“After 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted, it’s finally time for me to say Good-Bye to Slashdot. I created this place with my best friends in a run down house while still in college. Since then it has grown to be read by more than a million people, and has served Billions and Billions of Pages (yes, in my head I hear the voice). During my tenure I have done my best to keep Slashdot firmly grounded in its origins, but now it’s time for someone else to come aboard and find the *future*“, CmdrTaco posted on Slashdot.

Slashdot began when Rob Malda and Jeff Bates created it while undergraduates of Hop College. Eventually the site wound up in the hands of VA Linux Systems, where Malda ran it out of the SourceForge Inc. office in Dexter, Michigan. Though Malda has held numerous titles and roles over the years, he’s stated that his main role was just to “Make Slashdot Great“.

For those hoping that CmdrTaco would be sticking around in some capacity, he’s not. Essentially after he uploaded his resignation post to Slashdot, he lost his ability to post anything further. He states that’ll he’ll submit stories form time-to-time, but there is no guarantee they’ll make the cut.

“As part of my resignation, after this story appears I will lose the ability to post. For me, this is the most bitter pill to swallow. Posting stories has always been my favorite part of the job. I created Slashdot to share these stories with my friends from IRC and school. It was never ‘work’. Now I will have to go cold turkey. I’m walking away from the soapbox I built. I wish I could continue to post stories forever, but those closest to me know that if I maintained the ability to post, I’d never move on. I’ll continue to read Slashdot and hopefully my occasional story submissions will make the cut. My old mantra: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters still holds true here today. Nobody does it better.”

During his tenure CmdrTaco has seen some amazing events cross the front page of Slashdot. “The explosion of Linux. The rise of Google. The return of Apple. The Dot Com Bubble. The DMCA. 9/11. Wars. Elections. Numerous successful Shuttle Launches and one Disaster. Scientific Breakthroughs galore. Cool toys. Web2.0! Social Networking. Blogging! Podcasting! Micro-Blogging! The Lord of the Rings being filmed and an entire trilogy of new Star Wars.” But the most important to him was his proposal to his longtime girlfriend Kathleen Fent, which he did via the front page of Slashdot on February 14th, 2002.

It’s pretty fitting that CmdrTaco ended his last post as editor-in-chief with the line “thanks to every Slashdot reader for giving me your time all these years. I hope I’ve wasted it efficiently and enjoyably.”

It’s unclear at this time who will be named the new editor-in-chief, but they will no doubt have some big shoes to fill.

Digg came as a revelation to those of us worked in the trenches of IT departments when it debuted. Overnight, our regular source of breaking tech news, Slashdot, looked old, tired, and out of step.

Contrast that with the intriguing assessment of Digg published at ReadWriteWeb. The money quote: “We have new data that shows that the number of frontpage tech stories is halving every year on digg.”

That’s happening by design. Although your friendly neighborhood techie may be a godsend when it comes to figuring out when your system needs an updated driver, he or she isn’t a profitable demographic for advertisers.

“Currently the most popular category is World & Business, which accounts for just over 22% of the total. The Offbeat category is now around the same as Tech, with 18-19%,” Richard McManus said in the report.

We like ArsTechnica, Gizmodo, and Engadget as much as the next geek. The ReadWriteWeb story shows how, even as the frequency of their front page appearances diminish on Digg, they still dominate the tech stories that do make Digg’s widely-read front page.

Fewer tech stories on Digg probably means fewer people using that category. McManus suggested they may be going to other sites like Reddit or Mixx; we’ll give ReadBurner a mention here.

We think techies took advantage of the available tools, like freely available feed readers, sprinkled in alerts on relevant topics courtesy of sites like Google or Yahoo, and built their own news destinations. That would be a true tech solution, building one to suit a need.

When writing an email at work, it’s safest to assume that the boss will see it – email monitoring systems are often in place.  Lawyers and courtrooms full of newspeople can also become involved, as Katheryn Hayes Tucker details.

In an article spread by Slashdot, Tucker writes, “It has now become routine even in civil investigations for computers to be subpoenaed so lawyers can look at e-mails and hard drives.  And one thing always leads to another. . . .  E-mails, text messages, BlackBerry communications all are potential time bombs if not worded thoughtfully and with discipline.”

So, while we can’t condone any immoral or illegal actions, employees would do well to type with care, or to not type at all – if a subject is especially sensitive, a quick stroll over to the next office might be in order.

As Tucker concluded (quoting Smith, Gambrell & Russell partner Matthew W. Clarke), “never say anything in an e-mail that you wouldn’t want to see displayed on a giant screen in a court room in front of a judge and jury even years from now.”

Does Open License Mean Open Season?

Slashdot blew the whistle on John Wiley and Sons (Wiley) and author George Orwel (note the one "L") for publishing a Wikipedia article on the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. The article appeared without attribution in Orwel’s Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors as though they were Orwel’s words, and not the collective writers of the article on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia contributor "Ydorb," who prefers to remain anonymous, says he wrote much, but not all, of the text that appeared in Black Gold, and provides a side-by-side comparison at Wikipedia. Ydorb says he was informed of the situation via another contributor who had read the book, prompting him to put together the comparison page.

In response to a WebProNews inquiry, Wiley’s Susan Spilka issued the following statement:

"In Black Gold by George Orwel, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., published a credentialed author and a thoroughly-sourced book.  However, it appears that a specific passage from Wikipedia was inadvertently added by our author to the text without attribution. George Orwel has assured us this was not intentional and has asked that we rectify the situation. Wiley will provide corrections to all future reprints of this book and make the changes to the ebook version.

"We take this situation very seriously.  We earn our readers’ trust by producing quality works by reputable authors.   On rare occasions, mistakes happen.  When they happen, we appreciate being alerted and do what is necessary to rectify any problems."

While it appears that Wiley will be doing just that, the incident brings up some important issues regarding open licenses used for collaborative works, including software, on the Internet. Because of the terms of the licensing agreement and the nature of the work, Ydorb and other contributors may have had no other recourse aside from media coverage.

Like much open source software, Wikipedia content is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License, also known as "copyleft." This type of licensing says that content can be reused or repurposed verbatim, either commercially or non-commercially "so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement)."

But what if the attribution requirement is not met? Who will pursue the matter of infringement?

 Wikipedia says not them. Though the staff at the Wikimedia Foundation found the situation "frustrating," spokespersons agreed the company "doesn’t really take any position on this. It is not the copyright holder, the individuals who wrote the article in question are. They have licensed their contributions to the Foundation to get them into Wikipedia.

"Realistically all these folks can do if they feel aggrieved is appeal to public opinion via the media, it is expensive to pursue a copyright infringement case, and for material under GFDL the process would not be to extract money from the plagiarist, but to make them release their work under a compatible license."

And then there’s the problem of multiple anonymous contributors. "That it’s been edited raises very big factual questions," Technology and Marketing Law blogger Eric Goldman tells WebProNews. "Who did what to whom?" And because it’s under an open license, "it’s a little hard to object if somebody actually takes it."

At least in the case of the Khobar Towers article, it is clear that non-attribution is cause for infringement of the license. But there’s nobody willing to pursue the case, and if attribution is made eventually, it becomes a sort of no-harm-no-foul situation.

"This is a really great example of some of the problems with taking content off the Internet," says Goldman. "The publisher may not realize they’re giving their stuff away."
    

You can also go to the preview page for any feed and see its ranking, even if it isn’t in the top 1000, if you know its siteid. For example, this blog, with 54 subscribers, is ranked 22,975.

InsideGoogle is thankfully in 843 place. If you don’t like your ranking, you can claim multiple feeds your site has and consolidate them, so total subscriber count is given credit, rather than seperate Atom, RSS 2.0, RSS 0.91 feeds and so on.

In the first ranking, Slashdot’s 103,771 subscribers makes it #1. Dilbert is 10,000 behind, followed by Engadget. The official Google blog is eighth. Gizmodo is #17 and #74, and adding the two subscriber counts together could make it number 7. There are a good number of site’s that would rank much better if they consolidated feeds.

Check out the full list at beta.bloglines.com/b/topfeeds.

A post should be about this on Bloglines’ news page tonight.

Also, Bloglines shipped some minor improvements, continuing to improve beta Bloglines. I only spotted them because I live my life in Bloglines, but one of them made my life a hell of a lot better.

They changed the behavior of the “f” hotkey, which loads up the next folder of feeds. Instead of opening the folder, it keeps the folder closed and selects it, loading all feed items from that folder, exactly like I normally do with the mouse. Using the “f” key and “j” key, you can go down through items (”j,j,j,j”), then when you reach the end, load the next folder (”j,j,j,f,j,j,f,j”).

I’m breezing through my feeds now faster than ever before. They seem to have improved the performance as well, though that could just be my imagination.

Another improvement: The title bar now shows the number of unread feed items, as well as the number of items you’ve pinned. Whether you keep Bloglines open in a seperate browser window or in a tab, you will always have a cound of the number of unread items to rely on while you’re doing something else.

Finally, they made the address bar update with a unique URL based on what you are viewing. This way, if you hit refresh or restore a browser session, everything will be right back where you were, still reading the same feed as before.

So, another month, another update for Bloglines. What a great pace for them to be keeping up. Sure, its little things, but if Bloglines gets a little bit better every month, just imagine how amazing it can be in the long run. They really are listening to the users and giving people what they want. Gotta love it.

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Photos and Bill Pay appear ready to die quiet deaths, but this is not the case with Yahoo’s latest cut.  In reference to Musicmatch, “BanjoBob” writes on Slashdot, “There was nothing not to like about the product.  There is nothing to like about the new downgrade, Yahoo! Music Jukebox.  MusicMatch users have been getting notices to ‘upgrade’; those who have taken the bait are not pleased.”

A link then leads to the Yahoo Music Jukebox and Yahoo Music Unlimited Feedback forum, where there is long thread calling for a “CLASS ACTION SUITE!!!!!!!!!!” (among the 168 replies, more than a few have pointed out that it should be “suit”).  A sort of runner-up thread still contains 37 replies, and is titled, “‘unable to play media (unresponsive)’ error on Play.”

It’ll be interesting to see if the outcry has any effect on Yahoo’s plans, though that seems unlikely.  Still, while cutting back on products and services can be smart – unused ones are wasteful – trimming away at popular ones could alienate users.  Considering Yahoo’s position in respect to Google, that doesn’t seem like a wise tactic.

The companies, which sell academic essays, theses and dissertations to students who don’t want to write themselves, are now part of a list of unacceptable advertisers that includes the illegal (prostitution, drugs) and the immoral (tobacco, miracle cures), with Google deciding what is acceptable in their minds, and what isn’t.

While anyone can see their point, especially with Google’s close links to academia, there’s a fine line when banning things that are not illegal. After all, many politicians jump on the (First Amendment violating) violent video games bandwagon, and while we expect our politicians to be stupid, I’d be far more dissapointed if Google banned the makers of those games from advertising. Lets hope they stick with banning the scummy, and don’t ban by bandwagon.

(via Slashdot)

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The social bookmarking site has experienced exactly 20 hours and eleven minutes of downtime since May 3 of this year – that works out to about a 96 percent “success” rate, which sounds pretty respectable.  But, unfortunately for BlinkList, Royal Pingdom also measured its competitors’ downtime, and the results put BlinkList to shame.

Fark, Slashdot, Netscape, and Digg didn’t go down for as much as a single minute.  Del.icio.us was down for just five, and Meneame and StumbleUpon trailed with 24 and 33 minutes of downtime, respectively.

The next three social bookmarking sites did notably worse, but still not as poorly as BlinkList.  Royal Pingdom measured one hour and 28 minutes of downtime for Reddit, two hours and six minutes for Newsvine, and four hours and 28 minutes for Furl.

And, yes, then there’s BlinkList, with its 20 hours and six minutes.  I mean, goodness, by the time we reach a number as high as “20,” we’re supposed to represent it with digits, not numbers.  And the outages weren’t just quick blips; Royal Pingdom reports, “The longest individual downtime for the Blinklist website was 4 hours and 46 minutes.”

Royal Pingdom offered “[o]ne possible explanation,” however, which “could be that Blinklist is having scaling issues (a.k.a. growing pains).”  For BlinkList’s sake, let’s hope that’s the case, or else the company and site could be in for a shrinking user base.

Hotness basically uses the social activity around the photos on their site, "votes, views, and more," to share with members of the JPG community some of the best shots being uploaded per an "algorithm" that they created.

Which I think is friggin’ *awesome*. I love the fact that members of the JPG community can have their votes and other activity used to show me even more interesting photos on their site. I love JPG magazine and think it is one of the cooolest sites on the internet today.

We have actually built something similar in Zooomr Mark III that we will release shortly called awesomeness.

The problem?

Well Yahoo would like every site on the internet everywhere to not be allowed to aggregate their user data this way. I’ve blogged about this before. Yahoo has filed an application for a patent on their concept of "Interestingness." To read more negative responses to this BS patent feel free to check out these articles by Boing Boing and Slashdot on the situation.

From Yahoo’s BS patent application:

"Media objects, such as images or soundtracks, may be ranked according to a new class of metrics known as "interestingness." These rankings may be based at least in part on the quantity of user-entered metadata concerning the media object, the number of users who have assigned metadata to the media object, access patterns related to the media object, and/or a lapse of time related to the media object." You can read more details on this patent here.

Hmmmm… lets see.

Is JPG serving up "media objects such as images?"

Yes.

Is JPG using "at least in part the quantity of user-entered metadata concerning the media object"?

Well, Yes.

So then I guess Yahoo can sue them. Sure digg, reddit, YouTube and many other sites also do the same thing — and prior art does exist before Yahoo decided to own all social activity on every web site in the world. But, hey, why not try to screw over the rest of the Web 2.0 community and try to play God with how social media can be arranged outside your own domain.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Yahoo’s bogus attempt to patent the concept of ranking social media is simply ludicrous. They should rescend the patent application for Interesetingness and publicly state that the ranking of media doesn’t belong to anyone. Instead they silently "carry on" proving to the small companies everywhere that all the Kumbayas in the world from Flickr won’t change the fact that bottom line Yahoo is about screwing over any other social networks who dare to compete with them in the glorious pursuit of the almighty dollar.

I don’t mind Flickr patenting their specific mixture and formula for ranking their photos, but when they try to patent all ranking formulas everywhere they cross a line that they shouldn’t.

I’d be interested if anyone has an update on the status of this patent application or knows how to track these kinds of things. I seriously hope it is not approved by the US Patent office. Otherwise sites like JPG may quickly find their "hottness" getting them into "hot water," when Yahoo sues their ass.

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