Slashdot
Slashdot, often abbreviated as /.,[1] a name coined to confuse individuals who attempt to pronounce the URL as "h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-org",[2] is a Web 2.0 website owned by SourceForge that, in keeping with its billing as "News for nerds, stuff that matters", purveys user-submitted articles that deal with a variety of technologically-related topics. Slashdot is powered by the open-source Slash engine, which is written in Perl, and uses the mod perl Apache module. The actual content is stored using the MySQL database software. Slashdot has acquired a good deal of fame within the geek community.
Slashdot receives about 5.5 million visitors per month,[3] and a resultant phenomenon often associated with Slashdot is the "Slashdot effect", which is, essentially, a huge traffic spike resulting from a website being featured in a Slashdot article, and the subsequent direction of large numbers of people to the website. This has been known to result in diminished website performance, or even loss of service. A website which has experienced such failure due to the Slashdot effect is said to have been "Slashdotted".
Prescient Quotes on Police State Internet Surveillance
- "The progress of science in furnishing the government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wiretapping. Ways may some day be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home. Advances in the psychic and related sciences may bring means of exploring unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions. 'That places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer' was said by James Otis of much lesser intrusions than these. 1 To Lord Camden a far slighter intrusion seemed 'subversive of all the comforts of society.' Can it be that the Constitution affords no protection against such invasions of individual security?"
- Louis Brandeis (1856-1941), United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
