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Another representative of Clan Anonymous Coward wanted suggestions on the following: "Whats a good FTP server to use now-a-days? Since the recent decline of the once used everwhere wu-ftpd some new products have popped up . But who is testing them for security. I was looking at BeroFTPd and ProFTPd but they seem to be very slow getting out of beta stages. Are they trustworthy ? What other freeware alternatives are there ? "

Another representative of Clan Anonymous Coward wanted suggestions on the following: "Whats a good FTP server to use now-a-days? Since the recent decline of the once used everwhere wu-ftpd some new products have popped up . But who is testing them for security. I was looking at BeroFTPd and ProFTPd but they seem to be very slow getting out of beta stages. Are they trustworthy ? What other freeware alternatives are there ? "

tilly writes "The recent article, An Open Business Plan for Red Hat, Inc. (which appeared on /. as What if Red Hat Bought SCO) has inspired an interesting follow-up article on Freshmeat. "

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in Red Hat. Not that makes any difference in what I post, but, hey, I figured you'd wanna know.

tilly writes "The recent article, An Open Business Plan for Red Hat, Inc. (which appeared on /. as What if Red Hat Bought SCO) has inspired an interesting follow-up article on Freshmeat. "

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in Red Hat. Not that makes any difference in what I post, but, hey, I figured you'd wanna know.

Today Andover.Net announced that they have acquired Freshmeat. They promise never to put scoop and I in the same room for fear of the carnage that would ensue. (j/k). Actually scoop had all the same reasons as I did: running Freshmeat has been a hectic one man show for a long time. Andover has done of good job giving me the resources I've needed to allow Slashdot to expand, and now they'll give scoop the same helping hand with fm. Very cool.

Paranoid noted that Freshmeat (hi Scoop!) is now doing an x10 Promotional Offer for those of you who missed your chance when we did it. You pay $6 shipping, and you get all the required parts to turn on your house lights from your command line. Or a TCL GUI. I just ordered a set for my gf- these things really rock. I've got my lava lamps rigged up in my room, plus a motion detector in my bathroom so I don't kill myself before I get my contacts in first thing in the morning.

Paranoid noted that Freshmeat (hi Scoop!) is now doing an x10 Promotional Offer for those of you who missed your chance when we did it. You pay $6 shipping, and you get all the required parts to turn on your house lights from your command line. Or a TCL GUI. I just ordered a set for my gf- these things really rock. I've got my lava lamps rigged up in my room, plus a motion detector in my bathroom so I don't kill myself before I get my contacts in first thing in the morning.

MacJedi writes "Freshmeat has an excellent article about a possible Microsoft strategy to capture the web from both the server and the client ends. " The article itself does a good job of dissecting recent comments from Steve Ballmer, as well as what some of the new items in Win2k portend for our favorite web server.

diabloii writes "SCO will license its System Activity Reporter (SAR) source code to the open source community in cooperation with Starnix, Inc. SAR is currently used to retrieve data for administering the UnixWare 7 System V Release 5 (SVR5) kernel. SCO is hoping that the release of SAR will help standardize kernel administrative. Read the press release here. Also more info at freshmeat. " SAR will be released under the Mozilla license, under the 2nd phase of the release. In the first phase, it will be ported to *BSD and Linux, with the help of Starnix.

Christopher Cashell writes "Everyone knows about Beowulf High Performance clusters, but it's often remarked that these are impracticle for most business uses, and that High Availability Clustering is still lacking. It looks like the guys at TurboLinux are working on fixing that. First seen on freshmeat"

Kris Kersey wrote in to mention that CompHardware.Com and running the Linux Hardware Database. Roast Beef wrote in to comment that AntiOnline's new AntiCode looks Strangely Familiar. Richard Finney sent us a nice picture of IO Transitioning Jupiter that has officially met Rob's First Law of Art (all art is better once it becomes my background image). Next up, a trio of Star Wars related stories: PhoneMonkey wrote in with proof that everyone has Star Wars fever over at The Onion. Danse writes wrote in to send us The Phantom Menace Revealed from the Brunching Shuttlecocks. Lars Westergren sent us Mr Cranky's top 10 reasons why you should be worried about the new "Star Wars" movie. [null] created the terribly flawed Slashdot Quota (he gives more points to quickee submittors than feature & book review writers, plus failed to give a million bonus points to anyone named CmdrTaco). An anonymous reader linked us to a suspended Linux server. Link wrote in to send us a little web slideshow that I can't explain, but its so odd that I had to share it. The Dude wrote in to tell us about the ideal use for that VAX 11/780 that you lying around. And finally for the paranoid, Cabby sent us a website which (I kid you not) is Everything Women need to know about Y2k. Sit in slack jawed amazement.

Robert Levin wrote a piece about what he calls Algamics, i.e. the dynamics of gift society. He points out that it is neither new, nor a zero-sum game such as the "market" as described by conventional economics. In related news, Jakob Kaivo has written a Freshmeat Editorial for newbies about chipping in, and giving back to the Free Software Community.

Jonathan Ocab wrote in to tell us that Red Hat has redone their site. You'll notice a summary of both Freshmeat and Slashdot stories on the page, linkage to User Friendly, as well as lots of javascript mouseovers to consume bandwidth.

Jean-Paul Smets wrote in to tell us that Fujistu has released its first Linux software: AVS5 is a visualization and computer graphics program that includes advanced features such as volume rendering. Apparently Fujitsu has a strong Linux tradition, with Linux already running on its AP1000/AP3000 series of parallel computers. Update: 02/25 11:22 by S : Can someone who reads Japanese confirm this story because... maynard writes "Dudes: I notified /. of AVS-5.4 for Linux back in spetember. Also, you might note that AVS is produced by Advanced Visual Systems in Waltham MA, not Fujitsu. See this freshmeat app index entry."

So: do we have a mix up, or 2 pieces of software with the same name?

Ed Bailey wrote in to say that the Linux-7K project to get Linux on the Psion has started Bearing Fruit Fict sent in a link to LinuxApps which recently got a recamp. Looks strangely familiar GVeloper wrote in to say that gdev has been revamped (to use Slash) as well as containing some comments about glide and glade possibly merging. Lincoln sent us a link to a CG short parody of the politics of sfx which will be of interest to Star Wars fans. my copy of xanim won't play it, but several people told me it's really excellent. freejack wrote in to say that the Star Tribune rated Slashdot in top sites for geek gossip mongers. Whatever that means. Shave sent in a link to Jerry Pournelle's web site a where he talks about Refund Day and Slashdot (and neither in particularly cheerful terms) And finally, for the gamers out there, mgix sent a link to a N64 Emulator that can do Zelda64. That game has been a staple in the Geekhouse for weeks now. Addictive.

Linuxberg from the people who make TUCOWS has opened, and is offering a copy of WordPerfect 8 to win. The website seems to me much more geared towards newbies than Freshmeat, providing a somewhat different service. It also appears less comprehensive than SAL. Interestingly, this Ext2 interview of the president of TUCOWS shows his company's been using Linux for quite some time.

So a good friend of mine works really hard on his web page. He overhauls the thing to create a new look and feel for it. He ads tons of user interface improvements and in general makes it faster, smoother, and better looking. He put it up today and got his ass flamed for all his hard work. This guy works long hours, he doesn't get paid a nickel for his work. And the world thanks him by insulting him. You don't have a right to flame people for changing their websites. Besides, not all change is bad. Sit back and give it a chance. And while you're at it, a huge number of you owe scoop an apology. He's created one of the best sites on the internet, and he never charged any of you a nickel for his uncountable hours of work. Flames are not the way to say thanks to someone who creates something so great and never asks anything in return. </RANT> Update: 01/02 12:08 by S : Freshmeat's back up.

So a good friend of mine works really hard on his web page. He overhauls the thing to create a new look and feel for it. He ads tons of user interface improvements and in general makes it faster, smoother, and better looking. He put it up today and got his ass flamed for all his hard work. This guy works long hours, he doesn't get paid a nickel for his work. And the world thanks him by insulting him. You don't have a right to flame people for changing their websites. Besides, not all change is bad. Sit back and give it a chance. And while you're at it, a huge number of you owe scoop an apology. He's created one of the best sites on the internet, and he never charged any of you a nickel for his uncountable hours of work. Flames are not the way to say thanks to someone who creates something so great and never asks anything in return. </RANT> Update: 01/02 12:08 by S : Freshmeat's back up.

Sven Neumann writes "A first release of the developers-series 1.1.x has appeared on ftp.gimp.org and should soon be available on a mirror near you. What a nice xmas present. " Just a reminder that the Gimp has adopted a version naming convention similiar to the Linux Kernel, so since this is an odd numbered release, it is for developers and risk takers, and not graphic designers with deadlines. And FWIW I'm not planning on announcing devel gimp releases unless they have significant changes in them in the future. There are other sites that already do a fantastic job announcing software.

Been meaning to write this one for a while, but you know how time is. The following is an account of a...misadventure had by myself, OctobrX and Rob Walker of VA Research while at the Atlanta Linux Showcase (which was great, BTW). None of the names have been changed, because, well, no one's an innocent these days. Click below for the story. So, it's the end of the Atlanta Linux Showcase. OctobrX, Rob Walker from VA Research and I are sent on a mission. VA has come along with enough computers to crack the RC5 challenge in a few seconds. Add in a bunch of big monitors, letting lots of people (like us) use their machines in their booth, and one kick-butt looking booth, and they have a shipping nightmare.

I came back from visiting around, and found Rob and OctobrX talking about going to Office Max to pick up shipping plastic. This stuff is like the Samsonite of saran wrap. If you've been to one of the mega-stores and seen their pallets wrapped in this plastic wrap, that's the stuff. You could wrap bodies in this and ship them all over the world--or 21" monitor boxes. Whichever. VA had a distinct lack of this wrap-that is, zero. Rob had been sent on a mission to get it, and since OctobrX was a local, he was co-opted for geographical knowledge. I was just along for the ride.

First stop was the area Office Max. Despite what appeared to be an abundance of office supply products, we met with along zeros when asking about the location of this particular type of shipping material. Rob went so far as to ask the store personnel, who responded with the ever witty "Well, if's not out there, then we don't have it. I don't know who has it. Try Office Depot, or Home Depot."

Never to be stopped in our valiant quest for massive amounts of what is essentially really big saran wrap, OctobrX hurtled up this through rush hour Atlanta traffic, until we pulled around the hill to Avalo....er...Home Depot. Draped across the front of the store was a massive sign stating in exciting letters "Open 24 hours a day". Up in the front, Rob began to drool excitedly at the thought of a 24/7 Home Depot, and verbally fell over himself trying to describe the elation and ecstasy that he felt in his heart. If only he knew the toils and troubles this store would bring down on us.

We entered the store and began excitedly looking at all of the wrapping plastic--ladders, paint, people...er, no. Every pallet in the place had this wrapping plastic around it. We began searching the store for the locale of this fabled substance. One issue-this Home Depot was approximately the size of the greater Chicago land area-I figure it had to be at least two or three thousand acres large. We wandered up and down, admiring the high quality designer plumbing supplies, and finding rolls of the plastic wrapping sitting on top of different products.

Rob, being the ever-resourceful individual that he is, took one as a, ah, "prop". We asked where we could find more and were directed down the main aisle. Here we met Jerome. Jerome would be our contact for the reminder of our Home Depot adventure. Upon encountering him, Rob asked excitedly where we could buy some of this amazing stuff.

The word from on was that we couldn't.

No, apparently this material which was used extensively throughout the store for exactly what we wanted it for--wrapping products, was reserved solely for use within the store. More and more employees gathered around as we began to hold a heated "discussion" about whether or not we could obtain said product.

Even with offers of bribery in the air, Jerome stood firm. After more begging, pleading, and wheedling, we managed to get the manager on the phone. Jerome, OctobrX, and myself stood by while watching Rob on the phone.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of watching Rob in action, imagine the most persuasive phone voice you've ever heard, combined with someone who will never let you get a word in edgewise, and has that know-it-all voice developed from years of tech support.

It doesn't even come close to Mr. Rob Walker. The phone is putty in his hands.

After literally fifteen minutes of watching Rob, talking about the convention, /. and themes and Linux with the assorted employees gathered to watch the spectacle, the manager was finished with Rob, and wanted to speak with Jerome. Jerome talked, looked at us a few times, and then hung up the phone.

To get a clear picture of this, you should understand Jerome is not a small man. Jerome is stout, well-muscled guy. So's Trae, but hey, it's Jerome's store. Jerome turns to and says in a somewhat gravelly voice: "I'm supposed to escort you out of the store."

Rob looks a little surprised and responded with "No, you don't mean it, right?"

Jerome shook his head, smiles, and told us to follow him-Rob had managed to convince the manager of the value the Home Depot was supplying to us, faithful customers, and what a service they were doing for the community. Well, probably some of that, but also just trying to get Rob off the phone probably had a good deal to do with it as well.

Smiling like me after three or four shots Bushmills, we walked through the store. Rob and Jerome vanish for a few moments, we get our plastic priced, and leave the store. We walked back in a few minutes later to give to Jerome the VA, themes, /., and freshmeat shirt on my back.

So, only a good ninety minutes afterwards, we returned to the convention center, victories warriors. Bottom line is that Jerome of the Atlanta Home Depot went above and beyond, Home Depot should start carrying this plastic wrap for sale for easily, and Tim, the manager of said Home Depot, recognizes customer gold mines when he see's it.

That, and Rob knows how to wheedle people. Congrats to him...

David Braben of Frontier, the co-author of Elite, the author of Elite 2 and Zarch (later renamed Virus on the Atari and Amiga), wants to know whether people would buy a Linux port of his new game V2000. Given that Elite and Zarch were great games (with the emphasis on Games), I expect V2000 to be good fun. Link courtesy of freshmeat.

Karpe writes "There's a new editorial on freshmeat regarding the future of UNIX (especially Open-Source) as an end-user desktop solution, in a market where prices are expected to go even cheaper in the next decades. It describes strategies on building more and better aplication software, and how the existing business model can't live with a market of ultra-high volumes / ultra-cheap prices. "

Karpe writes "There's a new editorial on freshmeat regarding the future of UNIX (especially Open-Source) as an end-user desktop solution, in a market where prices are expected to go even cheaper in the next decades. It describes strategies on building more and better aplication software, and how the existing business model can't live with a market of ultra-high volumes / ultra-cheap prices. "

Rob Kaper sent us a link to something you might have missed on Freshmeat. It's a nifty site that is tracking Server uptimes. El wrote in to send us a link to "Penguin Lust" which I found silly enough to post. Josh Baugher sent us a link to the so called Christmas Document that you might find amusing. Quazi sent us a link to a ZDNet IE5 Review that normally wouldn't deserve a glance. But apparently a Slashdot fan was involved. Or just as likely, they wanted some hits and figured that this publicity might send some clicks their way *grin*. iota wrote in to send us a link about Mexico using Linux in schools and saving themselves over a hundred million bucks in the process. Mark Woon sent us a link to a funny BMW ad poking fun of MS. Lastly, worth noting (and based on the submissions box, and my msglog, a lot of you did) Red Hat has updated their website with a cleaner, and frameless design. Joy!

scoop writes " StarOffice 5.0 Personal Edition for Linux is available for free for non-commercial use. The offer addresses to all individuals, private persons and students and is exclusively restricted to individual, non-commercial use. StarOffice 5.0 is a fully-integrated and Microsoft Office-compatible suite of productivity applications. It provides powerful Web enabled word processing, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, email, news, charting and graphics applications. StarOffice runs native on the Linux Operating Environment on Intel platforms and is also available for other operating systems. "

Derek Glidden writes "Not Quite C is a C-like programming language for programing the Lego RCX brick that runs on Linux! This sort of programming is a lot easier than the funky visual interface Lego supplies. (Plus, did I mention it runs on Linux?)" amazing what ya stumble on over at FreshMeat, isn't it?

Freshmeat has announced a new partnership with 32BitsOnline to help introduce Linux to their OS/2, Windows and BeOS readers. Freshmeat benefits by getting more content (editorials/hardware reviews/etc) from 32BitsOnline.

Freaker writes "It seems the IBM-ERS has found multiple overflows in ssh 1.2.26 (and lower). According ssh.fi and datafellows there were no overflows in SSH. Read this article carefully since this one contains the truth " Update this is never gonna be resolved. Now folks say this was a prerelease report, never intended to be published, and is invalid. I give up. Space aliens hacked rootshell and they did it through the power cable. They should have been using a redundant surge supressor.

frokost writes "There is an editorial at freshmeat written by Jim Gettys, one of the original authors of X. Very interesting, indeed." S: Jim's idea of cross-toolkit themes should be extended to Wine: many companies will use Wine to port to Linux, simply because there are a lot of Win32 capable programmers out there. Wine will therefore be one of the important GUI toolkits out there. I also agree with his point that WIMP is step 1. Voice recognition is step 2. Right now, Linux GUI standards are in very rapid development, which makes it the right time for a voice recognition standard to be built and added so that apps may be designed/reworked early to include voice-recognition. Some work similar to what he's talking about has been done by IBM, such as a browser to help blind users surf the web.

Hemos and I are seconds away from leaving for ALS. Everyone be good while we're gone! We'll hopefully be back online yet tonight and be able to post live reports from the show. Looking forward to seeing a lot of you at the t.o/fm//. booth. (Thanks again to Cyclic Software and VA Research for getting all of us down there and setting us up)

boinger wrote in to send us a link to a yahoo bit saying that ALS has broken the record for the largest number of exhibitors at a Linux conference. I bet this trend continues for every con for that comes along for awhile. I'll be there. I guess I'm one of the exhibitors (VA Research and Cyclic are our official sponsors, so go buy their stuff :) in a booth with t.o and freshmeat so see ya there. No, I won't be naked, but I might go topless for a bit if anyone wants to give me a laptop with a fully functional x key *grin*

OctobrX hinted at it, but here's the deal. Slashdot, Freshmeat, and Themes.org are going to be going to the Atlanta Linux Showcase at the end of October. Hemos and Myself will be representing Slashdot, along with OctobrX and Scoop from Themes & FM respectively. We'll have a booth and some VA Research machines to run web sites on. The whole adventure is being sponsored by VA and Cyclic Software. If there is demand I can bring shirts for folks. We're still working out what we're going to do with the booth- the nude interpretive dance idea seems to be a popular choice though.

Many things are springing up @Themes.org. We have a new icons page at: icons.themes.org as well as a new Guest Tiler. e.themes.org also now has the tag "Official Enlightenment Themes page". -- Stay tuned for an announcement about [/. - fm - t.o] from Rob RSN.

Since Fresh Meat seems to be less then cheerful, I thought I'd just throw out that Apache has released v1.3.2 of their super popular web server, and WindowMaker (which is the windowmanager still known as WindowMaker) now has the 0.20 beta up for download.

soren harward sent in a link to a site I've been enjoying for awhile. It's called Red Meat. (no relationship to freshmeat). It's kinda dry cynical humor, I'm sure a lot of you will get a kick out of it.

Freshmeat is carrying another LSB editorial. This one points out that if a standard does not come out soon, it may be superseded by a de-facto standard such as the much rumoured "IBM Linux". Instead of a cathedral like institution, a community effort led by a reasonable dictator would not only be more "linux-like", but also more effective.

Freshmeat is carrying another LSB editorial. This one points out that if a standard does not come out soon, it may be superseded by a de-facto standard such as the much rumoured "IBM Linux". Instead of a cathedral like institution, a community effort led by a reasonable dictator would not only be more "linux-like", but also more effective.

Our sister publication Freshmeat has another LSB editorial. This one emphasizes the need for tests of standard APIs (something with which I would agree), but also appears to advocate the same level of compatibility as in the DOS world... Although compatibility is nice, it is not some Holy Grail. Microsoft is killing ISA, DOS, and eventually Win16 because it's a mighty pain to keep things compatible. A better solution seems to me to be a strong spec, but also open source code to avoid the need for legacy API horrors are needed to keep binary compatibility.

Our sister publication Freshmeat has another LSB editorial. This one emphasizes the need for tests of standard APIs (something with which I would agree), but also appears to advocate the same level of compatibility as in the DOS world... Although compatibility is nice, it is not some Holy Grail. Microsoft is killing ISA, DOS, and eventually Win16 because it's a mighty pain to keep things compatible. A better solution seems to me to be a strong spec, but also open source code to avoid the need for legacy API horrors are needed to keep binary compatibility.

Ton Roosendaal is the author of Blender, which we publicised a while back. He has given an interview to the Croatian magazine PC Chip, in which he dicusses his plans for his new company NaN and hints at eventually opening the source. The article is hosted by Linux Journalists International (from Freshmeat).

Freshmeat is carrying an editorial by Ian Nandhra of NC-Labs, one of the founders of the LSA (=XYZ). He chides slashdot readers but does not address their main concern: the notion that the LSA will own IP, and that the definition of LSA standards is not truely open to all (LSA can refuse to renew a membership), as is traditional in Linux. He does not seem to realise that many readers agree that a standard is necessary to maintain the diversity of Linux distributions -- but neither at the price of diversity nor at the price of abandonning open methods. As the LSA's own collection of trophies shows, we're being watched. Please no flames.

Our sister publication Freshmeat is carrying a (last?) editorial on LSB which announces the death of the LSB: few people felt it was necessary to have a very tightly defined "standard distribution" from which all other distributions would diverge only a little. Indeed, Linux's diversity enables Linux to be tailored for different applications or cultural needs. A common filesystem/library policy, the LCS will resolve most of the compatability issues. Vendors who insist on supplying binaries only will know which libraries they can depend on being in the system, and which they should statically link in. Update: The LSB is not officially dead, but "in transition". Nevertheless the above editorial blows some rather large holes into its current incarnation.

Our sister publication Freshmeat is carrying a (last?) editorial on LSB which announces the death of the LSB: few people felt it was necessary to have a very tightly defined "standard distribution" from which all other distributions would diverge only a little. Indeed, Linux's diversity enables Linux to be tailored for different applications or cultural needs. A common filesystem/library policy, the LCS will resolve most of the compatability issues. Vendors who insist on supplying binaries only will know which libraries they can depend on being in the system, and which they should statically link in. Update: The LSB is not officially dead, but "in transition". Nevertheless the above editorial blows some rather large holes into its current incarnation.

While perusing Freshmeat, the title Anti-filter-proxy-proxy caught my attention. What it does is defeat the site-blocking functionality of censorware. This is cool because it neatly solves the CDA nonsense, and with a network of sites such as httpd-afpp's homepage it should also allow citizens of countries such as China and Singapore to get around state imposed censorware, keeping the internet a free-speech area.

Our sister publication Freshmeat has a very well worth reading editorial for everyone who does not know Unix history. Written by Jordan Hubbard, one of the FreeBSD project, it presents a mature analysis of Unix' biggest problem.

Our sister publication Freshmeat has a very well worth reading editorial for everyone who does not know Unix history. Written by Jordan Hubbard, one of the FreeBSD project, it presents a mature analysis of Unix' biggest problem.

Albert Strasheim was the first to alert us about the Freshmeat Makeover. Meander on over there a minute (who am I kidding? We all check freshmeat out every day already) and check it out. Elegant. Clean. Very functional and attractive. And the content just keeps growing. Scoop deserves a pat on the back.

This evening, at 8 (Eastern), the one and only Eric S. Raymond will be answering questions on SomeNet. If you have questions about Open Source, this is a great place to be. Thanks to Scoop for reminding me to tell everyone. I'm going to probably be there (although my left contact has been bugging me so my computer time may be limited today).

So now I'm finishing up the mess I started yesterday. Lots more minor stuff that needs fixing and tweaking. So don't be surprised if you see any errors today. I'm not pulling the cron job offline, so things should function normally.

Oh, and don't be surprised by the book reviews that follow this article on the homepage. We are reorganizing the book reviews now, and so we are reposting them. Under the new system, you can post comments to them as well.

Another interesting side note- you may or may not care, but as of this minute, we have 25,142 comments posted on Slashdot, as well as 1,053 stories (we lost several hundred of the older stories after the rewrite). It's pretty crazy. Updated Hardcore readers will want to read this. Updated Again! Cookies are fixed now. And just in time for The Simpsons :)

Allright, the cookie code is still busted, but Dave should be on that tonight if I can keep him away from his close, personal friends (Jim Beam and Jack Daniels). Anyway, some stuff that is working now:

The whole site now uses 2 cron jobs (it was 7 or 8). One runs every 60 seconds and one runs every midnight. We used to have one to generate new fortunes, snag Freshmeat, update various bits here and there, but now that is all handled by a single proggie. It's much less complicated.

Each Subtype has a homepage now. This is still a bit wierd, but it'll make more sense soon. Mainly this means that the books section can look different than the articles section. The 3 sections currently are features, books, and articles. Someday I hope to add a few more section including hardware and software reviews, and whatever else there is an intense demand for. Perhaps a seperate 'humor' section for those comedy impaired people who can't tell when something is meant to be funny, and like to flame me for posting things so obviously untrue.

Flattened Pages The homepage itself is available with all the links going to flattened articles. The url is slashdot.org/index_F.shtml. I just want to beg one last time that when you use the flat mode, please click the reply button on the article you are replying to. If you do this, both threaded and flattened pages will be happy. I want the threads to be default (and prefered) because it's a much easier way to organize pages when they get to 100-125 comments, but as long as the people who prefer flat mode reply appropriately, I'll leave the flat mode up for them.

Cookies are still busted! When they are fixed, the poll booth will properly display in flat/threaded mode, and your email/urls should once again be saved properly.

What about the source? It's coming. Soon. Right now I'm chatting with a few sites that may become test sites. The first few times this gets ported, I'm going to have to be involved because a lot of stuff is weird yet. Currently The license is going to be pretty fair I think- the code will be free for whatever you want, as long as you put a Slashdot logo and link on any site created with the my codebase. I'll negotiate with sites that don't want to link me. This way Slashdot gets some growth, and hopefully several dozen cool sites will pop up using the code. But first there needs to be some more clean up.

Finally there still is the mod_perl/DBI/Apache/Mysql problem. Somewhere along the lines, a persistant database connection goes screwy, and although Mysql seems to query fine, no data is returned to the perl script. This is why you regulars are seeing the occasional blank page. Its a big pain. I really want to work on fixing that.

Datamode Obsoleted Its gone. History. For those who know what I'm talking about, contact me for info on its replacement.

If you're curious about what we're working on, finger malda@slashdot.org and demaagd@slashdot.org for details as they happen.

The Mining Co (I'd never heard of them before, although it looks like a nice site) has posted their Linux "Best of the Net" site awards. The 10 winners include Freshmeat, Debian GNU/Linux, The Linux Documentation Project, LinuxHQ, and last/least, Slashdot.org. I'm sure everyone here has visited all the winning sites many times, but I'm sure all of them appreciate the recognition.