Well, for subscribers only this week at least. We have a half dozen minor bugs left in the TODO list, but if you are a paying subscriber you can test it out. It works best if you are using the keybindings to navigate. Pressing 'f' takes you to the next unread comment respecting thread order... so you can press that over and over again.

We also added a thing to 'collapse comments after reading' which I think I might turn of as a default setting soon. This is only usable for subscribers atm as well. But basically, as you navigate through a discussion, it collapses the comments you've read after you move on. This makes it really easy to navigate large discussions without having to scroll over 150 comments you've already read.

we're aware of a number of annoying bugs, but hopefully most of them will be squashed by Pudge for this weeks code refresh. If things are stable, we hope to roll this out for everyone rsn.

also my baby cut his first tooth yesterday. My furniture will never be ungnawed upon again.

I'm not a huge fan of the GPL. While I agree with the FSF on most things, I can't help feeling that the GPL shows a certain lack of faith in the whole idea - if the open source development model is so much more efficient, and Free Software is so much more valuable, then why do they need such a mass of legalese to protect them?

From a more pragmatic standpoint, the GPL is about the most incompatible Free Software license around. If you write GPL code, you can't use it in a BSD, Apache, X11, MIT, or Mozilla licensed project.

I was fairly happy with the LGPL until recently, however. It is a bit more restrictive than I'd have liked, but as long as you dynamically link to it it doesn't taint your own code. This is a story about the pain caused when lawyers get in the way of writing code.

It turns out that the LGPL, as it stood, wasn't restrictive enough for the FSF's ideology. You can't have freedom without a lot of restrictions (apparently) and so they added a load more to the venerable LGPL 2.1, and created the new, improved, twice as restrictive, LGPL 3.0, and encouraged all GNU projects to upgrade.

One such project, which I'm directly involved with, GNUstep, did so. Then we started having problems. It turns out there's this other license that has a clause stating that it may not be used with any conditions that are not in the license itself. This is the (GNU) GPL. Version 2 of the GNU GPL is incompatible with version 3 of the GNU LGPL, and since it's viral you can't even link code under the two licenses.

That's okay though, right? The FSF has been telling everyone that they should use the 'or later versions' clause when they use the GPL, just in case they want to make it more restrictive in the future. And everyone's done that, right? Well, it turns out, xpdf didn't. And the xpdf code was extracted to form the Poppler library. And the Poppler library, in turn, was wrapped in PopplerKit, an Objective-C framework for rendering PDFs. And so, by the transitive property, all of these GNUstep apps were GPL 2. Which is incompatible with LGPL 3. Which meant that suddenly they couldn't use the latest GNUstep. By the way, PopplerKit isn't the only GPL2-only library used by GNUstep apps.

This is a bit of a problem. So big, in fact, that Debian decided not to carry the latest GNUstep, because it would have meant dropping a load of GNUstep applications from the next release. The eventual outcome? GNUstep has reverted to LGPL2.

This isn't an unusual situation, by the way. A number of big libraries, such as GNU libc (an abomination that needs to die, but for technical, not legal reasons) is having the same problem - the FSF wants to 'upgrade' it to LGPL version 3, but that will mean any Linux distro that ships the new glibc will not be able to ship any GPL 2 apps.

And people wonder why I prefer the BSD license family.

Best knock knock joke ever:
KNOCK KNOCK
    Who's there?
9/11
    9/11 who?
YOU SAID YOU'D NEVER FORGET!!

The primary function of society is the sharing or mediation of risk and reward. Thoughts?

Warning! Do not eat these. They are not candy. Although I suppose if you've been hankering for some gummi fish that taste like actual fish you may be in for a treat. My boss gave me some just now. "Want some gummi fish?" he asked, and me being a sucker for sweet-sour gummi things in general, I popped one in my mouth as he continued, "They're full of vitamins and Omega-3..." Right. Fish oil. These things taste like sugar and citrus coated rancid fish. Just nasty. I'm still trying to get the flavor out of my mouth.

Consider the simplified case of three property owners, A, B, and C. Here's what their property looks like:
AAA
ABC
CCC
Now, A and C make an agreement not to buy any of Bs goods or sell anything to B. B doesn't own enough land to support him and all his family living there. He doesn't have enough land for an airport, or a helicopter. A and C won't let him on their property, and they won't let anyone else deliver anything to him over their property either. B and his family starve to death, then A and C split his land between themselves.

Please, explain how this scenario or more complex variants of it would not be commonplace in a true libertarian system. "Force" is more complex than libertarian philosophy likes to admit.

From this post, just wanted to save it because I think it distills much of the objection I have towards libertarianism into a succinct argument, and if anyone can refute the premise, it would go a long way towards convincing me that libertarianism isn't morally bankrupt.

Also this, from the same thread:

The real ideological difference lies in what qualifies as "hitting first," and also what qualifies as "freedom." For instance, should people be free to own more real estate than they themselves can work, and charge rent for said real estate? If people have that freedom, is it "hitting first" for them to withhold food from workers who have no other means of support than working for them at whatever wage they offer?

In a system with total individual freedom and strong property rights, what is to keep the most ruthless from leveraging the power that accumulated wealth has to influence markets, and using that power to keep other people dependent on them? Is economic coercion "hitting first?"

If people do have the right to own more land than they themselves can work, then isn't it also a freedom for a group of people to, say, call themselves "The United States of America" and make up some rules regarding what others can do with "The United States of America's" land? After all, isn't that really nothing more than land owned by a group of individuals?

There is a lot of difference in ideology even amongst people who subscribe to the ideals of freedom and not hitting first. So much so that different camps within that group all seriously question the other sides' commitment to those ideals. You know, the whole rift between individualist anarchism and social anarchism.

Oh, and happy Troll Tuesday everybody!

That's the point of regulations. Or rather, why large businesses oftentimes support gov't regulation - to squeeze small businesses out so that the large corporations, who can hire people to take care of tedious things like HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, monthly W-2 Payroll Withholdings, etc. I went crosseyed trying to handle all the payroll and taxes for a small corporation, and even with professionals doing it for us (costing $500/year for payroll, $1000/year for taxes), it's *still* a massive hassle. Guess who's responsible when Paychex sends out 1099s -- but instead of sending 1099s, majorly messes up and issues checks for the amount that should be on the 1099? Hint: not Paychex.

Due to friction / barriers to entry, it's very difficult to profitably run a small S Corp on less than six digits a year.

While you always hear some left-wing people complaining about large corporations, the highly regulated environments found in socialist countries are very favorable to the large companies at the expense of the small. If you contrast the number of top-100 corporations in 1950 in France and the US vs. the ones still around decades later, the majority of the US firms had vanished, but the majority in France were still around.

Socialism loves big corporations.

Roses are red, too.
Two times six is twelve.
There are twelve inches in a ruler.
Queen Mary was a ruler.
Queen Mary was a ship.
Ships sail in the sea.
Fish swim in the sea.
Fish have fins.
The Finns fought the Russians.
Russians are Reds.
Fire engines are always rushin'

therefore, fire engines are red.

I suppose it's time. I seem to get them once a year. But I got ten this time, is that new?

So as we've been migrating the system from the tired old D1 to the exciting and awesome new D2 a number of complaints have come up. I'm going to talk about a couple of them here because I'm really looking for feedback on THESE issues. Please only talk about these points or I will mod you offtopic or troll or something.

The issue is about the use of Flat/Threaded/Nested modes. D2 cleanly replaces both threaded and nested modes- you effectively get nested mode by bringing the 2 sliders together. And threaded mode is vastly more flexible because you can choose the level at which comments are abbreviated or displayed in full text. So users of those modes should be set (obviously there are other reasons not to use D2, I'm just talking about the layouts here tho)

What's left is flat mode, which has a number of sort options. Now flat mode is used by roughly 4% of our active population. When i think about flat mode, I think about 2 reasons you would have to use it:

1. I hate indenting and whitespace. I want a big vertical column now this isn't my bag, but I can understand it and even consider supporting it in D2. I think you sacrifice legibility, but this is a personal preference. It also would be easy to support in D2. Hell, you could probably do it in a greasemonkey script no problem.
2. It's easier to remember your place in flat mode This to me is the only reason to use flat mode- you can reload your page an hour later, find the last comment you read, and pick up where you left off.

Now I Would think that the only reason to use flat mode is #2... except that only a couple hundred Slashdot readers have the 'ignore threads' sort order enabled. So either they don't understand what they are doing, or #1 above is the real reason that they use flat mode.

So in a nutshell, the question I am asking in this journal is 'Why do you use flatmode?' Is it cosmetic? To more easily keep your place in a discussion? Something I'm just missing? We have plans to implement a read/unread state retention for discussions, so maybe would you migrate to a threaded view if that function exists? Or is it purely aesthetic... an irrational hatred of scrollbars and whitespace? :)

The reason this matters is that simply formatting the page flatly is easy. Probably a simple greasemonkey hack or maybe a few lines of CSS. But re-implementing the alternate sort is gonna take some work. And I'm ok with that... except that the logs say that nobody actually USES that sort... they ONLY are using flat mode for the cosmetic reasons.

Speak out! Stay on-topic or you WILL be moderated down.

Not that it's an earth-shattering development -- I'm not creating miniature black holes or anything, but I did re-up my Slashdot subscription.

The first potential ghost article: Engineers Make Good Terrorists?. I don't think that one will get canned! Though it sure seems like a leftover April Fool's gag. Sadly, it's not... the source article is dated 4/3, not 4/1. Of course, the past seven-and-a-half years have been an extended April Fool's Day... but on the bright side, there are only 9 months 19 days 17 hours 3 minutes before the foolishness finally ends.

In-Place Posting is now live for all logged in users. Hopefully there are no surprises. We've found a number of very tiny bugs, but nothing show stopping. We'll leave the link up to the 'classic' reply form for a few weeks. Next week anonymous coward will get the new posting form... hopefully there are no surprises with that.

A few new keybindings aren't documented yet... v (end) t (top) [] change upper threshold and ,. change bottom threshold. Also 'r' opens the new reply box, m opens the mod total thingee.

The only major complaint so far is that the design changes consume a lot more whitespace. I have mixed feelings on the subject, but am aiming to strike a balance. We noticed 2 very clear places where the whitespace is excessive and hopefully that will be fixed RSN. But on the other hand, making deep threads visually clear, and drawing some attention to the 'reply' buttons is beneficial to everyone, so bare with us as we work to strike some sort of balance.

Anyone planning on attending Gen Con Indy this year might find my online searchable database of Gen Con Indy 2008 events useful.

I just got back from the Novell Brainshare conference in Salt Lake City. It was a fun week. I attended lots of sessions on Linux and other open source tools. There was free (well, someone payed for me to be there...) food, free massages, free lattes, & lots of swag. Novell had a tech lab giving lots of interesting demos, and there were several dozen vendors and ISVs present. On Wednesday, Frank Caliendo opened for Collective soul at a free concert put on by Novell and open to the general public.

Perhaps the most interesting was a tutorial on using AppArmor. It's a great system for protecting applications. Novell bought the company that produced it several years ago and open sourced it. Basically, you point AppArmor at an application and put it in learning mode. You put the app through its intended uses, and then answer a series of questions regarding what AppArmor saw it doing. For instance, the app accessed a file. You can allow, deny, or 'glob.' Meaning, put in an asterisk. So it could access any file in a particular directory. There are also a series of pre-built templates you can add which allow certain sets of operations. Then you put AppArmor in enforce mode, and it keeps the app from doing things it shouldn't. Even if its running as root.

I'm impressed with Novell's commitment to open source. They are moving everything to Linux. Netware is no more, Netware services live on in Open Enterprise Server built on Suse Linux. Novell gave a great presentation on using the GNU autotools for their partners who want to move their products to Linux. Who knew using autconf, automake, libtool, and the rest could be so easy? Not me.

I've been working on setting up a log server, analysis, reporting, and notification system recently. I'm using Linux HA to fail-over an IP address and restart syslog. The logs are stored on an OCFS2 filesystem shared by the two nodes in the cluster. I use octopussy to analyze, report, and notify, and monit as a client side add in for logging additional information.

Discussion2 rolls on... the most recent addition to the system is in-place comment posting. Essentially, little dynamic ajaxy slideout boxes to post directly within the thread, without going to a stand-alone page. This is great because you don't have to lose your place within the thread to post.

this functionality is currently only available to paid subscribers, and several hundred of them have tested it out already. We still need to make it look pretty and add a few minor things (like the CAPTCHA for anonymous posting) but it's almost done.

Also worth noting is that logged in users can click on the 'Score' field of comments to view the moderation information on the comment. This information was previously not visible within D2, unless you navigated outside the d2 system (opening a comment in a new window did it). I doubt most people really care about this info, but it's available.

We also have one (perhaps minor) thing to get in... right now if you visit a comment directly via a CID link you can navigate within that thread, but navigating 'up' the comment hierarchy results in a new page, and a new discussion... this makes context a pain to maintain. So pudge is going to change that page to display the parent posts in an abbreviated format. This will mean that you can climb back up the thread easily, even if you entered the forum via a link deep into a thread.

A few minor items left on the todo list (keybindings for threshold changes... maybe press 'r' to open the reply slideout from the current comment, and a bunch of small design issues to make the threads a little more visually clear and easily navigatable) and we're ready to call D2 finished.

We have no plans to remove D1, so those of you who hate D2 are welcome to stay on the old system, but obviously new moderation tools and whatever else we think of will be attached to D2, not D1, so you've been warned ;)