While I disagree in general that the gaming market is dead — certainly the decline of brick & mortar stores tracks to some degree with the decline of games being distributed on physical media — I do agree that Quake 3 is the best FPS.
When BizX bought Slashdot, they brought only a portion of the existing Slashdot staff with them. That included one of the three editors and one of the four engineers. I'm not sure about the other departments. I'd guess they intended to fill those roles with people from their own organization, but I don't know anything about how they're going about it.
I never met or talked with any of the BizX folks, so I can't tell you much more than that. We editors were the bottom of the decision-making totem pole for the site, so I didn't know about the acquisition until it was done.
Even if I'm no longer affiliated, I still love the site and the community. I'll keep contributing until I see good reason not to.
Yes, I've found another job -- I start on Monday, actually. Really looking forward to it.:)
I was in the market for a new phone last year. I was interested in the Galaxy S6, and it ended up high on my list. The biggest drawbacks to the S6 (for me) were: smallish battery, no USB-C, price, and questionable optimization decisions. The biggest drawbacks for the 6P were: no wireless charging, Snapdragon 810, and weight. (There are other downsides shared by both, like lack of a removable battery and the lack of an SD card slot. But that's becoming pretty standard these days.)
Battery life was a key feature for me, so I ended up choosing the Nexus 6P. I've been really happy with it. The 810 heat turned out not to be an issue. The overall battery life and speed with which it charges over USB-C makes me not mind the lack of wireless charging. I appreciate stock Android, though I think the hullabaloo over Samsung's TouchWiz is vastly overblown. It's not terrible, and hardly even noticeable if you download Nova launcher.
If the S7 had been out, it would have been a much tougher choice. Still no USB-C, but a bigger battery, and they're bringing SD card slots back. If I'm reading this right, they actually made the phone thicker than its predecessor... which is amazing. I hope more manufacturers stop the thickness race.
Ultimately, the 6P is a great phone, and the S7 looks like it'll be a great phone. You'll probably be happy with either. Although: if you haven't had a phone with a giant screen, it's worth borrowing a friend's and carrying it around for a while to see how well you like it — hard to get a good idea just from handling it in the store.
Agreed. While it's nice to see him bring it up, it's definitely a weaker stance than Apple's. Pichai also says being required to enable hacking "Could be a troubling precedent." Well, yes. It would be nice if he (and CEOs of other major tech firms) stated specific opposition to it.
Users understand that if a company is legally bound to compromise privacy to work with law enforcement, they're going to do it. Nobody at Apple is going to go to jail for obstruction of justice. But it counts for something when they say that's the only way they'll do it, and when they put up a fight in court.
Plenty of people submit worthwhile things that just sit at the firehose, while plenty of shilled crap gets front paged.
Unfortunately, everybody's definition of "worthwhile things" is different. If there are specific examples you'd like to discuss, I'd be happy to post my perspective on why they may or may not have been posted. I realize that submitting to Slashdot can be like screaming into the void; it's something I always wanted to change. But there are often good reasons why submissions were declined.
Shilled stories get to the front page for a few reasons. Here's how CmdrTaco explained it to me when I joined Slashdot. The role of Slashdot is to be a filter; it whittles down the tens of thousands of articles posted every day to the 20-30 that are most relevant to the community. Most publications pump out lots of junk every day, along with a legitimately good article or two. If a shill wants to submit their best article for consideration... fine. Non-shills are preferred, of course, but more on-topic submissions in the firehose can only help the community. Editors can (and do) reject shills all the time. Even StartsWithABang only has a ~23% acceptance rate.
I dare you to explain how it is decided which things are front paged, including the names of the people who make the decisions. And I defy you to directly state that you still work for Slashdot and that advertising or other promotional deals do not affect what is posted to the front page.
I haven't worked for Slashdot since the acquisition. I can directly state that for the duration of my time there (Dec. 2007 until Jan. 2016) no advertising or promotional deals affected what was posted to the front page. (Excepting, of course, these dumb things that started a few months ago, which were straight up ad units, and labeled as such).
The editorial staff decides what gets posted. Prior to the acquisition, it was myself, samzenpus, and timothy. Since the acquisition, it appears to be timothy and a new editor named yaelk (and occasionally whipslash, one of Slashdot's new owners).
Stories are picked using a variety of criteria: how the community votes on it, how interesting it is, how on-topic it is, its relevance, the quality of the source, the article's timeliness, what similar material is on the page already, and a few other things. (Disclaimer: I am speaking for myself, and how I picked stories, but samzenpus and timothy operated similarly -- as CmdrTaco taught us).
These criteria are weighed against each other. If an article is a few days old, it needs to be particularly interesting to make the front page. The more off-topic something is, the more interesting it needs to be to make the cut. How the community votes is important, but is not enough on its own. The community sometimes votes for things that are factually untrue, or are years old, or involve attacking somebody. The community sometimes votes up dupes. On the other side of things, sometimes the community just doesn't vote.
There's no contract. Or any communication aside from the actual submissions. If you want different astronomy/science stories on Slashdot, you have easy recourse; submit your own!
Pretty tame conclusions, but I'm glad they're still doing research into this. I'm actually really curious to see what kind of psychological effects show up (or don't) as graphics technology gets ever closer to perfect fidelity. Not in the moral panic or "we must legislate this" sense, but just to understand whether and how a technology is capable of damaging us. VR is right around the corner, and game developers are focusing constantly on immersion -- this makes me wonder whether a sufficiently advanced game could cause PTSD, or a similar condition. I suspect not now, and not soon, but it'll probably be an issue some day.
I wouldn't phrase it quite like that, but you're absolutely right that PC gamers should wait for a bit. I picked up Rage for the PC right when it came out, and it was a complete mess. Carmack even apologized for it. He's not at id Software anymore, but hopefully the folks who are remember that lesson.
1. It's nice to see you're already communicating with the users. It's something I could never get previous leadership to do. Keep it up! You won't be able to bring them everything on their wishlist -- but don't let that stop you from telling them what you are bringing them, and why the other stuff got pushed lower on the priority list. They're reasonable folks; as long as you're working with them, they'll be on your side.
2. Small changes are better than big ones. Don't push ahead with a massive, grand plan and assume the community will jump on board (like video and beta). If they tell you they don't want it, they don't actually want it. When in doubt, trust Tim L. and Tim V. Nobody cares about the site and its users as much as those two.
3. Build for the community you have, not for the one you want. Don't chase the hockey stick. It's not going to happen. But there's still a path for evolving Slashdot to support an incredibly broad tech/geek community.
4. Nobody should make decisions about the site without being an active user.
5. Ask the community for help more often. The biggest area that needs it right now is submissions. They're the base from which all content flows, and they've been slowly drying up. Submission needs to feel less like screaming into the abyss. Consider reviving the IRC channel to give people direct, instant access to editorial. Try to find ways to solicit particular submissions from known experts. (For example, a submission about a new C++ release from an actual C++ engineer is worth its weight in gold.
6. Reward readers for doing things that benefit the site. Used a mod point? +1 subscriber (ad-free) page. Got a score:5 comment? +10 pages. Accepted submission? +10 pages. Or more. Be generous; these are your most valuable users.
7. Empower and invest in editorial. It is literally their job to know and understand the community, so they shouldn't lose fights centering on the community.
8. Ads have been in a bad place for a couple of years. Pulling it back will cost you revenue in the short term, but may ensure the site's sustainability in the long term.
9. Slashdot's founder, Rob Malda, still cares deeply about Slashdot. I'm sure he'd be willing to offer some advice.
You've been saying a lot of the right things about Slashdot an SourceForge. I sincerely hope you make it all happen.
It's true that companies with good support can make it very easy. Other companies can make it a nightmare.
Personally, I've never had a problem dealing with support when it came to individual components. If it doesn't work on arrival, retailers like Newegg will usually let you RMA it with no questions asked. Some manufacturers have great warranties, as well. Just recently I had a Sapphire graphics card that had a fan go out a year and a half after I bought it. They gave me no grief sending it in for a replacement.
Regardless of whether you pick pre-built or build your own, it's going to be a crapshoot in terms of how good support will be, unless you do a ton of research ahead of time. The nice part of building your own is that you generally have a lot more leeway in terms of what you can do without voiding your warranty. Your motherboard manufacturer isn't going to care that you put Linux on there, but the pre-built companies may take exception to blowing away whatever OS it comes with.
You're generally saving yourself trouble in the long run by building it yourself. As other have said, buying a pre-built system means you're going to have to worry about bloatware, firmware issues, and dealing with support if something goes wrong.
While it's true that you can find gaming systems for cheaper than you can build something yourself, it's almost impossible to beat the value of building it yourself. You can pick which components to spend big on, and which to scale back on. Pre-built systems will often have odd scaling issues between different parts.
For example, moving from a "medium" system to a "high-end" system may involve upgrading the video card and the CPU for $500. While it can be true that adding those two components individually does indeed add up to $500, you may get 90% of the performance increase from the video card. By building yourself, you can find the price/performance/features sweet spot for each individual component.
As the person who wrote it, I can guarantee there was not a shred of levity in it. Where I come from, "keep your head down" is synonymous with "stay safe" -- something I fervently hope any hostages are able to do. Since some people are apparently able to misinterpret that, I changed it.
I don't know if you're a troll or not, but you are going out of your way to pick a fight on the internet and projecting some serious ill intentions on somebody you don't know.
In addition to editing your submission for brevity and minor grammatical issues, I edited it for factual accuracy as well. I'll first address your two main points.
1) The rest of the quote from SourceForge was trimmed because it wasn't relevant to the content of the submission. SF has been bundling their "third-party offers" with projects who explicitly opt into it for a long time — it's a known thing, and has been discussed at length. Second, according to Fyodor's own post, they weren't bundling anything with nmap.
2) The rest of the Fyodor quote was trimmed for a similar reason. It makes reference fake download buttons and catching SF "trojaning" nmap. It's fine for Fyodor to editorialize as he pleases, but the first is a separate issue and the second is a non-event, so neither really have a place on this story.
The headline was changed for two reasons: First, Fyodor's account seems to still be under his control, and the nmap project seems to have been cloned/mirrored, so the references to hijacking the account lack clarity. Second, this is not actually new news. When the GIMP story broke, anyone with an interest could see what projects SF had taken over. Nothing actually changed for the project page Fyodor is posting about since the GIMP story broke — thus, the new information is simply that he's complaining about it. (Which is his right, of course.) I went ahead and posted the story for transparency's sake, and I added links at the bottom of the summary to the SF editor accounts, so people could easily see the full list of affected projects.
As stated at the end of the summary, old submissions are visible in the firehose. They're ordered by time, most recent first. If you scroll back through the past several days, you'll find a bunch of SourceForge-related submissions still alive and well.
I suppose you could put it that way. Slashdot and SourceForge have been under the same roof for a long time, but they've always been separate entities. I have no interaction with the SourceForge folks on a daily basis.
Slashdot Mirror
The last U.S. president to visit was Coolidge in 1928. They mention 1959 because that's when the U.S. effectively lost its influence there.
Negative; I started at Slashdot in December, 2007. Dice didn't buy it until Fall 2012.
While I disagree in general that the gaming market is dead — certainly the decline of brick & mortar stores tracks to some degree with the decline of games being distributed on physical media — I do agree that Quake 3 is the best FPS.
That's really awesome. I hadn't even considered the IT deployment possibilities.
When BizX bought Slashdot, they brought only a portion of the existing Slashdot staff with them. That included one of the three editors and one of the four engineers. I'm not sure about the other departments. I'd guess they intended to fill those roles with people from their own organization, but I don't know anything about how they're going about it.
I never met or talked with any of the BizX folks, so I can't tell you much more than that. We editors were the bottom of the decision-making totem pole for the site, so I didn't know about the acquisition until it was done.
Even if I'm no longer affiliated, I still love the site and the community. I'll keep contributing until I see good reason not to.
Yes, I've found another job -- I start on Monday, actually. Really looking forward to it. :)
I was in the market for a new phone last year. I was interested in the Galaxy S6, and it ended up high on my list. The biggest drawbacks to the S6 (for me) were: smallish battery, no USB-C, price, and questionable optimization decisions. The biggest drawbacks for the 6P were: no wireless charging, Snapdragon 810, and weight. (There are other downsides shared by both, like lack of a removable battery and the lack of an SD card slot. But that's becoming pretty standard these days.)
Battery life was a key feature for me, so I ended up choosing the Nexus 6P. I've been really happy with it. The 810 heat turned out not to be an issue. The overall battery life and speed with which it charges over USB-C makes me not mind the lack of wireless charging. I appreciate stock Android, though I think the hullabaloo over Samsung's TouchWiz is vastly overblown. It's not terrible, and hardly even noticeable if you download Nova launcher.
If the S7 had been out, it would have been a much tougher choice. Still no USB-C, but a bigger battery, and they're bringing SD card slots back. If I'm reading this right, they actually made the phone thicker than its predecessor... which is amazing. I hope more manufacturers stop the thickness race.
Ultimately, the 6P is a great phone, and the S7 looks like it'll be a great phone. You'll probably be happy with either. Although: if you haven't had a phone with a giant screen, it's worth borrowing a friend's and carrying it around for a while to see how well you like it — hard to get a good idea just from handling it in the store.
Agreed. While it's nice to see him bring it up, it's definitely a weaker stance than Apple's. Pichai also says being required to enable hacking "Could be a troubling precedent." Well, yes. It would be nice if he (and CEOs of other major tech firms) stated specific opposition to it.
Users understand that if a company is legally bound to compromise privacy to work with law enforcement, they're going to do it. Nobody at Apple is going to go to jail for obstruction of justice. But it counts for something when they say that's the only way they'll do it, and when they put up a fight in court.
Plenty of people submit worthwhile things that just sit at the firehose, while plenty of shilled crap gets front paged.
Unfortunately, everybody's definition of "worthwhile things" is different. If there are specific examples you'd like to discuss, I'd be happy to post my perspective on why they may or may not have been posted. I realize that submitting to Slashdot can be like screaming into the void; it's something I always wanted to change. But there are often good reasons why submissions were declined.
Shilled stories get to the front page for a few reasons. Here's how CmdrTaco explained it to me when I joined Slashdot. The role of Slashdot is to be a filter; it whittles down the tens of thousands of articles posted every day to the 20-30 that are most relevant to the community. Most publications pump out lots of junk every day, along with a legitimately good article or two. If a shill wants to submit their best article for consideration... fine. Non-shills are preferred, of course, but more on-topic submissions in the firehose can only help the community. Editors can (and do) reject shills all the time. Even StartsWithABang only has a ~23% acceptance rate.
I dare you to explain how it is decided which things are front paged, including the names of the people who make the decisions.
And I defy you to directly state that you still work for Slashdot and that advertising or other promotional deals do not affect what is posted to the front page.
I haven't worked for Slashdot since the acquisition. I can directly state that for the duration of my time there (Dec. 2007 until Jan. 2016) no advertising or promotional deals affected what was posted to the front page. (Excepting, of course, these dumb things that started a few months ago, which were straight up ad units, and labeled as such).
The editorial staff decides what gets posted. Prior to the acquisition, it was myself, samzenpus, and timothy. Since the acquisition, it appears to be timothy and a new editor named yaelk (and occasionally whipslash, one of Slashdot's new owners).
Stories are picked using a variety of criteria: how the community votes on it, how interesting it is, how on-topic it is, its relevance, the quality of the source, the article's timeliness, what similar material is on the page already, and a few other things. (Disclaimer: I am speaking for myself, and how I picked stories, but samzenpus and timothy operated similarly -- as CmdrTaco taught us).
These criteria are weighed against each other. If an article is a few days old, it needs to be particularly interesting to make the front page. The more off-topic something is, the more interesting it needs to be to make the cut. How the community votes is important, but is not enough on its own. The community sometimes votes for things that are factually untrue, or are years old, or involve attacking somebody. The community sometimes votes up dupes. On the other side of things, sometimes the community just doesn't vote.
Hope this provides some context for you.
There's no contract. Or any communication aside from the actual submissions. If you want different astronomy/science stories on Slashdot, you have easy recourse; submit your own!
Thanks for doing this.
Full study here.
Pretty tame conclusions, but I'm glad they're still doing research into this. I'm actually really curious to see what kind of psychological effects show up (or don't) as graphics technology gets ever closer to perfect fidelity. Not in the moral panic or "we must legislate this" sense, but just to understand whether and how a technology is capable of damaging us. VR is right around the corner, and game developers are focusing constantly on immersion -- this makes me wonder whether a sufficiently advanced game could cause PTSD, or a similar condition. I suspect not now, and not soon, but it'll probably be an issue some day.
I wouldn't phrase it quite like that, but you're absolutely right that PC gamers should wait for a bit. I picked up Rage for the PC right when it came out, and it was a complete mess. Carmack even apologized for it. He's not at id Software anymore, but hopefully the folks who are remember that lesson.
1. It's nice to see you're already communicating with the users. It's something I could never get previous leadership to do. Keep it up! You won't be able to bring them everything on their wishlist -- but don't let that stop you from telling them what you are bringing them, and why the other stuff got pushed lower on the priority list. They're reasonable folks; as long as you're working with them, they'll be on your side.
2. Small changes are better than big ones. Don't push ahead with a massive, grand plan and assume the community will jump on board (like video and beta). If they tell you they don't want it, they don't actually want it. When in doubt, trust Tim L. and Tim V. Nobody cares about the site and its users as much as those two.
3. Build for the community you have, not for the one you want. Don't chase the hockey stick. It's not going to happen. But there's still a path for evolving Slashdot to support an incredibly broad tech/geek community.
4. Nobody should make decisions about the site without being an active user.
5. Ask the community for help more often. The biggest area that needs it right now is submissions. They're the base from which all content flows, and they've been slowly drying up. Submission needs to feel less like screaming into the abyss. Consider reviving the IRC channel to give people direct, instant access to editorial. Try to find ways to solicit particular submissions from known experts. (For example, a submission about a new C++ release from an actual C++ engineer is worth its weight in gold.
6. Reward readers for doing things that benefit the site. Used a mod point? +1 subscriber (ad-free) page. Got a score:5 comment? +10 pages. Accepted submission? +10 pages. Or more. Be generous; these are your most valuable users.
7. Empower and invest in editorial. It is literally their job to know and understand the community, so they shouldn't lose fights centering on the community.
8. Ads have been in a bad place for a couple of years. Pulling it back will cost you revenue in the short term, but may ensure the site's sustainability in the long term.
9. Slashdot's founder, Rob Malda, still cares deeply about Slashdot. I'm sure he'd be willing to offer some advice.
You've been saying a lot of the right things about Slashdot an SourceForge. I sincerely hope you make it all happen.
Best of luck,
Jeff
It's true that companies with good support can make it very easy. Other companies can make it a nightmare.
Personally, I've never had a problem dealing with support when it came to individual components. If it doesn't work on arrival, retailers like Newegg will usually let you RMA it with no questions asked. Some manufacturers have great warranties, as well. Just recently I had a Sapphire graphics card that had a fan go out a year and a half after I bought it. They gave me no grief sending it in for a replacement.
Regardless of whether you pick pre-built or build your own, it's going to be a crapshoot in terms of how good support will be, unless you do a ton of research ahead of time. The nice part of building your own is that you generally have a lot more leeway in terms of what you can do without voiding your warranty. Your motherboard manufacturer isn't going to care that you put Linux on there, but the pre-built companies may take exception to blowing away whatever OS it comes with.
You're generally saving yourself trouble in the long run by building it yourself. As other have said, buying a pre-built system means you're going to have to worry about bloatware, firmware issues, and dealing with support if something goes wrong.
While it's true that you can find gaming systems for cheaper than you can build something yourself, it's almost impossible to beat the value of building it yourself. You can pick which components to spend big on, and which to scale back on. Pre-built systems will often have odd scaling issues between different parts.
For example, moving from a "medium" system to a "high-end" system may involve upgrading the video card and the CPU for $500. While it can be true that adding those two components individually does indeed add up to $500, you may get 90% of the performance increase from the video card. By building yourself, you can find the price/performance/features sweet spot for each individual component.
Good luck with your build!
As the person who wrote it, I can guarantee there was not a shred of levity in it. Where I come from, "keep your head down" is synonymous with "stay safe" -- something I fervently hope any hostages are able to do. Since some people are apparently able to misinterpret that, I changed it.
I don't know if you're a troll or not, but you are going out of your way to pick a fight on the internet and projecting some serious ill intentions on somebody you don't know.
Thanks. I've updated to fix.
I will do so.
No idea. I am not privy to such things.
That would be awesome.
Hi. Thanks for the submission.
In addition to editing your submission for brevity and minor grammatical issues, I edited it for factual accuracy as well. I'll first address your two main points.
1) The rest of the quote from SourceForge was trimmed because it wasn't relevant to the content of the submission. SF has been bundling their "third-party offers" with projects who explicitly opt into it for a long time — it's a known thing, and has been discussed at length. Second, according to Fyodor's own post, they weren't bundling anything with nmap.
2) The rest of the Fyodor quote was trimmed for a similar reason. It makes reference fake download buttons and catching SF "trojaning" nmap. It's fine for Fyodor to editorialize as he pleases, but the first is a separate issue and the second is a non-event, so neither really have a place on this story.
The headline was changed for two reasons: First, Fyodor's account seems to still be under his control, and the nmap project seems to have been cloned/mirrored, so the references to hijacking the account lack clarity. Second, this is not actually new news. When the GIMP story broke, anyone with an interest could see what projects SF had taken over. Nothing actually changed for the project page Fyodor is posting about since the GIMP story broke — thus, the new information is simply that he's complaining about it. (Which is his right, of course.) I went ahead and posted the story for transparency's sake, and I added links at the bottom of the summary to the SF editor accounts, so people could easily see the full list of affected projects.
As stated at the end of the summary, old submissions are visible in the firehose. They're ordered by time, most recent first. If you scroll back through the past several days, you'll find a bunch of SourceForge-related submissions still alive and well.
I suppose you could put it that way. Slashdot and SourceForge have been under the same roof for a long time, but they've always been separate entities. I have no interaction with the SourceForge folks on a daily basis.
I acknowledge that this was a fuck up. As I said in my note on the story, I'm sorry it took so long for this post to go up.
People are going to look for reasons to be mad, no matter what I do. They're entitled to that. I'm just doing what I can to make the situation right.