Misplaced Pages

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100-578: Slashdot (sometimes abbreviated as /. ) is a social news website that originally billed itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories on science, technology, and politics that are submitted and evaluated by site users and editors. Each story has a comments section where users can add online comments. The website was founded in 1997 by Hope College students Rob Malda , also known as "CmdrTaco", and classmate Jeff Bates , also known as "Hemos". In 2012, they sold it to DHI Group, Inc. (i.e., Dice Holdings International, which created

200-486: A social networking service , as members can follow other members and build personal profiles with information about their interests. Reddit , started in June 2005, is a social news website where users can submit articles and comments and vote on these submissions. The submissions are organized into categories called "subreddits". Unlike Digg, with Reddit, users can directly affect an article's score. An "upvote" will increase

300-441: A bus flying through the air". Two injured bus passengers said that they saw a man exploding in the bus. The location of the bomb inside the bus meant the front of the vehicle remained mostly intact. Most of the passengers at the front of the top deck survived, as did those near the front of the lower deck, including the driver, but those at the rear of the bus suffered more serious injuries, with several individuals being blown from

400-734: A comment. Moderation applies either −1 or +1 to the current rating, based on whether the comment is perceived as either "normal", "offtopic", "insightful", "redundant", "interesting", or " troll " (among others). The site's comment and moderation system is administered by its own open source content management system , Slash , which is available under the GNU General Public License . In 2012, Slashdot had around 3.7 million unique visitors per month and received over 5300 comments per day. The site has won more than 20 awards, including People's Voice Awards in 2000 for "Best Community Site" and "Best News Site". At its peak use,

500-510: A consolidated stream of information. NowThis News is a progressive social media-focused news organization founded in 2012. The company posts short (in most cases 15 seconds long) news videos and hyperpartisan content, which is primarily emotion-driven in order to generate views and shares. Voat , launched in April 2014 and discontinued in December of 2020, was also a social news website and

600-645: A filing that it was unable to "successfully [leverage] the Slashdot user base to further Dice's digital recruitment business". On January 27, 2016, the two sites were sold to the San Diego–based BizX, LLC for an undisclosed amount. It was run by its founder, Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda , from 1998 until 2011. He shared editorial responsibilities with several other editors including Timothy Lord, Patrick "Scuttlemonkey" McGarry, Jeff "Soulskill" Boehm, Rob "Samzenpus" Rozeboom, and Keith Dawson. Jonathan "cowboyneal" Pater

700-704: A free alternative to overcrowded trains and buses. Local lifeboats were required to act as safety boats, including the Sheerness lifeboat from the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. Thousands of people chose to walk home or to the nearest Zone 2 bus or railway station. Most of the Underground, apart from the stations affected by the bombs, resumed service the next morning, though some commuters chose to stay at home. Affected stretches were also closed for police investigations. Much of

800-462: A later date). Paid staff editors have an unlimited number of moderation points. A given comment can have any integer score from −1 to +5 , and registered users of Slashdot can set a personal threshold so that no comments with a lesser score are displayed. For instance, a user reading Slashdot at level +5 will only see the highest rated comments, while a user reading at level −1 will see a more "unfiltered, anarchic version". A meta-moderation system

900-502: A link to the original story, and a lengthy discussion section, all contributed by users. At its peak, discussion on stories could get up to 10,000 posts per day. Slashdot has been considered a pioneer in user-driven content, influencing other sites such as Google News and Misplaced Pages. There has been a dip in readership as of 2011, primarily due to the increase of technology-related blogs and Twitter feeds. In 2002, approximately 50% of Slashdot's traffic consisted of people who simply check out

1000-416: A negative response from many longtime users, upset by the added visual complexity, and the removal of features, such as comment viewing, that distinguished Slashdot from other news sites. An organized boycott of the site was held from February 10 to 17, 2014. The "beta" site was eventually shelved. In July 2015, Dice announced that it planned to sell Slashdot and SourceForge; in particular, the company stated in

1100-508: A new and innovative way to participate in a community that is constantly being flooded with new information. These social news websites "include opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, a changed attitude toward intellectual property , the diversification of cultural expression, the development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship ". These websites can help to shape and reshape democratic opinions and perspectives. Social news sites may mitigate

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1200-572: A news story posted to the site with a link could overwhelm some smaller or independent sites. This phenomenon was known as the " Slashdot effect ". Slashdot also now offers a business software comparison directory with over 100,000 software titles. Slashdot was preceded by Rob Malda 's personal website "Chips & Dips", which launched in October 1997, featured a single "rant" each day about something that interested its author – typically something to do with Linux or open source software. At

1300-572: A rate of $ 5 per 1,000 page views – non-subscribers may still view articles and respond to comments, with banner ads in place. On March 6, 2003, subscribers were given the ability to see articles 10 to 20 minutes before they are released to the public. Slashdot altered its threaded discussion forum display software to explicitly show domains for links in articles, as "users made a sport out of tricking unsuspecting readers into visiting [ Goatse.cx ]." In observance of April Fools' Day in 2006, Slashdot temporarily changed its signature teal color theme to

1400-550: A secure Ministry of Defence site. A replacement bus was named Spirit of London . The 52 victims were of diverse backgrounds. All were UK residents, including exchange students. The majority lived in or near London. Their ages ranged from 20 to 60 years old, with an average age of 34. Thirty-two victims were British, while one victim each came from Afghanistan, France, Ghana, Grenada, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mauritius, New Zealand, Nigeria, Romania, Sri Lanka and Turkey. Three victims were Polish nationals, while one victim

1500-409: A series of attempted attacks that failed to cause injury or damage. At 8:49   a.m. on Thursday 7 July 2005, three bombs were detonated on London Underground (LU) trains within 50   seconds of each other: It was originally thought that there had been six, rather than three, explosions on the Underground network. The bus bombing brought the reported total to seven; this was clarified later in

1600-566: A series of four co-ordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamist terrorists that targeted commuters travelling on London's public transport during the morning rush hour. Three terrorists separately detonated three homemade bombs in quick succession aboard London Underground trains in Inner London . Later, a fourth terrorist detonated another bomb on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square . The train bombings occurred on

1700-423: A social news site focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship , created by Paul Graham and run by his startup incubator, Y Combinator . feedalizr was a cross-platform, desktop social media aggregator built using Adobe Integrated Runtime that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites. Users can then use this application to update those sites from their desktop and view

1800-507: A stream of content from other Newsvine users. The "Top of the Vine" displayed the most voted and commented on articles of the day, week, month, or year. Additionally, Newsvine allowed members to create their own "Customizable Column", which could highlight a user's content posted, recent comments, and information about the specific Newsvine member. Hacker News , started in February 2007, is

1900-401: A subsidiary known as Slashdot Media. While initially stating that there were no plans for major changes to Slashdot, in October 2013, Slashdot launched a "beta" for a significant redesign of the site, which featured a simpler appearance and commenting system. While initially an opt-in beta, the site automatically began migrating selected users to the new design in February 2014; the rollout led to

2000-682: A system of user-created communities called "subreddits", which are essentially categories for a specific type of news. Comments on the featured posts are shown in a hierarchical fashion also based on votes. Users have the ability to earn " karma " for their participation and time on the website. Newsvine , started in March 2006, was a social news website mostly focused on politics, both international and domestic. The Newsvine home page allowed users to customize "seeds" and story feeds. Users received articles via "The Wire" from sources including The Associated Press or The Huffington Post , and from "The Vine"

2100-572: A terrorist suspect arrested in Berlin in May 2011 have suggested that Rashid Rauf , a British al Qaeda operative, played a key role in planning the attacks. A second claim of responsibility was posted on the Internet by another al-Qaeda allied group, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades . The group had, however, previously falsely claimed responsibility for events that were the result of technical problems, such as

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2200-456: A user's rating, which is known as " karma " on Slashdot. Users with high "karma" are eligible to become moderators themselves. The system does not promote regular users as "moderators" and instead assigns five moderation points at a time to users based on the number of comments they have entered in the system – once a user's moderation points are used up, they can no longer moderate articles (though they can be assigned more moderation points at

2300-518: A videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera on 1 September 2005, Mohammad Sidique Khan described his motivation. The tape had been edited and mentioned al-Qaeda members Osama bin Laden , Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi , describing them as "today's heroes". Khan's tape said: I and thousands like me are forsaking everything for what we believe. Our drive and motivation doesn't come from tangible commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion

2400-705: A videotape broadcast by the Arab television network Al Jazeera. However, an official inquiry by the British government reported that the tape claiming responsibility had been edited after the attacks, and that the bombers did not have direct assistance from al-Qaeda. Zabi uk-Taifi, an al-Qaeda commander arrested in Pakistan in January 2009, may have had connections to the bombings, according to Pakistani intelligence sources. More recently, documents found by German authorities on

2500-405: A warm palette of bubblegum pink and changed its masthead from the usual, "News for Nerds" motto to, "OMG!!! Ponies!!!" Editors joked that this was done to increase female readership. In another supposed April Fools' Day joke, User Achievement tags were introduced on April 1, 2009. This system allowed users to be tagged with various achievements, such as "The Tagger" for tagging a story or "Member of

2600-431: Is Islam , obedience to the one true God and following the footsteps of the final prophet messenger. Your democratically-elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we feel security you will be our targets and until you stop

2700-483: Is a sign that someone has an older account and has contributed to the site longer. For Slashdot's 10-year anniversary in 2007, one of the items auctioned off in the charity auction for the Electronic Frontier Foundation was a 3-digit Slashdot user ID. In 2006, Slashdot had approximately 5.5 million users per month. The primary stories on the site consist of a short synopsis paragraph,

2800-491: Is another popular editor of Slashdot, who came to work for Slashdot as a programmer and systems administrator. His online nickname (handle), CowboyNeal, is inspired by a Grateful Dead tribute to Neal Cassady in their song, "That's It for the Other One". He is best known as the target of the usual comic poll option, a tradition started by Chris DiBona . Slashdot runs on Slash , a content management system available under

2900-499: Is dying." Users will also typically refer to articles referring to data storage and data capacity by inquiring how much it is in units of Libraries of Congress . Sometimes bandwidth speeds are referred to in units of Libraries of Congress per second. When numbers are quoted, people will comment that the number happens to be the "combination to their luggage" (a reference to the Mel Brooks film Spaceballs ) and express false anger at

3000-552: Is of the emergency services, police forces and voluntary aid societies that responded to the bombings to assist with rescue, recovery, security and scene control: There were limited reactions to the attack in the world economy as measured by financial market and exchange rate activity. The value of the British pound decreased 0.89   cents to a 19-month low against the US dollar. The FTSE 100 Index fell by about 200 points during

3100-423: Is very similar to Reddit visually and functionally. The site's userbase included a large number of alt right users, many of whom migrated to Voat after being banned on Reddit . Prismatic combined machine learning, user experience design, and interaction design to create a new way to discover, consume, and share media. Prismatic software used social network aggregation and machine learning algorithms to filter

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3200-550: The 2003 London blackout and the US Northeast blackout of 2003 . Within hours of the bombings, various Islamic religious groups had condemned the attacks and distanced themselves from the perpetrators. Sir Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain stated that the perpetrators were not true Muslims as their acts were "contrary" to Islamic beliefs. On 18 July, over 500 British Muslim religious leaders issued

3300-636: The Bank of England , HM Treasury and the Financial Services Authority revealed that they had instigated contingency plans immediately after the attacks to ensure that the UK financial markets could keep trading. This involved the activation of a "secret chatroom" on the British government's Financial Sector Continuity website, which allowed the institutions to communicate with the country's banks and market dealers. Continuous news coverage of

3400-697: The Circle Line near Aldgate and at Edgware Road , and on the Piccadilly Line near Russell Square . Apart from the bombers, 52 UK residents of 18 different nationalities were killed and nearly 800 were injured in the attacks. It was the UK's deadliest terrorist incident since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 near Lockerbie , and the UK's first Islamist suicide attack. The explosions were caused by improvised explosive devices made from concentrated hydrogen peroxide and pepper, packed into backpacks. The bombings were followed two weeks later by

3500-528: The Dice.com website for tech job seekers). In January 2016, BIZX acquired both slashdot.org and SourceForge . In December 2019, BIZX rebranded to Slashdot Media . Summaries of stories and links to news articles are submitted by Slashdot's own users, and each story becomes the topic of a threaded discussion among users. Discussion is moderated by a user-based moderation system. Randomly selected moderators are assigned points (typically 5) which they can use to rate

3600-405: The GNU General Public License . Early versions of Slash were written by Rob Malda in the spring of 1998. After Andover.net bought Slashdot in June 1999, Several programmers were hired to structure the code and render it scalable, as its users had increased from a few hundred to tens of thousands. This work was done by Brian Aker, Patrick Galbraith, Chris Nandor and others, resulting in version 2 of

3700-503: The War on Terror , and claimed that the plan that included the bombings also involved increasing harassment of Muslims in Europe . On 13 August, quoting police and MI5 sources, The Independent reported that the bombers acted independently of an al-Qaeda terror mastermind some place abroad. On 1 September, it was reported that al-Qaeda officially claimed responsibility for the attacks in

3800-450: The collective intelligence of all of the users to operate. Social news websites also "impl[y] the technical, economic, legal, and human enhancement of a universally distributed intelligence that will unleash a positive dynamic of recognition and skills mobilization". Social news websites help participants to share a collective vision and awareness of how their actions are integrated with those of other individuals. Social news websites provide

3900-589: The 'No. 30 bus' after it was destroyed. The slogan, "Maybe now it's time to start listening to the BNP" was printed beside the photo. Home Secretary Charles Clarke described it as an attempt by the BNP to "cynically exploit the current tragic events in London to further their spread of hatred". Some media outside the UK complained that successive British governments had been unduly tolerant towards radical Islamist militants, so long as they were involved in activities outside

4000-437: The 2000 novel Cosmonaut Keep , written by Ken MacLeod . Several tech celebrities have stated that they either checked the website regularly or participated in its discussion forums using an account. Some of these celebrities include: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak , writer and actor Wil Wheaton , and id Software technical director John Carmack . Social news Like many other Web 2.0 tools, social news websites use

4100-589: The Hammersmith & City line was reopened from Baker Street to Barking after the affected train was cleared at Aldgate, together with the stretch from Moorgate to Aldgate of the Metropolitan Line. The Hammersmith to Paddington part of the Hammersmith & City line was a shuttle service after the bombings. On 29 July, the District line was reopened from High Street Kensington to Edgware Road, after

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4200-426: The Internet as a " series of tubes " or former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer 's chair-throwing incident from 2005. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is a popular target of jokes by Slashdotters, and all stories about Microsoft were once identified with a graphic of Gates looking like a Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation . Many Slashdotters have long talked about the supposed release of Duke Nukem Forever , which

4300-406: The Internet". Andover.net merged with VA Linux on February 3, 2000, changed its name to SourceForge, Inc. on May 24, 2007, and then became Geeknet, Inc. on November 4, 2009. Slashdot's 10,000th article was posted after two and a half years on February 24, 2000, and the 100,000th article was posted on December 11, 2009, after 12 years online. During the first 12 years, the most active story with

4400-518: The King's Cross railway station was also closed, with the ticket hall and waiting area being used as a makeshift hospital to treat casualties. Although the station reopened later during the day, only suburban rail services were able to use it, with Great North Eastern Railway trains terminating at Peterborough (the service was fully restored on 9 July). King's Cross St Pancras tube station remained available only to Metropolitan line services to facilitate

4500-429: The London bombs, they have been deployed to look at certain people." Vodafone reported that its mobile telephone network reached capacity at about 10   a.m. on the day of the bombings, and it was forced to initiate access overload control to prioritise emergency calls. Other mobile phone networks also reported failures. The BBC speculated that the telephone system was shut down by security services to prevent

4600-712: The U.S. and Israel , in the massacre of our children in Palestine . You are directly responsible for the problems in Palestine, Afghanistan , and Iraq to this day. You have openly declared war on Islam , and are the forerunners in the crusade against the Muslims . ... What you have witnessed now is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq. And until you stop your financial and military support to America and Israel. Tanweer argued that

4700-504: The UK. Britain's alleged reluctance to extradite or prosecute terrorist suspects resulted in London being dubbed " Londonistan " by French law enforcement in the mid 1990s, the term was popularised by in the UK by columnist Melanie Phillips . Even before the identity of the bombers became known, former Metropolitan Police commissioner Lord Stevens said he believed they were almost certainly born or based in Britain, and would not "fit

4800-478: The administrators of the site. Each day, these administrators pick out 50 articles to display on the front page. Slashdot , started in 1997, was one of the first social news websites. It focuses mainly on science and technology-related news. Users can submit stories and the editors pick out the best stories each day for the front page. Users can then post comments on the stories. The influx of web traffic that resulted from Slashdot linking to external websites led to

4900-459: The affected train was cleared. On 2 August, the Hammersmith & City line resumed normal service; the Circle line was still suspended, though all Circle line stations are also served by other lines. The Piccadilly line service resumed on 4 August after the affected train was cleared on 16 July, and enhanced maintenance work was done. On 4 August, the Circle line was reopened again. The list below

5000-464: The attacks occurred, described the bombers as " cleanskins ", a term describing them as previously unknown to authorities until they carried out their attacks. On the day of the attacks, all four had travelled to Luton , Bedfordshire, by car, then to London by train. They were filmed on CCTV arriving at King's Cross station at about 8:30   a.m. Two of the bombers made videotapes describing their reasons for becoming what they called "soldiers". In

5100-566: The attacks was broadcast throughout 7 July, by both BBC One and ITV , uninterrupted until 7:00   p.m., although the BBC stuck with initial reports of a power surge on the London Underground until actual events could be corroborated. Sky News did not broadcast any advertisements for 24 hours. ITN confirmed later that its coverage on ITV was its longest uninterrupted on-air news broadcast of its 50-year history. Television coverage

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5200-458: The bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight. We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation. The tape continued: ...I myself, I myself, I make dua (pray) to Allah ... to raise me amongst those whom I love like the prophets , the messengers, the martyrs and today's heroes like our beloved Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, Dr Ayman al-Zawahri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and all

5300-533: The bombings, Home Secretary Charles Clarke confirmed the incidents were terrorist attacks. Although there were security alerts at many locations throughout the United Kingdom, no terrorist incidents occurred outside central London. Suspicious packages were destroyed in controlled explosions in Edinburgh , Brighton , Coventry , Southampton , Portsmouth , Darlington and Nottingham . Security across

5400-436: The bus. The extent of the damage caused to the victims' bodies resulted in a lengthy delay in announcing the death toll from the bombing while the police determined how many bodies were present and whether the bomber was one of them. Several passers-by were also injured by the explosion and surrounding buildings were damaged by debris. The bombed bus was subsequently covered with tarpaulin and removed for forensic examination at

5500-547: The caricature al-Qaeda fanatic from some backward village in Algeria or Afghanistan". The attacks would have required extensive preparation and prior reconnaissance efforts, and a familiarity with bomb-making and the London transport network as well as access to significant amounts of bomb-making equipment and chemicals. Some newspaper editorials in Iran blamed the bombing on British or American authorities seeking to further justify

5600-457: The categories for which it was nominated ( Best Community Site and Best News Site ). It was also voted as one of Newsweek ' s favorite technology Web sites and rated in Yahoo! 's Top 100 Web sites as the "Best Geek Hangout" (2001). The main antagonists in the 2004 novel Century Rain , by Alastair Reynolds – The Slashers – are named after Slashdot users. The site was mentioned briefly in

5700-640: The comment, either up ( +1 ) or down ( −1 ). Moderators may choose to attach a particular descriptor to the comments as well, such as "normal", "offtopic", " flamebait ", " troll ", "redundant", "insightful", "interesting", "informative", "funny", "overrated", or "underrated", with each corresponding to a −1 or +1 rating. So a comment may be seen to have a rating of "+1 insightful" or "−1 troll". Comments are very rarely deleted, even if they contain hateful remarks. Starting in August 2019 anonymous comments and postings have been disabled. Moderation points add to

5800-410: The community feels that the subject has finally figured out something obvious), "correlationnotcausation" (used when scientific articles lack direct evidence; see correlation does not imply causation ), or "getyourasstomars" (commonly seen in articles about Mars or space exploration ). As an online community with primarily user-generated content, many in-jokes and internet memes have developed over

5900-535: The content that aligns with the interests of a specific user. Prismatic integrated with Facebook, Twitter, and Pocket to gather information about user's interests and suggest the most relevant stories to read. Artifact was an iOS and Android app that used machine learning to personalize news recommendations to readers, and also had social features such as liking articles, commenting, and reputation scores for users. 7 July 2005 London bombings The 7 July 2005 London bombings , also referred to as 7/7 , were

6000-555: The country was increased to the highest alert level . The Times reported on 17 July 2005 that police sniper units were following as many as a dozen al-Qaeda suspects in Britain. The covert armed teams were ordered to shoot to kill if surveillance suggested that a terror suspect was carrying a bomb and he refused to surrender if challenged. A member of the Metropolitan Police's Specialist Firearms Command said: "These units are trained to deal with any eventuality. Since

6100-454: The course of the site's history. A popular meme (based on an unscientific Slashdot user poll) is, "In Soviet Russia , noun verb you!" This type of joke has its roots in the 1960s or earlier, and is known as a " Russian reversal ". Other popular memes usually pertain to computing or technology, such as "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these", "But does it run Linux ?", or " Netcraft now confirms: BSD (or some other software package or item)

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6200-470: The damage caused by the bombings was not as great as thought initially. By end of trading the market had recovered fully to above its level at start of trading on 7 July. Insurers in the UK tend to reinsure their terrorist liabilities in excess of the first £75,000,000 with Pool Re , a mutual insurer established by the government with major insurers. Pool Re has substantial reserves and newspaper reports indicated that claims would easily be funded. On 9 July,

6300-624: The day there were 40,000-page requests per second for the BBC News website. The previous day's announcement of the 2012 Summer Olympics being awarded to London resulted in up to 5   Gb/s. The previous all-time maximum for the website followed the announcement of the Michael Jackson verdict , which used 7.2   Gb/s. On 12 July, it was reported that the British National Party released leaflets showing images of

6400-439: The day. US market indexes increased slightly, partly because the dollar index increased sharply against the pound and the euro. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 31.61 to 10,302.29. The NASDAQ Composite Index increased 7.01 to 2,075.66. The S&P 500 increased 2.93 points to 1,197.87 after decreasing as much as 1%. Every benchmark value gained 0.3%. The market values increased again on 8 July as it became clear that

6500-446: The day. The incorrect reports were later attributed to the fact that the blasts occurred on trains that were between stations, causing wounded passengers to emerge from both stations, giving the impression that there was an incident at each. Police also revised the timings of the tube blasts: initial reports had indicated that they occurred during a period of almost half an hour. This was due to initial confusion at London Underground, where

6600-414: The domain, he desired to make a name that was "silly and unpronounceable" – try pronouncing out, 'h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slashdot-dot-org ' ". By June 1998, the site was seeing as many as 100,000 page views per day and advertisers began to take notice. By December 1998, Slashdot had net revenues of $ 18,000, yet its Internet profile was higher and revenues were expected to increase. On June 29, 1999,

6700-469: The effect being called the Slashdot effect Digg , started in December 2004, introduced the voting system. This system allows users to "digg" or "bury" articles. "Digging" is the equivalent of voting positively, so that popular articles are displayed first. "Burying" does not lower an article's score. However, if an article is buried enough times, it will be automatically deleted from the site. Digg offers

6800-558: The emergency sparked discussions to improve London's emergency communications system . For most of the day, central London's public transport system was largely out of service following the complete closure of the Underground, the closure of the Zone 1 bus network , and the evacuation of incident sites such as Russell Square. Bus services restarted at 4:00   p.m. on 7 July, and most mainline railway stations resumed service soon afterward. River vessels were pressed into service to provide

6900-414: The explanation had been made because of bomb damage to power lines along the tracks; the rapid series of power failures caused by the explosions (or power being ended by means of switches at the locations to permit evacuation) looked similar, from the point of view of a control room operator, to a cascading series of circuit breaker operations that would result from a major power surge. A couple of hours after

7000-401: The explosions were originally believed to have been caused by power surges . An early report, made in the minutes after the explosions, involved a person under a train, while another described a derailment (both of which did occur, but only as a result of the explosions). A code amber alert was declared by LU at 9:19   a.m., and LU began to close operations by ordering trains to continue to

7100-508: The gatekeeping of mainstream news sources and allow the public to decide what counts as "news", which may facilitate a more participatory culture. Social news sites may also support democratic participation by allowing users from across geographic and national boundaries to access the same information, respond to fellow users' views and beliefs, and create a virtual sphere for users to contribute within. Fark , which started in 1997, features news on any topic. On Fark, users can submit articles to

7200-539: The headlines and click through, while others participate in discussion boards and take part in the community. Many links in Slashdot stories caused the linked site to get swamped by heavy traffic and its server to collapse. This was known as the "Slashdot effect", a term first coined on February 15, 1999, that refers to an article about a "new generation of niche Web portals driving unprecedented amounts of traffic to sites of interest". Slashdot has received over twenty awards, including People's Voice Awards in 2000 in both of

7300-503: The importance of Online Moderation last December 1, 2011. On Valentine's Day 2002, founder Rob Malda proposed to longtime girlfriend Kathleen Fent using the front page of Slashdot. They were married on December 8, 2002, in Las Vegas , Nevada . Slashdot implemented a paid subscription service on March 1, 2002. Slashdot's subscription model works by allowing users to pay a small fee to be able to view pages without banner ads , starting at

7400-447: The most responses posted was the post- 2004 US Presidential Election article "Kerry Concedes Election To Bush" with 5,687 posts. This followed the creation of a new article section, politics.slashdot.org , created at the start of the 2004 election on September 7, 2004. Many of the most popular stories are political, with "Strike on Iraq" (March 19, 2003) the second-most-active article and "Barack Obama Wins US Presidency" (November 5, 2008)

7500-543: The most visited article with more than 680,000 hits. Some controversy erupted on March 9, 2001, after an anonymous user posted the full text of Scientology 's "Operating Thetan Level Three" (OT III) document in a comment attached to a Slashdot article. The Church of Scientology demanded that Slashdot remove the document under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act . A week later, in a long article, Slashdot editors explained their decision to remove

7600-538: The next station and, to remain at that station and detrain passengers. The effects of the explosions varied due to the differing characteristics of the tunnels in which each occurred: Almost one hour after the attacks on the London Underground, a fourth bomb exploded on the top deck of a number 30 double-decker bus , travelling its route from Marble Arch to Hackney Wick . The bus left Marble Arch at 9:00   a.m. and arrived at Euston bus station at 9:35   a.m., where crowds of people had been evacuated from

7700-414: The non-Muslims of Britain deserve such attacks because they voted for a government which "continues to oppress our mothers, children, brothers and sisters in Palestine , Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya ." Initial reports suggested that a power surge on the Underground power grid had caused explosions in power circuits. This was later ruled out by power suppliers National Grid . Commentators suggested that

7800-422: The old one but is more polished with more rounded curves, collapsible menus, and updated fonts. On November 9 that same year, Malda wrote that Slashdot attained 16,777,215 (or 2 − 1) comments, which broke the database for three hours until the administrators fixed the problem. On July 11, 2010, SlashDot was the first major media platform where Bitcoin , the first cryptocurrency, was publicized. On January 25, 2011,

7900-466: The one that was moderated. Slashdot uses a system of "tags" where users can categorize a story to group them together and sorting them. Tags are written in all lowercase, with no spaces, and limited to 64 characters. For example, articles could be tagged as being about "security" or "mozilla". Some articles are tagged with longer tags, such as "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" (expressing the perception of catastrophic risk), "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense" (used when

8000-492: The ongoing recovery and investigation for a week, though Victoria line services were restored on 15 July and the Northern line on 18 July. All of the damaged trains were removed in stages. St Pancras station , located next to King's Cross, was shut on the afternoon of the attacks, with all Midland Mainline trains terminating at Leicester , causing disruption to services to Sheffield , Nottingham and Derby . On 25 July,

8100-680: The original content ran counter to the website's longtime focus on user-generated submissions. Nick Kolakowski, the editor of the three websites, told The Next Web that the websites were "meant to complement Slashdot with an added layer of insight into a very specific area of technology, without interfering with Slashdot's longtime focus on tech-community interaction and discussion." Despite the debate, articles published on SlashCloud and SlashBI attracted attention from io9, NPR, Nieman Lab, Vanity Fair, and other publications. In September 2012, Slashdot, SourceForge , and Freecode were acquired by online job site Dice.com for $ 20 million, and incorporated into

8200-462: The other brothers and sisters that are fighting in the ... of this cause. On 6 July 2006, a videotaped statement by Shehzad Tanweer was broadcast by Al-Jazeera. In the video, which may have been edited to include remarks by al-Zawahiri, Tanweer said: Your government has openly supported the genocide of over 150,000 innocent Muslims in Falluja ... You have offered financial and military support to

8300-577: The page while providing links and information on how to get the document from other sources. Slashdot Japan was launched on May 28, 2001 (although the first article was published April 5, 2001) and is an official offshoot of the US-based Web site. As of January 2010 the site was owned by OSDN-Japan, Inc., and carried some of the US-based Slashdot articles as well as localized stories. An external site, New Media Services , has reported

8400-426: The person who revealed it. Slashdotters often use the abbreviation TFA which stands for The fucking article or RTFA ("Read the fucking article"), which itself is derived from the abbreviation RTFM . Usage of this abbreviation often exposes comments from posters who have not read the article linked to in the main story. Slashdotters typically like to mock then United States Senator Ted Stevens ' 2006 description of

8500-439: The possibility of mobile phones being used to trigger bombs. Although this option was considered, it became clear later that the intermittent unavailability of both mobile and landline telephone systems was due only to excessive usage. ACCOLC was activated only in a 1 km (0.6 mi) radius around Aldgate Tube Station because key emergency personnel did not have ACCOLC-enabled mobile phones. The communications failures during

8600-425: The score and a "downvote" will decrease it. Articles with the highest scores are displayed on the front page. There is also a page for "controversial" articles, that have an almost equal number of upvotes and downvotes. Free speech debates have arisen due to the shutting down of obscene or potentially illegal "subreddits" (including /r/jailbait, a collection of sexually suggestive underage pictures.) Reddit introduced

8700-481: The site launched its third major redesign in its 13.5-year history, which gutted the HTML and CSS , and updated the graphics. On August 25, 2011, Malda resigned as Editor-in-Chief with immediate effect. He did not mention any plans for the future, other than spending more time with his family, catching up on some reading, and possibly writing a book. His final farewell message received over 1,400 comments within 24 hours on

8800-522: The site was sold to Linux megasite Andover.net for $ 1.5 million in cash and $ 7 million in Andover stock at the Initial public offering (IPO) price. Part of the deal was contingent upon the continued employment of Malda and Bates and on the achievement of certain "milestones". With the acquisition of Slashdot, Andover.net could now advertise itself as "the leading Linux/Open Source destination on

8900-411: The site's users. A user-based moderation system is employed to filter out abusive or offensive comments. Every comment is initially given a score of −1 to +2 , with a default score of +1 for registered users, 0 for anonymous users ( Anonymous Coward ), +2 for users with high "karma", or −1 for users with low "karma". As moderators read comments attached to articles, they click to moderate

9000-423: The site. On December 7, 2011, Slashdot announced that it would start to push what the company described as "sponsored" Ask Slashdot questions. On March 28, 2012, Slashdot launched Slashdot TV. Two months later, in May 2012, Slashdot launched SlashBI, SlashCloud, and SlashDataCenter, three websites dedicated to original journalistic content. The websites proved controversial, with longtime Slashdot users commenting that

9100-415: The software, released in 2001. Slash remains Free software and anyone can contribute to development. Slashdot's editors are primarily responsible for selecting and editing the primary stories that are posted daily by submitters. The editors provide a one-paragraph summary for each story and a link to an external website where the story originated. Each story becomes the topic for a threaded discussion among

9200-459: The third-most-active. The rest of the 10 most active articles are an article announcing the 2005 London bombings , and several articles about Evolution vs. Intelligent Design , Saddam Hussein 's capture, and Fahrenheit 9/11 . Articles about Microsoft and its Windows Operating System are popular. A thread posted in 2002 titled "What's Keeping You On Windows?" was the 10th-most-active story, and an article about Windows 2000/NT4 source-code leaks

9300-516: The time, Malda was a student at Hope College in Holland, Michigan , majoring in computer science. The site became "Slashdot" in September 1997 under the slogan "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", and quickly became a hotspot on the Internet for news and information of interest to computer geeks. The name "Slashdot" came from a somewhat "obnoxious parody of a URL " – when Malda registered

9400-611: The tube and boarded buses as an alternative method of transport. The explosion at 9:47   a.m. in Tavistock Square ripped off the roof and destroyed the rear portion of the bus. The blast took place near BMA House, the headquarters of the British Medical Association , on Upper Woburn Place . A number of doctors and medical staff in or near that building were able to provide immediate emergency assistance. Witnesses reported seeing "papers and half

9500-629: The two hours after the first attack. This was its greatest decrease since the invasion of Iraq , and it triggered the London Stock Exchange 's 'Special Measures', restricting panic selling and aimed at ensuring market stability. By the time the market closed, it had recovered to only 71.3 points (1.36%) down on the previous day's three-year closing high. Markets in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain also closed about 1% down on

9600-429: The {1,2,3,4,5} Digit UID Club" for having a Slashdot UID consisting of a certain number of digits. While it was posted on April Fools' Day to allow for certain joke achievements, the system is real. Slashdot unveiled its newly redesigned site on June 4, 2006, following a CSS Redesign Competition. The winner of the competition was Alex Bendiken, who built on the initial CSS framework of the site. The new site looks similar to

9700-468: Was a Vietnamese born Australian and one held dual American-Vietnamese citizenship. Seven of the victims were killed at Aldgate, six at Edgware Road, 26 at King's Cross and 13 at Tavistock Square. The four suicide bombers were later identified as: Three of the bombers were British-born sons of Pakistani immigrants ; Lindsay was a convert born in Jamaica . Charles Clarke , Home Secretary when

9800-427: Was implemented on September 7, 1999, to moderate the moderators and help contain abuses in the moderation system. Meta-moderators are presented with a set of moderations that they may rate as either fair or unfair . For each moderation, the meta-moderator sees the original comment and the reason assigned by the moderator (e.g. troll , funny ), and the meta-moderator can click to see the context of comments surrounding

9900-432: Was notable for the use of mobile telephone footage sent in by members of the public and live pictures from traffic CCTV cameras. The BBC Online website recorded an all-time bandwidth peak of 11   Gb /s at midday on 7 July. BBC News received some 1   billion total accesses throughout the course of the day (including all images, text and HTML), serving some 5.5   terabytes of data. At peak times during

10000-404: Was promised in 1997 but was delayed indefinitely (the game was eventually released in 2011). References to the game are commonly brought up in other articles about software packages that are not yet in production even though the announced delivery date has long passed (see vaporware ). Having a low Slashdot user identifier (user ID) is highly valued since they are assigned sequentially; having one

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