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A Pre-History of Slashdot

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Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#41

Post by sah2ed »

drallison wrote: post #3

Slashdot has been a major influence. Everyone (who was someone) read Slashdot. Sergey Brin, for example, was a great fan. To be mentioned on slashdot was a meant instant saturation for a website. Personally, I miss CmdrTaco's wry take on the new of the moment.

> Everyone (who was someone) read Slashdot.

... as well as some of those that would eventually become someone. Like Mark Zuckerberg [0] who co-built an MP3 player that learns your taste [1] in 2003:

> "It looks like they're both college freshmen now. But last year, Adam D'Angelo went to Korea for the IOI contest. Apparently, the other one is a smart guy too. A friend at Exeter said Mark Zuckerberg was a bigshot in math there and had some interesting coding projects of his own. Go figure."

[0] https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=61425&cid=5774512

[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/03/04/21/110236/machine-lear...

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#42

Post by jedberg »

Thanks Rob for the trip down memory lane. I have two to share:

I started using Slashdot in ‘97. I remember back then you had a cron to update the front page and we figured out you only run it every 10 minutes, so I built small shell script on my Linux desktop that would pop up a notification reminding me to reload slashdot every 10 minutes.

My second memory was when I was working for Sendmail. Because we were “famous” and appeared on Slashdot for every Sendmail release, one of my first jobs was helping the senior admins set up a new web server for Sendmail.org. I was told by the creators of Sendmail “this server must be able to handle getting Slashdotted.”

So we bought the biggest Dell server we could find, put it in Level 3 in San Francisco (back when they still hosted things — that datacenter is now Dropbox’s HQ), and then I asked the creator of Bind if he could secondary my DNS on a.root-servers.net. When he actually replied and said yes I felt huge pressure to get that entry right and was a bit starstruck.

I was also awestruck as I was doing tail -f on the logs and we hit Slashdot for the first time after setting up the server. I couldn’t believe one site could send that much traffic.

If it weren’t for you none of that would have happened, so thanks Rob!

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#43

Post by ChuckMcM »

Hah, my daughter was in Voorhees freshman year (hmm, it might have been Van Vleck (sp?) the first year but there was a year she was in Voorhees). And all this time she had no idea she was living and studying in a place of historical interest :-)

The great thing this shares with a lot of stories about that time is that Rob didn't say "What can I build that will make me a million bucks?" instead he was just providing a service that was interesting and useful to him and people who shared his interests (which turned out to be a lot of people).

Congrats Rob.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#44

Post by aklemm »

Ahh the memories, especially that time I got an Ask Slashdot accepted. That was a BIG DEAL for some reason.

Addendum: Thinking back, Slashdot is where I came of age in tech. Also, I browsed casually without registering for at least a couple years before finally getting a userid in the low 600K area. I regret not registering right away!

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#45

Post by MattGrommes »

Slashdot user #578 here. :) Besides pre-web stuff like Usenet and BBS boards /. was the first place I really felt like part of a community. I still remember fondly the times that stuff I submitted made it to the front page (like the story announcing the title of Star Wars Episode 1), like I was now "famous" with a bunch of people I really wanted to impress. Like most of us, I drifted away a long time ago but I'm always happy to see people in new communities who were around back then. Happy Birthday /. and thanks for all the grits!

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#47

Post by EpicEng »

cmdrtaco wrote: post #15
blakesterz wrote: post #7

Feels like the Slashdot guys chased the wrong end of blogging. Rather than seeing what Drupal/Wordpress saw (building the site is the real money) the Slashodt folks chased the advertising/traffic side to their site. It seems really obvious now, 20 years later, that they should've spent time on Slashcode and made that better for a larger audience and they could've maybe turned out to be something like Drupal or WordPr…

Our shoestring budget probably prevented us from chasing that rabbit like it deserved. And Frankly there were far more seismic shifts that rocked us more.

I'd also love to hear some behind the scenes details if you're willing. I was on /. every day for years.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#48

Post by rmason »

Whether they know it or not Slashdot inspired a lot of Michigan startup founders. They proved that you didn't have to be in Silicon Valley to found a notable company.

I well remember after reading Slashdot for a few months and then finding out that they were in West Michigan and being absolutely floored.

Fun fact one of Rob's friends who helped found the company is now a professor at Michigan State University:

https://msu.edu/~kdemaagd/bio.html

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#49

Post by clutchdude »

Thanks cmdrtaco!

Throughout the years, I'd turn to /. to keep up to date on latest shakings and goings ons. I first heard about MythTV there back in the heady days before the home media landscape was bought up and "civilized". I got to see a constant reminders of the failings for the RIAA and so....many....patent troll cases. I remember the crap packt publishing reviews too - basically getting someone to pimp their book. Tons of discussions on cell phones and where the technology was going before Apple did put out the 3g phone and created the walled gardens we have today...then reading about the jailbreaking and what not that was created.

I owe a lot to /. for helping shape me into the slightly jaded but functional developer I am today.

One of my fondest memories was the time we did an Oktoberfest party on the 10th anniversary of /. We were the only party in the state I think.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#50

Post by fred_is_fred »

jedberg wrote: post #42

Thanks Rob for the trip down memory lane. I have two to share: I started using Slashdot in ‘97. I remember back then you had a cron to update the front page and we figured out you only run it every 10 minutes, so I built small shell script on my Linux desktop that would pop up a notification reminding me to reload slashdot every 10 minutes. My second memory was when I was working for Sendmail. Because we were “famous…

> I started using Slashdot in ‘97. I remember back then you had a cron to update the front page and we figured out you only run it every 10 minutes, so I built small shell script on my Linux desktop that would pop up a notification reminding me to reload slashdot every 10 minutes.

I did something similar but then at some point I ended up blocking slashdot.org in my hosts file because it was killing my ability to focus or get work done. I need a beowulf cluster of attention at work.

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