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Slashdot
URL	http://slashdot.org
Type of site	News
Registration	Optional
Owner	SourceForge, Inc.
Created by	Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Launched	September 1997
Revenue	Advertisement, optional subscription

Slashdot, often abbreviated as /.^[1], is a science, science fiction, and technology-related news website owned by SourceForge, Inc.. It features user-submitted and editor-evaluated current affairs news with a "nerdy" slant. Each story on the site has an Internet forum-style comments section attached; Slashdot was one of the first popular websites to include a commentary section in such a prominent manner ^{[citation needed]}. Shortcut: WP:-( Vandalism is indisputable bad-faith addition, deletion, or change to content, made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia. ... Shortcut: WP:-( Vandalism is indisputable bad-faith addition, deletion, or change to content, made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia. ... Image File history File links Emblem-important. ... Shortcut: WP:-( Vandalism is indisputable bad-faith addition, deletion, or change to content, made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia. ... Self-publishing is the publishing of books or other media by those who have written them. ... In historical scholarship, a primary source is a document, or other source of information that was created at or near the time being studied, by an authoritative source, usually one with direct personal knowledge of the events being described. ... Image File history File links Slashdotlogo. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1665x4069, 964 KB) The new main page layout of Slashdot. ... “URL” redirects here. ... LNUX stock price (December 9, 1999 through December 9, 2000) SourceForge, Inc. ... Rob Malda Rob Malda (born May 10, 1976), also known as CmdrTaco, is the founder of the website Slashdot. ... Rob Malda Rob Malda (born May 10, 1976), also known as CmdrTaco, is the founder of the website Slashdot. ... Jonathan Pater is an editor and co-founder[citation needed] of Slashdot. ... Anonymous Coward is a term applied within some online communities to describe users who post without a handle; it is a dummy name attributed to anonymous posts used by some weblogs that allow posting by people without registering for accounts. ... The Slashdot effect is the term given to the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic. ... Slash (a backronym for Slashdot-Like Automated Storytelling Homepage) is the open source collection of Perl modules and stand-alone programs which runs Slashdot, one of the oldest and most popular collaborative weblogs in existence. ... Geeks in Space was a semi-weekly Internet audio show produced from June 1999 to June 2001. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos and other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... LNUX stock price (December 9, 1999 through December 9, 2000) SourceForge, Inc. ... get lost Category: ... For other uses, see Nerd (disambiguation). ... A typical Internet forum discussion, with common elements such as quotes and spoiler brackets A page from a forum showcasing emoticons and Internet slang An Internet forum is a web application for holding discussions and posting user generated content. ...

The summaries for the stories are generally submitted by Slashdot's own readers with editors accepting or rejecting these contributions for general posting. While Slashdot's haphazard editorial style produced a unique voice in the pre-blog age, users frequently post criticisms of perceived arbitrary or biased editorial choices. Editing is the process of preparing language, images, or sound for presentation through correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications. ...

Though the site predates the modern concept of the weblog, Slashdot's architecture is commonly compared to that of modern blogs. Slashdot is notable in that its commenting system is much more robust than most blogs, with threading and user moderation having been introduced before these were commonplace in modern weblog packages ^{[citation needed]}. A weblog (now more commonly known as a blog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally, but not always, in reverse chronological order). ...

Officially, the name "Slashdot" was chosen to confuse those who tried to pronounce the URL of the site ("h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slashdot-dot-org").^[2] “URL” redirects here. ... Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a communications protocol used to transfer or convey information on the World Wide Web. ... The colon (:) is a punctuation mark, visually consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line. ... Due to technical limitations, /. redirects here. ... .org (organization) is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used in the Internets Domain Name System. ...

Administration

Created in September 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, Slashdot is now owned by SourceForge, Inc.. The site is run primarily by Malda, Jeff "Hemos" Bates (who handles articles and book reviews and sells advertising) and Robin "Roblimo" Miller who helps handle some of the more managerial tasks of the site, as well as posting stories ^{[citation needed]}. Rob Malda Rob Malda (born May 10, 1976), also known as CmdrTaco, is the founder of the website Slashdot. ... LNUX stock price (December 9, 1999 through December 9, 2000) SourceForge, Inc. ... Robin Roblimo Miller (born October 30, 1952) is Editor in Chief of Open Source Technology Group, the company that owns Slashdot, SourceForge. ...

The software that runs Slashdot is called Slash, and is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Slash (a backronym for Slashdot-Like Automated Storytelling Homepage) is the open source collection of Perl modules and stand-alone programs which runs Slashdot, one of the oldest and most popular collaborative weblogs in existence. ... The GNU logo The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely-used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ...

The Slashdot headquarters are located in Dexter, Michigan. Dexter is a village in Washtenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. ...

Moderation

To prevent abusive comments, a moderation system has been implemented whereby every comment posted (including those posted anonymously) has a starting score which can be incremented or decremented by semi-randomly chosen moderators. When moderating, the moderator actually chooses a given descriptor (such as "insightful", "funny", "troll") and each descriptor has a positive or negative value associated with it. As such, posts not only are scored, but characterized ("20% insightful, 80% interesting"). Users can configure the value of each descriptor. The descriptors available are normal, offtopic, flamebait, troll, redundant, insightful, interesting, informative, funny, overrated, and underrated. On Internet websites which invite users to post comments, a moderation system is the method the webmaster chooses to sort contributions which are irrelevant, obscene, illegal or insulting from contributions which are useful or informative. ... Sortition is the method of random selection, particularly in relation to the selection of decision makers also known as allotment. ... An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who intentionally posts controversial or contrary messages in an on-line community such as an on-line discussion forum with the intention of baiting users into an argumentative response. ...

Moderation points added to a comment are also added to a user's karma score. Having high karma gives one bonus point to posts made by that author. (Being a registered poster adds one more, so that the highest normally achieved starting score is two).

Conversely, users with low karma have penalties imposed on them. People that post comments designed to get more karma, for example mirroring a linked article or presenting a banal groupthink opinion or lame joke, are referred to as karma whores ^{[citation needed]}. Those who can moderate are selected by their karma score and number of meta moderations (and maybe other criteria). Slashdot editors, including Rob Malda ("CmdrTaco"), can moderate limitlessly. Moderator access for non-editors is time limited (to a few days) and the number of 'mod points' one gets at a time is limited to a total of 5 points. Rob Malda Rob Malda (born May 10, 1976), also known as CmdrTaco, is the founder of the website Slashdot. ...

A given comment can have any integer score from −1 to +5, and Slashdot users can set a personal threshold where no comments with a lesser score are displayed. A person browsing the comments at a threshold of 1 will not see comments with a score of −1 or 0 but will see all others.

A meta-moderation system was implemented to moderate the moderators and help contain abuses. A meta-moderation system is an arrangement used on some Internet websites (such as internet forums, blogs and news websites) which invite user comments. ...

Karma is implemented in the Slash Content management system and hence is generally used by all the sites that use this software. Slash (a backronym for Slashdot-Like Automated Storytelling Homepage) is the open source collection of Perl modules and stand-alone programs which runs Slashdot, one of the oldest and most popular collaborative weblogs in existence. ... A Content Management System (CMS) is a software system used for content management. ...

Meta-moderation

Meta-moderation is a Slashdot mechanism whereby a reader can volunteer to review the correctness of moderation decisions. The reader is presented with ten moderation decisions made by other readers and is asked to say whether or not those moderation choices were fair, by reading the post which was moderated and considering the moderation given.

The correctness of users' initial moderations, as determined by the users who are meta-moderating them, affects how often the initial moderators are given moderation points^[3], so a reader who moderates but constantly has his moderation decisions marked incorrect under meta-moderation will only infrequently be given moderation points.

Slashdotting

Main article: Slashdot effect

Look up slashdot in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Slashdot has about 5.5 million users per month,^[4] and encourages its readers to read the articles linked to in the summary. This leads to a sudden upsurge in people visiting any website linked to, a phenomenon known as the "Slashdot effect". Sometimes the website's server is unable to cope with the level of traffic, and the site becomes unresponsive: the site is said to be "slashdotted". The Slashdot effect is the term given to the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 150 languages. ... The Slashdot effect is the term given to the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic. ... The inside/front of a Dell PowerEdge web server The term Web server can mean one of two things: A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are known as Web browsers, and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are... The Slashdot effect is the term given to the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic. ...

The demand on the servers is reduced as the Slashdot story is moved down or off the front page from new stories being posted. Some webmasters have responded (either before or during a Slashdotting) by replacing dynamic content with static content on that page, to reduce the load and allow their servers to handle more requests. Rarely, a webmaster will take the entire page down or replace it with a blank page temporarily if the traffic is not wanted. Today, most major websites can handle the surge of traffic, but Slashdotting continues to occur on smaller or independent sites.

Article sections

As of May 1, 2006, Slashdot articles are divided into the following sections:^[5] is the 121st day of the year (122nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

• Apple • Articles related to products from Apple Inc, such as Mac OS X, iPod, as well as items that directly compete with those products.
• Ask Slashdot • Articles that seek advice from the Slashdot readership about jobs, computer hardware, software glitches, philosophical problems, etc.
• Backslash • This section contains editor's picks of best comments from a recent popular article, primarily intended for those who do not want to read hundreds of high-moderated comments from the original thread.
• Books • This section is for original book reviews on (not necessarily) tech books.
• Developers • News about the software, or anything that directly affects the practice of programming. (i.e. A new programming language? A useful technique? Licensing issues?)
• Entertainment
• Games
• Hardware
• Interviews • Slashdot occasionally has interviews with various people. Questions are posted as comments in an initial story and 10 highly rated questions are sent to the interviewee; the answers are posted in a follow up story.
• Information Technology (IT) • Anything that people with "Information Technology" in their job description might be interested to know.
• Linux • The Linux section is for news specific to GNU/Linux
• News
• Politics • This section is for news relevant to United States government politics. It was created primarily to cover the 2004 US Presidential Election, but now exists for occasional stories that are related to U.S. Politics.
• Science • This is the place for science articles. Cool technology, space telescope observations, interesting medical research.
• Technology
• Your Rights Online (YRO) • News affecting your ability to live as a free, responsible person online. Such examples are Spam, invasions of privacy, and onerous licenses. Copyrights, patents, intellectual property, and other lawsuits often appear here although their relevance to online rights may be questionable.

The Apache and BSD sections are still posted to, although they no longer enjoy a place in the main site navigation. The Geeks in Space section was a web audio broadcast featuring several of the editors of Slashdot; there have been no recent updates to this section. Apple Inc. ... Mac OS X (IPA: ) is a line of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ... iPod is a brand of portable media player designed and marketed by Apple and launched in October 2001. ... This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ...

Criticism

Critics claim that the quality of materials found on Slashdot has progressively declined. Common complaints include:

• The frequency of reposts (also known as "dupes"), where editors approve articles for the front page, often slightly re-worded, that have previously appeared on the site. Since the major responsibility of editors is to sift through article submissions, reposts leave the impression of incompetence. Some readers have called for mandatory procedures to search for Slashdot dupes before an article is published^[6].

• Some article summaries have typos, misleading titles, or errors. An example of this is an article titled "Spain Outlaws P2P File Sharing" where the article summary states that Spain is banning all P2P file sharing, a huge fuss ensues in the discussion, while the reality is that Spain only made it a civil offence to pirate movies, which is hardly "Outlawing P2P". ^[7]

• There is no mechanism to delete Slashdot accounts. A user cannot remove or delete their Slashdot account. [1]

A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively few servers. ...

Culture

As Slashdot has existed for so many years, it has developed its own subculture, especially running jokes and gags, and the continued obsession with repeating certain quotes or phrases, as well as the use of obscure puns. These include:

• Goatse (For years, a common tactic of Slashdot pranksters was to place comments with links which appeared to be article-relevant sites but were in fact links to the goatse.cx site, which featured nothing but a "gross-out" image)
• Natalie Portman (Referencing her attractiveness, a meme that began on Slashdot around the time of the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace)
• "Hot Grits" Troll (Referring to a probably apocryphal story about Southern women pouring hot grits mixed with lye into the pants of unfaithful male lovers to maim them; usually combined with Natalie Portman references)
• In Soviet Russia... (Referencing a hackneyed joke form popularized by the '80s comedian Yakov Smirnoff)
• Al Gore References, (Joking references to Gore's semi-apocryphal claim to have "invented the internet", when the subject is the Internet. Headlines referring to Gore are also frequently tagged with "manbearpig", in reference to episode 145 of South Park.)
• "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those" (Slashdot's early history coincided with the rise to prominence of the Linux-based parallel computing Beowulf system; speculation about powerful new computers arrayed in a Beowulf cluster quickly became an overused comment)
• "You must be new here." (Invoked frequently after a poster complains of a common Slashdot issue such as duplicate stories or perceived bias by certain editors)
• "But does it run Linux?" trolls and other Slashdot trolling phenomena
• I, for one, welcome our new <some animal/object> overlords (Referencing the famous quote from newscaster turned would-be alien invasion collaborator Kent Brockman of The Simpsons)
• I <cite silly personal offence>, you insensitive clod! (originates from a Calvin and Hobbes strip dated February 14, 1986)^[8]
• 1,2,...) <some action> n-1) ??? n) Profit!!! - number of steps (n) may vary. Usually 3 or 4. Originates from the South Park episode involving the Underpants Gnomes and Harbucks Coffee
• Defective by design (referring to DRM)
• Series of tubes variations (Referencing Alaska Senator Ted Stevens's infamous explanation of the Internet as being a "series of tubes")
• "<Some action>. Cancel or Allow?" (Referring to Windows Vista's User Account Control, which is reputed to frequently ask for permission to perform an action.)
• "Stephen King is dead" variants (Referring to a popular early Slashdot troll which claimed to be posting breaking news that author Stephen King had died)
• "Move along, nothing to see here."
• Using "Young Sebastian" to refer to an innocent child.^[9]
• Car analogies.
• "Netcraft confirms it: <some software> is dying" (Referencing a longtime Slashdot troll which made erroneous deductions, citing a Netcraft report, to conclude that BSD Unixes were "dying")
• The high system requirements for Microsoft Windows Vista.
• Reference to Steve Ballmer throwing a chair.
• References to William Shatner's halting vocal style when a user is deemed to have either overused or incorrectly used commas.
• Most of online polls seen on Slashdot include an option involving CowboyNeal.
• "In Korea, only old people use <x>" (origin)

Additionally, the ID of the Slashdot user is sometimes regarded as a sign of how 1337 the user is, although this is not taken very literally. Having a user ID that is a prime number or other significant mathematical number is also valued. Some people have successfully sold their Slashdot ID (usually because it was a low 4 digit or smaller), although the website's policy on this isn't exactly clear. Slashdot assigns user ID numbers in the order that the user registered, i.e., lower user ID numbers correspond to older accounts. Goatse. ... // Gross Out describes a celebrated movement in art (often comic), which aims to shock the audience with controversial material including toilet humour, nudity, and darkly twisted League of Gentlemen-style sordidity, usually serving the purpose of popular entertainment, though sometimes a vehicle of satirical social comment. ... Natalie Portman (Hebrew: נטלי פורטמן; born June 9, 1981) is a Golden Globe-winning, Academy Award-nominated Israeli-American actress. ... For other uses, see Meme (disambiguation). ... Film poster for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is a 1999 film by George Lucas starring Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, and Jake Lloyd. ... An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who intentionally posts controversial or contrary messages in an on-line community such as an on-line discussion forum with the intention of baiting users into an argumentative response. ... Lye is a caustic solution used for glass and soap making. ... Russian reversal is a type of joke popularized by Yakov Smirnoff. ... Yakov Smirnoff (Ukrainian: Яков Смирнофф) (born January 24, 1951) is, according to his own description, a Ukrainian-born American comedian and painter. ... This article is about the former Vice President of the United States. ... ManBearPig is episode 145 of Comedy Centrals South Park and originally aired on April 26, 2006. ... This article is about the TV series. ... The Borg, a 52-node Beowulf cluster used by the McGill University pulsar group to search for pulsations from binary pulsars. ... This article contains speculation and may try to argue its points. ... Kenton Kent Brockman, (nee Brockelstein), is a recurring fictional character from the animated TV series The Simpsons, voiced by Harry Shearer. ... Simpsons redirects here. ... Listen to this article (3 parts) (info) Part 1 â€¢ Part 2 â€¢ Part 3 This audio file was created from an article revision dated 2006-01-29, and may not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... This article is about the TV series. ... Underpants Gnomes is episode 217 of Comedy Centrals South Park. ... Digital rights management (DRM) is an umbrella term that refers to access control technologies used by publishers and other copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices. ... Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who referred to the Internet as a series of tubes. ... This article is about the senator. ... Windows Vista is a line of graphical operating systems used on personal computers, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, Tablet PCs, and media centers. ... UAC confirmation dialog UAC credentials dialog User Account Control (UAC) is a technology and security infrastructure introduced with Microsofts Windows Vista operating system. ... Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of over 200 stories including over 50 bestselling horror novels. ... Netcraft is an Internet monitoring company based in Bath, England (recently having relocated from Bradford on Avon). ... “BSD” redirects here. ... Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ... Windows Vista is a line of graphical operating systems used on personal computers, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, Tablet PCs, and media centers. ... Steven Anthony Ballmer (born March 24, 1956 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American businessman and has been the chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation since January 2000. ... CowboyNeal is the online nickname (handle) on Slashdot and other websites of Slashdot editor Jon Pater. ... This article does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... In mathematics, a prime number (or a prime) is a natural number which has exactly two distinct natural number divisors: 1 and itself. ...

Recently, a Slashdot community poll indicated that the 'In Soviet Russia...' meme is considered the most popular^[10] in Slashdot's first 10 years. The grits meme received the least votes.

Audience

While Slashdot's core audience is often said to consist of Linux enthusiasts and various other enthusiasts of the open source software movement, there is a significant Windows audience as well. A poll on Slashdot suggests that approximately half of all Slashdot visitors use Microsoft Windows as their operating system, a third use some form of Linux, and above ten percent use Mac OS X. But what is probably significant is the number of cross-users, that is people who use more than one if not all the mentioned systems.^[11] Polls on Slashdot, like most on the Internet, may be unreliable (all slashdot polls include the disclaimer "If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane"). The ongoing assumption that Slashdot is Linux-oriented comes both from historical reasons and from its famous Bill Gates "Borg" icon. Despite this reputation, a significant number of Slashdot stories are related to Windows video games or applications, or Microsoft security bulletins.^{[citation needed]} This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ... Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ... Windows redirects here. ... // An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer. ... This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ... Mac OS X (IPA: ) is a line of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ... For other persons named Bill Gates, see Bill Gates (disambiguation). ... includeonly> It has been suggested that Assimilation (Star Trek) be merged into this article or section. ... “Computer and video games” redirects here. ...

Famous or well-known active "Slashdotters" include:

• Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales (username "jwales")
• writer and actor Wil Wheaton (username "CleverNickName")
• id Software technical director John Carmack (username "John Carmack")
• Nmap author Fyodor (username "fv")
• GNOME and Mono architect Miguel de Icaza (username "miguel")
• Freenet creator Ian Clarke (username "sanity")
• ReiserFS creator Hans Reiser (username "hansreiser")
• open source evangelist Bruce Perens (username "Bruce Perens")
• MySQL CEO Marten Mickos (username "martenmickos")
• Eric S. Raymond (username "ESR")
• O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly (username "tadghin")
• Samba developer Jeremy Allison (username "Jeremy Allison - Sam")
• Physicist and Author Clifford Stoll (username "Cliff Stoll")
• Linux kernel developer Alan Cox (username "Alan Cox")
• Linspire founder and chairman Michael Robertson (username "Lindows.com Michael")
• Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar (username "Ingo Molnar")

Several engineers from NASA involved in the Mars rover exploration projects have also participated in Slashdot's forums.^{[citation needed]} Wikipedia (IPA: , or ( ) is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. ... Jimmy Donal Jimbo Wales, (born August 7, 1966)[2] is an American Internet entrepreneur best known for his role in founding Wikipedia, as well as other wiki-related projects, including the charitable organization Wikimedia Foundation, and the for-profit company Wikia, Inc. ... Richard William Wil Wheaton III (born July 29, 1972) is an American writer and actor. ... id Software (IPA: officially, though originally ) is an American computer game developer based in Mesquite, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. ... John D. Carmack II (born August 20, 1970) is a widely recognized figure in the video game industry. ... For the maternity policy see National Maternity Action Plan Nmap is a free security scanner written by Gordon Lyon. ... Fyodor at the 2006 Hackers on Planet Earth conference Fyodor is the pseudonym of network security expert, open source programmer, writer, and self-proclaimed hacker Gordon Lyon. ... This article is about the mythical creature. ... Mono is a project led by Novell (formerly by Ximian) to create an Ecma standard compliant . ... Miguel de Icaza Miguel de Icaza (born c. ... For other uses, see Freenet (disambiguation) Freenet is a decentralized censorship-resistant peer-to-peer distributed data store aiming to provide electronic freedom of speech through strong anonymity. ... Ian Clarke, around 2002 Ian Clarke (born February 16, 1977) is the original designer and lead developer of Freenet. ... ReiserFS is a general-purpose, journaled computer file system designed and implemented by a team at Namesys led by Hans Reiser who is referred to as the projects Benevolent Dictator for Life. ... Company portrait of Hans Reiser Hans Thomas Reiser (born December 1963) is an American computer programmer famous for his contributions to the Free Software community in the field of file systems. ... Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ... Bruce Perens is a leader in the Open Source and Free Software community. ... MySQL (pronounced (IPA) , my S-Q-L) is a multithreaded, multi-user SQL database management system (DBMS)[1] which has, according to MySQL AB, more than 10 million installations. ... MÃ¥rten Mickos MÃ¥rten Gustaf Mickos (born November 6, 1962 in Esbo, Finland) is chief executive officer of MySQL AB. He has served as chief executive officer since January 2001. ... Eric S. Raymond (FISL 6. ... Programming Perl is a classic OReilly book. ... Tim OReilly at the MIX06 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada Tim OReilly (born 1954, Cork, Ireland) is the founder of OReilly Media (formerly OReilly & Associates) and supporter of the free software and open source movements. ... Samba is a free software re-implementation of SMB/CIFS networking protocol, released under the GNU General Public License. ... Jeremy Allison is a computer programmer famous for his contributions to the free software community, notably to Samba, a re-implementation of SMB/CIFS networking protocol, released under the GNU General Public License. ... Clifford Stoll (or Cliff Stoll) is an astronomer, computer systems administrator, and author. ... Alan Cox at FOSS.IN/2005 Alan Cox (born 1968) is a computer programmer heavily involved in the development of the Linux kernel since its early days (1991). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Michael Robertson (born 1967) is the founder and former CEO of MP3. ... Ingo Molnár, currently employed by Red Hat, is a Hungarian Linux kernel hacker. ... Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the solar system, named after the Roman god of war (the counterpart of the Greek Ares), on account of its blood red color as viewed in the night sky. ...

Appearances in books

Slashdot has been named, either directly or indirectly, in a number of works:

• Accelerando by Charles Stross
• Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds. According to an interview with the author, the main antagonists in the novel are named after slashdot.
• Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Berlin Johnson cites Slashdot's comment moderation system as an example of emergence and describes its operation in detail.
• Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else by Albert Laszlo Barabasi. The Slashdot effect is discussed with respect to network organization.

Accelerando (ISBN 0-441-01284-1) is a 2005 science fiction short story collection by British author Charles Stross. ... Charles David George Charlie Stross (born Leeds, October 18, 1964) is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. ... Century Rain is a science fiction/mystery book by author Alastair Reynolds (ISBN 0575074361). ... Alastair Reynolds (born in 1966 in Barry, South Wales) is a Welsh science fiction author. ... Steven Berlin Johnson Steven Berlin Johnson (born June 6, 1968) is an American popular science author. ... A termite cathedral mound produced by a termite colony: a classic example of emergence in nature. ...

Appearances in Popular Fiction

Slashdot has been used or mentioned in a number of fictional works, including:

• The Sandman:Endless Nights, by Neil Gaiman.

The Sandman: Endless Nights is a graphic novel by Neil Gaiman as a follow-up (but not a sequel) to his ground-breaking Sandman series. ...

Slashdot Japan

Slashdot Japan is owned by VA Linux Systems Japan, led by Oliver M. Bolzer. It started beta test in 2001-5-9, and began operation in 2001-5-28. However, the first Slashdot Japan news article was published in 2001-4-5.^[12] LNUX stock price (09-Dec-1999 through 09-Dec-2000) VA Software Corporation (NASDAQ: LNUX), formerly VA Linux Systems (and VA Research before that), is the provider of the SourceForge Development Intelligence application. ...

The site carries some of the original Slashdot articles, and localized Japanese news.

Timeline

• July 1997 - shortlived forerunner to Slashdot, called "Chips & Dips"
• September 1997 - Slashdot is created.
• December 31, 1997 - First archived Slashdot post.^[13]
• February 2, 1998 - Slashdot begins accepting advertisers.
• May 13, 1998 - Slashdot introduces the "Ask Slashdot" section.^[14]
• September 14, 1998 - Slashdot is hacked.^[15]
• February 1, 1999 - The Slashdot effect is first mentioned.^[16]
• June 29, 1999 - Slashdot is acquired by Andover.net.^[17]
• September 7, 1999 - Meta-moderation is introduced to Slashdot.^[18]
• September 10, 1999 - Slashdot announces the addition of the "Your Rights Online" section.
• October 15, 1999 - Slashdot announces the addition of two new sections: Apache and BSD.
• February 3, 2000 - Andover.net, Slashdot's parent company, merges with Linux company VA Linux.
• February 24, 2000 - Slashdot's 10,000th article is posted.^[19]
• May 2000 - Slashdot is the victim of a week-long Distributed Denial-of-Service attack.^[20]
• September 28, 2000 - Slashdot is hacked again.^[21]
• March 9, 2001 - An anonymous poster posts the full text of Scientology's OT III ("Operating Thetan Level Three") document in a comment attached to a Slashdot article. The Church of Scientology then demanded that the Slashdot editors remove the post under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A week later, in a long article,^[22] the Slashdot editors explained their decision to remove the page while providing links and information on how to get the document from other sources.
• August 18, 2001 - Slashcode 2.2 is released, which allows for comment notification, journals, and UNIX-style user pages.^[23]
• January 2, 2002 - Slashdot introduces the "zoo" system, allowing the marking of users as "friend" and "foe".^[24]
• January 16 - January 30, 2002 - An off-topic post purported to be detailing the results of an investigation into Slashdot trolling phenomena becomes itself the subject of a "moderation war" and ends up being moderated a record 851 times (as well as getting 268 direct replies). The editors are accused of indiscriminately modding down all the posts in the thread collectively as well as permanently banning anyone who moderated the post up from moderating or meta-moderating again.^[25][26]
• March 1, 2002 - Slashdot begins a subscription service, where subscribers are given special perks in exchange for a small fee.
• March 6, 2003 - Slashdot subscribers are given the ability to see articles 10-20 minutes before they are released to the general public.^[27]
• August 18, 2004 - Slashdot has its ten millionth user posting.^[28]
• September 7, 2004 - Slashdot "goes political" and creates a new politics subsection, two months before the U.S. 2004 presidential election.^[29][30]
• April 8, 2005 - Slashdot introduces "day passes", allowing all users to enjoy the benefits of subscribers for the duration of one day if they watch a commercial.
• September 22, 2005 - Slashdot begins using HTML 4.01 and CSS on its pages, replacing the aging HTML 3.2-based system which had been in place for many years.
• April 1, 2006 - OMG!!! Ponies!!! pink theme is used for the day, some users report eye strain. The theme can be applied to the current Slashdot layout using the Slashdotter Firefox extension.^[31]
• June 4, 2006 - A new design is implemented following a contest.^[32]
• September 2, 2006 - richardcpeterson registers as Slashdot's one millionth member.^[33]
• November 9, 2006 - Slashdot reaches 16,777,215 (or 2²⁴ − 1) comments,^[34][35] temporarily breaking the database.^[36]
• October 2, 2007 - Slashdot marks its 10 years online

“Advert” redirects here. ... The Slashdot effect is the term given to the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic. ... This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ... LNUX stock price (09-Dec-1999 through 09-Dec-2000) VA Software Corporation (NASDAQ: LNUX), formerly VA Linux Systems (and VA Research before that), is the provider of the SourceForge Development Intelligence application. ... Doctrine Practices Concepts People Public outreach Organization Controversy Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by American pulp fiction author L. Ron Hubbard in 1952 as an outgrowth of his earlier self-help system, Dianetics. ... Scientology cross Symbol Doctrine Practices Concepts People Public outreach Organization Controversy The Church of Scientology is the largest religious organization devoted to the practice and the promotion of Scientology belief system. ... The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law which implements two 1996 WIPO treaties. ... Slash (a backronym for Slashdot Like Automated Story-telling Homepage) is the open source collection of Perl scripts which runs Slashdot, one of the oldest and most popular collaborative weblogs around. ... Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... Look up Moderation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A meta-moderation system is an arrangement used on some Internet websites (such as internet forums, blogs and news websites) which invite user comments. ...

References

• C. Lampe and P. Resnick, Slash(dot) and Burn: Distributed Moderation in a Large Online Conversation Space, in Proc of ACM Computer Human Interaction Conference, 2004

Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 225th day of the year (226th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st Century. ... // is the 125th day of the year (126th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• Slashdot front page
• Slashdot Japan front page
• Slashdot Book
• Stephen Adler article on the "slashdot effect"
• Webby Award Article
• C/Net article on Slashdot and its founder
• A Brief History of Slashdot Part 1, Chips & Dips