{"id":28083,"date":"2017-10-12T12:03:02","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T10:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/?p=28083"},"modified":"2017-10-12T12:03:02","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T10:03:02","slug":"happy-20th-birthday-slashdot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2017\/10\/12\/happy-20th-birthday-slashdot\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy 20th birthday, Slashdot!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Slashdot<\/a> is celebrating its 20th birthday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today we’re marking Slashdot’s 20th birthday. 20 years is a long time on the internet. Many websites have come and gone over that time, and many that stuck around haven’t had any interest in preserving their older content. Fortunately, as Slashdot approaches its 163,000th story, we’ve managed to keep track of almost all our old postings – all but the first 2^10, or so. In addition to that, we’ve held onto user comments, the lifeblood of the site, from 1999 onward.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

20 years is indeed a long time, and especially so on the Internet.\u00a0 It’s pretty much impossible to imagine the Web without social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.\u00a0 Without YouTube.\u00a0 With no Wikipedia.\u00a0 Without Gmail.\u00a0 Heck, without even so much as Google search.\u00a0 Well, it was around, but not many people knew about it yet.\u00a0 Blogs weren’t invented yet.\u00a0 Web 2.0 was years away.\u00a0 There were no RSS feeds yet.\u00a0 Heck, many people who can’t imagine their lives without the Internet today weren’t even born yet!<\/p>\n

I was introduced to Slashdot back in 1997 or 1998 by my good friend and mentor – Vladimir Ivaschenko<\/a>\u00a0(aka hazard).\u00a0 I think it was on the same day as he told me about Freshmeat.net<\/a>, later re-branded as Freecode.com, the best resource at the time to find and learn about Linux applications (to which I haven’t been in years), and Linux Weekly News<\/a>, which I am still a frequent reader of.<\/p>\n

I’ve been reading Slashdot since then myself, and I have recommended it to every IT professional and technology enthusiast without exception.\u00a0 IT industry in general, the Web, and the Open Source movement wouldn’t have been the same without Slashdot.\u00a0 And neither would I.<\/p>\n

I have learned a lot about a lot from Slashdot – new companies, new technologies, new ideas, different perspectives, influential people, and more.\u00a0 I’ve linked to Slashdot posts and comments from this blog more times than I can remember.\u00a0 (Google Search estimates 1,060 pages linking from this blog to Slashdot since I started posting here 17 years ago).<\/p>\n

If I had to pick a single my most memorable moment about Slashdot, that would be without the doubt September 11, 2001.\u00a0 I wasn’t anywhere near the United States that day, but it wasn’t about the USA.\u00a0 The whole world has changed that day.\u00a0 Nobody knew what was going on.\u00a0 Everything just stopped, or slowed down to a crawl.\u00a0 Everybody was trying to understand, or at least find more information about what happened.\u00a0 All the news sites – from the major ones, like CNN, to the small local newspapers – were dead under the traffic spike.\u00a0 \u00a0Slashdot was pretty much the only one that could cope.\u00a0 It was slow, but it was there.\u00a0 Countless people in the comments were sharing bits and pieces of information.\u00a0 People were sharing photos and videos and redistributing them across a number of FTP sites.<\/p>\n

At the time I was working at PrimeTel<\/a>.\u00a0 There were quite a few people and everyone was desperate to know more.\u00a0 I remember downloading the pictures at turtle crawling speeds, and sending them off to a huge TV I had next to my desk (I was working on project involving video walls and a network of window displays).\u00a0 A crowd of people from the office were just standing nearby, staring at the TV with planes exploding into the towers, towers collapsing one by one, and all the havoc and rescue efforts afterwords.\u00a0 This was something… A decade and a half later, I still get shivers remembering that day.<\/p>\n

This was the most powerful moment.\u00a0 But there were many more.\u00a0 There were numerous times when I started researching something just because of a story or a comment posted on the site.\u00a0 There were a few times when I changed my opinion after an insightful comment.\u00a0 And there were plenty of moments when I burst into uncontrollable laughter.\u00a0 Oh you guys in the comments, you are something!<\/p>\n

I’d like to thank everybody who contributed to Slashdot in these last 20 years and who made it possible, and who kept it alive and kicking.\u00a0 You rock!\u00a0 Here’s to the next 20 years and more stories and insightful, interesting, and funny comments – Cheers!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n

Slashdot is celebrating its 20th birthday. Today we’re marking Slashdot’s 20th birthday. 20 years is a long time on the internet. Many websites have come and gone over that time, and many that stuck around haven’t had any interest in preserving their older content. Fortunately, as Slashdot approaches its 163,000th story, we’ve managed to keep … Continue reading Happy 20th birthday, Slashdot!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Happy 20th birthday, Slashdot! #WebWork #news #Slashdot #Internet","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,62,1334],"tags":[696,991,186,2363],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-28083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-technology","category-web-work","tag-birthday","tag-milestones","tag-news","tag-slashdot"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":16775,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2012\/10\/01\/happy-birthday-slashdot\/","url_meta":{"origin":28083,"position":0},"title":"Happy birthday, Slashdot!","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"October 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Slashdot, probably the most well-known technology news website, is celebrating its 15th birthday. \u00a0I can't say that I've been reading it for 15 years (yet), but I'm pretty close. \u00a0If I remember correctly, Vladimir showed it to me some time back in 1998-1999. \u00a0I've followed it since. 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