Thanks For Reading: 15 Years of News For Nerds

Slashdot turns 15 this month! You may have noticed that we’ve swapped out the usual logo for the first of the reader-contributed designs we'll be featuring this month. (If you think you have a better idea, we'd love to see it; all artists whose designs we choose to run will get Slashdot anniversary T-shirts, and one will get a Nexus 7 tablet.) We're also happy to announce an overdue feature here on Slashdot: a blog with information from the developers and editors. We'll use it to provide updates and background information about the site's development (for instance, new features or fixed bugs, or changes in the user interface), and try to answer reader questions about the site at greater length than the FAQ. Shameless tease: today, you can read about the launch of Slashdot mobile in the inaugural post. We might use the blog to expound on story choice or to make non-critical announcements, too. You probably don't come to Slashdot generally to read about Slashdot, though, so don't worry &mdash the blog will live safely and quietly in the background until you want to read it. Since this is a new feature, we're still working out exactly how it should best be used, so feel free to make suggestions below on what you'd like to see. Between now and the end of October, look for a passel of other treats, too, starting with an interview with Woz later today. We hope you'll get together with other readers at one of the many parties planned for later this month, also. Slashdot exists for and because of everyone who reads the site; thank you for being part of it.

Comments

15th year old

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that this means that /. is currently in its acne filled puberty.

No, thank you!

[johnsnails]

No thank you /. for enabling me to be across such a wide range of technology issues, it actually helps earn boss respect to be across so many things that I attribute to /. news.

dayummm

[Monoman]

Wow that might make some of us .. .err not me, feel old.

I wonder what the average slashdot age is around here. Meaning, are many "old timers" still around? How long the typical person stays active on /.? etc etc

Re:dayummm

[Average]

Any of us with a /. UID under 15,000 or so were here before logins (since there were that many of us who signed up the first few days).

What makes me feel old is that I'm working on the same floor of the same building I was in 1998, back when I first saw Slashdot and happiness was a warm DEC Alphastation.

Re:dayummm

[tamyrlin]

Here is one old timer checking in. Although I'm more of a passive consumer of slashdot these days. Although this is not really slashdot's fault, I'm more of a passive consumer of mailing lists, discussion groups, usenet, etc these days as well. (Having a day job and a family does have a higher priority for me than participating in forum discussions these days.)

Re:Thanks

[MtViewGuy]

What I find fascinating is that how much the influence of UNIX has become in today's computing landscape since Slashdot started 15 years ago. After all, Apple's MacOS X runs off a UNIX kernel variant named Mach, and both iOS and Android runs off UNIX-like kernels. In short, the dream of running UNIX on consumer devices has become reality, though in a way nobody expected.

Congratulations on 15 years of one of the most influential places on the Internet, and may you be around for its 30th anniversary. We do miss Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) and his stewardship of Slashdot, though.

Slashdot on 9/11

[lateral]

I'll never forget September 11th 2001 on Slashdot. When I first heard the news that somebody had flown a plane into the World Trade Centre I reflexively checked the BBC website. It was unreachable - completely swamped. I checked CNN and that was swamped too. I went to Slashdot and they were reporting it and available so on-and-off I followed the story on Slashdot and on TV all day.

By the evening on the TV they had already gathered their pundits and reduced the days events to a continuous 10 second loop of a plane hitting a building. It was already starting to look like a music video.

Meanwhile on slashdot there were real conversations going on with real people who had been there, seen it or been affected by it. I remember one comment in particular - somebody wrote about psychologists being dispatched (volunteering I think) to go to school bus stops to tell some of the waiting kids that their parents were dead.

L.

Long missed feature

[Vintermann]

so don't worry &mdash

Speaking of, when will we get unicode support?

Re:Thanks

[drjzzz]

"I don't think many people realize just how many embedded devices run Linux or BSD."

True. I've seen a couple airplane entertainment systems booting recently (normal startups, not reboots) and was a little surprised to recognize many of the usual daemons waking up. In contrast, I've seen a number of information screens in lobbies of hotels or office buildings stuck on a crashed Windows error message. Once upon a time, such a contrast would have cheered slashdotters but now it's just the way it is. So long Windows, and thanks for all the BSODs (in keeping with the thread above).

15 years

[Natales]

In the last 15 years I've had 4 different jobs, I've moved 4 times in 3 different countries, I divorced and got remarried and I've had a lot of personal changes. In all these years Slashdot has been a refuge for me, even an obsession when I had nothing else going on, or when I was stuck over the weekend in some foreign country. I always felt part of this community even if sometimes I've been modded down into oblivion.

Being a nerd and a geek is cooler now, but we are still fringe elements of society at large, so I never want to underestimate the need and value of the few good virtual places where we can be accepted and talk to others like us. So today, I just want to say thank you Slashdot for being there. We've all grown together.

My post for 2012

[davidu]

I guess this is an appropriate post for me to comment in. Nice work Slashdot, still going strong.