Slashdot Mirror

As a matter of fact, it hit kuro5hin six minutes before I hit "submit" on my submission. Followed the story for about a day beforehand; I forget how I first ran across it. Drudge Report, perhaps. Had a good argument with a SlashNET regular about whether the kid deserved jail or not.

I'm tempted to write letters.

Wellllll... If it ain't geeky enough for Slashdot, but it's something to do with society, submit it to Kuro5hin. (Is that where I read the story about the kid in Canada; probably the same one?)

Due to the way that CD-Rs place pits on the CD-R, the laser that reads the data on the CD-R has to be the same wavelength as a standard infrared laser that CD players use.

"Silver" CDs will work with the Red laser that DVD players use, since, while the red laser breaks the spec, the pits on CDs pressed from glass masters are more tolerant of the laser's wavelength.

The DVD players that do work with CD-Rs have to have some extra electronics to work with CD-Rs. Basically, these DVDs have two lasers: one for DVD media, and one for CD and CD-R media.

Anyway, I think I will go to Kuro5hin now.

- Sam

There's another great article about this on k5.

Burris

There is a lot of good detail, background and opinion on this whole debacle in the discussion over on kuro5hin.org about this issue. I'm still not sure who started it all though.

Moderation systems are normally designed for the purpose of promoting the quality of a forum. It's interesting then, that the most prominent moderation system uses a method that assigns subjective opinion a quantitative value. "Scoring" a post "up" or "down" is inherently flawed in that you are allowing an individuals subjective opinion to 'grade' the post, rather than a more effectively classifying or categorizing a post.

Filtering these forums based on this flawed quantitive value will obviously result in quality posts being ignored. Slashdot does offer some kind of categorization of the post, but it still relies upon scoring to order and filter posts.

Another factor to consider in moderating systems is accountability. Slashdot, and many others, use an anonymous moderation system. kuro5hin does not follow this poor practice. Everyone can moderate, and everyone is accountable. You can view who has moderated your posts and view the value they selected.

So let's tie this together. We want a system that reflects a true subjective and qualitative analysis without the impedance of scoring. We want a system that is accountable. "Grading" a post becomes "Classifying" a post, and filtering becomes organizing. For example, let's say the categories to classify a post include the following:

• Informative
• Opinion
• Off Topic
• Troll/Flame
• Pro
• Con

If subjective categories such as "interesting" or "boring" are available, so be it. They are simply classifications. Opinion is important, but if we base our filtering on grades that do not accurately reflect content, we loose any advantage we gain through moderation.

So, what would a forum look like with this system? It could be displayed in exactly the same way we see /., but instead of showing a score, we provide a link to show the categories and number of people that moderated the post. For example:

...and so on. (Man, I hate mozilla keybindings...*sigh*). Thus, you have the system I propose as a base. Quantitative measurements are possible, but should only reflect actual physical facts about the post, such as size, number of links, number of moderations, etc.

Kuro5hin: technology and culture, from the trenches
Everything Slashdot should have been.

K5 is like Slashdot, but it allows users to see and moderate the submission queue. The stories are more detailed. It also has very little spam (the -1 FP/portman/goatse.cx shit) because the community just doesn't tolerate it.

But if VA Linux dies, so does the rest of OSDN, which means no more free hosting for free software projects, as most free servers limit file sizes and bandwidths to keep the warez kiddies from hogging their resources.

If you wanted something like that, you could probably hack the slashdot code to do it (IE, open story submissions and moderation).

The Scoop engine (which powers Kuro5hin) has story moderation and a comment moderation system that always gives you the points you want.

If you wanted something like that, you could probably hack the slashdot code to do it (IE, open story submissions and moderation).

The Scoop engine (which powers Kuro5hin) has story moderation and a comment moderation system that always gives you the points you want.

Is for slashdot to add a Mindless Link Post section.

as to why Kuro5hin has been linked to Slashdot's front page, yet AGAIN?

I found out about it from a slightly more difficult to find sid on slashdot than the TOP article on the FRONT page..I am of the belief that it is best to let people hunt a little bit for such a site, rather than repeatedly subjecting it to the whole panoply of lusers that could possibly be accessing the front page of Slashdot.

The practical applications are endless. Even when I only think about comics: Right now, good comics that convey a political or scientific message are rare. But imagine: On Kuro5hin, you get 1000 users to vote on a story -- why shouldn't the same 1000 users donate 10 cents to the production of a comic? And the resulting art would be free to reproduce wherever you like. I would really like to see a good, free evolution theory comic in response to Jack Chick's creationist *$()=).

Now, think about what could be done on sites like Slashdot -- imagine the Slashdot effect with "money-URLs". Slashdot's weekly worthy cause: "Donate 1$ to the EFF" == 10000$ in donations. "Donate 1$ to help this college student get a good lawyer." "Donate 1$ to build a school in Cambodia."

Now that you think about it, doesn't it sound suspiciously like the powers that be may be afraid of our combined monetary power? And even if this is not the case, do we really want a central Microsoft bank that controls our money flow?

Where is the open-source movement when you really need it? This is one of the most important battles of the 21st century -- I'm not exaggerating, consider that this payment method will be applied macro and micro, for shopping as well as for donating.

Why don't we have an open micropayment foundation, and an open-source bank, with Richard Stallman as the director? Heck, I'll even settle for Natalie Portman, but really -- the crypto is out there, writing a browser plugin shouldn't be that hard. A mini fee (say 1/10 cent per transaction) might be used to pay the bank, surpluses go to the EFF. What are we waiting for?

--

The practical applications are endless. Even when I only think about comics: Right now, good comics that convey a political or scientific message are rare. But imagine: On Kuro5hin, you get 1000 users to vote on a story -- why shouldn't the same 1000 users donate 10 cents to the production of a comic? And the resulting art would be free to reproduce wherever you like. I would really like to see a good, free evolution theory comic in response to Jack Chick's creationist *$()=).

Now, think about what could be done on sites like Slashdot -- imagine the Slashdot effect with "money-URLs". Slashdot's weekly worthy cause: "Donate 1$ to the EFF" == 10000$ in donations. "Donate 1$ to help this college student get a good lawyer." "Donate 1$ to build a school in Cambodia."

Now that you think about it, doesn't it sound suspiciously like the powers that be may be afraid of our combined monetary power? And even if this is not the case, do we really want a central Microsoft bank that controls our money flow?

Where is the open-source movement when you really need it? This is one of the most important battles of the 21st century -- I'm not exaggerating, consider that this payment method will be applied macro and micro, for shopping as well as for donating.

Why don't we have an open micropayment foundation, and an open-source bank, with Richard Stallman as the director? Heck, I'll even settle for Natalie Portman, but really -- the crypto is out there, writing a browser plugin shouldn't be that hard. A mini fee (say 1/10 cent per transaction) might be used to pay the bank, surpluses go to the EFF. What are we waiting for?

--

But are there only 2 choices ? What if instead of some agency you would have several volunteer-driven groups (sites) targeted at specific audience which would link to information and provide commentary ? And where readers could then discuss it further ? And then you decide which groups you trust to classify information for you ? You pick several sources to filter "censor" information, and submit information you consider valuable.

I believe I heard about site called ... umm Slashdot was it ? Or kuro5hin ? There you could get "pre-filtered" information that could be then further corrected/discussed in comments. Anyone else around here heard of Slashdot , no ?

Opinions are mine only and could change without notice.

There was a kuro5hin feature on multi-player games at parties and whether it was a Good Thing.

-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!

Why is .NET "scary", AntiFreeze? Are you afraid of change, or afraid that it will be successful and make GNU/Linux even more irrelevant to the enterprise? Do you really know what you're talking about? Please, draw upon your six months of programming experience ("JavaScript is l337, man!") and explain exactly how .NET will affect you, a high-school sophomore in Aberdeen, Kentucky. I'd also like you to explain how you could interpret such a story, posted on Slashdot next to the "Borg" icon, as anything but pathetically blantant flamebait.

I have several accounts here, two with capped karma. I've been around a while. But it's getting more and more difficult to come here expecting anything intelligent, when there are so many more mature, interesting webboards out there. Bojay was right to bugger off when he did.

I would like to encourage Microsoft stories on Slashdot, but can be please be a little more grown-up? "No, of course not, we must be feverent Microsoft bashers, because it's trendy, just like Linux!" Poor Andover, and poor VA... this is what happens when you invest millions of dollars in a dead messageboard run by crappy Perl programmer kids who encourage flamewars.

Cut the crap, already. You know that both yourselves and the majority of your readers are scrappy Linux-hacker wannabes. Why not post stories about things they can have intellgent discussions? Here are a few suggesstions:

• "Ask Slashdot: What is the l337est GNOME skin?"
• "Interview: A Non-virgin"
• "The coolest TI-83 games to play during English class"
• "Science: Stealth masturbation"
• "BSD: Not as l337 as LUN1X!!"
• "Book review: O'Reilly's Acne Prevention in a Nutshell"

(ObDisclaimer about hating to sound like flamebait or troll) but really, only an American could say such a thing about their own country (let alone about America!)

I think those of us in RoW are well aware of the corrupt & shallow US political culture, obsession with material success & status, barbaric policy of executing black people (and keeping many of the rest firmly repressed, whilst claiming to be the land of equality and fairness for all), highest proportion of population in jail, etc etc.

Let me add that the several Americans I've met personally IRL and (mostly) on the net have been mostly intelligent, nice, probably good people. By shee, you must all get pretty intense brainwashing.

Haven't read the other comments yet but I'm sure others will have mentioned this piece on the Other Place. Interesting and largely flamefree comment from a wide variety of opinions. Let's see what the people have posted here on /. ...

there is an interesting cross story on kuro5hin.

Don't mod me up. I already have 50 points.

K5 has a story about a particular Slashdotter not checking his links Right Here

There's an great writeup by eries at kuro5hin about this issue. It also has a very interesting poll accompanying the article on how many k5ers would be willing to donate to the cause.

There's an great writeup by eries at kuro5hin about this issue. It also has a very interesting poll accompanying the article on how many k5ers would be willing to donate to the cause.

You really think he thought it was serious? C'mon man... shouldn't you be somewhere else?

um.. I done, you can stop reading...

Do you realize how much energy our Sun is spitting out every second? And how little of that energy happens to impinge on this tiny planet for us to use?

How about matter? I'll spare you the numbers, but it wouldn't take a very large asteroid to supply our entire civilization's structural metal requirements for centuries, and to provide enough mass of everything else to make the phrase "precious metal" an oxymoron.

There's a nice Kuro5hin discussion going on right now about overpopulation, including the question of what is a "sustainable" population for humanity. The answer isn't encouraging; our fossil fuels won't be around in a few centuries, our fissionable metals will give us a few centuries more... and then what? Solar power? Not concentrated enough, unless you've got a plan to reduce our population 10-fold, or pull in extra power from space. Fusion? That's better (assuming we get it working eventually), but then you run into the problem that the cleanest fusion fuel, He3, only exists in quantity on the Moon and outer planets. Even if you don't see the value of going into space to support life there, eventually we'll want to leave this planet to better support life here.

The solar system has the resources to support quintillions of people; unfortunately for us an insignificant fraction of those resources happen to be on Earth.

An elevator to nowhere. Imagine how silly it'd look.

So anyway, like I said, you've got it exactly backwards. It would be an elevator to everywhere.

A discussion similiar to this already occured on kuro5hin, link here. The outcome of the discussion, revealed during a discussion of possible New Year's resolutions, was that the kid would stick with a CS degree and try hella freaking hard to do it despite the math and hardship, etc. His reasoning escapes me though...

I'm biased being a CS major. I really do get my jollies from reading obscure theory and coding useless stuff. CS = theory, CIS = practical. I figure if you know the theory, you'll be able to do the practical, you'll just have to spend that little extra time poring over manuals, HOWTOs, newsgroups, etc.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057

There's a discussion at Kuro5hin about this article, too. In particular, you might want to read these comments by the author of the article at the Register.

There's a discussion at Kuro5hin about this article, too. In particular, you might want to read these comments by the author of the article at the Register.

I think it's really dumb that ./ decided to post the serial ATA story and NOTHING about this, even though many people have submitted the story.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2000/ 12/18/151138/41

Feel free to add your insight to the discussion there as well because I never thought of India as a good example until reading what you posted.

See also the article on Kuro5hin and The Register.
Richy C.

Besides, they do this at sports events and stuff -- still pictures stuck on the boards of the hockey rink or whatever -- and it seems to work well enough to pay top dollar for...

And with creative use of frames [shudder] you could periodically load a new static picture -- once a minute, say. They're small enough that it wouldn't suck nearly as much bandwidth as animated banners (to say nothing of in-your-face javascript).

-Erf C.

I want to answer the original poster's real question, and not just tell him to take the child out for socializing. Other people have made that clear.

How does the child like to learn? Does he like books or teachers; both perhaps? If books, then make sure you know the best books/sites out there. He doesn't have to read them, just let them be there if he wants to look through them. Eventually, he will, reading little parts as he is interested. I hear this book is entertaining for children, and he can read it if he tires of the adult tone of other books.

As for teachers... let him go to the nearby large university to visit.. Speak with a department head. Perhaps he can hang around the science grad/undergrad students doing their little projects. He can find out what people are doing, and hang on for as long as he feels like.

Of course, he can't be shut out from his peers. The goal is that he should be as comfortable with humans as with books, or at least have the chance to be, if he isn't wired that way. There are many arenas in life he should be able to feel comfortable in; I have personally known people who've been advanced a little too quickly, and they've turned.. sick in certain ways. Without an oar. Don't fawn over him for the one attribute. He is not to be a trained performing dog.

There are other places to ask, if you want more in-depth information by people who've gone through this.

"....someone could come up with a patent on comment moderation."

Someone did.

I submitted a more accurate review that, among other things, didn't confuse data rate and clock frequency, to Slashdot and Kuro5hin last week. Kuro5hin accepted it. You can read it and reader responses at:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory&sid=2000/ 12/10/0925/1544

There's an recent article on Kuro5hin about fear of XHTML. The most relevent thing in it is how people will violently stick to what they know. They learned to use font tags instead of CSS, and so they like it that way. They fear that their pages will not work in the future, and they fear that they can't do the same things in XHTML as in HTML.

This is an example of how advocacy (in this case HTML over XHTML/CSS) is very bad for everyone involved. People do not want to leave HTML, so parsers will have to continue to be complex. Browser incomatibilities will widen even more.

I often see this kind of thing. A new standard comes out, and it solves more problems than before, but there is this inertia on the existing standard. It's almost as if people decide that they have learned enough for them to retire on.

I'd be interested in working to develop it. I think that it is possible to have a moderation scheme like /. or maybe reader voting like www.kuro5hin.org. There could be a trust metric like that used by advogato or sourceforge as well to allow for evaluation of the evaluators. This would turn it into a peer review type process. If anyone is interested, please email me: HomeySmurf at hotmail dot com.

Actually, Linux is a DOS App. I know, because Loadlin is a protected-mode program that runs Linux from DOS! DOS lets the program do whatever it wants. I mean, it's the running program, right?

Yeah, but you're expected to be able to return to DOS after playing the game. Which causes no end of annoyances... Saving the pointer to the INT9 handler, hmph.

Now there's a challenge for you: making LOADLIN return to DOS after you shut down Linux. It shouldn't be nearly as hard as something like Plex86, since you don't need to virtualize or anything, just save a bit of data for when you're finished.

Case in point: after removing my TV Card, my SB Live! card doesn't work at all. Under Windows, the card gets detected, and then the system locks. Hard. Under Linux, the drivers try to load, and then fail, but the system keeps going.

Ugh. I had a Hauppauge WinTV board, which you'd think would be pretty much guaranteed to work under Windows, right? Ha. It worked fine in Linux on the first try, but under a fresh Win98 with no other extraneous hardware, it would reboot 1 second after starting the TV display.

Incidentally, I don't use Windows at all now. Luckily, I'm not really a gamer, so I don't have the normal conflict of interest thing.

I like the design of RT-Linux, myself; I think a lot more could be done with a model like that.

Heh, lots of people are gushing over the possibilities of user-mode Linux. Linux -- it's a Web server, an ORB, an embedded system, and a mainframe, all in one!

--

The point is not that the Council wants the Empress' staff, it's that Palpatine -- sorry, Profion -- wants the rod.

He tries making his own, and fails. So he manipulates the Council into trying to strip Amidala -- sorry, Sarvina -- of hers. But when he learns that there's another rod of dragon control out there, he sends Darth Maul -- sorry, Damodar -- to recover it. (But he still wants the other one, to further weaken his opposition...)

For my take on the movie (written at 2 A.M., so I lose steam near the end) go to my K5 diary.

Jay (=

From my K5 article from some time ago, Australian company Nascomms has patents pending on technology to convert phone numbers into URLs. They've redesigned their page, but at one stage they were claiming to have invented numeric Internet addresses.

But I hope you're joking, or not a sysadmin. Bugtraq is a service for sysadmins, so they know what to look out for, not for crackers to get the latest cracks. Crackers get their 1337 cracking advice and tips from other 1337 crackers.

MS usually don't patch any security holes till crackers find them, even if they are aware of them. You can't 'just trust' Microsoft. I mean, think of the DOJ.

If you want to use the Fort Knox example, think of 5 million people all running their own Fort Knox, not telling anyone about it, but leaving the door wide open... Do you think nobody will find out?

If you're still not convinced, Inoshiro at kuro5hin has some very good security tutorials that go over this in detail.

But I hope you're joking, or not a sysadmin. Bugtraq is a service for sysadmins, so they know what to look out for, not for crackers to get the latest cracks. Crackers get their 1337 cracking advice and tips from other 1337 crackers.

MS usually don't patch any security holes till crackers find them, even if they are aware of them. You can't 'just trust' Microsoft. I mean, think of the DOJ.

If you want to use the Fort Knox example, think of 5 million people all running their own Fort Knox, not telling anyone about it, but leaving the door wide open... Do you think nobody will find out?

If you're still not convinced, Inoshiro at kuro5hin has some very good security tutorials that go over this in detail.

Slashdot is free... If You Want Commercials

from the free-as-in-good-bye-privacy dept.
Many of you wrote in to note that the latest edition of Slashdot is now free... except for the part that it runs commercials while you browse. (They don't even give you the option to buy a non-ad-filled commercial version if you like). It seems as though this advertising thing has also be applied to the other platforms. What do you guys think of ads in your web pages? Is it worth giving up your privacy for a free page, or paying fifty bucks for the HTML file? Personally, I'll stick to kuro5hin.

--

P.S.: I am not the real Rusty (who claims the same). I guess nobody notices the irony...
--
There is no K5 cabal.

A post from Estanislao Martínez on kuro5hin pretty much sums up the attitude of some on Slashdot to rally against John Katz as if he was trying to infiltrate this geek paradice without claiming any sort of technical merit as his pulpit.

Self-described g**ks *are* elitist bastards (4.09) (#82)
by Estanislao Martínez (emartinez*NOSPAM@quebecemail.com)

This goes to something I've talked about plenty already-- what somebody on that other site called once /. arrogance-- the belief that programming is the hardest human endeavour in existence, and thus, programmers are the smartest people, and if you know how to program, you can do anything any other professional can as well as they do, or even better.

Like, i.e., give legal advice ("IANAL, but B.S.]"), lecture experts about their own areas of expertise (e.g., go up to a linguist, condescendingly start explaining to them the most idiotic and trivial ideas from, say, Pinker's books, *and* then get them backwards). Or the numerous stories in /. or here in k5 about "g**k political organizing"-- the typical "if anybody is able to hack the political system, we g**ks are". The g**k's premise *is* self-superiority.


The attitude is basically, Katz, as a serious journalist who does not have [or claim to have, or see in advantage of having] wide technical skills, should be denied a voice. Surely `geeks' are entirely capable of evaluating and investigating their own culture? Surely someone without technical skills couldn't possibly understand?

Wrong. The third party view from Katz is the most eloquent and nonpartisan view in any story. And the reactions to the Hellmouth series are a testament to that.

Keep in mind I'm responding to a broad claim, and have provided a broad answer. Yes, the discussion of `geeks' as a single group is a generalization. but in order to draw a picture of scoiety, or any group within it, one must paint broad brush strokes.

There's a Kuro5hin story submission on this exact topic. I bet it will go to the front page soon. British Government considers interception plans more radical than Carnivore.
------------

There's a Kuro5hin story submission on this exact topic. I bet it will go to the front page soon. British Government considers interception plans more radical than Carnivore.
------------

I (a while back, admittedly) posted an article that gets involved with the implications of a unified packaging format/specification. Since that discussion is rather dead, and this one is alive and kicking, I'll repost it here for your enjoyment ;-)

(Special note: I'm using Debian now, and kernel 2.4 works fine. Before you flame me, check my (edibiase's) replies to concerns brought up on K5!)

I'm about to scream. This is about the third time this has happened: I've gotten sick of Linux. I know what follows. I'll "try" Windows 2000, decide that I hate it even more than Linux, and move on to BeOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Darwin, NetBSD, and then, to top it all off, QNX. At the end of that OS run, I'd think to myself, "Hmm. It appears that I do like Linux the best of all the operating systems I've tried," and I'll go back to Red Hat. But, after a while, I'll think to myself, "Red Hat sucks! It's too unstable, too bleeding-edge, and things don't always work the way they're supposed to. I need something that will work right all the time, like Debian. Debian all the way! One-hundred-percent free software, baby!" So I'll enjoy Debian for a while. Then, "Debian sucks! It's too out of date! Nobody releases DEB files for packaging, anyway! I won't be able to use Linux 2.4.x with Debian until the Sun dies, and that's optimistic!" Perhaps after this I'll move on to SuSE, and then to Slackware, and eventually I'll end up at Caldera. Once I get there, I'll be thinking, "Well, Windows 'Whistler' looks pretty neat. I'll give it a shot." In truth, though, I love Linux, but find it incredibly hard to use. I'll admit it, I'm rather a perfectionist in this regard.

Can we develop a more usable Linux?

To answer these questions, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I'm sixteen years old, and have been using Linux for a little while now; I'd estimate about four or five years. I want to go in to computer science when I "grow up." My real interests are in AI and user interface design, though.

My UI interest should come as no surprise, though, because I spend so much time looking at every single interface known to man in my quest for the optimal system. GNOME, KDE, Window Maker, Enlightenment, bash, DOS, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows 2000, BeOS. Those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head; I don't know how many others I can't even remember!

think I've come to the conclusion that I like Linux. It's fast. It's free. It's stable. It lets me mess around with programming, administration, and web development stuff, and it's starting to support all of my hardware (Quake III, the Matrox G400 MAX AGP, and XFree86 4.0.1 make a sweet combination). So what's the problem? I've identified several, and possibly you can add some more.

First off, there is nowhere near a useful level of consistency among distributions. Red Hat puts things in different places than Mandrake and SuSE, and doesn't even use the same package management system as Debian, Storm Linux, and Corel Linux. That's not to mention Slackware, or the other (millions?) of distributions that are around.

Not only is there no level of consistency in where distributions put things, but they use different package management programs, and there's no easy way to convert between them! Sure, there are tools like alien, but how much use are they when packages converted from one format to the other will probably only stick things in the wrong places and not interface with any kind of dependency system? The obvious problem is that I, J. Random Software Developer/Company, can't just release the J. Random Development Environment "for Linux." I have the joy of making a version for "Debian GNU/Linux," "Red Hat Linux 5.x," "Red Hat Linux 6.x," "Red Hat Linux 7.x," "Corel Linux," "Storm Linux," and "Slackware Linux." Yeah, I'm really going to want to create seven packages and manage them all. It's easier just to do it for Windows, or, as some companies have been doing of late, to release it for a particular Linux distribution only, and pretty much saying that any other platform is unsupported.

If we can get the consistency problem licked, it shouldn't be much of a jump to move to a unified packaging system, or at flock of compatable ones. Can't we come up with some kind of unified Linux packaging standard, with rules for creating, installing, and configuring packages, and work from there?

My last major point is that all the GUIs I've seen for Linux I'd classify in the "not very useful for Evan" category. I'm not saying that KDE, GNOME, and all the other Graphical User Interfaces out there for Linux are horrible (they're not), but rather that they're not what I feel comfortable using, and they're not something I feel many others would feel comfortable using. Neither GNOME nor KDE give me any real configurability as far as how I want my data to be organized, and they don't seem to have been designed to follow any sort of goal as far as user interface goes. I don't want to give the impression that I'm an expert on this, because I do not follow development of these projects at the mailing-list level, but this is what I know as an end user: it is really, really hard to justify using "mature" Free Software products like GNOME or KDE when they do not provide an intuitively designed interface nor a consistent way of working with the machine. Here's an example: I use GNOME most of the time, and it really irks me that things are so haphazard in it. Using a GUI should be easy, fast, and intuitive. We're moving toward fast (and, in many cases, are already there), but what about easy and intuitive? Let's cause a paradigm shift here: interfaces by, for, and of the users, as opposed to by, for, and of the whimsies of the arbitrary developer. Can we make an interface that nobody's ever seen before; an interface that will make Linux stand out more than it already does as a shining example of an excellent operating system?

Those are my ideas for a good Linux system. In a nutshell: consistency, good package management, and amazingly good GUIs.

But, you may say, this argues for the end of distributions! What good is a Mandrake to a Red Hat if I can just take the Mandrake packages and install them on Red Hat? To this, I say that perhaps distributions will have to do more to stand out. How is Red Hat presented? What does it include out of the box?

I know that the driving force behind any kind of evolution, be it biological or technical, is diversity. But how can we continue to justify diversification to the extent of exclusion? I don't think we can any longer. Yeah, you can go and hack your own system from the source, and only install the source. That's your choice. But let's agree that there are certain things that simply need to be standardized. I'm sick and tired of fighting Linux to get it to do what I want it to do, and I'm sure that many of you agree.

So, what do you make of my little rant? Is it too late for Linux? How much standardization is really necessary? I want to see this turn into something amazingly productive; I believe that the open source/free software concept, when harnessed properly, is the most powerful software development force yet known. Can we harness it to do something about this problem? Do we need to start a SourceForge project? Work with the Linux Standards Base and the distributions to try and standardize the important things? What are those important things? Do we need to standardize interfaces (I don't think so)? What about creating a package management format that works better than RPM and dpkg, and that will let software developers release one package for use with everyone? I look forward to hearing what people think, because we truly have the opportunity here to release Linux from something that, in my opinion, has been holding it back.

Yeah, it's a bit long, but it generated some good discussion on Kuro5hin, so I figured it might generate a similar level of discussion here.

Not only is this old news, but its old news that was covered by Slashdot before!

This Slashback announced it on September 26 (albeit without confirmation).

And this Kuro5hin story featured it on October 19th, after the solution was confirmed, complete with a link to the solution details (PDF) !!

If you need to be able to grow to form a huge community, then you'll need slashcode.

But if you are talking about a few thousand visitors per day, you should look into any of the following slash-alikes:

• PHPslash
• Squishdot
• ThatPHPware
• scoop
• SlashJ
• sips
• localecho
• twig
• ASPslash
• phpweblog

Methinks this would have been a better question to ask on Slashcode.org instead of here on Slashdot itself.

I thought it was logical, since cache is the only difference I can think of between the T-bird and the Duron. If a proc comes off the line, but the L2 cache has an error, AMD may be able to save it by doing some creative wiring. I do doubt that AMD does this, since mass marketting has lead to the end of hotfixes to make "mostly OK" products into "OK" products (go look into any older machines for hotfix wires).

As for the cache size being off.. whoops, I don't own a T-bird. I do own a K6-III and a K6-2, so I know the specifics of those chips from dealing with them daily (cat /proc/cpuinfo :))

"Had me half convinced.." .. sigh.. must everyone think that every other post on Slashdot written with any form of coherency is a fscking troll? I guess that's why I live more on Kuro5hin.
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Linux is only Free if your time is worth Nothing