Slashdot is No Longer Relevant

Slashdot isn't relevant anymore. For those who have never visited the site, Slashdot is a news aggregation site that follows the tag line, "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters". For years it was a dependable source of news on a wide variety of interesting topics ranging from space exploration, to computing, to patent law and copyright freedoms. Most stories that appear on Slashdot focus on the computing and technology industry. Each story includes a comment listing where readers can respond to the story and to the comments of other readers. Ever since college I have faithfully read Slashdot for the latest technology news.

One of Slashdot's favorite whipping posts is Microsoft. Microsoft is the big bad ugly that represents everything evil in the world. When the Netscape vs. Microsoft battle was taking place, Slashdot was a great site to catch up on the latest proceedings and each punch in the boxing match between the companies. Slashdot was also a fantastic promoter of open source software and specifically the variet of flavors of the Linux operating system.

Lately, however, I've noticed that the stories on Slashdot are becoming less newsworthy. Other sites are doing a better job of covering the news that Slashdot was once reliable for. Now I visit Engadget to get updates on the latest cool toys coming out, or Space.com for information about space exploration. Joystiq is my favorite site for gaming news. When I occassionally check back on Slashdot, i see that most of the stories are simply links to the ones carried last week by these other sources. What's worse is that the submissions on Slashdot aren't even trying to be objective anymore. Every story takes a very one-sided slant. Even when there isn't a story to be made, submissions will take weak chip shots at their old favorite baddies. Just today one headline read "Buy Vista or Else" and was followed with a rueful scorning of Microsoft for advertising their new operating system (Vista) as more secure. It is really sad that a once great source of community discussion and relevant news has devolved into petty name calling and sniveling. Slashdot, oh how you have fallen. I'm afraid that the time has come to finally delete you from my news sources.