For the record: I really thought that champagne cooler was empty.

In 1997, right after Chips n' Dips had faded away, to be replaced by the enigmatically named http:///..org, all of us free software nerds hung on its every story, comment and poll like it was carved on tablet and flung from a burning bush. A year later I had started at hardware maker VA Research and /. was falling down for lack of machinery, so we rummaged through our returns piles and sent Rob and Jeff some 2u servers to help out. That was for me the beginning of some of the most important friendships in my adult life.

Its hard to explain how important Slashdot was to all of us 10 years ago. Indeed, without it it would be hard to imagine HN, Reddit, Digg, Fark or any of a thousand lesser sites. The editorial perspective of Rob and the other editors of /. is what kept people coming back and for a long time that perspective was Rob's, then Rob and Jeff and a bunch of us (some, like Timothy and samzenpus, still around!), but then Jeff left, now Rob. In some way I see this as a passing of an era in free software.

Throughout, while some have left for those greener shores, slashdot abided even while buffeted by the markets and the de/evolving internet news world, and it has remained a default tab in my and many others' browsers.

I didn't mean this post to be about Slashdot though, but about my friend Rob. I'll only say that while the site will be the lessor for you leaving, I firmly believe that computer science will gain my. While this note reads like an epitaph or the last pages of a book, it is really no more than a thank you note from me and many I know to your for your decade+ of work on the site. So...

Thanks.

All of the upper management in my company carry an iPad, not for technical reasons but because they like it and they think our customers like it. Site updates are now being checked against iPads and site traffic from iPads has exceeded 1%.

I walked by a managers office the other day, a sign was posted that "The future of CRM is mobile" and a picture of an iPhone, Android and iPad.

Rather than carry my laptop around these days I carry my iPad for email, and other intranet access.

Pointy Sticks

Sorry, but Theora is still not as high quality as later codecs. That hasn't changed. But I was very happy to fund this work out of my group.

Hey, the fellows in netops asked me to clarify for you folks here's the story:

1e100.net is a Google-owned domain name used to identify the servers in our network. Following standard industry practice, we make sure each IP address has a corresponding hostname. Starting in October 2009, we started using a single domain name to identify our servers across all Google products, rather than use different product domains such as youtube.com, blogger.com, and google.com. We did this for two reasons: first, to keep things simpler, and second, to proactively improve security by protecting against potential threats such as cross-site scripting attacks. Most typical Internet users will never see 1e100.net, but we picked we picked a Googley name for it just in case (1e100 is scientific notation for 1 googol).

So there you go!

If you head over to LWN, we've already gone back and forth on this a bit. http://lwn.net/Articles/372419/. The short form is that if they don't like how we use the kernel, we're unlikely to be accepted upstream. It's all still released as source code to the world, but the mainline is not interested in most of what we've with to the kernel.

If the program rootkits your system and prevents you from running certain software... well that sounds like DRM to me. I'd be happy to use a different term if you have something that's more accurate while conveying the same information.

Sounds about right to me.

I wish someone would pick up the Inifinity engine from Bioware and make new D&D games. I really enjoyed Baldur's Gate - Icewind Dale II. I go back and play them about every 2 years at this point.

I just finished buying all the original Lucasarts adventure games that were released on steam (Dig, Monkey Island, Indiana Jones) as well as the new Monkey Island game (+episodes). My fiancee had me pick up the Wallace and Gromit games.

What I'm saying is, I'm still an adventure game junkie, and, if I have anything to say about it, any kids I have will be too. We need more of them.

Hijacking someone else's software isn't competing. Preventing palm from using iTunes isn't anticompetitive in the sense you are suggesting. Anticompetitive behavior would be Apple software going out and uninstalling palm software, or going out onto a system and converting all the music files into a iTunes only DRM format (like Sony has tried to do over and over).

If palm wants to compete then it needs to do its own hard work and write its own software. Apple is under no obligation to support them in anyway and can do whatever it wants with it's own software.

Is it a dickhead move on Apple's part? yes. Do they have a monopoly on digital music? quite possibly. Does what they did violate the Sherman Antitrust Act? of course it doesn't, they're still playing in their own sandbox.

Two things:

1) People have fun in different ways. From your post it seems like you have fun by over coming the challenge of having to have sharp split second response times (mario, prince of persia). Some people don't enjoy that, and despise having to play the same 2 minutes of a level over and over until they can do it in their sleep. Some people just like being an active participant in the story and action. Some people like to have to come up with a winning strategy. Some people like to find-the-pixel. Different styles of play, and there is generally games out there to support all different kinds.

2) I think you'll find that most game companies (video and things like pen-and-paper) have come to learn that "losing" isn't fun. When you invest 30 hours in a game and then die permanently because of a die roll, it's just unsatisfying and frustrating. There is a crowd that can't enjoy a game unless there is a real chance of failure, but that crowd isn't nearly as big as the one that just wants to have fun playing. I see a lot of alternatives to death and losing these days, such as failure leads down a different path, often more difficult than the "success path". I don't expect this will change much, in general people respond better to penalty than outright failure. So yes, game companies will probably not re-adapt perma-death because it will cause them to sell fewer games.

No mod points, but this is the answer to your question.