Ironically enough I found out about slashdot in 1999 from a rather nerdy little fellow named 'Phil Smith' (No relation to Will Smith!) who was primarily a math teacher doing some initial web design courses in the Business and Computer Science department at our local community college. I started out reading sporatically, juggling it with a MU*ing habit I'd had since six months after getting on the net (Brought on by a combination of an HTML class in '95 when I was but a wee lad, a visit to the Compass Rose booth at a certain festival, and a giant interest in Battletech brought on by a comic shop, Mechwarrior 2, and the short year or so period where we had the benefit of a Virtual World Entertainment location in my otherwise podunk city.) My first skims of the site took place on an AT&T 14.4k modem that was purchased after a rigorous 6 months of chores, grades, and generally responsibility; things that were all shirked when the infinite possibilities of the internet were being discovered.
Sadly nothing has lead to the same level of excitement as the pre-2000 internet. Geocities, Sarna.net, hell, even Gopher! (Which always seemed like an inferior BBS interface to me!)
To all the people I once knew, in all the years prior to 2002.
I bid you adieu.
And perhaps now slashdot too.
As my parting comments:
Mr. Malda: Thanks for all the years of wasted time, links to new places I never would've heard of, interesting links, history, etc of the computer world I've had a negligable impact in, and good luck in your retirement and marriage to Steve Jobs,now that he's finally free to devote his time to you. :)
And to Professor Smith, in case you're reading: 'Yes, yes we did feel the rush. Thanks for showing everybody in class the biggest time waster we could've fathomed back in those days. Without it I might've actually had to work for my links :D'