Slashdot Turns 5 692
As much as I avoid discussing Slashdot on Slashdot, I figured I'd just take
a moment to say that Slashdot is 5 years old now. I've written a
Journal Entry with a few more comments on the subject. And yes we know we jumped the shark about a week after we registered the domain name, but we just don't care! Here's hoping we're here 5 years from now doing exactly the same thing with the same folks. (As a side note, due to a data importing bug, we really don't know exactly when we made our debut, but I spent september 97 putting the site together... and when we went live, we didn't even have comments for the first week or so!)
How many other websites have been around this long (Score:4, Interesting)
That are not corporate sites, like Microsoft.com, etc
I'm talking...ad-supported.
Happy birthday!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot is a source of info, of pure fun and of substancial debates.
Congrats, Mista Taco!
Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
How many? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sometimes, I feel like an old geezer having a user ID of 3264, when I see user IDs in the 6 digits range.
How about a "This day, five years ago"? (Score:2, Interesting)
Will you be around in 5 years? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A Whole Week? (Score:0, Interesting)
That's what I would like to know.
1st posting on the Wayback Machine (Score:5, Interesting)
ALIGN attribute: Wayback [archive.org] It is from Dec 21st, 1997 and talks about how Netscape may be in danger from Internet Explorer. Can CmdrTaco pick 'em or what?
Three years and counting.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I found
I've always found the content on
I may have missed the first two years, but I'll read for the next two to make up. Although I may not always agree with
Thanks,
SIDE NOTE -- because of
five years of lost discussions (Score:5, Interesting)
Early slashdot is just as valuable as early usenet, and I think we need to find a way to make it accessible. Isn't there some NNTP gateway code somewhere? Could slashdot export month-old stories for google groups to pick up? I bet the google guys would even help develop a new protocol if necessary.
Most valuable of all would be to establish a mechanism that other web discussion boards could use, and encourage them to make their archives available. Imagine the power of all your favorite weblogs searchable through one interface. This would be a boon for users and net historians alike.
All -1's have been archived since 2.x upgrade (Score:2, Interesting)
Slashdot doesn't archive -1 posts.
Slashdot has archived comments that had been moderated to -1 since the upgrade to Slashcode 2.x. In fact, the story about the 2.x upgrade [slashdot.org] is an example of an "archived" discussion with some extant -1 comments. So is Oracle Breakable After All [slashdot.org], where more than half of the comments are -1 (due to The Post [slashdot.org]). It's true that -1 comments before the 2.x upgrade were discarded, but more than half the comments in Slashdot's database have been posted on 2.x. Not even the editors [nazi.org] can change that.
Re:Happy birthday!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to spend a lot less time on the net before I found Slashdot. Then I got this uncontrollable urge to read every story and most comments, every day! Although it's time I could be spending doing things, i'm not sure it's really wasting time either because there's plenty to be learned by observing discussions. I'd say my overall tech knowledge has definately improved a lot since i discovered /. Also, I don't think I would know about annoying things like the DMCA if it werent for /. nor would I know the difference between free and Free.
You guys (cmdrtaco and crew) have done a great job getting relevant info out to the techies but without too much bullshit (cnet, wired, pcmag).
Dupe posts, incorrect spelling, and search engines aside, /. is my favorite website for 2+ years now.
Who's still around from the "early" days? (Score:3, Interesting)
Reminiscing for a minute: Remember when...
* the Enlightenment window manager was still using DR (development release) in the versions?
* having to download 50 different graphics libraries to install Enlightenment?
* the first time someone told you to run "ldconfig -v" ?
* the first time someone told you to run "rm -rf
* a time before GNOME vs. KDE, because there was neither?
* you were the only kid on your block (in your school, at your job) who knew what an mp3 was?
* big companies announcing Linux support was a big deal?
* when XFree86 supported about 10 video cards?
What else?
Re:1st posting on the Wayback Machine (Score:3, Interesting)
I like the way the image alt tag says, "News for Nerds on the Stuff that Matters." Not quite as catchy at that point. :)
Re:And Now... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
~WIll
Well shit, (Score:3, Interesting)
but there are still a hell of a lot o half arsed discussion sites out there that have a flat layout for comments
In an earlier life, when I was a DECcie we had a corporate network with maybe 100000 users and we had this groupware thingie called VAXnotes. Of course DEC couldn't sell it for shit, but it had a huge impact on the company internally.
The software was rather primitive. You installed it and created a conference on your box. The format went something like SLSHDT::COBOL for example, discussing the finer arts of Cobol. SLSHDT was the DECnet node, where it resided (limited to 6 chars, but those where the good ol' days).
Within the conference everybody could create an entry and after that it was just one flat stream of comments.
There where confererences for every product and every obscure piece of software which this company manufactured and produced. That was nifty, because if you had a Cobol question it wouldn't take an hour until somebody from Cobol engineering jumped in with a knowledgeable and comprehensive answer. But the most interesting part of the whole system where the EI (employee interest) conferences, which ranged from cats through tarrot over DEC issues (HUMANE::DIGITAL) up to Soapbox (damn! I can't even remember the node name...).
While it was primitive from a "layout" point of view I have never since experienced the power that a network can have on its participants. They where some really, really smart people bitching and flaming away, but sticking together whenever required. At one time we even pledged to get the best hated Soapbox contributor (Jamie, who was a very fat git, NOT!) to a boxbash in Bawston from Reading, UK.
It was also around that time (1993) when a really, really smart engineer (let's call him Dan K) mentioned something he was working on, something that would change the world, something so fucking (he didn't say fucking, since that was verboten) revolutionary it would blow us out of our socks. He couldn't really mention what it was, but it was later marketed under the term WWW.
Yep, it was a primitive form of discussion, but it didn't matter, not at all and it was one of the aspects in DECs culture, which made this company so great!
It saddens me until today, that one of the most important companies in computer history was sold off by a slick guy with a bad hairdo to some box-assembling marketing organisation in Texas.
Other funny stuff: (Score:2, Interesting)