Thanks For Reading: 15 Years of News For Nerds 229
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.
Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
To everyone involved, on both sides of the fence!
The new logo is really great BTW.
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Informative)
Oblig http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1SpFt7zJUM [youtube.com]
but yes "little enidian" to rule ;-p
lets hope for another 15
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hmmm... although slashdot.com is redirected. It is slashdot.org !
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Funny)
As a real nerd I have to object. Endianness is all about the order of equal-sized elements in a larger container. In the most popular form, it is about the order of bytes within a larger (16, 32 or 64) word. Hence, assuming every character is stored as a byte, the logo should be
todhsalS (64 bit), salShtodh (32 bit) or lSsadhto (16 bit).
This logo is not a correct representation of any little endianness stored Slashdot, not even on 24 bit machines.
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Funny)
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This is why I come to Slashdot: for posts that are best read while imagining Comic Book Guy's voice. :-)
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Haha (Score:5, Insightful)
The title gives the impress "thanks for reading, we're shutting down /. kthxbi"
as always, tl;dr
Re:Haha (Score:5, Insightful)
Not RTFA is one of Slashdot's greatest traditions.
Re:Haha (Score:4, Funny)
Scratch that, you apparently didn't even RTFS.
Re:Haha (Score:4, Funny)
Why even waste time RTFT (Title)? Just start commenting. To paraphrase one Zapp Brannigan: Make as many posts as you can as fast as you can. Don't stop for _any reason_.
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Re:Haha (Score:5, Informative)
and they dropped "stuff that matters" :)
Re:Haha (Score:4, Funny)
They did a long time ago.
And OSnews has become "Thoms latest phone purchases and such"
Re:Haha (Score:5, Funny)
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Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you Slashdot. You created one of the greatest communities on the internet. Yeah, it is a community, despite the fact that we mostly argue with each other all the time :-) No other site comes close to being as insightful and interesting, and occasionally hilarious.
I'm sure there will be lots of "Slashdot is dying" posts, but I think it is more of an inevitable change. Long gone as the Emacs vs. vi holy wars, to be replaced with the Android vs. iOS wars. How long ago the late 90s seem now.
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At least we are still seeing sensible comments here in slashdot
And without demanding your real name either.
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Informative)
Long gone as the Emacs vs. vi holy wars, to be replaced with the Android vs. iOS wars. How long ago the late 90s seem now.
I used to like coming here when apple was nearly dead and you could guarantee a good MS bashing. How times have changed indeed
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Yeah, those were the days ;). At least we have a choice now. Even in companies you see more and more Linux and Apple.
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MS bashing is still alive and well, but Apple are really pushing hard for that number-one-object-of-hate spot.
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Funny)
3 obvious points about that: /. is dying when Netcraft confirms it.
1. I'll believe
2. Your preferred $EDITOR sucks. Mine rocks.
3. I want Natalie Portman naked and petrified in hot grits.
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russian, Natalie Portman pours hot grits on YOU.
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our hot grit pouring Portmans from Russia Overlords.
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1. Build a beowulf cluster of hot grit pouring Portmans.
2. ??
3. Profit!
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I want to see a site from a former soviet republic post a link to slashdot that overwhelms the servers so that way in Soviet Russia...
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In the /. HQ, CowboyNeil pours hot grits down Natalie Portman's trousers!
Re:Thanks (Score:4, Funny)
Starting Score: 1
Moderation: +1
Thank you Slashdot. You created one of the greatest communities on the internet. Yeah, it is a community, despite the fact that we mostly argue with each other all the time :-)
+1 Informative
No other site comes close to being as insightful and interesting, and occasionally hilarious.
+1 Funny
I'm sure there will be lots of "Slashdot is dying" posts, but I think it is more of an inevitable change.
-1 Troll
Long gone as the Emacs vs. vi holy wars, to be replaced with the Android vs. iOS wars.
-1 Flamebait
How long ago the late 90s seem now.
+1 Insightful
Total Score: 2
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It could have been digg/reddit long ago though, before those even came about, but the site rested on it's ass.
Not that I mind, given the commentary there is low grade and lots of noise... but still.
Aside a few tweaks, this place kinda the same since 1999. No ambition whatsoever.
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At least they aren't Windows-8-ing the interface like some news sites are...
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Slashdot = stagnated.
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Definitely. Back in the late 90's it didn't really seem odd to hear influential people in IT say things like "UNIX is dead", "In ten years every server will be running Windows NT or Netware" or "Linux is just a toy, Windows is the future".
The only upside to those dark days was that a lot of companies who got suckered into the lovely all-Windows future dumped near-new workstations and servers because they were standardizing on NT on workstations and servers (and surprisingly often win9x on regular desktops,
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For me it's bitter-sweet. Both Linux and BSD are open source, and that was always the dream - OS software running on mainstream consumer devices, replacing proprietary and restricted code. Unfortunately it took commercial companies doing their own UIs on top of the OS core to gain popularity, and while iOS is particularly bad both MacOS and Android are still somewhat locked down in practice (bootloaders, DRM etc.)
Even on /. I don't think many people realize just how many embedded devices run Linux or BSD.
Re:Thanks (Score:5, Interesting)
"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).
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To be fair I think most people recognize now that Windows is pretty stable, but of course is at the mercy of poorly written applications and hardware failures. Displays in particular, where the machine is stuck in some hot cupboard somewhere and neglected for years on end doing 24/7 duty and then not attended to when it fails so the evidence lingers for days, tend to show many such faults.
It is interesting how when MacOS/iOS/Android/TVs/routers/etc crash people don't blame Linux or BSD. It is just assumed t
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Re:Thanks (Score:4, Informative)
TBH I haven't gone to this link in awhile since I like to read all comments, but it's a roundup of the most popular Slashdot comments (submitted by users): http://seenonslash.com/ [seenonslash.com]
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That "get a life" post! (Score:2, Funny)
Wow! 15 years? Man I need a life.
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It's pretty crazy that I'm still with the same site I was reading back in high school and my freshman year of college.
I still remember my first +4 post and how I got contacted by the guy who in HS introduced me to the site I would continually contribute to as a commenter for the next 15 years of my life because it floated to the top.
I went to my first /. meetup after moving to Minnesota, a state where I knew no one and realized the community this site has built covers such a wide range of "nerds" that while
/. 10 years of news for nerds (Score:3, Insightful)
and five years of news for burned out web admins.
15th year old (Score:2, Interesting)
I suppose that this means that /. is currently in its acne filled puberty.
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I wish I was back in my acne filled, zx spectrum dominated, puberty... so much to look forward to in those days. And congratulations and thank you to /. for filling up a bit of my life that probably would not have found the same level satisfaction in the real world. Oh, and mobile /. is long overdue.
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LOL (Score:2)
No, thank you! (Score:5, Interesting)
dayummm (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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That is a low number you go there old timer. Heck I think I always had a login so that may have happened sooner.
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Think I signed up around 1997/8ish after I'd been reading for a while. Seems like so long ago. Because it was :-/
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Yup! ;)
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I think it must have been 97/98 but saying that I can't remember anything about no logins etc :-/
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Missed the sub-100's by a bit, myself. It took me a while to realize that logins were possible (or useful). At the time, the comments weren't even close to the most interesting part of the site.
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Re:dayummm (Score:5, Funny)
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Heck, this is my second ID, because I couldn't remember my first. Sigh, good to see some folks that make me seem like a noob still around. Was fun to see the Hot Grits comment, I'd love to see some caveman comments. Feeling old "First Post"
It would be interesting if they could dig up what the highest UID was at the end of each year, and post that
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I had the same thing happen. I didn't create an account right away when they first started offering them and when I finally did I lost the first one.
Re:dayummm (Score:5, Interesting)
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Impressively low numbers, fer sure! "Age" is relative. When I finally joined (after watching for a while), I thought "that's it, I'll be at the end of this line forever." Then within a few years 10x more people joined. This is a great site (though I sometimes do look for a "like" or thumbs-up option and wish I had karma points to give).
Re:dayummm (Score:5, Informative)
My sig points to some research I did to answer this question.
EDIT: For those of you not logged in, the sig says http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year [slashdot.org]
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Perfect - I was saying that someone should do that research
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Thanks for the kind words. It isn't perfect, but I included links for those who might want to refine the numbers.
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Thanks for posting this- I've actually been wondering for years.
I must have signed up in 1999. I was.... thirteen. Now I'm 26.
Half my life!
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The bad thing is I had an earlier ID but it was tied to one of the earliest ISPs that went under. Since I couldn't remember my password and the email was invalid, I had to create a new ID (this one). It's still a low number though :)
I found the old email address a couple of years ago and thought I'd send a note in to see if I could reactivate it based on knowing the e-mail but I never received a reply (probably a good thing I guess).
[John]
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I was lurking for at least a year before registering, I believe. If I'm someplace with access to my own computer, I will typically visit at least once per day. Oh, the hours you owe me, Slashdot! ;)
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Not your actual age. Your Slashdot age. I've probably been here 13-14 years.
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Presumably that can be calculated fairly easily from your ID?
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I was here from the start I think. First I lurked, but /. was the first site I got an account on.
day 1 (Score:2)
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How many userIDs do you have? The one you are using is too high to be from "day one".
BTW - only one of the sites mentioned in your post is a search engine. The other two are not search engines.
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Thanks for all the fish... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for bringing me a community with people that are more than willing to give me sleepless nights.
Thank you for giving me a reason to surf on the job, just to check if that rat bastard Anonymous Coward has brought insult to my name, once more.
Thank you for bringing us a site that is immediately quoted on a bazillion dupe wannabee sites once it gets slashdotted.
Thank you for reminding me that I am a geek, no matter where I work, whom I work for - ultimatively Im really your bitch and nobody else.
Thank you for occasionally making me a moderator and handing me anything between 5 to 15 moderator points just to take it away from me a few days later, just to tell me that every geek is created equal.
Thank you for posting subjects making it possible to discuss no one else but us geeks would ever dream of discussing.
And ultimatively...
Thank you for being the one and only site out there, reminding us all of - that we have no life, really - we dont! ;)
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Thank you for giving me a reason to surf on the job, just to check if that rat bastard Anonymous Coward has brought insult to my name, once more.
When I first started lurking on /. I genuinely believed that Anonymous Coward was a remarkably prolific poster. It was not until I plucked up the courage some years later and posted something that I realized...
I, for one.. (Score:3)
I, for one, congratulate our Slashdot overlords!
On /. will live for ever ! (Score:2)
On /. will live for ever:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3050993&cid=41003473 [slashdot.org]
Slashdot on 9/11 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Yah since the MSM sites were slashdotted it was nice to see Slashdot itself gear "down" and have 2 posts going on in a MUST NOT GO DOWN fashion.
How many different websites went into BAD WOLF mode (and how quickly did they come back up??)?
How about joining the 21st century? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, like implementing things like IPv6 and UTF-8 support.
Mod points for ACs for 15th anniversary (Score:5, Funny)
I hear each and every AC is going to get 15 mod points for /. 15th anniversary, spread the news !
Long missed feature (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking of, when will we get unicode support?
Re: (Score:3)
I'm so very tired of pasting totally innocuous copy and having it turn into perl code.
Congrats and thanks! (Score:2)
Congratulations on surviving this long...many other places on the net have come and gone in the time that you have been around...and I have been there with you too, and enjoying it all the time. Thank you for building such a wonderful site, again and again and again! :-)
Good luck going into the future, from one of you're earlier members!
ttyl
Farrell
Well you are welcome..... (Score:2)
...dotSlash
Does this mean there is only 15 more years?
About damn time.. (Score:2)
Time sink! (Score:2)
happy birthday kid. now get a job. (Score:2)
My android only loads half of the new icon. The mobile site doesn't let me view just the article - it automatically expands the first or second article.
Thanks for being awesome (Score:2)
Slashdot, I love you.
Slashdot: a better example of what the net can be (Score:5, Insightful)
Having had legitimate posts downvoted to "Flamebait" for offending community pretense, I'm not going to pretend Slashdot is a Utopia. People are still people, and people are still stupid, even when they're smart. On the internet, this all gets turned up to 11.
However, Slashdot is a better example of what the net can be than "social networking" like Facebook, Myspace, Digg, Fark, Reddit, etc. These sites are clustered around the idea of people socializing through the internet. As a nerd, I think that's foolish. You socialize around being a person who likes to be with other people, and you find people who you respect.
A lot has changed in the past 15 years. UNIX is now mainstream, running on thousands of devices. Even more, computer technology and networking are now mainstream, with ordinary people navigating wi-fi hotspots and even writing code for their phones. What once was special and unique is no longer so removed from the experience of normal people.
I miss CmdrTaco and his guidance, but think the team is doing a good job. That's fortunate, as they have quite a task ahead of them: remaining focused on what it is they do well in a world that has surged past their original mission, and now needs new types of guidance with new uses of technology.
15 years (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My post for 2012 (Score:4, Informative)
Your post is a good experiment on how no one ever scrolls down to the bottom and only comment the first 5 - 7 posts.
Some things never change in 15 years, eh?
Mods? This is why you use your points near the bottom! Anything? Helllllllllloooooooo?
Well, at least this is where I usually try to use my mod points. Sorry Dave, used my last one up before it expired at midnight last night. I'd have given you one here. Thanks for being part of the reason why I started reading here so long ago, man.
Cheers to ya!
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Slashdot's gone cold I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all
The morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all
And even if I could it'll all be gray but your picture on my wall
It reminds me, that it's not so bad -- it's not so bad
Dear Rob, I wrote but you still ain't callin
I left my email, my ICQ, and my yahoo chat at the bottom
I sent two emails back in autumn, you must not-a got 'em
There probably was a problem with your sendmail or somethin
Sometimes I scribble email addees too sloppy when I jot '
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I block all of the trolls in my HOSTS file...
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Yeah, I did some research on Slashdot ID by year a couple weeks back. I looked at December 31st stories from each year to get an idea of the ID ranges posting. I read a few posts from each year and found that really the quality of posts really hadn't changed appreciably. Slashdot myth proved to be unfounded.
I did find that we have had a crap flood of bogus account creating in the last 12-18 months however.
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I did find that we have had a crap flood of bogus account creating in the last 12-18 months however.
I wonder if that's just here, or if that corresponds to anything seen on other sites. I've definitely noted the increase in throwaway troll/shill accounts.