of this, people have been taught that it is wrong to envy.

Nuh-uh. It's very human to want what someone else has, and perfectly natural to question - and object to - someone having more than you. It was the gospel of envy that freed the slaves and gave the vote to women. May envy continue to motivate progress, and leave contentment to those who prefer stagnation.

I hate living in the Western "free" world, and would love to have lived in a Russia of the '20s, or a Soviet Union of the '70s, where I would have been thoroughly nurtured for my abilities in mathematics, and been given the opportunity to maintain an establishment based on egalitarianism (at least in the first period, and far closer than anything in the West in the second). Those with less mental acuity, less opportunity and worse physical health would have, through the gospel of envy, rightly hated me had I not lived in a system designed to lift them toward me, while at the same time not lifting me too high.

Academia maintains rigour and mental preparedness but stifles productivity; I refuse to enter industry until the appearance of another state which comes at least remotely close to the ideals of communism. Fortunately, I am still young, and look forward to the rise and fall of new empires in the next 20-30 years.

(Incidentally, if on reading this you think "but look at the great conditions in which I live in the free world!" then you are the minority kulak so hated in early communist Russia not just because of the gospel of envy but because you were honestly blind to just how much better off you are than the average man living in your country. Because you measure the worth of yourself and your country by your ability to buy ten televisions rather than two, you are rightly destroyed as useless and harmful.)

Re:Good

[midnighttoadstool]

Stallman's philosophy, of which Perens is a supper and not just a fan, is anti-business. The failure for commercial reasons of his enterprise is fitting and just.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Soviet Russia achieved more under Stalin in 10 years than what took most of the Western hemisphere a century.

In Russia, you make progress. In Capitalist America, progress make you!

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot effing on.

Re:Good

[MRe_nl]

"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.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read your history there's a period from ~1910-1940 or so when the Soviets were far and away accomplishing more than the west: they built up modern roads and water systems and electrified their nations over that period, while the west dragged its heels and fell into the great depression.

They never really recovered from losing ~15m lives in WWII.

Bringing up the body count is certainly a fair critique, but you have to have some kind of blinders on to think it's in any way a uniquely soviet thing: if you include "surplus" deaths over all of American history, you have to bring in the entire native population of the content, who somehow dwindled from 20-100m in 1776 to 1m today, with almost all such deaths directly attributable to American actions (both public and private) over a 100 year period.

Clearing out space for a new economic system and society is always messy, and it's not exactly intellectually honest to start your timeline from well after the time you guys wrapped up your mass extermination of inconvenient peoples.

Re:Good

[loonycyborg]

Stallman's philosophy, of which Perens is a supper and not just a fan, is anti-business.

I'm sorry that Stallman's philosophy hurts your religious feelings, but it's just a philosophy. Get a life.

Re:Good

[midnighttoadstool]

Feelings, religion? Consider that you might be presuming upon a Vulcan.

In anycase "it's just a philosophy" is an illogical response. Marxism could be called 'just a philosophy', but equally with Stallman's position it causes human misery and removes human satisfactions by contradicting your nature.

I merely point this matters out for your information, since I am not affected by them in anyway, so that you may live long and prosper.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Re:Good

[loonycyborg]

Marxism could be called 'just a philosophy', but equally with Stallman's position it causes human misery and removes human satisfactions by contradicting your nature.

That is even more true for economic determinism.

Re:Good

[allaunjsilverfox2]

Why the hell would you want to smell concentrated trolls? Can you imagine the last time they left their computers? I mean, gawds, my eyes BURN thinking about it! :p

Re:Good

[midnighttoadstool]

Doubtless you are right, which is why I am a libertarian and reckon the market is the natural way.

Re:Good

[jcr]

I am a libertarian and reckon the market is the natural way.

I'm a libertarian too, but I'm not sure I'd describe the market as "natural", as such. From what I can see in history, kleptocracies and tyrannies are far more common, and freedom requires considerable effort to establish and maintain it.

-jcr

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we could easily trim the right 20% of the population. Take out the trash. Trim the hedges. 80/20. you know. You spend too much time whining about it and you'll surely end up in that group.

Re:Good

[jonbryce]

They went from a peasant economy similar to what you see in large parts of Africa today to something vaguely resembling a civilised country. It took Britain about 150 years to achieve something a little bit better using free market techniques.

Re:Good

[Dun Malg]

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.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read your history there's a period from ~1910-1940 or so when the Soviets were far and away accomplishing more than the west

I think this statement speaks for itself, although it probably has to stop ever couple of words to keep from giggling.

Re:Good

[Nick Ives]

Wait, so because I'm a GNU/FSF True Believer I have to eat Bruce Perens for supper? Well, worse things have been done in the name of freedom.....

BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIINNSSS!!!!!

Re:Good

[Jesus_666]

However, the R&D was already mostly done. Russia knew which directions to go and which to avoid as they could learn from others. It's similar to research - one team develops a new theory with years of work; afterwards others need only a miniscule fraction of that time to extract knowledge about the topic from the paper.

The USSR did rapidly "upgrade" themselves but then again that's something Germany did in the Fifties as well - it's easy to do with determination, control, money and a blank slate. And, especially, prior knowledge of what to do.

The impressive R&D part was the Space Race (and, less awesome, the nuclear arms race), where the USA and the USSR had their best minds competing with each other over a field neither had much prior knowledge about.

Re:Good

[midnighttoadstool]

A market is simply a place of exchange which would happen between any two farmers or hunters where one has something the other does not. It's more natural than pie. And more common than tyranny.

Re:Good

[Alex Belits]

The number of deaths that actually can be attributed to Stalin's politically motivated persecution is about 2 millions over the whole time he was in power -- that includes executions, .

The figures that people see published and re-published now, are mostly taken from three sources:

1. Famine deaths in 30's (at worst they are an evidence of incompetence while handling severe drought).
2. Numbers A. Solzhenitsyn mentioned in GULAG Archipelago (that reflect nothing but strength of Solzhenitsyn's hatred for the government that unfairly imprisoned him)
3. Various "estimates" made by American historians and propaganda workers as a replacement for total lack of information they had.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't think the dead were all peasants either. If you read the Gulag archipelago it is pretty clear that scientists, writers, and mathematicians were also sent to the gulag on slim provocation.

Re:Again? A fake

[Anonymous Coward]

That's is a fake

upside down kingdumb righting itself?

[Anonymous Coward]

could happen. not likely to be an instantaneous process. nothing much to do with mr. perens, who has taken his self-assigned duty to us quite seriously. he is correct about the 'creepiness' in the 'community'. like gangsters. thank you sir.

Godspeed, man.

[transiit]

It's been my experience that reading too much into an implied tone in the slashdot summaries just gets me in trouble, so in brief:

Thanks, Bruce, for your efforts and contributions over the years and may your next project(s) be successful and fulfilling.

THIS IS NEWS?

[ionix5891]

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/technocrat.net

come on slashdot, slow news day?

Re:THIS IS NEWS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Instead, let's get more stories on new crappy iphone applications and such.

Re:THIS IS NEWS?

[hairyfeet]

Man, that is just sad. Even PC Hell which looks like it was designed in 1993 and filled with old crap like how to remove the Blaster worm and a guide to Win95 OSR2 totally kicked their ass. But considering that I have been surfing tech sites for Deity knows how many years and I had never ever heard of it makes it not so surprising. Maybe he should have advertised? Or gotten the site put on Freshnews or the Daily Rotation? But surely he didn't expect to just throw up a website, never advertise, and have it magically turn into Slashdot just because of who he is, did he?

Why "donations"?

[ortholattice]

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.

Hosting services with essentially unlimited bandwidth can cost as little as $5 per month. I use ixwebhosting myself for a hobby site, but I don't feel the need to ask for donations from my audience to support it, since it barely costs me more than a couple of cups of coffee a month. I assume he needs no staff, and since the code is written the site would be essentially self-maintaining. And if the traffic became too much for a cheap hosting service, then it would be high enough for ad support. I'm sure he has his perfectly valid reasons for shutting it down. Maybe he doesn't want to spend time moderating a site he is no longer interested in, for example. But it seems odd to imply that one of them is that he is unable to afford to run it as a hobby without donations.

(BTW I was a technocrat subscriber, although I posted very rarely. There were certain seemingly self-important posters, who I'll leave nameless, whose long rambles I just ignored. Other topics were often interesting, though, somewhat like /. but a little broader in scope, and I monitored the RSS feed every day or two.)

Re:Why "donations"?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were certain seemingly self-important posters, who I'll leave nameless, whose long rambles I just ignored.

coughGUYFAWKEScough

Re:Why "donations"?

[larry bagina]

Your $5/month account doesn't have unlimited bandwidth, but more importantly, it doesn't have the RAM and CPU needed to host SLASH (which is a resource hog).

Re:Why "donations"?

[JWSmythe]

    I don't think most people will really understand what you mean.

    When Free Internet Press (http://freeinternetpress.com) started, I used Slashcode. It ran fine on one server, after I got all the damned mod_perl stuff working for it. That was all fine and dandy, until we were picked up by Yahoo! News and Google News as a news source. If we showed up on the front of either one (Google News is the heaviest), the site would be down within about a minute or two.

    I had to grow it to 3 dedicated servers. Two web servers, and one database server. That worked, but even still when it got hit, it was slow.

    It didn't take me too long to grow tired of Slashcode. It wasn't only the performance issues, but making serious changes became a nightmare. I switched to PHPNuke for a while, which did much better as far as handling surges in traffic, but grew tired of their security problems. The site was exploited twice. The first time it required a cleanup and software upgrade. The second time, I gave up on it, and rewrote the site from scratch.

    With my own code, I had basic functionality working in two days, and all the normal features working not too long after that. I'm a good coder, so there have been no problems with exploits. I validate all my inputs, and the coding style is much simpler so it's much easier to work with. I even have good caching code, so it should be safe from the Slashdot effect. For those who want the code, sorry, it's not available.

    Really, needing 3 dedicated servers was a lot for a small site. Now that it's bigger, it runs safely from two (a web and a database server). I could consolidate to one, but I don't need to. I could also grow it to as many servers as necessary without any real headaches.

    Even still, I wouldn't want to run it on a $5/mo hosting account. Sure, my site would be fine, but what happens if one of the hundreds or thousands of other sites on that same server are too heavy? Then my site will be slow.

    Bandwidth usually isn't a big concern for a mostly text based site, unless you're trying really hard. :)

Re:Why "donations"?

[ralphdaugherty]

Your $5/month account doesn't have unlimited bandwidth, but more importantly, it doesn't have the RAM and CPU needed to host SLASH (which is a resource hog).

      Yeah, but a typical $20/month shared web host account has plenty of bandwidth/CPU/capacity for a typical forum like the one described here.

      And $80/month gives you dedicated IP access from home/shop to run on the most souped up PC (or even multiple hosts/failover) you can cobble together.

      So financial just isn't an issue as far as a hobby for an employed person goes.

      Now having the time to deal with it is a different matter, and if full time devoted to a software starup then that hardware/bandwidth/monthly accounts may need to be devoted to teh startup, and that would be a financial issue as well as time.

  rd

Re:Why "donations"?

[osu-neko]

Maybe he doesn't want to spend time moderating a site he is no longer interested in, for example. But it seems odd to imply that one of them is that he is unable to afford to run it as a hobby without donations.

What he said doesn't imply that, at least in the strict sense of "imply". And I don't think it's implied in the looser sense either, since, as you point out, that wouldn't make much sense. You're misinterpreting what he actually did say. He never said he couldn't afford it. He did imply he wasn't interested in it anymore. If he's not interested in it anymore, he's obviously not going to pay for it. So, he'd either need to take donations or shut it down. Thus, he wouldn't need to take donations because it's too expensive for him to afford, he'd need to take donations because he's unwilling to spend any of his own money on it, regardless of how much he has.

As a general rule of thumb, if someone says something that doesn't seem to make sense, more often than not, it's because you've missed what he's saying, not because what he's saying actually makes no sense. Reinterpret until what was said makes sense, and you'll actually discover the full meaning of what was said, including the unstated implications. The surest sign that you've misread or misinterpreted something is that it sounds wrong. Reread and reinterpret at least twice more before concluding it actually is wrong. Most disagreements are actually over misunderstandings rather than over facts or even opinions.

Re:Why "donations"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your $5/month account doesn't have unlimited bandwidth, but more importantly, it doesn't have the RAM and CPU needed to host SLASH (which is a resource hog).

In its most recent incarnation the site was written in Rails. For the amount of traffic it appeared to receive it could have easily been hosted for less than $20 a month. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the hosting cost that caused him to shut it down.

Re:Why "donations"?

[MichaelSmith]

BTW does anybody have a contact for GF?

Wait

[eclectro]

Has Netcraft confirmed this??

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

in Soviet Russia, technocrats shut YOU down!

neverheardofit

[sleekware]

"neverheardofit" would be a good tag for this article. It could be just me, but I've been reading tech news sites for a few years now and haven't heard of this one...

Blah

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this news ? Who the hell has ever heard of that site before...

Technorati

[MrCrassic]

I think most will be confused with the much more popular site Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/). I thought I heard of this web site, until I remembered that it was actually this one I've heard of.

Re:Technorati

[Blimey85]

Thank you for clearing that up. I'll admit, I was one of the confused.

New rule: confusing shit is not to be posted until mid-afternoon so that we may have a chance to get enough caffeine into our weary bodies that we just might notice the slight difference in the name. Or, if that's too much to ask, pertinent info such as this could be included in the fucking summary.

Really the best way to handle this?

[anothy]

speaking as a relatively frequent poster: wtf?

i like Bruce, but this is very poorly done. if the primary concern is financial, there's ways to mitigate that. if he wasn't happy asking for donations (which i can certainly respect, even if i wouldn't have that problem myself), you can look at both revenue and expenses independent of that. on expenses: it's never been clear to me what the "professional editorial staff" actually did, besides stick a comment on some stories - a comment which wasn't reliably better than any other on the site. for revenue, using the ad hoc advertising was also probably a poor choice compared to using something like google's service. and if the issues was primarily the creepy community, there's ways to deal with that, too: moderation systems, or even (at the size it's at) just kickban individual users (after talking to and/or warning them).

and if you've given up on all that, the shutdown itself was not well done. no notice? that's kinda disrespectful to the people who've put in work to build what's there. i would've loved a few days to copy some of the comments i've made there, or links others have posted, or discuss where to go from here. and that last one, of course, could have included handing the community - or even the site, wholesale - off to another host. that last part in particular stings; it kinda feels like "if i can't have it - on my terms - nobody can".

Bruce, if you're out there, look: thanks for all the work you've done. it was great. i'd really like to keep it going. let me know if we can talk about options.

Re:Really the best way to handle this?

[edittard]

it's never been clear to me what the "professional editorial staff" actually did

I've been saying that for some time. Rumour has it it's nearly as bad over at technocrat.net

Re:Really the best way to handle this?

[1u3hr]

it's never been clear to me what the "professional editorial staff" actually did, besides stick a comment on some stories

I had editing powers there, and actually I am a professional editor elsewhere, but I wasn't paid at Technocrat. Anyway, when I did do some editing mainly it was deleting spammy submissions (a lot of crap from India mainly) and cleaning up the text and coding of the submissions that were worth posting. And I also wrote and sourced a few stories from various news sites. I think Zogger was very active in doing that.

But I did find the shutdown rather abrupt. The cash outgoings must have been trivial, considering the low traffic. Perhaps he just grew tired of monitoring it when much of the conversation was of no interest to him, and didn't want to leave it to evolve into something he liked even less. Would have been nice if he'd given some notice and perhaps asked if anyone wanted to take it over for a nominal amount.

Re:Really the best way to handle this?

[MichaelSmith]

Bruce, if you're out there, look: thanks for all the work you've done. it was great. i'd really like to keep it going. let me know if we can talk about options.

I sent an email to Bruce after he shut the site down basically saying the same thing. He doesn't seem interested in selling the domain name. I have a plan to set up a new site. I have written about the in my journal. If you want to hear more about it when it is ready let me know.

Re:Really the best way to handle this?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...the shutdown itself was not well done. no notice? that's kinda disrespectful to the people who've put in work to build what's there. i would've loved a few days to copy some of the comments i've made there, or links others have posted...."

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://technocrat.org

--
ggg

Re:Really the best way to handle this?

[Reziac]

I never got regular over there (fact is, I'd forget it existed), but what discussions I did read/post in.... well, it's a shame they're not preserved elsewhere. If Bruce doesn't want to run a forum, that's his business, but it sure would be nice if he'd make the existing content available for someone else to carry on, and so that all those posts are not lost -- surely there were plenty that are worth preserving, that contain good info, etc...

Re:Really the best way to handle this?

[zieroh]

Meh.

I run a moderately large forum, and the kind of entitlement you're displaying here reminds me of why I frequently want to shut my own site down.

In the end, it's usually not any one thing: it's a combination of factors that, when they all converge, convince you to just give up and walk away.

And someone is always there to bitch about it, instead of thanking their hosts for all their hard work.

Re:Really the best way to handle this?

[anothy]

i'm not sure what in my post is triggering the "entitlement" claim. i don't think the shutdown was handled in a way respectful of what others have (had, i guess) brought to the community. i don't think of myself as entitled to anything more than the courtesy of allowing me to grab some of my contributions or make some notes on things others have said that i wanted to look into more later.

in case you missed it, i explicitly thanked Bruce for his work. i think it was, for the most part, great what he created there. but that doesn't mean the shutdown wasn't poorly handled.

Looking in the mirror?

[NaCh0]

Out of all the self-proclaimed open source leaders, Bruce Perens creeps me out the most. I really don't know why people follow him. Everything he touches is lackluster at best.

Others like Stallman (GNU) and ESR (CatB) have caused major philosophical movements. The same can't be said for Perens.

I see Perens to Linux as Sean Hannity is to Conservatism. He's there and not afraid to pipe up. But he really hasn't offered any original ideas that have been worth much.

Re:Looking in the mirror?

[osu-neko]

I'm more creeped out by people who never miss an opportunity to misuse the term "self-proclaimed" as a dig at anyone even mildly well known. Anyone who gets even a small touch of fame, through no effort or fault of their own, invariably gets declared as having a god complex by these creeps who are just... I don't know. What IS the motivation behind these creeps?

Re:Looking in the mirror?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are original ideas in conservatism? I'm not saying this as a troll but... how can you expect original (in the sense of new) ideas in conservatism? I mean, maybe original ideas (in the sense of... the old, very first ideas)

Re:Looking in the mirror?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be extremely stupid.

Re:Looking in the mirror?

[l00sr]

Out of all the self-proclaimed open source leaders, Bruce Perens creeps me out the most.

You clearly haven't met ESR in person... On the one occasion I did meet him, not too long after 9/11, he had some pretty borderline-fanatical opinions on that subject. Creepy summarizes it fairly well. Haven't met RMS, who, to be fair, seems like he is probably pretty creepy in real life as well.

Re:Looking in the mirror?

[Bryan Ischo]

I met RMS in real life, back in 1998 or so. He wasn't especially creepy, but the posse of idolizers who followed him around (and to a dinner that we all ended up having at some Chinese place in Manhattan) sure were.

Re:Looking in the mirror?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um...
Ever heard of Debian ? Busybox ? Open Source Initiative ?

Re:Looking in the mirror?

[MadMidnightBomber]

Neither has Linus hasn't caused a "major philosophical movement". He's just good at what he does.

How much of a loss was it?

[Timex]

There were a few people there that I liked, because they showed that they put thought into their commentary. Their logic was sound, even if I disagreed with them.

One writer seems to have attempted to make the site his personal Blogging page.

I stopped going there around October because Bruce felt the need to put banner adverts up for the Obama campaign. I don't go to "Geek sites" for political adverts.

At least this way, Bruce will be able to focus his energies on more interesting projects.

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least this way, Bruce will be able to focus his energies on more interesting projects.

....or, at least, less annoying ones......

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I don't go to "Geek sites" for political adverts.

Who goes to any website for the advertising?

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I stopped going there around October because Bruce felt the need to put banner adverts up for the Obama campaign. I don't go to "Geek sites" for political adverts.

To add to the other replies to this post, why are you here then? Weren't there Obama banner ads on this site back in the campaign days?

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[chill]

Bruce hardcoded it in and it was fed from technocrat.net itself. It wasn't a banner ad from one of the services, and AdBlock didn't catch it unless you explicitly blocked that ad. Bruce is a strong Democrat, and spent a good deal of time doing campaign calls in -- I believe -- Ohio and Georgia.

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[jonbryce]

I go to kelkoo.co.uk for the adverts

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[Timex]

Weren't there Obama banner ads on this site back in the campaign days?

Not in the same way they were on Technocrat, as Charles has already pointed out. It's one thing to get a banner ad that can be blocked, but it's quite another to get them forced on you.

I'm a subscriber to Slashdot, so I don't get adverts here most of the time. This is an option I have here that I don't recall having there.

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[Martin Blank]

His advocacy for the party is one of the things that led me to lose interest in the site. I didn't mind him using his site to voice support for his chosen candidates, and I accepted the ads as part of that. However, for both the 2006 and 2008 federal elections, he made posts that essentially said that if you didn't vote Democrat, you were stupid, evil, or both. This resulted in some very strong words from Libertarians, whom he suggested were just wasting their votes. A few of the editors had similarly strong political views with just as little inclination to listen to the views of others.

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[osu-neko]

I don't go to "Geek sites" for political adverts.

You realize your statement is illogical, right? I go to the grocery store for donuts. If I can find the donuts, it makes sense to go to the grocery store. If I can't find the donuts, it doesn't make sense to go to the grocery store. But it doesn't make sense to not go to the grocery store because it has things I don't go there for, e.g. bratwurst. I hate bratwurst, so it makes sense for me to skip it. It doesn't make sense for me to stop going to the grocery store because of it. The presence of things you don't go there for is an utterly illogical reason to cite for not going there. The absence of things you do go there, or the presence of things you find so offensive it drives you away, these would be sensible reasons to cite. If the sight or smell of bratwurst makes me vomit, and I'm so sensitive to it that I can't go to the grocery store without vomiting, then it make sense for me to not go to the grocery store for my donuts. But in explaining this, if I don't want to sound like an idiot, I should say something more than just, "I don't go to the grocery store for bratwurst." Indeed, that's not actually the reason why I'm not going, and I'm lying to myself and others if I try to pass that off as the reason.

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[Beelzebud]

After the past 8 years can you blame him? Was the sane alternative to put McCain and Palin in charge?

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[GuloGulo]

"You realize your statement is illogical, right?"

No it isn't and your analogy sucks.

In fact, every single thing you posted was wrong and moronic.

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[MichaelSmith]

His advocacy for the party is one of the things that led me to lose interest in the site. I didn't mind him using his site to voice support for his chosen candidates, and I accepted the ads as part of that. However, for both the 2006 and 2008 federal elections, he made posts that essentially said that if you didn't vote Democrat, you were stupid, evil, or both. This resulted in some very strong words from Libertarians, whom he suggested were just wasting their votes. A few of the editors had similarly strong political views with just as little inclination to listen to the views of others.

I think the editors were too keen to delete posts, and I thought it was really bad that they were editing and deleting posts in discussions they were involved in.

I am working on my own site. Details are in my journal if anybody is interested.

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[Martin Blank]

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.

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of a loss was it?

Hence the 'andnothingofvaluewaslost' tag which was on the article when it first hit the main page.

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Bruce hardcoded it in and it was fed from technocrat.net itself. It wasn't a banner ad from one of the services, and AdBlock didn't catch it unless you explicitly blocked that ad.

Blocking specific images (two or three clicks) or specific paths in adblock is so ridiculously easy, it doesn't seem like it should be a problem. Did he have dozens of different images mixed with a lot of non-ads in the same path?

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[chill]

No, just the one. At that point it was the principle of the thing. I, and others, already had AdBlock running which filtered out all of the ads except that one. Since he went to all the trouble to put it in place, I wasn't going to block it. I think the libertarian bent of some of the more prolific posters -- myself included -- irked his Democrat soul. :-)

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Protip: Libertarians are republicans who don't want to be publicly associated with the bush failure machine.

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the big mean Democrat hurt your feelings?

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[zieroh]

No it isn't and your analogy sucks.

That's very convincing. No, I mean it! I mean, in the long and respected history of debate, I don't think anyone has thought of simply saying "No it isn't" to refute an argument. Such a sublime and delicate answer, carrying such immense strength and weight.

Truly, thou art a force to be reckoned with.

The coup de gras of your statement, of course, is the final "...and your analogy sucks", letting the world know what a magnificent judge of the written word you must be.

A masterwork. Truly.

Re:How much of a loss was it?

[Timex]

You realize your statement is illogical, right? I go to the grocery store for donuts. If I can find the donuts, it makes sense to go to the grocery store. If I can't find the donuts, it doesn't make sense to go to the grocery store. But it doesn't make sense to not go to the grocery store because it has things I don't go there for, e.g. bratwurst. I hate bratwurst, so it makes sense for me to skip it. It doesn't make sense for me to stop going to the grocery store because of it.

Ah, but your anology is irrelevant: bratwurst and doughnuts are both expected items in a grocery store, as both are edible items.

Politics, though occasionally discussed by Geeks, is not the main subject of discussion-- one usually expects Geek sites to talk about iPods vs other music file players, Macs vs PCs, Linux vs Windows, vi vs Emacs, etc. In your analogy, skipping a store because it may carry bratwurst is silly, because most of them do carry it. Most just hide the brats in with the sausages in the meat department at the other end of the store from the bakers, where you're going for the doughnuts. They carry it and you don't even know it. :)

Most Geek sites, however, tend not to discuss politics on their front pages, and so far as I know, most do not force political adverts on their readership. Bruce did seem to force the advert. The advert was fed from his server, so it wasn't a simple matter to have it "skipped". (That was the first thing I tried.)

But looks permanent this time

[an.echte.trilingue]

It was shut down before, but Bruce had this to say on the site:

Hi Folks. Well, a lot of you seem to be disappointed about the site shutting down, and several people have offered to keep it going. I've turned down those offers. Technocrat was intended to get technology experts (us) involved in technology policy. It didn't succeed in that, although it was a good discussion site. The goal of getting people involved in tech policy is still a good one.

Thus, Technocrat will be re-launched with a new format. It will not be a discussion site any longer. Instead, it will offer tech stories and legislation alerts to be syndicated by other web sites, including discussion sites. There will also be some other features that I'll keep quiet about until the new site is on the air.

The goal is still to get more technology experts involved in setting technology policy.

Thanks
Bruce

That new format was slashcode, but looking at the most recent archives, he was only getting a couple posts per story (prolly mostly from twitter). Of course, slashcode's moderation system exists to try to separate the cream from the milk, but at the volumes he was getting, it was all just yogurt. To bad, though.

Re:But looks permanent this time

[Anonymous Coward]

That new format was slashcode

If I recall correctly, the relaunch involved a rewrite for Ruby on Rails, and at the beginning, had virtually no features beyond simple login.

Re:But looks permanent this time

[1u3hr]

That new format was slashcode, but looking at the most recent archives, he was only getting a couple posts per story (prolly mostly from twitter). Of course, slashcode's moderation system exists to try to separate the cream from the milk, but at the volumes he was getting, it was all just yogurt.

There was no one called "twiter" posting on Technocrat that I noticed, and I was a regular there. Of course, he/she could have used a (different) pseudonym, I don't follow his posts here so I wouldn't know how to determine that. And the volume was low, there was no need for moderation in the slashdot sense of modding posts up or down. It was an event to get more than 10 comments on a post.

Actually Bruce had changed the code base a few months ago, I didn't pay much attention, but it was different from Slash in several ways. (Had rich formatting in comments, e.g.)

Re:But looks permanent this time

[Matt Perry]

That new format was slashcode

It's never run slashcode. It ran Squishdot, which was a Slash look-alike, but that was a long time ago. The most recent version of the site (the last few years) ran on Ruby code that Bruce wrote himself. He even had the source available for download.

Re:But looks permanent this time

[MichaelSmith]

I am pretty sure I saw "twitter" posting on technocrat a couple of times.

Re:But looks permanent this time

[1u3hr]

I am pretty sure I saw "twitter" posting on technocrat a couple of times.

I'll take your word for it, though I never noticed them. But certainly not "most of the posts" were made by him as the previous poster asserted.

Re:But looks permanent this time

[MichaelSmith]

But certainly not "most of the posts" were made by him as the previous poster asserted.

For sure.

Re:But looks permanent this time

[twitter]

I was there, mostly as a lurker. Contrary to M$ smear attacks against me, I mostly talk about things I know about or ask questions when I don't know. Because there was no moderation system at Technocrat, there was no need for me to use multiple accounts.

Re:But looks permanent this time

[Anonymous Coward]

I mostly talk about things I know about

*bursts out laughing* You mostly talk out of your ass. Most of your 'facts' are opinion and invention. Example: "M$ smear attacks against me". I didn't even have to leave the topic to find something you lied about.

Because there was no moderation system at Technocrat, there was no need for me to use multiple accounts.

You mean, because the community couldn't do anything to let you know how objectionable you are you were free to troll as much as you like? I don't understand how that's a better system for the rest of us.

Re:But looks permanent this time

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to M$ smear attacks against me

Fucking annoying peacock. You're just a failed troll.

I know what did it

[Degrees]

I know what did it:

Certain elements of the community that developed here, unfortunately, creep me out.

In the interest of living a life a certain good book suggests (turning the other cheek), most of the people who donated to Bruce's site were Novell employees.

Re:I know what did it

[Anonymous Coward]

Creeped out by Novell, eh? Well then... he's not alone.

To Summarize the Summary

[Greyfox]

Ya'all creepy! I'm going to go over here now! Merry Christmas!

Thanks for the information!

[King_TJ]

I, too, was never a user of Technocrat. (As many of us on Slashdot as are saying the same, no wonder it wasn't self-sustaining as a business model!)

But it sounds like I web site I would have enjoyed, actually.

I think you bring up a really interesting point about people tending to become more "vocal and extreme" in their opinions when faced with adversity in their personal lives. If I look in the mirror, I realize I spent more time on the net ranting about political issues while I was going through a divorce. I'm not sure if I was saying more "extreme" things than I really believed though? Possibly ... but I think it was more a matter of wanting to get things off my chest. Ideas of mine I may have "watered down" otherwise, in the interest of promoting a more open discussion, I probably tended to speak "exactly as I felt" instead.

In any case though, you can find plenty of places to voice opinions on the Internet. If you want to be verbal about it, you can podcast or create a series of youtube videos. More often, it's put in writing, anyplace from blogs to Slashdot or ArsTechnica, or even anonymous Craigslist forums.

The problem is, most of those places either let you control the direction of the whole discussion (such as making your own podcast or blog), or the political commentary is secondary to the overall "theme" of the site (such as Technology and Science themed web sites where it always creeps in).

Technocrat sounds like the entire theme WAS political discussion, and let's face it - politics is ugly. So I can see how the site would have some "disturbing qualities" to it. It comes with that territory.

Anyone care?

[SwashbucklingCowboy]

Is Bruce Perens even relevant anymore?

He seems like the Jessie Jackson of FOSS...

Re:Anyone care?

[ultrabot]

Is Bruce Perens even relevant anymore?

For some reason, bringing up B.P. evoked a sense of weird nostalgia.

Remember UserLinux? Remember time before Ubuntu, the time when Linux was trying to "make it" - and we didn't know for certain what distro was capable of doing that?

Re:Anyone care?

[HanzoSpam]

Is Bruce Perens even relevant anymore?

He seems like the Jessie Jackson of FOSS...

Yes, forever trying to get out in front of a parade that has already left without him.....

Re:Anyone care?

[TornCityVenz]

I object that your statement seems to imply that Jessie Jackson was ever relevant.

Re:Anyone care?

[SwashbucklingCowboy]

Objection overruled.

There was a time when Jackson was relevant.

Not the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce Perens has a long string of failed and aborted initiatives behind him. His catapult to fame was the establishment of a constitution for Debian. Soon after he left Debian. He started Linux Capital Group but soon left his investors in the doldrums. He started the OSI with Eric Raymond, but has abandoned his role there too. If you check his CV, there is a string of similar engagements that end with Bruce jumping ship.

I trusted Bruce on his old merits once, and I would think very carefully before doing so again.

What was it, and how do I read it all?

[PurplePhase]

If the site has been up for 8 or more years, there's got to be some interesting stuff there. My question includes, as a lot of people here: How do I learn more about it? (since I haven't heard of it before), and especially if there are "creepy" things... is the wayback machine the only saviour, or is he going to tgz the site and put it on BitTorrent? I don't even see a mention in Wikipedia...

8-PP

Re:What was it, and how do I read it all?

[jciarlan]

http://www.archive.org/ maybe

Hmm...

[GofG]

I am reminded eerily of moot's attempts to distance himself from his own creation, 4chan. in fact, the two communities were eerily similar.

Re:Hmm...

[dubl-u]

4chan. in fact, the two communities were eerily similar.

Well, I guess that answers the question of why Bruce closed it. Even the Internet doesn't need two lower colons.

Liberal views are scientifically unproven

[Anonymous Coward]

There's two types of societies: organized ones and deconstructing ones.

Liberalism, the People, etc. is deconstruction and places power in the hands of those who are most easily fooled.

They are then ruled by oligarchs, of whom technocrats are a subset.

No matter how liberal you get, problems remain.

But if you read some history, and learned about how civilization like software has a design theory behind it, you would see that liberalism is the cause of the problems it finds repellent.

Re:Liberal views are scientifically unproven

[bluefoxlucid]

You must not be American. Liberals here want to put people of different races (black people) into college/jobs for free and on lowered standards (because, of course, they run entirely on the "niggers and spics are too stupid to get a job/vesa themselves" platform). They want to re-distribute wealth by taxing the rich and refunding the revenue to the poor (Robin Hood socialism) either directly or through social services (i.e. fourth-generation welfare families). They want to take away money and power from the people and businesses, and direct everyone to "get along." They want to give everyone free government health care instead of allowing them to pick a health care firm.... it's all about government control.

Re:Liberal views are scientifically unproven

[schon]

Liberalism, the People, etc. is deconstruction and places power in the hands of those who are most easily fooled.

You fail it.

Re:Liberal views are scientifically unproven

[dfn_deux]

I'm not gonna put a comment in one way or the other on your political view or its accuracy or lack thereof, that said...

It is probably pretty easy to make the sort of argument you are making the style in which you have made it. When you start off with a exclusionary qualification of opinion and then follow up with redefining an indefinite group under your own terms there is little anyone can say to disagree. Since there is no big "L" liberal group which has a definitive stance on any of the topics you've mentioned you can define it however you want and then easily attack the straw man which you've created. I think you've named your straw man "they."
Perhaps if your arguments have real merit, in the future you can elucidate upon them in a way where you are able to define specifically the group which you are attacking and then point out, by specific example, the flaws in their position and/or method.

Maybe I've succumbed to a troll here, but I feel generous in the spirit of the winter holidays and would rather put my effort towards elevating the quality of this type of discussion.

Re:Liberal views are scientifically unproven

[bluefoxlucid]

When you start off with a exclusionary qualification of opinion and then follow up with redefining an indefinite group under your own terms there is little anyone can say to disagree. Since there is no big "L" liberal group which has a definitive stance on any of the topics you've mentioned you can define it however you want and then easily attack the straw man which you've created. I think you've named your straw man "they."

In lower forms of Political Science, we generally lay out a "political spectrum" with liberals on the left and conservatives on the right. We put Democrats left, and Republicans right. To the left of Democrats we put Socialists, Communists, etc; to the right of Republicans we put Libertarians and Fascists.

In higher forms of Political Science, the sides often reverse, or become something similar but slightly different, perhaps centered elsewhere; the terms "liberal" and "conservative" have very context-sensitive definitions. "Liberals" in other countries follow what we consider "Moderate" political views here, while some countries standard "Moderate" views would seem very "Liberal" to us (the UK for example).

Classically, in most models, "Conservatives" want to minimize government regulation and involvement; while "Liberals" want to maximize it, regulate business, and do all "for the people" that they can-- as far as telling businesses who they have to hire, what they should/must make (see France), to go as far as taking peoples' insurance away and instead forcing their own insurance on them at cost in taxes (see socialized healthcare).

The GGP's post described Liberalism as placing power to decide in the hands of the people, rather than organizing it at the core government. That's not true here.

Re:Liberal views are scientifically unproven

[CTachyon]

Classically, in most models, "Conservatives" want to minimize government regulation and involvement; while "Liberals" want to maximize it, regulate business, and do all "for the people" that they can-- as far as telling businesses who they have to hire, what they should/must make (see France), to go as far as taking peoples' insurance away and instead forcing their own insurance on them at cost in taxes (see socialized healthcare).

Actually, this is exactly backwards when you look at history prior to, say, 1840ish. Liberals were people who wanted to maximize liberty (individualistic personal freedom) for the sake of individual happiness and prosperity, and Conservatives were people who wanted centralized power (divinely-appointed kings) because it appealed to their aesthetic craving for orderliness and organization. In US history, the split was perhaps best exemplified by the wide gulf between far-Left Jefferson and far-Right Hamilton.

Then around the mid-1800s, things flipped around when a number of thinkers (most notably Karl Marx) decided that the goals of Liberalism (maximum individual happiness and prosperity) could be achieved through the mechanisms of Conservatism (centralized power), and that since centralized power seemed much more "efficient" it should therefore be implemented. (Donald Knuth's comment that "premature optimization is the root of all evil" is apt here.)

The proper Liberal-Conservative spectrum, viewed from that pre-Marx perspective, thus has Classical Liberalism on the far Left, Monarchy on the far Right, and both Fascism and Communism on the far Right just slightly left of Monarchy (with the famed Communism/Fascism mutual hatred stemming from professional jealousy and egoism nearly as much as from actual ideological divides, not much different from the internecine Communist hatreds like Stalinism/Trotskyism and Stalinism/Maoism).

Against this scale, the US Democratic Party is rather ill-defined: most are in a fuzzy mass toward the middle, with some straying far left or right. FDR, today cheered/vilified as a paragon of the Left, was actually a Right-winger who was only a step away from Fascism. If you actually look at what was said during the 1930s, he lavishly praised Mussolini and favored big business interests in the New Deal. He actually had the balls to say that competition was a bad thing, and encouraged industrial consolidation into monopolies. Big businesses were actually major FDR supporters, while small entrepreneurs were squashed as he neutered antitrust laws and increased barriers to entry.

The US Republican Party, in contrast with the Democrats, is divided into three clearly defined and strikingly different camps: the "Social Conservatives" at the far right, who think that the whole democracy thing is overrated and would be content to return to divine kingship (so long as said king was appointed by the correct religion, i.e. theirs); the "Neoliberals" and "Fiscal Conservatives", who despite lip service toward laissez faire principles are actually somewhere in the middle not far from the Democrats (the principle difference being which industries they favor); and the tiny handful of libertarians, Ron Paul now being the default example, who are actually farther left than most Democrats but foolishly think of themselves as "Conservatives" and "right-wingers".

Re:Liberal views are scientifically unproven

[Nick Ives]

Then around the mid-1800s, things flipped around when a number of thinkers (most notably Karl Marx) decided that the goals of Liberalism (maximum individual happiness and prosperity) could be achieved through the mechanisms of Conservatism (centralized power)

I always thought (from, you know, reading his work) that Marx was big on the dismantling of the state. His view of the final state of socialism was quite anarchistic, in fact. The totalitarian forms of "Marxism" that were starting to spring up in his day were criticised by him leading him to famously state "If that is Marxism, I am not a Marxist!"

Re:Liberal views are scientifically unproven

[Anonymous Coward]

Liberals were people who wanted to maximize liberty (individualistic personal freedom) for the sake of individual happiness and prosperity, and Conservatives were people who wanted centralized power (divinely-appointed kings) because it appealed to their aesthetic craving for orderliness and organization.

I think you reveal your bias by the motives you ascribe to conservatives. They believed it was the right thing to do to have an aristocracy; many still do, since the aristocracy were the smarter people in each society (look at societies such as France and Russia which have removed and killed off their aristocracies, and notice how their average IQ lags 5-10 behind that of their neighbors who did not kill off the aristocracy).

Liberals have always been about individual liberty.

Conservatives have been more scientific: use history as our laboratory, and pick plans that work, and leave moralistic bloviation about individual liberty for later.

Conservatives also acknowledge what liberals fear: most people are irrational and cannot, even through voting, make sane decisions about who should lead a country.

Re:Liberal views are scientifically unproven

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing the political construction of society, i.e. classical liberalism, with the liberal/conservative dichotomy associated with modern political philosophies.

Republicans (or "conservatives") qualify as classical liberals.

Re:Liberal views are scientifically unproven

[CTachyon]

I always thought (from, you know, reading his work) that Marx was big on the dismantling of the state. His view of the final state of socialism was quite anarchistic, in fact. The totalitarian forms of "Marxism" that were starting to spring up in his day were criticised by him leading him to famously state "If that is Marxism, I am not a Marxist!"

True, Marx's ultimate vision of Communism was the "withering away of the state". But Marx's explanation of how that would come about basically amounted to:

1. Workers own the means of production
2. ???
3. Profit^H^H^H^H^H^HWithering away of the state!

And, not surprisingly, the state has never actually withered away under any form of centralized Communist government.

Re:Liberal views are scientifically unproven

[CTachyon]

Conservatives have been more scientific: use history as our laboratory, and pick plans that work, and leave moralistic bloviation about individual liberty for later.

Oh bull. Conservatism has never been more scientific. All European governments were feudalistic monarchies, from the Dark Ages clear to the Enlightenment. That's an unbroken string of 1000 years of monarchies. There were no differences to observe, no laboratories to experiment in, and therefore nothing to be learned. The absence of variation meant that no one, no matter how intelligent or scientifically minded, could pick the best form of government — the parameter space was almost completely unexplored.

The only variation that remained was the strength of the feudal system's influence. And, lo and behold, the few places where the system was weakest — 12th century northern Italy being a prominent example — were precisely the ones that prospered the most. Not only did northern Italy become the epicenter of the Renaissance in culture and art, it also became Europe's leader in science, finance, trade, and prosperity in general.

If the aristocracy had been scientifically seeking what worked best, they would have observed Italy and then attempted to replicate Italy's findings by loosening their own control over distant holdings and observing the results. That didn't happen. Instead, they fought back by strangling free commerce with the creation of mercantilism: a system of government-approved monopolies (e.g. the British East India Company) and strict punitive tariffs on anyone who attempted to circumvent the monopoly.

Conservatives also acknowledge what liberals fear: most people are irrational and cannot, even through voting, make sane decisions about who should lead a country.

If most people are irrational, why would you want to put them in power where they can maximize their irrationality? A democratically elected despot is bad, but that doesn't mean that the "democratically elected" is the part you should be taking issue with. The correct response is to attack the idea that a single person should be exalted to the point of despotism. As you yourself rightly point out, most people are irrational: therefore, whichever person becomes a despot is quite likely irrational. The means of ascension to power are irrelevant: democratic vote among the rabble, aristocratic vote among the land-holding nobles, dynastic feuding within a royal line, or bloody coup. The danger is in the outcome, not the method.

No matter how intelligent or aristocratic or rich or whatever a person is, people aren't naturally rational beings, and even the most educated and intelligent people are frequently damn irrational people on anything but a few narrow subjects. There are vitamin-peddling physicists, young-earth creationist neurosurgeons, mathematicians who believe in an entire spectrum of religious beliefs (most of which I guarantee you don't believe in), engineers who believe in crystal healing or homeopathy, molecular biologists who believe AIDS is a government conspiracy to poison people and HIV itself is harmless. The list goes on and on. (Scarily, I had a specific scientist or other professional in mind for every one of those examples.) Elevating one of them to a leadership position over an entire nation is foolish and stupid — no matter how carefully you vet someone's credentials, whoever you pick is pretty much guaranteed to have irrational beliefs. This is, of course, one of the underlying reasons why Jefferson was so keen on checks-and-balances when Hamilton made his push for an elected president-king. Checks and balances keep any one person's irrationality from harming others.

Centralization of power is the danger here, because it allows irrational decisions to be enforced over people other than the person making the irrational decision. It's not that majorities are right

Another summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"My free discussion site failed, so I hope to have better luck developing free software"

Badly named and too soap-box-y

[IGnatius T Foobar]

It's difficult to imagine Technocrat as anything other than "Bruce Perens' blog." All this time he has claimed it was a more grown-up version of Slashdot, but then you go there and find that it's mainly his own political soapbox. I want to read about the latest chips and dips, not about how Obama's flatulence is the cure for global warming. Seriously, what does he expect? That's not the formula for success. Either call it what it is or take it down.

"Main Stream Media"?

[FatSean]

That's a reliable sign of a troll. Anyone who uses that phrase is either trolling or drooling. I don't think you have a right to call someone out as trolling in your reasonable conversation when you use such trite talk-radio talking points in your own posts.

Re:"Main Stream Media"?

[Doctor_Jest]

It's not that talk radio uses that term quite a bit, rather it's not theirs to claim. It existed before Hannity and Limbaugh used it as a derogatory term for "left leaning" media.

You can fix that

[GameboyRMH]

Take a look at your options on this special comment configuration page hidden in the guts of the preferences pages (actually it's in the Help pages):

http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm

That link should take you straight to it.

But even after you sort those issues out, the user pages are still a useless maelstrom of wasted space. The old user pages were just plain better, I don't see a single improvement on the new user page. In fact I don't see anything that hasn't been thoroughly screwed up. One good idea I did get is that in a user page like the old one, it could be handy to show articles you've tagged with the tag you used...I think that was the intention of showing every article you've tagged in the "garbagefall" on the new user page, but it just shows all the tags on the article.

Re:You can fix that

[mzs]

Yes I know, I have fiddled with that as much as I could and I still cannot replicate under D2 this behavior.

Early on in a story you tend to get a bunch of trolls, rants, obvious, wrong, and just plain inane comments. So say there are a bunch of comments like this where A- E order them via time of post:

troll A
..inane B
....insightful E

insightful C
..insightful D

Under the old system with nested and my bonus and limits the way I had them set-up what would display is this:

insightful C
..insightful D

insightful E

Under D2 I get this:

insightful E

insightful C
..insightful D

Is there a way to get that back?

Also it would be neat if there was an option for different thresholds when you clicked on a comment, so that I could open it in a new tab with everything expanded. I rather liked that old check box 'save settings' now when I slide those two sliders around in D2 it always remembers it.

Re:You can fix that

[Briareos]

Is there a way to get that back?

Use the sliders - you know, the ones in the bar with the story name.

The first slider chooses what score to display full vs. what to display abbreviated, and the second one selects the score at which to hide comments.

Just make sure to set the second slider two steps from the right and comments with score 0 or -1 are filtered out.

np: Kid606 - Comeuppance (Pretty Girls Make Raves)

strongly statically typed languages like Perl?

[Mathinker]

> strongly statically typed languages like Perl

Wow, it's been ages since I looked at Perl --- I know that Larry said that Perl 6 would be revolutionary, but I didn't think he'd go that far!

You're lucky you don't owe me a keyboard, mate... LOL

God complex?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since there is no "God", there cannot be a "God complex". And "grandeur" sounds French, stick to English.

Easily creeped out? 1999 ESR - Perens

[Anonymous Coward]

I never visited Technocrat, so I don't know what the community was like, but Perens seems like he is easily "creeped out." I remember his blowup in 1999, when he was so whacked out by an email from ESR that he called the cops. I thought he was wildly overreacting, though the incident probably hurt ESR's standing, as well.

---------

email threat

        * To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
        * Subject: email threat
        * From: bruce@perens.com
        * Date: 5 Apr 1999 22:48:42 -0000
        * Message-id:

Today I received the following threat in e-mail from Eric Raymond. The message
was copied to the Silicon Valley Linux User's Group officers, who you may
consult regarding its authenticity. The police have been notified.

Because I know that Eric is a firearms enthusiast, for my own protection,
I feel the best strategy is for me to publicize the threat widely.

        Thanks

        Bruce Perens

> Damn straight I took it personally. And if you ever again behave like
> that kind of disruptive asshole in public, insult me, and jeopardize
> the interests of our entire tribe, I'll take it just as personally --
> and I will find a way to make you regret it. Watch your step.

----------

email threat withdrawn

        * To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
        * Subject: email threat withdrawn
        * From: bruce@perens.com
        * Date: 6 Apr 1999 01:54:22 -0000
        * Message-id:

Eric says he only meant to threaten me with "defamation of character", not
with any kind of violence. Thus, I think I'll just let this issue drop now.

        Thanks

        Bruce

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

In truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to be a pedant, but you can only profit from closed source. Viral systems like the GPL cannot propagate profit even with recursion.

And by the way, despite claims, Python lacks the necessary means to do proper recursion. Yet another failure of open source to profit.

Re:In truth

[_Sprocket_]

Wait - was that a troll created by a Perl script? I think the dig on Python is what gives it away.

The official list of Internet assholes

[Alex Belits]

1. Lifetime achievement:

1. djb
2. rms
3. deraadt
4. esr
5. jwz

Honorable mention: joels

2. Collective efforts:

1. Anonymous (of 4chan)
2. GNAA (of Slashdot)
3. Anonymous Coward (of Slashdot)

(feel free to expand this list)

Re:The official list of Internet assholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Reiser should probably be on the top of that list.

He was doing great until the whole murder thing...

Under Collective efforts, - the Church of Scientology - come on - that's an obvious one.

Re:The official list of Internet assholes

[m.ducharme]

I suspect that there's a lot of overlap in your "Collective efforts" section...but a worthy start nonetheless

Re:The official list of Internet assholes

[Alex Belits]

Hans Reiser's greatest act of assholeness was performed completely outside the Internet, and therefore does not qualify. His Internet-related achievements are limited to flame on LKML, and do not place him into the same league as the three-letter giants leading the list. He might be slightly above joels, but only because joels is an idiot and Reiser is not.

Church of Scientology is a bunch of assholes, and has a distinction of actually being evil, however their Internet-related efforts are pathetic -- they even managed to get slashdotted by someone other than Slashdot, what can be only described as lameness beyond lame. RIAA and MPAA have better claim to the place in the Internet assholes list because both are currently using the Internet in their war on their own customers.

Re:The official list of Internet assholes

[twitter]

feel free to expand this list

Yourself.

Re:The official list of Internet assholes

[Alex Belits]

lol twitter.

I remember MEEPT!

Re:The official list of Internet assholes

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what's more precious: bestowing "enemy of the state" status on Alex because he called RMS an asshole, or declaring livejournal.com "a completely lame expression method favoured by trolls" because Alex called RMS an asshole. Perhaps if Twitter had actually read Alex's "live journal", he'd see who he's calling... never mind. If well-known XEmacs contributors can't pass muster in Twitter's World, what chance do any of us have?

Re:The official list of Internet assholes

[Anonymous Coward]

I love that list of yours. Much hand-wringing, ominous-sounding but out of context quotes from people who wouldn't be caught dead doing things the way you do, and you have a goddamn XEmacs maintainer there, apparently because he replied to some flamebait of yours posted with one of your 200 or so sockpuppet accounts.

"They hate me, I'm more important than Jesus, therefore they hate Free Software and Slashdot. They hate me because of my freedom and my values". What a pile of Fox News crock.

Just doesn't get any better than that. You're the kind of person that probably caused Bruce Perens to shut down his website.

Re:The official list of Internet assholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter you are a fucking piece of shit. Alex is definately not Republican. Either Microsoft is for the GOP or Alex works for Microsoft. Next thing you will say is he has enough seething hatred to threaten you imaginary family. BTW, feel free to count this as a fucking threat even though it is nothing more than calling you a fucking sick retard who should spend time at a mental institute, perhaps for the rest of your miserable life.

Since I don't want to go through pages of trolling

[Master of Transhuman]

somebody want to mention what Perens site used to be about? Something OTHER than trolling, I assume was the original intention?

Given that Perens was one of the primary instigators of what I refer to as "Novell trolling", over the Novell/Microsoft deal, I'm not sure he has any business complaining about trolls.

Not in the best 'net spirit

[raduf]

This reminds me of the forum at ornery (http://ornery.org/), one of Orson Scott Card's sites. Pretty much everybody there thinks OSC is a nut and isn't shy of saying so, and still the guy keeps footing the bill and AFAIK has never interfered with the forum. We're not talking about a few people, the forum is pretty damn big and reasonably well known.

(As for _why_ they think that about him, that's a different discussion. Suffices to say he's always been openly pro-Bush.)

Re:Not in the best 'net spirit

[MichaelSmith]

Orson Scott Card must have a thicker skin than Bruce.

Re:Not in the best 'net spirit

[Reziac]

Or uses his own forum as a place to effectively quarantine his detractors ;)

Re:Not in the best 'net spirit

[Alsee]

It's a Free Speech Zone.

-

Re:Not in the best 'net spirit

[Reziac]

Even for the detractors ;)

Re:Not in the best 'net spirit

[Alsee]

Hmmm, I'm not sure if you did get what I meant, or if my joke was too minimalist.

I was alluding to Bush's "Free Speech Zones" which were - to quote your post I was replying to - "a place to effectively quarantine his detractors".

-

Re:Not in the best 'net spirit

[Reziac]

Ah, I missed that. I live in a cave. :)

This is the problem with web forums

[jdb2]

With the decline of Usenet and and the rise of a huge heterogeneous, chaotic and tangled network of Web "Forums" to take its place we have a problem :

The loss of any standardized search capability, no consistent archiving mechanism, the necessity that one have a separate profile password and username etc. for each forum, no standard interchange format,(eg. different posting, editing, and formatting rules) and a jumbled mass of different rules, Terms of Service, and copyright policies.

I submitted a story which asked the question of how this problem might be addressed, but it was rejected unfortunately. Nonetheless there needs to be a discussion on this matter in the Internet standards community. Excepting the voluntary adoption of OpenID, I haven't seen any other solutions to these problems proposed, and now they are starting to bite us.

Usenet is dead. Long live Usenet.

jdb2

Re:This is the problem with web forums

[MichaelSmith]

With the decline of Usenet and and the rise of a huge heterogeneous, chaotic and tangled network of Web "Forums" to take its place we have a problem : The loss of any standardized search capability,

Google?

no consistent archiving mechanism

Google?

the necessity that one have a separate profile password and username etc. for each forum

Yeah thats an issue, but a small one I suppose. There are single sign on systems around but who wants to give that much control aaway?

no standard interchange format,(eg. different posting, editing, and formatting rules)

I suppose so but RSS helps.

and a jumbled mass of different rules, Terms of Service, and copyright policies.

Wasn't always consistent on usenet either.

I submitted a story which asked the question of how this problem might be addressed, but it was rejected unfortunately.

Technocrat was my solution to this problem. All my submissions were accepted, and they site had reasonably good readership.

Nonetheless there needs to be a discussion on this matter in the Internet standards community. Excepting the voluntary adoption of OpenID, I haven't seen any other solutions to these problems proposed, and now they are starting to bite us.

I kind of like the current disorganised status quo. It is harder to control centrally, and I think that is a good thing.

Re:This is the problem with web forums

[Wildclaw]

Google?

Google sucks for searching the specific forums you are following. You can either search all the web or a specific forum. But you can't search all forums you are following easily.

"Google?"

Google doesn't do much archiving. If a site goes offline it is online with all its posts. Sure, you can dig up some in the google cache, but calling that arching is laughable.

"There are single sign on systems around but who wants to give that much control aaway?"

Single sign on systems are far safer anyway as they puts the trust into one provider that you can choose. They don't take away control. They give you control.

"I suppose so but RSS helps."

RSS has nothing to do with posting. It only provides an extremly inferior version of pulling that only fetches the thread head. Compare that with a usenet client where you can fetch all new threads, mark the interesting ones and consistently get the new messages that appear in those threads while ignoring any thread you aren't interested in.

Even compared to "New posts" in some bullentin board software, usenet clients are far far superior in this regard because the mechanism allows two things. The ignoring of uninteresting threads and consitent and efficent working on multiple boards at once. This is the main damning thing of all web forums. They work decently well for people who read a subject once and then moves on, but they suck for keeping track of discussions and following interesting threads while ignoring the boring ones.

Re:This is the problem with web forums

[dubl-u]

Also, in other countries, they have different customs, laws, and even languages! This is obvious waste, and as an American, I demand that you foreigners tidy things up pronto.

Also, I think programmers should standardize on one language, and while we're at it, one operating system should be enough.

After that, we can get rid of all of those extra planets in the solar system.

Re:This is the problem with web forums

[MichaelSmith]

There is nothing to stop you running your own news server. I am sure you will get a lot of takers.

No anonymity - no deal

[sweet_petunias_full_]

IMO, the reason Bruce's site didn't pick up much steam is he insisted that his members give out their real-world name to log in. I would imagine that anyone who has witnessed with open eyes the wholesale raping of their privacy on and off the internet would have avoided giving away yet another attack vector against it. It just wouldn't be worth joining any site, no matter the quality, if the price one had to pay was to receive a permanent marketing barrage from automated telemarketing callers linking a meatspace name to a desirable demographic.

Bruce is usually spot-on on most topics, I wonder why he missed this one?

'creepy'

[jmcvetta]

Those who insult people or ideas which make them uncomfortable as 'creepy', make me very uncomfortable.

alexa...

[Cally]

wince

Last items on the Technocrat RSS Feed

[Shadyman]

1. Auto Industry Bailout
2. New Credit Card Regulations
3. Food Stamps hit record high in Oregon
4. China's first mass-produced hybrid car...
5. A better global economic architecture
6. Food Bank pressure increases in US
7. Congressional report claims "Atmosph...
8. Beat the Clock
9. Your New Electric Car Might Have an "In...
10. Safer Partying Through Technology
11. Self Defence Helps Beat Pirates
12. California Enacts Stricter Diesel Regulat...
13. Virginity Pledge. Does it work?
14. Making the Hidden Web Visible
15. High Altitude Glaciers Thinning?
16. GM to Idle 20 Plants

Transcribed by hand from firefox's cached RSS feed for your informed pleasure. And yes, the first one is "Live Bookmark feed failed to load.".

Don't Forget Slashdot's Biggest Loser

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/~SockDisclosure/journal/214377

Now a legend in other parts of the internets.

Fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

> Contrary to M$ smear attacks against me

Can you provide proof of this?

I've come to expect pretty much anything from Microsoft (or as you cleverly
call them for the win, "M$"), but certainly organizing some sort of smear
or censorship operation against a single Slashdot user seems far-fetched
to say the least.

Still, if you have concrete evidence of that, I'm sure many other people
on Slashdot (FOSS advocates, I assume?) would be extremely interested
in seeing that come to light.

Oh, I thought it was about...

[A New Normalcy]

...the political movement that Howard Scott started.

kklein - Another user for the troll zoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Kklein, Hater of free software and lover of M$. Definitly will become a M$ attack bot like willyhill, macthorpe, dedazo, jwilcox154, Alex Belits, westlake and numerous other accounts.

--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Friends do help M$ addicted friends to commit suicide.

One of the trolls=Fat Fucktard

[Anonymous Coward]

When you take into account one of the users on your list is a fat fucktard, it would make sense he would support the fat chair throwing fucktard over at M$. Given the fact
fat fucktards have extremely low IQs he will eventually threaten you and your family just as he has in the fucking past.

Hey fat fucktard, anytime you post I will remind everyone how much of a fat fucktard you really are. Eventually someone in their right mind will mod your whole fucking account into fucking oblivion which is what fat fucktards like you should do by slitting your fucking wrists. Once all you fat fucktards do so, then there will never be a shortage of food in the fucking world ever again fat fucktard.

If you flame me or ignore my post, then you will prove just how fucking right I am fat fucktard. If you continue to post stories I will post similar messages telling everyone just how much of a fat fucktard you are by placing this fucking comment in every fucking discussion that is fucking relevant to you fat fucktard.