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A Pre-History of Slashdot

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Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#171

Post by gcb0 »

gfodor wrote: post #107

I remember getting my house's cable modem slashdotted in 2001 when i launched a community site (half-empty.org) I built -- what a wild ride that was. (If you are reading, thanks to Tim Wilde and the rest of the DynDNS crew for all the memories helping me, a young kid, get that site into an actual DC :)) I remember always rolling my eyes at the Linux and Free Software crowd on /. and the anti-Microsoft zeitgeist that…

context is everything.

you were lucky to be doing an online gig. the rest of /. audience was probably in desktop software. most of the people there were ruthlessly crushed by Microsoft business tactics.

they mostly had a very good reason to attack Microsoft.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#172

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

JoshMnem wrote: post #129

I wish that people would stop blogging on Medium, especially about Free software topics. I click the link and get an obnoxiously animated popup shoved in my face that tells me that I've read my two articles for the month and that I should log in for the full experience. Why should people be asked to sign in to follow a blog when there is RSS/Atom? Learning how to use Hugo, Metalsmith, Hexo, Pelican, or Jekyll is not…

Works fine with NoScript. Never knew Medium had a page view limit.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#173

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

samstave wrote: post #158
gfodor wrote: post #107

I remember getting my house's cable modem slashdotted in 2001 when i launched a community site (half-empty.org) I built -- what a wild ride that was. (If you are reading, thanks to Tim Wilde and the rest of the DynDNS crew for all the memories helping me, a young kid, get that site into an actual DC :)) I remember always rolling my eyes at the Linux and Free Software crowd on /. and the anti-Microsoft zeitgeist that…

>> In today's world of mass surveillance, corporate consolidation of internet infrastructure, and the call for censorship of speech on the web I am going to have to call you out. I had a low-digit ID on /. We (people like me) have been calling this out for FUCKING DECADES. I feel that we can talk about generational millenials etc.. but we can also call out DIGITAL millenials; those who thing they know what the fuck i…

Hear, hear. I had a conversation last week where I mentioned that 20 years ago, on Usenet of all places, people were saying that due to the growing size of corporate databases, privacy had already been dead for a long time.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#174

Post by dotancohen »

kevstev wrote: post #148
cannam wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a four-digit Slashdot ID and I don't remember friends and foes. Is it after my time, or is it just that I don't remember anything any more?

You just don't remember anything anymore. IIRC, it was implemented around 2001. It was little more than a curiosity though, you may have just bypassed the little colored "pills" on comments, but aside from being angry about having foes, or happy about getting a new friend, nothing was really done with the feature.

I think that friends' posts had an extra point of moderation calculated for your display, though that feature might not have been present in early incarnations.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#175

Post by sethrin »

cannam wrote: post #92
jandrese wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, every time I see the friend/foe dots/pills on a post my first thought is "that's an old-timer". I'm betting well over 75% of the current Slashdot readers don't even know it exists.

I have a four-digit Slashdot ID and I don't remember friends and foes. Is it after my time, or is it just that I don't remember anything any more?

It still exists if you have the original discussion system enabled. I never moved on to the javascript-based one.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#176

Post by jbgreer »

Slashdot user #4245 here, with comments dating to April of 1999, 2 friends and 1 fan, no foes or freaks. I also had the pleasure of meeting Cmdr Taco at an early LinuxWorld (1998?) in California. I admit it fed a lot of my biases at the time, but also provided a lot of useful information.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#177

Post by dotancohen »

barkingtoad wrote: post #144

User #333 here. Back in the day, someone offered me oral sex for the low user number. What a perfect metaphor for the dot-com era: offering to wildly overpay for a social media asset that would eventually turn out to be useless.

But if course you wouldn't have taken the offer, /.ers never have sex. That would require leaving mom's basement!

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#178

Post by Nition »

jerf wrote: post #168
bdamm wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not owning a TV is pushing my kid to watch a lot of YouTube. I'm seriously considering buying a TV, after living for 30 years without one, just so that I can have a quality entertainment feed that doesn't bend to the new media's idea of what my kid should watch, because what that ends up being is endless advertisements ("open this egg! What's inside? A Ken doll!! Wow!!") and videos of pandas killing each other with c…

Depending on the age of your kids, I suggest total YouTube curation. I've only got up to a nine-year-old but I'm thinking it's going to have to go up to at least 13 or 14 before I can have a serious discussion about just what is out there and how people are trying to manipulate them. Five years ago that would have been more to avoid them from stumbling across the various types of adult content that for various reason…

How are you managing "total curation"? Are you always there with them when they're on YouTube, or are you whitelisting specific channels in some way?

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#179

Post by lazyjones »

User 8xxx here... Slashdot was great while it provided the best daily overview of IT stories. I wonder what changed - I can vaguely recall switching to heise.de and later HN.

Perhaps the way it presented the stories worked better for a few major pieces per day and everyone tries to read "all" interesting stories every day now, so pages with just headlines and broader coverage took over?

I miss the quieter "online life" of the late 90's...

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#180

Post by dbg31415 »

I remember, about 20 years ago, having an argument with someone on Slashdot. Then realizing, about 10 messages in, that I actually knew the person I was arguing with. Being able to connect with friends online, being able to make friends through dialogue online... the site was easily the best online community at the time.

Bonus: Even 20 years ago it had better design than Hacker News! (= (Couldn't resist.)

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