Slashdot Mirror

After having slaved away for several weeks building an per/xml based content engine (Kumera), I started having a look around to see what else was out there, and got suddenly depressed.

The only saving grace was that is Australia, the cost of running a dedicated server is way too high, and so there is still space for a cgi-bin perl based system.

Although you may not be interested in all of this, I'm doing it for my own sanity and clarity ...

In my wandering I have found ...

http://slashcode.com/ - the content engine that slashdot is based on. Runs in mod_perl (or cgi-bin I guess), very sofisticated. Has daemons that run to collect content for the slashboxes and everything else we know and love about slashdot.

http://www.zope.org/ - not sure, I think it's a python based application server that has some content systems built around them, including (just to confuse you) http://squishdot.org/ which is the slashdot code ported to zope (I think)

http://frontier.userland.com/ - is a news system/engine that has a thing called manilla, http://manila.userland.com/ which is a front end to editing and so on. Frontier isn't free or open source, but very popular.

http://java.apache.org/jetspeed which is a portal based engine built on top of turbine which is an applicate framework for building applications. There is a content engine and discussion group system that are developed by someone else, who are expecting to open source the discussion groups, and provide source and binarys for a low cost of the content engine.

And there are a few more application systems, which are not exactly content management systems as such, but could be used to build some ... like cold fusion, active server pages, java server pages, php3, and the list goes on and on and on ...

The more I look there more there is ...

After having slaved away for several weeks building an per/xml based content engine (Kumera), I started having a look around to see what else was out there, and got suddenly depressed.

The only saving grace was that is Australia, the cost of running a dedicated server is way too high, and so there is still space for a cgi-bin perl based system.

Although you may not be interested in all of this, I'm doing it for my own sanity and clarity ...

In my wandering I have found ...

http://slashcode.com/ - the content engine that slashdot is based on. Runs in mod_perl (or cgi-bin I guess), very sofisticated. Has daemons that run to collect content for the slashboxes and everything else we know and love about slashdot.

http://www.zope.org/ - not sure, I think it's a python based application server that has some content systems built around them, including (just to confuse you) http://squishdot.org/ which is the slashdot code ported to zope (I think)

http://frontier.userland.com/ - is a news system/engine that has a thing called manilla, http://manila.userland.com/ which is a front end to editing and so on. Frontier isn't free or open source, but very popular.

http://java.apache.org/jetspeed which is a portal based engine built on top of turbine which is an applicate framework for building applications. There is a content engine and discussion group system that are developed by someone else, who are expecting to open source the discussion groups, and provide source and binarys for a low cost of the content engine.

And there are a few more application systems, which are not exactly content management systems as such, but could be used to build some ... like cold fusion, active server pages, java server pages, php3, and the list goes on and on and on ...

The more I look there more there is ...

You can deny based on referer using mod_rewrite. Read some suggestions on it here:
http://bugs.apache.org/index.cgi/full/968


Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

For the past couple of weeks I have considered contributing to an open source project and have hesitated due to the fact that even though I am competent in C and C++ my area of core competence is Java. Imagine my surprise when today while hunting around I found NOT one but TWO sizeable open source projects that primarily use Java; Apache's Tomcat server and now FreeNet.
Now on to my questions.

a.) Besides source code is there an object model or UML diagrams available for potential contributors to Freenet to view?

b.) Do you know of any other sizeable open source projects that use java primarily?

c.) Are you worried about Freenet becoming a haven for pirates and W4R3Z d00ds and if so are any steps being taken to combat this?

Have you thought about building a web application with something like Silver Stream or Apache-Jserv?

Recently we built a sales responce tool for a client that allowed users to send information, manage contacts, and generate sales reports for managers. It worked out rather nicly and was completed in the time it would've taken to build a Win32 or Java application.

One of the original suggestions of a use for XML was as a means to bring order to the blizzard of .*rc and config files in the *nix. As someone here pointed out, Mac 10 will be using this format for the data formerly known as the resource fork.

As someone else noted, a standard schema for config files across different kernels could be useful, but would in fact be redundant effort because once you have XML, transformation into a different content model is next to trivial. In point of fact, modification of the kernel would be unnecessary as proper stylesheet processing could write the config and .*rc files in whatever form required by your kernel of choice. Is this worth the effort? I'll leave it to others, I'm merely a markup theorist.

XSLT: its not just for serving to old browsers. Use it.

I have a similar solution. I'm using mysql to develop a large-scale commecial website with gnujsp and apache jserv.

My problem is this:
This is a database of commercial real estate data. There is really only one main table, but it has lookup fields that reference as many as 7 other tables, most with funky outer joins. Performing even simple queries on it is horrific.

My hack is this:
Every night, at 3am, do a GIGANTIC 7-way merge of all the relevant tables, and insert the results into a MAMMOTH SINGLE TABLE, the cache table. Lookups are lightning fast, and the data is at most 24 hours old (this is reasonable in my case). Building the cache actually only takes 15 seconds or so --- abominable if you're waiting for a web page to load, but no so bad at 3am :)

This technique may or may not be available to you, depending on your circumstances. I find it to work quite well with mine.

- jonathan.

For example, a site dedicated to a specific topic, such as Apache, or book reviews? Is there enough of a market, or interest, in any one of these categories? How many new stories are there every day about, e.g., Apache, that would interest readers without becoming ApacheWeek, an Apache mirror, or a site dedicated to programming Apache? (not that those are not all great ideas!) I'm definitely OK with being that technical, but the question is, would there be enough reader interest for it to be worthwhile? (i ran with the Apache topic here, but it could apply to a lot of other topics.)

darren

Sun released Tomcat (the Servlet/JSP reference implementation) under the Apache license as Project Jakarta. This was a pretty major release. :)

Check it out at:
jakarta.apache.org.

1. Php Pros:
   1. Easy to learn. Once Apache is configured with Php, it is seductively easy to write code.
   2. The Db connection pooling comes in handy.
   Cons:
   1. It is yet another language (I mean, I already know perl, right? Why do I have to learn another language?).
   2. Also, you tend to design page by page. it does not have a great library system to use. It has lots of code snippets you can copy.
   Notable sites: Sourceforge.net, and persiankitty.com (reputed to be the yahoo of porn))
2. mod_perl: This beast can be used in several ways. If you use it with Apache::Registry, y use Php,ou almost are doing a disservice to yourself. The three ways of using it are:
   1. embperl: Looks like Php style of embedding. Comes preconfigured with DBI and friends. But, too cumbersome to programs. It also does not encourage component programming. It provides the substrate for you to build other features you might like.
   2. mason: Has cool component features. Has neat features such as caching with intesting way of managing it, and autohandlers. Looks ideal for the publishing world, where it evolved. On the cons side, not too many components.
   3. Apache::ASP: Not used it much.
   Notable sites: dejanews uses embperl. techweb, stamps.com use mason.
3. Zope: Too different from others. The strongest suite is the built-in authorization systems and web based management system. You can program at embedded HTML level called DTML, or you can write python classes. There are several prebuild modules that run out of the box. As long as the prebuilt modules serve you well, you can go ahead and use zope. Otherwise, be prepared for a long learning curve. It almost looks black magic to me.

   As an aside, python has the weirdest variable scoping and declaration rules. I ought to know, I have a PhD in programming languages.

4. ACS: ACS is entirely different from others. It is not a language like Php, it is not a webserver like APache, it is not a app server like zope. What it is one man' use Php,s vision and experience about community web sites distilled into a toolkit. It is a datamodel, it is a set of practices, and a set of programs. It happens to use TCL, Oracle, and Unix. But that is almost besides the point.

   The biggest selling points of ACS for me are:

   1. The documentation. Quite possibly the best documented system. I can take an average joe out of the street and train him to use ACS in a systematic way in no time.
   2. The Data model. I would expect to pay in hundreds of thousands of dollars for such a datamodel. It constantly amazes me to find the little details that I needed in those datamodel.
   3. Best practices to run a website. How to harden a Unix system and set up the services so that you can sleep peacefully.
   The negative points are:
   1. Alas, it requires Oracle. I just learnt the existence of ACS/pg and I am rejoicing!
   2. Not too wide spread usage. I expect this situation would change. Look at this way. I tried building a community web site. It took me untold hours to gather all the snippets of information for a Php based site. It took me no time at all to build it using ACS. I would use ACS for a community based website over any other toolkit anyday.
   3. No good enough template mechanism. Fortunately, ADP in AOLServer is changing that.
   So, in conclusion, php and modperl and zope vs ACS is not a right question. You can implement ACS in php, and I frankly hope somebody does to save lot of human misery and suffering.

   Rama Kanneganti

Have you read about the load-balancing capabilities built into Apache's mod_jserv 1.1? Here's a document outlining it.

To summerize, if you can start the servlet engine's VM in debug mode you can then connect to it with a remote debugger like jdb. You have to get the password from wherever the VM's standard out goes. The page I listed up above gives directions on how to do this with the JSDK's Java Web Server.

As far as other developement. I've been using iPlanet's iWS 4.1 beta. It works pretty good. I haven't tried setting Tomcat up yet, but on the Tomcat mailing list they are getting together a beta for version 3.1 which is VERY close to meeting the Servlet 2.2 specs and will be the reference implementation once it is done. The beta release canidate 1 should be up today.

As somebody else mentioned standard out and the servlet response are also good places to send information especially if you don't want to run your VM in debug mode or can't. One thing about iWS 4.1, I don't think the standard out and standard error are directed to a file by default. I had to open my own servlet logging files and redirect System.out and System.err to them myself from within a servlet.

For developement I use JBuilder on NT, and vim occasionally under linux. I have had no platform problems with moving my Java class files from NT to linux. On linux I am using the latest blackdown release of the JDK. In fact for one application I have the web server (iWS 4.1 beta) running under linux and it loads pre-compiled servlets that exist on an SMB mounted directory that exists on an NT machine. It hasn't acted any different from the web server running on NT with JRun as the servlet engine. (well I had some JSP problems, but that was a difference in implementation of the JSP specs between iWS and JRun)

--

For more complex debugging IBM's VisualAge for Java can run a servlet engine (Tomcat) inside itself and allows stepping though servlets with all the windowed debugger features that you'd expect. I'm sorry, but I can't find the directions for setting this up.

I'd imagine that other Java IDEs have some kind of support for running servlets so they can be debugged, however IBM's VA is the only one I've seen do this.

I still tend to use debug output in HTML comments, I find it works best for me. Although I often build a simple test harness for each class so I can test it by itself. Means I do less debugging once everything is put together and running as a servlet.

I will be submitting my changed to the Xerces folks at http://xml.apache.org but a little more work is needed before I do. Until then, email me privately at crawford@goingware.com if you want to try it out.

I haven't got it working yet, but I'll also be building the IBM International Components for Unicode (ICU) library on MacOS.

Mike Crawford

Well, the expat library already exists and seems to be quite defacto under Unix.

At least, PHP and Apache use it, and well. And a couple of other utilities and CPAN modules. I've come across. It's fast, small, and not full of unneccessary crap.

Anyway, utilities like Apache and ProFTPD already have meta XML config scripts, and a fair few perl scripts that make use of XML::* as well.

I don't think I like the idea of having a dynamic XML library, and your entire /etc filesystem depending on it. What do you do when it breaks? It's like screwing up your LD.so.1 ... ow :)

Still, a standard, easy to use DOM for utilities would be nice, perhaps some kind of extension of the GetOpt stuff would work? It's succeeded largly because it's there and easy to use, and an XML standard would have to do the same.

For those of you interested in caching and how it can help large scale sites, I've helped co-author a technical report with Network Appliance, which was our experiences at accelerating the Mars Polar Lander website. That site used NetCache boxes, simple HTTP/1.1 cache-control headers, and a bit of cunningness to allow user-level tracking without letting the track requests filter through. As traditional, the site had a couple of problems which we've also included in the appendix after we fixed them, to hopefully save other people the same hassles in the future.

The technical report can be found at http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/307 1.html

We would all save a scary amount of bandwidth if more sites were designed with public caches such as (the awesome) squid in mind, and it's a really simple use of headers that make it possible.

For those who use Apache and are interested in making your own sites more cache-friendly, I recommend you look at mod_expires, which is part of the default distribution of Apache, although not compiled in by default. If you have large, static images that rarely change, then go ahead and put week-month-year long expiry headers on them, and watch the hits for those redundant images drop right down on your web server. And if you suddenly need to change them, then it's no real problem, as all you have to do is change the images URL and it will become a "new" entity for purposes of caching.

Yeah, granted, bandwidth is getting cheaper now, but for us poor Europeans, it's still a scarce commodity and we need to worry about these things :-)

-anil-

As a cryptography and computer security expert, I have never understood the current fuss about the open source software movement. In the cryptography world, we consider open source necessary for good security; we have for decades. Public security is always more secure than proprietary security. It's true for cryptographic algorithms, security protocols, and security source code. For us, open source isn't just a business model; it's smart engineering practice.

I hate to have to break this to you, seeing the amount of work you've already had to do, but JServ isn't it any more. The new reference implementation for servlets is Tomcat from the Jakarta Project.

My condolences...

- - - -

About the "faster" part, it will probably never be suitable for OS development, but you CAN get platform-specific compilers for it.

Regarding the "pervasive" & "outside the browser" parts, I think you're just not looking.

• Oracle & Sybase (also SQL Anywhere) now ship their DB software with Java as the internal procedure language.
• At JavaOne last year, the Palm Pilots for sale so inexpensively were loaded with a JVM.
• The Apache organization has embraced Java Servlets and Java Server Pages in their Jakarta Project.
• IBM's AlphaWorks is pouring out java resources like mad.
• Embedded Java is a super-hot trend for everything from cell phones to web kiosks.

Admittedly the start was slow, due to the fact that Java's original target platforms were toasters and TV's. But there are no shortage of Java applications you can't see until you look for them.

- - - -

i'd like to see more schools adopting linux. i am personally attending a private middle/highschool with a lot of computers(every student has a laptop), and huge(to me) bandwidth(a T1). Unfortunately, it is NT. I am the only one with linux, but i get by. i'd like too see our server run apache. the school's page is here

Recently I have been working with XML and XSL to see how the relavent content of any site can be presented to a hetergenous group of browsers. For the technical stuff check out Apache's website and in particular their XML stuff. A friend of mine is nearly blind so he and I spend quite a good deal of time talking about issues surrounding accessibility and what new technologies can do to enable him to take advantage of the internet. Often he and I share the same frustration of visiting a web site and being assaulted by all of these graphical images, fixed size small fonts, and general clutter. Sometimes it is a real pain to search through data to find what we are interested in. I think if sites can start using XML and XSL a lot of these problems could be solved. XML allows a content developer to tag the data they are presenting for what content it represents (i.e. on a music site with a track list from an album you might see tags for artist name, album title, track title, etc). XSL allows these site developers to specify how to present that data to the end viewer's particular browser. So you could make a style sheet for MSIE/Netscape, lynx, WAP, an audio browser, a palm pilot, etc. I have already requested that my webmaster install support for XML so that I can redo my pages to be more friendly for text based browsers, audio browsers, PDA based browsers, etc.

A simple thing, aside from websites, is unified messaging. I have been using JFax just as a place to get voice mail and faxes, since I don't have a home telephone number. You can also use JFAX to get and send your e-mail from any account that is POP-3 accessible. For my friend, this might be the easiest way to communicate via the internet. And yes that JFax link I provided is for the affiliate program so that I get a commission if you sign up.

Given that companies are trying to make their websites as accessible as possible in the hopes of being able to sell more and more products, I don't think we have much to worry about in terms of the future. Just think about what has happened with WAP in the last year or so. Certainly on a small cell phone screen one cannot use the images and annoying fonts that are used in a graphical browser. I think the future is looking bright for all those who suffer some form of visual impairment. Think of how much harder it would be for them to interact with the rest of the world, if there were no internet.

Recently I have been working with XML and XSL to see how the relavent content of any site can be presented to a hetergenous group of browsers. For the technical stuff check out Apache's website and in particular their XML stuff. A friend of mine is nearly blind so he and I spend quite a good deal of time talking about issues surrounding accessibility and what new technologies can do to enable him to take advantage of the internet. Often he and I share the same frustration of visiting a web site and being assaulted by all of these graphical images, fixed size small fonts, and general clutter. Sometimes it is a real pain to search through data to find what we are interested in. I think if sites can start using XML and XSL a lot of these problems could be solved. XML allows a content developer to tag the data they are presenting for what content it represents (i.e. on a music site with a track list from an album you might see tags for artist name, album title, track title, etc). XSL allows these site developers to specify how to present that data to the end viewer's particular browser. So you could make a style sheet for MSIE/Netscape, lynx, WAP, an audio browser, a palm pilot, etc. I have already requested that my webmaster install support for XML so that I can redo my pages to be more friendly for text based browsers, audio browsers, PDA based browsers, etc.

A simple thing, aside from websites, is unified messaging. I have been using JFax just as a place to get voice mail and faxes, since I don't have a home telephone number. You can also use JFAX to get and send your e-mail from any account that is POP-3 accessible. For my friend, this might be the easiest way to communicate via the internet. And yes that JFax link I provided is for the affiliate program so that I get a commission if you sign up.

Given that companies are trying to make their websites as accessible as possible in the hopes of being able to sell more and more products, I don't think we have much to worry about in terms of the future. Just think about what has happened with WAP in the last year or so. Certainly on a small cell phone screen one cannot use the images and annoying fonts that are used in a graphical browser. I think the future is looking bright for all those who suffer some form of visual impairment. Think of how much harder it would be for them to interact with the rest of the world, if there were no internet.

It is not an Apache problem. It is not a Microsoft problem. It is not a Netscape problem. In fact, it isn't even a problem that can be clearly defined to be a server problem or a client problem. It is an issue that is truly cross platform and is the result of unforeseen and unexpected interactions between various components of a set of interconnected complex systems.

You are correct, nph is a CGI thing. The filename requirement is not true as of Apache 1.3, though. nph scripts are now implementation defined, meaning the server has to determine whether all required headers have been supplied based on the content rather than the filename. Much more robust that way, you have to admit.

Take a look at this link

Is this a cheap way to expand your RAM, upload via smell to your own brain?

Better leave the room when you empty your recycle bin. And you don't want to leave those core dumps lying around, they can really stink.

Now I'm really going to avoid cDc. BO get's hardcore nasty.

Smelling search-voyeur is a bit like walking through a dorm... "What on earth was that smell?"

It might save some time when you're trying to pick up on IRC... "You don't smell like a blonde 18/F/Paris"

The banner ads? Hmmm, smells like KFC. Now I'm hungry.

Personally, I love the fresh-leather aroma of a "Your Apache install worked!" page.

But I'll really be looking forward to the olfactory upgrade to Fractint - THAT would be beauty.

Exactly. Wasted effort. See xml.apache.org for XML parsers and other tools, some implemented in multiple languages.

XML is the wave of the future, that's for sure... But what tools are available to actually incorporate XML in a system that can do all things we poor webdesigners dream of?

What tools are available? Apache's Cocoon is probably the most advanced XML-based web publishing tool available today

• XML Enabled Database system: Data is retrieved by the transcoder using HTTP or your favorite protocol
• Transcoding gateway: should translate the XML data using XSL (or another way) to a form readable by the client. The exact translation or the XSL to use can be set by the server (included in the XML source), or be detected by the gateway.
• Browsers of all colours and kinds.

All of this seems to refer to Cocoon by name. Database access is possible using the SQL processor as well as the new XSP (the extensible server pages).

This question is what the people on the Apache XML project spend more or less all their time not just talking about but building stuff. If you care, join up.

Having said that, XSLT may be magic, but "old-fashioned" solutions like PHP and Zope and plain old perl-backed CGIs (perl includes an excellent XML parser) ain't going away anytime soon.

<quote>
But what tools are available to actually incorporate XML in a system that can do all things we poor webdesigners dream of?
</quote>

There are many tools available to build such a system.

To mention only Open Source projects, I could suggest using Apache JSERV with Apache Cocoon as a framework, Castor or Quick to bind XML data to Java objects and a OODBMS like ozone or a RDBMS like PostgreSQL.

These are my favorites ;)

They are very powerful and highly flexible, but the price to pay is that they are rather complex to use, that you need time to get on speed with them and that you loose focus on the core techniques behind them.

To try to get a good understanding of these core techniques, I have set up some simple examples showing how one can bind XML documents into java objects, store these objects in a OODBMS and use them in a XSLT sheet both in standand alone mode or as a servlet.

These examples are available on our web at http://downloads.dyomedea.com/java/ and a mailing list has been created to exchange and discuss such basic tips.

Hope this helps.

Eric van der Vlist

<quote>
But what tools are available to actually incorporate XML in a system that can do all things we poor webdesigners dream of?
</quote>

There are many tools available to build such a system.

To mention only Open Source projects, I could suggest using Apache JSERV with Apache Cocoon as a framework, Castor or Quick to bind XML data to Java objects and a OODBMS like ozone or a RDBMS like PostgreSQL.

These are my favorites ;)

They are very powerful and highly flexible, but the price to pay is that they are rather complex to use, that you need time to get on speed with them and that you loose focus on the core techniques behind them.

To try to get a good understanding of these core techniques, I have set up some simple examples showing how one can bind XML documents into java objects, store these objects in a OODBMS and use them in a XSLT sheet both in standand alone mode or as a servlet.

These examples are available on our web at http://downloads.dyomedea.com/java/ and a mailing list has been created to exchange and discuss such basic tips.

Hope this helps.

Eric van der Vlist

Probably one of the few truely great ideas in the Web development industry. It means freedom from client peculiarities --forget about all writing for all those different browsers again and again, just one huge translator template will (e.g. XML->Opera-compatible HTML, or IE-compatible HTML or AvantGO, etc). It means that potentially the same server can be serving not only PCs, laptops, PDAs and the like, but also other software, by reading plain XML, or some subset of it.

In the OSS arena, the best example of XML on the server=>HTML (or for that matter anything else) on the client is Cocoon. I played around with Cocoon 1.x a little bit and it's very impressive architecturally, but even the principals agree that the performance isn't there yet. I am eagerly awaiting for Coccoon 2 though ;-)...




engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

And none of this would have been possible without the pioneers who blazed the path towards open source within IBM with contributions like Jikes.

I gave up on waiting for a Slash release. I was looking for a similar /.-like engine for my site, and after some research I settled on PHPSlash. It's at least a generation behind /. --no user accts, no dynamic homepages, no moderation-- but: a) it's Open Source, with a decent enough following, b) it's based on PHP, which I wanted to learn.

FYI, there's also Squishdot (sorry no link in my RAM ;-) based on Zope and a coupla interesting projects on the Java Apache pages.

I agree with the other comments though. The /. overlords should be releasing Slash, even as a rough draft, just so to put their code where their mouths are.

engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

I also wish there had been more push for make Linux x86 a better database server platform. Limitations that get in the way are:

• 15 partition limit should be raised to a 31 partition limit
• Support in the offical kernel for accessing raw partitions such as rawfs or char partition devices
• Support in the offical x86 kernel for file over 2 gigs

Another item is the ability to have multiple default routes and routing to the default route based on source ip address. Multi-homing on multiple Internet feeds just isn't any fun when all your outbound traffic goes through the same pipe regardless of where the request comes from.

Anyways, I look forward to the 2.5 developments. The 2.3 kernel series has been fun. :)

mod_perl; how can there be any question?

mod_perl; how can there be any question?

• Most Improved Kernel Module: FreeBSD's Linux emulation module.

• Unsung Hero: In descending order:
  • Kirk McKusick, for his more than two decades of tireless service and personal sacrifices for our community.
  • Gurusamy Sarathy, Perl project release manager, responsible for bringing fork(2) to Microsoft ports of Perl and a million other things to make Perl code truly robust and portable between Microsoft and Unix platforms, a true Godsend for those of us forced to co-exist on both.
  • Malcolm Beattie, for trailblazing the Perl-to-C compiler, the Perl external byte-code interpreter, the first Perl/Tk implementation,threading in Perl, and safe blackbox compartments for mobile agents in Perl.

• Best Newbie Helper: Mike Stok from comp.lang.perl.misc. He is patient and kind, never chiding nor arrogant. He has been doing this job for many years.

• Most Deserving Open Source Charity: The Usenix Association. They don't take sides. They promote technology and open standards while remaining vendor neutral. They promote all aspects of advanced technology, but are especially supportive of open source solutions. No organization has done more to legitimize us over the last twenty-five years.

• Best Open Source Advocate: Larry Wall. He doesn't rant against anyone, tries to help everyone, and gives his code away for use by anyone, even Microsoft users. He doesn't restrict his good works to things that only benefit his friends. He doesn't preach, but lives by example.

• Best Unix Desktop Eyecandy: The newest version of the randomizing X screensaver. It's really great in a room full of people on acid.

• Best Unix Desktop Earcandy: The following entry in one's .Xdefaults file:

  *visualBell: on

• Best Desktop Theme: ShinyMetal

• Best Open Source-Related Book: In order of highest to lowest, all worthy of the award:
  • Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C by Lincoln Stein and Doug MacEachern.
  • Damian Conway's Object-Oriented Perl.
  • Elements of Programming With Perl by Andrew L. Johnson.

• Best Perl Module: Damian Conway's Class::Multimethods module for traditional OO in Perl.

• Best Apache Module: mod_perl; how can there be any question?

• Best Open Source Text Editor: The vim editor (vi improved), complete with its gvim graphical incarnation and its perl and python plug-ins.

• Best Deserving of a $2,000 Award:
  1. The late, great Rich Stevens's children's college fund
  2. Larry Wall's children's college fund
  3. Dennis Ritchie's retirement fund.
  (Perhaps those count as charities :-)

• Best Designed Interface in a Graphical Application:
  1. The eesh shell for controlling Enlightenment.
  2. The ddd debugger
  3. MacOS X's environment.

• Best Designed Interface in a Non-Graphical Application:
  1. The {Free,Open}BSD ports collection: being able to just cd and type make and have everything happen is the best thing that ever happened to third-parts apps.
  2. The make menuconfig directive for building Linux kernels.
  3. The v4.0 trn newsreader, with scoring and plug-ins.

• Best Dressed: Larry Wall, whether he's wearing Hawaiian shirts, tie-dies, or best of all, his outlandish, pastel-coloured tuxedos.

• Favorite Slashdot Comment Poster:
  1. Guy Harris
  2. Tom Christiansen
  3. Enoch Root
  4. Jay Maynard

• Favorite Slashdot Author: David Brin wins this one hands down.

• Best Slashdot Story of 1999: Eric Raymond's story about viruses on Microsoft vs Unix.

• Big Dumb Patent Bully: Amazon, followed by Unisys.

• Big Dumb Domain Bully: NSI, followed by Etoys.

• Clue Stick Award for FUD in Journalism: Slashdot.

Finally an article on the server-side successes of Java. IMHO, Java servlets are the best thing that has happened to Java since its inception, but for reasons completely unknown to me, Java-bashing has taken its place next to Microsoft bashing as an official Slashdot sport. Perhaps the reason is the early failure of Java when Sun touted it as the single platform that will replace everything. Anybody else remember the Java ring and the Java OS?

Dear fellow Java-basher Slashdotters: I know most of you have very little free time on your hands, but please set aside a couple of days to take a look at this exciting server side technology, Java servlets. It is truly write-once, run anywhere; it's a widely accepted industry standard, almost all popular databases and application servers support it, and Java is a very good OO language after all. Take a look at some nice servlet tutorials or better, O'Reilly's servlets book, download the awesome Tomcat or Apache JServ to run with your Apache Web server, get the latest JDK from Blackdown or even better, IBM's JDK, add Jikes for good measure, and explore the beautiful world of Java servlets. Sun's site completely relies on Java servlets, Yahoo uses servlets for some portions of the site, a host of smaller Web sites and e-commerce companies completely rely on servlets and/or JSP (which is based on servlet technology), (epinions.com, mercata.com come to my mind; there are lots of others)

Whatever server-side programming technology you're using, you will like servlets. Most likely you will want to forget about CGI.pm, sell your books about Netscape's proprietary server-side JavaScript on Ebay, erase memories of hours of fiddling with ISAPI/NSAPI extensions, shred your printouts of ASP error message explanations from the Microsoft knowledge base, and lament about the time you spent posting aimlessly on every bulletin board about those pesky, undocumented Oracle functions of PHP. You will easily have time for all these when you start to use servlets.


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BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.

Finally an article on the server-side successes of Java. IMHO, Java servlets are the best thing that has happened to Java since its inception, but for reasons completely unknown to me, Java-bashing has taken its place next to Microsoft bashing as an official Slashdot sport. Perhaps the reason is the early failure of Java when Sun touted it as the single platform that will replace everything. Anybody else remember the Java ring and the Java OS?

Dear fellow Java-basher Slashdotters: I know most of you have very little free time on your hands, but please set aside a couple of days to take a look at this exciting server side technology, Java servlets. It is truly write-once, run anywhere; it's a widely accepted industry standard, almost all popular databases and application servers support it, and Java is a very good OO language after all. Take a look at some nice servlet tutorials or better, O'Reilly's servlets book, download the awesome Tomcat or Apache JServ to run with your Apache Web server, get the latest JDK from Blackdown or even better, IBM's JDK, add Jikes for good measure, and explore the beautiful world of Java servlets. Sun's site completely relies on Java servlets, Yahoo uses servlets for some portions of the site, a host of smaller Web sites and e-commerce companies completely rely on servlets and/or JSP (which is based on servlet technology), (epinions.com, mercata.com come to my mind; there are lots of others)

Whatever server-side programming technology you're using, you will like servlets. Most likely you will want to forget about CGI.pm, sell your books about Netscape's proprietary server-side JavaScript on Ebay, erase memories of hours of fiddling with ISAPI/NSAPI extensions, shred your printouts of ASP error message explanations from the Microsoft knowledge base, and lament about the time you spent posting aimlessly on every bulletin board about those pesky, undocumented Oracle functions of PHP. You will easily have time for all these when you start to use servlets.


--

BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.

i can tell you authoritatively that you are utterly full of shit. yahoo uses apache.

You are cute, but you just showed us you really don't know what servlets are, do you?

Do everyone on this thread a favor, before wasting more bandwidth, and go to java-apache and look for the jserv section.

btw I don't know if the yahoo claim is true, all I can tell you that at the startup I work at we use apache/java for our clients. So I would not be surprised if it was, whatever it's irrelevant. The hottest game in apache land right now is "Jakarta" the program to add servlet/JSP/EJB to apache, go learn java and help them out.

Jon Steiner, not AC

Check out the jakarta project for a real world example of a large scale Java project that runs on many different platforms/JVMs.

Okay, I know a bunch about this, since it's an important part of what I'm studying... Pay attention.

First of all, the Internet -- porn or not -- is growing at an absurd rate. Any single search engine, regardless of how good its ranking algorithm is, will not be able to keep up either with new or more difficult to use technologies (such as databases, as the post mentions). Some of my research is directed towards the idea of distributed indexing. I can't get into it now, but imagine Napster except with metadata instead of MP3s. These distributed mini-engines would know how to answer very specific queries (some would know how to deal with databases, some with PHP, some with other mini-engines, and so forth). It's a pretty complicated idea, and has some problems (such as response time for searches), but is the only real scalable solution for the growing Internet.

Second, XML is becoming more prevalent on the Internet in general (see Apache XML), but unfortunately is not quite there yet. However, as a poster alluded to, RDF (an XML flavor used to describe site metadata) is usable today. The state of RDF, however, is that it's currently used more for the purposes of Slashboxes for example than web spidering.

Anyway, be sure to keep an eye out. Expect things to change dramatically in the next year or so. The Internet is still a baby, and it's just now learning to walk...

PHP Builder ran an article describing how you can have Apache Webserver treat a certain "directory" as a script, using the Location directive. So if I had a script file name called www.mydomain.com/foo then I could access www.mydomain.com/foo/param1/param2 and the foo script would run, and could use environment variables to find the "path" foo/param1/param2. I tried it, and it works quite well. This hides get parameters as "paths" so that search engines don't think the pages are dynamic (this is how Amazon.com works)

PHP Builder ran an article describing how you can have Apache Webserver treat a certain "directory" as a script, using the Location directive. So if I had a script file name called www.mydomain.com/foo then I could access www.mydomain.com/foo/param1/param2 and the foo script would run, and could use environment variables to find the "path" foo/param1/param2. I tried it, and it works quite well. This hides get parameters as "paths" so that search engines don't think the pages are dynamic (this is how Amazon.com works)

The solution is easy. Don't use them in your URLs.

Do not use GET args in dynamically built links, but hide your args in a longer plain ole URL. For example, a script at http://www/x/y can actually interpret http://www/x/y/z/ just fine and you can then parse off z as an argument.

First, alias a directory that runs your CGIs, PHPs, etc. Like you would cgi-bin but don't call it that!

Then, plant your cgi program(s) in there. The "arguments" further down would be in the PATH_INFO variable (which you'd have to parse out manually).

So, in the case of http://www/aa/xx/yy/zz/ the script is in the aliased /aa directory. The script is named xx and the PATH_INFO passed to it, in the above example, would be /yy/zz/

This works with Apache. Don't have Apache? Upgrade today at www.apache.org :-)

Personaly I feel the overall aims of cosource are a good one, I'm total advocate of open source and I'm also a total advocate of me having stack loads of cash. Exactly how the two can be made to work together is a different matter but I'm working on my own ideas.

The writer (or the people the writer is quoteing, it's not all that clear) claims "Without some system of monetary incentives, crucial gaps in the open source landscape -- such as applications and user documentation -- would never get filled.", this is not enirely true. The various documentation projects on linux may not be a shining example but a quick look at Apache will show you how it can be done. Not only do the programmers contribute documentation but many of the supporters who are not programmers feel that this is the way they can contribute.

After looking at the cosource website I get the feeling that it's more the article writers objections to open source rather than those of cosource that is showing through

The biggest problem with this is the commercial notion of reward, I do things for free that would cause me to laugh if anyone offered me less than several thousand to do. An example of this from the CoSource site is " Request: 3-D modeller with cartoon mode, First, I want an open source 3-D modeller with skeletal animation for X (or crossplatform GUI lib). This may or may not already exist, and building on an existing modeller to add skeletal animation etc is of course OK. But a cartoon rendering mode should be added [snip]" and the grand sum offered for this? $200, I guess the point is that if enough people offerd $200 then the project would get financed. However I'm already working with some other people on a project along these lines, I would not however want to get involved with anything like this unless the cash amount was really significant.

I agree, we use AboveNet... so do sites like www.apache.org.

I would suggest that you check out using an application server mod for any major web server. The application server will allow you to use JSP and Servlets with Java. This is a good alternitive to CGI. Using Java (being a popular term) you could have an easier time getting the funding for the upgrade to a new system.

Java Apache Page

This site will point you into the right direction getting everything that you need. Should you need to get a developer I would suggest contacting Web Programmers, Inc. We have used them for our development and they've done a great job on our up coming project for Ruptime.com

1. get apache + jserv (java.apache.org)
2. re-write your scripts as servlets
3. get the java COMM package (http://java.sun.com/products/javac omm/index.html to talk to the backend server.
4. put your data in any database you want and connect to it via jdbc. One way would be to keep the access db on an NT box and whenever you get new data connect to it via jdbc, grab the data, stick it in more robust database (also via jdbc)

1. easier to maintain and debug
2. see #1

Take a look at the Popular Perl Complaints and Myths doc compiled by Adam Pisoni and docs to get you started with mod_perl at perl.apache.org