As we're nearing 100 signed up people for the A2 Slashdot anniversary party, we've changed the venue to Leopold Bros... it's just a block south from the other place and they can handle us. I've also got word that we'll be printing a few hundred extra shirts since there was already like 50 parties with 5+ people in attendance. We certainly won't have enough for everyone, but we'll make a good dent in it.

I will of course put this information into a story next reasonable chance I get for a story, but I figured at least I could get the word out there. The anniversary party entry on the official page has been updated with the new location & address.

The A2 party already has like 70 signed up. We're going to have to rethink venue or time I think if we really have that many people. Wait a few more days and see what we can work out. Keep reading in the party forum for info. We have 500 shirts to print and hand out... it'll be fun to see where they go.

more info as I get it. There will be notes on future stories as days get closer.

Why does my heart still ache for the same she, when she is now again over ten Mm away. My heart should feel anger, not anguish, after what she has done to me.

When will she answer my calling.

If any of you are using an iPhone and are willing to help test out some Slashdot handheld crap, shoot me off a note... my email is the same address as always, and if you can't guess it, you probably can't help anyway ;) I've built a stylesheet and Tim put together a few little options that we think will make a few bits of Slashdot look nice on an iPhone (or really most lower resolution displays) but unfortunately none of us actually HAVE one yet... so anyway, let us know. Or if you work at Apple, send us freebies dammit!

Jack Thompson is currently on Fox News blaming video games for the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

Jack said that it would be impossible to carry out a massacre of this proportion without training, and that he was sure when they examined the shooters computer, that "training" program like GTA would be find.

Is this about as evil as it gets -- as soon as there is a tragedy, you use it to promote your cause? I know there's no debate on /. about how wrong JT is. My question is, how can you counter that? I'm emailing Fox News, but I doubt they'll be interested in what I have to say

Someone twittered about the version of Firefox with an "orthographic corrector." I wondered why this was so great, and whether this was something I needed. So I went to the page they linked to and still didn't get information about this feature beyond the fact that it existed. So I looked up "orthographic" on Google: Of or pertaining to orthography, or right spelling.

That's right, orthographic corrector = spellcheck.

Twice, 6 weeks and a week ago.

QQ? Nah. Not anymore.

Same she though. Sad.

This Sunday, many Christians of varying denominations will be doing something that will surprise many /. readers. They will hold special services celebrating Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Their purpose? Refuting creationism, which claims the biblical account of creation is literally true, and which is increasingly being promoted under the guise of "intelligent design".

"For far too long, strident voices, in the name of Christianity, have been claiming that people must choose between religion and modern science," says Michael Zimmerman, founder of Evolution Sunday and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Butler University in Indianapolis. In the Clergy Letters, Zimmerman goes on to state: "Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts."

I'm not Christian, but I think I might attend one of the services (listed on the first link) near my house to show my support for rational religion.

The discussion2 system had 2 notable changes in this weeks code refresh that I'd love to hear feedback on (use email if you can't post here). The first is Scott's very excellent new draggable slider control. Everyone mostly figured out the slider tool before, but it was very unresponsive... but no longer! It has some layout niggles under some browsers, but it functions properly in most of them.

Equally exciting is new dynamic updating... the old code actually transferred the full discussion and displayed/hid content as requested by your settings. Thew new code properly requests comments as needed, and when needed. This cuts page sizes dramatically for people reading with filters turned up very high. It also puts us a few stone throws away from a 'refresh' button which can just add newly posted comments in place. There's some work to be done yet, but it's made a lot of progress. I hope you like it.

We've tested everything under most of our most common browsers... if you're curious they are very roughly FF2 38%, FF1.5 19%, IE7 8%, Safari 7%, Opera 3%. Missing from our compatibility list is IE6 with 13% of our traffic. Fixing IE6 is non-trivial and we'd certainly take patches... but since the IE6 population lost a point or two last month anyway, and fixing the code is pretty substantial, we'll probably be focusing our development time on the larger and growing platforms (FF2 and IE7 obviously being the most important).

Anyway, merry-whatever-you-believe to everyone out there. I'm spending my holidays the same as always- driving from family gathering to family gathering. Roads suck but the person I like being with most is in the car too, so it doesn't matter.

I've seen (as has everyone else) about a million sites go down under the weight of the slashdot effect. Is there some reason why we don't post the links for the stories as coral cached links? I know the sites might want the traffic, but most of them can't handle it, and the good ones will retain their customers anyway. Isn't it time to stop destroying the web one site at a time?

Our new XServe is up and running. It has many pretty blinkenlights, making it more attractive as well as a zillion times faster than our old stack o' Dells.

Now the only question is, what do we do with the old servers? They're not really fit for reuse, so it's been suggested that we destroy them interestingly and post the video on YouTube.

If you have enabled the Discussion2 beta, you will notice a number of confusingly titled links appearing in comments. These control expansion/contraction of threads in several different ways. They are confusingly titled because we want you to try each of them and let us know which ones you like best without concerning yourself explicitly with how they work.

You can email your feedback to me (try d2 at cmdrtaco dot net) or some of you can actually post here.

I think next week will have a patch with a number of D2 changes (including some results from this experiment hopefully) so your help is really appreciated.

Normally I think about technology and copyright as it applies to music or movies, not fine art. This article in the Post and Courier describes problems Charleston's local artists are having with their pantings being copied for profit without permission. Technology makes it easy for their images to be copied and placed on mugs, t-shirts, etc. This often happens outside the U.S., making it hard for the artists to follow up and prosecute copyright violations.

Artists and those copying them have different views on the morality of copying the art:

Anthony Pompa owns a Montreal company that makes canvas prints from the images on Carter's posters. "I love Eva Carter's work. I really do," he said. "And this is such a proper way of displaying her work. We're just doing her a favor. We're making her look great."

Carter, who operates a gallery on East Bay Street, views the works as a clear infringement on her copyrights and a threat to her livelihood. But the practice continues just the same.

Sportsdot is reprint that a Red Sox fan's plea on a message board before game 7 of the ALCS in 2004 has been officially preserved in the Baseball Hall Of Fame at Cooperstown. Warning, if you have not read the original post before, get some tissues ready.

As web applications grow more and more featureful, I slowly find myself replacing desktop apps with web apps. This really makes a lot of navigation on the desktop a real pain in the ass. Example: Gmail. It's probably open in a tab right now. Not sure which one... occasionally we accidentallly close tabs. But if I use quicksilver to open 'gmail' it will open a NEW tab every time. Same if I use the gmail notifier.

Applications each open individually, and they know that they get focused when activated/launched whatever. But effectively firefox may (or may NOT!) actually encapsulate 2-3 different applications... spreadsheets, email, or say, the bookmarks that I use to maintain Slashdot's submissions bin.

I'm not exactly sure how to deal with this. I imagine this problem will only grow if good web applications continue to replace desktop applications.