Slashdot IRC Forum

The IRC forum with CmdrTaco and Hemos is now complete, and a log has been posted. They answered quite a few questions about Slashdot's subscription system, bigger ads, and other assorted stuff. Don't miss the question about pop-up ads.

Subscriptions are worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone can turn off Slashdot ads [slashdot.org] for free!

Re:anti-anon

[sulli]

just give ACs a -6 bonus in your profile, they'll always end up at -1. (if you haven't checked this out, it's pretty neat: you can give bonuses between -6 and +6 to Friend/Foe/Fan/Freak as well as all comment ratings. it's in the "comments" section of your preferences.)

Re:ignored question

[thelenm]

Probably the reason it was ignored was because the exact same question was asked (by the exact same person) and answered earlier in the discussion.

Re:wow... that popup question was worth the hype.

[Julian Plamann]

I agree completely.
With the click of a few buttons, I could block ads from any site I wanted across my LAN. But you know what? I have yet to ad slashdot.org to this list.

I think most of the people who read slashdot are intelligent enough to realize the cost of running an extremely popular site such as this one.Because of that, they're more than willing to put up with a few banner ads regardless of how easy it would be for them to block it.

Re:slashdot vs alterslash.org

[Hemos]

Read the IRC log. When someone posts a comment, they are granting permission for it to appear on here. If it's taken from here, and mposted some place, we're liable. That's bad. That's how it works - the commenter would take it up with them, but the way the legal system works, we bear responsbility.

I want to try and find a solution.

Re:my question

[Tomster]

VA's net loss was more than their TOTAL REVENUE.

And someone else recently said VA has about 3-4 months of funding left.

On the positive side, they are moving towards profitability. (The pessimists amongst you who say they're still hemorrhaging are correct, but they're headed in the right direction.)

I hope they can reach profitability before having to take more drastic measures to cut expenses (read /l/a/y/o/f/f between the lines). I think SourceForge is a pretty nifty tool, and I'd like to see Slashdot survive as well.

-Thomas

Re:An excerpt

[UnifiedTechs]

-CmdrTaco- We understand that many users will
just run junkbuster. Comes with the turf.
-hemos- That's how it is.
-CmdrTaco- We hope that enough users want
Slashdot to still be here in a few years.
-hemos- I just don't wnat you to. :)
Heh.
I meant to the above statement.
I would like Rob to still be around.

I see the humor in how it came out, but for all the readers who don't have time to read the whole log I wanted to post the comment in context.
Personally I am sure I fall in or close to the 3% who would pay out the ass for no ads, My plan... to just continue to look at/ignore the ads, I won't block them, but I can't afford to not look at them, heck /. is my home page on 3 computers, that alone would kill me.

P.S. reasoning for - instead of brackets is I am to lazy to think about how to post a bracket without it being read by the browser as HTML.

A little lesson in IP law

[hayden]

IANAL but have an interest in it and Hemos and CmdrTaco don't seem to understand the issues (<troll_conspiricy> or are trying to hide their true intentions </troll_conspiricy>).

Firstly, copyright (unlike trademarks and to a degree patents) doesn't have to be protected to remain in force. Yuo can allow people to abuse yuor copyright to their hearts content and then at a later date sue them for current infringement (not sure about previous infringement, time passing may equal consent to use it).

Secondly, slashdot has no case against alterslash on the grounds of them reusing comments. Slashdot isn't the copyright holder of the comments (according to Taco or Hemos in the log) and so cannot sue alterslash for copyright violation there. Users can sue alterslash but Slashdot can't (for the comments) They probably can't sue for submitted stories either leaving them with only the small additions to the stories on the front page (and the obligitory corrections). So their main premise for the cease and desist is (to put it bluntly) crap and on par with any large company. They aren't using the slashdot logo anywhere so there's no trademare issue there (they'll have a rough time of it with the background image).

Morally what they are doing is dodgy. Legally they may have a few problems but not the ones Taco and Hemos seemed most annoyed about.