If you are someway related with the IT field, chances are you have already heard about slashdot. And chances are also that you have already made your (possibly negative) opinion about it. The official line goes 'News for Nerds, Stuff that matters', but it is more than just a technical news site. More than the stories themselves, it's the comments that appeal me. Some of the heavyweights from science and tech. and IT frequent the discussions and hearing (reading actually) their opinions is a pretty enlightening experience. But you will say, this happens on every newsgroup worth its salt out there, so what makes slashdot special?
The important thing is that slashdot has evolved a whole culture around it, with its own slang and style (e.g. consider this sentence, "foobar.com was slashdotted", which means after the foobar.com link appeared on slashdot, the massive traffic generated caused a server meltdown at foobar.com). Comments cover the whole spectrum of attitudes, from witty to sarcastic and from insightful to downright flaimbait (but this is the nature of cyberspace). And the most funny thing are the polls, with must-have 'CowBoyNeal' options. You can't post anonymously, but as 'Anonymous Coward', and on the polls page, you get the warning "This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane." It just can't get any funnier than this. Slashdot also has its own form of social networking, on other sites you have friends and fans but here you also have foes and freaks. And if you don't have a fan, you get the message "You are either loved by all, or just invisible."
Some people (correctly) point out the incorrectness and somewhat sarcastic nature of some of the posts (some of the comments about Outsourcing to India really got on my nerves), but what needs to be remembered is that it is a human gathering. As in any other human affair you will have opinions, and some of them wrong (well, at least from your point of view). It just can't be eliminated (and if done so, it will take the fun out of it). So I am going to keep reading it (and having fun) in the near future.
Here is the link
http://slashdot.org/
and for some the best comments posted on slashdot
http://seenonslash.com/
and hey, hey remember "My UID is prime". :-)
The important thing is that slashdot has evolved a whole culture around it, with its own slang and style (e.g. consider this sentence, "foobar.com was slashdotted", which means after the foobar.com link appeared on slashdot, the massive traffic generated caused a server meltdown at foobar.com). Comments cover the whole spectrum of attitudes, from witty to sarcastic and from insightful to downright flaimbait (but this is the nature of cyberspace). And the most funny thing are the polls, with must-have 'CowBoyNeal' options. You can't post anonymously, but as 'Anonymous Coward', and on the polls page, you get the warning "This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane." It just can't get any funnier than this. Slashdot also has its own form of social networking, on other sites you have friends and fans but here you also have foes and freaks. And if you don't have a fan, you get the message "You are either loved by all, or just invisible."
Some people (correctly) point out the incorrectness and somewhat sarcastic nature of some of the posts (some of the comments about Outsourcing to India really got on my nerves), but what needs to be remembered is that it is a human gathering. As in any other human affair you will have opinions, and some of them wrong (well, at least from your point of view). It just can't be eliminated (and if done so, it will take the fun out of it). So I am going to keep reading it (and having fun) in the near future.
Here is the link
http://slashdot.org/
and for some the best comments posted on slashdot
http://seenonslash.com/
and hey, hey remember "My UID is prime". :-)
1 comment:
talking about comments on slashdot. check out bash.org. These are real quotes from IRC. Most hilarious site i have ever been.
Post a Comment