If you have been, in any way, involved in the Internet in the past decade or so you’ll know the name CmdrTaco. His real name is Rob Malda and he started Slashdot, a news aggregation site and proto-blog in 1997 after building his own CMS in perl.
Malda and his crew defined the early geekosphere and, back before behemoths like Gawker, Weblogs Inc, and, well us, roamed the Earth, the worst and best thing a server could be is Slashdotted: worst because the sheer deluge of traffic tore down your site and best because, well, the creme of the Internet was knocking on your door.
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[photopress:astrology_planet_chart.jpg,full,center] Over the weekend, my friend Jimbo and I had a pretty good conversation about hippies, and about my uncanny ability to get into fights with them every weekend. He pointed out that it’s likely because, as a man of reason and a trained engineer, if there’s a conflict, I find a mutually agreeable resolution based on principles of rational thinking. Hippies, however, think they’re always right because karma says so, or some other crap. That makes me punch them, my bad, braugh. The same argument, it can be said, applies to nerds wanting to date girls or guys who believe in astrology. Astrology is not logic. It is not reason, or anything close to it. It’s pure, unadulterated superstition, but Slashdot asks the question: can a scientist seriously date a man or woman who believes in this mumbo-jumbo? Or visa-versa? Of course, CrunchGear poses a more relevant question: can Slashtdot nerds really afford to be picky? Should Scientists Date People Who Believe Astrology? [Slashdot] → Read More
[photopress:sdigg.jpg,full,center] Slashdot used to be the place to go for tech news. I now go there because, while the news may be a little older than what you can find on blogs, the comments are usually a lot more informative—a more “elite” techie than the average blog reader, maybe. But Slashdot has been in a feud of sorts with Digg since the latter’s launch. Slashdot’s spiritual leader, CmdrTaco, doesn’t like that whole “social news” model. It’s better when you have a clique of the enlightened deciding what is and isn’t news. You need to guard against the tyranny of the majority. But a tyranny of the minority is just fine with Taco. I don’t see why you’d need to denigrate your competitors if you’re confident in your own model. Don’t blow out my candle to make yours shine brighter, in other words. Slashdot Founder Questions Crowd’s Wisdom [Bits New York Times Blog] → Read More
Three sites I use often are Digg, Slashdot and del.icio.us/popular. If you want to find out what’s hot right now on the Internet, those sites will tell you (although Memeorandum usually gets the news even before these sites). I saw a blurb on Programmable Web about DiggDot.us, which launched yesterday. Diggdot.us combines results from all three of those sites into one very clean interface. Stories have been de-duplicated, and they claim to have additional content as well. Digg, slashdot, and del.icio.us/popular – this is a constant browsing cycle for us. So why not combine them into a unified format without all the extra chrome? We can eliminate dupes and add some extra niceities. If you are a news junkie, this is for you. Or at least, it will be once they have an RSS feed. Shame. → Read More
Digg continues to increase its traffic at an impressive rate, and is clearly set to overtake Slashdot within a month or so (thanks for the link Brian). The image, from one year traffic trend, shows Digg nearing Slashdot traffic levels after less than a year after launch. Slashdot is red, Digg is blue. Digg allows anyone to submit news stories, and other users vote on how important the news is. More popular stuff moves to the top of the site, eventually gaining front page promotion. It thas recently raised funding and saw traffic spike even more as publicity about the site spread from hard core net news junkies to mainstream internet users. See our profiles of Digg here and here. → Read More
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