Ask Slashdot: Should geek-centric magazines still publish paper editions??

Hmmm. Seems like geeks would like the trend of magazines going paperless. The link is to a lively conversation over at the Slashdot web forum on that topic.

Dropping paper text books instead of trees

And replacing them with PC tablets or iPads.  For college students this should save them a fortune on overpriced dead-tree edition textbooks. For secondary students maybe not..unless they're neigh indestructible and include tracking software for when the kids lose them.

Fox News blogger tells us that Slashdot, Salon, Blogger, Chatroullete and Digg, among others are dying and doomed

"What seemed so fresh when you first registered", says John Brandon a Fox News technology blogger,  "now seems like a ghost town. What happened? According to Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg, site visitors routinely check the door to see if anyone else is leaving for better services. Like lemmings, they can pull up stakes and leave in a heartbeat. (Facebook, are you listening?) All you can hear are the crickets." [Facebook link in original]

I don't know about the rest of Brandon's analysis but the part about people being able to scurry away to someplace else sure is true enough. Anybody here remember Friendster, Napster, or Del.icio.us?  All of them and many more after being the hot new thing and the place to be on the web at one time not too long ago are now ghost towns or gone altogether.