Slashdot Mirror

TBC writes "Etrade's IPO center is now accepting indications of interest for anyone with an E-Trade account. They will probably continue accepting indications of interest until 5:00pm CDT. Get it while you can... " Today is apparently the deadline for the last round of folks trying to get in before the public. A lot of people got theirs. A lot more didn't. If nothing else, this has been a learning experience for a lot of people. And a pretty profitable one for E*Trade too I bet. Update: 08/04 10:20 by CT : A few people noted that the times up.

soulhuntre wrote to us about thirty-days.com. They're running an odd little experiment-trying to open a company, and make the whole thing "open". As he says: We are telling the whole world what's going on, you can call us, watch us via our webcam and ask us anything you want. Live or die, we have 29 days and counting to secure an investor. " They've got the phone numbers, the real business plan-it's sort of like Jennicam for B-school graduates. Or the Real World gone tragically wrong. Update: 08/03 12:58 by CT : for those of you who haven't caught on, this site is really stupid. Stop emailing me to complain- we shared it because we thought it was stupid.

An anonymous reader noted an amusing story where we learn that Jar Jar will make space fun for children with attention spans destoryed by MTV, and senses of humor rendered disfunctional by years of Sitcoms. It might be better if it was hosted by Darth Darth Binks (thanks SissyLaLa) Point_Blank Sent us a really interesting site that has a history of GUIs. Its just interesting to watch the evolution of those clicky interfaces that we've been using for so long. John Hebert noted that there are New Dune Novels coming out. Tim Macinta sent us a super hilarious Microsoft Advocacy HOWTO. Worth the read. $Bob was the first to tell us that the new obfuscated Perl challange is up (no I'm not entering Slash ;) Bowie J. Poag has concocted an epic poem known asTuxowolf: ..A retelling of the classic Beowulf legend in more familliar prose. Gorak sent us a great 3D image gallery at Mastering 3D Graphics that is laden with bit streams that fulfil Rob's Art Axiom (Art is better when it is a desktop image) And finally, the most disturbing bit was sent by an anonymous reader. Ever want to augment your cats the hi tech way. Check it out. Update: 07/29 12:05 by CT : Shaheen reminded me that I'm going to be on The Wednesday Night Wireside net radio thingee tonight at 9:30 EDT.

Zach Garner writes "IBM is introducing a new line of harddrives, code named "Shark", that will start from 420gig and go up to 11 terrabyte." Now thats what I'm talking about. This kinda stuff has got to make the film industry as nervous as the recording industry. But mainly it just makes things like digital audio and video mixing a lot easier. (Update: 07/27 01:32 by CT : Course a few people noted that these things are the size of refrigerators so its not like their gonna be desktop toys any time soon either)

Matthew Priestley has written an excellent essay on News in the Slashdot Decade. It talks about how The Internet is changing the way that news moves about, and discusses problems and advantages related to it. Interesting its a really excellent piece.

The following was written by Slashdot Reader Matthew Priestley, who, despite his email address, is a pretty cool guy Honest News in the Slashdot Decade
In this paper, we discuss the nature of biased and unbiased news in terms of 'trust decisions', using the cryptographic sense of that phrase. We examine the biases in modern media and identify their causes. Two examples of community news services are examined: Slashdot.org, and FreeRepublic.com. (0) From this analysis we derive a model of community news.

Disclaimer: The author of this paper works for Microsoft, but his opinions may not be the opinions of Microsoft. In fact, they aren't. The author hereby declares that nobody important at Microsoft is even aware of his existence, and that he is about as significant to Bill Gates as a single bacterium in your colon is significant to the weather in France.

0 Introduction
There is a malaise of distrust among news consumers. In recent years the number of news outlets has dwindled due to mergers and attrition, leaving information consumers with a scrawny range of choice. As the global quantity of information grows at a jaw-dropping rate, individuals increasingly despair of their ability to filter the news without aid from massive corporations.

Almost half of adults have little or no trust in media agencies (1), yet almost all delegate news collection to companies they will condemn if asked. When consumers knowingly act against their own interests, a form of coercion must be in operation. In the case of news, this coercion is a stranglehold enjoyed by media companies over filtered information. If their services are not accepted, the consumer sinks in a sea of data. In a world in which no one can process all the news and still enjoy a full life, having all information is as useless as having no information at all.

1 Nature and weakness of trust decisions
The selection of a news-filtering agency resembles what is called in cryptology a 'trust decision'. Briefly, a trust decision is a choice made by the user to validate another user's digital certificate. By assigning trust to the certificate, any content signed by that certificate becomes, in a limited sense, trustworthy. (2)

It is burdensome to evaluate the trustworthiness of every certificate, and a typical user lacks the expertise to investigate each exhaustively. For this reason, most users choose to trust a Certification Authority or CA, a central agency empowered to make trust decisions on their behalf. By endowing a single node with the power to filter certificates, the user is spared this chore. (3)

This process is analogous to the decision to accept news from an established information outlet. It would require an unreasonable effort and scads of time for any individual to audit all the news. Apart from sheer volume, appraising facts often requires background familiarity. Sources must be checked, viewpoints solicited, and impact considered. It becomes clear that this is no task for a person who hopes to conduct, for example, a life on the side. Hence the necessity of the trust decision.

Due to the exhausting claims of evaluating news, authority to filter information must be delegated.

2 Sources of bias in modern media
2.1 Opinion pollution
That trust decisions are subject to predation should be apparent. The most evident form of bias is opinion pollution, in which the subjective feelings of a reporter taint the news. Such bias may either systemic, or it may be the fault of "rogue" reporters, or both.

This form of bias is trivial to establish. In a July 8th article discussing a verdict against tobacco companies, the New York Times dwells on the volume of damning evidence presented by the plaintiffs. The deformities of the smokers are described, and the article drops a helpful tip about joining the suit. (4) Covering precisely the same event, the Wall Street Journal scrupulously avoids discussing the smokers, save to describe their organizers as 'flamboyant'. The spectre of a flooded court system and billions in costs is raised multiple times, and the guilty verdict categorized as a legal 'aberration'. (5)

This form of trust violation can be characterized in two ways. If the tolerance for personal beliefs in the news is not widespread, but isolated to a few reporters, then officials of the corporation have delegated their authority unwisely. An organization that is otherwise trustworthy will eventually correct this error. If the corruption runs throughout, however, then the consumer's initial trust decision was poor. In either event, ongoing opinion pollution can only be sustained by broad organization-wide consensus on the value of certain ideas.

Opinion pollution is a trait of homogeneous groups.

2.2 Advertising revenue and corporate ownership
Often overlooked as a source of bias is the murky relationship between news providers and advertisers. The age-old subscription model has fallen by the wayside, unable to compete with advertiser-funded services that appear to offer information for free. (6)

One fallacy is that advertising flows toward high readership, rewarding popularity with success. In reality, corporations are not interested in buyers, not readers. The Daily Herald, a worker's paper in 1960's England, boasted a readership of 4.7 million the year of its demise - nearly double that of the Times, the Financial Times, and the Guardian combined. (7) But the Herald's readers were demi-socialists, and failed to support the very businesses keeping their paper alive. The advertising money melted away.

A look at subscription income and advertising income emphasizes the dwindling importance of readers. A copy of The Washington Post costs as little as 24 cents a day. By contrast, one inch of black-and-white advertisement in the paper commands $257.55. (8) Economically, it would be more prudent for the Post to alienate 1000 readers than one business buying a daily inch of print. If the lost readership were confined to non-buyers, advertising rates would not even have to drop. When profit per advertiser squashes profit per consumer, the business of advertiser-funded information outlets becomes not the sale of information, but the sale of a receptive audience.

The situation is aggravated when a large corporation owns the news-filtering outlet. Most fans of TV news are unaware ABC is owned by Disney, NBC by GE with investment from Microsoft, and CBS by Westinghouse Electric. Stories critical to these interests are treated gingerly in the news. (9)

Reliance on advertising or corporate ownership selects for news that is business-friendly. High readership is no exemption.

2.3 Feeder authority
Any reader who has attempted to wrest information from the government is aware of its inertia. Similarly, the PR departments of businesses are known for their unhelpful volubility. In the first case the problem is information deficit, in the second it is disinformation glut, but ultimately the predicament is the same.

The situation is no different in a modern newsroom. Effective reporters are those who have established personal relationships with 'sources' inside various institutions who feed them privileged information. These reporters are superior information gatherers because they may ask questions that typically are rebuffed.

Without the goodwill of their 'feeders', even competent journalists drown in a sea of flack. Should an information gatherer alienate an important feeder, the gatherer is instantly severed from a pool of developing information. Pains are taken to ensure feeders are pleased with the treatment of their comments in published accounts. (10) This creates an unhealthy environment for the analysis of news. If an information outlet were to criticize the statements of a feeder, or if fallacies or lies were exposed in the feeder's reasoning, the potential effect on the outlet would be calamitous. This allows the feeder to make use of information outlets as occasional distributors of propaganda, knowing that refusal is unlikely.

Information from a small number of feeders may be propagandized.

3 News distribution over the Internet
Slashdot.org and FreeRepublic.com are representatives of a new class of news filter. While using these sites, consumers alter the fundamental structure of their trust decision. Rather than inhabiting a descending tree, in which trust is derived from progressively higher and fewer nodes, a Slashdotter or Freeper distributes their trust. In a distributed trust model, each consumer inhabits a single node in a formless but highly connected graph. Central authority is weak, participants are anonymous, and all nodes perform small amounts of voluntary labor.

3.1 Slashdot.org
Recently thrown mainstream as a gathering spot for Linux advocates, Slashdot.org has a large and devoted following of geeks and technophiles. Interestingly, because of its adherence to transparency and peer review, Slashdot has evolved a news system that defeats several of the biases described above. Slashdot is the conceptual descendent of the Internet newsgroup and the old-timer's BBS. Members log in to the web board and select one or more current items to discuss, then post their reactions.

3.1.1 Successes of the Slashdot model Participants on Slashdot are only identifiable if they wish to be. Widespread use of aliases insulates participants from real-world reprisal - a Slashdotter may criticize the government, their employer, or other feeders with small risk. Handle-use also renders a state of meritocracy on Slashdot. Comments and topic submissions are judged by their own merits, since little is known about their real-world source. Aliases grow trusted in the forum as a result of their owner's contributions. Deprecated aliases have only themselves to blame.

Members submit topics on Slashdot, and those with promise are posted to the forum. By distributing the labor of reporting, the process of information collection becomes inexpensive, and the likelihood of discovering important news increases - much like the 'Have you seen this child?' ads on milk cartons. (11) When the system requests voluntary labor, it is limited to tasks costing only a few mouse clicks. The decision of what is 'newsworthy' is also simplified, since an audience member has provided the item. If each registered Slashdot member contributed only 1 minute per day, their efforts would sum to 1083 work-hours of labor - absolutely free.

Relinquishing trust to anonymous lurkers appears foolhardy, but as randomness grows, so does quality. The web demographic is a straw poll in the worst sense of the term (12), but there are tide pools of demographic validity if groups are narrowly defined. When a site achieves a certain level of notoriety, Slashdot for example, a cross-section of users may fairly be said to represent its supporting community, in this case idealistic geeks. An information consumer is not interested in topics useful to the average person; rather they are interested in what is useful to people like themselves.

No opinion is authoritative until it runs the Slashdot gauntlet. Members comment on topics, share experiences, and take potshots at sloppy reasoning. This is more egalitarian than the feedback model of magazines, TV, or books. In those cases, if a retort is even possible, it is run in the following issue, with no guarantee to reach the original audience. On Slashdot, user comments frequently upstage the 'official' news, and it is a testament to their quality that reading the primary source is often unnecessary. Because most topics excite a gamut of opinions, Slashdot defeats the threat of opinion pollution.

To tame dull or off-topic comments, Slashdot members are randomly empowered to moderate the 'score' of remarks. Moderators are chosen by the system with a preference towards regular but not ubiquitous readers. Comments that gain the approbation of everyday participants gradually move up through statistical effects. Pointless comments sink into oblivion. Visitors to the forum may choose their own threshold of dependence on this ratings system. On Slashdot, the uniform opinions of classic information outlets are rare.

Finally, the scripts and HTML that run Slashdot are released to the community. This ensures, within reason, that the site truly operates as billed, as well as opening the code to all the benefits of open source.

3.1.2 Failings of the Slashdot model
Among its positive effects, anonymity damages credibility. If Secretary of State Madaleine Albright posted a remark on technology export limitations, her opinion would be more significant than had 'DrDeath' typed precisely the same opinion. Validation of real-world credentials can be desirable. One solution would be to support either the S/MIME or PGP signing standards as a user option. A hash of important messages could be included with the post, thereby validating the identity of the signer. (13)

No Slashdot participant receives a handle until they submit an e-mail address to the Slashdot central authority. Those who do not may participate as 'Anonymous Cowards'. AC's suffer numerous disadvantages, not the least that their posts begin at a lower score. Though this distinction discourages meddling from non-regulars, it is risky. Regular members are no less anonymous or even cowardly than AC's, save that they have disclosed their private information to the Slashdot central authority. This makes criticism of the authority more difficult, since critical remarks are safe only as an AC post from a lab computer, which is immediately scored down.

There is one departure on Slashdot from democracy. While consumers do submit the discussion topics, these are dropped into an administrative black box, unseen until a few emerge handpicked by the central authority. Inside the 'box', a small number of humans, vulnerable to self-interest, choose which of the topics will be news. In theory, the authority could even replace submitted topics with its own. A better system would be an open one, moderated in the same manner as user remarks. Along with their ration of remark-points, moderators would be given a supply of topic-points, which could be spent on proposed topics in a pool. Users could set topic thresholds in the same manner that they set thresholds for remarks. This method would be self-policing and eliminate tedious work for the central authority. (Update: 07/16 01:15 by CT : See the Slashdot FAQ for the reason that I've decided not to do this)

Slashdot is funded by banner advertisements, and on 6/29/99 announced that it had been acquired by Andover.net. (14) While there is little danger of the various Linux distros exerting pressure as yet on Slashdot, and while Andover rarely appeared on Slashdot in the past, nonetheless these developments cast a shadow on the impartiality of the community forum. Is it less likely that a story criticizing Sony will be run when an advertisement for the Sony AIBO adorns the top banner? What would become of stories damaging to Andover? Members should be alert for signs of conflicting interest.

3.2 FreeRepublic.com
Similarly evolved, although less highly automated, is FreeRepublic.com, a forum for the exchange of conservative commentary. FreeRepublic is similar to Slashdot in appearance and general design. We will focus on their differences.

3.2.1 Successes of the FreeRepublic model
FreeRepublic's most notable trait is the freedom members enjoy in topic selection. Power is so far in their hands that every member may post any topic they choose, resulting in dozens of discussed topics per day. A true distributed trust network has no single point of entry. Since the number of daily articles is finite, any given node in a sea of nodes has negligible influence. Individuals may be bought or coerced, but since the merits of each contribution are peer-reviewed and peer-diluted, successful corruption must be hugely widespread. The resources needed to influence a majority of users would be prohibitive, and only dubiously worthwhile. Once accomplished, the forum would cease to serve the needs of valid members and would naturally dissolve. Attempts to corrupt distributed news forums are by nature self-defeating.

FreeRepublic reaps no funding from advertisement or corporate ownership. The site is fed by out-of-pocket donations from participants. Though it should be noted that FreeRepublic's supporting community stereotypically has more disposable income than the average netizen, even so the site is accountable to none save its members. When the object of a news outlet is the aggregation of money, it should be unremarkable when money supersedes the pursuit of information. But in a community forum, participants have no aim other than valuable and convenient news.

Participants on FreeRepublic meet physically, organize in chapters, and crusade in the real world to accomplish their aims. There is little risk to anonymity, since there is no need to divulge onscreen handles. Provided chapters are small and independent, the inevitable discussion of principles will not even dampen diversity of opinion, which could expose the forum to opinion pollution. Participants also leave the meetings with a sense of community, which increases their voluntary labor.

3.2.2 Failings of the FreeRepublic model
Although a blessing, complete freedom of topic selection is also a curse. At times of peak activity, two successive clicks on Refresh may result in two completely different topic lists. Crackpots frequently post and their topics slide off the page untouched by regulars. There is much duplication as news breaks. Most topics receive fewer than twenty comments, reducing the effects of peer-dilution and peer-review. All these problems could be resolved if FreeRepublic were to transition to the scoring-based topic selection approach recommended previously.

FreeRepublic has no moderation method for comments, and consequently all remarks carry equal weight. In its absence, opinions win by volume or position near the top of the remark list rather than insight or appeal to the median qualities of the community. Corruption of an unmoderated forum is trivial given fifty aliases and sufficient time.

On FreeRepublic, community participants are not permitted to comment or post discussion topics unless they are logged on. This is an extreme case of Slashdot's Anonymous Coward dilemma. No contribution can be made to the forum without being noted by the FreeRepublic central authority. There is no guarantee the central authority will not terminate or diminish the accounts of those who criticize its practices.

Finally, FreeRepublic is closed source. Though the site is more static than Slashdot, what scripts it has are not disclosed to the forum. Members must take it on trust that no back doors lurk in the code.

4 Issues in Internet news distribution
4.1 The trouble with enthusiasm
One trait of both Slashdot and FreeRepublic is that their populations contain a percentage of zealots. This fact attracts the attention of non-members and ensures the continued participation of long-standing ones. While allegiance to a specific viewpoint is in no way an exclusionary criterion on Slashdot or FreeRepublic, most users share a common opinion on a few controversial issues. This may reflect the fact that contentious topics generate the most passionate interest.

Regrettably, this bond introduces a capacity for bias. Most information processed on a trust graph will lie outside the emotional boundaries, allowing peer-review and peer-dilution to ensure honest news analysis. But when discussion touches on a 'hot button' topic, rampant uniformity of opinion eliminates these safeguards.

FreeRepublic may safely be termed incapable of objective thought when the topic of President Clinton is broached. One recent post discussing Clinton's attendance at the World Cup bore the helpful keywords 'CLINTON RAPIST EVIL SLEAZY TRAITOR'. (15) Similarly, the high quality of discourse on Slashdot disintegrates when Microsoft enters the headlines. Both communities may be absolutely correct in their opinions on these topics, but the mere fact of consensus mimics the effects of corruption and degrades the community information filter. Whether it is desirable or even possible to generate a community forum without this sort of bias is a question for further debate.

4.2 Overcoming feeder bias
Although incisive analysis may overcome the flaws in a poorly written news article, community forums are ultimately limited by their feeders. These feeders are not usually primary sources, except in cases where significant documents are available online. Far more common is the linking of news articles from established information filtering corporations. The question arises whether community news efforts can surmount partiality on the part of the original reporters.

The answer appears to be yes. When CPU-maker AMD recently released comparisons between its chips and those of rival Intel, Slashdot was quick to dissect the biases in presentation and supply the necessary omitted background. (16) However, it should be noted that processors are a topic enjoying high familiarity among the technical elite who visit the site. Had the discussion been on the political condition of Nicaragua, results would be sketchy at best. Fortunately, community information forums are inherently unlikely to encounter this dilemma. Since the group as a whole selects topics, discussions lying outside the expertise of the majority are rare. A more difficult question is this: will community news replace traditional news outlets, or merely supplement them?

5 Conclusion
Community information filters are a novel approach to news. Trading on the principles of self-interest and distributed trust, they levy the expertise of thousands into producing honest, cheap daily news. In a world where command of information is rapidly becoming the root of institutional power, distributed trust graphs refocus information upon the needs of the citizen. While they remain in a state of infancy, the rise of sites such as Slashdot and FreeRepublic herald the demise of traditional information flows. We have entered the Slashdot decade, and only time will judge our success.

6 References
(0) http://www.slashdot.org, http://www.freerepublic.com
(1) http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr990108.asp
(2) http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/faq/html/4-1-3-11.html
(3) E.g. http://www.thawte.com
(4) "Tobacco Industry Loses First Phase of Broad Lawsuit", New York Times, 6/8/99
(5) "A 'Class' Trial Finds Tobacco Firms Liable; Big Payments May Follow", Wall Street Journal, 6/8/99
(6) Cable is an exception. The means of distribution in cable are monopoly-owned, preserving cable from direct competition with TV.
(7) Herman & Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon Books, p15, [cf.]
(8) As of July 1999, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/guide/sub/sub.htm, http://adsite.washpost.com/rates/retail/fullrun.html
(9) http://www.fair.org/media-woes/media-woes.html
(10) E.g. http://independent.org/tii/content/events/f_macarth.html
(11) http://www.missingkids.org
(12) http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/digitaldivide
(13) http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/faq/html/2-2-2.html
(14) "Slashdot Acquired by Andover.Net"
(15) "Clinton hopes for soccer diplomacy"
(16) "Athlon Benchmarks Out"

petchema writes "Corel is been sued by Advanced Software for software patent infringement. The contention feature is the side-by-side file comparison found in Wordperfect. " Yeah because nobody did that before. Update: 07/07 02:50 by CT : originally this story linked through to advancedsw.com- this company is in Colorado and has nothing to do with the Advanced Software from California that was doin' the suin'. Sorry about the confusion.

I'm sure a lot of you knew it was coming. The steady stream of emails asking "When is Slashdot gonna IPO" and messages from VCs pretty well proves that you guys knew it as well as I did. Well the cost and overhead of running Slashdot independently finally began to overwhelm us. After much deliberation and careful analysis, we're excited to announce that we've been acquired by Andover.net. Read more to learn what this means. Why did you do this?

Slashdot keeps growing. The overhead and costs associated with running this beast has become astronomical. Hemos and I work marathon weeks, and there still isn't enough time to get everything done. There are always banner ads needing selling, stories needing posting, perl needing hacking, and readers with questions needing answering. Besides that, our single channel ISDN connection is awfully saturated, and the "Business" work of running this website is beginning to be nearly as much work as the "Website" part of the site.

We had 2 options: get cash from some investors and hire a staff, or or find a company that we felt understood what we wanted to accomplish here, and use their money to hire help.

Hiring our own staff would mean hiring suits and marketing people. We decided that simply being acquried would allow someone else to worry about the suits and marketroids- we would simply benefit from their existing business infrastructure, and we could concentrate on what we already know how to do: Run a website.

What do we intend to do? Well for starters we'll be able to pay several of the guys who have been volunteering their time for so long. Plus, we'll be able to hire people to help sell banner ads, and the administer the servers, and maybe to debug code. Basically, a support staff so that Hemos and I can simplify our lives, and Slashdot won't have to depend on us 24/7. And we have new things that we want to do on Slashdot, so offloading tasks from me will us to focus on other things that we want to do around here.

We'll start doing things like content mirroring. We'll have more servers, and hopefully soon servers will pop up on each coast. And we'll be able to have experts help pull it all together. The end result will be a faster, more stable Slashdot.

Why Andover?

We talked to several companies: Some that you've heard of, and some that you haven't. We were looking for a company that would guarantee us complete and total creative control, but provide us the financial resources necessary to expand Slashdot in the way we consider best "right". And whoever became involved, they had to be "Outside" the linux/open source world to a certain degree: we didn't want anyone to think that a company might buy us simply to gain an advantage in the story select.

Andover is good for that- they aren't a "Linux" company - they run Linux, and they read Slashdot, but they don't sell a distribution, or Linux boxes, or anything related to Linux . In fact, we've only mentioned them on Slashdot a couple of times in the past.

Best of all- they're smart guys. They understand what Slashdot is, and they respect that they can't change it without destroying what it is. So they are happy to guarantee (it's even in the contract!) that Hemos and I would retain full control of the site, while taking advantage of their business resources to take care of that icky part of running this monster. To guarantee that, I've also been appointed to the Andover.Net board. (I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to wear a tie)

What is Andover

A Media Company. An internet company. They run websites. Sorta like Earthweb or Internet.com. All of their existing sites are done essentially in-house. They have several sharp hacks over there and I'm looking forward to working with them. They also have top notch guys-with-ties, and a real keen grasp of where things are going in this business.

Conclusion I couldn't be more excited about this. I finally will have the ability to expand Slashdot the way I want to. I'll have the ability to pay people that have been volunteering hundreds of hours of time to help. And I have complete control over Slashdot's future, without the financial burden that has been growing over the last year. This couldn't be better for Slashdot, and I hope I haven't offended anywone to bad. We fundamentally will not change anything, we'll just have a better infrastructure to do what we've always done.

The final cool part of this is that I get to say thanks to you guys. Most of what we're getting is a piece of Andover.Net. And after I pay off my student loans and Hemos pays off his credit cards, we want to make sizable donations to some causes that we think are important. This seems like the best way for us to give back to the community that made us successful.

• The Free Software Foundation - How can we not give back to them for making so much cool stuff possible.
• Debian - I love Debian. I just want to make sure that they keep going strong. Debian's success is critical to the future of Linux. Besides, I wanna make sure that my apt-get command gets the newest version of everything cool.
• Project Gutenberg - Keeping books online and making them available to the world is important.
• The Macatawa Area Community Network - They give free network access to our hometown. They were the original home of Slashdot- and they let us keep it there for several months even when we were saturating their T1 every afternoon.
• Hope College - We both graduated and we want to set up a scholarship or something there. I want it to be for a "Hot Chick Going into CompSci" but we'll have to see if they'll let me do that...
• Foresight Institute - So hemos is obsessed with nanotech. He wants to give them money in exchange for a campbell's soup can of nanites He's wierd, but hey.

We're happy about this, but I know not all of you will be. To those of you who think I'm wrong, I'm sorry. I really believe that this will allow me to make Slashdot into something even better then it is today, without sacrificing what it already is. Its been a crazy ride so far, and now its only going to get crazier.

If you want to contact jeff or I, you can email malda@slashdot.org or hemos@slashdot.org. We'll try to respond, but I suspect we're going to get flooded, so be patient.

Update: 06/29 02:12 by CT : Just FWIW, this has no effect on the Slash source code release. It will still be released whenever I have time to work on it. In fact, hopefully now since I'll have some help around here with the sysadmin stuff, I'll be able to focus on it some more...

al-bob writes "Sony introduced at PC Expo a set of goggles that simulate a 52-inch monitor viewed from 6 feet away, including surround sound. Each color LCD display has a resolution of 180K pixels and they can be switched to see-thru and are AC/DC. Quite a cool bit of technology, but it costs $899! " Of course, $899 is a bargain for a 52 inch screen. The resolution isn't quite up to snuff for hi-res computing, but hopefully it isn't far off. I'm stoked to try a pair- but they won't be available until september. Update: 06/24 12:47 by CT : Sam Livingston mentioned that an 800x600 version will be available for $2600 too. Still cheaper than a 52" monitor...

I've gotten a lot of mail, and seen this submitted - a porn site has sent mail using the Slashdot.org name, purporting to be Slashdot.org. They are not. We don't, and will not send mail out using your name. Click below for the full text of the message that was sent out. Update: 06/17 12:56 by H :Current going theory (thanks to Mark Rietman) is The list is the one maintained at distributed.net. This is because they used my distributed.net@rsoft.demon.nl adress (which i never use anywhere else). It's a list open to public (team stats-page --> memberslist) Update: 06/17 01:09 by CT : I just wanted to apologize. I'm getting a lot of hate mail, and I just want to reiterate that we didn't do this, and that I wish bad things would happen to the bastards who did this. I consider forging email to be among the worst of all net.crimes. And don't visit the site or you'll just encourage these pricks.

[TEXT OF MAIL FOLLOWS]

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Breakdown was the first to send the word that DIVX is dead. Hooray! Now, I think I might finally be able to get off of their mailing list. And, if you purchased a system before June 16, 1999, you get a 100$ rebate. Update: 06/16 01:09 by CT : They cite lack of interest from studios and other retailers. They also say that most Circuit City consumers bought DivX (they gave away 5 free titles and the cost difference was almost negligible so I found that amusing). All I can say is R.I.P. DivX.

Mike_Miller writes "According to a ZDNet Article, the term "Open Source" is not, and never has been, trademarked. Quote: "The term has never been a registered trademark, and it's no longer even pending registration." " Oh dear. Update: 06/15 02:30 by CT : ESR wrote in to say "Hey, chill, everybody. OSI was planning to issue a statement about this matter after our Wednesday board meeting (despite some of the rumors going around, we do operate by consensus; this slows us down a bit sometimes). So if you'll wait a bit, all will be made clear. In the mean time: don't panic!"

Raster emailed me to send some clarification about his recent announcement that he is leaving Red Hat. I've attached his email below so you can form your own opinions. But essentially he was unhappy with his manager at RH, and simply got fed up with it. I s'pose most of us have been there. Anyway, his email is attached below. (CT: The following is from an email to me from Raster. He asked me to share this with everyone).

I need to make sure people know the following:

I have nothing against my Red Hat in general - it's all against one person in specific - they abused E's user base and fdinally broke the camels back with a last straw. the mailed to a mailing list I was on and effectively stated that E users are a crowd that "festers around me" (thats a literal quote) - that was the last straw - and seeing they were in management they directed development andthus made red hat policies as they were - I'm keeping the name of this person out of it - but Red Hat needs to know I will NOT stand for their management staff offedning me and the Enlightenment user base like that without repurcussions. I care about users very much and I can't take any more of this kind of stuff. I have mailed Red Hat themselves and higher management and told them to do something about it. I do not want this kind of attitude prevailing - my negative comments about Red Hat are specifically directed at this induvidual and he is a big reason I left.

I think the rest of Red Hat have their heads screwed on right... just one does not.

Anyway - if you can paraphrase this or something that'd be good. anyway .. now to get on wiht driving.. :)

CT : I decided not to paraphrase, so you've got the story (typos and all) right from Raster. And best of luck to ya man. And I guess I hafta forgive you now for the "Meat Pie" thing...

Normally I reserve stories about Slashdot to the quickies bin, but this article is getting submitted so many times that if I don't post it, I'll spend the rest of the day deleting it from the submissions box. Bill Longabaugh wrote in to send us a piece by Dan Gillmor over at the San Jose Mercury News about Slashdot. It's a nice little 'Slashdot as a weblog' piece apparently designed to stroke my ego. Update: 05/25 03:42 by CT : I've begun rewriting the Moderator Guidelines, so if you're interested, please check them out and submit comments (or diffs :)

Several notes attached below regarding the system in general, but also regarding minor changes to moderation. If you have ever had moderator access, or ever expect to get it, please read the link below to read a few comments on minor changes to the system, plus answers to faqs that keep flooding my inbox. Never fear, I'll be rewriting the moderator guidelines just as soon as I have a few hours of peace and quiet.

1. System has been unstable lately. Its a cranky 2.2.x kernel that likes to crash every few days (a known bug relating to the ether controller). 2.2.8 was having troubles with my SCSI adapter, so I gotta try 2.2.9. The problem is that with the machine 3 time zones away, so if I make a mistake, it is a pain to get it back up. Fortunately the coloc is installing a remote power toggle for us, so hopefully we can at least get it back up. We've been having troubles at home too with our local ISP dying (and this morning the power was out for like 2 hours). This makes it a real pain-in-the-butt for Hemos or I to post stories. Sorry about all this folks, but we're sorting each of those problems out as fast as we can.
2. Moderator access is temporary. You get 5 points, and when you use them up, you're done until such time as you get more. Eligible moderators essentially take turns. On one hand, this restricts a good moderator from really doing a complete job, but it also restricts abusers from going hog wild.
3. I replaced the + and - moderator control buttons with a drop down list containing reasons for moderation. These include Flamebait, Informative, Offtopic etc. The end result of these items is still the same, I'm simply trying to make moderators explain themselves just a tiny bit more- hopefully it will also make the system more self explanatory to new moderators.
4. I have several things left on my "Shoulda been done weeks ago" list, most important of which is rewriting the moderator guidelines. They are hopelessly out of date. A few odds and ends after that and I hope to have a new Slash tarball out for those of you who keep asking and asking and forcing me to waste time replying instead of working on it (grin).
5. Its good to be home. I had a great vacation (it was great to get away from all you guys for a bit *grin*), and LinuxExpo wasn't to bad either (as far as conferences go anyway). But thank god I'm home- I hopefully can be responsive to email again, and get cracking on the ever expanding TODO list. It feels good to be back.

Update: 05/24 09:15 by CT : Some responses to some of the comments:

1. Redundant was supposed to be a -1 score but I messed up. It's fixed now.
2. I thought about a humor indicator, but I'm wondering if it might be open to more abuse since humor is much more subjective than things like "Informative" or "Offtopic" (each of which are also subjective, but less so)
3. Highly rated replies to low rated comments do get lost. I intend reparent them, I just haven't written that code yet.
4. The moderator guidelines are comically out of date. Please read them when you get access, but don't worry about the letter as much as the spirit- they are months old, and the system has changed significantly since the days of 22 moderators hand picked by me... and parts of the guidelines haven't been rewritten to reflect that!

We break the week barrier, and tons of people email to gloat that they've seen screenings. The rest of us will have to settle for massive media hype including mantid's note from harper's that proclaims that Reagan's Star Wars project costed $4.166 billion, but Star Wars merchandise costed $4.5 billion. mattdm noted that Moviefone blew up under the ticket demand yesterday. ZD-Net has a report. DH1 sent us a really top notch interview at Salon with Empire Director Irvin Kershner- kinda nice to read something cool about the original movies after all this gas over the new one. Lastly Jethro73 sent us a George Lucas's take on piracy of Star Wars. Basically, he will be very angry and fight very hard (big surprise) against pirates. Update: 05/14 01:59 by CT : My ticket plans haven't happened, so if anyone has bright ideas on getting tickets for the Slashdot crew while we're at LinuxExpo, lemme know...

Vince writes "PhantomCast.com, "The Official Webcast of the Star Wars Lines" has live video of the Westood line, some funny new parodies, and interviews with the people in line. It's almost as good as being there. " In the meantime we can all run around the net trying to find those prequel mp3s. Why must I wait until May 4 for CDNOW to ship me mine? I need a T1! Update: 05/01 04:59 by CT : if you want more SW fun, check out this weeks Dave Barry column (thanks Johnath)

More stories from the Hellmouth that is High School for many bright, individualistic American kids continued to pour in yesterday. They are jarring testimonials from kids, adults, men and women. In the past four days, I've gotten well over 2000. These stories, many of them painful and engraged, tell us more about what happened in Littleton, Colorado -- a lot more -- than the dumb, exaggerated, frightening alarms about video games, Goths and geek monsters pouring out of much of the mainstream media. Update: 04/27 07:44 by CT : Sharon Isaak from Dateline NBC wants to get in touch with folks to do a story on this subject for this show. She's specifically seeking Jay of the Southeast, Anika78 of suburban Chicago, ZBird of New Jersey, Dan in Boise, Idaho, but he'd also like anyone who's been targetted as a result of this thing to contact her. Wonder if they make ya wear pancake makeup...

The messages started coming in a trickle Friday afternoon, then a torrent by Monday. They were wrenching, sometimes astonishing, an electronic outpouring of anger and compassion.

These jarring testimonials explained more - a lot more - about Littleton than all the vapid media stories about video violence, Goths, game-crazed geeks.

For a writer, there? s nothing more humbling than to be at a loss for words. I can't do more justice to these stories than to let them speak for themselves.

By last night, I had received thousands of e-mails about life in junior and high school. Few remembered it fondly - none, in fact. Some had unbearable memories. Some are still recovering. Many more are still there, suffering every day.

Many of you wrote asking if you could help these kids. Others wondered if there was any way to get the message about their lives out beyond Slashdot, if these stories might reach the mainstream media in some form.

Don't worry about that. The column and the responses to it richocheted all over the world, via e-mail, mailing lists, links, even faxes. There were scores of requests to reprint. For any others, and on behalf of Slashdot, be my guest.

On the Net, ideas don't need to be pushed. They find their own audience and stand or fall of their own weight. Eventually, I will answer each e-mail, and am grateful for them.

In the wake of the killings in Littleton, Colorado, here are more stories from The Hellmouth, from its current and former children:

From Eric near Littleton, Colorado:

"?I live just a few miles north of the school between the same streets. I'm a geek under the skin. I was a state champ in the high jump, and the leading scorer on the track team, so I was not quite the outcast that some of the geeks are, but I understand what they are going through. I wasn't very popular despite being the big athlete on campus, but I at least had respect.

I am very happy to see you and Slashdot carrying coverage of "the other side" of the story; the side nobody else wants to look at. These outcast kids are now being swept under the rug at best, and prosecuted at worst."

From Josh, a Slashdot reader:

"I was much like those kids when I was in school - weird, cast out, not much liked, alienated, all that sort of thing'I used to imagine bringing weaponry to school and making the fuckers who made my life miserable beg for mercy. (I was never sure what to do then, though. Do I let them go? They won't have learned, and after that, I could never turn my back. Do I kill them? I really just wanted to be left alone'Remember the scene in "Ender's Game.") I think my parents and their support made a lot of difference to me."

From John of Austin:

"?you can probably imagine the emotional scars that I still tote around with me at age 26. I still have yet to go to college, I have shelves upon shelves of books that I have bought, read and committed to memory. From literature to computer programming, there is no one that I can't have a meaningful and informed conversation with.

But to this day, the thought of entering another educational institution to prove that I have the facilities to be a ?meaningful? member of society makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end and turns my stomach inside out.

"I am the father now, and as such I worry about the kind of life my son will lead, too much at times, I'm sure'A few weeks ago I was watching the TLC (The Learning Channel) or the Discovery channel, and there was a special on the social structure within the United States prison system on. While I was watching it, I was thinking to myself just how similar it was to the social structure we find in schools.."

From John, who's 37 years old:

"What this really means to all my fellow young geeks out there? Endure. It may take a year, or two or five, but we will win'All those preps, jocks, etc., etc., will have their Ms. degrees, 2.5 kids, a job at Circuit City as an assistant manager, will be wondering where their life went, when we are coming into full bloom and taking over the world."

From Dan:

"How dare you glorify these scum? They were Nazi thugs, nothing more, nothing less. They are brutal murderers. They planned this on Hitler's Birthday, for God's sake. What kind of creep are you? How dare you compare them to geeks? They deserved everything they had coming to them, and so do you. May they rot in Hell."

From Kevin, a parent:

"I am married, have two wonderful little kids, and am, by conventional measures, considered "successful." I'm also a computer geek, a nerd, and still have painful memories of the emotional and physical trauma I sustained in high school. I still attend counseling regularly. I still take anti-depressants every day and will probably continue to do so for the rest of my life.

"Did I feel hate and rage for my attackers? Oh, yes. But I could never do anything about it and couldn't get anyone to help me. The only advice I got from my parents was to just ignore the bullys and eventually they'd leave me alone. Fortunately, I don't seem to be pre-disposed to violence or was too much of a coward to consider it. I can, however, see how the wrong kid in the wrong situation could go over the edge."

From Peter in Boston:

"I am a geek, and very proud of it. I have been beaten, spit on, pushed, jeered at. Food is sometimes thrown at and on me while teachers pretend not to see, people trip me. Jocks knock me down in the hallway. They steal my notes, call me a geek and a fag and a freak, tear up my books, have pissed in my locker twice. They cut my shirt and rip it. They wait for me in the boy's room and beat me up. I have to wait an hour to leave school to make sure they're gone.

Mostly, I honestly think, this is because I'm smarter than they are, and they hate that.

The really amazing thing is, they are the most popular people in the school, while everybody thinks I'm a freak. The teachers slobber all over them. Mostly, the other kids laugh, or walk away and pretend not to see it. The whole school cheers when they play sports. Sometimes, I want very much to kill them. Sometimes, I picture how I'd do it. Wouldn't you? But unlike those guys in Littleton, I never will. I value my own life much more. When I read these messages, I would ask other geeks to try and remember that, no matter what. And get online and make contact."

From Rory in Chicago:

"Would you bring a kid abused by his family to counseling and call him the problem? If that kid expressed rage and anger toward the world, we would call it a product of his abuse, and try to help him with this rage, treating him as the victim. However when it is other kids abusing each other, we treat the abusees as the problem and ignore the abusers altogether. Hunting down and persecuting the abusees is only going to alienate them further - not only with their peers be persecuting them but so will their parents and teachers."

From Jason, a Slashdot reader:

"Jon, please take these e-mails'and take them to CNN, ABC, NBC, whoever, what ever. Make them heard, and stand up for all of us! Geeks = different, different = okay, if not better! Make my mother understand, sweeping problems under the rug, or simply not dealing with them, doesn't do jack shit! And there's a bigger problem, it's them!

The people who think being different is bad, being geek is bad, TV, Games, the Internet, all bad! It will be hard, a minority against a majority! But please do it!"

From Evan: "I am 24 years old, and a successful professional now, but the, fifteen years ago, I was in the Hellmouth. Just wanted to shout some small form of encouragement out to the kids fighting today. Take your fight for the right to be different to the people with power, and enlist your parents? help. Remember that if you can get your parents to understand your need to be creative, and non-conformist, because your brain is just plain bigger than the small world of middle and high school, your parents can make a fuss to school boards. But if they won't listen, go to the school boards yourself. Peacefully, but forcefully, assert your right to be different by speaking out against fear and oppression. Because that's what it is. It's all about the fear.

People fear what they don't understand, and let's face it, the world of a geek isn't something most people can understand, if only because it's a complicated world filled with smart folks. And most people aren't complicated smart folks. You have GOT to break them of the fear. You gotta explain that it's an outlet, like racquetball or bridge. You have to explain it's not violent, it's colorful. You want violent? Look at football, look at sports.

That's REAL ACTUAL violence, not the simulated, stylized, far from even looking-real violence of video games or D&D (Dungeons and Dragons). And for a real kicker, ask them how many geeks are arrested for violent crimes and misdemeanors when compared to popular athletes."

From Cory, a high school student:

"I go to a private high school and on Wednesday in religion class I told the class, because we were on the subject that I could understand what would drive them (the killers in Littleton, Colorado) to do it. They said that it couldn't happen at our school and I responded by saying that it could because back in my freshman year it was so bad (the jokes, abuse, etc.) that I wished I had had a gun at home. I am a Senior now and 9 days from graduation. News got to the administration and I was suspended until I received an evaluation by a psychologist and was deemed safe to return to school. I have not been back to school since."

From MishtaE: "I've been out of school for awhile (not very long) but I still physically shake, I feel adrenaline go through my system when I think about my own junior high experiences'The feeling of hopelessness, of knowing that you have no one to go to who can or will make it STOP is a very horrid feeling. It makes you consider irrational things, because the rational ones obviously don't apply.

"But make no mistake, the cruelty inflicted on kids doesn't magically go away when you graduate (or drop out and get your GED at 16 as I did). You live with it, you learn to deal with it, but it's still there, and it does change you."

From LHRunkle, a self-described geek Mom:

"?my six-year old wonders why he isn't popular on the block, but does not enjoy racing his bike, or playing soccer. (Soccer is becoming fun.) He also wonders why noone else is reading the books he is. The online community did not exist when I was in high school, but geek culture did. Dungeons & Dragons (the original three-booklet set) and science fiction saved me.

"How many scared parents have taken the time to introduce their child to the items that kept them sane in high school? How many high school libraries are even allowed to stock Theodore Sturgeon, or all of Robert Heinlein? Before we go to Net culture, we need to face local culture. How many schools enforce a respect-for-all policy, and enforce it fairly? I know that I have a budding geek, and if I can get him sane through the next thirteen years, there will be another decent adult on this planet."

From Simon:

"The mainstream is missing the point. All over the world, "geeks" are standing up and saying "This is horrible and I know what cause it" and all over the world people are saying "Oh, my God! Another killer!" I'll spell it out: "The killers are a symptom of the alienation of an unrecognized minority - the geeks." No, that doesn't make it right. No, that doesn't mean a thousand more killers are lurking in the computer rooms of your schools.

"Failure to understand this severely limits your ability to correct it. I read with dismay that geeks are being cut off from the Internet and violent online games so that they "won't become killers."

Follow my logic here:

"Given: The killers were motivated in no small part by alienation. Reducing a persons contact with like-minded people increases their alienation. Reducing a person's sense of identify increases their sense of alienation. Geeks tend to communicate with each other via the Internet and online games.

"Conclusion: Cutting geeks off from each other (Internet access) and their identity (choice of clothing) will increase rather than decrease the likelihood of violence."

"I've been wracking my brain to figure out what stopped me (from hurting someone). I've been asking myself "what can I hand to people to fix this?" The answer is very simple. The faces are very clear in my memory of the few "popular people" who took the time to talk to me and find out about me. There are maybe a half a dozen. They showed me that they were people too.

I heard a report, it may not be true [it is] that one of the killers went and told one of his classmates before the killing, "I like you. Go home." If that happened if you are that person, you know that your attitude saved your life. If there were a few more like you, maybe it would have saved everyone."

From Armadillo:

" I thought I had put this behind me but I obviously haven't. This whole past week has really torn me up inside because 15 years ago, I was one of those kids. Because HS for me was sheer and utter Hell. I have no single memory that I can recall as being good.

I have no single person who I can recall as a friend. Hell, even the OTHER rejects kicked me around. I feel like I'm seeing this all through the eyes of a refugee from a war, who by some circumstance is rescued, taken off to a land far from the conflict, far from the danger and death and constant fear and destruction.

Years later, after having made some personal peace with the past, if not the people, they hear or see a report that their former home town or village has been bombed and the people they knew killed and it all comes flooding back.

"Why is it that we as geeks, freaks, nerds, dorks, dweebs'have to suffer while the clueless, bow-headed, tostosterone poisoned "normal" people are allowed to get away with murder'I wonder just how many outcasts have been driven to suicide because of just one too many tauntings or practical jokes on a particular afternoon?

"Why do we murder the spirits of our most gifted and talented young people? THEY are the ones that are our future. THEY are the ones that are best equipped to build the world to their hopes and dreams. The prom queens and cheerleaders will have their 15 minutes and then take their places among the teeming masses of consumers. They have already shown they want to be lead around and are more than happy to let society tell them where to go and what to do."

From Nick:

" I'm a junior in high school in a suburb of.... I felt that in light of what happened last Tuesday and your recent article on Slashdot, I should respond. Recently, one of my friends, Chris, was suspended for three days. He's an athlete (football and shotput), but is no means considered a "jock" as he plays computer games, reads fantasy novels, plays Warhammer 40K, etc. One person, Ryan, considered a "nerd" by his peers, mislabeled him [Chris} as a jock and decided to taunt him verbally. Chris is normally a nice guy who's never been in a fight before, as he gets along with most students. This verbal abuse continued for almost the entire school year so far.

Last Thursday, Chris slapped Ryan upside the head due to a particularly nasty thing that was said and Ryan picked up a chair, shouting death threats and swears. They were quickly broken up by the teacher and hall monitors, and were escorted to the dean's office.

Normally, each would only get a 1 day in-school suspension for what they did, but due to the incident in Colorado, each got three days and counseling by the school psychiatrist for the remainder of the year. The deans obviously overreacted, given the circumstances. What the main problem is here is that years of torment in people like Ryan's lives have led to such "classes" -- Goths, nerds, freaks, preps, etc. People form together in cliques where people are distinctly filed into the social pecking order. The high school situation could (and is) leading to a French Revolution-esque "class war" where social outcasts decide to say enough with the years of torment. Unfortunately, this is happening sooner than we think.

From Sally:

"The irony in the current coverage, at least to me, is that I remember my leather-jacketed, spiky-haired, combat-boot wearing friends as being for the most part peaceful, gentle, sensitive types - lots of vegetarians and anti-nuke people. Sure, there were a few who probably could have benefited from some therapy, but most of them were - and are - the nicest, kindest people I knew, despite their rather alarming appearance. After all, we had to be like that - we all knew what it felt like to be shoved in a locker, spit on, have stuff thrown at us, etc. I seem to remember the football players and other jocks as being a lot more violent and given to fits of rage and other displays of aggression.

... I certainly agree that the two shooters in Littleton were deranged boys filled with hate, But it's a fine line between a supposedly "well-adjusted" teenager [who bashes freaks] and a disturbed one."

From Matthew C in Wisconsin:

"I, like many of the Slashdot audience, was one of those those kids in high school, and junior high, and elementary school. I have suffered what those kids suffered, and continue to suffer. I made it through, but apparently not everyone does. The response to your article seems to suggest that there are many of us out there who want to help do something to curb the backlash to focus on the correct issue. I was wondering, in your surely large catalogue of responses to this column, have you found any hints of where we might send letters? Or who we might contact, to start telling people what the real problems are?

I want to help. I want to write, to talk, to help ensure that geeks of today and tomorrow aren't further persecuted for pursuing differences from the norm. We have to spread the word far and wide, teachers, parents and people who should know better than to ban trenchcoats, take away computers, and further drive their kids into depression and isolation. How can we organize something meaningful?"

Gimila writes "Despite previous proposed censorship being decided against here in Oz our esteemed leaders (*sarcasm*)have decided to introduce internet censorship legislation to buy one uptight politician's vote on a GST tax - he holds the balance of power and wants to "protect children from the internet", while the government want to intoduce a GST *roll*. 'Net users in Australia need to act now to prevent the proposed legislation - see the EFA Action Alert for more information. The government are ignoring all past and present expert advise including their own studies. We need a backlash down here! " Yeah, yeah, I know--that's the America Declaration-but it seemed appropriate. Update: 04/22 06:08 by CT : Hemos needs some more high school: "We the People" is from the Constitution, not the D.O.I.

As many of you know, today is the day that ICANN is supposed to announce the 5 companies that will be competing with NSI for registering domain names. You can see the announcements here... except that the server is bogged. Update: 04/21 04:16 by CT : Here is the List:America Online , CORE (Internet Council of Registrars), France Telecom/Oléane, Melbourne IT, and register.com. You can see more on ICANN if it wasn't so slow.

i0n wrote in to send us a Chicago Tribune article about Linus and Bill at Comdex. Has anyone rummaged up transcripts of either speech? I've seen several articles on each, but no transcripts. Update: 04/20 02:07 by CT : Knish sent us a PC Week Story on the keynotes. Update: 04/20 03:17 by CT : Ign0rance sent us Bill's Speech. Update: 04/20 03:34 by CT : BitMan sent us an MSNBC article.

i0n wrote in to send us a Chicago Tribune article about Linus and Bill at Comdex. Has anyone rummaged up transcripts of either speech? I've seen several articles on each, but no transcripts. Update: 04/20 02:07 by CT : Knish sent us a PC Week Story on the keynotes. Update: 04/20 03:17 by CT : Ign0rance sent us Bill's Speech. Update: 04/20 03:34 by CT : BitMan sent us an MSNBC article.

i0n wrote in to send us a Chicago Tribune article about Linus and Bill at Comdex. Has anyone rummaged up transcripts of either speech? I've seen several articles on each, but no transcripts. Update: 04/20 02:07 by CT : Knish sent us a PC Week Story on the keynotes. Update: 04/20 03:17 by CT : Ign0rance sent us Bill's Speech. Update: 04/20 03:34 by CT : BitMan sent us an MSNBC article.

Several folks have wrote in to send us the wired story on S/WAN which strives to allow secure TCP connections between any 2 points on the internet. Written in Canada so it isn't affected by Uncle Sam's braindead encryption export policies. The article refers to the software as freeware, dunno what the license is. You can also just go straight to the software if you like. Update: 04/15 08:01 by CT : Johnathan Nightingale that it is apparently under the GPL where it can be. Just read it.

Kaa writes Sent us this wired story about AltaVista wanting to serve advertisements as search results. For words with more than 100,000 hits, they will sell the number one result, indistinguishable from a normal match. Here's a great quote "They will likely implement this very quietly," the letter says. "One point to remember is that AltaVista is still a popular search engine among 'old time' Internet users who might react vocally to this change once they know about it." " I dunno how vocal I'll be. But AltaVista was my primary search engine. Update: 04/15 01:21 by CT : Wired retracted the comment that we posted here saying that it was unconfirmable.

Today's idiotic lawsuit...parents are suing Hollywood and some porn websites because some kid shot a bunch of his classmates. Here is an exceptionally choice quote: "The lawsuit claims that confessed shooter Michael Carneal, a 14-year-old freshman at Heath High School at the time of the Dec. 1, 1997, shootings, was influenced by the violence in ``The Basketball Diaries'' and by several violent computer games such as ``Doom,'' ``Quake,'' and ``Mortal Combat.''" The Mortal Combat techno track does make me want to kill whoever produced it, and I've never been fond of DiCaprio, but wow. What a great country we live in. Update: 04/13 02:11 by CT : several people sent us this story which says that 14 game companies will be sued. Guess who is among them?

TurboDog sennt us a link to an article that suggests that SGI will change its name on wed. I'm waiting for word from my SGI contacts, but so far this is just a rumor. Update: 04/12 05:44 by CT : chrisd noted that their signs are covered up on shoreline... Update: 04/12 08:29 by CT : a few folks have wrote in to say that Silicon Graphic's new name will be.... SGI. Bummer.

TurboDog sennt us a link to an article that suggests that SGI will change its name on wed. I'm waiting for word from my SGI contacts, but so far this is just a rumor. Update: 04/12 05:44 by CT : chrisd noted that their signs are covered up on shoreline... Update: 04/12 08:29 by CT : a few folks have wrote in to say that Silicon Graphic's new name will be.... SGI. Bummer.

ugene sent us a link to something I've never seen before: 7mm thick speakers. They claim they sound as good as conical speakers, but they project sound 360 degrees. Nifty looking if you're aestheticly anal, or low on space. I wonder if they can be removed from their stand and hung right on a wall. Update: 04/11 06:17 by CT : Cyberdiva sent me a review as did Alan Dang from 3DGaming.

Well, I try to avoid posting MS stories unless they're kinda large, but about 50 people have submitted a CNet story that proclaims that MS might be charging as much as $89 for a Service Patch to Windows 98. I guess I'd try to come up with an appropriately witty comment, but I'm at a loss for words here. Update: 04/07 03:27 by CT : apparently Cnet is screwed up a bit here, and CNN has a more accurate story. Read it.

Smasher writes "The redesigned, more ambitious incarnation of Salon is now "completely rebuilt" around Linux and Apache. This is a great boost--Salon is a very popular site, and this gives Linux even more exposure to the mainstream. " We see Salon articles regularly on these pages. Glad to see them take the plunge. Update: 04/05 10:17 by CT : here's a news.com story on the same thing.

preed-man writes "I don't know what's up in Mountain View, but it's not good: AOL has laid off about 430 Netscape employees; in addition to this, a "key Mozilla.org figure" has resigned as well. It's a somber time in Mountain View. " CT : Sorry about the lag in story postings. Reformatted and reinstalled, but I now have a nice shiny new Debian box.

An anonymous reader linked us to a forbes article about the linux/playstation devel stuff that has been mentioned here like 9 times before. We've got some official word from DJ Delorie @Cygnus who confirms this stuff- Update: 03/26 09:38 by CT : I've got a full blurb from DJ attached below: Worth reading. DJ Delorie writes "There's been a lot of rumors about Sony and Linux lately, but on Monday Cygnus will add fact to rumors by announcing that they've developed the next generation Playstation development tools that Sony will be distributing to game developers. Here's the basics: it includes gcc and gdb, runs on Linux, includes a GPL'd NG Playstation simulator, and will be available as part of the NG Playstation developer's kit.

The compiler targets Toshiba's new 128-bit CPU, and includes extensions to program the custom graphics chips in the next generation Playstation.

The simulator simulates most of the NG Playstation console, but you can't quite use it to play games on it - its CPU outperforms even a Pentium III. However, the simulator lets game designers debug things that would be impossible with hardware, and since it's GPL'd, they can modify it as needed to help them debug.

The tools will be available through Sony's usual developer channels as part of their hardware development systems, and yes, they'll be GPL (the compiler and simulator, at least) for those people who buy them. Cygnus will sell support contracts to game developers.

Eventually, of course, the changes to gcc, gdb, and other FSF programs will get rolled into the public releases.

You will be able to read the press releases on Monday.

Let the games begin! "

As many of you have noticed, something has changed recently with Slashdot moderation. Its not my major change that is still coming, but instead its a significant tweak to the old system. Hit the link below to read the summary of these changes, and comments about them. This is extremely important to any of you who read or post comments. Back in the old days, I was the only moderator. Dave pitched in. It was easy, there were only a hundred comments each day. We read them all. They were almost always good- only a couple were really flamebait or offensive, and those were just deleted. This got sticky- I never liked deleting comments.

As Slashdot grew to have hundreds of comments each day, I coded a fancy moderator system. One that didn't involve deleting comments, but rather just organizing them for people who wanted it. Over the following months, friends, family, pets, and even a few bots tried to do the job. At the end we had 25 people moderating a total of about 5 comments per day. It was obviously not working- any regular reader of the comments knows that the signal to noise ratio is simply terrible in those flamebait articles. The system grew to have thousands of comments each day, and the 25 moderators (of whom only a 2-5 were active on any given day) simply couldn't keep up.

I have a new system that I'm devising, but I've decided to experiment with the old system. I think I can learn from it, and make the new system better. Or else, this "Tweak" might even work and then I won't have to write the code. We'll have to see.

So what is the change? Simple, we had 20 or so moderators. Now we have 408.

What?

Yup.

The system was tracking moderation done to each user internally for just this purpose. (I had a score of 2, Anonymous Coward had a -1628 *grin*) All users with a positive score were given moderator access.

Last week wed. we had 2,800 comments posted on Slashdot. 11 of them were moderated. This week 15-30% of comments are being moderated, and its my hope that this number will increase.

Now a lot of you guys are going to scream and cry about censorship, but that just isn't the case. Anyone can disable the actions of the moderators by simply setting their default user preference to -5 or something really low. Tada! Slashdot in all its flamey off topic glory. But my goal is that users reading with a preference set to 3 will only read the absolute best comments. That type of reader doesn't want a discussion. They don't care about the 300 comments- they just want those 2 comments that are really smart, insightful, and often, better then the story that they are attached to. Try setting your Comment Limit to 10, and your Comment Order by Score. Suddenly the few comments that you see are interesting. They're useful.

The goal here is to create a better dispersal of scores. Last week, a +4 comment was virtually impossible, but we've had 40 since the new system took place. Sure, not all of them were great, but as a whole, they were good comments.

Now the danger. With 25 moderators, it was pretty easy to keep an eye on things. But with 400 its going to get simply crazy. We're going to have abusers. I've already revoked access from a few people. For you moderators, read those The Moderator Guidelines carefully. The rest of you might be interested too. The general summary, is the moderators shouldn't let their own opinions factor in. They do and thats the problem. Its my hope that since we have 400 of them, we'll have some abusers (who will hopefully surface and have their access removed) but they'll be outnumbered by honest, fair people who don't let their own ideals interfere with the task at hand. Its a difficult task, but an essential one.

A few of the more important rules for moderators:

• Impartiality. This isn't "I agree with That", this is "That is worth reading, and that isn't". This is obviously the hardest, and most subjective part of the task, and the one that will require the sharpest eye on everyone's part.
• Anonymity. Any moderator who posts that they are a moderator will probably have their access revoked. I simply don't want moderation to be an ego thing.
• Accountability. Anyone who sees clear breaking of the above 2 rules should send me info (I need a URL to the comment: cid & sid. Click the reply button and send me that URL if you need it). This isn't "3 Strikes and Your Out". If someone is abusing their trust, they'll lose it.

As an aside, if you have problems, bugs, or complaints, email them to me. I don't read all the comments. We have 2800+ of them on a good day. There's no way I'm gonna read them all. Send problems to me. Posting complaints is usually off-topic. Emailing me is much more likely to get a response, plus if you want to complain about how much I suck, don't do it in a story about CD Vending Machines or Wearable PCs- its simply off topic. Do it in this story! Its on topic here. Or email me so I'm sure to read it and cry.

Where is this heading? Think of a news site like Slashdot without a guy like me, or a group of guys at the center. One where the best comments become the articles on the homepage. If we could make that work... wow. At some point I'll have a page of the top 10 comments from the last 24 hours. I think that will be really interesting- I'll probably have a general discussion at some point specifically for this purpose.

Its a delicate thing trying to make all 75,000 of you happy- Your tastes are diverse, and there's just no pleasing all of you 100%. So I'll keep trying new things, and make as many things customizable as possible, so most of us can have it the way they want it.

We're getting closer. But until then, hang in there. Constructive criticism is appreciated (although I simply can't reply to everyone) I even read the flames, although if you make me cry I don't reply.

Update: 03/23 01:53 by CT : Responses to some of the comments:

1. No, simply creating new accounts won't work. You had to have had a comment moderated up by the original 25 moderators.
2. No, moderators can't moderate their own comments.
3. I yanked someone already for revealing that they had access. Someone didn't read very carefully.
4. An absolute minimum for comments? Set it to -10000 or something. I doubt we'll ever see a comment that bad *grin*
5. I'll probably figure out a clean way to reassign moderator access occasionally. I haven't thought that far ahead yet.

Josh Baugher sent us a link to a book (that none of you ought to buy!) over at Amazon. By our good buddy Bill Gates, but Check out that List Price. So you thought he got rich simply by enforcing a monopoly on the computer industry! Update: 03/23 01:15 by CT : Doh! Its a set of 24 books- so its only $40 a book. Practically a bargain. Go pad Bills pocket if you like.

Several people followed up the today's earlier apple Open Source article by pointing us to Apple's Official Website on Open Source. Features Yet Another License, the Apple Public Source License but requires a login to get much more than the license and a faq. Update: 03/16 07:52 by CT : Virtually unrelated, thanks to darren wilson, the original creator of the crystal apple icon there.

Richard Thieme has long been writing a weekly column called Islands in the Clickstream. Richard wants to run them weekly on Slashdot - he would be joining Katz then providing new content on these pages. I'm excited about this, and I think many of you will too. The following feature is this weeks island. Read it, vote on the poll, and hopefully Richard will be back next week. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Richard Thieme Distortions

"We all know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it." -- Woody Allen

A couple of weeks ago, it was reported by Reuters News Agency that hackers had taken control of a British military satellite and demonstrated control of the "bird" by changing its orbit. The report said the hackers were blackmailing the British government, and unless they received a ransom, they would take action. The demonstration was frightening for those who were just waiting for a blatant act of cyber-terror.

A few days later, the Hacker News Network , an underground alternative to CNN, reported that the hijacking was bogus.

The Hacker News Network got it right while Reuters got it wrong.

Just as business managers increasingly supervise IT workers who know more about networks than they do, traditional news sources often cover subjects they don't understand, and they often get it wrong.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for Forbes Digital on the unique culture of the professional Services Division of Secure Computing, where a number of former hackers help government agencies and large financial institutions secure their networks. Many articles have appeared recently about former hackers who have swapped underground lives for stock options, but that wasn't what my article was about. It was about the mindset that hackers bring to their work, a map or model of reality that is becoming the norm in a borderless world, where intelligence operatives are migrating into competitive intelligence in growing numbers. It's a mindset characterized, said one, by "paranoia appropriate to the real risks of open networks and a global economy."

Businesses used to decide on a course of action, then inform IT people so they could implement the plan. Now our thinking must move through the network that shapes it, not around it. The network itself - how it enables us to think, how it defines the questions that can be asked - determines the forms of possible strategies. So those who implement strategy must participate in setting strategy, not be added on after the fact, just as information security must be intrinsic to the architecture of an organizational structure, not added on as an afterthought.

The mind that designs the network designs the possibilities for human thinking and therefore for action.

Every single node in a network is a center from which both attack and defense can originate. The gray world in which hackers live has spilled over the edges which used to look more black and white. The skies of the digital world grow grayer day by day.

In that world, we are real birds fluttering about in digital cages. Images - icons, text, sound - define the "space" in which we move. If the cages are large enough, we have the illusion we are free and flying, when in fact we are moved in groups by the cages.

Example: to prevent insurrection during times of extreme civil unrest, government agencies created groups whose members were potentially dangerous, building a database of people they intended to collect if things fell apart. These days, many digital communities serve this purpose.

Example: Last week an FDIC spokesperson provided data on the readiness of American banks for Y2K. Tom Brokaw of NBC had recently announced, he said, that 33% of the banks weren't ready, but in fact, 96% of the banks are on schedule, 3 % are lagging a little, and only 1% are seriously behind. The biggest threat to the monetary system is a stampeding herd, spooked by the digital image of a talking head giving bogus information.

The digital world is a hall of mirrors, and the social construction of reality is big business, fueled by the explosion of the Internet, a marketplace where the buyer of ideas - as well as items at auction - had better beware.

This is not just about the distortion of facts by mainstream (or alternative) news media, nor the exploitation of fear because we know that fear sells. More and more, we are seeking and finding alternative sources of information from sources we believe we can trust. Believable truth must be linked to believable sources, or else we will make it up, pasting fears and hopes onto a blank screen or onto images built like bookshelves to receive our projections. Because we like to live on islands of agreement, receiving information that supports our current thinking, we live in thought worlds threaded on digital information that isolates and divides us. But the network is also the means of a larger communion and the discovery of a more unified, more comprehensive truth. We live on the edge of a digital blade, and the blade cuts both ways.

"We all know the same truth," said Woody Allen. "Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it."

Except Woody Allen didn't say it. Rather, he said it through the mouth of a character in "Deconstructing Harry" named Harry Block. Except Harry Block didn't say it either. He said it through the mouth of a character he created in the movie.

Hacking is a kind of deconstruction of the combinations and permutations available in a network. Deconstruction is essential in a digital world. The skills of critical thinking, the ability to integrate fragments and know how to build a Big Picture are more important than ever. Those skills are critical to hacking and securing networks and critical to understanding who is really who in a world in which people are not always what they seem.

Plato feared the emerging world of writing because anybody could say anything without accountability, but he did not foresee the emergence of tools to document and evaluate what was written. Our world may seem for the moment to be a-historical, fragmentary, multi-modal in relationship to the world of printed text, but something new is evolving - a matrix of understanding, a set of skills, a mindset that lets us sift through disinformation and use the same technology that lulls us to sleep to wake ourselves up.

Richard Thieme (www.thiemeworks.com) speaks, writes and consults on the human dimension of technology and the work place.

CT : So what do you think? Is he a keeper? Vote on the poll if you'd like to see this column each week on Slashdot. Of course, now that we have the customizable stuff, you'll be able to disable future Island's even if we do keep him.

The arrival of the new server last week brought spare clock cycles to burn. It was time to make Slashdot customizable. Last thursday I announced the ability to filter the story display, but now, we have full customization of the grey boxes on the right side of the homepage. Currently, things like The Poll and Freshmeat dominate, but now we have a couple dozen interesting boxes to choose from, ranging from the User Friendly to the JenniCam to various search forms and headlines to a few of our favorite sites. Or you can just turn them all off. If you are Logged In and you Edit your Preferences. I'm open to suggestions about new boxes, and in the future we'll be allowing users to make and share their own custom boxes. Course by then hopefully we'll have a few more servers to distribute the load over. Update: 03/15 11:21 by CT :

You can reorder the boxes with the arrows.

Some new sql index entries and some optimizations have got the server performing near where it was.

Several people have pointed out several bizarre bugs that I'm working on- things relating to turning off selected boxes and stuff. Also note that there is a limit to the number of boxes you can select (the length of the id's can't exceed 255). I'll mess with that later- but it basically limits you to perhaps 15-20 boxes. Probably better to leave it that way just to save bandwidth *grin*

Logged in users will notice New Options on the Preferences Page. (non-logged in users should go to the Accounts Page and login). Last night I added the ability to filter Slashdot on Author, Section and Topic for all you Katz haters. Today I added an option to configure how much news you want on the homepage. Tonight I finish configuring of the grey boxes on the right hand side of the homepage. Its actually working nicely: I've got a picture of Dust Puppy, the JenniCam, and a couple forms for my favorite search engines. You can even have a custom block for your own bookmarks if you really care. If you have URLs to sites that have open back ends that we could import useful stuff from, let us know. We've already got our favorites in there, but we could do anything that makes sense so send in suggestions- preferably with parsable back end pages or perl scripts to make it easy. Having a fast server is cool. We can do much neater things. Update: 03/11 02:18 by CT : Did I mention you can now disable comments? *grin*

A truckload of you have emailed to curse me because you aren't getting emails from the system for lost passwords and new accounts. I'm getting emails from some of my accounts, but not from others, so hopefully I can get this working soon. Probably just switch to Net::SMTP. But wait, thats not all. Hit the link for a big batch of assorted updates pertaining to bug fixes, hardware updates, and new features coming up on Slashdot. Its fun for the whole family assuming your whole family is deranged. Update: 03/10 11:34 by CT : I think email is working again. Hopefully everyone can stop emailing me now *grin*. Update: 03/10 11:55 by CT : The Users Page has been updated- click 'Preferences' to get the first round of Slashdot customization. More hopefully in the next day or 2.

Customizable Homepages
Yes thats right, you'll be able to filter on Topic, Author & Section. So if you only want to read Jon Katz articles, or really only like Star Wars stories or something, you'll be able to do that. The real wild card is how much server strain this is going to cause. I'm hoping that this will go live tomorrow (or maybe even later tonight if I can fix some stuff).

Even cooler is a coming-rsn feature- ya know the big grey boxes on the right hand side of the homepage? Those will soon be customizable. If anyone has good suggestions for sites to import, let us know. We've done a few sites already (freshmeat obviously, Everything is coming soon). But this will allow you to ignore features, or polls or book reviews entirely, and hopefully provide headlines to a few other sites if you're interested. There also is a user defined box so you can stick bookmarks or something if you want. I've been testing it all day with a link to the Jennicam and GNOME.org and it all seems to be working. We'll probably have that publicly usable by the end of the week. And I have a box with a picture of Dust Puppy for no apparent reason. Its neat.

Hardware
The new hardware is holding up fine. Its load is easily half that of the old box. We'll see how the new dynamic homepage affects this. I think we'll be ok, but if everyone uses the new features, we're gonna need to start load balancing. A dedicated SQL box, and a few load balancing web servers will probably let us handle significant growth, but for now, I'd rather concentrate on just providing all the features I want with the number of hits we're getting. Once I have to start messing with load balancing and massive scalability, I'll have even less time to add actual usability enhancements to the site.

Email
Ya, it seems to be busted. I'm working on it. Its a major pain because nobody can get forgotten passwords, and new users aren't able to login at all. Its my #1 priority right now. It might just be me now tho, but I think its working. I get email at 1 of my accounts, but not 2 of the others. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon.

Source Release
v0.3 is basically done. Unfortunately Slashdot itself has forked well beyond v0.3. I'm probably gonna release v0.3 anyway. Slashdot is getting so customized for slashdot that its more work to make a clean version of the code for distribution than I care to think about. So much of the code is stuff specifically designed for things we need here, but nobody else would need. The stuff that would be applicable to another site is in the v0.3 tarball (many of you have prereleases already). But I'll probably just bite the bullet and throw it out there in the next couple weeks. My time to work on it has gone from minimal to non-existant.

The FTP server is still down. I'm not really planning on putting it back up. The code is downloadable from this directory if you are dying to get it.

New Moderation Stuff
A lot of people had great ideas about how to improve Slashdot moderation. The new beefy server makes it possible for me to consider implementing some of them. We'll see how much juice the current feature roster sucks up- if we've got cycles to spare, I'll try the new stuff out. It'll be optional for people who like the old system, but I think the new system will be a welcome change. More on that later, but I'm really excited about it. I think that this system will provide the best compromise that will allow anyone to say what they want, and anyone to read what they want. But first I gotta finish that homepage crap.

A truckload of you have emailed to curse me because you aren't getting emails from the system for lost passwords and new accounts. I'm getting emails from some of my accounts, but not from others, so hopefully I can get this working soon. Probably just switch to Net::SMTP. But wait, thats not all. Hit the link for a big batch of assorted updates pertaining to bug fixes, hardware updates, and new features coming up on Slashdot. Its fun for the whole family assuming your whole family is deranged. Update: 03/10 11:34 by CT : I think email is working again. Hopefully everyone can stop emailing me now *grin*. Update: 03/10 11:55 by CT : The Users Page has been updated- click 'Preferences' to get the first round of Slashdot customization. More hopefully in the next day or 2.

Customizable Homepages
Yes thats right, you'll be able to filter on Topic, Author & Section. So if you only want to read Jon Katz articles, or really only like Star Wars stories or something, you'll be able to do that. The real wild card is how much server strain this is going to cause. I'm hoping that this will go live tomorrow (or maybe even later tonight if I can fix some stuff).

Even cooler is a coming-rsn feature- ya know the big grey boxes on the right hand side of the homepage? Those will soon be customizable. If anyone has good suggestions for sites to import, let us know. We've done a few sites already (freshmeat obviously, Everything is coming soon). But this will allow you to ignore features, or polls or book reviews entirely, and hopefully provide headlines to a few other sites if you're interested. There also is a user defined box so you can stick bookmarks or something if you want. I've been testing it all day with a link to the Jennicam and GNOME.org and it all seems to be working. We'll probably have that publicly usable by the end of the week. And I have a box with a picture of Dust Puppy for no apparent reason. Its neat.

Hardware
The new hardware is holding up fine. Its load is easily half that of the old box. We'll see how the new dynamic homepage affects this. I think we'll be ok, but if everyone uses the new features, we're gonna need to start load balancing. A dedicated SQL box, and a few load balancing web servers will probably let us handle significant growth, but for now, I'd rather concentrate on just providing all the features I want with the number of hits we're getting. Once I have to start messing with load balancing and massive scalability, I'll have even less time to add actual usability enhancements to the site.

Email
Ya, it seems to be busted. I'm working on it. Its a major pain because nobody can get forgotten passwords, and new users aren't able to login at all. Its my #1 priority right now. It might just be me now tho, but I think its working. I get email at 1 of my accounts, but not 2 of the others. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon.

Source Release
v0.3 is basically done. Unfortunately Slashdot itself has forked well beyond v0.3. I'm probably gonna release v0.3 anyway. Slashdot is getting so customized for slashdot that its more work to make a clean version of the code for distribution than I care to think about. So much of the code is stuff specifically designed for things we need here, but nobody else would need. The stuff that would be applicable to another site is in the v0.3 tarball (many of you have prereleases already). But I'll probably just bite the bullet and throw it out there in the next couple weeks. My time to work on it has gone from minimal to non-existant.

The FTP server is still down. I'm not really planning on putting it back up. The code is downloadable from this directory if you are dying to get it.

New Moderation Stuff
A lot of people had great ideas about how to improve Slashdot moderation. The new beefy server makes it possible for me to consider implementing some of them. We'll see how much juice the current feature roster sucks up- if we've got cycles to spare, I'll try the new stuff out. It'll be optional for people who like the old system, but I think the new system will be a welcome change. More on that later, but I'm really excited about it. I think that this system will provide the best compromise that will allow anyone to say what they want, and anyone to read what they want. But first I gotta finish that homepage crap.

Zibalatz writes "The second Star Wars trailer will be appearing at Countdown to Star Wars today at around 4:00pm. There's more information on the second trailer and its non-web appearances on the site. I would strongly recommend anyone who can provide a mirror to do so. " Update: 03/09 08:24 by CT : Delayed. Isn't that always the case?

The new box is stabilizing at 206.170.14.76. Thanks to the several of you who've commented on various things. Yeah, its a bit slow- but thats actually because I think we were hitting our bandwidth cap. Anyway I've got a new kernel and I've shut off the useless services, and I think we're almost ready, but I need some of that Slashdot Effect for once to make sure we're gonna go uninterupted tomorrow. So go to 206.170.14.76 for a couple minutes and post some comments or something. Lets see how revved up this beast really is. (don't worry about 404s- I haven't moved the 200 megs of old articles over yet) Update: 03/09 01:31 by CT : Wow! You guys kicked more pages out of that thing than I would have thought possible. It was doing about 3 times the load of Slashdot. I think its stable. You can be gentle again *grin*

Luca Lizzeri writes "The WSJ reports that IBM, Novell and Compaq are taking equity stakes in Red Hat (subscription required). An excerpt: "Red Hat Software Inc. [snip] said it obtained equity investments from three more computer companies: International Business Machines Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and Novell Inc." Pretty please will someone find a link we can read and post it? And guys, don't just post the article contents in the comments- if you guys keep doing that I'm gonna get sued for copyright violation. Update: 03/09 09:33 by CT : Joy! stick sent us a free version of the story.

Allright the big beefy new VA Research box (Dual P2/450 with 512 megs of RAM- replacing a dual P2/266 with 256 megs!) is up and running at 206.170.14.76. Go ahead an smash it around a little bit. I need a little bit of that Slashdot Effect before I try actually running Slashdot on top of it. If we don't have any major problems, I'll probably switch everything over later tonight. The old server was handling over a half a million pages per day. Hopefully this one will have muscle enough to support us while I work on the personalized homepage stuff. Update: 03/08 05:27 by CT : THUD. that didn't take long.

Proof once again that I shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a root password, Slashdot's httpd has begun crashing. It dies about every 4 minutes for no apparent reason. Nothing shows up in any of the logs. I haven't changed a single thing on this damn machine since last wed, and this started yesterday, so its either gremlins or script kiddies. Anyhoo, please hang in there- I'm working as fast as I can. I'm going to be shuffling around some hardware soon (including a much faster box for Slashdot) so hopefully that will help. This puts a delay on the new moderation system (grr) but I'll get to it. I'll be a bit balder but I'll get to it. I gotta hire a sysadmin. Ugh. Update: 03/08 01:15 by CT : Please stop sending resumes!

Knish wrote in to let us know that the Intel-FTC suit has already been settled. Details are still very sketchy, but we will post more updates as they are known-all that is currently known is that both sides have submitted motions to withdraw the matter. Apparently, there are still "other issues" to settle, but the main ones are taken care of. Update: 03/08 02:40 by CT : Knish sent us more information on the settlement.

The Smack writes "Lokisoft is taking applications for beta testers for Civ: CTP. Show them the support they deserve and flood their mailbox with legitimate applications. Can't wait! " Head over to Lokisoft to sign-up. Looks cool-and their booth is interesting too. Update: 03/03 02:21 by CT :This just in:scjody writes "You may want to update your CIV story. I copied the beta. Here's the form

C|Net Radio is at Linuxworld Expo, and they have now the keynotes in Real Audio. First is Dr. Michael Cowpland, President & CEO, Corel Corporation, who talks about Wine and Quattro, Word Perfect, and the Second is Mark Jarvis, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Oracle, who speaks about Oracle 8i and Linux. The third Real Audio clip will be Linus speaking about Linux on past, present and future and it will be at 6:30 PM (clip will be posted a bit later, and information can be found here. I hope ZDNet will have clips with higher sound quality (and maybe Video), but currently they don't have anything yet (you can check it here for updates). Enjoy. Update: 03/03 12:08 by CT : Linus also broke the keynote attendance record- it was Steve Jobs with 6,000. Linus had 7,000.

VA Research had their little press conference today. They talked about their Linux.com acquisition and their intel investment- they also are reporting that they are going to offer 24/7 on-site service through DecisionOne. Most interesting, is that as part of their intel deal, they'll be porting Linux to Merced (under NDA) and are targetting a complete GPL source release of the port upon the release of the chip. Update: 03/02 06:31 by CT : theGEEK wrote in to link to a wired article that talks about the cost of linux.com. The article basically says less than the top bid of $5 million, but more than a million.

cswiii writes "In case you've not heard, Apple's been putting legal pressure on two teens who registered "appleimac.com". This latest story mentions Apple's most recent action to date -- registering a copycat domain, that is actually an old domain that one of the kids used to own. " Who knew that apple was less mature than a couple of 16 year olds? Thats just to funny. Update: 02/25 05:58 by CT : as with most of the best jokes, this was a hoax. Funniest thing I've seen all day.