Slashdot Mirror

Interested in a free domain for your open-source project? Huh, are ya? "Too bad, sucker," says the .cx registrar. On the other hand, you can drink beer (or sarsparilla) and talk tech with folks smarter than your average bear, create poetry using such fine poetic-sounding things as "Python" and "Java," and even let other people know the names of those who you would call Spammers. Read on, if the gist is really not enough.

See, what we really meant was ... From the inimitable jamie: In February we reported that the .cx registrar was offering free domains to open-source projects. Now, their Board of Directors claims this is "inconsistent with the basic principals [sic] of fairness...this policy has been cancelled." Their FAQ has been changed from this to this accordingly. The board meeting promises "existing registrants will be 'grandfathered-in' and a new second level registry for the oss community will be established." Presumably that means new applicants will get YourOpenSourceProject.free.cx or something. Props to jmason and TBTF for the above links.

LinuxBierwanderungenrundeninkreisen, oder? One of the cool things about Free software is that there's an attitude of joviality and conviviality among its users and developers -- as evidenced by the recurring Linuxbierwangerungen, as reported in Slashdot last week. Even the WSJ notices, evidently: alanw writes "This article is fairly accurate, although we were mostly drinking real ale, not lager."

The article also mentions the oh-so-intriguing idea of simultaneous, net-linked Bierwanderungen on different continents. I vote for the mountains of Maine, New Hampshire or Tennessee as good trial U.S. locations -- if you know any organizers, make sure they leave comments below about a U.S. Bierwanderung!

Opting in, Sir? Opting out? Headphones, Sir? Red Wine? White wine? discHead writes "The Mail Abuse Prevention System has announced that a temporary restraining order filed to prevent them from listing Harris Interactive in the Realtime Blackhole List has been denied."

So long as no one is required to abide by the list that MAPS creates of mail abusers, would a restraining order preventing them from listing a spammer (by their definition) ever work? I rather hope not.

No, not the envelope with "those" pictures, the envelope with the winners! Tim McNerney writes: "The second round winners in the Software Carpentry competition have been announ ced. Though the test harness category got dropped in the process, the config, build and track categories all have winners along with judge's commentary. Next step is to choosing developers to implement the winners." And speaking of lucky winners (you may not already be a winner, in this case), at0m writes "The Haiku Generator Challenge has been completed, and the results have been posted. For those who are not familiar with the contest, the goal was to create a program that used a user-inputted RDF file and created three lines with 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. To see the winning entries, visit the challenge page. dotcomma has also announced a new, less difficult challenge, which can be found here."