Why digg.com is better than Slashdot
December 8th, 2005
For the longest time I wouldn’t start the day without reading the articles on Slashdot. Hell, at my last job I would check on new articles every hour on the hour. Recently, however, I have spent a lot more time reading the articles on Digg. Why? There are a few reasons. Number one is the articles themselves: there are more of them, they show up faster ( as opposed to reading things a couple of days later on Slashdot – if I wanted two-day-old tech news, I’d watch the local television news ) and they have a greater subject breadth. It is nice to read articles dealing with Microsoft that have something to say other than "Microsoft". This leads to the second reason why I am so tired of Slashdot – the people who post comments there. Never, outside of a Kansas State Board of Education meeting, have I seen so much ignorance in one place. I think that the vast majority of the people who actually post comments, post articles and/or moderate on Slashdot must be script-kiddies ranting and raving from their mommy’s basement.
Seriously, anyone who actually works in IT knows that you use the right tool for the right job. Constantly trashing Microsoft products because you don’t believe in their corporate philosophies / perceived philosophies only exposes your ignorance. Don’t get me wrong, I am a strong proponent of Free and Open Source software, but there are some applications to which Microsoft’s proprietary systems work better.
At my current job, we are a Microsoft shop. When I started there I was astounded at the level of interoperability of systems. With an Active Directory / Domain setup there is true single-sign-on that is great for the end user. We have around 300 people plugged into our network, only a handful being technically adept. I sincerely doubt that the same setup could be implemented using, say, Linux and maintained by only two SysAdmins. In our environment it just works and that is what is important here.
Getting back to the point, if you are a fan of the tech news that is presented on Slashdot, have a look at Digg. I am sure that you’ll like the quality of the articles and the lack of ignorant zealotism. Plus, the look and feel of the site doesn’t resemble the product of a intro to web-programming class.
