Slashdot During War? 127
Seen Dairen writes "How would Slashdot function during a war or comparable crisis? Would it help people distribute critical information? Would it help people keep in touch with their friends and enemies? Would it help to prevent a war? So far it seems no person in extreme need has submitted to Slashdot, but if they do, how would we respond?"
Parochialism, Thy Name Is Slashdot... (Score:1)
...do any of you read newspapers?
News for nerds (Score:1)
Reporting on wars is not the purpose of /., otherwise we would have heard about the war in Chechenia (sp?), in Macedonia, in Bosnia, and probably a whole lot of other locations.
Hopefully, publications will spring up, possibly using part of the /. technology, like the moderation system, but where everyone can post, and whose threads will later be sort of expired, based on a function of total score and time online. Hopefully, nothing will be deleted in that process, just archived in a searchable way.
Also, there might be news services that use the freenet technology (http://www.freenetproject.org/ [freenetproject.org]) to distribute the news, while achieving some level of resistance against disaster, be it censorship or weapon effects.
Regards, Ulli
American's are paranoid (Score:1)
What would slashdot do? (Score:1)
CowboyNeal (Score:1)
DeCSS (Score:1)
Slashdot's war reply (Score:1)
Re:Bad Idea (Score:1)
-Ellen (Posting anonymously to preserve my precious reputation as an objective Slashdot admin.)
Uhm.. Ellen? I think you forgot to check the little 'Post Anonymously' box, before smakcin' the submit button.. better luck next time.
/. won't matter (Score:1)
Slashdot during a war ... (Score:1)
Patriotism is not dead (Score:1)
States of America, of course, and hire
Tom Clancy as a consultant. =)
stupid question (Score:1)
yeah umm, can Slashdot help bring about world peace?
Articles from WW3 (Score:1)
1.) Linux 3.4.1 released [Read more...]
2.) Europe destroyed in nuklear attack. [Read more..]
It is NEWS FOR NERDS, right?
- Knut S.
It may just be me being lame
Re:A Real War (Score:1)
We have no guarantee that our enemy would even use a network that we/you could connect to, much less crack in such a way that a vital system could be knocked out.
- Knut S. May just be me bing lame
Tell this to tibetans .... (Score:1)
What we would really do!! (Score:1)
Geek House [geek-house.org]
Re:War Pigs (Score:1)
Forget ./, What Happens to Internet during War? (Score:1)
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/who/ches/map/yu/index.h tml [bell-labs.com]
Now, I don't know what'd happen to ./, but if there's connectivity, someone will step in. I've got my old ham rig boxed in the basement, just in case; that, and a packet radio TNC, and I could be a post-armegeddon ISP!
Prevent a War or Cause one? (Score:1)
For British
Re:They'd probably probably run a poll (Score:1)
ware, huh, what is it good fare. (Score:1)
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Re:A rather silly "Ask Slashdot" (Score:1)
Answer: It may do, unless the tapes in question are in heavily-EM-shielded cases. However, since they will be, in very quick succession, toasted by the heat wave and blown apart by the shock front, this is rather immaterial. And even if they are outside this radius, the fallout will prevent anyone from using them for some time. Assuming anyone survives the bombing, and that they're not blinded by the flash.
In other words, whether your copy of Baywatch survives is likely fairly low down the list of priorities when a nuclear bomb goes off above you.
Grab.
Re:Prevent a War or Cause one? (Score:1)
"And as the B-52s fly overhead, the yuppies make a frontal assault with a round of Harvey Wallbangers, but are held off by a group of underdressed women with repeating Pina Coladas."
Sorry, I'm not sure where I was going with that. I think I should stop now.
Grab.
Maybe ZDNet can pitch in, too! (Score:1)
Re:A rather silly "Ask Slashdot" (Score:1)
Tease...
slashdot effect (Score:1)
Didn't You Know? (Score:1)
In a time of war (Score:1)
If so then this is the right place.
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Re:American's are paranoid (Score:1)
Then again, IIRC, about 1/2 the Harriers are down again, so maybe they shouldn't be a consideration anyway.
Re:American's are paranoid (Score:1)
There is no reason for it to be unable to take off from or land on a highway conventionally other than the state of maintenance of the average highway (stresses, cracks, rocks, other debris) and the front landing gear (they don't call it the widowmaker for nothing-I know, not the main reason for the name, but true nonetheless).
A conventional landing or take off on a highway may be within the operational envelope, but only just barely and under either strictly controlled or emergency conditions. I can't think of a pilot who would do it even then.
I don't know much about the steel mesh. I think it would to eliminate the problem with the thrusters kicking up all the debris on a vert., but using it would require a controlled situation. I don't think that is what was being discussed.
Re:One of the odder /. questions to date... (Score:1)
IRC hotline to Moscow (Score:1)
It was rather strange to be on IRC and to read someone writing that he could hear automatic gunfire in the distance and see tank columns in the city streets.
I also remember wondering that if the hard-line communists won, how long it would take before they remembered to cut the internet connections. Phone lines and radios would have been gone at once, but the net was such a novelty back then that the universities might have been able to keep a life-line abroad for a while longer.
Yeah, real useful.... my a$$ ! (Score:1)
Yeah, Slashdot and the Internet in general would be REALLY useful.
"Uhh, why can't I get online?" as sirens and the sounds of bombs crash in the background... "I need to check my email!"
U-go War...not action (Score:1)
8)
Re:A rather silly "Ask Slashdot" (Score:1)
slashdot from the trenches (Score:1)
Our planes are dusting us with something that tastes like coal and makes me feel like LSD-25. They say deserters are shot in the back of the head. My question to you is, what should I do?"
sorry if I'm a cynic, but I am
Information collection (Score:1)
3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!
Re:U-go War...not action (Score:1)
They should have typed faster...
rcently? (Score:1)
Re:Distro... (Score:1)
Highly doubtful (Score:1)
Why would Slashdot matter ? (Score:1)
Re:American's are paranoid (Score:1)
Is it me, or do Americans seem rather paranoid?
It's you. The only reason it seems unreasonable to you is because the US has done such a good job of it they appear invincible, so it's easy to mock them of over building their defenses (hence offenses). Yet as stable as the world seems there are always people eyeballing screwing it all up again, and if you wait until you're being overrun it's perhaps a little bit too late..
Re:HELP! (Score:1)
That's easy! Shoot the hostage!
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Re:i can see the headlines... (Score:1)
Your Rights Online: "Loose lips sinks ships" to be official motto of Carnivore 2.5
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
A more interesting question (Score:1)
Re:Bad Idea (Score:1)
The Slashdot Moderation War Code of Honour. (Score:1)
Flamebait: to be used when a post is the parent of a 5-post long discussion, regardless of the content of those posts.
Offtopic: to be used when a post does not cover all of the items discussed in a story.
Redundant: to be used when a post contains one sequence of words used in a previous post, no matter how unique the post actually is.
Overrated: to be used out of spite, or to fulfill a moderator's personal gain.
Re:American's are paranoid (Score:1)
Slashdot's already embroiled in two wars... (Score:1)
Slashdot during wartime (Score:2)
Heard of a website that is loaded with people,
modd'ed up and ready to go
Heard of some other sites, on the super highway,
a place where nobody knows
The sound of goatsex, off in the distance,
I'm getting used to it now
Lived on slashdot, lived on kuro5hin,
I've lived all over this placea
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain't got time for that now
Transmit the kernal, to the receiver,
hope for an update some day
I got three slashdot accounts, a couple of emails,
you don't even know my real name
High on a hillside, linux is loading,
everything's ready to roll
I sleep in the daytime, I code at nightime,
I might not ever get done
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
He ain't no Hemos, or RMS,
he ain't got time for that now
Heard about kuro5hin? Heard about freshmeat?
Heard about latest kernals?
You oughta know not to mod down to zero
somebody might see do that
I got some cable, some kernal updates,
to last a couple of days
But I ain't got no slashdot, ain't got no
news for nerds, ain't got no weblog to read
Why stay at slashdot? Why go to freshmeat?
Gonna be different this time
Can't use cryptography, can't send a news story,
I can't write nothing at all
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
I'd like to read slashdot, I'd love to mod you
I ain't got no time for that now
Trouble in the code, got through the segfault,
we blended with the crowd
We got computers, we're tapping pohne lines,
I know that ain't allowed
We dress like students, we dress like housewives,
or in a suit and a tie
I changed my post stule, so many times now,
I don't know how i type!
You make me shiver, I feel so tender,
we make a pretty good team
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some modding,
you ought to get some sleep
Get your mod points, follow directions,
then you should change your email address
Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day,
whatever you think is best
Burned all my notebooks, what good are
notebooks? They won't help me survive
My linux is crashing, burns like a furnace,
the crashing keeps me alive
Try to stay healthy, physical fitness,
don't want to catch no virus
Try to be careful, don't take no chances,
you better watch what you say on slashdot
Re:Mass exodus (Score:2)
You're kidding, right?
I admit that slashdot has been my homepage for a very long time, but it is not, was not, has never been, and never will be "the single most important english site on the internet".
For starters, I could make the argument that sites like Freshmeat or Linux Today are at least as important as Slashdot, and perhaps moreso.
Then, we could go from there to actual sites in The Real World(tm) that cover topics such as: Current Weather, World Events, and... heck, even Technology.
And then we have the Meta Sites, such as Google: the duct tape of the Internet, without which we could find very little.
And then, you go on to say that the stories that are picked on Slashdot are redundant or boring. Gosh, I guess that rules out the rest of the Internet, then!
...except for this "Kuro5hin" site, which somehow isn't "the single most important english site on the internet", despite being possibly more diverse or colorful than slashdot?
However, even if you can't make an argument, at least someone found you Insightful. I just hope *they* aren't planning on posting, and enlightening us all with *their* newfound insight, TOO...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Re:American's are paranoid (Score:2)
First saw 'em in the late 50's or so when my dad took us aboard Seymour Johnson one summer when he was reserve training. I admit they're a little strange looking when parked, with the wings looking like something out of a Salvador Dali painting.
C-130's must be smaller than I thought, or carriers bigger.
Re:American's are paranoid (Score:2)
*Of course fighters like the P-51 my dad flew can't help but outshine bombers in the looks department.
Re:I think (Score:2)
slashdotting enemies' websites (Score:2)
It depends on scale of war (Score:2)
If this was a nuclear war, the commercial Internet would surprisingly go down pretty quickly--the detonation of several megaton-yield nukes at high-altitude over the USA and the ground destruction of critical communications backbone facilities would stop all commercial Internet traffic--I don't think commercial server farms are capable of withstanding the EMP burst.
Now, military communications would likely survive, since they are designed to operate even in high radiation/EMP environments.
It would be simply shut down. (Score:2)
A friend of mine studied to get his HAM license. Just before passing his exam, one of his mentors pulled him aside, and quietly told him: "Now, that you'll be licensed, you have to realize that in case of war, they gonna come out and lock you away, and confiscate all your gear".
He did not bother taking the exam.
--
sigint (Score:2)
I for one would either be in the theater fighting a meatspace battle, or in my bedroom hacking the enemy.
Bad Idea (Score:2)
--Shoeboy
A rather silly "Ask Slashdot" (Score:2)
Mass exodus (Score:2)
This shouldn't be debated when I know so many quality reader submissions are being sumarily dismissed without a second thought. Story selections are becoming a real problem lately - alot of stories are either redundant or boring -and I can see a mass exodus to kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org] if the editors of
Lets start a war, shall we? (Score:2)
--------------------------
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco (Score:2)
I got some groceries, some peanut butter
to last a couple of days.
Re:Distro... (Score:2)
When I worked at CSC subcontracting for lockheed, the naval display systems for aegis battleships and cruisers ran HP-UX
Useful in War? (Score:2)
Odds are that if somepleace like Korea gets nuked, you'll get the news from Indymedia.org, and a lengthy diatribe about how much [company X. movie X, processor X] sucks/rules from the slashdot editors, who wouldn't even notice until the submission line became clogged with nothing else.
Wars happen all the time... (Score:2)
Considering the number of wars that have happened during slashdot's history, and the number still happening now, I think we can conclude that for the next few wars at least, slashdot would be no help at all, and would be largely unaffected by it.
Or were you referring to a war affecting the slashdot editors? Geez, if someone invaded Jon Katz' territory we'd never hear the end of it...
War in the United States ain't gonna happen any time in the forseeable future. Nobody's going to invade the country with the world's most bloated millitary budget, and the likelihood of revolution of any kind, second amendment or no second amendment, is as close to zero as it's possible to be. (If the well-trained militia were really going to overthrow the government for being tyrranical, it'd have happened by now.)
Re:Slashdot During War? (Score:2)
So. You're new here, are you?
--
typo fix (Score:2)
--Matt
Re:A rather silly "Ask Slashdot" (Score:2)
--
i can see the headlines... (Score:2)
Serious Security flaw in US Anti-Missle Defence System
by Hemos [hemos.net]
Will the War Delay Kernel Release?
by CmdrTaco [cmdrtaco.net]
War is Targetted at Geeks Like Me and You by JohnKatz [goatse.cx]
Slashdot them! (Score:2)
Re:War Pigs (Score:2)
They'd probably probably run a poll (Score:2)
Perhaps there should be a poll on how many Cowboy Neal clones would be neccesary to ensure victory ( or is one enough?:)
Re:No. (Score:2)
And email their congressmen to get GPS turned back on in war zones.
--
of course.... (Score:2)
(then again, he'd probably survive the war and do a 10 part-er on the relationship between "smart" bombs and social inadequalities in Zimbobwe).
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Simple (Score:2)
any questions?
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Re:A rather silly "Ask Slashdot" (Score:2)
How would Slashdot react? (Score:2)
You get the idea.
--
How would you mod? (Score:2)
Subject: Help us please!
Comment: We have no food or water left! The Canadiens have overrun us! We are in a small data center with a T1 and two laptops, please helps us!
modded -1 Offtopic
Reply Post
Subject: Re Help us please!
Comment: click here for help goatse.cx
modded - 1 Troll
Reply Post
Subject: Re Help us please!
Comment: Have you tried using
#!/usr/bin/perl -w?
use food;
M$ Sucks!
modded +4 Insightful
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One of the odder /. questions to date... (Score:2)
How would Slashdot function during a war or comparable crisis?
About as well or badly as it does now, factored by as well as it is able to given whatever conditions are imposed on it and on the internet by the said war.
Would it help people distribute critical information?
Very doubtful that anyone would chose /. above other websiate and/or internet facilities.
Would it help people keep in touch with their friends and enemies?
Same answer. I'm not about to communicate with my sister via /. - I'll write her an email. Duh.
Would it help to prevent a war?
No. Good grief.
So far it seems no person in extreme need has submitted to Slashdot, but if they do, how would we respond?
We only know that no such submission has been published. Possibly this is because the /. crew do not want /. turned into a FAQ for newbies and the lame. How would we respond? Heterogeneously, as normal.
By the way, could I take this opportunity to troll by saying your president *really* *really* sucks over the Kyoto thing.
Re:Slashdot During War? (Score:2)
Define "April Fool's joke". Are we talking about an Ask Slashdot that's so unbelieveably stupid, inane, or silly that there's no way it could be taken seriously?
If so, I'd like to point out the following non-April 1st "Ask Slashdot" entries:
Given that the "Slashdot during War" AskSlashdot is less absurd than some of the "legitimate" AskSlashdot's and could (potentially) serve as a catalyst for worthwhile discussion, the question becomes just who pulled a prank on whom?
Or, to put it more simply, is trolling trolls really trolling? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Who is John Galt? What's keeping Godot? If a tree falls in the woods, will it knock out my Internet connection?
Re:War Pigs (Score:2)
Re:American's are paranoid (Score:2)
You do know that the AV-8B Harrier is VSTOL, that is can take off like a conventional aircraft, without using its vectored thrust systems. Also, it can take off vertically from rough fields prepared with steel runway mesh and from the decks of LHDs. So there's no reason that it can't take off conventionally from a highway or vertically from a highway or field prepared with steel mesh.
Landing conventionally on a highway is also within the Harrier's operational envelope.
Maj. Kong.
--
Re:American's are paranoid (Score:2)
BUFF = Big Ugly Fat Fucker.
Flown them for years, when they were almost old as I was (last one off the line was 1962).
Real name is the "Stratofortress", a/k/a "Aluminum Overcast".
Maj. Kong
--
Re:American's are paranoid (Score:2)
Bullshit
Ever seen a B-52H son? Big ugly fat fucker, with a wingspan that would need a 20-lane highway. Ever been to an Air Force Base? Those runways are specially reinforced concrete twenty feet thick.
With 6,000 airports and thousands of square miles of dry lake beds out west, you don't need to land on highways.
True, the Interstate highways were an Eisenhower Administration project built with civil defense and military mobility in mind (the 12' 6" minimum overpass height were supposed to accomodate troop and missile carriers), based on the German Autobahn.
And yes, there are plenty of European nations (Sweden, Finland, Germany, UK, Russia) that use their highways as emergency staging areas for military aircraft. But these are always small fighters and fighter/bombers, smaller than anything in the USAF inventory. You might be able to pull it off with the A-10 or a USMC Harrier, maybe even a C-130 (which landed on a carrier deck once -- the test pilot got the DFC for that one), but that's about it.
Now, if you want to talk paranoia, take a look at all of the armory buildings that were built in the late-1800s and early-1900s, when the urban gentry felt threatened by rioting immigrants and bomb-throwing anarchists. The machine guns in those armories were meant to mow down rioters, something that happened a number of times (Haymarket riots, Bonus Army, Pullman strike).
Maj. Kong, USAF (ret.)
--
Probably see posts like this... (Score:2)
A Real War (Score:2)
We hold a lot more power than some of you think. We're the ones that can destroy the enemy's computer systems, but then again, we can do that to our own nation as well..cuts two ways
Legal Issues (Score:2)
Slashdot's contribution to the war effort (Score:3)
That, and get Jon Katz to write a few essays to bore the enemy into submission.
--
Ask Slashdot: Please speculate wildly... (Score:3)
Slashdot During War? (Score:3)
I can't believe how many people fell for this April Fool's joke.
/. has already been there. (Score:3)
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]
No. (Score:3)
During a war, slashdot would bitch about how hard it is to get RAM through trade embargoes.
They would use cryptography, and get arrested. And their user base would bitch about it.
They'd talk about GPS, and how it's used for missle tracking.
In short, it would help the war effort exactly not one iota, and still waste the time of our geeks overseas.
But you knew that, right?
Distro... (Score:4)
--
Re:A rather silly "Ask Slashdot" (Score:5)
"If we get involved in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs damage my videotapes?"
HELP! (Score:5)
Pop quiz, hotshots:
HHHHEEEEELLLLLLLPPPPPPP MMMMMMMEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
ESR just broke into my house. He's naked, covered in jelly and holding a gun along with a copy of ESR's Love Tips
What will you do?
Problem with continual defocusing (Score:5)
I built the first site for the North Korean famine (www.northkorea.org [northkorea.org]) over some years with a past Newsweek editor in Japan. I've had some time to think about how to converge people on sites and solve problems.
Actually since the Kobe quake I've thought about how to make systems that could help focus responses to a web thread and help people solve problems. Slashdot might be better than nothing, though it lacks an editor who can continually digest and udpate info to provide a quick to consult page. On the web people tend to surf away and away from a given site, so while Slashdot is great for gathering a mass of people, you still are going to need a link at the top to someone's page. That someone will have to be a superhuman or have a lot of helpers to manage the information flood and remain of interest.
It seems there are a number of interesting components that could be useful in this case if they are not built monolithically, I'm thinking of sourceforge and open directory type collaborative services like dmoz.org [slashdot.org].
There are a lot of other problems though, and one big one which it seems the people here might have a chance at solving, which is the political angle. It's everyone's business when there is a war, and lots of people may not want some information to be posted. There is also disinformation and the danger of getting people hurt.
In the North Korea project, we had a bank account closed in the U.S. and I kept my name off the board since I was worried about being able to travel. But the biggest reason and perhaps the only reason why it succeeded (we raised a quarter million dollars in food, medicine, clothing, and other items) is that it was masterminded by an ace journalist named Bernie Krisher who felt something had to be done, did it, documented it, and demonstrated integrity to people through the site. He pulled his contacts and he risked his life (just because he is elderly.. and still more active and energetic when it counts than most twenty-year olds) one of the trips he ended up hospitalized there. The story got out through the site's news items, essays, photo and video reports, faxes from the government of North Korea, and info about newspaper appearances around the world which were also very important.
I thought of using the web in the Kobe quake to help organize volunteers to assemble needed materials, but the fact is one manic person can do more than a CGI program. If you can somehow gather twenty manic networking people and filter everyone's energy through that you got something big. I say this because in the Kobe quake my own contribution was just to mirror a site on the beleaguered system that was still up in Kobe, and to direct people to a fantastic frequently updated site that everyone from student to megacorporation looked when it was the most important.
Where was the site? Standord University. A student there had the objectivity of five thousand miles and some incredible energy because before other companies took up the slack, and while the government was paralyzed, this guy was probably the most important communications channel.
You also will need to consider how to get people in and out. More information could be had from Eastern European linux people who have plenty of experience in this area. Even in a highly industrialized area you are likely to discover problems getting people physically in and out of the area. And the groups which can move freely may be highly politicized themselves. I think you will have a lot more luck if you try to be extremely focussed and selective about what you are trying to do and what you say you can do. In the end though if someone depends on your website, your ass is going to be on the line! Literally!
Excerpts from Slashdot@War... (Score:5)
by FPTroll (kissmy@trollbutt.com)on Sunday April 01, @07:03 CST (#5)
(User #987765 Info)
First shot! Ow dammit, that was my foot!
Germanys past Performance... (Score:2 Funny)
by Gazundheit (sneeze@germanyr0x0rs.com)on Sunday April 01, @07:30 CST (#22)
(User #666666 Info)
Didn't Germany do rather well in the last big war?
Help!!! (Score:-1 Flamebait)
by unknown_soldier (unknown@soldieroffortune.com)on Sunday April 01, @07:45 CST (#37)
(User #425112 Info)
Help! Help! The guys with the anti-personnel flamethrowers are here!
Imagine ... (Score:4 Insightful)
by PortmanFan (biggestfan@Ilovenatalieportman.com)on Sunday April 01, @07:41 CST (#44)
(User #133755 Info)
We could really end this war if every guy had their own beowolf cluster of cloned Natalie Portmans who would serve them fresh, hot grits for breakfast.
Re:A rather silly "Ask Slashdot" (Score:5)
More likely The Powers That Be would continue posting articles on why The Enemy was going to lose because they were not using The One True OS. Jon Katz would post articles on how the use of guns on the battlefield was leading to a crackdown on geeks in US schools. And the trolls would keep on trolling. Possibly in another language if the war was lost.