Technocrat.net Shut Down 326
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.'"
Re:Creepy (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 of himself as ESR.
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.
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.
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
Anyone care? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is Bruce Perens even relevant anymore?
He seems like the Jessie Jackson of FOSS...
Re:Good (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 include "surplus" deaths over all of American history, you have to bring in the entire native population of the content, who somehow dwindled from 20-100m in 1776 to 1m today, with almost all such deaths directly attributable to American actions (both public and private) over a 100 year period.
Clearing out space for a new economic system and society is always messy, and it's not exactly intellectually honest to start your timeline from well after the time you guys wrapped up your mass extermination of inconvenient peoples.
Re:A shame. (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 about disaster preparedness is awful, but that's true with a lot of people on a lot of things.
If you were just being sincer forget I said anything.
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.
Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:community (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 lacks faith or favors another economic system. He just might not share the same views as certain elements of those two groups. Many people are Christians or of another faith but are uncomfortable with some of the views of other Christians. Many people are capitalists but think that there's such a thing as hard-core capitalism that could be tempered. Very few systems encompass people who immediately share all beliefs without offense.
In particular, I think there's a big difference between saying "I made some Christians uncomfortable or offended them" and saying that someone presented a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith. In that context you are assuming that Christianity is the only faith, and that only by supporting atheism or possibly agnosticism would someone make a Christian uncomfortable. It simply depends on the Christian. The poster could easily be a Christian who disagreed with them on certain topics, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Jewish, or... you get the point.
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.
Re:How much of a loss was it? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't go to "Geek sites" for political adverts.
You realize your statement is illogical, right? I go to the grocery store for donuts. If I can find the donuts, it makes sense to go to the grocery store. If I can't find the donuts, it doesn't make sense to go to the grocery store. But it doesn't make sense to not go to the grocery store because it has things I don't go there for, e.g. bratwurst. I hate bratwurst, so it makes sense for me to skip it. It doesn't make sense for me to stop going to the grocery store because of it. The presence of things you don't go there for is an utterly illogical reason to cite for not going there. The absence of things you do go there, or the presence of things you find so offensive it drives you away, these would be sensible reasons to cite. If the sight or smell of bratwurst makes me vomit, and I'm so sensitive to it that I can't go to the grocery store without vomiting, then it make sense for me to not go to the grocery store for my donuts. But in explaining this, if I don't want to sound like an idiot, I should say something more than just, "I don't go to the grocery store for bratwurst." Indeed, that's not actually the reason why I'm not going, and I'm lying to myself and others if I try to pass that off as the reason.
Re:Dear Bruce, (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.
Not in the best 'net spirit (Score:3, Insightful)
This reminds me of the forum at ornery (http://ornery.org/), one of Orson Scott Card's sites. Pretty much everybody there thinks OSC is a nut and isn't shy of saying so, and still the guy keeps footing the bill and AFAIK has never interfered with the forum. We're not talking about a few people, the forum is pretty damn big and reasonably well known.
(As for _why_ they think that about him, that's a different discussion. Suffices to say he's always been openly pro-Bush.)
Re:Not in the best 'net spirit (Score:3, Insightful)