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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.'"
What is?
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. ;-)
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
January 04, 2001 (8:00:00 AM) - 7 years, 11 months ago
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
I am not familiar with the community at Technocrat or the site itself for that matter. Anyone care to elaborate?
(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.)
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.
Yeah, it's okay, but it doesn't get the balance right. Balance, man. It's all about balance.
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.
I can't believe you don't remember the "great exodus" maybe five/six years ago. A bunch of people (mostly the journal writers) left Slashdot for Technocrat. I don't remember the reason for the boycott. Sorry about that. I think it had something to do with deleted posts and editor mod points.
The stories on TC were really good to start with and the conversation was clean. The platform was slashcode. The site worked pretty well for a month or two, but then died out. I've checked in on it a couple times a year since then.
Put identity in the browser.
Has Netcraft confirmed this??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
"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...
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.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
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.
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.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
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.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
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.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
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?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
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.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
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?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Ya'all creepy! I'm going to go over here now! Merry Christmas!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
"Soviet Russia achieved more under Stalin in 10 years than what took most of the Western hemisphere a century."
What, 20 million dead Russians?
Some archival researchers have estimated the number of victims of Stalin's repressions to be 4 million in total or less, others believe the number to be considerably higher.Russian writer Vadim Erlikman, for example, makes the following estimates: executions, 1.5 million; gulags, 5 million; deportations, 1.7 million out of 7.5 million deported; and POWs and German civilians, 1 million - a total of about 9 million victims of repression.
Some have also included the 6 to 8 million victims of the 1932-1933 famine as victims of repression. This categorization is controversial however, as historians differ as to whether the famine was a deliberate part of the campaign of repression against kulaks or simply an unintended consequence of the struggle over forced collectivization.
Certainly, it appears a minimum of around 10 million surplus deaths--4 million by repression and 6 million from famine -- are attributable to the regime, with a number of recent books suggesting a likely total of around 20 million.Adding 6-8 million famine victims to Erlikman's estimates above, for example, would yield a total of between 15 and 17 million victims. Researcher Robert Conquest, meanwhile, has revised his original estimate of up to 30 million victims down to 20 million.Others continue to maintain their earlier much higher estimates are correct.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
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.
No, Twitter submitted the article, which consists of 9 words of his own, followed by a copy-paste quotation from Bruce.
...or are you saying that Twitter is a Bruce Perens sock puppet?!?!?! (ZOMGWTF!)
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Is Bruce Perens even relevant anymore?
He seems like the Jessie Jackson of FOSS...
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.
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).
I am reminded eerily of moot's attempts to distance himself from his own creation, 4chan. in fact, the two communities were eerily similar.
GFA/M/S d-- s: a--- C++++ UBL++$ P+ L+++ !E- W++ N+ !o K- w--- !O !M !V PS++ PE Y+ PGP+ t+++ 5- X+ R tv@ b++ DI++++ D+ G
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.
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. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
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.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
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.
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.
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.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The black arrow indicates the current post you are at.
Soviet Russia achieved more under Stalin in 10 years than what took most of the Western hemisphere a century.
Not that hard when you're two centuries behind the rest of the world to begin with. He was playing catch-up, the rest of the world having already done the much of the scientific discovery legwork, and even then never achieved any sort of parity. Granted, organizing a giant country full of ignorant feudalism-era peasants and dragging them kicking and screaming through the industrial revolution is no mean feat, but it was largely just a matter of shooting enough recalcitrant people to get the rest moving, and it was Lenin and Trotsky which did the job of putting those guns in Stalin's hands.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
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
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.)