Slashdot Mirror
Introducing SlashBI
By now you’ve noticed that Slashdot is growing. We recently introduced Slashdot TV, which offers up everything from “amateur” rocket launches to the return of Leisure Suit Larry. We revamped our newsletters. Now we’re launching some new sites devoted to very specific corners of tech. Our first one, SlashBI, focuses on the fast-changing world of business intelligence, and features articles and opinion pieces on everything from how Big Data and analytics could make salespeople extinct, to B.I. apps for your iOS device, to choosing the right database for a business. No matter what your background, chances are good you’ll find something of interest here. Swing on over, give it a look-see, and let us know what you think.
So Slashdot is turning into a blog site? Cmdr. Taco left because he wasn't happy with GeekNet's "ambitions" about the site? When do we get SlashHomo? There's so many questions to be asked...
Business Int
Capitalist glint
Of shiny chin
Fit to print
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Not to be confused with /b/
Today is May 1st, not April 1st..
Im outta here. It's been a good 10 years, but this reminds me of when Coke changed their formula. It's been fun guys, but I is outta here.
Perhaps "BizSlash" or "SlashBiz" would sound a little more relevant? My first though was "Oh great now we have a dating site for alternative lifestyles?" Past that I'm all for expansion, just please watch your step.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Eventually Slashdot will be nothing but a brand; a collection of minimally-viewed tech blogs that are finally sold to a media company and rolled into their large collection of robotic advertising delivery channels.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I don't even have any specific objections... this just feels wrong somehow. Maybe I'm cynical or just following the trend of slashdot pulse, sponsored "ask slashdot", slashtv, etc.. but this feels like when a big company buys out some site you like and runs it down the drain. Obviously that's not exactly what happened here, but I'm starting to think Cmdr. Taco leaving had the same effect.. like maybe he was holding back this tide.
Right now it feels like the "gliding on legacy" phase.. coming soon is the "trying to gather new audience" stage.. then the "please come back, we're still cool and returning to our roots stage" and finally .. acceptance and forgiveness.
I hope I'm wrong. I'd love to see slashdot return to its former glory.. or at least turn into something better than what it was. It managed to turn back from it's "digg" path a few years back.. maybe it can do the same here.
How much of this will be paid content?
As portrayed in http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/20000/6000/200/26257/26257.strip.gif
I'm usually one to let this kind of thing slide (so to speak), but if this topic is meant to be at all serious, SlashBI is hardly a serious name. B.I. will only last so long before it withers under the ridicule. I strongly suggest something like "BusInt".
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
This site is nothing like what it used to be, and it's no longer something I enjoy reading anymore. Bye!
Dear slashdot editors and admins,
Please google the term "Jumping the shark". It is a concept you might want to familiarize yourself with. Oh hell, I'll just link it for you, since using google might be too geeky. Note that it doesn't necessarily involve actual sharks (nor any laser attachments to said sharks).
Lose touch much with your core demographic lately?
Throw in some buzzwords, fine; but don't use the same fucking one over and over again!
Slashdot is a different beast now.
I've been following Slashdot since the 90s and it just seems to be evolving into another unfocused blog.
I loved reading Slashdot everyday(mostly!) but it just is not the same anymore.
As a geek I felt I belonged to a site like this and felt very comfortable here. It's also one of the very few sites where I can be arsed actually commenting on anything.
But over the past few weeks the story submissions are becoming less relevant to me now and Slashdot has become a less interesting place to be.
Not to mention this new "B.I. feature" contains a link to "choosing the right database for your business" - yeah telling a site full of IT geeks how to choose the right database is a "smart" thing to do (even from a "business" perspective) - how patronising!
"No matter what your background, chances are good youâ(TM)ll find something of interest here."
Nnnnnnope.
We'll just have "We've noticed customers who posted comments similar to yours were interested in the following products and services...."
Had to check my watch to see if it was April 1st.
This place certainly HAS changed since the days of CmdrTaco.
ExpertSexChange.com
Perhaps, "Eternal right-after-commander-taco-leaves?"
Palm trees and 8
So is there actually some effort being put into SlashBI or are you attempting to subject MBAs and CEOs to poorly written summaries quoting irrelevant blogs trying to get page hits rather than reputable news sources?
While you're at it did you actually hire an editor worth a damn or are we to expect crap headlines, spelling mistakes, extreme bias, opinions in the summary, and how could I forget everyone's /. favourite; dup articles that are always 3 days behind the actual news?
I like Slashdot. Frequently, there's interesting, if not somewhat bizarre, discussions on this site. Plus there are quite a few highly educated people who hang out here and throw in some interesting comments now and then. But Slashdot is not (at least to date) a news site. It's more of a tabloid. Not to say that there is anything wrong with that but to use Slashdot as a source of serious information? Not unless serious vetting takes place for the stories posted here.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Flip-flopper!!! ;)
Finally a place for the uninteresting stuff, so they don't have to put it up on the front page.
I like the concept, and it's relevant to my line of work so I'll probably be keeping a regular eye on it. But the layout is pretty awful, the two-uneven-columns approach really doesn't do it for me. It's hard to read, and particular it's hard to read one article summary then just move on to the next. Could it not just use the normal slashdot style single list ?
As it is now, it reminds me of a lot of stuff that comes across my desk ... polished but not actually useful. If it attracts contributors, readers and commenters, that will change. Good luck.
Has anyone actually looked at that site? Holy crap, that's all I can say. I'm floored. It has all the appeal to a longtime /. reader of a piece of dog shit on your shoe. I'm having a hard time understanding how it even came to exist. I'm actually really depressed now.
Breakfast served all day!
Ddd someone just use the word 'leverage' in a article title? Surely not! http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/shortage-of-b-i-talent-a-critical-hurdle-in-quest-to-leverage-big-data/ And what are those silly stock photos all about? I'm not sure I recognise the model of computer in the linked article.
I think Taco exited at the right time. Also, I think I might be spending less time here, if Slashdot has started focusing on keywords like BI, and away from the core idea of "News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters", which is why we joined the site in the first place & kept coming back.
Why would I go to another site, when the greatest source I've ever found for an exchange of real world technical opinions on enterprise IT is found right here? I might as well be reading one of the industry magazines if I wanted PR blurb.
Clearly false... lurking since 1998
----
"Those who quote others are more likely to one day be quoted" -Tom Planter
Instead of doing more stuff, how about doing the stuff you should be doing better?
There have been complaints about the editing and story selection - the core aspects of /. - for many years now. It may not be true, but this second side-project feels like confirmation that one of the reasons this has never been fixed is that you're simply trying to make more money with more stuff.
I have taken a good look at this new offshot, and I can guarantee that it's the last look I have ever taken on it. I simply couldn't care less, even though I am the CEO of a small company, so I'm right there in your target audience.
But I don't come to /. for "business intelligence" (more on that in a second) and I don't expect any from /. and I don't trust /. as a source of any. One of the reasons loops back to the beginning: If you are not doing an excellent job in your core business, why should I expect you to do a good job in an offshot project?
As for "business intelligence" - that crap is a dime a dozen. If you want to enter the market, do something different. Like actual intelligence. The word largely means "information" these days, but it should mean more than that. A good intelligence source requires really good editing. And that is not exactly a strength of /.
I hope this dies a quick death and you will learn that you need to make your core business brilliant before even thinking about doing anything else.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Was this posted a month too late? Please?
Quick-hit tech items... check.
No context... check.
Lots of buzzwords... check.
Lots of random, cool-looking stock photography having nothing to do with the stories... check.
Why not just call this SlashPHB and be done with it?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Some clever dickens has decided that nerds need to take more of interest in business... Jolly good. Absolutely. We spend all bloody day trying to give a sh*t about whatever cock-eyed scheme the businesses we work for are concocting to wring yet another dollar out of people who usually don't deserve it, and now we're going to pollute one of those precious little places were we can come to just be nerdy, for interest and fun, with more of the same tripe we deal with all day?
And BI? Of all things?
2 week strike slashdot - I'll be back in 2 weeks, if this hasn't gone away, I'll take my page views elsewhere.
No matter what your background, chances are good you’ll find something of interest here
If you really believe that then why does it need a separate site? You could just post it on Slashdot with everything else.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Dunno if I should laugh or cry
lol
Instead of trying to make add-ons to Slashdot, or other slashdots, expand the categories available for article posting and let us filter them by what we want to see.
The frontpage is already populated with stuff that's far from "news for nerds," and most of us like it that way. Just make /. the news aggregator for people with IQs higher than their sock sizes (as opposed to Fark, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc.)
Personally I enjoy the mix that Slashdot brings out. It's anything a nerd/geek would find interesting and want to hack on. Even if that's in the world of economics, big data, academia or inter-species love.
Futurist Traditionalism
Queer eye for the tech guy.
Verifier: "retrains" I don't like where that is "head"-ing....
Ok, I'm your target market here, I'm always looking for BI sources for things but frankly, you can't maintain the quality of submissions with basic editing, I'm not about to take heed or put much faith in anything you push down your channel.
One of the things I like about slashdot is the single column template (with all the content in one column). The new template looks like it was designed to make it as hard as possible to find the useful information on the page.
Title: Slashdot's SlashBI: All Your Busines Intelligence Info in One Place
Description: SlashBI is a new site for the latest in business intelligence news and analysis, created each day by the industry's top experts, and produced by Slashdot.
00:00) <TITLE>
A small picture of "Nick Kowalski - Senior Editor, Geeknet" appears over a screenshot of the Slashdot website featuring the "Bitcoin Mining Startup gets $500k in Venture Capital" story which slowly zooms out.
00:00) Nick>
Slashdot is growing.
We have exciting new sites in the works.
00:04) <TITLE>
The backdrop changes to that of a blurred view of the SlashBI page, that slowly becomes sharper, featuring the post "B.I. Analysts: Start with the Right Questions, Then Use Tools".
00:04) Nick>
The first one, SlashBI, focuses on the fast-changing world of Business Intelligence.
00:11) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of a post with a tree graph from the "Smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices are driving the need for more storage." article.
00:11) Nick>
Its articles and opinion pieces, which are created by a mix of technologists and experts, field everything from BI fundamentals for businesses [...]
00:18) <TITLE>
The view changes to the "Choosing a Database That's Right for Your Business" post.
00:18) Nick>
[...] to choosing the right database.
00:20) <TITLE>
The view changes to an interview video.
00:20) Nick>
SlashBI will also feature videos of developers and other notable figures in BI.
00:25) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of the "Salesforce EVP Byron Sebastian: Platform-as-a-Service Here to Stay" post.
00:25) Nick>
More companies than ever are relying on Business Intelligence apps that collect and analyze data.
00:32) <TITLE>
The view changes to a screenshot of another article listing a few BI mobile apps.
00:32) Nick>
With this information in hand, executives can make more informed choices [...]
00:35) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of an overview of several SlashBI posts.
00:35) Nick>
[...] about everything from marketing and sales to production.
00:37) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of several styles of BI analysis graphs
00:37) Nick>
Rapidly growing areas of Business Intelligence include predictive analytics, datamining and performance management.
00:44) <TITLE>
The view changes to a still of, identified by caption, "Crawford Del Prete - Executive Vice President, WW Research Products - IDC" as it fades to a graph with a generally upward trend.
00:44) Nick>
Research from IDC predicts the big data market will grow from $3.2B in 2010 to $16.9B in 2013.
00:55) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of a car with a through-hood turbocharger with its engine shown.
00:55) Nick>
That's more than enough information growth to supercharge the BI sector.
00:58) <TITLE>
The view changes to an overview of SlashBI posts scrolling past.
00:58) Nick>
SlashBI's news stream will keep up-to-the-minute track of the latest acquisitions and software releases, [...]
01:05) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of the "Death of the Salesmen: The Geeks Did It" op-ed post.
01:05) Nick>
[...] while its analysts and pundits offer a big picture view of the action.
01:08) <TITLE>
The view changes to that of a stylized head shown in profile with various technical elements within, and the text "Business Intelligence - http://slashdot.org/topic/bi" overlaid on it.
01:08) Nick>
So, all the intelligence you'll need on Business Intelligence.
You haven't defined a background-color for the body element, so it defaults to transparent. That means users will see whatever color they've told their web browser to default to as a background-color. No doubt you meant the site to have a white background, but you need to specify it. Browsing with an off-white color as my default, SlashBI looks pretty bad...
Rookie css mistake that is embarassingly common.
It looks like you just added articles with the words Business Intelligence or B.I. to the page. I need a way to filter, to get articles that are pertinent to ME.
and thanks for all the fish.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
If I were in charge of Slashdot, I'd rather concentrate on improving the quality of the posts - the summaries are eye-bleedingly horrid in every aspect. The only reason anyone ever comes to /. is the quality of some of the replies in the thread. That is, it's the readership that makes Slashdot valuable.
Piss off your readership, and you pissed away Slashdot - since the quality of the content is otherwise rubbish.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
...slashdotter which works with BI and find this interesting?
This is blinging
Dear Slashdot Editors,
Please spend some time getting intimate with a writing course. Such as this one by prof. Armstrong. Come back when you'll have a clue.
Sincerely,
tibit
PS. Prof. Armstrong is geeky. She is quite rational and measured in her speech, even if that means many /. "articles" would make her barf.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I understand on AllthingsD maybe, but here?
I hope you like our new direction....
This page is having a slideshow that uses Javascript. Your browser either doesn't support Javascript or you have it turned off. To see this page as it is meant to appear please use a Javascript enabled browser.
...are you going to take the five minutes to code in support for this thirteen-year-old technology? Or do you think âoebugs like thisâ(TM) are acceptable on a purportedly professional-looking website?
Liberty in your lifetime
Nearly ten years ago, I joined this site. I have quite a low ID by the standards of most of the comments I see on articles now, so maybe I've just been here long and aren't in touch with "nerds" any more.
I don't know a single "nerd" who has an iota of interest in "business intelligence". I'm not even sure I could tell you what it is, short of a poxy management fad that I hope never to have to deal with.
And if you're no longer "news for nerds", I don't think I'll bother to come back. Seriously. That's not why I signed up, not why I look at the site and not why I paid to get rid of the advertising all those years ago.
SlashTV was your first hint of what you were doing wrong. Enforcing change without consultation and without listening to your readership. But, hell, you did it anyway, and then tried to apologise for doing it (when it would have taken seconds to get rid of it). Now this crap.
Sorry, a few month's ago, I vowed to minimise my visits to this site to only those articles I have a direct interest in and cannot find elsewhere. As it turned out, that would have left me no reason to come here but I did so out of nostalgia. But now? Business-crap? Really?
There's needing to pay the bills and there's selling out your readers. This is the latter. I have no interest in it. Purely out of a profound sense of nostalgia and fondness for what this site used to be, I may pop back to see if you've realised your mistake and got back to the core of your readership, but the chances seem slim now.
Until then, ta ta. Enjoy your "business intelligence" site and crappy videos. I think that The Reg will be my next refuge, but Slashdot has been invaded by big business far too much, trying to monetise what they know rather than what's here.
Accentuate the inevitable!
When will /. have a site for its retired members and what will it be called.
Association of Retired Slashed Utterers
(ARS/.Rrs)
Also, that giant flash video that goes where the text should be is making me so glad that I have NoScript installed.
Seriously, everyone needs a shot of Bailey's (or if you're like me, Amaretto) in their coffee. First off, Slashdot is (part of) a business - they're here to make money. They're showing you a new offering they have in case you are interested. Accept it, move on. Secondly, NOBODY is forcing you to read SlashBI. If it's not a story which interests you, DON'T READ IT.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
That site should have nothing to do with the /. name. The community of (more or less) like minded people is what has made this site special since its inception. "News For Nerds". That important little slogan disappeared from the banner at the top of the page early last year. Now this business improvement blog is aimed at helping executives make important decisions. It says so right in that poorly done video. That doesn't sound like /. to me.
I, like many others who post here have noticed the decline in the quality of both stories and comments over the last 8 or so years I've been coming here. Most of this hasn't been the site's fault. But with /.TV (which has a HUGE icon up on the top line, ever noticed?) and this B.I. site, the discussion appears to be less important. I don't even see an obvious way to join a discussion on the TV site.
I guess this is a long way of saying that I think this is a bad idea. You're changing the mission of the site, maybe in order to broaden your audience, but I think it will just end up alienating the loyal audience that has been around for a long time.
Normally, i mostly only read the comment section of each headline/story because i find it refreshing not having to decompile the OP's story just to get to the core of the story, for example: "Experts say that the Windows 8 is hard to use blah blah blah blah" rather in the comments just plain and simple: "Windows 8 is like Vista". Sure i tried Windows 8 preview just like any other release of an OS, i built my own opinions and then went to slashdot to see what more experienced people than me thought about it. So i ask you this, Where does one since Slashdot is a sell-out and the members plan to leave?
Your ship of fail has come in to port!
It's got that musty odor of desperation though...
Oh look, a SlashdotBM.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
So what about the Gays, Lesbians, and Transgendered?
Even though it is a "slashdot page" and shows me logged in on top, the comment system is different and I can't comment unless I allow javascript from livefyre.com and fyre.co?
Well folks, that's it, the beginning of the end. Instead of making sure the site stays attractive to hardcore geeks, the people who are managing slashdot are diluting its value by doing some blatant marketing pushes.
I've been reading slashdot daily for what, 8 years now? Between the stupid "vlog" and all the latest attempts at being something it should not be, I think I'm going to be done with this site soon.
Slashdot has always done only a few things, but these core qualities were done extremely well, making this site interesting for people like me.
1. Keep the signal to noise ratio high. The moderation system has worked well to keep the SN ratio relatively high. Browsing at +2, when not moderating, keeps the discussion fairly clean and interesting. It's degraded a bit over the years, but I feel this is still slashdot's strongest point. Compared to sites like digg and reddit, slashdot discussions are mostly sane, polite and flame-free.
2. By the virtue of point 1 above and being a site targeted at hardcore geeks, you often get to speak with people involved in the stories first-hand. Over the years, I read and participated in threads with some very smart, interesting people. On stories about solar powered car competitions, we had the participants pitch in. On stories about new wireless chips, we sometimes had the engineers who designed it comment. On stories about Star Trek, you had Wil Wheaton giving behind-the-scenes stories. This was possible because slashdot was a site where geeks felt comfortable having discussions. Over the last few years, slashdot has been slowly losing this quality.
3. Clean, clutter-free interface that doesn't attempt to be anything else than a good place to discuss news stories of interest to geeks. Geeks like function over fluff and slashdot delivers. It doesn't need to be ugly, just functional and not distracting. All the crap you've been adding to the site of late is detracting from this. Things like the stupid videos or the "pulse" poll; blatant advertising barely disguised as something else.
This is just one geek's opinion, but slashdot is slowly going in the wrong direction. I know that if you keep this up you're going to lose me as a reader, and I have the feeling I'm far from the only one.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
Chances are, this was discussed in the boardroom, and Rob Malda suddenly came to realize what 'selling out' really meant.
Slashdot is owned by a conglomerate that just wants to make money -- and for a while, Rob had some creative freedom, but that time has long past.
I notice that all these changes (slashdot TV, for example) came *after* Taco left, but something tells me these plans were on the whiteboard well before the retirement happened.
Slashdot is just a name now. In the early days of the web (1995 to 2002), slashdot was a big deal, but the unfortunate reality is, they are losing money compared to say Chezbuger.org or whoever owns lolcats.
The sad reality is that pictures of fat people in walmart generates more ad revenue than a "news for nerds" website.
And this is why Taco left. Facebook is king, and Slashdot isn't. The web has changed. It's not the place it used to be. Now it's about Facebook and Google. They make the rules. And now you have to play by those rules or die.
For me, more and more every day, the internet is over. It's become corrupted by corporate greed. Time to find something new to play with.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Intelligence as Military Intelligence is to
Military Music is to Music...
There's a customer born every minute.
. . . sums it up pretty good I think.
Actually, porn would be news that matters to nerds.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
XP, Firefox, Flash 11.1.602.... yet these videos still don't work for me. I just get an empty black rectangle devoid of ideas, talent, production values or indeed, anything at all.
Or is that what I'm supposed to be seeing???
lol. I come back to slashdot to see how much worse its gotten..... I'm sad to see its gotten much much worse.
slashdot is not growing. if it is, its because they're growing the organization out of sheer will, and not in response to increased readership or relevance. this site has been in a nosedive since cmdr taco left, everyone recognizes it, and outside of losers like BMO and other people with a dog in the race (ie mental illness or an attachment to a low slashdot user # (how big of a loser can you be?)), people who care about info tech and the like go to one of the million other sites with less obvious mod/reader bias, without legions of troll-users waiting to shout SHILL at anyone speaking in support of anything non-GPL, and without the idiotic popularity-contest moderation system that allows a small group of assholes to completely quash worthwhile and intelligent contribution via downmodding/flagging.
its become a self perpetuating circle jerk, and its fucking pathetic.
SlashBO - an in-depth analysis of the relationship between progressive anosmia and the intelligence quotients of the subjects quarantined within GeekNet.
Judging by the comments on this, I notice all the longer term Slashdotters are coming out of the woodwork against this. I think many of these recent changes are worthless too, and add no value. The stories are becoming more political and less geeky, and the new addons are useless and do attract me to the site at all. I've been coming here since the late 90's as well, and if this continues, the site will lose me too. Slashdot needs to get to get back to its roots...now get off our lawns and fix the site.
The "B" in BI stands for "bullshit that drives away nerds". If we want business news, we'll go to WSJ or... hell I'm so uninterested in business news, I can't actually NAME another source for it. Your readers are nerds, they like robots and programming and Linux and video games and kinetic sculpture. We don't care about products and ROI and ... BULLSHIT. What the hell? Even goatse is better than this!
... a site about fencing, is next.
Through all the ownership changes, etc. over the 14 years I've read /., this is the first time I've had a real panic over the fate of the site. For now, I'll just try to ignore the existence of /PHB but meanwhile that's the hole that management is throwing time, money and energy into until it fails (hopefully quickly and quietly, most likely not), at which point losses will need to be recouped from the unprofitable "news for nerds" division that keeps writing about free software. Who's going to pay to advertise software that's free?
Best case scenario: Silicon Valley billionaire needs his geek news fix, buys out /. to save it before it's too late. Maybe Bill Gates is secretly a slashdot reader? That would actually be preferable to current management.
Seriously, it's 2012 and slashdot of all sites isn't up to this technological marvel known as characters sets.
But... the future refused to change.
Two words: InfoWorld. If I wanted that, I would go there, not here.
Actually, I do. More to IW now, since /. is becoming a clone. Next thing you know /. will have columnists.
You can have that idea for free. No strings attached. And no visitors, perhaps, either.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I got an awful sinking feeling on reading the post, but that didn't prepare me for the spewed-up-from-the-1990's mess of a website that greeted my nervous click on the SlashBI link. Who designed this shite? Who wrote the dry-as-dust articles? Who proof-read them??? What the hell are Slashdot thinking?
This couldn't be further away from what I imagine Slashdot to represent. Hopefully it will turn out to be a sick joke.
This is now my go-to site for crappy Web 2.0 clipart.
Bookmarked!
I will add to the litany of long-term /. readers that are horrified by this feeble attempt to expand /. You are trying to squeeze blood from a stone and targeting the very thing that /. has always avoided.
When the content and polls on this site are directed by marketing trolls fueled by bean counting business types it is time to say goodbye.
Consider yourself warned. Bank of America realized their foolishness and changed before it was too late.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Really now, Business Intelligence is News for Nerds? No. No it's not. Next thing you'll be making SlashMarketing and filling the site with... MARKETERS, and if that's not a nightmare scenario for 99% of your present users, I don't know what is.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
You know, leaving the sans-serif font issue aside, they actually could have saved a lot of confusion by calling it "Business Logic" instead of "Business Intelligence".
I can't even remember when I started reading Slashdot, but I associate it with my discovery of Linux in the mid/late 90's. I think I found it while surfing around after figuring out how to get my modem to connect using redhat 4.2 . Or maybe it was while I still ran an OS/2 box and found Slashdot while looking at the RC5 teams. Took a while before I finally signed up.
Anyway, I have really enjoyed the stories and discussions until recently. Been thinking about moving on. This latest expansion to whatever-bi just confirms my thinking. Must be a better News for Nerds out there. Guess I'll go take a look.
bye
Kurt
The only reason anyone ever comes to /. is the quality of some of the replies in the thread. That is, it's the readership that makes Slashdot valuable.
This. This, this, this ad infinitum. There's a reason that "nobody reads TFA" is a running gag here: because practically nobody does; because the articles are not what make Slashdot awesome. What does is the fact that on any given story, usually at least one expert in the field in question, or genuinely knowledgable person will chime in to tell us something Interesting and/or Insightful pertaining to the story. It cannot be stressed enough that this is why people are here, and why they keep coming back, despite invariably complaining about the quality of the summaries, the news- or nerd-worthiness of the stories, etc, etc, etc. I doubt that many people really give a damn about those issues, because they're fundamentally here to learn something from (or just be entertained by) their fellow readers.
To be honest, I don't really care what changes you make to this site, just as long as you don't mess that aspect of it up (e.g., by alienating too many readers, or whatever). Because that is what Slashdot really is. If you can find a way to more efficiently monetize it without killing it, then fine. That's business. Just make sure you understand where the true value is (and has always been) on this site.
Can BI have the goatse guy too? Because if so, then I might just go there. Just to watch, of course.
C|N>K
I never though I'd see the day when MBA's started to run /.
Thanks for the good times, but I came here for the "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" not the buzzword-flinging, know-nothings that slide out of business school.
I am in favor of the extinction of salespeople and want to know what Slashdot can do to speed this up.
It sounds all Enterprisy.
That will go over well here.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
First off, the new site looks terrible and I'm not likely to read it. When I first browsed over that way I thought it was April 1st and they had sent me to The Onion or CNN; the layout looked that similar.
That being said there are a lot of comments on here about how Slashdot has declined, and I disagree. There _are_ more stories each day which makes the geeky news seem less prominent, but you're always free to skip the articles you don't like! But the real reason I still read /. is because of the comments. The comments have _always_ been the greatest strength of the site. I often learn far more and see more alternate viewpoints about the topic being discussed in the comments than are covered in any article. As long as I keep getting that, I'll still be a /. reader.
Finally, the new site is obviously aimed at non-geeks. Look at the new site as a possible new interface to educate people who aren't geeky but would like to be. SlashBi: The gateway drug to the tech world.
tl;dr comments are Slashdot's real content, the news stories just point the way. Also the new site is ugly and probably not aimed at us.
SlashBI, really? at least please reconsider the name.
Eh, that was just fucking horrible -
Yet another generic, non-technical, heavily sposored, buzzword-laden site trying to sell me that "Big Data Amplifies Need for Self-Service Business Intelligence"-bullshit.
The direction slashdot has been heading for a while has had me wondering more than once lately, but at least now I know I should take my pageviews somewhere else.
The average /.er doesn't care about BI. We care about things like our digital rights, free software, and cool technologies. If /. is going to create subsites to focus on an area, they should focus on one of these. After all: when was the last time you saw a story on BI?
I've been coming to /. since about 2000. Yeah, I got news here; I've also had good discussions here.
I've seen several people in this thread talking about how they come here rarely now, and get what they used to get here from other sources. My question: what are those other sources? There are lots of sci/tech news sites on the web, yes; but they all seem to me to tend towards the "enterprise IT" variety and not at all of the "news for nerds" variety. Where are you going to find out about the stuff you used to discover on /. ten years ago?
And more importantly, where are you going to have the same discussions that used to take place on /.? Much of the interaction I had on Usenet in the 80s and 90s seemed to move to /.; I honestly don't know where it is now.
You were right Michael Kristopeit, .
slashdot = stagnated
Hell, I think even he's already left...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Ok,
W T F ?!?!?!
Why are we segregating content, why the horrific site redesign apparently inspired by the gawker media atrocity from last year?
I love this place, been here for over a decade, but this.... this....obvious shark jumping.
I don't know if I'll be coming back, I do know that I've lost faith.
Slashdot.org was a leader in the blog space, now they are desperately following. Be a leader again, not a follower.
I'm out.
They apparently didn't like the wtf and troll tags addded to the story.
Must've ended up breaking shit to get those removed from the story too.
Way to run a functional site asshats! You got guru meditation 503 errors now!
http://slashdot.org/tag/troll
http://slashdot.org/tag/wtf
captcha: contents, even your captcha system knows irony better than you.
That site offended me. From the mass of stock photograghy, to the lack of content, that site was offensive. I was asked to check it out, but I sure won't be following that POS. It hurts to look at it. Someone should be looking for a new job for showing that to the public.
I was at a pizza meeting with various Linux/software/techie/perl dev people and I mentioned about something I read on slashdot. They reacted, "What?!? People still reading slashdot?" So I asked what and where do "they" read now. I never got a straight answer, responses were mushy and only specific word I heard was reddit.
OK, so this is a chicken-and-the-egg issue but what do real /. people go to these days? Can that be answered here if they all left?
mfwright@batnet.com
I think it was the terrible Linux and OSS shills that did it for me a couple of years ago. I still check slashdot out occasionally, post a message like this as AC and never stick around to read any replies. Like the USENET it tried to imitate it wasn't very good for discussion and like I mentioned earlier the other half wasn't that much better.
Yeah, stick a fork in it, it's done.
But not far off...
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
I said it in an earlier comment, so may be a bit redundant, but my experience is that there are lots of really good niche boards .. but I've yet to find any with the kind of diversity we have here.
The big draw of slashdot is you have people from all kinds of backgrounds, age groups, and experiences discussing things at about the same level. It's a nice mixing pot for general nerdy discussion.
Excellent, bisexual slash fiction is just what today's tech site needs
Other, lesser managements have B.O.
Slashdot has B.I.
This is crap. I mean that seriously - I've been here for over a decade, and this is the first time I'm actually concerned for the future of the site. Not in the way that it will "run out of funding and close", but in a way that all the readers who make /. what it is will vanish.
Please stop what you're doing.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Old Slashdot
Recent Slashdot
New Slashdot
So yeah. RIP, the slashdot that I once cared about :-(
(That, and even the community has dropped in quality recently; witness how every ubuntu story is full of people who are too dumb to apt-get install a different WM to replace unity -_- Back in my day, customising your OS to fit your needs was the norm, nay, the entire point of using linux - people would be shunned away from the site for being noobs if they dare complain about how hard it is to compile their own desktop environment from source...)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
What, you're sucking up to MBAs now? Taco! Come back...we need you!
Link please.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Oh dear, why oh why does it have to be a blog?
You are really stretching the slashdot brand here, and it's showing.
For some actual feedback:
The actual article layout feels off and uninspired.
What is up with the comment system, why is it different?
What is up with the articles? Why are they amazingly uninteresting? (and i love IT+Business)
The content seems vaguely similar to the stuff i get at tradeshow booths...
I would love something dedicated to all things IT+Business (Analytics, BI, ERP, the buzzwords go on) with a geeky spinn on it, but this? Your energy could be better spent somewhere else.
SlashChat: Live chatroom for slashdotters
SlashLolz: Geek-oriented humor section
SlashForums: Typical forum except each discussion is threaded in the usual Slashdot style. Like journals but easier to see.
BETTER EDITING AND STORY SELECTION
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Has anyone read the crap on there? My first read was about selecting a Database for your business. Its a couple of pages of meaningless waffle. There's no real content - the author clearly has very little knowledge about databases, hasnt written anything meaningful or useful and Slashdot has ultimately published an article that will not be of any help to anyone.
Plus is uses another whole new commenting system - so more issues and bugs to contend with.
To agree with some of the above posters have mentioned, I for a long time have come to Slashdot not so much for the articles, but the comments on the articles. You could always guarantee that a number of world leading experts on the subject would be posting. Those days are sadly passing.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
Man when I saw the headline I was really hoping for the slashdot bureau of investigation. Do it.
Just like anything else new and different, I don't like it.
Question:
Now that slashdot is no longer suitable for engineers to discuss technical topics, what are some good alternate sites? I've perused physicsforums (great for continuing information about Fukushima) and the comments section of xckd (lots of math folks there!) but haven't found a good hackish site. Any suggestions?
http://news.ycombinator.com/ is what I registered on today. I also read the various programming subreddits.
Yet this is GeekNet's Jump The Shark moment, today, May 1, 2012, for anyone keeping track.
I think you're right. I've been here a gawd-awful long time, and this latest abomination is by far the worst by several orders of magnitude.
I keep hoping to see an "UPDATE: Suckers! We trolled you good!" appear in the summary, but I don't think that's going to happen.
I wonder if the Romans felt this way as their empire declined and fell?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
don't even bother. unless you want this level of factuality: " Xen is an open-source suite of tools that includes VMWare’s flagship product, the Xen hypervisor. "
If Commander Taco has left then I am not sure why we should stick around. Definitely not for this stuff.
Wow...I'm not really sure what to say. I created a comment yesterday, and the message ID for it is no longer found. It didn't portray this new section in a positive light, so perhaps the powers that be removed it? If that's the case, slashdot has gotten a LOT worse than I previously imagined.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Slash is about homo, not bi.
I defended /. when people slammed the video, because video is something that could add to the /. experience if done well; Nobody still does journalism in the English language except for the BBC, and /. could help step into that gap.
But this BI thing? Naw, this is horribly off-mission, guys. No self-respecting geek would ever read this stuff. The buzzword itself creates a geek-repulsion field. And after more than a decade of CNET and its ilk why do /.'s publishers think they're going to lure away PHB's & MBAs to read the same kind of fluff on another site? PHB's and MBAs strongly dislike real geeks, and fear the things they know as "geek stuff." That's why they mainly read Fortune and Forbes and the WSJ because they like to fantasize about their stock options and only occasionally dip into CNET when they feel like being a little "edgy."
Please, guys, don't keep going in this direction. Listen to what Tom said up-thread: refocus on being brilliant at /.'s core mission of being News for Nerds. The MBA's who are obviously driving this trend toward mission creep and dilution are going in exactly the wrong direction. You do not alienate your core audience, because they are a high-value audience. They are fully segmented and demographically, ie. relatively affluent males ages 18-45, are highly desireable. You can charge a much higher CPM for that than the opposite that the MBA's are driving you toward.
So just in case any of said MBA's are reading this (which I doubt very much, because they're probably sitting on the shitter jacking off to their sheaf of the afore-mentioned stock options), then DO NOT KILL SLASHDOT. Go back to business school or go work for AIG or whatever you worthless sacks of crap do. (Sorry, fellow slashdotters, for the vitriol)
If not us, who? If not now, when?
I have been reading Slashdot nearly every day since the late 90's, and I have deep feelings of nostalgia for the site. I truly hope they listen to what everyone is saying here and do a major course correction and get back on-mission.
But I doubt the editors can make that happen because idiot MBA's are now clearly in charge and determined to drive this site off a cliff.
It makes me deeply sad to say that, but I want to contribute something positive to the discussion about Slashdot alternatives. I don't know of any one site that is what Slashdot used to be, but I have in the last couple of years found the same creative energy represented at the Maker Faires. The work being done by MakerBot, Fab@Home, Adafruit, and all the many, many DIY'ers of all stripes out there is unbelievably cool and inspiring. I read /. and science news all the time, but when I visited the Maker Faire last Fall at the Queens Science Center I saw 7 different revolutions in the making that I wasn't even really aware of, and the one I had learned about at previous iterations of the Maker Faire, 3D printing, had grown by leaps and bounds.
So maybe somewhere between Make Magazine, Thingiverse.com, and some of the others is where the next Slashdot could be born. What do you all think?
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Oh well, next one that arrives, I'll unsub.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"