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Slashcode v1.0 Released 136

Posted by CmdrTaco from the does-that-mean-its-not-beta? dept.
Patrick and Chris have been working their kung fu overtime for some time now to clean up Slashcode and release a version one point oh. Its available on Slashcode: if you're interested in setting up your own slashdotesque weblog and are up on mod_perl and apache, you'll enjoy it. With 1.0 out, its time to once again start hammering on new features including wireless device support. I hacked in quickie WAP device support, so if your phone handles it, give it a whirl. Avantgo will be coming soon as well, along with many design improvements that will drastically improve performance (thank god!) and simplify administration, and allow usage on a variety of SQL servers.
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Slashcode v1.0 Released More

Slashcode v1.0 Released

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  • Re:Speaking of Avantgo (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There's already Avantgo syncing under Linux:
    http://www.tomw.org/malsync.html

  • What about mod_jonkatz? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I mean, there's no way a *human* could write such nonsense. It must be another example of Taco's coding skillz.
  • This is actually an undocumented feature. It was meant so that you could arbitrarily spawn new discussions that may have been off-topic from the current story, and give Slashdot the power to host discussions for other sites.

    Just because we haven't gotten around to putting a pretty face on it doesn't mean it's a bug yet. Spawning a new sid on the fly is pretty handy for testing comment posting as well.
    --

  • I am interested in adding wireless support
    to a web site that I maintain, but I haven't
    been able to find very much documentation on
    how to go about doing it. Does anybody have
    any pointers to docs or HOWTOs or anything?

    Thanks in advance,
    Pez
  • Version 1.0 seems to have a Story Queue that anyone can browse... Hmm don't see that on Slashdot...
  • For a much easier method, I'd suggest setting up the Zope server with Squishdot. squishdot.org I believe is it's site. It is certainly easier to get going for novices. Then you can concentrate on the site content rather than the backend.
  • The interface doesn't matter much to me as long as a site has good content. I've seen many comments here over the ages of people bitching because some other site has a similar design to Slashdot. That said, at least it allows you to see all the items and a quick blurb easily. Anything is better than the big magazine sites, where the actual text of a column is one thin column surrounded by 143 images and spread over 13 pages. Ick.

  • Apache is available for Win32.
    Mod_perl (or at least ActiveState's reimplimentation) is available for Win32.

    Although maybe you knew that already.

  • I apparently signed up Thu, 3 Sep 1998 and was user #2031, so apprently the original poster was in September of 1998.

    The reason I know the exact date is that I have the original "Here is your password" email.

    Talk about exponential growth.

    ObSlashhot: I would like to see when I and other people signed up. Yet another field to add in the user database. Also, in the Moderation hidden discussion, we were talking about meta-moderation getting screwed up (some people not being able to meta-moderate). Has this been fixed?
  • "I am Gill Bates of the MicroSloth clan! I have many style sheets! Would you like to try my IE 5 stylee???"

    "I'd like to try your IE 5 style, lets begin then!"

    *HAWWP* *AAAKP* *HYAHP* *DYAAHP*

    Your *DYAAHP* has performed an illegal operation. It is recommended that you restart your stylee.

    "Darn you *Lip movement* This is not over!! I will train in the arts of Ween Tew Kay *ha ha ha hahaha ha ha ha*. I will avenge my crashing by representing Microsloth with more abnormal extensions!!!" *POOF*

    "Once again, the Nets of Scapage clan wins again, but Gill Bates will be back...I will be ready."

    "Electric Relaxation" - ATCQ
    - Bwana
  • You can't fix it anyway; we don't accept anonymous patches there, sport.
  • That wasn't the part that is libelous.
  • If it is plain text, then, according to the accepted definitions of "plain" and "text" (and "old"), one would think that there would be no bold or "other formatting stuff" included, wouldn't you think?
  • i'm not sure if it's related or not, but it seems that all the comments of past polls were erased for some reason?
  • Is there anywhere I can get nice and easy rpm's to install? I tried using the tarball recently, but because of all the nefarious Perl module dependancies, I was unsuccessful.

    Are there ever rpm's of Perl modules? Does it even make sense? Is this an unsolvable problem with Perl modules? CPAN [cpan.org] only goes so far in solving this problem.
  • YAY!!!! finally a reason to use my stupid neopoint!! =)
  • I think there's a mutating bug running loose causing various intermittent flakiness in the whole karma/moderation system but nothing that's consistent enough to track down or produce repeatable results.

    I also think that in the past couple of months some people who just think and see things differently have started moderating and meta-moderating. My personal suspicion is that they are either under or over medicated. :-)

  • I've noticed that the random slashbox often has one category's header and another's stories. Frinstance, it'll say Ask Slashdot but all the stories are from Your Rights Online.
  • I got here in October of '98, before the Halloween Papers that led to the Katz infestation, and just as the "JWZ is dead" story went up (boy did that hit the fan). That got me # 5733, if that helps you work out anything.
  • I was going to say that more could be found at sid=index, or maybe it was sid=indexed, but either way, it seems to have disappeared so I'll just mention sid=moderation and sid=metamoderation.

    sid=Slashdot Marketing is hilarious (with a few exceptions). Hot Grits and Natalie Portman are lame 'cause those trolls can't stand posting where it won't annoy anybody. they're all out spamming other threads.

  • So what you're looking for is a Slashdot without any of the stuff that makes Slashdot Slashdot, and without any of the advertising that pays for the equipment, bandwidth, and staff that makes it possible? No problem, go turn your monitor on and your computer off.
  • Oh yeah, if I were going to get a bunch of people together to plan something I'd be sure to use something like Slashdot :-)
  • There is a separate sid=metamoderation thread.
  • Does Avantgo have any official plans to offer the /. channel any time soon?
  • I've been losing karma recently without being moderated down, but I assumed that Rob had put new rules into the system which whittled your karma away if you didn't keep earning it (to defeat those who whore karma until they reach 25 so that they can make comments at +2 if they wish (like myself), or if you didn't metamoderate (which I've not been doing much of recently either).

    But since I dropped below 25, I've been asked to moderate twice and not lost any more karma. So I'm scoobied.

    Hamish
  • Every time CmdrTaco uses the word 'wierd', you could have a routine that automagically corrects it to be 'weird'. :)

  • Re:DDoS (Score:1)

    by SEE ( 7681 )
    I've even noticed that the last several times I've moderated, I end up losing about 3-4 points of Karma. Now, perhaps I'm being "a bad moderator", but I don't think so: I take great care to moderate well and in the spirit of the Moderator guidelines. I wonder if the Trolls haven't managed to get several accounts they use for bogus MetaModeration.

    Okay, that explains a lot. Although I personally am not worried -- I've got a superhigh Karma total -- this does need to be addressed.

    I am certainly going to MM daily now, however; perhaps I'll save a few people from the trolls.
    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • There already is Slashdot for Avantgo

    http://www.perilith.com/slashdot/avantgo/index.h tml

    Hopefully when the official version comes on line the URL won't be hidden so that those of us that want to use something a little less memory intensive (iSilo for example) can get to the content. Just need iSilo to support colour.

    Neil.
  • The easiest way I've found to do this is to setup a PPP connection for the Palm over the serial port to the cradle. Then just do a modem sync in AvantGo.
  • I am the creator and operator of the site mentioned by the poster, cizone.com [cizone.com]. I've put hundreds of hours into the development and operation of this site. I did not use Slash nor any other prewritten weblog application, instead, I chose to write 100% of the code on my own.

    While I enjoy reading Slashdot and believe that it is a highly-informative and intelligent (well, usually) source of news and information, I don't believe that it is fair to declare all other sites based on the weblog concept as "Slashdot wannabes".

    Each and every time I post a new story to cizone.com, I make it a point to avoid reporting on the exact same stories as Slashdot and other major news sources. When this cannot be avoided due to the significance of the story, I at least try to throw some type of twist into the article that sets it aside from the others. The greatest strength of any weblog is not only its ability to provide news stories, but also its commentary and other forms of editorial opinion to create a "community" atmosphere.

    Yes, I am currently the only full-time poster at cizone.com, but does that really matter? How would the site be any better for you, as a reader, if it were maintained by ten people who posted an equal amount of information as one person?

  • Uh huh. Right Rob... *wink*.
  • 29 January 1999
    #16075

    Thanks for the idea. I'd been wondering myself, and I have my original password e-mail too.

    Hanzie
  • Considering that Hemos [slashdot.org] posts at 2, I'd say your karma rating has to be pretty high.
  • Ahh.

    I just now noticed. What was extrans is now plain old text, and what was plain old text is now extrans. They switched them. Wish they'd notified everyone of the changed behavior. Oh well..

    bold
    italic

    Anyway, I used plain old text for this message..

    ---
  • Well, damnit, this is the behavior we want, somewhere...

    Look, it's extremely easy to type a message this way, and still include bold or other formatting stuff, without having to think about all the crap HTML requires.

    Also, if this is wrong for plain old text, what is the difference between plain old text and extrans?

    ---
  • If it is plain text, then, according to the accepted definitions of "plain" and "text" (and "old"), one would think that there would be no bold or "other formatting stuff" included, wouldn't you think?

    Well, in that case then, what is the difference between "Extrans" and "Plain Old Text"? They'd both do the same exact thing.


    ---
  • Yes, I know this is a bit OT...

    <i>italic</i>
    <b>bold</b>

    Why didn't that work? Extrans (html tags to text) has been broken for months now.. This is SO annoying for posting a reply!

    Sorry. Had to vent a bit.

    ---
  • Well, here's what I think is going on:

    Every time recently I tried to moderate, I've been screwed, in that my Karma drops a day or two later.. This time-lag effect points to meta-mod being abused.

    What's occuring: Notice that the meta moderation page consists mainly of well moderated stuff. I usually put "good" on 9 out of the 10 that appear. So, if someone has a bunch of accounts, they can just mark everything as bad from all those accounts. This could be automated quite easily via scripts or some such. This is probably what's happening. Metamoderating does NOT affect the metamoderators Karma, so you can create an account, metamoderate it, and never, ever go negative karma.

    Fixes:
    I don't think AC's can meta-moderate, but if they can, they shouldn't be able to.
    Karma limits should be around +10 to meta moderate or moderate. Possibly higher. They should at LEAST be +5.

    This eliminates those jerks with a bunch of throwaway accounts that never post anything, and therefore can't get Karma.

    A good look at server logs would easily tell if someone is going psycho on the meta-moderation. Probably you could just check by IP.

    ---
  • Whats the URL?

  • I've been able to find RPMs of all the modules I've looked for. Do a search on Google [google.com] for what you want and you'll probably find it.
  • Take a look at securitygeeks.com [securitygeeks.com], another site with only 3 people posting a hundred articles per day.

    But I like the site, I get some decent info, and I help them out by posting comments and checking out their banner advertisers. Maybe more people will like the site, and it could become another great place like Slashdot.

    When slashdot started, I betcha Rob was the only dude posting to 12 readers...
  • I used to read Chips&Dips. Then Rob got an Alpha box, the Multia, wasn't it? A whopping 166mhz. My how things change...
  • http://www.phone.com

    http://www.wapdevelopers.org

  • Considering I coded that on purpose, I doubt we'll remove it from a future release.

    I'm so happy to hear that. Although I have yet to get it working on my site, I chose to go with slashcode in the end because of this feature.

    My site has a need for dozens to hundreds of rooms that are self-cleaning, non-archiving and not connected to stories. I'm going to enjoy putting that all together.

    Now, if I could just get it set up...

    paperbacks.homepage.com [homepage.com]

  • Slashcode 1.0? Come on, you can do better April fools jokes than that!

    In case you missed it, that was humor.
    --
  • Now that you mention it, I just went and checked my Karma. I had moderator points last week, at least a couple of which were used vs 'HOT GRITS IN MY PANTS!!' and I'm down a couple Karma.

    I'm no karma whore, I mainly lurk. I've probably posted six times in the last two years. But still, losing Karma for putting in the time to moderate is annoying.

    -Red
  • Seems like a troll, but I'll bite...

    There's a growing number of sites using slashcode (mine was using .9.2 until a couple days ago), and there's a good number of people on the mailing list, naming bug, submitting patches, and making suggestions.

    As for your concern about 1.0s and messy code floating around. Yup, there's lots of messy code out there. If you don't like it, help out or don't use it. You don't have to rewrite it, but if you can recognize 'messy code', you should be able to help out in one way or another. It's only free beer if somebody makes it first.

    As much respectas I have for RMS and ESR, I don't think that a smackdown from them would be good for things, and a point of having open source is to *NOT* keep it to yourself until it is "cleaned up and ready" - it's easier to get it ready if you have more help. That's why it works.

    Open Source implementation varies from person to person, project to project... you can't place the blame on any person for anyone else's shortcomings.
  • Check out slashcode.com - there's the usual /. web interface, and there's a mailing list to sign up for... a lot of the patches go over that list, and I believe out on server 52 there's some form of bugtracking...

  • Slashdot Palm VII web clipping app (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There's already a wirelss Palm app for grabbing slashdot headlines. Get it here:

    http://www.rgctech.com/slashdot [rgctech.com]

    I run it on my Palm VII and it works great. You can first pull in the 5 most recent headings (about 500 bytes it tells you). Then you can click on a heading to get the full text (about 800 bytes it tells you). It's read only, but you do get your news!

    Later.

    mattj@invisik.com

  • My Problem with Squishdot (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    is that there is no login functionality (that I can see.) You can submit articles as anyone. I agree, I was amazed at how easy it was to setup and, even more impressively, configure. But you imagine the chaos that would arise if anyone could submit a comment claiming to be CmdrTaco.

    One other thing to look at is the PHP Slashdot clone, PHPSlash at http://phpslash.org/ I haven't really evaluated this yet, but it looks promising.

  • Not true. We're gonna abstract the DB dependance, and perhaps even the dependance on *Apache*

    Don't confuse bigotry of comment posters with the bigotry of those of us who run the show. We have a whole different set of bigotry ;)

  • It's not actually a lock. portald get fired up every half an hour to update the slashboxes and do assorted odds and ends. However, there's no way to tell if it crashed or not (usually the XML parser barfs), so this function just keeps track if it's running or not. And emails me if it crashes, the next time it starts up. So if a slashbox URL breaks (which happens about once a day), I get an email reminder to fix it.

    And even though it's way old and needs to be rewritten, it's never been an issue with locking. But how would I know, I only try to keep things running...
    --

  • So should we follow the general rule of .0 releases, and wait till .1 or .2 for all the bugs to get worked out ;)

    -----
    If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
  • >objects have everything to do with scalibility and portability.

    Um, no. Objects are a tool that can be used for lots of things, and one of those things is ease in scalability, and one of the applications of objects can be ease in portability, I suppose. But there are many other ways to do the same thing. There is no direct link between scalability and objects, or portability and objects.
  • No problem. Re-reading my reply to you, I sounded a bit harsher than I wanted or needed to be (end of a long week and all that :). I just wanted to be very clear that there is no expressed or implied condition in Slash as to the purpose of the sites that use Slash.
  • Extrans does work as it is supposed to: it translates < and > to HTML entities so they show up as we literal characters, not as HTML tags, so I don't have to type &lt; and &gt; each time.

    PRE is disallowed because it is too easy for people to totally screw up a page's formatting. Sorry.
  • That sounds like a good question to ask on the Slash site [slashcode.com] instead of this one.
  • Then you don't think very well on this matter.

    He said, "You mean, like objectify the whole lot, so it's truly scalable and portable?" That means two things:

    Expressed: That by using objects, something is truly scalable and portable. This is bullshit.

    Implied: That in order to be truly scalable and portable, you must use objects. This, too, is bullshit.

    I am not biased against objects. Most of my more widely used projects have OO interfaces. I am biased against useless use of objects (see the original File::Spec interface), and I am biased against saying that the only way to achieve scalability/portability/whatever is with objects.
  • That feature, like many others, can be turned on or off with a boolean flag. So Slashdot, even running 1.0.x, may or may not have that feature.
  • Extrans was broken before. It is now working properly. Now it appears plain text is broken. Sigh. On the TODO list. :-)
  • If you are going to libel someone, have the guts to use your real name, loser.
  • What the heck do objects have to do with scalability or portability?
  • Fix it or shut up. How about that, tough guy?
  • We are not going to be developing a Palm app for Slashdot, but for Slash. It will be usable with Slashdot, of course. The developer of this is plenty free to help our development, though.
  • Matt, yeah, I know of your module, and we are looking into doing something very similar to this. We may even use your module, but we need to get deeper into evaluating all our options before we decide the specifics, of course. :-) Thanks,

    --Chris
  • http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Node/408 1/cspl.html
  • You did not see that on Slashcode. This is simply false. Use it to make an anti-Slashdot site. Who cares?

    Maybe you saw that I wrote that I don't want advocacy for alternatives to Slash posted on the Slashcode site, but that had nothing to do with Slashdot or with the code itself. That was just because Slashcode is a site about developing and helping with Slash, not about advocacy or general discussion.
  • Yeah, that's basically true. 1.0.0 has all outstanding, known major bugs taken care of, after a couple of months of the public hammering on it. Installation is not too hard but needs improvement, code had a LOT of cleaning but is now going to be reorganized, and other stuff. 1.0.0 means that this phase of work is done, aside from maintenance. Now we move on to more cool stuff.
  • Um, yes it does. Please re-read the FAQ [slashcode.com].
  • It'd be cool if there was an option, to display something like the +4 and above comments, when viewing slashdot from your phone.


    --
  • Not true. We're gonna abstract the DB dependance, and perhaps even the dependance on *Apache*
    Whoa! You mean, like objectify the whole lot, so it's truly scalable and portable?
    Or, is it all a conspiracy to move over to ASP/SQL and rebrand to either
    http://slashdot.microsoft.com or
    http://slashdot.linux.com?
    #8^p
  • I've even noticed that the last several times I've moderated, I end up losing about 3-4 points of Karma. Now, perhaps I'm being "a bad moderator", but I don't think so: I take great care to moderate well and in the spirit of the Moderator guidelines. I wonder if the Trolls haven't managed to get several accounts they use for bogus MetaModeration.
    Ummm, yeah, I've noticed the same thing of late....

    Hey, Taco, care to fix it where AC's and negative karma-ites can't MetaMod? Methinks we're being Had....

    --
    sooner or later, the only way to
    run a truly value-added anything
    is to become a real BOFH on trolls.

  • > That is the question.

    No, man, the question is,
    How many more versions until we get the built-in e-mail client?

    --
  • Those who want to run a weblog like /. but don't have access to database servers could try out sips [sourceforge.net]. It's written in PHP and doesn't need anything beyond a php enabled web-server. The trade-off is you don't get half of the features of /., and it's only in version 0.1, but this looks like a really interesting project. I'm going to follow it closely (esp. since I'm the developer! :-D) ;)
  • The FAQ indicates you are using the GPL (good for you!), but says nothing about how I submit patches (or who I submit them to).
    --
  • Are you certain about this? I've never worked with mySQL, but generally, the conventional wisdom is to leave sorting to the database. That's what databases do... I'd be quite surprised if it was actually faster to dump a set of records and have perl sort them rather than have the database do it. If true, that says nothing good about the database software.
    --
    Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
  • I actually would like to have the option to see very highly moderated comments on the phone. The thing is, the screen is tiny, and the connection is slow. So I don't see it being terribly useful. If I really want to read slashdot from anywhere I can just hook my phone up to my laptop and use a real browser.

    --GnrcMan--
  • Boy is this ever not the way to lock:

    } else {
    open LOCK,">/tmp/portald.pid"
    or die "Can't open /tmp/portald.pid: $!";
    print LOCK "$$";
    close LOCK;
    }

    This is from the portald makeTmp subroutine.
    You have to use flock or fcntl to make sure of
    atomicity. You have a race condition between
    when you open the file and when you write.
  • OK, Rob, just how high does your Karma have to be to automatically post at 3?


    It's good to be root....

  • I think metamod and moderation are limited to individuals with a positive karma. However, since it's not hard to get one upmod, I think that what's happening is the trolls are creating a large number of bogus accounts, get a single upmod on each, and then metamoderate badly. Perhaps what should happen is that you shouldn't be allowed to metamoderate until you have +10 or more karma (if you can generate 10 good points, you probably know what a good post/bad post looks like), and you cannot moderate until you have a karma of +20 or more.
  • Are there any real sites based on the "Slashcode"? I certainly haven't seen any. And if not, why does anyone care about this? It's not like it's doing anyone a whole lot of good or anything. Really - what's yet another bloated,
    overblown, messy, ugly Perl script going to do for me? Nothing, that's exactly what.

    You like to flame huh? I would give up a good deal juts to be able to run the slash code or in fact any server type code on a web site. Being a sysadmin is a luxry that I do not have at the present time.

    What slashdot has done rather successfully is take the concept of a nested and web based interative dynamic type of medium that usenet could only dream of. By eliminating the need for a specific client you make your access to millions instead of a trusted group of elites. It really depends on what you want to do. I think that the ability to dynamically add stories and bits of interest in a dynamic way is good. I was toying around with the idea of having dynamic content that could update a web page remotely. The only good script that I have seen as of yet has been one that hasn't worked on any of the unix systems I have tried it on despite using the portable perl language. I wish to god I could get this to work on one of the "free" sites. A few of them allow for the perl language but I haven't found one that would have both mySQL and perl with the necessary extensions. But I have a good idea why. Control C-O-N-T-R-O-L in it's most basic form. Oh sure speech is free but the presses aren't.

    I don't understand this about the "Open Source" movement at all - there's all this messy code floating around out there that nobody would ever use in their right mind, and you've got to wade through so much of it just to find some
    decent software, much less what you're looking for. It's probably no coincidence that Freshmeat, Slashdot's sister site, is one of the worst perpetrators of this travesty.

    I think you miss the point entirely about the open source methodology. Essentially the code is out there to be fixed. That's about like saying that if you go to a garage and see people working on broken cars. They are doing this not to say that these cars work but that they are actively fixing them. What's happening here is a little less like a garage and more like a group of people "souping up" a car not only to fix the carburator but to give it a nice tune up when it's needed.

    I, personally, believe that RMS and ERS and crew have some serious revising to do if the "Open Source" movement is to remain viable. First step would be to tell people that until their code is usable and cleaned up and ready for a
    1.0 release, they should keep it to themselves!. Second, of course, would be to not throw it out on the web if you can't think of at least fifty people who'd want to use it - you're just cluttering the spiders and wasting your disk. This
    applies equally as much to the Slash code.

    You know I remember another AC who was whining and spamming a discussion with a discussion about the slashdot not being open. Multiple bitched and whined about it and then finally Malda got tired of having his mail box filled with 100,000,000 requests to open source the code and released it.

    He knew damn well the code wasn't ready but he was pressured to release it. I personally thing the code is better for his decision and bugs that were possibly hindering the code have been worked out much more quickly.

    Don't get me wrong - I think "Open Source" is an excellent idea. I just think the implementation is flawed.

    You know I think it's people like you who deliberately make me wait for updates to my favorite open source updates and debian packages because you like seeing people squirm. There is no good technical argument that would support such a thing. Source should be open. The version dosn't matter because most projects are works in progress. I think the ultimate progress of systems is the main goal and not 100% stability.

    In short if I want to risk my system with untested code I should be able to. If you want trusted code get a good linux distribution linux slackware 2.0 and update the entire thing by hand from source and do all the updates yourself. I tried that route and got insanely irritated with the results (which were usually very, very, frustrating because of little problems and not so little problems.

  • Now is the chance. There can be a better Slashdot, which retains both the technical and non-technical aspects of /. without adding crap like Jon Katz, timothy, etc.

    Unfortunately you have to get the kind of traffic that slashdot for your site to be even remotely successful in any way. That's really the tricky part or not. At one time I had a site that was being generated as the first match for a particular keyword on excite (no I won't tell you what it was). Also you have to keep that audience.

    No more idiotic "trolls" who post worthless flames. No more brainless zealots whining about Linux for karma points. No more self-congratulatory "X device uses Linux" bullshit. No more targeted attempts to sell you worthless
    linux-using merchandise. In breif, no more Rob Malda, Jeff Bates, Andover.net management, VA Linux, etc.

    Again in your site becomes popular with anyone all the problems (well maybe not the editorial kind) with slashdot will come to you. Trolls were never asked to come to slashdot they came because they wanted to. Zealots can come if you have an open subscription of any kind and can even be created by your own "trusted" users.

    Then maybe this whole idea will come together.

    That would be an emense level of social engineering and isn't a trivial task. What is your outlook for this?
  • Is anyone waiting for Elightenment 1.0? Red Hat 6.2 isn't using XF86 4.0, but they've been using E as the wm for a while now.

    Exactly what is the difference between Emacs vX.Y.Z and vA.B.C? I think the version numbers are automatically incremented by a random number generator.

    Netscape Navigator 6.0, anyone? They probably shouldn't even call it "Netscape"...

    Thank goodness I'm using Windows 98 here at work -- with a version number that high, it must be good!

    --
  • Will you stop using ORDER BY and GROUP BY statements? Your ORDER BY statment in selectComments is most likely slowing down this site by an order of magnitude. MySQL doesn't do well with ORDER BY and GROUP BY! You really should look into returning your information and having perl do the sorting. Perl was built for sorting. Perl likes sorting. Perl is your sorting friend. If you wish I can submit a fix, I wrote a slashdot-type messageboard over the past few weeks that borrowed from your design (it's functional and it's proven :-) but -god help me- not the horrendous sql or code.

    .agrippa.
  • For those of you who haven't figured it out, you can go places by editing the sid in the URLs by hand.
    This needs to be fixed in Slashcode 1.1.

    Otherwise, thanks for a great site, Pat and Chris.

    Here's what I've found so far...
    Slashdot Marketing [slashdot.org]
    Hot Grits [slashdot.org]
    Slashdot [slashdot.org]
    Natalie Portman [slashdot.org]
  • As much as the script is based on the linux operating system, it'd be not much to port it win32, but knowing the people at slashdot, it'd be impossible, since they'd think anything win32 would be a waste. If there were at least any tips on how to do this with out the ego drunk penguin, or any of the unix based extensions, there might be some good code. -Sephiroth, 'cause the penguin's d.w.e. (drunk with elitism)
  • Considering I coded that on purpose, I doubt we'll remove it from a future release. This is quite intentional behavior.

  • Squishdot (Score:3)

    by John Goerzen ( 2781 ) on Friday March 31, 2000 @06:28AM (#1159003) Homepage
    I might also mention that Squishdot [squishdot.org] is available. It is a lot easier to set up than Slashdot and its code is a lot cleaner. It runs under Zope, using a modified Confera engine.

  • Good Job! (Score:3)

    by The Tomer ( 4213 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [reksirbt]> on Friday March 31, 2000 @07:25AM (#1159004) Homepage
    Back when I joined slashdot over 2 years ago (is there any way to find out exactly when?), it was an inovative site with an interface that was hardly used anywhere on the web- back then, the hot things in webdesign were frames and portals. Now, I can hardly pass 10 websites without seeing atleast one that has a similar "web-logesque" interface. It looks like slashdot was one of the first sites of this trend. Now, we have reached version 1.0 of Slashcode, and we can truely say that both slashdot and it's community have gone a long way. Even though we have to face trolls on a permanent basis, we can now easily face them with our army of well-selected moderators. We have even grown some "hidden" forums, created by using comments.pl with a sid that doesn't point to an article. Back when I joined, I got ID #4213. The comunity has grown so much, that the poll often goes into the tens of thousends of votes, and that's just the people who vote! Slashdot has grown from an anonymous site that only a few select geeks knew about to a gaigentic news agency of sorts for nerds worldwide!
    Way to go Slashdot!!

  • Re:so -- what's this mean? (Score:3)

    by EvlG ( 24576 ) on Friday March 31, 2000 @07:16AM (#1159005)
    I certainly hope you are not trolling, as this is something that comes up time and time again.

    It's really not enough just to upload the code to a public site and release it under one of the free (as in speech) licenses to call yourself "Open Source." While technically your source is open, there is much much more to that than just having publically accesible/modifiable code.

    At the heart of the Open Source concept is the notion that software developers should "release early and release often." Note that this is entirely contrary to what you have suggested. It's ok. You're still learning.

    The reason you release early is to catch major problems early, when they are minor ones. That way they don't develop into huge problems later which require an entire redesign. Note that Open Source isn't an instant cure for design problems; rather, by its very nature, more eyes see the code, more brains work on the concepts, and thus better solutions tend to arise.

    The reason you release often is to keep things moving. Hoarding the code leads to a slow development process wrought with bugs. Releasing often encourages people to try the software and submit feedback, since they know that a new release which will address their concerns/bugs/RFEs is just around the corner. Without the release often, you are losing much of the benefit of open source.

    You would do well to read ESR's The Cathedral and the Bazaar. It does an excellent job of documenting a particular example where the Open Source development process resulted in a high-quality application. Along the way it explains much of what I have hinted at, with documented evidence as proof.

    May the source be with you.

  • More features? (Score:3)

    by Kool Moe ( 43724 ) <_koolmoe@@@yahoo...com> on Friday March 31, 2000 @06:37AM (#1159006)
    I like this Slashdot thing. Cool stuff since I was led to it a couple years ago. Perhaps this is beyond what slashdot hopes to accomplish, but there is SUCH a great wealth of knowledge here, its a shame it can only be accessed via designated topics. Even Ask Slashdot questions are picked for us.

    So how about setting up a part of this venerable website as a general forum? Where folks can post questions which the Powers That Be may not consider worthy enough to post on the front page?

    I'm trying to learn Linux, and often have questions directly related to the OS, or others about what type of programs are the best, the options- how exactly a recompile works and such.
    It would be fantastic if I could post these questions in a general forum in case anyone is willing to help.

    Or perhaps such a place exists already! But usually I have to remember 10 different newsgroups/webboards and which I posted questions to...

    Kinda like an Open Ask Q/A section. Embrace and Extend?

    Perhaps the moderation of such an area would be overwhelming. Then again, the same user-moderation scheme could be used there. Or perhaps just ask for volunteers from among those with the higher karma points.

    Regardless, love the site and would really dig if it expanded in such a way.

  • Wireless support (Score:3)

    by GnrcMan ( 53534 ) on Friday March 31, 2000 @06:31AM (#1159007) Homepage
    I when I read this, I fired up the web browser on my phone. Works nicely but the text formatting is a little wierd. You, of course, don't get to see the comments.

    --GnrcMan--

  • DDoS (Score:3)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Friday March 31, 2000 @07:00AM (#1159008) Homepage Journal
    Has any work been done on dealing with the Distributed Denial of Service attack that Slashdot has been undergoing for the past several months?

    I refer of course to the trolls who are waging a DDoS attack on moderator points. Just like any other DoS attack, they seek to consume all of a resource to prevent legitimate users from accessing it. Instead of consuming sockets, bandwidth, CPU, or disk space, these guys are consuming moderator points.

    I've even noticed that the last several times I've moderated, I end up losing about 3-4 points of Karma. Now, perhaps I'm being "a bad moderator", but I don't think so: I take great care to moderate well and in the spirit of the Moderator guidelines. I wonder if the Trolls haven't managed to get several accounts they use for bogus MetaModeration.

    So I wonder what if any attempts to correct this have been added to Slash1.0

  • Re:Wireless URL (Score:4)

    by Kurt Gray ( 935 ) on Friday March 31, 2000 @07:17AM (#1159009) Homepage Journal
    The URL is the same (http://slashdot.org/). Rob simply added a mime redirect to httpd.conf that redirects text/vnd.wap.wml requests to /slashdot.wml. WML has some issues with HTML tags so the WML is basically a stripped-down lowercase HTML version of index page. Viewing comments via WAP is going to take some work becuase viewing 100K of text on a cell phone LCD screen is obviously not feasible so it will most likely be view-one-comment-at-a-time type of scenerio.

  • You (Score:4)

    by pudge ( 3605 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMpudge.net> on Friday March 31, 2000 @11:34AM (#1159010) Homepage Journal

    If you think the Slash code sucks, you have not looked at recently, and don't know what you are talking about. It could stand for a lot of improvements, which we are busy making. But it is far from sucktitude.

    If you think Perl is slow, you are a stupid troll. Go away.

    If you think SquishZopePHPYourMamaSlash is better than Slash, then by all means, use it and shut up about it.

    If you have patches or want to otherwise participate in developing Slash, make sure you post it on the Slashcode site (or better yet, please read the FAQ about how to help [slashcode.com], because if you don't, we might not see your contributions or patches or suggestions.

    This has been a public service announcement. You can go back to your hot grits now.

  • Re:Kung Fu (Score:4)

    by RottenDeadite ( 137213 ) <cnelsonweb.hotmail@com> on Friday March 31, 2000 @06:34AM (#1159011) Journal
    Sure, along with:

    "Hah! Taste my Third Heaven's Gate Parsing Strike!"

    "Useless against Golden Willow Parts the Nested Documents!"

    And lots of programmers wearing jeans and t-shirts flying around on cables through bamboo forests.

    ***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
    ***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***

  • Re:slashcode translations (Score:5)

    by Kurt Gray ( 935 ) on Friday March 31, 2000 @07:25AM (#1159012) Homepage Journal
    Not yet -- Slashdot has a lot of tweaks that have to be massaged out but during the next few weeks it will be upgraded to 1.0, then once Slashdot is on 1.0 code base it will stay in synch with the latest-greatest Slash release. I think Slashcode is running on 1.0.

  • Database Independant Backend... (Score:5)

    by Matts ( 1628 ) on Friday March 31, 2000 @06:49AM (#1159013) Homepage
    This is a shameless plug, but can I suggest you guys take a look at DBIx::AnyDBD. It's a module I wrote to greatly simplify making cross db perl DBI applications.

    The basics are that you put all your db access methods in a Default.pm file (in the class hierarchy of your choosing). Then when you want to port to a new platform, anything that's different to your original development platform goes in [Driver].pm, where [Driver] is one of Sybase or Oracle or Pg, etc.

    This has really simplified things for me on a cross platform development system, and I think it will for slashdot (and other systems) too.

    Mail me direct if you have any questions.

  • Kung Fu (Score:5)

    by Glytch ( 4881 ) on Friday March 31, 2000 @06:29AM (#1159014)
    Am I the only one who has visions of two programmers talking out of sync with their mouth movements?

    "Huh. So you wish. To review my code. You must be eager. To die. Huh."

  • slashcode translations (Score:5)

    by rnd() ( 118781 ) on Friday March 31, 2000 @06:35AM (#1159015) Homepage
    When I loaded slashdot this morning, did
    I load a page generated by slash 1.0? That is
    the question.

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