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!
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.
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.
Finally a place for the uninteresting stuff, so they don't have to put it up on the front page.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Oh look, a SlashdotBM.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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.
This is now my go-to site for crappy Web 2.0 clipart.
Bookmarked!
Don't you mean "SlashBye!"?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
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.
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.
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
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!
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.