What it should do is take you back to the main salon home page, after which all the stories are accessible. If it doesn't do that, then there's probably some bad browser-OS-cookie configuration problem. Sigh.
Re:full article text, no pass required
on
Software Archaeology
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
You watch an ad to get a day pass. Advertisers pay to sponsor the daypass. The more people use the daypass, the more valuable that sponsorship, and the more we can charge for it.
I responded to this above once already, but because this is dear to my heart, I'll do it again. Of course Salon isn't going to care if anyone prints out a copy and tapes it to their cube wall. But if a Web site grabs the text and posts it in a place like Slashdot, that deprives us of literally thousands of readers. Many of those readers might otherwise watch and ad and grab the daypass, which is good for our financial health, and some percentage of other readers might even subscribe, which is even better for us.
Technically, it's copyright infringement, but Salon isn't going to devote resources to suing Slashdot or Slashdot readers. If we were going to go that route, we'd start with the Freerepublic assholes, who actively want us to go bankrupt and do everything they can to help us down that road. To slashdot readers, the best appeal I can make is simple.
We want to make a living at what we do, so we can keep doing it. I want to keep paying great technology writers like Rachel Chalmers and Sam Williams to do interesting stories. If we convince enough readers to watch our ads or subscribe, we'll pull off this magic trick. So basically, the way I see it, any time a Slashdot reader posts the full text of a story on Slashdot, it's a vote against our survival, which is ironic, since you wouldn't be posting the stories if you didn't think there was some merit in them, right?
Re:full article text, no pass required
on
Software Archaeology
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
At least with jay-walking, no matter how many times you do it, the road will still be there. But if you post the full text of Salon stories without either subscribing or getting the FREE day-pass, eventually we will no longer be able to pay fine writers like Sam Williams and Rachel Chalmers to write the stories that Slashdot readers like to read.
Hackers is an awesome book, one of the best books about computing culture ever written, in my opinion. The Hacker Ethic picks up on some strands that are in Hackers, and elaborates it into a theory of how hackers approach work.
I can't say that I'm surprised at how condescending and outright nasty many of the comments directed at Salon's sysadmin are here. The tenor of discussion at Slashdot has degenerated quite a bit since I first started reading it three or so years ago.
But I will say that the particular admin I was describing is, in my opinion, a really cool guy who is passionate about free software, works with it every day, and is knowledgeable about a ton of of complex technical issues.
I'll also say that those of you trying to pretend that sysadmins can't be hackers or vice versa are bigots, plain and simple. You're a disgrace.
My bad on the CERN/CERT typo and the freshmeat URL. Should be corrected by now.
I've been trying to figure out an appropriate way to alert Slashdot to stories that I think Slashdot readers will appreciate. I've been a longtime participant in Slashdot, and for years refrained from submitting any of my own stories, basically figuring that it was up to Slashdot whether they were worth covering. Then Slashdot linked to a Red Herring reprint of a story we ran on Gnutella, and I wrote Rob Malda asking how this could be avoided, and he said that everybody "else" submits their own stories. So since then I've started submitting them -- although the only stories I've submitted have been SDMI related
We checked out the story with three members of the coalition, all of whom confirmed it. They did so off the record, of course, which puts us in a vulnerable position. But all I see in the inside.com article is one source, the executive director, who has every reason to be unhappy with Salon, not just for this story, but for previous stories in Salon that painted him in an unflattering light.
We printed their denial, we checked it out as best we could. I won't respond to larger questions about Salon's "ethics" but I'll defend Salon's technology coverage to the DEATH.
Re:Wow...the Linux community really IS "the enemy"
on
SDMI Cracked Too Soon
·
· Score: 2
As the editor on the piece, I just want to note that the intent of the sentence was to indicate that the programmers were suspicious of SDMI's attempt to manipulate them, not that the programmers themselves were somehow evil.
I'll go rewrite it to make it more obvious what themeaning was.
Oh please. Over the weekend, Slashdot linked to a Red herring reprint of a major story we did on Gnutella, and I was a little peeved that we didn't get a direct link. So i asked Rob Malda how we could avoid this, and he said there was nothing wrong with submitting stories directly. So I did.
Next time I'll be sure to mention all my connections with the piece, but anyone who knows my writing well enough to call me "a perfectly fine journalist" ought to know that I wouldn't "whore" anything to slashdot that I didn't think was fully appropriate to Slashdot readers.
Re:FreeBSD and BSDI's BSD/OS codebases *will* merg
on
The Roots Of BSD
·
· Score: 2
OK -- I did goof. I should have written that BSDi had merged with Walnut Creek CD-ROM. I just got off the phone with Kirk McKusick and he straightened me out.
There is the expectation, according to McKusick that there will be some merging of the code bases between BSD/OS and FreeBSD. McKusick says that the source code to BSD/OS will be made available to FreeBSD committers, who will be able to take pieces of code, and once having integrated them into FreeBSD, change the license to a BSD-style license.
I'll make a change in the text ofmy story and log the correction in my revision log.
Actually, I think I do understand the power of the community -- at least I think that's the way I've been reporting about this for at least two years. But I also think that we haven't yet seen the true test of community power vs. shareholder capitalism. And I think it's really worth keeping as a close an eye as possible on events as they happen.
I won't deny that we pay attention to circulation figures, but that's not the only reason we cover free software so closely. It's a rare case of instance when a story that we think, editorially, is really important,-- socially, politically, economically -- also turns out to be very popular with readers. So we're running with it. I'm pretty much following this beat exclusively.
And while the slashdot effect is indeed impressive, over time the percentage of readers for a particular free software story that have been referred directly from Slashdot has been declining, which leads me to believe that some people are now checking us independently to see what we have to say.
Many of you already know this -- but I made a pretty stupid error in the Apple/Linux story. I said that Mac OS X is code-named Darwin. As I have been informed by numerous parties this morning, Darwin only refers to certain underlying layers of code in Mac OS X, mainly Mach and BSD. Corrections have been made to the story that bring it, I hope, into line.
Well, I really apologize for starting off Rob's day badly. I have nothing but the greatest respect for Slashdot and what Rob has accomplished here. I mainly thought it was funny that I was being approached by a public relations firm that was pushing Rob Malda as some kind of Linux celebrity. I most certainly didn't mean to criticize another open source site or Rob himself.
I should have e-mailed Rob and asked for his take on how the PR company was representing him. Mea culpa. I didn't because I was just doing a take on my LinuxWorld related mail, and didn't stop to think about how readers might react. I never imagined that they might think that Rob was personally responsible for the way he was being packaged.
Stern's comments on the semantics of "botness" are, I think, well taken. Certainly it was the hardest thing to work out in the book. In my own defense, I'll note that I was pretty explicit about this problem in the book, and particularly with respect to the Wumpus.
Slashdot readers will probably appreciate the fact that when I was researching the Wumpus, I dropped a line to the editor of the Jargon File, asking him if he thought there was any way the Wumpus could be considered a "bot." He flamed me so hard for my idiocy I almost had an aneurysm. And that was my first introduction to none other than Eric Raymond, long before anybody had heard, or said, the term "open source."
Anyway, for people who hated the green ink, the weird typography, the unjustified margins -- I'm totally with you. I can only recommend that if you are interested -- get the paperback. It was published last fall by Penguin, and it looks very nice. Cheaper too.
It's also worth noting that a number of Salon staffers are long time Well veterans, like myself, our VP for site development Scott Rosenberg, our Table Talk host Mary Beth Williams, and not least of all, our Table Talk conferencing director, Cliff Figallo, who for many years was one of the Well's top two hosts.
The Well's got a lot more than six months of a future.
Oh please...as the author of that sidebar, I think that categorizing the whole pieces as a piece about "how incredibly hard it is to use Linux" is inaccurate.
Despite the great advances being made in usability for those who aren't very proficient with computers to begin with, I still think Linux is not ready for the average Windows user -- unless it is exquisitely pre-installed and configured by someone who knows what they are doing.
Slashdot Mirror
I am informed that earlier today the daypass option was broken. My apologies.
What it should do is take you back to the main salon home page, after which all the stories are accessible. If it doesn't do that, then there's probably some bad browser-OS-cookie configuration problem. Sigh.
You watch an ad to get a day pass. Advertisers pay to sponsor the daypass. The more people use the daypass, the more valuable that sponsorship, and the more we can charge for it.
I responded to this above once already, but because this is dear to my heart, I'll do it again. Of course Salon isn't going to care if anyone prints out a copy and tapes it to their cube wall. But if a Web site grabs the text and posts it in a place like Slashdot, that deprives us of literally thousands of readers. Many of those readers might otherwise watch and ad and grab the daypass, which is good for our financial health, and some percentage of other readers might even subscribe, which is even better for us.
Technically, it's copyright infringement, but Salon isn't going to devote resources to suing Slashdot or Slashdot readers. If we were going to go that route, we'd start with the Freerepublic assholes, who actively want us to go bankrupt and do everything they can to help us down that road. To slashdot readers, the best appeal I can make is simple.
We want to make a living at what we do, so we can keep doing it. I want to keep paying great technology writers like Rachel Chalmers and Sam Williams to do interesting stories. If we convince enough readers to watch our ads or subscribe, we'll pull off this magic trick. So basically, the way I see it, any time a Slashdot reader posts the full text of a story on Slashdot, it's a vote against our survival, which is ironic, since you wouldn't be posting the stories if you didn't think there was some merit in them, right?
At least with jay-walking, no matter how many times you do it, the road will still be there. But if you post the full text of Salon stories without either subscribing or getting the FREE day-pass, eventually we will no longer be able to pay fine writers like Sam Williams and Rachel Chalmers to write the stories that Slashdot readers like to read.
Hackers is an awesome book, one of the best books about computing culture ever written, in my opinion. The Hacker Ethic picks up on some strands that are in Hackers, and elaborates it into a theory of how hackers approach work.
Hackers: indispensable
Hacker Ethic: interesting
I can't say that I'm surprised at how condescending and outright nasty many of the comments directed at Salon's sysadmin are here. The tenor of discussion at Slashdot has degenerated quite a bit since I first started reading it three or so years ago.
But I will say that the particular admin I was describing is, in my opinion, a really cool guy who is passionate about free software, works with it every day, and is knowledgeable about a ton of of complex technical issues.
I'll also say that those of you trying to pretend that sysadmins can't be hackers or vice versa are bigots, plain and simple. You're a disgrace.
My bad on the CERN/CERT typo and the freshmeat URL. Should be corrected by now.
I've been trying to figure out an appropriate way to alert Slashdot to stories that I think Slashdot readers will appreciate. I've been a longtime participant in Slashdot, and for years refrained from submitting any of my own stories, basically figuring that it was up to Slashdot whether they were worth covering. Then Slashdot linked to a Red Herring reprint of a story we ran on Gnutella, and I wrote Rob Malda asking how this could be avoided, and he said that everybody "else" submits their own stories. So since then I've started submitting them -- although the only stories I've submitted have been SDMI related
We checked out the story with three members of the coalition, all of whom confirmed it. They did so off the record, of course, which puts us in a vulnerable position. But all I see in the inside.com article is one source, the executive director, who has every reason to be unhappy with Salon, not just for this story, but for previous stories in Salon that painted him in an unflattering light.
We printed their denial, we checked it out as best we could. I won't respond to larger questions about Salon's "ethics" but I'll defend Salon's technology coverage to the DEATH.
As the editor on the piece, I just want to note that the intent of the sentence was to indicate that the programmers were suspicious of SDMI's attempt to manipulate them, not that the programmers themselves were somehow evil. I'll go rewrite it to make it more obvious what themeaning was.
Oh please. Over the weekend, Slashdot linked to a Red herring reprint of a major story we did on Gnutella, and I was a little peeved that we didn't get a direct link. So i asked Rob Malda how we could avoid this, and he said there was nothing wrong with submitting stories directly. So I did.
Next time I'll be sure to mention all my connections with the piece, but anyone who knows my writing well enough to call me "a perfectly fine journalist" ought to know that I wouldn't "whore" anything to slashdot that I didn't think was fully appropriate to Slashdot readers.
OK -- I did goof. I should have written that BSDi had merged with Walnut Creek CD-ROM. I just got off the phone with Kirk McKusick and he straightened me out.
There is the expectation, according to McKusick that there will be some merging of the code bases between BSD/OS and FreeBSD. McKusick says that the source code to BSD/OS will be made available to FreeBSD committers, who will be able to take pieces of code, and once having integrated them into FreeBSD, change the license to a BSD-style license.
I'll make a change in the text ofmy story and log the correction in my revision log.
Actually, I think I do understand the power of the community -- at least I think that's the way I've been reporting about this for at least two years. But I also think that we haven't yet seen the true test of community power vs. shareholder capitalism. And I think it's really worth keeping as a close an eye as possible on events as they happen.
I won't deny that we pay attention to circulation figures, but that's not the only reason we cover free software so closely. It's a rare case of instance when a story that we think, editorially, is really important,-- socially, politically, economically -- also turns out to be very popular with readers. So we're running with it. I'm pretty much following this beat exclusively.
And while the slashdot effect is indeed impressive, over time the percentage of readers for a particular free software story that have been referred directly from Slashdot has been declining, which leads me to believe that some people are now checking us independently to see what we have to say.
Many of you already know this -- but I made a pretty stupid error in the Apple/Linux story. I said that Mac OS X is code-named Darwin. As I have been informed by numerous parties this morning, Darwin only refers to certain underlying layers of code in Mac OS X, mainly Mach and BSD. Corrections have been made to the story that bring it, I hope, into line.
Cheers!
Well -- Rob's note introducing this topic makes it sound like he didn't enjoy reading his mail this morning.
Well, I really apologize for starting off Rob's day badly. I have nothing but the greatest respect for Slashdot and what Rob has accomplished here. I mainly thought it was funny that I was being approached by a public relations firm that was pushing Rob Malda as some kind of Linux celebrity. I most certainly didn't mean to criticize another open source site or Rob himself.
I should have e-mailed Rob and asked for his take on how the PR company was representing him. Mea culpa. I didn't because I was just doing a take on my LinuxWorld related mail, and didn't stop to think about how readers might react. I never imagined that they might think that Rob was personally responsible for the way he was being packaged.
Damn.
Just a note -- the above article is only the first page, less than a third of the whole article.
Got to get up earrrrrlly in the morning to beat slashdot.
u rcexchange/index.html
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/05/14/so
Stern's comments on the semantics of "botness" are, I think, well taken. Certainly it was the hardest thing to work out in the book. In my own defense, I'll note that I was pretty explicit about this problem in the book, and particularly with respect to the Wumpus.
Slashdot readers will probably appreciate the fact that when I was researching the Wumpus, I dropped a line to the editor of the Jargon File, asking him if he thought there was any way the Wumpus could be considered a "bot." He flamed me so hard for my idiocy I almost had an aneurysm. And that was my first introduction to none other than Eric Raymond, long before anybody had heard, or said, the term "open source."
Anyway, for people who hated the green ink, the weird typography, the unjustified margins -- I'm totally with you. I can only recommend that if you are interested -- get the paperback. It was published last fall by Penguin, and it looks very nice. Cheaper too.
Cheers.
OUCH! Damnit, not enough sleep. I'll fix that.
It's also worth noting that a number of Salon staffers are long time Well veterans, like myself, our VP for site development Scott Rosenberg, our Table Talk host Mary Beth Williams, and not least of all, our Table Talk conferencing director, Cliff Figallo, who for many years was one of the Well's top two hosts.
The Well's got a lot more than six months of a future.
Oh please...as the author of that sidebar, I think that categorizing the whole pieces as a piece about "how incredibly hard it is to use Linux" is inaccurate.
Despite the great advances being made in usability for those who aren't very proficient with computers to begin with, I still think Linux is not ready for the average Windows user -- unless it is exquisitely pre-installed and configured by
someone who knows what they are doing.