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A New Benefit For Logged-In Readers: Meet Slashdot's ROT13 Initiative
We appreciate all the support we've gotten over the years from Slashdot's logged-in users. They take part actively in discussions, and in exchange for their active interest in the site, we like to give a few perks over and above what our beloved anonymous readers get. But we never want to deprive anonymous readers of the actual features of the site — whether you're a logged-in account holder, anonymous, a subscriber, or have a username but are browsing anonymously at any given moment, Slashdot has always been freely available to read for anyone with a browser and an uncensored Internet connection. It's a balance we try to maintain, too, Sure, we'd like you to login, and we think it has some worthwhile benefits (like tracking comment responses, building karma, and using the Zoo system to keep track of your friends and foes), but we'll never force you to. Today, we're building on this approach, by introducing a feature that benefits every logged-in user, but still leaves the page free to read for all. We'll be phasing in over the next few days a button that logged-in users and subscribers can click to decrypt the text of each Slashdot posting with the trivial transform known as Rot13. Read more, below!
Don't panic. You don't have to do anything at all, especially for right now. For the rest of the week at least, though, you'll notice that stories are rendered a bit harder to read, because they've been ROT13'd. "Encrypted" seems too strong a word for it, since ROT13 is about as tough an encryption as Pig Latin is, and more consistent. You'll just need to click once more to read the full, plaintext version of each story. After we complete a few shakedown days, subscribers and other logged-in users will always be able to get through to the plaintext just that simply, and for anonymous readers, it'll be nearly as easy: they'll just need to click one button, and watch one painless interstitial ad, to reach each story's plaintext. For the masses who read anonymously but don't want to suffer through any more ads? (Believe us, we understand.) Not to worry! As we transition away from offering the plaintext along with the ROT13 version, there will be several great options for translating ROT13 text; you'll just need to copy and paste the text, or in some cases the URL for the story you'd like to read, into the engine of your choice. We favor the spartan rot13.com, but there are others. Heck, if you're a CS grad, or even an amateur programmer at all, you've probably written a ROT13 translation program, or you can pipe the text through a built-in function in the language of your choice. (Let us know your favorite translation system in the comments below.) If you have any questions about the transition, please let us know.
Note: You'll notice that comments are still in plaintext for now by default. They will probably stay this way for a while, too, even for anonymous readers. The conversion process itself for the 19.2 million comments in our database is pretty trivial, actually, but there have been some glitches with the way that the transform handles things like code inside of comments, and it would be a shame to break any of that code. And it's a near certainty that only anonymous readers will ever see reader comments encrypted with ROT13, when all those details are worked out.
Note: You'll notice that comments are still in plaintext for now by default. They will probably stay this way for a while, too, even for anonymous readers. The conversion process itself for the 19.2 million comments in our database is pretty trivial, actually, but there have been some glitches with the way that the transform handles things like code inside of comments, and it would be a shame to break any of that code. And it's a near certainty that only anonymous readers will ever see reader comments encrypted with ROT13, when all those details are worked out.
svefg cbfg
The only person in the world that is so bad that his NORMAL writing looks like Rot13...
...or actual ad spamming. Naah, april fools'
"Hello, IT... Have you tried turning it off and on again? Yeah... No problem."
Lame. This is pretty lame even by Slashdot standards.
...someone at slashdot has lost their mind.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
How about letting logged in users filter out all april fools jokes?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
More April 1 bullshit. Can't they at least come up with one thing that is actually funny?
Or just rename it April 1 troll day and be done with it.
Wait, what day is it?
April troll's day. I miss the long dead tradition of April fools day.
Let's use DOUBLE Rot-13 encryption to make it even more secure!
Now the April Fool's jokes on /. are just tired and worn out. There are days why I wonder why I still come here. I guess old habits die hard. Can we not do this shit next year guys?
Vs lbh nfxrq Oehpr Fpuarvre gb qrpelcg guvf, ur'q pehfu lbhe fxhyy jvgu uvf ynhtu.
I am officially gone from
Where it would be quicker to write a perl script to do ROT13 translation, than to read the editors' description of what the site did with it.
Assuming it's not an April 1 joke, and it might be (an unusually ponderous one at that).
I can't resist an excuse to do this in tr.
tr 'a-z' 'n-za-m' HERE
Put your message here
HERE
Trivial I know. I'll bet half to slashdot could not resist immediately coding ROT-13 in their favorite language.
Seems like a perfect candidate for a simple one-line APL ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language) ) function. This should be something like {/~{\}, but my keyboard doesn't have the required keys to enter any of the characters needed. Can anyone help?
Ok, I've managed to work out a truly marvelous 7-character conversion in APL, but the margin is too small to contain it.
No. Well...maybe. Actually, yes. It really just depends.
... is 'super members' of the community that have proven their knowledge, there is too much bullshit getting modded insightful when it is outright incorrect. I'd like to see slashdot select logged in moderators get the ability to mark false insightful posts as 'false/incorrect' and turn that posters post a different color.
The amount of disinformation from either youth, the uninformed, trolls, or paid hacks to disrupt intelligent discussion on the internet is something I've grown increasingly weary of. It seems increasingly difficult to have intelligent discussions online. There are people who DO KNOW and understand the world at a higher level then most posters on slashdot and these people could help guide discussions when these forces of stupid / distortion appear.
http://consciouslifenews.com/paid-internet-shill-shadowy-groups-manipulate-internet-opinion-debate/1147073/
The joke is on Slashdot, I for one have been using ROT26 for several years already.
Bring on the ponies! I can take it.
Don't panic. You don't have to do anything at all
The Adams family's lawyers are sending the takedown notice now... also, reading a slashdot story is now a felony, since the content is cryptographically protected by slashdot's patented Rot-13 DRM technology.
Gotta love them lawyers!
Free Martian Whores!
Cryptography experts have proven long ago that ROT-13 is weak against simple brute-force attack. But it turns out that there is also a little-known security hole in ROT-26, which allows a sophisticated eavesdropper to read the message WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING THE PASSWORD.
Cryptography experts suggest, for robust security, the use of at least ROT-39 encoding should be encouraged. This takes a minimum number of log_2[2^39] tries to decode by brute force.
Some experts have suggested that ROT-39 shares the same security hole as ROT-13, but I don't believe I've seen that result confirmed in peer-reviewed literature.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Instead of having many stoopid ones, what they should do is have one extremely clever one. That would be funny. But then that would require effort and preparation. Not copy and paste.
Also I see more and more companies doing the Aprils Fools day so they can show how 'real' they are and not at all a serious company. However they are still aware that they do it and are so afraid of their image that they make it extremely obvious and it becomes just another marketing trick.
So please stop doing that.
What I did as a kid was NOT fool anybody. At the end of the day everybody was almost killing them selves, because they were waiting for it. Then when asking if they thought I was going to fool them (or already did) and they said yes, I said : Fooled ya!
Many adults did not understand what I was talking about and why I thought that was extremely funny.
I admit, I have no friends.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Used to be funnier and well thought out and silly, but now it's just comedy by committee, with all kinds of notes from the network executives. /., eh?
.
Where's the pink pages? Where's the OMG ponies? Where's the cuteness of fvcking with the CSS and some actual intelligence behind an April Fool's day joke?
:>(
. It's kind of like letting the pointy-haired bosses write a comedy script by committee, zat's what you get with the new
to avoid Slashdot.
Emacs. Can your editor do that?
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Sorry, I forgot there are ads on the Web; I use Lynx.
Yeah this sucks. I'm probably done with slashdot. I think it is enough to require login to contribute or post is crap. I have slashdot in one of my tabs and take a quick scan at the articles,. I created an account, but I still can't just glance at them. Slashdot advertisers,maybe you should tell them that this idea is shit-tastic.
Great, so now my RSS feed is going to be broken for the rest of the day? I like April Fools' as much as the next guy, but not when it effectively breaks the whole site for the day.
The Slashdot logo should be changed to Fynfuqbg.
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
I'm logged in and am still only viewing ROT-13. I don't know if this is just an April Fool's Day joke, but if the whole of the internet decided to go this route, I would stop using it altogether. Period. Might even lose a few lbs :-P
If this is the route /.is going to take, then they have just lost a VERY loyal reader.
Yeah, it was funny and original for the first story or two. Now it's damned frustrating. Away with Rot13 or whatever you're calling this crud. Happy April Fools Day from Atlanta.
Computing and Programming Since 1975 The Best Kept Secret in Technical Support Master of the Bare Metal Clean Install
This might actually be useful for a day if it encouraged people to
create accounts but why am I still seeing rot13 after I log in?
I don't mind logging in but I don't like to have to click on every
article to read the summary even after I do log in.
Whatever fucking idiot that thought this was funny can't even execute it properly. I'm logged in and still getting the April Fools shit. This is hands down, THE STUPIDEST thing the /. staff have EVER done. Congratulations, you 0wned your own site.
Asshats.
So, I logged in... and its still all scrambled.... bad move slashdot.