Volume CCXXXIV, Number
46 June, 2004
Finally, the suave loungedorks of Slashdot take time off from htting on foxes to rocket blogging to the inevitable meta-level. The subject: what is a blog? The answer: who cares?
Fellas, go outside.
| Slashdot as a
blog (Score:5, Interesting) by moberry (756963) on Monday May 31, @12:40PM (#9296901) |
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| When i hear the word WebBlog, I think journal. Public journal that is. Slashdot is more of a news site where users can post commets. I would like to know the author's reason on why slashdot is a blog. If slashdot is a blog, then it must have the record for being the world's BIGGEST blog. | |||
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| Did we really
need a link to slashdot in the story (Score:4, Funny) by IchBinDasWalross (720916) on Monday May 31, @12:41PM (#9296905) (http://www.lemonparty.org/) |
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| I mean, seriously folks, that's just stupid. | |||
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| Audience is
the Producer (Score:4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 31, @12:42PM (#9296911) |
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| Sure this makes for generally interesting articles/reading. The real value I see with these Blogs/sites is it's a cheap peer-review process. I have an idea. I submit my idea. I get immediate, high-volume feedback. Saves me publishing to a journal. At least the value can be had on the surface. | |||
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| Slashdot's
collaboration.. (Score:4, Insightful) by Hawkxor (693408) on Monday May 31, @12:42PM (#9296912) (http://web.mit.edu/hawk/www/) |
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| ..ends with crowds of middle schoolers posting pointless inside jokes.
I have been very impressed with./'s moderation system, though. Plus Slashdot allows anyone to post what they want - so it can be read for humor and for knowledge. Entertaining and informative. |
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| don't forget
the other site... (Score:1, Offtopic) by chocolatetrumpet (73058) on Monday May 31, @12:43PM (#9296924) (http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~jf179900) |
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| Don't forget HuSi [hulver.com]! | |||
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| And
colaborative 'ciclopaedias? (Score:5, Interesting)[Notwithstanding that score, we omitted it Ed.] by Pope Raymond Lama (57277) <gwidion@NosPaM.mpc.com.br> on Monday May 31, @12:43PM (#9296926) (http://www.geocities.com/gwidion23) |
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| Is /. truly a
weblog? (Score:5, Insightful) by Cloudmark (309003) on Monday May 31, @12:46PM (#9296939) (http://www.digitalgenesis.ca/) |
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| Does/. really count as a weblog anymore? For that matter,
do any of the sites mentioned? It's a hard call - BoingBoing [boingboing.net] and similar
sites seem to fit the bill for collaborative weblogs far better than discussion
forums like /. I think the sites listed have really moved
beyond weblog status. They really seem to be closer to forums and aggregators.
This isn't a bad thing - it's just different and may require independant
analysis. They've grown beyond (and in many cases existed before) what is
commonly considered a weblog these days. Interestingly, this month's Wired [wired.com] had an article on weblogs / nanopublishing and highlighted a variety of collaborative weblogs, likely as a tie-in to the conference. |
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| "blog"
buzzword for "Wiki" (Score:1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 31, @12:47PM (#9296950) |
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| "wiki" is the term i prefer over "blog" which is just a buzz word for a wiki
that is focused upon a specific application (logging or journals) but since the underlying concept is that of "group colaboration" regardless if it is being used to log daily events or to track issues on a group project and allow people to come together in new ways. Wiki's are the only way to go. TWiki being among the greatest examples. [twiki.org] |
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| Oh
dear (Score:5, Funny) by panurge (573432) on Monday May 31, @12:48PM (#9296958) |
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| If too many people read this paper and the nice things it says about Slashdot, we will be overwhelmed by aspirational would-be techies...fortunately it's been posted on Slashdot, virtually guaranteeing that hardly anyone will actually read it. | |||
On that note, we conclude today's edition of Best of the Web . . .
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HELL, OLD W. PRACTICALLY LIVED AT DIVAS OF HOUSTON TO RELIEVE THE STRESS OF THOSE DANGEROUS MISSIONS FOR THE ALABAMA NATIONAL GUARD. Strip club owners are asking patrons to turn their eyes away from the stage for a moment to fill out a voter registration form and then vote against President Bush. . . . Micheal [sic} Ocello, president of the Association of Club Executives, said the group believes that the president's brand of conservatism is bad for business. . . . Heather Layman [We can't make this stuff up Ed.] said she does not know why the businesses would consdier the president unfriendly to their industry. The Boston Glob, May 21, 2004 at A5. |
It wouldn't be a Best of the Web without the incomparable descriptive talents of glitterqueer. blogspot.com
This month, we focus on blogs. From the media hack's memory hole of orphaned statistics, experts say that over 4,000,000 persons have started blogs, through which they share their inmost feelings and piercing aper็us with their readers. If any. Here's some of the very pithiest. Enjoy.
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Matthew Yglesias Comments: TVHuh? Posted by JP at May 3, 2004 10:28 AMDon't worry Matt. You'll get better as you go. Incidently, what the hell are you talking about? Posted by LowLife at May 3, 2004 10:29 AMBlogging about television is like dancing about architecture, man.
No, it wasn't terrible. Terrible would have been if you had made a major f%&k up or something, like making an obvious factual error, or serving up a an easy one for your adversary to slam back in your face, or sounding really nervous, etc. Your words flowed smoothly, and were cogent. Nope, your performance was hardly a disaster considering it was your national TV debut (which it was, wasn't it?). You did use the word "liberal" once -- I forget the exact context, but it made you sound a bit more Cambridgey than you probably want to (and I'm not just saying that 'cause I'm not one). You'll undoubtedly get better with practice. That Apostolu dude had his talking points well rehearsed, hence his ability to spew on longer than you. Seriously, I'm predicting a network Sunday morning before the year is through. Better get an agent. Posted by P.B. Almeida at May 3, 2004 12:03 PMThe voices in your ear were on a delay? Is this the way it's usually done? And if so, is that why on those Crossfire type shows, when people are joining from studios across the country, there area always those exchanges of crosstalk when one person tries to interrupt and the other barks out "Let me finish!" and it all just falls apart until the host raises his voice after a few seconds? Posted by Jaquandor at May 3, 2004 12:46 PMMatt sorry I missed your CNNFN appearance. BUt more importantly where is your (formerly) regular Monday feature on TAPPED: WEEKEND UPDATE Bring back Weekend Update! Keef Posted by keef at May 3, 2004 01:08 PMDon't you mean "disorienting"? ~Ptitza Odelay Posted by Ptitza Odelay at May 3, 2004 01:34 PMPtitza, you're a moron. Go away.
What else can I say about our weekend down south? In no particular order... Posted by JP at May 3, 2004 01:48 PM Hey, Ptitza, shouldn't your name be spelled "a-n-n-o-y-i-n-g"? Posted by asdf at May 3, 2004 04:25 PMFor those of us who's cable companies do not carry "the best network, ever" - is the interview available on their website? Posted by SoCalJustice at May 3, 2004 06:05 PM |
We almost hate to start with Matt Yglesias '03, because he reminds us of dinner in Adams House, when the blowhard from some New York private school you never had heard of before college would parade his brilliance in the hope, sometimes not in vain, of nailing an impressionable sophomore. Girls, if the following snippet from his blog makes you tingle, please let Matt know.
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Poor Andrew Sullivan had to direct his productions elsewhere. Maybe next time. Thursday May 27, 2004 PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG! |
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It sure doesn't seem fair to beat on poor Matt Yglesias without giving equal time to his even more tedious "adversary," Mickey Kaus. Mickey reminds us of the guy in Mather House who tried the same trick as Matt, but got laid, like, never, because he couldn't shut up.
Here's Mickey trying desperately to score points on John Kerry, for perhaps modifying his views on troop levels in Iraq over a six-month period. Good thing Kerry's opponent never flip flops on Iraq. How are those great victories in Fallujah and Najaf coming along? Don't ask Mickey he's got smaller fish to fry!
Update: Matthew Yglesias attempts to make sense of Kerry's statements, arguing that Kerry's position last September was that we needed more foreign troops, not American troops. "Back then, [it] looked like it would be possible to secure significant contributions of foreign troops to the operation if the United States was willing to cede control of the political process to the United Nations," Yglesias says. " Kerry's full Albquerque statement suggests Yglesias is right about Kerry's desire for foreign troops. After the bit quoted above about halting "Americanization," Kerry went on:
And the way to do that is do everything possible, including sharing the power, to bring other countries in to take the burden.
A couple of points, however:
1) Like many alleged Kerry flip-flops, this one appears to really be a straddle presented in a dissembling fashion. Kerry may have had a consistent underlying position--'I'll go for foreign troops first, and if that fails I guess I may have to send more U.S. troops'--somewhere between the competing camps. The problem is that he shows each camp the half of his position that he wants it to see, keeping the other half hidden. [Gee, is this guy a politician? Ed.] So he tells Democratic primary voters "we should not send more American troops" without telling them that he in fact would send more American troops if no foreign troops are forthcoming. Then when the second, hidden half of the policy comes out, it looks like Kerry's flip-flopping, when in fact he's just been hiding the ball. I don't know if that's better or worse than flip-flopping. Flip-flopping reflects indecision. Dissembling and straddling reflects a calculated , dishonest opportunism that isn't even smart in the long run (when both halves of the position are bound to come out--as they did in Florida when Kerry boasted of his support for the anti-Castro Helms-Burton bill while absurdly hiding the fact that he ultimately voted against it).
2) It's not clear to me that getting more foreign troops for Iraq (in exchange for power-sharing) really was a lively possibility last September. [Not as long as Bush is president. That's the point, Mickster Ed.] Keep in mind that the U.N. had just fled the country after its headquarters had been blown up. Were the U.N. and NATO (and France) really going to rush back in to take responsibility for cleaning up Bush's mess? In retrospect, Kerry's "foreign troops" position may have been a convenient mirage--it gave him something to say that wouldn't annoy the anti-escalation left, but it wasn't a realistic possibility. Backfill: NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof was skeptical of the "foreign troops" solution at the time. ("I've asked two Democratic presidential candidates, Richard Gephardt and another who spoke off the record, if it's really credible to offer the U.N. and NATO as a solution to Iraq. They harrumph a bit in a way that I interpret to mean: 'Maybe not, but it works in front of television cameras.'")
3) Of course the situation on the ground was different back in September--there was a battle going on! Specifically, Kerry was in a primary battle against Howard Dean. If Kerry'd been honest--saying "We need more troops. If I can't get foreign troops I'll have to send more American troops as my buddy John McCain wants to do"--he might have lost some votes! So he pandered and said that sending American troops was "the worst thing"--logically implying it was a step he'd never take. Today, what he said was the "worst thing" is the thing he wants to do. I suggest that this is not being "amazingly consistent from the beginning on Iraq."
4) Berger's "amazingly consistent" quote reflects the natural tension that always exists with campaign surrogates who want to simultaneously a) sell the candidate to voters and b) suck up to the candidate so they'll get jobs in his administration. Imperative (b) often leads surrogates to gild the lily and exaggerate. But the perils of surrogate suckupmanship are particularly acute when the candidate is basically guilty of the charges (i.e. public inconsistency) you are defending him against--and when reporters like Tom Curry are ready to pounce on any evidence of this. .... Hey, at least Berger doesn't have to worry that Kerry's the sort to blame staffers and surrogates for his own mistakes! ...
Damn, I missed it. --s
Posted by J.Scott Barnard at May 3, 2004 11:23 AM