This blog entry for the class CT244 is a review of the online blog www.slashdot.org.
Slashdot.org the blog which provides “News for nerds and stuff that matters” does exactly what it says on the tin and little more.
Unlike most blogs which have a single moderator who decides what to put on the blog, slashdot has several moderators which decide on stories to be placed on the site based on stories which are contributed to the site by any user.
These stories cover a huge range of subjects from general news in the technology world such as IBM releasing news on there new mainframe
Other article types which feature regularly are new developments in the law which affect your rights online. Two examples of such stories are the decision that spamming is not protected by America’s first amendment (i.e. freedom of speech)
Or the story that a man who hacked into a computer system and used the information he found for his own financial gain and was allowed keep the money.
Frequently on Slashdot you will find stories’ coming up over and over as new information arises on the topic. For example the story relating to facebook and mysapce being vulnerable to hacking was updated later when it was confirmed that it had actually happened.
Slashdot is not solely a computer based site it does provide news for technology in general and safety precautions that should be observed in our day to day lives. For example this story about the flaws in chip and pin credit cards.
As I said at the beginning slash dot is not simply a news site it also provides technology reviews and recommends safe secure products for people to use. For example which USB hard drives are the safest to use. These reviews are not limited to technology.
They have a section of there site dedicated to book reviews
which is updated on a weekly if not sooner basis. On top of all this Slashdot offers a price comparison section for quality products which are on the market as well as an email service that will inform you of any new products on the market which relate to your personnel areas of interest.
One section of Slashdot which is quite unique for a blog is the jobs section. This allows employers looking for people with IT experience to post the job description on the site and allow anyone to view it and apply for the job.
Features such as this job board and the fact that all the stories are submitted by users of the site, make slashdot a very community orientated board. The down side to this Slashdot community is that it is directed mainly towards American people and features such as the job search are of very little use to anyone outside America.
When asked about whether they would create international versions of the site they said they have no plans to do so but they are not opposed to it happening. They also point out that there is a Japanese version of the site which they helped set up but no longer have any involvement in.
In short slashdot is a great site which will keep you up to date with anything and everything to do with technology and the world we have built around it.
Slashdot’s focus is on technology related topics. This is summed up in its slogan “News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters”. There are many articles on Slashdot about technology related topics such as Games, Linux and IT. However the website also covers topics unrelated to technology, such as politics.
The blogs I commented on are.
1)Motivation in schools.(Callanan)
2)The Relevance of Mathematics Today (by Mary Keegan)
3)Language and Thinking (Rowntree)
4)Programming as the new Literacy (Dougan)
5)Mandatory Life Sentences, the Constitution and the European Convention of Human Rights (Jordan)
I’ve found Slashdot a reliable site for covering and linking news in Information and Communication Technology. The editors tend to take particular interest in open source software and several prominent developers have been known to leave comments. The comment system is an interesting method of collaborative filtering that also includes reasons rather than just a score. This often results in humorous and informative threads although the many in-jokes can take a while to pick up on. The system, however, be problematic when too many are excluded and it is difficult to see the full context of posts and replies.
Good overview the slashdot site.