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It's on SourceForge, and is the first hit on Google, so I'm not sure how you missed it.

You could have also checked out the Help Desk category at DMOZ for which I am an editor. There are several open or free help desk packages listed.

The system you want does exist. It's called the Open Directory Project. You can access it via a defined network protocol (HTTP) and it has an easy way to add and change entries (web forms). I think it just allows name collisions at the moment, but really that's fine since the kind of names you're proposing (descriptions of real world names) are not necessarily unique.

Here are two systems I found in less than five minutes:

• JCS
• Request Tracker

The Open Directory is also a good source of information - the have a whole page of Help Desk programs (though not all are OSS).

Here are two systems I found in less than five minutes:

• JCS
• Request Tracker

The Open Directory is also a good source of information - the have a whole page of Help Desk programs (though not all are OSS).

Second of all, a greater concern might be "Is the Internet growing too disorganized?" There are ten jillion pages out there, and the vast majority of them aren't even linked to from other documents. They don't show up on search engines, they just sit there, with the web masters wondering why they've only gotten 3 visits in the past year.

Even the sites that can be found by search engines are getting increasingly hard to organize. Yahoo! is starting to wobble in their traditional high-quality, hand-picked links directory. They can't keep up with the net, so they've started implementing pay-for-listing programs. The Open Directory Project survives because of heaps and heaps of volunteer editors, but every category varies in qualities, and some basic categories don't even have editors. Many other search engines have attempted dynamically-created directories based on keywords, but these are easy to spam and often have very low-quality content.

All the disorganization also affects our information processing skills. We don't read like we used to. Hardcore web surfers are generally incapable of sitting down and enjoying a good book, because they're too accustomed to the "This page doesn't have it, go to the next one" cognitive paradigm.

What we really need is a new way to organize web sites, perhaps based on a combination of client (most visited sites), server (author-specified categories), and parsed (most linked-to sites) information.

The internet is not growing too fast. Our ability to cope with it, however, is failing to grow with it.

We have more to fear from Monsanto than just about any other corporation out there.

For more info:

Also, I'm not impressed with ODP's handling of new applicants. I applied once last year and received NO reply, not even a rejection letter. I had applied to edit the category of "Personal Pages -- Surnames starting with U". It was to get my feet wet, learn how to be an editor, see how time consuming it might be before adding a more serious category. I mentioned that in my application.

I resubmitted it in February and successfully received . . . a rejection letter! They decided I have a personal stake in the category (note my last name) and might be biased. Oh no! We must prevent the potential for abuse of Web Pages about people named U*!

If I'm not allowed to edit for categories that I know something about and I'm interested in, then what exactly should I volunteer for, and why should I?

Also, I'm not impressed with ODP's handling of new applicants. I applied once last year and received NO reply, not even a rejection letter. I had applied to edit the category of "Personal Pages -- Surnames starting with U". It was to get my feet wet, learn how to be an editor, see how time consuming it might be before adding a more serious category. I mentioned that in my application.

I resubmitted it in February and successfully received . . . a rejection letter! They decided I have a personal stake in the category (note my last name) and might be biased. Oh no! We must prevent the potential for abuse of Web Pages about people named U*!

If I'm not allowed to edit for categories that I know something about and I'm interested in, then what exactly should I volunteer for, and why should I?

Well, I'm tired of them too, and I write pages that I submit to search engines from time to time, and I've come up with what I feel is the best way to submit links to a bunch of sites:

Direct links into the pages that have the URL submission forms on a bunch of search engines.

• Search Engine Submission Form Index

That's it!

I got all these search engines off the Search Engines Category at the Open Directory Project. If you know of any pages that list a bunch of other search engines (there are many smaller ones, and a lot of special purpose ones) then drop me a line at crawford@goingware.com.

In my index I provide brief notes about some of the engines, including mentioning whether they refuse to accept submissions without payment. I don't provide links to submission forms for the engines that won't list a site for free, and I'd like to ask you not to support the trend towards paid index and spider placement.

You should understand that the vast majority of visitors to your sites don't get there through search engines, they get there because other people like your page and give you a link. The main value of search engines is to "prime the pump" so a few people start finding your site and then know to create a link for it.

Create successful web sites by writing good web sites - see Some Web Application Design Basics for links to a few good pages written by experts that will start you well on the road to an appealing, successful website.

Thank you for your attention.

Mike

Well, I'm tired of them too, and I write pages that I submit to search engines from time to time, and I've come up with what I feel is the best way to submit links to a bunch of sites:

Direct links into the pages that have the URL submission forms on a bunch of search engines.

• Search Engine Submission Form Index

That's it!

I got all these search engines off the Search Engines Category at the Open Directory Project. If you know of any pages that list a bunch of other search engines (there are many smaller ones, and a lot of special purpose ones) then drop me a line at crawford@goingware.com.

In my index I provide brief notes about some of the engines, including mentioning whether they refuse to accept submissions without payment. I don't provide links to submission forms for the engines that won't list a site for free, and I'd like to ask you not to support the trend towards paid index and spider placement.

You should understand that the vast majority of visitors to your sites don't get there through search engines, they get there because other people like your page and give you a link. The main value of search engines is to "prime the pump" so a few people start finding your site and then know to create a link for it.

Create successful web sites by writing good web sites - see Some Web Application Design Basics for links to a few good pages written by experts that will start you well on the road to an appealing, successful website.

Thank you for your attention.

Mike

Well, it's not their serial ports... but you can use the parallel ports and use PLIP -- parallel line internet protocol.
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Operating_Syste ms/Linux/Hardware_Support/PLIP/

alleria wrote:

Do they already know about _all_ of these links?

Pretty sure they do. There's a list of sites and words banned by the Church of Scientology's version of Cybersitter.

For more links, see the Open Directory Project's Opposing Views: Scientology section.

Sony should have made the built-in event handler resubmit unhandled jog-dial events and up/dn arrows.

I'm surprised that a hack hasn't been written for this functionality yet, but I would expect it within the next month or two.

--

Dmoz has a bewildering array of links on the topic of Pi. If ever there was an argument for people having *way* too much free time on their hands, this is it.
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To my simple mind the Open Directory Project seems to be the best bet for a model for searching Usenet. It's arranged hierarchically, it's searchable, it's open. And instead of having all the archives stored in a single location, what about having them distributed? Just a couple of random ideas while I've got other better things to do.

They also have a film archive section.

Well, post early, post often ;-)

This reminds me of Project Gutenberg - anyone else know of good repositories around the Web? Post 'em below.

If you're looking for texts, see The Open Directory's etext section. Typically, if I need similar resources for something, I enter the address of the resource that I have in dmoz.org's search engine and browse the category where they put that resource. Very useful, most of the time!

Where are the corresponding accomplishments of free information in the area of music? Mutopia is great, but its contents were all public domain already. If you look in the relevant dmoz category, there is virtually no music that has been intentionally made into copylefted free information by the composer.

As long as free software could be successfully portrayed as a synonym for warez, it was hard to make any political progress. Same goes for music. As long as the free music scene on the internet consists of nothing but downloading MP3s illegally, it's going to be very hard to accomplish anything against the overreaching of the copyright holders.

The Assayer - free-information book reviews

• Cor van de Water Renewable Energy
• Tomi Engdahl's Power Supply Page
• Open Directory Power Electronics

Why does one need cheesy dotcoms to tell us what a directory is?

A directory search limited to U.S. newspapers immediately brings up, say, an explanation by Linda Chavez about her relationship with the illegal alien in question.

If one wants political news, one can go to a political news source. If one wants information on Linda Chavez, one can do a more specific search. If one wants political news about Linda Chavez, one can (this must be getting very complex for your average dotcom founder) search a news archive.

Why? Mainly because the people there are funny, like the sort of things I like, and we can allow have 'input' onto the site - /. has comments and moderation, ODP has its internal editor forums, editing the listings and a good 'community'.

Communities happen - if you try and 'force' it, they just won't work... IMHO

Does anyone know how the effort to make a GUI for LilyPond is going? Until that effort is complete, this kind of activity is unfortunately going to be limited to (a) extreme geeks who want to hand-code LilyPond, or (b) people who don't mind shelling out lots of money for proprietary software.

The Assayer - free-information book reviews

I saw one of these in a computer store four years ago. It had a crank that could be used to ajust it from totally flat to totally vertical.

A quick scan through dmoz's keyboard list returns lots of examples of vertical keyboards. Like this one.

Lots of good SID-related links here:

dmoz Commodore 64 SID category:
http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Systems/Commodore/Co mmodore_64/SID/

Boy am I getting tired of slashdotters who give out misinformation. Often it comes with profanity or insults. Check out this site, or anything in the relevant DMOZ category. In the U.S., you do automatically own the copyright on everything you write, but registration strengthens your legal options against pirates.

Interesting links on Self can be found here.

Where Pliant syntax is discussed, it is said that it is original because "The Pliant parser is original in that it doesn't rely on an automaton derived from a grammar. It is simpler, but more customizable and therefore much more powerful. "

I'd like to point out that the parsing extensibility of Pliant can be found in the Forth language and I believe that Rebol may also have some of these advantages. The language Lua also comes to mind as a language with syntactic extensibility.

---

yah like lets all start using gopher and veronica again!

• GMD ifarchive of new and old interactive games
• Frotz, infocom game player for all machines (including Windows and Linux)
• Nitfol, an even better infocom game player
• About.com guide to IF
• unofficial Infocom page with some freebie Zork downloads
• Most of the Infocom games (Amiga games site, but the data files work on all platforms with Frotz)

I'm not talking about mod as in modern... I'm talking about mod as in the file format, originally started on the trusty Amiga. Think MIDI, but with the instruments stored as digital samples within the file. And think (relatively) small file sizes. Back before we had MP3s, we had MODs (or S3M, XM, etc). Every day, new mods would be released onto Usenet. Some pop, some oldies, some just plain odd, and lots of techno. People would rip samples from popular songs and remake them. Others would get similar sounding instruments and try to recreate the original song. And everyone would eventually start making their own music for the world to hear. And you always tried to keep the files as small as you could. I remember spending a weekend modding Mortal Kombat during college, not to mention the many late nights writing my own tunes. The best part was that when you downloaded a mod to listen to, you had all the instruments and the notes to play around with, yourself.

Realistically, the MOD scene is still around, though it has been eclipsed by the plethora of MP3s, etc and the advent of more bandwidth. Now, it is mainly hobbyists and the like, whereas before, you'd get people who wanted to download their favorite song to listen to it, or check out some random DJ's remix.

In case you're curious, check out: Arts: Music: Sound Files: MOD for mod files and Computers: Multimedia: Music and Audio: Software: MOD for players and trackers on Open Directory. Oh, and if you have Winamp, you already have the ability to play MODs.

I'm not talking about mod as in modern... I'm talking about mod as in the file format, originally started on the trusty Amiga. Think MIDI, but with the instruments stored as digital samples within the file. And think (relatively) small file sizes. Back before we had MP3s, we had MODs (or S3M, XM, etc). Every day, new mods would be released onto Usenet. Some pop, some oldies, some just plain odd, and lots of techno. People would rip samples from popular songs and remake them. Others would get similar sounding instruments and try to recreate the original song. And everyone would eventually start making their own music for the world to hear. And you always tried to keep the files as small as you could. I remember spending a weekend modding Mortal Kombat during college, not to mention the many late nights writing my own tunes. The best part was that when you downloaded a mod to listen to, you had all the instruments and the notes to play around with, yourself.

Realistically, the MOD scene is still around, though it has been eclipsed by the plethora of MP3s, etc and the advent of more bandwidth. Now, it is mainly hobbyists and the like, whereas before, you'd get people who wanted to download their favorite song to listen to it, or check out some random DJ's remix.

In case you're curious, check out: Arts: Music: Sound Files: MOD for mod files and Computers: Multimedia: Music and Audio: Software: MOD for players and trackers on Open Directory. Oh, and if you have Winamp, you already have the ability to play MODs.

I'm not talking about mod as in modern... I'm talking about mod as in the file format, originally started on the trusty Amiga. Think MIDI, but with the instruments stored as digital samples within the file. And think (relatively) small file sizes. Back before we had MP3s, we had MODs (or S3M, XM, etc). Every day, new mods would be released onto Usenet. Some pop, some oldies, some just plain odd, and lots of techno. People would rip samples from popular songs and remake them. Others would get similar sounding instruments and try to recreate the original song. And everyone would eventually start making their own music for the world to hear. And you always tried to keep the files as small as you could. I remember spending a weekend modding Mortal Kombat during college, not to mention the many late nights writing my own tunes. The best part was that when you downloaded a mod to listen to, you had all the instruments and the notes to play around with, yourself.

Realistically, the MOD scene is still around, though it has been eclipsed by the plethora of MP3s, etc and the advent of more bandwidth. Now, it is mainly hobbyists and the like, whereas before, you'd get people who wanted to download their favorite song to listen to it, or check out some random DJ's remix.

In case you're curious, check out: Arts: Music: Sound Files: MOD for mod files and Computers: Multimedia: Music and Audio: Software: MOD for players and trackers on Open Directory. Oh, and if you have Winamp, you already have the ability to play MODs.

Along these lines, a Open Directory Project-type layout would be helpful on any large (City or larger, if I had to pick a line) government site.

-Waldo

Most of comercial website in Malaysia is using english without having Malays version.
Take a look of this comparison from a survey survey from Nua.ie :-
1.5 Million Malaysian online and ONLY 40,000 for indonesian.

but take a look at Here at dmoz.org
Webiste on Malaysian is only 188
but website on Indonesian is 2,014

whose fault is it?

• A list of links for arcade cabinents, especially about building your own.
• A M.A.M.E cocktale project, looks closely like the machine I want.
• Another build-your-own cabinet page (using consoles, not M.A.M.E)
• A great faq on how to build an arcade console, a must read for anyone thinking about it. Includes stuff like the problem of keyboard ghosting and encoders.
• Another build-a-cabinet page, with pics and diagrams
• Diagrams for a dual keyboard circuit and automatic joystick switch + other fun stuff. Another must read.
• Keyboard Matrix Help
• Happ Controls, the source of arcade quality joysticks, buttons, and other controls. They also sell keyboard encoders and other neat stuff. If you look around on the web page, you can find a place to order a free catalog, which can give you an idea of prices. (Please though, only ask for a catalog if you're interested, I hate to see the /. effect decend on this nice company)
• A source for emulators, and emulator news.
• An emulator front-end.
• English translations for NES & SNES. The reason why I became interested in emulation in the first place.

--diggiedug

--

--diggiedug

--

And for the rest, there ist the Open Directory Project.

Dmoz.org is for brosing directories...

I refuse to wait up to 8 seconds for the fricken' front page. that's not reasonable. At least, not in light of cable network access..

This space reserved for a reservation message

People should be aware that they now use redirection scripts for every link in their directory - e.g. this page) - they can (and probably do) associate everything you click on with your "My Yahoo!" id.

Now would be a good time to switch to dmoz.org.

I'm sure many people will complain about Yahoo charging money for adding sites to its directory, but here's a better idea than complaining on Slashdot: go to the Open Directory Project and start participating. Be an editor, or just submit links. The better the ODP gets the less often I (and you) will have to go to Yahoo. Even Google partners with the ODP. Shouldn't you?

Check out DMOZ.ORG's list of links.

First off, bad grammar. Second off, there are many.

• yahoo.com: Yahoo! directory + Google search engine
• google.com: dmoz directory with PageRank technology + Google search engine
• hotbot.com: dmoz directory + Inktomi search engine (the engine Yahoo! used to use)

OP could have just been saying "dmoz is better than Yahoo!'s directory."

Ultimately the best way of finding good sites has to be by getting humans to find them, but without requiring the huge expenditure of effort that actual directories need - even the Open Directory is nowhere near a full reference. This is what "favorites directories" like Blink and Backflip are about, as well as Alexa which uses information based on people's surfing patterns. Maybe an open source implementation of some of these, built into Mozilla, would be a good idea.

Google has got a 'family friendly' option - IIRC it excludes web pages with certain content and sites listed under the ODP's hidden 'Adult section (which Google uses and also hides)
Richy C.
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Google has got a 'family friendly' option - IIRC it excludes web pages with certain content and sites listed under the ODP's hidden 'Adult section (which Google uses and also hides)
Richy C.
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Loved the book by the way, not the funniest nor grimmest, but overall the best Culture novel in my mind.
--

"As I've mentioned in earlier Slashdot posts, the most simple and elegant solution I've been able to think of is to require porn sites or sites with adult content to have different TDLs like .xxx or maybe .N17 - then filtering programs become unnecessary - you just set browsers not to allow those sites..."

I don't know what porn is for sure. Do you? Is Hustler porn? Is Playboy or 'Fratjock' magazine porn? Probably, but what about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition? Or nude renaissance paintings and sculptures? Some people think they are. What about Robert Maplethorpe photography? Will sex education resources have to be considered "porn" because some prude on the board that makes the .xxx decisions thinks it is(this happens in school librarys more often than you'd think)?

If you define porn as something that is meant purely for entertainment purposes and contains no informational value, then who decides what has information in it!? Who are you to say I cannot derive information to write a paper like "the effect of pornographic media sales in the early '90's on the entertainment industry as a whole" by using content information from Swank magazine! You can't!

http://dmoz.org/Arts/ Lit erature/Authors/R/Rushdie,_Salman/ has got to be purged from the directory. After all, a lot of countries (including some so called democracies like India) have banned "The Satanic Verses" as being libelous to Islam.

hmm, "sites with unlawful content" would remove all the decss sites currently listed, and anything else that falls under the dmca, correct?

and, although it may be perfectly legal to talk about suicide online now, it may not be legal for long (ie, judge kaplans ruling on special case restrictions of free speech online has set a precedent for defending civil rights infringing bills like the metamphetamine anti-proliferation act, etc.)

in other words, my opinion, is that the new policy seems to be very very bad, and will most certainly conflict w/ the odp's goals (of being the "most complete directory").