A topic I stumbled upon at Google Groups. Words by the OP:
So it looks like freecode.com is now dead. I suppose it was inevitable that projects which don't generate enough revenue would be cut after all it seems that Dice's failed attempt at Beta on Slashdot was just a cynical attempt to somehow raise site revenue.
It makes one wonder how long Slashdot is for this world. I don't imagine there's much revenue from banner ads as almost anybody who can execute the forehead to spacebar maneuver has them blocked, and I can't imagine that a Slashvertisement generates much income either. Perhaps people will realize that relying on these for-profit HTTP-bound services is not viable in the long term and continue to flock back to Usenet, IRC, and email which are all federated, platform-agnostic, and most importantly, not in control of a single entity.
[Ed's Comment: The post above is a direct quotation of the OP on Google Groups - I'm not sure that his opinion of the long-time feasibility of Slashdot should be given too much credibility.]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Horse With Stripes on Friday June 20 2014, @10:07PM
Dice is rolling the dice by alienating as many of their "products" as possible. Some of us escaped under the threat of Beta so it's hard to tell if the exodus has continued. Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass. Let 'em roll snake eyes and be done with the lot of them.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday June 20 2014, @11:08PM
Welp, now I'm angry and paranoid!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 21 2014, @08:56AM
Long time /. lurker here. When Beta started getting forced on me at random, I started visiting ever less. Out of habit I still check the frontpage, but don't dwell there for nearly as long as I used to. Reckon I'm not alone.
In terms of eyeballs-on-ads statistics, that's gotta be disastrous. For a supposedly IT savvy corp, Dice knows surprisingly little about ye ol' "never touch a running system".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mojo chan on Saturday June 21 2014, @09:29AM
I still hang around there, and it has definitely changed since the beta disaster. A lot of the regulars have left or barely post any more, and the number of asshat misogynists, libertarians, gun nuts and general trolls seems to be way up. Where as popular stories would get over 1000 comments a few years ago now they typically struggle to scrape past 500.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by captainClassLoader on Wednesday June 25 2014, @06:08PM
Also, it seems there are more moonbat conspiracy type persons than I recall there being on Slashdot in the past. But that could be my own selection bias as well.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kaganar on Friday June 20 2014, @10:16PM
Soylentcode.com, anyone?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 20 2014, @10:48PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @11:18PM
Computer, Arch!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @10:49PM
"Soylentcoders are people"?
For a motto that is,,,couldn't see typing Soylentcode is people.. Many of them may feel like they been run through the grinder on any given day but...
Funding suggestions?
On a separate note: OSS in government. Hosting similar to a Consumer Information Catalog online but for free/fast downloads of OSS really should happen, regardless of the fact that many might not want to download from there. Might make for some abandonware to public domain donations too if worked right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 21 2014, @10:41AM
Yes a non diced version of freshmeat would be nice that helps people find software and keep track of the latest releases/updates of open source software with user reviews and discussions etc.
how much can it cost to buy freshmeat.org from the ugly domainblocking company that blocks it now? but I guess another name could be equally good say freshmeat.is
Or are there already another site that do what we need? are www.opensourcesoftwaredirectory.com any good?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 22 2014, @09:14AM
FYI https://directory.fsf.org/ [fsf.org]
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Saturday June 21 2014, @09:32AM
Which reminds me, what happened to the name change? Aborted for now?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by mattie_p on Saturday June 21 2014, @02:23PM
I think you just missed it. The vote is in and we are keeping SoylentNews as our name. Read about it here. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by elf on Saturday June 21 2014, @06:04PM
I missed this too, would have been nice to see a banner like there was for the vote. Interesting read looking at the stats, but a bit confused that the staff had a separate vote.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Saturday June 21 2014, @06:44PM
Funny, because /. had a phase where they were posting tons of stories about software updates, even just minor version number jumps. Probably in a similar vein to Soylent's recent whining that they aren't getting enough story submissions to fulfill their self-imposed quota. So many times people chimed-in saying "Slashdot is not Freshmeat" or "I'd be reading Freshmeat if I wanted to know". Thanks to Dice, /. was indeed Freshmeat, and now Freshmeat isn't Freshmeat either.
If I may digress, Freshmeat was of decreasing utility in recent years. I'd use it from time to time, but so many search results were just abandoned projects that couldn't be made to work on modern systems. Not that Sourceforge is ANY better in that or any other regard... Today, to find software to do a given job, I do a "yum" search, and then I scour the latest Fedora "rawhide" SRPMs:
http://mirror.hmc.edu/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/source/SRPMS/ [hmc.edu]
rpmfind.net is another decent option.
And Slackware's PACKAGES.TXT is still just as useful as ever:
http://mirrors1.kernel.org/slackware/slackware-current/PACKAGES.TXT [kernel.org]
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 3, Informative) by rancid on Friday June 20 2014, @10:56PM
17 years online sounds long term to me.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @11:16PM
Unfortunately the current gang has long since stopped, if they ever started, seeking Enlightenment,,,in any form,, nor accepting anything that might help them get there. By "current gang" I mean the management/Dice.
"There are none so blind as those that will not see."
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Friday June 20 2014, @10:58PM
I liked Freecode. Had no idea that Dice owned them, actually.
Soylent News is looking like a better and better idea as time elapses.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @11:11PM
Oh really? What, if anything, guarantees continuity of existence for SoylentNews? Does it have a publicly traded corporation backing it? Community driven seems like a good idea, but that means SoylentNews is people! What happens if the people venture out of the basement and get hit by buses? Or get laid? Or get jobs? Or just plain lose interest in maintaining it?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Horse With Stripes on Friday June 20 2014, @11:24PM
Well, first and foremost SoylentNews tests negative for Dice.com. If that's not a ringing endorsement for future success I don't know what is.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 21 2014, @02:56AM
That's 'cause Soylentnews is condoms!
errr... dice.com is soyled condoms?
...dice.com is people feeling used and cheap, and no it wasn't good for them either?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @11:29PM
Don't worry! NCommander has no life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 21 2014, @12:59AM
Or get laid?
I'm willing to test this eventuality. Repeatedly, if needed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 21 2014, @01:30AM
Solo sex doesn't count as reaching out and touching someone.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 21 2014, @03:00AM
It does if he uses 'Tickle my Elmo'.... errrmm... 'Tickle ME Elmo', sorry.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Saturday June 21 2014, @04:56AM
Or worse, people remain Anonymous Cowards, Zombies that contribute nothing but negative comments and seek to devour the brains of others. Yes, you are right, this is a survival situation. The only thing that can ensure the survival of Soylent News is People! Non-zombie people! People who need people, who are the luckiest people in the world!! . Oops, sorry. But the point stands. The profit motive is like the zombie need for brains, it is itself not rational, cannot ever be satisfied, and does not result in a net gain of smartness. Thus humanity will win over capitalism by means of the internet, which interestingly enough, was developed by the Military-Industrial Complex (See: Eisenhower) (and Darpanet, and Al Gore) to defend capitalism. Now there is a Marxist dialectical irony for you. Oh, and check out Re:Your Brains [youtube.com] by Jonathan Coulton (ASL version is really the best for pure horror). "We're not unreasonable, I mean, no one's going to eat your eyes!"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by monkey999 on Friday June 20 2014, @11:18PM
Usenet is NOT Google Groups. Especially ironic considering the OP makes the point:
GG is trying to change this by becoming synonymous with Usenet, and luring people into its own groups. We need a distributed social network, or a return to classic Usenet, to reverse the corporate capture of the Internet.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Lagg on Friday June 20 2014, @11:27PM
Hilarious too because the assholes don't even provide an NNTP gateway. I've always been kind of insulted that google did that. It's clear why: They want people to use the webterface for the all important ad revenue. Which is insulting in itself because they're using historical posts for such things.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1) by cykros on Tuesday June 24 2014, @12:35AM
A valid complaint, no doubt.
Though I am curious about young folks these days who only find Usenet through stumbling into Google Groups, and once there, see posts regarding better alternatives for accessing Usenet, and make the transition that way. Sure, we "get off my lawn" types can go on about how Google Groups are an attack on Usenet, but doing so from a background having had ISP provided NNTP servers growing up seems to smack a little bit of unchecked privilege. Google isn't responsible for that major assault on Usenet, they're just somewhat taking advantage of it after the fact. If, in so doing, they bring some folks to Usenet that are valuable contributors, I'm not sure how much I care to pick up arms against them on this particular matter. It seems best to just get on Usenet, and provide helpful advice for those who may just be stumbling in and not really familiar with, well, ANYTHING about Usenet, not having been exposed to it.
September of '93 seems to show no signs of letting up anytime soon, best get to educating the noobs and hope for the best.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @11:31PM
to reverse the corporate capture of the Internet.
Have fun with that. Make sure to using any of the backbone, fiber interconnects, switches/routers, etc. that all those "evil" corporations created and used to build the Internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @11:33PM
Make sure to *stop* using.
(Score: 3) by monkey999 on Friday June 20 2014, @11:56PM
"switches/routers, etc" are only so cheap and ubiquitous because they use the same open TCP/IP standard that allows them all to interoperate.
If the internet infrastructure was run the way google groups/yahoo groups etc was run, you'd need to buy a Microsoft router to connect to your MS PC, subscribe to a MS ISP and then only view web pages on MSN served by IIS. If you wanted to view a web page created by an AOL user, you'd have to use the AOL browser, buy an AOL router, and sign up to AOL.
That nightmare scenario is to the Internet as GG & Yahoo groups is to Usenet.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network [wikipedia.org] http://squte.com/distributed-social-networks-part1.html [squte.com] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in [wikipedia.org] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FOSS_Open_Standards/Importance_and_Benefits_of_Open_Standards [wikibooks.org]
(Score: 1) by q.kontinuum on Saturday June 21 2014, @08:50AM
What a stupid way of reasoning. I *pay* for my internet access, my provider *pays* for peering connections (or gets paid by other providers who wish to peer with them). This is a closed deal and has nothing to do with me liking, disliking, opposing or whatever other actions of these corporations. What is more, they earn the money from me because their backbones support open standards (TCP/IP). In this respect, they do behave OK on a technical side. (Trying to gain monopolies and to dictate prices might be another problem.)
Re-capturing the internet the internet does not mean to regulate big corporations to destroy google groups. It means to confront people using brand names as substitutes for product categories. Imagine all people use the word "Toyota" as a substitute for "car": "Die you see the newest SLK Toyota from Mercedes?" On a technical site like soylentnews I find it highly disappointing when people refer to Google Groups when they actually mean usenet, or to "google" something when they actually generically mean to "search something in the internet". Like "Nowadays I google stuff using duckduckgo, for the privacy".
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @11:43PM
So go choose one of the many IRC servers out there and join a channel full of nerds. The jocks will keep using Facebook because they can go to facebook.com and find Facebook.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by monkey999 on Saturday June 21 2014, @12:06AM
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday June 21 2014, @03:08AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by cykros on Tuesday June 24 2014, @12:47AM
I'll echo what others have said: IRC is not a replacement for a full-featured social networking platform.
Diaspora* is something I was extremely hopeful for, but unfortunately the suicide of one of the main devs among other things has resulted in it kind of going a little stagnant.
Perhaps even better would be an application that allowed you to painlessly (from a user's perspective...which may be getting into the land of wishful thinking) aggregate RSS feeds from blogs, facebook, google+, twitter, etc, as well as an xmpp client (though with Facebook's unfederated XMPP and G+ having moved away from xmpp entirely, this is getting less and less likely), and in addition manage things like shared photo collections. Basically, a web browser specifically geared to social network functionality with contact-based viewing options as well as aggregated "timeline" options.
For now, it's a total pipedream, as the social networking options available make a point of specifically NOT playing well with others, because social networking as a business is at this point a subset of marketing, NOT delivering the best services to the users. I'm not sure what exactly it would take to change this, but I adamantly insist that it is the direction things need to move in. Working out how to finance it seems to at this point still be a pretty difficult issue, as a federated network of this sort would have financing needs in a bit more of a chaotic manner than existing centralized services, but I guess I remain hopeful, as these costs seem to diminish with time as bandwidth and hosting become cheaper and cheaper (think about how much you'd have done in 1995 to have even the free tier Amazon VPS services available). The right easy-to-use federated server package being available at a time when the hosting is all but free will hopefully bring a trend away from centralization...for now, we're stuck in the web 2.0 equivalent of the mainframe era.
(Score: 2) by demonlapin on Saturday June 21 2014, @02:11AM
I haven't done a damned thing on there that wasn't binary in at least ten years, probably 15.
Not that I'm bothered - I'm actually happy to hear that the last remnants of the pre-Web Internet are still alive. Just a little surprised.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zafiro17 on Saturday June 21 2014, @09:05AM
Hell yes. In fact, a bunch of us left Slashdot during the Slashcott and wound up at comp.misc. One of us posted this message there. So you are reading on a web page an article that was posted to Usenet by a Slashcotter. We're alive and well thank you very much, and now that most of the dumbasses have abandoned usenet for other pastures (long ago, actually), Usenet is actually pretty awesome.
Here's an article about us:
http://www.ngrblog.com/slashdot-usenet/ [ngrblog.com]
If you insist on accessing Usenet via a browser, you couldn't do better than www.squte.com which is Usenet on the web with added moderation functionality - the best of both worlds.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 2) by demonlapin on Saturday June 21 2014, @04:45PM
(Score: 1) by cykros on Tuesday June 24 2014, @07:10AM
At the risk of being flamed to all hell (I personally don't use windows, and am not really in the loop), you could do worse than Mozilla Thunderbird. Especially handy if you already use it for email. Handles pgp/gpg key signing of messages as well, with the Enigmail extension, fwiw.
I imagine others have their favorites, just figure it's a worthwhile place to start.
(Score: 2) by omoc on Sunday June 22 2014, @08:42AM
> "you couldn't do better than www.squte.com which is Usenet on the web with added moderation functionality"
wow I wasn't aware of this, thank you!!
(Score: 2) by tdk on Monday June 23 2014, @10:32AM
Thanks for your kind words.
If you want to leave any more feedback, you can do so here [soylentnews.org], or on comp.misc [squte.com] or on the site news [squte.com] forum.
Take back your internet [squte.com]