Slashdot Log In
Technocrat.net Shut Down
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Dec 26, 2008 07:31 AM
from the best-wishes-good-luck-and-too-bad dept.
from the best-wishes-good-luck-and-too-bad dept.
twitter writes "Bruce Perens has pulled the plug on Technocrat.net. 'The technocrat.net public discussion site is shut down. This has happened because the site never achieved the ability to financially sustain its editorial staff and system expenses with its revenues. When it became evident that Technocrat was un-viable as a business, I found that I did not wish to keep supporting the site as a hobby. Certain elements of the community that developed here, unfortunately, creep me out. At the end I faced the decision of asking for donations to keep the site running, or letting it die, and it became clear to me that I'd feel better if it would just die. I am very busy building a new software business, with some great new (and yet unannounced) Open Source software in development. I must focus on that for now. Best holiday wishes to you all.'"
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Creeping him out? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is?
A shame. (Score:5, Interesting)
I enjoyed technocrat while it lasted. I got to understand a lot about americans and how they think. Especially those who don't share my "european liberal views" have been very interesting to communicate with.
I think that I've learned a lot about human cultures from technocrat. Sad to see it go.
And I hope I'm not one of the ones that creep Bruce out. ;-)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are plenty of people who own guns, or who keep some emergency food on hand just in case some disaster should befall them. Most of them were somewhat vindicated for their beliefs when Rita and Katrina hit, but they are normal everyday folks. Talking to them a
Again? (Score:5, Informative)
January 04, 2001 (8:00:00 AM) - 7 years, 11 months ago [linux.com]
But looks permanent this time (Score:5, Interesting)
Hi Folks. Well, a lot of you seem to be disappointed about the site shutting down, and several people have offered to keep it going. I've turned down those offers. Technocrat was intended to get technology experts (us) involved in technology policy. It didn't succeed in that, although it was a good discussion site. The goal of getting people involved in tech policy is still a good one.
Thus, Technocrat will be re-launched with a new format. It will not be a discussion site any longer. Instead, it will offer tech stories and legislation alerts to be syndicated by other web sites, including discussion sites. There will also be some other features that I'll keep quiet about until the new site is on the air.
The goal is still to get more technology experts involved in setting technology policy.
Thanks
Bruce
That new format was slashcode, but looking at the most recent archives, he was only getting a couple posts per story (prolly mostly from twitter). Of course, slashcode's moderation system exists to try to separate the cream from the milk, but at the volumes he was getting, it was all just yogurt. To bad, though.
Parent
community (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not familiar with the community at Technocrat or the site itself for that matter. Anyone care to elaborate?
Re:community (Score:5, Funny)
Come on man, just visit the website and see for yourself. Er, oh...
Parent
Re:community (Score:5, Funny)
I am not familiar with the community at Technocrat or the site itself for that matter. Anyone care to elaborate?
There has been some talk of scripting a live action Jar Jar Binks movie on there.
Parent
Re:community (Score:5, Informative)
I had been reading Technocrat daily for I guess 9 or 10 years, I can't really comment on what facets of the community that Bruce objected to, so I will comment only on my observations.
The regular contributors of Technocrat were a pretty small group, so whenever one (or perhaps some) found themselves with a lot of spare time and an axe to grind they became the center of gravity of the site and swung the nature of the site to their particular interest, gripe, political view... or whatever. As contributors lost employment, ended relationships, faced large medical bills, and whatever other trials and tribulations people face they have a tendency to become vocal and extreme (while this is apparent to me in hindsight, as a daily observer, it can not possibly be apparent to casual readers).
The summary of the interests of the regular contributors includes disaster preparedness and self sufficiency... which occasionally crossed the line of rationality took on the appearance of armed lunatics holed up in their self constructed secret bunkers, prepared for a shooting war with both revenuers and the starving populous streaming out of the cities (and sometimes I suspected they expected zombies).
I know that a couple of the regulars have mental health issues and I suspect the number to be slightly higher than just 2. Not that I in anyway hold this against them... but I often wondered how our (very public) conversations must look to the outside world.
On several occasions, the world's circumstances focused most of the community on a single topic for comparatively long durations... and for some reason convinced the group that they were experts. The most recent of which is the global international econpocalypse, which convinced most of the group that they were expert economists, bankers, politicians, &tc. The result of this was long passionate diatribes of thinly veiled bigotries and prejudices of every possible flavor (which we all have)... Which naturally created flame wars increasing in extremist rhetoric. Combined with the interests I described above, the theme on Technocrat would take on this protracted dommerish theme... Perhaps we were never really able to overcome "John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory".
Some of the most frequent Technocrat contributors habitually proselytized non-mainstream ideology which I personally found alarming and repugnant: Market Fundamentalist / Extremist Libertarianism, Nationalism & Jingoism, Christian Reconstructionism, Militancy, Fascism, Racism ... it's a profoundly scary list.
Oh... and naturally we had trolls: two of them.
Now having said all of that... I feel like I should make a few disclaimers:
I was a contributor of technocrat. I also participated in these discussions and I also injected my own bigotries and prejudices into the conversation. Doubtless some christians and or capitalists were uncomfortable with or offended by some of my past comments. However I am not doing so in ostensibly in connection with my private business enterprise... this is a point lost on many of my fellow contributors at Technocrat, I think. And in this way I feel that we treated Bruce unfairly. Bruce is an important member of the Open Source community and it was very gracious of him to provide a sand box (or perhaps soap box) for us to play in. However I don't think we sufficiently recognized how the resultant community reflected on him.
If you look here on Slashdot you will find all of this, and more, in a single day... but generally it is overwhelmed by the volume of normal and reasonable comments... and the moderation system. such that it is.
You may get the impression that I intensely dislike many of the regulars at Technocrat. For the most part this is not the case, nearly all of them are good people, I would gladly have a number of them over to dinner and introduce to my "in real life" family. (excepting the trolls of course).
I have to say, I am profoundly disappointed in Bruce's decision. BUT, I completely understand and agree with it. I think Bruce is a really great guy... and I'd much rather see that he have more of an impact in our community than just running Technocrat
Parent
Re:community (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you got a larger than usual dose of The Internet in there. It can get pretty caustic when concentrated!
Seriously, you'll see the same thing happen anywhere where self-declared smart people congregate. Slashdot gets some of it, reddit gets even more of it, and so on. I can see why Bruce would just want to get rid of the whole mess, if it got that bad.
Parent
Re:community (Score:4, Insightful)
Dealing with a large group of people who think they know everything, and this is true for slashdot as well, is frequently boring, sometimes highly enlightening, and always at risk of showing just what terrifying abuse a person will subject truth and reason to.
Parent
Thanks for the information! (Score:3, Interesting)
I, too, was never a user of Technocrat. (As many of us on Slashdot as are saying the same, no wonder it wasn't self-sustaining as a business model!)
But it sounds like I web site I would have enjoyed, actually.
I think you bring up a really interesting point about people tending to become more "vocal and extreme" in their opinions when faced with adversity in their personal lives. If I look in the mirror, I realize I spent more time on the net ranting about political issues while I was going through a divor
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, this is an OT response. I should really know better.
Two things really creep me out in this world: People who present a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith, and those who continue to press economic systems that are known to be fundamental failures.
I'm curious. Do you know the poster, or are you basing this solely on his /. post?
Because simply saying that "some christians and or capitalists were uncomfortable with or offended by some of my past comments" does not mean he
Godspeed, man. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been my experience that reading too much into an implied tone in the slashdot summaries just gets me in trouble, so in brief:
Thanks, Bruce, for your efforts and contributions over the years and may your next project(s) be successful and fulfilling.
Wait (Score:5, Funny)
Has Netcraft confirmed this??
Really the best way to handle this? (Score:5, Interesting)
i like Bruce, but this is very poorly done. if the primary concern is financial, there's ways to mitigate that. if he wasn't happy asking for donations (which i can certainly respect, even if i wouldn't have that problem myself), you can look at both revenue and expenses independent of that. on expenses: it's never been clear to me what the "professional editorial staff" actually did, besides stick a comment on some stories - a comment which wasn't reliably better than any other on the site. for revenue, using the ad hoc advertising was also probably a poor choice compared to using something like google's service. and if the issues was primarily the creepy community, there's ways to deal with that, too: moderation systems, or even (at the size it's at) just kickban individual users (after talking to and/or warning them).
and if you've given up on all that, the shutdown itself was not well done. no notice? that's kinda disrespectful to the people who've put in work to build what's there. i would've loved a few days to copy some of the comments i've made there, or links others have posted, or discuss where to go from here. and that last one, of course, could have included handing the community - or even the site, wholesale - off to another host. that last part in particular stings; it kinda feels like "if i can't have it - on my terms - nobody can".
Bruce, if you're out there, look: thanks for all the work you've done. it was great. i'd really like to keep it going. let me know if we can talk about options.
Re:Really the best way to handle this? (Score:5, Funny)
I've been saying that for some time. Rumour has it it's nearly as bad over at technocrat.net
Parent
Looking in the mirror? (Score:5, Insightful)
Out of all the self-proclaimed open source leaders, Bruce Perens creeps me out the most. I really don't know why people follow him. Everything he touches is lackluster at best.
Others like Stallman (GNU) and ESR (CatB) have caused major philosophical movements. The same can't be said for Perens.
I see Perens to Linux as Sean Hannity is to Conservatism. He's there and not afraid to pipe up. But he really hasn't offered any original ideas that have been worth much.
How much of a loss was it? (Score:5, Interesting)
There were a few people there that I liked, because they showed that they put thought into their commentary. Their logic was sound, even if I disagreed with them.
One writer seems to have attempted to make the site his personal Blogging page.
I stopped going there around October because Bruce felt the need to put banner adverts up for the Obama campaign. I don't go to "Geek sites" for political adverts.
At least this way, Bruce will be able to focus his energies on more interesting projects.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It wasn't that he was campaigning for Democrats. I'm fine with that. But the attitude that he took in those posts towards those that preferred to vote Republican, Libertarian, or whatever else was dismissive and arrogant. That's the part that I'm talking about.
I know what did it (Score:3, Interesting)
In the interest of living a life a certain good book suggests (turning the other cheek), most of the people who donated to Bruce's site were Novell employees.
To Summarize the Summary (Score:3, Funny)
Anyone care? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is Bruce Perens even relevant anymore?
He seems like the Jessie Jackson of FOSS...
Badly named and too soap-box-y (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dear Bruce, (Score:4, Funny)
It's a shame. I thrive on reading the work of trolls and the drama they incite. Can't say I'm much good at trolling myself, but that's they way it goes.
Anyway, I think that's why Slashdot succeeds. It strikes the right balance between interesting and informative content, misguided zealotry, blatant outright trolls and vandalism.
I read it as much for the Unix pissing contents as I do for the antics of the various trolls.
It's tough competition.
P.S. Long live twitter. :P
Parent
Re:Dear Bruce, (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's okay, but it doesn't get the balance right. Balance, man. It's all about balance.
Parent
Re:Dear Bruce, (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck trolling. Every time I start getting into a good thread about the relative merits of the GPL vis a vis the BSD license, or a deep legal examination of the ramifications of massive copyright theft, or the advantages of using strongly statically typed languages like Perl over Python for implementing LAMP servers... whammo, there's something gaping, oozing, or epitheting the middle of a decent conversation.
Enough already. Why don't you guys go troll a worthier target already, like the mainstream media or Canada. We're trying to literally make the future of the Internet here and you're ruining all over it.
Parent
Re:Dear Bruce, (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't say I like the trolls, but pretending that what happens on the semi-productive section of Slashdot is of some grand importance seems like a bit of a reach.
Parent
Re:Dear Bruce, (Score:4, Funny)
Can't say I like the trolls, but pretending that what happens on the semi-productive section of Slashdot is of some grand importance seems like a bit of a reach.
There's a semi-productive section of this site? Wow. Hey, post the link to it when you get a chance.
Parent
Re:Dear Bruce, (Score:5, Funny)
Can't say I like the trolls, but pretending that what happens on the semi-productive section of Slashdot is of some grand importance seems like a bit of a reach.
There's a semi-productive section of this site? Wow. Hey, post the link to it when you get a chance.
idle.slashdot.org
Parent
Re:Dear Bruce, (Score:5, Informative)
The stories on TC were really good to start with and the conversation was clean. The platform was slashcode. The site worked pretty well for a month or two, but then died out. I've checked in on it a couple times a year since then.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I saw in Google Zeitgeist that Slashdot readership is also gradually falling last 12 months). I wonder if it is the case with other forum type sites?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dear Bruce, (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually I think it is I cannot sort stories as highest ranked first anymore with the new discussion system. That makes a bunch of rants and trolls intersperse with the real discussion. I think a bunch of the insightful posters of the past simply stopped posting due to the signal to noise ratio falling.
Also I liked to open a new tab with all the comments under a post and then open them all to read the whole discussion. Now I have to use that slider over and over again or click like I am on Ritalin.
Finally I used to pick my mods from the drop down and then go back and pick the best. Now it takes it immediately, even when I let go of the mouse on the wrong selection.
Parent
You can fix that (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a look at your options on this special comment configuration page hidden in the guts of the preferences pages (actually it's in the Help pages):
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm [slashdot.org]
That link should take you straight to it.
But even after you sort those issues out, the user pages are still a useless maelstrom of wasted space. The old user pages were just plain better, I don't see a single improvement on the new user page. In fact I don't see anything that hasn't been thoroughly screwed up. One good idea I did get is that in a user page like the old one, it could be handy to show articles you've tagged with the tag you used...I think that was the intention of showing every article you've tagged in the "garbagefall" on the new user page, but it just shows all the tags on the article.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The black arrow indicates the current post you are at.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't derive much benefit from this, that's fine. I like it though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have seen posts made, by people who obviously have never worked in IT, loudly proclaiming with absolute confidence that qmail can take over as a drop in replacement for Exchange, that a Linksys wrt54g can do everything that a Cisco 2600 can do (and better!), etc. The level of technical knowledge among users has been steadily dropping for years now. As people who really know their stuff leave, they are replaced by Joe Plumber who just installed Ubuntu and now considers himself a UNIX guru.
I dunno, I think that "hobbyist dabbler" quality has been around since the beginning of the site, and probably reflects Taco and the other guys who built it.
If anything the decline was because the *editors* aren't involved in IT, not the posters. So you get story selections skewed towards politics and tabloid drama. (As if anyone cared what a bunch of Unix nerds have to say about anything other than Unix.) Comment quality on technical topics in the realms of people's expertise tend to be much better.
neverheardofit (Score:3, Funny)
"neverheardofit" would be a good tag for this article. It could be just me, but I've been reading tech news sites for a few years now and haven't heard of this one...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm gonna guess he got a lot of "ZOMG BRUSE PERENS" sycophants, and was unable to financially justify continuing the site. Hell, last time I looked if a story had two comments in it, it was a red-letter day.
Basically he thought he could throw up a slash installation and that a community would magically form around it. It didn't; and instead he got trolls, jerks and brown-nosers (you know -the usual /. fare).
I always thought perens was decent enough, seeing him here on /.; but it looks like he's just as full
Re:Creepy (Score:5, Funny)
Basically he thought he could throw up a slash installation and that a community would magically form around it
To be fair, that's pretty much what slashdot did.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
New rule: confusing shit is not to be posted until mid-afternoon so that we may have a chance to get enough caffeine into our weary bodies that we just might notice the slight difference in the name. Or, if that's too much to ask, pertinent info such as this could be included in the fucking summary.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
"Soviet Russia achieved more under Stalin in 10 years than what took most of the Western hemisphere a century."
What, 20 million dead Russians?
Some archival researchers have estimated the number of victims of Stalin's repressions to be 4 million in total or less, others believe the number to be considerably higher.Russian writer Vadim Erlikman, for example, makes the following estimates: executions, 1.5 million; gulags, 5 million; deportations, 1.7 million out of 7.5 million deported; and POWs and German civilians, 1 million - a total of about 9 million victims of repression.
Some have also included the 6 to 8 million victims of the 1932-1933 famine as victims of repression. This categorization is controversial however, as historians differ as to whether the famine was a deliberate part of the campaign of repression against kulaks or simply an unintended consequence of the struggle over forced collectivization.
Certainly, it appears a minimum of around 10 million surplus deaths--4 million by repression and 6 million from famine -- are attributable to the regime, with a number of recent books suggesting a likely total of around 20 million.Adding 6-8 million famine victims to Erlikman's estimates above, for example, would yield a total of between 15 and 17 million victims. Researcher Robert Conquest, meanwhile, has revised his original estimate of up to 30 million victims down to 20 million.Others continue to maintain their earlier much higher estimates are correct.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you read your history there's a period from ~1910-1940 or so when the Soviets were far and away accomplishing more than the west: they built up modern roads and water systems and electrified their nations over that period, while the west dragged its heels and fell into the great depression.
They never really recovered from losing ~15m lives in WWII.
Bringing up the body count is certainly a fair critique, but you have to have some kind of blinders on to think it's in any way a uniquely soviet thing: if you
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Soviet Russia achieved more under Stalin in 10 years than what took most of the Western hemisphere a century.
Not that hard when you're two centuries behind the rest of the world to begin with. He was playing catch-up, the rest of the world having already done the much of the scientific discovery legwork, and even then never achieved any sort of parity. Granted, organizing a giant country full of ignorant feudalism-era peasants and dragging them kicking and screaming through the industrial revolution is no mean feat, but it was largely just a matter of shooting enough recalcitrant people to get the rest moving, and
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think most people will really understand what you mean.
When Free Internet Press (http://freeinternetpress.com) started, I used Slashcode. It ran fine on one server, after I got all the damned mod_perl stuff working for it. That was all fine and dandy, until we were picked up by Yahoo! News and Google News as a news source. If we showed up on the front of either one (Google News is the heaviest), the site would be down within about a minute or two.
I had
Re:eat my shorts, slashdot !! (Score:5, Informative)
Bruce Perens was well-known in the open source community as the project leader of Debian and for founding the Open Source Initiative (and creating the Open Source Definition [opensource.org]) long before his 2-year stint at HP.
and i don't recall Perens or any other open source leader ever claiming that Linux was a 'sure thing.' though pretty much every major system vendor (HP [hp.com], Lenovo [ibm.com], IBM [ibm.com], Dell [dell.com], Apple [apple.com], etc.) today has a Linux division or is involved with FOSS in some way--a situation which Perens has played no small part in creating.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see how a failed discussion site about general technology has anything to do with "failing with Linux." I went to his site a few times, but found that it was missing a sort of critical mass that is necessary to make it an interesting discussion.
Yes, I know I'm feeding the trolls. They just look so cute and I'm still in the holiday spirit, I guess.