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LinuxWorld.com, UnixInsider To Close 44

Posted by Hemos from the bye-bye-american-pie dept.
A couple people noticed that NewsForge has a story running on the closure of LinuxWorld and UnixInsider, two of IDG's online efforts. Some of the efforts will live on in the parent ITWorld, but it's too bad to see them go.
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LinuxWorld.com, UnixInsider To Close More

LinuxWorld.com, UnixInsider To Close

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  • twist of fate (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 13, 2001 @01:41PM (#365824)

    Too many companies took too little time to research the pros and cons when coming on the Internet with site after site after site, of content based commercialized houses that who knows what they housed. (sounds odd but made sense when I thought about it)

    Well take a look around at whats going down, do the math if you will before you post on with some rant which you understand nothing of. Lets go with "Benefit of the doubt Mathematics 101"

    hosting for site colo, per month 10k

    writers, content people, etc., lets say 10 employees 10k

    hardware 2 Sun e450's, 10 VAR501's 60k

    Promotion 600,000.00

    Just for a small company, thats about 30k a month. Now look at the revenues these sites generated with "click me banners". Maybe 3000 here 4000 there, which means most companies lost on these schemes as we all no.

    Its simple to sit back, watch and poke around and make fun at FuckedCompany.com, but the overabundance of these sites which flourished in the late 90's are what saturated the markets with overhyped products, sites, dreams and hopes.

    For those who keep up with financial info, you would know NASDAQ is taking a beating left and right and things will continue as more investors become aware of the true facts: The world is not ready to be run solely on the Internet.

    Us geeks could dream, wish, hope, ponder, attempt to make it a reality but when it all comes down on paper take a quick look... There is no paper when dealing with the net its all a big risk, something investors are not going to sit back and watch eat up their money without making a profit.

    Companies should seriously start revamping their business models and turn conservative for a period of time and hope this wave dies out (which isn't likely for some time now).

    This is sad news but should not come as a surprise to anyone.
    Use my bandwidth till I'm on FuckedCompany.com... enjoy [antioffline.com]

  • What will hapen to Linux expo? (Score:3)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2001 @01:28PM (#365825) Journal
    I have never been to the summer one in Silicon Valley but there is a winter one in New York and it ROCKS!

    This company that just went udner rents the javitis convention center for the expo and aranges the activities. Everyone including Eric Raymond to Alan Cox, to even Linus Trivolds attends these expo's. Even Rob Malda and Timothy from slashdot have there own booth complete with a rug, couch, bean bags, and a giant telivsion screen with slashdot on it, and annoying acccording music played by rob personally.

    In other words THE EXPO'S ROCK!! Also I got lots and lots of free software. IBM db2, SCO unix ( shudder), ximian cd's, etc. I feel a strong community sense when I am there and IT journalists and analizers get more hyped up about LInux after they attend these expo's. I beleive the expo's have contributed to Linux's success after the years because journalists bring more hype about it and that brings in more users

    I will be very sad without an expo this year. Is there anythinge can do?

    Also it is rumoured that Microsoft bought %10 of the company that hosts the comidex under the condition that they ban Linux from the mainshow room and move it to somewhere else in the Las Vegas. Is this true?

    Oh well, perhaps Redhat, IBM, and one with a few other vendors can form a non profit group to organzie them.
  • I found LinuxWorld a very informative Linux news site. Much more so than Slashdot. Sorry folks, but Slashdot is sometimes more noise about Linux than real news and information. (I do like /. for the other news, though).

    I think the LinuxWorld crew is (or was) a very talented one, most of them pro's that actually know what the hell they are talking about.

    So long LW, some of us will miss you.



  • This makes me sad and sick. Linuxworld was one of the few sites that had Contributing Authors who held some name recognition and clout in my eyes. (Nick & Joe). I had been reading their stuff in the print mags that end up in my in-box at work for the last few years --- and I had followed them and was very anxious to see every new article authored by them at Linuxworld.

    The bigger picture I guess would be what happens to sites like /. who depend on other site like Linuxworld for original content to rant about on a daily basis. (Well I guess we would still have "Ask Slashdot", Jon Katz, and Geeks In Space.....to make slashdot visitable :) But it seems the whole crux of sites like this depend on Original Content being.....errr...originated elseware. And these sites that have a "paid" staff are dropping like flies.

  • LinuxWorld - the publication, not the expo! (Score:4)

    by update() ( 217397 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2001 @01:54PM (#365828) Homepage
    For those who can't be bothered to read the article, or the Slashdot writeup for that matter, this refers to the LinuxWorld online magazine, not the expo.

    I enjoyed the first few months of LinuxWorld but honestly I can't say I'm surprised to see it go. Joe Barr is better suited to be a perpetual +1 Slashdot poster than a journalist, Nicholas Petreley sounds like a flack for Caldera and their message boards were generally deserted except for Mr. Barr picking flame wars with anyone who crossed his path.

    I think the bottom line is that The Linux Revolution is over. Now it's just about people using it, improving it and making a living from it, without all the drooling hype.

    Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

  • Re:My recent experience with IDG (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Search LinuxToday for "eDirections", and you'll find an article that explains this magazine was entirely funded by MS, and is not a real magazine, in the normal sense. Just part of your MS OS tax dollars at work....
  • Do they not realize what kind of PR gaffe it is for a systems builder's most popular site to be fucked for what seems like at least once every single day?

    I agree - it's incomprehensible to me that a server manufacturer could let its flagship site perform so badly.

    Hell, even if VA hadn't bought Andover, you'd think they'd realize the PR liability of having the preeminent Linux site unreachable for hours every day. You'd think they'd step in with hardware, network assistance, help with Slashcode -- something.

    Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

  • Excellent Points! Especially the part about Bob Metcalfe, I never thought I'd miss him, but I do.


  • I'd just as soon see less "fluff" portal sites and see more meat-and-potato content-filled sites anyway. Portals are getting old.


    What makes you think that the "meat-and-potato content-filled sites" are any less likely to go under? Given the death of banner income, if they're that good, they'll end up with enough traffic that bandwidth related costs will sink them, never mind the cost to create the content.

  • Ummm, no, it's the engineers, the admins, the IT people, the CEO's, the janitors, the marketroids, the bagel boy, and everyone else who is getting fired. Don't you read f**kedcompany [fuckedcompany.com]????

    If you don't, here's a hint: the dot-com bubble has burst, and silicon valley start ups are dropping like flies. Most of them were started by really "smart" degreed engineers who didn't have a clue how to run a business or make a profit.

    - Twid

  • Read the article:
    LinuxWorld, Unix Insider, and ITWorld are all owned by IDG, a worldwide information conglomerate headquartered in Boston, Mass.
    Despite your theory, the traffic in Boston and around is not getting any better. Anyway, let's hope that the fired engineers are responsible people and will prefer Charles River to freeways.
    ---
  • Err, let me rephrase that: ;-)

    While Slashdot nowadays serves mostly as a platform for Michael's 2600'esque ideology and an arena for Windows-using Linux wannabes to denounce "Micro$hit," it is still the public face of Linux and the "Open Source Community." If I were a salesman for Sun or Microsoft and were trying to win over a customer who was eyeing a Linux solution, you can bet I'd encourage to try reading Slashdot between 5-7 pm EST.

    Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

  • I lost all respect for InfoWorld when they reviewed the last version of OS/2 Warp Server with Buzzword-Compliant Subtitle (whatever). Since they were still bitter over the Product of the Year ballot-stuffing incident, they gave the review to a contributing editor from Windows NT magazine (no conflict of interest there), who proceded to flame the IBM product, based solely on his dislike of multi-colored tabs in the settings windows. No benchmarks, no feature comparisons, just a summary dismissal because the UI wasn't identical to NT4.

    I seem to recall that it was only a few weeks later that Nick Petreley left his editorial position at InfoWorld, although he remained as a columnist, and latched onto LinuxWorld.com. Smart guy, that Nick. Any chance Andover can get him to displace Jon Katz around here?

    We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead
  • I liked the Unixinsider site. Sure, it was not as good for me as reading Sysadmin every week. However, these sites like Unixinsider and unixreview are great reading for the beginning and middle level admins wanting to read articles from peers.

    A lot of people are saying but these sites are in my opinion aimed more at the professional working on the big *nixes and the loss of this content is no good sign for the leagues of people working in environments that have not adopted BSD or linux on a complete scale.

  • I've notice this too. I commute in from Boulder Creek (up highway 17 at Bear Creek road to 880 north to near the San Jose airport), and I've noticed that traffic has been getting a LOT better. Of course, with Intel "attritioning" thousands and Cisco doing the same, things can only get better!

    - Twid

  • Wow. Thanks for the insight, Zico. Whatever would I do without you? You're my hero.

    I think you missed the point, dumbass. Read the message again. I didn't feel the need to include IDG's reply. I could give you the name of the person the message was forwarded to, and their response, but its just not as funny as the original.

    Yeah, I got unsolicited shit from IDG. Yup. You got it, on the nose. But not only was it unsolicited, it was paid for by Microsoft.

    Get it? No, I didn't think so.

  • With corporate funded hobby-esque sites dropping like the NASDAQ in Q4 of 2000, how long before our own beloved /. goes the way of the portal? With it's parent company losing money hand over fist and a lack of serious money generation of it's own... hrmmm...
  • Of course, they couldn't actually respond, so they saw to it that my message was forwarded to the "appropriate personell".

    Whatever the hell that meant.

    it's a simple concept actually. in unix terms, '> /dev/null'

  • Sorry, you do make a valid point. My cynicism of the /. "community" is largely influenced by the fact that I browse at -1 ;)

  • I never read UNIXinsider, but I definitely read LinuxWorld. They were an excellent portal. I especially enjoyed the writings of Nick Petreley, Joe Barr, and Colin Mattoon. I think they did a marvelous job of extolling the benefits as well as exposing the warts of Linux. They weren't afraid to voice controversial ideas and in fact encouraged critical discussion of those ideas.

    I'm going to miss reading their work, because while I agree that they will provide some nice "round-out" content for ITworld, I'm afraid that no one will ever see it. The ITworld front page has got to be one of the most cluttered ones I've ever seen. I think if anything they suffer from too much content, for my taste.

    Just my $0.02
  • wouldn't it be funny if LA,T we're mimmicking herself...

    too bad that's not the case.

  • "What makes you think that the "meat-and-potato content-filled sites" are any less likely to go under?"

    I never said they were any less likely to fold. I'm just saying that I personally would rather (and do) visit and read real sites.

    Portals are empty voids filled with links to everywhere. I can do that with my own bookmarks and a search engine. They're not value added. They're merely trying to capitalize on other people's work and in the process, cram banner ads down your throat.

    No thanks, I won't miss 'em.

  • Our local version of ComputerWorld takes a lot of "news" from slashdot. Many times I see a article/post on /. that will appear a day or two later on their site. Last one that I remember was the demise of the Coffee cam. but there's a couple each week.
    Most of the times I am quite sure that it's from /. because they are the only media covering the subject besides from slashdot. (and that the subject is very slashdot'tish(?)).
    So I read Slashdot and get the news a couple of days before my collegues :-)
    Oh another clear case I just remember was that house-Tetris game long time ago.

    --------
  • I think all of us who have read it will dearly miss it. Its been with us through good times and bad times and as Kathy Badertscher (editor in chief of LinuxWorld.com) said It is with great disappointment, displeasure, nausea, etc. that I must tell you that ITworld is shutting down LinuxWorld.com. I think many of us might feel one or more of those mentioned above, I know I do. So long, farewell... we will miss you. Diplomacy is the art of letting people have your way

  • Funny, but there still will be Linuxworld conventions. What's closing is the crappy "magazine" that no one paid any attention to anyway.

    This August's Linuxworld in San Francisco will be pretty interesting. Last year they decided to move the convention from the San Jose Convention Center to Moskone in SF, which is bigger. Are they going to have to do some fancy footwork to make a two-thirds empty Moskone look good after all the Linux companies scale down and/or pull out of the conference?

  • I don't think it's the engineers getting fired, it's the worthless IT people and sysadmins that can be replaced by 10 year olds. I hope now they are starting to realize just how useless they are. All you morons that decided certs were the key and college was for chumps, seeya at school.

  • Death of Computer Magazines in General? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I used to subscribe to about 10 PC related magazines during the 80s and early 90s. That was about the only way I could get information on a timely basis about computing-- at least what the editors thought was informational. Now with the World Wide Web there is no need to subscribe to computer magazines. What's the point of reading about computer news that is a month old (actually older because of press & printing time) when I can read about it the day it happens on the web? Not much.

    With the massive amount of information about computers and computing on the Internet, I think the days of print magazines about computing are numbered.

  • As my subject, I am sad that Linuxworld is a casualty. I've appreciated Nick Petreley's thoughtful journalism for quite a while and he always managed to pique my attention. A tip of the hat to Joe Barr and Rawn Shah as well (I hope I've got you names right!). I hope you find new homes that are as comfortable as LW.

    It's been a pleasure. Now, get back to work! ;-)

    Alastair

  • Good point. But I still think their is a future in mixing a product or two in with the content. Based on these sorry sites bandwidth bills it sounds like the "...And they will come" part is being taken care of. (I always assumed the biggest problems would be more from the "We built it and they did not come" side.)

    The problem seems to be that once the people visit these sites the companies are expecting to make money from their visitors buying some other companies products (banner ads)....I think the key would be actually having a product of their own...or a parternship that would be an equal benefit. (Mugs, T-Shirts, Pencils, Mouse Pads....) If I am watching TV and I see a Nike commercial -- Nike knows that I am not going to get up in the middle of Dark Angel and go to the mall and purchase a new pair of Nike's....

    They have to be satisfied with the fact that when I am in a position to be buying a new pair of shoes, that their ads may have left a lasting impression in my head that would lead to me purchasing their brand of shoes....What more can they ask for.....

    If anyone thinks that people that are reading tech articles are going to halt in the middle of reading CPU speed comparison articles to click on a link to buy a Power Drill or Vaccumm Cleaner -- then they are all high.
  • ..interesting.. which brings to mind another thought: If all the retailers- sorry..*E-*Tailers and mega-corps now rush to abandon the web... in the end us geeks get what we wanted. A community without commercialism. Perhaps we are looking at the death nell of spam, viral marketing, hype, hyperbole, webbugs, tracking databases, domain name claimjumping, bullying, "one click" patents and other big business rudeness... I say good riddance! It's like Starbucks moving OUT of a community for a change..maybe the small "shops" will flourish once again.

    Not, mind you, that I would like to see places such as thinkgeek or similar go.. just the clueless masses like Etoys..

    Saddened to see Linuxworld go...

    3Cats
  • I've also received the same publication, eDirections. They have asked me to evaluate it or something. Hopelessly Microsoft-skewed staff. Brrrrrr... Found it in my mailbox right after read this news.

  • No more San Jose traffic (Score:3)

    by heroine ( 1220 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2001 @01:09PM (#365856) Homepage
    No more linuxworld conventions further prove my traffic theory. The lighter traffic on 680 is a combination of engineers being fired by the ten thousands, conventions terminating, and companies folding in.

    Then when engineers start committing suicide the traffic gets heavier because they jump on the freeways.
  • It seems to me that ITWorld is a better host for these anyway; they did not provide much in terms of new content but will provide some nice round-out content to ITWorld.

    Cut costs, enrich content at the mother site ... seems like a win all around.
    --

  • no, like how people just make things work as a community. not like a slashdot community, but just the help of the community. There are plenty of cheap hosting sites that someone could take over the websites.

    it doesn't bother me they're going to say the least. I just find it ironic to see all the work just go befcause of a failed commercial effort that could very well work in someone else or the general publics hands.

  • You mean like how /. lives off of people's contributions? Like to see that happen...

  • The following is a letter I sent to IDG regarding another "publication" that I had been sent. To this day, I wonder why I received said publication, as all it was is an ad for Win2000. You want to know why LinuxWorld.com and UnixInsider are to close... because they haven't sold their souls to support the proliferation of Win2000.

    I subscribe to both MacWorld and InfoWorld. I appreciate both magazines, and find them to be very useful.

    However, today I received a copy of "eDirections", and it leaves me wondering why. Not that I don't appreciate Microsoft products, but I have no desire to read such a painful MS advertisement. Perhaps I was just sent a copy to see if I was interested. I really don't know.

    What really bothers me about this is the lack of contact information on the magazine, with the exception of a long-distance phone number for subscription information. I don't want a subscription. I don't want to receive another copy of "eDirections" again. I would hate to think that someone would pay money for it.

    Again, MacWorld and InfoWorld are great. I read every issue I receive. And that is exactly why I asked to receive them.

    Please see to it that I do not have to put another copy of "eDirections" into the trash again. Such a waste of paper and ink saddens me.

    Of course, they couldn't actually respond, so they saw to it that my message was forwarded to the "appropriate personell".

    Whatever the hell that meant.

  • Death of Free On-line Content? (Score:4)

    by west ( 39918 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2001 @01:25PM (#365861)
    Isn't this just part of the death of online advertiser supported content? The disappearance of such web sites is occurring in every field from gaming to writer's resources and beyond.

    Given nobody has made subscription based content work, it looks like the web is going back to its roots with hobbyist-only content. The only problem with that is, if a site is any good, there'll be tens of thousands reading it, in which case the hobbyist goes bankrupt supplying bandwidth. At least in the old days, there just weren't that many people to serve.

    Of course, we'll always have corporate sites, but it kind of diminishes the joy of the web. After all, not that many people are fascinated by the world's largest shopping mall.
  • Seems the downturn is taking a few sites with it.

    That's unfortunate. But in all honesty, are we gonna miss YAP (Yet Another Portal) anyway?

    What's surprising is that these two sites are from different ends of the OS spectrum - one is about Linux, the other about Solaris. Showing us that no one is safe right now.

    I'd just as soon see less "fluff" portal sites and see more meat-and-potato content-filled sites anyway. Portals are getting old.

  • It couldn't have happened to a worse company. IDG deserves the bad fortune they've brought on themselves as a result of being such dicks to anyone who uses such trademarks as "the color yellow" or the word "dummies". Here's hoping to Chapter 11 for IDG.
    ---
    seumas.com
  • no. that would belong to me.

    unintentionally, even.

    without effort.

    stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

  • Will they continue?

    I was at New York 2000 and it was great fun. BSD girls, mmmmmmm.

  • IDG (Score:2)

    by eap ( 91469 )
    Is this the same IDG that got so sue-happy over anyone using the phrase, "For Dummies", even if it was just a parody?

  • IDG: We'll Read When Pigs Fly (Score:5)

    by Dr. Dew ( 219113 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2001 @01:28PM (#365867) Homepage

    I enjoyed LinuxWorld in particular, and will miss it. But this isn't particularly surprising, given the state of affairs at IDG.

    The InfoWorld weekly just isn't what it used to be; Bob Metcalf's departure left a void (and I never thought I'd think that, let alone say it). They're getting more reader comments in response to smacks at religion than they are at insightful pieces on the industry.

    IDG Books...er, Hungry Minds [idgbooks.com], is publishing Cliff's Notes and the computer equivalent...books for people who don't wanna know nothin'. Their logo change (to a flying pig, I kid you not) is beyond explanation.

    Sure, Tim O'Reilly is a windbag, but at least his company has carved out a niche and mostly has the respect of its readers.

    What's left of Bill Ziff's company is still churning out the typical combination of advertiser suck-up, bombast, and pertinent information.

    MaximumLinux is gone, but its current incarnation [maximumlinux.org] is, in my opinion, better than ever.

    The bottom line is that old-school publishing rules don't work well in the Internet space. I don't want to read advertising online. I worked for one of these publishers for years in the 90's, and I know how often people griped about the number of pages of advertising vs. editorial. Nothing has changed there, except that now the recipients are paying for the ad space in connection time.

    Like the Linux kernel, Linux media sources that get their energy and input from people who are interested will continue to thrive. Those that follow a business plan co-opted from last decade's print media are doomed.

    I guess I came to bury LinuxWorld.com, not to praise it. But I did like it while it lived.

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