Slashdot Mirror
Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht's Next Court Date Set For November
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Ross Ulbricht, the alleged administrator behind the illegal online drug marketplace the Silk Road, will get his day in court on November 3rd, according to a blueprint laid out today in New York's Southern District Court by Judge Katherine Forrest. Ulbrict, alleged by the government to be Silk Road founder Dread Pirate Roberts, is facing four charges (PDF via Wired) related to narcotics conspiracy, running a criminal enterprise, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, and money laundering (other charges have been brought against him regarding murder for hire in Maryland). Appearing today in court—clean-shaven, in a navy blue prison uniform—he pleaded "not guilty" to all charges. Next week, on February 13th, Josh Dratel, Ulbricht's defense attorney, will be handing over hard drives sufficient to hold eight to 10 terabytes of data, which is the approximate size of the evidence which the government has said it may use against Ulbricht. By Feb. 27, two weeks later, the prosecution must return the drives with Silk Road data the FBI collected from computers in a foreign and unnamed country, as well as a drive that holds the contents of the defendant's laptop, which was seized during his dramatic arrest at a San Francisco library in October."
Obviously, I've been around the Internet and around here for a long time: started reading Chips & Dips and continued reading on a daily basis since then (overall, I don't think I missed a single story ever). I even (unknowingly) helped Rob with a Perl problem on comp.lang.perl when he was coding the original Slashdot (received a "Don't Fear the Penguins" T-Shirt when they made it into the big league - I still treasure it).
A couple of years ago, I switched to doing most of my reading on smartphones and tablets. One of the first apps I downloaded for my iPhone was the Slashdot app (I think it was branded by the then owners and included other sister sites) - it sucked though.
Anyway, I continued reading Slashdot daily through the RSS feeds and hardly ever logged on to the website itself. It wasn't just about the stories themselves - I got a lot of news and editorials from other tech sites as well (AllThingsDigital/Re-code, GigaOM sites etc). I loved reading the comments (trolls, shills etc included) and the RSS reader neatly provided the top 5 comments for each story which also enabled me then to drill through into parents, responses etc. Though I've always been more of a lurker, it is those comments that have made it a community that I've felt a part of for the past 17 years. I didn't mind crappy summaries, duplicate stories and other editorial failures - they were a part of Slashdot. About the only thing that I found annoying was the rampant islamophobia/xenophobia that developed over the past 10 years, supported by 1-2 editors, but it was mostly easy to ignore.
I've tried to support Slashdot whichever way I could. I clicked on ads on Slashdot when I wanted to buy something from those regular advertisers (Rackspace, ThinkGeek etc). I didn't even find Slashvertisments annoying as a lot of those introduced me to products and companies that I didn't know about - a good example was a video for Scottevest hoodies, which I've been buying regularly since.
I read some rumblings about Beta in the comments recently and didn't fail to notice :-) a torrent of them over the past week or two, so I decided to check out the Beta site.
The beta site is fundamentally broken! I appreciate where the defensive story yesterday came from and I know that a lot of actual technical bugs with the new site can and will be fixed. The problem though is that the idea behind the new site itself is broken, so whatever is being built is being built on wrong foundations (and feel free to replace "foundations" with "intentions", depending on your level of paranoia about Dice's ownership/plans). The commenting functionality very much feels like an add-on (and it is reflected in the UI design as well) - at which point you may as well just run a Wordpress blog with comments or a commercial web discussion plug-in. The commenting functionality needs to be the foundation that the rest of the Slashdot is built on, not the other way around.
Based on my own experience, I know how these things go and I know that these (and others') comments will be ignored because a lot of effort would have gone into the current Beta site already. Something reasonably functional will eventually emerge, after many iterations and after a lot of effort, but by that time, a lot of users will have been needlessly turned away.
Death by a thousand cuts is sad :-(
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
verdict: GUILTY OF SUCKING
I've been reading slashdot for around a decade and have never bothered to create an account let alone comment / moderate, but I did today in order to add one more voice to the chorus of lamentations over the design changes.
Since finishing my schooling, slashdot has been the place that I come to continue to learn. Slashdot has taught me a history of the internet from the perspective of the people who actually developed it. Slashdot introduced me to linux which I now run exclusively in my house. And it has influenced my thinking on non-technical subjects like civics and law. I visit daily because, despite all the flamewars and occasional shill, uniquely knowledgeable people always have some insights to share.
Since this site is now facing an identity crisis that threatens to drive away the community that makes it worthwhile I want to share one tidbit that I learned here:
grok: (verb) to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience
I have grokked slashdot. The people pushing the awful beta design clearly have not.
Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet. (Copy-paste the html from here so links don't get mangled!)
On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design. Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.
If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.
We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott
Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta
http://slashdot.org/recent - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories
Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.
-----=====##### LINKS #####=====-----
Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=56395415
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=submission&id=3321441
Alternative Slashdot: http://altslashdot.org (thanks Okian Warrior (537106))
I have been an active and paying member of Slashdot for the better part of 15 years. I am already mourning its demise, as I view it is on its deathbed in terminal condition.
Please, please don't make the beta live for everyone, even if there is a (let's face it) temporary classic mode ;(
This reminds me too much of FastMail's UI disaster of October 31st 2012 :(
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
The unnecessarily complex and excessively indented layout interferes with text->speech tools, and actually reduces legibility for people who heavily expand their screens due to visual problems. The current clean, well ordered, linear layout is easy to use, intuitive, and doesn't insert painful, confusing, or unnecessary complexity. The slashdot readers, and contributors, are here for the stories, not for the exciting newness of the GUI.
Does anyone know who actually _wrote_, or demanded, the Slashddot Beta? I'd like their names so we can warn our clients and colleagues _against_ their work.
Old age, time in grade, and time in rank is a mythical way to determine competence.
They are one of many ways to gauge experience. In any case, people are doing something:
http://altslashdot.org/
I didn't rtfa becase....
beta sucks. Clueless MBAs in tech companies suck. Clueless marketing and sales drones in tech companies suck.
Get a clue.
Boycott /. from the 10th to the 17th
First off I appreciate your comments, wonderful to see a thoughtful and measured response to this whole thing for a change. I've been using the new site for the past few days - at first just trying to sift through the crap, and then getting fed up and downmodding and finally replying to it out of desperation, and through all of it I never witnessed how the commenting/modding system is any more broken that it has ever been. Missing features galore, yes, but fundamentally broken?
The *only* specific gripe I've seen was that if the thread gets too nested the comments are squeezed into an unreadably narrow box. (1) that's seems like a pretty easy fix, and (2) I can't recall the last time I've read through a good comment thread that was more than 4-5 levels deep. So with respect, what am I missing? What has been fundamentally broken in the comment system? Nobody seems to say, they just say it sucks, or is fundamentally broken, or as you say is an add-on, etc.
I've been an active reader/commenter/submitter for over a decade and none of this makes any sense to me. Worst case the site is done, due not to the redesign itself, but the completely unhinged overreaction to it (see: throwing out the baby with the bathwater.) Best case, 1-2 months from now the is cruising along fine minus a tiny group of users with a very skewed set of priorities.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
These on-topic posts are so confusing just now.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
My best guess is they're different accents based on your posting location. Helvetica is standard American English, Times New Roman is standard RP British English. At least that's how they sound to my eyes.
The italics are just drunk.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable